So I been thinking about Rob Chin a good deal, and how he's coming up in the world, and the like. A good kid. I just wonder, sometimes, at how many kids like him I've ignored for whatever reason, not ever given a chance to get to know... But then I remember that he's a unique freak, so I don't feel so bad. I dunno... I guess for him, for most people, pure grad school is not as bad an idea as it would be for me. Bleh... I am back into my mid-week routine and not very coherent or punchy.

So I been thinking about Rob Chin a good deal, and how he's coming up in the world, and the like. A good kid. I just wonder, sometimes, at how many kids like him I've ignored for whatever reason, not ever given a chance to get to know... But then I remember that he's a unique freak, so I don't feel so bad. I dunno... I guess for him, for most people, pure grad school is not as bad an idea as it would be for me. Bleh... I am back into my mid-week routine and not very coherent or punchy.

So I am surprised I did not make another post later last night, though I suppose I was working, as I sort-of am now, at the college tip-typing out some BS journal entries for the writing class that I'm taking, for which I've yet to buy the textbook, as I can just get that from the bookstore.

I can't believe it's only Tuesday--and life feels good except for those 40 progress reports I have to do, and the time I will need to spend on the phone setting up my new cell. Sigh. I guess there are worse things.

Today was productive with the 10th graders, but difficult with the other classes, and I'm not sure what more I can do without pulling a muscle. These progress reports have to be sent out, though. That much is clear. I need a set of stock-phrases.

Last night I had some dream which now basically eludes me, but it had something to do with profession and the calling that one findes--perhaps it was about teaching--I need to keep better track of these things, as sure as fuck no one else is.

Asianboi roundup

So I have decided to do a roundup of how all the Asianbois in my life are doing, in a periodic State-of-the-Race report. I suppose this will be on the 29th of each month from now on.

The following is alphabetic by pseudonym:

Alric continues to be lonely, and the paragon of inertness. He is Argon, if any element. This inertness is moral, spiritual, intellectual. Which is not a bad thing, necessarily. Resting is important. Bearings too. He'd do well if only he did more... Perfectionism is antithetical to progress. And I exaggerate, if only because he has tendencies I see in myself which I abhor. His mythological creature is Proteus, or probably more like Zelig.

Joephet is finding his feet. He really is more attractive when active: he's settling happily into his Law School niche, which while perhaps a bit too buffoonish in my view, is probably better than I give him credit for, due to my own envy: I really do love the bugger, just not in the scary, possessive way.

Kean is stranded. He has a good heart and deserves better than being stranded in the morass of Midwest morality: I feel as if the danger he runs is the same as that of the Chinese empires: stagnation. This is what happens when a chinaboi becomes too corn-fed.

Kenneth is avaricious. This is not a bad thing, I suppose, and his worries are very in the moment, rather than existential. But I guess I get the sense from him that there is something more... that he's not saying. So even though by outward apparenances he is being imperialized by a 30-something, I'd say in this case it's more the other way around than you'd think.

Lostin is bitter. He's also somehow isolated, a true Asian, somehow, which might just mean he dies first when the Great War comes. Like Paulie in some ways, it's rough being Korean in this country. I think he more fully realizes the futility of Asian-Am pursuits, without being able to offer a remedy. I see a lot of similarities with my worldview back in freshman year, but I am too manic to let the abhorrability of others keep me down.

Rob Chin is aging. He's soon to graduate, and wants for a direction in life. Not unlike me at that stage, though he's a different person--much shyer, much less full-fleshed and arrogant. Which may serve him well. He's meek.

Me, I'm lazy. But headed somewhere, of course. Where, it doesn't matter. Just as long as whitey gets fucked.

So a run and a shit always make me feel great. Sigh. I am coming up with cool projects for my students to work on, progress report templates, and am doing some light lifting. LIfe is pretty good, and all before dinner..

So I feel like an idiot for lingering too long at work and thus missing a FedEx delivery, this on the day that I am actually allowed to go home earlier than most days, without a detour to college in the middle of Flatbush. Perhaps tomorrow I will swing by back here to pick up my stuff before heading back out to college, though that would probably make me late, or something. And would mean that I would have to have the work done tonight. Still, it's worth it, for the cellphone, I guess. Sigh... Stupid kids.

My old college mag contact Crody tells me that my old poem "Coming Out of Ambiguity" is now being read by compers (those trying to get on the magazine). This makes me feel intensely curious as to how it is received, and simultaneously very old, for being read in such a way.

Today was a rough day, and now no cell to comfort me, unless I go all the way out to Maspeth. Sigh. Times like this, I would love being able to drive: it would take but 8 minutes, they say.

So I have been making a habit of needing strange things by the time that stores close on Sunday: today it was a squeegee in Midtown. No dice. I would need to go to Home Depot to have any luck at all. Went over to Joephet's last night and found myself cooking sesame-encrusted tuna balls at three in the morning. Apparently Joephet had actually watched The Life of David Gale, a movie which was the bane of my preview-viewing existence with Alric a year ago. The premise: a white man on death row. Hrmm... Korean buffet was throughly satisfying, though I crave some raw seaweed salad right about now. Then some frustrated shopping before perky Euge (Rob Chin's sister) and characteristically brusque Alric, whose claims of having "wandered into" Sephora to pick up the same face wash that Joephet has I find far from plausible. Home again for laundry and dinner, and to buy some face-scrub of my own. Apricot! I have had a weekend almost entirely apart from thinking about school. This is not a bad thing.

My misogyny

So it occurs to me that it is important to outline this, that we might spare ourselves further confusion, misunderstanding, bruised feelings, and so on. I am in some sense a misogynist. I am a misogynist in the feminist sense. I hate girly-girls, and my undue and disproportionate association with this type in my early years has, I think, led me toward misogynistic tendencies that are indeed ill-founded and undeserved, or perhaps merely misunderstood.

I hate girly-girls, with their hair and their clothes and their shoes and their purses and their accessories, this cosmetic materialism and an inner-life turned outward, externalized and quantified to the point of market value, or what passes for it, the nonsense of designer handbags and knock-offs, the guy-like competitive strutting, the helpless and dependent foot-bound woman, the Elvira of Scarface. Insincerity is unacceptable. I can't be bothered with others' opinions of me. I don't care about how I look, beyond basic fabulousness and maybe some apricot scrub.

Which is not to say all women are this way. Miss Fegs is a woman. In that she doesn't buy into that soft bullshit. Which isn't to say that she's not a great nurturing mom--she is--the point is she's not a girly girl, and that's what is bred, and marketed, and trumpeted, and what the hetero-ideal is, which is probably why I'm such a bugger--I just couldn't stand to be reduced to dependence on such an already conquered ideal as the hair-flipping blonde-type.

I know plenty of strong women--these are the ones who are my friends, it is almost a tacit precondition: Jen, Bessie, Anna, Lucy, Miss Fegs, some of the girls in my ed class, and the list goes on. So it's not women I hate, it's the weakening, sickening qualities our patriarchal, capitalistic, predatory civilization builds into them that I hate.

Sigh... this was much more coherent on my first go,w hich was before my whiskey-and-cigarette last night... now it's jointed

So I have been mostly exercising and eating, so I have not quite made much headway on my to-do list. Cleaning comes first, I think. Little else beats a good run, if you can find the time. The plan is go to running three times a week, in a staggered sort of way: 2 park laps on Mondays, one on Thursdays, three on Saturdays, all starting today, though only with 2. That and some lifting should be cool. I wish I had a spotter, but Alric is gone and Joephet has sticks for arms. Well, I'm sure Joephet is strong: he just lacks confidence.

I am editing my dad's CV and teaching philosophy, and other little bits. Sigh. It's hard, not speaking English, and not being generally brilliant. It's also a little frightening, how much that man has done, even if in directions that I don't quite really understand. Fluency, I say, is a difficult, essential thing.

I will try and get back to do a sketch of one of my blocks of students before the evening is out. Now to go and steal a cigarette from my slumbering roommate.

So I am a tired old man. So I am lifting and trying to remember what it was I supposed to get accomplished this weekend. I guess it's easy to forget after you spend your afternoon completely passed out from the week's exhaustion. Sigh. So here's a plan: clean room, plan week's lessons, grade papers, design new sheet, do research, read articles. Sigh. What a life this is trying to be...

So it's gotten to the point where I seriously can't find most white kids cute or charming, even when they are standing on the N train and being jostled, youngly expresses their over-concern for such. They're just going to grow up into whitey, junior whitey, or junior assistant whitey. Sigh.

So the Teaching Fellows Program is looking for a new slogan for the subway advertising campaign. I would suggest, "Cuz Whitey ain't just gunna fuck himself"

So I was marvelously drunk this afternoon, with two of my coworkers after work. Quite pleasant,a nd hanging out with other fellows now that I am at last of age. Well, at the beginning of a school year. So two guinnesses to the winds, at a bar near Columbia, raging at the cute white jock-types presiding over the bar proper. The fucks. Got angry, bitched at the entire table of dark women teachers, and me. What a pairing. Such a faggot. I hate white people, I really do. Dammit. But that was great, and today was bearable, as I again improved my chess record, and had a mixed day, with the difficulties in my own classroom as far as clash of styles goes.

So I was staggering, feeding quarters into meters on Broadway, and drunkenly running to meet Alric at work, but I was late, and had purchased meatloaf, which I drunkenly devoured while walking through Times Square to see Scarface, and now home at last after a stopover on the UWS for SImpsons, home to boil frozen dumplings and kick off a great weekend, and Joephet might even stop by...

A new cell is also on the way. Sigh.

So I have been functioning remarkably well today, given that I got under 4 hours of sleep, as I was up rather late talking to Kean about this and that. Good kid. Slept well as a result, somehow... Hard to explain why. It just was.

And today there was actual substantive discussion in my usually troublesome D block, as many previously recalcitrant students have come around. And I have just been more level-headed, having regained some of equilibrium after last week. Two outsiders. My Bulgarian math coach, and an elderly Jew-consultant, who is wrinklier than a pug, and not as helpful. And a new special ed teacher, whose style is not very helpful, ultimately.

Beyond that, I dunno... Logic class is going well, if very slowly and frustratingly--I really need to find brighter classmates, somehow. Beyond that, not much to say, besides some Joephet frustrations which will hopefully subside before long. Not in the best of places right now, and perhaps here is not the place to explain...

So: it turns out that the protagonist of Erica Jong's novels marries a Chinaman psychiatrist. I will hafta read this novel now to get up on heterosex Asian marrying-up.

So it looks like I'm going to make it to another week.

This morning, a bird (I dont' know what kind, it was just black...) flew into my classroom, somehow, through a narrow opening in the grate. My windows have grates to keep the kids from getting out. They are a metaphor. The bird was flitting, and I was afraid of shitting, desperately, unsuccessfully trying to get out. A custodial engineer was summoned, and he let the bird out at last, though the grate fell four stories but didn't hit anyone.

I know why the trapped bird sings. Well, on weekdays at least.

So I was also upbraided today by two longtime classmates for my intimidating manner in classes, openly disapproving when I disagree with something being said, usually mathematically. Umm.. I guess they're right. I"ve pissed off Eric Wepsic this way. Then again, Wepsic is a self-rationalizing capitalist bastard. So I should be nicer in general. Still, no feelings were hurt, as we engaged in loud Marxist readings of children's cartoons on the 2 train in flatbush. I have so far done readings of: He-Man (imperialism), Thundercats (Zionism), Planeteers (Post-Cold War multilateralism), and more that I'm blanking on now, but I'm sure Alric can remind you of (Jungle Book, Star Trek, etc, etc.)

CUNY GC library is full of Asians, I noticed last night. Many of them are cute, not the chubby sweaty type. BUt they are studious, which means they are straight, or lame. Sigh.

Today was manageable. NOthing to report, beyond more happiness and more frustration, depending, with the staff. Sigh. I am working with numbskulls and saints. My most troublesome student ends up in too many disputes with the new kid on the block, who is reputedly cute, but I don't think so. He's just fresh meat, I guess. Not even that built. (Jesus..)

Hrmm... Beyond that, I dunno... just hafta get through this week. No firm plans for the weekend yet, which is fine.. Should just spend it at home, though some more fun with Fegsling is tempting. And in a couple weeks, though, it's a long weekend: Jersey-brother, or Boston-buddies? Hrm...

So I am staked out at the CUNY GC trying desperately to find scholarly articles from which to spin a polemical account of confusions around symbolic representations in "school algebra." It's been a rough day. It was Parent-Teacher night, and two parents out of 107 students' worth showed up. Well, the mom of one of my students died, so I guess that's an excuse.... How can I deal with that situation, having never died myself? Well, you know what I mean... Today was a bit placid, probably because my fag student and his coterie did not show. But certain kids still have to be whipped into shape. I don't know what to do--I just know I have a long way to go before effective classroom management. ("Do you have management issues?" "Yes... My issues are the students."; "These students have issues"--"Yes! They have a subscription!")

But no, it's just Icarus falling, 'cept I gots a parachute.

Things have been a little rocky with Joephet, and I think that's because my last two conversations with him framed my sleep last night, and they were more along the tack of unavailability. But I am just being over-demanding, I realize. School's started. I should be nicer. He deserves that much, at least.

But this research has gotten me excited--through all of college, I never had to do anything like this. It's fun.

Hrmmm. So yeah... other than not being able to find books and getting too deep into CogSci, I am pretty happy. Just not thinking about how it's only Tuesday.

So I am back from a good run in the park--two laps over asphalt as well as grass and graded both up and downhill--that and a thorough shit and I feel clean again. And ready to face the evening, whatever that might mean. Today was a rough day. I will spend some time soon going through my students one-by-one, thumbnail sketches all the way around, and this will be vaguely offensive, as I will have to do a typology of blacks and Latinos. But most readers have no right to be offended, and I am also trying to be honest about how I am viewing it all.

But I love the staff, for hte most part--from the yellow-galoshers to the dour fascists, it's great--they will hafta be sketched too, though again the Tracy Morgans and the subcontinental refugees are best mentioned as little as possible.

I was reading a blog at "refference" on this site, and thoroughly disgusted. This is why I became a Marxist. I would go on a rant, but my jog-endorphins are too high-flying to allow that to happen. Still, it fucking annoys me somewhat.

OK: I need to figure out my shit for this week. At least I finished my math last night at Joephet's. And don't forget the academic dishonesty.... Ah, if they could see me now.

So I have been out of touch, but not out of action. Saturday I was wakened early by the TV that was left on all night and the patter of kiddie feet, and was persuaded after some nappery to go and take Fegsling and Fegsling-friend bike riding toward breakfast, which was fun except for the paranoia. We rode down to Milburn and bought some bagels and juice and sat in the park, and ate, and told about biology and animals and tigers, which I maintained can turn blue when angry and travel backwards in time (which is why no one has ever seen a blue tiger...). So suburban life need not be so bad, even if Miss Fegs was tearing up everything cleaning. It's a pretty house for the effort, though. AFter the exertion, though, I simply had to pass out. And that meant afterwards I went to the library with the kids again, and Fegsling passed out reading about sharks, but Fegsling-friend was still awake: I read Harry Potter, adn they read nonfiction about animals I myself was not aware of. It was fascinating. And Mr Potter continues to have a few Marxist sensibilities buried in some sort of half-assed Great Man/Chosen One theory that I am skeptical of, even if Mr Potter is in his own fictional world the victim of pooh-poohing. So that was great, and in addition I managed to find a used copy of the Corrections, hardcover, for $1, though the girl at the desk insisted that it was softcover (helpfully pointing out some hardcover books for my future reference) and charged me 50 cents for it. The book has been a good read, but exactly the sort of bujii-nonsense that I inveigh against, with purple conceits I could not get away with--at one point the sister lectures a brother "like the World Bank lecturing a Latin debtor."

I don't know what to make of all that. Pleasant dinner with Miss Fegs at a diner, and then off to home again, and while waiting for the train a mini-convention of well-fed, white, middle/upper-middles waiting for the train were laughing at the desperation of bums desperate enough to fight each other for $20. The explanations were thoroughly unsatisfying, "They are willing to do it for a living"; "They are so desperate they'll do anything for a dollar" etc etc... No sympathy, no uncomfortable looks. My students last year also enjoyed this shit, but they are uneducated in some fundamental way. And don't live in the sort of comfort one is able to read from this group of junior whitey. What can I say? Fucking whitey....

Ah, well. so I got home eventually, did the shower and freshen up thing, and did a flying meet-up with Joephet on the 7 line, and we proceeded to the village for dinner, which was rather pleasant, despite my persnicketiness. I really should be more appreciative and less demanding of him: he really does deserve better, and I can't get away with treating him the way I do Alric.

Alric, incidentally, I did see today, though I was ruder than I should have been, and just generally annoying, as we strolled Fifth Avenue Book Country and I was cynically appraising Target, DC Comics, the Asian American Writer's Workshop, and so on and on. Sigh. Stupid whitey.

Ummmm... I guess I'm on a tear because I've been seeing way too much miscegenation. Maybe that sounds a bit extremist, but the fact remains that the reality of life in this country is that there is if not a racial hierarchy, then a certain set of relations between races, and roles which cannot be easily escaped. And this is why the closest we have to an Asian-American superhero in the comics is Jubilee, who has a crush on Wolvie, who is Canadian and white. Were there ever to be an AA superhero, his power would probably be invisibility.

And I saw D today, downing a too-big chocolate shake and two jalapeno burgers at White Castle. He is doing OK, though beginning a divorce. Which is a brave thing. And his school is apparently worse than our last, which I wouldn't say of mine.

So I approach tomorrow with a bit of anxiety, but a new file-rack and hope.

So it has been a shitty day.

My kids have been giving me shit. They stole my cellphone, my MetroCard. There is no retribution. I feel as if I am disregarded, ignored, and hated, but still third from last in this regard as far as teachers go. Then I try and do shit in midtown, and have to take a massive piss, overladen with a heavy Prentice-Hall Math A textbook, and staggering to PABT. A great feeling, though, that liberation. Ugh... Hitting up poor Alec for a phone number check (since they stole my fucking cellphone). Then I end up finally hanging out with Kenneth, which was at least grounding in the good way, even though I was somewhat out of it, and back to smoking down Newports. Sigh. I needed Joephet then. Yeah... In any case, I eventually make it out to Maplewood, but wait! I lose Miss Fegs' phone number, so I dial every combination I can think of, then have to end up taking a nicely-driven gypsy cab all the way to the place, which sets me back another $10 I'll never see. I did at some point hold $640 cash today. Hrmm... That was nice. So yeah... today I end up down about $120 for no reason other than my job, which might yet not be my calling.

But then I get to Miss Fegs' place, and some online backgammon and substances later, feel much better, hauling out the detritus of nearly a decade. If you've never destroyed an old musty couch, I suggest that you do.

So I am feeling at a relative low from before, which was much more energetic and happy, and adequate. So I will need to go do some research tomorrow in the CUNY Graduate Center, or something. Go look shit up, and take down names. Apparently I am not alone with my Wittgensteinian tack toward shit.

I think this is some way of handling my pride which was a bit too high--back to work, back to work, back to work.

So it has been three pseudo-months since I first starting pseudo-doing whatever it is that I pseudo-am with Joephet. This is a little long, actually, for me, but I guess I don't really feel it: the entire summer just sort of breezed by, and it's quite all right. I guess I never envisioned this, but so what--I am happy now, and have been invited over, strangely enough. So yeah--happy happy, and more than in the giddy way.

So I am at the spiffy new library and typing away at a spiffy new computer that kicks my computer's ass. I don't trust white people.

It's been a good day. The troublesome block I usually have was unusually well-behaved today, and we got a good deal of work done that I was hoping we would, and the groups are forming better and workng together more happily.

I am not a fan of older Indian pedants. They speak, but have no real competence themselves. It's a strange thing, as I feel as if older Chinamen tend less to be like this. I think it's the residue of direct Anglo-imperialism, as certainly all the accents hae been that way, as well as the vague arrogance. I don't know why I am remember this from yesterday, though I suppose it in general is the repeated encounters with old mathmen who are not that expert and somehow are still deeply didactic.

I am tired and ready for some dynamic logic. That should be fun. Or just tiring. I'm sorta glad that now that I have a cellphone I can nap in the library and wake when I please, thanks to good vibrations. Jeez... I really am tired.

So I am getting the sense that I am wasting my fucking life here. Well, at least at these education classes where the fucking incompetences (yes, they are plural and so on) are shocking, really. I mean, these are people impossible to work with in groups. And not that I'm not exceedingly patient with students in my classroom (well, maybe I could be more so): but I am supposed to be dealing with professionals here, and it's just shocking the lack of basic organizational skills: it's not that fucking hard to make a table.

And I am tired of post-Soviet Russians who are not good at collective work inveighing against computation without calculators, as if remembering the rule that two negatives make a positive ("I'm ugly and I'm smelly. How is that good?") is somehow actually understanding as opposed to punching it in the calculator correctly, which is already a minor triumph. (Hrmm... that was kinda a longish sentence...)

No, what we need to fix things is a massive revolution. I shudder at what I see from other teachers, my Caribbean Tracy Morgan colleague openly napping at his desk this afternoon--even I have the decency when necessary to pull my desk out of sight from outside. It's just common sense, really. It's really disturbing, but I suppose it's ok that even the kids at St. Ann's aren't exactly getting a topnotch education. Or Collegiate. Fuck whitey slowly, and incompetently. Cuz someone has to.

I miss Joephet. I admit it. Sigh... It's nice to not hafta position yourself in terms of someone, vie for power, all that jazz. It's nice just to be. Sigh.

I suppose it doesn't help that I'm here waiting for it to turn 9 so I can use my cellphone to make a slew of phone calls home. It all makes more sense than the train ride home, I guess. And I get to see Kenneth tomorrow, and perhaps Miss Fegs this weekend. That, at least, is the hope and the plan.

So this is what is said about my writing by a peer reader....

My feedback would be that your writing is a little hard on the reader. That your sentences are a bit gluttoral and cluttered. All these words and the length of the sentences seem to obscure instead of clarify what you are saying. I would say, go back to Mr. D----'s advice, cut those sentences in half!! And the infinately good remark from one educator to another: you have great potential, don't give up!

Ummm, should I have a footnote explaining the imitative fallacy? But how it sometimes can be used to good effect? I should include the essay...

Why don't people realize that long sentences have their uses too?

So my phone finally works. Not that lacking it was that big a deal or anything, but it's nice to have, even if I am still unable to make as many phone calls home as I would like. I am at a loss as far as what I am doing for the rest of this week mathwise goes: I suppose I want to do a few poster projects where students free-associate or go digging in the textbook for keywords that mean operations... And the textbook really ain't that bad when you get down to it.

So I perhaps got on the wrong train this morning, and rode toward work with a carload of students, mostly chinky, who go to some magnet public school, and was eavesdropping on this white girl who was talking to some chinky girl about how she's read "a bazillion books" and really loves writing, indeed, she seemed to like about 7 words in particular, as those were all she needed. The chinky girl was complaining about how Greenpoint is full of Spanish people and therefore ghetto.

I hate chinks. It's hard to describe the differences in this conversation; its blandity and narrowness cannot be adequately paraphrased, as that paraphrase would add so much in terms of concision and punch. I dunno: I wonder what Tong lord my chinky students failed to pay off, or crossed to end up in my school. It's a terrible thing to say, I admit.

I lost ten dollars today, probably in the convenience store. Which got me to thinking. Not that much money, in some sense, but still, to my mind, substantial. So I'm still at that point in my life, I suppose, and I guess I have been spending too much on eating out when I could just stay at home and make simple dishes. But it's just an opportunity cost thing, I suppose, or something like that. So I guess the point is I don't often think about money, it has a very physical meaning fo rme, as bills and coins and lost tacos.

So I had a pleasant beer with Rachel and Alric today in bujii Times Square, but nonetheless. And I have been using my best whitey-voice to try and talk to my students' parents, where I very fluently go from one slogan another, focusing on first this and then that aspect of student success and achievement, from cooperation to partnership to achievement. Something tells me I'd do just fine at Alric's job. Except for the part where you're not supposed to disturb bujii sensibilities (which is an oxymoron, if I've ever heard one).

So it was another one of those massacre-days that were not that bad for being old. I am inured to all this, and now multitasking--editing an essay about writing, on the phone with AT&T, blogging, IMing again. Life is good. I will sleep well tonight.

So my long wait is over, after more than an hour of nothing. Sigh I hate this. I hope Joephet isn't asleep by the time I get there again. Stupid, stupid. And yes, the tagphrase on AT&T when you get through finally is, "Let me check on this additional information for you, just one second..." "I think I have all the additional information..." "I have made a note of the additional information..." "I just need to check on this additional information for you, real quick...." "I will check some additional information, very quickly...." Stupid capitalism!

So I am disconnected from AT&T after almost 30 minutes. Dammit. And something glass exploded in my oven--I don't know how, at all. It's veyr confusing, how that could happen.. I haven't used that oven it ages, and it's all gunky too. Who knows where it came from, and it'll be a bitch to clean up. Sigh. There goes another casserole.

So I am reading Kean's blog now, and I am impressed and cowed, and I suppose now is as good a time as any to sort of comment on bloggery, to some extent. For instance, Alric's group blog with his roommates is very sort of fanboyish and externalistic even when it tried to talk about emotion. Joephet's blog was very uniquely voiced, and it's hard to explain what about it made me fall for it , him, except there is this one photo of Joyce Carol Oates in the president's office at Princeton, of Ms. Oates at some sort of talk or reading and she is in black-and-white, and holding up her hand, tilted, mannered, just-so. And that is the gestural weight of all of Joephet's writing, which seems very old and yet very wide-eyed. Other blogs I have read have been way too blurby or too self-promoting and again, externalistic. Kean's, somehow, is very honest, but does not try to pile too much on, the way that I sometimes try to, drunkenly and free-associating, the sort of cryptic and cramped style which is not very reader-friendly and requires more footnotes than not. So it's honest: I dunno: when I read a blog I want to have something somehow personal, somehow honest, somehow raw... And this is what I try to do, if by misdirection and fluorish.

So I have sat through four different musical sequences on hold with AT&T wireless. I guess this is not an ideal time to call, and I really hate keeping Joephet waiting, but it's now or never... and I have a substantial amount of homework still to make up, somehow, but there is little that can be done. Tomorrow I just hafta finish writing this essay I'm working on about writing, and then do some reading and reflecting on a working class kid who rose to become a professor. Probably not quite in the Richard Rodriguez mode, but so it goes.. I am not a bad Marxist, just not a very ideologically steeped and mature one, I fear. It's strange having a dead cellphone, and yet I wait, because when you've gotten this far....

Meanwhile, I heard on the evening news tonight Colin Powell saying that he does not condone killing Arafat as a valid measure. I laughed out loud, thinking this to be ridiculous, but when I come home I discover this is not that far-fetched a possibility. So yeah... as I was remarking earlier, my anti-Zionism is not the same as anti-Semitism.. But yeah... I don't know what to say at this point about this shit. It's just beyond me.

So Joephet is reading Sausurre for his literary theory class he's taking to finish his master's thingie. So I am jealous of him so much... But it gives me a great idea for a project, which is just to have a series of drawings, much like the ones interspersed throughout Course in General Linguistics which are faintly ridiculous for what they are trying to explain: Simplistic Diagrams for Complicated Phenomena, all somehow faintly didactic, in the hyperrationalist mode.... For instance, a pauper, bend over, with the caption "Proletariat" and an assfucking labeled "Capitalist"....

So I was telling Joephet today about ankles, and how I am particular about them, how I like a nice, well-defined ankle that shows plenty of Achille's tendon and maybe a few strong veins around the ankle proper, not some ludicrous skateboarder tree trunk that has no transition between calf and foot. And on the walk home I was remembering why... In my youth, socks were a troublesome article of clothing: being raised in a family of "cheap Chinese bastards" as Joephet woudl put it, where our socks would long outlive their elastics (being cheaply made in the first place, and of course these socks were the long-sock variety, of course, which means that they often had to be scrunched down in the first place), so that at times we actually wore rubber bands from scallion bunches and then turned the tops of the socks over so as to conceal our thrift, our shame. In sixth grade I was discovered in the act, as it were, and it was rather embarassing, as I was wearing a pair of shorts that were homemade, out of the same cloth that my pillowcase still is, to this day... In any case, I coveted the sorts of short-short crew socks that only came up on the foot, showing plenty of naked ankle, and at the mall on weekends would ogle cute white boys and their ankles and short socks and calves and shorts. So yeah.. hence my ankle fetish.. wanting to be white: indeed, that was the dream when I grew up--wear short socks and shorts and go to the arcade and actually fucking play instead of watch. Jeez.

So I am back for only a bit, but it's been a good weekend: work, and office supplies, and hanging out with Rob Chin and his sis, and so on, with plenty of Joephet, actually, what with coffee and four meals and all that, and now back to pick up some stuff tomorrow before crashing over there. My phone is in transition, I'm writing and mathing again, and though the school stuff is strenuous, I don't let it faze me much. Life is overall pretty good, even if it is moving faster these days, and I hafta hang out here just to wait for my phone to recharge so I can change my other number. Stupid shit like that is what will kill you in the end, I think.

So it was one of those times when you're sitting having dinner with Alric and you haven't been paying attention to the world news, and so you ask what's been going on: Johnny Cash died, and so did John Ritter (apparently his death left "a big gaping hole"...), but US troops opened fire on Iraqi policemen, killing 8. Hrmm... Yes... At that last, you just start laughing uncontrollably. What else is there to do?

So I'm back. Windows 98 is fucking evil, but I'm back. I really want mozilla firebird, which I will get again and reinstall. Fuck this. Done with my first week of school, and I am already undersiege. But that's ok, as now I have so much restored to me. Whee!

So it is Thursday, and this feels earned. Not that today was terribly strenuous--most days fail to be: it's mostly just a matter of showing up and facilitating: the kids are all right, except for D-Block, which is strangely supposed to be higher-performing but is merely a den of obstreporousness, projectile-chucking, and dull-eyed aggression. So it goes. I am excited, though about getting my computer back, if only to type and to produce stuff, and then perhaps to actually make some real headway as far as my writing and my math go. Hrmm.. Going to be late for class.

The secretary asked me about some ID-code today, "what class are you X-something-something?" I exclaimed, "I'm middle class!"

Apparently, James Atlas is still a massive tool. And he's why I became a raging, white-hating leftist. Not quite a commie-nazi. Yet.

So I have become a scrounger or scavenger of sleep, snatching all I can from here and there, sleeping any time I can, whether o n the train or otherwise. Today was a relatively rough day, but I suppose that last year made me impervious enough to the yelling, the insults, and the obstreporousness--it really does make a difference, having confidence, though of course I am not as steady as I ought to be, quite yet.

Yet more coursework now, which is annoying because I have to somehow sit and listen and roll my eyes silently and invisibly, aubt at least I get to email, even if some of the peer critiques include such comments as "excessive verbage" (should I nominalize?) and of course "try to avoid 'smart' words".

Only two more days till the weekend, and I feel a little naughty cuz I was able to sneak a visit to Joephet in to my last night. So things are pretty balanced, overall. I just need to continue to crack down and to write some anecdotals.

So it's been a while--I went this weekend to see my bro and fam in Jersey, and then was basically just getting ready for school, and the students came yesteray and the only real problem so far has been that many students have been misplaced--not so much lost, though, as held-over yet another year in the ninth grade (really, the 9'' grade).... I've been very pleased, and today for instance my tenth grade class was phenomenally good--the first time I've ever felt as if I've had a good class discussion. So maybe I do do better in better schools. Beyond that, I've been just chilling, though of course my life has been strangely tired and tiring--I routinely pass out for hours at a time, and yet still have troule falling asleep, though last nightthat was mor ean issue of flies and mosquitoes than any real anxiety. I've been reading a good deal more comic books, actually, just in my general bedtime routine, now still divorced from any computer usage or TV, even though the new season of 24 approaches. So I'm happy, even if I'm a bit overworked as far as college coursework goes. To be honest, I sometimes feel very much as if I'm still coasting and I've got nothing to do. So far, I'm known for being Chinese and for being good with names. But it's helpful to have big studdy name-buckles....

Joephet lost his phone service sometime between Friday and Saturday. I miss him.

So I am headachey, and I have found Wittgenstein on foundations of mathematics quite satisfactory. The march of classes and preparation continues, and I relieved to find excellent and cheap boricua food close to my school, even as I sit through meetings and headaches--I think I need some aspirin, or I need to get more sleep. I have been seeing a good deal of Joephet, but perhaps an unrealistic amount for when the year starts, sadly enough. I mean, priorities are hard to set up in advance. It's times like this being a straight-acting, straight-thinking guy hurts, as my classroom just isn't all that pretty, despite my fondness for arts and crafts. But I think that I am generally in decent shape, as I am making my own forms, which might well just be the mark of cheapness rather than anything else such as initiative. But it's nice to have tailor-made shit. And by this I just mean gradesheets and the like.

So many people to talk to. I miss my computer, in some ways, though I think I would be more productive at home without it, if I didn't just end up going over to Joephet's all the time. That counts, even if I jog over. That boy will be the death of me.

So my reduced access to the internet has not necessarily sharpened my prose when I do use it. And this is a shame, for I am still meandering about, not yet fully settled into my new classroom, and have been hanging out with colleagues. One teacher in particular reminds me of a Tracy Morgan character on SNL, and the arrogance of some teachers from other schools when it comes to playing along with group activities (on company time, after all) is troubling. A lot of my ideas being echoed here: on the force of explanation and the stupidity of completing sequences, and that sort of thing. So this is nice, but perhaps should not take all day, quite. And it's hard to know what sort of schedule I can ever really settle into with my own life, once school starts. BUt having your own classroom, while cutting down on the contact you might have with someone like Miss Fegs, does let you get organized with files, and maybe even set up different learning stations, or something which is more geographically awake... Beyond that, yet more classes, and decent hope for writing this seemster, if only because it is hoped. It feels good.

So it is a new school year. And I have an ass-massive classroom, and some coworkers who are cool and progressive, and others who are liberal, if by "liberal" you just mean "my-white-daughter-deserves-better-than-these-blacks." I have now made my way to college, to learn about writing across the curriculum (with no use-mention jokes coming). It's depressing how new this computer here is: flatscreen and new keyboard with very little peoplegrease. So I feel pretty damn good, but there are no kids yet.

So I been out of touch, because my computer died. I have been left only with MS-Text Editor.. The main loss, however all my old data, which could be gone permanently. Not that bad.

Tomorrow school starts again, but I don't feel too bad. It's exciting--here at Miss Fegs, passing my last day of vacation away... I don't feel much of a transition--yet... Next weekend everything will be sharper, though--for now it's just officemates and such.