*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