So I don’t know what it is about PIXAR movies, but they always make me cry. Mark and I enjoyed WALL-E, though I was a little confused as to why so few Chinese people actually made it into space.

Today’s trip out to Brooklyn College was a success–my students are amusing, and very young–they still call me “Mister.” But my interactions with the Taco Truck guys was less successful, partly because Mark was ordering tacos with his whole arm again:

Maestro, tengo una pregunta. En tu idioma que dices cuando quieres comer.
Pues, los chinos no se dicen nada antes–solamente comenzamos a comer: los japoneses, pues, los japoneses siempre se dicen “itadaki-masu,” pero nosotros no tenemos tiempo para esto.
Y como se dice “novia”
Uhhhh… niupengyou.
Ah, chino es mi idioma, porque dos de mis amigos estan casados con chinitas

I can only look uncomfortably at Mark.

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.

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.