random Sunday thoughts

I have been meaning to document this for some time, so here it is:

There is a lady who lives on the sidewalk outside of Trader Joe's, as far as I can tell.  She is always there, and she always has multiple signs with angry things written on them.  One is about how she's hungry, but she will only accept organic food, or $20, because GMOs are evil, or something like that.

My favorite sign of hers looks something like this:

i am a poet
i write poems
i make words
i am like a radio
BLACK PRIDE


She is white, if that matters at all.  (And I think it does.)

It occurred to me recently that there aren't going to be any homeless people in State College, and it's going to be a little weird.  Homeless people always make me a little uncomfortable, because I want to help them, but I realize there's nothing I can really do to help them, besides volunteering at a soup kitchen or something like that.  I have gotten used to having them around, though, because there are so, so many homeless people in Berkeley.  They camp out on the sidewalks downtown and near campus, and you see the same ones over and over again.  There's also a special breed of weirdo that inhabits Berkeley, and that I've never seen anywhere but here, which is the maybe-homeless.  As in, they look kind of unkempt and disheveled, but you can't tell if they're crazy and homeless or just crazy.  Most of these people have at least a few signs, and they don't seem to care whether you notice them or not.  It's as if they see their life's work as standing on the street corner outside the games store with a big poster identifying animals' footprints, for some reason.  (That's just one guy.  My favorite of this type is probably the guy who walks around with sandwich boards on, with an arrow pointing to the left and big angry letters proclaiming "PASS ON THE LEFT!!!".)

There are many things I will miss about Berkeley, and actually, the crazy people are probably one of them.

I need to do some work today, and instead I have been wasting time on the internet and cooking.  It's been a good day, really, but now I think it's time to do some statistics while my rice cooks.  And then I'll probably go for a bike ride to enjoy this nice day.

Oh!  Speaking of nice days, Jevon and I went to the hipstery-est wedding I could ever have imagined yesterday.  It was in a backyard in San Francisco, replete with thrift store clothing, sideburns, and tongues planted firmly in cheek.  It was actually very lovely, too, in a weird way, but some of the people there made me feel a bit out of place.  Like the very fact that I would allow them to let me feel out of place probably meant that I Care Too Much About Things.

Anyway, rice is almost done.  Bye for now.