I think my cat knows your nephew's girlfriend

Today's discomfort: Strangers with no candy

I rarely get embarrassed. Just about the only things that do get me embarrassed revolve around judgment from complete strangers. For example:
1. When I find myself involved in a loud conversation in public about something inappropriate, (like multiple orgasms, or poo) or something really mundane (like socks)
2. When people I'm with awkwardly approach strangers to ask them about something they think they may have in common (like that their ponies both have alopecia).

I guess I don't want people to think I'm vulgar, boring, or creepy. The weird thing is, I frequently seek out friends who specialize in creating the situations described above. Case(s) in point - Alok S., Amy M., and most recently, the new boyfriend.

Last night, the two of us went to a concert at the Mill, and in the course of a few hours, we/he:
- Talked loudly and extensively about pants
- Talked briefly about sex
- Had an overly personal conversation with the waiter
- Approached two different strangers about: 1. Being neighbors with Ernest's best friend from middle school; 2. Having once accidentally sworn at said stranger in a coffee shop
- Advised a third stranger to dress up in animal costumes on a daily basis

None of the above strangers offered us candy and/or a ride, so I think we were pretty safe. But it just further reinforced my theory that deep down, all I really want in life is to be a little bit uncomfortable.

My bus smells like plastic and sounds like China

Today's discomfort: Naiveté

This rambling is posted in honor of procrastination for my final paper of the semester...

I have a confession to make. And it's not an easy one. It's utterly shameful, considering my choice of life pursuits, but....I've never ridden a city bus. Never. Until a couple of weeks ago, I'd never even ridden the free campus bus that galavants around Iowa City. Now that it's too cold to bike, I'm a regular on said bus, and I have the following to report:

- In the span of two weeks, I have taken the wrong bus 3 times.
- I rarely hear any conversations that are not in Chinese
- There has been only one day in which I have not had to run to catch the bus
- I am continually amazed by the fact that someone will come pick me up and transport me in warmth and ease to my destination.

Public transit. Who knew?

Oh right, thousands of people. Thousands of people who don't claim (as I do) to be interested in studying how cities work and how we should improve our transportation systems. I need to get with the program here. What other critical urban challenges do I have zero experience with? Oh, you know just a few minor things like: living in poverty; affordable housing; living in a city larger than 100,000; commuting farther than 1 mile; owning property. Who am I kidding with this whole "urban planning" degree? Here's a plan for you kiddo: be a real person.

When I say post, you say communist

Project Nanowriqua: Writing a 50,000 word novel in 91 days. Every day(ish), a new embarassing 91 word excerpt.

Word count: Let's not talk about it

Ok, so I'm super behind on the novel. In fact, I haven't written anything at all for a solid 2 weeks. But I think that I should be forgiven for two reasons:

1. It's cold and I don't want to do things
2. I've been spending the majority of my time learning about Bucharest and why it's been having a bit of an identity crisis since the fall of communism. This is in preparation for something that will make me very uncomfortable (look at the title of the blog folks....I think I get credit for this).

On Friday I'm part of a conference where I'll be giving a presentation about Bucharest and urban identity, which should be interesting considering that a month ago I wasn't really sure where Bucharest was (even though I've been there before.) I also didn't know anything about European history, like the purpose of world war I (still don't really get that actually) and what was that whole thing about communism again? Something to do with blocks? And what is this "European Union" you speak of?

So we'll see. I'm basically concluding that there are multiple unresolved contradictions in Bucharest's people, history and built environment, that make it difficult to push the urban identity desired by those in power. And you can never really go wrong when you basically say: Oh, you see this really complicated thing I've introduced here....um, it's really complicated. You know, like contradictory and stuff. Cause of the communists.... Yeah, that's right. The communists. Always blame the communists.

Day 48: Life according to Merriam Webster

Project Nanowriqua: Writing a 50,000 word novel in 91 days. Every day(ish), a new embarassing 91 word excerpt.

Word Count: somewhere between 18 and 19,000 of 50,000

I was hoping it wouldn't come to this. I'm giving you a few more than 91 words today, because really, I shouldn't be allowed to count most of these:

"Angie is reading from the dictionary again.

Parsnip: a Eurasian biennial herb (Pastinaca sativa) of the carrot family with large pinnate leaves and yellow flowers that is cultivated for its long tapered edible root which is cooked as a vegetable; also : the root

This seems like an unnecessarily specific description of the weird looking vegetable sitting on her counter. Perhaps could more easily defined as: object which will slowly rot in Angie’s cupboard. She looks around the kitchen for something else to define.

Bastard:
1 : an illegitimate child
2: something that is spurious, irregular, inferior, or of questionable origin
3 a : an offensive or disagreeable person —used as a generalized term of abuse b : man, fellow

bas·tard·ly adjective

Hm. Bastardly. Angie hadn’t thought of that. This could come in handy, assuming that bastardly creature on the floor ever woke up from its Keystone-Light-induced slumber. Bastardly. Yeah. Something about that seemed to sweeten her tongue a bit."

Day 46: Out, damned spot

Project Nanowriqua: Writing a 50,000 word novel in 91 days. Every day(ish), a new embarassing 91 word excerpt.

Word Count: 18,085 of 50,000

"...sitting up, attempting to wipe the blood off with a dirty hand and the collar of an already stained white shirt. “You need ice or something,” Mauri asks. The kid looks up and squints, then stares back down at the blood on his hands. “Well get back on your row then,” Mauri yells over his shoulder as he heads back toward the field. The dry spring meant the season would go even later this year. Mauri trails behind the crew, tugging a little too hard on the tassels they’d left behind."

Day 45: One of these things is not like the other...

Project Nanowriqua: Writing a 50,000 word novel in 91 days. Every day(ish), a new embarassing 91 word excerpt.

Word count: not enough of 50,000

Sometimes when I'm simaltaneously writing a novel about myself and a memo about highway congestion pricing, I find it interesting to compare the two side by side. For example, today I wrote both of the following 91 word excerpts. I'll let you decide which is which.

"In southern California, a 1993 HOT lane experiment on SR 91 showed reduced commuting times in both HOT and general use lanes, with increased number of travelers participating in ridesharing (Downs, Fielding, Poole). HOT lanes remained uncongested during peak times, due to dynamic pricing.

In Washington, a HOV to HOT lane conversion was implemented after finding HOV lanes drastically underused. Post conversion, general purpose lane speed increased 10%, while HOT lanes increased 7-8%, achieving a minimum speed of 45mps 99.2% of the time. Transit ridership increased by 16% and average tolls..."

compared to this:

"...only problem was what came next: puppies. Unable to care for the constantly arriving litters, the farm mentality prevailed. Unwanted animals, be they chickens, cows, or puppies, are disposed of one way or another. Every few months, Mauri’s dad would leave the house with just one sentence of direction: “When I come home tonight, there will be one dog at this house.” No explanation. No eye contact. Just “one dog.” And then he was gone.

Mauri had discovered that summer that there was no humane way to kill a puppy..."

Day 43: Fate and Detasseling in Newman Illinois

Project Nanowriqua: Writing a 50,000 word novel in 91 days. Every day(ish), a new embarassing 91 word excerpt.

Word Count: 16,264 of 50,000 (behind!)

"...some disappeared, only to be found decaying under a bottle somewhere. Others ran off to Champaign, where they had a mall and a Bob Evans, or flung themselves further, to the places for which these small towns were named: Paris, Brazil, Milan (“My-len,” to the locals)

But for now they were all the same. Kids in a dark parking lot. Waiting, staring into space, crashing shopping carts together. Or three hours later, kids in a hot, dry field. Swearing, whining, peeing on the corn stalks, and every now and then, doing their job."

Day 40: the tao of smoking goat

Did you miss me? Of course you did. Back to the novel.

Project Nanowriqua: Writing a 50,000 word novel in 91 days. Every day(ish), a new embarassing 91 word excerpt.

Word count: oh...thousands...

"There he was, this fascinating high school boy. Long brown hair. Far off looks. Failing grades. Always carrying a copy of something with the words “dao” or “marx” on it. Never wore anything that fit, or that had ever been in a store under florescent lighting. Reportedly once slaughtered a goat on school property while smoking a joint. Angie was never sure when she heard that story whether Mark was the one smoking, or the goat. She liked to imagine it was both.

And now he was staring at her. Waiting."


Novel tip #1,207 - When all else fails, see if you can get your main character to read select passages from the dictionary.

They say the neon lights are bright...

...on Broadway

Part 3 of 3 in our discomfort series.

If Iowa City had a bad part of town (this is debatable), it would be the southeast, around Broadway St. I'm writing a paper that compares this neighborhood to my own, so a few days ago I spent an afternoon walking around there taking pictures. Despite my best efforts, I was a bit conspicuous, especially behind a camera lens. Lacking any personal connection to the place, it felt a bit like an exercise in exoticization of the "other" (or to put it in less pretentious terms, I felt like a wang). Look children! Cracked streets. Subsidized housing. Sub par neighborhood parks. See how different from the lovely urban enclave from whence we came?

The thing is, the Broadway neighborhood is actually a pretty decent place to walk around for an afternoon. Save one or two buildings, it's mostly modest but nice homes and well-kept (at least outwardly) apartment buildings. Yes, they do have more crime issues than the rest of the town, but it's truly not the hotbed of danger and despair that the papers make it out to be. And over the course of about 100 pictures, only one person mockingly yelled at me to 'take his picture cause he's a model, sweetie.'

Regardless, one can't help but get a little squeamish documenting in detail the difference between this:


and this:


Well then.

All I'm saying

Part 2 in our 3 part discomfort series:

If I were making a top 5 list of the things my family is best at, it would probably go something like this:

Scaring animals away from fruit trees/bushes
Talking
Trivial games of mental agility
Producing cute children
Talking

With all this skill of speech, it's strange that there is one thing that I never ever talk about with my family: people I'm dating. Or maybe it's not so strange...because really, this is why:

This past weekend I visited the family and decided to tell them about my current romantic situation, as it had become quite worth mentioning. This made me very uncomfortable, and a quick look at some of the responses reveals the validity of my hesitation:

Dad: Will he dig holes with me?
Brother: So Lorin, I hear you have a Latin lover.
Mom: [immediately tells entire extended family]
Aunt: All I'm saying is, it's a good thing for a family to have a wedding.

Oh, the world would be such a wonderful place if that really was ALL she was saying.

Tomorrow: Wrong side of the tracks