Yesterday I was waiting for the bus, freezing my hairy Italian "boys" off, when I overheard a conversation between two young women.
Ugg-wearing woman #1: So, like, my teacher said he's from Belgium!
Ugg-wearing woman #2: Ohmigod! So like, I've always wanted to go there!
UWW1: Isn't Belgium in France?
[Domonic begins to pray in earnest]
UWW2: Yeah, it's in the northern part!
You'd think that my world would have fallen in upon itself at that moment and I, under the weight of it would moistly implode; or that I, eyes wild and unblinking, would have accosted them as they stood there, shivering and bemoaning their glittery-haired fates by telling them that, indeed, Belgium is *GASP!* a whole other country altogether from France. Like, fer sherr! But instead I was transfixed by their footwear: giant, floofy boot things that were a pale pastel pink, much as the inside of a baby would be. And by "inside of a baby" I mean... never mind. Anyway, so the floofy boot-things. I wondered for a moment how many tsunami survivors you could feed by selling those Uggs that covered their cloven hooves; simultaneously, how much money could I make selling those girls into white slavery? I can see them in sackcloth, standing with heads on their perky bosoms, lice almost visible to the naked eye, as the hellish slavetrader shrieked: "Pearly skin! Childbearing hips! Never known a day of manual labor or temperatures harsher than the mall! She'll love you long time!"
I broke out of the trance as they hastened to their bus; with tinny peeps like freshly-hatched snake spawn, they continued their inane conversation until they, and the #3 Downtown bus, vanished from earshot and view into the concrete canyons and urban jungle that is Bloomington, Indiana. Would I have found those boots less offensive if they have been a sensible color? If they had been worn by a flannel-wearing John Goodman-esque lesbian with a tin of Skoal packed into her lower jaw? If I didn't know that it would take me half a month's stipend to pay for them, had I been filled with the Satanic desire to own a pair? Whatever it was, I'll never know, because my increasingly short attention span was captured by a young Asian international student trying to cross what is easily one of Bloomington's busiest streets at rush-hour. She'd get about halfway across before darting back to the other side of the road when a car came. For an insane moment I thought of that old arcade game, Frogger, wherein you guide a poorly-animated amphibian from one side of the road to another (and safety). Mine usually ended up as road-pizza; with grim fascination I watched to see if she would fall upon a similar fate as she howled in Korean to her mate, who had made it safely to the other side and was gesturing to her as one would imagine Anne Sullivan might teach a marmoset Hindi sign language. Once upon the bus, the crazy didn't end; the driver of this particular #7 Shuttle Express bus was not only a heroin addict, as evidenced by how he took curves and the scabbed-over trackmarks on his arms, but was also a dirty hippie. He was folding 10,000 paper cranes for world peace: please, take one as a gesture of love and compassion for the world! The small basket proclaiming as such swung lazily from the coin-takey-place, filled to the brim with gaily-colored Japanese fowl. While he was distracted by the task of not getting a busload of college students pureed in a crush of metal, steel and Plexi-glass, I looked him over. Late forties, clean shaven, manicured nails, shiny shoes, pressed clothes. Not the stereotype by any means. Then I thought: maybe those cranes are soaked in LSD and he's not pulling a "Sadako-and-the-Thousand-Paper-Cranes" thing, but is hopelessly addicting us to a controlled narcotic!
So I took two, and when no-one was looking (on the old plantation!), I lathed my tongue on them. Hmm. Tastes like fingers.
Speaking of "things that are tragic, like mass graves", my second favorite international graced me with her presence today, andandAND did so at two minutes to four. Of course, my "favorite" international was the one who called me a liar, said that I had singled her out from all other students for my unique brand of punishment, and told me that she'd bring charges against me for breaching my contract, whatever the eff that means. All this over a Social Security Number, which, oh wait!, I couldn't have given her anyway. Anyway, my second "favorite" international had, at one point this summer, told me that I "should look for another job" because "I mistreated her" since, uh, I made her wait her turn to be served. It went something like this:
Cocaine-abusing international: [sweeps to the desk, cuts off a student I'd called to be helped, and grins like a child who's found a ready source of "fingerpaint" in their diaper]
Me: Hi! Have you signed in?
CAI: No! I don't need to sign in!
Me: Yes, yes you do. We keep track of the number of students we help every day so that we can better help you in the future.
CAI: [looks at me like I am trying to explain how to turn Grape-nuts into plutonium]
Me: Go ahead and write down your name and I will be right with you as soon as I help the people who got here before you.
CAI: [digs around in fanny-pack, retrieves piece of paper with some freaky-deeky language scrawled across it] I need to see Xxxxx Xxxxxxxx!
Me: Please sign it. It'll only be a second. There are magazines. There are chairs. If you're good, I'll give you some methadone. Now, please sit.
CAI: No! [slams down Hello Kitty pencase; other student whom I'd called backs away like he'd found a scorpion in his shoe]
Me: Miss, I can't help you if you don't follow the rules.
CAI: [bares yellowed teeth in a vulpine sneer] You don't like me so you won't help me!
Me: [reaches for squirt-bottle] I could have helped you twice if you'd followed our office rules. These other people are probably not really happy that you aren't following the rules and they are and you'll get served first.
CAI: [lunges at receptionist as she's walking by in the vain hope that she's Xxxxx Xxxxxxxx, she's blocked by the bulk of a 240lb New England-livin' flannel wearin' mofo]
Me: [calls to good student who has waited through the entire spectacle; no doubt he'd only wanted to pick up a certificate of enrollment]
CAI: [shrieks like a collie being torn apart by ferrets] You need to find new work! You aren't helping me!
{she flings her motley collection of human hair poppets, ginseng herbal tea face cream and her passport into her fanny pack; leaves the office flailing}
That day, I drank openly from the engraved flask I have taped under the front desk. As I felt for its liquid strength when I saw her again, she smiled sweetly and walked over to the sign-in sheet, gently took the pen and wrote her full name on the register and sat.
And she was the only one left in the office.
I thought: medication? Maybe she's gravid with ilk? I called her name (which, incidentally, I'd not known before for obvious reasons) and she came and folded her hands upon the faux-wood veneer of the desk.
What can I do for you today?
I'd like to make an appointment with the Dean, Xxxxx Xxxxx.
[clap of thunder]
Uh... can I know why?
Because I want to talk to him. (shiny, albeit brown, smile)
Well, he's a busy man, and normally he doesn't take student appointments unless he makes them himself.
{Visibly, she's holding back from breaking vocal cords screaming at me; my pleasure increases tenfold. I too can play this game, and I have the advantage: I have the squirt-bottle.}
Well, Xxxxx Xxxxxxx at the International Center sent me here.
[my bowels roil; maybe she actually does need an appointment?]
After fetching Judith, the Dean's assistant-person-thingiemabobber, we uncover the stark truth. I'd talk in length about it, but I want you to wonder for all eternity ALL ETERNITY! about why a woman--a woman who clearly is crazier than a shit-house rat on crystal--actually needed to talk to the Dean of International Services.
[torture!]
Anyway, crawl I shall back onto the shiny nail-bed of Turkish, and Ottoman, and French, but not before I beg you all, wherever you are, to sacrifice livestock in my name to ensure that I survive this semester.
As the blood elps, so are the Days of My Life! [cue crazy music and hourglass sequence!]
See you all soon, I promise.
Dom <--- punchy, cold and also, uh, punchy
Monday, January 31, 2005
Thursday, January 27, 2005
[ascending to mount self upon hand-carved personal cross]
The pathetic carcass of a Code Red Mountain Dew bears mute testimony to yet another night when the only sound in this [increasingly alien-feeling] apartment is my despair rising to a fever-pitch. In front of me is a document written in a script that hasn't been used (in this form) by a living human being for more than three hundred years. Imagine, if you will, taking a sheet of paper; upon this paper, you fling hundreds of nightcrawlers and a handful of Rice-a-Roni. Then, magically!, this is to make sounds that turn into a forgotten and oft-neglected classical language. It's all I can do to try to put my mother's words of wisdom out of my head:
"If you cross your eyes, they'll stick that way."
So, as a good warrior would do, I exposed my neck in abject defeat. Instead of the clarion whistle of a rapidly descending blade meant solely to sever my beleagured head from my cricked-up neck, I got an email from my advisor/mentor, Kemal bey. I'd sent him an email explaining to him three things:
1) I suck.
2) I am only in second year Turkish and I can't possibly understand thirteenth century Turkish documents WRITTEN IN ARABIC if I don't have the proper background script training.
3) Also, I suck.
His email made me mist up a wee. The red bits are where I translated Turk-bits for ye.
Sevgili (Dearest) Demir:
No problem canim (my dear)! I am glad you told me this honestly. From tomorrow on, I will develop a different method just for you. Don't worry about the homework. We will find a method that works for you. If necessary, we will start from the very beginning with a different way. Do not worry, hang in there! Sevgiler (warm wishes), KS
[check one language off my worry list!]
In French tonight, I and two of my other CEUSie compatriots decided: enough is sisterfeckin' enough! So we slaughtered an alley-cat to the Hittite god storm-god Teşup and with its rapidly caking blood we swore to divide and conquer. We are now only going to do a third of the ri-effing-diculous ten pages of translation we get every two days and we'll pool the other 2/3 from the other two people into a finished piece. Also, for the wretched project that we are being held to the flame for-- a fifteen-to-twenty page translation of an article in French about our particular research--I found a book about the Turkish missionization of Central Asia in French! And and AND it is ridiculously easy to read! {ka-CHING!}
[check second language off my worry list!]
Today, before I sent Kemal bey the email detailing how, Ottoman-wise, I am a developmentally-challenged rabid mandrill in heat, he and I decided that our project for the "fun" class that I was to be taking--Turkish Literature in Translation--would instead be--now, brace yourselves!--yet another translation class! Yes! Just what I needed for my collection! That makes one-two-three-FOUR LANGUAGE CLASSES AT THE GRADUATE LEVEL IN ONE SEMESTER. My neurons are committing suicide by seppuku in the tens of thousands each day; my eyes have written me a nasty letter detailing for me what it might be like if they went putrid and leaked out of my skull as protest; my wrists, weary of late-night typing, whisper in the darkness of carpal-tunnel and their mutiny would shudder me verily.
So I got the book--HAHAHAHAHA! THE BOOK!--I am to translate today. The upside to this whole thing: one day, maybe this summer, IU will be able to publish it with our names on the cover. The downside: it's 170 pages long. And in Turkish. It's called "Oğlum, Canım Evladım Memedim: Cezaevınden Memet Fuat'a Mektuplar" by Nazım Hikmet. That means "My Son, my Dearest Precious Mehmet: Letters from Prison to Mehmet Fuat." You see, Nazım bey was a Communist and spent a lot of time in Turkish prisons; he's also Turkey's most revered and esteemed modern poet. This book is a collection of letters he wrote from prison to his child.
His. Child.
So, flipping through it, I danced a wee jig: the Turkish is ri-donc-ulously easy, as it would have had to be for a CHILD TO READ. So: fame! notice! come to thy master! I can do this!
[third language checked off worry list]
As a reward for my good behavior, I'm allowing myself to succumb to the siren-call of my bed. Oh, sweet succor it provides!
[limbs failing; torpor! torpor!]
See you tomorrow, Bloomington.
Demir (Dom)
PS. I chose my Turkish name. Demir, or "iron", sounds rather like "Dom", and my only other choice for similarly sounding names was "Duman", which is "smoke" or "mist." Uh, no. So then I picked my last name as well, much as every Turkish male did in the 1920s. I picked "Gökoğlu", which obliquely references one of my favorite movies of all time, The Last Emperor: it means "son of the heavens" or "son of the sky."
Dom <----- insufferable geek
"If you cross your eyes, they'll stick that way."
So, as a good warrior would do, I exposed my neck in abject defeat. Instead of the clarion whistle of a rapidly descending blade meant solely to sever my beleagured head from my cricked-up neck, I got an email from my advisor/mentor, Kemal bey. I'd sent him an email explaining to him three things:
1) I suck.
2) I am only in second year Turkish and I can't possibly understand thirteenth century Turkish documents WRITTEN IN ARABIC if I don't have the proper background script training.
3) Also, I suck.
His email made me mist up a wee. The red bits are where I translated Turk-bits for ye.
Sevgili (Dearest) Demir:
No problem canim (my dear)! I am glad you told me this honestly. From tomorrow on, I will develop a different method just for you. Don't worry about the homework. We will find a method that works for you. If necessary, we will start from the very beginning with a different way. Do not worry, hang in there! Sevgiler (warm wishes), KS
[check one language off my worry list!]
In French tonight, I and two of my other CEUSie compatriots decided: enough is sisterfeckin' enough! So we slaughtered an alley-cat to the Hittite god storm-god Teşup and with its rapidly caking blood we swore to divide and conquer. We are now only going to do a third of the ri-effing-diculous ten pages of translation we get every two days and we'll pool the other 2/3 from the other two people into a finished piece. Also, for the wretched project that we are being held to the flame for-- a fifteen-to-twenty page translation of an article in French about our particular research--I found a book about the Turkish missionization of Central Asia in French! And and AND it is ridiculously easy to read! {ka-CHING!}
[check second language off my worry list!]
Today, before I sent Kemal bey the email detailing how, Ottoman-wise, I am a developmentally-challenged rabid mandrill in heat, he and I decided that our project for the "fun" class that I was to be taking--Turkish Literature in Translation--would instead be--now, brace yourselves!--yet another translation class! Yes! Just what I needed for my collection! That makes one-two-three-FOUR LANGUAGE CLASSES AT THE GRADUATE LEVEL IN ONE SEMESTER. My neurons are committing suicide by seppuku in the tens of thousands each day; my eyes have written me a nasty letter detailing for me what it might be like if they went putrid and leaked out of my skull as protest; my wrists, weary of late-night typing, whisper in the darkness of carpal-tunnel and their mutiny would shudder me verily.
So I got the book--HAHAHAHAHA! THE BOOK!--I am to translate today. The upside to this whole thing: one day, maybe this summer, IU will be able to publish it with our names on the cover. The downside: it's 170 pages long. And in Turkish. It's called "Oğlum, Canım Evladım Memedim: Cezaevınden Memet Fuat'a Mektuplar" by Nazım Hikmet. That means "My Son, my Dearest Precious Mehmet: Letters from Prison to Mehmet Fuat." You see, Nazım bey was a Communist and spent a lot of time in Turkish prisons; he's also Turkey's most revered and esteemed modern poet. This book is a collection of letters he wrote from prison to his child.
His. Child.
So, flipping through it, I danced a wee jig: the Turkish is ri-donc-ulously easy, as it would have had to be for a CHILD TO READ. So: fame! notice! come to thy master! I can do this!
[third language checked off worry list]
As a reward for my good behavior, I'm allowing myself to succumb to the siren-call of my bed. Oh, sweet succor it provides!
[limbs failing; torpor! torpor!]
See you tomorrow, Bloomington.
Demir (Dom)
PS. I chose my Turkish name. Demir, or "iron", sounds rather like "Dom", and my only other choice for similarly sounding names was "Duman", which is "smoke" or "mist." Uh, no. So then I picked my last name as well, much as every Turkish male did in the 1920s. I picked "Gökoğlu", which obliquely references one of my favorite movies of all time, The Last Emperor: it means "son of the heavens" or "son of the sky."
Dom <----- insufferable geek
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Purja purja kat merai kabhu na chadeh kheit.
"And, though cut piece by piece, the hero never abandons the battlefield." - The Guru Granth Sahib, Sikh holy book
There comes a day in every semester when you realize, concretely, that all joy in your academic life will be sucked dry, much as when a sea-lamprey accosts a sea-bass. First, it nudges its nasty, sightless head into your gill and secretes an anti-coagulant into your bloodstream, causing near instantaneous hemophilia. Then it feeds, and then when it is done feeding, it feeds some more. You find yourself wandering in the Memorial Union for hours, unable to even muster the strength or desire to feed yourself. When you lope listlessly to the fun fireplace room to try to find a couch to heave your bulk upon, you are met with hundreds of other students lying about in heaps like a still from a genocide documentary; ordinarily, you couldn't care less, but this somehow galls you like nothing ever has. Quieting thoughts of machetes and the cruel equatorial midday sun, you fall asleep reading the instructions for your homework only to awaken when someone's cell-phone rings (The "Brady Bunch" Theme song; rot in hell, bitch, rot in HELL) for a solid five minutes before the insolent hussy who owns it awakens from her blissful sorority-girl slumber to flee from the lynchmob that'd hastily formed near her couch. By then, it's too late. Things that, even when spoken about in whisper, turned you on now seem like work. The sea-lamprey slides its boneless head entirely into your gill, and you find yourself thinking: hey! I already HAVE one degree! Isn't it pretentious/unChristian/communist to have more than that? Plus: when am I ever going to use my knowledge of the Book of Revelation's Seven Churches of the Apocalypse for anything other than making my friends dislocate their jaws yawning?
Yet another night of translation. Yet another night spent cradling a mug of pumpkin spice coffee, grim charm against the encroaching desire to bed myself. Yet another night where I wonder if I should have taken the $38, 000 job at GE when I had the chance.
In a rustic faux oldy-timey picture frame on my desk is an ethnographic artifact that I took from the Milford gurdwarda. On paper printed to look like the cloudy sky, scripture from the Guru Granth Sahib is written in English and in Punjabi (with accompanying transliteration). "Once you put your foot on My Path," it warns, "then lay down your head without reluctance."
[neck outstretched]
I mean: YAY TURKISH! YAY OTTOMAN TURKISH! YAY FRENCH! YAY OTHER CLASS THAT HAS NO NAME BECAUSE ONLY TWO PEOPLE ARE IN IT AND YOU AREN'T GOING TO MEET AT ALL!
The coffee has lost.
Have a great night, Bloomington.
Dom
There comes a day in every semester when you realize, concretely, that all joy in your academic life will be sucked dry, much as when a sea-lamprey accosts a sea-bass. First, it nudges its nasty, sightless head into your gill and secretes an anti-coagulant into your bloodstream, causing near instantaneous hemophilia. Then it feeds, and then when it is done feeding, it feeds some more. You find yourself wandering in the Memorial Union for hours, unable to even muster the strength or desire to feed yourself. When you lope listlessly to the fun fireplace room to try to find a couch to heave your bulk upon, you are met with hundreds of other students lying about in heaps like a still from a genocide documentary; ordinarily, you couldn't care less, but this somehow galls you like nothing ever has. Quieting thoughts of machetes and the cruel equatorial midday sun, you fall asleep reading the instructions for your homework only to awaken when someone's cell-phone rings (The "Brady Bunch" Theme song; rot in hell, bitch, rot in HELL) for a solid five minutes before the insolent hussy who owns it awakens from her blissful sorority-girl slumber to flee from the lynchmob that'd hastily formed near her couch. By then, it's too late. Things that, even when spoken about in whisper, turned you on now seem like work. The sea-lamprey slides its boneless head entirely into your gill, and you find yourself thinking: hey! I already HAVE one degree! Isn't it pretentious/unChristian/communist to have more than that? Plus: when am I ever going to use my knowledge of the Book of Revelation's Seven Churches of the Apocalypse for anything other than making my friends dislocate their jaws yawning?
Yet another night of translation. Yet another night spent cradling a mug of pumpkin spice coffee, grim charm against the encroaching desire to bed myself. Yet another night where I wonder if I should have taken the $38, 000 job at GE when I had the chance.
In a rustic faux oldy-timey picture frame on my desk is an ethnographic artifact that I took from the Milford gurdwarda. On paper printed to look like the cloudy sky, scripture from the Guru Granth Sahib is written in English and in Punjabi (with accompanying transliteration). "Once you put your foot on My Path," it warns, "then lay down your head without reluctance."
[neck outstretched]
I mean: YAY TURKISH! YAY OTTOMAN TURKISH! YAY FRENCH! YAY OTHER CLASS THAT HAS NO NAME BECAUSE ONLY TWO PEOPLE ARE IN IT AND YOU AREN'T GOING TO MEET AT ALL!
The coffee has lost.
Have a great night, Bloomington.
Dom
Sunday, January 23, 2005
You just can't do it.
Last week, in a moment of inspiration (and by "inspiration" I mean "Satan, most likely, was whispering directly into my ear canal") I sent Abbas bey, my Turkish teacher, a request to do something fun in class. For the past week we've been talking about how planting trees is/or is not a good gift to give to the parents of babies. (My contention: they need diapers, formula and Zoloft). Anyway, I asked Abbas bey if we could translate our favorite English language song into Turkish, and then we'd give the other two classmates the translation and we'd try to guess what the song was by our translations.
Well.
Of course I chose Bruce Hornsby's The Valley Road. About three lines into it, I knew I was gonna get effed up the goat's ass. How, then, would you translate such phrases into a Uralo-Altaic horseman tongue?
-this time I'll go where she wants me to go
In the end, that one came out looking like "this time I will go to where to go she wants."
- he took her "all the way" down the low valley road
The emphasis is mine; however, how do you politely say in Turkish that he knocked her
up?
- he showed her "what they do" down the long valley road
What "they do" is, apparently, pork each other. She gets knocked up, he's a poor local boy and daddy makes her "get rid" of it.
I should have done something ridiculous and easy, like "Imagine" by John Lennon. But nooooo!
With all my "alone time" this weekend I did quite a few pleasurable things. No, not those, you perverts. [counting on fingers the number of you who read into that too much] Like, I bought myself a new movie, among the other things (four picture frames, a tear-a-day calendar and a candle). It's The Village. When you see it, you'll know why I liked it so much.
('cuz it's effed up!)
I also went to see the Tibetan nun. Sadly, because Mother Nature took a healthy dump on the East Coast this weekend, the nun was stranded in Washington, DC. So, making the most out of the evening, they served the momos and some noodles and then we watched a movie called "Cry of the Snow Lion". It was awful. No, the work was good, but of course anything you watch that involves Tibet makes you want to reach for your hip-flask and go skin one of them yeller' Red Chinamen. So, feeling bad about earlier feelings about Tibet's freedom (ie, I oppose it sorta-kinda... well, total freedom, at least), I bought an "I (Heart) Tibet" tee-shirt. It's saffron, my favorite color, which makes me feel even fuzzier inside.
I know, I know, that was a boring post. I had a boring, nice weekend, so eff off.
Good night, Bloomington.
Dom
Well.
Of course I chose Bruce Hornsby's The Valley Road. About three lines into it, I knew I was gonna get effed up the goat's ass. How, then, would you translate such phrases into a Uralo-Altaic horseman tongue?
-this time I'll go where she wants me to go
In the end, that one came out looking like "this time I will go to where to go she wants."
- he took her "all the way" down the low valley road
The emphasis is mine; however, how do you politely say in Turkish that he knocked her
up?
- he showed her "what they do" down the long valley road
What "they do" is, apparently, pork each other. She gets knocked up, he's a poor local boy and daddy makes her "get rid" of it.
I should have done something ridiculous and easy, like "Imagine" by John Lennon. But nooooo!
With all my "alone time" this weekend I did quite a few pleasurable things. No, not those, you perverts. [counting on fingers the number of you who read into that too much] Like, I bought myself a new movie, among the other things (four picture frames, a tear-a-day calendar and a candle). It's The Village. When you see it, you'll know why I liked it so much.
('cuz it's effed up!)
I also went to see the Tibetan nun. Sadly, because Mother Nature took a healthy dump on the East Coast this weekend, the nun was stranded in Washington, DC. So, making the most out of the evening, they served the momos and some noodles and then we watched a movie called "Cry of the Snow Lion". It was awful. No, the work was good, but of course anything you watch that involves Tibet makes you want to reach for your hip-flask and go skin one of them yeller' Red Chinamen. So, feeling bad about earlier feelings about Tibet's freedom (ie, I oppose it sorta-kinda... well, total freedom, at least), I bought an "I (Heart) Tibet" tee-shirt. It's saffron, my favorite color, which makes me feel even fuzzier inside.
I know, I know, that was a boring post. I had a boring, nice weekend, so eff off.
Good night, Bloomington.
Dom
Saturday, January 22, 2005
*Gag.*
Today, instead of clock-watching my way through two Uralo-Altaic languages, I was spared Ottoman class because Kemal bey is currently Turk-ing his way through The Big Apple herself; no doubt, at his meeting with the Department of State spooks, he'll proffer his interview with me. After bursting blood vessels in their eyes and temples laughing at me, they'll retire to a Turkish restaurant and sup upon kebap and lahmacun. Chew carefully, spooks. Chew effing carefully. One day, when I am the U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, I will have the last laugh. Well, the last laugh would actually come when their hobbled, pathetic remains were found in the hastily-dug shallow graves in the Meadowlands (NJ) in repose.
That reminds me: I need to remember to get some more quicklime when I am out.
So, instead of Ottoman, I went instead to, uh, my home, after making a brief appearance at work to see my fellow Front Desk Gangsta, Brooke. Then, the Townie Transit home; needless to say, an international student accosted me. She had on a huge woolen cap and gloves and was wearing one of those [fashionable?] white face masks you always see when looking at pictures of residents of Beijing in winter. She sits near me, looks at me for a minute, and then she begins to speak. Needless to say her voice was slightly muffled; also, I was trying to pretend I didn't speak English.
Female Asian international student: Where do I know you from?
Me: Umm... well, I work at the Office of International Services.
FAIS: Ahhhh! That's where I know you from!
Me: Indeed!
As this exchange was transpiring, I was trying to remember her name. One of the freakish things that's happened to me since I started working at the OIS is that I can now remember hundreds of people's names; no mean feat when half of them are Korean and the other half are... well, not in English. Her name came to me, and then I remembered exactly who she was, all bundled up under what appeared to be several hundred pounds of clothes. Far away in the OIS, attending a meeting (if by "meeting" I mean "death march") about the new iOffice software, I knew of at least one of my colleagues who would have breathed a sigh of relief to know how much distance lay between them. A Precious Angel student. The assault continued.
FAIS: How long have you worked there?
Me: Hominids had yet to gain bipedalism as a defense against savage plain-cats.
FAIS: What?
Me: A year and a half.
FAIS: You like it there?
Me: What I like most is calling the Department of Homeland Security each day with my list of people who need to be deported. Say, what's your name?
FAIS: I don't understand what you're saying.
Me: It's a great job. I like it a lot.
[she loses interest; I begin to observe the gentleman near the front of the bus who appears to holding an animated conversation with a freshly-plucked eylash]
Once home (empty home! I very well could be writing this in a lime-green tube-top and all y'all'd never know it!), I decided that I'd do myself a favor: I took a nap. When I awoke three hours later, the sun had already set and a glance at the clock terrified me: whenever I sleep in the daytime and I wake up after dusk, I always think it's the early AM. Not that I have anywhere to be tomorrow... but still. What to do, what to do? So, I armed myself with a cruciform, the Kansas bus-bench Bible and Saint Anthony de Padua and I opened my closets. It became immediately apparent to me that the clowns had been having a field day in there. Red foam noses caked with the blood of the slaughtered innocent were strewn about; the stench of cotton candy hung pregnantly in the warm air. Before they came back with their latest kill, I needed to do some rearranging and I needed to get my filthy laundry out of there--it'd come to start attracting flies. So, I did five loads of laundry: two for my clothes, and two for my towels and a few coats. The last? My crimson shower curtain. With dawning horror this morning I'd discovered that it was riddled with soap scum and a growth that I can only pray was of this earth. I beat the curtain into the warm, soapy water of the machine and it began to weep ever so softly, as I imagine I must have wept when my cruel parents took away my blankie as a wee one. Oh, they both say that I didn't miss it and didn't ask for it, but oh, how I wept! I held a funeral for the "blunk" in the backyard; bekilted Scotsmen in their finest tartan sent him off well with their wailing pipes. Further, when I took the shower curtain off and beheld the tub itself in the harsh light of discovery, I found that the Mao Zedong profile had come to more closely resemble Pol Pot. No wonder why my dreams as of late have been in Khmer! I have also been using the term "killing fields" a lot and hating the French. Coincidence? Methinks not. Twenty minutes of soaking with bleach AND some freaky super-strength industrial solvent and Pol Pot was ferried back from whence he came.
Speaking of hating the French... my GOD! There can be nothing I have endured, ever, that compares with the agony of this French class this semester. Last semester, of course I bitched about French and how much I hated it. I believe I used the words "I hate this class with the fire of a thousand burning suns", but I could be mistaken. But, at least the professor was sweet and fair and "special", and that made things more bearable. This semester: Satan's post-gravid harpy. When she laughs, I want to punch a nun in the throat. Dogs form into packs and blood oozes down the walls. Plus plus PLUS! She has NO IDEA WHAT SHE'S TALKING ABOUT. Yes. She asks US for answers to her questions! If it weren't for the fact that she has a new baby, we'd have jumped her in the parking lot by now; the mutinous whispering in our class must be alarming to her unless she's a completely clueless troglodyte.
Tomorrow: I get to listen to a Drapchi Freedom Fighter Tibetan Buddhist nun talk about how much China sucks; following that, momos and nun-interaction. God I love Bloomington.
Have a good night, Bloomington.
Dom
That reminds me: I need to remember to get some more quicklime when I am out.
So, instead of Ottoman, I went instead to, uh, my home, after making a brief appearance at work to see my fellow Front Desk Gangsta, Brooke. Then, the Townie Transit home; needless to say, an international student accosted me. She had on a huge woolen cap and gloves and was wearing one of those [fashionable?] white face masks you always see when looking at pictures of residents of Beijing in winter. She sits near me, looks at me for a minute, and then she begins to speak. Needless to say her voice was slightly muffled; also, I was trying to pretend I didn't speak English.
Female Asian international student: Where do I know you from?
Me: Umm... well, I work at the Office of International Services.
FAIS: Ahhhh! That's where I know you from!
Me: Indeed!
As this exchange was transpiring, I was trying to remember her name. One of the freakish things that's happened to me since I started working at the OIS is that I can now remember hundreds of people's names; no mean feat when half of them are Korean and the other half are... well, not in English. Her name came to me, and then I remembered exactly who she was, all bundled up under what appeared to be several hundred pounds of clothes. Far away in the OIS, attending a meeting (if by "meeting" I mean "death march") about the new iOffice software, I knew of at least one of my colleagues who would have breathed a sigh of relief to know how much distance lay between them. A Precious Angel student. The assault continued.
FAIS: How long have you worked there?
Me: Hominids had yet to gain bipedalism as a defense against savage plain-cats.
FAIS: What?
Me: A year and a half.
FAIS: You like it there?
Me: What I like most is calling the Department of Homeland Security each day with my list of people who need to be deported. Say, what's your name?
FAIS: I don't understand what you're saying.
Me: It's a great job. I like it a lot.
[she loses interest; I begin to observe the gentleman near the front of the bus who appears to holding an animated conversation with a freshly-plucked eylash]
Once home (empty home! I very well could be writing this in a lime-green tube-top and all y'all'd never know it!), I decided that I'd do myself a favor: I took a nap. When I awoke three hours later, the sun had already set and a glance at the clock terrified me: whenever I sleep in the daytime and I wake up after dusk, I always think it's the early AM. Not that I have anywhere to be tomorrow... but still. What to do, what to do? So, I armed myself with a cruciform, the Kansas bus-bench Bible and Saint Anthony de Padua and I opened my closets. It became immediately apparent to me that the clowns had been having a field day in there. Red foam noses caked with the blood of the slaughtered innocent were strewn about; the stench of cotton candy hung pregnantly in the warm air. Before they came back with their latest kill, I needed to do some rearranging and I needed to get my filthy laundry out of there--it'd come to start attracting flies. So, I did five loads of laundry: two for my clothes, and two for my towels and a few coats. The last? My crimson shower curtain. With dawning horror this morning I'd discovered that it was riddled with soap scum and a growth that I can only pray was of this earth. I beat the curtain into the warm, soapy water of the machine and it began to weep ever so softly, as I imagine I must have wept when my cruel parents took away my blankie as a wee one. Oh, they both say that I didn't miss it and didn't ask for it, but oh, how I wept! I held a funeral for the "blunk" in the backyard; bekilted Scotsmen in their finest tartan sent him off well with their wailing pipes. Further, when I took the shower curtain off and beheld the tub itself in the harsh light of discovery, I found that the Mao Zedong profile had come to more closely resemble Pol Pot. No wonder why my dreams as of late have been in Khmer! I have also been using the term "killing fields" a lot and hating the French. Coincidence? Methinks not. Twenty minutes of soaking with bleach AND some freaky super-strength industrial solvent and Pol Pot was ferried back from whence he came.
Speaking of hating the French... my GOD! There can be nothing I have endured, ever, that compares with the agony of this French class this semester. Last semester, of course I bitched about French and how much I hated it. I believe I used the words "I hate this class with the fire of a thousand burning suns", but I could be mistaken. But, at least the professor was sweet and fair and "special", and that made things more bearable. This semester: Satan's post-gravid harpy. When she laughs, I want to punch a nun in the throat. Dogs form into packs and blood oozes down the walls. Plus plus PLUS! She has NO IDEA WHAT SHE'S TALKING ABOUT. Yes. She asks US for answers to her questions! If it weren't for the fact that she has a new baby, we'd have jumped her in the parking lot by now; the mutinous whispering in our class must be alarming to her unless she's a completely clueless troglodyte.
Tomorrow: I get to listen to a Drapchi Freedom Fighter Tibetan Buddhist nun talk about how much China sucks; following that, momos and nun-interaction. God I love Bloomington.
Have a good night, Bloomington.
Dom
Thursday, January 20, 2005
Two down.
Two weeks. Fourteen more to go. [slash!]
It's nearly midnight. In my living-room, my roommate's mother reposes in a profound state of unconsciousness, and, if I may be frank, she's snoring like a harelipped interstate trucker following his bleary-eyed all-nighter, a gorge-producing bender and a visit with one of the truck-stop enchantresses. I mean, in no way, to imply that she is or does any of those things: she collects angels and prays before meals and brings us things we need, like dishtowels and cutting boards. I have noticed, though, that she steers clear of my room and my bathroom. Could it be fear of the hundreds of writhing arms from my Hindu statuary contingent? Might it be that the dozens of Buddhae do not turn the corners of her mouth with depictions of their merriment/ bliss? Or maybe it's the five-foot long red flag with a crescent and a star on it that hangs on my wall above my desk?
I can't turn the anthro off any more that Alex Trebec can stop overpronouncing every French word on Jeopardy!. I've bought objects hewn from animal parts from people with visible body parasites. I'll eschew any large U.S. city's major attractions to spend days and days poking around Chinatown. I did fieldwork with people who carry daggers on their persons all day, every day. Yes, even in the shower. This leads to awkwardness whenever I am in a social situation where strangers I have no desire/need to meet are present. In my [warped?] mind I am building their life story from birth onward, and, let me say, none of my people lead happy lives.
Last night whilst supping at the local Dublin-esque pub-- the Irish Lion--with Keith, I couldn't help but notice the two men sitting next to us. What struck me was their age disparity. They seemed to be holding an animated conversation, in a free, easy way, and yet one of the men was a twentysomething and the other was nearing eight-hundredsomething. As I gently spooned my coddle stew (in a breadbowl!) into my mouth, I listened when I could to snippets of their conversation. {stalker!} In the end, they stood up and began to say goodbye. The old man then said to the twentysomething, "Won't your friends be surprised when you tell them you had dinner with a priest?"
(CHILDHOOD FLASHBACKS!)
Well, of course, insert "nun" for "priest." I used to be friends with the nuns from the convent across the street. I'd walk with them around town, go to the store with them, go to lunch with them...
*my GOD! it's my root!*
How is it that I haven't imploded with the weight of my weirdness yet?
The other night at Olive Garden (where I met delightful Life in the Corn readers Julie and Anna) I did it too. No, not with Julie and Anna; there was a strange, ghetto family sitting behind us who just didn't seem to know what to do, or how to act, in a place such as Olive Garden. Two forks? A menu that isn't up on a ceiling? Foreign words? Wine? They didn't seem into it. They pushed their salad and breadsticks around; when the entrees came (spaghetti for all), they looked at it as I might examine freshly slaughtered roadkill. Chunks in the sauce? Cooked noodles? SPICES? It was too much. They had all three boxed up and they left, weary from the effort and bewildered. I was, of course, at the time eating something called "chocolate lasagna." Damn. What must it be like to have never eaten candy-coated insects? To have never gotten a bagel and lox in a Hassidic deli in New York City? To have not been awakened at 6 AM by turbaned people wearing swords who bade you eat curry and fried donuts? To have never marked an octopus in a dank little tank for death in an Aegean Sea restaurant and listened as the cook beat the creature to death on a flat stone? (Olive oil, garlic, rosemary... that eight-legged freak was effing tasty). To have never eaten tiramisu while the sun sets over the Pantheon in Rome? To have never smelled braizing lamb while gazing upon the Parthenon-crowned Acropolis?
Hunger. That's what I've done to myself. I deserve it!
Anyway, I'll be back tomorrow night. Looks like a long, relaxing weekend ahead, but one bereft of the snuggly AND the roommate. One of those things makes me weepy. The other... well, uh... apartment! to myself! all weekend! SCORE!
> :-)
Have a good night, Bloomington.
Dom
It's nearly midnight. In my living-room, my roommate's mother reposes in a profound state of unconsciousness, and, if I may be frank, she's snoring like a harelipped interstate trucker following his bleary-eyed all-nighter, a gorge-producing bender and a visit with one of the truck-stop enchantresses. I mean, in no way, to imply that she is or does any of those things: she collects angels and prays before meals and brings us things we need, like dishtowels and cutting boards. I have noticed, though, that she steers clear of my room and my bathroom. Could it be fear of the hundreds of writhing arms from my Hindu statuary contingent? Might it be that the dozens of Buddhae do not turn the corners of her mouth with depictions of their merriment/ bliss? Or maybe it's the five-foot long red flag with a crescent and a star on it that hangs on my wall above my desk?
I can't turn the anthro off any more that Alex Trebec can stop overpronouncing every French word on Jeopardy!. I've bought objects hewn from animal parts from people with visible body parasites. I'll eschew any large U.S. city's major attractions to spend days and days poking around Chinatown. I did fieldwork with people who carry daggers on their persons all day, every day. Yes, even in the shower. This leads to awkwardness whenever I am in a social situation where strangers I have no desire/need to meet are present. In my [warped?] mind I am building their life story from birth onward, and, let me say, none of my people lead happy lives.
Last night whilst supping at the local Dublin-esque pub-- the Irish Lion--with Keith, I couldn't help but notice the two men sitting next to us. What struck me was their age disparity. They seemed to be holding an animated conversation, in a free, easy way, and yet one of the men was a twentysomething and the other was nearing eight-hundredsomething. As I gently spooned my coddle stew (in a breadbowl!) into my mouth, I listened when I could to snippets of their conversation. {stalker!} In the end, they stood up and began to say goodbye. The old man then said to the twentysomething, "Won't your friends be surprised when you tell them you had dinner with a priest?"
(CHILDHOOD FLASHBACKS!)
Well, of course, insert "nun" for "priest." I used to be friends with the nuns from the convent across the street. I'd walk with them around town, go to the store with them, go to lunch with them...
*my GOD! it's my root!*
How is it that I haven't imploded with the weight of my weirdness yet?
The other night at Olive Garden (where I met delightful Life in the Corn readers Julie and Anna) I did it too. No, not with Julie and Anna; there was a strange, ghetto family sitting behind us who just didn't seem to know what to do, or how to act, in a place such as Olive Garden. Two forks? A menu that isn't up on a ceiling? Foreign words? Wine? They didn't seem into it. They pushed their salad and breadsticks around; when the entrees came (spaghetti for all), they looked at it as I might examine freshly slaughtered roadkill. Chunks in the sauce? Cooked noodles? SPICES? It was too much. They had all three boxed up and they left, weary from the effort and bewildered. I was, of course, at the time eating something called "chocolate lasagna." Damn. What must it be like to have never eaten candy-coated insects? To have never gotten a bagel and lox in a Hassidic deli in New York City? To have not been awakened at 6 AM by turbaned people wearing swords who bade you eat curry and fried donuts? To have never marked an octopus in a dank little tank for death in an Aegean Sea restaurant and listened as the cook beat the creature to death on a flat stone? (Olive oil, garlic, rosemary... that eight-legged freak was effing tasty). To have never eaten tiramisu while the sun sets over the Pantheon in Rome? To have never smelled braizing lamb while gazing upon the Parthenon-crowned Acropolis?
Hunger. That's what I've done to myself. I deserve it!
Anyway, I'll be back tomorrow night. Looks like a long, relaxing weekend ahead, but one bereft of the snuggly AND the roommate. One of those things makes me weepy. The other... well, uh... apartment! to myself! all weekend! SCORE!
> :-)
Have a good night, Bloomington.
Dom
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
The project.
Can you die from ennui?
I'm not entirely sure I am even in my own league anymore. In the background of my day-to-day workings, I hear the vile clacking of some dread creature's mold-encrusted talons; surely it is the Angel of Academic Failure and Bewilderingly Utter Ineptitude. And by "angel" I, of course, speak euphemistically. Some days I wake up and think: How did I even get this far? It's certainly not my looks or my leadership ability or my sparkling wit; until Saturday I thought it might have been the gray gook lodged in my watermelon-sized noggin. Now, methinks not.
Let me set the scene for you.
My professor/advisor/mentor, Dr. Silay, is conducting phone interviews with non-native Turkish speakers for his work with the State Department; he is employed by them to evaluate Turkish language ability for potential new-hires in that shadowy organization. So he begs of me: can I use you for a subject? Of course, since he is the only Turkish Studies person at IU, and I, the only non-native "speaker" of Turkish, the choice was as obvious for him as it was damning for me. He preps me for a bit and then tells me he will call at the stroke of two Saturday afternoon.
2 PM Saturday. Ring, ring.
We chit-chat for a few moments and then we decide to get down to business. He begins to record and reads a prepared schpiel about the nature of the interview, the project, and how I will be involved. Then, it's down to bid'ness. I'll write this all in English, though of course, none of it was so.
Kemal bey: So, Domonic, tell me a little bit about yourself. What do you do? Where are you from? What do you study?
Dom, Developmentally-Challenged Lame-o: I student. I from Maine. I study Turkish and Turkish language. I go Indiana University. 3 year ago I study in Turkey. I stay Ankara. I like lot.
KB: I see. Tell me, Domonic, what was your average day like in Turkey?
DDCL: I wake up. I go class. I eat. I go Ankara. I sleep.
KB: Uh-huh. (reaches for "Retard Cards") Thank you, that was fascinating.
DDCL: Thank you.
KB: Now, let's do a little role-playing. I work in a restaurant and you want to make a reservation. OK?
DDCL: Sigh. Ok. Hello!
KB: Hello, this is the Ankara Kebap House! How can I help you?
DDCL: I want reservation. Is there one?
KB: There are many.
DDCL: .....
KB: When would you like your reservation for?
DDCL: I want 6 o'clock.
KB: Smoking or non?
DDCL: Non.
KB: Thanks. (Shuffles "Retard Cards").
This goes on for some time. In one role-play, I have to pretend I am a sailor on shore-leave. Oh, come on! How do you say "red-light district" in Turkish? Anyone? Kırmızı ışığı mahallesi?
Anyway, it was awful. When Kemal bey hung up, I thought: bleach! bleach goes down smoothly! There was too much pressure! Too much at stake! I choked!
Thankfully, the rest of the weekend was delightful. I spent a lot of time sleeping, a lot of time snuggling, and, periodically, eating one of Brooke's peanut-butter balls. Can't eat too many: they are not only sacred, but also endangered; them, and condors.
Today, back to the harrowing truth of the semester: wow, I suck it, and suck it hard. With a thought that brought my gorge to the rim of my esophagus, I remembered that, previous to my botched phone interview, Kemal bey had suggested that my Readings in Turkish Literature class (enrollment: two) could be a translation class. His plot: get a hold of a saleable Turkish novel that hasn't been translated into English, and then we'd do it up and publish it as a collaborative effort. Of course, with that call I will no doubt find myself at the receiving end of flashcards: Cat! Bird! Monkey! Truck! Dammit all to hell!
I do know, though, that there is one thing I am getting to know blessedly well: immigration crap. In the next four months I will be training two, potentially three, people for Front Desk work. While I was explaining something to Victim Number One today, I found that I was not only confident but also quasi-knowledgeable! Muahahahahahahaha! Eat that, State Department! I may not be able to effectively convey my desire to have a heated room in a hotel, but I sure as hell can tell you about automatic revalidation for F-1 visa holders for travel to Canada, Mexico and the outlying islands!
[Whimper.]
Tonight: Homework, and lots of it. Hurrah for May! Come to thy lover swifly, comeliest of months! Relieve thy supplicant of his slump! Also, bring pizza! I hunger!
Have a good night, Bloomington.
Dom
I'm not entirely sure I am even in my own league anymore. In the background of my day-to-day workings, I hear the vile clacking of some dread creature's mold-encrusted talons; surely it is the Angel of Academic Failure and Bewilderingly Utter Ineptitude. And by "angel" I, of course, speak euphemistically. Some days I wake up and think: How did I even get this far? It's certainly not my looks or my leadership ability or my sparkling wit; until Saturday I thought it might have been the gray gook lodged in my watermelon-sized noggin. Now, methinks not.
Let me set the scene for you.
My professor/advisor/mentor, Dr. Silay, is conducting phone interviews with non-native Turkish speakers for his work with the State Department; he is employed by them to evaluate Turkish language ability for potential new-hires in that shadowy organization. So he begs of me: can I use you for a subject? Of course, since he is the only Turkish Studies person at IU, and I, the only non-native "speaker" of Turkish, the choice was as obvious for him as it was damning for me. He preps me for a bit and then tells me he will call at the stroke of two Saturday afternoon.
2 PM Saturday. Ring, ring.
We chit-chat for a few moments and then we decide to get down to business. He begins to record and reads a prepared schpiel about the nature of the interview, the project, and how I will be involved. Then, it's down to bid'ness. I'll write this all in English, though of course, none of it was so.
Kemal bey: So, Domonic, tell me a little bit about yourself. What do you do? Where are you from? What do you study?
Dom, Developmentally-Challenged Lame-o: I student. I from Maine. I study Turkish and Turkish language. I go Indiana University. 3 year ago I study in Turkey. I stay Ankara. I like lot.
KB: I see. Tell me, Domonic, what was your average day like in Turkey?
DDCL: I wake up. I go class. I eat. I go Ankara. I sleep.
KB: Uh-huh. (reaches for "Retard Cards") Thank you, that was fascinating.
DDCL: Thank you.
KB: Now, let's do a little role-playing. I work in a restaurant and you want to make a reservation. OK?
DDCL: Sigh. Ok. Hello!
KB: Hello, this is the Ankara Kebap House! How can I help you?
DDCL: I want reservation. Is there one?
KB: There are many.
DDCL: .....
KB: When would you like your reservation for?
DDCL: I want 6 o'clock.
KB: Smoking or non?
DDCL: Non.
KB: Thanks. (Shuffles "Retard Cards").
This goes on for some time. In one role-play, I have to pretend I am a sailor on shore-leave. Oh, come on! How do you say "red-light district" in Turkish? Anyone? Kırmızı ışığı mahallesi?
Anyway, it was awful. When Kemal bey hung up, I thought: bleach! bleach goes down smoothly! There was too much pressure! Too much at stake! I choked!
Thankfully, the rest of the weekend was delightful. I spent a lot of time sleeping, a lot of time snuggling, and, periodically, eating one of Brooke's peanut-butter balls. Can't eat too many: they are not only sacred, but also endangered; them, and condors.
Today, back to the harrowing truth of the semester: wow, I suck it, and suck it hard. With a thought that brought my gorge to the rim of my esophagus, I remembered that, previous to my botched phone interview, Kemal bey had suggested that my Readings in Turkish Literature class (enrollment: two) could be a translation class. His plot: get a hold of a saleable Turkish novel that hasn't been translated into English, and then we'd do it up and publish it as a collaborative effort. Of course, with that call I will no doubt find myself at the receiving end of flashcards: Cat! Bird! Monkey! Truck! Dammit all to hell!
I do know, though, that there is one thing I am getting to know blessedly well: immigration crap. In the next four months I will be training two, potentially three, people for Front Desk work. While I was explaining something to Victim Number One today, I found that I was not only confident but also quasi-knowledgeable! Muahahahahahahaha! Eat that, State Department! I may not be able to effectively convey my desire to have a heated room in a hotel, but I sure as hell can tell you about automatic revalidation for F-1 visa holders for travel to Canada, Mexico and the outlying islands!
[Whimper.]
Tonight: Homework, and lots of it. Hurrah for May! Come to thy lover swifly, comeliest of months! Relieve thy supplicant of his slump! Also, bring pizza! I hunger!
Have a good night, Bloomington.
Dom
Friday, January 14, 2005
The bus; also, Lot's wife.
Oh, my devoted, long have I been torn from thee!
I have but to plead with ye to forgive my misdeed. I'd thought that, since I have no real new classes and have the same effing schedule as last semester, I'd pick this one up quickly. Then I remembered what made last semester so enchanting: three languages and another Satan-worshipping writing-intensive death course. However, the bliss of a three day weekend yawns before me, and yea, it is to be replete with sleeping and effing around.
This morning, however, I was confronted with perhaps the single most challenging moment of my time here in Bloomington: should I, or should I not, snuff the obnoxious woman who is shrieking like a raped mandrill in the liqueur-reeking confines of the Bloomington #1 Downtown bus? I got the distinct impression that, had I taken my jaunty satchel’s strap and garroted her, I'd have been acquitted purely based on the witness' testimony. Well, let me preface this story with the following disclaimer:
Domonic doesn't ride the Bloomington bus, nor any other means of public transportation, with hopes (high or not) of meeting the world's most sophisticated people. Fellow students, townies, raving homeless lunatics with decomposing undercarriages - we belong to a vast network of the gravid underbelly of public service users.
So, it was 10 AM and I had to be at Turkish class by 11:15. Seeing as how I am still possessed of two brain lobes as well as my brainstem, I take note that I would have had to very literally slaughter someone to get a parking spot anywhere near campus at that hour. So, I pick up the #1 Downtown a half-block from my door. Now: even though it's 10 AM at this point, I had not yet consumed a caffeinated fructose beverage, and as those who love me know, mornings and I are like Pakistan and India. We see each other all the time, but the loathing is intense. I get on the bus and a young woman and her friend are sitting, hidden, in the back of the bus; from OUTSIDE THE BUS, with the doors closed, I could hear her whinnying like a mare in heat. The bus driver shot me a look when I presented my Indiana Card as if to say "Come up from behind me and cut my throat; shuffle must I off this mortal coil." I have to give this young woman her dues: she smelled like a semi-pastoral water-buffalo herder with damp undergarments, and her conversation was the most inane, stultifyingly awful drivel I have ever been privy to. The following is an actual transcript of her conversation. By "actual" I mean "how could it not be real? It's seared into my skull for all eternity."
Obnoxious townie ghetto wannabe: Girl, no he di'ent! You playin'?
Quieter friend: I ain't playin'! That what he said!
OTGW: No he di'ent! He a foo'! *snap, snap, snap*
QF: I can' believe you been w'ih him!
OTGW: Oh, I know you not goin' there! He say he love me! Gave me new bras and all!
QF: Well, he is yo' baby daddy.
OTGW: That not what the test say! OK?! *laughs like a braying ass*
QF: You crazy!
OTGW: No, YOU crazy!
This goes on for fifteen minutes. I was long enough for me to go to the happy place and ride three pretty unicorns while eating Brooke's buckeyes (correction: peanut-butter balls) and drinking from the "Live Wire" Mountain Dew river. The man across from me--he, in a fedora and a trenchcoat and a healthy two-week stubble goin' on--cracked his knuckles menacingly. It was then that I noticed that he had the letters "L-O-V-E" tattooed on his knuckle bridge. I was suddenly siezed with the urge to take a fistful of cash and go get "L-I-F-E" seared onto one hand and "C-O-R-N" on the other; that way, when I am in my eagerly anticipated first bar brawl I can instill fear merely by brandishing my closed fists, as they will assume that I'd gotten inked in the clink. Well, that, and I will also be grasping the neck and jagged body of a beer bottle that I'd smashed dramatically on the bar moments before. [fantasy!]
As I disembarked from the bus, it was all I could do to not impale this young woman with my mental atlatl/spear. I figured, hey, there's no need to look back at her. Yet, of course I did; I couldn't resist looking at the splendiferous ruin that was her outfit and her extension-begrafted h'ar, as well as her jungle red Lee Press-On Nails. When I did, like Lot's wife, I was turned momentarily into an immovable pillar. Why, you ask? Because she winked at me.
Last night, as I attempted fitful slumber, I came to the realization that I was feeling incomplete somehow. Something was missing from my life, and without it I'd surely fly into insanity. A clarion bolt of inspiration struck me like a brakeless Ford Festiva: I need Judeo-Christian devotional statuary, and I need some now. The keening I felt was, no doubt, due to my psychic connection to my St. Anthony de Padua travel-buddy and his need for other playmates; he and the bronze Ganesh statues have been forbidden to play with each other following an unfortunate tusking. Damn his needs!
Since I was already awake and had nothing to do, I wrested the Ouija board from the gore-covered clown who's taken up residence under the big-boy bed and set to lighting some candles. As the swampy stench of a flooded cemetery rattled through my earthly goods borne on a frigid wind, I summoned "Earl", whose wife caught him au naturale with the neighbor's wife on their anniversary.
Dom: How many times did she stab you?
"Earl": T...h...e...c...o...r...o...n...e...r...s...a...i...d...t...h...a...t...I...l...o...o...k...e...d...
l...i...k...e....1...9...0...p...o...u...n...d...s...o...f...s...h...a...v...e...d...h...a...m.
Dom: I don't blame her, though I do wonder if the carpal tunnel was worth it for her.
"Earl": G...e...t...t...o...y...o...u...r...p...o...i...n...t...a...s...s.
Dom: What's that warm, fuzzy feeling I have in my chest?
"Earl": C...o...n...g...e...a...l...e...d...b...a...c...o...n...l...a...r...d...s...i....z...z..l...i...n...g.
Dom: No, that feeling like something's moving in there? Could it be? Do I have a heart?
"Earl": M...y...v...o...t...e...i...s...o...n...p...a...r...a...s...i...t...e...s.
Dom: Might the ice have broken? Could there be... love?
"Earl": W...h...o...d...l...o...v...e...y...o...u, ....y....o...u...m...u...t...a...n...t...?
Dom: [hurls board onto floor; gaily colored gloved hand snatches it back under the bed]
OK, the cluster is getting effing hot, and the gentleman sitting next to me has apparently been siring ilk with a musk-ox. Off to Ottoman doom!
Hats off to you, Bloomington.
Dom
I have but to plead with ye to forgive my misdeed. I'd thought that, since I have no real new classes and have the same effing schedule as last semester, I'd pick this one up quickly. Then I remembered what made last semester so enchanting: three languages and another Satan-worshipping writing-intensive death course. However, the bliss of a three day weekend yawns before me, and yea, it is to be replete with sleeping and effing around.
This morning, however, I was confronted with perhaps the single most challenging moment of my time here in Bloomington: should I, or should I not, snuff the obnoxious woman who is shrieking like a raped mandrill in the liqueur-reeking confines of the Bloomington #1 Downtown bus? I got the distinct impression that, had I taken my jaunty satchel’s strap and garroted her, I'd have been acquitted purely based on the witness' testimony. Well, let me preface this story with the following disclaimer:
Domonic doesn't ride the Bloomington bus, nor any other means of public transportation, with hopes (high or not) of meeting the world's most sophisticated people. Fellow students, townies, raving homeless lunatics with decomposing undercarriages - we belong to a vast network of the gravid underbelly of public service users.
So, it was 10 AM and I had to be at Turkish class by 11:15. Seeing as how I am still possessed of two brain lobes as well as my brainstem, I take note that I would have had to very literally slaughter someone to get a parking spot anywhere near campus at that hour. So, I pick up the #1 Downtown a half-block from my door. Now: even though it's 10 AM at this point, I had not yet consumed a caffeinated fructose beverage, and as those who love me know, mornings and I are like Pakistan and India. We see each other all the time, but the loathing is intense. I get on the bus and a young woman and her friend are sitting, hidden, in the back of the bus; from OUTSIDE THE BUS, with the doors closed, I could hear her whinnying like a mare in heat. The bus driver shot me a look when I presented my Indiana Card as if to say "Come up from behind me and cut my throat; shuffle must I off this mortal coil." I have to give this young woman her dues: she smelled like a semi-pastoral water-buffalo herder with damp undergarments, and her conversation was the most inane, stultifyingly awful drivel I have ever been privy to. The following is an actual transcript of her conversation. By "actual" I mean "how could it not be real? It's seared into my skull for all eternity."
Obnoxious townie ghetto wannabe: Girl, no he di'ent! You playin'?
Quieter friend: I ain't playin'! That what he said!
OTGW: No he di'ent! He a foo'! *snap, snap, snap*
QF: I can' believe you been w'ih him!
OTGW: Oh, I know you not goin' there! He say he love me! Gave me new bras and all!
QF: Well, he is yo' baby daddy.
OTGW: That not what the test say! OK?! *laughs like a braying ass*
QF: You crazy!
OTGW: No, YOU crazy!
This goes on for fifteen minutes. I was long enough for me to go to the happy place and ride three pretty unicorns while eating Brooke's buckeyes (correction: peanut-butter balls) and drinking from the "Live Wire" Mountain Dew river. The man across from me--he, in a fedora and a trenchcoat and a healthy two-week stubble goin' on--cracked his knuckles menacingly. It was then that I noticed that he had the letters "L-O-V-E" tattooed on his knuckle bridge. I was suddenly siezed with the urge to take a fistful of cash and go get "L-I-F-E" seared onto one hand and "C-O-R-N" on the other; that way, when I am in my eagerly anticipated first bar brawl I can instill fear merely by brandishing my closed fists, as they will assume that I'd gotten inked in the clink. Well, that, and I will also be grasping the neck and jagged body of a beer bottle that I'd smashed dramatically on the bar moments before. [fantasy!]
As I disembarked from the bus, it was all I could do to not impale this young woman with my mental atlatl/spear. I figured, hey, there's no need to look back at her. Yet, of course I did; I couldn't resist looking at the splendiferous ruin that was her outfit and her extension-begrafted h'ar, as well as her jungle red Lee Press-On Nails. When I did, like Lot's wife, I was turned momentarily into an immovable pillar. Why, you ask? Because she winked at me.
Last night, as I attempted fitful slumber, I came to the realization that I was feeling incomplete somehow. Something was missing from my life, and without it I'd surely fly into insanity. A clarion bolt of inspiration struck me like a brakeless Ford Festiva: I need Judeo-Christian devotional statuary, and I need some now. The keening I felt was, no doubt, due to my psychic connection to my St. Anthony de Padua travel-buddy and his need for other playmates; he and the bronze Ganesh statues have been forbidden to play with each other following an unfortunate tusking. Damn his needs!
Since I was already awake and had nothing to do, I wrested the Ouija board from the gore-covered clown who's taken up residence under the big-boy bed and set to lighting some candles. As the swampy stench of a flooded cemetery rattled through my earthly goods borne on a frigid wind, I summoned "Earl", whose wife caught him au naturale with the neighbor's wife on their anniversary.
Dom: How many times did she stab you?
"Earl": T...h...e...c...o...r...o...n...e...r...s...a...i...d...t...h...a...t...I...l...o...o...k...e...d...
l...i...k...e....1...9...0...p...o...u...n...d...s...o...f...s...h...a...v...e...d...h...a...m.
Dom: I don't blame her, though I do wonder if the carpal tunnel was worth it for her.
"Earl": G...e...t...t...o...y...o...u...r...p...o...i...n...t...a...s...s.
Dom: What's that warm, fuzzy feeling I have in my chest?
"Earl": C...o...n...g...e...a...l...e...d...b...a...c...o...n...l...a...r...d...s...i....z...z..l...i...n...g.
Dom: No, that feeling like something's moving in there? Could it be? Do I have a heart?
"Earl": M...y...v...o...t...e...i...s...o...n...p...a...r...a...s...i...t...e...s.
Dom: Might the ice have broken? Could there be... love?
"Earl": W...h...o...d...l...o...v...e...y...o...u, ....y....o...u...m...u...t...a...n...t...?
Dom: [hurls board onto floor; gaily colored gloved hand snatches it back under the bed]
OK, the cluster is getting effing hot, and the gentleman sitting next to me has apparently been siring ilk with a musk-ox. Off to Ottoman doom!
Hats off to you, Bloomington.
Dom
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
Peanut-butter balls of doom.
This morning I awoke to a strange sound; for a drowsy, Benadryl-drugged moment I thought I'd lost my sensibilities completely. The sound was thunder. To confirm that I hadn't developed a grapefruit-sized brain abscess, the drumming of bathwater-warm rain began in earnest. I got up, turned off my alarm ten minutes before it went off, and began to wonder how in the hell a thunderstorm happens in January in the Midwest. It is, at nearly midnight, more than sixty degrees outside.
It's the end of days.
Grass is green. Insects have begun to emerge from their vile chrysalises. And you just know that somewhere on this campus, {social} sorority girls are getting together for emergency bikini-waxing sessions. "Like, Jeezum Crow! If I get caught all fuzzy at the big DEKE hot-dog and lite beer orgyfest, I'll just die!"
Brooke (esteemed co-founder of Phi Delta Gamma) brought two objects to the office today. One was her wedding album, which, despite the fact that I've seen many of the prototype pictures, nevertheless makes me well up like a kid who's been left by his "loving parents" at fat-camp. The second was a tin. Inside this tin were dozens of peanut-butter balls, lovingly dipped in chocolate.
Obviously, Brooke hates me.
I eat one, and as I feel the flesh of my mortal body slough off to reveal my innermost and most wanton desires' fulfillment, I know that, deep inside, I can not--nay! will not!--rest until I have eaten as many of these delights as possible.
The little voice within tells me to share, like a good boy. The part of me that knows I should never try crack because I'll like it too much told me to get off my ass and into the breakroom, lest one of those sacred orbs slip into some other person's gullet. I would be at the Front Desk, helping the needy and international, when from the breakroom I'd hear my name spoken, softly and gently, like a warm summer zephyr. It was too much. I thought the tea was bad news.
Ok, OK, bitches! I ate six of them! Sue me!
Oh, and I can already tell that my French class [if this is at all possible!] will be more awful than last semester. The professor... oh, it makes my nonexistent womb ache and the gorge rise in my throat. Nothing should be worth this much unless you get saluted for it.
Well, I am about to pass out. See you tomorrow, Bloomington.
Dom
It's the end of days.
Grass is green. Insects have begun to emerge from their vile chrysalises. And you just know that somewhere on this campus, {social} sorority girls are getting together for emergency bikini-waxing sessions. "Like, Jeezum Crow! If I get caught all fuzzy at the big DEKE hot-dog and lite beer orgyfest, I'll just die!"
Brooke (esteemed co-founder of Phi Delta Gamma) brought two objects to the office today. One was her wedding album, which, despite the fact that I've seen many of the prototype pictures, nevertheless makes me well up like a kid who's been left by his "loving parents" at fat-camp. The second was a tin. Inside this tin were dozens of peanut-butter balls, lovingly dipped in chocolate.
Obviously, Brooke hates me.
I eat one, and as I feel the flesh of my mortal body slough off to reveal my innermost and most wanton desires' fulfillment, I know that, deep inside, I can not--nay! will not!--rest until I have eaten as many of these delights as possible.
The little voice within tells me to share, like a good boy. The part of me that knows I should never try crack because I'll like it too much told me to get off my ass and into the breakroom, lest one of those sacred orbs slip into some other person's gullet. I would be at the Front Desk, helping the needy and international, when from the breakroom I'd hear my name spoken, softly and gently, like a warm summer zephyr. It was too much. I thought the tea was bad news.
Ok, OK, bitches! I ate six of them! Sue me!
Oh, and I can already tell that my French class [if this is at all possible!] will be more awful than last semester. The professor... oh, it makes my nonexistent womb ache and the gorge rise in my throat. Nothing should be worth this much unless you get saluted for it.
Well, I am about to pass out. See you tomorrow, Bloomington.
Dom
Monday, January 10, 2005
By the pricking of my thumbs...
... gross semester this way comes.
To say I'm a little underwhelmed about the prospects for this semester would be like saying Pentacostal women have poofy bangs; harrowing indeed shall this semester be. I know this because I've done it before. Yes, Life in the Corn-ers, deja vu: Turkish, Ottoman Turkish, French and Readings in Turkish Literature. The sharp among you will remember that I didn't have Readings in Turkish Literature last semester--simmah down! gorry!--and that I had The Glorification of Jihad. You're right. However, this class is at the same time on the same day, taught by the same professor and has the same people in it.
Have any of you ever seen Groundhog Day?
Today was the first day back, and it was grim. My Turkish professor managed to plummet from his bicycle following a wipeout on ice over break, and watching him try to write his freaky-deeky Uralo-Altaic language on the board was like watching a six-year-old eat a pile of paint chips: you just can't look away, and you feel slimy inside for it. At one point today he handed out a worksheet with a bunch of people doing ridiculous things, and under each one was the action's name in English; we, apparently, were to go ahead and fill in the Turkish. I don't know about you, but never does a day go by when I don't use the word "lance" or "hurtle" in English. Needless to say, we were at a loss. His creepy Middle Eastern eyes glistened, and I thought with growing dread to the prescribed narcotics that swam lazily in his veins. Once he determined that we were developmentally challenged gibbons vocab-wise, he moved on to an excercise that was supposed to make us flex our verbal muscles again. He gave me a picture of a swarthy taxi driver waiting at his cab-stand and told me to make up a story about him.
Well. If there's one thing my friends and family have learned not to do, it's allow me to make up stories. I scribbled for ten minutes and then stood up in front of the other two people in my class to tell them the sordid story of Ahmet, the taksici:
Ahmet was born on a straw pallet in a remote Eastern Anatolian town that has more goats than people. His parents signed their names with their thumbprints, having never taken the time to learn to read or write. When he wasn't beating wolves off of his family's meager flock with rocks and a stick, he tended to his twelve brothers and sisters, one of whom was carried off by an eagle the size of a Shetland pony. When Ahmet was eighteen, he left his squalid malarial village for Istanbul, the Big Meat on a Stick herself, with about the equivalent of ten American dollars in his wallet. Within twenty minutes, he was broke and had to indenture himself to a taxi-stand so that he could afford his unheated seventeenth floor walkup that reeked of urine and tears. Some nights, after getting paid, he found comfort in the company of a Belorussian lady of the evening who had lost most of her teeth and most of her nose in a tragic pimp-beating. The rest of the money found itself in the hands of the local mafia, who threatened him with castration and horse sodomy.
Clearly, Abbas bey hadn't figured I'd talk about that.
And, of course, there's the office. Today, a young couple came in for counseling about their future. The strapping young lad wanted to know how long he could be gone outside the US and have his wife and child remain here. My steel-trap mind shot to the exact same conversation I'd had not all that long ago; lo! it was the same couple! I remembered them! They were advisor-shopping, hoping for a better answer! I suppose they hadn't reckoned on me being there half of the time the office is open every week. Foiled by that hairy mofo at the Front Desk yet again they were. Next time, a squirt-bottle emblazoned with a clown-faced mark o' the beast, filled with tepid water, awaits them. Bring it.
Tomorrow: work all day {somersault of joy!} and then the wretched Romance language that dare not speak its name. Restrain me, lest I harm myself in my Dionysian celebration.
It's good to be back, Bloomington.
Dom
To say I'm a little underwhelmed about the prospects for this semester would be like saying Pentacostal women have poofy bangs; harrowing indeed shall this semester be. I know this because I've done it before. Yes, Life in the Corn-ers, deja vu: Turkish, Ottoman Turkish, French and Readings in Turkish Literature. The sharp among you will remember that I didn't have Readings in Turkish Literature last semester--simmah down! gorry!--and that I had The Glorification of Jihad. You're right. However, this class is at the same time on the same day, taught by the same professor and has the same people in it.
Have any of you ever seen Groundhog Day?
Today was the first day back, and it was grim. My Turkish professor managed to plummet from his bicycle following a wipeout on ice over break, and watching him try to write his freaky-deeky Uralo-Altaic language on the board was like watching a six-year-old eat a pile of paint chips: you just can't look away, and you feel slimy inside for it. At one point today he handed out a worksheet with a bunch of people doing ridiculous things, and under each one was the action's name in English; we, apparently, were to go ahead and fill in the Turkish. I don't know about you, but never does a day go by when I don't use the word "lance" or "hurtle" in English. Needless to say, we were at a loss. His creepy Middle Eastern eyes glistened, and I thought with growing dread to the prescribed narcotics that swam lazily in his veins. Once he determined that we were developmentally challenged gibbons vocab-wise, he moved on to an excercise that was supposed to make us flex our verbal muscles again. He gave me a picture of a swarthy taxi driver waiting at his cab-stand and told me to make up a story about him.
Well. If there's one thing my friends and family have learned not to do, it's allow me to make up stories. I scribbled for ten minutes and then stood up in front of the other two people in my class to tell them the sordid story of Ahmet, the taksici:
Ahmet was born on a straw pallet in a remote Eastern Anatolian town that has more goats than people. His parents signed their names with their thumbprints, having never taken the time to learn to read or write. When he wasn't beating wolves off of his family's meager flock with rocks and a stick, he tended to his twelve brothers and sisters, one of whom was carried off by an eagle the size of a Shetland pony. When Ahmet was eighteen, he left his squalid malarial village for Istanbul, the Big Meat on a Stick herself, with about the equivalent of ten American dollars in his wallet. Within twenty minutes, he was broke and had to indenture himself to a taxi-stand so that he could afford his unheated seventeenth floor walkup that reeked of urine and tears. Some nights, after getting paid, he found comfort in the company of a Belorussian lady of the evening who had lost most of her teeth and most of her nose in a tragic pimp-beating. The rest of the money found itself in the hands of the local mafia, who threatened him with castration and horse sodomy.
Clearly, Abbas bey hadn't figured I'd talk about that.
And, of course, there's the office. Today, a young couple came in for counseling about their future. The strapping young lad wanted to know how long he could be gone outside the US and have his wife and child remain here. My steel-trap mind shot to the exact same conversation I'd had not all that long ago; lo! it was the same couple! I remembered them! They were advisor-shopping, hoping for a better answer! I suppose they hadn't reckoned on me being there half of the time the office is open every week. Foiled by that hairy mofo at the Front Desk yet again they were. Next time, a squirt-bottle emblazoned with a clown-faced mark o' the beast, filled with tepid water, awaits them. Bring it.
Tomorrow: work all day {somersault of joy!} and then the wretched Romance language that dare not speak its name. Restrain me, lest I harm myself in my Dionysian celebration.
It's good to be back, Bloomington.
Dom
Saturday, January 08, 2005
A race against time.
At T-minus-seven minutes ago, I allowed a rogue Benadryl slip past the smooth patch in the back of my throat where my tonsils and adenoids used to hold court and into the sea of acid and Indonesian fried rice that is the Domster's gullet; as we speak, it is racing through my bloodstream with intent to incapacitate. The Biblical plagues of Egypt hold nothing to the recent rash of eye swellings that have been befalling me. I look like Tina Turner after a drunken brawl with Ike. If I knew what was causing them, I could take measures to make sure they couldn't return, but as it is, I can only assume it's divine retribution. Flash to Dom's Former Lives:
Ramesesean Egypt; threw infant Hebrews into the Nile for the crocs.
Periklean Athens; brewed the hemlock tincture that snuffed Socrates.
Hadrianic Rome; cheered as early Christians were mauled and gored by ravenous beasts.
Ming China; hobbled insolent Great Wall workers for insolence.
Mughal India; bricked Sikh children alive in furnaces.
The list goes on and on. It could be worse: I could be visited by that special swelling that only happens when you strain too hard when "laying cable".
As days go, today was as productive as those cows you see on CNN who are given bovine hormones. I got new shoes, and it was a darn good thing. Of my other shoes, I have (1) pair of lumberjack boots, (1) pair of sandals, (1) pair of ratty sneakers, (1) pair of dressy dressy shoes and (1) pair of nice shoes. The "nice shoes" only look nice, as they reek like something foul that you pull out of an aquatic crime scene. I've tried everything, including exorcism, but the shoes laugh at my foolish attempts and continue quietly reeking, often giving off stench that is visible to the naked eye. I also managed to get my books from the IU Gestapo-store, aka the Bookstore, which managed to charge me $81 for four books, one of which was a novel and the other three are bound photocopies. I also managed to push my mask count to 92 with a stunning Japanese Noh mask from devoted Life in the Corn reader, Nori, who brought it back across the Pacific for little ol' me. {welling up}
Last night at dinner with Keith at the Cracker Barrel (mmmmm....) I found myself browsing in their "country store" for tasteful (hahahahaha ah ha...) objet d'art when I stumbled upon the "clearance" section, which at this time of year means "stuff we couldn't move for Christmas." Hanging on a wire Christmas tree that you could buy "as is, no returns" were strange, vaguely Latin American-looking Nativity ornaments. Upon closer inspection, lo! they were African American nativity ornaments. In the Cracker Barrel. Cracker. Barrel. At $.53 a pop, the three that now adorn my wall fill me with a nearly insane amount of delight.
One day, when I grow up and have a big-boy apartment all to my own, I am going to have the most fun house all y'all have ever cast your eyes upon. (Dangling participle.) Just you wait and see.
My fingers now feel as though they've been shot with Novacain(e?). My jaw slackens; a ribbon of slaver snakes down the front of my shirt. Oh, but that my snuggly could be here to help me warm my chilly hooves!
Good night, Blooming.... ZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Ramesesean Egypt; threw infant Hebrews into the Nile for the crocs.
Periklean Athens; brewed the hemlock tincture that snuffed Socrates.
Hadrianic Rome; cheered as early Christians were mauled and gored by ravenous beasts.
Ming China; hobbled insolent Great Wall workers for insolence.
Mughal India; bricked Sikh children alive in furnaces.
The list goes on and on. It could be worse: I could be visited by that special swelling that only happens when you strain too hard when "laying cable".
As days go, today was as productive as those cows you see on CNN who are given bovine hormones. I got new shoes, and it was a darn good thing. Of my other shoes, I have (1) pair of lumberjack boots, (1) pair of sandals, (1) pair of ratty sneakers, (1) pair of dressy dressy shoes and (1) pair of nice shoes. The "nice shoes" only look nice, as they reek like something foul that you pull out of an aquatic crime scene. I've tried everything, including exorcism, but the shoes laugh at my foolish attempts and continue quietly reeking, often giving off stench that is visible to the naked eye. I also managed to get my books from the IU Gestapo-store, aka the Bookstore, which managed to charge me $81 for four books, one of which was a novel and the other three are bound photocopies. I also managed to push my mask count to 92 with a stunning Japanese Noh mask from devoted Life in the Corn reader, Nori, who brought it back across the Pacific for little ol' me. {welling up}
Last night at dinner with Keith at the Cracker Barrel (mmmmm....) I found myself browsing in their "country store" for tasteful (hahahahaha ah ha...) objet d'art when I stumbled upon the "clearance" section, which at this time of year means "stuff we couldn't move for Christmas." Hanging on a wire Christmas tree that you could buy "as is, no returns" were strange, vaguely Latin American-looking Nativity ornaments. Upon closer inspection, lo! they were African American nativity ornaments. In the Cracker Barrel. Cracker. Barrel. At $.53 a pop, the three that now adorn my wall fill me with a nearly insane amount of delight.
One day, when I grow up and have a big-boy apartment all to my own, I am going to have the most fun house all y'all have ever cast your eyes upon. (Dangling participle.) Just you wait and see.
My fingers now feel as though they've been shot with Novacain(e?). My jaw slackens; a ribbon of slaver snakes down the front of my shirt. Oh, but that my snuggly could be here to help me warm my chilly hooves!
Good night, Blooming.... ZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Thursday, January 06, 2005
Jus' lahk them there Bahbull tahms.
As I sat in Bangor International Airport yesterday "morning" at 4 AM waiting to board my flight back to the corn, irritable and bleary-eyed, I looked at my ticket for any suspicious markings that would lead a "cheerful" TSA officer to believe that I was desperate to detonate some incendiary device on our thirty person propeller-driven mosquito-sized aircraft. When I went to pass through security, a young woman whom I went to high school with (five on my Random Encounter-Meter) took my boarding pass and waved it under a red scanny-thing. It beeped twice.
Beep one: Allahu.
Beep two: Akbar.
So yet again I was taken aside for "special treatment." My rapist- oh, I mean, officer- was a man who clearly did not want to be wanding people at a time when most humans would be slumbering. To say he was brisk with his patdown would be like saying there's a lot of them there Chinese people. I mean, it was like a prison movie without the dropped soap. I hobbled away with my bags and a few shreds of my dignity; his musk lingered on me for hours. Honestly, drunk and unshowered at 4 AM? Of course, I was also drunk and unshowered, so naturally he felt his "move" was appropriate.
This time, the plane took off. At the precise astral moment when I thought I could fall asleep, the flight attendant brine hag came over the PA to say that we'd be landing soon. Put on my brown hide shoes and I boarded the plane/ Touched down, me all full of booze in the middle of the pouring rain. Cincinnati. My sworn enemy. With what I thought would be about a half-hour of layover time, I relieved myself and made way for the gate. Indianapolis. Delayed. I was beginning to think that I'd somehow incurred the wrath of the airplane imps; I hastened to the Auntie Annie's pretzel counter, purchased a pretzel-wrapped hotdog and ceremonially cut its throat. Just when I thought that one more moment in that, the undercarriage of Ohio, would make me do the unspeakable - buy a Cosmo magazine - my flight began to board. By this time, in the amount of time that I waited for my flight I could have driven to Indianapolis and back. I wanted to die, and I wanted to die so hard. Mostly, though, I wanted to sleep. On the twenty minute flight to Indianapolis, the flight attendant threw six ounce bottles of Dasani water at us from her vile nest near the cockpit; she was too busy molding the ground-up carcass of a ten-year-old into fine pottery to really care about our needs for the tasteless cookies they now serve on planes.
So. Back in the corn. First day back at work. I'd missed it here a lot. I have, as of yet, to unpack, but hey, you're pretty much useless when you're on the stem. I got a call from my friend Nicole, who invited me to dinner and to fetch my mail (I lived in Nicole's apartment this summer, and apparently not all of my "people" have my correct address yet). While dining upon a delightful pasta dish, I opened one envelope to reveal a small orangish slip and a folded piece of hard paper. The slip explained that the State of North Carolina had deemed that I was grossly overcharged for my car insurance and I was to be refunded (with interest!) the money I'd overpaid.
The hard paper was a check. A check for $531.
I imagined, for the briefest of moments, what watching manna falling from the sky would be like.
That'll keep me in Velveeta Shells n' Cheese for, like, a year.
It's good to be back, Bloomington.
Dom
Beep one: Allahu.
Beep two: Akbar.
So yet again I was taken aside for "special treatment." My rapist- oh, I mean, officer- was a man who clearly did not want to be wanding people at a time when most humans would be slumbering. To say he was brisk with his patdown would be like saying there's a lot of them there Chinese people. I mean, it was like a prison movie without the dropped soap. I hobbled away with my bags and a few shreds of my dignity; his musk lingered on me for hours. Honestly, drunk and unshowered at 4 AM? Of course, I was also drunk and unshowered, so naturally he felt his "move" was appropriate.
This time, the plane took off. At the precise astral moment when I thought I could fall asleep, the flight attendant brine hag came over the PA to say that we'd be landing soon. Put on my brown hide shoes and I boarded the plane/ Touched down, me all full of booze in the middle of the pouring rain. Cincinnati. My sworn enemy. With what I thought would be about a half-hour of layover time, I relieved myself and made way for the gate. Indianapolis. Delayed. I was beginning to think that I'd somehow incurred the wrath of the airplane imps; I hastened to the Auntie Annie's pretzel counter, purchased a pretzel-wrapped hotdog and ceremonially cut its throat. Just when I thought that one more moment in that, the undercarriage of Ohio, would make me do the unspeakable - buy a Cosmo magazine - my flight began to board. By this time, in the amount of time that I waited for my flight I could have driven to Indianapolis and back. I wanted to die, and I wanted to die so hard. Mostly, though, I wanted to sleep. On the twenty minute flight to Indianapolis, the flight attendant threw six ounce bottles of Dasani water at us from her vile nest near the cockpit; she was too busy molding the ground-up carcass of a ten-year-old into fine pottery to really care about our needs for the tasteless cookies they now serve on planes.
So. Back in the corn. First day back at work. I'd missed it here a lot. I have, as of yet, to unpack, but hey, you're pretty much useless when you're on the stem. I got a call from my friend Nicole, who invited me to dinner and to fetch my mail (I lived in Nicole's apartment this summer, and apparently not all of my "people" have my correct address yet). While dining upon a delightful pasta dish, I opened one envelope to reveal a small orangish slip and a folded piece of hard paper. The slip explained that the State of North Carolina had deemed that I was grossly overcharged for my car insurance and I was to be refunded (with interest!) the money I'd overpaid.
The hard paper was a check. A check for $531.
I imagined, for the briefest of moments, what watching manna falling from the sky would be like.
That'll keep me in Velveeta Shells n' Cheese for, like, a year.
It's good to be back, Bloomington.
Dom
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
One more night.
Shit. Now I have that Phil Collins song in my head.
This afternoon I took my thirteen metric tons of luggage and went to Bangor International (ah.. international) to fly back to the corn. I said my goodbyes and waited for my flight whilst eating airport clam chowder. Airport clam chowder!, you exclaim. Well, let me tell you a secret: everyone in this whole damn state, from the moment of birth, can fashion a savory chowdah from clam stock, potatoes, cream and the beasts themselves. That airport chowder was four hundred times tastier than anything I have been offered anywhere else outside of New England; it begs the question of why I try anymore. This includes the hag who works behind "The Coffee Shop" as well; her secret was a whisper of rosemary. So, as I looked out at the Maine skyline(trees), cradling my creamy treat, I thought: something's amiss.
I don't know what triggered it. The treat was agreeing with me; I'd purchased something delighful as a gift for someone who deserves it (cryptic!), and I was properly... rested. For some reason, I knew that I wasn't going to be going home to the corn today. When our plane hadn't yet arrived and it was ten minutes before we were supposed to be in the air, I thought: huh. When the plane came, and the pilot was one of the first people off the plane, I thought: double huh. When the airport staff started talking behind their folders about the flight, I thought:
Effing huh.
Well, it turns out that something was wrong with the plane. This news came after about a half hour of edginess bordering on mutiny. One wheelchair-bound woman stood up out of her chair just to fling a crap-loaf she'd made in her hand at the "cheerful" airport staff when the announcement came over the P.A. system. Several small chidren stopped munching on each other's digits to wail like trailer-living mongrels in heat. As I trudged down the stairs to the baggage claim to get my suitcases and call my mother, I thought: I'm not surprised that this happened. On the tail of that thought came, That airline employee has reflexes like a ninja, what with how she dodged that turd.
So, another night here in the woods. It could have been worse: I could have been stranded some evil place, like red-state-Ohio, instead of five blocks from my home. For dinner I ate a gigantic plate of Gulf of Maine shrimp; in a few hours I have to tuck in so that my FIVE FORTY A.M. flight won't be met by a Domonic whose need to kill has manifested.
Good night, Bangor.
Dom
This afternoon I took my thirteen metric tons of luggage and went to Bangor International (ah.. international) to fly back to the corn. I said my goodbyes and waited for my flight whilst eating airport clam chowder. Airport clam chowder!, you exclaim. Well, let me tell you a secret: everyone in this whole damn state, from the moment of birth, can fashion a savory chowdah from clam stock, potatoes, cream and the beasts themselves. That airport chowder was four hundred times tastier than anything I have been offered anywhere else outside of New England; it begs the question of why I try anymore. This includes the hag who works behind "The Coffee Shop" as well; her secret was a whisper of rosemary. So, as I looked out at the Maine skyline(trees), cradling my creamy treat, I thought: something's amiss.
I don't know what triggered it. The treat was agreeing with me; I'd purchased something delighful as a gift for someone who deserves it (cryptic!), and I was properly... rested. For some reason, I knew that I wasn't going to be going home to the corn today. When our plane hadn't yet arrived and it was ten minutes before we were supposed to be in the air, I thought: huh. When the plane came, and the pilot was one of the first people off the plane, I thought: double huh. When the airport staff started talking behind their folders about the flight, I thought:
Effing huh.
Well, it turns out that something was wrong with the plane. This news came after about a half hour of edginess bordering on mutiny. One wheelchair-bound woman stood up out of her chair just to fling a crap-loaf she'd made in her hand at the "cheerful" airport staff when the announcement came over the P.A. system. Several small chidren stopped munching on each other's digits to wail like trailer-living mongrels in heat. As I trudged down the stairs to the baggage claim to get my suitcases and call my mother, I thought: I'm not surprised that this happened. On the tail of that thought came, That airline employee has reflexes like a ninja, what with how she dodged that turd.
So, another night here in the woods. It could have been worse: I could have been stranded some evil place, like red-state-Ohio, instead of five blocks from my home. For dinner I ate a gigantic plate of Gulf of Maine shrimp; in a few hours I have to tuck in so that my FIVE FORTY A.M. flight won't be met by a Domonic whose need to kill has manifested.
Good night, Bangor.
Dom
Sunday, January 02, 2005
Oh, and just so you know...
If there's a blue underlined thing in any of my blogs, that's a hyperlink. Click it.
Is anyone out there yet?
Dom
Is anyone out there yet?
Dom
Saturday, January 01, 2005
I'll never let go, Jack...I'll never let go.
Of course, that was the best part of Titanic--watching one of the worst actors in Hollywood pretend to freeze to death in the frigid North Atlantic. Man, here I am, not having seen the movie in absolute months, geting all misted up.
It's a new year. 2005 came to me in the quiet New England city I've called home for the past decade in the company of one of my closest friends and devoted Life in the Corn-er, Jeny, cushioning the demise of this past year into silent repose. Well, that and the three large blueberry Seadog ales I'd slammed. There's a lot I'd like to forget about this past year, but mostly I think about the corn and how I, for good and not, have been profoundly affected by my decision to nest myself in it. I've lost a lot, but I think that what I've got now - a job I love, schoolwork that turns me on, a town I've come to adore, a nice home and a new, banjo-playing buddy - and I think: hey, maybe it was worth it.
Speaking of "loss", my sister took me today to Mount Desert Island so that I could fulfill my promise to my Life in the Corn readers to fling myself into the sea. The "loss" I am talking about was threefold:
1) One complete layer of skin.
2) The ability to feel pain.
3) Use your imagination.
(See pictures below).
There was still a wee bit of the white stuff on the sand when I, clad only in a "Dodge City Testicle Festival" shirt - oh, the irony- and shorts walked calmly into twenty-six degree water that was thick with marine algae and tiny bits of sea ice. The Gulf of Maine and I had words. Well, mostly I shrieked. The web of profanity that I wove will hang in space over Mount Desert Island for centuries to come. (Ah, the Christmas Story). When I emerged, I realized with a start that I'd brought towels but no change of clothes. Thankfully I still had my Indiana sweatshirt and my socks and my jeans, which, while cold, were not wet. As I frolicked on the beach, barefoot, for the next half hour looking for sand-dollars (four! found four!) in Maine in January, I thought: my GOD, I've gone around the bend. The line between "weird" and "gibbering lunatic" is perilously near.
Later, we went to the undisputed tourist capital of this part of Maine, Bar Harbor, which perches on the best real estate in Eastern Maine. To the north of town, the Porcupine Islands lift themselves out of a Gulf filled with frolicking seals and otters and the omnipresent homarus americanae. Looming to the south the East Coast's highest peak, Cadillac Mountain, affords climbers the opportunity to be the first people in the nation to see the sun when it rises.
Yet in the summer, especially in July, Bar Harbor is insufferable. The tiny village, whose year-round residents number about 7,000, becomes an orgy of concentrated Maine-ness. It's almost more than one can bear. If it's got a lobster, a moose, a black bear, a humpback whale, or a lighthouse on it, you'll find it in Bar Harbor; similarly, if it's been concocted with clams, lobster, blueberries or if it can be balsam-pine scented, you need look no further. In a way, it's sad - you'd only have to drive into the island a little more to find more authentic New England- but in a way, hey: it keeps all of those tourists away from us. Bar Harbor had smog three days last summer. Smog. In Maine. But take the case of Sand Beach, which is in Acadia National Park and has, on average, ten people per square meter in July, and a beach less than ten miles away (which shall go unnamed) that has, uh, me. So, thanks Bar Harbor and Old Orchard and York for "taking one for the team" so that the rest of us don't sit on our "rustic" porches, sharpening our ice-hooks in eager anticipation.
Three days till I go back to the corn. I miss my bed. I miss my things. I miss the Republic and her loveable minions whom I've come to embrace. But tonight, as I watched the sun set over the pine-covered camel-back mountains to our West with the scent of brine in my lungs, I knew that it would be hard to go. Seven more months.
Oh, and hey! In the past three weeks I've gotten nine emails. Nine. Where did everyone go? Honestly, people!
Have a good night, Bangor.
Dom
It's a new year. 2005 came to me in the quiet New England city I've called home for the past decade in the company of one of my closest friends and devoted Life in the Corn-er, Jeny, cushioning the demise of this past year into silent repose. Well, that and the three large blueberry Seadog ales I'd slammed. There's a lot I'd like to forget about this past year, but mostly I think about the corn and how I, for good and not, have been profoundly affected by my decision to nest myself in it. I've lost a lot, but I think that what I've got now - a job I love, schoolwork that turns me on, a town I've come to adore, a nice home and a new, banjo-playing buddy - and I think: hey, maybe it was worth it.
Speaking of "loss", my sister took me today to Mount Desert Island so that I could fulfill my promise to my Life in the Corn readers to fling myself into the sea. The "loss" I am talking about was threefold:
1) One complete layer of skin.
2) The ability to feel pain.
3) Use your imagination.
(See pictures below).
There was still a wee bit of the white stuff on the sand when I, clad only in a "Dodge City Testicle Festival" shirt - oh, the irony- and shorts walked calmly into twenty-six degree water that was thick with marine algae and tiny bits of sea ice. The Gulf of Maine and I had words. Well, mostly I shrieked. The web of profanity that I wove will hang in space over Mount Desert Island for centuries to come. (Ah, the Christmas Story). When I emerged, I realized with a start that I'd brought towels but no change of clothes. Thankfully I still had my Indiana sweatshirt and my socks and my jeans, which, while cold, were not wet. As I frolicked on the beach, barefoot, for the next half hour looking for sand-dollars (four! found four!) in Maine in January, I thought: my GOD, I've gone around the bend. The line between "weird" and "gibbering lunatic" is perilously near.
Later, we went to the undisputed tourist capital of this part of Maine, Bar Harbor, which perches on the best real estate in Eastern Maine. To the north of town, the Porcupine Islands lift themselves out of a Gulf filled with frolicking seals and otters and the omnipresent homarus americanae. Looming to the south the East Coast's highest peak, Cadillac Mountain, affords climbers the opportunity to be the first people in the nation to see the sun when it rises.
Yet in the summer, especially in July, Bar Harbor is insufferable. The tiny village, whose year-round residents number about 7,000, becomes an orgy of concentrated Maine-ness. It's almost more than one can bear. If it's got a lobster, a moose, a black bear, a humpback whale, or a lighthouse on it, you'll find it in Bar Harbor; similarly, if it's been concocted with clams, lobster, blueberries or if it can be balsam-pine scented, you need look no further. In a way, it's sad - you'd only have to drive into the island a little more to find more authentic New England- but in a way, hey: it keeps all of those tourists away from us. Bar Harbor had smog three days last summer. Smog. In Maine. But take the case of Sand Beach, which is in Acadia National Park and has, on average, ten people per square meter in July, and a beach less than ten miles away (which shall go unnamed) that has, uh, me. So, thanks Bar Harbor and Old Orchard and York for "taking one for the team" so that the rest of us don't sit on our "rustic" porches, sharpening our ice-hooks in eager anticipation.
Three days till I go back to the corn. I miss my bed. I miss my things. I miss the Republic and her loveable minions whom I've come to embrace. But tonight, as I watched the sun set over the pine-covered camel-back mountains to our West with the scent of brine in my lungs, I knew that it would be hard to go. Seven more months.
Oh, and hey! In the past three weeks I've gotten nine emails. Nine. Where did everyone go? Honestly, people!
Have a good night, Bangor.
Dom
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