know your camp

Of the two camps of New Year's Eve persons, the Outrageously Festive and the Gloomily Dour, I am, of course, part of the latter. There are those who get wild, put on bear costumes where they can see out of the fake screened-in mouth, wear glittery brassieres, drink out of cups with tassels on them, gyrate. Then there are those who simply cannot believe that another year has passed -- or rather, maybe can believe it, but cannot believe that it has transpired in the way that it has. O, woe is this group! Another year has passed with nothing to show for it! -- or, correction again -- something to show for it, but not the thing that was planned. I don't know, though -- not to turn on the Dour camp, but sometimes the thing that wasn't planned isn't really so bad. 

To end the year on a characteristic note, I spent all morning frantically (but thoroughly!) finishing a proofread on a manuscript about Native American cats. Yeah, you heard that right. 2007, the bounty you've brought me, o, the bounty you've brought me. Native. American. Cats.

My family called. It was 7 pm on the east coast, and, shouting incomprehensibly all at once via speakerphone, they informed me that they were "ushering in the new year with sparkling cider." At 7 pm. Ever the party animals, my family. Now you see where I come from. Now you see the veritable font from which my party genes flow. 

So, it's like 4:15 pm on New Year's Eve and I am just sitting here in Fort Phil Collins. Phillip, part of the Festive camp, has put on a dogbear suit, in an effort to be festively meta. I am listening to music. I am not fact-checking a manuscript about sleepovers and French braids, which is what, theoretically, I should be doing. (Fact: Sleepovers can occur at any hour of the day!) I don't think I could really ask for anything more.

Happy New Year. 

in which accurate phonetics are chosen

The Mexicana airlines barf bag features the morbid daguerrotype of an airplane flying at an unnatural angle, trailed by the following statement in type of varying size. I quote: 

"aaaghh...!

AAAGHH...!

aaagh...!"

Is this the international phonetics for vomiting? Whatever it is, it fairly sums up the fine work of Mexicana yesterday during my 15-hour voyage from Mexico to San Francisco, during which, besides "Aaaagh!", they also offered the important statement that it might "be my pleasure" to sleep on the floor of the Mexico City airport alone at night. Being that the first leg of my flight was several hours late, it seemed I was going to miss the connection to SFO.

"I don't think it would be my pleasure," I said carefully, wedged with my backpack against some kind of emergency door in the shuttle that was taking us from Mexicana plane #1 to the main terminal of the Mexico City airport. My Horrific Spanish was getting a workout. Maybe I had the word for "pleasure" wrong. I didn't think so. According to my watch, my next plane had begun boarding about 45 minutes ago. Nearby stood a particularly distraught looking young person with a T-shirt bearing the name of the university where I teach. The airport representatives, who had incredibly long eyelashes that must have been fake, were talking about the merits of different laundry detergents. 

"Listen," I asked them again, in my robotic high-school-polluted-by-Italian Spanish, "if I do miss this flight, when is the next one?"

"The best thing to do," they repeated from six inches away, remaining wedged, "is to sleep on the floor of the Mexico City airport. We can provide you with a Coca-Cola."

Coca-Cola! The sleep aid of millions! The Young Person from the University Where I Teach seemed to have caught wind of this, as he issued a sort of when-the-doves-cry call of alarm. 

When he saw me looking at him and his T-shirt, he said,

"Look, when we park this thing, we run. We run like hell."

"Toward where?" I asked. They refused to tell us where the SFO flight was boarding. "We don't know where we're going." (I would later discover that this person is enrolled in the class I am teaching next semester, although it is not clear whether he is in my section. If so, oh, what delights await me. What brilliant ideas! Run as fast as you can in any direction at all! This bodes amazingly for his compositions.)

Sure enough, however, when the shuttle parked, T-shirt and I, along with a few other people in a similar situation, ran like the fucking blazes toward we did not know. 

"We've got to... toward the... I'm sure it's..." 

He made a lot of helpful statements as we went.

Finally we saw a sign that said "San Francisco."

T-shirt accosted a nearby Mexicana representative.

"Our flight," he gasped, "is it gone? Can we get on?" 

Our flight was not gone. The five or six of us, gasping ridonculously, as my brother would say, learned that our flight was in fact delayed by two hours.

"Take a seat on the floor," the representative suggested. All the chairs were taken. "Have a Coca-Cola or something."

This was when, deflated, about nine hours into the traveling bonanza, sitting on the backpack on which I have spent many a night in many a stairwell, airport, bus stop, etc., I sent Nate a text message telling him not to worry anymore about picking me up at SFO, as I had no idea when I would arrive there. 

It was hours later when we were finally shuttled to another plane full of AAAAGGH...!s, flown to San Francisco with the accompaniment of a movie about animated surfing penguins (I want to die, I thought, hearing T-Shirt cackle appreciatively at the movie in the row behind me), and offloaded into the customs line. I checked my phone. There were two messages, one from Nate, the other from Michelle.

"We didn't know what flight you were on," they said, "but we looked up the flights coming in from Mexico and we guessed which one must be yours. We came anyway. We are here." 

Readers, it was midnight. Nate had been to the airport three times that day. Michelle herself had recently flown in from parts afar. I had told them no need to come. I had not even told them my flight. And they had come anyway. 

I was amazed, touched, appalled, elated by this act of heroism. 

("This is the most heroic act I have ever witnessed!" I would shortly exclaim from their backseat. I was jetlagged. Still, it was heroic.)

While I was waiting for them on the sidewalk, T-Shirt came up to wait for his ride.

"Well," he announced, "we made it. We make a good team!"

I was not sure that our teamwork, for what it had been worth (running furiously toward some unspecified destination), had really helped our cause at all, but I smiled at him and said yes, enjoy the rest of his break, maybe I'd see him around campus.

"Maybe I'm really in your class!" he enthused. "Wouldn't that be so weird? I can't wait to go home and check!" 

"I also, uh, cannot wait," I told him. 

His ride pulled up and he jubilantly threw himself into the vehicle, which was studded with paraphernalia from that same university.

"Dude, you're not going to believe who that girl is!" I heard him saying as he got into the car. 

When Michelle and Nate, with Nate's brother Tony, American (and Filipino) heroes, showed up, I was never so glad to see them. 

animals of warm climes

There are a shitload of animals in the creche in the hotel where I am staying. Not normal Nazareth animals only, but also X-treem animals: cheetahs, grouse. Things that were not present at the birth of the Baby Jeebus, for reasons variable. One thing missing from the creche, however: Young master J himself. I keep looking in there and poking around for him. Maybe he doesn´t come out for Jews.

Today I spent some time pretending to be carefree, which has netted me approximately 50,000 freckles and the appearance of a baked leopard, or Pippi Longstocking, complete save for pigtails. I was standing in the water fretting about freelance and other such things, because I am apparently incapable of vacating. That is, having a vacation. Bobbing on the water not far from me were two storks.
"Stay well away, storks," I warned them. "Your gifts are not welcome here."
Still, the storks bobbed inexorably closer, probably bearing freak babies with fins beneath the water.
"Aaah!" I shrieked. "Keep your stork gifts far from this curmudgeon!"
And Pippi Longstockinged my way right the fuck out of that water.

I am amazing at relaxing.

The End of the Year of Our Tears, or, The Beginning of Verizon's Latest Windfall

Verizon, who are always looking out for my interests, by which I mean spare pennies that may be floating around in places where they should not be, such as my bank account, sent me a warning today.

"Warning," said Verizon. "You are about to exceed your monthly minutes."

This -- which I have since fixed -- was particularly bad news because my billing cycle is not over for three weeks. That's right -- you heard it here first. In the past eight days, I have spent 900 minutes on the phone, which does not, apparently, include the 540 minutes spent talking to other unlucky Verizon customers. I'm no mathematician, but that appears to come out to about 1,440 minutes in eight days, or approximately three hours a day, every day. Three hours a day every day on the phone? Can that be right? Wasn't I doing other things? What could I possibly have had to say? And by god, to whom? To whom, Verizon?

That was a question (like "May I give you more money?" Response: "Yes, you may") that Verizon could answer. Apparently I was talking to my mother. (I have an amaaaazing social life.) Additionally, it seems I exchanged words with my grandmother. (See previous parenthetical.) Copious words, fucking so many words, were exchanged with young Amy. Last night's three-hour conversation with Abby, the conversation during which I downed an entire bottle of wine by myself with no food in my stomach ("Abby! Everything you say is brilliant! O ho, Abby, I roll on the floor in mirth from your words!") did not go unnoticed by Verizon either. How many of these conversations included tears? I looked down the list. A lot of them. Too many of them. Probably because the bulk of them were to my mother. ("I'm just"--gasp--"I"m just"--gasp--"I don't under"--gasp-- (fade to bawling)). Classy.

While I was shaking my head over this itemization, Phillip appeared with a note.

STOP CRYING, SAVE MONEY it read.

"Yep, got it," I replied. "Thanks, Geico."

Squeaking past the screen in his nylon rain garb, Phillip retaliated with another note.

THINGS THAT WILL OCCUR IF YOU STOP THE INCESSANT CRYING:

1) SAVE MONEY

2) MY BED WILL NOT BE DAMP

3) NOT BE LAME

"Phillip," I said, loudly, because the rain hat he has taken to wearing sometimes obscures his hearing. "Have you seen me cry in 48 hours? Have you? Have I cried even a little?"

He was silent, then scribbled something unintelligible. It is what he does when he does not want to admit he has been wrong or unobservant. He claims his unintelligible writing is because he is a doctor. Of what, he has not yet specified.

"I haven't been crying anymore," I noted. "Whatever was making me cry shriveled up." 

WHAT, the next note came, WAS MAKING YOU CRY?

"The last traces of the benefit of the doubt," I said.

Apparently that shriveled up at Verizon long ago.

I'm going away for a week to a warm clime with my family. I'll try to write from there -- there will be internet, feel free to correspond -- and tell you about how excessively warm it will be, and construct some annoying similes about grains of sand. There will be pictures, probably of other people's sunburns. In the meantime, I hope you have a very fine holiday. I hope you consume nogs, or whatever it is people tend to consume. I hope any people who are guests in your home or the home of your family do not make unpleasant comments to you about your girth or unmarriedness or unfinished projects (especially if your girth is unremarkable, you are married, and all your projects are finished). I hope your benefit of the doubt is still in tact, that you can still use it, and dole it out. It's a good thing, a really good thing. People basically are trying to do okay; I'm telling you, it's true. People are trying.

Just watch: My benefit-of-the-doubt's coming back. It will be better than ever.

the offensive denizens of my childhood closet

My family is going on a trip to a warm clime, and I'm going, too. This is happening very late on Friday night. Yesterday, from amidst The Year of Our Tears, I realized that I don't have a bathing suit. I recalled some bathing suits hanging from a doorknob in my childhood bedroom, probably from circa 2000. Potential problems with these bathing suits could include anything from: too big; too ho-ish; too prudish (probably not possible); dirty. Still, a week in a warm clime without a bathing suit would probably cause me to be too far away from my sister, who will definitely be wearing a bathing suit. I already plan to spend lots of time in the shade, sniveling and writing about tornados. I figure I should at least put in a little face time on a lounge chair, since it is vacation. So I called my mother to see if she could bring them for me.

"Okay," said my mom. "I'm in your closet." You could hear the disgust in her voice; my childhood closet is not a particularly savory place. Maybe this is why, as an adult, I sleep in a closet -- as penance.

"It looks like a lot of bathing suit tops but not a lot of bottoms."

"They're around there, I bet," I said. "Check the drawers, maybe? They could be in the drawers?"

"They are in the drawers," my mom confirmed. "...Next to your vibrator." If I'd thought "in your closet" had been said with disgust, I had not heard anything yet.

"Wait, what?" I said. "I don't have a vibrator."

"It's been in here for years," she said, reprise disgust. 

I had no idea -- really, honestly, no idea -- what she could be referring to, until I remembered the "gift" I had been given by an ex-boyfriend when I was nineteen. This "gift" was given in complete straight-faced earnestness, but became the butt of copious jokes between my friends and me for years to come, so useless was it in its, uh, herculean measurements. This vibrator could be used to mow down Redwood forests. It is truly surprising that one does not have to pull on an electric chain, gun an engine, add diesel to fire up this vibrator. It is like something one might attach to a rocket to power liftoff. This, clearly, was what my mother had found. 

"You can throw it out," I said. "Just go ahead and throw it out. Sorry. Sorry."

"I don't care!" my mother said, feigning good-naturedness, double reprise disgust. "Anyway!" She was trying to get things back on track. "They'll have bathing suits there, you could get one there."

"I don't know," I said. I was, while speaking to her, simultaneously writing an e-mail, which might explain why I distractedly continued, "I'm not really sure they'll have vibrators there."

There was a long silence, and then Juan, my mother, dissolved into teary laughter. 

"I meant bathing suits! Bathing suits!" I cried, and then muttered, "I'm sure they'll have vibrators."

The Mystery of U, and a Particularly Incredible Poem

There is a form all the instructors in my department have to fill out regarding grades and the number of students who received them. Number of students who received an A. Who received a B. And so on. There is also a space for students who received a U. I have been puzzling over what this could possibly mean. It does not mean No Credit -- there is a separate slot for that. It does not mean Incomplete -- ditto there. There is no explanation anywhere, just this baldfaced U. I wrote to Dan.

"What is the U?" I asked. "What does it mean to give U to someone?" ("Do U know?" I was tempted to add, but hated to fulfill the requisite dorkiness everyone already expects of English instructors.)

Dan did not know, pledged to get to the bottom of this. 

When Dan's departmental reconnaissance brought up nothing, I vowed to find an answer.

"Don't worry," I said. "I will figure out what U is all about, and then report back." (To U.)

"Yes," said Dan. "Otherwise U will haunt us forever." 

I wrote to my officemate, who seems to know a lot about most things. He has not yet written back. I began to brainstorm -- who would know about U? What could U be? This was all starting to sound like a particularly uninteresting text message. Dear _____,  I wrote to my officemate, I wonder if you might know what U is. 

I may have to take this to the streets, in other words, to ask a man whose name is comprised entirely of letters of the alphabet -- the PWCM. If anyone should have information about the alphabet, it is probably him. 

The Mystery of U is as yet unresolved. If U have any ideas, please do let me know.

Meanwhile, today Ben alerted me to a piece of poetry worthy of great attentions. While unfortunately I have no enemies who are writers, and therefore cannot hope to ever feel the true pinnacle of the emotion this poem inspires, I do have some passing acquaintances whose books I would not mind seeing remaindered. 

I herald and praise this author's use of boobs. 

The Book of my Enemy Has Been Remaindered

The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am pleased.
In vast quantities it has been remaindered
Like a van-load of counterfeit that has been seized
And sits in piles in a police warehouse,
My enemy's much-prized effort sits in piles
In the kind of bookshop where remaindering occurs.
Great, square stacks of rejected books and, between them, aisles
One passes down reflecting on life's vanities,
Pausing to remember all those thoughtful reviews
Lavished to no avail upon one's enemy's book --
For behold, here is that book
Among these ranks and banks of duds,
These ponderous and seeminly irreducible cairns
Of complete stiffs.


The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I rejoice.
It has gone with bowed head like a defeated legion
Beneath the yoke.
What avail him now his awards and prizes,
The praise expended upon his meticulous technique,
His individual new voice?
Knocked into the middle of next week
His brainchild now consorts with the bad buys
The sinker, clinkers, dogs and dregs,
The Edsels of the world of moveable type,
The bummers that no amount of hype could shift,
The unbudgeable turkeys.


Yea, his slim volume with its understated wrapper
Bathes in the blare of the brightly jacketed Hitler's War Machine,
His unmistakably individual new voice
Shares the same scrapyart with a forlorn skyscraper
Of The Kung-Fu Cookbook,
His honesty, proclaimed by himself and believed by others,
His renowned abhorrence of all posturing and pretense,
Is there with Pertwee's Promenades and Pierrots--
One Hundred Years of Seaside Entertainment,
And (oh, this above all) his sensibility,
His sensibility and its hair-like filaments,
His delicate, quivering sensibility is now as one
With Barbara Windsor's Book of Boobs,
A volume graced by the descriptive rubric
"My boobs will give everyone hours of fun".


Soon now a book of mine could be remaindered also,
Though not to the monumental extent
In which the chastisement of remaindering has been meted out
To the book of my enemy,
Since in the case of my own book it will be due
To a miscalculated print run, a marketing error--
Nothing to do with merit.
But just supposing that such an event should hold
Some slight element of sadness, it will be offset
By the memory of this sweet moment.
Chill the champagne and polish the crystal goblets!
The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am glad.


Clive James

on failed officiality, cuore vuoto, and one of many ways to temporarily dispel it

Yesterday afternoon I met one of my students in a coffee shop near my apartment, to give him a letter certifying that he had earned a B- in my class. I don't really understand why he needed this letter, nor did I understand how I was supposed to make it look official. I had the departmental letterhead paper and envelope, but one thing I have never been good at is printing stuff onto marked paper and not fucking it up. Knowing my weakness in this area, I wrote it by hand. I decided to make it seem more official by writing out the numbers and then parenthesizing the numerals afterward, like zero (0). Clearly anyone who would write zero (0) is, like, totally, like, the professor, and like, so totally isn't forging this letter for some, like, untoward purpose. 

The thing looked like my student had sat at home and read a manual on letter forgery, then written it himself. But he seemed happy nonetheless. I sat down and talked to him for a few minutes about his classes and other such things, and then we left. On the sidewalk outside the coffee shop he asked if he could hug me. Asking if you can hug someone is sort of awkward, but I think I invite this awkwardness by my non-warm presence. I am not really a hugger, do not naturally move to hug my friends upon hello or good-bye, and therefore probably seem all the less huggable to, uh, you know, business contacts and students (as I should seem!). I let the student hug me anyway. 

He made a remark about feeling awkward at being the age he is and still in college, being glad to finally be done with this portion of his schooling, how it had come slowly.

"Hold the line," I said, quoting Toto. "Love isn't always on time. The same thing applies to jobs, publications, and passing English class."

He clearly had no idea what I was talking about, but thanked me anyway.

When I got home I was overcome with cuore vuoto, a sensation that has been plaguing the Fort and its inhabitants for a little while now. I pulled down all the shades, got under the covers with all my clothes on, including shoes, and commenced full-scale sobbing for several hours while Phillip sat nearby wearing a yellow slicker and galoshes so as not to be washed away. Phillip is getting really tired of all this weepage, and passive-aggressively bought this rain ensemble on eBay as a statement on my recent habits. The day he won the bidding on it, he looked really smug. True, he admitted, the boots were not exactly the right size, but this was nothing that couldn't be amended with really thick socks (which he also bought on eBay). He hoped I did not begrudge him the use of my credit card. 

Finally I felt an insistent kicking against my head, and then the telltale fluttering of one of Phillip's signs raining down on my face. 

HEY, FUCKFACE, it began helpfully, DON'T YOU HAVE SHIT TO DO?

"No," I snarfled mournfully, which was a lie, I did have shit to do, I had grades to assign, and freelance, and data entry, and a book to finish writing, and according to my e-mail, which Phillip now urged me to check, I had a movie to watch with Zachary, whose insistence on this activity was expressed in all caps. 

"Give me," I wrote back, "like forty-five minutes. I have to wash mascara off my face, and you have no idea how much mascara I wear."

The movie we watched was one you guys would like. It's called "Igby Goes Down," and it has a Culkin in it. Igby is shown at different ages, and I remarked to Zach, as we enjoyed an extraordinarily nutritious dinner of ice cream and wine, that all the kids they'd gotten to play young Igbys really looked like Kieran Culkin.

"They just got other Culkins," Zach said. "There are like five hundred Culkins. They can use different ones to show progressions through time." 

Are there really five hundred Culkins? I imagine them lined up one after the other, in various states of stooping from prostration to Walking Man, like an exhibit in the Natural History Museum. But I did like this movie, with its disturbing stills of D.C. and New York, despite the unbearable presence of Claire Danes and her unbearably permed hair. 

another problem with the plan outlined below

With thanks to reader TM, who points out that none of us really has any foes unless we're characters in Alexandre Dumas novels. I'm not; I don't. Not any. Really not one. And certainly not because I'm likeable.

sweet revenge and other fantasies

In the summer, Michelle, Nate, & I went to the movies downtown. There are only two stores by this movie theater: a comic book shop that Nate always has to visit, and a magic store. While Nate made his requisite pilgrimage, Michelle and I wasted time in this creepy, suburban-feeling magic shop. Most of the stuff in there was pretty boring and had a distinct air of Mary Lyons about it -- Mary Lyons being the dorm at Swarthmore College, far from the madding crowd, where many be-caped people resided, thumping their staffs upon the ground to emphatic effect and playing games with misspelled names like Magicks and Underwurlds. There was one display at this store, however, that caught my attention: a rotating carousel of vials, each with a different danger/inconvenience-causing purpose. One of these vials contained a solution that would turn your teeth black for 48 hours. Another would cause you to projectile vomit for up to 60 minutes straight. (Now that I would like to see. I imagine a team of people in too-tight cuffed tee-shirts looking on and cheering, "Go! Go! Go!") While Michelle looked at the less harmful things, I fantasized about using one of these vials on some foe. Particularly the black teeth one I found very compelling. The vial, the shop girl told me, was $30, too much for a poor copyeditor to spend on revenge -- especially when revenge, for that particular copyeditor, is always ever but a fantasy. Not that I wasn't sorely tempted. Who needs to eat when you could show your foes how you really see them, as freaks of nature with shrivelled black holes for teeth and heart? I mean, nothing.

Sometimes, however, I still think longingly of that vial of black-toothmaking substance. I plot out in meticulous fashion, usually while bored on public transportation, how I would sneakily convey it into the drink or food of a foe. This could be a really good use for those Borgia poison rings we learned about in twelfth-grade European history, maybe. Never let it be said I didn't pay attention in class.

I imagine the reaction, usually cinematically cliched: "My teeth! Myyyyy teeeeeeeetttthhh!!! Noooooooo!" followed by the dramatic shattering of nearby mirrors and a whirling dervish of objects hurled around the room in rage, sort of like an emotion-propelled, intensified things-tornado like the one in The Wizard of Oz where bicyclists, homes, dogs, picnic baskets slowly churn by. Chairs flying, pages of books somehow being ripped out of their own free will in midair! Then the foe, pausing momentarily, crusty, gnarled palms raised to the sky, would ask, 

"Whooo would doooo this to me? Whooooo?" (Apparently, they'd also speak like a ghost in a Scooby Doo television special. (Ruh-roh and whatnot.))

Of course, in answer to their question, they would never suspect yours truly. How could I, a vapid, underachieving, talentless buffoon, have done, or even thought of, such a thing, much less afforded a $30 poison vial on my state-university adjunct salary? 

Lightning crashes.

Buffoon, am I? Buffoon? Eat. Shit. You. Cocksucker. 

Usually by this point in the public transport, I've arrived at my destination and the reverie ends, reluctantly.

This is one of my fondest  and most unrealistic fantasies, right up there with Mischa Barton appearing naked in my mailbox, becoming a Rome Fellow, or finally achieving my goal of reaching the height of 5'10", on which, by the way, I'm making amazing progress. 

holistic molistic

Today was the holistic final-exam grading day, which meant that I left the Fort at 4:30 in the morning to get to a windowless room to grade hundreds -- you heard me, hundreds -- of composition finals. Literally stealing away in the night to grade papers is not my idea of a Scarlet-Letter-esque secretive nighttime outing, but I'll take it where I can get it. The windowless room had a seating assignment. Luckily I was compelled to sit by all the people I like and know, although not sufficiently far enough from the people I do not like and/or know, one of whom kept getting up during the grading to go to the bathroom or something and quite obviously and purposefully grazing my ass on the way, a problem I solved about three hours in by installing a balustrade of bananas around the back of my chair. Each paper had to be graded by two people, which meant unfathomable amounts of grading as well as unfathomable amounts of agony over whether I was grading correctly according to the departmental rubric. Was this paper "ADEQUATE"? Or was it "BORDERLINE"? (The headings for the grade descriptions were typed in all caps, which seemed unnecessarily emphatic.) Occasionally I would get a paper whose handwriting I would recognize as belonging to one of my students, and be thrilled, and very, very, very proud of whatever they had written, even if it was awful. 

The grading took over eight hours. The instructors of the other lower-level comp course finished three hours ahead of us. Dan, who teaches that course, appeared in the doorway of the windowless room and beckoned me over. Up until the grading began, Dan's voice had been lost, but once the grading started, he got it back. Go figure -- I guess you have to give something up to get something back; in this case, grading, one gives up shriveled rivulets of his soul, but that's just a standard part of our job. With his newly found voice, Dan informed me that he had to catch a boat this afternoon (to where? I was too polite/grading to ask), so with his apologies, the carpool wouldn't work out. It's a good thing he didn't stick around, because my room of graders was in there almost until the sun went down. There was no one I wanted to see more than the Baby Bullet at that point, in other words, no one I wanted to see more than no one, so that I could recommence the outrageous, pansy-esque sobbing I have been participating in recently, sort of like NaNoCriMo, as though it were my job.

For someone who had fled the Fort at 4:30 this morning, determined with everything in my body to take public transportation to San Jose damn it even if I have to get up weeks in advance to do it, I was remarkably spry when I met Majkin and Ji-Won at the Homestead when I got back to the city. I think it was because I am always spry when I know I am going to be doused in alcohol like a highly insured house. I don't know if I'm supposed to be drinking with these drugs they gave me for my shoulder, but damn it, hundreds and hundreds of essays. (I forgoed the sling today, thinking it mostly an instrument of lameness, but may wear it tomorrow and prop Phillip up in the crook like a passenger. He's going to Love. It. ) 

This is brilliant: The perfect dance for escaping a windowless room of holistic grading, protesting unreasonable heating bills foisted upon one by roommates, or anything (or anyone) else that might make you want to dance in an angry, with-thanks-to-Kevin-Bacon manner.

turtle in a half-shell (turtle power)

This morning I went to the doctor to get my arm checked out. My arm is okay. My arm got hit by a vehicle -- no, not a vehicle, pardon me -- a BMW. ("A bum-wah," my neighbor commented.) It didn't get hit very hard. I have been walking around like a zombie and not looking where I'm going, so when I stepped out onto Hoff  and a BMW was barreling toward me, I did not really think it necessary to move -- or, more to the point, I couldn't move because I was not quick enough. I saw it coming but I did not move and it did not stop. For a second I realized I was going to get hit and I didn't care. Then I cared a lot. Too late. I am like one of those really big rodents in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies -- cruel, hairy, beady, evil, but not at all fast. The impact was small and I fell back onto the pavement and my shoulder popped; then I leaned back on it (mistake! mistake!) and it popped back in, which was excruciating but also efficient. The driver got out of the car and started raining apologies on me. He gave me his business card. Was I okay, did I need to go to the hospital, no I did not.  I was weirdly fine. When I got home I looked at the arm in the mirror. There was nothing wrong with it. My leg was sort of bruised up, but there was really nothing wrong with it either. It was another dumb non-accident. 

This is the moment when I would assign this to my age-old Everything Happens For a Reason theory, and pin it to some action on my part ("You stole a fifteen-pound chocolate cake from a storefront, and now you will pay with a small fracture, barely even perceptible, in your shoulder! The spaces of which will be filled with chocolate cake and then be eaten by raccoons!") but actually, despite the signs Phillip insists on making, I haven't actually done anything wrong, really (for once). Other than being somewhat pissy for a few hours in recent days, I have not done anything wrong. Nothing. Therefore I assign this item to Bad Driving in San Francisco. 

You might be interested to know, since I did a little bit of research on this, that no bones thus far have been caulked with cake, but that many DIY web sites describe the caulking process as much like decorating a cake. And this sort of delights me.

Today on the Seattle radio, this Velvet Underground song I used to love came on. Stephanie says/that she wants to know/why she's given half her life/to people she hates now. Stephanie, this is a superb question. It is rather like the question The Smiths ask in their song "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now," in which they query, In my life/why do I give valuable time/to people who I'd much rather kick in the eye? This is a huge mystery. Would that I had an answer to propose; I have a feeling it has something to do with employment.

Sorry I couldn't find a less wretched video, but the song itself is worth it.

tapatio

Yesterday Nate informed me of a method known to him, and other Dangerous Persons, as Tapping a Knee, or, for the informal among you, Knee Tapping. This is different than Taking a Knee, like in football, which is not a dangerous gesture. It is also different than Toe Tapping, which is what really fey people in offices do when they hear jaunty music or feel the undeniable onset of ennui. This is freaking Tapping a Knee, motherfuckers, and it is an act of aggression. 

Nate describes the act as basically tapping, hard, and straight down, on the center of the kneecap. He learned about this while reading a book on the mob. The pain, the book told him, was great, but there were no lasting effects or damage. Apparently debt collectors would use this method as a first warning to collect debts without leaving a sign that they'd been there. While telling Michelle and me about the knee tapping, whether subconsciously or not, he walked jauntily around the room with a huge hammer slung over his shoulder.

"Do you do it with a hammer?" I asked nervously. 

"No," said Nate, with menace. "You can do it with your bare hands."

I have had this recurring dream where I go to Wisconsin because I've received this awesome writing fellowship (the first indication that this is a dream), but before I can get to the venue, I get eaten by sharks. (In Wisconsin. Indication #2 that this is a dream.) In some iterations of this dream, instead of getting eaten by sharks, I get throttled to death by this other writer I know in the middle of a skating rink. (This part could actually happen in real life.) Last night, however, I had what at the outset appeared to be a different dream -- I opened the door to the Fort and outside there was a shark, standing upright on its tail, not precariously. It was holding a hammer like the one in Nate & Michelle's apartment. 

"I am here," the shark announced politely, "to tap your knees."

And I -- what was wrong with me? -- actually said okay, straightened up, and offered my knees to him for tapping. Offered my knees to this goddamn shark that had appeared upright at my door in the middle of San Franscisco's Mission District. 

The shark, whose fins in real life would probably be too unwieldy and/or short to perform such a feat, swung back and hurled the hammer at my kneecaps. It hurt a lot, even in the dream. 

Why do these sharks keep showing up in my dreams, and why do I keep letting them eat me and tap my knees? 

I am also intrigued by this bit of news. Look what the British medical system is doing with its funds and skills!

three signs by phillip

On Thursday the teaching ended. I had been looking forward to this day for quite some time. I asked both of my classes, each in turn, if there was anything they wanted to ask, say, complain about, exclaim upon, etc., either pertaining to the course or to anything else. One class wanted to know how old I was, and I obliged them, receiving sheer terror in response. The other just sat there like dead guppies in a fish tank.

"Ah," I said. "This is how I shall always remember you: silent and staring at me."

And they laughed. Apparently they have known all along that this is what they do, and enjoy this knowledge. 

After they left the room it felt pretty quiet in there, their chair-desks all disarrayed. I felt sort of sad in that empty classroom. I realized I would kind of miss those high, sharp mohawks, those dead-guppy expressions, the really bad grammar. Then again, I would not miss it at all. For one month, I would get to write again. Free Willy, etc. 

Unfortunately, however, my Time of Freedom is not off to a phenomenal start. In the barely 48 hours since the Freedom has begun, I have managed to somehow accrue two students's bribing proposals for me to change their grades (bribing!); ruin the Christmas of the Jews (ruin!); fumblingly exacerbate another person's Already Unbearable Personal Situation ( ); and, on my way home from the BART today, have my entire bag split open, underpacked though it was, and spill pills all over the piss-graffitoed streets of the Mission (like the pills weren't toxic enough already). 

Back in the Fort, Phillip had prepared a sign written in crayon. NO MORE TEACHING, he had written. There was no punctuation. When I remarked on this, he pointed out that I was not supposed to be back in the Fort until tomorrow, and that he had been planning to add punctuation in the morning -- an excuse that never occurred to my students, I might add, during the three-and-a-half months that they were enrolled in my classes. 

"Thanks anyway, Phillip," I said. "It's the thought that counts." I could tell it was supposed to look festive. But the truth was I really wasn't feeling festive about the teaching being temporarily over. At least while it was going on, I didn't have as much time to professionally fuck everything up. 

Phillip produced another sign that he had been hiding behind a pillow.

CONGRATULATIONS! this one read. YOU'RE A HUGE FUCK-UP!

He had completed the punctuation this time.

Oh, Phillip, no one knows me like you do.

Later on, returning from Nate & Michelle's, I found another sign lying at the foot of the bed by some other, older ones Phillip had made in the past (notably among them: I HATE DIET BREAD and also KILLED SPIDER AM HERO PRODUCE FANFARE). This one, uncharacteristically cryptic, said,

SORRY IS HE WHO EXACERBATES OTHER PEOPLE'S ALREADY UNBEARABLE PERSONAL SITUATIONS BY BEING HIGHLY UNPLEASANT, OVERLY INTIMATE, AND POWERFULLY ANNOYING.

Resting incriminatingly near the sign was a half bag of fortune cookies with a number of them broken open. Crumbs adorned the comforter. 

"Phillip, you can't just steal your sign ideas from fortune cookies," I said, diplomatically not asking where he had gotten them. "You've got to stick with your own style, man."

But I kept the sign and put it under my bed. I kept it because, like all of Phillip's other signs, while it may not be brilliant, 

it's true.

the christmas of the jews

I went out today in search of some Hanukkah materials I'm missing. Yes, Hannukah began last night to remarkably little fanfare -- or not remarkably little fanfare, given my generally low levels of Jew Power. On the phone with Michelle A. in New York, we both remarked that Hanukkah had just begun, and then followed it up with a series of unconcerned "oh"s. The thing is, Hanukkah is not The Christmas of the Jews -- not by a long shot -- and it's always sort of been the bastard son of the holiday season. But never so much the bastard son that absolutely no Hanukkah goods were on offer anywhere.

After a rather long grading-procrastination quest to find such goods, I went into the Walgreens. I had to go there anyway because I promised my students candy tomorrow at our last class. They specifically asked me for candy -- as part of something that they referred to as a "party," which seemed weird since this is college and it's not like this is a contraband good that they could not get on their own, or that they would otherwise have to hide from their mothers. Also, a party in the building where this class is held seems inconceivable to me. 

"A party?" I said. "Like, what are we talking here -- pump up the volume, dance, dance?" I raised the metaphorical roof and someone tittered. 

"Yeah," one said. "Like music and food."

"You guys want candy?" I asked. "For real?"

The looks on their faces informed me that this need for high fructose corn syrup was completely for real. 

"Or beer," one reconsidered.

"I'll see if I can rustle up some candy," I said. They've earned it, I think, having endured a three-month-plus diet of writing composition, which is like the brussels sprouts of academia. 

Anyway, in this Walgreens there was Christmas paraphernalia out the rectum. Really cheap-o, saran-wrapped, glittery bow-wielding crap. There was a whole row of it. I went up and down this row looking for a hint of something blue, and therefore maybe Jewy. Nothing. A Walgreens employee approached me and asked me if she could help me find something.

"Yeah, actually, thanks," I said. "I was wondering if you guys carry any Hanukkah stuff."

"Hanukkah?" she asked.

"Yeah, you know, Hannukah" -- and here I made an inexplicable motion involving both hands splayed on top of my head, which maybe was supposed to make me look like a ten-pronged menorah, but instead just made me look more like a reindeer, or maybe just a moron.

She didn't know what I meant.

"The Christmas of the Jews," I said, inaccurately, but sure enough, recognition dawned.

"No," she said. "No Hanukkah stuff. Oh! But... no. Well..." She leaned in. "This probably isn't what you have in mind, but..." and started to lead me off into another aisle.

Before I knew it we were standing in front of a wall of condoms where, on a low shelf, was a box with an image of a condom with a Menorah printed on it. Hanukkah condoms.

"You don't have any Hanukkah stuff, but you do have Hanukkah condoms?" I asked. 

She shrugged apologetically. 

I was amazed that such a thing even existed, and picked a box up to inspect it.

"What am I gonna do with these?" I asked wonderingly.

She gave me a very droll look, like I certainly did know what I could do with those. 

I put them down, feeling thoroughly weirded out. The idea of that condom going into anyone seemed somehow pornographic beyond the limits of modern pornography, and not in a hot way. After purchasing an outrageous load of candy for my students, I left. 

Why is there no Hanukkah loot in the entire city? Should I feel amazed, offended, nothing at all? Mostly I feel like an imbecile for trying to indicate the holiday by making myself look like a reindeer. 

*Note: What the eff is going on with the line spacing here? Computer gurus, a hand please? Me dumb writer. Me no know how fix.