Saturday, October 14, 2006

A Herculean Day, Several Petty Hours Of It, A Synopsis Of A Non-Event

5:59 am (on a Saturday!)
-- I woke up this morning thinking. The German Musicologist said I think too much. He is probably right.

-- I thought about how many academics I know live with their parents. I suspect a high number. My favorite professor at Hampton lived with her mom. I remember a lady in gender studies at my first conference in Africa said that most people do not understand what this profession takes when referring to borrowing money from her mother to get to Africa. The head of the program I taught in in Germany in 2004 and the visiting professor both lived at home. The visiting American professor was old and retiring. He was just newly married for the first time and had a mint of money. Hmmmmmm?

-- Made coffee. Turned on the computer.

Damn! I thought again.
I just thought this computer is making me fatter.

7:28 am
-- Finished organizing my 'favorites list' which includes research on possible interview guests, journals, university sites, photos, freelancer's union website for NYC, contact lists and the Bloodhound Gang.

-- Watched Pattie LaBelle on YouTube and saved 99 Red Balloons in German and English in a new play list called Deutsche Popstars (along with Die Arzte, Rammstein has their own list). I guess I am turning into a German fairy. Nein! Du kanst nicht meinen Schokoschwanz haben!, as my friend DMJ used to say.

9:43 am
-- Working through applications at Austere University, Goliath State University (it is the size of a small city), and Simon LeGre of the Right Pedigree University in the mid-south. Just finished 2 online applications at Austere University for administration. The one I finished weeks ago is under review, I am pretty happy about that. After Austere, I will look at Goliath State. I never thought that being sick would have knocked me out of the game for so long.

11:49 am
There is an invader. It sounds like one of my stepmother's girlfriends dropping something off. I am a bit nervous about who it is since I am in my pajama bottoms. I walk up the stairs to find a copy of the Watchtower on the table.

3:16.
-- Just laid down after talking to my family. My father walked in during lunch from Puerto Rico with briefcase and suitcase in hand. My stepmother had made sandwiches for her and Bonnie and was fatigued from her walk without the cane. It was the first bit of exercise since double hip replacement surgery. The talk was about my diabetes, insurance cost and student loans which are really effecting the quality of my life. My father was in the dark about a lot of things concerning both my physical and financial condition, and has generally been out of touch for a long time. He does not want to admit that. Life is suppose to be a stroll in the park for me because his life has been a real struggle.

When I told him I was getting fat from being so close to home, he said that it was aristocratic and very middle class to complain about such things.

Stop. Reverse. Rewind. Edit.

When I was 17 my father yelled and screamed for at least 27 minutes straight on US-1, north bound, between Franklin Park and East Brunswick -- Tower Center. The subject was how capitalism is the greatest system in the world, and that communism and socialism are utter failures.

I had declared that I was a socialist just two nanoseconds before he started to scream at me like some old black coachman pissed that his page has screwed up massa's pants legs with mud.

Now, probably 17 years to the day since that conversation, my father is using words like aristocratic and middle class like he never raised us to be little John Henry old school black power/race pride spitting blue blooded hell hounds thrashing through the halls and throats of pampered Anglo-Saxon bastions of intellect and culture. It was not his mission for the collective economic liberation of all coloureds to happen through these efforts, but for the singular economic liberation of the most talented, so there are more black folks in the club and at the party. Elitism. This ensures that other Blacks that can compete, will compete, and win! Maybe he is softening after seeing the world a bit more since 1989.

In the background my 11-year-old sister, who is a cross between Moesha and Molly Ringwald, is flipping through channels, and blasting us with MTV2 until she finally settles on the musical Rent. I like the part where the black girl sings about three hundred thousand . . . something . . . something . . . something . . . "minutes". Then, after that, I usually change the channel. But not today, cause Mollyesha is going through a binge of consumerism and suburban girl tantrums. The volume kept going up and down between Nellie's grills and a Broadway libretto. Today she mentioned Manolo Blahnicks at the lunch table (I stopped breathing). I hope she learns some coping skills (a down home and around the way form of theory) to accompany her choice in shoes. I gotta talk to my father.


7:10 pm
-- Seeing that I only had 4 hours sleep and I am stressed over my life in every aspect, I caught up on the other4 hours sleep. Woke up to hear the UN sanctions debate. The North Koreans were talking about wiping out entire cities. What the fuck? The tripped out part of it is that it did sound like fighting words, cause in effect, they said that if anyone else increases the embargo that has been placed on North Korea by the United States' "gansta" (and yes, he said it just that way, I wish I had TIVO) acts of persuasion it will be seen as a declaration of war. Now, let's get hood for a second and think. The talking heads say that it is impossible for N. Korea to harm us with a missile, but this is the same group of people that said that Iraqis would welcome us with open arms. I don't care how big that test nuke was, I am a bit nervous. We have a track record of underestimating foreign coloured folk here in America, but they have brains just like us, and it seems to be that they work just as good as anybody else's.

Great. Now the pundits will really be talking tomorrow morning during the political talk shows, followed by the Flavor of Love 2 marathon, followed by the finale. I have only seen 2 episodes of this skank ass form of Americana and I love it.

But, to swing back a minute, what are these blue boys and red heads going to really do about this tiny bomb making nemesis, anti-matter flinging, maniac. He could blow some shit up, and them red and blue boys would just talk, while the rest of us have to live our lives. This is bogus.

But I digress . . .

We are having Chinese food tonight (I wish someone would take out that MSG reheating death trap of a Schzuan buffet I went to that gave me food poisoning 3 years ago). I am going to miss a friend's birthday party, but it is OK, I have something else that I need to do anyway concerning my trip to Austere University next week. Plus, I have one unfinished application for Goliath University to do. It is the most challenging job of them all.

12:16 am

-- I wonder how long I will sleep tonight. I just am a bit tired. I have watched the Pagan Poetry video a million times (an all time favorite) and several others by Bjork. Very nice. Tomorrow a trip to Harlem, possibly. It seems my whole life is being reconstructed there by some divine design, like a most high spirit sent my stuff their in advance. Or it could be that Harlem attracts people like honey. Or it couple be that we all have to confront our monsters again in order to see how small they really were. I had a few of those monsters there, and they seem the size of teddy bears now.

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