Sunday's post:

Strange things are afoot at the Circle K. Somehow the entry I wrote for Friday never got published (I can thank my lovely internet for that), so you get to read my stale, three day-old prose about shit that's not even pertinent any more. But it's okay, because it probably wasn't even pertinent in the first place. For that, see below this post.

I've finally started getting all of my shit together for this post-bac program. I certainly couldn't take on a job in addition to it-- at least not this semester-- but I've for the most part locked down my homeworking schedule. I say this, not having done any translating yesterday and neither today (yet) but still having about two-thirds of my work left to do. Procrastination, hello.

Interesting time about that birthday party: it was on the boundary of Kensington and Fishtown, two and three districts north of Old City, respectively, and about a forty five minute journey through a HORRIBLE rainstorm, front door to front door. This, I'm told, is the hipster part of Philadelphia. Five years ago it was run down and ghetto as hell, but NOW, all the "starving artists" flock to here for the cheap property costs (I guess?) and old fashioned Philly grit. I like it for the grit as well, and frankly, the area reminds me of Kalamazoo in a lot of ways (minus the black people). This is where the El Bar lies, the delicious hipster bar where you can get a tallboy of PBR and a shot of whiskey for three(!!!) dollars. That definitely beats spending four bucks on a pint of musty Bud Lite from Up and Unders.

But anyway, there was a load of free beer at the party, a whole bunch of people I hadn't met yet (and upon meeting them, proceeded to bumble my way through sentences about the weather and the neighborhood), and about six bottles of liquor for mixed drinks. Oh, and a 90's jams/Lady Gaga dance party. See, for the first half of the dance party (the 90's half), I wasn't too about it. Chris and I sat in the living room drinking slowly, myself going out for a cigarette in the torrential rain every half hour or so, but once the GAGA started, I was sufficiently buzzed to become EXUBERANT (note the usage) and danced my balls off for a good half hour. And a half hour is quite a long time for me to dance my balls off. I'm not too into dancing, especially my balls off. Met some people, ended up taking the bus home, and fell into bed immediately.

Yesterday I went to a reading of the Iliad in Clark Park. The park is historical in one way or another, just like everything else here, about four blocks from my house on Baltimore. This was a pretty funny time as well. Obviously they couldn't read the entire Iliad, so they lifted all the famous episodes and took out all the killing in between. There was still some badass killing, but not as much. Oh, also no catalog of ships (thank god). It was being read by two ladies who had memorized all the lines, one of whom kept forgetting all of them, and they played two guitars lain on the table in front of them and a djembe. A cool idea, in raw, conceptual form, but it was executed very poorly. The variation on the guitar notes they would played was limited to three: one, plucking the low E string over and over; two, slapping across all the strings on the 7 and 12 harmonics; and three, plucking the high and low Es together and then the A and B strings, so creatively dissonant. Why am I wasting your time explaining this? I'm not sure. Because the guitar work was just that impressive, I guess. The readers had these bad porn voices they employed at any point something could be taken even remotely sexually (Achilles' strong, firm rod that no other man in the world could bear). All of this together with the forgetfulness made for a pretty interesting reading. More than interesting. It was fun.

I suppose to should get to Sallust. I've been procrastinating ALL DAY.