i attended graduate school with emily alt. she lives in chicago, works in a school, eats large meals, and afterward takes herself out for a run. her boyfriend is a lovely man.
I don’t pray often, but when I do it’s to thank YHWH that I’m a native English-speaker. Not only is it a sign of a keen intellect, speaking English is also practical considering 25% of the world’s population uses it. It’s also a marker of cultural efficiency: the majority of English-speakers learned it as a second, third, or even fourth language. That’s just a silly waste of time and effort, especially considering you can speak without an accent if you learn from the cradle. I mean, I know you might’ve been born on some remote island called Java, but why bother with the Javanese if you’ll never use it to order lunch in a New York deli? I suppose that 25% of the world speaks English means there are nearly five billion ppl who don’t, but some of those ppl are European and only pretend they don’t speak English, while the others live in places no one would want to visit anyhow. Vietnam? Uruguay? Cote D’Ivoire? Inner-city Chicago? And what’s the worst-case scenario if you do go to some of those places? The ever-depreciating US$ is always good for diplomacy if trouble arises, and even if something terribly outlandish happens - say, terrorists kidnap you - you speak English, which means God’s on your side.
Actually, the real reason I’m fortunate to speak English is the trains, specifically the Chicago L. It’s relatively easy to navigate a transit system in a foreign country even if you don’t speak the language, but that’s assuming everything’s in working order, which usually isn’t the case in Chicago, and is most definitely never the case with the Blue Line. Every time I’m on that fucker it either takes a 15-minute smoke break in between subway stops (great for claustrophobics like me) or the conductor rifles through transfer/detour/get-off-here-if-you-don’t-want-to-burn instructions that filter through the AV as, lakdfahofekdokdaeoreivealdorvoiesteoakd. It’s about then I begin to harbor sympathy for the heathens visiting my city who don’t speak English very well. How many of them saw on the map they could transfer to the Red Line at Washington, get off, and then stare in bewilderment at the sign that says, Go fuck yrself, and afterward you should transfer at the Jackson stop? The good news is they don’t understand the sign and won’t actually fuck themselves, but the bad news is this confusion should be avoidable when you have only six tracks to maintain. Imagine somewhere with a more sophisticated transit system, like Tokyo. Which reminds me: thank YHWH I speak English. Who really cares about foreigners staring at notices telling them to go fuck themselves? I understand where to transfer and which stops are closed, so selah. I imagine I could be more empathetic, especially if the situation were reversed and I found myself on the Paris Metro listening to announcements made in French, but the Metro actually runs halfway efficiently and that would never happen, which saves me the trouble of learning a different language. Fooken yeah, English and the sexy dance...
Actually, the real reason I’m fortunate to speak English is the trains, specifically the Chicago L. It’s relatively easy to navigate a transit system in a foreign country even if you don’t speak the language, but that’s assuming everything’s in working order, which usually isn’t the case in Chicago, and is most definitely never the case with the Blue Line. Every time I’m on that fucker it either takes a 15-minute smoke break in between subway stops (great for claustrophobics like me) or the conductor rifles through transfer/detour/get-off-here-if-you-don’t-want-to-burn instructions that filter through the AV as, lakdfahofekdokdaeoreivealdorvoiesteoakd. It’s about then I begin to harbor sympathy for the heathens visiting my city who don’t speak English very well. How many of them saw on the map they could transfer to the Red Line at Washington, get off, and then stare in bewilderment at the sign that says, Go fuck yrself, and afterward you should transfer at the Jackson stop? The good news is they don’t understand the sign and won’t actually fuck themselves, but the bad news is this confusion should be avoidable when you have only six tracks to maintain. Imagine somewhere with a more sophisticated transit system, like Tokyo. Which reminds me: thank YHWH I speak English. Who really cares about foreigners staring at notices telling them to go fuck themselves? I understand where to transfer and which stops are closed, so selah. I imagine I could be more empathetic, especially if the situation were reversed and I found myself on the Paris Metro listening to announcements made in French, but the Metro actually runs halfway efficiently and that would never happen, which saves me the trouble of learning a different language. Fooken yeah, English and the sexy dance...
precocious is obviously a relative term when speaking of a lady not quite one-point-five-years-old...
i recently moved to the southside b/c i'm scared of all the white ppl in wicker park. now i live in little village and am scared of all the mexicans b/c they're not white and speak a language i understand only on occasion, like when i'm 13-years-old and my hs spanish teacher asks, ¿tienes que ir al baño, puto? i also understand spanish when some drunk girl yells at me in english, hey white boy, come here.
-no puedo; tengo miedo...
and i should've been afraid, b/c i passed her while walking past a crowd just letting out from a mexican concert of some sorts, and i heard one of the cops on brown-person patrol say to his partner, what the fuck is this guy. estoy perdido, i presume.
the reason for mentioning my neighborhood's - err, barrio's - ethnographic profile is that i have to eat, and if you don't have a fridge, stove, or even cabinets, it's hard to maintain a well-stocked kitchen. so i eat out a lot, and by eat out a lot i mean i go to the same restaurant every day b/c i have a mild crush on the waitress there, and it's empowering, if slightly misleading, to tell my cracker friends that i hit on her in broken spanish. i mean, i do use my broken spanish with her, but only to ask for a fifth cup of coffee, which i doubt will lead me to her bedroom within the next 42 years. make hay while the sun shines, ¿verdad?
anyhow, my novia wasn't there one day last week and i had to use my broken spanish with the scab waitress b/c she spoke nada de ingles. since i definitely wasn't busy hitting on her, i figured it was a good time to catch up in my journal, but the scab who stole my g/friend’s shift kept interrupting to ask what i was writing. i finally managed to stumble through something about recording my thoughts, to which she replied, sus piensas son bonitas. eh? are you allowed to say things like that? yr thoughts are beautiful? at first i was excited to actually understand what she said, but then i sunk into an abyss of self-importance. sí, mis piensas SON bonitas - if i’m ever forced to characterize them - so i’ve begun to use piensas bonitas as a header on the scrap paper i generally use to write notes to myself. this has been going on for a good week now, and i’ve become so audacious that i’ve begun to confuse general observations with piensas bonitas, particularly those i have while standing on the el platform for a train unbound to any sort of time table, where the collective impatience of exasperated hands-in-the-air are unable coax the train to arrive any quicker, demonstrating the impotence of populist political theory. only the germans can make the trains run on time, but i don’t know what kind of gov’t they use. no son bonitas mis piensas…
i want my novia back, if only so i can have a sixth cup of coffee.
-no puedo; tengo miedo...
and i should've been afraid, b/c i passed her while walking past a crowd just letting out from a mexican concert of some sorts, and i heard one of the cops on brown-person patrol say to his partner, what the fuck is this guy. estoy perdido, i presume.
the reason for mentioning my neighborhood's - err, barrio's - ethnographic profile is that i have to eat, and if you don't have a fridge, stove, or even cabinets, it's hard to maintain a well-stocked kitchen. so i eat out a lot, and by eat out a lot i mean i go to the same restaurant every day b/c i have a mild crush on the waitress there, and it's empowering, if slightly misleading, to tell my cracker friends that i hit on her in broken spanish. i mean, i do use my broken spanish with her, but only to ask for a fifth cup of coffee, which i doubt will lead me to her bedroom within the next 42 years. make hay while the sun shines, ¿verdad?
anyhow, my novia wasn't there one day last week and i had to use my broken spanish with the scab waitress b/c she spoke nada de ingles. since i definitely wasn't busy hitting on her, i figured it was a good time to catch up in my journal, but the scab who stole my g/friend’s shift kept interrupting to ask what i was writing. i finally managed to stumble through something about recording my thoughts, to which she replied, sus piensas son bonitas. eh? are you allowed to say things like that? yr thoughts are beautiful? at first i was excited to actually understand what she said, but then i sunk into an abyss of self-importance. sí, mis piensas SON bonitas - if i’m ever forced to characterize them - so i’ve begun to use piensas bonitas as a header on the scrap paper i generally use to write notes to myself. this has been going on for a good week now, and i’ve become so audacious that i’ve begun to confuse general observations with piensas bonitas, particularly those i have while standing on the el platform for a train unbound to any sort of time table, where the collective impatience of exasperated hands-in-the-air are unable coax the train to arrive any quicker, demonstrating the impotence of populist political theory. only the germans can make the trains run on time, but i don’t know what kind of gov’t they use. no son bonitas mis piensas…
i want my novia back, if only so i can have a sixth cup of coffee.
maan, i fooken love musical accoutrements; you know, my totally rad ipod full of music i lifted from other ppl's computers. although i'm not much of a curmudgeon, i still prefer making out with a mouth full of 1000-watt electrical nodes to listening to an actual, normal mouth, so when i'm out and about i generally have my ipod with me to cut down on all the white noise/mundane horseshite ppl talk about in public. [un]fortunately, that means whatever i'm listening to colors the way i experience everyday minutiae, so that the anonymous jogger across the street isn’t so pedestrian anymore as he is an olympic hero [track: eye of the tiger - no, it’s not actually on my ipod, but if it were…]. and i’m not really sitting across from a thoughtful-looking man on the el who’s bored with the 45-minute, two-stop commute on the blue line, i’m an extra the movie scene where he wanders aimlessly through the city after a pitiable breakup [track: any generic acoustic up-and-comer who’d be on the dawson’s or oc soundtrack where they still on the telly - yes, i have those on my ipod].
most of the time the music works with quotidian life in a way to amplify the dramatic impression it leaves on my imagination, like those moments i listen to peter bjorn and john’s paris 2004 just so i can pretend every man-woman couple i pass on the avenue shares a love that fights hunger, but occasionally the soundtrack and scene don’t align. like the end of my night out in lincoln park last month. i’m not a yuppie, so i couldn’t hail one of the cabs already occupied with ppl and their collared shirts, so i waited for the bus, only it was 3.00 am, the buses stop running at 11ish, and i had to foot it from lp to wicker park. selah, i had my ipod to dramatize the experience [OMG, I have to WALK?!?], and by the time i reached my neighborhood it was 4.00 am and only the very drunk and stupid were milling around the recently closed bars, and by drunk and stupid i mean the amazon woman in high heels and short skirt beating the shit out of the other girl in a double date. [i know this b/c the two dooders just stood watching, chatting. plus, everyone called each other by first name.] it would’ve been an interesting scene regardless, but the ipod sets the mood for how i experience the things i witness, and at the time i was listening to gavin degraw’s nice to meet you. fitting, i’d say, to further express what it means to call yr friend a bitch ass slut, throw her up against the wall like a rag doll, spit on her, and then slap her entire face with yr meat claws. nice to meet you, anyway…
most of the time the music works with quotidian life in a way to amplify the dramatic impression it leaves on my imagination, like those moments i listen to peter bjorn and john’s paris 2004 just so i can pretend every man-woman couple i pass on the avenue shares a love that fights hunger, but occasionally the soundtrack and scene don’t align. like the end of my night out in lincoln park last month. i’m not a yuppie, so i couldn’t hail one of the cabs already occupied with ppl and their collared shirts, so i waited for the bus, only it was 3.00 am, the buses stop running at 11ish, and i had to foot it from lp to wicker park. selah, i had my ipod to dramatize the experience [OMG, I have to WALK?!?], and by the time i reached my neighborhood it was 4.00 am and only the very drunk and stupid were milling around the recently closed bars, and by drunk and stupid i mean the amazon woman in high heels and short skirt beating the shit out of the other girl in a double date. [i know this b/c the two dooders just stood watching, chatting. plus, everyone called each other by first name.] it would’ve been an interesting scene regardless, but the ipod sets the mood for how i experience the things i witness, and at the time i was listening to gavin degraw’s nice to meet you. fitting, i’d say, to further express what it means to call yr friend a bitch ass slut, throw her up against the wall like a rag doll, spit on her, and then slap her entire face with yr meat claws. nice to meet you, anyway…
pee/see - namibia has a gender awareness committee that puts on a leadership camp every year called camp glow. [click the link b/c (1) i don't want to regurgitate info already published and (2) it's a program that legitimately deserves yr support, if you feel so inclined. holla, right?] i worked the 2006 camp - used old coke bottles to bush brew starbs for the tired volunteers who actually worked - and met a lot of great kids with promising futures. one of them started a blog. i don't know how often it'll be updated, but it's worth a look, non?
joseph kadhila
joseph kadhila
