Up From the Bog

Laugh out loud: www.Engrish.com. Posted recently: "No swimming if you can't swim." Sign on a cash register in China: "I really don't know how to apologize to you. Please move on to another cash register." On a menu: "Sizzling noodles of you," and other even better entrees which escape me now.

My first day off after three grueling days of work, I swim up from the bog of extreme fatigue, headache, and general nothingness of ambition [Engrish is getting to me] always wondering what I need to do to recover and spend the most refreshing and useful [to me] two days off that I can. I've been catching up with Baha'i Views to realize the Yaran have been sentenced to twenty years in some other prison . . . I half expected them to be executed. Perhaps world opinion is making some dim impression on the administration in Iran. It's horrible. I hope they have beds.

I spent quite a few minutes reading the message posts on the CNN blog about religious rights. What hatred, what close-mindedness, what innocence about what's really happening in the world. People fascinate me, even the passionately ignorant. I'm interested in how people's minds work. How did they get to where they are?

Trip planning. Trying to decide whether to drive to the airport and pay enormous parking fees on our upcoming trip, or to use one of the shuttles which are never quite as convenient as one thinks. Looking forward to the Friends of Persian Culture Conference in Schaumburg [Chicago] Illinois over Labor Day Weekend. AKA All Farsi All the Time. As Mahnaz put it the other day, "Oh, you poor baby!"

I don't mind standing around in a forest of Farsi speakers. What I mind is making small talk and having to smile too much. Please, just let me disappear.

What I'm looking forward to is music!