So! What's going on with me?

I'm being a research assistant for my econ prof

(Props to Dr. Mitch!)

What I'm doing is I'm cross-referencing 19th century marriage records to the 1851 census in Britain, to see if whether adult literacy rate (as determined by whether people sign their marriage license or just X it) matches up with their childhood educational backrounds.

So.. uh.. lots of Excel database stuff, really. And entertaining facets of 19th century life.

I don't think "farmer's widowed pauper" or "spoon polisher" or "pearl button cutter" really flies on resumes anymore. Or "gentleman."

This one time I was reading the job description for this guy, who described himself as a 'inge filer.' I was really confused until I read the other records, in which his son described the filer as being a locksmith.

Apparently he's a hinge filer.

Fuckin' Cockney!

Well, in the evening, Sam IMed me asking me if I wanted to go to Ascension, the name for Goth night at Club Orpheus in Baltimore. So I said yes, because I didn't foresee myself having anything better to do, and dragged Jose along too, because I didn't want to be at a club without at least one person who I knew decently well. We went with Sam and Jenny, his cousin, who seemed nice, if chronically angry. It's a strange combination, but it works like this:

Jenny: Hi!!! I'm Jenny!!!! ^__^
Jenny: Will you hurry the fuck up, Sam??? >___<
Jenny: Nice to meet you guys!! ^__^
Jenny: Goddammit! I need a smoke!!! >___<

Sam and Jose don't mix well. Both Sam and Jose have their annoying mannerisms, and while sometimes two people's annoying mannerisms can enhance one another's, in this case they aggravated each other like a particularly volatile reaction, or like the physics textbook illustrations of sound wave interference. Some of the things though, I don't understand why Sam does. Like why wear Devil's horns in public? Hmm? You must have been asking for the jeers at 7-11.

Ascension itself is close to the Harbor, in a Fell's Pointy type place though I couldn't be sure. You unlatch the thick, wooden door of an unassuming townhouse, and lo! a Goth club. Upon seeing that door, I almost expected one of those scenarios where you have to knock three times and someone pulls back a creaking panel, squints out, and says, "What is the shadow of the five moon ghost?" It didn't happen though. We just had to show our IDs and pay $6.

Orpheus in general seems pretty shitty as a club. It has a basement smell, or maybe the backstage of a community theater smell, and looks somewhat like a garret with a sound system and tables in a corner. The drywall wasn't even completely painted over yet; I think that's why they keep the lights dim. We went at nine, and no one was there. Jose complained that we would have a private club, which I thought was more the better, because Goths hate people anyway. There were people, maybe a handful, and everyone was huddled around the bar, smoking. At any given point there were like maybe three people dancing. Dancing, because you're a goth, in as unenergetic a way as possible, like in that South Park episode on Goth kids. It has to match the operatic moaning soundtrack, after all.

I think I had fun though. Not dancing, of course. The people there were fun to talk to, and Orpheus is quite a successful lounge, if a shitty club. I met a few nice Victorian gentlemen with swordcanes, who gave me good advice on getting good plus-sized men's Goth clothes (cowboy re-enactor sites, surprisingly), and bondage clubs in D.C. It's a shame about its club pretensions, actually, since once you stop trying to be cool (and fail miserably) it's a good place. If we could actually talk without shouting and choking on secondhand smoke, it would be lovely. Overall, I'm glad to be out on a different social scene every once in a while.

Plus, they had free pecan sandies.

---

Came back with Jose. Around one at night, the weather was cool but the campus abandoned. We were on our way to Late Night when we were accosted by a guy yelling, "HEY!" at us. I thought he was drunk, and began walking faster, with my head down. In a very shady tone, he went, "Hey... you guys fileshare? Are you anti-government? Well we all know this school rips you off, and I think it's about time we give something back to the students. Just this year, five students have been arrested for filesharing." The slowness of our downloads is oppressive, the expense of the dining hall an outrage, and Kazaa a political cause. Apparently he runs some sort of private direct-connection filesharing intranet on campus and wants us to be in on it, though he couldn't provide us enough specifications about it to really satisfy our curiosity. Convo goes as follows:

"So, where do you live?" Jose says amiably.

"Apartments."

"Which one?" asks Jose.

"I can't tell you." The guy is dead serious. "You scare me because you're asking so many questions." The guy's eyes dart from side to side. "Stop asking so many questions."

"Hillside!" guesses Jose.

The guy flinches.

"Casselman!" I narrow it down. Me and Jose think of Kay, and laugh.

The guy goes rigid. "Are you laughing at me???" he demands.

"No," Jose says, putting his hands up to defuse a confrontation, "it's just an inside joke."

"Tell me what it is," he insists, demanding proof that we aren't mocking his anti-authoritarian revolution, "I need to know."

So we have to explain it to him, how Kay lives in Casselman and has his own ftp which he uses to share files and the rest. By the time we explain it to him, it's not funny anymore, which is, of course why you don't explain inside jokes in the first place.

The guy gives us the ip address and then, seeing two other guys walking towards the dining hall, yells towards them, "HEY! HEY YOU!"

"Do we know you?" one of the guys calls back in a knife-edge polite, conversation-terminating inquiry. They begin walking faster.

The first guy writes his AIM handle down, and hands us a slip of paper.

"Here," he says. "You'll find me online."
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Can someone tell me what the fuck?