So today was busier than normal, a complete workout before hopping off to “research”, two interviews without me bursting out by saying, ‘well, can we hire somebody who isn’t white for once?’, some catch-up pints with Laser, Japanese with Mark, and now unwinding quietly at home.

So somehow I neglected to commemorate in full splendour my five-year bloggiversary which was sometime last week, as like Friday as not. As you might be able to tell, I’ve been doing my best summer to resume my daily pace now that the usual excuse of not having consistent access is gone. I won’t bother now to revisit in detail where I was at five years ago–such exercises are moot at such an intermediate distance. More sobering, perhaps, is that this is the year of my tenth high school graduation anniversary, or somesuch. I be getting old.

Today was a leisurely morning with Mark as he made coffee for me and the fungus gnats and we browsed various titanium rings and their associated diamonds from past and present and then my new routine of morning calisthenics before digging up call the CST books which I’ve been leaving by the bed|wayside in order to try and make some headway this week. Making my way to Rob Chin’s for some carne guisada y pernil was the right taken, as somehow on that blacktop roof of his I managed to make some progress on how I way join that faux-cult. In particular, I think that the ways in which this will help what I’m trying to write about (social justice curriculum and course for Latino immigrant students and Spanish speakers) is to re-envision discourse in terms of limits and forms rather than the process of production. That is, looking at “what can be said” in the context of such an academic course, as opposed to affinity grouping or somesuch; looking then further at the notion of the “archive” as a methodological question: how will this ed research be conducted, while keeping in mind the injunction to ever pluralize–to see discourses, discontinuities, and resistances. The irony in all of this might be the ways in which social justice curriculum seeks to convert an informal set of practices into a more scientific or rationalized process–just add the water of our discontent? So maybe not that much progress, but at least I’m working on it.

The GC, meanwhile, is surprisingly hopping during the summer, or at least the library is as most of the faculty is on vacation and no one has summer classes. I’m rewired here and will be glad to use this as a bonus office, even though I will need to deal with MS Office 2007.

So last night we were out late with Mark’s future roommates at what had to be the worst places to eat or drink in the W Vill–sangria like blood and Guinness, well, still like Guinness. We got home late but happy, and today I was relieved not to have to go all the way out to Brooklyn College for unappreciative Asian girls with bad Bronx accents and doughy thighs–today was just half a workout with myself, a greasy Chinese lunch with Mark, and a longish wander no place in particular, but always in the direction of Red Mango.

So three pilsners (urquell if lukewarm) with Rob are just about enough to cure what it was that was ailing me. Which is not to say that I wasn’t a little moonish earlier, but after a late-night session discussing crossword puzzles for mathematics learning with graduate students, a little levity is quite overdue.

Pendant lamps, meanwhile, are quite overdue to alleviate Mark’s persistent complaints re: the want of a overhead lighting in my apartment’s living room. That and a recentering of the new TV. Meanwhile, the flypapers have yet to fully exterminate the gnats.

I should really do better to reread Monkey or rather Journey to the West, Waley notwithstanding.

It remains to be seen if I can meet Rob for a paella lunch tomorrow.

So back again from a night at the Beer Garden, this time with Joephet and his fam and birthday boy Dannis. Not to mention Betsy. Or at least I try not to. A good set to have fallen in with. No subequatorial stirrings of note despite the proximity to Joephet, which is indeed well-due progress, I must say. So it’s going to be OK, and already is. Difficult to imagine a week ago, which was so marooned and desolate and without hope. Now there is sort of passing acrimony matched with nurturing friendship, which was probably the way to go anyway. New joke, “This is the monoGAMest I’ve ever been.” Must be the buzz talking. It’s a joke because of the acronym GAM. If this needs further explanation, maybe you should read the handbook. Am I hardcore, or do I just pretend? I guess a whiskey, a Lucky, and a Zippo are all that I need. But no, drunkenness is ineffable, even from the inside–and of course a roving eye is always good, though the lighting is not Web-quality: the red lights at the Web make everyone look white. But not quite right.

White makes right.

The 60s managed to win equal whites.

So it goes.

Last night another drunkenly beautiful carouse at the Beer Garden around the corner from my house, the stagger home always the most brilliant stretch in all Astoria, vaguely residentio-commercial, but in a non-threatening way, with the TriBoro bridge always suddenly looming, luminous in the distance. This time with Bessie–that frankness sipped by sipped, and after a day of hanging out, toying more and more with the possibility of going to law school as being a more effective way of reaching strangers, more effective than this current teaching business, which reaches only no-longer-strangers, but can’t yet shover the system further where it needs to go–after a year, I’m still idealistic (though, as the old phrase goes, “certainly not wide-eyed”), but it’s unclear how long that can last in the face of unsympathetic changes to the system and an economy that’s less and less friendly (more an issue for my students than for me, me with my iron-rice-bowl, as the phrase goes). The only issue is a matter of usefulness–I feel useful now, but to wait three years after the two I plan to spend still teaching before being greatly more useful is a strange thing. But I won’t be covering any rich ass… Too early to tell, I’m probably just heady on the enthusiasm Bessie always brings, and vaguely dissatisfied with my current idleness. I guess I’ve been thinking back to that time I went and helped my brother out with his legal-type troubles with the school administration. It was then, more than ever, that I somehow felt indispensable, and as if I was actually bringing to bear all the math, philosophy, and prose that had, until then, merely been disconnected elements. And we kicked some major whitey ass. That was just a defensive action, though. Time to get more offensive…

Speaking of offensive, though my Spanish spelling is poor, I am often reminded of the idiom, “fumando como un chino en kiebra,” which means, roughly, “smoking like a bankrupt chinaman.” That’s me.