So

Asianboi roundup

Alric is discontented. Or something. I mean, what else would make you want to move to Malta.

Brother is employed. Or something. I mean, he has a summer job on campus, so he'll be around.

Joephet is beautiful. Or something. I mean, it's hard to say, as this particular Joephet-stages are reacquainting themselves with idleness. I mean, idleness that's not in the face of obligation.

Kenta is back. Or something. I mean, only for a little while, but still.

Kenneth is working. Or something. I mean, he's going to Jersey daily, but I haven't yet heard how it's been going.

Lostin is digging. Or something. I mean, I envy him his Asian-sensitive garden, though not his homeness with parents.

Paulie is getting married. Or something. I mean, marriage doesn't necessarily have the same cross-cultural weight on that particular peninsular. It might be heftier.

Rob Chin is moving. Or something. I mean, It's clear that he's moving back and out and then to New York. The question is whether he's moving forward.

So I'm sure there's more oddness that I haven't yet blogged, as I've been sneaking these in--this month is over, and I'm not getting enough done in terms of apps, and I miss Joephet badly, but of course the alternative of drinking lots of Yuengling and cookery with the bro as well as stocking his kitchen capital.

Yesterday was pleasant wandering all over to look for cheap clothes adn Indian food, somewhat disappointed at the mini-ness of the particular restaurant on E 6th we went to. By the time we got home it was just TV and beerage until unconsciousness, and much the same today--I have purchased a shinai, and this is rather exciting, I'd say, as it is a concrete commitment to the summer: it's odd, how I am viewing my house again anew, even as I am advertising for new roommates, and coming back consistently--really living here for the first time in weeks if not months with Joephet.

And it's time for Asianboi update, which I sorta-missed yesterday. So bear with me...

So it's been quite a little ride, I suppose--I forgot when last I posted, but Friday was phoned in yet again before ending up at a Columbia bar with my female coworkers, being somehow grilled on my turn-ons and preferences ("Competence," I answered, airily), while further getting to lowdown on way too much intraoffice gossip and downing three Guinnesses before staggering home to make it down to see Lex and Hanna and to pick up my brother.

They were having reunions with many offensive themes, which as I gathered were: 5 years, Mexican; 10 years, Las Vegas; 15 years, Egyptian (!); plus, Whitey.

What else need be said?

On the train ride home, my bro and I were hit upon by an attractive perky Nigerian girl who identified greatly with the Swedes, apparently, working for their foreign press, and this was a great diversion, even though there was way too much classist lecturing on my part, as it's odd, since I'm teaching a whole different kind of black student... Ah, well. I scored an email address--Alric, interested?

So my mom's dad has finally died after a protracted illness--I'd always meant to go back before now, but it's too late. My mom's guilty for not being able to go back, but that's more my dad's decision... so now she will, and maybe I'll make a trip back this summer--I'm not really that upset, I guess, but it's still something--it's been over 14 years or so, and even then a-gong was well-on in years, shuffling around shake-headedly at my brother and I and our sloth, even as he collected stamps and enjoyed his Beijing Opera. Sigh. So much just lost.

So I am amused by the various ways that I have come up on searches. This can be seen via the NedStatBasic link (the square-root-looking thing) at the bottom of the page and then looking at "How".

I am currently in the process of spitting out a hardcopy of my blog so far. The stats are as follows: active since 10 July 2003, 350 posts, almost all of them mine, amounting to slightly over 60,000 words if you adjust for the phatic stuff for each post. This train-reading will be excellent indeed.

So Errrrin is also getting married, which is odd, as the Magnetic Fields are coming out with a new album i which is ironical as back in the days when I was in love with Jeremy aka Twinkieboi, the theme song was When my boy walks down the street. It went somethin like: Grand pianos crash together when my boy walks down the street
There are whole new kinds of weather when he walks with his new beat
Everyone sings hallelujah when my boy walks down the street
Life just kind of dances through ya from your smile down to your feet
Amazing he's a whole new form of life
Blue eyes blazing and he's going to be my wife
The world does the hula-hula when my boy walks down the street
Everyone thinks he's Petula so big and yet so petite
Butterflies turn into people when my boy walks down the street
Maybe he should be illegal he just makes life too complete...
Amazing he's a whole new form of life
Blue eyes blazing and he's going to be my wife
Oh, shadows of echoes of memories
Oh, things that he brings that he found in the sea
Oh, shadows of echoes of memories of songs
Oh, how could he know that it won't be long...
Grand pianos crash together when my boy walks down the street
There are whole new kinds of weather when he walks with his new beat
Everyone sings hallelujah when my boy walks down the street
Life just kind of dances through ya< from your smile down to your feet

So I am almost done with a full liter of Asahi Super Dry, the bestest beer in the world, and I have also made myself dinner, for the first time in ages, and it was adequate--over soupy blackened garlic arroz con gandules, eggified black bean sauce chicken nuggests with suntan peppers. This afternoon I went a-shopping for DVDs and such, buying Joephet a long-awaited present he was not around to receive. On the fly, I met Rob Chin and escorted him successfully in the nick of time to JFK and his flight home and away from college--apparently he and I talked last night at three in the morning, though I have no recollection of this in the least.

On the stressed-out ride on the stalled E from Queens Plaza to Sutphin Avenue, we witnessed a near-middle-aged white man with recent hairline studying Intermediate Chinese a la Routledge, who was not so much middle-aged as a little overweight with an overcompensatory hairline receding. He was hitting on in that inimitable, cocky subway way on a woman, red-haired, her hair styled and slicked back almost like a topknot untied, but without the forelocks shaved. In any case, this guy is doing the full-court press; the last time I witness this particular strategem I was heading home with Ei a year ago on the L train, and the woman, after giving her number to her insistent stranger-suitor was smiling and adjusting herself afterwards. Our man Morris was not so lucky--he left with the woman at the stop. Alack, he was a full-foot shorter.

That at least explains the Routledge.

So rob chin is swinging by town for a bonus fiesta. I am ready for the fiesta, though it looks like the fiesta may take place on the E or A trains on the way to JFK. Still, it only takes one for a fiesta, though two is better.

I sleptwalkt again today through a day when the kids were off watching some movie for education value--the departing English teacher bemoaned inaccuracies in the fate of Ajax, though of course I don't really remember the difference between Ajax the lesser and the greater, though of course there's some Alric-denigrating joke in there sompelace.

I neglected yesterday to relate the following conversation amongst my ninth graders about another long boring blockbuster.

Girl 1: Yeah, I love that guy with the white hair!
Girl 2: Oh, yeah, he's my favorite?
Me: You mean Gandalf, the wizard?
Girl 1: No, the guy with the arrows--he's so cute!
Me: Oh, you mean that tw--umm... elf, right? He's white all right.
Girl 2: Aren't they all white?
Boy: Yeah, everyone's white.
Me: What about the orcs?
Girl 1: I guess not the orcs.
Boy: That's just what they do there, all that fighting.
Me: Where?
Girl 2: What's it called again? The Third World?

So Joephet declares victory at hearts--a reverse shut out with Tom 103-Sarah 30-Devon 49.

So I was so frantically and busily finishing my paper this afternoon I didn't have a chance to even blog the news that Paulie has found a Korean fiancee who will be his Korean wife by the end of summer. This fact is both encouraging and depressing--it's excellent for Paulie, with whom I've fallen far too far out of touch.

Beyond that, it was just a matter of reunion with Kenneth who begins work tomorrow. It's not clear whether this is the first step on the way to toolery or foolery, though by the end of my large Asahi, I didn't quite care: it will be good to stay more in touch with folks in this golden time, even though it's still consumed by this job-hunt business.

Chatting with rob chin reminded me of my college days as well. Again, that I don't much miss them is perhaps the best sign of my current health. And I really can't wait for him to come to the city: it'll be all Kendos and Metal Gears and Asahis till dawn.

So sadly the The Nation website is stingy to non-subscribers when it comes to their online archive, but they published for their Brown issue a great article on "adequacy" which is dear to my heart and blog.

Beyond that, today has been largely a day of check-ins but missed contacts--Paulie is likely headed back to Michigan without even a hello--it sounds like he even has a JD in his pocket. D checked in and has been harrassed worse than me, and Skaren now unfrantically knows the angles in a 3-4-5 right triangle (the larger is arccos (3/5), of course!). I also happened to miss Kenneth last night, so this has been kind of a socially dead weekend, but probably one of the last to be: I do need to make it down to see Lex before he and Hanna move off. Next weekend is Memorial Day at last, and I'll see if I can't try to have a barbecue for it. It's just not very clear, though, where that would be, and who would actually come. Somehow the idea of Alric, Joephet, D, Kenneth, and all my school friends together on my front lawn, while appealing, works better in a buddy movie than in real life.

So I present a world tour (while realizing that my entire Mock Chinese Parable business is out and out) through the eyes of a scrub who was going to be a Fellow but has now won some bujii travel fellowship with which he will study math education across the world!

J22: i think i want a mix between first world effective stuff in singapore, japan
J22: and third world stuff in africa
J22: also big on eastern europe
J22: to visit my root
J22: s
J22: brazil has cool stuff going on too

I can't make any further comments on the above. It's too easy. This is how painful white Jewish guilt gets.

Of course, such a project is off, as again, the best you'll get are the Potemkin villages in such a broad survey: I can only imagine what someone thinking about American education would say... There's something to be said for depth. Even if that's the depths and bowels of human iniquity.

So I got a hit for a certain word... I'd repeat it, but that would just invite more hits. Just go see.

There are plenty more things I've accumulated over time, and I feel as if there needs to be some search engine feature which finds all the keyphrases that produce your site in the top 50, sort of like a reverse dictionary.

So I forgot to mention my coup of some days ago: a new canvas book-tote back of grayhair spinster UES type with Corbett (the best text on rhetoric there is), some Sapir essays and a Chinese reader. Right now the plan is to chip away at some Gabriel Garcia Marquez and some of the many books (such as Sanguo yanyi, Xiyouji, and other more Classic texts) delivered to me by my moms: something to be said for slow-ploddingness. I just need lots of short term goals, or I'll flounder.

So I am sapped.

Today I went down to see the bro and the folks. It's amazing how much older they grow each year, each of them--my dad is down to a 28 waist, which makes Joephet both jealous and drool. But it's odd to think about that--how they are aging and Asian, and not long for this country, perhaps. The quiet college town is much as a remembered it from my extended visit now over two years ago: white exuberance and an abiding belief in a white future.

Other than that, just a quiet night at home enjoying quiet and cleaning house--amazing the accumulation of filth when all you're trying to do is write a thesis. It's odd, as I'm soon to face the same adjustment that Joephet is now negotiating: idleness.

So the weekend is here and there are lots of things I should do, largely going down to see the folks as they are around to pick up the brother (bro-ham, Jen would have said) on one of their usual psycho crosscountry road trips, though I need to catch up with Kenneth, and most excitingly, Kenta is coming back in town. Well, that is nice, but I'm mostly trying to vex Joephet, who's been even more cagey than usual, probably because he's angling to go back to Guam this summer and of course wants to be off leash.

On my way to Wanda's birthday party in Curry Hill, which was incidentally a bit taken aback at the "genuine enthusiasm" of a large ground of sassy black ladies (and me), I ran into two hicks on 23rd on my way to the N: they were hicks and dopey, and just whiter than most Astorians. In any case, one of them asks me if I've heard of a place called "Bodegas" around here, cuz he'd seen in a movie somehow that that's a place to score "chronic"--I was amused.

I'm probably more energized now than ever as far as the math goes, and the redesign of our school: there's just so much that needs to be done, and our piece-of-shit, half-assed, bright-visions-dim-witted principal just isn't doing it... At our last school when we were all out of jobs, we were told in December to start looking. Here it is, late May, and I still don't know. We'll see. How many pages should a cover letter be, again?

So it's been two soon to be three nights in a row of drunken glories: last night late in ktown with rob chin, tonight with joephet and his law school buddies now newly done as 1l's, even though yesterday i finally finished my thesis and today my math career, i still have a gay diversity paper before freedom.

I'm fundamentally torn, then, about whether or not to stay at my school. I think I will need to interview and think about what will happen in the fall: it might be better to get a fresh start, but that might be possible without moving off...

So I was so busy today finishing up my thesis frantically (70 pages is a lot of hole-punching), I couldn't even do my usual multitasking hang-out thing in the lab. Still, it turned out relatively well even if I'm not completely satisfied: it is just a beginning, and I'm really grateful that I had such a great class. In general, I'm much more proud of this degree, albeit from a public school and all that jazz, than I am of my rather fancier undergrad degree: it feels more useful, somehow better earned, more urgent, and authentic. Just more real, too, and I feel more intellectually challenged and free. It's something you live in, this constant refinement of practice...

Sadly, the rumor is firmer and firmer that we are all out of jobs for next year. But I'm told that the Chinese word for risk is the same as for opportunity. But that's probably made up.

In this lull before another math final and a gay paper, I would like to lay out some goals, the way I used to every new volume--spiral notebook--of my old plog (paper-log) (erlog??)

There used to be a whole page, but this will do:

Kendo with Rob Chin
Relearn my Chinese reading
Cien anos de soledad en el idioma original
Write lesson units and plans, especially for scales-algebra and game theory.
Get back into shape generally.
Revive the love of comics, poetry, and actual creation
Dig.

So I keep on forgetting to mention: I am shocked to discover that Kmart via Joe Boxer produces a cheap, light, attractive, cloth, thoroughly serviceable porkpie style spring/summer hat. I am much pleased, and none the poorer for it.

So one mystery is solved--my wayward roommate has returned--apparently he has been harassed by an organ of Dick Cheney's America for some time now--something straight out of Kafka. So it's hard to ask for rent under such circumstances, and it's all rather scary, as surely this here blog is at least a little politically heterodox, and no doubt vaguely monitored.

Today's exercise at teaching another teacher's class an overprepped lesson was instructive: I sweat too much, and there are good, sharp math people out there--who would have thought that fruitful cooperation could be possible? So I am pleased, and actually energized yet again--it's been two good teaching days in a row, though, granted, I only taught for 50 minutes today, so perhaps that's a good teaching day by definition.

So there are many mutterings at school which are discontented, as we all are realizing there may not be the sort of work we want at our schools, but my work schedule of course prevents me from tending to myself: if you've been reading, you know the workhell I am going through, so that's good enough--I am not a lamentor.

So this is triumph, or

something like it: my most obstreporous block, which was flinging both folders and insults last Friday, today was docile and productive, and some were working and engaged the whole ninety minutes. Things were of course far from perfect, but it was still substantial progress over what was in the past, just last week: and I had been dreading this. After this, it's all smooth sailing, I'd say: it's all in the clear, despite the quantity of work still left to me, it will be all relatively easy to finish from here on out.

So I've not been blogging because it's been hectic--Thursday, for instance, after finishing my math frantically on the train and finding my professor, I was still unable to obtain my old tests, so I'll hafta wait till Tuesday and the last midterm, then I ended up at Kmart shopping for yet more presents before reaching Joephet's apartment to find out that he was at the Beer Garden. So eventually that was that.

Friday was a nightmare at school--I've lost it, totally, this desire to teach, at least in my present circumstances, which are, of course, going to change drastically before long. Which gets me to thinking...

In any case, despite some delays, I did end up seeing Happy Together, as planned, and this was most satisfactory in a unclosed way, an effortless representational success without the elbowings of Hollywood work like Troy, which was revisionist nonsense. If, as the theme seems to be, great deeds cause you to live for ever, or at least your name to, I would prefer obscurity to artless reimagining. All in all, that took till about four in the morning, including a nap on the steps of Penn Station, or thereabouts. Skaren is doing well, though I found myself defending Alric in his presence. First time for everything, I suppose. Bessie was also a welcome sight--amazing how to the grindstone my nose has become--again, after June there can be no excuse...

Yesterday was of course an utter wash, though with downpours and yakisoba and Joephet--I am not nearly far enough along on my work, and it's getting to me. The gauntlet closes in..

So don't tell Joephet, but

I was at Kiehl's today to buy him a present (What do you get a guy who already has a perfect laid-back spin?) and they needed my name for registration purposes, or citizen tracking, or something. So they typed in "Drew Hu" and all that came up was "Drew Hunk." I'm not sure who this person could be.

Beyond that, it's been a droll day of reliefs--the word on the street is that the fix is in grade-wise for me in most of my classes, even though my work has not yet been completed. So I can relax, even if I still have 55% of a thesis somehow still left to do. So I was able at last to do some shopping, though I'm still short a pair of shoes and a serviceable set of flip-flops. This weekend of all weekends is unfortunately overpacked with whitegirl goodness--the scion-with-a-sister of Anglo-class (in the good sense) and Midwest moderation and the bucolicky cultured thorn in Alric's side are both in town, with plans of seeing Troy and Orlando Bloom's smooth birdchest and Happy Together respectively. I'm torn between that and duty. Oh shit and my brother.

In other news, they've finally done what made sense, by lopping off the middle school from the rest of us, and this might mean I'm free to look for work elsewhere.

Other than that, there are plenty of forgotten drolleries--today is one of those days that makes me wish I was still in math--it's so innocent and mock-clever and so on. So it's OK. It's just so easy to forget all this.

So here!

A Dog Can't Be Changed from Eating
Shit

A dog can't be changed from eating shit.

So it's already been a hectic day--got up at 0430 or so and waded through the dense humidity (Joephet's getting a secret present tonight!!) to work on game theory until discovering circa 0620 that I didn't have the stats book I need for the homework I'm going to do on the train later on to turn in tonight... So I had to go all the way back home to pick shit up, which would have been pleasant but for the usual holdover at Astoria Blvd for no very good reason at all. So I was sweatily 20 minutes late(r than usual) for work. And somehow I managed to survive my morning ninth grade class though there are still three hours left of instruction. Still, it will look pretty good past a certain point. It doesn't help that my brother is showing up this wekeend too--he has a penchant for showing up on weekends where there is no easy service between Manhattan and Queens. Indeed, this weekend,there is neither N nor R service, I believe. I'll be a very happy man in just one week's time. I also need to catch up on my Mock Chinese Parables.... (Thank goodness for email-posts!)

So I get these moments when I think that some word just looks wrong, that it couldn't be spelled that way, look that way, mean that way. This alienation is not quite the arbitrariness of the sign, I don't think, but it's still problematic: I've had this feeling about "STOP" (though not recently), and just now with "happen". And this is one of those phenomena I class as tokens of the type "brainfart."

So I am tired somehow despite having slept the entire 5-train ride over here before my final presentation for my thesis class, which should be smooth: that's not what I worry about as much as the game theory I need to somehow finesse and finish by tomorrow. But none of this is really of real consequence.

I've been sleepwalking, and somehow the weather doesn't help--alternately muggy and torrential, everyone has been on edge somehow, and just uncomfortable--I hate heat-headaches.

So this is phenomenal: exactly the shit that I needed to see to get the ball rolling again. There is not excuse for my unproductivity. It's easy to forget how I used to view art and representation, how I was in some ways on the William Hung side of things, though not really, but how removed from all that striving I now am in the daily drudge to survive. If ever there was a definition of byt, then this is it.

So I feel as if one morning I woke and my genre had left me: I used to able to produce emails and emails a day, many of them just channeled jokes on flippant subjects (the best of which was probably "11 Jokes About Jess Berenbeim's Ass"), or other flowing pieces. So maybe it's a good thing that I can now blog-by-email: surely I've held back at times from blogging from school simply because I don't want to get caught in the act, as you never know who's going through your caches. Still, I feel as if I want for interlocutors.

So now:

Waiting for Rabbit

A farmer was once resting when a rabbit ran hurriedly into the tree under which the farmer was sitting, knocking itself senseless. The farmer leapt up in excitement at this lucky stroke of luck, but in so doing bumped his head on a low branch and knocked himself senseless.

So I almost was crushed to death yesterday, underneath a bar with only 115 on it. Still, it was scary and slower than I expected. Other than that, yesterday was a flurry of productivity and sleeping on the train, as a forgotten book meant I had to drop by the house first to nearly be crushed to death before hoofing it to Flatbush.

Meanwhile, I have been greatly enjoying no sword and would be developing a crush were it not untoward.

I am disturbed, however, by this news story about a most unfortunately outed teacher. The blatant homophobic commentary is shrill and ludicrous, but also what you'd expect from parochial schools. It's just fucking offensive.

So I proudly present...

The murmur beyond the whisper

When Weng had pacified the South and the Yellow Emperor granted him the hereditary title of 'Pacifier of South' and enfeoffed his sons, Weng was granted the privilege of a private audience with the Emperor, who in his eminence whispered something into Weng's ear, at which Weng smiled. At this, all the eunuchs were heard to murmur.

So now there's a new interface at blogger, and I'm not a big fan--it's a bit too rounded and friendly, not for hardcore oldschool Linux sucking cui types like me. It'll take some getting used to, I suppose, but is not the end of the world.

Today I taught for five period straight--this is in part a birthday present to Wanda, who has gone off camping. It was not a day, however, that reassured me in my chosen profession--students simply refused to work, somehow, and I didn't know what to do about it, today especially, with a gauntlet next week of exams, thesis, lesson study projects, and so on. It's just not very pretty overall, and it doesn't help that I have to speedily do some game-theory post-haste to meet with my advisor tomorrow.

I've also fallen behind on my misrepresentations of my proud ethnic background. So soon we'll have...

So today was largely aimless meandering, which is not all that fruitless, as I managed to find a new rainyday hat, which recalls most closely my brown felt cub-reporter hat of Winter/Spring 2002, which as I recall was sold to Donna, a mental hospital patient for $7--I had to charge the fair market price because I didn't want to appear condescending by way of charity...

So I made very little progress on my various enterprises today--but I figure one off-day a week isn't going to kill me, and I did after all get a few miles of walking in, across the Queensborough Bridge, and some lifting as well: it's troubling to think how despite all that I'm much more productive now than on a college weekend.

I am wondering why I haven't purchased a new fedora to replace the old green fur felt one which now has a small hole near the pinch. I dug up my new notebook for various comicky jottings and made a few scribbles, but no progress.

So it looks like in actual point of fact the high point of my weekend may well have been New York Minute with Alric. Now, of course the only reason I went was not for the Olsen twins (no Jeremy jokes, please), but because I was informed that Andy Richter would be playing the adopted white son of Chinese video pirates, with an accent likened to Mickey Rooney's. I was not disappointed, the more so by the broken Mandarin--I speak better Mandarin while drunk, goddammit, and the idea that these little white hypersexualized Electrafied imperial Midases could mysteriously have mastered incidentally to their high school lives not only Mandarin but Tai Chi is ludicrous, especially given the throwaway presumption that said video pirates are involved as well in counterfeit Gucci handbags--are we supposed to laugh at such white presumption, so that everything falls into place? Is it really that important that the daughter of a Long Island doctor get a scholarship to study at Oxford? Isn't it more useful to the whitey that one of the minority props competing for siad scholarship win as a sop to the myth that anyone can succeed? No, I really can't begin to work on the cheapness of all this--I mean, sure: it stands to reason that in a black hair salon there would be one comically gay guy, but why again are we in a black hairdresser? I think I'm just pissed because only the Chinese and their affiliates get carted off to jail.

But this is shrill and uninteresting. What is interesting is what would possess some of the single folks in the audience to show up--I would find this to be an incredibly sad milestone in my single heterosexual life, if that ever were the case, and I don't know if the guy in the front row who was very responsive throughout left with about fifteen minutes left because he saw the shlock coming or whether he already got what he came for.

So I am rested but shocked. I am shocked to discover that Rod Paige is a black man. This fact is astounding to me, as I have heard nothing but bad thing about him and have every reason to hate and resent his eviscerations of the system. When will people learn? As if Clarence Thomas, Condaleeza Rice and Colin Powell were not enough: don't trust whitey and what whitey offers. shit.

So today has been sleptwalkt through, I fear, and I really don't want to still be around for this nonsense these days--I just need to go back to digging--last night I spent at home which meant that I did get some work done, but I fear that for the most part I gave up and ran into trouble defeating Galwerg, and called it a night rather early--I have been skipping dinner when at home too late, somehow, but it's not that bad, as I've been segmenting my meals more these days, and throwing in more fruit: today was the usual butter bagel and coffee, followed by a yogurt-grapefruit-tea snack, then lunch of arroz con gandules y chicharos, y finalmente un pedazo de pizza con muchos vegetales. I had very little to show for my efforts beyond an additional thousand or so words and many mosquito bites.

So I wanted to point out that Rocket Mania on Yahoo!games is racist, but fun. Like me, on a good day.

I am told that it is Asian American Heritage Month, or maybe just Asian Heritage Month, or something. In any case, it is thus appropriate that I offer for the next 12 days a daily Mock Chinese Parable, in the spirit of the old four-character chengyu into which I was supposed to be indoctrinated. It didn't quite take, as many of those characters are archaic and useful mostly for chengyu not daily fried chicken negotiations.

So I present:

The Left Side of Heaven

In ancient times, it was customary for travelers on country paths to walk on the left side of the road. If they happened to encounter one another it was further customary, if one of the parties was a priest, for the other party to step to the side of the road and respectfully wait for the other to pass. Now it happened one day that a farmer by the name of Ha was walking on market when he encountered two priests, both paused by the side of the road, each waiting for each to pass, like Manilov and Chichikov trying to enter the drawing room. His chickens growing agitated and his vegetables wilting, Ha walked in between them both.

So it was depressing last night to realize, as I was talking to my moms, that I really didn't want to go back to my job at this same school next year. It feels a little better now because today was a good, relatively smooth sort of day, the sort of day when wayward students who have exclaimed, "Fuck Hu!" upon entering class everyday have finally gotten it into their heads that the best way to pass a math class is by: (a) coming to class, (b) cooperating, (c) not pissing off Whitey (which in this case, happens to be me, somehow). I just hope this isn't illusory--we have been fomenting (fomenting!) revolution at school among the teachers, and while it's not clear that I'll be more than a commissar....

Meanwhile, I've been thinking about my recurring damnation by faint praise--tepid recommendation letters or compensatory compliments accompanying negative performance reviews. By way of biography, I provide a few:

--shoes and belt often match
--brings crossing-guard ladies coffee and tea
--dress shirt stays tucked in all day
--bubbles attendance roster neatly
--crosses 7's Euro-style.
--takes steps two at a time; setbacks one at a time
--gets plenty of fiber (habichuela negra martes, miercoles, y viernes; chicharos los otros dias de la semana)
--also, "z"s
--is very regular (see above)
--reach commensurate with grasp
--headgear is age-appropriate; removes do-rag when asked

So I am confused as to why the folks at the Thai place we went to--an excellent 7-day-a-week lunch special place--were so insistent. No, they weren't insistent on the Pad Kee Mao, whcih was good (and red). Rather, they were insistently informing us --on two separate occasions--that the shlocky music videos on the two TVs were starred in by all men--many of them with implants and dressed as women. This is of course something I believe, as from experience, and maybe this is racist, but fat Thais end up working in restaurants, and the skinny ones end up becoming women. Hrmm.. It was hard to not say when they asked us how things were, 'yum yum!'

On Broadway near Steinway today there were a couple young white girls trying to sell some Socialism conference. I was skeptical, but would have stopped in to talk to them if only I had the time, and if they hadn't mysteriously disappeared. Amazing how much more I was concerned with all that a year ago.

So I have confirmedly not gotten into my desired New Brunswick summer program, and part of this no doubt is because of the secret Romanian connection, part the socioeconomic skewing, part my youth, but mostly because my fucking principal stalled on the recommendation repeatedly, ending up writing me a tepid recommendation (which I was also shown), and the whole shebang was FedExed in the last day of the deadline, which, you'll note if you visit the above link, was when all the Romanians were already in the program. So I'm a little pissed, but it's ok--I'll just find something else to do this summer, though this throws the entire New Hampshire plan into some doubt: it doesn't make sense to take off for only half a month, as that subletting thing then doesn't happen. But we'll see, I guess.. it's time to obsess now about structuralism and semiotics, my stagnant thesis, and living arrangements for the next year.

I barely made it through the week, as it was, with some minor sickness creeping up on me. I just need this year to be over, as soon possible.