beben y beben y vuelven a beber / vuelven a beber los peces en el rio

We have, then, in the Satires of Juvenal, a good example of a recurring phenomenon: the reactionary marginal voice which in turn marginalizes others. The logical conclusion to be drawn from the rhetoric of the Satires is not the need for the inclusion of the excluded: many marginal voices make just such a plea, but not this one. Here inclusion in the system is not the goal; rather, it is the assumption of power by the dispossessed, who will then marginalize those who threaten their authority.

D Larmour. Juvenal, Ideology and the Critics: A Plan for Resisting Readers. Pacific Coast Philology. v. 26 p. 45

that cali

the summer vacation is starting to congeal and people are hastening to pick out the fatty parts. to make sure the urge to make fondue wouldn't have passed by the time i was hungry again we bought cheese and wine shortly before midnight last night, then set the bread out to get stale. johnny came over and we ate sitting around the magnetic stirring hotplate, planning to watch a movie and play risk. said of the lil' wayne and juelz santana mixtape "i can't feel my face,"
-they roll a bit too hard

most rappers start out as teenagers and their early material is teenager's fantasy power and respect

i got turned down for one job then got a tentative offer for a better job. i would be an academic mentor for university athletes

more chances

words coming from Old English crudan, to press: crowd, crud, curd

expiate

the tomatoes have consumed my nights. perhaps i have decided that my nights are to be consumed in insomniac idleness and this has been projected on to the tomatoes. na will go to bed earlier than usual to ease the tomatoes along, making sure they prevent me from coming to bed.

i was walking around the neighborhood and went to buy a lighter. the girl at the gas station said i'd have to show id for her to sell me one, then refused my expired driver's license. i'm imagining that there is no such law but that the police and the gas stations have some kind of understanding with eachother. the gas stations help them to bear down on this poor neighborhood and they protect them from teenagers and homeless men, sitting in the parking lot, occasionally writing citations for failure to show proof of liability on the part of customers who don't look like they can afford it.

my new theory is that personal freedom is damaged by the ubiquity of the automobile in the US. you must have a car to lead a dignified life. you have a license to drive that doubles as an identity card. you need a driver's license to be able to identify yourself. roads mark out the places where you can go, and it is inconvenient to move even a short distance if not by road in a car. licenses are relatively easy to get because everyone needs one, so the drivers are dangerous. alcohol is restricted in general so that the drivers don't become worse. you spend a lot of time on the road and the police patrol the roads in the interest of safety. if they find a pretext under which to pull you over, they'll see if you have any warrants or are breaking any other laws. every day can bring a chance meeting with the police.

doctors

Has the insurance company had a bad day with the subprime mortgage bonds in its investment portfolio, and this quarter's earnings are at risk?

Well, that's easy enough to deal with. Guess what, doc: where we used to pay 80% for code 69405, Eustachian-tube catheterization, now we'll only pay 50%. The patient now has to pay the rest; if he can't, the doctor or clinic eats the remainder. If the company's balance sheet still looks grim, it may be decided that from now on, lots more 96921s - laser treatment of inflammatory skin disease between 250 and 500 square centimeters - are going to be classified as "not medically necessary", no matter what the patient's doctor thinks.

Asia Times

a pigeon for each hole

yesterday we went to a garage sale of two gay men who had a showroom for their custom upholstery business. they closed the showroom to do only custom orders. we got a large wool rug for 10% of the showroom price and i got to test out my spanish in arranging for $3 less on a small carpet. bi returned with her cat so it could stare at the fat goldfish in the fishpond and flirt with the mexican one. he said that they started with three and now forty but each has a name so don't steal one because i'll miss it and this is why we confirmed he was gay.

we drove up and down ben white to get a new laptop from dhl and ten pounds of tomatoes at $0.38 per pound. they cut the price down because they were all very ripe, wal-mart did. either that or they know how i like buying bursting red romas below cost. i'll stay up some of the night to change them into a simple sauce.

listening: lil wayne: greatest rapper alive mixtape

sin haberme dado siquiera

in dallas. it is exciting when the toll booth approaches and you don't know if you have enough or exact change then you throw into the bucket. if you miss the bucket then you are out holding up traffic searching around for a dime that rolled under your car. we go to the house of chi, a divorcée, for bao's graduation party. bao claims he will seduce her because he is a gold digger and na says that is a very unkind thing to do. if an 18-year old boy can outwit a 40-year old woman in the game of love, según dije, than everyone deserves what they get.

the pool table is slanted and so is bi's house. in eleven days i'll be back on flat land.

a laos couple, a guy named bobby and his fiancée who is a chiropractor and puts her photo on her business card so you can choose to have a pretty chiropractor if you like came to the party. bobby knows much about the science of fucking partying one's ass off. he said that in mobile , alabama a preacher's daughter was putting her hands on bao. everyone was viet, so thought the preacher's wife, adtulit bobby, and she told her daughter in laos "my girl maybe you don't want to sit so close to the boy" and the daughter snapped back that mom mind your own business leave me alone. preacher's kids, i tell you what...

everyone was viet or laos at the party except for the three perverted guys who had asian girlfriends.

mother came in now and says "hi boy you are nice [put her hand on my chin] you are my son see this i hab not gay fabric only back do you like i patch it is better you patch when it is small. see boy i am not scaring you see na what you say is not"

triple beam, dirty bird sippin' dat promethazine

in the summer some of my extended family goes to a motel next to a lake that has some poles driven in the ground where we play horseshoes. then for four days i spend most of the time playing dominoes, 80, horseshoes, and poker. my gambling losses amounted to $1, but my mom kept making sandwiches for me and someone kept putting bud light and ice in this orange cooler. it becomes all the more profitable when i factor in the birthday presents and the good will generated by family reunions. we drove back to austin in the night and went to the grocery store. i like to believe that the five other shoppers were a club bouncer, a security guard, an aged stripper, an aged waitress, and a pale guy who ran out of snacks while playing video games. their diets are not healthy compared to mine. mexican guys were waxing the floor and painting stripes in the parking lot. later at a gas station a very tall black guy with a handsome face and one jeweled tooth was joking with this smiling chubby mexican girl about $9.86 and she was telling him it's either the swishers or the gasoline because $9.86 is a difficult number to negotiate.

it was a good idea to buy food and gasoline before going to sleep. the phrase from one of onetti's stories, un desayuno fuerte, cualquier tontería como almuerzo, y con frequencia cenaban afuera, always makes me want a large breakfast on certain days when there is someone around to hear me call it a strong breakfast. bacon, two eggs, a bagel, a slice of cheese and orange juice.

she's a stripper i'm a tipper with a counterfeit twenty

some of my chattel was in a professor's attic. we arranged that i'd pick up the things on the hour's advent of a cocktail party for two ph.d students who had gotten jobs. most of the people in the party were yorubas. west africans don't drink cocktails, i have conjectured. black label, wines and belgian ale.

i learned some important information.
akálá: nnwe for beignet
akálá bean: cameroon pidgin for fried bean cake
akálá: yoruba for fried bean cake
akálá dje: brazilian name for fried bean cake (yoruba, literally: eat
akálá!)

sus cheques ahora

i wake up, and look
upon your painted eyelids
the world is your oyster
and the trashbags are your kids

one of the mornings where i wake up and feel that i am surrounded by filth. slowly, methodically clean my body, calculating. then decide which pieces of furniture are responsible for this and throw carry them away, into the storage room. sweep the floors and vacuum, wash most of the dishes, then feel that i've proven my point and agree that yes, let's roll a small one.

-one of these days we're going to have a dinner party...
-yeah
-and i'm going to serve edamame the first course, then the guests are going to know that we're classy. like not one of those...

in the pub with some white collar workers who need the booze more than i do, we'd get into arguments of the type:
-now from an air pollution perspective, if all of the coal-fired...
-now wait, can you name one case...
-i mean statistically, if we average...
-but...
-right, zero cases. every one is special, but if you're a gambler you want to know...

when jupiter created the world, he hung a wallet behind our backs that contains our faults, and everyone else's wallet hangs from their necks.

you are special, i am special, but averaged together we are base and shameful.

Faith

It had been many years that I had known that it was necessary to put catholics, freudians, marxists and patriots in the same bag. I mean anyone who has faith, no matter in what; anyone who has an opinion, who knows or acts repeating inherited or learned thoughts. A faithful man is more dangerous than a hungry beast. Faith pushes them to action, to injustice, to wickedness; it's better to listen to them nodding your head, to measure the intensity of their disease with a cautious and urbane silence, always conceding to their arguments. Faith can be placed in and intensify in the most disdainful and subjective things. In the shared love for a woman, in a dog, in a soccer team, in a number on a roulette wheel, in life's calling.

Onetti, Dejemos hablar al viento

three in the mornin' and you know what they knockin' fo'

cruising through the AMD campus on oltorf, blasting Rick Ross, Port of Miami, dont "where my money" the theme song for my dealings with landlords. two certified letters in the mailbox with phrases like "...that the matter be settled without recourse to the law. To this end, I have filed a complaint..."

grant writing

i'm writing a grant proposal for a theatre troupe, deciding whether or not to affix this citation from cicero:

You ask us, O Gratius, why we are so exceedingly attached to this man. Because he supplies us with food whereby our mind is refreshed after this noise in the forum, and with rest for our ears after they have been wearied with bad language. Do you think it possible that we could find a supply for our daily speeches, when discussing such a variety of matters, unless we were to cultivate our minds by the study of literature; or that our minds could bear being kept so constantly on the stretch if we did not relax them by that same study?

of those things having been translated from latin the problem there is that such number of run-on sentences and passive voice there are made to be, which, in the times of those great orators were believed by the same to be marks of eloquence (ex loquens) that by readers of our time less, mirabile dictu, esteemed are they.

Quaeres a nobis, Grati, cur tanto opere hoc homine delectemur. Quia suppeditat nobis ubi et animus ex hoc forensi strepitu reficiatur, et aures convicio defessae conquiescant. An tu existimas aut suppetere nobis posse quod cotidie dicamus in tanta varietate rerum, nisi animos nostros doctrina excolamus; aut ferre animos tantam posse contentionem, nisi eos doctrina eadem relaxemus?

glenmorangie

"I love the population, the way business is
flowing. A few people are honest, let's say a quarter of them. People
here can help you and make life easier for you."

LA Times
Lagos:'The New York of Nigeria'
It is among the world's fastest-growing cities, at once a chaotic
megalopolis and a thriving center of entrepreneurship.
By Robyn Dixon
Times Staff Writer

frank and duylinh and i were thinking of theories of dating advice for our friends. the idea is that everyone should have a minimum standard.
for women, a man who:
-is functionally literate
-does not beat her
-tells the truth 40% or more of the time
for men, a woman:
-who is not criminally insane
-whose smell and appearance are tolerable

these standards are harder to achieve than you would expect. so the idea is to then start by dating someone who is above these standards and from there pick out what you like and don't like, slowly refining your profile.

we drank british tea from those huge, chipped, porcelain mugs i brought back from china and bequeathed to frank. funding for the arts.

we could go to the pictures

cars, cars everywhere.
the airline put me in a luxury hotel and gave me a meal voucher worth $10 that i used on a $54 meal: a pound or so of pig flesh with a baked pear and some bitter leaves. i asked for a digestif, explained that it is an after-dinner liquor, and ended up with a glass almost full of hennesy X.O., something that contributed greatly to the bill.
i should have a simple cup of tea for breakfast. i woke up at 4h30 since i love waking up with the first roosters. they have yet to crow

he's like a friend

first impressions on meeting fang, who is from the region:
-you're from maryland, eh? so why is it shaped that way?
-some kind of river. let's go sightseeing.
-no.
-i like your attitude. then lunch and a pint?
-yes. you must order everything because you are literate.

duylinh showed herself to be squeamish about some of the local specialties so we colluded to get mostly things that would disturb her. the meal ended up being duck tongues, eel, chicken feet, ersatz shark fin soup with dumplings, prawn dumplings, chopped pork wrapped in glass noodle, shanghai steamed buns and about nine pots of chrysanthemum-green tea. i had forgotten that duck tongues have a bone in them.

we went to a museum where they showed a movie that had a part about favela people that would do pixação and the one guy said that he had retired because they were pixando and the police came and started firing shots into the building and a night guard yelled to the police to go ahead and kill him because they had insurance for that sort of thing. he slode down a steel cable using his shirt as padding while they shot at him sliding down some cinquenta metros and that's the day he quit pixação, still having nightmares about the incident, waking up checking for bullet holes in his body. the moral of the story is that são paulo should build more metro tracks, according the museum exhibit.

we met the woman who is our host and a greek then another greek and had bottles of white wine where it is expensive but it's all monopoly money to me. duylinh was overcast and speaking to no one then after a glass a wild look started to melt into her face and she was blocking fire exits trying to kiss me, then with her arm around fang, then holding conversations like:
-duylinh, you're _________
-no, you're _idem_.

we had a dreadful spaghetti dinner in the kitchen 75% incompetence on my part 25% poor ingredients. my final night in stamford.

i'll have to start to reestablish myself in austin from now on.

playstation controller

epilogue:

after reading the economist article i says to myself Tesco is a model business model, and as an underwear model riding in model T's with my heroin chic models i purchaysed 190g each of gruyère and emmentale and a bottle of vin blanc sec. we met the woman at her house and sat around the stove holding baigne marie and had fondue. camden women are sexist, says we.

where you go i'll

today the plan was to find a case of OCB roulets. i started out the morning by eating some cold pizza that someone hadn't sliced but had bitten off 2/3 of it. gnawed, mind you. we went to the train tracks and got into a car. got off and got on another car. at that time the line was brown. got off, then it was raining so we ran into one of those decker buses since they are so nice to get a view of the poor suburban neighborhood with signs written in arabic and then i thought how this is quite far from camden road. we got off at a train station that services manchester and decided against going to manchester without a ticket. i received a phone call saying i should be in westminster which meant duylinh and i had to stop in a fried chicken restaurant and walk out never feeling clean again. the westminster plan fell through and we went to a pub and met this woman who was billing her company for the time she was sharing a pint with us. and another. twelve pints of cider. there was a store on the way to the underground station and the clerk suggested that i should buy a whole case for twenty sovereigns.

i feel confused when people say things and i don't understand them because in theory they are speaking english, the number of whose fluent speakers i am of. it'd be better if they were speaking a language that no one expected me to understand.

there is a wimbledon tennis tournament which means that all trains go to wimbledon from earl's court even if the loudspeaker and the front of the train and the electric sign board say they're going to olympia where i wanted to be all along. got on the 14 until it seemed to be straying, then the C1 and we laughed at all the people who were asking the driver for directions because they were lost. i had to do this so no one would know i was lost.

mel's final night in stamford is tonight! it's fang's première night but i refuse to celebrate it, categorically, on account of her moral turpitude

nous voulons dire que qu'il est

immotivé, c'est-à-dire arbitraire par rapport au signifié, avec lequel il n'a aucune attache naturelle dans la réalité
-F. de Saussure

RED (light)
BLUE (in west african pidgin english, "blue tapes" are pornographic films)
GREEN (un viejo verde)
YELLOW (in chinese, often describes something lewd or licentious, some say because of a banned oscar wilde book)

run run run but you still

it was the old gang back together again in stamford, connecticut. we've known eachother so long that it's like we just met.
-i didn't get pork because her alleged boyfriend doesn't eat it and i didn't get beef because she doesn't like beef.
-she hates beef.
-that is correct. she hates beef.
-i'm fucking hungry. what want ye? burger burger burger burger? cider cider cider cider? you know i've been eating beef non-stop this past week. there's nothing i love more than beef. your shoes just crack me up. aren't you bored that they talk about eyelids?
-i have a beautiful pair of shoes that i get a job with.
[note: documents unscrupulously translated from french often contain "of which" "from which" "about which" instead of "which ... of" "which...from" "which...about"]
-those shoes.
-no, other shoes.
-this cider is strong. i'm drunk.
-you're drunk?
-i mean to say that this makes me slodding into tipsiness.
-i also am feeling it.
-don't worry. people drink heavily here in stamford. you'll get used to it. for example my colleagues boast about making merry until 3am in plain office. i hold a grain of virtue more than they do. i stay out until midnight then i'm tired. yesterday i did vigorous exercise, the daily application of which has chased my cough away. this cough that was so evident in spain. after that i had six pints of cider then six more. you'll get used to drinking, trust me.
-never. i will never.
[note 2: latin has four irregular imperatives: duc, dic, fac, fer. spanish has upwards of five: haz, pon, di, sal, ven]
-no, it wasn't like that. they weren't like regular guys. dare i say effeminate? no, stoners.
-it's raining. same latitude as moscow. you get used to these bright summers. dark winters. ok bye.
-there's one also.
-ok bye. bye. tomorrow. [door slams]
-thirteen minutes. fuck. yes, he nows how to say this in cantonese and i know how to say this in italian. we were saying those two things. why don't you pay?
-i got a magnetic card. you picked a nice seat.
-that's hot, dude.
-yes, the tube is crowded and by the overland route you learn about the city. you can pick out nice places to see. sales week. there are only two sales. i hate shopping. are you going to the sales? like people buying diesel jeans because no tax. when i was here last time i got lost and now i always remember the cinema followed by the iranian restaurant.
-look at those fools trying to make a marriage proposal and shit.
-i think it's the title of a movie.
-a savings of (1 - 1/1.08)*100%. yes, very passionate woman. as i recall there was this one speech by this one guy.
-oh, dave natchez.
-and she said that what is something that makes you react and she said she was the only one who had prepared a statement and stood up saying i hate it. dallas. suburbs. that's how she knew.
-very passionate woman. she says she'd go into real estate, if not for the hatred.

toledo, oh

it's all the same now. a birthday party. thierry opened a 30 year old bottle of armagnac after coffee since it was his patron saint's feast day.