A dream of late this summer:

This summer I dreamnt –

I’m sipping a cup of coffee, and it has a very distinctive sweet flavor sitting above the standard coffee taste, so as I hold my coffee mug, I look around on the nearby counter until I can find the bag, and I pull it out and flip it over and look at it, and it is Skittles-flavored coffee.

. . .

(I had bought some regionally-produced blueberry- and peach- and grog-flavored coffees on sale a long while ago, from the local supermarket, and all had sweet flavors that sat out above the standard coffee taste.)

An extremely minor life decision.

From now on, I’m only ever buying the most expensive bulk popcorn at the local co-op store.

The cheapest one is also from a local farm, and it would be nice if it was good, but it isn’t; all of the kernels are very small, and they just don’t pop.

The same goes for the “white popcorn” that’s the middle-priced of the 3 varieties that they sell…  Its kernels are distinctively white, but just so many of them don’t pop, when you stovetop heat them in oil in a pot and try to pop them all on your stove.

So, the most expensive of the 3 brands it is for me, I guess.

I guess you pay for consistency!

Addendum addendum.

After a few of us went out drinking still more, the one (gay) (Brazilian) (STEM) post-doc who I know from around town turned to me at one point after he had boughten a round, and was like, “Buy, because they are still students.”

At the third bar of the night, this one (biracial) (American) undergraduate began asking me for my professional opinion on American political elites and human sacrifice – he kept saying very intensely that he takes it seriously, because we’re “spiritual beings” – and my one (Brazilian) friend somehow got very mad at me for talking about the logic of animal and human sacrifice, including in relation to Jesus Christ, since he said that his death wasn’t about that, it was about overcoming personal challenges, and I’m making it bloody.

At a pizza place after that, too, he was remarking that (Americans) drink too much, whereas in (Brazil) you “protect yourself” with water throughout the night, as well as by ending with food.

Addendum.

When the one (young) (flighty) (Afro-Brazilian) (female) graduate student was telling me that about Charlie Kirk, it was at this one impromptu late-night drinking party that a lot of local (Brazilians) put on, where they all showed up at a bar with a nice patio to drink, in honor of Jair Bosonaro’s 27-year prison sentence.

And, they all wore red in honor of the major political party opposite Bolsonaro, including the one (gay) (Brazilian) (STEM) post-doc who I know from around town, who had dug out some bright red shirt with a giant stylized face of Paolo Freire (sp.?) and a big cursive (Portuguese) quote about the necessity of human dreaming.

So, I ended up buying them all a round of tequila shots, and after we all finished, I clapped my hands together authoritatively and was like, “Okay, okay, now it’s time for 26 more, we need to do 27!!!!!!”.

The one (young) (flighty) (Afro-Brazilian) (female) graduate student was also saying that a lot of enrollees in her popular music class are like kids who’ve grown up listening to hip-hop, and they decide to take it because they need to fulfill a distribution requirement.

“So, they’re like, ‘I’m intersectional, because I’m engineering, but I also have a chem minor’?”, I was like.

“Yes, pretty much!” she was like, with a small laugh.

Two reactions to the death of Charlie Kirk:

1) A (young) (flighty) (Afro-Brazilian) (female) graduate student who I know socially was saying that she only found out who Charlie Kirk was when he had made an appearance on the local campus a while ago and there were all these security checkpoints set up for him, and she had to ask what was happening.

“I was glad when I didn’t know him,” she was like.

She also teaches a popular music class and has different music cued up when the students walk in, so the very next class after his assassination, she had playing that one song “Protect Ya Neck,” and she said she saw several students covering their mouths gleefully like, “Oh no, oh my god, she didn’t do that,” and like poking each other in disbelief.

2) My one (younger) (skinny) (Latino-American) coworker at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now was saying very clearly that he’s not advocating for violence and doesn’t want anyone killed, and if he had his way, no-one would ever die of gun violence ever again, but there’s also some clip showing Charlie Kirk defending random deaths as the price of the Second Amendment.

“So, on some level, he was okay with his own death,” he was like. “There’s only so sorry you can feel for that.”

A day at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, in early fall…

…when a trip that I was taking to a conference was already in sight, including a bunch of days that I was set to take off:

1) When my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker is super busy and is abruptly handing me bundles of take-out packages to take out from the kitchen and set in the areas where they’re staged for delivery drivers or for distribution to people walking in to pick up their take-out orders, she was always like, “Here, take this,” and “Take this,” over the course of multiple interactions.

“Who will [her first name] command when I’m gone?”, I then ask aloud in front of her and several other people, when she comes up to me and does that again.

2) When towards the end of shift we reflect that there weren’t very many dine-in tables but we had a lot of calls for take-out from like the minute we opened at 5pm onwards, I’m like, “That’s because [the first name of our one (older) (Thai) coworker who’s a whiz at the phones] has a sexy voice, and everyone wanted to talk to her today.”

“Sure,” she was like.

On the nature of two coworkers:

1) When I was asking my one (tall) (skinny) (younger) (Latino-American) coworker how his college classes were going, he was telling me about all of these interesting classic social thought texts that he was reading, including Rousseau on how private property originated through social coercion.

“It’s really good stuff,” he was like. “I liked it.”

“Of course you did,” I was like. “You’re Luigi adjacent.”

2) After I worked a lunch shift with my one (newer) (taller) (Thai) coworker, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker group-texted us at dinner-time to remind us that we have to check for unused side-salads at the end of the lunch shift, and take them back into the kitchen.

“It’s okay now, just in the future,” she was like, mentioning that there was only one left anyhow, and she had eaten it.

“[My version of her name combined with a popular cartoon character], this is why the world loves you,” I was like.