Unholy Racket No 004: A short update

1.Vancouver is full of weird-looking people, and, considering that my definition of weird is perforce different from that of mere humans, you can imagine what I mean.

2.Why is it that when I am waiting for a bus, reading a book on quantum field theory and desperately trying to wrap my brain around a particularly painful Lagrangian, some old codger or a born-again fool always attempts to engage me in some inane conversation? And they refuse to stop babbling and persist in ruining my concentration. Go play on the freeway, you goddamn freaks!

3.Conversation overheard on the bus:

SLOB, to DRIVER: "Are you going to Vancouver?"
(The front of the bus is lit up with a glowing sign saying, MAX via Jantzen Beach).

D.: "No, I am going to Delta Park."

S.: "Just to Delta Park?"

D.: "Yes."

SLOB (getting on the bus): "Let me know when we get to Mill Plain."

!!!!!!!!!

4. An old joke popped up in a new book on brain states:

--Knock knock.
--Who is there?
--O.J.
--O.J. who?
--You're on the jury.

5. Finally, to clarify my definition of weirdness, I prefer mango peach salsa to chocolate. So there!

Turkeys'n'shite

Today, as a mental exercise, i am trying to imagine what Thanksgiving would be like had the Axis Powers won the Second World War.

I shall have sushi and sake for lunch, and dine in a German restaurant, on sausages and sauerkraut, with some doppelbok and a shot or two of good schnapps.

A secondary birthday, hurrah!

Tomorrow is my secondary birthday: 26 years in these here United States, with brief interruptions. I seriously think of this as a birthday, of sorts. When I first came here, my family strongly encouraged me to assimilate. So I did, the result being that my Russian-ness (whatever that is) froze at the level of a 16 year old, and my American-ness (whatever that is) began at that point. I can talk about girls and algebra in Russian (and broken English), but I can only discuss politics and calculus in English (and extremely rudimentary and broken Russian).

Yeah, verily, I was a babe in the woods in late 1981, but a beer-drinking, cigarette-smoking, skirt-chasing babe. That ought to have caused some problems, you'd say, and you'd be right; all kinds of problems, from a textbook-perfect form of arrested development via ODS and Peter Pan syndrome to a possibly debilitating case of ADHD (whatever that is). In fact, it is only now, at a ripe (American) age of 26, that I am beginning to slowly realize the errors of my partying days and becoming more willing to make adult sacrifices to facilitate an interesting life and career, only to discover that I am indeed an overgrown adolescent. An adolescent with a college education, and—even if I say so—some claim to intellectual sophistication, but an adolescent anyway. Truly, this would be almost depressing if it wasn't so bloody hilarious. Oh well.

I'mo celebrate by drinking large quantities of fermented (and maybe distilled) beverages and enlisting the help of hopefully numerous members of the opposite sex to help me remember. What it is I am remembering, exactly, is nobody's business, perhaps not even mine, but remember it I shall, and enlightenment may be achieved. After all, everything will turn out allright, unless it doesn't.

Tomorrow never knows.