I heard the Indian run to the bathroom this morning as soon as her heard my alarm go off at nine o’clock. Whatever he did in there took about 30 minutes. Maybe I can frame him for something so he’ll be deported.
I worked from 10:30 till 12:30, having lunch at the Student Center McDonalds before Chinese class. I’d accidentally left my money and debit cards at home, so Kelly had given me a $10 pay advance.
The assistant teacher taught Chinese today and I asked her before class if she’d ever heard of Dave Chapel. She hadn’t, and didn’t even know the term “stand-up comedy”. So, I described to her that Dave Chapel was a black guy that stands in front of audiences and tells a lot of jokes making fun of black people. There was a reason behind all this; I wanted to know if Chinese people would think it was funny to see a white person get on stage and make fun of foreigners. Her face lit up when she realized what I meant, saying that there have been a couple foreigners become very famous in China for “being funny”. I’d been thinking for the past few weeks that it would be funny to do something like write a terrible Chinese song with the few words I know and post it onto a Chinese website. Thinking about the idea more last night, the Chapel concept hit me. I’m not funny enough to be a stand up comic here, but Chinese people will laugh at foreigners even if they’re trying to be serious. Maybe I could become the Chinese Chapel, if my Chinese ever gets good enough for people to understand my jokes.
I returned to work from 2 to six o’clock. Josh came in to shop and bought one book with the credit he has accumulated. We keep credit records on index cards, and Josh’s card also listed his ex-girlfriend Courtney’s name, so he got a good laugh when I scribbled it out.
I stopped at Save-a-Lot on the way home but could only buy a couple items because there was only about $6 left from that pay advance Kelly gave me this morning.

Lunch: McChicken, Chesseburger, small fries
Dinner: turkey sandwich and a cheesedog
Snack: two human ears

I walked to Marina’s house to meet her and Josh at 10:30. We played Guitar Hero then walked to my apartment so I could wear a Technicolor shir(required for free admission to the party)t. We returned to her place after obtaining the shirt, on the grounds that she needed to change out of high heels. Josh and I hid from her behind the front porch. A guy and girl happened to be sitting on the curb nearby having an argument. The girl said, “I just don’t want to have a relationship right now”, and the guy replied, “We’ll, why did you kiss me then?”. Marina paced back and fourth in the alley while we were hidden, then we on the porch and acted like we were there the entire time. She believed it after a bit of coaxing. It’s so easy to make girls think they’re crazy.

We walked together to a theatre party, meaning SIU theatre students, the same house that I’ve been to several parties to in the past. Nic came to the party about an hour later. A girl was giving massages in the living room and we paid her $7 for both of us. A girl that looked like she was 8 years old was wildly dancing in the living room, but she must have been 10 years older than that.
Leaving the party, Nic and I stopped to watch two groups of guys yelling at each other across Cherry St. One group had apparently yelled something “gay” to the other side. The two groups yelled at each other till a street fight developed between a white and black man. After that, the two screaming groups seemed to be divided between blacks and whites. The blacks and whites taunted each other as they walked down the street, while Nic and I followed closely behind. Everything would have ended peacefully had it not been for a hippie-looking black hurling beer bottles at the white group while they walked away.
About 5 minutes later, the whites showed up with about 10 more whites in their group. The small group of black held their ground on the sidewalk just at the end of the block. The sole troublemaker was still the black guy who had thrown the bottles in the first place. The groups sent “representatives” to negotiate a couple times before a full-fledged fight developed. Nic and I followed the battle as it moved through two city blocks and onto the communal deck of an apartment building. It now was hard to tell who was fighting who. Two men faced each other off and one backhanded the window on the front door of a random apartment that happened to be behind them. The owner soon came out yelling “nigger” comments at the black guy that had thrown the first bottles. Even though that black guy had really been responsible for the whole fight, he had nothing to do with the breaking of the door. The nigger comment seemed to hit him harder than any fist had.

Things became even more confusing now, and the growing crowd just seemed to be fighting at random on the deck. My brother’s friend Sien just happened to show up. An apartment door just happened to be open and two guys just happened to be passed out cold inside.
I really need to start taking my camcorder out more often.

Saturday: 9-2-06

I’d been up till after 6AM last night, so going to work at 1 o’clock this afternoon was really the first thing I did all day. The toilet in the office fills with hot water. I realized that not from sticking my hand in the bowl or drinking the water, but from feeling steam rising when sitting on it. After simply telling Carl and Kelly, “Your toilet fills with hot water”, it occurred to me that they might wonder how somebody could possibly know that without sticking their hand in there.
After work, I went directly to a party Rufus invited me too a couple weeks ago, stopping at ABC Liquor along the way to buy a back of cheap smokes for a not-so-cheap price. In Kentucky, I’ve heard from Tavis and Katie that you can still buy a pack of Marlboro’s for $2.70, but even a pack of generics in Illinois costs over $3. One reason for a cigarette tax is supposedly to deter people from smoking, but in reality, it just makes smokers poorer and stresses them into smoking even more. Maybe the government knows this and it’s all a big conspiracy.
I found the party at a small house on Allen St., where Josh B. and his girlfriend live. A few guys and a girl were in the backyard drinking from a keg while Josh barbequed. I’d never met the other guys there, whom greeted me by making “fag” comments. Their motivation for this seemed to just be drunkenness, and they giggled about it with each other, so I just took it with a grain of salt.
I filled the toilet up with beautiful solid waste and it wouldn’t flush. Nic showed up a couple hours later, and so did two other people from my high school, Mark H. and Opie, neither of whom I’d seen in years.
Nic had ridden his motorcycle, and exchanged it for his car so him, Rufus and I could go out looking for house parties on Cherry St.. He backed into a telephone pole leaving the party because his rear window was fogged up. There was amazingly no visible damage to the car, but we decided not to go looking for parties and Nic decided to go home.
Something terrible happened an hour later; Rufus and one of the other guys got into a bad fight. It was one of the guys who had greeted me with a “fag” comment earlier, and Rufus has never had much patience for those kind of people. After seeing Rufus get in so many fights over the years, I at first just casually observed, even taking a couple pictures. A couple minutes into it, Rufus was loosing consciousness and the other guy was taking the opportunity to take open shots to his face as hard as possible. After seeing two of these hits and the animal-like look on the other guys face, I knew I had to stop it fast before Rufus had permanent injuries. A few other people had been watching from the yard, but thought they were play fighting before now.
In my opinion, the best thing a person can do in this situation is step directly between the fighting people. I thought that grabbing the aggressor from behind could escalate things to where he would have wanted to also fight with me, but looking back on things, I should have grabbed his arms and tried to pin him down. He reached around me to punch Rufus two more times, then grabbed his hair and pulled his head down for a brutal knee to the face. The next knee came so fast that I was only partially able to block it. By this time, Rufus’s face was flowing all over the porch, so two other people quickly jumped in to help restrain both people. The other guy held onto Rufus’s hair for about 30 seconds before we could separate them.
There wasn’t just blood all over the porch and the fighters, but me and the other people that separated them. It was really a brutal fight. Rufus and I walked away a few minutes after he cleaned some of the blood off him. The wounds kept freely bleeding as we walked down the street to Schnucks. There, I called us a cab back to his place, but he mentioned that he should maybe go to the hospital instead, which I thought was a good precautionary measure, if for no other reasons than cosmetic ones. There seemed to be a good chance that his nose could be broken or some of the other wounds could need stitches.
Two police cars and an ambulance arrived just a couple minutes later. I ran to the hospital so fast that I was completely out of breath. I don’t know why I ran, considering I knew that Rufus’s life was no longer at risk, but maybe I just wanted to try and ambulance, which I did by about a minute.
An ex-high school classmate, Allen R. happened to be the guard at the door. He gave me a guest pass and so I could sit with Rufus in a room at the back. I sat in this room for two hours while Rufus briefly slept and they rolled him back for xrays. I spent this time alone reading a Time magazine article about modern Chinese spies and the federal governent’s US operation to sniff them out. The article reminded me of the anti US propaganda that I’ve seen China publish, but the article was still fascinating.
Listing to emergency room activities while reading, it soon became evident that all the staff had to deal with was drunks. A completely unconscious young man was wheeled into a nearby room. An 18-year-old-looking girl was screaming and being abusive with staff from her gurney. Her shrill screams could be heard for several minutes till they finally sedated her forcefully. I’m assuming it happened forcefully because she screamed even louder, “STOP IIIIIITTTTTTTT! YOUR HURTING ME!”, then was silent after that. My ex-high school classmate said that he often has to fight people like that to restrain them.
A police radio was loudly transmitting all the drama from all over the city. One police officer called in to say that a girl was being brought in with a swollen inner thigh, saying she believed herself to be “bitten by a spider”. There were about ten staff members listening in on this transmission and they all busted out laughing so hard that I even started laughing.
Rufus checked himself out of the hospital about 4AM, walking out when nobody noticed. Allen did run up behind us to ask him to sign a form, but he refused. We walked back to my apartment and I blew up my air mattress for him to sleep on.
Knowing Rufus for so many years, I fear he’s going to want to destroy the guy who beat him and that he’ll end up in jail for it. He’s an independent guy and nobody may able to convince him not to go after the guy. After much thought, my only solution is an unusual form on non-violent protest; a one-month alcohol strike. The idea of one of his best friends not drinking for one month should get a message across, especially considering how much he likes alcohol and the fact that the whole strike is aimed at getting him to stop fighting now and in the future.

Sunday: 9-3-06

Rufus slept on my inflatable mattress last night, recovering from all his wounds. There was substantial bleeding overnight. He left around 11 o’clock. I was like a zombie all day from the party and all the drama last night. I went back to sleep from 2 till 5:30, after talking to Johanna on the phone for a while. She says she might consider coming to Shanghai with me in May. She’s definitely welcome but I’ll have to see it before I believe it………..
I started a load of laundry at six o’clock, then walked across town to retrieve my bike from the house where the party was last night. Walking down Cherry St., a random smiling girl said hello, then a random homeless cat walked out of the bushes and sat down in front of me on the sidewalk and rolled over on its stomach. It appeared to be homeless because of hairballs in its fur and a general appearance of poor health. To be that friendly, someone had obviously owned it at one time, though. I pet it for a minute then it stared with sad eyes as I walked away.
The next animals I came across, 4 dogs in a back alley, weren’t as nice. There were in a fenced backyard and every one of them wanted to kill me. It was a bit uncomfortable to pass as they ferociously knawed the thin wire fence. The bike was still right were I left it, locked to the pole of a clothes line in the backyard.
Back at home, I finished up my laundry then got the new pictures online, then read some more of Red China Blues. According to the book, the families of the 7000+ people China executes each year have to pay for the bullets that used to kill their kin.
The fire alarms went off at about 10:30. I was at first going to just hide in my dark room and hope that nobody came to flush me out, but ended up going outside anyway. The fire trucks and firemen in full gear was like a tourist event for many of the new foreign students. The truck drivers even honked at them when they pulled away. There was no fire, of course.

Monday: 8-4-06

Something was ticking like a bomb in my apartment this morning. The sound was coming from my computer monitor, but turning it off and on apparently diffused the bomb.
After a couple generic Pop Tarts, I realized that my September rent still wasn’t paid, so I went to the bank to get some cash and deposit two paychecks. I’m also still holding onto a $700 check from the university, but won’t cash that till making sure they didn’t accidentally over-reimburse me. That could have happened since I wasn’t able to get signed up for all my classes till well into the first week of the semester. I could just cash it but don’t want to risk something crazy happening like them dropping me from all my classes for nonpayment of fees.
Once at the bank, I realized it was a holiday and the bank was closed, so I just took some rent money from the ATM and came home. The apartment’s office was also closed, so I couldn’t pay the rent yet. I’d been thinking it was Memorial Day till Johanna told me that was in the spring. I always get those two confused unless there’s some reason to pay attention. It’s kind of funny that a foreigner knows more about American holidays than me.
The whole afternoon was spent finishing the book Red China Blues and the homework assigned with it. For dinner I ate frozen Banquet Salisbury steaks. Save-a-Lot only has three different kinds of Banquet entrees available for sale and I’ve been on a rotation between them. Dinners sure were a lot better at the old apartment, but that’s about the only thing I miss, other than the extra space and private bathroom.

Tuesday:
The Indian is getting out of hand during the morning in the bathroom. He spent two hours going in and out of there from 8 till 10 o'clock, and that was even before he had a shower.
I paid my rent and picked up four packages from the office. The packages were the remaining textbooks I'd ordered online a couple weeks ago. The Financial Aid Department told me on the phone that the $700 check they sent was not a mistake, so I took a trip to the bank.
On campus, I stopped in the Faner computer lab to get my network account reactivated for the second time, then ate at McDonald's while waiting the required 30 minutes for the reactivation to take place. Walking back to the computer lab, I stopped at the Student Center's convenience store to sign up for laptop rental. They rent laptops there that work with the building's wireless Internet service, but you have to sign up and wait a day before ever getting your hands on one.
Back at the computer lab, I battled several other people that were all waiting to grab the first computer to come available. Once logged on, the first thing I did was change my password. Last time they made me change it, the only requirement was that it be 8 characters long and have one number. Now, the requirement is 8 characters, one uppercase letter, two lower case letters and one character from the set "!@#$%^&*()". This all seems to be getting out of hand. They just need to assign passwords at this point.
To teach a new grammar concept in Chinese, the teacher asked the class what we did in the shower for fun. This question was first proposed to the Japanese student, who could only respond by laughing in his heavy accent. Based on everyone's limited vocabulary, all we could really say was, "I sing in the shower for fun". Maybe it's good that our vocabulary is limited. The preacher student brought me a magazine article about Macau.
I spent my break sitting in an empty classroom of the engineering building, which just so happened to be the same room I had a calculus class in back when I was married to Gretchen. I always thought the teacher of that class looked and acted like Zach R's dad. I spent the time there translating another article from the China People's Daily, which accuses America of being a haven for child labor. It seems kind of funny that China would denounce anyone for that.
My culture class had a long written quiz, which we were barely given enough time to finish. The academic crap in that class seems to be getting even thicker, and it seems like we've started to bash white people now. Most of today's discussion was about a video we watched last week in which an ordinary black and white man screamed about each other about racial issues. The class only discussed the dumb things that the white guy had said, letting the black off scott-free.
I went to work directly after class, staying there till nearly 8 o'clock wrapping Internet orders. Carl and Kelly usually don't work that late, but had alot of work backed up from leaving town yesterday to take their daughter back to her university. We sent out a book titled “Lesbian Vampire Stories”. Maybe the government should red-flag whoever buys such a thing.
I bought some groceries on the way home, then ate leftover salisburies and a bologna sandwich with cheese and nothing else but bread. I read the article that preacher had given me earlier, which compared Vegas to Macau. There are 140 million people within a 5-hour flight from Vegas, compared to 3 BILLION the same distance from Macau. Sure, most of those people cannot afford such a trip yet, but will probably be able to in just a few years. Furthermore, the article said that the “whales” currently visiting Vegas disproportionately come from Asia. Whales are people that gamble over $1 million in a single trip. So the theory is that they will come more often to a Vegas-like place that is closer to home. I’m still keeping Macau in mind after my internship is complete. After that, I’d like to do an intensive language study for a few months, then maybe see what’s available in Macau.
Wednesday: 9-6-06
http://news.yahoo.com/s/wisc/20060905/lo_wisc/9792536
The Indian let his alarm go off for an hour starting at 7:30, and the walls sound as if they’re paper thin. At least I was getting up at 8:30 anyway because I’d agreed to help Oliver U. with his computer at 10 o’clock. Oliver was a substitute teacher of mine in high school, whom I was reunited with while hanging out with Rufus one evening about a month ago. They live in the same trailer park. He had asked that evening if I would show him how to post things for sale on Ebay, then he called me at work last week about coming over this morning.
His trailer court is one of ones on Old South 51 past Arnold’s Market. His yard is scattered with dozens of things he’s bought at yard sales, all nicely arranged in rows on tables and benches. These things include several pairs of shoes and an old microwave with a sign hanging it reading “works $5”. His porch is full of hanging plants and the front door was open. Easy listening music was playing louder than most people listen to it. Oliver heard me walk up and opened the screen door. He is a Santa Clause-looking Turkish immigrant who’s probably in his late 50’s.
The inside of the house makes the yard look plain. There must be thousands of yard sale items packed into the small trailer, all neatly arranged like the ones in the yard. At least a dozen wind chimes are hanging from the ceiling. Boxes on the floor hold dozens of power adapters, all with their cords perfectly wrapped around them. Neat piles of clothes cover the couch and several parts of the floor. The only clear surface is a narrow walkway through the living room, and even parts of that have little piles of random organized stuff.
I spent about two hours helping Oliver out with his computer, which was an older model that he’d bought from one of the schools he substitute taught at. He has dial up access and the monitor was so dark that many colors barely showed up. He was learning how to use Ebay so he could try and sell a few of the million items in the trailer, but I’m not sure how much luck he’s going to have selling old phones and radios.
One of Oliver’s friends, a middle aged woman, stopped by unannounced for a few minutes. As I was leaving, a young black guy rode up on a bike and asked him to borrow a car jack. I was at school by 12:30 and sat in my Chinese room preparing for the test and studying other Chinese. The assistant administered the test and was very generous, just like last year’s assistant. She repeated the listening section over several times and let us stay 5 minutes late to finish up. Only three students took the test.
I stopped at Wendy’s for lunch on the way to work. Casper the cat always follows people around when they carry food in. He stared at me the whole time I sat on a couch eating in the back office, so I finally gave him a tiny part of a chicken nugget. He constantly meows at certain customers and follows them around the store. One of those certain people came in today, a tall skinny guy with a bunch of acne. Casper was on the guy’s heels meowing as soon as he walked in, and didn’t stop meowing for the next 15 minutes while the guy shopped. It would appear that Casper likes to be abused, because he loves this guy for heavy petting. I wouldn’t call it petting at all, but more like hitting. After the guy paid, he hit Casper on the back a few more times with the book he bought. Casper followed him all the way to the door.
Homework at home. That’s all.
Breakfast: 1 honey bun, bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios
Lunch: Wendy’s Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger and 5-piece nugget
Dinner: one cheesedog sandwich with bread toasted

Thursday: 9-7-06
I went to the computer lab before class this morning to make a printout. They have finally abolished the old 1980’s era print card payment system and replaced all their giant ancient printers. Students now use a machine to place value on their student ID, then swipe the ID on flat-screen monitors next to the printers. The new printers are small, quick, quiet and shiny and produce a perfect copy every time. Everybody’s happier.
For an hour before Chinese class, I sat in the classroom beginning to read the next book that’s assigned for one of my Chinese culture classes. It’s simply called “The Chinese” and describes what all the different classes of people are like today, all the way from peasant to top level Communist Party members. The Chinese teacher returned our first tests today. I got a 94.
World Culture class was more boring than ever today because of the very general nature of the discussion. The teacher asked us to rate dozens of statements like “I remember something better if I write it down” from 1 to 5, 1 meaning strongly disagree and 5 meaning strongly agree. I’ve known this teacher a couple years and really like her, but the class material is just zombifying me every day. It helps that we meet in a room with computers on Thursdays now. I try to sit with a posture where she can’t tell that I’m surfing the Internet.
The other portion of this class is great, the part where we meet with our culture partners at 3:30 on Thursdays. The Taiwanese today told us and the other American in my group that most of their people look down on us Westerners for not taking care of our parents when they get older. I said that some people do give their old-aged parents money and the Taiwanese thought that sounded even worse, like we’re trying to pay off our responsibility. Peter Pan(one of the Taiwanese) invited the whole group over to his apartment for Taiwanese dumplings next week. They will show Jianna(the other American) and I how to make and cook these dumplings. We can’t wait. These kind of interactions really make me want to get back to China, where the people are always so willing to invite foreigners into their lives for such activities.
I went to work for an hour after the culture meeting. An author was in the store doing a book signing. There were no customers and it appeared the author was sitting there reading his own book out of boredom. I had to return to school at six o’clock in order to meet a culture partner for my Chinese culture class. This partner was arranged through the assistant teacher of my Chinese language class. We are supposed to discuss the articles I’m translating for the China People’s Daily so journals can be written about our discussions. My culture partner is a very small friendly man that looks like he could be 16 years old. Here’s what I wrote for this week’s journal:
--------------------------
I met with my culture partner for the first time this Thursday evening(Sep. 7th), appropriately at the Student Center’s International Lounge. His name is Zhong Yan and he’s a 31 year-old from the city of ShiJiaZhuang(population 1 million) in the Hebei province, a two-hour drive southwest of Beijing.
This is Zhang Yan’s first time in the United States. He arrived in April to be with his wife, a grad student studying economics at SIU. Next semester, he will also begin the economics graduate program.
Zhang Yan had very few opinions about the article that’s translated above(note: the article was Chinese propaganda about child labor in the US). He believes that the US government tightly controls its labor laws and would not expect to see too many violations. When asked about child labor in his own country, he replied that the laws are enforced just as strictly. A few violations may be found occasionally, mostly in the countryside, but nothing more serious than those in the US. Chinese citizens must be at least 18 years old in order to legally hold a job.
There is a common misconception(stereotype) among US citizens that child labor runs rampant in China. The popular conception of a Chinese Nike factory, for example, often includes scores of 12-year olds assembling tennis shoes. Many Americans accept this idea without ever giving it a second thought, especially the middle-aged working class.
Much of my dialog with Zhang Yao consisted of a mixture of Chinese and English, including simple topics such as living arrangements and family background. Zhong Yao’s English is good enough for him to have passed the GMAT examination, so needless to say, it’s far superior to my Chinese. Despite my comparatively low skill level, he still seemed very pleased to find that I could understand a good portion of his speech, saying that I was the first American he’d ever spoken Chinese to.
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I got back home about 8 o’clock and spent a couple hours writing the culture journal above and the culture journal for my world cultures class. Between those two journals, the journal for my second Chinese culture class and my own journal, I’m writing an average of about 5000 words per week. My weblog now consists of about 800 entries in total, which average about 500 words each. That’s 400,000 words so far, and every five years of weblog will be about 1,000,000 words. If I stick with the goal of this website and continue to write everyday, then I’ll have amassed about 10,000,000 words by 75 years old. What’s the point you might be asking? Well actually, if you’re reading this, then you probably get the point.

Breakfast: One bowl Honey Nut Cherrios, one honey bun

Lunch: one bag of Lays original potato chips and one Hershey’s bar from vending machine

Dinner: Big Mac meal with a Coke from Student Center Mcdonalds.

Friday: 9-8-06

There was a knock on my door at 11:15 this morning. Two men were there, one of whom flipped his wallet open to show a police badge. They were both 30-something year-old detectives with the SIU Police Department. One was skinny, one was a bit heavier and both were short and cleanly shaved. I let them in my room when they requested we all go somewhere to talk. The skinny detective did all of the talking. His first question was, “Could you tell us about the pig head put on Chancellor Wendler’s car last May?” Hearing that was kind of a relief because it meant both that nobody was hurt and that they weren’t here about any more serious crimes. From the beginning, I simply said, “I won’t discuss that because I don’t want to incriminate anybody”. The skinny detective’s response was, “We know about the luau and have subpoenaed email records. There is enough evidence to arrest you right now unless you talk.” I replied again, “Well, I just won’t incriminate anybody so I can’t talk”. His next statement was, “You’re under arrest. Stand up and place your hands behind your back. I offered you a chance to talk”
He helped me put on shoes and took some money out of my desk for bail, then the heavier-set detective locked my door on the way out. In the parking lot was a brown unmarked police cruiser. I sat in the backseat while waiting for a marked car to come transport me to the police station. There was a 20 minute wait so I curiously asked the skinny detective why a marked car had to do the transporting. He said that insurance regulations require that anyone in custody is transported in a vehicle with a protective cage between the front and back seats.
The other car took me to the SIU police station, which is an old converted dormitory building. The detectives arrived at the same time and took me inside to a little interrogation room decorated with a desk and some photography and fingerprinting equipment. The skinny detective got out a file that was 75-100 pages thick, maybe even more. As he flipped through it, I could briefly see the picture of at least one of my friends. He spent a few minutes trying to convince me to talk, while the other detective sat in a chair nearby. The two detectives seemed to be engaged in a “good cop bad cop” interrogation method, but didn’t really try very hard, maybe just because it was probably obvious I wasn’t going to say anything. I kind of expected them to at least do something like place me in a cold hard cell for a couple hours, but they accepted my refusal to speak after just a couple more inquiries.
Next, they took a mugshot and fingerprints in the little room, then the heavier-set cop escorted me to the bathroom to wash my hands. Back in the little room, the skinny cop wrote out a disorderly conduct ticket at the desk. I had to pay $75 and will have to go to court on September 28th to plea guilty or not guilty. A guilty plea will probably just mean a fine of about $250, but I think I’ll plead not guilty and get a public defender. This way, I can at least get copies of the file the detective has on me, and maybe even get out of the ticket altogether. The files would just be fun to see.
Here’s what’s written on my ticket “Disorderly Conduct in that Kiser placed a cooked pig’s head on the hood of Chancellor Walter Wendler’s car when it was parked on SIU Lot 2. An E-mail was further sent to Wendler stating, ‘Next time…….It won’t be cooked!’ This alarmed and disturbed Wendler.”

Wendler and his SIU police seem to have a pretty intimate relationship for them to spend 4 months and subpoena email records just to give out a simple disorderly conduct ticket. After all, there are unsolved murders in this town. The police don’t seem to have any direct evidence of who actually put the head on Wendler’s car or who sent the emails, so there’s probably a good chance that this ticket just won’t stick. I’m not sure how my name came up in the subpoenaed email records, which is one of the reasons I’m interested to get ahold of them. As for the mention of a luau earlier, that was the luau that the owner’s of my old apartment complex hosted. They advertised a pig roast to attract new tenants and reward old ones. The pig head was given to me upon request and I placed it in my refrigerator. It subsequently ended up on Wendler’s car a few days later and a picture was printed in Carbondale’s Night Life newspaper. In the picture, a sign is hanging on the car hood by the head read, “Wendler, stop pigging out on tuition money”. This came at a time that a few dozen students had been protesting Wendler’s support for tuition hikes.
The police released me to walk home at 12:30. There was time to return home and then get to Chinese class by 1 o’clock. I went to Wendy’s and work after that, working till just 4:30 because Nic and I had been planning a weekend trip out of town to visit his sister at Mizzou University in Columbia, Missouri.
Nic picked me up at six o’clock. The drive to Columbia should take 4 hours, but we went accidentally went 11 miles in the wrong direction after passing though Chester. Once in Columbia, we spent another 30 minutes lost as Nic’s sister tried to direct him to her dormitory over the phone. We finally got to the dorm at 11 o’clock. Alcohol is not allowed in campus dorms, so we had to sneak ours in, which we had bought before leaving Carbondale. The two bottles were in Nic’s suitcase, but I openly carried a bag of ice, which probably looked suspicious.
In Carly’s(Nic’s sister) dorm, two other of her friends were also there visiting for the weekend from out of town. I’d met one of them before a few weeks ago, a tiny 18-year-old guy of Taiwanese descent named Ethan. The other guy, Seth, is a soft spoken tall skinny guy with bushy straight highlighted hair and glasses. We all talked in the room for a couple hours and two more of Carly’s friends came, Naomi and Yolanda, who both attend school at Mizzou with her. Naomi is a tiny 17-year old British-American girl of Indian(?) descent. Yolanda is a tiny 17 year-old black girl from this country.
Our very diverse group went out in search of a bar that everyone would be allowed into. Even the 17 year-olds said they had been allowed into a bar last weekend. All the bars were closing by the time we walked downtown, so we just did some people watching. The downtown area offers several blocks of entertainment, which is mostly frequented by a very white middle class crowd. The only people who didn’t fit that description were the 2 or more beggars that could be seen on every street. Sitting by one street, we watched a guy offering cab drivers $200 dollars to kick out their occupants and transport him with his harem of about 8 women. The cab drivers refused but he eventually talked a passing limo driver into accepting the cash.
After two o’clock, everybody but Nic and I walked back to the dorms. We continued our people watching as we passed through different downtown areas. I found a discarded plastic gargoyle on a stick, which went really well with my black shirt when I put the collar up. It never attracted any Goths as hoped.
Nic and I were pretty lost after a while and spent another hour wandering around the massive 30,000-student campus. Everything is beautiful there, probably because of the huge alumni support. Signs are posted saying that $1 billion in public donations is requested, $696 million of which has already been received. That’s some school spirit.
Back at Carly’s dorm, she met us outside and we sat with a group of students in a circle on the ground, one of which was poorly playing a guitar. Mizzou’s dorms are separated by major and nearly everyone living in Carly’s is a band nerd. The nerds liked my gargoyle.

Saturday: 9-9-06

I didn’t sleep very well or long last night. I’d brought a sleeping bag and a small inflatable pad to lay on the floor. Carly’s roommate was gone overnight, but there were five people sharing the small room. I woke up at 9:30 to see her smiling young roommate standing over me to reach at something. I said, “Hi, I’m your new floor roommate” and she laughed. She took it very well that her room was invaded and an unknown man(Nic) was sleeping on her top bunk.
Nobody slept past 9:30. I went into the men’s communal bathroom to take a shower. Nic snuck away with all my clothes while I was in there, but brought them back a couple minutes later. The first thing we did was walk to a building next door that contained a convenience store and Subway restaurant. I bought a frozen burrito and microwaved it in the store. Nic and Ethan ate Subway and Carly and Seth shared a box of Pop Tarts; typical college diet.
We next walked through the campus to the stadium, where a football game was just about to start. Thousands of people in yellow Tigers shirts were descending on the game from every direction. The stadium holds tens of thousands and appeared to be filling up quickly. At the crowded ticket booths, we decided not to attend because even general admission was $18. After attending SIU for so many years, it seems unreal that a student would actually pay $18 to see their school’s football games. SIU offers students free tickets and still sees much less attendance than they’d like.
Fireworks went off and the crowd wildly roared as the game started. There sure is a lot of school spirit at Mizzou. We decided to watch part of the game from the top of a five-story parking garage nearby. The crowd’s enthusiasm increased as their team easily outplayed the other.
We returned to Carly’s dorm after watching 30 minutes of the game, then Naomi met us and went to the nearby rec center, which is supposedly the #1 college rec center in the nation. The building resembles a large stone church and definitely puts Carbondale’s rec center to shame as far as looks goes. The problem is that the beautiful facility and all its expensive equipment is barely able to be used. Nic and I were going to play racquetball but they didn’t rent any racquets. We were going to use the 50-foot rock climbing wall but its very restricted hours didn’t include Sundays. We were going to try out the workout machines that had DVD drives and LCD monitors but an employee kicked us out because Naomi had blue jeans on. We were going to jump the high dives in the larger-than-Olympic size swimming pool, but were told that only the diving team was allowed to use the diving platforms. Not a single person was in the pool. Finally, we were just going to relax at another pool that featured a lazy river, but that also was closed. By this point, we were almost mad we’d come after having paid $5 each for guest passes. We ended up at least finding the outdoor pool to be open, which was only three feet deep but was decent sized and had a couple small waterfalls in it. After renting a volleyball, Seth, Ethan, Nic and I played a made-up kind of football style game for a while, then Nic and I just played the game ourselves for several more rounds. I always lost because Nic is fat. Naomi left right after we arrived at the pool and Carly also never got in the water.
Back at Carly’s dorm, Naomi met back up with us and we all went to the mall. It was several miles away so we took two cars. I rode in Nic’s with him and the others traveled in Ethan’s. The mall was pretty much an average mall except for a full-sized children’s carousel at the front. Everybody but me looked at clothes in a couple different stores. I did some people-watching while everyone was gone, noticing one very young girl that was completely decked-out as a goth. She couldn’t have even been 10 years old and was wearing all leather with dyed hair, face piercings and heavy makeup. A very conservative-looking woman walking with her saw me looking and sincerely said, “Sorry, were not from around here”.
After everyone had shopped for a while, we all decided to eat at the food court. I had a piece of spinach pizza from a Sabarro’s restaurant. Nic also got a piece of pizza from the same place, which was black on the bottom. Next, everyone else went home and Nic wanted to look at new shoes before we left. He didn’t buy any. We saw some of the ugliest stupidest shoes I’ve ever seen. Actually, I really wished I could have bought the pair that had a big silver metal emblem on the side saying “True Player”. It would be fun to have multiple personalities and dress as a different kind of person every day of the week. There could be Manic Goth Mondays, Too Normal Tuesdays, Thug Thursdays, etc.
Back at Carly’s dorm, I was exhausted and fell asleep in the corner of a lounge room for an hour. After that, we all played a round of poker in the lounge. Ethan and I were the last two playing and we decided to split the $25 pot, even though he probably had quite a bit more than me. After watching a few minutes of the movie Serenity in Carly’s room, we decided to go downtown, stopping by Naomi and Yolanda’s very pinkly-decorated dorm room to pick them up. Sitting there waiting for them to get ready, Ethan finally agreed to speak Chinese with me but everyone was listening and we couldn’t think of anything to say. He’s spoken Chinese with his family since childhood, but had earlier refused to speak any to me. I’d said in Chinese at the rec center earlier, “You speak Chinese, right?”, and he just replied in English, “Yeah, but I don’t like to speak it”.
The first bar we tried to get into was Athena, the one that that Carly, Naomi and Yolanda had been able to get into last week. They were denied entry tonight. Several people were walking by that bar carrying nearly-life-sized wooden crucifixes. One group of black guys ripped theirs apart and started sword fighting with it in a liquor store parking lot, then another group carried theirs across the street while loudly cussing.
Next, everyone but Nic and I went to go eat dinner. We went into a bar that his dad had recommended from his college years here. The two story building was crowded and some very drunken guys kept wresting and running into everyone. We left after Nic waited at the bar for ten minutes without being served. There was a little Japanese bar across the street that looked decent, but they wanted a two-dollar cover charge. We ended up at another little nearby bar and sat on some leather couches while having a beer, then got sandwiches from a Jimmy John’s next door.
After that, we briefly met up with the others, who were just finishing their meals at a Mexican restaurant across the street.
The city seemed to be completely overrun with the white middle class, so Nic and I next decided to go to a little hole-in-the-wall Goth bar. It was perfect because I’d been wanting to hang out with Goths since finding that plastic gargoyle last night. We ordered beers and played two games of pool. A fat drunken woman quickly came up and said that we were way too innocent to be there. We had a strong suspicion that one “woman” was actually a man. The DJ had waist-length dreadlocks and was wearing a pirate hat with sunglasses and a full-length silken robe. His assistant danced on the small stage pretending to have sex with chairs. The building had a strong death theme featuring decorations like a fake stuffed baby.
At closing time we began asking around about after hours parties. The DJ directed me to a woman who directed me to a man named Dave. Dave told us where a house party was and gave us his phone number in case we couldn’t find it. We didn’t want to go to the party with nothing, but were informed that the stores were all closing in less than 15 minutes. The closest one was about six blocks away so I jogged there while Nic waited. Somebody asked where I was headed, then said, “I’ve never ever seen anyone jog to the liquor store before”.
The store was a regular-sized gas station that was completely overrun with customers. The lot was full of car stereos blaring rap and at least two heavily armed guards were protecting the premises. One was roaming inside and the other was in the lot. Both had belts holding a gun, tazer, baton and mace.
Walking towards the party with Nic, it seemed that screams were coming at us from just about every passing car. Literally, at least 20 different people screamed at us, mostly girls. From this weekend, my first impression is that the ration of guys to girls at this campus is way off.
Once we arrived near the area we thought the party should be, nobody had ever heard of our destination, Ross Street. After asking a dozen people around campus, we were about to give up when a smiling petite young dark-haired girl told us it was just a couple blocks away. There were actually several parties on Ross street. We called Dave to get the address and he offered to meet us at the corner. Waiting for him, we observed the antics at a house party on the corner. Guys were playing a cups game on a crudely homemade table and a girl was passed out cold next to them. One nearly-as-drunk guy was trying unsuccessfully to carry her away. At the house next door, several guys were throwing charcoal briquettes at another guy in the yard. He was protecting his face with a small wire table and most of the charcoal was slamming into the white car parked behind him. There were more than just a couple dents.
Dave never showed up so we walked on down the street looking for the party. At a two-story brick house we saw a party and walked into the backyard. We knew it was the right place after seeing the “woman” we thought might be a man. There were about 60 people there in all, spread out between a bonfire in the backyard, the back porch, the house, the front porch and the front yard. Surprisingly, many of them looked like normal college students.
Nic and I spent our time moving between all the different areas of the party. Dave was there, but we didn’t talk to him after saying hello. One heavy-set blond girl put her arms all around Nic for a few minutes, then looked mad when he just said hello to her later.
Carly called Nic sometime after 3 o’clock and said she wanted to come to the party. She was apparently bored in her room and couldn’t sleep. Walking down the street to meet her, Nic and I came across an old office chair, which we used to push each other down the sidewalk. We pushed Carly a block back in the other direction towards the party. Things were quickly winding down there by this time. A very drunken hippy guy named Joe talked to us in the front yard, saying he was hated by nearly all of society for being both a “tree hugger and a c*ck sucker”. I’d been listening in on some of this guy’s conversations earlier and he’s definitely the most hilarious gay hippie I’ve ever met or probably will ever meet.
Standing by the front steps of the house, Nic and Carly noticed the bottom portion of a 100-year-old tombstone leaning up against the house. The man that lived there told us “It was here when we moved in”.
Walking back towards Carly’s dorm, we all sat in the grass for a while by a very out-of-place fenced-in cornfield across the street from the university. Nic was heavily interrogating Carly about her new boyfriend Paul.

Sunday: 9-10-06

I woke up on Carly’s dorm room floor about noon today. Ethan was doing homework but mostly everyone else appeared to have just awaken. After packing up all our things, I walked down to the parking lot to pick up Nic’s car, then packed it and Ethan’s car with all of everybody’s things. For lunch, we all went downtown to a nice restaurant called The Pasta Factory. Everyone left abruptly after eating because Carly realized she was late for a choir rehearsal.
Seth rode back to Carbondale with Nic and I. We were planning on stopping in St. Louis to visit Larry for a couple hours, but went several miles too far on the Interstate and decided not to go back because traffic was moving at a crawl in the other direction. The car’s air condition was out and even the windows being wide open and Nic’s 85MPH average speed didn’t seem to help. A rain shower was very welcome relief.
We saw an extremely erratic driver in the St. Louis traffic. A young guy in a dirty black family sedan was passing cars and braking so wildly that he briefly lost control of his vehicle a couple times. Some other drivers could be seen shaking their heads and turning on their cell phones, presumably to call the police. I began recording video of the crazy driver and he calmed down after seeing the camera pop out of the sun roof. He first backed way off, then tried to speed past us again after thinking I’d put the camera away. I started recording again as he came up alongside, then he hit the brakes and hid behind another car where I couldn’t get a picture. He made two or three more attempts to pass but stopped every time he saw the camera, then took the next exit.
We briefly stopped at a Taco Bell near Belleville, where a Toy’s R’ Us and Hooters oddly share the same sign post. I drove the rest of the way home while Nic and Seth slept.

Monday: 9-11-06

Today was my dad and sister’s birthday and the 5 year anniversary of 9/11/01. Maybe the day will someday become a national holiday and they’ll always be ensured of not having to work. They celebrated the birthday over the weekend while I was out of town.
I talked to Johanna online this morning and asked her if she’d ever heard of a bonsai kitten. Nic first told me about the bonsai kitten on the way to Columbia, then his sister said that she had also heard of it. Even Johanna knew about it in Finland but it was completely new to me up until Friday. So, what is the bonsai kitten? It’s a newborn kitten that’s sealed into a small jar, resulting in only limited growth to the shape of the jar. It’s fed small amounts of food through a tube, so little food that it never goes to the bathroom. The bonsai kitten is a form of decoration that a person could put on a shelf.
Typing the term “bonsai kitten” into Google showed that it was an Internet hoax started by an MIT graduate student with the website bonsaikitten.com. The FBI investigated the student on the grounds that the website could lead to animal cruelty. The Internet is such an effective place for a prankster to start a rumor. Everyone that’s told me about the bonsai kitten thought it was true. I witnessed the same thing with a story about Tom Green’s show being cancelled for him showing up at a bar mitzvah dressed at Hitler; it never happened. And the student producers of the movie “The Blair Witch Project” made tens of millions on it by starting an Internet rumor that modern camera equipment had been discovered sealed inside the 100-year-old foundation of a building where the movie was filmed.
It was sprinkling rain when I road my bike to work at 1:30. Having lunch at Wendy’s, I was able to watch Jerry Springer on the lobby television. The lunch crowd is about half senior citizens, so they probably didn’t care for that much. I think I’ve finally discovered how this restaurant can have such bad service and still be open; it’s a front for other activities. From the men’s restroom, loud music can be faintly heard coming through the wall, but nothing can be heard from the lobby. There’s some kind of secret business operating in the back.
At work, Kelly asked me about meeting her daughter’s boyfriend over the weekend. I said he seemed nice and polite, and she responded, “Those are the type you have to worry about. Like you.” She must be visiting my website. Riding home from work, I stopped at Walgreens to buy some razors and toenail paint. Not the colored kind of toenail paint, but the kind that fixes sick toenails. Mine look funny so I thought I’d give it a try before all the toes. At the checkout, I made an impulse earbud purchase for $2. Several months ago at this store, I’d asked the manager if they sold any pepper spray. He looked and couldn’t find any. Today I noticed a big display of pepper spray at the front and was wondering if that was because I’d requested it.
Back at home, I spent much of the evening translating another China People’s Daily propaganda article, this one being about American children being flooded with too many advertisements.

Tuesday: 9-12-06

Clara picked me up at noon this morning. We went to Murphysboro then I drove the car back to Carbondale. Why do such a thing? Because her and my dad left town this afternoon and I’m house-sitting for the next 10 days. They’re driving all the way to the Grand Canyon to surprise my brother for his birthday.
Back in Carbondale, I couldn’t park in my apartment’s lot because they refused to give me a parking sticker earlier this morning, saying that all the stickers had already been given out. I complained that the lot should be first-come-first-serve and that nobody had ever told me about the possibility of running out of stickers. The parking spaces are not assigned and everyone pays the same rent whether or not they drive a car, so I deserve a sticker, especially after having to put up with the Internet access for the past 6 weeks. Speaking of the Internet, I sent an email about it last night to the company that owns the building. A woman named Shannon responded this morning saying that she was just recently made aware of the problem and that the company would be changing providers in the next week.
I rode my bike to class because driving cars there is just a nightmare unless you arrive before 8 o’clock to find a parking space. During my break after Chinese class, I sat in drizzle at a picnic table by the lake continuing to read “The Chinese”. The beginning of the book describes the situation of the country’s poorest residents, the ones that make less than $1.00 per day. Their land was originally difficult to farm due to geographical circumstances, but large sections are now virtually destroyed by decades of naïve government reforms such as the Great Leap Forward in the 1950’s, in which peasants nationwide were forced in to grain-growing communes. Virtually all land was used to grow only grain, even if it was completely unsuitable for such a crop. The resulting famine cost 30 million lives and the program was abandoned.
Because of all this environmental damage, the country is facing water shortages that may soon be devastating. One of the major rivers, the Yellow, now dries up for hundreds of miles several months of every year. All the rivers are full of silt due to erosion caused by removing the trees from hundreds of miles of river valleys. The silt fills up the river beds and raises the water level, resulting in unprecedented flooding. The underground water level has dropped 300 feet in some areas, resulting in severe subsidence. These are just a few of examples of the country’s many environmental problems. I knew they had some issues in that area, but those issues are much more widespread and seemingly hopeless than I ever expected.

In culture class, some people finally spoke up about the “white bashing” I mentioned in this blog last week. The first person to say something was a girl that happens to be president of the sky diving club. Her comment was soon followed by several others who agreed, then came just as many protests from students who thought they were racist. One person even used the exact term “white bashing”. This was exactly the kind of debate that the teacher was trying to provoke by showing the class such an emotional racism video last week.
The class was split up into groups of five to discuss today’s assignment. Three in my group appeared to be good friends and giggled about everything. We were asked to come up with a few terms to describe ourselves and the only girl in our group said “social butterfly”. The other member of the group was a black International Business student, who asked the girl if she said “sexual butterfly”. She said “sometimes” and he complimented her toes.
Leaving campus, I stopped at the computer lab to print out a journal assignment for the culture class that I’d forgotten about earlier. The journals have to be turned in on paper and by email. After delivering the paper to my teacher in her office upstairs, I returned home to pack up my dirty laundry and anything needed overnight. At the car, I decided to stop at Goodwill before driving back to Murphysboro. I’m in serious need of some new pants, especially since a pair of jeans was ruined by Rufus’s blood two weekends ago.
The Goodwill was only open till six so that that meant just 20 minutes to shop. There are always very few men’s jeans to choose from, but they just so happened to have a new-looking pair that was nearly a perfect fit. I say nearly perfect because some people think I have bad taste. I think they’re just perfect.
In addition to the $4 jeans, I bought a U.S. Army jacket for $3, for no particular reason other than it’s cool. I was even considering buying an old minidisk player because it seemed cool, but didn’t because it probably isn’t really that cool.
At my family’s place in Murphysboro, the front gate was closed and I couldn’t remember the combination of the chain lock. Leaving the car parked at the end of the driveway, I walked up to the house and tried to call Clara for the combination. She didn’t answer but my sister did. She knew the combination. Brant sucks.
The refrigerator at the house is full of homemade leftovers, so I had the best meal I’ve had in forever except for that pasta and salad in Columbia on Sunday. Tonight’s dinner consisted of a chicken fried steak with gravy, mashed potatoes and a big salad.
I went to work on homework after a brief cigarette walk outside. The Internet access at the house finally works good after Clara had the antenna on the roof replaced some time ago. I installed Skype on the computer so I can check my phone messages there for the next 10 days. Skype is great when it works, kind of like a cheap semi-portable phone that can be moved between any two Internet connected computers in the world.
I was still doing homework at 1AM while at the same time watching a tiny black and white portable TV. A documentary about the 5-year September 11th anniversary came on public TV so I quit homework and went to the living room to watch it.

Wednesday: 9-13-06

There was a strange sound coming out of the family room at 11 o’clock this morning, which I traced to a mouse stuck in a glue trap. The tiny animal was flailing about so wildly that the movements almost looked like seizures. I took the trap with mouse attached outside to release it away from the house, but freeing it from the goo seemed impossible. I used a small wire to free one leg at a time, but then the mouse would just go into one of its seizures and end up stuck again. After several cycles of this, Janie the dog ran up behind me and took off with both mouse and trap in her mouth. Later, I found the empty trap laying in the yard. Mouse fur was all that remained. Janie eats small animals whole.
In Carbondale, I parked the car a block from my apartment, then walked there to try again at getting a parking sticker for the lot. Construction workers were moving sinks and tools around but no office clerk was in sight. The construction workers must double as office assistants, because one of them helped me. It turns out that parking stickers were never free as I’d led to believe when moving in. They cost $10 a month so I decided it wasn’t worth it.
I rode my bike to Chinese class and two of the other students had forgotten to bring their workbook. So, I shared mine with them both till some other students with workbooks eventually showed up a few minutes later. It’s hard to share one workbook between three people, especially when you’re trying to read a foreign language.
After class, I exchanged my bike for the car and went to work till six o’clock. I had to carry out a box of bibles for a black woman, who had also bought two boxes of bibles last week. She gave me a $1 tip, which was nice considering I wanted something to eat and had left all my money and debit card in Murphysboro this morning. I also found a few quarters in the car, so was able to eat well at the Student Center Mcdonalds after work. I met my Chinese conversation partner Yan again at 6:30. This is the second time we’ve met. Tonight, we discussed the China People’s Daily article I’d translated earlier this week, the one about American children receiving tons of junk mail. Yan says that Chinese people don’t like junk mail and that they don’t ever receive much. However, he oddly does claim to like the ads he gets here from Walmart. Speaking more on advertising, I asked him about the concept of subliminal messages, which he’d never heard of and was really interested in.
Walking out of the Student Center, he asked me if I knew Josh T., taking a couple seconds to say the name very slowly. Hearing him randomly say the name of one of my good friends was quite unexpected. It turns out that Josh’s sister is his wife’s conversation partner, arranged through their church. He and his wife had gone out to dinner with Josh and his sister recently. Yan mentioned my name at that time and Josh knew there could only be one Garth that was studying Chinese in Carbondale. Small world.
Back at the house in Murphysboro. I gave the dog a few minutes of attention while smoking a cigarette, then let her sleep on the family room floor while doing homework at the computer the rest of the evening.

Thursday: 9-14-06

Looking through Clara’s leftovers in the refrigerator this morning, I put what looked like fish into the microwave. It turned out to be a sickening doughy paste and I can’t imagine what it was, but it definitely wasn’t fish even thought it looked exactly like it. I listened to AM talk radio on the way to Carbondale, because the car’s FM has been broken forever. Not many AM stations will even tune in, so I have to choose between ultra-conservative talk radio or ultra-liberal talk radio. Yesterday was ultra-conservative. These talk show hosts must have no lives whatsoever.
I had to run a few errands once in Carbondale, first stopping at Schnucks to use an ATM and buy some chips and dip. The chips and dip were needed for later in the day because my Taiwanese culture group had invited me over to one of their houses for dinner later. Picking out my chips, Charley called my name from behind. He’s worked there for nearly ten years now, since the store opened in 1997, I think.
My next stop was Pinch Penny Liquors to buy four tickets for the Pinch Penny Beer Festival on Saturday. One ticket is for me, two are for Nic and Sara, and one is for Josh T.. I was able to park the car by my apartment, switch it for my bike and arrive at Chinese class 15-minutes early. That same older woman was sitting alone in the classroom studying, the same one that was sitting there yesterday. She had been studying logic then and Latin today, so I enquired why. She simply said that it helps her to review Supreme Court cases.
On the way to my culture class, I saw Fatty for the second week in a row in the exact same area of the building leaning against the exact same wall he’d been leaning against last week. In class, I sat in the back today so I could quietly surf the Internet without the teacher knowing. Internet Explorer kept crashing over and over. During the lecture, I realized that I hadn’t done an online assignment that was due today, then quickly completed it at the end of class.
Next, I met with my culture group downstairs. Here’s what I wrote in my class journal about the meeting:

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A member of my culture group, Peter Pan, invited everyone to his apartment for Taiwanese dumplings on Thursday. Peter lives with wife at the Southern Hills student apartments. All the Taiwanese went to work on the dumplings as soon as we arrived, working for well over an hour just to prepare the dumpling stuffing. Preparing the lettuce took most of that time, as it had to be chopped extremely finely then pulverized into a near paste. The pulverizing was done by Peter, who spent at least 20 minutes smashing it in his fists and in a plastic bag. Once the lettuce was sufficiently abused, they mixed it in one dish with ground chicken and another with ground pork.
The other American and I were finally able to make ourselves feel useful by helping with the tedious stuffing process. We sat at the kitchen table with two of the Taiwanese and spent another 45 minutes stuffing the lettuce-meat mixtures into mini-pitas. I use the word mini-pita for lack of remembering the real word, but they looked just like a regular pita except for the fact that they were thinner and only about three inches wide. They came in prepackaged stacks that were about 50-high. A spoonful of the mixture was placed in the middle of each pita, then we dipped our fingers in a bowl of water and wet the edges so it would seal well. The Taiwanese used a sealing method that I couldn’t quite master, so I improvised by just making sure my edges were folded over and compressed several times. They all laughed at the appearance of my dumplings, saying the edges looked like little pies. I ran out of the apartment screaming that I never wanted to see them again. No, just kidding, I know that a sense of humor is a cross-cultural virtue.
The dumplings were cooked in three different ways; baking, steaming and boiling. After all the work, there were a couple hundred of them altogether, spread out across the table farther than we could reach in every direction. Peter’s wife, Wendy, made a kind of soup with an interesting name that translates simply to corn soup. The other American and I misunderstood the word soup for soap, but the soup turned out to be some of the best I’ve ever had, for real. The Taiwanese named Jay had brought a kind of spicy beef stew, which Peter directed us to dip a dumpling in. Jay claimed to have spent all day Saturday cooking, from morning till night. Apparently, he spends every Saturday cooking enough food to last him the entire week. That’s one way to deal with culture shock. Luckily, we Americans can fall back on McDonalds just about everywhere we go instead of having to slave all day in a hot kitchen.
During dinner conversation, I spoke a bit of Chinese to Peter’s wife, who barely speaks any English and was embarrassed to even try one sentence. I asked if she planned on having any children and Peter patted her tummy, saying she was five months pregnant. She appears to be as petite as any young teenage girl, not showing the slightest sign of pregnancy. Peter said the baby would be known in Taiwan as an “ABC”, or American-born Chinese. Because they have an affectionate phrase for it, I’m assuming that having a baby in America is something that’s sought after by many Taiwanese. A baby with dual citizenship is probably seen as having a good opportunity for a bright future.
We ended up spending nearly four hours at Peter’s apartment. Based on tonight’s success, I’ve invited the group to my parent’s farm property in rural Murphysboro for an American-style barbeque next Thursday. I’ll also invite a couple mainland Chinese that I know. It will be interesting to see how the two groups interact. I’ll try to immerse them in the Midwestern rural culture by playing horseshoes and getting drunk and stoned while cooking meth. Just kidding again, except for the horseshoes.

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I arrived back in Murphysboro around 8 o’clock, then walked around with a flashlight outside for a few minutes with the dog while having a smoke. Like last night, the rest of the evening was spent doing homework in the Family room with the dog curled up on the floor.

Friday: 8-15-06

Getting ahold of Ericka on the phone, she told me that she had been delayed by an hour this morning because one of her cats escaped. We agreed to meet 30 minutes later at Jimmy Johns. Ericka didn’t show up then either. Leslie B. was also supposed to meet us there, but she wasn’t anywhere to be seen either. Not seeing Ericka or Leslie made me at first think that they must have already met and left without waiting for me. I walked to Old National Bank and withdrew $950. Two-hundred of that was owed to Ericka and the other $750 was for my family. I’d borrowed the $200 from Ericka nearly four years ago, well actually from Ericka’s mom because she borrowed it from her mom to wire to me in Alaska so I could afford to travel to New York and take a sales job with her. I’d borrowed the $750 from my family last spring in order to put money down on the lease for the apartment I live in now.
Next, I walked back to Poplar Street where the car was parked, planning on going to work for a couple hours. It turns out that Ericka wasn’t impatient after all. I saw her car parked by Jimmy John’s while passing down the Strip on the way to work. I’m glad I saw it or I would have ended up like the impatient one. She had apparently been stuck in Marion traffic. I really should probably get a cell phone.
She was walking out of Jimmy John’s with food as I walked up to her car. I bought a sandwich and we ate in the sun on the curb. The first thing she wanted to do in Carbondale was go walk around on campus and see what had changed. We took a picture in the exact same spot that we’d taken one about five years ago, by a flag pole surrounded by flowers in front of the music building. The music building had been completely remodeled since she got her Music Business degree there 4 years ago, so she walked around the hallways like a shy little girl. When I mentioned she looked like a shy little girl, she said that it was because she might see her professors or advisors. In the Student Center, we went in the basement craft shop so she could talk to her old boss.
Next, we went back to my apartment building and played three games or ping pong at a table in the lobby. Her parents have a ping pong table in their basement, so I lost all three games. She now claims that she could beat me in racquetball “no problem”, so I can’t wait to take her down.We next decided to play some pool at the Hangar, where she won two out of three games. I can’t wait to take her down at racquetball. Our next stop was Tres Hombres, where we planned on spending the next few hours and meeting several other people. Leslie B. was the first one to show up. We reserved seating for 7 people in the dining area and ended up sitting at the table for nearly an hour before everyone showed up. Among the others, the only one I really knew was Jennifer R., who has known Ericka ever since we met.
After the meal, we all spent the rest of the evening by the bar. Josh T. came out to join us sometime after 10 o’clock. I was making a conscious effort to only sip beers because I only expected a couple hours of sleep before going to work and the Pinch Penny Beer Festival tomorrow. Right before closing time, an employee rolled a wheeled cooler of iced-down beer into the middle of the bar and just walked away. There were a couple hundred beers on the cart and about half of them were gone within 30 seconds. It was just like a feeding frenzy of animals as everyone grabbed and opened beers as fast as possible. I believe I had started it by taking the first beer for myself. Everyone had been eyeing the cart but hadn’t made move before that. Another memorable activity of the evening was tearing bead necklaces off each other’s necks and whipping each other with them. The beads were the promotional kind that beer companies often give away.
After the bar closed, we ended up going to the house of one of the girls in the group. The house was packed tight with stuff from ceiling to floor and everywhere in between. Animals were running everywhere and several more were in tanks. Josh came over for about an hour and then was the first to leave. Ericka and I left about 20 minutes after that, at about 4AM, and returned to my apartment so I could get a couple hours of sleep before getting up at 8:00 in the morning.

Saturday: 9-16-06

Getting up after three hours of sleep wasn’t that bad and I was really glad I’d only sipped the beers last night. I didn’t have to work till 10AM, but got up so early so I could drive to Murphysboro and check on the dog and take a shower. The dog could have been left alone for the day, but all my bathroom supplies were at that house. Driving back through Murphysboro on the way back to Carbondale, the town was about to celebrate its biggest day of the year, Apple Festival Saturday. The parade on that day usually attracts about 20,000 people. Stopping at the Jackson Square McDonalds, the drive-through line was at least 10 cars long so I went inside to get my food.
I worked till 2:30, then walked across the street to buy a new pair of sunglasses from Walgreens. They had one on sale for 3.98, which might actually be women’s, but look masculine enough at least. I then walked the three or four blocks to the Pinch Penny Beer Festival. I’d bought four tickets on Thursday, one for Nic, one for Sara and one for Josh. Josh had called the bookstore earlier saying he was sick, so I needed to sell a ticket. The event was sold out so that really wasn’t a problem. Carl had earlier been debating taking the ticket, but decided against it. Nic and Sara and Ericka and Leslie were already in line by the time I got to the festival. Nic and Sara were at the end of the long slow line and Ericka was at the front, so I joined her group. Nobody seemed to be looking for tickets by the door, so I went into the liquor store to see if anybody needed them there. The employees ended up buying the ticket, saying they would surely sell it to someone.
This is my second year attending the beer festival. Each person is given a commemorative glass and a raffle ticket at the door. I lost my raffle ticket within five minutes. Around the perimeter of the beer garden, dozens of tables are set up with tubs of ice holding a couple hundred different types of beers from here and the rest of the world. Each table has a couple tubs on it and each tub has three of hour different kind of beers to choose from. An employee is stationed at each tub to dispense the beer, so the event requires about 50 employees, all of which are probably actually marketing reps from the beer companies. The bar was filled to capacity with 500 or more people, making getting around a bit tough. Bud Light of course had the biggest presence, even bringing in a commercial star named Ted Ferguson. Ted Ferguson apparently does some stunts on Bud Light’s commercials, so he was always wearing a helmet and goggles. He spent hours on a stage giving away merchandise, signing it and taking pictures with people. All he really did was smile and drink Bud Light bottles, never saying barely a word. One of the reps on the stage gave me a foam Bud Light helmet and a shirt. I had Ted sign the hat and take a picture with me. Wearing the foam helmet would prove to be very useful, as it once protected my head from a spilled beer and later in the evening from a cats claw.
I went around to all the different beer reps collecting any free merchandise that I could wear, ending up completely decked out with a pair of white Bud Light Gloves, the helmet and two bead necklaces.
A Saluki football game was on all the screens during the last couple hours of the three-hour festival. The team was playing a rival that was way out of their league, but still won. The crowd became more and more enthusiastic for the game as the Salukis slowly scored a few points here and there, then went absolutely wild when we actually won. A majority of the 500+ attendees were crowded tightly around the bar screaming “SIU” and pumping their fists. The event organizers knew there would be chaos if they ended the festival on time and made the people leave their game. The beer reps even kept pouring more drinks up until about 6:30. After that, a raffle was held to give away all kinds of larger beer company merchandise, like small refrigerators, patio umbrellas, etc. I didn’t have a ticket and Ericka was still feeling terrible from drinking too much last night, so we left at the beginning of the raffle.
Our next stop was at Leslie’s house, where a keg party was about to take place. Nobody was yet there when we arrived, but the back door was unlocked so we went on in. I was just about as tired as Ericka, but only from a lack of sleep. We layed on the living room couches and a seemingly-friendly cat took turns lying across each of us. I say seemingly-friendly because it suddenly took a claw swipe at my head after hugging my neck with its legs. That’s where the helmet came in handy.
One of Leslie’s roommates was the first to get home. She didn’t seem to mind that a couple strangers were lounging in her living room. She had a bag full of party decorations and asked Ericka and I to help. I blew up balloons while Ericka put up streamers. We were decorating the yard when a friendly homeless cat approached me. It followed me around after I pet it, then eventually snuck in the house and a cat fight quickly developed. What a homewrecker.
About thirty people showed up over the next couple hours, including Nic. The back yard was wooded and a small bonfire had been built. The rear of the house also had a multi-level deck, so it was the perfect atmosphere for a backyard keg party. Many of the people there had already been drinking at the beer festival since three o’clock, so the party was always lively.
Ericka was still feeling bad and wanted to leave sometime before midnight. We stopped on the Strip to buy two bagels from Winston the Bagel Man, then drove to my family’s house and stayed there.

Sunday: 9-17-06

I woke up about 8:30 this morning and so did Ericka. We searched the entire house for breakfast food and eventually ended up with biscuits, scrambled eggs, sausage, tea and blueberries with whipped cream. Clara always has the supplies on hand to cook nearly anything, if you know where to look. It used to seem weird to me that I could never find anything to eat even though she could always whip up a great meal in a short period of time.
Ericka and I drove back into Carbondale at 10 o’clock. She dropped me off at my car then I stopped at the gas station across the street to buy some smokes. I asked the clerk if she had any matches and she handed me a big wooden stake. I looked at her like she was crazy and she looked at me like I was crazy, then she looked at the stake and said, “Oh, there’s usually a lighter attached to the end of this.”
My plan for the day had been to go home and relax and do homework, but I’d just received a message from Randy this morning about a barbeque birthday party at his house this afternoon. Rodger H. was also going to be there and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. I barely see Randy anymore and I hadn’t seen Rodger since Randy’s wedding about 15 months ago.
Randy’s said the party was starting at 11 o’clock, but nobody was there when I arrived except for him and Lisa. Rodger and Julie came about an hour later. It appeared that the party was going to be more of a late afternoon/evening event, so I decided to leave and come back in the evening after getting some other stuff done.
Back at my apartment, two cars on the street had their front windshields shattered, surely the result of a drunk last night. I spent a couple hours on my computer typing about all the many activities of the weekend.

I headed back to Randy and Lisa’s house at 2:30, stopping along the way to buy them a bottle of Blue Sky wine at Old Town Liquors. I’d actually wanted to get them a bottle of takillya with a worm in it, but the store didn’t have any. Two other couples had come over to the house while I was gone; one that was roughly my age and another that was probably in the late 30’s or early 40’s. The younger couple was a backwards interracial couple, backwards because the guy was the white and the girl was black. I can’t remember ever seeing that before. The other couple was also interracial, with a white female and a Hispanic male. Vinne was the Hispanic’s name and he had some odd hilarious things to say. Lots of people would probably have been terrible offended as he drunkenly rambled on about things like his legless ex-girlfriend that he used to push out of her wheelchair.
Everyone was in the basement playing pool and table tennis when I arrived back at the house. Storms were moving in at that time and the sky grew very dark. It seemed like things could get severe for a few minutes but the storm passed with just heavy rain and a few wind gusts. When the rain stopped, we decided to shoot a bowling ball with an AK-47. Someone had first proposed shooting the ball, which was lying on the basement floor, a couple hours earlier. I kept pushing the idea but Randy was skeptical because he thought flying debris could hurt someone. Plus, he probably didn’t want to get out an assault rifle while people were drinking. Surprisingly, Lisa also wanted shoot the ball, which was all the convincing Randy needed. I set it up about 100 feet into the woods on top of a trash can, then sat my camcorder on another trash can nearby and zoomed in close on the ball. Randy hit it on his second shot, splitting it almost evenly in half. The ball was located at the bottom of a small hill and all the people were located on the rear deck of the house.
All my life, I’d always assumed that bowling balls were hollow, but that just isn’t true. This one had a center that looked, smelled and felt like charcoal. I put one of the halves back on the trash can and then someone else shattered that. The fun continued and everyone took turns shooting bowling ball sections till there was absolutely nothing big enough left to shoot. Stay tuned for the video coming to a computer near you next weekend, probably.
Rodger and Julie left sometime after six o’clock, then the rest of us played a few hands of poker for chips only, no money involved. Randy’s mom arrived around 8 o’clock, after a rain-soaked 7-hour drive from Chicago. She had a 100+ pound jointer/lathe in the back of her truck, which she’d bought from a relative to give Randy. I helped a bit at getting it out of the truck and putting it downstairs. Standing around looking at it, I made the comment that it was perfect for dismembering kittens. Everybody got really quiet, then somebody mentioned that Randy’s mom was a “cat person”. She bluntly said “not funny” but it didn’t really seem to offended after that. The comment came from the fact that 4 tiny tan-colored blue-eyed kittens were running all over the house. The tan-colored blue-eyed mother could sometimes be seen carrying them around by the neckskin. Randy’s mom was talking about all the storms on her way down from Chicago, saying that a squirrel had blown out in front of her truck. Must have been quite a sight. The other younger couple left shortly after Randy’s mom arrived, then I stuck around for just a few more minutes while playing a couple more hands of cards with Randy and eating a few leftover meatballs. I arrived back in Murphysboro around 9 o’clock, punk.

Monday: 8-18-06

I got up at 8:30 this morning to get an early start on all the homework that will be due this week. Housesitting for my family over the last week has seemed to break my normal study routines, resulting in less time for homework. Even in my normal routine it seems that I have a hard time getting everything done this semester. So far, I’ve tried to leave all my weekends free, but that probably won’t still be able to happen when some reports are due at the end of the semester.
It rained hard much of the night and wasn’t warm or sunny enough all day to even dry up all the water from the ground. I worked from 2 till 4:30, then did some shopping for a barbeque I’m having at my family’s place on Thursday for some Chinese and Taiwanese students. My first stop was at Save-a-Lot, where just $27 bought the majority of everything needed to feed 10-15 people. The point of this is to give the foreigners a traditional American experience, so they’ll have hamburgers, hot dogs, chips, potato salad, baked beans, Italian sausage and Miller Light while playing horseshoes in the backyard.
My second stop was at Schnucks to buy the sausage and bulk baked beans and potato salad. Unfortunately, it seems that they no longer sell those things in bulk, so I’ll have to look elsewhere for the beans and salad. My last stop was at SI Liquors in Murphysboro to buy the Miller Light and two bags of ice.
Back at the house, I unloaded all the good and looked around for a cooler and some chairs to use on Thursday. Something really strange happened when I decided to mow the section of lawn that I plan on having the barbeque at. Janie the dog had been closely following behind my every move, but ran ahead and went directly to the lawn mower when I decided to mow! She hates the starting of small engines and will bite at the tires of any machine when a person tries to start it. She was already biting the lawn mover tires way before she should have known I was going to use it. How could she have even known? Just because I had been looking at the grass and kicking at it to determine its length? I’m going to do an experiment tomorrow morning to see if she bites at the tires when I walk by the mower without the intention of using it. If there’s no reaction, then I’ll never look at the dog in the same way again.
I continued working on homework from 7 till 11 o’clock with the dog laying next to me and probably reading all my thoughts.

Tuesday: 8-19-06

I got up at 8:45 this morning and went straight outside to pick the okra for the second time since my dad and Clara have been gone. Last time, there was barely any big enough to pick, but after Sunday’s two inches of rain and Monday’s bright sun, it had an amazing sudden growth spurt. Most of it is probably too big and tough to be eaten.
The two times I’ve been outside early over the last week, I’ve noticed that Janie isn’t much of a morning dog. At night, she’s so hyper that it seems she could explode, but she just slowly walks around with her head down in the morning.
I drove back into Carbondale at 10:15, stopping at McDonalds and Aldi’s along the way. I wanted to buy baked beans and potato salad for the barbeque on Thursday but all they had was the baked beans. The potato salad had to come from Schnucks deli. I also bought some plastic forks and ran into a couple old coworkers there.
At my apartment, I studied for a Chinese test then went to take it at 1 o’clock. I had made flyers with directions to Thursday’s barbeque a couple days ago, so I handed them to the class before the test.
I spent my hour and a half break studying for another test in an empty classroom of the engineering building. That test was for my culture class. Today was only second test in that class and I hate them for two reasons; there’s not enough time and they’re stupid. Sometimes it seems like someone tripping on acid wrote the material because it’s all just oversimplified truths about how to deal with stressful situations and people that are different. This crap has to be memorized for not-so-short answer tests that are three pages long. Even writing as fast as I can it’s still nearly impossible to finish them in the 30 minutes given. I left a note on my test today saying, “Not enough time; more multiple choice questions or more time please”.
The last 45 minutes of class was presented by the first guest teacher of the semester, a woman from Spain. For the rest of the semester we will have a new teacher from a different country every two weeks. This Spanish woman looks more American or European than Spanish, but definitely has the right accent. She is about 40 years old and incredibly hyper. She asked the class what we knew about Spain and I mentioned the world’s largest tomato fight, which I do plan on attending someday. At the end of class, she mentioned that she had gone on a 30-day walking pilgrimage from France to Spain.
I went to work for an hour after class. Kelly can barely walk because of some pinched nerve. I’m probably going to have to quit working these little one hour shifts as school continues to take more time.
I returned to Murphysboro at 6:30, expecting my dad and Clara to be home from their trip at any time. For dinner, I cooked myself some of the barbeque food I’d bought for Thursday’s barbeque; a cheeseburger and Italian sausage. My dad and Clara didn’t arrive home till nearly 9:30, so I wasn’t able to stay and visit for more than a few minutes. My dad had brought me back an Animal House John Belushi doll that talks and dances. He had found it at some kind of small used store in New Mexico. The batteries were dead so I don’t know exactly what it does yet.
I’d expected to give the car back to Clara tonight, but she is letting me borrow it till the barbeque on Thursday. I returned home to Carbondale for the evening. If you’re reading this shortly after I posted it and you want to kill me, then I’m in trouble, especially considering my exact address is here too. Just remember I might have a gun or worse.

p.s. I was reading in the news that tanks and soldiers had entered the streets of Bangkok today in a coup attempt while the president is at the UN meeting in New York. There are so many tourists in that city and I was wondering how they’re all taking it. The article said that they were just drinking at the bars like normal and stepping out to take pictures with the tanks. Sounds fun, seriously.

Wednesday: 9-20-06

Analyze this dream: Walking through a forest, I come to an overgrown clearing with a run-down tomb in the middle. Despite it’s poor condition, the red door on the front is still sealed tightly shut. Pulling myself up to the roof, I realize it has no roof left at all. A woman is sitting in a chair at one end, there is a life-sized statue of a pig at the other end and a coffin is partially buried in the middle. The woman is sadly staring down at the coffin and I climb inside and take a seat next to the pig. She never looks up, but just slides the lid off the coffin to expose a lightly-decayed body. There is a pile of straw next to her and she places handfuls of it on the body’s head while crying. She pours some juice in its mouth before closing the coffin back up.

I woke up after that dream and a slew of other that were just as weird. One of my cactus seems to be getting really skinny, presumably because it’s dying, so I performed emergency surgery and cut off all its offshoots. Over the past few months, it had grown a “branch” that was about 18 inches long. My theory was that supporting the branch could be taking too much energy. Root-like structures were growing off the branch, so I placed it in soil thinking it might grow on its own. This cactus came from Wal-Mart about 7-years ago, as a Valentines Day present for Gretchen(I used to get her flowery cactus because they last longer than roses). The flower turned out to be just grafted on the top and it fell off a few days later.
I spent the morning translating another article from the China People’s Daily, this one about elementary school kids taking guns to school in the United States. They claim that there were 18,000,000 reports of school violence in 1990 alone, so they must even be considering making a bad face at someone violence.
My Chinese class received our tests back today. I got a 94, which was very fair considering I took a few slightly-educated guesses. I drove the car to work so I could give Yan a ride home after our 6:30 meeting at the Student Center. Reading a Daily Egyptain before that meeting, I came across an article about a “Survivor” style competition that will be happening on campus in October. It is sponsored by the university and will be hosted by a former contestant from Australia’s version of Survivor. The ten chosen contestants will camp at the Campus Lake beach for 52 hours while completing all the physical trials. Contestants will vote each other off and the winner will get $500 worth of book credit. I’m applying, even though the book credit won’t do me much good.
I talked to Yan a lot about guns tonight since that’s what this week’s assigned article was about. He says that some high school and college students are required to train with the military for one week, where one of their activities is assembling and shooting guns. Since privately-owned guns are illegal there, it’s the only time that most people will hold or shoot one in their entire lives. Yan said it was very exciting to shoot the gun, so I told him about shooting the bowling ball with the AK-47 this weekend. He instantly recognized the name AK-47 and seemed shocked to know that kind of gun was legal here.
We talked till 8 o’clock then I gave him a ride home. Nothing else happened except homework.

Thursday:

I’d thought my complaints about my apartment’s Internet had been successful. The management switched to a different provider last week and everything seemed to be great, then it was out again when I came home last night. Not only was it still out this morning, but the hot water was out too. I’d wandered why the Indian had taken such a short shower without singing any of his usual 80’s love songs. I couldn’t force myself under the cold water.
I went to school at 11:30 to use the Internet and make a call to Clara about icing down the Miller Lights that I’d bought a earlier in the week for tonight’s planned barbeque. My dad answered her phone, saying that they were on the way to a Lewis and Clark festival somewhere a couple hours north.
We talked about head lice, fleas, bedbugs, homosexuals and ticks in Chinese class. The Chinese word for flea translates simply as jumping bug. The homo conversation came about when discussing the practice of female friends holding hands in China and Taiwan. Females and young couples can apparently often be seen holding hands, but older couples never do so in public. The teacher even said that his Taiwanese wife will drop his hand when she sees any Chinese or Taiwanese pass by.
Culture class was pretty boring again today. I’d had great hopes for this next phase of the class that’s taught by foreign guest teachers, but the Internet was the only thing that kept me awake for the Spanish lady today. For the meeting with my Taiwanese culture group after class, this is what we did(as written for my class journal):

*****************

Since the Taiwanese had treated our group to dumplings at one of their apartments last week, I treated everyone to an American barbeque at my family’s farm property in Murphysboro this week. We drove two cars for the 10-mile trip, with Americans in one and Taiwanese in the other. They must be scared of American driving. The Taiwanese named Peter brought along his pregnant non-English-speaking wife.
Once arriving in Murphysboro, we decided to do the cooking in a greenhouse because it looked like rain outside and the temperature was a bit cool. Everyone helped carry all of the tables and cooking supplies into the building. The Taiwanese and the other American explored the gardens and Pontiac graveyard while I prepared to cook. American or foreign, everyone is always caught off-guard by the 300+ decaying antique Pontiac parts-cars behind a fence between the house and a forest. It usually requires a bit of explaining, as it did tonight.
After everyone’s curiosity settled down, I schooled the Taiwanese on the ancient American custom of pitching horseshoes. They took an interest and continued to play till their arms hurt. For dinner, I served a meal of Italian sausage, burgers, chicken breasts, baked beans, potato salad, soda and Miller Light. The Taiwanese named Jay apparently really likes beer and has drank as many as nine in a single evening, but didn’t drink any tonight because he had to drive. The others don’t seem to have an interest in beer.
Just as round one of the food was consumed, a second round of guests arrived; two locals from Murphysboro who were escorting two mainland Chinese. The mainlanders were a husband and wife that grew up in a city that’s a two-hour drive from Beijing. The husband, Yan, is my culture partner for a Chinese culture class. When the Taiwanese first heard they were coming, the female in the group had held up her fists and said, “We will fight”.
Also just arriving to the barbeque at this time was a student from my Chinese class named Regina, who came with her husband Steve and their six-month-old baby Oliver. Behind them was my father Ron and my step-mom Clara, who were just returning from a Lewis and Clark festival two-hours to the north. There were now twelve people in the group. I cooked a second round of food for the newcomers, then hung out with the Taiwanese as they continued playing horseshoes. We used this time to share English and Taiwanese profanities with each other. The girls acted embarrassed at this but kept laughing hysterically each time the other American or I would learn a new word and repeat it in our terrible accents. The Taiwanese actually already had quite an impressive vocabulary of American profanity. It seems that no matter where in the world I’ve been, exchanging swear words with the young locals is always a good time for all involved.
After the rest of the group had finished their meals, my family invited everybody in for a tour of the house. It’s not all that big, but is built rather oddly and is filled with hundreds of unusual things my dad has picked up in this country and abroad during his lifetime. In one room in particular you can find a 1950’s era barbers chair next to an old railroad signal from the 1800’s, for example. My dad tried to explain to the guests that he was eccentric, but I told them that was just a nice word for “weird” or “crazy”.

*************

As everyone was leaving the barbeque, the American girl in my culture group mentioned that she really liked a shirt I’d let her borrow to ward off the cold, so I offered it to her saying that I’d only paid a dollar for it at a thrift store. She gave me a dollar and wore it home. Thinking back on it, today was only the second time I ever wore that shirt and had just realized I kind of liked it. Oh well, I didn’t like it that much to buy it off somebody’s back so I guess she’s the one that should have it.
The Taiwanese named Jay was driving everyone home and he couldn’t remember how to get back to the highway, so I drove Clara’s car there while he followed, then returned to the house. It’s hard enough to remember directions in your own native language.
I had planned on my family taking me back to Carbondale later tonight, but agreed to stay in Murphysboro to make things easier on them. I read my assigned book “The Chinese” in the living room while my dad and Clara went about their business elsewhere in the house. We all watched the news together in the living room, then they showed me some video of their trip to the Grand Canyon.

Friday: 8-22-06

I slept in the guest bedroom at my family’s house last night and Clara woke me up at 7:30 this morning so I could clean up last night’s barbeque mess before she took me into Carbondale at 9 o’clock. She drove the Suburban to drop it off for a tire rotation at Plaza Tire while I followed in the Intrepid.
I planned on getting some assigned reading done this morning before class, but fell ended up just falling back asleep for an hour and a half.
I had a giant leftover barbequed chicken breast for lunch before going to Chinese class. There were tornado warnings everywhere while I worked from 2 till 6, including one for Carbondale, but the sirens never sounded. There was just heavy rain and light hail. A customer refused to leave while Casper the cat was sitting in front of the door. Kelly assured the women that he wouldn’t run away, but the woman said, “no, I’m scared of him”. It’s hard to believe that a person would honestly be scared of a cat, especially Casper.
Back at home, I needed to make a couple phone calls but my Internet access was out again. I’m giving this a couple more weeks before looking for another similar place to live if the problem isn’t fixed. It’s been nearly two months of problems now.
To make my first phone call, a local one to Nic, I used the pay phone in the lobby. He had been planning on attending a BBQ competition in Murphysboro tonight. Mike is in town for it and his brother is competing on a team. Nic had something come up and couldn’t go, so I needed to call Mike’s St. Louis number to get a ride with him. I didn’t want to have to pay two or three dollars to make the call on the pay phone, so I asked a couple people in the lobby to borrow theirs. The first person said, “I don’t loan mine out”, and the second person had to think about it for several seconds. I can see not loaning my phone on the street, but it seems really selfish in this situation unless you’re using a pay-as-you-go plan.
After all the trouble, I just got Mike’s voicemail, then went back to my room and tried to call him a second time 20 minutes later. This time, I tried to call from the payphone, but it’s broken and will only dial out local numbers, So, a Cantonese speaking girl in the kitchen let me borrow her pink Hello Kitty phone. Mike answered and said that he and Carolyn were still an hour away. So, an hour later I went to try and find another phone to call him back again. This time, a Middle-Eastern student lent me one, which had a picture of what appeared to be the president of Iran holding up his fists as the screensaver.
Returning to my room, I again passed a pile of hundreds of sodas that were lined up against the wall of a hallway. There was a sign saying “Free, please take”, so I took about 30 of them, including root beer, Coca Cola, Sprite and a few other kinds. The catch was that the cans appeared to have been in storage for years, and many were strangely unopened yet empty. I didn’t think age would really make a difference with a sealed soda, so I just chose cans that were intact and mostly clean. Back in my room, one of the root beer cans sprang a leak as soon as I sat them down. Drinking the first one will be an experiment.
I still had to call Mike one more time to arrange a time for him to come by and pick me up. He hadn’t been sure during the other phone calls because he was still on the road. For this final phone call, I stopped at an apartment down the hallway that had it’s door open. A foreign flag that I didn’t recognize was hanging over the entryway. I knocked and voice said to come on in. Two black guys, presumably Africans, were inside listening to some African music and examining a beta fish in a small plastic container. They let me use a phone.
Mike and Carolyn arrived in his truck at 9 o’clock, just after a strong storm had passed with nearly constant lightning. We first stopped briefly at Tim and BJ’s house in Murpysboro before going on to the barbeque competition, which is held behind Dairy Queen every year. Most of the barbeque teams build some kind of props to attract attention to themselves, some of which are quite elaborate. The theme seemed to be ‘Mardi Gras’ this year. One group had built a tall stage out of scaffolding, which girls were dancing on top of while throwing beads down to the crowd. Another group had hired a band and built something to look like a small Bourbon St. bar. The band played blues and featured a blind black man that supposedly had drunk enough rum throughout the night to kill most people. Despite all the liquor, he was great and always had a crowd.
All today’s storms had severely thinned out the crowds compared to last year, but like every year, John’s team seemed to have the most people hanging out at its area. There were a lot of familiar faces from Murphysboro, including a couple I hadn’t seen in over ten years, Josh M. and Matt ?. Josh rode bus 12 with me for years and I had a few classes with Matt, including biology where I paid a guy named Mike Green to eat a 4 inch log dead specimen bug.
Nate W. had a good story to tell. He was jumped by a group of high school-aged kids after the class reunion last month. He had decided to walk home for some reason and was passing through the housing projects when it happened. A group of people started harassing him, then one punched him in the back of the head as he walked away. He tried to get up and keep walking but the entire group then started punching him in the head. A girl happened to stop and break things up before he got hurt really bad, but he somehow ended up loosing his watch.
Tavis and Jared were in town because there grandfather just died. They had been pallbearers at the funeral today and Jared was still wearing a dark suit. He was definitely the only suit at the barbeque.
There was a rumor of an impromptu wet t-shirt contest on the main stage at midnight as yet another storm passed through, but it never happened. I left with Mike and Carolyn around 1 o’clock, then we got some food from Hardees before going to his brother’s house to spend the night.

Saturday: 9-23-06

It seemed like heavy rain and thunder was waking me up all night long as I slept on John’s living room couch last night. The strongest of the storms was coming in when Mike, Carolyn and I woke up at 9 o’clock. Leaving the house, the dog Mia ran out into the worst of the rain and Mike had to go fetch her. We passed though a dozen temporary mini-rivers on the way back to Carbondale.
At my apartment, both the Internet and hot water were out again. I feel like withholding part of the $80 utility fee they charge each month. The rain was still coming down when I went to work at 11:30, but not nearly as hard as it had been. Nevertheless, it resulted in an uncomfortable level of wetness. I saw a just-as-wet bike-riding girl at Wendy’s who looked at me and said, “kinda sucks, huh?” I punched her in the face.
Today was Carl’s birthday, so Kelly took him out to lunch at El Bajios while I watched the store. They called an hour later to say that their van had died in the parking lot, so Kelly took a cab back to the store while Carl waited for a tow truck and went to Marion to get a rental car.
I spent the last couple hours of my shift moving thousands of mystery and horror paperbacks around to expand the section by integrating another bookcase into it. A couple blocked my path just as the job was almost completed. All the books in the store and they just had to look at the ones right in front of me for 25 minutes. They just chatted with themselves and completely ignored the fact that I was working there. This is something I experienced often at Schnucks and it sometimes seems that people do it on purpose, seriously.
I eventually just gave up on finishing the job today and left the store at 5:30. After a stop at Save-a-Lot, I happened to pass by Gabe’s house when he and Tavis were out in the front yard talking. I spent 20 minutes with them then returned home for a quick shower before Tavis came to pick me up at 6:30. We went to Buffalo Wild Wings to eat and play the Golden Tee Live machine there. A group was playing when we arrived but just so happened to be on the 18th hole. The restaurant was even more packed than it usually is on a Saturday night. A waitress almost refused to serve us because we didn’t have a table.
Mike and Carolyn came at 7:30 and we played another 18 holes of Golden Tee. The restaurant became even more crowded when UFC fights were put on the big screens at 9 o’clock. Buffalo Wild Wings is making somebody incredibly rich even though its concept is so simple; more and bigger TV’s. The place was like a crowded house party after the UFC fights came on, with hundreds of people wildly cheering or booing at every hit.
Another thing that’s making somebody really rich is Golden Tee Live. Each 18-holes is $4 per person and there must be at least 10,000 of the machines in this country. We played for four hours tonight and charged a total of $28 dollars onto our credit and debit cards. It’s safe to say that the machine makes $100 per day, or $36,000 per year. So, at 10,000 machines, the company is making $360,000,000 per year! It seems like too much to be true, but it must be. Tavis alone claims to have a spent a total of $300 over the past month and regularly plays with coworkers in Cincinnati who have spent just as much. I want my piece of the world’s money pie. Some people make making money look easy but I just can’t seem to make any, yet.
We left the restaurant at 10:30 and Mike and Carolyn went home. Tavis came in my apartment and we had a smoke in the courtyard before he left. Nic had left me a message saying him and Sara were at a house party right across the street. Sara was the only one there when I arrived and we left a couple minutes later to walk to the Strip and meet Nic. I asked Sara if I’d been the only straight guy at the party and she said there was actually one other straight guy that just seemed gay.
Most of the people who had been at the party ended up going to Stix, which was recently remodeled. Waiting in line inside the front door, I realized that a big mirror on the wall was actually a two-way mirror. I cupped my hands around my face to peer in and was kind of surprised to see a row of guys staring back out at me. I was even more surprised to realize that they were standing at urinals! One of the guys jumped back to hide as he realized I could actually see him. It would only be fair if they did this to the women’s restroom too. Speaking of the women’s restroom there, I’ve heard that the plumbing used to be so bad that girls would regularly piss and puke in the sinks when the toilets backed up. They put on nice feminine fronts but are cruder than the guys behind closed doors.
Nic and I played a couple games of pool then I stood around talking to some of the other people in the group. A girl handed me her drink and asked that I watch it while she went to the bathroom. She said, “don’t put anything in it”, so I was silent and tried to look at the drink as suspiciously as possible. She then asked, “Your not going to do anything to it, right?”. I slowly shook my head with a grin and she took the drink back, politely saying, “I’ll take it with me, but just because I might want to drink some”. There have been some public service advertising campaigns over the past few years telling women to always watch their drinks, and I think they’ve just made some people paranoid, because this isn’t the first time I’ve seen that kind of behavior and it just seems to have become an issue after the ads and reports of abuses.
Nic and I left the bar at 1:30 and stopped at Jimmy Johns for sub sandwiches before he dropped me off back at my apartment.

Sunday: 9-24-06

I got up at 9 o’clock to go have breakfast at Harbaugh’s with Mike, Carolyn, John, Amy and Dylan. The restaurant has expanded a lot over the past few years but they still don’t take credit or debit cards, which is kind of perplexing. I’d forgotten that and had to borrow the money from Amy.
Mike and I went to play racquetball immediately after eating. Carolyn sat in the truck making bead jewelry while waiting for us. This was the first time we’d played in at least six months. I’d really been hoping to cream him but going out for the second time last night probably cost me the game. After a rather smooth victory in game one, I suffered bitter defeat in the second, then again lost all energy at the end of the third, so that little bitch beat me two out of three.
Back at my apartment, I fell asleep for two hours, then got up and prepared new pictures to put online till going back to the Rec Center to play more racquetball with Nic and Carl at six o’clock. Nic won the first game then abruptly left to go play poker somewhere. Carl and I played a game alone, then a small guy named Steve asked to join us for the third game. Steve appeared to be in his early 20’s and had his own racquet and glove. His energy level was amazing and he once picked himself flat off the floor by flopping like a fish and landing on his feet. Watching him violently dive at balls made me realize something; wearing pants instead of shorts gives a person a great sliding ability. Amazingly, Carl ended up almost winning the game, but Steve won at the very end.
Talking to Steve after the game, he said that he was a former butcher from the Quad Cities that had applied to Schnucks a couple times since moving to Carbondale to work on a mechanical engineering degree. We tentatively agreed to play racquetball again on Wednesday night. The person he used to play moved away so he’s been going to the Rec Center and asking random people to play lately. He’ll definitely beat me unless I’m in by absolute best frame of mind, unlike today. I can always notice the effects of even a couple beers when playing racquetball the next day.
Back at home, I had a message from Jennifer R. saying she was in town and coming to Carbondale for the evening. We met at Stix at 9:15. She was there with two of her cousins who were in town for the same reason; their grandmother’s funeral. One cousin was a car salesman from Ohio and the other was a bartender at a gay resort in Ft. Lauderdale.
After a couple pool games at Stix, we played several more at PK’s. Jennifer and I were on a team and ended up loosing a majority of the games. I left at 11:30 to finish up a load of laundry that I’d started earlier at my old apartment building’s laundromat.
Checking my email while the clothes dried, I discovered a Facebook.com friend invitation from Jeff S. who was the class of 1996’s main nerd. Tavis and I were saying at the reunion that he was one of the people that we would be most curious to see, but he didn’t come. Checking out his profile, it looks like he’s a patent examiner for the patent office. He has both a master’s degree and PhD and has even done an internship for NASA. Go figure. Surprisingly, he looks nothing like his old nerdy self anymore.
Getting my laundry from the dryer, I discovered a beat-up USB drive near the washing machines. It had probably been through both the wash and dry cycles, but amazingly worked when I put it in my computer. The student who lost it had some papers saved listing his name, so I looked him up on the university’s website and sent a message saying he could have the drive back for $100. But, I did end the message with “just kidding” and gave my phone number.

Monday: 9-25-06

I got up at 9 o’clock this morning and finished two class journals and memorized 46 new Chinese characters, then wrote my application essay for the Ultimate Saluki Competition. I made sure to mention the fact that I applied for the very first season of Survivor in 2000.
I worked from 2 till 6 this afternoon, packaging mail and continuing to move hundreds of mystery novels onto different shelves. Carl and Kelly left for a while so he could take her to an acupuncturist. Carl had advocated the idea to her after finding that his back felt better after visiting one. She was still limping around when they returned to the store.
At 5:30, I rode with them to check out a collection of books in a private home off Pleasant Hill Rd. The woman that lives there had come to the store saying she had lots and lots of books, but it turned out that she not only had few books but had few of value. She lived in a large home on a wooded turnabout. Her husband was sitting in the garage when we pulled up, slowly putting thousands of old documents through a small shredder. Carl ended up just taking two boxes of the books and offering her $25, which she reluctantly accepted.
I arrived back home just after six o’clock and made the mistake of trying to take a one-hour nap at 7 o’clock before starting more homework. I should know by now that I won’t get up after an hour unless I absolutely have to. Tonight’s nap turned into a nearly four hour sleep marathon. Upon awakening, I continued to read “The Chinese” and began translating another article from the People’s Daily. This latest article is about the “education crisis” in America, which hypocritically comes from a country that spent only 2% of its budget on education as recently as 1992 and where schools were forcefully shut down and teachers were beat up and killed during the Cultural Revolution in the 70’s.
I was outside smoking a cigarette at 1:30 and came up with an idea for a “confessions” website. The little gold screen in the wall of my apartment’s hallway prompted the idea, the little gold screen that I mentioned would be funny to place a cross and the word “confessions” next to. What if there was a microphone behind the screen and everything recorded was put onto a website? What if a person was to put up little confession boxes at certain locations all over the country? People would confess to the boxes with the understanding that their recordings would instantly be available on the “confessions” website. Letting the box record video of you would be optional. In reality, most of the confessions would just be silliness, but that’s the idea. OK, I just need some funding now.

Tuesday: 9-26-06

Checking my mail this morning, I found a letter from the SIU Judicial Affairs Department saying they were charging me with Disorderly Conduct and Harassment by the for the “pig head” incident last May. This is in addition to the Disorderly Conduct ticket that the SIU Police game me three weeks ago. Today’s notice says that I can either plead guilty or opt for a Judicial Affairs hearing. I’ll take the hearing, because that sounds more fun, and I’m innocent, of course. The Judicial Affairs Department can do everything from give warnings to kick people out of school, but this should be rather minor.
Ever since getting the ticket from the police, I knew there was a chance that Wendler would also have the university bring up charges under its own system. I’d decided to just let the matter go and pay the police ticket unless he took it any further. So, I started writing a letter to the Daily Egyptian immediately after opening the Judicial affairs letter. Here it is:

Wendler’s Sense of Humor

Well, to put it disappointingly simple, he has none. On the morning of September 8th there was a knock on my door at Ambassador Hall. Two men were standing at the other side, one of which flashed a badge and stated that we needed to talk. They were SIUC Police detectives in plain clothes.
We sat down in my apartment and they questioned me on the following incident: On May 11th, 2006, a smoked pig’s head and a sign reading “Wendler, quit pigging out on tuition money!” were placed on the hood of Wendler’s car while it was parked in Lot 2. A mass-email was further sent with a picture of the car and the message “Next time it won’t be cooked!!!!!”
I simply told the police that I was not willing to incriminate anyone and they simply arrested me on the spot, saying they had subpoenaed email records linking me to “the case”.
The case? Subpoenaed email records? A FOUR MONTH INVESTIGATION? This “case” file at the police department is nearly 100 pages thick! Wendler, didn’t you notice Carbondale’s unsolved murders that the SIU Police detectives could be helping to solve, like the poor young guy that was robbed and stabbed to death after a Sunset Concert this summer? You seem to use the university police as your own private army, and even had the chief drive your car home one evening last May because a few innocent student protesters waited by it in the afternoon; F.Y.I. -the chief has much more important things to worry about than your damaged pride, but won’t say anything because you’re the boss. Be assured that he plays the world’s smallest violin for you at home behind closed doors.

The two detectives issued me a notice to appear in Jackson County court this Thursday, which will probably involve a $250 fine and court supervision. I’d just decided to let this matter go, but then a notice arrived in the mail from Judicial Affairs on Tuesday(26th). I’m writing this letter because Wendler has now gone too far by charging me with harassment and disorderly conduct under the SIUC Student Conduct code. I’ll plead innocent but my unwillingness to discuss the matter and incriminate anyone involved will most likely result in a guilty verdict.
Wendler, just get a sense of humor, like most sensible people in your position would have about playful victimless student pranks. Quit wasting the university’s resources to make yourself feel powerful and to get even. It’s hard to believe that you could have actually felt threatened by this or the other May protest at your car. I’m giving you a new job title, Emperor Wendler.

**********

I went to the Faner computer lab at 11:30 and realized I’d forgotten my student ID, which is the only way to pay for printouts now. So, I rode my bike right back home then right back to the computer lab. In addition to the Daily Egyptian letter, I also needed to print out an application for the Ultimate Saluki Competition and a journal for my culture class that was due today. I then went to a copy machine to make a copy of both my letter from Judicial Affairs and the ticket the police had given me three weeks ago.
The Chinese professor told a good story in class today. A Chinese student in Carbondale had taken a job at a Chinese Buffet shortly after moving here. An American customer asked, “Can I have this to go”. The words “to go” sounded to her like the Chinese words “tu gao”, which means “local dog”. So, she went to the back asking her coworkers where the local dog was on the buffet. Her nickname was Tu Gao for the rest of her stay in Carbondale.
After Chinese class, I went back to the computer lab and scanned my police ticket in order to make a color copy. The copy machine copy hadn’t turned out well. I stapled this color copy together with my letter to the Daily Egyptian, the copy of the Judicial Affairs letter and color copy of the photo of the pig head on Wendler’s car. I then took these printouts to the Daily Egyptian newsroom in the journalism building. The newsroom was full of student reporters sitting at dozens of Macintoshes writing all their articles. A big long-haired guy casually sitting on a table told me to take my letter to the General Editor, Andrea, who was sitting in an office just a few feet away. Andrea appeared to be quite young and was very friendly. She briefly looked through the pages I handed her and said that the reporters might want to talk with me more, so I left my phone number an email address. Wendler sucks.
I smoked a cigarette before culture class, then a giddy girl who sits behind me giddily said, “You smell like a chimney, but no offense”, smiling and bouncing the whole time. The Spanish guest teacher taught for the third day today and it didn’t get any more exciting. I worked for an hour after class then returned to my apartment.
My Internet access has barely worked for days again, so I’m definitely withholding part of my $80 utility fee this month. When I pay my rent later in the week, I’ll just pay $260 instead of $280. I should probably keep even more than that considered the problem has been present for nearly two months now.
I spent the evening working on various Chinese-related homework. The person who owned the USB drive I found two days ago came by to collect it. His name is Liknu and he’s probably from some African country, but I’m not sure. He didn’t say much, but got really happy and said “god bless you” when I handed him the drive.

Wednesday: 9-27-06

My Internet access was out for the third day in a row, so I went to the Faner computer lab at 11:30. In Chinese class, the student Regina looked like she was about to cry all hour. At the end of class, she abruptly handed me a thank you card for the barbeque invitation last Thursday. I couldn’t remember where my bike was parked after class. It was locked up in a completely different spot than usual, but I still don’t remember putting it there.
At work, I had to take six boxes of books to Goodwill in addition to normal other tasks. I met with Yan at the Student Center at 6:30. We talked about public schools in the US and China. Their version of Kindergarten was called “Educate Red Class” up until recently, now it has another name. I spent an hour and a half talking to Yan today and it seemed like just 30 minutes.
I met Nic at Stix to play some pool at 8 o’clock. All the tables were full and I ended up playing just one game against a guy I didn’t know. He was completely drunk but still won. I spent a while talking to Joe, a 40-something year-old guy that worked at Schnucks most of the entire time I did, and still does work there. It’s funny that after all those years, we never really spoke more than two words before tonight.
I left the bar around 9:30 and took a quick tour of the abandoned Lincoln Middle School with someone. It’s just a block from the Strip and is slated to be torn down to build a new police station in the coming weeks. The doors are unlocked. We could barely see a thing inside but the scene is creepy. The walls are still decorated with construction paper murals like school just got out today, but the floors are littered with fallen ceiling tiles and broken glass. Paint cans and brushes are still on the shelves of the art room and test tubes and chemicals are still in the science lab. The basement is just too scary to mention.
Leaving the building, two drunken girls happened to be stumbling across the street in front of us towards the Strip. One of them handed me a soda bottle filled with a yellow substance, which was the worst Long Island Tea I’ve ever tasted. Neither of them could barely stand and one kept calling the other “my puzzle piece”. They walked into Stix together and were probably carried out later. Nic called me his “puzzle piece” as we parted ways.
Riding my bike home, I realized that I’d left my backpack in Stix earlier. It was a traumatic moment and I was sure someone had taken it, but it amazingly was still exactly where I’d left it. I still can’t believe I’d forget my backpack like that, but I guess it’s just because I’m not used to taking it into bars.

Thursday: 9-27-06

I had an interview this morning at the Daily Egyptian offices about the pig head incident. A reporter named Brandon had left one message yesterday and then left both an email and a second message today. The newsroom that had been so crowded two days ago was completely abandoned today. I found Brandon in an attached office talking with another person. We sat at his desk for about 10 minutes as he asked basic questions while taking amazingly fast notes. I was careful to answer no questions having to do with guilt, innocence or anyone else involved.
Leaving the Daily Egyptian, I briefly stopped at the library to use the Internet because mine isn’t working at home for the fourth day in a row. I sent a message to the management last night requesting that everybody in the building get a discount on this month’s utility fee, but have so far received no response.
I left the library at 11:30 and then ate lunch at Burger King before riding my bike all the way to Murphysboro for a court appearance about the pig head. This pig head has already been taking up way too much time but at least it makes great material to write about. The wind was blowing against me all the way to Murphysboro, the temperature was cool and it rained for a few minutes. A dump truck honked at me.
The Murphysboro courthouse seemed to be abandoned except for a few guards. My name was not listed upstairs on the bulletin board of scheduled cases, so a guard told me to go downstairs and ask about it in the Circuit Clerk’s office. A woman there could find nothing on her computer and said to take the elevator up to the third floor and ask the State’s Attorney’s office about it. That office was mostly abandoned for lunch and a lone secretary was stationed behind a desk in the front. She tried to look up my case but could also find nothing. Heather H. then happened to appear behind her, whom I’d just seen Friday night at the barbeque competition. I’d known Heather studied law, but didn’t know she worked here.
I was eventually told to wait until a certain person got back from lunch, which happened about 15 minutes later. This person was a little guy carrying hundreds of papers in a dozen different folders, who was probably younger than me and dressed to perfection without even a singly hair out of place. He was instantly familiar with the case when asked about it, and I heard some giggling around the room. It’s nice to know that even the prosecutors are entertained.
This perfectly dressed man went to his office for my file, then said, “you don’t have to be here today”. This is because he hasn’t decided what to do with the case yet. He said that I could expect a letter in the mail soon that “may offer a deal”. I’m thinking this means the case will be dropped, because the secretary gave me a piece of paper to take back to the Circuit Clerk’s office, where my $75 of bond money was returned.
Leaving the building, Cole C. happened to be passing by on the sidewalk. He expressed his dissatisfaction with being in Chicago last week when a tornado had smashed up the town of Gorham. He’s a volunteer rescue worker and would have been able to respond to Gorham had be been in town.
The bike ride back to Carbondale took half the time because of the strong tailwind. I was back in my apartment by 1:55, then went to the Faner computer lab. I’d planned on missing both my classes and my 3:30 meeting with my culture group. I could have even gone to my second class, but decided to skip it instead of show up late. At this week’s culture meeting, the Taiwanese girl Chen couldn’t make it, but everyone else did. Here’s what I wrote about our meeting for this week’s class journal:

**********
The Taiwanese named Chen was in Chicago today and couldn’t make it to the meeting. Everyone else showed up and we decided to start our meeting with a couple games of pool at the Student Center. I was hoping that pool might be a new experience for the Taiwanese, but it was only semi-new. Jay had played a few times before and Peter was surprisingly a master, but playing 8-ball wasn’t a very familiar concept to either of them. They were only used to playing 9-ball and snooker in Taiwan. Peter pretty much just ran the table while everyone else missed a shot here and there.
Jay didn’t appear to be enjoying himself, so I suggested that we all go sit at the outside dining area and talk about American Ways issues. Walking there, I mentioned that the Student Center sometimes holds blood drives and asked if Taiwanese people often donated. I’d heard that mainland Chinese hate to give blood and usually have to be paid for it, but that seems to not be the case in Taiwan. However, the compensation is still more than the free cookie donors get in the US. Jay had donated several times before and received gift certificates for a popular steak house. Peter didn’t like the needles, but said his father had donated nearly 500 times over the past 20 years.
Sitting down, our first topic of discussion was a college student’s freedom to choose their own course of study, rather than having their parents decide for them. Jay’s father had forced him to study engineering, even though his preference would have been sociology. Peter’s family never forced him into anything, even saying that he didn’t have to go to school unless he wanted to. He seems to have been raised in a much more Western style than Jay, and this was apparent even in my first impressions of their personalities. Peter is much more assertive and animated in conversation, and he’s even good at pool. On the other hand, Jay faced the traditional parental pressure that most Asians seem to be accustomed to. His father regularly assigned him more homework after he was finished with his real homework, and would hit him with a stick if he didn’t get it all done.
Jay asked the other American and me whether or not the police would come if a young adult living at home called to say that their parents refused to let them move in with their girlfriend. He was absolutely shocked when I told him that the police would come and possibly arrest the parents for false imprisonment if they held an adult child against his or her will. In Taiwan, he said that not only would the police not come, but that a child even making such a phone call would be something newsworthy to laugh about. Young adults seem to be at the legal mercy of their parents in Taiwan, as Jay also told us that parents have the ability to override the college decisions of their children. Parents will not only decide what major their children choose, but will also fill out the required paperwork and turn it in to the university. I enquired at to whether or not it was possible for the child to change the information after it was turned in. The Taiwanese said “maybe”, but couldn’t imagine someone doing such a thing.

*********

I went on a filming and photography tour of the old Lincoln School building at five o’clock. It appears that people are entering that building on a daily basis, as many things were moved around just since yesterday. Chairs are placed in a circle at the middle of the gymnasium, with wallet sized photos spread all around the area. A photo of a white child sits in each chair and photos of dozens of black kids are placed on a piece of glass in the center. Pretty weird stuff.
I went to the Hangar with Nic at 6:30. Cheech was working and asked me what I’d been arrested for, apparently having had seen the police blotter report in the Carbondale Times. Cheech and Nic played a game of pool while I used Nic’s car to get some money from my apartment. Back at the bar, Nic and I played two more games before going to his house. Sara likes to collect small animals and recently imprisoned a large toad in a small aquarium. Nic was going to show me the toad when he realized it was missing. Sara came home and acted suspicious, asking, “Why were you looking for it in the first place?”
Nic and I next went to PK’s to see all the strange people that come out for $1 night. Sure enough, there were a lot of strange ones. One old drunken skinny guy threatened to “school” Nic at pool. Nic almost ran the table then scratched on the 8-ball. Nic opened his phone to take a call and the old guy reached in and started pressing buttons. I got to meet Dan’s blind wife before leaving at 8:45. Dan used to work with me at Schnucks.
Back at home, I spent the next three hours typing typing typing. Between this journal and my two class journals, it was a couple thousand words. That’s a lot of typing, dude.

Friday: 9-28-06

I got an email from my apartment’s management this morning saying they would send a $15 dollar refund check for the loss of Internet services. That’s good enough for now but it’s going to have to start working soon or I’ll have to move out at the end of October. The worst part about this is not being able to use my computer phone service.
I went to the Faner computer lab at 11:30 to study for today’s Chinese test. It wasn’t easy and the four students taking it all had to be moved into an empty conference room when class was over, so we would have enough time to finish.
At work, Carl and Kelly left at 2:30 to go visit Carly at Mizzou for the weekend. Carly’s friend Seth rode with them, who was visiting her when I was there with Nic three weeks ago. My afternoon working alone went fairly smoothly, with nobody bringing in large amounts of books to sell. I spent 30 minutes shelving paperbacks after the store closed. On the way home, I realized that my Ultimate Saluki Competition application had never been turned in, so I did so at the Rec Center. The deadline was 9:30PM tonight.
Back at home, I microwaved frozen Salisbury steaks for dinner. With my Internet access completely out tonight, I wasn’t able to make or receive any calls and decided to stay home for the evening. I spent some time reading “The Chinese”, then Nic unexpectedly stopped by and I decided to go out. He wanted to play a joke on his boss, who had recently installed a new security camera at the office. We first went to his house to collect a few props for the stunt, including a butcher knife, condoms, a bag of sugar, several empty liquor bottles, Bud Light and a little can of WD40. Sara was home and she told me that yesterday’s missing toad had been found. It had been in its cage the entire time.
Nic’s office is actually just a big old house on Main St. that has been converted. The upper floor is an apartment. There is a deck and a parking lot on the backside of it, which roaming partygoers regularly inhabit temporarily, sometimes leaving bottles, used condoms and other unusual trash. This is why the security camera had been installed. It records 8-second clips and Nic’s boss had spent the time to watch about 50 of those clips that were recorded last night, including boring things like people just walking and driving through the lot. The joke was to fake some crimes on camera and just leave a big party-looking mess on the deck, but a light in the office was on.
Nic called the office phone and his boss Jason answered. The joke was kind of ruined, but not completely. Jason came outside to hang out with us on the deck and we just decided to leave the mess so all the other workers would see it. Jason is the editor of the Carbondale Times and Nic is one of his ad salesmen. Jason left after talking with us for about 20 minutes, then we tried to make the scene look as bad as possible, scattering the bottles and condoms around. On camera, we staged a fake mugging and pretended to break in a car that was sitting in the lot. The sandwich bag of sugar was left in the barbeque grill. The WD40 was used to blow fire in front of the camera.
We were preparing to leave the area when a group of about 10 loud people walked by yelling “80’s PARTY” to us. The guys were all dressed in things like parachute pants and wristbands and the girls even had 80’s hair styles. We followed this group for several blocks, originally thinking the party was nearby. Eventually we came to an area near Mill St. where multiple parties were taking place at several adjacent houses. There may have been 600 or 700 people in total, most of whom were outside in the yards. The 80’s party was at an apartment building. A girl came by offering us some kind of white powder, which we were instructed to put on our noses. The idea was to just apply a little bit to give a sloppy cocaine look, but I just slapped it across my entire nose. For the rest of the evening, people kept politely telling me that there was something on my face. Each time, I would ask “What do you mean?” with a very serious expression.
A girl at the 80’s party was going around loudly telling everyone that she would be belly dancing at one of the other parties in 15 minutes. She had dollar bills stuffed in her clothes and was obviously hoping to make money from guys. She drew quite a crowd because mostly everyone thought she was going to take off clothes during this dance. She put on belly dancing music and danced on a deck at this other party. Everyone was quickly disappointed because not only did she not take off any clothes, her belly was even covered up by a shirt.
A keg fight developed as we were leaving the party. Two guys would hold empty kegs and smash them into each other till somebody had to drop their keg. The deposit on those kegs is definitely lost.
Nic and I next decided to get some food from Jimmy John’s, but then he all-of-the-sudden remembered that he was supposed to let his family’s dog out today while they’re out of town. We ordered our Jimmy Johns to be delivered at the house. Nic’s family’s dog hates him, growling and walking away each time he touches it. It was the dog that Nic grew up with. When asked why it hates him, his only response was “rape”. It’s a really friendly big dog, so it must have a memory like an elephant. I ended up sleeping on the couch in this house. The dog slept in the room I was in instead of the room Nic was in. I raped it.

Saturday: 9-30-06

Nic took me home at 8 o’clock this morning so I could get ready for work, which today included running the store by myself. My Internet access as the apartment was still down, so I went to the bookstore 30 minutes early, at 9:15, to check my email there. Casper the cat sat on my lap the entire time. There was a customer waiting to get in the door at 9:59. The store was full of needy customers by 11 o’clock, asking all kinds of questions that were difficult for me to answer. I’ve learned where a lot of stuff in the store is over the past year and can usually use the Internet to help me answer author-specific questions that I don’t know. There was a brief period of time around noon when the store was completely empty, then a barrage of business continued throughout the rest of the afternoon. At least a dozen people brought in sizable quantities of books to trade. One lady bought $164 of romance paperbacks! She was an adult, but her mom put it on her credit card, frowning the entire time. Mom probably wishes she’d put down the romance novels and find a real live man to support her. Big purchases like this continued all afternoon, but never quite as big. I never had time to order any lunch and barely even had time to use the bathroom. The last book-trading customer brought in a bag at 5:30 and the very last customer of the day came in at 5:59, one minute before the store closed.
I worked putting books away till 6:45, then went to Wendy’s for dinner before meeting Josh T. at the communications building to see a play at 7:30. Going to a play alone with Josh is probably kind of gay, but what the hell, it was a good time. The play was called The Highwayman and is the thesis project of a doctoral theatre student. It’s based on a famous poem with the same title. It was about an hour and a half long, including a 15 minute intermission when the props were changed. Josh was talking dirty during the intermission and a bunch of older people appeared to be listening in. I had to move him when I realized of those people might be Dr. Sanjovi(sp), the doctor who was in charge of my mom’s case for years.
Someone’s cell phone rang several times at the beginning of the second half of the play. Before the first half had started, someone had told everybody, “Take out your cell phones………now TURN THEM OFF!”. Someone had also announced this before the second half.
Josh hung out and talked to the cast after the play, which just consisted of six people. We attended a feedback session after the play, where some of the audience and cast answered questions about how they had perceived it. This was intended as a way for the playwright to get feedback, but he didn’t appear to care what anybody had to say. An old professor asked all the questions while the playwright just saw in a chair next to him with his arms folded and his nose in the air. I made one comment and the old professor replied, “clever”.
Josh and I next decided to have a drink at the Hangar, but they were charging a $5 cover, so we went to Booby’s beer garden instead. They were also charging a cover, but we just happened to get in a couple minutes before they started collecting any money. Bottles of Old Style were just 75 cents, the cheapest I can ever remember paying for a bottled beer at a bar. Sitting at a table with Josh, he shared a great story about last night(Friday). Ask him about out. It’s a good one.
Over the next hour, more and more people I knew kept showing up in the beer garden, including, Heather H, Nate W., Gabe and Andrea(Nora’s friend). All of those people seemed kind of subdued for the evening, except for Heather. I had Josh take a picture of me with this dancing homeless-looking woman whom I’ve seen at bars dancing before. She always tries to kiss me when I ask for pictures.
Josh and I left the bar around closing time, then went to Don Taco for a late snack before continuing our evening. The next stop was at my apartment to put a few beers in a backpack, then I convinced Josh to find an apartment he was debating whether or not he ever wanted to find again. We found the apartment, but the person wasn’t home. It has to do with that great story he told earlier. Ask him about it.
Some people at Booby’s had earlier told us that a big party was going to be held at a house on the intersection of Oak and something street, but we couldn’t remember what something street was. So we figured we’d just walk down Oak St. till we found something street. We didn’t even know exactly where Oak was, so we asked random people as we walked in what we thought was the general right direction. A guy in a leather coat said, “Oh, you must mean the party at the Treehouse. That’s where I’m going”. Hearing the name Treehouse instantly made me aware of the party’s location because there’s only one party house in Carbondale that could be called a treehouse. It’s right behind the hospital and is a maze of multi-level decks and oddly connected rooms. I’d been to a party here a couple years before when two bands were playing in the basement at the same time in different rooms.
Walking around to check out the crowd, the first person I ran into was Tavis’s younger sister, who’s in high school. We had seen each other several times before when I’d been at Tavis’s family’s house, but had never spoken a word to each other before tonight. She mentioned that she’d been to my website and seen a picture from my class reunion with one of her high school’s janitors in it. She was essentially calling Tavis and I old.
Outside the house, I found Josh talking with a group of people, one of which said she knew me. After a second her face became familiar and I said, “Oh, you were Jen’s friend(a former neighbor)”. Her semi-angry one-line response was hilarious but I guess I shouldn’t share it here.
Josh and I left the party at 4 o’clock, stopping at the hospital to take a look at the new construction project there.