Recent conference revelation.

At the one conference that I went to this past fall, a presenter who was presenting some very good linguistics research mentioned some interesting things that he had found while reading a dictionary.

“Aha!”, I thought, “I’m not the only one!”

A self-directed put-down.

The other month, I was chit-chatting with the one (younger) (white) bartender with the (pussy-hat energy) at the local brewery, and she was telling me about her social science-subject matter college writing class, and while she was doing that, she put herself down and said that she never has any original research ideas.

And, I said that at her stage, much of your reading is just to gather basic information and orient yourself with facts and in fields, and so it’s hard to have an original idea like that, except maybe if there’s some new group and you “cut and paste” existing ideas onto it by analyzing this new data.

And, that pacified her a little bit, but not entirely.

Later, I also thought of how it’s a lot easier to have original paper ideas on a dense literary text where you just explicate that one text, and so the next time that I saw her, I told her that, and that her feelings might be more the result of the type of writing class she chose to take, than anything having to do with her ability, and that seemed to make more sense to her.

I also told her about a great strategy I had come across for making effective papers about a dense literary text -- you find a point in the text where something doesn't seem to make much sense to you, and if you can figure out what's happening and why, that's the paper right there, to present to someone the problem that you had stumbled upon and then solve it for them.

Soup-present.

Because I had cooked up a huge pot of “unstuffed pepper” soup and the one (gay) (Colombian) grad student who I know was preparing to defend his dissertation, I messaged him if he wanted to pick up some soup so he could have a few quick and easy dinners from that that coming week.

And, he did want some, so he did come by and pick some up.

Now, the soup is the same ingredients as a stuffed pepper – tomatoes, onions, green peppers, and ground beef – so the idea is that you cook up some white rice and pour the soup over all that and it tastes like a stuffed pepper, only it’s a heck of a lot quicker to cook than actual stuffed peppers since you don't have to go stuff all of them individually and bake then in shallow pans.

And, he texts me, and he says he loves it, but he decided to cut up pieces of ham and cheese and tortillas into it.

Like, that makes two types of meat in it – ground beef and ham – and why would he have tortillas anyways, I thought, since I thought that (Colombians) liked arepas.

I guess if it works for him?

But, it’s nothing that I would do, and I told him that he was desecrating my soup.

True crime-worthy line.

In my continuing routine about the break-up of my one (younger) (taller) (Latino-American) coworker at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, I was asking him how it went where he took the new girl he’s interested in to a house-show where his cool ex-girlfriend might have showed up.

And, as it turns out, she wasn’t there, and everything went smoothly.

“That really would have made a good true crime reenactment, though,” I was like, and I then put on my announcer’s voice: “This alternative girl was fuming, since her ex-boyfriend showed up, with an alternative girl.”

And, he doesn’t watch too much true crime, though his mom does, he said, but he did have to agree with me.

. . .

(. . .)

Happiness.

I’ve been so productive the past few years, but it hasn’t necessarily increased my overall level of happiness.

As I’ve been telling people lately, though, I think I’ve finally figured out why – I haven’t been completing the right projects!

“After the next one, I’ll finally be happy,” I’m like. “It’s gonna be the next one that does it, I just know it.”

. . .

(. . .)