Negative campaigning.

It's really crazy, a few conversations I had towards the end of the last general election.

Like two Democrats I know - a (female) (black) security guard at the local library, and a(n older Latino-heritage) (female) person who I met when I was out canvassing - both said that they were having a hard time deciding who to vote for in this one race that was getting massive play on TV.

Basically, the negative personal ads on TV were turning them off and making them wonder who to vote for, even though they both admitted that the Democrats had better policy and that Republicans were crazy.

It really makes you realize, how all that money floating around can be deployed into negative campaigning and drain off the votes from the left, to get rightwing reactionaries elected when they wouldn't be otherwise.

It's so sad, and so perverse.

Winter time is here...

So I now walk to the subway every morning, instead of bike.

I can't risk the wear and tear of salt and water on my bike, all winter long.

It can destroy a bike!

A night-time ride on the subway one night after work:

At one end of the car a man is stretched out and sleeping, and at the other end of the car there's a (20-something) (black) guy in shorts with his legs showing and smelling all like BO, for like a third of the car, and in one of the forward-facing seat pairs there's this (early 30-something) (white) couple with their arms around each other.

Later, a(n older) (black) guy gets on dragging a wheelie suitcase with bundles on it behind him, and he goes down to sit at the end of the car with the BO guy, and his head is shaven and he's wearing sunglasses and he has this boil or something about the size of a giant gumball on the back right of his head, just sticking out to the point where the skin is stretched and a little lighter around the edges.

Even later, the car fills up more, and this (older) (dreaded) (haggard) (black) guy gets on, and he sits at different places in the car and talks with folks like the (white) couple, and makes them uneasy.

When he's in my part of the car, he cracks open a beer can, and sits near a (younger) (black) couple, and says that he hopes that they're making babies.

Resthome anecdotes (2 of 2): Such language.

The other week at the resthome, I was helping out the one retired psychiatrist who likes to swear a lot, and I ended some list of stuff with the word "shit."

"[The full form of my first name!], he was like, "Such language.  I think I taught you that, f*cker."

Resthome anecdotes (1 of 2): Dinner absence.

The other week at the resthome, this one woman who I tend to discuss books with a lot observed to me that this one gentlemen who hums to himself very loudly wasn't at dinner that night, and he wasn't at lunch that day either.

"But the funny thing is," she was like, "I still heard him doing that in my head, today at lunch."

"Interesting," I was like, and I then told her about how sometimes I hear my cellphone alarm going off in the morning and I wake up, but it's not it at all, it's just me thinking that I hear the sound from the cellphone alarm.

Pen mystery.

The other week I was at a library branch after work, to print a few pages and scan some stuff to send out by email.

And, late in the process, I drop my pen, but when I look down on the ground, I can't find it at all, even after I get up and move my chair and my backpack and look around everywhere, to the point where I worry that any librarian who's looking on and seeing me might think I'm strange, like some of the people who suffer from mental illness and hang out at the library and use the computers all the time.

That night when I get home, though, I unzip one pocket on my backpack, and there my pen is, sitting out on top of some stuff.

I'm guessing it dropped into an open pocket of my backpack when it fell, but I didn't see it at the time, and I must not have seen it when I zipped up the open pockets on my backpack and got up and left, after I had been searching for the pen and then finished up all that I was doing at the library.

A dream of the resthome.

The other week, I dreamnt -

I'm upstairs far up in the resthome, and it's this confusing area of escalators and whitish walls and dull business carpet, all very anonymous.

Later, I make my way down, and I'm down on the regular floors, in this area with relatively empty multi-level wood floors, and a small divider wall and stairs here and there that go between levels, and I get a call to go meet a patient who's coming back from rehab.

Instead, I lie on my stomach on the wood floor and do things on my laptop, when I know I should be working.

After a while, I get up, and I go put some knickknacks on a glass coffee table that's standing out there, and one of them is this greenish ceramic leaf with an inordinately long stem.

And then, I wake up.

. . .