My bus ride up from Charlottesville on Monday confirmed a number of things:
1) Baltimore is weird. This was NOT in fact confirmed by a John Waters film shown during the ride, but rather by the bizarre man-child (or should I say, child-man) sitting behind me.
Apparently, Child-man moved from Baltimore to “the country”, someplace in Virginia I’d never heard of and hope never to accidentally come across from the sound of it. He is only 17, but gets his liquor from the store in town owned by the “China man” who never cards him.
He moved there several years back, because “people” were trying to kill him. He does not go to school, actually has not since he was 12, when his mother took him out (not sure how she managed this, except that she was “fucking crazy”) and his house, apparently some sort of crack den, was “popped”, which I can only assume means “busted.”
He had a weird accent that sounded Southern and gay, but may just have been Baltimorean and bizarre. The strangest thing about all of this was that I learned it by overhearing his conversation with a UVA ROTC student, who quite earnestly encouraged Child-man to take the GEDs and go to community college in order to pursue his dream of being an architect or interior designer (GAY). Yet ROTC man did not seem to notice, or at least mind, the GAYness. Not to assume that all army peeps are homophobes. Anyway, ROTC man did not ask, and Child-man did not tell. They probably fucked in a bathroom stall at Union Station once we got off the bus.
2) Anthropology students make me sad. First, I ran into a “friend” from class. You know, the kind where you have a nice chat one day about your similarly hopeless futures before the professor comes, and you think “hey, maybe we’ll end up best buds” and so you go home all exited and facebook friend them. And then you never talk to them again for the rest of the semester? She was nice enough, and actually surprisingly interesting without spilling her guts in that awful way that pseudo-interesting people do. But then we ran into her friend (“friend?”), another anthropology fourth year who apparently divides his time between UVA and his job working for “a presidential campaign” in DC. (As a side note, I REALLY hate when people are purposefully vague, in some sort of attempt to be either [pseudo]modest or [pseudo]interesting]. It’s not working, asshole).
Anyway this douchebag was bragging about how he never goes to class, only office hours, where he flatters the teacher (mostly just by being there, I’m sure),and gets all the important points of the reading (which, not surprisingly, he does not read on his own). He was, of course, writing a thesis, which from its topic sounded like it had potential, until he explained it and then it sounded lame. He also shared his recent interest in archetypes (not Jungian, just generic) not as an academic exercise or even as a way to understand specific cultural tropes - which I would have had no problem with – but rather as an enlightening way of understanding all of humankind. Anyone with any ounce of anthropological sense (especially the school of Anthropology generally taught at UVA), would reject this idea without hesitation. Even if this actually were an example of archetypes, which it is not, just because the Egyptians AND the Mayans both built pyramids does not mean we are all hardwired the same. Maybe you should have gone to class more, IDIOT.
3) Neko Case & Cat Power are both very nice to sleep to.
