An unexpectedly pleasant subway ride, and rider.

The other week when it was very very cold out, I was returning from a lesbian feminist choral concert and was making a subway transfer for a few stops, and I hop into this car full of many homeless people, including one (shorter) (slightly older) (chubby faced) (bearded) (lighter-skinned black) guy holding an Icehouse beer can and smelling of alcohol and with a shopping cart full of a clean sleeping bag in front of him, and strapped onto the top of the sleeping bag in the shopping cart was a big speaker playing R&B music rather loudly, and that music was very much dominating some rinky-dink hip hop music or something that some (skinny) (young) (dark black) guy farther down the car was playing on his smartphone.

Then, some song came on, and it was some really smooth, very famous song that you could totally groove out to, and this (older) (black) (possibly homeless) woman in a mildly puffy black quilted coat who was standing near us started dancing to it as I kind of moved my shoulder in time to the beat.

"This is great, man," I was like to the guy who had the shopping cart, and he seemed pleased.

Then, I was like, "This is music, that other stuff is just noise," and when I said "that other stuff," I nodded my head down the car to the guy playing hip hop on his smartphone.

At that, the guy seemed pleased again, and smiled more broadly.

Also, when I later asked him what it was right before I got off on my stop, he said it was Gladys Knight, but he couldn't remember what song it was.

. . .

...I think I remember the phrase "young love" and googled it, but the only thing that came up was "Love Overboard" and I haven't been in a place with internet where I could hit 'play' and see if it's actually the same song, so I'm not sure if it's the one song that I heard there on the subway and that I really like...

Two people on the subway the other day.

The other evening I was going in to assist my one client with disabilities for a few hours and the subway car kept filling up, and next to me sat this one (intense) (white) (early college age) (young) girl with dark stringy hair and a cheap knit cap on and her smartphone out in front of her, and this (short) (fat) (early college age) (young) (white) guy with a blonde beard and a pot belly was standing in close to her and close to me and he also had his phone out, and it became clear to me that they were playing some fantasy trivia game together on each of their smartphones.

"I forget, is Lothorian close to Gondor?", the guy asked a bit loudly in his higher-pitched voice, in this very tentative way clearly deferring to her superior authority.

"Yes," she was like, solemnly, and they each pressed that choice from the list of three multiple choice fantasy place names, and she was right.

After that, the list was of three names, and you had to pick the one that was *really* a Hobbit name.

He made a mistake, but again she was right.

They were still on the subway car when I finally got off to go to work.

Purification.

I'm now trying to think of my life as purification.

I made up a list of four areas of my life, with two of them being the past (my campaign and my doctoral program), and two of them being the start of the future (two major areas of freelance writing).

I listed out a bunch of tasks, and what I'm going to try to do now is close off all the areas of the past as quickly as possible by completing all the little loose end stuff that I have left to do to fulfill my responsibilities in those areas, and then I'll start phasing in my other writing until it's all that I'm doing and I'm in a new chapter of my life.

It's really time.

Further campaign realization.

Looking back on my campaign, I realize that my opponent wasn't as getting defined by the media as much as I thought he was, and so although he had and has a very small base, he also had the money to buy four mailers and get them out to people, and that worked on enough low info people to get them to think that he was okay enough to the point where they would go and vote him back in, especially since a lot of those people I guess were never exposed to me and my campaign, or were never exposed enough.

I had no idea mailers could be that effective, too. They certainly seem to be important, maybe even more important now because of the decay of common news sources due to the rise of the internet.

In light of that strategy he used, I realize now that I would have had to have a full-time organizer and enough money for enough mailers to counteract him.

But, even though that might be like $50,000, he has access to way more money than that, so my even maybe getting $50,000 could maybe set off an arms race where he spends more money and then I have to go out and spend more money in order to match him enough to the point of significant declining marginal returns on his investment, maybe to like where I'm spending like $100,000 or so.

That's just insane, and beyond what I ever fathomed could ever be necessary, even though I heard that number floating around.

You *hear* about money in politics, but it's another thing to go and learn it for yourself, how it just puts a finger on the scales and helps a shitty incumbent get re-elected, even though not all that many people really even like him that much.

To-do list: Mole.

My one mole on my right forearm that I've had checked out before and turned out to be benign looks a bit bigger on one half and is still as dry as it ever was, maybe even a bit more.

So, I'm thinking of getting it checked out again.

I wonder if I can somehow just put my foot down with the dermatologist and have it cut out, and maybe biopsied to boot.

I'd rather have a small scar and no worries, than this thing there.

Resthome humor (3 of 3): Jury duty.

That same evening during a slow part of the night, I popped into our central office and my one (Ethiopian) supervisor was there catching up on paperwork, and she was doing that as I sat down at our same one main table and started to have a snack.

Then, she turned to me and was like, "Can I ask something?"

"Of course,"  I was like.

"I get jury duty, I don't want go, what do I do?", she was like.

"I actually have no idea," I was like.

She then said that she doesn't want to miss all that work and that she was thinking that she could pretend that she doesn't know English in order to get out of it, and that she wanted to reply back -

I don't understand. I don't speak English well.

- "That's it," she was like, shrugging and using this phrase of finality that she uses that must be some kind of stock phrase in Amharic.

The funny thing, too, is that like two days later, I got standby notice for jury duty in the mail, and I've never been called for jury duty before!

Resthome humor (2 of 3): Election results.

After I got back to work, me and the one (Jewish) resthome resident with a really dark sense of humor caught up a bit, and he hadn't heard that the one really well-funded political dynasty candidate in the mayor's race didn't make the runoff

"Really?", he was like, genuinely surprised.

"Yeah," I was like.

"Maybe I should go to services," he was like.