I miss Alabama.

I'm incredibly excited to be getting ready to leave for New Orleans to spend a few days with Arianne. And excited again at the prospect of getting to visit Melissa and Josh later this summer. My time in Alabama was seriously one of the most important learning experiences I've had, for countless reasons, not the least of which was the intelligent, ambitious, and remarkably compassionate friends I made. Just impressively thoughtful and action-oriented people. (So impressive, one might be inclined to think that they can't party. But, oh no. They can.) I mean, check out Chris' latest blog entry. (And this from a guy whose nickname I shall not include here.)

on (I think) my 21st birthday

Brotherhood 2.0

My big brother Johnny (Hi Johnny!) called me last night to tell me about a video he thought I should see since I had been making fun of him and my little brother Neil for their excessive excitement over the newest Harry Potter book.

But I'm intrigued by the video's opening, "Two Brothers, One Video Blog, 365 Days of Textless Communication." The two creators call their project Brotherhood 2.0. And their video messages to one another are hilarious. I especially like all the "in my pants" jokes. I can't help wondering, though, if this kind of communication is really satisfying for them, or if they actually miss each other. Yes, they're responding to each others videos, but it's with the knowledge that other people, and a lot of them, are watching them communicate. It's so un-intimate. I'm a big fan of YouTube and the kinds of things it can make possible, but as a way of keeping in touch, it seems sort of disjointed.

You know who's not a fan of You Tube? President Bush, apparently. In an article titled "Will the G.O.P. say No to YouTube?" TIME reports that many of the Republicans running for the presidential nomination have decided not to attend the Republican version of the YouTube-based debate in which the the Democratic hopefuls participated earlier this week. They think it's silly. "White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters that the President had not even watched, saying Bush was 'not big on YouTube debates.'" ...That cocky son-of-a-bitch. Too cool for those new-fangled technological advances, Mr. Bush? Especially those that allow real people to ask presidential candidates their real questions? Shocking.

Anyway, I'm leaving Mobile now, and I have some new close friends to keep in touch with. Maybe I'll give this "Textless Communication" stuff a shot before I decide how I feel about it.

"They wished to become frightening"

For my birthday last month, my awesome friends got my two really good books. I'm working my way through one of them, Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, right now. I like it a lot. Vonnegut is hilariously dry and distant in the way that he describes "Earthlings," and often more specifically, Americans. He makes us sound absurd; it's awesome.

Today at work, Arianne, Chris and I watched two kids we'd been bullshitting with for about an hour suddenly break into a fight and beat the shit out of each other in the street. They very nearly attacked each other with bricks, and most definitely would have if it hadn't been for two older guys wrenching them out of their hands.

Over lunch, we talked about it. The sight of one of the boys kicking the other in the head repeatedly as he lay near the curb, and the sound of their shoulders and heads cracking off the pavement as they wrestled each other was disturbing. But then one of the older guys told us that they fight like that every day. And I remembered how one of them, shocked that I'd told him I'd never been in a fight, had asked me just a few minutes before he started wailing on the other kid, "So what do you do if someone grabs your tit or rapes you?" And Chris noted how the kid he was reading the survey to wasn't phased at all by what the violence that was going on a few feet in front of him and continued answering the questions; no big deal.

I found this scene in Breakfast of Champions particularly poignant, considering the day's events:

In one of New York City's many ghettos for dark-skinned people, a group of Puerto Rican boys gathered together in the basement of an abandoned building. They were small, but they were numerous and volatile. They wished to become frightening, in order to defend themselves and their friends and families, something the police wouldn't do. They also wanted to drive the drug peddlers out of the neighborhood, and to get enough publicity, which was very important, to catch the attention of the Government, so that the Government would do a better job of picking up the garbage and so on.

In the spirit of the YouTube debate last night...

"re...stupid"

One of the things that my friends do that I appreciate most is correct themselves when they use the word retarded as a synonym for bad, uncool, shitty, whatever. I try not to be annoying about it, but it really grates on my nerves when people use it. So when I hear my friends correcting themselves when they're about to say it, it means a lot.

sap fest

One popular complaint among the interns about our survey is that it, or any survey, is a completely inadequate way of getting a snapshot of a person. How much can you really gather about a person based on their multiple-choice answers? By far the coolest part about administering the survey for me has been all of the interaction with the kids. Even then though, we only see most kids one time over the course of the summer, usually for an hour and a half, max. But sometimes, you just have a moment with one of them. It's probably stupid to attach a lot of sentimental value to one conversation, or one glance, or one joke with a kid. I'm not saying that any connecting moment should be used as some cheesy symbol for what it's like to work with these kids; because, really that's not much different from thinking that their completed surveys are accurate depictions of who they are.





"Do you have a boyfriend or a girlfriend right now? Or are you talking to someone, or a couple of people, but you don't have a girlfriend or boyfriend right now?"

She filled in the bubble next to the latter before I could read the other options. I told her that she could mark "A. I don't have a boyfriend or girlfriend" for the rest of the page, flip it, and mark the same for the whole next page.

"I had a boyfriend yesterday..." She mumbles more as she's bubbling down the page.

"Oh yea?" I thought I heard something about getting rid of him. "Did you break up with him?

"Yes ma'am."

"Yea? Why?" She looked at me. I am thinking that I shouldn't have asked that.

"He was talking to other girls on the phone." No big deal.

"Ahh... And you didn't like that?" I say, smiling.

She smiles, "No." Still bubbling.

"How long were you two together?"

"Eleven months."

I say, "Woww" mindlessly, but she's already on the next page, pointing to the next question and asking me, "What do they mean here?"


So I finished the survey with her and went outside for Arianne to pick me up. I didn't have my phone with me, but I knew it wouldn't be long until she was back.

The girl sees me out on the curb, and comes out of the house. "You can wait inside until your ride gets here!" she offers.

I figure she's just being polite. Inside, she kept calling me "Ma'am" until I said, "Hey, I'm not that much older than you. You don't have to call me that." I tell her not to worry about it and that it won't be long at all. I start doodling on the manila envelope that her survey is in, but I feel like I'm being watched.

She's standing on the porch. "I'm just gonna wait until your friend gets here." She's protecting me.

"Oh don't worry about it. I'm great here... Do you want me to knock when she gets here?"

"Yea." She goes back inside.

A few cars go by on the street in front of me. From one of them, I hear a male voice, "Hey girl!" Instinctively, I look up. I'm sort of asking for it, sitting on the curb at 10:45 in the morning with a clipboard and a name tag and my fair skin and blonde hair. I probably look completely out of place.

The car stops and reverses. "What are you doing, girl?"

"Oh I'm just working," I say, thinking how I look like the last thing I'm doing right now is working.

"Survey?"

Relief. "Yea, survey." He smiles and drives off.

I turn around just in time to see her retreating back into the house, quickly so that I can't see that she's still watching out for me. She's thirteen years old.

Iraq's official language

As I was perusing The Best American Nonrequired 2006 today, I came across the Iraqi Constitution, approved by a referendum in October of 2005. Pretty interesting. Some of it sounds exactly like the US Constitution, but the ways that it is different are fascinating. The Preamble opens,

In the name of God, the most merciful, the most compassionate

We have honored the sons of Adam.

Another point of note is

Work is a right for all Iraqis so as to guarantee them a decent living.

I am also particularly intrigued by the way that the document deals with language. It's in Article 4 and says,

First: The Arabic language and Kurdish language are the two official languages of Iraq. The right of Iraq is to educate their children in their mother tongue, such as Turkmen, Syriac and Armenian, in government educational institutions in accordance with educational guidelines, or in any other language in private educational institutions, is guaranteed.

Second: The scope of the term official language and the means of applying the provisions of this article shall be defined by law which shall include:

A. Publication of the official gazette, in the two languages;

B. Speech, conversation and expression in official settings, such as the Council of Representatives, the Council of Ministers, courts, and official conferences, in either of the two languages;

C. Recognition and publication of the official documents and correspondences in the two languages;

D. Opening schools that teach the two languages, in accordance with the educational guidelines;

E. Use of both languages in any settings enjoined by the principle of equality such as bank notes, passports and stamps.

(Third: The federal institutions and agencies in the Kurdistan region shall use the Arabic and Kurdish languages.)

Fourth: The Turkmen language and Syriac language are two other official languages in the administrative units in which they represent density of population.

Fifth: Each region or governorate may adopt any other local language as an additional official language if the majority of its population so decide in a general referendum.

This is different from the US; we don't have an official language, technically. Some people want to make English our official language, and it gets talked about a lot especially within the context of immigration reform. It's a lot easier to say, "I just think that if you're going to come to this country, you should speak our language," than it is to say, "I don't like Mexicans." But this thing seems to be where it's at. Two official languages, plus a just-in-case clause for any extra language that the locals want to add on, niiceee.

I'm a genie in a bottle

I can't figure out how to get this photo upright. It's an advertisement for a scholarship awarded to high school students who have civic service experience. I'm not sure what the pink flower is for, except to deter any insecure high school boy trying to establish his masculinity from applying.


"COME SEE WHAT SHERRY IS GOT COOKING" Yes, please.


The kids are still periodically elaborating on their bubbled-in answers. This one's particularly scary.


And if you don't go inside to speak with Mr. Lee, is that an indication that you don't love your family?


Here's Arianne and I working today. Some kids called us Christina Aguilera.



This is what Christina Aguilera looks like.

still not over this site

!!!!!!111

I'm so excited right now. Josh posted recently about the kitchen fiasco that I mentioned before that, aside from being maddening, is pretty hilarious. And I'm so glad he did, because his friend directed his (and my, as a faithful Josh-reader) attention to www.passiveaggressivenotes.com.


I mean, seriously. That is good stuff. You can even browse their entries by categories like "CAPS LOCK," "spelling and grammar police," and "exclamation-point happy!" What could be funnier?


I love it.

yikes

http://www.anti-war.us/gallery/gallery8.php

Although really, "would'nt" should be "wouldn't." I'm just saying...

Book Review: Olaf Reads by Joan Lexau, illustrated by Harvey Weiss

In this book, Joan Lexau tells three different Olaf stories, none of which makes any sense at all. None of them has a plot. Each ends unexpectedly and strangely. I think the moral of the story is supposed to be that goofy antics inevitably follow the inability to read properly. Illiteracy = silly. I love it. A favorite excerpt? I'd have trouble deciding between:

"Olaf," said his mother, "will you mail a letter for me?"
"What will you give me?" Olaf asked.
"Nothing," said his mother. "You should do it because it I ask."
"O.K.," said Olaf.
"I will give you a cookie when you get back," said his mother.
"For mailing the letter?" Olaf said.
"No! Because I want you to have a cookie," said his mother.

and

"Who pulled the fire bell?" asked a policeman.
"Pull?" said Olaf.
"Did you do it?" said the policeman.
"But it said Pull," said Olaf. "Are you going to put me in jail?"
"No, but I will scold you," said the policeman. "It is good to read. But you must think, too. Read and think."
"Yes," said Olaf.
A fireman said, "You must not pull something that says Pull if you don't know what it is."

What? For Olaf, I'd say adults are probably confusing. One thing that the book has going for it is cool illustration. Even if Olaf can't seem to read the signs around him well enough to avoid making an ass of himself, at least the way he sees the text around him is whimsical and fun!

(not) home, (not) sweet (not) home

We came back to the dorms after spending the holiday away to find these notes taped to our doors.


There are about seventy-five people staying in this dorm; all of us keep our groceries in one fridge, all of us use the same stove, oven, microwave, counter-top, dishes. And we keep pissing the higher-ups off by not leaving the kitchen clean, so they're locking it for a few days to teach us a lesson. I mean, it is annoying when people don't clean up after themselves. That said, the signage that has been posted over this whole kitchen ordeal is mucho passive-aggressive. I wish I had taken photos of the signs that came before this one. One featured a picture of Mr. T. and read something along the lines of "I pity the fool who does not clean up his or her dishes!" Anyway, by Tuesday afternoon, the dorm-powers-that-be decided that they had had enough of our slovenly ways. We came home from work to find Mr. T. gone. A smiley-face on a new sign exclaiming, "Well, you've done it!" seemed to take pleasure in the pain that we will inevitably feel at our exclusion from la cocina. In quite cliche fashion, the text on the sign ended with, "Have a nice day!"

What gets me about the sign above is the grammatical structure of the last sentence. "These belong to your neighbors and were removed without permission!" Really, it should probably read, "These belong to your neighbors and you removed them without permission!" Make that passive tense active, you know? Be direct about it. To be fair, passive tense is not technically wrong, but the sign's creator may have expressed a stronger message if s/he had more clearly identified the subject of that passive verb. Something like, "These belong to your neighbors and were removed without permission [by you inconsiderate assholes]!"

GRE vocab word of the day: ambivalent

Recorded some video at work today. Here's some of it:

Raneicia and Alonzo playing with magnets

Jermayne writing and reading a story about Jermayne.

And my favorite,

"Oh! You can't be doin' that junk on her phone!"

A little while before we started playing with the cameras, one of the kids told me all about how he stays with his aunt now, (and his eight brothers and sisters, and his cousins,) because his mom has been in jail in Montgomery for seven years. He's nine.

Josh had a jarring experience today. Spending so much time hanging out and having fun with these kids makes it almost harder for me to really get some of the shit they deal with.

1+1=3

Arianne, Chris, Josh, Katharine Ann and I went to New Orleans this past weekend and stayed with Arianne's brother and his roommates (pictured above after dinner Friday night.) It was very cool, lots of good food and drinking and quality hang-out time.

Anyway, back to work Monday, where we're hanging out with a bunch of kids who are all targeted, and I use that word deliberately, by an abstinence-only campaign with the slogan "1+1=3?"

Our survey asks

Was the sex education you received in school worthwhile?
... I have not had sex education in school
... No
... Yes

Occasionally, I'll be reading to a particularly talkative bunch of kids who will have a few comments to make every question or so. One time, I had a kid ask "What's sex education?" and his friend answered, "It's the 1+1=3 people." The kid who had asked the question then marked that the sex ed was useful. Next question:

Have you ever had sexual intercourse? 'Sexual intercourse' means having sex with the male penis inside the female vagina. This is sometimes called 'going all the way.'
... No
... Yes

I swear, that's how the question reads. The same kid who didn't know that the 1+1+3ers were sex education didn't know what sex is. How useful is sex ed when kids come out of it not knowing what sex is? Well, he didn't know what "male penis inside the female vagina" is, but he's not a virgin. He answered that he usually does use a condom when he has sex and that his girlfriend is on birth control. You could probably argue that the kid was fucking with me, just acting like he didn't know, but I'm pretty certain from talking with him that afternoon that that wasn't the case.

To be fair, there are a lot of various reasons why the kid might have been unaware of what sexual intercourse means. But does the mysterious add-on that happens when 1+1 have to be guilt or regret? How about 1+1+love= 3, or even 1+1+orgasm=3? No?


Yikes.

buzz kill

When I was walking through one of the public housing developments the other day, I picked up this.



It's just a busted up video game controller, yea, but it also struck me as a cool symbol for the weird kind of poverty we're dealing with down here. The neighborhoods in which we work are some of the poorest in the country, and a lot of the living conditions are pretty gross. But it doesn't look like the poverty you see on TV.

(Thanks, Josh, for the photos that I took without asking!)

Can you imagine a sappy infomercial asking for money to feed the person who lives in the photo above? Or to fund his kids' education? No way. What's depressing about this job is that sometimes I get the overwhelming sense that some of these kids just don't have a chance. That doesn't mean they're not saturated in consumer culture, though, so they still want all kinds of goofy things. I mean, of course they do. They're kids, and that's allowed. One kid waiting for his friends to finish the survey the other day drew me this.


I won't pretend to be some kind of expert on poverty; just thought I'd say something about how this stuff is a little (a lot) fucked up.

See what I mean?

We saw this in one of the neighborhoods today. Gang graffiti? Probably not. Hilarious? Yes. Good for you, Ross. Nice one.

in defense of graffiti

One of the most interesting things to me ever is when people write on things that they're not supposed to. It's using literacy to rebel, and it's cool. I mean, it's really cool when graffiti voices some kind of political dissent, but I get just as excited about kids writing on the fill-in-the-bubble surveys we're administering as I do when I hear about the "more like homeland insecurity" that Melissa saw in Atlanta.

But today I'm getting the impression that I may be in the minority on this one. When I checked my email early this morning, I was excited to see that the National Geographic Photo of the Day is this:


The caption, however, reads,

Graffiti covers the side of a ship in one of Denmark's many harbors. Vandalism is rare in this exceptionally peaceful, orderly society where a mere 2 percent of the national budget is spent on police, prisons, and courts. A common saying in the patriotic nation holds that "Denmark is a land where few have too much and even fewer have too little," a fact that they attribute to keeping the crime levels low.

giving me the distinct feeling that the caption-writer thinks graffiti is bad; it's vandalism.

Later in the morning, as I waited for my medium black coffee at Moka's, the local coffee shop, I read an article on the front page of today's paper called "Mobile's wannabe gang problem." The two images in the story are of graffiti. (I couldn't find them online, so below are my photos of the photos.)



The first one really gets me. The caption assures us that "it does not indicate gang 'turf' or a warning to rivals." Um, yea. It says love. Repeatedly the article cites the existence or lack thereof of gang graffiti as a major indicator of whether or not gangs exist in Mobile. Although school officials "have linked some fights to territorial conflicts ... school walls aren't painted with gang graffiti, and [the security director for the school system] doesn't see students wearing gang colors." Don't get me wrong, I'm not downplaying the gravity of the issue of gangs. I just don't see how graffiti and bandannas can be the only evidence available for piecing together a conclusion. The second caption above concludes that "while [the tag] appears to be gang-oriented, it is actually the painter displaying his artistic ability with a spraypaint can." While I take issue with the assumption that the tagger is male, I sort of like how Officer John Young can get down with the idea of graffiti as art. I don't even really think that the second tag is that cool per se. What I do think is cool is the way that taggers use their ability to write as a a way to inscribe public space. It's just so bold. It makes a passer-by see what the tagger has to say, even if it's unpleasant.

Anyway, the survey we're administering asks the kids

Agree/Disagree: Kids who are in a gang get respect from other kids in my neighborhood.

How much do you worry about gangs in your neighborhood?

Have you ever been involved in a gang?

Are you currently involved in a gang?

Do you hang out with members of a gang?

Analyzing this data seems to me like a more reliable source of information about the state of gangs in Mobile than looking at the graffiti and scratching our heads, no?


They published this in TIME a bit ago:

40 ounce of Schlits Malt Liquer

Define shrimping.

It's what Bubba and Forrest and Lieutenant Dan from Forrest Gump do, right? Yes and no.

Since the 4th of July is rapidly approaching, and since we're in the South of the US, and since many of us will probably not have another extended stay down here, we want to do something super hillbilly-ish. We're stereotyping, yes. So we've been talking about going shrimpin'. It just sounds awesome. The thing is, we have no shrimpin' hook up, so last night I innocently typed "shrimping" into Google. I did not find a shrimpin' hook up, but I did find the Urban Dictionary definitions for the word, and I got the shock of a lifetime.

1. shrimping

To lick or suck on someone's toes.

I like to lay back and stroke my cock while Brandi is shrimping me.

2. shrimping

Even if you're gay you gotta be pretty stoney mchill to try this. It's the act following homosexual intercourse between two guys; after which the pitcher produces a bendy straw and proceeds to suck the mixture of shit and sperm from his partner's gaping asshole.

I caught Gary and Chaz shrimping in the bathroom last week...i threw up hxc style.

5. shrimping

It means to suck toes. If you do not believe so, then look up some old porn. There are titles that are named shrimping and they are about toe sucking. I own one such porn movie on VHS. Do not confuse feltching with shrimping. You will make those like myself that have a foot fetish angry....LOL

shrimping means to suck on someone's toes

6. shrimping

toesucking I know e'ryt'ing dere is to know about de shrimpin' bidniz.

8. shrimping

when one extremely flaming homosexual ejaculates in another's anus. then he proceeds to reclaim his "man juices" through some type of tubular suction device. most commonly used would be a straw., but twizzlers or thin pvc pipe work well too. (used by the gayest of men for etxra pleasure) those damn faries

Joseph aka the harbor master reclaimed what was righfully his by shrimping his dog. he was secretely gay and did not want anyone to know about it.

9. shrimping

After ejaculating into the rectum, consuming the foamy, pink-ish mixture of shit and splooge, which is rumored to taste somewhat like shrimp.

"Do you have any cocktail or tartar sauce? I want to go shrimping in your asshole."

11. shrimping

The act of catching shrimp.

She came from a whole family of shrimpers so she was quite good at it.

20. shrimping

To pleasure a woman by wiggling your toes in her clitoris region.

My friend Jimmy likes to go shrimping with his girlfriend.

21. shrimping

Small particles with shit veins. I like to stroke my little cock to something resembling life while gay wrestlers fist shrimp in my loose asshole.

25. shrimping

when 2 gay men put a dead rat in a sperm filled condom and stick it up each others butthole and pull it out with their mouth.

(1)"John Seeley of the Manchester Monarchs is a mad shrimper."
(2)"Dude, Seeley and Kanko shrimped all night long."
(3)"Where's the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins?" "I dont know, probably shrimping in the locker room."

Okay, and there are also several variations of the word shrimping. For example the second definition of shrimper is

2. shrimper

A shrimper is when One Person sucks the cum out anothr persons Ass Hole with a Straw.

This Faggot Named James Rhoton Once Gave a Shrimper to a Hobo, for a 40 ounce of Schlits Malt Liquer.

Urban Dictionary is a fascinating thing to me. I think what freaks me out the most is the sexist and heterosexist discourse that is obvious in these user definitions and that I've seen in previous visits to the site. These people are idiots.

My first sake

I went to dinner tonight with some friends to one of those Japanese restaurants where they cook the food right in front of you. Here we are:


It was a lot of fun and delicious, but it made me feel sort of weird. Melissa could tell that I was freaking out and kept laughing at me. I mean, the man who cooked our food was speaking to us with an accent similar to Mr. Yunioshi from Breakfast at Tiffany's. Come on. Since he is working as a chef in a Japanese restaurant, there is obviously a great chance that he is actually Japanese. That said, something about the whole thing seemed artificial, like it was for our entertainment. And then there's the pressure to be entertained by the charade. I don't know.