Cooler than You: Stupid Things I Say and Do

An old friend came in for dinner the other night, as she was in Princeton for a conference. Since our plans were last minute Amtrak was out, as the price nearly doubles the day of departure. So, I taught her how to ride the commuter rail and take NJ Transit into NY Penn. She got to Penn about the time I was exiting the subway, so she climbed from the deep bowls of the transit maze to the 7th Street entrance. About the time I'm approaching the crosswalk, and going redneck to yell out her name, she posts a photo of Madison Square Gardens to Facebook with a message saying she felt out of her element. She hadn't been to NYC in 20+ years, and I giggled. All-the-while, I reminded her the city is like yours twenties: always changing, the shell is the same but elements evolve. I took her to one of my favorite places in the Theatre District, Zen Palate, for yummy Asian vegetarian food (read: she's one of the few friends I can take to my earthy joints). Like a good New Yorker, I wal...

I apologize in advance for typos. Mondays.  Diatribes about Mondays are easy to come by, and even on this blog I have posted one , two ,or some more .  Every now and then a Monday proves exceptional, causing a need for a brain dump, recharge, and maybe a bourbon or two.  Let's see . . . Monday for the making. 9:00am, first class.  I come into the classroom a few minutes early to see a student who hasn't been there in WEEKS waiting.  Walking in I remarked the he had returned, and he said "yea, I wanted to talk to you about that."  What did he want? He hasn't done any work all term, and I'm talking not a lick.  He wanted to sit-in on class and be able to pass . . . Did I tell you that he said he couldn't all semester because I have a policy that if you are more than ten minutes late you can't come in?  So it's my fault he couldn't get there on time? Yup, you know it . . . pass the bourbon, and it's not even 9:00am. Class wasn't ba...

As I do so frequently these days, I blogged from the subway.  From Saturday . . . *** Some days subway rides are more amusing than others. Sometimes they frighten you. Others...just perform a mixture of piss you off and what the hell; today is a piss off and what the hell kind of day. Shoving my way onto a Brooklyn bound N should have been a marker of things to come, on this dreary and rain-filled day. The first N, filled to the gills, ate at my skin with the business man two seats over carrying on a cell conversation so loud that my iPod and book did little to give me a bubble of sanity. The blonde across from me, twirled her 20-something locks, and...chatted about how much she drank the night before.  Ya know, because . . . like, we all needed to know that that vodka and coke was like so good . . .ya know.  All the while, mariachi players strummed and peddled for our pennies. At some point the MTA announcement advised/begged us to not give money to the p...

At some point in my early twenties I came to the realization--or sad conclusion, depending on how you look at it--that I could buy flowers for myself. I realized (while walking through a spring open air market in downtown Las Cruces, NM) that waiting for/expecting boyfriends to show up with flowers was a fantasy more than a reality. The boyfriends have been far and few between--even a decade ago--and I've only gotten flowers twice. Both occasions were in bad form. So, now I buy my own flowers on the rare occasions I long for them on my dresser or windowsill. I have a penchant for daffodils and lilacs--also something none of the doofuses I've dated have ever picked up on--and it's never spring (to me) until I see the petite bundles sitting at sidewalk vendors casting rays of yellow to the retina. Every spring I shell out four bucks and buy a bundle, or two. This year is no different, as I picked some up last week on a trip back from the market. You know, as a ray of sunshine...

The state of this current generation of college students and twenty-somethings scares me. Their general sense of nothing requires work, that they should get gold stars for just doing something (mind you not even well), and that they are entitled to anything they want bemoans disaster. Apparently, if they ask, whine, cry, or threaten to go to a higher up whatever they desire will materialize. They complain for half a point, they believe Wikipedia and Google are the only way to look up anything, they won't read more than 200 to 500 words without saying it's too long, and they say that only business and medical degrees will earn them a "profit." They snicker and sneer at my PhD in history, telling me they'd never spend that kind of time and money for something without immediate gratification. Far too often, there is no passion and drive in them. Senses of entitlement are so overwhelming that its stench can kill you. They live at home, trading material possessio...

Monday began with a status update from a friend from college proclaiming "It's officially Steak and Blow Jobs Day today!!!  Don't get offended girls . . . you have Valentine's Day."  Should I note he lives in Denmark?  So aside from my mouth falling agape and laughing out loud, then texting friends who don't know him and texting one from college for her to look at it, it was more humerus than not.  Normally, on any other day of the week, it would be a marker of funny things to come.  Not.  Not today.  Yea, my first class started out as planned and then a student who came past the ten minute marker refused to leave, made a pain of himself, and security was called.  Drama.  I'm pretty sure I can't talk about it yet.  Drama.  For the record, I said drama NOT trauma.  Security was called because he was a disruption, not a threat.  Then one of my major students remarked that I looked "off," and I made mention it was a bad d...

When you learn a language the text books and dictionaries can only take you so far.  For the most part, those prove to give you the basis of the understanding the language.  But, as anyone who speaks multiple languages can tell you, really learning the language comes from use and conversing with natives.  The expression that natives always know it best certainly rings true . . .  Such is the case with Turkish. A few years back a friend, who I had just met, was being discussed to me by someone else.  She was a few feet away, and someone (I can't remember who) wanted to know how we met.  This person kept calling my new friend Pembe.  Um, pembe means pink.  So I was utterly confused because I knew my friend as Gözde.  So, in my slightly inebriated American mind, I kinda thought pink was some kind of slang name for women . . . you know, kinda like peaches is used in the American South.  Now that I think back on it, I bet I either came ...