And I Know Fuck Is A Bad Word, But It Sounds So Good.Good, Like Flipping Off The Preacherwhenever He

“And I know Fuck is a bad word, but it sounds so good. Good, like flipping off the preacher whenever he forgets that Eve was Adam’s teacher, ‘cause apples are fucking healthy you patriarchal piece of shit.”

Andrea Gibson (via lipstick-feminists)

You're riding a train at night across some vast plain, and you catch a glimpse of a tiny light in a window of a farmhouse. In an instant it's sucked back into the darkness behind and vanishes. But if you close your eyes, that point of light stays with you, just barely, for a few moments.

Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami

China Days 32-37 宁波 and 上海:

1. Visited my ancestors' hometown of Ningbo and toured the mountain villages in which I might have grown up had subsequent generations of Dus not bust their respective balls to improve their quality of life.

2. Scandalized relatives by wearing raggy shoes and smoking at the dinner table with the men. Apparently Chinese society is extremely materialistic, and I'm obligated to not only accept this as an unerring fact of Chinese culture but modify my personal lifestyle to impress those around me. Also, as a woman I should accept that my freedoms are fewer than those of men because Confucius said so.

3. Befriended a flirtatious Pakistani hotel chef by getting him to talk about his wife and son. Received a specially made omelette. 

4. Beat my cousin at basketball at the cost of getting my foot cut open, courtesy of the aforementioned raggy shoes.  

5. Saw my grandma naked one too many times.

6. Tolerated my brother's continuous poking and pinching of the various flabby bits of my body (i.e. underarms, abdomen, thighs), coupled with repeated insults to my physical appearance and intelligence. 

7. Had afternoon tea at the Waldorf with another cousin.

8. Ferried about the Huang Pu River thinking about a boy.

Novel excerpt: The Midnight Cafe

The Midnight Cafe, established 1962, had been a Jacobin headquarters for the beaten down since the Beat Generation became a staple in that part of town. Over the years, it grew into a fully-earned reputation for revolution, for Marxists, feminists, transcendentalists, surrealists and hedonists alike had at one point considered the cafe a nightly destination for conspiring over whisky. In the 70s, while Tibetan refugees starved themselves on the sidewalk outside, Rastafarian guitarists serenaded passersby from the balcony seating. In the 80s, university students watched the fall of the Berlin Wall on TVs hanging above the bar and listened to radio reports of their Beijing counterparts being crushed by tanks. 

And in addition to the countless poets and lovers who met tragic ends overdosing, over-copulating in the bathroom, it was said that in his youth, a certain congressional lynchpin broke his heart against a chiseled queer on the dance floor before taking up the mantle of hardline conservatism in the 2012 presidential primaries. Michelin was decidedly reluctant to surrender to The Midnight Cafe even half a star, but for what it lacked in actual coffee or real food, a loyal clientele compensated with BYOB.  

No stranger to the establishment, Elia greeted the people she knew with hugs and kisses, quickly becoming acquainted with those she didn’t as she squeezed through an intimate throng of bodies. Talk was kept to a shallow minimum, as attempts to converse were frequently interjected by the clatter of plates, the clink of glasses and the whir of blenders churning out assembly line margaritas. Every last face in the place was beautiful, made so by makeup, by product, by dim lighting and clothes cut scandalously just so. Spirits were high and free-flowing; oxygen was low. 

First assignment for Intro to Photojournalism:

1. Light: Julianna Nunez, 21, checks a text from her boyfriend over a dinner of fish and spinach with injera. Monday night was her first time trying Ethiopian food at Addis Abeba in Evanston.

2. Rule of Thirds: Freshman forward Nia Coffey attempts a layup Wednesday night against Purdue at Welsh-Ryan Arena. The Boilermakers fell to the Wildcats 71-68.

-Susan Du

Chicago Pride 2013 in Lakeview, the year of the repeal of DOMA