So I’m descended back into idleness after a week of three-hour commutes and a modicum of planning. It’s summer, for real, now, and I don’t know what to do with myself, as tempting as it was to go and buy a bat and ball the other day, fetching said ball is still rather tedious, all by yourself. I guess I can always exercises, one way or the other, but it’s good to just relax–I really can’t fully remember what I’ve done in summers past, though I suppose I should finish some of this overdue work before it’s too late, but I know that it’s a matter of my personality–no deadline means no completion, not ever.

I really should start on the whole cardio thing again, but it’s just too tedious for me: I need some sort of project, somehow, and I’ve been putting finding one off for way too long. I remember having this sort of thing in college, where I would long for whatever breaks I could find and then promptly squander them once they arrived. Even during spring break I had the floors project… and now look!

So it’s still sweltering sweaty sweat: it’s interesting, this daygig, as the kids are so like, “What’s a hexagon?”–future math teachers of America!

Alric has big news.

I like having the free time to wander around in Target and buy nothing, just wondering at the cheapness, except the books section, which is a slice of what real people read, if they read at all, which is also fine, although it would seem that more women than men read judging by the titles, and I don’t know if that’s true overall, as my set is not exactly representative.

One more day commuting and then I really should settle into writing this long-overdue paper. Well, it’s still under a month late, I guess.

So I don’t know what to make of my kids–the honeymoon is over and they’re all draggy about learning the math alongside the problem solving I’m supposed to be teaching them, and there’s in general very little patience in terms of trying to solve prolems with more than one-step formulas once they are given a new kind of formula. It’s tricky, yes, but it’s the time span more than anything else that’s limited.

Other than that, the weather has been nearly unbearable. I wish it were fall already.

Besides that, it’s just this new routine with the prospect of more hourly wage labor, which I don’t want to say no to straight off because you know, it’s all about the networking.

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 of course there is little to say–I am now revisiting Lone Wolf & Cub, which makes me all emotional, like, with its simplicity and its rawness and its fluid violence, its authenticity–I was also getting pissed off at the new Nation as I was on the subway (mostly for what was going on within it). And on the way home, there was this cute little black boy, who couldn’t have been more than 2, but was already talking and gesturing and everything. Sigh. I must be PMSin’, the tears really do well up sometimes. Ugh. Not enough time to change the world. Maybe it’s arrogant to think people want saving, but I dunno… I guess it’s just making their lives as easy as mine were, back in the day.

Ah, well. Alric does not have good news on the dating front. But I am working on that. I feel as if he and Juliana could get along rather well, actually. I was woken this morning by a call from D, who’s a sweetie, who sends me these postcards with naked women, which I place on the fridge next to the postcards of naked men that my older friends who know me send me, who is still trying to help me out with girls. But yeah. Juliana and Alric? Stranger things have happened. But apparently chicks dig my politics.

I really need to skip more math classes. Induction is a great thing, like the first three times you learn it. You really don’t need to see it more often than that. I’m just a snob. But it is an amusing proof that all collections of n horses are the same color. Hrmm… And there is a philosophical thrust to it all, which is that in the case that any group of 2 horses are the same color, then… But I dunno.

In the modal logic, I am happy to report that I am reaching philosophically meaty stuff as far as existence goes. My sort of kneejerk admiration for Quine’s sort of deflationism is being deflated. This is actually meaningful philosophical substance with actual logic to go along with it. There might be a paper in here someplace.

Making plans with Joephet for tomorrow and the weekend somehow makes me very happy. Like I have something to actually look forward to. And yes: I am evidently going shopping with him this weekend, which I suppose we will hafta try and document in some way, as those who know me will find this rather difficult to believe. I am a very cheap dresser. Cheaper than any you could find at IKEA.

So my throat still hurts, but less so, after some chicken from the Chinese place, which was embarassing, as the entire family was sitting down chatting about their next meal of dog in the dining area when I walked in, and so they hurriedly rose to serve me, which was a bit strange, to say the least, and these excellent vitamin C drops that Halls makes which have made it possible for me to swallow without my entire torso performing the peristalsis, though the pain is still a little nagging.

I really do need to get into college early if I ever hope to make any headway on this math–there are some things I need to look up and some novels I need to check out, and the new Nation should hold me over just fine until I get to the library and new material: but so far it is a blank sort of day, having lost the push to produce comics, my letters stand there, languid, accomplishing nothing. And my summer dribbles away.

I really should try and write a comprehensive manifesto as regards math education as directed toward the aim of democracy. Yes. That would be nice. But maybe I should read a bit more before going off.

So I need a plan. I’m here between classes, having finished an exam early, retrieving a lost disk from the computer lab. I wonder if this is legal for working in this lab. Who’s to say? I guess I just feel the schoolyear approaching all-too-fast, without having really done anything to prepare myself, after a fashion. And this scares me more than a little bit, somehow. Certainly my new nocturnal rhythms will not in the least mesh well with next year’s requirements. This just annoys me. But with only two more weeks of classes (even though Joephet goes back to school next week, at least in some sense), and then two weeks off, I wonder if I shouldn’t take a trip someplace, but of course I have failed to plan ahead enough: we’ll see, but I am restless, and this is not a good thing.

So I am still at somewhat of a loss, just hanging out in the computer lab, having been successful at finding satisfactory Caribbean food in the way of slightly overcooked jerk chicken. But something about that steamed cabbage:

Meanwhile, amazing how fast I was able to read through From Hell–done within twenty-four hours, the sort of leisure that will be well-beyond me come fall. And after that food I feel healthy again, even capable. It’s just a matter of needing to produce, to feel somehow indispensible and unique again, which is a frightening responsibility, the sort of thing that makes you drag yourself into work to see your ungrateful kids even though you have sick days stored up and are sick as a dog–when people ask me why don’t I find another job, you seem so unhappy and overworked, I guess this job is the thing for me to now do. As much as it may be questioned at times, I think I am on the right track–it little profits to look at other plates.

I have been strangely emotional. Maybe it’s the force of the Alan Moore. Or maybe I been seeing too many little kids on the subway. My biological clock is ticking.

So I am off early to classes today, and perhaps to enjoy some Caribbean food in Flatbush, though I am still feeling a little sick, though not under the weather, which is so bright and clear and sharp. Things with Joephet are at an odd pass, perhaps. I am generally bored, or rather sick, and I have been reliving the glories of Alan Moore’s From Hell. I really need to get my comics collection organized: my productivity has ground to a slow and sickly halt, and I miss how Bessie is not around to read my blog and email me her comments, as I’m too HTML-dumb to include them myself.

So today was not very exciting, as far as classes are concerned, given that my shoptalk banter I expect to be more exciting than actually happened this afternoon. In any case, I wish the following were more troubling: but it is not. Welcome to my life, eh? It’s been strange how I’ve forgotten my work habits and my importance. But this shit gets me fucking steamed.

I love pigeon peas, I love Goya. And Joephet too. But that’s a longer story, with fewer carbs.

So I am sitting at my college computer lab, blogging and surfing away since my Assembly class was cancelled. But this is pleasant enough, even if I am deprived of my usual chatty subactivities. I have finished my assignment for the week, which seems horribly simple after a fashion, and I am wondering whether that $40 Assembly book was worth it. I also feel snobbery creeping into what I am thinking, as I am looking up nursing programs… I don’t know what to say at this point.

I was rereading some more unpleasant writing I’d done as regards Joephet some weeks ago: three weeks ago, in fact. And I must say, I am rather sharp. Maybe I will post that when I get home, maybe not.

So I’ve been a marvelous juggler. Today since hitting the college library again I’ve been bouncing all around yet more modal logic, some philosophy of math a la Hartry Field, and William James and Pragmatism. And I can hold each in my head, separately. But this of course does not compare to what I was doing last night, which I can now shamefacedly confess–I was half-consoling my friend Boston, chatting with Joephet on the phone about my tendency to be mean to him (for all the obvious reasons), and performing a running commentary over IM about this really bad gaysian porn I was watching with Kean. Yeah. All this at the same time, somehow. I had considered writing at length on that particular porn, but that would be very Albert freshman year. I just don’t know that it would quite change anything.

Beyond that, a wonderful moment at Borough Hall in Brooklyn on the 4 train when a family walks in, and the matriarch (grandmother) mutters about one of her grandkids, “I really hafta get rid of one of them,” to which I promptly reply, “I’ll take him!” Something about 3-year-olds which is so vulnerable and beautiful and full of hope.

Crabs are good for your dick.

Some philosophical asides: Life is great as far as logic goes, I’m waking up more than I have, and I think I can make all sorts of new use-mention jokes because I have been reminded of pointers. This business–the machine-language, assembly, higher-order language business–has also made me think more in terms of linguistics, especially those aspects which line up of course with the philosophy I’ve been interested in, some watered down version of Wittgenstein. But I am also realizing that the sorts of in-jokes, half-asides and flexing (as the old term used to go for showing off in class, back in college) that this instructor for the Discrete course engages in is no doubt how I do teach my high schoolers and how I would teach at the college level, if that ever again presented itself. And it’s fucking annoying. Mostly because you can’t make technically precise jokes to an intro-level class….

I am growing out my facial hair in recognition of my current non-dating status. The same for my hair, which has grown rather unmanageably long in the back. I figure it’s worth a shot, and might help me look more hard-core. For whom, I don’t know.

Beyond that, today was a lazy time, with eventually a brief walk with Jet up and down Broadway–yes, I have a Chinese buddy named “Jet,” withthe exuberance that only comes of jabbering in Chinese–my intonations are all different, somehow, and indeed my personality. Dealing with bilinguals is like dealing with two people, really.

Today was also the first day in quite some time that I’ve worn my old Florida YSP shirt, which has on the back many names, including that of one Michael Hunt (that’s not a circumlocution–that’s usefully-mentionally correct!). But in any case, I’m at the pizza place (pizza has again become a staple in my commuting to classes) wearing this shirt, which in standard math/science camp fashion has an odd agglomeration of things: Gauss’ Law, a DNA helix, a Spanish fort, a Pascal syntax bit, a crab. Well, the Mexican pizza guy recognizes the crab, at least. He starts saying, “congrefos” which is evidently Spanish for crabs. In any case, after going on for a bit about how los chinos like their crabs, he starts talking about “pito”. Then he starts flexing his arm and saying that crab is good for your ‘pito.’ Or so it appeared. Hrmm… So yes… thankfully, with the help of the Slavic counterman, I was able to figure out that crabs are good for your dick. Lobster too.

First day of classes for the summer, BS CS to plug in for inadequate math, 3 hours of train for 4 hours of boredom. But not hopeless. I mean, how exciting can Assembly possibly be? It’s droll, though, how the instructor thinks that “mnemonic” (pronounced “menumonic,” evidently) comes from the Latin for “operation.” The other class is sadly hopeless in its own way, just overblown philosophical asides in what is so far an intro-Logic class. I haven’t heard “vague” abused so many times in a class ever. But the instructor seems willing to work with me on modal logic and other little bits, more from the logic side than the philosophy side of things, which will be novel. Not that this is worth much to my political mission.

Meanwhile, I might well become more involved with the Math Immersion program, in terms of helping with tutoring and perhaps trying to rationalize the Algebra course, to make it more useful for teachers at the secondary level. So it’s been exciting getting back into the saddle mathematically, though at this point I bet that I just need some sort of intellectual stimulation after these last two weeks fallow.