when people stop being polite, and start getting real

In a conversation about what kinds of hobbies we could take up in an effort to make our lives less boring, Jess said this:

"I'm just trying to pass some goddamn time before I fucking die."

on being a townie

I don't like being a townie. It's taken a lot of the anonymity out of living in this place.

When I used to walk on the quad as a student, I would marvel at just how many classmates I had. I would think about the fact that I would probably never see some of the faces that I was passing again even though myself and the strangers around me were all so familiar with the same campus landscapes.

Now, though, it's easier for me to see how everyone is connected. I run into a student and/or a parent nearly every single time I go to the grocery store, for example, but it's not just people from work. I mean this in the least I'm-a-big-deal way possible, but it just seems like I've started to know a lot of people around here and they all know each other, too, for various reasons.

I can definitely see how this could be construed as a good thing. Sometimes, I do like it. Like the other day, I ran into the parents of one of my students while we were all volunteering at a food pantry that we were invited to by a good friend of mine. That was kinda cool, real community-like, y'know.

That said, I'm just not a smalltown person, and this place doesn't even qualify as a small town. It's not really to do with those kind of stereotypical everybody-knows-everybody's business issues -- and Lord knows it's not because any majority of people are stereotypically conservative over here. I'd just really much rather feel my insignificance in obvious ways every day, the way I feel while riding public transportation in a city, for example.

I almost can't believe I'm saying that; what, I want to teach in a big ol' impersonal school district where I don't have any valued input into the way things work? to live in a place where any kind of positive contribution I make to my community could only be so relatively tiny as to almost be pointless? where it's maybe easier for people to dehumanize one another since there's less of a chance that they'll have to interact with one another meaningfully?

It doesn't make sense when I really think about it, but really, sometime relatively soon I'm going to make a move towards someplace where I can feel a little less known. It'll be good for my level of modesty.

(ha. Ask anyone in Champaign-Urbana. My name rings out here. Right...)

wise beyond their years

No school today, so I've been running some errands this morning. As I was walking through my neighborhood, I heard a few sevenish-year-olds chatting as they rode bikes.

"Did you just say something mean about my teacher?"
"He said 'expectations.'"
"Yeah, and actually that's a good thing. Teachers should have expectations."
"It makes us want to obey them."

ha I don't know about that "obey" stuff.

as if we needed more proof that Urbana is "progressive"

Thanks, Kasey, for sending me the link to this:
Marijuana Decriminalized in Urbana

I know several of my students will be happy to hear it.

commuting

I happened to be on The El at 5ish today. Crowded and sorta sweaty, yes, but there's something about seeing Chicago from that venue that always gets me all antsy and stuff. It makes me feel like there are so many places and people that I need to see and know. It's overwhelming. I like seeing all the well-dressed (and not-well-dressed) people, and I wonder where they're going, where they're coming from, what they do, who they're texting, and why, and what music they're listening to. I also like being able to look down at people's backyards and onto their porches and into their windows. Not in a weird way, just like, "Huh, cool place." Kinda reminds me of that subway piece in Will Eisner's New York.

What a far cry from my "commute." I usually don't see anyone as I walk through my quiet neighborhood, and my brain is usually fixated on figuring out things that happened throughout my own day. Sometimes, I see Richard Powers walking home from work. Wonder what that guy's thinking.

Mmm hmmm Mmmm hmmmmm

I had to go to school early this morning to drop off lesson plans for my sub. As I was walking back home, the crossing guards for the local elementary school were just getting to their posts. I was saying good morning to one as another pulled up, parked, and opened the door so that we could hear her BLASTING "A Woman's Worth" by Alicia Keys. The woman who'd just said hello to me started laughing and said, "You'll have to excuse my mother. She's old." I thought she was kidding, making a joke about how loud this person's stereo was at seven-thirty in the morning. But when I walked past the car, there really was a super old woman getting out of it. Like, really old. How cool.

back to bed

shwag

God I love free stuff. Everyone does, I know. But I, like, reeeeeally like it. When we were little, Dad used to take us to the Auto Show, and even though I've never had any interest whatsoever in cars, I would get seriously invigorated by the process of collecting hundreds of *free* brochures and posters for fancy vehicles. Upon returning home, without fail, I would promptly throw them in the garbage. (Obviously, this was before being green was uber-trendy.) And don't even get me started on the free gifts he would bring home from the Chicago Tax Club. Words cannot express that kind of goodness.

Check out the free crap I got today!


Oh yes, that's an Urbana School District pedometer you're seeing there below the Urbana School District pen and above the Urbana School District hand sanitizer. (O.K., but I'm seriously kind of excited about the tote bag.)


... And all joking aside, my job rules.

apartment tour

It's still a work in progress, but with an emphasis on the progress.

Caution: Motion sickness ahead. Prepare accordingly.

(special thanks to Ben Harper and Neil Young)

I met a townie last night who's voting Hillary.

Go figure. I mean this guy seemed like your stereotypical east-central-Illinois-born-and-bred-Republican. But nope. He's like, "A woman runs my house; a woman should run the White House."

I'm addicted to stress.

And it's so good to be back in my organized clutter.

These are my feet, and my legs adorned in my recently rediscovered "good sweats."

"Every now and then I get a little bit tired of listening to the sound of my tears."

I thought I hated PlayStation and all video games (not for some problem I have with what video games may or may not be doing to the kiddies, but because I think they're boring.) But SingStar rules. I'm so glad my eight-year-old cousin got it for Christmas so that I could play with it. I wish I had the video of Sinéad and I singing this, but these Italians are doing a pretty good job, no? Here's us:



I had a blast in Dublin, and am now back to beautiful Evergreen Park, Illinois. Tomorrow: Urbana!

tormented soul

The public transportation system in C-U has been running an ad campaign for a while now that features various bus drivers, each with a photo and a personal tidbit enlarged and slapped on the sides of the buses. I kinda like it; it feels really community-grounded, or something. Anyway, I saw one this morning on my way to class that said something along the lines of "Four years with MTD, father of three, writes jingles in his spare time."

Now, in his photo, the guy looks pretty well-adjusted. But I can't help thinking that with a little embellishment, this guy sounds like a great protagonist for a short story or something. Methodically driving around a relatively small town on the same route everyday, eternally tormented by catchy little diddies that run through his head incessantly. He can write them down and sell them and try to move on from them, but there's always a new jingle playing in his mind... "I gotta get to the autopark! The O'Brien Autopark" (People in C-U might know which jingle I'm referring to.) And he's good at it, so there's always some local company willing to pay him for a new one. And he hears his work on the radio as he's driving around, but even when he's not driving, he's constantly hearing radio jingles. He tries listening to other music, but once it's done playing, he remembers it cheesier. Like the KidzBop versions of already overly-catchy pop songs.

Almost as cool as regular graffiti. Almost.

Something I've been wanting to blog about for a while. Walking through my neighborhood, something that stands out is the way that the people who live here use their homes, yards, and cars as spaces for written discourse. People write all over this neighborhood. Below are pictures of just very few examples of all of the writing around here:







The final image, which for some reason I can't get to load vertically, is something I'll probably write more about later. This robot-ish motif is something I've been taking note of all over campus-town. I wonder if there's some artist responsible for all of its instances. Or maybe there's an underground robot art movement. That'd be pretty cool.

One of my favorite pieces of public writing in this neighborhood is something I don't have a photo of yet. One house's address is marked "605?" I can't remember if 605 is actually the number or not, but the question mark is what I like love.

Number of times I used the word something in this post: 4. Now 5.

It's the little things in life, you know?

Today as I was leaving the grocery store, there was a man coming in, in his fifties I'd say, and wearing a vintage teal B.U.M. Equipment sweatshirt. He had longish gray hair and just as he was stepping into the sensored zone of the automatic door, he kicked his leg forward, did this karate chop thing, and yelled, "Hiyah!" He was by himself, no kids with him or anything. But after he did it he looked so happy. He looked at me with no shame and said, "I've always wanted to do that." Yeah, man.

sappy

As I was walking down the street at dusk this evening, I could see into someone's kitchen where two people were hugging like they've never hugged before. Nothing sexual. No funny business. Just a good solid hug. It was lovely.

"We're not worthy!"

So I'm down in Urbana for good now, enjoying our sweet new apartment. There was an old plaid armchair in my room when I moved in, and I didn't really want it there. My plan to move it to the living room down the hall, though, was foiled when it didn't fit down the hall. So now, in homage to the Wayne's World skit in which Wayne proclaims, "Aerosmith is in my breakfast nook!" we created a little breakfast nook with a great view of the garbage can.



In the nook, I've been reading Strip City: A Stripper's Farewell Journey Across America by Lily Burana, and it's fascinating. Frankly, even thinking about strip clubs used to make me really nervous, but now I'm embarrassed that I was Judgey McJudgerson about them without knowing anything about them.