Read my latest story, "A Tale of Two Birthdays", at 52|250.

Last night I went to the cheap wine and poetry event at Hugo House. I came away feeling that it had, overall, been mediocre, but the truth is that by the time the reading began I was in no mood to be open to poetry. It began when I wanted to get a glass of the $1 wine and was carded but had not brought my ID. If someone would like to explain to me how we can call this a free country when a 29-year old can’t even get a drink without showing ID, I would be quite grateful.

But that’s a relatively minor complaint. What truly put me in a foul mood was the introduction to the event, in which the audience was admonished to drink responsibly lest the organizers have to carry you outside “and let the homeless have their way with you”. It’s funny because if you drink too much you get raped! And by gross homeless men! And it’s like totally transgressive to talk about homeless people as a criminal element!

The really funny thing is that I can almost guarantee you that there was a rapist in the audience laughing at the joke. Laughing because it reconfirmed him as not in the class of people usually considered rapists—as too clean, too economically secure, and not lurking in the bushes. Laughing because it reconfirmed the victim as responsible for avoiding the situation in which she is raped, as if rape just happens. Laughing, like everyone else in the room, not because it was funny but because applauding such sentiments means you can be criticized.

Laughter invokes the “just a joke” defense. All I could do at the time was mutter in disdain because if I had made noise about it, I would have been deemed hysterical.

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Today as I was walking to the library to return a truly awful book (Look Me In the Eye - the author chose to speak for all Aspies way too often in the first three chapters for me to be able to stand reading on), I passed a few white teenagers, all taller and generally larger than I am, who were taking up most of a corner. As I passed by them, one of the taller boys decided to jump towards me while screaming “boo!”

It was incredibly stupid, but it was also a violation of my space and peace of mind. A man shouting at someone on the street, especially when that person is physically smaller, is often a precursor to threats or even violence. In a split second, I had to prepare myself for the possibility of needing to defend myself.

The kid didn’t think about this, of course. He has the privilege of not expecting random harassment that leads to violence. He just wanted to get a few laughs from his friends. When I realized this, I made a comment on how very clever he was in my best sarcastic drone. It’s sad that these spoiled kids think upsetting people for their entertainment is acceptable, especially since they never know what sort of history the person they bother has.

It’s also a shame that we still have a world in which a woman can’t expect to walk a mile and be left alone. Even such small pieces of tranquility are denied us.

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Students here have a tendency to ask absurdly overbroad questions. Today, for instance, as I was taking my turn being the foreign-teacher zoo exhibit in the English Corner, a student decided to ask me about Keats. When I asked what he wanted to know about Keats, he said everything. Indeed, he didn’t even know if Keats had written poetry or prose. Goodness know where he heard the name. What bothers me here though isn’t just that it didn’t occur to him to pick up a book instead of expecting to be spoonfed by a teacher.

Much worse is that, had he gone to the library instead, he would not have picked up a book of poetry; he would have gone for some introductory text that would have named one poem as Keats’s official masterwork and provided a neat prepackaged story about the meaning of the poetry. He may have read a few lines within such a text. That is what these students have been taught to do. Even those studying for the postgraduate examination have read very few works of literature whole, though their ability to regurgitate particular notions of literary history can fool you at first.

Indeed, it is such tests that are the culprits here. Being able to spit out stock phrases and theories leads to better scores on exams than being able to do the heavy lifting of unique interpretation does. High stakes testing and creative/critical thought are inherently opposed and while some naive proponents of standardized examinations may not see this, my suspicion is that most– and most of the powerful in particular– are well aware of it.

I’ll give a more detailed account of the day’s happenings later (and since I’ve been using Freemind to take notes, I won’t be all that likely to leave anything interesting out accidentally). At the moment, I’m a bit too tired (and enjoying my Shiraz a bit too much) to provide anything really well considered. (I’m also suffering from a bit of information overload, as I attended six panels today and visited the New Mexico Holocaust & Intolerance Museum during lunch.) For now, I just want to register my great irritation with the woman who chose to use the question period at the end of the first panel on religion and pop culture to respond to the presentation on apocalyptic works produce by empire with a statement about how the Book of Revelation shows that there are many opportunities to choose to give glory to God– not just one.

I’ll refrain from bemoaning the state of a nation in which even an academic conference may be infiltrated by those who believe that they have the truth and must proselytize all others. Instead, I’ll just point out that I rather wish the presenter this was addressed to had chosen not to defuse the situation.