oh my dang

the ladies in the deans' office are talking about where they're going to be buried. the following is verbatim.

[talking about one's late husband - she has remarried and divorced since he died]
"mike's dead seventeen years yesterday. 1991 - is that seventeen?"
(no, but i'm not going to correct her about how long her husband has been dead)
"oh, patsy. where is he buried?"
"st. joseph's."
"oh, that's a beautiful cemetery. you should go there!"
"well - "
"i would go there! oh patsy, you should go."
like it's a restaurant.

then they started debating the ethics of using the plot she has next to him if she's been with someone else since his death, which i guess is pretty appropriate.

a couple True Stories, and one small Victory

this really happened. when i get off the t, i walk down a street where there is a high school on one side and a children's hospital facing it. each of them have a street lamp that flickers right in front of them. it's pretty spooky. one night last week, i was coming home from the library pretty late, maybe around midnight. i got off at my stop, and a large dude got off behind me. warren street is a pretty busy street, and there are cop cars driving down it every thirty seconds, but when a large dude gets off the streetcar behind you you're always a little uneasy. anyway, he passed me just as we were crossing the street, and i looked up at him. he looked back with this expression that just said "don't worry," and then started walking pretty fast and i know this is illogical but i felt a little like he might be doing it to put me at ease. when he got to the point between the flickering lights, he was about 100 feet ahead of me. he looked up at one, then at the other, and then did this little flick with his right hand - not really a wave, more like a tiny dismissal. the lights stopped flickering, and he looked back at me, smiled, and waved, and then kept walking.

today on my walk home, i found a little dead bird at a bus stop. nothing violent had happened to him, he was just lying there with his little feet up. at first i walked on by and thought about what it meant for there to be a dead bird there. bird flu? west nile? did it just get too cold too fast, and he didn't get out soon enough? is it a sign that i did something wrong? then i realized that it is arrogant to think that a bird died to prove something to you, and that it is wrong to leave a dead bird at a bus stop so i picked up a newspaper and hid him in some grass by a construction site, and then came home and washed my hands because what if it's west nile after all?

then the irish guy across the street invited me in for a beer and i turned him down to write this blog.

actual conversations i had walking home along washington st. after 3 am

dude on balcony: "you wanna rassle?"
me: "not really."
dude: "yeah, i'd prolly dominate you."
me: "i studied with billy blanks."
dude: "holy shit!"

one block later:
dude on balcony: "isn't it a little late to be walking home?"
me: "i know self-defense."
first dude and other dudes: guffawing.

i love living in brighton. genuinely. also, my guardian angel lives here. more later.

barf!

is that onomatopoeia?

i would like nothing more than to finish my reading for visual studies tonight - it's arguably some of the most interesting reading we've been assigned for that class so far - but i am currently desperately trying to finish a paper for jim smith, man of the century, so that i can con one of my friends into reading it before i actually attend class at 7. also, my back tire is flat.

if i have a guardian angel, i saw him today.
1. riding a bike on the sidewalk
2. white hair under an embroidered yarmulke
3. hi-top chucks/shorts combo
4. leather jacket

today i added interpol and dinosaur jr. (mostly green mind, also in a jar off of you're living all over me) to the list. let's face it - pretty much the only thing that's safe right now is greetings from asbury park, and even then i can only listen to blinded by the light and spirit in the night. did you know that the traveling wilburys track tweeter and the monkey man is a bruce springsteen tribute? well, now you do. i know i was supposed to use like a million quotation marks in that paragraph but i just don't care. everything's fine! geez!

yesterday boston was san francisco. today, it's portland.

i'm in pretty serious denial that i live too far away from home to drive back in a day if i really need to. i've never actually lived this far away from california, and i never realized how strong the pull of home could be. boston's been cool so far, but i'm starting to hate it a little bit because it's not home. portland was never like this. i can't put my finger on the difference - sure, the accents and footwear are different, but most people in san francisco are stuck in the 90's just like people in boston and it's only different enough be funny. but there are other more serious differences that are really affecting me, and if i could just figure out what they are i could pretend they don't exist.

let's add cat power and elliot smith to the "feelings" list. they're pretty much givens, but it's important to be clear and comprehensive when coming up with things one isn't supposed to do.

cogito ergo sum

last night i dreamt i liked a boy, and instead of the usual making-out dream i have, i dreamt he was translating phrases from french into english, and then from english into latin, while i sat back and thought about how hot that was. i'm not thinking about it.

some "phrases [a woman i work with] has:"
"you catch more bees with honey than you do with a knife"
"blessed are the meek, for they will be comforted"
"singing to the choir"

also, i got bought a smoothie this morning, i'm going to get a catered lunch, and i could be doing reading right now if i wasn't blogging. this job is incredible.

things i'm not allowed to listen to because they give me too many "feelings"

1. arcade fire
2. carole king
3. sloop john b
4. sean kingston
5. everything

brighton is just full of people complaining

girl behind me, with a native american headdress tattooed on her shoulder: complaining to her visiting mother about every boy she's ever slept with, although making it ok by saying she was "seeing" them.
girl over there: can't figure out webct.
woman + coworkers at table next to me: so and so stayed up too late playing video games last night and is now saying he can't come into work because he has fleas. this may be the best one.

i don't have anything to complain about that isn't my own fault. well, i can't hear out of my left ear, but that just sometimes happens because i inherited a really narrow ear canal. it's not a big deal though.

also, it's supposed to be 80 today.

i'm pretty sure you'll know my favorite part when you see it

i thought you knew enough to just roll with it when i condradict myself

not that i don't deserve to be called on it, but often, my more recent opinion is a product of further learning and research or at least a sincere desire to be a better person, or appear as such. mostly i just reread my earlier posts and realized that i posted some real "opinions," which were a result of coffee and intellectual discussion, even though they may not seem that way. not that i don't feel them, i just may not always feel as strongly about them as i did at cafe nation this morning, surrounded by people who were either my friends or impressed with my tshirt (the law & order + batman one) or both.

on another note, i've been lying the past couple weeks about not being interested in sports, particularly the red sox. i am interested in the red sox, i just don't have time to watch all the games. but i watched the game tonight and it was incredible. drew trottin out his skills, youkilis and his incredible header, and then of course pedroia, my fave, love child of casey affleck and giovanni ribisi. i was a little sad daisuke didn't see the mound, but i'll have plenty more chances to convince people that he has a mowhawk under that hat (knock on wood). i called my grandpa after youkilis owned that base, and he was pretty excited that i was 1. "becoming entrenched in the geography" 2. having a good time 3. ecstatic about baseball.

augh! some things!

first of all, this whole "1,000,000 strong for colbert" thing is out of control. it is a huge mistake for colbert to run because, while i support getting 18-25 year olds excited about voting, it's nader all over again and we are going to end up with a candidate we're ambivalent about supporting because all the kids voted for colbert. if anyone i know votes for colbert, i will slap them. i don't care what state you're in or if you crunch enough numbers to make it "okay" because your vote "won't count." voting is our constitutional right and if you use it irresponsibly i am furious with you. votes always, always count because it is your one opportunity to say something that will be heard (unless you have a really big megaphone and stand somewhere in washington dc). exit polls, stats, people pay attention to these things and actually believe that they represent something, and a vote for colbert represents that our generation cares more about a couple laughs late at night than the state of our nation. while i understand that the state of the nation is frustrating - this is why zombie movies, with their promise of the erasure of two-party politics and credit card debt, are so popular - but to buy into the "i don't care, imma vote for colbert" mentality is to hand the country over to old white rich men forever. i just pray that at the last minute before the primaries, colbert takes his whole facebook group aside and says: "hey guys, thanks for your support but i'm not actually going to run, although now that you're all jazzed up about voting why don't you go out there and throw your lot in with ______?" that is the only way that i can support this. if it goes anywhere else than there, i'm just furious.

also, i pretty much hate queer, feminist, postcolonial, and ethnic theories because guess what? when you break up with someone and then hate them vehemently, that's still a feeling you have for them. when you're furious with heterosexual, masculine, colonist, or white perspectives and form a theory in reaction to and which excludes those perspectives, you're still defined by them. also, no one listens to a zealot, and let's face it, that's pretty much what's goin on right now, or at least how most people see it ("people" meaning people entrenched in the academic world, which i understand represents a privileged minority). i'm not going to say that these theories are "invalid," i'm just going to say that a lot of products of liberal arts universities, like myself, are just SO SICK of hearing them that the second they hear "heteronormative" or "subaltern" they just tune the heck out. so what's the alternative? i don't know yet, but carolann, james and i are working on it.

all families have secrets. not just catholic ones. also, even if your parents were raised catholic but had completely abandoned it by the time you were born, you're still catholic. i don't know what it is, but you are.

"okay. i'm going to pretend for fifteen minutes that i care what i am wearing to the reading. maybe a sweater?"

my friend lizzy wrote that in her blog today. i have that fifteen minutes every morning, except it's usually more like five and goes a little like this:
"crap!"

dressing "professionally" is just really hard for me. i like superheroes, bands, and bookstores, and so my tshirts say so. i don't know what to do about it, especially when it's too warm for a sweater and most of mine are bright colors anyway. mostly i just wear my converse and think: "well, my grandma's cool with it."

i'm really sad that psychoanalytic criticism has fallen out of favor

because i'm really pretty into it. theory in general usually takes a little grappling for me - lc's curriculum was a little theory-lite, to be completely honest - but thanks to professor tom schoeneman, psychoanalysis is an arena in which i feel particularly comfortable. not that i believe any of it. i was pretty jealous when a classmate presented on ecocriticism yesterday and said things like "our canon" and "our mission." not that i want to be an ecocritic, nature is pretty ok but i like sleeping indoors and zealotry makes me uncomfortable even when i agree with it, it's just that it's probably really satisfying to believe in the lens through which you read literature. i love the psychoanalysts, but most of what they have to say is pretty self-congratulating flatulence. but it's also really interesting, and i find i have a lot more positive things to say about it when it's applied to literature instead of people, especially since a lot of contemporary authors have read Freud and Lacan and so you know that some of them, at least, have it on the back burner while they're writing.

i know a woman named marge

isn't that weird? i didn't think real people were named that. i thought it was reserved for, you know, chickens and other farm animals, except for cows who should either be named "bessie" or after a flower.

so clearly my new m.o. is to pretty much just blog while i'm in the office. it's fine by me, and i don't care what you think, so there you go.

my grandpa dropped off my grandma's bike last wednesday, and i've been riding it around a little. i'm used to a road bike with the bullhorn handlebars, and decided to be a little bit of a snob about things and get them changed as soon as i had the chance, as well as the rusty pedals. but then i rode it around the block and as it turns out i am pretty much in love with it and refuse to change anything, including the pedals, because they are weighted and so don't spin around when you're at a stoplight. it's the lightest frame i've ever ridden on - my favorite bike up until now has been my schwinn varsity, which is a gold color and has the original seat and handlebar tape, but which is a little big for me and heavy as a tank. my grandma's blue miyata has girl handlebars, but i am way into them. my posture's much better than usual, at least while i'm on my bike. the back brake cable snapped a couple days ago, but i guess that's not as big a deal as i thought it was - i was pretty sure that if i ever used the front brake, ever, i was going to fly right over the handle bars. apparently, though, a lot of people use the front brake and this rarely ever happens. the tension on the front brake was a little overeager, but i fixed it myself during the simpsons, which is pretty much the first time i've ever fixed anything on a bike myself and things have worked out perfectly. i also put on my light brackets (safety is sexy) and my bell with a brontosaurus on it. my favorite thing to do with my new trusty steed is to ride home after dark and go really, really fast past the graveyard right by campus while whistling. that is living.

last friday, i went to a party at a professor's house. i don't know what i expected, but this was not it. i drank two sparks, one secretly, before leaving so that if any of my professors were there i wouldn't be too nervous, and if there were any boys there i wouldn't blush. well, i got there, and my scariest professor was there, but he was wearing flannel and didn't want to talk about school at all. he touched my classmate's hair, and laughed a lot. i did blush quite a bit, though, i'm pretty sure. i went into the bathroom with other girls a lot, used a professor's 1. mouthwash 2. hand lotion, actually opened a beer with my lighter and then cut the heck out of my hand when i tried to be smooth and do it again later, and got overstimulated about a dozen times and had to go outside. the whole thing came to an end (for me) when carolann and i got in separate but parallel shouting matches - an italian was trying to ask carolann out on a date, and the classmate with the hair was trying to tell me that i'm smarter than him, or at least make more valuable comments in class, and if there's one thing i cannot abide it's an intellectual compliment. we're all intelligent. that's why we're in grad school. we don't have to debate the nuances. end of story.

the next day, i saw darjeeling limited again. if it's not clear yet that i just don't really care what other people say, this will prove it: i was and still am crazy about it. i don't want to talk about it here, and may not want to talk about it in person seeing as a small guy with glasses pretty much took up all my talking-about-wes-anderson-films quota for the year at carolann's party last month, but i really loved it. so there.

then i went to dinner with my aunt and uncle and grandparents and got sent home with the following: 1. a bag of fresh produce 2. chocolate-covered cranberries 3. a lollipop 4. cashmere socks. having relatives never gets any less incredible.

the nicest email i've ever gotten

here it is, verbatim:

subject: a sizzling taco, a mushroom cloud: the perpetrators of awful acts, and the atrocities in eye sight

Sugar,

When you're sad I just want you to think of fuzzy, friendly ponies galloping to see you. Behind them are baby goats and pony. They know how cute and nice you are. They are eager to see you. They know about you, because I told them and I'm right behind them.

AUGH.

everything about it is perfect. if you ever want to send me the perfect email, well, now you know.

here are some things girls know about boys that boys don't know they know:
1. all boys jerk off. we know this.
2. all boys look at other girls. the nice way to do this is when we're not around.
3. everything.

i'm really into the british invasion thing right now. specifically, the zombies. specifically, "friends of mine." i've been into this song before; for some reason, "june and duffy" just draw me to this song about twice a year. also, who can deny "time of the season"?

on an academic note: freakout.

i drank tea today

so there's that. here are some other things:

i had an amazing time on the cape on friday. fun with family, best sleep i've had in months, or at least since the last time i was there, probably around four stick-to-your-ribs meals plus one to take home, and carolann didn't even go out so i didn't miss anything. next night, hilarious time. carolann got in a dryer, we hid from the cops in a basement, and then stumbled home stuffing our faces, giggling, and littering.

the next day, i went to see darjeeling lmtd. i am currently livid that i will never, nerver, neverinero get to make out with adrien brody. but the theater i went to is incredible, and getting a student membership there ($35/yr, $3 off every movie, so $4.25 matinees) is the closest i'm gonna get to the laurelhurst. then afterwards, we went to eat pizza and elliot smith was playing. i was already in a pretty nasty mood from all the stumbling the night before, and while the movie was pretty much nothing but enjoyable, i was still mildly irritated about everything and elliot smith just made me feel cuh-razy. so then carolann and i decided to pretend we were still in the movie and we followed some people around. it was pretty hard to be in a populated area because a million people were holding hands with a million other people and it made me FURIOUS. the first smells of fall - ozone, leaves, wool - were in the air, and spring be damned, this is the hardest time of year to be alone. i thought about jake for 24 hours, but feel better, less crazy, and actually a little bit rad today after listening to hot rocks and the village green preservation society for eight hours and crying a little.

today, i met james at a coffeehouse for some gossip and light reading, plus a bagel. after a while james had to go do whatever boys do and carolann came on by. we did a little heavier reading, about equal on the gossip, and then headed for an incredibly successful trip to old navy and target. i got this. it's a locket. i don't know what i'm going to put in there, but it's going to be awesome.

another day at the office

so i decided i hate putting pictures of myself on the internet. don't look down.

on the other hand, i DO like putting pictures of my cat on the internet, even though that was something i said i would never do. in 8th grade, i said i would never smoke and i would wait til i was married. every time i drink tequila i swear i never will again. and now, there are pictures of my cat on the internet. so? he's cute, he's on facebook, i didn't make a website with a purple background with dancing sweaters, and i still only have one of him. everything's fine, nothing's weird, i'm not crazy.

it's warm again. and totally humid. gross. i hate weather. i would prefer to live in the complete absence of weather where i can choose to be wearing a tshirt or a sweater based only on my own feelings and not what's going on outside. basically, i miss san francisco, and this will get a lot worse come winter.

i'm going to be courtney love for halloween. for real this year. for REAL. not because i'm obsessed with courtney - i would actually bet ten dollars that she's doing a not very good job of raising francis bean - but because i would give anything to have been married to kurt cobain.

i'm also looking forward to thanksgiving, because jake is coming. he sent me a package with comic books and asian candy, which arrived yesterday. the candy is pretty much gone, but i don't think i'll be able to read the comic books until he gets here.

that's all that's happening outside of my academic pursuits. inside them, i am entering crisis mode, which strangely coincides with "party and get out of town" mode. i have a presentation today (all set, excited about it, sneezed and there was a five-page writeup about it on my computer, wearing my new dating-a-parisian-sailor-circa-1920 shirt), a presentation next friday, a paper or review due the 26th and an annotated bibliography on the reception history of j.d. salinger's "a perfect day for bananafish" due on halloween. i know that that doesn't sound like too too much for one month, but as professor najarian said last night, "there is a tendency in the profession towards hysteria." my opinion is, without that hyseria, none of us would get anything done.

also, this.

as of 10:30 this morning

still cold, still cranky, still with a lot of reading to do.