Today was a nice day in Russia! I got up at two in the afternoon (barring a few earlier trips to the bathroom!) because I had had a Legitimate College Experience the night before, of the type I powerful miss. I stayed up until five in the morning on the internet, talking to people about games and science fiction and who was and wasn’t a dick. The cherry on top was foraging for junk food at four am (COLLEGE!) and finding some! Also, it had a nice “you’re in RUSSIA” twist to it, since the junk food were these little fried dough cake things that I slathered in honey. And now there is honey on my pants, since I willingly wiped it there. Less cool is the fact that my Russian host-sister remarked to me skeptically, and jokingly that I had been wearing these pants for a while. Russians wear clothes more times between washings than Americans, in general. But I have broken even them! Victory! My pants actively smell. We are reaching “I stink too much by my own standards so we have to change soon” – but that just means all is as it should be.

Anyway I got up and ate something and went to see Leonya. I hung with him a bit, we listened to music (a group he has recently discovered called “The Horse Cock Kids” – and the songs are even better than the name! and Tom Waits, one of his favs), and then we went to visit his aunt, who is Natasha’s host mom. That was the first time I had visited a kid here on our program in their host-house (except Lucy, of course, who lives with Leonya). Sonya’s family is never home (except when they stop by to ask her incredulously why she isn’t in a night club), Joseph has just an old babushka who weighs him every week and gives him самагон (moonshine) and drinks with him.

Anya arrived hot on our heels, and we sat around being hilarious and gross in Russian for like four hours while we trank like six gallons of tea each. Then there were lots of jokes about being full of tea which wanted to be freed and having to pee very often. I sort of brought down the house by grossing everyone out with the story about how I like chewing on toe and fingernails so much I salivate at strangers who have longs, and how I spent like a week working on my big toenail, which Dr. Daniels gave to me after he pulled it outta my foot. That coversation went something like this:

DR. DANIELS: (enters) All right, everything's good. Here's the nail – some people are biters! (he winks – he is a jovial, friendly man)

EDDIE MCCAFFRAY: (sitting on examination table – he is unsure if DOCTOR DANIELS is joking or not) Heh heh . . . thanks. (he decides that, regardless, he will begin to consume said toenail in the car on the way home, while listening to FRANK ZAPPA'S song «FLORENTINE POGEN» which includes a delicious driving RYTHYM GUITAR, and some COOL SOLOING – and also NAPOLEON MURPHY BROCK provides and ENJOYABLE VOCAL PREFORMANCE)

EDDIE MCCAFFRAY: (in MOTHER'S tope-colored mini-van, hurridly crams TOENAIL into MOUTH, drooling like PAVLOV'S DOGS and singing along badly with FRANK and NAPOLEON) SHE WAS THE DAUGHTER OF A WEALTHY FLORENTINE POGEN – DA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NAAAA!

CAR SPEAKERS exeunt

Then we wandered around downtown for like twenty minutes. There were fireworks and also some music, since today was the 70th anniversary of the Irkutsk Oblast (or something like that). Then Anya and Leonya and I returned домой.

Now I am listening to Dispatch's live album «Gut the Van» - it's really great (not that this is news to me). Some people may not like the overly-slick «college» lyrics (and they have occasionally grated on me), but mostly they're average, with a few moments of what is probably genius or something close to it. I am sorry they do not present the lyrical mastery present in such recently-popular works as «Candy Shop» (I am all too afraid that Fifty Cent really would allow me to «lick the lolly pop»). As for their groovable, meolodic, and emotional playing . . . I don't get who doesn't like that. It's not the most complex thing out there, that's for sure, but it's put together so dammed well. There are a lot of moments on both discs that really floor me.