The first day October was perfectly sunny and in the mid-80’s. I slept in late because of my action-packed 20 hour day yesterday. To enjoy the weather, I sat in the secluded grassy area on the west side of my apartment building reading “The Chinese”. A black cat usually inhabits that area, sunning itself in the lawn. The cat was nowhere to be seen at first, then I realized it was staring at me from the shadows under the high bushes that surround the area. It didn’t like the fact that I’d invaded its comfortable quiet area.
I fell back asleep for four more hours in the late afternoon and early evening, sleeping far longer than ever intended, as usual. I spent the rest of the evening using the computer and finishing up reading “The Chinese” and writing the journal that’s assigned with it.
My website remains under attack from spam. This time it’s the message board receiving links to things like “HOT ASIAN ANAL SEX” and “VIAGRA”. I was forced to prohibit guests from leaving comments to stop this. Anyone making a post now has to register and log in. Most of the regular posters have already created accounts so that shouldn’t be a problem.
My apartment has been invaded by little brown bugs that I accidentally transported her after my camping trip with Lee to the Current River in August. They were hiding in an inflatable mat and had run everywhere when I opened it up in the apartment. I’ve since been seeing them occasionally for the past two months. They look kind of like rolly-pollies but are brown and a lot faster.

Note: Make sure to get a copy of Tuesday’s Daily Egyptian!

Monday: 10-2-06

The reporter Brandon from the Daily Egyptian called again today to check his facts about the pig head incident before the story goes to print tomorrow. He’s put quite a bit of work into the article so I’m expecting it to be extensive. He today wanted to know if I’d received any more mail from the State’s Attorney or Judicial affairs, but I haven’t.
I spent my morning in the apartment doing homework and getting the China video I finished two months ago ready to burn onto a menued DVD. Leaving my apartment at 12:15 I realized that my bike was still parked at the Communications Building from whet I went to that play with Josh on Saturday night.
After walking to get the bike I deposited three checks at the bank then went to a printing business on the Strip to get a T-shirt made. The front of the shirt will have a picture of the pig head on Wendler’s car and the rear will have a sentence. They print shirts for $12.50 in quantities under 10 and for $10.50 in quantities over 10. I’m know a lot of people would like a shirt after seeing the article in tomorrow’s paper, so I’d like to sell them on my website and any other way I can think of. I think there are some Registered Student Organizations that have protested Wendler and have the right to sell merchandise on campus, so maybe I should approach them about the idea. I’m more focused on getting the shirts distributed than making a profit, because Wendler sucks.
I ate lunch at Wendy’s then went into work from 2 till 4:50. I bought three bags of groceries from Save-a-lot on the way home, then set about trying to learn the 70 new Chinese characters that are in the next lesson. By learning, I always mean learning to recognize, not learning to write by memory. I probably couldn’t even write a dozen by memory, but could recognize a couple hundred, maybe more. I have a pre-kindergarten-level vocabulary.
Some Wendler T-shirt ideas popped in to my head around dark. Putting them into use required Internet access, and mine was down again at the apartment so I went to the Faner Computer lab. I spent several hours deciding exactly what my strategy would be and how to go about it. My shirt ordering system is not very user friendly, but should do the job. To further market the shirts, I created a group on Myspace and posted to a couple message boards at other sites. Don’t forget to read that Daily Egyptian tomorrow.

Tuesday: 10-3-06

There’s about to be an Internet riot in my building. Even the regularly placid foreigners are loosing their cool. An Indian guy asked if mine was working in the hallway this morning, then threw his hands in the air and quickly walked away without saying a word.
The first thing I did this morning was pick up a Daily Egyptian from the lobby, seeing the pig head prominently displayed on the front page. I didn’t stick around the apartment long since I couldn’t use my computer. At the computer lab I printed out 30 flyers advertising pig head t-shirts, then bought a stapler from the Student Center’s bookstore and started sticking them on bulletin boards. There is a big outdoor bulletin board in front of the Faner building, but that’s made of cement so I had to go back to the bookstore and buy some sticky-tack.
The Faner building is so large that it took up most of the posters.
In my Chinese classroom, nobody showed up until almost 5-minutes before the class started, not even the professor. The first thing he said to me was “your’re famous”, then he complained that the police wouldn’t have done a thing if somebody had put a pig head on his car. Later when he was trying to describe a Chinese word for “phenomenon”, he integrated the concept of pig’s head’s on cars in his description.
After class, I printed out 30 more pig head flyers then went to the Engineering building and sat in an empty classroom beginning to translate this week’s China People’s Daily article. Coincidentally, both this article and the current Chinese lesson in my textbook both have to do with discrimination. The People’s Daily articles always seem so hypocritical and this week is no exception. The article talks about the experience of a black student in the US who had hate messages left in her dorm room. A lot of Chinese people will openly admit they hate black people, but at least the American haters usually deny it. One thing I found interesting in the article, the hate message left in the black girl’s apartment translated back into English as “black devil”.
A girl from my culture class invaded my private classroom to ask if I was in her culture class. I initially misunderstood her and answered no. She apparently knew for a fact that I was in her culture class because she gave me a weird stare like I was playing games with her. I admitted the fact then she asked me a question about today’s test. Today’s test? I had no idea of any test and had even checked the schedule this morning, but apparently not very well.
In my culture classroom before class started, an energy-filled red-haired girl saw me continuing to study Chinese and started asking questions. I’d briefly spoken with this girl before and she’s always a bit sarcastic in a friendly kind of way. She said that she was pure blood German even though her family had immigrated decades ago, so I called her a racist. She argued that her half-sister is half-black and I couldn’t argue to that.
Today’s test covered general topics about Spain, so I was kind of able to bullshit my way through it by just remembering a few things the Spanish guest teacher had said over the past two weeks. Maybe I got a C.
After the test, our next guest teacher began teaching, a woman from France who has no discernable accent and seems a bit mean. One of her first comments was, “Unlike the Spanish teacher, my slides won’t be posted online, so I advise you take notes”. She’s already reinforcing our French-hating stereotypes.
After class, I put up the rest of my flyers in several buildings, including Engineering, Neckers, Communications, Life Science and Lawson. If these result in any sold shirts, then I’ll put up more later. Back at my apartment I had a terrible dinner of a bologna sandwich and hot dogs. My Internet access was still down and a bluntly-worded sign on the office door warned people that anyone using file-sharing programs would be disconnected from the system.
I went back to the Faner Computer Lab to print out a Chinese assignment and check my Skype phone messages. Riding my bike back home, I saw the most amazing bike stunt I’ve ever seen in person. A little guy on stunt mountain bike hit about 30 miles per hour in front of the Pulliam building and went down the three flights of stairs there, which is a rather steep 30-foot drop. I was so amazed by the sight that I ran off the sidewalk and hit the cement edge of another sidewalk hard enough to flatten my rear tire. I told the guy, “That was awesome dude”, and he replied in a depressed tone, “should have been farther”.
Back at my apartment, it took me a couple more hours to finish translating the People’s Daily I had started earlier in the day. I couldn’t make sense of one paragraph even though I was able to translate every word. That will really drive a person crazy.

Wednesday: 10-4-06

I ate generic Cheerios and toast for breakfast before walking my bike to the bike store to buy a new innertube and install in there. The foreign owner was helpful and talkative as usual. He even noticed that I’m riding a different bike than I had for the past two years.
The feminist T-shirt exhibit was set up in the breezeway of the Faner building today, which has been steadily growing for years. The feminists set it up a couple times a year and there are more shirts every time. It takes up about 100 feet of the breezeway now, with at least a couple hundred shirts. Each one is handmade and has some kind of message about sexual abuse against females. Many of the designs are bizarre and more than a couple are made to look like they’re spattered with blood. I wonder if men are allowed to submit a T-shirt……
After using a computer for a few minutes, I sat in a Faner lobby on the second floor called the ‘Glass Room’, where I thought of some racial-discrimination-related questions to ask my Chinese culture partner Yan later today. The Glass Room is not very appropriately named because only one wall is glass. There was one small white girl sound asleep on a couch and one large black girl on the phone telling her boyfriend that he had too many female friends.
In my Chinese class, Matt said that I was famous, referring to yesterday’s Daily Egyptian. I went to work immediately after class. Kelly was on the phone and told some unknown person, “Oh, Garth’s here, I’ve gotta get his autograph”.
An author came in the store and dropped off a whole box of wine, which he’ll be giving out at a book-signing tomorrow. I wasn’t going to work then, but Kelly talked me into it by saying she expected to have plenty of extra wine. When I left the store, Carl said, “Give our best to Wendler.”
I went to the Student Center and ordered a 2-snack wrap Value Meal from Mcdonalds, which is on sale for $4.09. They just started a new season of the Monopoly game, which I was surprised to see an article about in today’s Daily Egyptian. Is that really news?
I met with Yan from 6 till 8 o’clock. Here’s what I wrote for my class journal this week:

*************\

After showing Yan this article, his first question was whether it’s better to call African Americans “negros” or “black people”. He felt that “negros” was the better option, but I warned him that it could sound like “nigger” if not pronounced right. I advised him that “African American” would be the safest option.
When asked if the Chinese consider America a racist society, Yan admitted that some Chinese people hold that stereotype. He denied that any forms of racism existed in China, but may have been thinking that I was only enquiring about legal injustices rather than general public sentiment. This seemed to be the case because he admitted the Chinese people’s hateful feelings toward the Japanese when asked. As I expected, he said that those feelings are not so strong among the younger generations. His grandfather and other elderly people had occasionally shared stories of Japanese wartime atrocities.
Continuing to discuss feeling towards Japan, I asked about the Chinese reaction to the recent renewed nationalism in that country. Surprisingly, it’s not seen as any kind of threat because Japan has educated their youth about the past mistakes and apologized for them. Even more surprisingly, Yan had serious suspicions towards Germany’s rise back to power. Unlike Japan, he said that Germany hadn’t educated their youth about the past mistakes or apologized about them. Furthermore, he believed that the German government had intentionally downplayed atrocities. In particular, he mentioned that German textbooks put the Nanjing death toll at a mere 10,000 instead of 300,000.
I continued to ask Yan in different ways about forms of domestic racism in his country. He said that it doesn’t exist due to government efforts at curbing it. On the national college entrance exam, some minorities get a point curve, for example. I asked if he’d ever heard the term “affirmative action”, but he hadn’t.
I was particularly interested in public feelings toward India considering the country’s recent rise to a nuclear power. Despite a war in the 60’s and the nuke issue, he spoke of no adverse feelings towards India. He did remember hearing about the nuclear issue in the news but said that people weren’t necessarily concerned about it because they thought that neither country would ever use nukes at the risk of being nuked themselves.
My last question was about the existence of Chinese minorities famous for their rebelliousness, people like Martin Luther King Jr. in the US. He said that no such people have been allowed to rebel since the communists took power, but interestingly mentioned the man who had advised Mao to enact population control measures. This man had supposedly been ridiculed at first then treated as a hero when the government embraced the policy a decade later. Yan said he couldn’t think of the name of a single famous dissident(political or racial) from the last 20 years, but knowingly laughed when I asked about the men who threw ink on Chairman Mao’s painting.

*************/

I spent the rest of the evening doing homework at my apartment. I started a new book for my Chinese culture class last night, called “Streetlife China”. I was expecting it to be interesting but the author has unfortunately either intentionally overcomplicated things or is just too smart to write books that normal people can read. The things I’m interested in seem to be buried in a mass of big little-used words that’s combined with a style of grammar that’s just as incomprehensible. Why can’t people just be normal sometimes?

Thursday: 10-5-06

I discovered the Daily Egyptian article linked above this morning when picking up a paper in my apartment’s lobby. It been watching the editorials section since Tuesday thinking somebody might write in about the pg head. I wasn’t expecting the paper to write its own editorial on the subject.
At the Faner computer lab, I wrote up a response and posted it on this website before going to Chinese class. In culture class, the teacher told the class to not use the computers in the room while the guest teacher speaks, which everybody has been doing every week, including me. A few students were pressuring the guest teacher to put her PowerPoint presentation online. The class doesn’t seem to like her much. She spent the hour talking about French history.
I met my culture group at 3:15. We didn’t do any activities this week, but just sat and talked. Here’s what I wrote in my class journal for this week:

**************/

The Taiwanese all laughed while talking about their country’s Taoist traditions, but also admitted that they would definitely go to a temple if they were having really bad luck. All three of them grew up in households that followed the traditions, including the burning of ‘paper sacrifices’ and observing holidays that center on the dead. Making a paper sacrifice involves the burning of paper copies of everyday objects, like phones, cars, money and just about anything else you can think of. The idea is that a person’s dead relatives will receive the real version of that paper object in the other world. It’s hard to imagine why someone would need money and a cell phone in heaven. Stores can be found in every neighborhood selling paper copies of everything.
There are certain holidays where all people are supposed to go into the cemeteries to clean them up and make sacrifices. Another method of sacrificing is to leave fresh vegetables and other foods. Not all sacrificing happens in the cemetery, but also in the streets and homes. The Taiwanese all laughed hard when I told them that I had recorded a small cemetery documentary when studying abroad in Macau. Little did I know that taking pictures or shooting video of graves is not good unless you ask the dead people if it’s OK. Apparently, ghosts will follow people that don’t ask before taking pictures. The method of asking involves throwing a pair of objects on the ground three times. These two objects are half-moon shaped and have a “positive” and “negative side”. An answer of “yes” is implied if one of these objects lands positive side up while the other shows negative. This has to happen on each of the three times they are thrown so I assume that the ghosts don’t say yes to many questions.
About the cemetery documentary, the graveyards always interested me because they’re all on hillsides and are always very dirty. Instead of having tombstones, most graves are a small shrine to the person or people buried there. Most have benches and some even have tables. The documentary can be viewed on my website at:
http://garthkiser.com/video/ChinaVideo0405/cemetery.wmv
About the many ghosts that are following me around, the Taiwanese advised that I go into a temple and ask them to leave. The problem with ghosts following a person around is just bad luck, not possession or anything like that.
Another kind of popular religious device is a small wooden tower with numbers on it. These numbers are somehow randomly mixed up, then the order of the numbers is recorded and taken to a “professional” that knows the meaning of this order. These professionals can be found at most temples and charge nothing for their services, although, donations are encouraged.

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I went to work after the meeting with the Taiwanese. A local author named Allehando came in at 5 o’clock to do a book signing. He was offering wine and snacks and gave a one-hour lecture on his book, about a feminist poet from Uruguay who was murdered by her husband at 27 years old. Instead of working till six, I just worked till 5:30 then sat and listened to the author and drank his wine. There were about 10 people that came to listen, most all of which were people he knew from the university, where he’s a Spanish professor. One of those people happened to be the guest teacher from my culture class. She surprisingly remembered me before I remembered her. Oddly, she isn’t from France. That’s odd because she’s teaching the French section of the class.
The store normally closes at six o’clock, but it stayed open till 8:00 tonight so everyone could continue drinking wine and socializing . The small group went though three very large bottles. The only younger person in the group was a student named Larry. He told me that he realized in high school that he loved learning languages and had since learned two. His sister recently told him that she would take him to Italy for free if he learned Italian. He accepted the offer.
Riding my bike home, I saw Gabe in his yard talking on the phone. We talked for a minute then went across the street to talk with one of his neighbors. They had a lot of pig head questions.
I really have little idea what happened the rest of the evening and this is very strange. It’s possible I had some kind of food poisoning from the sandwich I had for lunch. I’d just purchased the meat and it had an odd texture to it.
One of the last things I remember is going to a party with Gabe across the street from his house, below the apartment of his friend we had been talking to earlier. A bar was set up in one room of this house and Gabe made a screwdriver for me. This is the only other drink I remember having all night, so either something else was wrong with me or Gabe slipped me a ruthie. My only other memories involve a long wrestling match with his huge dog and talking to Tavis on speakerphone.

Friday: 10-6-06

I was sick all night long and all day today. It involved all the symptoms of a really bad hangover but that just isn’t possible. I don’t remember riding my bike home last night and it was in my apartment this morning, not outside where I usually leave it. My shoes were still on when I woke up in the middle of the night. It was like I just came in the apartment and fell straight into bed. My door wasn’t locked and the keys were still in it. Such a small amount of alcohol just couldn’t do this to me but I guess this is just a mystery that I’ll never solve. My only theories are that the meat on the sandwich I had for lunch yesterday was bad or somebody put something in the one drink I had at a party last night. Weird.
I slept till noon and still felt terrible. I went to school at one o’clock and planned on attending Chinese class, but was just too sick to sit through it. I found a sunny grassy area near Shryock Auditorium and laid there for a while. Next, I remembered that my pig head T-shirt was ready at the Printing Plant, so I went there to pick it up. The quality isn’t all that great but it’s the best I’ll be able to do cheaply. I ordered 10 more at a total of $101.50. Selling them won’t be a problem and I’ll probably end up needing more.
I’m hoping to have the shirts by next Tuesday so I can take them to a Student Government meeting. I today noticed a Student Government flier next to one of my pig head fliers on campus. It simply read “Heard about that pig head?” and mentioned the date of the next Student Government meeting. Excellent.
I next took $280 out of my banks ATM to pay my rent, accidentally leaving the card in the machine. I went to work after dropping off the rent money, stopping at Walgreens to buy some Alieve and a bag of popcorn along the way. I slowly started feeling better over the next four hours.
Carl and Kelly left the store from 4 till 5 o’clock. An ex-neighbor came in during that time to buy a book she’d just called about. She was my neighbor when living with Carolyn in the apartment behind Kroger West. Walking her to the book, she took another book off the shelf called “Good in Bed”. She looked me up and down and said, “Maybe I should read this instead”, with a big smile on her face. She later came to the counter and I asked, “Can I check you out now”. She looked into my eyes and erotically said “anytime…”. Hillarious.
I worked till 6:30 then stopped at Save-a-Lot on the way home to buy unpoisoned meat and AA batteries. I wanted the batteries because I figured the ones in my wireless mouse would go dead any day. The store was completely out of AA batteries, and sure enough, my mouse went dead 5-minutes after I got home. Luckily, I found one new battery left in a drawer.
Back at home, my Internet was working for the first time all week. Maybe getting people to stop using file-sharing programs has finally fixed the problem. I went to Mark B's apartment just after nine o'clock. He had left me a couple voicemails during the week.He was sitting in his living room with a guy named Scott, whom I'd met there once before. Like Mark, Scott has been in some kind of accident and received a serious brain injury. Scott had just stopped by Marks apartment unannounced. Mark eventually asked him to leave. Scott is just 27 years old and very polite. Carrying on a conversation with him is easily possible but can be difficult at times. He spends lots of time working out in the hopes of meeting a girl, but the chances of that are slim to none unless he find a girl as disabled as him.
Mark had heard all about my pig head situation and had a stack of the papers sitting in his corner.

Saturday: 10-7-06

I tried to go to sleep at midnight but ended up awake till 4 o’clock. After an hour of no sleep I used the computer for a while then tried to sleep again for a while. This cycle happened several times. I think I’m just obsessed with this whole pig head thing, especially after discovering the hate-message board and the mention on the US News and World Report Website. I last night decided that one single last surprise act would have to be committed before this is over with. Come to the Undergraduate Student Government meeting at Grinnell Hall at 7 o’clock Tuesday if you want to get in on the action. After the meeting, a couple friends and I will be giving a small gift to the USG and announcing that final act to happen on Wednesday. Then, it’s over and I’m going back to my normal civilian life. I’ve spent so much time scheming and plotting over the past couple weeks that schoolwork has taken a backseat sometimes.
Not only was I up till 4 last night, I awoke at 7:30 wide-awake. I’m thinking more and more that I had some kind of food poisoning Thursday night, because I still didn’t feel quite right all day.
Making the best of my early morning awake time, I read another chapter in the book StreetLife China. The introduction had been miserable but it’s getting better now. I had two corn dogs and a plain ham sandwich for lunch before going to the Student Center to print something out, then went to the bank to retrieve the debit card I’d left in the ATM yesterday. A former teacher, Kevin S., was standing at the service center there, talking to his wife that was working. The economics class he’d taught me was quite large and it had been two years ago, but he remembered my face instantly. I always used to amuse myself with the fact that he sometimes talked with a bit of a lisp and had the last name of a famous cartoon character with a lisp. Great guy though.
I worked from 12 till 4:30. Somebody recently sold the store a cat naming book. For the family that has no imagination whatsoever – a book of cat names. Hopefully it’s just a gag and nobody really uses it for that purpose. If I ever have a kid I think I’ll give it a unisex cat name like Fluffy. Speaking of the name Fluffy, that was the name of the most loyal cat I’ve ever known, which my family owned for over a decade. So, out of respect for Fluffy the cat, I’ll give my first child the same name.
I rode my bike to Wal-Mart immediately after work, buying a few supplies for the final phase of the pig head plan and a package of Oreos to take to a party later.
That party was on Shwartz Street, just a few blocks from my apartment. I arrived at 6:30 and the house was full of Chinese people. The older white lady that lived there introduced herself to me in Chinese. Her husband also spoke decently, as they had spent a total of two years in China. More people kept arriving and nearly every one was from somewhere in mainland China. In total, there were about 20 Chinese and 5 white Americans. The purpose of the event was to celebrate the Mid-autumn festival, which is like the Thanksgiving of China. Traditionally, people sit outside eating Moon Cakes while looking at the full moon. The hosts had set up several tables on the rear deck of their home so traditional Chinese board games could be played. The idea was to do that from a position where the moon could be seen, but trees kept it from working too well. A young Chinese guy with above average English challenged me to several games of connect-five. He won the first few and said, “I like to win. You build up my self confidence”. That was all the motivation I needed to beat him three times after that.
Everyone had been encouraged to bring a snack and nearly everyone brought cookies. There must have been a thousand cookies on the kitchen table. The party came to an end at 9 o’clock and I returned home for the evening.

Sunday: 10-8-06

It’s obvious I’ve caught some kind of sleeping disease, because after just three hours of it Friday night, I was up until 4 AM again last night. People could still be heard yelling, screaming and smashing things at that time. It’s homecoming weekend and people had even been out in their yards partying when I rode my bike to work at noon. I have a feeling there’s a lot of sick people in this town today.
While waiting on a load of laundry at my old apartment building, I was sitting on a bench translating a Chinese article when Michele from my Chinese class happened to walk by, who lives in that apartment complex. She went to get her dog, named Crunchy Bar, from her apartment then came back and chatted for quite a while. I also saw Jason, who had asked Carl and I to join in a racquetball game at the Rec Center a couple weeks ago. It was quite a coincidence seeing him because I was thinking about calling him for another game almost at the exact moment we ran into each other today. Two weeks ago we had agreed to play more games, but I’d never called him back. I hate to tell people I’m going to do something then never do it.
Back at my apartment, I read more of the book Streetlife China and finished last week’s journal that was assigned for it. The sleep disease seems to be wearing off because I slept for over an hour in the late-afternoon. Upon reawakening, I did another hour of homework before going to meet Jason at the Rec Center. We were supposed to meet at 6:30 and he wasn’t there, then I noticed that all the clocks in the building said 7:00. I briefly thought I’d ridden my bike through a time warp on the way there, then an employee told me that it was indeed only 6:30. Waiting for Jason, I saw Chen from my culture group, who had just gotten off a treadmill. Jason showed up around 6:45 and we played a very intense game of racquetball. I nearly beat him but he ended up winning by two points. Next, he challenged two random guys in a court near us to a game of four-man, where we competed in teams of two. This is the one of the only times I’ve ever played with four in a court and I just can’t stand it. With all the titanium racquets flying everywhere, it just seems like a matter of time before someone take’s a hit to the face. I just couldn’t concentrate on the game and did terrible. We played a second round then they wanted to play a third, but I had to decline.
Back at my apartment, my mouse batteries were dead and all the available batteries in the apartment were used up. The mouse uses two AA’s and I had three left in the apartment, which I’d been alternating into the mouse each time it went dead. The mouse uses only a tiny bit of power and letting a battery sit unused for a while will give it a bit more of a charge. This process of putting the same batteries into it over and over only worked so long. I went to Schnucks to buy more, along with something else that I’m going to need for Tuesday night.
Todd was working in the meat department and he helped me find the perfect sized empty box, which I’ll also need for Tuesday. One other person I briefly talked to was Joe Y., who was sitting on the floor stocking some shampoo. He’s been driving to work back and fourth from Cape Girardeau, over a one-hour drive, for nearly 10-years. He was working till 10 tonight then had to get up at six o’clock and drive back in the morning. Several Schnucks employees transferred to Carbondale from a store that closed in Cape Girardeau ten years ago. A one-hour drive is quite normal for some jobs, but not grocery store employees. The drive helped to drive at least one person temporarily insane when I worked there.

Monday: 10-9-06

I went to the Faner Computer Lab to print a couple pages this morning, then went to the Rec Center to sign a release form for the Ultimate Saluki Competition, which I applied for a couple weeks ago. A woman had left me a message last Thursday, but I hadn’t received it till Friday after business hours. Returning her call this morning, she said that I’d been chosen as an alternate and would need to sign the forms and complete a physical. Having to complete a physical seemed a bit excessive for an alternate, but after having spent the time to fill out an application and write an essay, I agreed. The first prize now includes $500 in book credit and a weekend trip to the Missouri Valley Conference tournament.
The release forms had to be filled out in the Alumni office of the Rec Center, then a secretary took my picture. Handing back the completed forms, I noticed the secretary checked me off a list of about 15 names, only two of which were checked, meaning that I’m only the third person to complete the process. Based on the large number of students that applied for this, it seems strange that only three have come in so far. If everyone had been notified last Thursday, then I would have expected several to have already come in. This makes me think that maybe everybody was told they were an alternate and there is going to be some kind of initial competition on Friday to determine the real contestants. This is a reality show, after all, so I wouldn’t be too surprised if this is what they’re up to. Just in case, I left my work phone number with the secretary to put in my application. The competition starts this Friday afternoon, when I’ll be at work. I would so like to win this and make the school give me the prizes after they tried to prosecute me for the pig head.
I stayed at the Rec Center and continued translating a China People’s Daily article till having to go to work at 2:30. Carl’s father and step-mother were at the store with Carl and Kelly when I arrived. It’s the second or third time we met and they’re always so friendly. There was only about an hour and a half of work to do, then I went to the WDBX thrift shop to look for some warmer clothes. Several things were worthy of being tried on, but only a pair of blue jeans made the final cut. I was really hoping that a pair of pants made out of shiny black fabric would fit, but things just didn’t work out. They were so awesome.
Next, I went to Save-a-Lot, then went to the Printing Plant to see if my 10 Pig Head T-shirts would be ready for tomorrow. Surprisingly, they were already in the store. Getting the box home on my bike was a bit of a challenge. The shirts mostly turned out great, but the picture on one turned out a bit crappy.
I spent the next hour in my apartment getting a few things ready for my visit with the Undergraduate Student Government at their meeting tomorrow. It’s going to be amazing. Come if you can. So far, it’s just going to be me, Nic and anyone else that saw my calls for attendance on this website. Come out, buy a pig head T-shirt and put it on for the meeting. I have a small hilarious gift to share with those in attendance and an announcement to make about something that will happen on Wednesday.

Tuesday: 10-10-06

I got a hair cut from Nathan at The Space when it opened at 11 o’clock this morning. They can take credit cards now. One of the things we talked about was how we both could be doctors now if we had been constantly going to college since high school. Oh well, but then I would have missed out on a lot of other things, like working at McDonald’s. Speaking of old jobs, I had a dream last night that I returned to work at Schnucks for one day to fill in for somebody.
At school, I spent time studying Chinese in the computer lab before going to Chinese class. I wore a Pig Head T-shirt all day to promote sales. Lots of people noticed and wanted to know if I was “the guy”, but nobody made any purchases.
For lunch, the Snack Wrap Meal I ordered from McDonalds somehow turned into a plain Two Cheeseburger Meal, but I happily ate it anyway. I won an instant free small fry in the Monopoly game. The rest of the break was spent reading “Streetlife China” at a picnic table by the Engineering Building.
In Culture class the guest teacher made the class do three activities to illustrate certain concepts about French culture. In the first example, we were each assigned the numbers one through three. Ones held the highest social status and threes held the lowest. The entire class was sent out into the hallway and each person had to open the door for others based on their sex and/or social status. While it was an confusing oversimplified demonstration, it got a lot of laughs.
The next experiment involved how to walk on the street like a Frenchperson, which means walking fast but not breaking stride, holding your arms close to your body and not smiling. The entire class was told to walk up and down the narrow isles between the desks several times, saying “Bon Jour” and greeting every third person we passed. For the last example, the teacher pushed four chairs together to form a bench, then asked six volunteers to sit in it. I volunteered and ended up tightly between two girls for a couple minutes. This was apparently to show that the concept of personal space is different in France.
Back at my apartment, Nic picked me up so we could prepare to attend the Undergraduate Student Government meeting tonight. Our first stop was at Wal-Mart to make a couple final purchases, then we met Sara and some of his coworkers at Pinch Penny for 45 minutes. Nic and I were both wearing Pig Head T-shirts and one of the people there ended up buying one. Arriving at Pench Penny then was great timing because the shirt purchaser has the connection to get the shirt right onto Wendler’s desk tomorrow morning. I’m doubtful it will actually happen, but it sounds like a real possibility.
Nic and I arrived in Grinnell Hall at 6:50 to attend the USG meeting. The meeting area was empty, then three guys showed up there. Speaking with them, I learned that the meeting announcements I’d seen were actually advertising the meeting of a USG sub-group called Fight Club. They explained that Fight Club is intended to eventually be a secret organization and this was their first meeting attempt. They were all very friendly and supportive when they saw all the Pig Head related things I’d carried in, so I agreed to attend their next meeting next week. I’ve got no idea what it’s all about, but am curious.
Nic played a loosing game of pool against some random guy at a nearby pool table, then Sara met us and we packed up everything and took off. Nic’s car was parked on the other side of the tracks and a slow-moving freight train cut us off by just a few feet.
Back at my apartment, I found two letters from Student Judicial Affairs saying I had a hearing scheduled for this Friday. The letters mentioned all the witnesses that will testify against me, of which there are five. Should be an interesting time. I talked to Nora, Tera and Lee on the phone later in the evening. Tera is coming into town this weekend to attend a lesbian wedding. We haven’t seen each other in about two years. Lee just got back from a week-long trip to Switzerland. The plane ticket was a reimbursement for his unused ticket to Finland last summer, when he hurt his knee. Among his memorable experiences was unexpectedly stumbling upon a statue of Freddy Mercury while hiking around Lake Geneva. He missed his flight back to the US because he showed up at the airport only an hour early instead of the required two hours. The staff refused to check him in even though there was nobody else in line waiting.

Wednesday: 10-11-06

I got up at 8:30 this morning because there was lots to do, including studying for a Chinese test and updating the website on the Pig Head situation. All this work was done at the Faner computer lab because I needed to scan the documents from Judicial Affairs.
My lunch came from McDonald’s, then I went to my Chinese classroom to spend a few minutes reading “Streetlife” China before class started. An older woman was sitting in the room when I arrived, the one I’ve talked to before that studies Supreme Court cases. She told me that the Student Center would soon be installing equipment that blocked cell phone use. I thought the idea sounded absurd and she defended it by saying that cell phones disturb people studying in the building. What the hell? Isn’t one of the main purposes of a student center to provide a central place for students to socialize? The woman went on to say that most students cell phone conversations aren’t important anyway, which started to remind me a bit of Wendler. Even to block cell phones in the library seems a bit extreme because students use them arrange meeting places etc.(hopefully on vibrate mode). Friendly lady, but I have to strongly disagree.
In Chinese class, the assistant had the three students that showed up write and speak about a couple topics in Chinese. The first topic was “write about a female in your life” and the second was “write about female discrimination”. For the first part, I wrote about Clara, and for the second part, I mentioned Hillary Clinton. About Hillary, I said that she might be elected president in 2008 and that some haters call her a lesbian. It was very satisfying when the teacher understood all of that.
At work I spent two and a half hours shelving paperbacks and one hour doing mail. Kelly asked, “So, you’re going to cause some more trouble tonight?”. Apparently, Carly had been to the website and informed her of the details about tonight’s planned meeting with the Undergraduate Student Government.
Nic came to the store to pick me up for that meeting at 5:30. We picked up all my anti-Wendler propaganda from my apartment then he dropped me off at the new Student Health Center building that’s attached to the Rec Center. Getting all the stuff in the door alone was quite a challenge. I’d never been in this big nice new building before, but the auditorium was luckily very close to the entrance. There were only a few people in the room beginning to set up for the meeting. In front of each row of seats was a curved room-length table, so I set up all my things on the corner of the table nearest to the main entrance. Among my propaganda, the main items were a Wal-Mart cake imprinted with the Pig Head photo and a large pig-head-sized boxed gift wrapped and addressed Wendler with the words “KEEP REFRIGERATED!” on the sides of it.
The “public comments” section of the meeting came near the beginning of the schedule, but the first couple items on the schedule took nearly an hour, including the speaking of four guests. I would estimate that there were 40-50 people in the auditorium when my turn came to speak. The meeting-administrator gave me five minutes, three of which I spoke and two of which I left for questions. Several hands went up at the same time immediately after the call for questions. Hands were still raised when the administrator called that my time was up.
The meeting lasted another hour and a half afterwards, so I found some chips from a vending machine and browsed the building for a while before returning. The session was adjourned at 8:45 and I began serving the Wendler cake to anybody interested. About 15 plates were served over the next 10 minutes. Even the leftover icing was eaten.
This meeting turned out to be a big success and I was better received than expected. I’d planned on getting a decent amount of criticism about the pig head method of protest, but actually heard little. Unfortunately, the anti-Wendler shirts seem to be priced too high for students, so I offered them at $5 to a couple guys who promised to wear them to my hearing on Friday. I will make the same offer to anyone else that will do the same. Come to the hearing early if you want to buy a shirt then!
After getting the USG video online back at my apartment, I stepped out for a smoke and beer. Passing by an area in the lobby where people place bulletins, I noticed a student named Nishit was trying to sublease their apartment.

Thursday:

Today’s edition of Daily Egyptian’s showed a picture of me talking to the USG President last night at the meeting. In the foreground was Wendler’s gift with the words ‘KEEP REFRIGERATED” prominently displayed. The caption on the picture read “…..Kiser brought a wrapped box which he said was a ‘surprise’ for Chancellor Wendler.” By using the words ‘wrapped box’ and ‘surprise’, the paper seemed to be deliberately trying to make it seem like there was something bad in the box.
So, I got a lot of looks when I carried the gift to my doctor’s appointment at the Student Health Center this morning. There were two appointments, scheduled, both of which were for the Ultimate Saluki Competition. In the first one, a very friendly guy made me move all my joints in different ways and jog in place for a few minutes. For the second one, I was taken to a different room where a nurse questioned me before a very tall young doctor came in and looked in my nose, throat and ears and listened to my breathing. In the slim chance that an alternate is needed and I’m the one picked for the competition, the doctors say I’m in top shape to do it. Although, with this Pig Head thing the way it is, I doubt the University will let them pick me. Wendler sucks.
It was interesting to carry Wendler’s gift through the waiting rooms while all the patients were holding Daily Egyptians in front of their faces. Every once in a while, I would notice someone do a double-take between the gift and the picture of it in the paper.
Next, I walked onto campus and looked for somebody to videotape me deliver the gift to Wendler’s office. I asked a few people around the Student Center but they were all busy, so I asked a few more people on the sidewalk in front of Wendler’s building. A friendly young black girl agreed to follow me in with the camera.
The receptionist looked angry and shot a glance at a coworker across the room when I walked in. She impatiently asked who I was, then asked me to wait for the Chancellor to speak with me. She seemed to be behaving suspiciously and I had a feeling she might have been just stalling me till the cops could get there. Sure enough, a big cop walked in the door a few minutes later when my camera woman and I were chatting in the lobby chairs. One of the secretaries approached at the same time as the cop. She asked “What is this?”, so I described how it was a gift that would provide Wendler an opportunity to prove he had a sense of humor. She then implied that something dangerous might be in the box, so I assured here it was an innocent gag gift of new kids toys and a sealed package of food. Being a Wendler employee, she of course hated everything I said and let it be well-known.
The cop told me to come back into a conference room and open up the gift for him. I asked if my camera woman could come and he started interrogating her, with the obvious intent of trying to scare her, which worked. He asked for all her personal information and she became visibly upset, then he sent her away. I’d promised her a free Pig Head shirt if she showed up at the trial tomorrow, but I doubt I see her now.
Back in the conference room I ripped apart the gift and happily explained the purpose of each item to the cop. The package contained, a Pig Head T-shirt, toy farm animals, play handcuffs, a sherriff’s badge, an obviously-fake gun, a package of pork chops from Schnucks and a gallon jug of water. The jug of water was just to simulate the weight of a pig head. A letter attached to the box read:

Dear Chancellor Wendler,

As you know, the pig head incident has caused both of us to be viewed negatively; me for allegedly placing the head on your car and you for having the police pursue it so aggressively. My own fate will soon be decided by Judicial Affairs, but you have yet to even make a statement acknowledging the criticism against you.
I may be able to help you look like a more approachable fun-loving Chancellor. Among the gifts in this box, you’ll find a Pig Head T-shirt. What a better way to show your sense of humor and humbleness by wearing it to work for one day? Additionally, the media coverage resulting from the act might even make the name SIUC more well-known and bring in a few more tuition dollars for you to spend. Just kidding, but who knows, wearing the shirt could create some positive outcome. Go ahead, try it on right now…….you know you want to…….

Please don’t kick me out of school,

Garth Kiser

Another cop walked in the room and started laughing at seeing the items displayed across the conference table. He asked if the pork chops would be OK for somebody to eat later and I assured him that they would. Then both of the cops did their job and explained to me that I couldn’t go around doing this kind of thing in a world filled with terrorism. Thanks Daily Egyptian. This is mostly you’re fault. Other than harassing my obviously-innocent camera woman, both the cops seemed like genuinely good police officers. One was a bit rude at times but seemed polite by the end.
Next, I walked back to my apartment then walked to the bookstore to pick up my bike, buying a bottle of cherry-flavored vodka on the way there. For lunch, I ate at Wendy’s, then bought some barbequing supplies from Save-a-Lot, which were needed for a planned dinner with the Taiwanese later.
Back at my apartment, I got a call from the wife of a local ACLU lawyer, who said that her husband was interested in helping out with my case. Her husband turned out to be the same lawyer that had emailed me on Sunday. She told me to call him sometime before 4 o’clock.
I had to spend the next hour studying for my one o’clock Chinese test. These tests are quickly getting harder because they are longer, especially the listening sections.
In culture class, I left the room for 30 minutes to call that lawyer from the courtesy phone in the Faner computer lab. He will be out of town for tomorrow’s case but will send a paralegal. He was about to get on a train and spent 20 minutes giving me all kinds of tips for the case. I also mentioned a defense idea I had based on a section of the Student Conduct Code I’d read yesterday. He said the idea was good and that I should formally submit it as a motion at the hearing.
Back in culture class, the teacher played some French music for us and handed out doughnuts, knives and forks. The purpose of the food and utensils was to demonstrate how French people don’t switch their knife and fork between hands when they’re eating.
Next, I went downstairs expecting to meet the four people in my culture group, but only Chen was there. Jianna just didn’t show up and Chen said that her and Peter would meet me by the barbeque grills at Ambassador Hall in a few minutes.
I arrived several minutes before them and started preparing charcoal on one of the grills. Peter and Chen came with another Taiwanese that I’d never met. They had been unable to contact Jay, the other person in our group. As we started cooking, more and more foreign students started to show up. Most of them were Taiwanese but there was also one Japanese and one Thai. Then something really strange happened and people started to come up and shake my hand to say that they thought I was great for the Pig Head incident. They had all read about it in the paper and were eager to share their anti-university views. What’s strange about this is that I never suspected that the foreign students here felt taken advantage of. One had just had his student visa revoked for missing too many classes, one said that tuition was too high and kept rising, and another mentioned specific charges on her bursar bill that she thought were crap. Maybe some of them will come to my hearing. Having foreign students there would make an even stronger statement I think.
We cooked for the next two hours, everything from pork chops, to burgers to chicken to hot dogs and more. Nic also came out later to joint us. It was quite chilly after the sun went down and is going to be near freezing tonight for the first time this season. That’s awful.
I spent much of the evening preparing everything that I will say in my hearing tomorrow. Tera C. was supposed to come into town at 9 o’clock and have a drink with me, but was running late. We were still going to have that drink at midnight, but my Internet access went down and we couldn’t contact each other.

Friday: 10-13-06

I got up at 8 o’clock this morning to finish preparing for today’s hearing. Of course, I wore a Pig Head T-shirt. At the computer lab, I printed out notes for the hearing and two motions to submit. Here’s the motions:

Challenge for Cause

Garth Aaron Kiser vs. Student Judicial Affairs, October 13, 2006
Based on SIU Police Report # S060511-004

In section VI C 5d, the Student Conduct Code recognizes the need to remove judicial board members in situations involving a conflict of interest. The case at hand presents a situation where Hearing Officer Terry Huffman faces a conflict of interest based upon this case’s involvement with the university Chancellor. This conflict can be resolved by replacing Mr. Huffman with a University official holding a position of authority greater than that of the Chancellor or by bringing in a third party that is not affiliated with either the University of the Carbondale community.

Motion to Postpone Hearing

The defendant Garth Aaron Kiser was not given adequate time to prepare a defense for the October 13, 2006 Student Judicial Affairs hearing based on SIU Police Report # S060511-004. Kiser received notification of the hearing by mail on the afternoon of October 10th.
Two notifications were sent. The first one, postmarked October 6th, declared the scheduling of the hearing and the names of 4 witnesses. The second notification, postmarked October 9th, called an additional witness. Both of these notifications were delivered by USPS on the afternoon of October 10th.

::::::::::::::::::::::::

The hearing was held on the third floor of Woody Hall. I arrived 20 minutes early and spent time looking over my notes. The hearing officer, Terry Huffman, came to ask whether I wanted an open or closed hearing. Open, of course. Huffman said that it would be held in a conference room because his office wasn’t big enough to hold everybody. The waiting room had filled up with about 10 people, all of whom had come for the hearing. None of these people looked familiar and their presence was at first a mystery. I asked who they were and one just said, “He have a personal interest in this case”.
The lawyer whom I spoke with yesterday, Richard Fedder, sent a paralegal named Lenia to advise me during the hearing.
Before beginning the proceedings, Huffman and an assistant had trouble getting a CD-recording device to work, so they had to bring in another identical machine. He began the hearing by stating the basic rules, that nobody was allowed to speak unless asked to and that this wasn’t a court of law. By saying it wasn’t a court of law, he basically meant that nobody had any rights to do anything he didn’t approve of.
The first 30 minutes consisted of listening to Huffman read though the police case files. It was fascinating and disturbing to hear how I’d been tracked down. In June, the wrong person had been accused of the “crime”, a student named Gary. Gary was interrogated at the police station and eventually asked to take a polygraph test. He obtained a lawyer and refused to take the test or speak any more with the police. They must have believed he was innocent because they kept investigating afterwards, subpoenaing email records from Hotmail.com and Verizon. Email records were important because a mass email was sent with a photo of the pig head on Wendler’s car and the text “Next time it won’t be cooked!!!”. Through Verizon, they determined that the email was sent from an account registered in the name of Terry Halderman. They interviewed Halderman at his home and learned that he was the network administrator at St. Germain Square, my old apartment complex. Interviewing Tammy, the manager of Saint Germain Square, they learned that there had been a pig roast on the property in May and that a Garth Kiser had left with the pig’s head that day.
This is an oversimplified version of the investigation. The whole story involves many other steps and I’ll get the audio transcript from the hearing onto this site next week.
Huffman surprisingly seemed friendly at times during the hearing, but this university court system is a joke. Huffman raised his voice when I submitted my motions, repeating, “Kiser, this is not a court of law!”. Remembering the advice of my lawyer yesterday, I again insisted on submitting the hearings and Huffman read them out loud, instantly denying both of them of course.
The school’s witnesses included two police officers and the student Gary that had initially been charged with the crime. Two other witnesses failed to appear. Most of the audience in the roomed turned out to be Gary’s friends. They all left after his short testimony. The first police witness was the officer who had responded to Wendler’s office yesterday when I delivered the gift. The second was one of the detectives that had arrested me in September.
The only guest that showed up on my behalf was a guy named Matt that I’d met on Tuesday night when going to the USG meeting on the wrong evening. He had bought a Pig Head shirt when I saw him at the meeting the following evening.
My lawyer’s paralegal barely said a word but it was nice to show Huffman that I had representation from one of his arch rivals. Fedder has taken on a few other free speech cases at that university before.
The hearing lasted a little over an hour, then Huffman made his decision. The Harrassment charge was dropped but the Disorderly Conduct remained. I let it be known that I knew putting a pig’s head on somebody’s car was not harassment and that I would appeal anything decided. He ruled that I would be required to interview Chancellor Wendler and the Vice Chancellor then write an 8-page paper on University spending. This is a wonderful punishment that I would probably enjoy, but I of course am not going to accept any guilty verdict for Disorderly Conduct.
Maybe the most ridiculous thing about his hearing was Huffman’s insistence that Wendler did not receive preferential treat from the University police. I said that the police would simply file a report at most if any regular people found a pig head on their car. Huffman responded that any citizen could expect to receive the same extensive investigation as Wendler had! This must be some kind of Huffman strategy because I can’t imagine he’s that naïve.

At the end of the hearing, Huffman handed me a form where a box had to be checked stating whether or not I would appeal. He pointed that the box labeled, “I will accept the decision and not appeal” and said, “Check this box if you want to appeal”. This was surely a deliberate attempt to get me to check the wrong box. He then went on to say, “You still must write the paper whether or not you appeal”. Yeah right! Wendler Sucks! Maybe I will just interview Wendler then still not write the paper………

After the hearing, I worked at a FLIT book sale from 12 o’clock till one. (FLIT is my major). I’d volunteered to work the sale last week when a student in my culture class had asked me to. The sale consisted of two tables set up in front of the Faner building by the Student Center. Most of the books were in foreign languages. I relieved a student and was working by myself for a few minutes, then two other people came to help. There really wasn’t much to do with three people working, so I mostly browsed through the books seeing if I thought anything might be valuable.
After Chinese class, I briefly stopped at home to eat lunch and pick up my book of China People’s Daily articles before going on to work. I was unusually tired the rest of the afternoon and could barely stay awake when sitting at a computer putting books online. At six o’clock, I went to the Student Center to meet Yan. Ordering some food at McDonalds, I talked to a former teacher that I had two economics classes with over the past years, the most recent of which was last semester. Yan and his wife happened to come and order McDonalds at the same time, so we all sat together and ate. Like Yan, his wife is very curious about American ways and asks a lot of questions. They say that they will stay in the country and work for 4 years before returning to China.
After eating, Yan’s wife went to the library while he and I spoke in the International Lounge. This week’s assigned People’s Daily article was about minority races. China has dozens of minorities, one of which worships pigs. Yan says that he has friends of this race and this it is even impolite to eat pork in their presence.
Back at my apartment, I wanted to take a shower before going out, but a sign on the door says that the hot water is expected to not work till sometime Monday when a new part arrives. It’s hard to find a good apartment complex in Carbondale without paying a lot of money. Considering the large number of people that live in my building, the management should take the effort to drive somewhere immediately to pick up that part rather than waiting for it to get here on Monday. Even if the part is in St. Louis is Chicago, it should be a priority.
My friend Tera was in town tonight, whom I hadn’t seen in about a year and a half. I met her at PK’s where she was hanging out with some women that were older than us. She told them I was the Pig Head guy and they wanted autographs! One of them worked at SIU. This is the first time in my life that I’ve ever signed an autograph. I wrote, “To Patty, glad you liked the head!” on one and “Glad you liked the head as much as me” on the other. I was still wearing my Pig Head shirt under another shirt and everybody wanted to see it. One of the women said she would buy one next week. I still have 8 left so reserve one now if you want it because there probably won’t be enough demand to print any more.
After an hour, Tera and I walked down to Booby’s. It was quite cold out but bands were setting up to play in the beer garden. We returned to PK’s a few minutes later, then eventually went back to Booby’s. Tera’s friend Melissa Ethridge met us there the second time, who just had a baby six weeks ago.
Next, the three of us went to the Cellar then we went to Tres Hombres. Tera wanted food at Tres, but the kitchen was closed, so we walked to La Bamba’s and ate then returned to Tres. I’m actually confused and don’t know exactly what order we went to all these places in but I guess it doesn’t really matter because that’s the just of it.

Saturday: 10-14-06

I worked from 10:30 till 2 o’clock today. An author was doing a book signing till noon. She had written a book about her murdered son who had social anxiety disorder. I heard her say several times, “You just can’t tell who’s a serial rapist anymore. Most serial rapists are now just normal looking young guys”. I wondered if she even suspected me of being a serial rapist.
I left work at two o’clock and went home to put on a suit, then rode my bike over to the Presbyterian Church that is a couple blocks behind the old Hardees building. Here I witnessed my first-ever lesbian wedding. Tara had invited me and was sitting on a bench in the lobby when I arrived. This wedding hit nearly every lesbian stereotype on the head. The “bride”, was wearing a semi-traditional wedding dress and had long hair in a pony tail. The “groom”, Pati(A.K.A. Pat), was dressed in a tuxedo and had short hair. Had I not known it was a lesbian wedding, it would have definitely been possible to mistake her for a real male groom.
The person administering the ceremony may not have been the actual preacher of the church. He looked like my Chinese professor and closed his eyes and swayed whenever music played during moments of silence. His tone of voice was somehow very unusual. There were several questions I had in my mind about lesbian weddings, like, “Do they play ‘Here Comes the Bride’?”, and “What does the preacher say in place of I now pronounce you man and wife”. An R&B love song was played in place of Here Comes the Bride and other love songs played at various points through the ceremony. After the preacher’s introduction, the “bride and groom” read self-made poems to each other and exchanged rings. They lit a unity candle just like in a traditional wedding. At one point, the preacher said, “May your love stay on a straight path”, and I thought that was a strange thing to say. Instead of pronouncing the couple “man and wife”, the preacher said something like, “This union is now complete. You may kiss”.
There were no more than 50 guests in total and quite a few were black. One of the black women that was in the wedding party asked me to come sit with her and discuss the pig head incident. She wasn’t even from around here and apparently had been told the story by Tera. It seems to instantly grab the attention of even those who don’t know the whole story background.
Leaving the wedding, Tera and I had to help pick up all the food and take it to the reception. The food was in a trailer court somewhere near Carterville. There were three very heavy food warmers filled with beans, corn and barbeque pork. Two women also came to help us, both of which had been at PK’s last night with Tera and I. They claimed to not have slept all night. There was lots of food to move and the women couldn’t lift much of it, so I ended up having to work a bit for my meal.
The reception was held at the bar above the sports center that is behind the mall. This place is not prepared to host a wedding reception and we couldn’t even find working electrical outlets to plug in the food warms. There was only one bartender and a DJ working. A staff member from the sports center brought up extension cords to get power to the food warmers, but then a breaker flipped and nobody could ever figure out how to get it back on. Beers were $3 and mixed drinks were $6, but the free food was great. I stayed for a couple hours and chatted friendly with out-of-town lesbians at the bar. Tera dropped me off at home around 8 o’clock.
Over the past 24 hours, I have checked two things off my life to-do list; signing an autograph and attending a lesbian wedding.

Sunday: 10-15-06

I tried to have lunch with Tera at the Corner Diner before she left town today. We sat down at a booth and realized there were at least 30 other people in large groups that were all waiting on their food. So we left and went through the Wendy’s drive-thru instead, then ate in the courtyard at my apartment complex.
My bike was still parked at the church where the lesbian wedding was yesterday, so I had Tera drop me off there when she left. Next I had to do a couple loads of laundry and I saw the student Michelle from my Chinese class at the laundromat for the second week in a row.
After returning to put the clothes in the dryer, I saw on a stairway behind my building and smoked a cigarette. An idea came into my head for a website idea: I’m homeless six nights per week and can stay in a hotel on Sundays. During the rest of the week I hitchhike around the country and try to bum enough money off people to get by. Each day I go to a public library computer and write a weblog about the prior 24 hours, which will include a few pictures. Imagine meeting people like Tanner every day and writing about them.
I spent the rest of the afternoon finishing up last week’s assigned reading in the book Streetlife China and writing a class journal about it. Nora gave me an interesting call in the early evening. At 2 o’clock this afternoon she had come up with a website idea she called girlinavan.com, where she would travel around the country living in a van and writing about her experiences. It’s odd that she had an idea similar to mine on the same day, but even odder that the idea even came at the exact same time, 2 o’clock. Maybe it’s a sign that we should go into business together. If we ever did such a thing, then she’d have to be homeless with me because I’ve seen the chaotic state of affairs in her vehicle and could never live in one with her……sorry Nora if you ever read this….well OK, if you insist, then maybe we could train a monkey to be the maid, then we really would get famous.
Speaking of being famous, the best way to be famous would be a situation where everyone knew your name but few knew your face, then you’d get famous benefits but still be able to remain anonymous when desired.

Monday: 10-16-06

There was another pig head article in the Daily Egyptian this morning. It rained all day probably without even a single break. Cold rain. I took two blank CD’s to the Judicial Affairs office at 10 o’clock so they can make copies of the audio CD that was recorded on Friday’s hearing. The copies will be ready on Wednesday and I expect to have them online by that evening.
Just that short bike ride to Woody Hall got me nearly soaked. I spent the next couple hours studying for a test that was supposed to be given tomorrow in my culture class. The teacher sent out an email this afternoon saying it had been postponed till Thursday.
Just before I was getting ready to leave for work, Carl called and offered to give me a ride there and back, but I declined because the rain appeared to be subsiding and I wanted to stop at Wendy’s and eat lunch. The rain wasn’t actually subsiding and I ended up quite cold and wet at Wendy’s. Chili, a baked potato and a chicken sandwich hit the spot.
It was still raining on my way home from work at six o’clock. For dinner, I bought a package of frozen lasagna from Save-a-Lot, then spent a couple hours trying to memorize 66 new Chinese characters for class this week, which are mostly about sickness and disease.
Josh came over at 10 o’clock then we walked over to Marina’s house, where his car was parked. Inside, we talked to a couple girls sitting on a couch while Marina was finishing up getting ready to leave. As I walked in, one of the girls said, “I heard you did something”, then the other said, “You’re my hero if you actually did it”.
Josh, Marina and I planned on going to a bar. Josh wanted to walk and Marina didn’t, so Josh and I started walking and Marina said she was going to drive herself to the bar. Yes, Josh is an ass. A couple hundred feet down the street, he realized he didn’t have his wallet so we turned around. Marina hadn’t left yet and was just coming out the front door. She said Josh couldn’t park his car there because people were coming over that needed the parking space, so he ended up driving the three of us. If it was just a ploy to get him to drive, then a good ploy it was.
We first went to the Hangar. Cheech was standing by the door and he greeted me by saying, “We have a celebrity in the house”. The Bears game was on all the TV’s and about 40 people were screaming. The people were screaming even though the Bears were loosing, then they seemed about to explode into pieces as the Bears started catching up.
We next went to Sidetracks and ate some free popcorn while playing trivia. There were fewer people in this bar but all of them also seemed to be about to explode for the Bears. The Bears won.
A drunken guy stumbled over to our table and said it was his 27th birthday, then Josh, Marina and I walked on down the street towards the Cellar. We started to hear a screaming crowd growing louder and louder behind us, chanting “Bears, Bears, Bears” over and over. They were a couple blocks away but we could see them gathering in the street trying to block traffic.
I walked back to check out the mob while Marina and Josh went on to the bar. It had already grown to about 200 people by the time I got there. The crowd was walking by every bar beating on the windows to attract more Bears fans to join it. The plan was working and more people also were also arriving from all the connecting streets. It appeared that lots of people were on their phones calling out all their fellow Bears fans in town.
The entire mob tried to get into Sidetracks and the people working there turned them back. It seemed for a moment that the crowd was about to turn on the staff, but police cars were creeping up from every direction by this point. The mob was temporarily in a state of confusion, then somebody yelled out something about tearing down the goalposts on campus and everyone started to march that way. The crowd was still growing at this point and I decided to go back to the Cellar to meet Josh and Marina.
We played some more trivia here and ate some more peanuts. Josh had already ordered me a beer and it’s worth mentioning that he ordered himself a Samual Adams and me an Old Style. But considering this is Josh were talking about, I’m honored to get an Old Style.

Tuesday: 10-17-06

It finally stopped raining sometime overnight but was still cloudy all day. The rain had lasted without stop for at least 15 hours yesterday. I can’t ever remember seeing such consistent rain in all my life. It’s definitely a sign of the coming apocalypse.
I went to the computer lab this morning in order to make a collage of pictures from my Macau experience, to be used later tonight at a study abroad fair. After Chinese class, I spent the break beginning to translate this week’s China People’s Daily article in an empty room of the Engineering Building. For the third week in a row, the article is about discrimination against black people in this country. It would seem that the Chinese really have a strong idea that Americans are extremely racist. My culture partner Yan even admitted that a couple weeks ago. Like I’ve said before, this is strange because my experiences in China taught me that the average Chinese is much more prejudice against blacks than the average American.
In culture class, we began a new topic of discussion, the Middle East. There is no guest teacher for this section so our regular teacher Brooke will be doing most or all of the teaching. Today’s topics mostly dealt with the similarities between Islam and Christianity. I was really shocked to learn how interconnected the two religions were, to say the least. The Muslims believe that Jesus was a prophet born from a virgin birth. Many of the same people and stories are told in both the Koran and the Bible. However, the Muslims don’t believe that an intermediary(Jesus) is needed to communicate with God. The discussion went on to explain how some of these similarities are blamed for the 1500 year old conflict between the two groups, which I think is fascinating but still don’t completely understand yet.
After class, I spent another hour in the computer lab continuing to translate the People’s Daily article, then went to the basement of Grinnell Hall for the Study Abroad fair at six o’clock. The director of the Study Abroad department, Tom, had told me in an email that there would be free pizza for the people that showed up early to help set up. The event was held in a banquet room and mostly everything appeared to already be set up. Only Tom, somebody I didn’t know and the student Stacy from my culture class were there. Tom bought us three pizzas from the pizza restaurant that is also located in the basement of the building. He joked to me, “Sorry, I couldn’t get anything with only pork on it.” Four other students showed up to share the pizza; three girls and a guy. Everyone had studied abroad somewhere and was at the fair to help represent that country. One of the girls had spent two and a half years with the Peace Corps in Guatemala. She at first seemed extremely uncomfortable then I realized that every word she said was some kind of quiet joke. She told of how two years of cold showers had affected her in Guatemala and how both the electricity and running water had been out for up to two weeks at a time. Her shower just consisted of a shower curtain and a pipe suspended above it behind a building. That’s rough.
The fair lasted from 7 till 8 o’clock. There are six students here from Macau this semester, but they didn’t show up till about 20 minutes after the event started. I went ahead and set up the booth on my own because it at first didn’t look like they were going to show up. I spent the next hour mostly talking with one of the Macau girls and a girl from mainland China. There was only one guy from Macau in the group. The girl from the mainland told me that the African Americans in her dorm here are always very loud. See, they’re racist…..
On Macau’s table, I displayed the pictures that I had printed earlier today and spoke about them and Macau with a few interested students that browsed by the table. I ended up staying an hour after the event to help clean up. Only one other student had stayed, the girl Stacy from my culture class. Tom’s Taiwanese wife was also there along with some other Asian woman that appeared to be an organizer of the event.
Leaving the building, I ran into the guy that I’d met in the building last Tuesday when I’d accidentally come to the wrong place on the wrong night for the USG meeting. He is starting a new organization called Fight Club and I’d said last week that I’d come to check it out tonight, but had forgotten that I’d already promised to help out with the study abroad fair. It was quite a coincidence that both events were scheduled at the same time in the same building. I’d tried to find him at 7 o’clock to let him know I double-booked the time, but couldn’t find him. He told me that the meeting had actually been moved to a different building anyway. I said I’d try to attend next week’s meeting. I still have no idea what Fight Club is.

Wednesday: 9-18-06

The hot water was still out this morning. It’s been out for nearly a week straight now. I’ve been able to take two less-than-lukewarm showers since and have had it with this place. They even had the nerve to put up sign’s in the hallway telling people to “chill out” about the issue.
I picked up the audio recording of last Friday’s hearing this morning at Woody Hall. I was planning on going to the lawyer Fedder’s office to pick up some paperwork I had left with his assistant at the hearing last Friday, but couldn’t get ahold of him. I need to give that paperwork back to the school in order to appeal the case. I should have kept it with me but just wasn’t thinking.
I sat in the computer lab for the next hour finishing preparations for the meeting with my culture partner Yan later tonight. For this week’s discussion, I looked up information about racism against blacks in China. This is an interesting topic because some Chinese will claim that none of their people are racist, while others will claim that they and most other Chinese are in fact racist. Coincidentally, Condolezza Rice just happened to visit the region and Chinese website message boards were full of racial slurs towards her, using several different versions of the Chinese n-word. Interesting.
One article I read happened to mention a respected book on Chinese racism and I discovered that SIU’s library actually had it available. One of my classes requires that I write a paper about some Chinese topic, and after discovering this book, I’ve decided to do it on racism.
Since the library is under heavy construction right now, nearly all of its books have been moved to an off-campus location. Books are requested on the website then are supposed to be delivered to the library within two hours. I went to the library just before one o’clock but the book wasn’t yet in. Some poor guy was sitting in the corner using a typewriter.
Going from the library towards Chinese class, Elliot called my name from behind and invited me out later for his birthday, which is tomorrow. I went to Wendy’s after Chinese class, then work. One of the bookstore’s customers happened to be a girl named Michelle that I’d met last night at the study abroad fair. Rufus also briefly stopped by.
At the Student Center after work, I ordered a fudge sundae while waiting for Yan to meet me at 6:30. Asking him about racism, he sure enough claimed at first that the Chinese were not at all racist, then admitted that some people didn’t like them because they were too “active”.
Back at home, the hot water was still out so I sent an email complaining to the building’s owner. That seems to be the only way to get any attention around here. Two days ago, the staff put of signs telling the tenants to “chill out” about the hot water issue. The water was hot by 10 o’clock tonight, but surely not because of the email. Another issue around here is beetles. They’re everywhere. The courtyard is full of hundreds of them and I’ve been noticing some in my room over the past two weeks.

Thursday: 10-19-06

I talked to the lawyer Richard Fedder on the phone again this morning. I had intended to go to his office before noon and pick up the same paperwork that I’d wanted to pick up yesterday, but his assistant Lenia had it in her office and wouldn’t be in till the afternoon. He did speak with me on the phone for 15 minutes about the Judicial Affairs appeal process, in which I’ll submit a written request for an appeal. He said that, based on the school’s past record, the appeal would almost surely be denied. The point is just to officially object the unconstitutional nature of the Student Conduct Code. Fedder has advised me to not take things any further, based on the light punishment, so you probably won’t be seeing any more pig head news.
Johanna surprisingly contacted me at 10:30 this morning. We hadn’t spoken in at least six weeks. She said that she would most likely be moving to Beijing in February to complete a language study, then look for work there after that.
It was raining and in the low 40’s for my bike ride to school this morning. I first went to the library to pick up the book I’d ordered online yesterday. In my Chinese classroom, I realized that I was 30 minutes early because my clock at home is wrong for some unknown reason. A student that’s not in the class came in to study in the room. His name was Matt and he said he studied Japanese and had a Japanese girlfriend. He’s in my culture class but I didn’t realize it at first.
At 2 o’clock, my culture class met with its new culture partners. Two of the members in my group are the same; the Taiwanese Peter and the black girl Jianna. The new members are Jason, Amanda and Alan. Alan is from Taiwan and the other two are Americans. Amanda is the very hyper girl that sits in front of me during the lecture section of the class. My group and another one had our meetings in a nearby conference room. The Taiwanese Peter’s real last name is Pan. Peter is just his made-up American first name. I’ve talked here before about him calling himself Peter Pan, but the humor of his wife’s American name being Wendy never hit me till today. Speaking of Wendy, he today told us that it was her who asked him out on a first date.
The lecture section of the culture class met in the engineering building right after the culture-partner meetings. The schedule and location of our Thursdays has now changed from what it had been up until now. We used to meet in the Faner building at 2 o’clock for our lecture and then downstairs in the same building for our culture meetings at 3:15.
The class had to take a test over France first-thing today. Students were complaining about the difficulty of the study guide as they walked in. The guest French teacher had designed the guide and the test, and one student said “I want to burn that bitch at the stake like Joan of Arc”. That was extreme but I wouldn’t be surprised if others weren’t thinking similar things. We all hate the design of the tests in this class, especially today’s.
The class continued its Middle Eastern lecture series after the test. A student that had worked as an interrogator in Iraqi prison camps said that the former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz had once lifted his robe and taken a crap on the floor in front of her while she was questioning him. She also said that the men and boys had to be separated in the camps because the boys were constantly getting raped. She claimed that an Iraqi man once told her, “Women are for reproduction and boys are for pleasure”. Even the teacher had never heard of such activity in that part of the world before, but I did just happen to read an article today about an 18 year-old guy being inappropriately touched by a cab driver in Pakistan. The guy had killed the cab driver and been acquitted of the murder. However, another branch of the government had stepped in and issued a mandatory exaction of the man despite his acquittal. He’s British and has been given several stays of execution over the past years.
I went to work immediately after class. It was raining harder and seemed even colder. At the bookstore, Carl introduced me to their new free employee, Keri. Keri is free because she’s a student at a special learning disabilities school in town. Carl and Kelly left to attend some event shortly after I arrived and I closed the store by myself at six o’clock.
For dinner, I went to a Ramadan event that I’d been invited to through my culture class for extra credit. It was hosted by the Turkish student organization and was held in the Alumni Lounge of the Rec Center. I was the first from my class to arrive, then two students, one of their boyfriends, the teacher Brooke and her husband sat down at my table. One of the students was the one I’d talked to earlier today in my Chinese class, Matt.
The event started with a Turkish man singing a prayer that lasted a couple minutes. I understood the words Allah and Mohammed repeated several times. The prayer was immediately followed by a buffet of Turkish dishes. As the serving began, I sat at the table with Matt thinking that I’d get in line for the food after the line went down, but the line kept getting longer and longer, so we both had to wait about 20 minutes to get served.
The food was excellent and all homemade. A short presentation about Turkey was given afterwards, then I sat at the table talking with the other people at my table for a few minutes before returning home.

Friday: 10-20-06

I went to the lawyer Fedder’s office this morning to pick up the paperwork I’d given his assistant at my hearing last Friday. I knew the office was on a road called Fishback, but had never seen such a road before. A search on Yahoo Maps indicated that it ran parallel to Rt. 13 near the Carbondale Clinic. The temperature was in the mid 40’s so I had dressed warmly for the bike ride; too warmly. The sun was out and I was hot within a few blocks. Because of the construction on the Rt. 13 bridge at the west end of town, I took a back route that crossed Old Rt. 13.
Arriving at the intersection of Rt. 13 near the Carbondale Clinic, Fishback road was nowhere to be seen, so I went into my old dentist’s office to ask for directions. Dr. Houseworth no longer owns the business but it is still a dentistry clinic. The receptionist had no idea where Fishback road was, so I went into the Carbondale Clinic to call Fedder. Upon arrival at the Clinic, I realized my bike lock was not on my handlebars where I usually keep it, but I luckily found it back in the yard of the dentist’s office.
Fedder’s office was actually another mile farther out of town, at the Milwood Executive Suites. A receptionist directed me to a waiting room then led me to Fedder’s office a couple minutes later. He and his assistant Lenia were sitting in the small room. The furnishing was very sparse and piles of documents filled much of the floor space. Fedder was quite a bit older than I’d pictured him on the phone, probably in his late 50’s. He spoke with me for about 10 minutes about various ideas to possibly include in my appeal letter to Student Judicial Affairs. He is currently defending some or all of the 9 black students that were expelled from SIU this week. Whenever I’ve spoken with him today and before, defense ideas just seem to float off the top of his head and out his mouth effortlessly. It would be interesting to see him in heated court debate.
Leaving the office, I was waiting for Fedder or Lenia to hand me the documents, but they both just kept looking at me strangely, then one of them finally said that the receptionist had them at the front. They had told me that earlier and I’d forgotten. I gave the receptionist all the cash in my pocket to give to Fedder for his work on my case, which was $24. I wanted to give him something because his advice may have very well saved me from a harsher sentence that could have led to a federal court case and/or my getting suspended from school. He had said during our first phone conversation that I could give him something or nothing; it was left completely up to me. His going rate is surely much higher, but at least that buys a couple days lunch or a cheap bag of weed, if he’s into that.
Back at my apartment, I had a quick lunch of leftover frozen lasagna and a ham sandwich before heading to Chinese class. I talked pig head to Steph S. in the Faner breezeway for a few minutes. After Chinese class, I asked the student Regina if her baby had quit keeping her up all night yet. She asked when I was going to have a baby then said that her baby had made her look at the whole world in a brand new way; that she loved everyone more because they were somebody’s child. Regina might be one of the most upbeat people I’ve ever met.
I only worked till 4:30 today because my dad came at that time to pick me up. He had a new work truck that I hadn’t seen before; a big white Ford F-450 or something like that. In the bed of the truck was a pile of Egyptian brand bricks that he’d found abandoned somewhere earlier in the day. Egyptian bricks were made in Murphysboro at least 100 years ago and were shipped into Panama to build the canal. He told me that they sell for up to $5 a piece at local flea markets now. He took one of the bricks into the bookstore and gave it to Kelly to place with her display of local books. Lots of the customers have a huge interest in local history. Now whenever I notice a customer take interest in that brick I’ll tell them they can have one for $5.
Riding into Murphysboro, my dad was telling me about how a reorganization of the state office he works for caused a huge rise in their administrative costs. Before, his office was self managed and spent just 10% of their $8 million budget on administration. After another government branch took over the office’s management, those same costs amounted to 50% of the budget. State employees that had nothing to do with their office were getting paid with their money. As a final slap in the face, a high ranking employee in the branch that took over “stole” the office’s brand new truck, replacing it with an old beat-up one. It turned out that the thief was using the truck for his own personal use and had even installed his own CB radio in it, so someone complained and the truck was eventually returned to its rightful office. This state sucks.
My dad and I rode into Murphysboro then unloaded the bricks behind the building that we call the “chicken shed”. He counted each of the bricks and stacked it “Egyptian” side up as I handed them to him from the truck. He potentially now has a $520 pile of bricks.
Clara soon arrived home then the three of us went out to dinner at Old Rome in Murphysboro. My dad said I’d been there as a child a few times but I couldn’t remember. The food was great, even the baked potato. My main dish was ocean catfish.
Back at the house, my dad and Clara worked at listing car parts on Ebay while I sat in the living room and strategized about my appeals letter to Student Judicial Affairs. Clara seemed to be doing most of the Ebay work but still had time to stop and make a pumpkin pie/ice cream desert for everybody. My dad and I watched a VHS tape about the Beatles, which was one in a set of at least 10 tapes that somebody gave Clara at church to try and sell on Ebay.

Saturday: 10-21-06

I woke up at 9:30 and Clara had a breakfast of oatmeal and eggs ready. She was playing the Chinese game Mahjong on the computer while my dad and I ate, which is played with game pieces that are similar to dominoes. I’ll have to get her to teach me how to play sometime before going to China because the people still seem to love the game there.
At 10:30, the family friend Virginia came over and the four of us went to the home of other friends, Ruth and Ron P., for an apple butter making party. Ruth is 87 years old and Ron is her son. They live at the end of a very long lane in a very rural area surrounded by fields in every direction. Ruth lives there alone and rarely leaves, so the grass in the driveway has grown high enough to rub the underside of cars. They used to farm the property years ago.
The apple butter was being cooked in a big steel kettle in a dirt-floored open-sided shed next to the house. The kettle was large enough to fit a couple small children and a small wood fire underneath kept its contents boiling. Those contents were water and apples; $70 worth of apples. A man there said that he and his wife had spent four hard hours peeling apples yesterday. These apples were added to the boiling water a little at a time. Everyone constantly took turns stirring the mixture using a wooden paddle with a six to eight foot handle on it. The stirring and boiling dissolved the apples into a goo. As they disintegrated and the pot boiled down, more apples were added till all $70 worth were in the kettle.
It took at least four hours just to get all the apples in, then the goo had to cook for another couple hours to get the excess water out. I would strongly advise buying your apple butter at the store unless you have a lot of money and plan on having an apple butter making party. The kettle alone is expensive and hard to find. Apple butter is apparently only made in specially-designed kettles that have an copper-coated interior.
So, I spent at least six hours at the apple butter party. There were about 20 people who came and went throughout the day. Some appeared to be old local farmers and their wives. There were five black people there; 4 young adults and a child from Chicago, who were friends of Ron’s. One of them, named Patrick, told how he was a general manager for a food service that supplies many national sports stadiums and their teams with food and beverages. He spends his days traveling from stadium to stadium and often works right on the sidelines serving the players. It sounds like a job with lots of benefits but he now has a family and wants to quit traveling.
I spent most of my time talking with Virginia, who lives in Turkey and is temporarily in town to dispose of her late husband’s belongings, who was killed by an extremist assassin two years ago while working in Saudi Arabia. That assassination came after he had survived an earlier truck bombing on his residential compound.
One of Virginia’s comments on Saudi life particularly caught my attention; public executions done by axe. Her and her friends affectionately called the execution location “Chop Chop Square”, which was surrounded by a busy shopping center. Vendors want to be set up as close to the executions as possible because that’s where the business is. At least one criminal is executed every Friday, sometimes for crimes as menial as possession of alcohol. Virginia said that she made it a point to stay away from the shopping center on Friday’s, but that unscheduled executions sometimes took place on Thursdays if there were too many people to kill all in one day. In addition to beheadings, other parts of the body are still removed too, but these separations are now done by doctors in hospitals rather than by police using hatchets in the streets.
For lunch, I barbequed bratwurst and hamburgers that Ron and Ruth had provided. By five o’clock, the apple butter kettle was ready for the final step; adding sugar. It still had to be boiled another hour after that, then would be placed into about 50 canning jars. My dad, Clara and I arrived back at the house by about 5:30, then got ready for our next adventure; a 30-year-old’s surprise birthday party in Pinckneyville. That 30-year-old, Josh, was a family member of Clara’s and there were about 250 people at his party, which was held at a local KC Hall. We arrived a few minutes after Josh had received his surprise. His friends had taken him to a bar connected to the building, telling him that all the cars in the parking lot were because of a private event being held in the banquet hall. A large sliding door separated the bar and banquet hall, so it was slid open to the reveal the 250 screaming people on the other side. I later asked Josh how they got so many people to come to the party and was told that they had been planning it for a year. That always seems to be secret of having really successful parties. I’ve considered the idea of having a party like that in China someday. If enough people could come, then all the airfares could even be pooled together to charter a jet. That actually brings up a business idea; vacation party jets, but airlines must have surely already considered it.
Josh’s favorite beer is Stag, so free Stag was on tap at the bar all night. Game one of the World Series was on and the Cardinal’s won. A buffet of barbeque, baked beans, nachos, potato salad and desert was served. A country band played on stage in front of the large mostly-empty dance floor. One of the singers was a man my dad had known for years while never knowing he was in a band. A fifty-fifty drawing was held to raise money for Josh. Tickets were a dollar each and the winning ticket got half the money. The money ended up going a young boy that appeared to be a close family member of Josh or his wife. Several mums(flowers) were also given away, the largest of which strangely also went to that same kid. The mum he took was as at least 2 and a half feet wide with hundreds of blooms.
Josh’s mother and father in-law sat at our table, David and __. They raise over 4500 pigs on a mostly computer automated farm. David gets up every morning at 5AM to walk around and check on all the pigs to make sure none are sick. You can tell that a pig’s sick because it acts like a sick person and will have droopy ears. He gives a shot to any depressed-looking pigs. The farm receives the pigs when they are 10 pound piglets and raises them for 5 months to 260 pounds. They are separated into enclosures which each hold about 20. Only the ones that grew up together as piglets can be placed in the same enclosure. Introducing a foreign pig will result in that new pig being torn to pieces within seconds. As for human safety, David said that wasn’t a problem unless he ever had a heart attack in the pen, in which case the animals would probably eat him down to the bone. They even bite at the back of his legs when he walks through the pens to check on them, so he must constantly flick a whip behind him as he walks. He attributes this behavior to curiosity, but his wife said that she doesn’t get near the pigs after they are babies.
My dad, Clara and I got back to the house at 11:30. I showed them a video online of a bulldozer rampage that happened a couple years ago in a small Colorado town. A man angry at the local government spent hundreds of hours armoring a powerful bulldozer, then spent a couple more hours dismantling the town. This was no ordinary psycho, as the design of the dozer’s amour involved extensive planning that even included external video cameras connected to monitors inside the cab. This thing just looks evil.

Sunday: 10-22-06

I got up this morning at 8 o’clock just after my dad and Clara had left for church. I sat at the computer for the next three hours, having some toast and tea for breakfast while writing a journal entry and my appeal to Student Judicial Affairs, which is due tomorrow.
My dad and Clara got home from church just after 11 o’clock and we had egg salad sandwiches, soup and chili for lunch. Afterwards, I took a brief break outside while smoking a cigarette and snapping a few photos of the changing leaves. The temperature never hit 50 degrees today even though the sky was mostly sunny.
I spent the next couple hours reading Streetlife China, nearly finishing it. My dad spent that time outside digging up the many banana trees that he plants around the property every summer. A young man that owns a GTO briefly stopped by to speak with him.
Him and Clara brought me back into Carbondale at 3 o’clock on their way to the 6th annual Vulture Fest in Makanda, which is a celebration of the vultures migrating to the nearby bluffs for the winter. I had earlier planned on going with them but had since decided to do other things.
There were all kinds of messages on my computer phone service when I turned it on. Buckley, Jennifer and Jared had all been in town. I started a load of laundry at four o’clock then Nic picked me up to play racquet ball with him and Carl at the Rec Center. One of the games ended with Carl only having one point, but then he later beat me in a one-on-one game played to 11 points.
Finishing my laundry back at home, I saw two people in the laundromat at the same time that I hadn’t seen since last semester. One was a member of my marketing class group in which we wrote a paper about creating a text-messaging based television station in China. The other had been a student in my Chinese class for the previous three semesters. She spent the summer interning at a hospital in Shanghai, but was unable to take Chinese class this semester because it conflicted with another class.
Back in my apartment, I finished up my appeal to Judicial Affairs and worked on my last class journal for Streetlife China. In my backpack, I discovered that an envelope of religious propaganda had mysteriously appeared. This reminded me of when I found a mini-bible at the Cellar last weekend and slipped it into Tera’s purse.

Monday: 10-23-06

I went to school to run a couple errands at 10 o’clock this morning. I wanted to talk to my advisor Brooke about next semester’s schedule, but she wasn’t in her office. I ate a Breakfast Burrito Meal at Mcdonald’s then went back to her office, but only an assistant was there then, who said she was at a funeral. My Chinese professor happened to be walking through the hallway so I asked him what book I’m supposed to read next for my Chinese culture class. The book is called “In the Red” and it’s one of the ones I ordered on Amazon in August. Unfortunately, it’s also the one that fell out of a ripped envelope before it arrived here. The ripped envelope was sent to me a few weeks ago inside an envelope from the Postal Service Recovery Branch. An enclosed letter said they would try to find the contents if I returned a form describing them, but I’ve never heard back from them so the book is probably long lost.
In the computer lab, I made some finishing touches to my Student Judicial Affairs appeal then delivered it to the SJA office. I worked on translating this week’s China People’s Daily article back at home, which is about America being ignorant for bashing China’s One Child Policy and trying to enforce its moral values on the world.
I went to work from 3 till 6 o’clock, spending the second half of that time doing something new; putting mylar covers on the dust jackets of valuable books. I had been curious how people find the exact size of cover to fit on books, and know I know; there is no exact right size because just a couple sizes can be formed to fit all. I’ve been enlightened.
I returned home after a grocery stop at Save-a-Lot, then had a generic ham and cheese Hot Pocket and spicy boneless chicken “wings” for dinner. It took me a couple more hours after that to finish translating the People’s Daily article.
There is no longer an Indian living in my bathroom. He appears to have moved out for good because even the extra toilet paper he bought is gone. The light in his room has been left on for weeks.
There is a strange sound in the bathroom ceiling all the time that sounds kind of like something you might expect to hear in a spaceship. Speaking of strange sounds, I heard two gunshots tonight that were either from a really powerful gun or were fired very close to my building. Wendler Sucks.

Tuesday: 10-24-06

I went to my advisor Brooke’s office at 10 o’clock this morning to begin the process of signing up for next semester’s classes. All students in my major are required to see Brooke each semester before registering. This meeting took about 20 minutes, then I went on to the library to spend the next two and a half hours. That time was spent studying for tomorrow’s Chinese test and beginning to read the book “In the Red”. The book is on reserve at the library, meaning it can be checked out for just three hours at a time and can’t be taken out of the building. Keeping it over the allowed 3-hour time limit results in a fine of $50 per 30 minutes.
The library has become more and more unfriendly over the past weeks. Everyone was sitting at the computers wearing coats and hats today. At least a few girls were trying to type with gloves on. The temperature couldn’t have been more than 50 degrees and an employee said that the heat would be off till the end of the week. A thin temporary wall separates the area that students are allowed from the off-limits construction area. A loud machine that sounded like a leaf blower was turned on and off repeatedly behind the wall, leaving a strong exhaust odor in the air each time. The men’s restroom is closed and the women’s has been turned into a unisex facility. A sign on the door reads “Men and Women. Please lock door behind you.” All but one toilet is out of order.
A girl sat down at the computer next to me with a smelly service dog. There appeared to be nothing wrong physically wrong with her, so maybe the dog was one of those animals that people are allowed to take into public areas because it provides some kind of psychological support. Furthering this theory, any sane person would give their dog a bath or shave it if it smelled that bad.
After Chinese class, I had the professor sign a couple forms that Brooke needed from him to finish my class sign-up process. I went to her office after that but she was busy and said I’d have to come back tomorrow.
Getting lunch at McDonald’s, I talked to that music student who used to live in the apartment underneath me at Saint Germain Square, the one that I mentioned before might be an alien. Back at the library, the building smelled like I had just walked into a giant 7-story tall black marker. It was great really, but made me feel a bit sick after a while.
In culture class, Brooke told us that she had confirmed from another source that pedophilia against boys is indeed a popular phenomenon in many Arab countries.
After class, I went to Trueblood Hall to attend a couple functions there. The first one didn’t start till six o’clock, so I spent an hour studying for tomorrow’s Chinese test in an empty cafeteria lobby. The first event was actually at an adjacent building, Grinnell Hall. It was a meeting about the current criticism against Student Judicial Affairs. The organizer of the event recognized me from the USG meeting two weeks ago and thanked me for coming. There were over 100 people that showed up. The meeting was held in the same conference room that the Study Abroad fair had been in last Tuesday. About 95% of the attendees were black, which was due to the current issue of the nine black students being suspended last week for apparently just watching a fight. Nobody was making any comments at the beginning of the meeting so I made the first by telling a few things about how one-sided my hearing had been on October 13th. Hands went up everywhere shortly afterward and the organizer of the meeting sometimes had trouble keeping control. One commenter even flatly refused to stop speaking until after he had spoken for about five minutes straight. He had good points and felt very strongly about what he was saying, but the other people that were waiting to speak seemed a bit annoyed.
Just after seven o’clock, I left the meeting to attend the Fight Club meeting back in Trueblood Hall. This is the group that was organized by the only student who attended my hearing on my behalf. The meeting was already underway when I arrived and they were also talking about the Judicial Affairs issue. This really has suddenly become the dominant issue on campus.
The Fight Club meeting lasted just a short time then I returned to the other meeting, but it was already over so I returned home. Much of the rest of the evening was spent editing the video footage from Randy’s house on September 17th when we shot a bowling ball with his AK-47.

Wednesday: 10-25-06

I went back to my advisor Brooke’s office this morning and received a piece of paper that will allow me to sign up for classes. There are only two classes I must take but I’ll have to sign up for 4 in order to be eligible for financial aid, so I’m going to look for something interesting to fill that gap.
At the library, I studied for a Chinese test and read a few more pages of “In the Red”. The computers in the library are all having some kind of download problem so I went on to the Faner lab to try and listen to some Chinese audio there. There was only one computer available and it wouldn’t work either. I had sat down at it after another person got up, then another person sat down there right after I got up. Nobody knew it was broken until they tried to log in, so this was a continuous cycle that could have gone on for hours. That could be really annoying for the people sitting at the adjacent computers.
So, I went on up to my Chinese classroom 30 minutes early, but all those old women were sitting in it. I don’t know who they are but they can be found in the room about this time at least one day per week. They were still sitting in the room four minutes before the test was scheduled to start, so I walked on in and began to take some things out of my backpack. One of the women said, “We’ll just be another minute”, and I replied, “That’s fine”. A couple seconds later, the same women asked, “Excuse me, but do you mind just giving us a couple minutes?”. I replied, “You mean you want me to leave?”, and she said “Yes please.” I left the room even though my class was starting any minute and the women were just talking about one of their dogs being put to sleep. Despite the fact that they were all very polite when they left the room, they won’t get the same kindness if they ask me to leave again.
I’m not getting all A’s on the Chinese tests anymore, and I only expect a C on today’s. The writing section took most of the hour, I could barely understand any of the listening and I ran out of time for the reading. Nobody had finished when class was over, so we were allowed to continue working on the tests in a nearby conference room. I could have spent more time and done better, but I was supposed to be at work at two o’clock.
Among my tasks at work, I was asked to take two boxes of books to Goodwill. Nobody answered the doorbell at the rear of the building and I noticed a sign saying that no donations were accepted after 4 o’clock and that anyone leaving donations after that time would “be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law”. I sat the two boxes of books in a tub by the door and left. Back at the bookstore, Carl had me return to Goodwill and pick up the boxes because the sky was looking like rain. But, a guy I know was standing out by the backdoor then and was able to take the books and give me a receipt for them.
Back on campus, I was walking into the Student Center at six o’clock when I passed by Marina, who was talking on the phone to her mom in Russian. I had barely seen her face as I passed by but could strangely recognize her voice even in Russian. We were both heading into the Student Center for food, so I joined her in the Subway line.
I met Yan in the International Lounge at 6:30. This week’s topic of discussion was a China People’s Daily article about the US State Department bashing China every year in its human rights report. Yan said that this report makes the Chinese news every year and that the people don’t take kindly to the US imposing its views on them. The article specifically mentioned China’s birth control policy advocating abortion. Speaking about abortion, Yan said that the government prohibits doctors from telling parents the sex of their baby before it’s born. This is to prevent selective abortions. Everyone wants boys and couples are only allowed to have one child.
It was raining lightly on my bike ride back home. I spent the rest of the evening at my computer, as usual. After writing my class journal about tonight’s meeting with Yan, I looked over a letter he emailed me. It is a request to change his visa status so he can study at SIU with his wife. The letter was quite short, but considering its importance, I spent an hour making it look perfect and convincing.
Smoking a cigarette outside at 11:30, I overheard an Indian guy telling an American that he had saved his phone from a fall in the toilet by baking it in the oven for five minutes at 350 degrees. He claimed to have obtained this “recipe” from the Internet. The battery must be removed first. Hmmmmm.

Thursday: 10-17-06

I was back in the library at 11:30 this morning reading more of “In the Red”, which is so far mostly about all the activity surrounding the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident. The book goes into detail about all the people involved and what shaped their thinking. Sometimes it’s interesting and sometimes the author’s writing style is just too much for me to follow.
In Chinese class, the professor again used the idea of putting a pig head on somebody’s car to explain a new vocabulary word. After class, I asked him what would happen to a student in China that did such a thing. He said that they would be expelled unless they came from a prominent family or could pay off the officials. The professor then joked that we could pay him for A’s and that it would also help teach us about Chinese culture.
Walking downstairs to this week’s culture meeting, I nearly ran overtop of a small foreign creature. She was only four feet tall and I was looking elsewhere while descending the staircase. My culture group had its meeting in the same conference room as last week. The room was again crowded and all the activity was distracting to our conversation. Here’s some of what I wrote for my class journal:

For the last two weeks, my group has met in a small room with another group. The high concentration of Americans has had a negative effect on the amount of conversation that happens with the Taiwanese. All the Americans get to talking amongst themselves and leave the foreigners behind in conversation. If anyone else has sensed this, they haven’t shown it.
Our conversation started when one of the American females in the group asked the Taiwanese if they were familiar with the concept of drag queens. They weren’t, and neither of them knew that a gay bar was located a few blocks from campus. The discussion of gays seemed to make them both quite uncomfortable, especially the one that was newest to the group. They were not volunteering any information and were reluctant to answer questions. What we did learn is that being gay in Taiwan is not something that people flaunt. I proposed a situation where two people of the same sex kissed for a prolonged period on a busy sidewalk, and was told that the police may intervene to stop them.
The topic of homosexuality again came up when I asked about women in Taiwanese sports. They said that the perception of such women was of big, strong, lesbians that acted more like men. The most popular sports in Taiwan are baseball and basketball, but neither draws the kinds of crowds they do in the US. The love of baseball is not something I expected to hear, and I believe that it is not as prominent in the rest of Asia. Another surprise was the existence of widespread corruption in sports, where team members either play poorly and bet against their own team or are threatened into doing so by organized crime groups for the same reason. Gambling is strictly a black market activity that is completely forbidden at all levels. Police even sometimes raid private homes where very small-scale gambling is occurring among friends.
One of the Americans in our group has been showing off a new tattoo for the past couple weeks. Commenting on this, the Taiwanese said that tattoos are not accepted in their mainstream society, especially for women. One of them even mentioned that a girl with a tattoo is most likely a “play girl”. Actually, that same stereotype exists here to an extent, as a tattoo on a girl’s lower back is sometimes referred to as a “tramp stamp”. While on the topic of body modification, I also asked if many Taiwanese women received breasts implants. While it does happen on occasion, the women who receive the procedure usually always keep it a secret from all except their closest of friends.
The Taiwanese had a few questions for us also, including “Why don’t American women like Asian guys.” After some consideration, I said that it may be because Asian men are less aggressive than their American counterparts. American women are used to persistent(often over-persistent) men that don’t easily take no for an answer, while Asians seem to halt their pursuits after a single rejection. The phenomenon is surely much more complicated than this and could be an interesting topic to study.

After the meeting I had a late lunch at Mcdonalds, then saw the student Steven on my way out of the building. I met Steven three weeks ago at the Mid-Autumn Festival party I attended at a professor’s house. He today told me about a Cultural Revolution class he’s taking this semester, which I might be interested in next semester to fill that gap in my schedule. The Cultural Revolution was a real life event that rivals any Orwellian political fiction. The class would surely be interesting.
In culture class, the student Amanda continues to make me laugh. She pet my head today after I had joined some other students in playfully making fun of her for smelling bad. Earlier during our culture partner meeting, she mentioned something that I had told her last week, that her new tattoo makes her “damaged goods” in the mind of Chinese men. She apparently took the comment to heart, at least enough to remember it. She also told me about how people made fun of her in school because her middle name is Rose and her last name is Peters.
When class started, the teacher spent several minutes talking about sexual violence against women in the US, which came about because of our discussion of pedophilia in Arab countries. She wanted to make the point that sexual deviancy is not just something that’s reserved for other countries. When she spoke, I got the sense that this was somehow a very personal topic, as her eyes seemed red and her voice seemed to crack.

After class, I went to the library for another two hours to continue reading “In the Red”. Back at home, I received a letter from the University saying that an appeals hearing has been scheduled for me on November 13th. Wendler Sucks.
I spoke on the phone with Greg D. for an hour in the evening, who’s a friend a friend I met in Key West in 2002. Johanna and I visited him in Maryland in early January of this year, but we’d barely spoken since. He’s now teaching at the University of Maryland and pursuing a doctorate program. We talked about possibly getting together for a trip back down to Florida after Christmas. If that happened, then I’d have to fly back to St. Louis on the 4th to catch another plane to California. I’ll be going there to visit my brother along with my dad, Clara, Amanda and Brant. We are all booked on the same flight, which was offering round trip tickets for just $225, including all taxes.
I spent the rest of the evening on the University’s website looking for potential classes to take next semester. As I mentioned here before, I must take four to receive financial aid but I only need two more to graduate. After all my searching, I found six that caught my interest. Some of those would be useful towards my degree and others would not. Among the useful are World Geography, East Asian Civilizations and East Asian History. Among the non-usefull that I would just like to take for fun are Modern Russia, Beginning Ceramics and Beginning Glass. Taking the Russian class for fun might sound strange, but I just have a curiosity about it, especially since going there in 2005.

Friday: 10-27-2006

The theme of the day was wetness. I wanted to go to the library at 10:30 but thunderstorms kept me inside till noon, when the rain had finally slowed to just a drizzle.
On campus, my first stop was to ask about taking the art classes I’m interested in for next semester, which require the instructor’s permission for registration. The university’s website said that the classes were held in the Pulliam building, and I remembered seeing kilns in a certain spot behind that building before, so that’s where I went to look for a person to talk to. The website hadn’t listed the name of the teacher teaching the class, but this seemed like to logical place to go searching for such a person.
A skinny middle-aged man with a short white goatee was standing under an enclosure smoking next to one of the kilns. He told me that the people I were looking for were probably in the rooms of the building that were right behind him. I walked into an open garage door and saw dozens of unfired clay pots on shelves among all kinds of other artsy stuff, but no people, so I walked up a staircase on the exterior of the building. This led to a series of rooms with hundreds more unfired clay pots and related materials, but still no people. Walking through the artsy silence, I came upon a room where about a dozen people were quietly having some kind of meeting. Several of them looked up as I passed by the doorway. I didn’t want to interrupt the meeting and there wasn’t a single other person around, so I went back downstairs to take another look there. A guy now was sitting at a desk camouflaged among all the clutter. He may have been there before and just not have been noticed. He informed me that signing up for the class(es) would probably not be a problem and that I should come back on Monday and talk to a man named Robin.
Back outside, it was raining hard again, hard enough to get me nearly soaked on the short ride to the Faner building. My hair was so wet that I had to dry it with paper towels in the bathroom. The plan was to then go to the computer lab till Chinese class, but the Taiwanese Peter called my name as I exited the bathroom. Him and his class, English as a Second Language, were about to start a Halloween celebration with traditional American foods and pumpkin carving. So, I hung out with him and a couple other Taiwanese I knew for the next hour while eating some of the food. There were at least 100 foreign students involved in the celebration and the area was packed elbow-to-elbow.
Our conversation for a while centered on the differences between the evil mythical creatures in America and China. Most were quite similar, like werewolves and vampires, but their zombies don’t seem scary at all. A Chinese zombie wears traditional Chinese clothes and takes short hops instead of stumbling along. It still walks with its arms outstretched and a blank stare on its face, but the hop just makes it seem silly. Also, a person can hide from this type of zombie by simply holding their breath. It will find you as soon as you take even a slight breath.
Leaving the Halloween celebration, Peter told me how to say “take care” in Chinese, “bao zhong”. This literally means “keep the weight”, so some people might be offended.
It was still raining hard after Chinese class and I got very wet again on the way to work. Carl and Kelly left just a few minutes after I arrived, to go visit Carly for the weekend at Mizzou. The rain kept falling for the next four hours and only a few shoppers passed through. The rain was still falling just as hard when I left at six o’clock, and I got soaked for a third time today.
Tim and BJ came to pick me up at 6:30 so we could watch game 5 of the World Series. The plan was to meet Mike, Carolyn, John and Amy at Buffalo Wild Wings, but John called us on the way there to say that the line was out the door. So, we all went to ShowMe’s instead, where we found a whole room with a projection TV screen all to ourselves. All the tables in the room eventually filled up but it was never crowded.
Within a few hours, the Cardinals were the 2006 world champions and our stomachs held several gallons of beer combined. Now, we just need to win a Stanley Cup, then somebody needs to bring a basketball team into the city so we can win all four titles in the same decade.
BJ had a deal with Tim tonight, that he would never wear his worn-out Cardinals hat again if the team won tonight. He’s worn it religiously for the better part of a decade, so this was a memorable moment.

Saturday: 10-28-06

I was by myself at the bookstore from open till close today. Yesterday, Kelly had instructed me to walk around the store first thing this morning to make sure Casper the cat hadn’t puked anywhere. He hadn’t. The day started out quite slow and I completely ran out of things to do by noon, which is much unlike the other Saturdays I’ve worked alone. Everything changed after 2 o’clock and an endless stream of customers passed through providing endless conversation about the cat.
Luckily, only one lady brought in a large amount of books to sell. She left them in the store for three hours while running other errands, so there was never really even any pressure. I left the store just a few minutes after six o’clock then did some shopping at Save-a-Lot. This store has a rather large dollar section with some very unwanted merchandise, like Celine Dion mouse pads.
Riding my bike away from the store, I saw some of the best road kill I’d seen in a while; a cat that was nearly flat. It was right in front of the housing projects and a big loud group of women and children was standing nearby. They all started yelling incomprehensible things when I stopped to take a picture of the mutilated cat.
Down the street another block, I happened to run into Gabe and his neighbor, who were outside working on a vintage scooter that Gabe has been restoring.
After having dinner at home, I fell asleep for a couple hours, then rode my bike to Old Town Liquors and an ATM machine. The city was full of costumed pedestrians, some wearing barely nothing in the 45 degree air. I did something really stupid on the bike ride home and held my 12 pack of beer by the handle only when going over a large bump. The handle ripped and the box hit the ground and exploded, sending beers all over the parking lot of my apartment complex. A girl dressed as a mouse and a guy with her helped me pick them up. There were four casualties. I had luckily bought cans.
The Taiwanese Peter met me at my apartment building at 10:45. He had two girls from South Korea with him, Loon and Sinei, who were just in this country for one semester to take SIU’s English as a Second Language course. The four of us first walked to Old Town Liquors, where the girls bought Budwisers and Peter bought Diet Pepsi.
Our next stop was a party at the theatre student’s house. It was a costume party and nearly everyone had a well-thought-out costume, which could be expected at a party of theatre students. I was wearing a pig mask and one of my pig head T-shirts. I’d wanted to have a whole pig costume but never got it together. I told people I was dressed as the guy who put the pig head on Wendler’s car and most seemed to believe me, asking things like, “So, do you know that guy?” My pig head mask had come from Ebay and was surprisingly shipped direct from Shanghai. It looks great but is not practical to wear at a party where you’re trying to talk to people.
There were few guests at the party when my group first arrived, then about 100 slowly showed up for the next hour. My favorite costume was a Michael Jackson with his baby Blanket. This part was played by a hyperactive girl named Steph, whom I met at a party here a few weeks ago. She even held blanket over the stairwell balcony and dropped him.
Peter and the South Koreans left the party at 12:45 because one of the girls had to go meet her boyfriend. Josh didn’t show up at the house till just before they left. He was with a very pretty girl named Heather that I’d never met or heard of before. They would occasionally make out wherever they happened to be standing.
A guy dressed as a cave man told that that he went to a Catholic public high school that banned people from dressing as cave men. Unbelievable.
Marina was also at the party but we only talked for a few minutes. I walked home at 3:30.

Sunday: October 29, 2006

I slept in till noon today because of the late night, then had a long phone conversation with Johanna. I headed to the library at 3:30. The sun was out and the temperature was over 70 degrees, so I took the opportunity to take a few fall pictures around campus, including the ongoing massive construction at the library.
Inside the building, I checked out the book “In the Red” for two hours. The book is in the “reserve” section of the library and two hours is the maximum amount of time it can be checked out. I remembered it was due at the minute it was due, but didn’t get it checked back in till the time was up. A $50 dollar late fee was charged to my account. Because of the close timing, the man that’s in charge of the reserve section erased the fine from the records. I’ve dealt with this old man before and he’s about as dry as they come. He showed me notes he had entered into the library’s database about me last year, when he had erased another $50 fine for me for the same reason. The note was about 100 words long and said something like, “Mr. Kiser was warned on (some date) about the policy on reserve material…….”. He said that this incident would also be added to my record.
Next, I tried to check out the book a second time but was told that the library’s policy is that students checking out reserve material have to wait one hour between check-outs. As for people who blindly follow policies when they have to power to make exceptions without facing repercussions, they are barely any better than murderous dictators. This old man running the reserves section would have made a great Nazi officer. Even though nobody ever checks out “In the Red” and the library was nearly deserted on a Sunday night, he still wouldn’t make an exception. Well, he at least eliminated my fines, so maybe he wouldn’t make all that great of a Nazi.
So, there was no other reason to be at the library so I returned home. In the mail was a package from a former high school classmate, Gretchen, that had helped organize our class reunion. Inside was a booklet of student biographies that I had paid for and never received. They had been given out at the reunion but all were gone before I could get my hands on one.
I spent the rest of the evening doing various homework in my room. Strangely, my computer downloaded a 5MB Chinese audio file in just 5 seconds. I’ve never seen the Internet here ever download anything nearly that fast, and the speed was back to normal immediately afterwords.

Monday: 10-30-06

Warm and very windy today. I signed up for next semester’s classes at noon. I picked East Asian History and Modern Russian history along with the two Chinese classes that I’m required to take. This will finish my college career(unless I decide to go on someday).
I spent the next two hours at the library reading “In the Red”, then went on to work from two o’clock till 5:30. After packaging the mail I entered a stack of mostly pre-1950 books into the database, which takes a lot longer than newer books with ISBN’s. For dinner, I had Carl pick me up a chicken sandwich and fries from Sonic when he went there to buy a soda.
With daylight savings time starting on Sunday morning, it was of course completely dark on my way home from work tonight. I fell asleep for an hour and talked to Lee on the phone for 30 minutes before getting started on homework. We are planning some kind of a winter camping trip for December.
I spent the rest of the evening listening to the Chinese dialog that’s in this week’s chapter of my Chinese book. The book is used all over the country so lots of websites offer supplemental materials for it, like the audio I listened to tonight. I usually only listen to the audio in class and before test time, but thought I should start listening more since I’ve been having such a hard time with the listening sections of the tests.

Tuesday: 10-31-06

The warm sunny weather from the past two days is gone and has been replaced by cold drizzle. I spent two hours in the library this morning translating a China People’s Daily article about Americans buying shortwave radios during the Gulf War. Supposedly, Americans did this because the mainstream media wasn’t reporting the facts correctly. The article says so many people were flocking to buy these radios that demand exceeded supply. Sure don’t remember that. It also says that the media just likes to report on how good our bombs are and how many people they kill. Well, they got that part right at least.
The library was louder than ever today, with jackhammers on the floor directly above and two nearly-as-loud floor scrubbers that were sitting up against a wall to suck up water that was running in from an adjacent room. At least the heat’s back on.
I went to the engineering building and continued translating the article after Chinese class and lunch. I saw Chancellor Wendler doing a photo shoot on one of the paths in Thompson Woods. He looked at me but didn’t show any recognition.
There was a test about the Middle East in culture class, then we moved on to the Chinese portion of the lecture. This is being taught by my Chinese professor, Dr. Hammond. The class was completely unprepared for Hammond’s eccentric antics and was left giggling and speechless at times. He’s definitely one of a kind.
Nic picked me up at my apartment at 6 o’clock. We stopped at Jimmy John’s for sandwiches, then went to his parent’s house, where his mom was making a pumpkin pie or something like that. One trick-or-treater stopped by while we talked to her. We left his car parked at the house and walked several blocks to another house were Sara was giving away candy with two of her friends. Among the trick-or-treaters were parents in orange vests patrolling the sidewalks with flashlights. Nic said that this is part of a neighborhood watch program called the “Pumkin Patrol”. The Pumpkin Patrol paid special attention to Nic and I all dressed in black walking among the kids. One even shined their flashlight on Nic and looked him up and down.
Nic dropped my back of at my apartment at 7:30. He came back at 9:30 and we went to the Halloween party at the Copper Dragon. It at first seemed like turnout was going to be low, but the Halloween spirit is still alive and well in Carbondale, as hundreds eventually filled the place to what seemed like capacity. A band played mostly 80’s music and was dressed as 80’s creatures like Beatle Juice and Freddy Krueger. I think all of the songs were played with recorded back-up vocals.
There was a costume contest at midnight, where the best dressed male and female each got $500 cash. Winners were chosen by how loud the crowd cheered. The male winner’s costume was simple but brilliant for this audience; a bear costume and a Chicago Bears helmet. The female prize of course went to the most slutty. The last two women standing were a beautiful pirate and an even more beautiful teacher. The pirate was wearing a bikini costume, so the teacher competed by ripping off her shirt and lifting up her skirt, which quickly made her a cool $500.
Nic and I went to a party at 1 o’clock with Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall; four costumed girls that had competed earlier. The party was just across their street at Lewis Park Apartments. We later ended up at Denny’s for a very late dinner.

The cabinets were removed from underneath my bathroom sink one day last week while I was at school, just leaving the pipes exposed. The logical reason for this would have been to install new cabinets, but no, they came back today while I was gone and just screwed an unpainted board over where the cabinets used to be. What was the point? They had to do work for no reason and now I don’t have any cabinets and the bathroom is even uglier than before.