I slept in till nearly noon today. It had been a late night. In Chinese class, the assistant teacher had us read a proverb that she had read in grade school. In it, a group of friends are hanging out and only have enough wine for one person to drink, so they come up with the idea to have a snake-drawing contest to determine who gets to drink. The idea is that the first person to finish drawing a snake gets the wine. They all take up pens and begin their drawings, with one person finishing up right away. This person realizes he’s way ahead and decides to show off by adding feet to his snake. In the end, he looses the contest because snakes don’t have feet. This story appears to be giving the lesson: don’t show off. The teacher said that the Chinese word for “show off” means “shine brightly”.
I was wrapping Internet orders at work today when I thought of a coffee table book idea that would sell to people in my age group. The idea came about after I had wrapped one book about American colonialism and another about sex. So, imagine strategically adding a letter “g” to the word colonialism in American colonialism. The subtitle would read, “The Sex Lives of our Founding Fathers”. The title would sell the book and I’m sure doing the research to write it would be rather simple. There is probably tons of information on this topic out there. I could start with Jefferson, as he’s probably got the most dirt.
I ate dinner at the Student Center at six o’clock before my meeting with Yan. Here’s what I wrote for my class journal today:

Yan said that shortwave radios are common in China because they provide a source of English-language broadcasts from other countries. The government sometimes attempts to block certain stations for periods of time. In most cases, the blocking attempt will eventually cease or the station will move to another frequency. Yan did not know of any cases where pirate radio stations had been set up within China’s borders. I looked online for evidence of such stations, but it doesn’t seem to be an issue except for rare instances in the outer provinces.
Yan did not think the American media had a negative reputation in the mind of the average Chinese. He claimed to have not been exposed to any US media since arriving here last spring, ignoring it because his listening skills are too poor. As for reading the news, he only does so through a Chinese-language website, www.sohu.com, which was founded by a famous business man who was educated in the US.
Much of our conversation centered on the 1989 protests. Yan was in junior high during this time and I asked if he remembered any changes in the media, like different reporting styles, illegal stations, etc. In the book “China Blues” Jan Wong had said that some of the centrally-controlled media had liberalized during the crisis, but Yan didn’t have any knowledge of this.
He did remember protests in his city, ShiJiaZhuang, for several days around June 4th. The protestors camped around the local government buildings and thousands of curious onlookers came out to watch them daily. This was a once-in-a-lifetime event for Yan that was happening very near to his school. He passed by the area every day on his way to class but said he couldn’t tell what was going on because he was too short to see over the heads of the crowd.
Police surrounded the government buildings to protect them and their occupants, but no force was ever used to disband the gathering. The protestors eventually left on their own a few days after June 4th. The media did report for months that anyone was shot in Beijing. Asked if he thought such a violent government response was necessary, Yan said it was because it was effective at stopping the protests. Yan has said before that he believes China must slowly modernize in order to avoid chaos, so large scale protests are not a positive phenomenon. He seems to have no interest in western media reports on the 1989 Beijing incident even though he’s aware they differ from the Chinese government’s version of events.

I went to the library after the meeting and continued reading “In the Red”, then returned to my apartment at 10 o’clock. It feels like winter now.

I came across an article about a strange political ad online, concerning a US Representative from Wisconsin. Here’s some of the text taken directly from the ad:

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"Ron Kind has no trouble spending your money, he'd just rather spend it on sex. That's right. Instead of spending money on cancer research, Ron Kind voted to spend your money to study the sex lives of Vietnamese prostitutes. Instead of spending money to study heart disease, Ron Kind spent your money to study the masturbation habits of old men," states the 80-second "sex study" ad Nelson has posted on his campaign Web site.
"Ron Kind," the ad continues, "even spent your tax dollars to pay teenage girls to watch pornographic movies with probes connected to their genitalia. Ron Kind pays for sex but not for soldiers."
@@@@@@@@@
And to think, the people that write these kind of attacks are actually running the country…..

-Here’s a link to the article-

Thursday: 11-2-06

The heat is off again in the library. Even my feet were cold after spending an hour and a half there this morning. I’m a prisoner of that building since the book I need to read cannot be taken out. There’s no way to sneak it out because alarms will sound at the door. Unfortunately, it’s several hundred pages and will take at least two more weeks to finish.
I went to my culture group meeting after Chinese class. The foreigners asked us about American hand gestures so the girl Amanda in the group told them about the “shocker”, saying “two in the pink and one in the stink”. Vulgar talk even among most male friends is not socially acceptable in Taiwan, so having it come from a female stranger must have been unthinkable. Here’s what I wrote for my class journal about the meeting:

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The Taiwanese said that they believe most of their people are no
less hygienic than Americans, taking showers at least once or twice per
day. Grooming is a different matter, though. Most Asian men in general
to not seem to pay attention to combing their hair or styling it.
Also, their facial hair usually grows slower than that of Westerners.
Some grown men only need to shave once or twice per week. The
Taiwanese said that they did not know any women in their country that
shaved their legs. Although, I've never seen any kind of hairy legged
Asian woman. Reasonably, this may be due to the same biological
difference that causes men's facial hair to grow slower. Women may
just not need to shave their legs. However, many do shave their
underarms.
As for makeup, most Taiwanese girls are not allowed to wear it
until after high school. Schools and parents usually both forbid it
until that age when attracting a mate becomes important. Regular
visits to the dentist are not always a common practice, and braces are
rare. Both Taiwanese in our group visited dentists regularly but knew
plenty of others that didn't.
Moving on to the question of sales tactics, the Taiwanese said
they hadn't yet encountered any high pressure sales situations in the
US. They did mention a place where such types of salespeople can be
found in Taiwan; electronics markets. These are somewhat like an
American mall but are usually less fancy with smaller stores. Dozens
or hundreds of electronics vendors will often be selling the exact
same merchandise, so competition is fierce. I personally had
experiences with similar such places soon after arriving in Macau.
The salespeople were even more intense when Western students entered
the mall, and I was sometimes followed around the store by up to five
salespeople who were all trying to talk over each other. Still, I
could never get as good of a deal as the locals would. I quickly
learned that coming with locals would not only save me money, but
would also make the salespeople chill out a bit.
The Taiwanese asked about hand gestures in the US. They wanted to
know how to gesture, thank you, come here, good luck, etc. Most of
these gestures were different in Taiwan. Come here in Taiwan means go
away in the US, for example. One member of our group felt it was their
duty to fully educate the Taiwanese, so they made the "shocker" gesture
and asked them if they knew what it meant. They of course did not. A
girl from Turkey had now also sat down to join in our conversation,
who was also ignorant of the "shocker". With this being the most
vulgar modern hand gesture in America, somebody quickly said that we should
switch topics, but the foreigners had already noticed that myself and
the person that brought up the subject were turning red, so they kept
insisting on a description.
As in some other Asian cultures, the Taiwanese have said that
vulgar conversation or gestures is not common even among friends in
their country. So as could be expected, they had no more comments on
the "shocker" after hearing the very graphic description needed to
explain it. Even the Turkish student seemed to have the same reaction.
I felt obliged to explain how national media attention had made the
"shocker" well known, but that probably just made us look even worse.

@@@@@@@

After the meeting, I had lunch at the Student Center then went on to culture class. I arrived a few minutes early and everyone was talking about my group telling the foreigners about the “shocker”. A guy then asked if anyone had heard about the teenager who raped his mom in Alabama this week. Changing the subject, a girl asked him why the flags were at half-mast today, and I answered “because that boy raped his mom”. Click here to read the story.
The Chinese professor offered just as interesting conversation in the class lecture. He’s always willing to truthfully answer any questions relating to China, even if they have to do with personal information concerning his relationship with his Taiwanese wife. Someone asked about Chinese gays today, so he said something like, “Most gay relationships between gay men in China seem very one sided. Everybody wants to be (pauses to search for the most tasteful words).....................on………….top.”
After class, I returned to the icebox library to read “In the Red” for two more hours before returning home at 8 o’clock. Didn’t do much productive the rest of the night, but made the Morris Library Weather Forecast.

Friday: 11-3-06

On my way to the library this morning, I stopped to take a couple pictures of a ginkgo tree that had suddenly lost tens of thousands of its bright yellow leaves overnight. That kind of tree is weird that way; full of leaves one day and all gone the next. An older Asian man was also ponderously looking at the tree as I took the pictures. He walked away then turned around and came back to speak with me. He asked what I studied then asked if I was interested in games. I asked what kind of games and he mentioned the names of a couple that are played online. He was a programming professor that was looking for students to help him design new games. Seeing me take pictures of the tree, he mistakenly thought that I might be a design student that could help with the project.
At Morris Library, I printed out a few copies of the building weather forecast I’d created last night. I gave a copy to the employees working at each of the three service desks in the building and they all laughed even before getting a close look. I was putting one up at an entrance of the tunnel behind the building when Elliot happened to pass by. He works in the library and also got a kick out of it. Next, I took two of the copies over to the Daily Egyptian newsroom in the Communication building, thinking they might print it. Only two girls were in the newsroom and one of them told me to leave the copies on the editor’s desk.
Back at the library, I checked out “In the Red”. The employee that gave it to me said that the library supervisor had already seen the forecast and thought it was hilarious. A girl working at the desk asked if I was protesting. She was heavily bundled up against the building’s usual 50 degree temperature and looked disappointed when I said the forecast was just for satire.
I put up forecasts at 3 other ends of the tunnel on my way to Chinese class, where hundreds of people familiar with the building’s conditions would be sure to see them. The three people sitting in my Chinese classroom when I arrived also got a good laugh out of the forecast, even though two of them hadn’t been in the building since construction started.
When class started, the assistant teacher had the class make up our own sentences using certain grammar terms, in preparation for next Tuesday’s test. There were six students in class and everyone took turns saying their sentences out loud. The student Regina read my mind and used nearly the same sentence that I was going to on one occasion. So, I was able to use the next grammar term in the sentence, “Regina stole my idea, so I have nothing to say”. Learning a language is a lot more fun once you get to the point where you can start to get a little creative. I’m just now starting to get to that point, after nearly 3 years.
I ate lunch at Wendy’s on the way to work, then worked from 2:30 till 6:05. Those 3 and a half hours were rather uneventful and I didn’t come up with any revolutionary ideas or anything.
Shopping at Save-a-Lot, I purchased one of those $1 Celine Dion mouse pads that I’d first noticed last week. The blonde girl checked me out and I asked if she’d ever seen one sell before. She laughed really hard and said “never”. The mouse pad packaging reads “Optical mouse friendly”. No shit, an optical mouse would probably work in gravel! Food companies can’t say things like “Fat Free” if the product doesn’t normally have fat anyway, so why is this Celine Dion mouse pad allowed to make such a claim? I call shenanigans.
Once home at my apartment, I spent the next couple hours eating dinner and doing laundry. After that came homework, then Josh called at 11 o’clock and said he wanted to go out for a drink. As soon as I was ready to leave, he called back to say that he wanted to go out tomorrow night instead.

Saturday:

I want to accomplish a couple school related things this weekend; develop a bibliography and outline for a paper about racism in China and decide what questions I’ll ask Wendler in my interview. I got very little done this morning but did find a few sources for the China paper online.
Leaving my apartment at 1 o’clock, I heard a squirrel making louder sounds than I thought possible, at the top of a large oak tree. Moving closer to check it out, I realized it was making the sounds at me. It was mad when I had been far away, so it got a lot madder when I moved closer, jumping out of the tree and moving down a telephone pole towards me while continuing its angry sounds. I stood at the base of the pole to take pictures, hoping it wouldn’t jump towards my face. Squirrels in this area have supposedly been known to attack people on rare occasions.
I worked from 2 till 6 o’clock. Carl and I went to the Herrin Library at 3 o’clock to check out a booksale there. The library staff had called and invited him to take as much as he wanted for free. Even though the sale had already been going on for a couple days, there was still plenty of saleable stuff there. There were thousands of books on tables and in boxes. Carl went through picking out what he wanted while I put his selections into boxes and carried them back to the van. We had about 10 boxes in the end.
Local Herrin people were browsing the books at the same time we were. One was a gigantic woman that was wearing a stretched out T-shirt that looked like it’d been puked on. Whatever the suspect substance was, it was all over the front of the shirt and didn’t smell good. It seriously may have been puke.
Back at my apartment later, I ate dinner and fell asleep, then finally got started on homework again around 8:30. I’m really not getting much done today.
Josh and his Heather came to pick me up at 10 o’clock, in her car. I’d met Heather last Saturday at a Halloween with Josh party but had never talked to her before tonight. She’s from Carbondale and graduated high school in 2000. Her car is in just as bad of shape as Josh’s and she likes science fiction. They’ll probably have babies.
The three of us went to the Cellar and played trivia till 1 o’clock. A girl I barely knew through a friend said my Tanner video was funny. That video has probably been downloaded more than any other on this site. I must get more Tanner footage. He’s offered several times to do more and all it would only cost me a few beers and some food maybe.

Sunday: 11-5-06

I spent most of the day on the Internet continuing to research university spending issues and trying to finalize my questions for the interview with Wendler and his Vice Chancellor. If anyone’s interested, the best information I found was in the blog of a local businessman. Maybe I should have decided this before wasting so many hours, but I’m not going to write this paper; final decision. It was to be reviewed by the coordinator of Judicial Affairs, and considering his attitude during my hearing, he’s never going to accept the kind of criticisms that I want to write. I do realize that, regardless of whether or not Huffman was to accept my paper, it would be an opportunity to voice my concerns, but I don’t have time to be a low-level activist anymore. What little I’ve already done has cost a great deal of time and money, and nobody’s going to really pay much more attention to any paper that I write. For now, I’m going to leave the criticizing to people who have the resources, like the businessman whose blog is linked above.
My Judicial Affairs appeal is still scheduled for Nov. 13. If they uphold the “conviction” and I don’t write the paper, then the consequences are unclear. Huffman has refused to respond to questions on that matter. I don’t think that the university would risk bringing any more attention to this case, but in the event that I’d be suspended for a time, then I’d temporarily become an activist again and use the attention to bring more criticism against the university’s backwards and heavy-handed policies. Afterwards, I would move to China and proceed with my plans there until the suspension period was over, then return and finish my degree at SIU.
I’m not going to let the university squander away any more of my time unless that time can make a big impact. I have done nothing illegal or academically dishonest and refuse to play their wasteful games. Wendler Sucks.

My brother forwarded me the following text from a spam email. The email was advertising a stock and the text mysteriously followed it. Here it is(I bolded a couple of the best lines):
@@@@@@@

A chain saw
A diskette non-chalantly learns a hard lesson from a polar bear from an ocean. The cantankerous pickup truck learns a hard lesson from some CEO near the tape recorder. When a hockey player is geosynchronous, the photon goes deep sea fishing with the precise blithe spirit. A psychotic wheelbarrow makes love to a pickup truck. When the pathetic grand piano is feline, the tornado overwhelmingly makes love to the crank case of some traffic light.
Most people believe that a grain of sand defined by the power drill laughs and drinks all night with a nearest freight train, but they need to remember how accurately another spartan reactor procrastinates. If a parking lot carelessly requires assistance from the feline bottle of beer, then a defendant around a minivan daydreams. A jersey cow about a corporation is resplendent. Any parking lot can secretly admire a photon inside the fundraiser, but it takes a real class action suit to derive perverse satisfaction from the annoying paper napkin.
Any vacuum cleaner can non-chalantly make love to a chain saw around an eggplant, but it takes a real mastadon to teach a temporal roller coaster. A bowling ball inside the tape recorder hesitates, and a smelly apartment building feels nagging remorse; however, the feverishly cosmopolitan avocado pit brainwashes the fashionable bowling ball. A blithe spirit over the blithe spirit is hairy. Furthermore, the plaintiff living with a demon earns frequent flier miles, and a tripod of the defendant inexorably brainwashes the bowling ball over an oil filter. If the senator gives a pink slip to a Eurasian fundraiser, then a rattlesnake from a carpet tack hesitates.

@@@@@@@

Nic picked me up at 7 o’clock and we met Carl at the Rec Center for two games of racquetball, then went to the Hangar and had a beer after that. There were only two other customers in the bar, one of which was Gabe C. There was an episode of Family Guy on TV. Nic and I played a game of pool after watching the show, then he brought me home.

Monday: 11-6-06

Cool and rainy most of the day. It started raining harder as soon as I went to work on my bike at 3 o’clock, just like in one of those cartoons where a rain clouds follows someone around, but at least lightning didn’t strike me. There was a fine mist in the air when I left work at 6:30. Mist is even worse than rain in a way because it gets in the eyes. I wore my sunglasses home in the dark and could barely see a thing. It looks like just about all I have to talk about today is the rain. If it hadn’t rained I guess there would have been nothing to write except for something like, “I breathed 12,231 times when working from 3 till 6:30 today, coughing once at 4:53. I accidentally peed on my hand during that cough.” No, I didn’t really pee on my hand, not today.

Tuesday: 11-7-06

There was a fresh road-kill squirrel on my way to school this morning; and me without a camera; I forgot it at home for the first time in weeks. So, I put the squirrel in my backpack for later(lie). On campus, my first stop was at the Judicial Affairs office to request a copy of the file that they have on me for the Great Pig Head Incident of 2006. The student worker went to look for the file then came back and said that it was “missing” and that I would have to come back and talk to the boss tomorrow. She also said that, had the file been there, I still couldn’t have had copies of the police reports, which are the main part. I would only be allowed to look at those in the office and take notes. She said she could only make copies of the papers generated by the Judicial Affairs office and that anything else in the file would have to be obtained through the office it was generated at, which is in this case the police department.
I next went to the Faner computer lab and called the police department about this. An operator connected me to the records department, then a friendly female voice said, “Oh, they’re(Judicial Affairs) aren’t supposed to tell people that”. The woman put me on hold then came back and asked if the file was related to the “disorderly case”. I said “yes”, then the woman seemed to not have such a friendly attitude, saying that I could come in and fill out a Freedom on Information form to request the documents. She said that this form would be reviewed by the University’s legal counsel and the documents would be released if the legal counsel saw fit.
I spent the next hour sitting in the computer lab preparing for today’s Chinese test. Spending more time reviewing for the writing and listening parts of the test made a big difference, especially for the writing part. Looking all the characters up in the dictionary is usually what takes the most time during the test, but I had nearly all of them memorized today. Memorizing characters gets easier and easier as I become more familiar with their radicals(the few-hundred same individual parts which are used in all the tens of thousands of characters).
The test went relatively smoothly, then I went to the police station to fill out that Freedom of Information form. A woman spoke with me though a small talk-box in the lobby then handed the form though a slot under a window. It was accompanied by a letter saying it had to be turned in at Anthony Hall. Some construction workers in a pickup truck outside directed me to Anthony Hall, which just so happens to be the same building that the Chancellor and his secretary-drones are housed.
The Chancellor’s office is on the first floor and the office I was looking for was on the second. Not surprisingly, the entire building is in immaculate condition compared to most others on campus. I filled out my form in the sparkling nicely-decorated hallway of the second floor. In the office, a student worker said that it would be faxed back to the police station then somebody would call in a few days to inform me of the outcome. Faxed back to the police station? Couldn’t they have just left this whole Anthony Hall step out? Wendler Sucks.
So, what this whole episode means is that students can’t get access to their records in a timely manner, such as when they need them to defend themselves in a Judicial Affairs case. I was given three days notice for my first hearing and two weeks for the appeal. Getting these documents through all the red tape will surely take more than two weeks. On the positive side, this is a good argument to make at the appeal and in any further litigation(not that anybody will care during the appeal).
I spent the next hour translating a China People’s Daily article in the Engineering building. This one is about how the American lifestyle leads to drug use. It mentions that a new kind of amphetamine is being produced in “secret factories”, which is so powerful that people stay high for 14 to 20 hours. Like many other Chinese words, the word for “amphetamine” is constructed with Chinese syllables that are similar to the original English sounds of the word, making it sound kind of like a retard is saying it, or in this case, maybe a person who has smoked way too much meth(is there such thing as an appropriate amount of meth?) It should also be noted that the “secret factories” in question here are redneck trailers and pickup trucks.
In culture class, the Chinese professor continued to entertain the class with his antics, especially his semi-dark humor. I ate at McDonalds afterwards, running into a Chinese girl that lives in Ambassador Hall. I can’t remember her name but had met her at the BBQ at the apartment a few weeks ago. Standing in line, she asked if I knew of anywhere nearby with large open fields. She wanted to find such a place so she could fly her new radio controlled airplane. The new plane replaced an old one that ended up stuck in a tree near the Arena. She was looking for a place with no trees, so I recommended trying out the areas near the new high school. As for the old plane, she was still trying to devise of ways to get it out of the tree in order to recover a few good parts from it. Listening to these plane problems, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her as I would a young child with a broken toy.
We ate our Mcdonalds at a table together. She was like a hurricane as she hurriedly finished her meal in order to get to a lecture by 5:30. She ended up forgetting her coffee at the counter but didn’t ask the employees for a new one. I can just see her crashing that plane.
I next went to the library, smoking a cigarette outside while walking around to see if any of my forecasts were still up. Three had been removed a one remained, so I put up two more in the same spots two were missing from. I’m assuming students thought they were funny and took them.
I spent the next two hours in the library finishing up the translation of the People’s Daily article and reading “In the Red”. Leaving the building, I noticed that one of my new forecasts had already been removed, so I replaced it again. I’m now trying to think of new ideas for another forecast next week, since people like to take this one so much.
Back at my apartment, Mike called at 10 o’clock from San Francisco, where he was involved with some kind of training for his job. I spent some time on the Internet looking up the Chinese name’s of illegal drugs on the Internet for my conversation with Yan tomorrow evening.

Wednesday: 11-8-06
Nic left a message this morning saying Wendler was fired yesterday. It must have happened late because the Daily Egyptain mentioned it on their website but not in the paper. I feel as if I’ve lost my arch-nemesis.
Luckily, that road kill squirrel was still laying in same spot on the road today, so I was able to get a couple pictures. It wasn't as fresh as yesterday, but at least was nice and flat, making for good lighting.
I already changed my new schedule for next semester today, dropping the Asian History and Modern Russia class for East Asian Civilizations and Geography. The other two classes were early in the morning and they could have been very difficult, taking time away from my Chinese language studies. East Asian Civilization will be taught by my Chinese professor, and my department recommends the geography class so its students don't look like stupid Americans when they go abroad.
After switching the classes, I went back to the Judicial Affairs office to try and view the file they have on me, which had been "missing" yesterday. The same student worker waited on me today, remembering, "Oh yeah, that was one of two crazy questions I got yesterday". Her boss told her that the file had been sent to the Vice Chancellor's office on the third floor of Anthony Hall. At Anthony Hall, I was told that the woman in charge of the file, Vickie, was out for lunch and wouldn't be back for up to an hour and a half.
I spent the next hour in the Faner computer lab then went to Chinese class. This weeks lesson is on crime, so we learned the words for prostitute and cocaine, very important words indeed. I got quite a treat on the way to work; a second roadkill squirrel in the same day. This one was much fresher than the first had been.
I went to the Student Center at six o’clock to have dinner and meet Yan. The area we usually meet was closed off for remodeling, so I waited at the bottom of the escalators. When he didn’t show up by 6:05 I walked up to the second floor to look there. I went back and forth between these two spots two more times before finally giving up at 6:20 and going on to the library to read “In the Red”.
Four more of my forecasts were missing so I printed out more and replaced them again, returning home at 8:30 o’clock. Nic picked me up thirty minutes later. We saw a guy have some kind of turrets-like seizures in front of Schnucks. At first, we just thought he was pacing around in a strange way, then he started screaming at nothing and jumping up and down. This went on for about two minutes then he pushed his cart of groceries on like nothing had happened.
Nic recently talked to a guy at a bar who had scars all over the side of his head. The guy told him that he had gotten drunk on Yeager and shot himself with a .357. He claimed to have still been conscious and screaming “Yeager” when the paramedics arrived. This story is 99.9% unbelievable but it’s a good one.
Nic and I went to Mugsy’s for stand up comedy night. This is the first time I can ever remember going to any stand up comedy in my whole life. A woman was on stage when we arrived then a skinny little man came on. The skinny little man was a spastic and hilarious with a hillbilly accent.
The comedy ended at 10:30 then Nic and I went over to the other section of Mugsy’s. He knew one of the comedians that had been on stage before we arrived. We played some pool with this group of people, then a birthday party of girls that Nic knew came in. The birthday girl was Kris and her entourage included two identical twins. I saw Kris pick a guy up so I asked her to pick me up for a picture. She did a good job of it then had me jump on her back for more pictures. A group of girls at the bar asked me how long it takes me to poop. They claimed that they normally did it in under 45 seconds; not 45 seconds on the toilet, but 45 seconds in the bathroom total, during which time she could squeeze out up to a couple feet. Sick.
Nic and I went with the group of birthday girls to Denny’s just after midnight. It wasn’t until then that I realized I’d met 4 of them last week at the party Nic and I went to after the Copper Dragon’s Halloween party. They were dressed as summer, spring, winter and fall that night. I didn’t recognize them without the costumes. A girl that was hanging out with them tonight told us that she studies mortuary science at SIU, but she wouldn’t tell us where they store the bodies.

Thursday: 11-9-06
The lock on my door has slowly been falling apart for the past week, so I went to the office to ask that it be fixed this morning. Two plainclothes police officers were walking into the office at the same time I was. One was holding a printout from the Illinois State Police Sex Offender registry, which contained the picture and profile of a sex offender. The officer showed it to the employee working at the counter and asked him if the person still lived in the building. The employee confirmed this and the officers walked on down the hallway, presumably to arrest the guy. Sucks to be a sex offender.
The temperature was in the mid 70’s today and the sun was out. Mostly everyone was in short sleeves and some were even wearing shorts. The past two days have been nearly perfect.
I noticed some black against white racism in the Faner computer lab recently, which I meant to mention here and forgot. The computer next to me was not working and people kept sitting down and unsuccessfully trying to log on. A black girl was sitting on the other side of this broken computer. Each time a black person would sit at the broken computer, she would tell them it was broken, but she ignored the white people that sat there. I at first thought this was just a coincidence, but then she did the same thing two more times.
I went to my culture group meeting after Chinese class today, where we talked about drugs, among other topics. The Taiwanese Peter said that an illegal casino in his country had been found to be filling their ventilation system with crystal meth fumes in an attempt to get gamblers to spend more. He even said that he had friends at home who had become addicted to meth that was being made in private homes in his city. This epidemic is widespread.
After the culture group meeting, I went back to Anthony Hall to try and look at my Judicial Affairs records. The woman I was looking for, Vicki, was sitting at her desk and she walked me down to the hallway to a very well-decorated office where a distinguished-looking black man was sitting behind a shiny wooden desk. I explained my situation to him; that I had been on a wild goose chase all over campus to try and view my file before the appeals hearing on Monday. The Judicial Affairs office had told me I could view the files, but then had been unable to find them. Now after all my tracking down, this black man told me that the files were property of the university and that I wasn’t allowed access to them. These people make me sick. This black man just so happens to be the same person who will be the judge of my hearing on Monday. It was obvious from his attitude today that there is little chance of him reasoning with me during the hearing. Wendler sucked.
After culture class, I ate dinner at the Student Center and met with Yan at six o’clock. He was very apologetic about missing our meeting yesterday. He had gone out to celebrate the passing of a driving test and forgotten about our meeting. We tonight talked more about drugs in China. Unlike the Taiwanese Peter, Yan had never seen anyone use drugs or known anyone who had. He said that even marijuana use was “very dangerous” and didn’t see the logic of even allowing medicinal use of it. We tried to speak in Chinese during the last 30 minutes of the conversation, in which I told him about the poisonous snakes in this area. I kind of get a morbid kick out of telling the Chinese and Taiwanese about our brown recluses, rattle snakes and copperheads because the idea of poison bugs and insects living around here really seems to horrify them.
After stopping at the library to write class journals and read more of “In the Red”, I didn’t leave the campus till nearly 10 o’clock. Passing by the front of the library, I stopped to take a couple pictures of the bright lights emanating from all seven floors of the mostly-demolished building. As I approached the fencing in front of the building, I noticed a well-dressed student sloshing through the mud behind it. He claimed to have jumped the fence in search of a short cut not realizing there was so much mud.
Back at my apartment, I was walking through the lobby around 10 o’clock and noticed a couple familiar Taiwanese faces. As I was speaking to them, several more familiar Chinese faces entered the room, including Peter and Allan from my culture group. They were all getting together for a late snack. Allan was making a chicken nugget-like dish in the kitchen and invited me to join the group, which had now grown to about 15 people. They served root beer to everyone as the chicken nugget-like dish was brought out. Any outsider watching this group might have thought everyone was drunk. I’ve really come to appreciate the light-hearted antics of the Chinese and Taiwanese. The best example of this tonight was when everyone cheered and clapped at the pouring of the root beer. This cheering happened each time the carbonated foam rose over the top of a glass and almost spilled over. American adults seem to rarely have fun with such everyday events unless alcohol is involved, so it’s refreshing to see a culture that’s different in that way.

Friday: 11-10-06
I went to school at 9:30 this morning to help out with a booksale that my department was having at the Faner building. I was the first student helper to arrive, then a girl named Ruli showed up a couple minutes later. She’s a cute half American/half Japanese that is studying Spanish. We waited for 30 minutes and finally another student came to say that he had been waiting downstairs the whole time. That other student is a guy that sits next to my in my culture class.
The three of us went to an office in the Student Center to pick up 3 chairs and two tables, setting them up in the Faner breezeway. Next, we got a wheeled cart and rolled about a dozen boxes of books out of the FLIT office. The other guy and I spent the next couple hours sitting behind the table hoping somebody would buy something. We had made only 50 cents by 11 o’clock, then somebody bought a whole $3 worth. The booksale can sometimes make decent money, but not today.
After lunch and Chinese class, I went on to work for just two hours, then John E. picked me up and we drove to Mike and Carolyn’s house in St. Louis. In the back of the truck, we carried a massive mantle that Mike’s dad was passing on to him. The temperature dropped about 30 degrees during the two hour trip, from about 75 to 45. A strong storm sent lighting crashing next to the truck and rain so hard that traffic on the interstate slowed to nearly a halt. Winds were strong enough to shake us quite hard at times.
Mike was waiting for us at the house with the garage door open when we arrived. After unloading the mantle, we went to a Mexican restaurant and met Carolyn and her family there. There were about ten people in the group, including Carolyn’s parents, her brother, sister and their significant others.
We went on to Carolyn’s sister’s house after the meal, where they have a bar set up in the basement. The rest of the evening included a poker game which I lost because Mike tricked me into using too many cards. He told me that he recently took Damien the dog to the vet and the vet condescendingly asked him, “You been brushin’ this dog’s teeth?”. In a few years, the government will probably be able to take your pet away for such inattention.

Saturday: 11-11-06, at Mike and Carolyn’s House
Everybody got up at 9:30 this morning, accidentally, because a couple of the clocks in the house weren’t yet set for Daylight Savings Time. We ate lunch at Dave and Buster’s. Mike and Carolyn had given me a gift certificate for that restaurant last Christmas. This place can hold thousands and was described by Carolyn as “Chucky Cheese for adults”. Our waiter talked to us about one of the “smoking women” sitting at the bar and was generally playful in everything he said. The menu offered a $16.99 deal that included an entrée with a $10 game card.
The game room took up most of the building and contained hundreds of machines. Mike, John and I started out with a bowling game that was projected onto the side of a wall. It promptly stole $5 from John and was not a lot of fun. A few of the other games were in just of poor condition, but the management did at least give John’s $5 back. Overall, it was a unique experience that I would recommend, kind of like a casino where you win tickets instead of money. I ended up with 60 tickets and gave them to Carolyn to use later. She has thousands.
Next, we picked up Mike’s truck, which we had left at a shop to get the oil changed earlier. The shop called on the way there, saying that they had inspected the truck and needed to do some extra maintenance. That extra maintenance included a long list of minor unnecessary things that totaled over $700!. Mike said that he only wanted the oil chance and was told, “Well, if time is an issue, then we could loan you a vehicle for an extra fee”. They eventually took no for an answer and we picked up the truck. Just imagine how this place could screw some naïve blonde.
Back at Mike and Carolyn’s house, I joined her for some ceramics work at the kitchen table, making a mock cell phone. This piece of artwork is titled “The discovery of fire”. It only has only one number, “1”, and shows the text message, “go 2 the cave. Something weird just happened with 2 sticks”. Not very funny, huh.
Buckley and Jen came over for dinner. Mike and Carolyn made chicken and pasta. Mark and Tracy came over after the meal(Carolyn’s brother and his “girlfriend”). Buckley drank most of a fifth of Jack Daniels by himself.

Sunday: 11-12-06
John and I left Mike and Carolyn’s house at 10 o’clock this morning, getting biscuits for breakfast at a gas station on the way out of town. We spent the two-hour drive listening to Howard Stern shows on the radio, in one of which Stern was having a contest to find the “hottest female ex-convict”.
John dropped me off at my apartment at noon, then I fell asleep till 3 o’clock. I spent the rest of the afternoon putting new pics online and working on class journals, then edited this weekend’s video in the evening. I need a TV.

Monday: 11-13-06
I wasn’t able to go to sleep easily last night so I started watching a movie at 1AM on my computer. I’d seen every movie in my small collection except for an older one that I’d copied for my dad several months ago, “To Have or Have Not”. I watched an hour of it and ate some popcorn before finally falling asleep.
I had to walk to school today because my bike was still at the bookstore, where I’d left in when leaving town last Friday evening. My appeals hearing for the Pig Head case was held at 2 o’clock on the third floor of Anthony Hall. The person administering the hearing was Michael Stokes, the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, whom I’d briefly met last week when unsuccessfully trying to obtain a copy of the police reports. We sat alone with the door closed in his nicely-decorated office with a tape recorder between us on his big wooden desk. I was of course wearing a Pig Head T-shirt, which he made no comment on.
The atmosphere of this appeals hearing was much the same as the original hearing had been, with the “judge” constantly cutting off all of my sentences to say that they were not relevant in some way or the other. Some of the things that weren’t relevant baffled me, like when I brought up a statement that Wendler had made to the Daily Egyptian a few weeks ago. In an article, he had stated that he didn’t think the pig head on his car was meant as a threat, which seemed to contradict that fact that he was “alarmed or disturbed”, as had been ruled in my first hearing.
Anyway, the hearing lasted about 20 minutes and remained civilized. A ruling was made in my favor, kind of. The case must now be sent back to Student Judicial Affairs and they will give me a “re-trial”. I’m getting kind of sick of all the hearings, but if this case ends up going on to a real court, then it will probably be important for a judge to see that I exhausted all my options at the university level. Wendler sucked.
Some of my best ideas come about when laying in beds and sitting on toilets. Today I thought of a new business idea; a nail salon called Hand Jobs. Possible slogans could be, “A nail salon and so much more”, and “With Hand Jobs, you’ll always leave satisfied”. Help me think of more.
I didn’t go in to work till 6 o’clock tonight. Carl and Kelly had unexpectedly gone out of town because there daughter fainted and hit her head at her university in Missouri this weekend. She’s fine, though. Nic picked me up at six o’clock, gave me keys to the bookstore and dropped me off at Wendy’s. My bike was still inside the bookstore from Friday afternoon. Having dinner at Wendy’s I witnessed yet another terrible customer service incident. A man ordered some food for his family and asked for some ketchup packets. The clerk said, “We can’t give out packets to lobby customers”, so the man said, “Well, you are out of ketchup in the lobby”. The clerk yelled “WE NEED KETCHUP IN THE LOBBY” and told the man to sit down and wait. Nobody came to fill the ketchup after 5 minutes so the man went back and again asked politely for ketchup. The same clerk again told him somebody would fill the dispenser soon. I sat at a table long enough to watch a whole episode of the Simpsons and never saw anybody fill the ketchup. Wendy’s sucks, but some customers are just too nice.
I walked over to the bookstore at 7 o’clock and started wrapping internet orders and shelving paperbacks. Carl and Kelly arrived an hour later and I continued packaging orders till 10:15. Back at home, I ate some more popcorn and watched the rest of “To Have or Have Not”. My dad once said that Johanna looks like Katherine Hepburn. It’s true and I never noticed it before watching this movie. Beginning the movie, I actually thought the same thing even before remembering he had said that. If you’re reading this Johanna, then you should know that it is quite a compliment.

Tuesday: 11-14-06
There was a test over China in my culture class today, then a new guest speaker came in to teach the Japanese section. He’s an old Korean man that grew up in Japan till 12 years old. His family had at first lived in Osaka but moved to a smaller town because of the war. That smaller town just so happened to be in the burbs of Hiroshima, so they almost didn’t make a very good decision. Hopefully he talks about this more over the two weeks that he teaches us.
I worked from 5 till 8 o’clock, moving hundreds of romance novels around to make room for new(used) ones. My dad had sent an email saying he wanted to have dinner at 7 o’clock, but I never heard from him, probably because I said that I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to make it.
Stopping at Save-a-Lot on the way home, I finally remembered to buy more shaving cream. I’d left mine at Mike and Carolyn’s house over the weekend and hadn’t shaved since, so I look kind of like a bum.
I spent the next couple hours translating a China People’s Daily article, which says that America’s human rights condition is worse than China’s because our crime rate is higher. It says that the “human rights guards(US)” can’t protect the “right to life” in their own country.
I went to the Hangar at 11 o’clock to meet Josh. I didn’t see him at first, but did see Steph and Elliot. I found Josh and Heather 30 minutes later in a corner. We hung out with a couple of Josh’s friends, one of which is directing a movie that Josh is acting in right now. Josh and Heather briefly stopped by my apartment after the bar and I scared Heather by jumping out of the bushes at her.

Wednesday: 11-15-06

My Chinese class started watching a movie today, about roaming thieves. Strangely, two of the rival thieves had a “peel off” on a train, where each of them peeled an egg in some kind of an amazing way.
On the way to work, I stopped by Anthony Hall to pick up a copy of the audio recording from my appeals hearing. The man who had administered the hearing said that my files were now back at Woody Hall, so that’s where I went next. A woman there told me to wait in the lobby while she made a copy. I think it’s worth noting that the only reading materials available in the lobby are faith-based magazines, which included an article about how Internet pornography is devil’s newest weapon. So, the devil is behind pop-up ads. That actually makes some sense.
Copying the CD was taking too long, so I told the woman I’d pick it up tomorrow. I worked till 5:45, then returned to the Student Center to have dinner and meet with Yan. He told me that his high school played American oldies songs over the loudspeakers from 7:30 till 8 o’clock every morning and that he used to like the Backstreet Boys.
Yan and I both happened to be going to the library after our meeting. It was raining hard out and he shared his umbrella with me. Chinese people are always polite like this, even in situations where you don’t know them well. Although, I hear that they are not that polite towards other Chinese that they don’t know.
Not only was it raining outside, but it was raining in the library. Water was dripping everywhere and a small army of maintenance people was fighting to keep critical areas dry. Keeping that building open seems like more trouble than it’s worth.
The bike ride home was the most miserable I’ve had in months, with 20 mph winds driving 45 degree rain against me. Wind sucks. Checking my mail, I found two pig-head related letters. One granted my Freedom of Information Act request to get copies of the police reports. The other was from the State’s Attorney’s office, saying that they had decided not to pursue charges, which was already obvious anyway.

Thursday: 11-16-06

It’s been two months since the Indian moved out of my bathroom. It looks like nobody is coming anytime soon to take his place, so I cleaned up the entire bathroom today. Before, I had only been cleaning my area of it. Speaking of the bathroom, strange sounds continue to emanate from the ceiling. The newest sound can best be described as a high-pitched trill that lasts for about 2 seconds each time. It’s actually a pleasant amusing sound, like something you might expect a fuzzy little animal to make. The other strange sound seems to have suddenly disappeared. The new sound can be heard rarely, but the old one was nearly constant.

I picked up the audio CD of my appeals hearing on the way to class this morning, then went on to Chinese class to continue watching the movie about thieves.
During the meeting with my culture group, a Taiwanese girl said that there is often a lot of urine on the floor of bathrooms in her country, even the women’s bathrooms. After the meeting, another student and I stayed in the room for 30 minutes and practiced speaking Chinese with that Taiwanese girl and the Taiwanese Peter.
In culture class, the teacher told everyone that one of the culture groups had spent too much time talking about drugs last week and not enough time on the assigned topics. She was speaking directly about the conversation I had started, but the people in my group are bored with the regular issues and won’t talk about anything unless it’s spiced up.
I came home and did laundry after school, running into a classmate from my culture class when passing by the bike racks. That classmate was Matt, the guy who had spoken Chinese with me and the Taiwanese after our culture meeting. I invited him to come out to the Hangar with Nic and I at 7 o’clock.
Nic picked us up and we spent about 2 and a half hours at the bar playing pool with other teams of people. Matt left around 10 and Nic and I ended up walking all around Carbondale just for the hell of it, to see what was up. Not much was up.

Tim pointed out something interesting to me the other day in an email.
Look what comes up when you type my name into Google’s image search.

Friday: 11-17-06

I went to the Student Center at noon to eat lunch and get change for a $20 bill. Getting the change at the bowling alley, I discovered that the Japanese-American girl Ruli works there, whom I had met last Friday morning when helping out with the FLIT club book sale.
I needed the change so I could pay $2.50 cents to pick up copies of the Pig Head police report at Anthony Hall(10 cents per page). A student worker at Anthony Hall said I would have to come back later but then realized that the records were all ready to go on her desk. I will soon scan the good parts and get them online.
In Chinese class, we finished up watching the movie about thieves on a train. The preacher student brought his baby to class in a kangaroo-type pouch strapped to the front of him.
On the way to work, I stopped by Old Town Liquors to buy a bottle of wine to take to a party later. The Michigan State football coach died this morning while taping a local TV show in Detroit and people instantly started snatching up copies of his biography online. The bookstore had two copies and somebody ordered one to be sent priority mail in the early afternoon, presumably to resell it for a prophet(ha, just caught this misspelling but thought it was funny and left it). This kind of thing happens often and there seems to be a profitable book death-market for anyone in-the-know.
I left work at an hour early to go to the party I’d bought the bottle of wine for earlier. The party was being held by Regina and David. Regina is in my Chinese class. My ride was a Chinese student name XiaoXin, who came to my apartment to pick me up with her boyfriend. I thought we were meeting in the parking lot but they waited in front of the building, so we nearly missed each other. I’d met XiaoXin once before at a party at Regina and David’s house, when she’d given me a ride home.
Interestingly, I ran into Ruli again at the party tonight. It’s interesting because this is our third random connection in as many days. Yesterday, one of the Taiwanese students that I invited to my family’s Thanksgiving meal asked if she could invite Ruli with her, then I saw her again today at the Student Center bowling alley. She claims to not be a spy, but I’m not sure I believe that, especially considering the fact that she found an invitation to my family’s celebration….hmmmmm….she must know we’re a family of aliens in human host bodies. She is surely an alien hunter spy.
The party was a great time and about 20 people showed up. Most of the guests were associated in some way with the university and a couple were neighbors of Regina and David’s. One of the neighbors was having a birthday and two of the neighbors play in the popular Southern Illinois band Loose Gravel.
The group spent the next five hours eating, drinking and playing games. The games included table tennis and Charades. We spent the last hour in the kitchen exchanging extreme travel stories. One of the best was being stuck in a small hotel elevator for 4 hours with 12 people on New Year’s Eve. There was not even room to sit down and the front desk took the emergency elevator phone off the hook because they thought someone was making prank calls. Luckily, there were two bottles of champaign among the group, but unluckily, there was no way to use a bathroom. Someone eventually realized that they could get cell phone reception if they held their phone up to the ceiling.
I got a ride home at midnight with an American girl named Amy and two foreign students, Anna and Francsuo(sp).
Back at my apartment, I went outside to smoke a cigarette and met a random guy named David who was also smoking a cigarette. He flashed me a Vulcan symbol(Live long and prosper) and said he was working on getting drunk. Carbondale:)

Saturday: 11-18-06

I went to work at 1 o’clock and customers where everywhere because a book signing was taking place. Carl and Kelly’s daughter Carly was also there. Like many other universities, her Thanksgiving break doesn’t start till the middle of next week, but she took off early. Speaking of books, here’s a funny news article about gay penguins. It was also mentioned in the Daily Egyptian on Friday. My workday included normal activities including taking books to Goodwill. I ate dinner at Wendy’s and shopped at Save-a-Lot on the way home.

After falling asleep from 7:15 till 8:00, Nic came to pick me up so we could go watch tonight’s UFC fight at Buffalo Wild Wings. There were more cars at the restaurant than I’d ever seen there, which is saying a lot. We had to park in a muddy field far behind the building. Not surprisingly, the place was filled to capacity and nobody else was being let in. If anybody reading this has a million dollars to spend, they might want to find a Carbondale-like town to build something like this in.

The fight was pay-per-view and we didn’t know if anywhere else in town would be showing it. Our next stop, Show-Me’s, happened to be the right place, kind of. The fight was in fact on, but the building was packed to standing room only. After a few minutes of standing, we realized that a few x-Schnuck’s coworkers had two tables in a back corner, and they happened to have room for two more.

Nic has been following the UFC for some time but I’m just realizing how popular it has become. The two restaurants we went to tonight were both packed for this reason only. All the students have left town for the break. When I was younger, the only thing people knew about the UFC was that they sold a few videos of no-holes-barred organized fights, but clever marketing has suddenly given them wide fame. Tonight’s main fight was between the lightweight champ and a new rising star. The champ had held the title for 18 months and is from Taylorville, Illinois, the town I lived in till I was 9 months old. The rising star kicked his ass.

Sunday: 11-19-06

Audio from my appeals hearing. File #1 - #2

Nic and I went out in search of fighting equipment this afternoon. Watching the UFC fights on TV at the bar last night, we’d decided to give it a try. We had a boxing match at one of my parties a few years back, which came out to a pretty close tie. We now want to do the UFC style fighting, which includes elements of martial arts and boxing. That style is commonly called MMA(mixed martial arts).
Our first stop was at Wal-Mart, but they had nothing to offer us except mouth guards. I also bought socks, underwear and a new pair of $10 shoes to play racquetball in. Next, we went to K’s Merchandise’s ongoing going out of business sale. They did have some boxing equipment on sale, but not exactly what we were looking for. Hibbet’s did have the gloves we wanted, but we decided to look online for them before paying $30. Another product we were interested in was a book illustrating MMA moves, which we went on to Barnes and Nobles to look for. They did have such books, but again, we decided to look online before paying $30.
So, having not yet bought anything we wanted, we went on to the Rec Center to check out what fighting equipment and facilities they had available. Not surprisingly, they don’t rent any equipment(because they don’t want amateurs like us just beating the hell out of each other). The martial arts room was open and empty of people. We tried punching a few bags and taking each other down on the mats a few times. Nic weighs 50 pounds more than me so I’m going to have to try and stay out of wrestling situations if I want to beat him in fights.
Carl met us at 5:30 and we played three games of racquetball. It seems like I always get within 2 points of winning then just start playing poorly. Back at my apartment, I ate dinner and looked online for fighting equipment. I ended up the winning bidder of an Ebay auction where a whole set of protective gear sold for just $25. This includes about a dozen pieces; everything from head gear to foot gear.

Monday: 11-20-06

With nothing important to do this week, I’m already back into a hibernation sleep pattern, getting nearly 11 hours last night. I actually have something important to do, write a paper for my Chinese culture class, but it’s only 8 pages and I have the whole week to do it.
Last Friday, I received yet another letter in the mail from Student Judicial Affairs, saying that a re-hearing has been scheduled for the Pig Head case on Friday, December 1st. I was not given an option this time for a hearing with the Student Judicial Board, but rather just scheduled for an administrative hearing with Carlos Del Rio. The Student Judicial board is essentially a jury of students. An administrative hearing is decided by a single university official. This is supposed to be my decision, so I called the Student Judicial Affairs office today to request the Student Judicial Board hearing. The person answering, who identified herself as Mary, said that the SJB is booked on Friday and that hearings are never rescheduled. The fact that hearings are never rescheduled flies directly in the face of something that Michael Stokes(Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs) repeatedly interrogated me about during the appeals hearing. One of my first points of appeal was that I was not given adequate time to prepare for the first hearing because notice of it came in the mail just three days before the day that it was scheduled. Stokes asked over and over again why I had not called SJA about this before that hearing took place, saying that SJA would have been able to reschedule it. I have a hard time believing that he was ignorant to the fact that they do not reschedule hearings.

I almost forgot that I had to go to work at 2:30. Luckily Johanna reminded me on the phone at 1:30. Work was rather uneventful. The cat has become addicted to a new spot to the point that it makes him anti-social. That special spot is on the couch in the office between piles of books and a stuffed doll.
Back at home, I promptly ate way too much food and fell asleep for four hours. Like I said, I’m in hibernation mode. Once awake, I began work on my Chinese paper, which is about racism in China.
Checking my mail later in the evening, I found yet ANOTHER letter in the mail from Student Judicial Affairs. Now, they are charging me with disorderly conduct and harassment in a separate case, based on when I delivered the gag gift to the Chancellor’s office. The letter states, “On October 12, 2006 SIU police documented you insisted
to deliver a 'gag' gift to the University Chancellor. Your behavior
generated a disturbance that required police intervention.”
This letter was dated on November 15th, meaning it was probably composed on the day after they learned that my appeal had been granted. So, it looks like my success didn’t make them very happy. Now that Wendler is gone, I guess I’ll have to start focusing my protest on another individual, the one who is responsible for these latest charges. His name is Terry Huffman and he’s the coordinator of Student Judicial Affairs. So, here it goes: Huffman Sucks. But it just doesn’t have the nice ring to it that “Wendler Sucks” did, so maybe I’ll just call him Sergeant Huffy. Here’s a picture I found of Huffy:

Tuesday:

I went to the bank at one o’clock to cash my last month’s worth of paychecks, which totaled $448. With my cheap rent, that’s nearly enough to live on every month. Next, I dropped off a form at the Student Judicial Affairs office requesting that my Wendler Gift hearing(see yesterday’s entry) be heard by a jury of students instead of an administrator. One of the student employees working said that I probably wouldn’t be able to have a student jury, then changed her mind and said that I probably would.
Leaving campus, I dropped off a $9 donation into a mail box. The envelope was addressed to the Chinese department and contained the profits from the 2 pig head t-shirts I sold last month.
Next, I went to The Space to get my hair cut by Nathan, who said he had recently gone to Jamaica for his brother’s wedding. I agreed to meet him at the Hangar later tonight for drinks. Back at my apartment, I spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening continuing to work on my paper about Chinese racism, getting 2 more pages done. Nic picked me up at 7:15 and we went to the Rec Center to continue to practice fighting. He bought a book yesterday detailing different types of moves, which we wanted to practice. There were several other people practicing in the martial arts room, all of whom seemed like they knew what they were doing, so we were embarrassed to be practicing beginning level skills. I would have done it anyway, but Nic wanted to practice at his house instead where nobody could laugh at us. We tried several moves from the book there, which involved pinning the other person’s neck, arms and feet in painful ways that would theoretically make them give up the fight. I’ve never had any formal martial arts training and was surprised how easy and effective some of the moves seemed.
Nic dropped my off back at my apartment at 7 o’clock and I continued working on my racism paper till 10. I then went to the Hangar to meet Nathan. Also there was Fatty, Dan, Timmy, Andrea F. and Brett D. Brett went to school with me since I was about 6 years old but we hadn’t seen each other in years. I also saw somebody else from Murphysboro that was getting ready to leave for the Marines next week, but I can never remember his name…

Wednesday: 11-22-06

I went to Wendy’s and work at 2 o’clock this afternoon. Carl asked me to go to the bank to get change for a $20 bill at four o’clock. We always go to the same bank for change, which is just a couple hundred feet away from the bookstore. Everything at the bank was broken and nobody was paying any attention to the customers. A repair technician was blocking the front door with pieces of the dismantled night deposit box. Inside, an alarm was going off because there was some kind of problem with the machine that sends the pods through the tubes in the drive through. The manager repeatedly stabbed the top of the machine with a letter opener to get the alarm shut off. Another employee was helping him and left huge stacks of $50 bills unattended in front of me for several minutes, which must have amounted to several thousand dollars. Finally, after several minutes of watching the employees all madly run about, one of them decided to wait on me. I asked for $20 ones and the young male teller dryly asked, “Do you have an account with us?”. I explained I was from the Bookworm and he reluctantly gave up the ones, throwing them down on the counter without saying a word. No, I do not have an account with you and I never will.
I did some grocery shopping on the way home from work. Did you know that you can buy $1 pregnancy tests at Save-a-Lot, along with your $1 Celine Dione mouse pads. I asked the young blonde clerk if she ever sells any and she said, “No, everybody’s pregnant with those things”. It might be funny to buy one and see if I’m in fact pregnant too. If I was, then I could go to an abortion clinic and ask for an abortion.
Back at my apartment, I ate a dinner of canned asparagus and a double-chicken and cheese sandwich, then went back to work on my Chinese racism paper, getting it about halfway done. My room has been ice cold for the past few weeks, now it is suddenly boiling hot. I replaced my old mold-covered shower curtain with a new $1 one from Save-a-Lot.

Thursday: 11-23-06

I found a new-looking basketball sitting by the dumpster at my apartment this morning. My dad came over to pick me up at 11:45 and we drove to the house in Murphy. We weren’t leaving for Thanksgiving dinner for another 40 minutes, so I helped move a banana tree out of the garage and unsuccessfully tried to drain the Intrepid’s radiator while we waited for Clara to get ready. The temperature was nearly 60 degrees.
We ate dinner at Brant’s family’s house, which is on the Ava Blacktop about a ten minute drive away. I drove my dad’s 196? Bonneville there, which is in surprisingly nice condition. He’s had it most of my life but I don’t think I’d driven it before.
About 15 people showed up for dinner at Brant’s Family’s house. The ones I knew included his brother, parents and Brandy G.(from my high school). Amanda had of course brought Rainy and Kirby, the dog and cat. The cat was restricted to it’s cage because it had stepped in a pie earlier. Amanda demonstrated how the dog and cat are happy to stay in the same cage together.
Brant’s mom worked so hard on the food that she had barely eaten a thing by the time everyone else was finished. Some of the guests went outside to play with the animals after the meal. My dad and I threw a Frisbee-like disk back and fourth to each other.
We left just before dark, stopping at a house along to way to pick up my dad’s tractor, which a man that lived at the house had been fixing for the last 8 months. Clara and I followed in the car as my dad very slowly drove the tractor home.
My dad dropped me off at Tavis’s grandma’s house in Murphysboro at 7 o’clock. I accidentally had him drop me off two blocks from where the house actually was. Tavis’s grandma lives in a very old brick house that used to be a very small school. Some of his and Jared’s family were in the living room chatting when I knocked on the door(Tavis and Jared are cousins). Katie led me down to the basement where Tavis and Jared were playing pool with Jared’s parents and some young guy whom I didn’t know. I actually didn’t even recognize Jared’s parents at first. As many times as I’ve been to his house, I’ve barely ever even caught a glimpse of them.
We all played pool for the next couple hours, then I went back to Tavis’s parent’s house with him, Katie and his sister. We spent the rest of the evening watching TV in the living room. Tavis quickly passed out on the floor and his sister didn’t stay up long. I stayed up till 2 o’clock, watching a documentary about the L.A. coroner’s office with Katie. This show was incredibly graphic and disturbing, yet we couldn’t look away. A camera crew followed the coroners to scenes were bodies were discovered, then documented the process of trying to identify them. Nothing was censored, except a small fuzzy patch over the faces and genitals of the bodies. Two were homeless men and another two had anonymously died in trash filled houses. One of trash-filled houses was actually huge, and COMPLETELY filled with trash. The body had turned black and was dripping slime as they drug it out. All of the coroners the show documented were young females and most were at least semi-attractive. They all giggled and joked as they handled the severely decomposed bodies. The most disturbing scenes were filmed in the autopsy rooms. In one case, one of the young women opened up the bag of a body that had been stored for 8 months. The flesh had turned to something that looked like mud and had fallen off the bones. The woman removed certain large bones with a bone-saw and Katie and I joked that she was going to make stew. So, we were just shocked when she took the bones to a stove and put them in a pot of boiling water. But luckily, it was just to clean them so she could do the forensic tests.
The most disturbing scene came from the office of a fingerprint technician who specialized in obtaining fingerprints from decomposed corpses. He opened a box in his office full of little jars, each one of which contained a hand or finger. He cut the index finger off a gray leathery hand, then peeled the flesh off the finger. The flesh came off perfectly and resembled the finger of a latex glove. Then came the shocking part; the technician “wore” the skin on his own finger in order to get the finger prints!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMJ0njSMSPs

Interesting fact: The jailed leader of the polygamous branch of the Mormon Church, Warren Jeffs, is being held in the town of Purgatory, Utah.

Friday: 11-24-06

I woke up sometime around 7 o’clock on Tavis’s Family’s living room couch. Their little poodle slept curled up next to my feet all night, which was surprising considering how little room it had and how many times I accidentally kicked it.
Tavis and Katie had told me last night that they didn’t plan on leaving Murphysboro till 2 o’clock today, so I decided to just leave on my own before anybody else in the house woke up. I walked through the town and over the river, then held up a $5 bill as I continued walking towards Carbondale. After another half mile of walking, a man and his grandson in a brown family sedan stopped. The man’s name was Ken and the young kid was Shawn. They were from Ava and on their way to buy some building materials from Lowes. Ken said that he would have never stopped had I not looked “clean cut”. Lucky for me I got that haircut two days ago. Ken also asked that I throw any weapons I had out the window. We had very friendly conversation the rest of the way to Carbondale. The kid didn’t say a word. They dropped me off right at the parking lot of my apartment building. Ken would not accept the $5.
I spent the next couple hours using my computer and eating some breakfast, then fell asleep till going to work at noon. An author was doing a book signing today. He used to be the sheriff of Williamson county in the 80’s and had written some true crime novels about local cases. He must be a better-than-average local writer because lots of people came in to buy his stuff and get it signed.
A woman came in in a wheelchair and started offering people back massages with her one working hand. She told the story several times of how an aneurism had left the other side of her body paralyzed. Carl turned down the massage, then the author turned it down too. The woman wouldn’t accept “no” from the author and bluntly told him, “Come over here”. He complied and received a mandatory 2-minute massage while listening to the aneurism story a couple more times. The woman offered to give a customer a massage on her way out.
I worked till 6 o’clock, then came home and ate a cheese hot pocket, macaroni salad and a toasted ham and cheese sandwich for dinner.
Nic came to pick me up at 8:30 to go play poker at John and Amy's house. We stopped at Hucks in Murphysboro to buy some gas, beer and smokes. At the house, the only other people that had yet arrived were Mike and Carolyn. Carolyn said she had an appendicitis last Sunday about an hour after John and I had left their house. She had since spent time in the hospital and had the offending appendix executed.
Arriving over the next hour was Josh, Heather, Tim, BJ, Jared and Holly. Most of us played poker over the next 3 hours and it at first appeared I would lose my $5 buy-in. Things quickly turned around when I dealt myself three aces and two threes in a game of five card stud. Nic said that the chances of getting such a good hand in that game are hundreds of millions to one. Wish it had been a lottery ticket instead.
Everyone left by about 1:30, then I slept on one of the couches in the basement.

Saturday: 11-25-06
I woke up at 9:30 on one of John and Amy's basement couches this morning. I was planning on walking the two miles to my family's place, but John woke up and offered a ride just as I was about to walk out the front door.
I spent the next couple hours helping my dad and Clara get the place ready for all the guests that would be coming. I put fresh sand in the horseshoe pits and put hail bails there with blanket on them as a place for people to sit. My dad and I removed some piles of leaves. Charlie arrived before noon and helped us push a car into a shed, then he started deep frying a turkey using equipment he had brought. Clara had me take her car to Kroger and buy a few last minute cooking supplies. I saw Danny G. working at Kroger, who married one of Gretchen's best friends. He had met Gretchen's friend at the same time I met Gretchen, so there were a few months several years ago that the four of us had spent alot of time together. He has two kids now.
Back at the house, Amanda and Brant arrived, then the guests started arriving about 12:30. The guests included 7 Taiwanese students, 1 Chinese student and one Japanese-American student. I had never met the Chinese and one of the Taiwanese before today.
We first went out to the field by the horseshoe pits and spent about 30 minutes playing horseshoes and throwing frisbee-like disks around. A couple of the Taiwanese, including Peter, had nearly endless energy for this game. The temperature was in the 60's, so we were able to enjoy a rare Thanksgiving picnic on the deck. Clara had over a dozen dishes prepared in the kitchen and we all served ourselves.
After the meal, my dad took everyone on a tour around the property, showing them inside some of the buildings and walking them through the Pontiac graveyard. Clara fed us pie, ice cream and coffee just before dark. A few people tried their hand at driving the three wheeler after that, then everybody left.
At 7 o'clock, my dad, Clara, Charlie, Amanda, Brant and I went over to my dad's friend Randy's house to do some homemade wine-tasting. My dad has hired Randy to help with several construction projects around the house over the past few years. He has a room in his basement that is packed full of dozens of different kinds of homemade wines, each of which is stored inside of a different kind of recycled bottle. Four five gallon glass jars were on one shelf, in which this years batches were being brewed. The walls and ceiling were covered with spots of dark purple, which was the result of one of the jars violently exploding some years ago.
My dad, Charlie and I hung out in the wine room tasting wine while everyone else played games upstairs with Randy's young son. My dad had brought a five gallon plastic jug and some kiwi pulp so Randy could help him start his own batch of kiwi wine. He had grown the kiwis in his garden.
After an hour, Randy's wife came home and broke up the party when she discovered their dog badly injured outside. Randy had to leave and asked us to stay and watch his son while he went pick up his other son at the high school.
Back at the house later, we played two games at the kitchen table, called "Imagineiff" and "Boxers or Briefs". This lasted until about 12:30, then Charlie and I went out to sleep in the guest cabin.

Sunday: 11-26-07
I woke up in the guest cabin about 10:30 this morning. The furnace didn’t work overnight, so the building got a bit cold, which may have contributed to a bad sore throat and congestion I had today.
I made myself some toast for breakfast then went outside and played a game of horseshoes against my dad to enjoy the again-warm weather. Amanda, my dad, Charlie and I spent some time throwing the Frisbee-like disks to each other. I looked through the glove department of the 1985 Chrysler I used to drive, finding some old pay stubs and an electronic organizer.
Clara made everyone lunch at one o’clock, then my dad, Charlie and I took a .22 Ruger outside to shoot, which had been given to my dad to sell for one of his friends. We shot it at what used to be a dump on the back edge of the property. The contents of the dump included an old window with several unbroken panes, which I set up on top of some old car seats. After we took turns firing off about 50 rounds, I got a picture of myself acting like I going to shoot the dog(he accidentally bit me earlier when we had been playing Frisbee).
Charlie left for home at 2 o’clock and he dropped my off at my apartment in Carbondale along the way. I promptly fell asleep for two hours before getting up and preparing new pictures to put online. I was still feeling sick and decided to go back to sleep at 8:30.

Monday: 11-27-06

Still sick all day. I slept late and did some laundry and cleaning before going to work. 65 degrees, again. Left work at 4:30 and had dinner at Wendy’s. Went back to sleep. I was like a zombie all day and had to resist the urge to chant “brains” and bite people’s head’s. It felt as if squirrels were staring at me all day and one approached within 3 feet and silently looked at me with one of its beady eyes.
I translated a China People’s Daily article later, about the economic crisis in the US during the mid 90’s. As always, the article is very critical of the US but never mentions the other side of the story; that the recession during that time is thought to mainly be because of the East Asian financial crisis(including China).

Tuesday: 11-28-06

In Chinese class, all the odd-sized tables in the room had been replaced by new desks over Thanksgiving Break, so nobody knew where to sit. The student Matt told me that there was another article in the paper about me, which I read in the computer lab after class. Huffy sucks.
In culture class, the guy that sits behind me came in telling everyone that he had spent three days with a strange girl over the break before she informed him that her boyfriend was in the Marines and would be back soon. The guest teacher told us that suicide is a common way to say you’re sorry for serious offenses in Japan. He said that all the Enron execs would be dead by their own hands had they been Japanese. Well, that sure would have taken a lot of burden off the legal system.
I went shopping at Save-a-Lot after class, then came home and ate dinner before meeting Rufus at PK’s at 6 o’clock. He was sitting at the bar talking to his friend Evan. The homeless guy Kurt came in a few minutes later, who had read the paper and asked if I was “that guy”. Nic came shortly after that and started playing pool. A drunken girl stole his beer and tried to start a fight with him over it. He simply told her, “You weigh 87 pounds. There is nothing you can do to hurt me”. She turned around and gave me a hug and grabbed my crotch, then danced and rubbed up against my back as I sat at a stool. The guy she was with gave me bad looks. Rufus punched him and knocked him out at the bar several months ago.
I came home at 8 o’clock to study for tomorrow’s Chinese test.

Wednesday: 11-29-06

Cooking raw sausage in the microwave just isn’t natural. I bought what I thought was precooked links yesterday, but discovered they were fresh upon opening the package today. The white color of the pork remained after they were cooked, but they tasted normal. Did you hear about that woman who microwaved her one-month old baby? Another woman supposedly did the same thing in 2000. The woman in the current case said it wasn’t her and the woman in the previous case said she had no memory of doing it.
I spent the morning preparing for a Chinese test that didn’t happen. Arriving to class, I learned that it was actually scheduled for tomorrow.
Nothing notable happened at work. It was still 65 degrees until at least 10 o’clock tonight, yet the area is strangely under a Winter Storm Watch. I ate asparagus and macaroni salad for dinner. I love asparagus. Macaroni salad is OK. For homework tonight, I prepared a study guide about Japanese culture, for a test that will be given next week.

Thursday: 11-30-06

Check out the dream I had last night:

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I tell my grandma that I’ll help her pick up thousands of pennies that she spilled at her job. I feel bad for her because her husband has just been killed by the troops that are occupying the city. She spilled the pennies in a massive downtown government building that is being renovated. The accident happened when she failed to operate a large robotic machine correctly. Walking through the huge government building, she can’t remember exactly where the pennies where spilled, so we take a shortcut through the center of the building to the other side. The center is under such heavy construction that it’s hard to get through. Strangely, we also see large missiles being stored here. At the other side of the building, we find ourselves in an area where all the walls, doors and windows have been lined with plastic, not the area we were looking for. This area is off-limits and an employee grabs my grandma as we try to exit through the doors. I’m now outside alone on the sidewalk, looking out at the large perfectly manicured yards that surround the building. Scottish people wearing kilts are marching along one of the walks playing their bagpipes. They see me and throw down their instruments to give chase; undercover agents. I manage to run away and get lost in the crowd at a busstop across the street. Soldiers are directing kids and parents onto buses while an announcer says over the intercom, “Today we will be touring the Teletubbie Park. The Telletubbies were creatures that existed on Earth over 2000 years ago. Be warned that soldiers in the downtown area have fired upon civilians”.

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Cold medicine will really mess with my head. I’ve been a bit sick for several days and have taken Nyquil at night. During the day, I took some prescription-strength ephedrine-based medicine, which I think was making me hallucinate. Hopefully it was making me hallucinate, because I definitely was hallucinating. I fell asleep briefly during my culture class and awoke to briefly see a pattern of red lines and a waterfall-like design on my blue jeans. The designs were only present for about two seconds after I opened my eyes, but were very vivid. This has happened in past years when I’ve taken cold medicine, but not for several years.

It was raining this morning and it rained all day. The temperature remained in the 30’s; quite a shock from the last week of 60 degree dry weather. I took an umbrella to school that I had found in my apartment’s parking lot a few weeks ago. Not surprisingly, it didn’t work right. I had a Chinese test at one o’clock, then met with my culture group at 2 o’clock. The student Amanda stabbed me in the chest with her large umbrella for making fun of her. This was my second umbrella stabbing of the day, but the first intentional one. The unintentional one happened when leaving my apartment this morning. A guy came around the corner with his long metal-tipped umbrella at the same I was coming around the corner. We noticed each other and stopped just as the tip was about an inch from my eye. So, it wasn’t an actual stabbing, but nearly was a very bad one.

Here’s what I wrote about my culture group meeting for this week’s class journal:

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Some Taiwanese native peoples have been trying to build independent villages in rural areas. There is a small group of such people, about 300 of them, that are constantly having their independent villages demolished by the government. They build a village, the government comes in with bulldozers, then they go build a new village somewhere else. The cycle constantly repeats itself. The government opposes their villages because they claim independence and refuse to pay taxes.
The Taiwanese people feel that Americans hold certain stereotypes about them; they are good at kung fu, good at math and very shy. As a child, I did indeed believe all those things, but now I’m not even so sure that they’re generally better at math.
Old Chinese and Taiwanese men often grow their little finger nail very long and let hair grow out of moles on their bodies. These habits are both based on superstition. Growing a long fingernail is believed to keep people from “stabbing you in the back”. The mole-hair is left uncut because it’s believed that cutting it will lead to death. Do old men that want to die cut their nails and mole-hair?
There is an ethnic group in mainland China that values long necks. Just like a similar African tribe, they wind tubes around the neck in order to make it longer. Mormons are invading Taiwan. They can often be seen on the streets distributing their propaganda.
Men often read women’s palms on first dates as a ploy to hold the female’s hand. The Taiwanese in the group read the foreigner’s palms today, maybe just because they wanted to hold our hands. My love life is apparently complicated, but you are never supposed to tell a person anything negative like that on a first date.
One of the Americans mentioned that her friend has an Asian roommate that asked him to quit letting his girlfriend spend the night in their dorm room. Such activity is generally unacceptable in Taiwan unless the couple has been dating for a long period of time, usually several years. Most young people live with their parents and some parents will allow boyfriends/girlfriends to spend the night if the relationship is serious.
Businessmen having mistresses is becoming more and more common. There have been several cases over the past years where wives have cut off their husband’s genitals and thrown them in the toilet.

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In culture class, I briefly talked before class to the Korean man who is our guest teacher for the section of the class about Japan. I wanted to know about his experiences near Hiroshima when the bomb was dropped, but he said that his city was too isolated to have noticed any disturbance. It was just 60 miles away, but not well connected with any good roads. He did tell me that the Japanese built a gigantic battleship during the war, which was sunk by Allied planes just 10 days after it deployed. Apparently nobody had told them that huge battleships were no longer an effective tool of war. The teacher thought it was very funny when I called their battleship a “sitting duck”.
I went to the Student Center to meet Yan after class. A large craft fair with dozens of booths was set up in the area that we meet. One of the vendors was Jared’s mom, who I spent several minutes talking to.
Meeting with Yan, he mentioned that his parents worked in a sock factory for many years and saved up enough money for him to go to school. They now receive a pension of about $100 per month and health insurance. There are no property taxes in China, so that’s something to look forward to.