I miss Providence.

[quislibet]

Not the show, though, which I have never watched.

Went to a hooray-you-passed-evil-scary-exams bar party for some of J.'s fellow grad students last night, stayed over with friends, and spent the morning first at the Coffee Exchange on Wickenden St. and then in Rockefeller library, photocopying about a hundred pages' worth of recent and relevant stuff from classical studies journals. I like that Brown's library, unlike BU's, organizes current periodicals by call number rather than alphabetically; it makes it easier to browse a discipline's worth of stuff, and anyway they get more journals.

Back home now. Have to work at the Athenaeum tonight. At least it's a low-stress, low-duty 10 bucks an hour which I can spend reading some of those photocopied materials unless I can't successfully tune out the writers' group's discussion of one another's fiction.

Speaking of tuning out conversations, I failed to do so this morning at the Coffee Exchange. A 30-ish man, a 40-ish man, and a 60-ish woman, all apparently regulars, sat at two nearby tables and discussed current events (especially the nightclub fire) and then the 30-ish guy talked about an acquaintance of his dad's who is the reason 30 and dad don't hang out at a certain Rhode Island Dunkin' Donuts anymore. It all started when another friend of 30's dad came in, and dad introduced other friend to racist guy, and racist guy looked him over and asked, "Are you Jewish?" and then the conversation went downhill from there. After several days of bitter arguments, 30's dad decided he just didn't like going to the Dunkie's anymore, 'cause that guy would be there and they'd get into another shouting match.

Apparently racist guy (who cheerfully self-identified as racist, "like someone else would say, 'I'm a Yankees fan,'" says 30) also keeps a list of celebrities that speak out against going to war with Saddam (*) and will never see movies or listen to music created by them again. 30 and his dad suspect the celebrities in question would be unmoved, if they knew.

Anyway.

(*) J. thinks it's odd that everyone always refers to him by his first name, and she may have a point there.

Comments

[rojagato.livejournal.com]

J. thinks it's odd that everyone always refers to [Saddam] by his first name

I think it started during the Gulf War (I refuse to call it the first Gulf War), to avoid confusion with the late King Hussein of Jordan, who was on "our" side.

[quislibet.livejournal.com]

That makes sense.

[alonewiththemoon]

about that first name thing--I read that even the Iraqi people do that. There's just too many Husseins in the Arab world. Plus in our headlines the more educated reader might get confused as to whether Saddam Hussein or King Hussein of Jordan were being referred to, although I suspect that the vast, vast majority of headline readers would not be aware that there was any potential confusion to be had.

[quislibet.livejournal.com]

(See above. Or I could just repeat, "That makes sense.")