So this is only one day late:

Asianboi roundup

Alric is dating!

Joephet makes accusations about my ignorance. Flings them.

Kenneth is skeptical.

Lostin is back from Korea, and is soon bound for the city again.

Rob Chin may be living with me, if only we find the right rent and situation, which is tough given my ties to Astoria.

Paul is missing in action, but I should contact him again.

Thai is dating a giraffe.

So the workshop today was pretty entertaining, all things considered--I was amused because I was sitting near a skeletal-old and younger-chubby couple of Filipinos and they were conversing in what sounded like Ilocano about the math, and not getting very far.

Right now I'm trying to scrabble together an Action! Plan!, but of course this is rather difficult, as I'm still mostly inert.

So this here now is one of those lulls, when I have the day off from work tomorrow, just some workshop, and the classroom is clean and the work is left for the students and they are someone else's problem even though I'll still miss them I bet. This is the third time I've been absent from school--once was to interview for this job, once for another workshop that was a thorough waste of time. It's odd to have this freedom, somehow--I just strolled through the park sans directions and made slow-time: it's time to start a new workout routine now that classes are winding down--armed with D's latest issue of Men's Fitness, what could stop me?

But there is very little to report, though I guess I am continually surprised by my coworkers--it's odd when I find myself sort of defending American democracy to immigrants who've seen both worse and better--I do think we have something going here, but of course it's far short of democracy or justice. Still, it's several steps up from slavery, at the least.

I need to form a plan for the summer, though, as it looks like my Rutgers program isn't going to come through--I'm going to need something else for the second half of July, or else I'm spending a whole month in New Hampshire, if my sublet scheme is to work.

Well, time to get to buying Joephet's random present and to dine with Rob Chin, Rob Chin's sister, and the Brit.

So I have been really out of it, though not in a currently-depressing way: most of my week was in suspense and anticipation for an observation that's still not occurred--yet another "management technique" by administration. Still, it was an enjoyable weekend of TV, movies, Alric and Shaolin Soccer, the beer garden, japanese food, and all those other distractions. But it's going to have to be thesis-mode from here on in, I guess--

So I have not been blogging, though there has been plenty of meat, just not much internet access. Monday's class, for instance, was a veritable parade of cranky female insanity in various forms: I never thought that I would be engaged in a protracted discussion with a Hungarian nationala about the various Indo-European bloodlines and how the Age of White Hegemony is about to see its twillight. I mean, I felt a sort of obligation to correct her on her repeatedly fascist and racist beliefs. But I guess no Puerto Ricans have ever cut me. Still, it's odd to talk to be "blueblood" Hungarian in a diversity class, and of course her right-wing moralizing about buggery a few weeks ago wasn't very helpful--homophobes ought not to lead discussions about inclusion of gays into the school system.

I have also wearied of the half-Chinese pedant who has declared her background every time she has ever shown up to class, with some anecdote about her Sony-hating Chinese father. I mean, she's half-Chinese, doesn't speak the language, and is losing her fucking hair. But I suppose putative Asianness is something to hold onto when you've not got much else. It's just sad that it's such narrow imperialism and cultural chauvinism, always with the implication that the fried-chicken-greasy over-manicured, nails-done chubby fat black hands have a hard time keeping their hands on the plow and their eyes on their plow, unlike, presumably, those virtuous Sinofolks, who of course would have been pulling the plow (iron moldboard!) in the first place. It's just offensive, narrow, and saddening, all amid a discussion of Korean Americans as model minorities. I stayed silent rather than subject the class my vitriol, but it's sad again that ethnicity--hell, nationality, even--is jumbled up with class. It's just sad, as these are teachers and folks soon with masters degrees, and yet...

It didn't help that the crazed woman, who reminds me in some ways of an older Isobelle, sat down next to me, very politely, at that, and started yelling into her cellphone on 2/5 in Brooklyn for people to get away from her and leave her alone. At least New Yorkers aren't beyond the strangers' solidarity of mocking the less-fortunate. Still, I suspect that Joephet is right, and that New York is rather too ghetto for its own good.

I've been harassed, meanwhile, by my administration, which has told me that while I have many great characteristics--male, different culture, talk to students, know math, my lack of classroom management is unacceptable at this point in my career. Of course, this is from a veteran declaredly years from retirement, a petty landowner and capitalist with absolutely not subject-area competence despite repeated declarations of an affinity with mathematics and my style, which is of course completely out of the mainstream. I would just like to go on the record again and ask, "What is it we're supposed to be teaching our kids that we as teachers do not know across subject areas?"

So I lost a post about Israeli fascism, apartheid, genocide, and so on, but don't worry--I can always write it tomorrow and it will still be true.

I'm stuck at the library, trying to figure out what I should check out and read in the half-hour before class and in part on the train ride home. I think I've settled on some Dick, though I may have to shelf-browse. Of course, there is plenty I need to be doing, but of course I don't quite feel like it. Today, as with most Mondays, was the usual sort of auto-pilot day, and indeed in some ways smoother than I would have thought: these full weeks really aren't so bad, and tomorrow I will have plenty of time in school to just catch up on all the game theory I've managed somehow to fall behind on. Funny how that happens when you're digging.

So I've discovered that my much-beloved Zod the Bear is named after General Zod of Superman fame. As a Piagetian education joke, I feel as if even such a criminal should have been sent not to the Phantom Zone but the Zone of Proximal Development. Of course, in real life the Zone of Proximal Development is probably just going to be an IKEA if the board isn't outbribed...

It's been a sadly lazy weekend, though much of the laziness has consisted in walking around town with Joephet--in sunny afternoon on Steinway, in the cooler evening from Lincoln Square to Times, in yet another sliding scale of ghettoness--my reaction to gangs of black teenagers is of course different given what I do on a daily basis, though this probably doesn't make me safer, and it's been getting on my nerves--today on the train on the way to eat dinner with Kenneth (my second, his first, as he's rather freakish that way), a couple girls roll in, loudly hostile and mocking of clueless white fashion which doesn't hafta deal with immense quantities of firm fat, except on weakly chins: it's just dumb and misdirected and leads only to further tacit white racism: this is of course a difficult position to defend, as it's tantamount to saying that a few black misbehavers bring down the entire race, but this is sadly true. Of course, white racism flourishes with or without the objective correlative, as it's a very self-sufficient structure, but I doubt the white woman told without apparent cause to "Move out the way, bitch!" will be unaffected today: I certainly read the incident that way, and surely I ought to have known better. Am I counseling meekness? No. Rather, we ought to strive for strategic nonmeekery. White complacency does need to be disrupted, but in productive ways.

Joephet, meanwhile, has been scaring me: it's too easy to get suckered by his affectations and aggressively poor work habits. But when it comes to knowing his shit, he sure does.

Aside from that, little more, but plenty of movies, oddly enough: some at home, such as Better Luck Tomorrow (an even greater disappointment the second time through) with Joephet, and then for some reason Aloha Summer while waiting for Joephet last night, and then Kill Bill and today Taking Lives which is the most satisfying unsubtle pun in ages. Thankfully, in the latest installment, only one Asian was harmed in the filiming.

So I finally have seen some William Hung--it's racist claptrap, and hardly entertaining for anyone who's had to deal with FOBs in real life. Beyond that, it's been another one of those phone-it-in days, though I managed to get Zod the bear on my side in Gladius at long last, so that should really help to rip into those pesky skeletons and let me beat the rest of the stage. This is about the level that my life is at right now, with the only bright spots Mozilla Firefox and the upcoming weekend. But it's just two more months till summer.

So my first day back at work was not all that hopelessly terrible, in that the kids, as usual, were rather off-balance and docile. On the other hand, the rumor is that the school might well be shut down, and as a result I may again be updating my resume and writing cover-letters. I'm told, however, that there's a great International program at LaGuardia, which is Lelaina's school these days, and on the other hand as I'm done with my Fellows requirement, I no longer hafta teach at a shitty school. And this might not be a bad thing, since I either have terrible luck or the touch of death.

Yesterday was a colossus of procrastination, and I am now seriously behind on my thesis, as there's about a month before presentations or something, but I reread all the post-Reader issues of Planetary, which ultimately reminded me how much there is still out there in comics, even though it now seems like such an extravagance. Today I managed to do some shopping at Canal Jeans, finding a suit-top for $5, new, about the right size, that I will probably never find pants for. This purchase is a metaphor of Chinese pseudo-thrift.

Nine straight weeks to go before Memorial Day. Shit. Time to start kissing ass.

So it's not been the best of days, as Joephet is currently snuggling up to me in his cutest tightie-whitey while declaring his actual love for Jean Afflicted. Something like that. Of course it's kinda hard to believe, as he wouldn't stop calling me all day. It's all just a ploy to get more attention, fried chicken wings, and less perishable merchandise. I won't complain, though. Hrmph. In love? Ha.

Otherwise today I've wasted too much time on Gladius and then of course I ended up obsessing way too much over taxes and not having enough of a return: I owe New York State somewhere around $1300, which does not further endear me to the Department of Education--such distractions have marooned a half-post someplace else. Beyond that, I did manage a nice Last Stop lunch with D, amid talk of Planetary and another lockout. It's amazing how far I've fallen behind in comics, and I have not really prepared at all for this thesis-thing I'm supposed to be writing. Ah, well. Meanwhile I've been through the absolute last gorge-meal ever. It's all clean-living from now on.

It didn't help, perhaps, that yesterday was Pilipino excess at Joephet's fams' place, amid cute college male cousins and their ambiguous but not-so-well-dressed-or-coiffed-twinky-friends, awash in palabok and pancit bihon and that miraculous palmnut cream fruit salad that I wolfed down like a Chinaman who'd never eaten before. But the only real frightening thing was how good Joephet was at Super Smash Bros. Melee: his triumphal yelps and leaps, however, did rather hurt the lowish styro-ceiling tiles in a smaller-than-expected basement.

So I been: digging for compost and manure, turning that under in 30 foot beds, creating new piles of manure and compost, visiting past and future graves, crawling under electrified fences, measuring out chicken pens, using the Pythagorean Theorem, planting peas and spinach, transplanting various cabbages flowers beets and broccolis, drinking Bud Light, punning, stealing eggs, pounding stakes, wheel-hoeing trenches, building cloth snakes, wheelbarrowing, and scratching. Lots of scratching.

But New Hampshire and light manual labor are great--even though I passed out by seven on the first day of work, even though I was rather sore for a few days--it looks like a great way to pass a few weeks this summer, somehow, and I was relieved that the efbeeeye did not show up. Skaren and her folks are great--cheerful and welcoming and the exact opposite of what whitey is, somehow, even if Skaren is currently writing a book about ancient Greek for Christian students hoping to read the Septuagint, which, I will point out one last time this week, was divinely translated by a crew of 70. In many ways the past week felt like an RPG: perform request tasks, accumulate knowledge and expertise with various implements, pay attention to what other people say closely for clues, gain experience and level up, defeat evil boss at the end and bring light to the land again

I swang by Boston on the way home, in part my Golden's party--his girl is rather old, but charming--but I also dropped by the Signet, which was depressing, as so little had changed--well, Nathan being the same is not a real problem--it would be too disorienting for him to be any different--any less smelly, any less moochy, any less lecherous, any less blind. But it was just a bit disturbing to be sitting in a room of upper-middle-and-up white kids (really, kids, and yes, some cute in that twinky way, but pretentious artistic voids) so fucking concerned about making art. The self-absorption of it all... and yet that was my routine every week just two years ago. Perhaps it's not surprising that I felt for the first time a real regret at some of my foolishnesses as a kid in college. Kid, really.

I jetted back to New York by bus, and did the entire in-Chinatown-but-going-to-Queens-only-to-be-stuck-there-waiting-for-Joephet-to-go-back-to-Essex-for-some-stupid-alcoholic-brunch-with-fags. This was a change from New Hampshire, which frankly were probably the least libidinous four days (my Counter ratcheted up all the way to 5) in my post-pubescent life. Sadly, Pearl River is closing, or at least my preferred seedy branch, and there are no pink iPod protectors at the Apple Store. Or, at least none in stock.

As if the past two days weren't jam-packt enough, there was Alric and a decent rendition of Hellboy and Thai food with the gang last night--looks like his days in his current apartment are numbered, but then again, so might mine. Shit. July 1st is not that far off. I better start lookin.

So this is the last post from New York for a while: I am off to a farm in New Hampshire by way of Boston and old friends there: it's been a weekend somehow typically New York: dancing with Joephet and his classmates in the village, eating and barfing at Veselka afterwards, late gay Astoria brunches, visiting with Alric and Bessie and other former college classmates. So we'll see what Skaren Hargey's got to offer: the plan is to blog by paper until I get back.

So I am in the clear, though this took some doing: yesterday was all manner of last-minute before a Spring Break free of it, and I got perhaps the jaggedty end of the stick when it came time for the second exam in my probabliity class. But that was horrible only because I couldn't get started on my gameboy stuff: somehow, castlevania is as robust as ever.

Today I dispatched the kids to work on the Three Utilities Problem, and they went at it vigorously, failing. But this of course is a key feeling if one is to really study mathematics--that notion of the frontier--of slightly missed chances, and of not knowing, not being sure, and so striving. It's sad how much I've missed that in my day to day grind and compromises.

And so I am free. It's a longer spring break than usual, even. Tomorrow looks like Bessie and next week like Skaren Hargey. But right now is just Joephet. And I left a wet-spot in my undies.

So these are now chronically late....

Asianboi Update

Alric is writing. I have no idea how his novel's going, though there's a character named after me, though based on him, to some large extent. What narcisso-erotic implications this has I wont' bother to venture.

Joephet is single, or at least wants to be. He is willing to give me up but not the perks. Still, this is a good sight better than the alternative.

Kean is probably meandering, I don't rightly know.

Kenneth is not getting any younger. He's handling the singleness rather well.

Lostin has gone back to where he came from. But this is temporary, and he seems to be doing rather well, rather more well, than, well, me.

Rob Chin is vague.

Thai is happily ensconced in teleboyfriend.

So this morning after I woke and showered, early for the stress ahead, there was a loud knocking on both doors, and what sounded to be a crowd. But it was just the ef-bee-eye, looking for Neill. Now this was rather creepy, not just because there were soon a handful of agents were in my kitchen, but also because I'd left out a big chinese meatcleaver on the counter. Luckily, this did not become an issue. I have been off balance all day as a result, as this is more law enforcement than I have ever really encountered, and I can only wonder what Neill could have done to merit such attention. I mean, it just so happens that everyone on that thar most wanted list has relations with camels other than smoking them, except for one guy, um, and he's Whitey Bulger.

I just have two more days left before I get to kick back more permanently, and then I'll be able to catch up on everything else in my life. And maybe they'll catch up to Neill. Ugh.

This of course is much more serious than I'm making it sound: I mean, for all of Alric's shortcomings....