I've always found the phonetic similarities between "alma mater" (kind mother) and "mala mater" (bad mother, evil mother, cruel mother,) intriguing. If I weren't so concerned with the gendering of capitalist exploitation and other perfidies, i'd think the latter a good sobriquet for a certain four-letter word of a university by which i am currently employed as a casualized research assistant for a professor for whom i have enormous respect.

My cousin Kyla just got back into the states after spending two months on a boat off the coast of Antarctica, She has all these kickass pictures of Penguins, baby penguins, baby fur seals sleeping, a fin whale, and a wandering albatross. Albatrosses and Penguins kick ass. I wish I were a penguin.

I worked 8 hours this week. I spent 8 hours on the train with stamford-bound yuppies, yalite yuppies in formation, a hist/law student i used to do UMOJA with, a former professor who didn't notice, recognize, or acknowledge me, and hundreds of domestic workers returning to the city from the mansions of Greenwich and Riverside and Cos Cob, whence came the roomate who peed on my floor repeatedly freshman year. I'm hoping i can do a lot of the work from the Schomburg and elsewhere in NYC and might potentially be able to avoid having to go up to New Haven three days a week - 12 huors - for a 20 hour a week job. Not that i don't love New Haven, but being around Yale so much, with obnoxious yuppie asshole undergrads prowling elm street in packs, having to hide my face from the master of my former residential college to avoid being required to justify my presence - or explain my unnanounced absence from graduation last year, (and no, i don't think she's actually ask or care, but i gotta make my blog interesting, yo) and friends looking at me like a phantasmic apparition from beyond the grave and wondering why i haven't found something else to do elsewhere, is probably a smart idea.

I just got the invitation to my 5 year high school reunion at the beginning of June. They want to charge me 30 bucks. It's at the bar that used to be Dan Squadron's bar on 109th and Amsterdam. Nice touch there, folks. I'll probably go, but I'll grumble about thirty bucks (I saw Sleater-Kinney w/ the Shins Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Les Savy Fav & The Von Bondies and more for FREE! No way this could top that,) and i refuse to get all dressed up or otherwise yuppified. Being all shaved and the short hair is a radical enough change, methinks. In the meantime, i've seen at least one person i went to high school with every day for the last week or so - Ben, Elizabeth, Rachel B, Rachel P, Bean (though he didn't see me), Eve, and Victor - which has been kind of fun, kind of overhwelming.

Back in New Haven to finally procure an ID Card (I hope) on Monday...

CD's i've been listening to: (sorry, no song exposition today - i'm exhausted)
Fela Anikulapo Kuti and Africa '70: Zombie and Expensive Shit
Arichitecture In Helsinki: Fingers Crossed and In Case We Die
The dB's: Stands for deciBels and Repercussions (early 80's Winston-Salem jangle-pop i read a great review of somewhere and decided to check out.)
The New Pornographers: Electric Version
Annie: Anniemal