The Comet

When I was really little - like before 2nd grade - my dad got me this computer game/information game thing, I don't really even remember, but it was all about dinosaurs. I think it was just called "Dinosaurs." I can recall that there was one part where you could just click on different little icons, and it would take you to a new window/screen that just played a short animated movie about some part of dinosaur history. Dinosaurs in the air, large ones, predators, herbivores, whatever. I don't actually remember any of those in particular.

The only one that I do specifically remember is the one about dinosaurs going extinct. Most notably, the image of the comet crashing to the earth and how incredibly scared it made me. The image was of a bunch of brontosauruses chillin' like villains on a reddish plain, eating from some trees, with a stormy looking dusk sky in the background. It was mostly a reddish and orange image, possibly with some grays in the sky. Then something started lighting up behind the clouds as it moved closer to the earth and the dinosaurs turned their heads. The image of it behind the clouds really sticks out - it was well done, you could see an amorphous colored orb dilating in size and brightness as it went through different thickness and gaps in the clouds. Finally it touched down, and there was just a flash of white. Then everything changed, and it talked about the eventual extinction of all the dinosaurs, but when I remember most about this part is an emaciated t-rex stumbling to take its last few steps, and then falling over sideways and dying. Everything in the frame was grayish, gray dinosaur, gray sky, gray sands, and it was very eerie and scary to a 6-year-old me.

For a long time I was very very afraid of the earth getting hit by a comet and everyone dying out. I would look up at the sky - especially when it looked like it did in that video - and wonder if some light would start to shoot down the sky and be followed by a flash of white, and then I'd walk around and stumble to take my last few steps before falling over and dying in all gray. Sometimes I still worry about the first part. Sometimes I'm walking or driving or doing homework and I just imagine that orb of light crashing down in the sky wherever I can see the sky.

("Did anyone ever teach you to visual success?")

Peace out.

ArbitRage

This is the story of how to get screwed by Amazon. I think this is going to be another post that lands near the top of Google searches for related terms, which is unfortunate, but oh well.

So I was looking for a book called A History of Cambodia by David Chandler, which is supposed to be a really great history book that focuses on people instead of just great men and also focuses on times before Europe got there, instead of treating them as a prologue to Cambodia's real (white) history. A new copy of the book can run anywhere from like $35 to $100 depending on hardback and edition and all that jazz, but new copies were typically in the range of like $10 - $20. I found one in Amazon Marketplace for like $4 (+ shipping) and considering the description of the condition, figured it was the best deal I could find and went for it. Hooray! I couldn't wait to read about the people's history in Cambodia!

(To explain why: the orphanage I'm working at said that I may have an opportunity to teach history, and if that's the case, I want to make sure I have a thorough knowledge of Cambodian history in particular)

Anyhow, I came back to my house from a New Year's Eve party at about 2:00AM and saw a manila package with my name on it. A book! Hooray! Except it didn't look big enough to be the history book, nor did it feel heavy enough. I opened it up and found Mad Mary: A Workbook for Groups or Individuals, from the Bad Girls of the Bible series. I wondered what the hell had gone wrong. I went to my computer (keep in mind this is 2AM on Jan 1) to check what I had purchased. Definitely A History of Cambodia and definitely NOT anything close to Mad Mary. I kept looking through my email accounts and the Amazon account and my debit card's payment history to see if I had bought anything like this, but nothing was turning up. I looked through the package and saw the order slip inside, which seemed to imply that I had ordered Mad Mary, but I was putting together that something wasn't right here. I then noticed on the order slip that it appeared the seller was some name I had never seen before, and milde4 was the listed buyer. I wondered briefly if this was a joke gift from milde4, and wondered, "Whose initials are MIL that I know who lives in Delaware?" After running through my mental rolodex and coming up empty, I decided to try other options.

This was after I had taken a shower. It's now about 2:35AM on Jan 1.

I went to the sites for the listed seller, I thought about trying to contact them, I even went to the live help section to see if I could find what was going on. It was too late at night for that, so instead I typed milde4 into Google to find their page.

This is where I started to put it together.

People had posted questions often in the past on Amazon forums and jazz like that about milde4 and who they were and what they were doing and why they had so many sales and why something went wrong with their sale and why they got the wrong item. People who knew what they were talking about more would respond to them and claim that milde4 is a prolific drop-seller. I kept reading on for a little while, trying to figure out exactly what the hell was happening, but even after a number of pages and forums I was still a little confused. It was 3AM now, and I crawled in bed still trying to figure out exactly what had happened.

It was actually in bed that night that I did lay out the truth of the situation, which is like this.

Milde4 is one of the many names of an arbitrageur who operates a few sites. Arbitrage is when there exists a price difference for a single good in two different locations at the same time from different ends of the transaction. That is to say, suppose that Alice want to sell Book X for $3 and Bob wants to buy Book X for $10. This is an arbitrage situation, and a skilled arbitrageur would jump in, buy the book from Alice at $3, sell it to Bob for $10, and keep the $7 profit.

That's exactly what was supposed to have happened here. Alice was selling "History" for $.75 on Half.com and I was buying "History" for $4 on Amazon.com, so milde4 was supposed to make $3.75 by just buying the book from Alice but telling her to ship it to me, when I had just paid milde $4 for the book.

The only issue is that this operation is all carried out by software, is rarely ever checked by humans, and they make bugs a significant number of times. Like, from 3-10% of the time. In this case, the software's issue was that it thought Mad Mary was the same item as History. I don't know why it got this wrong - no parts of the book are similar at all - but it did.

So now I'm stuck with a book I don't want, and I want to correct this. I also feel pretty pissed off because arbitrage is a sort of juvenile thing to do in the first place and a way that leeches in society can make money, and I'd like to get back at whoever is behind the milde4 account. So I talk to customer support at Amazon to see if I can compel them to give me a copy of History. After all, the deal was I give you $4, you give me History. I don't care if you screwed up, I'm not liable for your mistakes, I held up my end of the deal and now you have to hold up yours. On top of that, you're a scammer and deserve to be punished, so I'd like a new copy of the book, hardback, please.

Unfortunately it's not in my power to do that. So I just have to settle for sending it "back" to him (for the first time) and get a refund. And hopefully get a refund on the shipping too. He asked me to print out a copy of the email saying that I had a defective product along with the product.

However, my printer was having serious issues. I don't want to go into too much detail, but it involved waiting for my mom to return from all her errands with the ink, changing it, putting the printer back online, sharing it, seeing what was wrong with our network, calling the computer guy at my dad's office, and waiting for him to fix it, all of which took about 5 hours. And I get tunnel vision with things like this, so I did nothing else all day.

Knowing that I have tunnel vision though, I personally gave up on the printer at 3PM, put the email on a flash drive, and decided to print it at Kinkos. The girl there, who was about my age, definitely thought I was a little bit crazy. I justified my actions to her by saying that "I'm away from home and my printer is broken," which are sort of disconnected and doesn't really make sense if you think about it, but I didn't really care. It cost $.11, which I don't think will ever be recouped, sadly.

Then I went to the post office, which I thought was a sleepy place for old people, but it was JAM PACKED. Seriously the line was like 20 deep. I couldn't believe that I had to try to fix my printer for 3 hours, step into a Kinkos, pay to print something, and then wait in a 20-person line all because this milde4 asshole had screwed up their algorithm and never bothered to check. I texted a few people while I was in the line - Kristin to see if I could hang with her; Tarik to see if his mosque was fixed; Haley because now I was bored in a long line.

Eventually, twenty minutes later or so, I had bought the necessary envelope and gotten it shipped. A girl who I had noticed on the way in - who I think was a senior in high school, judging from the "SENIOR" written on the back window of her car - walked in and out at the same time as me. She looked at me, definitely clearly as surprised as I had been that there would be 20+ people in a dinky post office at such a time of day and year, and we exchanged a few words about how trippy that had felt.

I went home.

And this is why I will always Google the people I'm buying from before I buy from them.

Peace out.

We Suck

"In his book The African Slave Trade, Basil Davidson contrasts law in the Congo in the early sixteenth century with law in Portugal and England. In those European countries, where the idea of private property was becoming powerful, theft was punished brutally. In England, even as late as 1740, a child could be hanged for stealing a rag of cotton. But in the Congo, communal life persisted, the idea of private property was a strange one, and thefts were punished with fines or various degrees of servitude. A Congolese leader, told of the Portuguese legal codes, asked a Portuguese once, teasingly: 'What is the penalty in Portugal for anyone who puts his feet on the ground?' "

[Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States]

Peace out.

New Years Eve

New Years Eve this year was a party that Chloe took me to, where I knew some of the people, and didn't quite know the rest, but in many cases had heard of them. I was rather worried when I showed up at first, but ended up having a really great time.

//

"DUDE. THIS GUY DID THE BEST STAGE TRICK. HE WAS SMOKIN A CIGARETTE -- HE ATE THE CIGARETTE!"

//

Talking with Dave about history and why America sucks and health care and morals, and everyone sort of paying attention and talking for the first bit, and then people slowly filtering out, and then realizing that Gab I was completely engrossed in the conversation and listened intently without saying a word until Dave and I were done talking.

//

"I hope they don't ruin Tron!"

"...Did you see the first Tron? It sucked. You can't ruin Tron."

//

His family tried to have an intervention on him to get him to stop drinking... while he was high on shrooms.

//

Oh man, the strip club story. They paid the cute girl in the strip club $40 to get their friend, K-hole, into "The Hot Seat," which they were not sure what it was. And yes, you know there's a problem because I said they got the cute girl in the strip club. The next thing they hear is "K-Hole to the hot seat, K-hole to the hot seat," but he freaks out, so they made another roommate go. He goes up on stage to the chair, and they tie him up in it. Then the cute girl says, "Alright Trisha, come on out."

And Trisha is not the cute girl. At all. Apparently she's some Amazon-sized Vietnamese girl with a not-so-great face, and she proceeded to beat and humiliate the kid in front of everyone. Apparently the worst move that she did was put whipped cream on her thigh right on the edge of her underwear and then force the kid to lick it off, which made him gag and almost throw up.

//

I was the first one to buy from the Wawa on Route 1 this year! $.20 for a Peppermint Patty.

Peace out.

Untied States of America

It's sort of funny how America, perhaps the only nation to be founded on the extermination of one race and the enslavement of another, fails to recognize the irony of making its creed "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Peace out.

Gingerbread Wat

Edit: Ginger Wat was JULIA's idea. JULIA's.

There was a gingerbread house study break recently in the dorm. Jen had asked me to go as part of our night of exciting things (!), plus I kind of wanted to go anyway, so I said I’d see her there. Since I actually had time to think about the fact that I was going to it, I had time to think of ways to “do it wrong.” In the early evening I had thought about building a replica of F. L. Wright’s “Falling Water” (Waters?), but upon inspecting the plans of that, decided it would be nigh on impossible to make a recognizable facsimile from the materials at hand. I think because of the painting Julia had made for me, I thought of making a gingerbread model of Angkor Wat instead. I got a few nice pictures of it up on my computer, and we went upstairs when it was time.

The crew consisted of Jen, Haley, Julia, Matt, Nick M, and myself. Matt and Nick both have engineering backgrounds, so that was nice. We were given a paper plate as a foundation, but we immediately knew that was NOT good enough. So I went to my room and got the base piece of cardboard from the pizza box Tarik and I had used last night. The person running the program thought we were kind of crazy, but we knew it was worth it.

We worked on the border first, using the graham crackers they provided. Jen and Haley worked on the inside square pagoda, which we realized was not going to be sufficiently tall at some point, so they needed to work on yet another base for it, and then a support column, which Matt and Nick also helped with. I worked on the spires with Julia, which were made out of Dots, and when that was finished, Julia used my Pokey Sticks to make the columns, and a candy cane to make the gate.

We were the last ones there. When we were done, it actually did look somewhat convincingly like Angkor Wat. Julia made a banner/plaque for it, two graham crackers next to each other, covered with white frosting, with “ANGKOR WAT” written in red, and a line of nerds at the top.

When we were done…

We decided we were the coolest.

Peace out.

Hits and Mrs.

Shortly after the second creeper-peeper incident occurred in Simmons Hall, the police decided it was time to start taking this thing seriously. Papers with descriptions of the suspects and crimes were posted all throughout Simmons Hall, people went in to discuss leads, and cops and RAs roamed the halls frequently.

I, being my normal self, continued to visit friends at night. At this point in the year – possibly October? – that meant a mix of going to see Julia/HK, Hortense/Haley, and Kerry. I forget exactly why on this particular night, but it was around 1AM and I felt like saying hey to either of the last two rooms. Perhaps I had already seen Julia/HK.

So I ran up the stairs to the second floor and popped out of the stairwell to see two police officers walking past. Surprising, to say the least, and I was immediately sure that they would suspect something was going on. “Hey,” I said to them, trying my best to be not-inconspicuous, before continuing down the hall to see Hortense/Haley. I saw that the lights were dim in their room, but figured I’d knock softly anyway. No response. Knocked again a few times. No response. No big deal, hadn’t seen Kerry in a while, so I went down the two hallways to see her.

As I approached her room, the two cops saw me again as they walked their way back from the wing of the building. Definitely suspicious by now. “Do you live here?” they asked me. I didn’t really understand the question. “Yeah – I mean, on the ground floor yes, but not on this floor.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m visiting my friend Kerry, so…” I looked at Kerry’s door. It had her name on it (score! Eat that, cops!), and she always stays up late, and the lights were still on. I knocked, and she came to the door quickly and opened it. I was standing there, with two cops behind me, looking in.

“Oh, uh… hey,” she said. She was clearly thrown off by the situation. I asked her how it was going and stepped in to close the door behind me, letting the officers go on their way and explaining this strange situation to Kerry.

Peace out.

Multiplication Fables

A lot of times when I go to cafeterias, I think about the tables. Yes, I’m aware this is weird. But I think it’s strange how an object can just sit there and have so many things happen on top of it and remain totally unchanged in their wake. People break up, people fight, people fall in love, people tell secrets, people become friends, people scream and shout, and nothing ever happens to the surface, you could never even tell. It almost seems unfair. I feel like everyone’s life is made worse by the fact that when you look at the tables, you can’t see the stories that have happened on them.

Peace out.

AAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYY!!

My friend from the Third Floor Girls named Emily W had this thing she always did. Whenever anyone made a sex joke or sexual innuendo, so we would a circle with one hand and then put vigorously put her other index finger in and out of it while shouting, “AAAAAYYYY!!!!” If it was a gay joke, she would do it with her two index fingers, or sometimes one index finger coming in “from behind.” If it was lesbian, sometimes she would make two circles, or sometimes two pairs of legs.

At Ceci’s party, I had been sitting with Chloe for most of the night, on the opposite side of the room from Matt. At one point I decided it was time for some horrible jokes, so I got up from where I was seated to join Matt on the table he was sitting on. And the rest is history. Terrible, terrible history.

I forget exactly what the first joke was, but me and Matt both did the Emily move. Then there was one more bad innuendo immediately following, and we did it again. Keep in mind that everyone laughed both times, quite heartily. Then I said to Matt, “Get it? It was an innuendo,” to which he dutifully responded, “You mean, an in your end-o!” And then we both did the AAAAAYYYYY again, and everyone laughed. I’m glad that he picked up on my telekinetic signals. Otherwise we wouldn’t have been funny at all.

Peace out.

YouTube Piano Sensation

So I found my way to become a Youtube phenomenon.

I was in Best Buy on December 23rd or so, and my sister and Sam were off looking at presents or games or whatever else, and failing to find a foreign film section where I could buy Three Idiots, I decided to play the pianos instead. I noticed that there were five pianos. And a lightbulb went off.

I played some chords on the first one while recording – Ab, Eb, Fm, Db… I played them a number of times in a row and in as steady a beat as I could. With my right hand on the “Play” button and my left hand stretched between the “Record” button and the first note of the melody, I started the first piano while playing the melody on the second piano. Then I played the first piano again and added in some strings with a third keyboard. I moved to the fourth and fifth keyboards to add some drums or guitar, only to realize that their power chords were missing! Melissa D had joined me by this point, and I asked a worker if he could turn them on so I could try them, but he said he couldn’t because the cords were missing. Well how would you try them to buy them?

Whatever. I still had three pianos going at the same time. And yes, the song – for those of you who played the chords at home! – was Paparazzi by Lady Gaga.

I’m going to do this again with a video camera. And like 7 pianos. And then I’ll be famous.

Not that I care.

Also I will never be famous.

Peace out.

Bhagat

"I told the author about my limited English. However, he said big emotions don't come from big words, so I had no choice but to do the job. I hate authors."

Peace out.

Nightmares

I had a run of mini-nightmares in the past few nights of sleeping. I guess over the past five days or so. The first one was about canning - I dreamed that we were all on a canning trip, maybe even one with me as a trip leader, and it was Saturday morning and we didn't even wake up until 9AM! Which would be terrifying if I were responsible. In the second one, I think I dreamed that Jen (possibly someone else, but I'm pretty sure) was in my room trying to turn on my Christmas lights while I was laying on the futon, but they wouldn't go on. Sometimes they would light up dimly for a fraction of a second, but they would never work. Also terrifying, because the alternative is overhead fluorescent. The last one was that I had to carry my cat, Cocoa, a long distance by hand. That might not seem too bad, but Cocoa doesn't like to hang out with you for more than like ten seconds at a time, and I had to carry her like a quarter mile in my dream. And for no reason, too. That was pretty bad.

Also, who the hell decided to spell it fluorescent with a u-o?

Peace out.

Trapped

Tarik was telling a story the other day.

//

Dude, I got trapped when I went to Mike and Collin's room.

huh?

I forgot my shoes in there, and so they texted me to come get them. So I went to their room, and I knocked on the door, and they open it, but just said, "Come in!" And when I opened the door, it was just dark, and I saw the two of them like, on their couch cuddling or something, I couldn't really tell, and I was just like, "Why are they doing that?" So then they say, "Come get your shoes, Tarik!" And they point to the back of the room, and so I walk towards it, and as I do I realize that my shoes are underneath a little cardboard box that's propped up on a little piece of plastic with a string tied to it. And I just stop and look at them, and they just wait and wait, and so I went down to pick my shoes up, and they pulled string out, and the box fell over my hand and they just... lost it. "WE TRAPPED TARIK! AHAHAHAHHA!"

//

Peace out.

To Be Safe

If I am somehow unlucky enough to be murdered or killed, use this as evidence that I would be extremely unhappy to know that the guilty party would be given the death penalty.

Peace out.

100,000,000

This is going to be the background music to one of the songs I'm writing for my thesis. Just the chorus, that is.

Best and Worst Clothes Day

There are four clothing items in my life which caused memorable sadness when I realized they were lost.

1) The baby-blue maple leaf "CANADA" shirt that Jessica got me. It was the first shirt I wore of that type, which is to say, the type that I still wear today. I had it for a while, and don't know where it went, or have any idea at all where it could have gone.

2) The many-blue-color beanie hat that Jessica got me one year for Christmas, and that I wore on the last night of Governor's School when we painted the fence, and got some paint on one side of it. I know I had it until sometime in college, and think that I lost it on a drumline weekend, possibly at the Rutherford's house.

3) The wetsuit-tight blue jacket that Kelly got me for our fake Valentine's Day dinner in 11th grade (at least, I think it was 11th grade. It may have been 10th). It was the first tight zip-up jacket that I got, and was the gold standard for all other jackets I've gotten since then.

4) The "SHUUUUUNNNNNN" Charlie the Unicorn shirt that Matt got me when he was in North Carolina. It fit really well and was extremely nerdy and always got attention and comments. I had no idea how it could have gotten lost, except maybe a home/college transfer.

Well anyway, this Sunday I woke up to go play hockey, and I opened up my closet and looked up and to the left, and THERE WAS BLUE JACKET! I was so pumped! What a great way to start the day! I knew that the universe would give me good karma for waking up on time for hockey. Then I opened my drawers to look for a black shirt and white shirt (to help clear up which team I'm on), and the first black shirt I pulled out was the SHUUUUUNNNNN shirt!!! SURELY A DAY FOR THE HISTORY BOOKS!

I was so pumped.

So I went to play hockey. I took the black and white shirts down and put them on the bleachers, figuring I'd put them on later when I knew what team I would be on. Turns out I didn't need either of them because my "air hockey legend" shirt was dark enough to be clear indication.

At about 6PM that night - I had gotten back from hockey at noon - I realized that I didn't pick up the shirts from the bleachers.

Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaang you guys

With nothing better to do - and the Eagles not on until 8PM or so - I figured I'd just put on some NPR or Fallout Boy and see if they were still there. NPR was awful, so I just put on the mixed FOB CD that I made from mp3s that Misha gave me in the last weeks of Semester at Sea. It was good fun, for sure.

I got there, well past dark, and was one of two cars in the lots. I was sure an officer would come up immediately and ask why I was there. I'd sound silly explaining it, and ask him to accompany me. That would not assuage his fears at all. What is he really looking for? Turned out there were no officers, but the moon was very bright, so I wouldn't need to rely on the light of my cell phone to help me look. I walked down the hill, feet wet from frost grass, and saw that they were not where I had left them. I look underneath, nothing. In the recycling can, the trash can, on the rink. Nothing. Maybe one of the hockey players had taken them for safekeeping. Maybe other players later had taken them. Maybe the children of the Mexican soccer league participants that usually filled the park had taken them when they came to play soccer in the hockey rink. I didn't know. I only had one shot left though.

I went home and emailed the list of guys that had played hockey that day. "Did anyone happen to grab one black and one white t-shirt? Thanks."

And an hour or so later, I got an email back "Yeah, Chris B took them. Talk to him."

Hooray!

Surely this is the best, and worst, and best clothes day ever!!

Peace out.

Pancake Dinner

I went to the Habitat for Humanity pancake dinner at a church on Thursday night because Haley suggested it at some point in the day. I guess really she just told me about it, and I went because it was all you can eat pancakes for $5, and who could turn that down? Not me. But I'm sure if you're reading this, you already knew that.

Well anyway, I went around 5:25PM or so with the normal crew, including HK and Shengnan, and I remember HK took a pretty killer fall right in the middle of the road as we walked over. Matt, Tarik, and I reminded her that she should look where she's going. There was a car headed towards her, but fortunately it stopped. It was an SUV.

The dinner was sort of crowded, and their pancake-making capacity did not meet the popularity of the event. I'm sure they were trying their hardest though. At one point they told the back half of the line to just sit down because it'd be so long, so that's when everyone at our table just hung out for a while. We got back in line later, and I got three pancakes, plain, which were pretty good. Some other people got back in line later to get some more, and just to avoid sitting alone at a table, I went to hang out with them.

When we got to the front of the line, things slowed down a little. Someone came to take a picture of them. Then someone else came in and said, "Hey, where's [boy's name]? Hey - happy birthday!" It was one of the guys who was cooking behind the counter, over on the left if you were looking over the counter. The people up at the window shouted happy birthday to him as well.

And I added, "Congratulations! Many years ago today you were squeezed through your mother's vagina!"

That got some weird looks from people behind the counter. I didn't feel awkward, but I knew they did. So I just turned around and left.

Peace out.

Arraigned Marriage

Today we went to Lori's house for lunch/dinner, or whatever, but mostly just to hang out and talk. A lot of people that I wished could have gone couldn't go, and that made me sad, like Hortense, Haley, and Jen. Lori is my professor for CAS 100H and she's really awesome. Very alive. Haley and I, since she's actually in the class with me now, used to talk about how awesome she was and how we should Facebook friend her and go hang out with her on the weekends.

We came and had some vegan pizza, and then some vegetarian baked goods, and then went downstairs to play Wii and talk and not play pool, and then went upstairs to have a short concert, and then just proceeded to talk for a long time.

By the end of the evening it was just six of us or so sitting around the dining room table with her, and Stef mostly talked, mostly about her relationship with a Muslim boy who wasn't allowed to see her because she was not herself a Muslim. She gave her first speech in the class about this topic too, and it was clear from the way that she talked about it that it still gives her massive amounts of trouble and heartache. At one point I wondered if she might cry because I asked about it. I felt bad for asking about it at first, but then she talked more about it, and I thought maybe it was good that I asked.

I brought up arranged marriage, I think, but maybe it was Stef or Lori that did. In either case, I talked about how at first I thought it was a really silly idea and it made me uncomfortable to think about. Then I met my best friend at school, Tarik, this really bad-ass Muslim dude (as I described him to the table), who was pretty excited to get an arranged marriage. And I said eventually as I talked to him about it, I sort of came to understand why: He doesn't feel like dealing with the whole stupid annoying courtship crap, and he trusts that his parents are going to pick someone awesome for him. I said that even though my dad would never arrange a marriage for me, I saw his point, because I'm positive my dad would pick someone amazing for me, too, given the chance. [KEEP THIS IN MIND, DAD, IF YOU'RE STALKING MY BLOG. ARTS AND MATH.] And then I mentioned that I thought it was really cool that arranged-marriage societies all sort of make a statement about love, as a society, that it's not some crazy thing out of your control, but a choice. You can make the choice to love. Your parents will find someone who is good, and you'll spend the rest of you're life with them, and you'll be good to them, and they'll be good to you, and you'll love them. And if you have the right attitude, you can love anyone, because it's something you can control.

When we were leaving and saying our goodbyes, I leaned down to say goodbye to their dog and said, "Bye, Linus! Make the choice to love!"

Peace out.

Tee

Hortense is in a group called PSIADA, which I don't really know anything about except they're international and a debate club, or something like that. They were having a fundraiser today at Happy Valley Freez, and I figured I'd go to help out her club.

Another friend, Amy (from English 202), had asked me to play at an open mic for a charity group she's in as well (Global Hunger Awareness, maybe?). Hortense's club was at 6 and the other was at 6:30, so I figured I would just go one right after the other. Amy's club didn't have a piano set up there, so I just brought my guitar. And so when I went to Hortense's fundraiser, I was wearing my blue hat, Fall Out Boy t-shirt, white belt and jeans, and the guitar on my back.

I walked in. I looked around for Hortense, and she wasn't there. I could see some people who were clearly members of PSIADA in the corner to my right, but I don't know any of them. I don't really know what to do for the fundraiser, so I just kind of stand there for a moment. The guys in PSIADA are staring dead at me, then turn to each other and laugh. One of them says, "Uh, what?" quietly to his friends, and another says, "Oookay..." It seemed quite clear to me that they were judging me really hard.

So I went to the cashier, who came to the register by then, and said clearly, "I'm here for the PSIADA fundraiser. Could I get a small chocolate cone?" I made sure they could hear it. I took my guitar to the corner where they couldn't see me and ate.

I texted Hortense:

J: I'm here! Where are you?

H: Oh no! Not there yet! I can be there in fifteen, sorry!

J: Hurry! Your friends are tots judging me!

H: Haha i love you!

J: IT'S STILL HAPPENING =(

H: Haha i still love you

J: Awww, thanks horty! Love you too =)

Extremely adorable, although it did not alleviate the judging.

//

Hortense sat with me for a while as I finished up my ice cream. It wasn't a kid's size, and I legitimately had a very hard time forcing myself to finish all of it. I didn't ask for a cup or throw it away because I was already being judged.

Before we left, Hortense stood up from my table and went to go hug her friends goodbye. I got up and stood near the door. She talked to them quietly and laughed.

When she got to me, she said, "When I was talking to them they were like, Dude, you gotta lock that down." I didn't really understand. "What does that mean? Is that good? Like lock me down because I'm a crazy person? Or lock me down like girls and boys?" "Yeah, like to date you." I was extremely confused. We laughed about it. She told me that it meant they thought I was attractive. I still felt kind of silly.

//

I saw Hortense later in her room, after she took her shower. She asked if I wanted to hear a fun story about PSIADA, and I said sure, but that I also wanted to hear a final verdict on their judging of me. She said that was the funny story.

"I talked to my friends and was like, 'So, were you guys judging my friend?' And they said, 'Judging, I don't know what you're talking about!' 'Well, he says you guys definitely said something...!' And the kid who was bisexual was like, 'I wasn't judging him, I was checking him out. Is he fickle?' He didn't ask if you were gay because other people don't know he's bisexual, but I know."

How strange.

The moral of the story is

Peace out.

The Center

I went to see Tess work with her learning partner for English 202H today. I almost cried twice. He was a thirty-year-old man, roughly, with short brownish hair and short red facial hair. He came in listening to his iPod with his headphones in, and told Tess he was going to go get something from the vending machine. He offered to get her something if she wanted it; she said no, and so he offered to myself and Dave as well, who was also watching the session.

They pulled out the books they had been using. A pronunciation book (he was almost 100% perfect with that, actually), some Entertainment magazines, a Game Informer, a screenwriter's bible, a book of scary Pennsylvania stories. Tess decided the lesson for the day would be to work on the script he was writing. He read the script to us so far - also not bad at all at reading - which was more of an outline of a horror film, but not yet complete. He creates the plot as he goes.

Tess pointed out that he had mixed up the words from and form again. As he read, he often mixed up the names Chelsea and Katrina. He often wondered aloud where the period should go. He didn't know how to use quotation marks. He couldn't spell the word friends or the word Escalade on his own, although he got them later with some help and some sounding out. He seemed completely happy to work on the story the whole time.

It totally broke my heart.

He's such a nice guy. He really was sweet and very polite, and he makes the choice to come work with Tess every single time he does it. He has a job as a dishwasher that most people in college would never dream of taking. He tries, he really does. And he still couldn't write a proper sentence if his life depended on it - and I seriously mean that, because that's how bad it was. Sometimes he couldn't even get a single word correct.

It made me think of all the bullshit we hear. "Anyone can make it in America! If you just work hard, you can do anything!" No, false. Some people have legitimate problems, and no matter how hard they work, they can never overcome some difficulties. It kills me to know that society, in general, would provide no help to this man. That doesn't seem like the kind of thing that a kind people and a kind Earth can do. He's a good guy, he works hard, he tries, he does what he can. He survives because he has a family that loves him and treats him like gold. But if it weren't for that, he'd be on the streets for sure. And that should never be allowed. Meeting him and working with him, even for an extremely short time, made this actually hit home, and it feels more unconscionable now that it ever has.

Peace out.