Another subway sight: Freshening up.

The other month I was on the subway down at the one end of the car, and I could see around the edge into that little compartment at the very end of the car, where on one half there's like a mini-room with a secluded seat, and the other half is a door leading to a conductor's compartment if that car is at the very front of the train.

In that little room with the secluded seat, was a (late teens or early 20s) (black) (guy), with a small backpack.

He set some stuff up on the ledge, then he took some clothes out of his backpack and changed outfits, and then he put on some aftershave and hair schmutz, in about ten minutes, all very deftly and discreetly, in such a small place.

"He must be homeless," I thought.

I then thought that that area must be the most private he could get, between wherever he was coming from and to wherever he was going.

I also wondered if he was going to work, or school.

Subway happenings: recognition.

So, like twice since I've written that one post, I've seen that (tall) (young) (skinny) (black) guy who's super out of it and slowly walks up and down cars and begs and vaguely waves his hand a bit in front of your face, to try to catch your attention.

I wonder if we just tend to ride the same train at the same time, or if he's just always on this one train that I ride a lot.

My one (half Sudanese) (half British) friends Saturday outing, the other weekend.

The other week I caught up with my one (half Sudanese) (half British) friend (the sister of the sister-brother pair), and she was telling me about her outing the other week.

Ever since living in the States, she's always wanted to go to a shooting range, just to hold a gun and shoot it, since you can't do that in the UK.

So, someone she knows from the office has guns and goes to a shooting range, and she finally took up an invitation from him to go to shoot with him.

She had a lot to say about that.

First, she doesn't know why anyone needs to own that many guns.

Second, she was surprised at the "safety" on guns, which she said a lot of times was like a small button on a cell phone, and she took out her phone to demonstrate.

"There," she was like, tapping a button on her cell phone.  "Safety on."

Then, she repeated the whole thing all over again.

"There," she was like.  "Safety off."

Then, she was like, "It's that quick, a little light goes on, and you can shoot."

Last, she said that the next day, she woke up aching all over from the recoil, and the previous day at the shooting range had been like some freaky alternate reality dream that she just woke up from.

Tenure-track people I know are out-to-lunch with encouraging graduate study.

Something that's been increasingly apparent on Facebook is how out-to-lunch a lot of tenure-track people are in encouraging graduate study to (mostly undergrads) who work under them.

One guy I studied with in Ph.D. put something up proudly about his one student getting accepted at a top Humanities Ph.D. program, and another woman who I've known for years put something up about her one student getting into a top MA with a half (!) tuition scholarship (which means at least $40K in debt!!!), and these other profs I know are actually *beginning* a Ph.D. program at their mid-level state school.

I haven't said anything, but in most cases, at least one Facebook commenter is like, "Are you sure this is such a good idea to encourage them towards this career path..?".

What I find astounding, though, is how blithely these profs encourage this career path.  They *know* that people are getting f*cked worse and worse, but it's like their minds shut off when it's one of their students, since they get an ego-boost out of guiding someone.

The other week I was talking with my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend, and he said this thing that he's been saying lately.

"You know, take a look at all of these professors," he was like, "I honestly don't want to be like them.  In a lot of cases, they're really quite horrible people."

Am up-and-down lately, with work and life.

Lately I've been up and down with work and life.

One part of it is having my one elder care client move into a home, and my having to scramble to find new work *just* when  I was getting into the groove of a schedule.

Another part of it is my smartphone...  I'm addicted to following all of these mile-a-minute political and labor developments, but it can make me feel atomized and disconnected and helpless.

Yet another part of it is my running for office, and the trade-offs it's caused.

Sometime I'm very unsure of myself, and am wondering whether the time is wasted, esp. since it's been preventing me from pursuing my longer-term writing projects that I've found so meaningful.

The Pope said about 2017 that it was "a wasted year."

I'm trying to look at my time now, and prevent wasted time.  In retrospect, a lot of things like following my smartphone closely will prove to be wasted time, I think, and I'm better off just sitting and reading or finding new things to do.

I need to focus more on my writing, too, when my campaign time allows.

Some home health care people's perspectives on food.

So, the other month I took a class through my one home health care position, and as part of a unit on nutrition, we had to talk a lot about personal relationships to food, since all choices about better food happen within the context of someone's life.

The class was like 65% women, and I was the only (white) person there, and it was just a blast to hear everyone.

1) One (older middle-aged) ) (black) guy on advice to cut off fat from food like pork chops before you eat it:

"But I like the fat part."

2) One (Latina) said her husband's (Mexican) but his dad as a kid held a belt over them and made them finish everything on their plate, so to this day her husband doesn't like a lot of stereotypically Mexican foods like rice.

3) Another (Latina) said she met her husband at 11, had her first baby at 14, and since he's (Mexican) from Mexico but she's (Mexican) from Texas, she had to learn a lot of stereotypically (Mexican) foods like tacos the way he likes them, and now her kids are used to having home-cooked meals like that every night.

"And that's why I'm a big girl," she was like, too.

4) This one (young middle-aged) (black) guy with a nicely-trimmed beard who seemed suave but kind of out of it says that he tries to be "purposeful" with his eating, and is getting into salmon.

5) One (middle-aged) (black) woman was also into that type of eating, and she said she eats carbs for energies, protein for builders, vitamins for protection, and fiber as, and she said something understated and innocuous, but we all knew what she meant.

"And sometimes, I eat the fiber, and it comes up on me, where I'm going to throw it up," she was like.

6) One (younger middle-aged) (black) woman said her grandmother came from Mississippi and had twelve kids, boy girl boy girl boy girl all the way down like that, and she taught all of them to cook, even the boys, since they might not marry and so would need it.

"But I couldn't stand a lot of that," she was like.  "Those pig's feet, and the chicken feet, UGH."

She then said that the first time when she was a kid, she saw the chicken feet boiling in a pot, and she got all freaked out because they were all curled up and she thought they were cooking babies' hands.

At that, one (Latina) woman said that in Mexico, they would sell chicken feet with hot sauce at schools, for kids who forgot their lunch, since it was a cheap snack.

"But is there even much meat on them?", the (black) woman was like, shuddering.  "UGH."

She also said that her grandmother was very particular, and if you tried to touch anything while she was cooking, "she'd take your arm off."

My one ex-neighbor works at a dog shop for the megarich.

So, my one ex-neighbor who survived Katrina has been working lately at this one dog shop for the megarich in like the city's richest neighborhood, where she has to stand in a certain way at attention when she's not helping customers.

Many of the customers are residents, she said, and many are people who the clients pay to take care of their dogs.

To both, she sells like $200 doggie outfits and $60 angora sweaters for their dogs, and she was telling me about one woman who came in and bought like 6 and wanted next-day UPS shipping to send them out as presents.

"These people have nothing to do but shop," she was like.

She also said that the medium-level rich people can be mean to you since they have something to prove, but the truly rich people interact with you not in a mean or even a negative way, but rather in a way that shows that they're just not committed to caring positively or negatively about you in any way at all, since they're just in a different place than you.

"It's so weird," she was like.

She also also said that there's like 3 types of credit card, a black one with unlimited credit for billionaires, and then 2 types of tin ones that weigh a pound each, that are either for millionaires or for people with high wealth variability, like Wall Street traders.

"They make a huge f*cking clunk sound when they pull them out and drop them on the counter," she was like.

Also also also, sometimes she has to go to these ritzy downtown highrises, to take up a bag of dogfood that someone needs.

. . .

Such a weird world.  And they're so involved in brands and signalling, that it's like they entirely collapsed into themselves, and became high school all over again.