Unexpected campaign bonuses.

As a result of my campaign, I was tapped to apply for a board seat for a pretty well-known civic organization in the city.

And, a congressional candidate for my district who's primarying the incumbent looked me up and wanted to meet me for coffee to pick my brains, and I was able to advise him some on issues and on strategy and I had some takes that dovetailed with what he was thinking and that he seemed to appreciate.

Both are totally unexpected bonuses; getting the shit on the incumbent out into the press was great and made everything more than worthwhile, and now this is just cake.

Some of the articles that came out with more details in the big papers after the election have really turned a lot of people against the incumbent, too, people have been saying...  Too bad it didn't happen before the election, but oh well, better late than never...  :/

Sauerkraut conversation.

So, lately I've been going to this one bar to work at that my one professor friend who studies (modern) (Czech) literature goes to, since it's chill and has good prices and between the music and TVs and whatnot, there's a lot of unobtrusive white noise around you that lets you go and focus.

So, the other day I had some dinner at home, including a huge bowl of homemade sauerkraut, and then I hopped the subway a few stops up to go do some work at the bar.

On the train I could feel my stomach gurgling a little bit like I needed to go to the bathroom, but that didn't make too much sense to me since I had already gone to the bathroom earlier that day, and then by the time I walk to the bar it had settled down some, but then I set up my laptop and all of a sudden I need to go to the bathroom again.

"Hey, can you watch my laptop for a second while I run to the restroom?", I asked these two (older) (white) guys who were sitting right next to me at the bar and who had just gotten another round of drinks.

"Sure," the one right next to me was like.

So, I head to the restroom and sit down, and as soon as I sit down and let go a little it's just like this huge stream of water coming out of my ass, and then another huge stream of water coming out of my ass again, and then yet another huge stream of water coming out of my ass yet again.

Then, I wait for a bit to make sure there's no more streams of water coming out of my ass, then I use some of the cheap toilet paper to dab up the remaining ass juice lingering around my anus so I can go back to the bar.

So, I do, and I leave a vague shit smell behind me in the bar restroom.

"Thanks for watching my laptop," I tell the guys who I left there like ten minutes before.

"No problem," the one right next to me is like.

Then, I work some.

Later, two older "stewardesses" from Las Vegas are next to me and we chat a bit, and they're appalled at the harsh abortion laws passing everywhere, and we talk some and the one mentions that her husband said that Melania is the most beautiful and elegant First Lady ever.

"I don't like your husband anymore," the one says to the other.

Then even later when it's closer to closing time, I talk to the one (white) (female) bartender some, and I mention the homemade sauerkraut.

"Bring some in for me next time!", she's like.

"I totally will," I was like, and then I'm like, "But it made me squirt a bomb earlier right when I got here."

And, she doesn't say much.

"I was kind of embarrassed," I was like. "It's really embarrassing to take a shit in a bar restroom, no one really does that."

And, she doesn't say much again, and then goes away as soon as she can to go do something else.

Awesome subway conductor.

The other week when I was going into work on the subway, this one (older) (African-American) man with f*cked-up eyes and a big white cane and a begging cup came onto the train from the platform, and as soon as he did that, the conductor came on over the intercom.

"Mister Visual," she was like, "Not on my train, there is no panhandling on my train, I understand that you just got on, but at the next stop you can get off and just keep right on going, there will not be any panhandling on my train."

And, for the first time ever since I've seen this guy - you see him a lot on the subway I ride - he just stood there in place where he got on and he stood there and he didn't say anything, and at the next stop he turned around and got right off the car.

The conductor had a (black) (lady) voice, too.

Fun day at work at the resthome: Medical appointment escort.

The other week I came into work at the resthome to escort a resident to a doctor's appointment.

We took a wheelchair cab to a nearby hospital, but it turned out that we had to wait forever for one on the way back and they couldn't even tell us when it'd be coming, so I raised the possibility of me pushing her back, since we were just five blocks away from the resthome.

So, we ended up doing that.

When we were mostly done, I said we could always do this in the future, if the weather was good.

"Just let me know for your next appointment and we can figure it out," I was like.

"I would," she was like, "But it's December."

"Oh," I was like.  "In that case, maybe not, though maybe we could."

Then, I was like, "But then again, maybe not, we wouldn't want to end up like the Donner Pass."

Confession of my one assisted living client with disabilities's sister: Wiccan prayer book.

The other week my one assisted living client with disabilities' sister was saying that she has this Wiccan prayer book and that it has some really good prayers, but she found out later that the guy who wrote it is notoriously anti-gay, which is mega surprising since the Wiccan community just isn't like that at all.

"You can't tell that from the prayers at all," she was like.  "And they are damn good prayers."

She says that she still has the book, but she keeps it deep in her bookstack and hasn't read it in years.

I then told her that years ago I started reading the Left Behind series to educate myself about evangelicalism, and then later after that I was pruning books and wanted to get rid of the first two I had from that series, but I wasn't so sure what to do with them, since I didn't want to give them away and put that energy and those ideas out into the universe.

"I actually put them deep in my trashcan so no-one would see them and get them," I was like, and I said that those are the only books in my life that I've ever thrown out.

I then said that I don't believe in book-banning or book-burning, but it was just too much as an individual to go out and spread those particular ideas by giving them away like I would with any other used books of mine that I was done with.

She nodded and agreed.

. . .

I also asked her why the one Wiccan prayer book guy was so anti-guy.

"Probably because he's an old closet case," she was like.  "Same fucking story as always."

The decay of the press.

The other week I was reading Alice Dreger's "Galileo's Middle Finger," and I was quite struck by this observation that she makes towards the later part of the book.

Basically, she says that over her activist career of truth-seeking, the rise of the internet really gutted the press, and it showed in which causes of hers they picked up and how they were treated.

Basically, there weren't enough specialist staffers anymore, and when there were, they couldn't take on too long or too complex of a story, and even when they wanted to, often time an editor killed it because it'd cost too much to factcheck and in case of any lawsuits.

That totally resonated with me, with trying to get my higher ed exposes into print, as well as some of the corruption stuff on my opponent during the campaign.

It was totally a struggle, and they were obviously good stories, but it was just like a wall, where people wouldn't want to look into the details or to move it forward and there was no sense that you could get them to go and do it.

In a way, it was very affirming, to see described it in print what I've faced, and to know now one presentation of the dynamics, so I can tell other people about her take on it when I tell them about what I've done and what I've faced.

In a way, too, it makes what I've done all the more impressive (though not to brag; I don't like to do that); I really did all of that expose stuff not only when I was split so many ways, but also in an increasingly less propitious media environment.

Surprise of another (Tibetan) coworker: Soka Gakkai.

The other week I was talking with my one (male) (Tibetan) coworker, and after he said he never reads books, he said that the Dalai Lama has some really good books, and he started telling me about them.

I then told him about the one book I was reading "In the Closet of the Vatican," and that they had this story about a Colombian cardinal who was incredibly depraved and would not only hire male prostitutes, but would also beat them up after having sex, just because, or maybe because he was sadistic and it turned him on, even after he had already ejaculated.

(I left that last detail out, when I told him about the cardinal beating up male prostitutes.)

And, Pope Francis sent his body back to Medellin from Rome, and it's there in the cathedral behind a fence because people are worried that gay prostitutes or their families might come in and vandalize the tomb if just anybody could get to it.

"Oohhhh," he was like, and then he clucked his tongue a lot, just purely and genuinely dismayed at how evil that man's behavior was.

He then asked me what I knew about Buddhism, and I said some, and then I started talking about Soka Gakkai, which he hadn't heard of and which made him very surprised.

"You chant something and you get it?", he was like.

"That's what they say," I was like.

"Use your sense," he was like, "If that was true, everyone would come and chant and get everything they want and everyone would come there and the whole world would do it, and that's impossible."

"But that's what they say and they think," I was like.

He just didn't even know what to think of it, and was surprised that it was a thing.

So, he pulled out his smartphone and I spelled the name out for him, and he began reading the Wikipedia entry for Soka Gakkai.