So I didn't blog last night as I was at Joephet's. I was going to stay in tonight for some reason, but I've forgotten why and am headed over ASAP. It just gets better and better, somehow. Comfortable.

Been working on cognitive interviews, been connecting with students on a more individual basis. Been happier talking to them in general. I hope Joephet doesn't mind me saying that I manage to derive such strength from him. That I can head into the day stronger. Something like that. That Monday which should have wrecked me didn't. I guess I need to be more grateful. Ah, well. So it goes.

So I was out last night, going over to Joephet's. It only gets better, that guy. Working now on cognitive-clinical interviews with my students, to see what it is that they think. This is perhaps the funnest part of the class, and something veyr new, though today in class I found myself with the Wittgensteinian reflexes unable to

So once again, it's time for

Asianboi roundup

(Alphabetic by pseudonym)

Alric is sliding. Perhaps more comfortably into his routine, his existence, but perhaps that comfort is fatal complacence. But claims that with a work-hurdle cleared he'll have more time for his own pursuits. It's hard to say, as I'm not him. I just don't know that could fritter my days away writing paeans to Indiana Jones.

Joephet is growing. He's growing in my mind. We've been spending more and more time together, he's growing used to having me around as much as I am, and he has settled into the Law school things, though I don't know if he's quite fully happy with it, as he's been quite territorial about his friends.

Kean is blogging. I enjoy his writing, his regularity, greatly. He was also in a proto-relationship, and me in suspense, as we couldn't really discuss it while my brother was here. He has a richer life than I think I give him credit for, and we share the same doubt of where we'll end up, though I guess I'm in it deeper now than he.

Kenneth is coasting. I guess I haven't seen him in quite some time, and I can only wonder whether he gets stressed in the same way that I do. I guess I've fallen out of touch for a few weekends and so don't know how it is that he's doing, or why... But I suspect he has the same ability to utterly mock me.

Lostin is adrift, perhaps just treading water or something, but I think that it's just the environment, which is too isolated, too rural, or something... Exile from one's homeland is something I have had a peek of, and it's not pleasant. Well, not exile, but the sense of separation, of coming unmoored.

Rob Chin is seeking. He needs a job. I hope he comes to New York. We been hanging out more. He is now legal, and more tolerant of alcohol than I am.

Sam is cute. Young, way-young, in his own chronologically-older way. I am not sure why I think there is something to him. But I think there is, even if he has fashion ambitions, something I simply can't fathom.

Paulie is in Korea, seeking a wife.

I am tired, but happy, extremely frustrated and thwarted earlier this week, but now more energetic than ever.

So as I blog this, Amy Tan is giving a reading at the Graduate Center from her new collection of essays about how white men are better, unheckled! I can only hope there will be another day. Though I do appreciate the moment in Joy Luck Club where a mother is confused as to why one of her tenants thinks she is a Fukien horrible landlord, when she clearly is from other part of China. Ha.

So it has been a thoroughly shitty day at work. Kids out of control. My brother is now sickly and passed out, so my chances of actually seeing J again seem rather slim, which is unfortunate, as I need someplace where I can forget the nonsense. Better than Wanda, whose apartment is apparently all flooded, like. It's days like this, with the rain pouring through everything, which make you wonder why you got in this business in the first place, when you could be sitting at your sinecure blogging more about less. The amount of abuse I am expected to absorb is ridiculous. I think it's rather hard to fathom for those in bujii professions. My kids don't know how to measure things with ruled tape. I am expected to get them to pass the Math A exam. This is all rather frustrating, and this is one of those weeks when I wish I could just phone it in. I have been producing more incident reports than prose useful to and representative of myself. I am being wasted here, slowly, I can feel the wrinkles creeping up on me, the thwarted energy: I went in today with the best of hopes and energy, and it took nothing more than wilfullness to crush me. Nothing I can do will really change things. I mean really change things, not just provide the cosmetic black successes capitalism needs to perpetuate itself.

And that's another thing: more and more I realize I am couching my experiences in a pseudo-Marxist language. Which is only a framework, I think. I have real beef with the way that things are. Apartheid is dumb as a system because the barriers are formal, rooted in the law. This country is so much more the fucking cleverer for encoding everything in more subtle ways. It's hard for me to pick apart: the humbling lesson, the point of this experience, if there was one to be front-loaded, was precisely to realize that I don't have the answers. I can't offer an account of how this system works: it's not premeditated, it's the organic disease of will and power inflicted from above in many directions, a really dynamic mill. Which perhaps sounds like I am absolving my students of their responsibility to be adequate human beings as opposed to savage little fucks. Well, it's not that. There are things one can do, no matter the circumstances, to lift oneself up. It's just a matter of how much we're giving, how much a priority it is to enable that. I just don't see it. It's hypocritical, it's cowardly, it's fucked.

I'm tired. Bone-weary on a Monday.

So I have not been blogged much at all, and this is for some reason: I have not been home verymuch, andthis weekend my brother has been visiting me, so it's been a little touch-and-go, as he is not to know of the existence of this blog, quite. Beyond that, though, it's been a long, strange weekend, now in the customary beginnings of drunkenness with coworkers and colleagues, though this week was much bujiier than it should have been, and then hanging out with Alric, and then eventually nestling with my beautiful Joephet. Well, whatever.

My paper, which was also draining me, is done and turned in and all that. Beyond that, there is just another week of classes, something that hasn't hit me yet in this leisurely weekend. My landlady upstairs was overcome with sharp stabbing pains to her stomach yesterday, so I had to tend to that, petting her dog, and trying not to hear or smell her explosive diarrhea. After some wanderings that were not very satisfactory with my brother, through Century 21 and Ground Zero and then eventually Chinatown for cold Dim Sum, and Times Square for comics--in short, all the weekend haunts, my brother and I ended up at Alric's, drinking and marvelling at the racism of Indiana Jones. Well, that was just me. Hrmm... Eventually back home to sleep. Embarassing that every last gaysian boy I know called me this weekend. Sigh. That was all a little drab.

Today was better, though again a slow start. Shopping for random shit, including office supplies, though I forgot graph paper. And then there was dinner in K-town, some random walks, and finally home for a jog, some light cleaning, with much more to go, and general boredom and catch-up. Few thoughts. I finished the Joy Luck Club, though it looks like Amy Tan will go unheckled tomorrow, as I have not adequately organized things this weekend, which I have given to my brother, at very little loss to myself, I suppose. So it goes. Another week of school, again atypical.

So little time to reflect on parent-teacher conferences, even. Sigh. Gunna get to school super-early tomorrow, to play catch-up. I feel good.

So I need to be blogging more. The problem is two-fold: I am swamped, and I am camped. Those two words do not rhyme, though perhaps they should. It's still a matter then, of which one dominates now. I suspect the former.

I got my ass kicked today at school. One has to find a way of stopping the paper balls being thrown. It's not long before that becomes chess pieces and spitballs. As it did. Today. Embarassing,what with admins roving. I wonder if they'll remember later this week.

So there has been a big gap in this blog: I've been going over to Joephet's quite a bit, and so I have not been blogging as much as I ought: got back home last night for the first time, but set to work on that paper on symbols in algebra almost straightaway, and then passed out, so that's the reason for perhaps the biggest gap in this blog since its beginnings over 3 months ago. The days rather unremarkable overall, just more and more procrastination even as I did my best to phone it in at work.

Friday brought the usual carouse with teacher-friends, this time in UWS Anna neighborhood, where I got more drunk than I perhaps should have, as ending up at Alric's passed out on the couch, enjoying snippets of Training Day and insulting him only sporadically bore out.

Yesterday was hanging out with Rob Chin, who'd dragged himself to the city. He's of drinking age. This is scary and depressing. We had a good nip dinner and all that, but then I just ended up passing out again for a few hours before getting up and back here.

Way too much work today. No idea how it's going to get done. This is the life.

So I am blogging from over Joephet's legs as we are discussing forcible sodomy. Umm, from a legal point of view. Today was a good day despite my graphic and inexplicable insomnia last night, with many strange visions, and a stolen mecha-pencil today, I fear. Sadly, I don't have AIM, so I am cut off my usual Asian cavalcade, and so on.

A discussion on race today in my math pedagogy course. I wanted to chime in about class, but somehow restrained myself. That's somehow my pet peeve, though I realize more and more this is due to my own narrow Asian-am upbringing and relative privilege. Ah well. Real progress today with some students. I am feeling good.

So I am back from a run and a bit too much dinner--my stomach must have shrunken after all that vomitting and diarrhea, so I have been eating less, though now I fear as if I will tilt the other way.

I went to a conference on schools in crisis today, and I will post later the "reflection" that I will write for my writing class. It will be charmingly Marxist, though of course now that I've gone and read more, I realize that I know so little when it comes to history, and am still somehow stuck in this Hegelian vanguard politics mindset. So I been reading up on the sort of class-roots of urban educational trouble, which out to be rather clear, as this entire business is not all that old, something I tend to forget--how quickly industrialization has changed the world. Life is much less academic.

I went for a run today, which was great, though I wish I hadn't eaten so much afterwards, still. Bubbling grades was not fun. There is no comment code for what I was feeling this morning...

My roommate tells me the Chinese sent up a rocket. Ummm... Yeah... Great.

I have been leaking other fine tidbits all day, like a garbage-bag a bored Asha-cat has perforated.

I have been visiting my circle of Asianboi blogs from school, and I have been amused by what Symantec as chosen to censor from student eyes. For instance, "Panna" is apparently illegal, a lot of my rants on Alric's blog's comments section are barely intelligible for the -------- censorship, Rob Chin's blog is completely unviewable, and yet Joephet's complaining about the raw, itchy status of his butt prances about unfiltered.

I have been trying to start this paper, but as my commitments continue to pile up for this weekend, I can only wonder where all this can head. But we'll see. I am gaining more respect for the educational research community, and see important connections to philosophy developing.

I have been reaching out to my most recalcitrant students. This has been working somewhat.

I have been negligent, though, in my plans to organize a heckling of Amy Tan. I hafta get on the ball. Under two weeks away, and I don't even have a script yet.

So I am a shmuck. I had an extended bout of sore throat a few months ago, while on this blog. I don't know why I forgot that. I'm dumb, that way. But it wasn't the sort of thing that interfered with my clarity of thought, which I guess is the point. I wouldn't even know where to begin right now on a To-Do list. Fuck. I am fucked.

So this is perhaps my first bout of sickness or anything like it since I strated this blog. Or so I think. But its' worth noting that being hearty and not frail like Rob Chin, I am usually in good health. So when I am so incapacitated it makes me grateful that I am clear-headed most of the time. It makes me wonder, though, if being this way is what it is like bieng in class for my kids. That probably sounded condescending, but I was acting last night a lot like some of my kids in class. Sigh. I wonder if they make any drugs for that.

I am tying some shit up, but I can't really find the energy to do anything, as I've lost most of my appetite. I am woozy. I need to find some Tylenol or something. I need to get a grip. I need to take a step back. I doubt I am ready to go back to work tomorrow. Big fat sigh.

So things were going pretty damned well until the food poisoning.

But I've been neglecting this blog, somehow, and it shows--the simplest of moments and the funniest of incidents are forgotten. For instance, at a certain restaurant in Chinatown, there is anti-Chinese racial discrimination, as Chinamen are not allowed to take dumps, for there is a sign that reads, "Zhi ke xiao bian/Bu ke da bian"--but in Chinese only--Anglos are instructed only to not toss anything other than toilet tissue into the toilet. Oh, well.

It's been a good weekend, skipping out on my teacher-friends to eat with Joephet in Ktown and then head back to Astoria, where I caught Kill Bill with Alric. This was not necessarily the best of ideas. Then general sleepery and slackery and on to the next day: did anything happen? Does it matter? So much work now to get done. Yesterday was more active, with Chinatown and Alric in Bryant Park, and online dating and the like, but the food poisoning (I suspect a Vietnamese sandwich) was unpleasant, and I am still recovering. Going to sleep some more, and then try to put together my life a little further. Or something.

Joephet's been a dear through my infirmity. Sigh. Sweet thing. I really shouldn't call him a psycho-bitch anymore. Even when he is.

So I am fucking busy. Hanging out with Joephet can be a full time thing. Ah, well. I'll elaborate more later. Life is good, is all.

So I don't know why I haven't been doing this sooner, this running thing. I've done so on Monday, Tuesday, and again today, and I feel somehow great. Tired, but somehow at the same time more energetic. I love this cooling down period, how fast my mind has to work, how well I sleep afterwards, even without my wonderful pillow. A shame he's so busy and so brilliant. Sigh. And not my cold, hard, sharp, pedantic type of brilliance, but something more radiant and warming. I miss him.

Logic was fun today. Our professor has a charming way of coming up with real-world explanations and motivations of logical facts, conventions, and explanations. Deontic logic has more to it than you would think, though I take pause at utilitarian logics which have linearly ordered value sets.

Classes were unremarkable, I'd say. I wish the Yankees would lose. I dont' know what else to say or to do with myself at this point--just winding down today with little stress, and just a Friday to take care of. I love students who linger after class somehow. They amaze me.

Oh, yes. Horatio Alger apparently got in trouble for homosexual activities with young boys. Which casts the book I'm currently reading, Ragged Dick, or Street Life in New York in a rather queer light, with this companionable cohabiting plucky young boys, who lay hands on each other, give each other money and support each other generally, with names such as Dick Hunter (no kidding) and Fosdick. And of course, I love any book which has lines like, "And Dick couldn't help but feel like a capitalist..."

Fuck whitey.

So I am tired, and I really wanted to go for a run, but it's just not going to happen. I guess I'll lift, as I listen to the ALCS, rooting for the BoSox belatedly, only cuz it's the end of hte season and what else can I do? I wonder if I'll ever go to a game.

Today breezed by, and was relatively slow. Too many students are still failing, though, and another bird flew in, this time with students in the room. I was not very amused. Beyond that, there is a little to say about my day, as it was just something that by now I can sleep walk through, and this is what I need to do this week, as I am tired, and the students are antsy. But next week I'll have the time to finish setting up my classroom with new systems and procedures and routines and all that wonderful nonsense which makes things work smoothly. And I have a computer, which is very helpful for keeping grades up to date.

And it's so delayed my blogpost that the BoSox have now won, which is wonderful. And I am tired, and hafta find the homework I need to do for Dynamic Logic tomorrow.

It's a good life.

So I can't motivate. I have run, I have eaten, I have work I need yet to do, but I just can't muster the energy needed to get it done. I am just biding my time until I can go to sleep.

Yesterday I missed blogging, as I was out--and two nights ago, I meant to write about possibly being the object of a con game, in which I "bump" into some guy, who then claims that I cracked the glasses which seem a little too small for his head and which he happens to know the exact price for. Yeah...

Hrmm.. The rest is all a blur. I remember reading, spending time with Joephet, paratha, and a haircut. Also Kenneth, whom I "helped" with "math" a little bit, and again chatted with bracingly as far as relationships go, if applicable. So that at least is sharp. I like to think of him as a younger, more idealistic version of me, but that is of course exceedingly unfair to the both of us. It's just a sharp and different perspective on things gay. Yeah... Ran into Joephet, cell-assisted, checked out St. Mark's Bookstore and was suitably pleased, dropped by Dannis', passed out, and made it to work this morning. Which was a strangely detached day, somehow. I made it through it all, and didn't really feel much, just reacted, kept things smooth, low-key, cool.

Came home, as today is a Monday as far as CUNY is concerned. Stuck on the train, and went for a blissful run. Not much to say. Feeling blah.

So I am back from the following adventure:

1540 leave house
1545 W train
1610 CUNY GC, library, American Mathematical Monthly
1627 6 train
1640 Utrecht--pencil and Rapidoliner
1645 6 train
1700 Chinatown! Mao hat, Joephet soap
1710 W train
1715 Herald Square: cellphone case
1720 Midtown Comics
1730 Office Depot
1750 (five minutes late) Loews with Alric, Euge, and Ashley.

Whew. And all this clad in a pecs-parading shirt. This is life at its efficient best. Movie School of Rock thoroughly satisfying. Jack Black could play manic me, and of course Philip Seymour Hoffman for dour/angry me. Unagi is a basic human right.

Ah, well.. Enjoy yet more comics and just chilling, in anticipation of my well-earned day off. Perhaps I need to draw a comic about that.

So I am just making a quick pit stop before hitting the city for all sorts of minor chores, including finally commiting to buying a nicer pen for my personal use, and getting a pencil, a cellphone case, an article I need for a research paper, and of course new and old comics that I somehow missed because Midtown Comics can be a bit bad about back issues, and they are just confusing, whereas JHU has everything: apparently I missed the end of the series The Truth, which is about a black Captain America. I really want to make it down to the village to buy a new pencil. BUt can I make it by 5? We'll see.

So I can't believe I forgot this story: yesterday, I needed to replace the SIM card in my phone. So I hafta find an AT&T wireless store near my school. I end up going to 86th and Lex, as that's a great bet. A few blocks eastward, and I'm set. So the clerk, a taller black man with inadequate teeth and dreads helps me, and gets me hooked up with a new SIM card, turns on my phone, and starts cracking up, there in the middle of the Upper East Side...

He says, "when you turn it says, 'something whitey'!"

I am embarassed.

It is true. My welcome message on my fone is "Fuck whitey!"

So I wanted to say some things about The Alchemist, which is the book which some of the tenth graders are reading in my school, and which was a book, originally in Spanish, recommended to me some 5 years ago, back when I was in high school myself. And suddenly 5 years seems like no time at all.

The book, a self-described fable of finding your life's purpose, is dangerous in many ways. Well, it is amazing how little physical suffering--thirst and hunger, etc--there actually is in the book, and the whole thing smacks of some sort of generalized, externalized everyman deal. But it's a veyr man-centered book: women have their place, and men seek their destinies, which is very strange, and of course there's this monism thing, which is dangerous and teleological: that we each have a "Personal Legend" to fulfill and we mustn't get sidetracked by materialist lures along the way. Of course, I am wary of this as it is religious in tone, and whiel I see the motivation in teaching this to students, it's a dangerous text in some ways, as this notion of coherence and synchronicity and fate and all that is tough to explain: as if will were all that is necessary, as if the only mission is self-fulfillment: I dont' know how to articulate my unease at the message, or perhaps just at the fact that there is a message. The book is also segmented and is inconsistent in terms of point of view, which I find effective. But there are also bits about the Arabs which are very European-stemming, and I am troubled by the difficulties of teaching this text--I don't know... it might seem a bit unreal, a bit cheesy, and a bit too wilfull. And the troubling thing is to imagine how I might have felt about this before my current tack, say, 5 years ago. But yeah.. those damn desert-dwelling Arabs... Sigh... Are we just going in circles now? Hrmph... I wish I could enjoy books more innocently.

So I would have blogged about two nights ago, but my connection was down, and last night I didn't come home.

Thursday, I just went for a jog: it was s'posedta be just one lap, but the wind was blwoing,t he park deserted and dark, and the only sound the rustling of leaves, it was chilly, and as I rounded the corner on my last lap, I thought that I would fuck it and go another. So I did. It felt good--and I finished what I needed to, and was happy, though Joephet was again incommunicado, which I am somehow OK with--I am happy, and understanding....

Friday was great--classes mostly a breeze, and then more fun with coworkers and their friends at a mariachi-laden restaurant where I was dragged into a shouted argument over the viability of socialism in the face of capitalist aggression. I know this will sound racist, but I have a hard time restraining myself in front of bujii blacks who defend capitalism. Sigh. My shameful class background came to bear once more, and I think it was just a guy thing, alienating most of the girls at the table.

Then Alric for an insulting dinner, with plenty of good movie material, but not all that much moral progress. Spin-off blog anyone? I think Alric should start "blog of inadequacy."

Oh, I lost $4725 the other day. My program wasn't renewed for AmeriCorps money. Fuck.

Ummm.. then Joephet, which was yet more passing out, randomly, and then good local Indian food, and then back here.

Ah, well. Now on phone with parents who might go to the mainland for a job. Sigh. More PhD pressure now...

So I am at school, and my phone is fucked up, and I have misplaced several progress reports I will now need to regenerate, even though I sort of lack the requist numbers, and I am just ab it too chickenshit to go bother the person using the computer I was at last night to get in to get the files I need. So it's kind of annoying and chickenshit, but just a matter of waiting a bit longer I suppose. I dunno.. I just want to get home and be done with all this progress nonsense, but I have four more reports to write or rewrite, and it bothers me--I can't be troubled to do it if I don't really really hafta.

Hrmmm... So yeah... I dunno... I g uess right now I want sleep above all else. That would set me right. Rereading Roth and Coleman Silk and thinking on my younger days.

So I got home a while ago and have been chilling out, chatting with my bro and with Rob Chin, and I'm just impressed by how much older I am. Which isn't to say that you can see my floors half the time, or that I am not buried by papers, but I've got more poise than before when under severe deadlines, and I handle things better--I may yell myself hoarse as I did today, but I move on, suck down a quick cigarette and I'm OK--I couldn't handle myself this way last year, and looking at Amenina who's new this year to the teaching thing, I am reminded of all that suffering. Still, it's worth it. I'm reminded of that in little ways. I just have to resist the urge to be a sanctimonious, self-righteous prig. And the urge to have a second cigarette--I haven't earned it, and besides, I have quit for the most part.

I have been newly ambitious about capital improvements to my classroom. This is exciting--it's better than an office in some ways--I just have to make it so.

My farts are supersmelly.

That was a Joephet-quality comment, I know.. But what have I been eating??

So I have not been as good a little blogger as I ought. I have also somehow only spent $2 today so far on diet soda. Then again, it is rather late--almost 10, and I am still in the middle of Flatbush, finally finishing up progress reports I will print out through the express printer, as the main network is down, sadly.

Been reading Joephet's blog. Sigh. I suppose I have my Keans and he has his Peter. Hrmm... No pun. Sigh. It's been a long, hectic day, though my 10th graders are quite sharp and one of them at least is doing higher-level reasoning in the mode that i was trained in at his age and height. The history class next door was doing stereotypes, and apparently most fags are bottoms. Or so the stereotype goes. We apparently like the pole, not the hole. And so on. I wish I remembered more--I guess I can go look them up myself.

It's nice having this new spiffy cellphone. I haven't really used it yet, except for a whispered call to Joephet. Hrmm... I guess it's definitely after nine now, though most of the tension is past, as I am in the flow of things, and it's really not much later than I used to stay over the summer, and it will be pretty quickly to bed afterwards, anyway. I miss Joephet.

I have been living very much in the moment of late. I have been wondering what the weekend will bring, and am leaning toward a Boston trip. I have been wondering what Rob Chin will do with his life. I hope that bugger turns out aight.

So I figured something out today--I spent $6 today on diet soda. That's alot of money. That's ridiculous. The last time I will do so. It's not good for me: it's probably carcinogenic at these levels. SO it goes.

I got my new cell. I'm more excited than I should be. It's like it's revenge.

Been sleepy, but productive: since getting home and working at 10 or so, I've produced about 20 progress reports. Not bad, given my other distractions. About 15 to do tomorrow night, and I'm set. Trivial, perhaps, in the grand scheme of things, but the sort of thing I need to worrya bout for now--

Other than that, I'm pretty happy. I still sort of miss Joephet, it's just not yearning. I'm happy with him these days. The weekend will be good. Just to have earned a long break--maybe I will end up travelling further afield. Maybe not. A Boston trip might be nice. Catch up with some shit...