So I have been back and lazy for a while now from Miss Fegs' in Jersey, and I even went for a run, and am doing my amped-up lifting, almost aerobic in the number of reps. I have no desire to go back to school tomorrow, or at this point, ever. But I will, and I know that when I wake in the morning I will be refreshed and ready to go once more. It's just now, that gray period between the evening news and Iron Chef or King of the Hill which is so deadening.

Oh, for those of you watching, Joephet didn't end up sleeping with Alex Apnea. Whew. Ha.

I love New Jersey Transit for all the absurd white conversations you here. Last night, there was some overgrown geek bemoaning how the space program had fallen off pace, how if the pace set by the 1970s had continued, we'd be on Mars by now. And be "we" he meant, of course, the US. And how sadly only China (a rising power in the space world) would goad the United States into a mission to Mars that doesn't involve Val Kilmer. Of course, he failed to realize that the space program is a fucking waste of money. Well, manned spaceflight anyway. I'm well past my Star Trek days. Also on the train last night, an absurd little chubby-cheeked squirrel of a boy was reading the flashing overhead messages robotically "Please keep feet... off the seats... NEXT STATION... Secaucus...." and over and over again, doing his best to anticipate what would then be said. Fucking white robots. Of course, this was the same kid whose none-too-bright mom was haltingly trying to explain the Johnny Cash song, "A Boy Named Sue," to which the boy replied, "He should have just changed his name when he got enough money... That's what I'm going to do...."

How bad could it be? Dwayne? Dweebus? I think that in this country we'd still suck the cock of a billionaire named Dwayne Dweebus.

So I know I'm a little late with this, but here we go again:

Asianboi Roundup

(Alphabetic by pseudonym)

Alric is Alric. Recently published, he remains in the same way as before, fundamentally. I have little real news to report.

Joephet is squirmy. It's hard to know where we stand relative to each other, what with all the sidestepping. He's settled into his school groove, and is discontent in his usual way.

Kean is coming. Well, to what, I don't know. The city, sure, but what else? I wonder what he'll make of this sordid mess, full of signs that are difficult to read, even after a few years of attention.

Kenneth is mired. Well, he's getting in deeper, digging in to what he's up to, I guess, though it's hard to tell, and it's perhaps without much relish.

Lostin is morose. Classes and work march on, and I wonder if there is anything to break the monotony, as I survey my own.

Rob Chin is looking. A job or grad school sounds like a choice between Scylla or Charybdis, though I suppose in this case, it's a matter of what sucks more... Of course, I chose both...

I am flabby. I am going back to work.

So here I am in the middle of Jersey, three-sheets to the wind, two-Guinesses drunk at Miss Fegs', home from a bar where the Mongoloid at the bar next to us took my tip ($3 on 3 $4.25 pints, a good leftist rate) to pay for yet another Amstel Light which he doesn't actually finish beyond a few sips, yet another example of Veblen-free conspicuous consumption, a falling short of drunkenness condoned by the Irish barkeeps, whom I have to tip another time, over $10 for a pint, it works out to, with the cute white Seton Hall boys still unattainable, and me raging about the usual imperialism, and capitalism, even of the hip-hop variety which makes for the 1-1/2 floor Urban Young Men's department of the Herald Square Macy's monitored by cops, thumbs-in-beltloops, protecting the capital represented by FuBu, Perry Ellis, Sean John, and Phat Farm. It's a strange experience, to be so face-to-face with hand-to-mouth-life, with numerous exes sanctified by the state of New Jersey, and kids who manage to survive despite it all, though I can sympathize, even if it's only so far as dipping into the convenience store for the supplies for potato-chip sandwiches, on which I was raised, despite the heretical variation supplied by whole-wheat bread instead of the usual white. It's all so post-Manhattan, as if the apocalypse had already come.

And Joephet is out with Alex Apnea, no doubt enacting his slinky wiles. But that's his business.

Dinner and long coffee with Kenneth, which was long overdue. I wonder how much we are dim mirrors of each other, our mutual desires, somehow mutually exclusive.

So it's a good life, fully independent of going back to work on Monday, living inbetween a slice of bread folded back onto itself, bulging with overfried fatty snacks.

So it's been a laid-back break so far, with little of note, other than families, both mine and those of others. I feel wonderfully indolent, mostly. Read a senior thesis today, some more books on the way, and a visit to Miss Fegs also is on tap for tomorrow, to say nothing of catching up with Kenneth, with whom I've not hung out in ages. But little news, I guess. Just veging before the 3-week march to Christmas Break. Joephet is being all nosy. Such is his right. Will he sleep with Alex Apnea tomorrow?

Tune in next time..

So I'm posting now from Joephet's with an amped up wireless feed. Plan is to go see Lex and bro this weekend, and to make it back in time to maybe hang with Kenneth as well as Miss Fegs before drafting a new uniform discipline code and bracing myself for three straight weeks of teaching before the vacation to end all. I have few memories of a year ago, except that I'd managed to turn a corner and was very much on the hunt for sex. Or something like that--that's how it seems at least, that I went boy-crazy around this time last year.

Little more to report beyond a failed shopping expedition with Joephet, as the combined force of my cheapo upbringing and my newfound Marxist rationalizations have made it difficult for me to commit to any purchases, even if they are avowedly good deals. And I don't think I look like that much of a slob. Brand-names I just resent. And I'm cheaper when I know how miserably earned each of those dollars was. Sigh.

Ah, well. I am relaxed: I have gotten very good at distancing myself from school, and this too has helped greatly this year.

So I'm returning from dinner with Rob Chin, reading the Ryan White Story with a critical eye, and snag a seat, when a whining fight begins next to me between some het-bujii couple. I guess I haven't witness all that many fights, but this is pretty serious, with the typical guy-quiet-rage-hostility, the girl-crying-snatching-whining, and all that. It's pretty hostile, pretty uncomfortable, and I can't help but think how young these kids are, though they no doubt have got years on me. This goes on for some time, the girl demanding that the guy (rather cute) sit down next to her that they might talk, in the seat I have given up in the furtherance of het-bujiiness.

In any case, eventually, in comes an Asian guy, clad in camo-gear (as if he doesn't realize that being white would be better camo), be-earringed, probably a pussy bottom boi by the looks of things, and smiling, proclaiming "cheers" when I move aside to let him take the hot seat. He asks repeatedly if the girl, at this point crying and withdrawn, is all right, and eventually gives up. After the bickering couple exit, I hear him, seated behind me now, say out loud, to no one in particular, "I hope you don't hit her." No further comment necessary. Sigh.

So I couldn't blog last night as Joephet was over, eating my rice and using my Ethernet cable (I should really swap the one at home for the longer one at school), but I have no complaints about that at all. I slept remarkably well for being crammed into the corner on my too-thin mattress pad. IT was a hectic yesterday, actually, in my quest to prepare dinner and dodge the writing I am now tapping out at the college computer lab, as my coursework for the semester finally winds down. I've grown tired of the writing--the professor is too coarse and insensitive [insert anti-Zionist remark], the classmates generally too lazy and judgmental, and the time of day a low-point for me. But at least I get to hang out with Rob Chin and sister afterwards in Manhattan.

Not much to report today, except some kid threw a chair out the window today. We had two teachers out, and so things were of course a little crazy. Something has to be done. I feel as if this would be be like the burning of the Reichstag, except for one thing. I don't think anyone in my school fucking would know what I was talking about when I just said that. So much more allusiveness. Here's to elusiveness.

So I am groggy, my throat is beginning to ache from too many cigarettes, I do not really want to write these journal entries from the past, and Jonathan Brandis is dead. This last bit of news is rather sad, as from looks alone I would have hoped that Wil Wheaton would have predeceased. I hope Tatyanna is feelin aight... Sigh.

So I just off the phone with my moms. Yeah, it's hard explaining leftist assaults against the neoliberal Clinton era in Chinese, but it's valuable, if only as a reminder of how difficult it might be to articulate your own well-vetted ideas in a foreign idiom. Well, apparently I have full parental funding for any doctoral program I will pursue. Sigh. It's a tough world, and it's hard to articulate why I'm not electable: as if the Asianness and the height were not enough, there's also the faggery. Fuck.

In better news, I finally beat Marvel v. Capcom today at the local pizzeria, and with the new team I have of Venom and the Hulk. It was a tight match, as Onslaught, while reputedly easy, is a tough nut to crack in some ways if your energy isn't up. But I don't suppose that means I'll necessarily stop...

So the film students prowling the neighborhood and shooting their bujii little white epics--they're majority white, somehow, with the occasional Asian, I suppose--are at least cute and nice for eye-candy, though I'm sure there's some trespass law about them putting their equipment on my porch, though I guess it's not really my porch, quite. I have an entire Marxist rant against film as being class-biased, fundamentally. Well, that's not quite true... I do remember some amusing student videos produced at school last year.

Predictably, my Chinese-restaurant reading today was Fanon and Said. Sigh. I am such a boring anti-colonial leftist. Hrmmm... The earlier shopping expedition into Manhattan with Joephet failed as I failed to bring my bankcard, and so we were limited to frog legs at a Vietnamese restaurant, yet another chewy reminder of imperialism, as I speculated as to whether the mythical subservience of the Thai boi is actually a need to be imperialized, as ol' Siam was never completely under foreign domination in quite the same way as their neighbors. They made a musical about it, for chrissake.

Thankfully, I managed to go for a run and some lifting today, both long overdue. I am beginning to get doughy in patches.

So the bed is here, and I am blogging from a different location, this time without a windowview to the outside world. Which is its sort of tragedy, I must suppose. Joephet is coming over for lunch. I am deciding whether or not to go Bessie-ward for this evening. It is quite unclear what I ought to do. I am myself starving, with only a minor sense of accomplishment at the new changes to the room, which make the whole place look a lot more open, even if the room is still cluttered with the trash of many exhausting days at school. And of course I'm still forestalling the mattress thing. Thank you, Martha Stewart. Hrmm.. No bujii impulses yet, but maybe it just needs to sink in.

I have been reading impatiently, mostly some Fanon I started on back in college and now have at last picked up, with a more Asian view of things. It's sad how much better and more hopeful things are in other countries, somehow, in terms of democracy and the working class.

So today was terrible in all the predictable ways--chaos descending, admins still short of being adequate, unable even to police teachers much less students. It's a bit of a drag, and I found math class just now refreshing, though now that it's drawing to an end, I wonder what the point of all it was, as interesting as it might have all been at the time. Now I just have one more day, though I suppose I will have to actually write lesson plans as demanded by an administration somehow hamstrung between creative/authetic assessments/projects and compensating for student immaturity by mechanical modeling . And I missed out on my usual Thursday ribs. Dangit. To say nothing of Joephet being unavailable tonight. Well, more so than usual. Ha. But no, nothing miffs me right now--I've found a strange calm in it all. And I look forward to tomorrow and the weekend to follow, hoping to make it up to see Bessie despite my earlier Saturday commitment. I can feel Thanksgiving. And I just bought a boatload of books from the library, including the mainstream economics I ought to know if I am to be a leftist contrarian. I hate days so busy at school you can't even check all the usual blogs.

Ah, well. Home-ward, with a pitstop for some Marvel v. Capcom at the pizzeria by the subway, and then lesson plans and yet more blogging!

So I realized just now how completely repetitive my last two posts were. Sigh. So it goes.

So seeing's how I'm being observed tomorrow, I'm halfheartedly now wiping off the good china. Today was a little rough toward the end, as our students were confronted with their widespread failure. That's always just rough.

I find Asian crowing over representation dumb. The Indian version, for instance. It's not as if we're suddenly dateable.

I get the evening off tomorrow, which will be blissful. I am much looking forward to January already, even if I have no idea what I should be registering for for the spring.

I have been tearing through old comics like there's no tomorrow. I need to get some more, organize what I have, and just clean up this apartment generally. The last main thing I have to worry about, though, is just this observation--and then it should be relatively smooth sailing on until Thanksgiving. It's just that I'm tired, just not physically. One can only take so much abuse.

So I have been at home and rather lazy, instead of doing the journal entries, lesson plans, and progress reports I ought to be, happily reading away at old comics which somehow seem better than I remembered. An observation this Wednesday, which will actually be by at least two or three observers, so that should sully the purity of the results, which is not a bad thing. I have little ambition or anything right now, just trying to make it through this week somehow, and then to Thanksgiving. A sad state, but perhaps a necessary one. Like I said, November is not my month.

So I am finishing up some progress reports, the ones I've been dreading, though I've tabled the tenth grade ones for much later, as it's just too much for right now, for one evening. I really need to be better about grading and record keeping, somehow. I need to have some sort of better system for all this, somehow. It'll come to me, I'm sure.

Other than that, it's been an all right weekend, with some quality time with Joephet, though a scaled-back time-spending schedule, for now, at least, as we both try to figure some things out. Him, blood-antigone-kinship-language-authority, and me just plain old persistent human suffering in the face of plenty. Something like that, anyway, finding that while my math knowledge is rusty, my skills are still adequate, in their own way.

I have a hellish amount of writing to do for my writing class, though, and so many other little tasks left. I am, however, in essentially the home stretch--November is still a terrible in time to be in love, to start new things, to improve your mile-time. But it's good for some things at least. It's just a matter of figuring those things out...

So I have spent the afternoon purchasing pink and yellow sponges, cutting them into sensible pieces, stuffing said sponges into slits, and spreading water putty on these sponges like hummus on neon ladyfingers. And so I have a little bookshelf-nook now, or will once I finish sprucing it up fully. Still putting off the paperwork, if only for a little while, as I seek to get my bearings and clean up this house, as the eventual arrival of me bed will require me to actually move around some furniture.

So I am warm at home, having taken care of my landlady's dog for a short while today, walking her in the park,a nd otherwisejust being generally sleepy and unmotivated to do the progress reports ahead of me. "Progress" reports. Ha. I can't get over that particular joke.

Joephet had been making strange noises, but I chalked that gurgling up to illness and general bitchiness. But whatever--if I thought these progress reports were really worth doing, I'd be all over it. As it stands, not really: I want to just run off to the pizzeria and play some more video games. And that's what I'll do. Be back in a few rolls of quarters.

So I think it's snowing out. I bought a bed today. Things were smooth today, even if I am currently losing way too many of my students. But one gets used to triage surprisingly quickly. Taking some time off from Joephet, which has left me in more quiet idleness than usual, though I suppose that this week I have generally tended to be rather nicely diligent about my schoolwork, which is of course also drawing rapidly to an end, as I am home now, rather than in the middle of blustery Brooklyn--teaching will be so much easier once I have no commuting to do.

So many projects I've abandoned--but just give it a little time.

What to do for Thanksgiving?

So today in writing class a group was presenting all about this book that is popular reading in the schools, Monster, by Walter Dean Myers. It's about a teenager (adolescent) who gets into trouble being involved in a second-degree murder during a robbery ("Felony murder!" Joephet would chime in, if he could, feverish little hottie), and is thrown around the jail system... Well, so the white and Persian(?) presenters try to sum up the book, but of course fail to mention the kid is black. Which is pretty fucking relevant, in terms of teaching our kids as well as the entire fucking prison-industrial complex. My Marxism is becoming more and more focused on the racism of the system, I'm afraid. But that's probably the point. Sigh. So where is it we're teaching again? But I guess I'm just hunkered down in my own siege mentality, given my two schools so far in this career-thing of mine. That is to say, there are other schools where there are different ethnic groups, which can war with each other. Sigh.

Life is good--home stretch on some things soon. I wish Joephet were healthier, though. Sigh. I'm just powerless.

So I am blogging from home after a day that has already been rather decent. Morning math class is refreshing, in that I was actually awake at 930, which would have been unthinkable back in college. What can you do? And I've been having fun looking over yesterday's transcript, in preparation for my written work later tonight. So life is pretty good, and I saw Alric and Rachel for lunch in midtown, which was droll enough, just not as drunken as one would have liked. I have been slapdash for the rest of the afternoon, and will go play some more video games before the day is out. Sadly I hafta schlep all the way to college in Brooklyn now. Which is really a tragedy cuz it's so damned far. And I don't really like this class, and am not doing as well in it as I perhaps ought. I will have to fabricate some journal entries soon.

Math seems easier than it ought to be.

Joephet was back on his feet this morning, so I rest easier. Sigh. What a bugger. Such power for such a small frame.

So I have the day off which is why I am blogging this late from Joephet's, and he is feverish, and I feel helpless and useless. Sometimes all you can do is hold someone and speak mutterily. Sigh.

Today was a shit day, though it didn't touch me, deep down inside. Supes peeps came to check out my classroom, and it was rather dumb and pointless, though they did prove that you can walk even the most recalcitrant of students through a problem by the nose leaving no written evidence or lasting understanding if you are Socrates-in-the-Meno enough about it all, and if you also somehow surround said recalcitrant ghetto-fabulous student (I wish I were exaggerating or being racist on this count--it would make my life easier if it were a misrepresentation) with five adults, four of them admins, and then me the lowly teacher, who is himself instructed to "learn" from this Potemkin bumpkinage from on high, as from a horsefucking Catherine. It's ludicrous. The shit we're expected to deal with. Sigh.

Beyond that, I did an interview today with one of my leftist vegan students, about the algebra and the math that I have been researching for my ed class. It was satsifying, though the transcription, while bringing back memories of two February/Marches past was not exactly worth the two and a half hours or more I spent on it. Still, it is good meat, and I wonder why I dont' do this for a living, or expand upon my philosophy directions. I am liking this iBook, I must admit. Ah, well. I ended up explaining,or trying to, about use-mention, while of course lazily ignoring that sort of thing in my actual transcript.

And then I lingered at school until six. Nice to have such coworkers, even if they complain a lot. "Bitch" is, after all, sadly a gendered verb. But I don't know if I would actually know what it's like to have male coworkers in an academic discipline in quite the same way. Ah, D.

Sigh. Joephet. Poor flaming pillow, now on the verge of self-combustion. I am worried. But at least there are emergency measures.

So I been negligent once more, though I am hard-pressed to come up with an excuse that is at all satisfying. There is much I still need to do, somehow. I am now in the market for a bed. Which is a frightening thing, in that I am afraid that my politics will rapidly swing bujiiward without possibility of return. So I am currently looking in the platform direction. Sigh. But this shit is expensive, though at least I'll get a better deal than Alric. Ah, well. I hafta keep in my whys and wherefores.

Beyond that, it's been an active few days--Thursdays I hung out with Rob Chin in Hell's Kitchen, drunk on Guinness and anticipation. I'd give my belt off my waist to that chink. And I did. It didn't do him much good, I'm afraid. School and classes were unremarkable, and saddening, that I would go so far to learn so little. But there is little blame to be assigned here, as I think back to contrast my level of education with that of my classmates and students. Nothing to get all hoidy-toidy about, but I think I tend to usually forget how big that gap really is. Hrmm.. Friday was yet more chilling, after a tepid third installment of the Matrix, with Rob Chin and his sis and some overblown incarnation of Asian male heterosexuality. Not very convincing. I mean, I don't need questions as to where I live barked at me. It's hard to articulate this, but Joephet agrees with me--all Asians are fags.

Ummm... yeah... yesterday I spent with Joephet. It melted or evaporated away rather quickly. This was pleasant in its own way, though I need to buckle down to finish the work I have due for tomorrow. So it's not a bad life, just a meandery one, and I need to cutback on my spending, as I am not meeting my savings goals, and I'm hardly Alric on this count.

Hrm... So yeah, I been sorely short of lots of things, but I am rebalancing now, and a few hundred dollars later my home will be more complete.

What have I been reading? Becoming a Man, some James Baldwin, a bit of Mike Rose's educational memoir, Catcher in the Rye again, for the first time after college and prep-school types, I think, some nonfic books on math as well as a touch of sociology, assorted new comics, and the usual left-press internet raggery. I will hafta revisit Lone Wolf and Cub before long. Just set aside a month for it all.

So I am annoyed at Joephet. It'll pass. It's just really consumingly annoying right now. Sigh. I'll let it go.

But I'm presently too worked up to say anything. So fuck it.

So I am glad Lily is back. We have riffs now.

I'm afraid I terminally offended a classmate of mine today in writing class when she was lagging behind on the internet project I was working on, and not being very helpful, seeking out prefab lessons rather than making her own. And so I tried to secede, while giving her something else to work on. Perhaps I should have handled it better, but she spent the rest of the block solo and muttering things about me in typical bitchy manner. Sigh. Still, I don't like the idea of actually having offended another adult, rather than a student. But I just can't stand incompetence and half-assedness unless it's in the service of something else. I will post a link to the cool research we did today on tax rates. Any idea what the top bracket income tax rate was in 1944? That's what the riffs section is for!

Harumph: today's staff development was unremarkable beyond a casual Tom Cruise Maverick Top Gun joke (TOP?? ha!), and quiet giggling at the phrase "bag of tricks"

Other than that, nothing to speak of other than drudgery and eye-rolling at either the incompetence of pomposity of my colleagues, or both. No one knew what "pedantic" meant. Perhaps I should have gone with "didactic." And somehow I don't think that the opposite of teacher domination is teacher submission. But who am I to criticize, really?

So other than guilt at holding people to standards which are unreasonable, in my demand for better days, I have little to say today, other than a new boot purchase, which sadly does not match my belt. But this is a gradual process. And I guess you can't beat meeting Joephet at the Graduate Center, getting really angry at him for not being able to find him, and then having all that teeth-clenching rage sort of melt away the instant you sight his beige-sweater-blue-oxford-clad slim frame off in the library distance, which must be unique, for content-dense, fluorescent-lit expanses of private silences. Sigh. Who has all the power now?

So I am back from a jog in the park. Which was amusing because as I was rounding the corner by the track, I saw a thin waify whiteboy tossing up the yellow leaves, themselves already drifting down like snow, in large handfuls with a girl. After eyeing his flip flops, I thought, this guy can't be straight. And I was right. I know because as I turned my head to check him out, the duo thought I was judging them for their leaf-flinging, and both said "Hi." The girl did so more heterosexually. And less gigglily.

The new boy at the boricua place I go for lunch is extremely cute, tucking in his lightly vertical-striped shirt enough at his fine waist for it to flare, the beauty Daoist in its emptiness, corn-rows inviting a slow ruffling before a rebraiding. He smiles at me, and I tip him when, as he did today, he decided to get me a new leg of roast pork when the old one was about tapped. He offered to toss away the old meat, but I took it anyway. It was slightly stringier because that is how I like it anyway. Ah, pork.

Why do I mention this? I mention this because the tittillation these moments might have offered me a year ago when I was first finding my feet in the city, in the datingness of it all, is tiny, tinny, compared to what I've found in Joephet. Maybe it's because I've finally been granted a trial period, and perhaps this declaration is too public, too rash given the relatively muted tones that it all has taken, the private turn, but I find myself pleased and patient, essentially happy with things.

So I've navigated HTML enough to add the ability for readers to riff. Go for it.

So this is a drive-by blogging. Yes, yesterday was a tablefull of Asians at a Nip restaurant, food and company much appreciated, as if we were a self-contained world. Today has been random shopping and sleeping in. I love the weekends, and this looks to be an odd week at work.

I am rather intellectually and artistically stagnant, though. I've been trying to produce stuff in my notebook, but all I can come up with are minor insults. Such as the fact that today is Alric's first dearthday, a year since he, well, did, well, that sort of thing. Hrmm... Yeah.... Beyond that, I dunno. I am just trying to coast through yet another week, which is tough, as my kids haven't turned in their major projects. Which means that they will fail. I really need to computerize some of this shit.

Beyond that, time to get a-running again. Surely there is soemthing I need to do: I will need to work out, clean, and such tomorrow night, and figure out for what I should vote on Tuesday!

Vote Tuesday! It's the least you can do, as most likely the rest of your existence merely perpetuates het-bujii-capitalism.

I got in an argument today, a minor one, though, with Sam Flip about whether the bourgeoisie still exists. Of course it does. It might not be French in this country, but you still have the same sort of externalistic, achievement-oriented, materialistic, anxious, upper-class-aping, conventionally moral, sanctimonious windbags out there. What can you do? Here are some benchmarks, as definitions are by nature philosophically suspect: Handsoap is bujii. Table service is bujii. Golden delicious is aight. But Fuji is bujii.

So I been very inconsistent on this blog. Yesterday was Halloween, which meant low turnout and watching Bowling for Columbine with a roomful of blackfolks, which was somewhat uncomfortable, for me at least. They kept on blaming crazy white people, and were more amused and intrigued by the onscreen deaths than dismayed. That and lots of candy consumption, and an early evacuation, and a couple of Halloween parties passed up in favor of a movie with Alric and then snuggliness and another movie with Joephet. In the past couple of days, not that much remarkable, I suppose, though lots of TV: 24 somewhat disappointing, but what can you do?

Tonight, dinner iwth Rob Chin and sisters and Joephet. Hrmm.. little accomplished today beyond watching the Joy Luck Club. Sigh. Amazing how evil Chinese men can be.

I need to try harder.