puppy elect II - the blog

r. kelley has created pretty much my new favorite thing: puppy elect: the blog. submit your candidates at puppyelect@gmail.com. hooray!!!

On another note, blogspot has really been terribly good to me - I've had two blogs, both of them through blogspot and I've never had a complaint. However, puppy elect has proven that the format of tumblr is so appealing that I think I'm going to have to move. Sorry, blogspot. It's been a good run. My new blog, coming soon.

puppy elect

the only thing i can think to do right now is make a list.

election!
•had pizza and beer with howard and friends r. kelley and carleton as well as some others whose blogs i don't know - not really sure what would have been more awesome
•first heard the news officially from jon stewart at 11pm - not really sure what could have been more appropriate
•cried at least five times, mostly during shots of all those people in chicago and then a lot during the acceptance speech - par for the course of yesterday's feelings
•shouted "puppy elect" about a dozen times
•walked home and got told "happy birthday!" by a drunk gay man - actually, i'm not really sure what the words would have been for how we both clearly felt at that moment, which is why i answered: "you too!" he got it.
•basically played my own personal part in history. i'm so proud to have been able to participate in something so enormous - so much bigger than me, but so personal too. much more eloquent people are saying the same thing right now so that's enough about political feelings.
•woke up to the words "happy president elect day!" and an email from obama, thanking me (i donated $5 a bunch of times)
•on the list to-do list: list of puppy candidates

i did not get a sticker.

so i gave myself one.

also i voted in a high school. the kids didn't get off school and so were walking through the polling place telling everyone to legalize marijuana. also i had to use my own pen.

those were the only even mildly disheartening parts, though. it did take about an hour, but that made me really happy because it means that a lot of people are voting. overall, it was a pretty moving experience. now i just have to try not to think about it until my poll results pizza party because every time i do i hyperventilate a little.

my favorite = the sad grandpa

linking to this because it is so big it eclipses other things.

also, my mom sent me this:


bonus:

don't read comic books. do NOT read comic books. put batman: year one down immediately.

i am trying to write a paper and it hasn't gone this badly in a pretty long time. i still like grad school - i do - the balance is much different since i started teaching, but i do still like it. this one class i'm taking is a little f*cked, but i'm making the most of it, and i went out for beers with the two professors i'll be taking classes with next semester (i know this doesn't actually seem like a good way to tell what the class will be like unless you are maybe a college freshman, but i have found that in grad school one of the best ways to go is to register for classes with professors you know to be stellar and suddenly their interests are your interests. it's happened at least once a semester already), so it's going okay. the problem is - well, the first problem i guess is that this class is sort of f*cked - but i think the real problem is that there are people all around me who are embarking on "real lives" (howard has an incredible job - at first i was extremely jealous, partially because of the color schemes of his id and the office, and also because they gave him a little leveler keychain for his office keys, then later because his coworkers are rad, he works in one of the coolest neighborhoods in boston and he has the most awesome parking spot in the entire city - but now i've realized that it's just the right job for him and i'll find one for me. also, people are doing things together - taking fun road trips, seeing movies - and i just have all this homework all the time) and i want one too. i don't know how comic books really have anything to do with this, but every time i look at the screen and see how little i've written, i think "this is f*cked" and have this crazy urge to just read batman: year one cover to cover.

also i got a haircut and went darker for winter. my roommate tells me this is a thing. i never knew it, but i'm enjoying it anyway. you can't really tell anything about my hair though because i'm in pretty typical "write paper, look like sh*t" mode. it looks a little like this:

zombie eyes and everything.

vote. please.

it's very important.

mostly a graphic blog, not too much text

my friend parker took me to see david sedaris read at the symphony. he said that something he likes to ask people at book signings is this: "if you were getting out of the shower and you saw a leprechaun next to the toilet, would you scream, or would you just innately understand that he meant you no harm?" that resonated with me, because that is a question i can both answer and imagine asking others. my answer is: innately understand, unless the leprechaun had an evil look on his face in which case i would throw my towel over him and then tie him up.

here is the view from where we sat, and a ridiculous picture of parker caught between picture-making faces (the iphone is particularly good for this):





then on monday (columbus day here, indigenous peoples' day in the bay area), we took a trip to portsmouth, new hampshire, just because! it's a town howard (and many of the other boy scouts, i think) enjoy visiting because it was the cool place to go when they worked at boy scout camp. howard and i went once over the summer - there's a nice bookstore, a great music store, a FANTASTIC diner which is clearly the hippest place in town, a coffee shop, a place where howard buys his hats and a place where he buys his messenge bags (he actually only has one, but i like parallel structure and sometimes mislead readers in order to maintain it). we went in ryan kelley's jeep. ryan kelley is a new best friend of mine, in case you're wondering. here are some pictures of foliage/a farm/bridges i took from the car, i boat i saw (portsmouth used to be a place where boats were built, although only the bridges part reminded me of portland), us fooling around at a fountain (i made them pose for this, knowing i would later put it on my blog; literary theory might call this a form of "colonization") and also some kazoos (this also):













obligatory zeppelin photos: