Convo with my mother (1 of 2): Something else.

The other week I was talking with my mom on the phone, and it was something else.

First, she was like, "Hello, [name of my brother's dog]," when she picked up the phone.

(My parents are taking care of the dog, and I think my mom was interacting with the dog when she went to go pick up the phone, and though she always knows who's calling since the name of the caller flashes across the TV screen because of some device they have, somehow her signals must have gotten crossed)

Later, I mentioned that the interviewer at my 3rd-round job interview was from Columbia.

"I'm not sure I like that," she was like.

I asked her why, and she said because it sounded like a money-laundering front where they run drugs.

"Columbia like the school, Mom," I was like, "Not like the country."

"Oh," she was like, and laughed.

"Have you been drinking?", I was like.

"No," she was like, "But I wish I was."

An appreciated Twitter oddity.

The other month I saw a "British translation guide" on Twitter, that gives examples of what a Brit understatedly says, what they actually mean by it, and how it's inaccurately perceived by non-Brits.

I texted it to my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend (the sister of the brother-sister pair), and she texted back pretty much right away that she loved it, and  that she was going to show it to her boss at work.

Like the next working day, then, she texted me that her boss liked the translation guide so much, that he printed it out and taped it up by his desk.

My new apartment's toilet.

My new apartment's toilet looks all new and shiny and good, but the very back of the bowl is actually shallow and pitched slightly towards the front at an angle more drastic than normal.

So, if you sit just a bit back on the seat when you go to take a shit, you leave big clops of shit all down the back, and the water when you flush isn't enough to wash it off.

The other day I went to open the toilet lid to go and take a piss, and there was a big clop of shit just stuck to the back.

I pissed at it and you could see bits coming off since the water grew browner and you could even start to smell shit again, but the thing was so dry and stuck that it didn't really come off that fast or all in one big chunk like I expected.

A party near me the other weekend:

I was walking down the street near me on a Saturday evening, and some (young) (white) people were out on the stoop, smoking.

Later, I walk by there again, and there's a different set of (young) (white) people out on the stoop, smoking, and I see the glass front door half open and a party going on, and I see a handwritten sign on the inside of the door "City Slickers Only," and then I look back at the kids on the stoop and I notice that they're all in what vaguely looks like Western wear.

Axe-to-grind Ten Percenters.

The other week I was at a protest for a municipality that was seeking to maybe exempt itself from a county-wide minimum wage hike, and then afterwards I stuck around for a beer in that shee-shee suburb and read for a bit, and then when I was leaving I asked a (later middle-aged) (Latina) woman smoking outside for a recommendation for another bar for a nightcap.

She was sitting on a planter, and of course she asked me where I was from, why I was there, etc., and when I mentioned the protest, she was like, "But do you really think that people with no skills should be making fifteen dollars an hour?".

I then tried switching the framing, and being like, "Everyone who works forty hours a week should be able to afford food and modest housing," and then when she replied something to that, I said that employers who paid less were causing "social pollution" and shouldn't be in business, since we regulate pollution pollution, and jobs like that are also harmful to society.

As it turns out, she was in HR negotiating with unions for the boss, and she said that she faced down racism and got an education and her kid was a latch-key kid while she worked 12 hour days, and minimum wage was only $2.65 an hour back then.

"But it's less now, proportionally," and I added that it's a numbers game, and some people might turn out okay, but the more you take away good jobs, the worse social outcomes you have, and we should plan for that dynamic; it's not that morality leads to good jobs, but good jobs lead to morality.

We went down that path a while, and then we both agreed that there should be a massive public works program where anyone who wanted to could work.

"We should have said that from the beginning," she was like.

At some point, too, when I pointed out that if she could front money for her college-age kids to take low-paid internships, she was probably in the top 10% of American families, that really didn't register with her, since she still wanted to claim her roots and lack of privilege.

Later, on thinking back, I realized that it was almost like a cycle of abuse, and that she got hazed economically in her time, and she wanted to turn that pain on others.  In discussing the economy and society, she really wasn't discussing how you make a better world, she was discussing how you set things up so she could feel good about herself in comparison to others, it was almost like she wanted to set everything up so we would just applaud her.

If I had to have that conversation over again, I think I would say that that was just awful how much she had to work while her son was growing up, and we should change things so no-one ever has to do that again.

I'd be interested to see how that approach goes down.

Can't wait to hang out with my old neighbor.

My old neighbor the shell-shocked New Orleanian just quit her job managing a bookstore.

She put it up on Facebook, and I posted that we should hang out and celebrate, and so we're going to.

I can't wait; she's a really cool person, and I'm treating her to dinner and drinks.

For some reason her job was horrible or turned horrible, and so she quit after a decade with nothing else lined up.

Horrible pet owners.

The way some pet owners treat their pets is really shocking to me.

The other weekend I was at the beach on these rocks that tumble down in to the lake, and there was this big group of (mostly white) (20 and 30 something) people, many with dogs.

When I was swimming, this (white) guy and (white) girl took their little boxer down on a leash onto a stone, and the guy got in the water and kept trying to coax the dog in, though the dog was freaking out because the rock it was on was slippery from algae growing on it and waves were washing in over that rock and causing it to lose its footing, and so it was whining a lot and you could tell it was mutedly freaking out.

"Come on, you're no fun!", the (white) guy told the dog.

At that, I was genuinely shocked.

What did he think, did he think that the dog was there to occupy him and be a sporty companion, and so you could guilt-trip him like a friend?  Honestly, it's a dog you take care of, not a best bud like in a movie or on a commercial.

Later, too, they were down by another rock and trying it again, this time with the girl in the water, and much of the same thing was happening.

When they gave the dog enough leash, it went onto dry rocks, but then they'd take in the leash and make it go near the water again, and the dog would just whine and whine.

It especially whined when the girl would start to swim away, and they held it near the water's edge to watch her.

The whole thing really ticked me off, I almost wanted to say something, but I didn't, because it would have made the owners defensive, probably.

I should have, though.  What's the worst that they could have said, that it was none of my business? I would have just responded that they were doing it in a public place and the dog was whining audibly, so it most certainly was.