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:

oh NO

mother's cookies is going under. mother's cookies is an oakland-based cookie company that makes my personal favorite cookie, the circus animal (which is actually also the personal favorite cookie of my best friend jordan pierce, one of the founding tenets of our friendship being a mutual affection for circus animals and an undying curiosity about what animal shapes the cookies are actually underneath the pink and white frosting; jordan once wrote to mother's to ask, and the framed response hangs on his wall to this day. if you want to know the answer, you can ask him, but let me just tell you it is not what you might think!):


this is terrible. really, really terrible. today i am going to go to the grocery store to buy as many circus animals as i can. this is the only thing i can think to do. i also thought about ordering this t-shirt for myself and jordan, but i did all my christmas shopping today (everyone gets soap, again) and still have to buy my airplane ticket home. so i think i will just eat cookies until i pass out. that is a fitting enough tribute, considering how often i have eaten myself sick on these cookies. for the record, i have always and will continue to enjoy every minute of it, including the lightheaded frosting stomachache that inevitably lingers long after the last sprinkle has been licked off the end of my sticky finger. goodbye, circus animals.

n conclusion, here is a little poem jordan wrote to accompany this sad news (maybe he didn't write it, but knowing jordan, he probably did):
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

some pictures of california; a moving update, and the status of school

i'm reading tom jones. can you tell? i figured now that school's started and i've been back in boston for over a month, it's time to recap my trip to california.

the stables where i used to ride (now all closed up):




a series of pictures of the beach as seen from the great highway (where chris isaak lives), taken from the driver's seat of my rental car (totally not safe, but i was listening to dick dale and feeling pretty happy to be home):









this is a picture of my horse with a bunch of birds on him. it must be hot in california, because normally he would never settle for that.



my mother's cats:



diesel.



willie.



cleo hates having her picture taken.



a sign i saw when my mom and i went to the women impressionists exhibit at the palace of the legion of honor.



my dad's dogs, bella (the princess) and bart (the rugby player).



this is a picture of me with my dad's cat on my lap. you can't see it, but bart is licking my face.

school is pretty good so far. i've only taught one class, but i've taken two - i was a little worried about one because on the first day i looked around and realized everyone in there has different academic interests than i do, but i've started thinking that that's a good thing. i need a little breadth. and my other class is going to be awesome i think. also i'm working a few hours at the desk at the learning center (great coffee), and i got a job at the library, which has one of the most impressive irish collections in boston (which is really saying something). but, this blog has never really been about california or about school, so that's all about that for now.




this is the last picture i took of the view from my old driveway. it looks directly down the street my grandmother grew up on. i'll miss that view, the blue walls of my room and the breeze that came directly in my window, but now i live in an apartment where i hope both zeppelin and i will be happier. more on that later.

i went to the cape recently, where my high school friends martin and jon came for their annual weekend vacation. we played king of the raft and mini golf and they got along very long with howard. my family is doing very well.

i won't be going on the boat cruise this year. i'm going to a party and then to see jamie t instead.

i've become a completely callous blogger, i didn't even read this over or spellcheck it even though those things are so easy

well! it has been a while. pretty much the entire summer. last thing you knew, i was discovering this year's new animals; now, here we are, ordering baseball shirts and an electric kettle off of amazon in preparation for another year at school.

and now, an old favorite!!! lists!!!
what happened early on this summer:
the aquarium (jellyfish exhibit, cute penguins, overall too many children and the octopus' terrible beauty gave me the creeps)
walden pond (i'm not that into thoreau, so it was mostly about swimming)
the cape (again, swimming, but also we took james to see some points of interest, including several lighthouses. also i sort of reconnected with my cousin willie but never bothered to explain to him that that was what was happening. we went to the drivein. no big deal.)
carleton's bbqs
got a summer gym membership (saw several colleagues and the head of the english department in the shower, ran into many large russian women bellowing to each other over the tops of the shower stalls [also could have been brazilian - found out this summer portuguese sounds a lot like russian], developed a taste for weightlifting)
taught esl at pine manor, which my grandmother tells me used to be a finishing school (i am now a practiced classroom disciplinarian, although i'm told that freshmen at bc don't tend to come twenty minutes late to a fifty minute class and justify their tardiness by explaining that they are "on time in european time")

later in the summer:
spent a night at boy scout camp (awesome)
helped cook a large dinner for boy scouts (delicious)
cape, again (right now)
more bbqs, also some in-home cocktail hours
went home to san francisco (anxious, but then ultimately pretty great - drove a rental car which could call people using bluetooth technology, couldn't find the microphone so drove all over the city shouting at the dash, rode my horse frequently, played with cats and dogs, went to two museums [deyoung for the chihuly, palace of the legion of honor for women impressionists - more on that later if i feel like it], watched most of the olympics, saw many friends, ate burritos and drank beer in dolores park, hung out with my mother and ate her cooking)
dark knight (2x)
swan boats
butterfly preservation

i know there's more but the prospect of school is looming over me. to be completely honest, i started this post to keep myself awake and occupied until after midnight so i could check a thing on the internet. now it looks like it won't happen until tomorrow morning so i would like to go to bed.

"my head just exploded"

that was the subject line in an email from my medieval romances professor. he sent me this.

new animals!!!

pretty excited about this. don't bother reading the comments though. they're mostly about god, or self-education via the internet. my favorites are #8 - i've been pretty obsessed with jellyfish lately, partially because of the under the sea glass animals exhibit i saw at the harvard museum of natural history and partially because of the jellyfish exhibit i saw at the aquarium, also it would suck to die from a jellyfish sting but it would be pretty cool if by dying that way you discovered a new species; #2 - new dinosaur; and #1 - "electrolux."

thankfully there are more black people here - not many, but definitely more

if i were still in oregon i would have gone to corvallis to see this. absolutely.

existential dilemma

a white person wrote an article about obama's potential effect on the future of hip-hop fashion. as a white person interested in the future of hip-hop fashion but aware enough not to practice it, i'm not sure how i feel about this yet.

if you think i'm sorry you've got another thing coming

maybe a little sorry. but only to sarah and matt. also, matt, sorry for not calling you back. i was in finals. i will call you. soon. i've been very bad on the phone lately.

anyway, it's been over a month, and i'm going to start blogging again. eventually. until then:
summer hit of 2006
promiscuous girl
summer hit of 2007
give it to me
failed summer hit of 2007
crazy in love
summer hit of every single summer ever
ride wit me

things to come:
more summer hits
2008 summer hit predictions
information i have gathered from the learning center's administrative assistant based on his side of the personal phone calls he holds for approximately three hours out of every six-hour day

oh go screw

thank you, carleton. thank you so much for this. there's an entire saturday morning gone. i'll never get that back.

i think this might be the only thought i have for today

at this point in her life - agewise, semesterwise - my mother was pregnant with me.

maybe i have just had too little sleep or too much coffee, but i feel like right now i understand something about how terrifying that must have been that i didn't understand before.

"i swear to PANTS that is what they are called"

brian is right. they ARE called megafauna. here are some more examples:


i forget what this is. a relative of the horse, or the hippo? both?


this is definitely an armadillo. an enormous, enormous armadillo.

nature is both terrifying and fascinating.

sorry some things are just more important

well, today was a great day and i was in an incredible mood for a decently large fraction of it. i walked my bike down to bicycle bill's - i would hyperlink it, but you would end up with this poorly designed new york cruiser's web page, which has a color scheme that would give a color blind man a headache. anyway, they were really nice to me. they complimented my grandmother's bike and let me watch bike race footage with them for a little bit, and then i read all their thank-you notes, many of which were from children. well, one. you know, the kind of card where a kid draws something on the front while you talk to them about why there is a card and who it will go to, and then you just write the appropriate sentiment on the inside. i love those cards. i have a stockpile of them.

anyway, one of the cards was from the "troll ladies" of brighton, allston or brookline, i can't remember which one. they are a couple of ladies who have an old station wagon with all these trolls glued to the roof. i've seen it. it's pretty memorable. as soon as i saw who the card was signed by, i knew what they were talking about. i tried looking it up on the internet, though, and all i found was this, which is also interesting. maybe i will hit that up as a detour to mexico, which is where i always go when i feel fed up, bummed out or like doing anything but my homework, which is occasionally.

in conclusion, it was a great trip to the bike shop. there were a bunch of the kind of moments where the sun is shining and maybe you meet a dog who is proud of the big stick he's carrying or there's a crocus or the sun is shining on the train tracks next to the freeway and the light is the way it is in the afternoon (perfect) and you are just right. also i took this picture.

it's what my aunt would call a "virgin on the half shell." (<-- shock quotes, that's what those are called)

last saturday was also pretty amazing. i:
walked to harvard square
went to a bookstore where i
- got a book on math in the rainforest for my mother
- purchased my fourth and hopefully last copy of "old possum's book of practical cats" [zeppelin's favorite poem is "growltiger's last stand" (i picked that website for what a great example it is of how the internet is insane)]
had tea at a tea shop(pe?)
went to the harvard museum of natural history which was so incredible i devote a paragraph to it later
ate pizza
bought one record
looked at comic books
walked home
went to a party in new hampshire, where i am pretty sure i was adequately charming and had a great time

now about the museum. first, the glass. the museum has a collection of handcrafted glass flowers - when i first heard that, i was expecting a handful of colorful handblown glass pieces in the entryway, something like:

which, i admit, is pretty incredible. instead, i found a room full of glass cases exhibiting THE most lifelike glass anything i've ever seen. it was incredible. so incredible i didn't take any pictures, which is a real shame because i can't think of a way to describe it. the blaschkas, the father and son team who made the flowers, did so at the request of a biology teacher who found drawings too two-dimensional and pressed live specimens too listless. the blaschkas also made a smaller series of undersea life - jellyfish, sea slugs, anemones - because biologists had a hard time with actual specimens losing their color and puddling at the bottoms of their jars. it was all pretty amazing. i did take this picture:

IT IS A SLOTH. maybe you can't tell how huge it is, but it's huge. the size of a small dinosaur. terrifying. the actual dinosaur skeletons were awesome, except for the aquatic one which made me never, ever want to go swimming again.

AUGH I JUST GOT A NEW RECORD PLAYER EVERYTHING IS ON HOLD

update: allergies

that is something that is not as cool about spring. maybe i will get it together to get prescription drugs for it this year instead of mistaking it for actual sadness like i have the past two or three years in a row.

also, last night lizzy prank called me using a strategy i invented. nice try, lizzy. here is how it goes:
two people pull out their phones
each picks someone they want to prank call (usually it is a boy they have kissed and would maybe like to kiss again although there is pretty much no chance that this will happen. maybe the boy has a new girlfriend, or is mean. this time, though, it was me. i've never kissed lizzy, i don't have a new girlfriend and i am not mean.)
they give the phone number to the other person, who dials it on their own phone
then you make it up as you go along, but for maximum confusion it helps to pretend you are someone this person has hooked up with and then get furious/ask to meet in person when they don't know who you are/pretend to know who you are, or just leave a long message about how you have feelings/pity/regret/an std as a result of your encounter

here are the mistakes lizzy made:
415 area code (obviously san francisco, an area code with which i am extremely familiar - it helps to find someone with an out of state/foreign/obscure area code)
call came at 3 am my time, 12 west coast time - clearly on different coasts, clearly an impossible match
i pretty much never hook up with random people, so the idea of someone i don't remember having spent the night at my house last weekend is completely spurious
the person had a specific date (last weekend) - it is important to be as vague as possible. it's actually best if you don't give a name, which to his credit this person did not.
i could hear her laughing in the background (she has a very distinctive laugh)
i taught her this

so, in conclusion, a for effort, lizzy, but like c+ for execution. props to your friend for making the call. there are not many friends who are adventurous enough to make such a call. i have a few, lizzy is one. so a for that also.

fox: beware of lies

here is what spring is like so far:
blue coat
sunglasses (yesssss)
listening to "sunday morning" over and over again even though it's saturday
if i have a shopping bag, i am swinging it
whistling

here is a picture of the flowers that are growing outside my apartment:

they close up in the shade. i don't know what they are, but i called my grandparents and they said to email them a picture and maybe they will know. that's why i took that picture. my grandmother also told me that spring in boston will "light up my heart." i think i know what she's talking about already. i'm finding myself impervious to music with feelings, or at least to the mildly dramatic negative feelings this music normally fosters, and breaking out in whistling in the middle of the grocery store. not that i was unhappy in the winter. i'm just happy bordering on sort of fuzzily ecstatic, grinning for no reason kind of happy starting first thing in the morning and lasting approximately until sunset these days.

today i went to the grocery store to get supplies for my easter dinner assignment (i was assigned an appetizer. i am making baked brie because it is like the one appetizer i know how to make). on the way, i passed by super 88. of course i went in, ostensibly to get myself a shoot of bamboo and check out the tea selection. these are the reasons i always cite to myself when entering an asian market. then i inevitably decide i don't want to carry around a shoot of bamboo and end up in the candy aisle. here is what i got today, despite pledging to spend as little money as possible (i am broke but currently refusing to admit it, because it is spring i think):
peony white tea (to maintain internal consistency [in terms of reasoning, not in terms of any actual physical consistency])
goya honey, complete with small piece of honeycomb (is this edible?)
two chocolate yanyans
two strawberry yanyans
kasugai pineapple gummy
kasugai apple gummy

the gummys were a little bit on the pricy side at $2.39 each, but each one (there were probably about eight flavors, including mango, litchi and both red and green grape) had a short description on the front. these descriptions are maybe the most effective marketing strategy i've ever seen. i chose mine based on which had the best metaphors.

Pineapple Gummy: The gorgeous taste of fully ripened pineapple, imposing as a southern island king crowned in glory, is yours to enjoy in every soft and juicy Kasugai Pineapple Gummy.

Apple Gummy: Every drop of fresh apple juice, carefully pressed from the reddest apples, shining in colors of the cheeks of a snow-country child, is yours to enjoy in each soft and juicy Kasugai Apple Gummy.

of COURSE i want to eat those!!! a lot of the descriptions were similarly enticing and talked about how much the eater would enjoy the gummys, but these metaphors just blew me away. the green grape one said something about giving the eater "the feelings of a lady," which i was curious about, but i generally don't like grape-flavored candy. both the pineapple and the apple are extremely delicious, maybe the best gummys i've ever had. they are individually wrapped, just the right size for a gummy, maybe the size of two gummi bears, and they come in a heart shape. they are the perfect gummy.

the yanyans, as always, strike me as a small stroke of genius. a couple years ago they started putting a few words about animals on each of the sesame sticks. here are the ones i found:

chocolate
horse: gallop away
whale: biggesy [sic] mammal
duck: go for a swim (x2)
frog: amphibian
mouse: do not be timid
chicken: kokekokko
goat: you are lucky today
golden egg (picture of an egg, with stars)
panda: go for more
squirrel: your best friend
beetle: lucky colour: brown
[after this i ran out of chocolate dip, but here are the slogans on the sesame sticks i didn't eat, which are worth nothing without the dip, fyi)
another beetle
owl: active at night
rhinoceros: think big

strawberry
stag beetle: love it (x2)
elephant: jumbo
cat: say meow
cow: muuuuu
zebra: herbivore
seal: loves to su(n? i broke this one on accident. actually i just looked yanyans up on wikipedia to make the hyperlink above and it turns out it is "loves to sun tan.")
nothing else new

the wikipedia page has a full list of all the sayings, but i have to say i have eaten my fair share of yanyans and have never come across either "sheep" or "golden log." i think mole is my favorite though. it rhymes. i hope i get that one.

what really cracks me up is the variety of things the sesame sticks communicate about different animals. some are facts: "biggesy [sic] mammal," "herbivore," "amphibian." i guess "kokekokko" and "muuuuu" would also fall into that category. also in that category are descriptions of what the animals like to do - "suntan," "gallop away," "go for a swim," as well as locations or times in/at which the animals can be found - "in a hole," "only at night." some of them, however - i think maybe my favorites - are direct addresses to the eater, occasionally even imperatives. some of these actually have something to do with the animal, or at least fabled stereotypes about the animal - "beware of lies," "eat more carrots." but some of them seem to have no connection at all: "goat: you are lucky today," "panda: go for more." as for the mouse, it's unclear whether the mouse or the eater should "not be timid." but the stag beetle - why exactly should i "love it"? why is the squirrel my "best friend"? and whose lucky colors are "brown" or "yellow," mine? the beetle's? the chick's? and why the differentiation between "stag beetle" and just plain "beetle"? the "golden egg" and nefarious "golden log" are just a complete mystery to me. curious. and hilarious. either way, delicious.

then i went to the grocery store. that was what it was.

lately i have been meeting a lot of dogs on the street.

i don't know what this dog's name is, but today i met a four month old boston terrier named "thor." he licked me all over my face. i also met two fat pugs and a small terrier. i like spring.

my room is a kleenex graveyard

spring break
hours in the car: under five, including incredible trip to provincetown
movies watched: delicatessen, sleepaway camp, 28 weeks later, the virgin suicides, cq + about eight episodes of mscl
pizzas consumed: 4, one of them free
cups of coffee: about 8 or 9
cups of tea: dozens
books read: 0
meaningful conversations had: dozens
not meaningful conversations had: hundreds
sunsets witnessed: three to four
seashells collected: in the 30's, + three bonus seagull chases
for a more detailed account of spring break not in list form, see carolann's version

then i got sick. it went ok. i'm pretty much better now. here are the stats on that:
chapped lips
chapped nose (gross)
diminishing sore throat
little to no body aches (anymore)
no headache
trash can full of kleenexes (name brand, but still gross)
mildly sexy deep getting-over-cold voice, accompanied by not-so-sexy lingering congestion

i did get to talk to my dad. this happens more frequently than me getting sick, but as soon as i start getting sick it is GUARANTEED to happen. sometimes i think my dad thinks i am sick all the time. i guess maybe he does, because he is always telling me to drink lots of fluids and take vitamin c, even when i'm not sick. good lookin out, is what i call that. my dad is currently in maui, taking a month off of work to get in some windsurfing time by himself. i think this is so, so cool. he had accrued a bunch of vacation time, so he decided to go to MAUI to WINDSURF. it's something he likes to do and doesn't get to do often, so he's just doing it. how cool is that?! SO cool. maybe he will start a blog while he's there. i should tell him i think that's a good idea.

today was a strange day. some weird things happened. mostly weird, though, was that i was in kind of a crap, prickly mood. this is strange because i have been in a good, if mildly crazy when hungry, mood for maybe a month straight. i just couldn't shake it. it was a little bit of a rollercoaster.
down: kicking myself for not having already written a paper that is due tomorrow
up: getting an a- on a paper i had already written
down: lamenting not being able to take my assignment for tomorrow seriously because my professor is an extremely friendly and casual guy who trades animal videos on youtube with me. also he is canadian.
up: leigh showing me this. personal favorite: feb 21st. if our ears were in our armpits, we WOULD have to raise our arms in the air to hear other people!
down: forgetting to eat very much and resulting craziness
up: ladies at the dean's being ecstatic that i feel better
down: i don't know, anxiety
up/down: reconnecting with old friends/by playing too much scrabulous
i think i finally kicked it by deciding to walk home. it was a pretty beautiful day, and i missed most of it because i was in class/at the library/in front of a computer at the dean's so i figured i could spare the time to look around a little. there were ducks swimming in the pond and i saw this dog:

then i stopped at cvs for something necessary and splurged on new lip balm (it turns out "subtle shine" means "we just added sparkles to the formula we use for the dudes' version"), after which i treated myself to ice cream. it wasn't quite THAT nice a day, but as it turns out, everyone in brighton center likes a girl with an ice cream cone. we'll see though - i just used up my last of the good green tea (the kind with a little lemongrass and the tag that's supposed to say something inspiring but which, when read aloud, just sounds ridiculous), which may or may not constitute a crisis during which the crap/prickle creeps right back.

some pretty important follow-ups

surfing duck
surfing dog
surfing cat

it's pretty clear what my interests are right now. i can't wait for summer.

this blog has been seriously lacking in animal videos recently

bunsen is my favorite, definitely. you can tell he knows what he's doing. this is not at all what my spring break was about, btdub. more on that later.

feelings are weird

i consider myself, and have been told by professionals that i am, a pretty keen observer of what goes on in my own head. what i've come to learn, though, is that just because you are aware of something doesn't mean you get to control it. an issue i struggle with pretty consistently is how much people should be blamed for their feelings, or beliefs based on those feelings. if i feel selfish when someone borrows something of mine and it looks better on them, is that something i can be blamed for? is it a wrong thing? what if i feel happy when something bad happens to someone i don't particularly care for? i'm pretty sure that is a wrong thing. do feelings like these make me morally culpable in some way, or is it just the unfair actions that might result from these beliefs that would get me in trouble? i guess the answer probably depends on whether or not you believe in god, but i genuinely believe that people can't really be blamed for things that are out of their control and i think feelings are probably one of those things. you just can't help them! they happen! what about beliefs, though? are those something you can help? let's say someone believes a racist thing, and you spend some time trying to explain to that person why the racist thing is wrong. he or she is not convinced. do you get mad? do you spend more time arguing? do you call them a name? what happens? for the record, these are all hypothetical situations. everything i own looks best on me, there is no one in the world that i don't like, and i'm pretty sure none of my friends believes a racist thing.

this all came from a tiny thing that happened today. i mean, it's on the back burner pretty constantly, because let's face it, everyone is confronted with feelings almost all the time, but the reason i felt like blogging about it is not that big a deal. well, maybe it is. it depends on how much you like birds. i guess i like birds a lot, so maybe it is a big deal.

i was in a pretty killer mood this morning, despite the looming late night paper writing sesh. i'm halfway done and the delicate parts are already written, but it's still haunting me a little. however, today is an incredible day. look at the brighton forecast, if you want to. it's beautiful and sunny and i walked to school in a sweatshirt. i could have done it in a tshirt if i really wanted to (i didn't, i probably would have gotten a sunburn). i ran into two friends, one of whom was wearing this incredible green jacket that matched the leash of the dog that she was walking, whom she let me pet extensively. i looked at some budding plants. i whistled a little. all in all, everything was going my way. then when i got closer to school, i went down the walk with the really tall trees that i always walk down and lying in the snow next to one of these trees was a fallen birds' nest. i should tell you i have grown pretty attached to these nests - there are a couple of them way up in the tops of these trees, and sometimes when i'm at school during a storm i'll walk out there to see them get tossed around up there. i don't think there are actually any birds in there right now - there's really no camouflage or coverage at all since the leaves fell - but i like to think of them sitting in there all warm and brave. so seeing that this nest had fallen on maybe the nicest day this month was a little disheartening. there weren't any birds in there, fortunately, but what if they came back and looked for it? i picked it up from the snow and put it on the bench. i doubt birds will want to live on a bench, but it's better than the ground. the point is, this happened and now i'm not completely jazzed on the day anymore, which seems kind of silly because no birds were hurt and it is still completely beautiful outside.

the unpredictability of everyday life is unbearable for noelle.

that was a sentence in one of the papers i read during tutoring today. i thought it sounded profound, maybe a little literary. it was a paper about a schizophrenic girl with post traumatic stress syndrome she's been counseling. the girl grew up with an alcoholic, sexually abusive father and a mother who got stoned on valium to pretend it wasn't happening. sometimes i can't believe the things people do. i mean, i guess i can believe that her parents did that. i've seen enough law and order to believe that. what i can't believe is that this girl talks to her every day without completely losing it. she did admit to some "secondary traumatization," but implied that it was nothing compared to what noelle experiences.

so maybe this is a romantic idea i have because i am from california, but snow is pretty magical. grownups act completely differently when it snows. sure, when they're inside they complain - wacky traffic patterns, the inevitable slush, one million tiny inconveniences - but when they're outside, they talk to people they probably wouldn't otherwise, fall and laugh about it and catch snowflakes on their tongues.

where my snacks at

some reasons why i have been updating irregularly and exclusively in list form:
numerous online scrab games
hungry a lot, therefore eating pretty often
a pile of one million books
zeppelin has been especially cute lately
spring (just a little bit and just these last couple of days and i technically know that it won't last the week or probably even the day but every time i go outside everything begins to rule almost immediately and today the bushes were full of birds and i saw the fattest sparrow i've ever seen)
more important things to write than my blog
i love lists

in conclusion, everything is okay. i mean, things have got to be okay if i have a bunch of other stuff to do besides blog, right?

also i'm reinvigorating an earlier practice. yesterday i saved an ant. it took forever.

things i did at the dean's office today

handed out valentines to the delight of all the ladies and the one male dean (fun)
stuffed envelopes (not fun)
copied a bunch of things (pretty fun)
snuck into the office supply closet to smell the smell of office supplies (really fun)
ran some of the dean's errands in the sun (awesome)
sent a bunch of ecards (a great invention for me because i never get it together to mail anything in time)
ate a lollipop in student services (delicious)
ate a couple cookies (pretty great)
made coffee (kind of fun although it tasted terrible)
complimented all the ladies on the roses they received (felt good)
did not receive any roses (felt great because i am terrible at caring for plants even ones that go in a vase, also i don't believe in valentines)
started feeling like myself again after a couple days of being mildly cantankerous (priceless)

i'm not sure if formal events turn out this way for everyone or just for me

last night was the winter ball and i have this haunting feeling that i made some bad impressions, but when i look over everything i did i can't think of anything too out of control. except for one thing that i said but i'm pretty sure she didn't hear me. here are the things i think about when i think about what happened at the winter ball:
it began pretty auspiciously. i tripped over my own cowboy boots and skinned both knees. they bled. a lot. everyone asked me if i wanted a band-aid. i didn't. i cleaned up my knee in the bathroom while carolann curled her hair with the provided curling iron.
somehow i got two extra drink tickets. i put them in my dress and handed them out later. i actually didn't drink anything at the winter ball. not even water.
i guess i danced some. i'm pretty sure i did more talking than dancing. probably more like yelling, actually. the music was pretty loud and not that awesome. but there are some pictures of me dancing, so there's that. a lot of them are pretty terrible. i was way into my dress when i put it on but i untagged myself from about eight pictures when i went on fbook today.
i did remove a balloon someone had tied to someone else by cutting the string with my teeth. was that uncouth?
around eleven i wanted to go home and even went as far as to put on my coat. i was bored and pretty tired. this is when things picked up. i made several new friends, a few offensive comments, and slow-danced with carolann. apparently we slow danced with a lot of encouragement in the middle of a large circle of people. i think carolann remembers this wrong. she says we were the life of the party and that everyone loved us; i'm pretty sure that either i was relatively quiet the entire time and no one noticed me except for the fact that i was a little bloody, or we were the center of attention in kind of a bad, ridiculous way.
then we went to a bar where there were some nachos and they were playing chris isaak. i ate a bunch of james king's fries but he wouldn't be mad about that, his impression of me was set a pretty long time ago. also i'll buy him pizza to make up for it. i guess we did make a bad impression on the waitress there because she talked some smack to us and we didn't really know why, but then we spent ten minutes outside talking about taking her and some asian dudes were pretty impressed and blasted jackson five for us to dance to in the street. so that was pretty much the night. nothing seems too embarrassing or out of control, but the human memory is a fickle thing. only fbook will tell.

oh and this one obviously

man i remember watching this and thinking "if someone in charge knew i was watching this i would be in big trouble." so of course i am going to put on a party dress and ask to dance to it.

is it a fake idea to think that i can learn to do this in cowboy boots by saturday AND get all my homework done?

i dip you dip we dip

on my way home today, i saw a prius i have seen several times, always near the intersection of comm ave and chestnut hill. boston's not like san francisco, with eight priuses at every stoplight, but i probably still wouldn't know this prius from the one other prius in town except for the woman driving. she's got big owl-eye glasses, crazy old lady hair, and she always, but always, has the hem of her coat caught in the door. not just a little hem, either. a lot of hem. she must have ruined about eight coats driving around like that with all the salt and dirt on the road. you would think, after ruining about eight coats, she would start pulling up the hem of her coat before closing the door, or maybe check it after she had gone a couple blocks. maybe this is something she secretly likes about herself, that she is too absent-minded to check that she doesn't have the hem of her coat caught in the door. i can see indulging in the belief that one is too absent-minded for something like that. then again, my mom has broken dozens of coffee cups leaving them on top of the car and then pulling out of the driveway.

also on my way home i went to bagel rising. i thought for a minute about giving up bagels for lent, but then i realized a. i'm not actually that catholic b. that would make my life impossible. chocolate is still on the radar though. i can't actually remember the last time i had any - can you give something like that up for lent? does it even count? anyway, the guys there were talking about this video. i told them about this one. they think i am really awesome.

here are the songs i am going to request at the winter ball:
gettin jiggy wit it
give it to me
izzo
pony
candy rain
and probably about a million more i'm not even excited about yet.

AUGH I FORGOT ABOUT PUPPYBOWL

HOW COULD I FORGET ABOUT PUPPYBOWL

i just spent the superbowl READING when i could have been watching this i am so upset with myself

nothing bad is happening. should i be worried?

well obviously my interest in self-presentation has gone absolutely nowhere except a bunch of conversations at a party i went to on friday. i think we all knew it would wane after last week's blog entry. that is just the way of these things. i guess there's a chance the arrival of "get rich or die tryin" through interlibrary loan will rekindle it. just a chance though.

the party was great. i cleared up some conflicting pieces of gossip that had been nagging at me, drank out of one red cup and one blue one, and yelled some without actually making any bad impressions. at least, i don't think i did.

that night i slept at carolann's. we watched flight of the conchords, ate pub mix and talked about boys some. when we woke up, we watched flight of the conchords for three hours and then got pizza for breakfast. i haven't laughed that hard in weeks. maybe ever. i know it sounds like we didn't do very much but when every tiny thing that you see or do causes an uproar it feels like you have crammed a whole week of fun into a morning. well, afternoon. it was two by the time we had pizza.

saturday night, james took us all out to dinner with some money his grandfather had given him to do something all together because we were nice to him while he was in the hospital. really thoughtful, right? especially thoughtful was the fact that james actually came up with something for us to do all together instead of just buying us some pizza and pocketing the rest. that is what i probably would have done. that or bought everyone shoes. here is what we did:
got picked up by marissa
informed her that james' grandfather wasn't actually here, just his check
got on the t
made fun of people on the t
got off at government center
took pictures of ourselves with various statues







found a restaurant that looked small and good and smelled incredible (cibo)
ordered wine we knew very little about
pretended it matched the food perfectly, although i for one would never have known
appreciated the waiter for talking to us like we were adults
realized it was a date restaurant
didn't care about this
ordered appetizers AND entrees and ate ourselves ill
went to mike's pastry and ordered two of every kind of cannoli
walked around looking for a park james likes
found a little alley full of pictures of saints and flashing things, but it was locked
got upset about that a little bit
found the park - christopher columbus park, i think, right on the water with a big archway of blue lights
decided that the arch made us feel like romeo and juliet a little bit, or at least like claire danes and leo
ate the cannolis
got powdered sugar up our noses (by accident)
ran around a little on a sugar high
walked back to the t
got driven home by marissa from the t stop

all in all, an incredible caturday.

now it's tuesday and i'm in that mode where i just live entirely in my own head and sometimes have a hard time figuring out what is real and what isn't, or at least what's important and what isn't. here is a breakdown i came up with last night:
school = important
crafts = not as important
pizza = awesome

the nutritional value of the ruling burger

lately (within the last 24 hours) i have been obsessed with the idea of self-presentation. maybe because i am so, so bad at it. i'm not really sure where this is going, but i can tell you it will involve the following:
roland barthes' essay on wrestling
the ultimate warrior
50 cent

first of all, that essay is my favorite of all the "mythologies," and i have never even been into wrestling. well, ultimate fighting for a short period of time during which i was mildly acquainted with tim mcginty, alias "the irish warrior." he actually wanted to be called "the international lover," but that wasn't aggressive enough, so they gave him "the irish warrior." he was a great dancer. i have no idea what kind of lover he was, for the record. i was like sixteen and into skinny nerds, and the dude had no neck. i also have no idea what kind of fighter he was.

the ultimate warrior. how to discuss this. wwf grandstander in the 80's/early 90's, face painted like a neon hawk, either insane or a brilliant pr craftsman. in 1993 legally changed his name to "warrior." later began a wrestling college from which no one graduated. avid follower of hulk hogan's career, believes in "what hogan's doing" (whatever that is) but believes he can take it further. amateur metaphysical poet. professional motivational speaker and MANIAC.



50 cent. i'm currently developing some theories about the appeal of "get rich or die tryin" (the album, not the film, although the film is also awesome). they're related to stockholm syndrome and the desire of an abuse victim to stay with the abuser. i think the keys might be the intro - 50 cent piece falls on the floor, gun gets loaded - and p.i.m.p., the one with steel drums in which he addresses his hos.



as for the movie, this is what quest library catalogue has to say about it:
"A rap superhero is encased in muscular flesh like armor, his face is an impassive mask, he reaches out to destroy his enemies with his unique talent."
yeah, i ordered it on interlibrary loan. i also ordered princess bride. we have it on vhs here, but i already know i probably won't feel like watching it in the living room so i lied and said i needed the commentary that's on the dvd. no one's called me on it yet.

also, i found the real sugar at the dean's office.

sometimes i wish i had an enormous dog, the biggest you can imagine, pachyderm-sized

i guess maybe not pachyderm-sized, because how much would a dog that size eat, really.

so i found out tonight that i am stretched a little thinner than i thought. gail sent me a text message around six informing me that her coworker had not been fired. a little after seven, i got home to an empty apartment and picked up the mail from inside the door. there was some junk, and a bank statement for gail that had the words "behind you" written next to her name. i looked at it for a couple seconds and then just FLIPPED OUT. i walked around the apartment and tracked mud allll over the floor, called gail who was at work and so didn't pick up, and then called my mom who told me to go to the cops. i did, and when i got there one of them gave me a hug because i was shaking so hard. no matter what rappers say, the brighton police are some pretty nice guys. they told me that gail would have to bring the letter back in since she filed the initial report. so i walked over to the hospital (crying and calling almost everyone i know, at least everyone with a car or who is taller than me except for james because he is still technically kind of an invalid), where an operator pulled gail off the short-staffed floor. gail thanked me for caring enough to completely SPAZ OUT, but also told me that that is just something the post office writes on our mail sometimes and brian has been getting letters that say that since before we moved in.

what is my problem. maybe it just gets dark too early. please don't tell my grandparents about this. they will move in with me. as fun as that would be for a couple of days, i would still like to try taking care of myself for a while.

i guess i can never believe in my horoscope again. oh well.

happy birthday, alan alda

so things seem to be falling apart a little bit.
gail: death threat
carolann: bronchopneumonia, 1/4 life crisis, a heck of a lot of poetry
marissa: hiding under the covers
james: staph infection
i'm scared to talk to friends in other places because who KNOWS what is going on. my horoscope tells me, though, that today is a day when i will see the good side of people, but encounter complications if i spill to them. seeing as i am currently pretty low on existential crises (probably because arcade fire has gone completely unrepresented in my recent listening repertoire), i think this means that now is a good time to help everyone else deal with their problems. i am pretty good at that.

visiting is cool especially when you get tea and a nice little chat

everyone is blogging these days. nell. carolann. basically, people whose inner monologues i never would have expected other people to have access to. besides myself, obviously. and not that i think a blog is an accurate reflection of a person's inner monologue. mine is certainly at least slightly more complicated than the consistently awesome narrative embodied by "boston n00b" would imply. but, it's exciting. that is what i am trying to say. i like visiting my friends online because i really suck on the phone and don't go out that much in the winter. i also like visiting books in the library, visiting other people's pets, and, in the warmer months, visiting the ducks at the pond. i have to bring my own tea to most of these activities, but if you have seen how rad my friends' pets are, you would know that it is worth it.

in case you have a use for it

Pet´ti`fog`ging
a. 1. Paltry; quibbling; mean.
n. 1. Pettifoggery.

achewood is getting really incredible

i'ma fuck around and barf!

aaron platt-ross:
tiniest kid in our class, hands down.
could not say a not ridiculous thing.
laughed like a donkey laughs at a clown.
MARRIED.

jesse escobedo:
nature shirts with wolves on them. tye-dyed.
sat across from me in ap calc and sneezed into the crook of his elbow. by the end of the day, it was all crusty.
MARRIED.

here is the best part.
jamie mcdonald:
once found out a girl liked him and covered her entire car in glue. it wasn't me. i didn't even drive in high school.
refused to eat fruits or vegetables. ate eggo waffles with fake strawberry syrup for breakfast every morning. one morning, he refused it. his mother looked at the label: they had switched to strawberry concentrate from real strawberries.
dated a girl who wanted m&m's from the vending machine but spent fifteen minutes in front of it looking for the "m" button.
i can't think of any more, but i know this guy and can testify to how completely ridiculous he is.
MARRIED.

i couldn't make this shit up! clearly pizza is the ONLY remedy.

update!!!

james king is OUT of the hospital! i guess that means i won't get to bring him pizza anytime soon, but still!!!

also, i edited my last post, finally, so if you read it already maybe read it again because maybe it's slightly better now. it is still just a blog though so don't expect anything fantastic. ever.

sorry i badmouthed you, poetry, you're cooler than that (not you, amateur contemporary poetry, you still suck)

when i worked at tin house i really started hating poetry. probably because we had to wade through about one million attempts to describe a grandparent's funeral or how it feels to lose your virginity. i hated all of those poems. i found some incredible stories though. some really great ones about unicorns. unfortunately, my name did not make it to the masthead until after i left.

it has been pretty cold lately. cold enough that i've started complaining about it, although only a little and only in private. i've really been trying to be on my best behavior. it's pretty beautiful today though, so i took a walk around a little lake my grandma knows about from when she was little. i spent some time in the sunshine and checked - one more time - to make sure the ducks had migrated. i have enough things to worry about. i don't need to worry about ducks getting cold.







for the record, i know i'm not any kind of photographer. i mean, these pictures were taken from my phone. when i take pictures with my phone, it's usually because something is so awesome that i can't bear not to take a picture of it. today was like that. i've never seen a body of water completely iced over before. i was pretty excited. just ask the lady who was walking her schnauzer around.

i gave up the search for omens - carolann and marissa are going to the ball, so so am i. that's it. it's decided, and if i back out again i think marissa will slay me.

yesterday we visited james in the hospital. we made a bunch of jokes about heath ledger because it is impossible to acknowledge that your big strong friend is in a hospital gown with needles in his arm. i cried a little bit but covered it up by hugging him and then wiping my eyes in his hair.



then when we got in the elevator we felt pretty bad for all those jokes. it's my contention that his od - which i want to believe was accidental (also he had pneumonia i think) - was a direct result of his attempt to really "become" the joker for the new batman movie. he spent a month alone in a hotel room going insane on purpose. i know he was recently divorced and possibly gay, but i think that kind of thing could really break someone and probably had a much more significant effect on his drug use than all of my friends that i have talked to about this think. i'm not sure if i'm going to be able to see the movie believing that it killed someone by torturing him slowly. i do think, though, that it's going to take on some crazy significance like the whole brandon lee/the crow phenomenon. goths, welcome to the comic book world. read batman: arkham asylum. you'll love it.

also, lizzy, i'm pretty sure samuel johnson never said "choose life."

i love sugar but nutrasweet sucks

everyone in the dean's office is on a perpetual diet and it is all we have. my coffee tastes HORRIBLE because i didn't anticipate how much i would hate nutrasweet and i put in as much of it as i usually do sugar and now i think my teeth are going to fall out of my head.

i just spent half an hour in an office down the hall discussing prom/reunion/formal event horror stories. here are a few:
• girl loses 25 pounds, has fight with boyfriend and refuses to wear expensive dress mother bought or even think about attending prom. has to be put on xanax.
• husband and wife go to husband's 25 year high school reunion. husband leaves reunion with high school sweetheart (not wife).
• divorced woman attends 25 year high school reunion. husband is there with new, younger girlfriend. divorced woman's rejected prom date is handsomest man at reunion. he doesn't recognize her.
• all girls' friends vow to go prom stag, together (is this possible? what does "stag" really mean?). the next week they all have dates. girl asks boy with locker next to hers. they become friends between agreeing to go to prom together and the evening of prom itself. he tries to kiss her during slow song. she freaks out, runs away, begins dating best friend's prom date.
guess which one is mine. i've been trying to interpret these stories in a way that will yield some sort of omen directing me to either go or not go to the grad students' winter ball in february. at first i was excited, but that was about four or five months ago and i'll get excited about anything if i don't have to do it right away. then i dreaded it a little bit but had promised marissa i would go and already gotten gail to say she would do my hair and makeup and maybe marissa's and carolann's too. then marissa found out i was dreading it and released me from my promise, and i was relieved. then two separate people that i would expect to hate this kind of event told me it was going to be rad and i should go, and then i tried on my dress and it makes me look like the kind of cupcake a princess would eat. augh. maybe i'll throw a party and wear the dress. maybe i'll stay home and do work. maybe i'll stay home and watch bill and ted and blog about how lame i am, while wearing the dress. in the end i'll probably do whatever carolann does, i guess.

all the ladies in the deans' office love my bangs.

i guess school is a real thing again

it's back to the backpack today. bag, it's been a good run, but it is ridiculous to carry three books in you.

my roommate has a meeting with the hospital administration today, finally. i'm mildly furious that it took this long for them to get around to making a decision about an employee who threatened another employee's LIFE. granted, he was probably bluffing, or at least i assume so because he hasn't come around, but we still act like he wasn't and so should they. anyway, if he doesn't get fired, i would make her quit if i could make her listen to me.

for those of you who miss me, i will eventually return your emails, and in the meantime here is something i've watched about twenty times in the last couple days. watch it yourself, and imagine me giggling the whole time but laughing especially hard at the part where germaine catches the apple. actually at pretty much all the germaine parts.

threat level plaid: an introduction

i should preface this by saying that i have no idea what the actual threat levels are and i have absolutely no motivation to look them up. i would say that this constitutes neither dissidence nor internet laziness; dissidence, well, i guess i just can't really imagine that a failure to blog about actual threat levels is going to do or not do anything for anyone, and i'm pretty sure it's not internet laziness because i just spent twelve minutes searching for the video of an snl sketch i think i remember about hilarious patterns for threat levels. i didn't find it. clearly.

this morning my roommate came home from an overnight shift in tears because her coworker made the following comments:
"i'm gonna follow you home, stand at your window, and shoot you."
"i have great aim. i know where you live."
"in my country [trinidad], we treat rats like we treat fags. i'm gonna shoot you like a fag."
despite obvious rhetorical problems, the main one being that she had no idea why he thought she was a "rat," another being that he wouldn't have to follow her home if he already knew where she lived, she was terrified. i made her sit on my bed and write up a detailed account of every interaction they had (numerous) and who might have been around to hear it (no one, he's totally sneaky and has clearly pulled this before), which she then emailed to her supervisors. then we went to the brighton police station to file a report. then we got bagels.

that was an experience. the police station is being remodeled, so they're operating out of a trailer in its parking lot. this trailer smells a lot - a LOT - like dope. this exhausted blonde woman helped us, taking gail's information (she asked if gail was married - is that weird?) and squinting at the computer as she typed up all of the above and more with a completely straight face. at one point i cracked a joke about playing guard dog for the next couple days, but being concerned because the only self defense i know is tae bo. she smiled for the first and only time. we made a lot of other jokes too. that was pretty much the weakest one. people mystify me. she also called a detective in; gail and i watch a lot of police-oriented shows, so i think we were both poised to fall completely in love with him. well, that happened. he was small with this incredible unselfconscious pompadour and a black peacoat. he actually looked nothing like mark wahlberg, but of COURSE we both left and could not talk about anything but how much he looked like mark wahlberg. oh also, everyone had boston accents as thick as a brick wall.

the detective did a really great job of letting gail know what her options were, what the likely consequences of those options would be, and generally making us feel safe. what really interested me was their special concern about the homophobic nature of the comments. at different times, both the lady and the detective took a close look at both of us and said in a serious tone (actually, EVERYthing was in a serious tone, so maybe just a slightly lower tone), "now, we need to know. what is your sexual preference?" considering how much gail and i talk about boys, this is pretty much a hilarious question. gail explained that she is straight (actually what happened was both times i blurted out "we're not gay! we're just roommates!" not that i have a problem with being thought of as gay - some pretty hilarious things happen on the street sometimes when people in cars think that - but i was tired and was having a crush on the detective and i was worried that if i wasn't convincing enough they would take the threat less seriously, which it turns out is totally wrong), but is a gay rights activist and works with lgbt youth and her coworker knows this and has made aggressively homophobic comments in the past to her and several other coworkers. it was at this point that the four of us had a short debate about whether or not to get in touch with the hate crimes division. ultimately, we thought the threats had more to do with the categorization of gail as a "rat" and not a "fag," but the fact that this could have been considered criminally hateful because gail is a gay rights activist was pretty cool.

the bagels were great.

then we went home and took four hour naps, and then i walked gail to work and ate toffee for dinner because i was tired and it was there. THEN i found out that my friend james has a staph infection in his leg. i have not been able to find enough information on the internet to reassure me that he doesn't have a flesh eating virus. right now i am vacillating (no s - who knew?) between googling staph infections and looking out the window until a cop car rolls by. so far they have been averaging about one every fifteen minutes. they told us they would pay special attention to our house on regular patrols, and i am thoroughly impressed enough to sleep at least until i have to get up to walk gail home from work. i am going to put myself to bed before i worry myself into a coma.

ny resolutions update: as it turns out, cutting down on the swearing means that "like" starts popping up everywhere. this is pretty shocking as i was raised in a household with only two rules regarding speech: don't say "like" all the time and don't end every sentence like it's a question. oh, also, if you're going to be on television, spit out your gum because it makes you look like a cow. anyway, being someone who is pretty concerned about negative stereotypes attributed to californians, i have followed the first two pretty closely. i've never been on tv so i don't think i have to worry about the third, but i am extremely disappointed in myself right now for how much i sound like those girls from baby got back.

obligatory political post

i'm not exactly pro-hillary, but this makes a point i've been trying to make for weeks. it's a little extreme, but maybe now that someone official has said it people will listen to me.

i wish i was any good at art at all so i could make a tribute to stan lee

some pretty cool artists recently did a tribute show to stan lee. i feel pretty great about this. have i said anything about how i think civil war is his retirement project? well i do. the guy is old and has inspired way more people than anyone could hope for with something that used to be and still mostly is considered fluff. anyway, here are what i think are the highlights:
stan lee's superhero band
the hulk drinking tea with a chihuahua
wolverine smoking a stogie
the real 50's-style dr. strange portrait
the spiderman stained glass is pretty incredible, also the series of panels where everyone is spiderman, including the dog
the magneto portrait, obviously

in celebrity news, brad renfro is dead. i think i wrote him a fan letter once in about fourth grade. i know i had a crush on him. i feel pretty bad about how badly his life went downhill, because we are the same age and i am broke but happy and doing pretty well, which includes not abusing substances. well, coffee. does green tea count? no, i don't think so.

carleton: how many blogs a day do you read, dude?! i read, like, yours, mine, and two others, maybe. oh, also, perez hilton, obviously. well, i guess there's also slate, the drudge report, and several actually respectable political news sites (thanks ivers), as well as keeping up with portland news via the mercury and the willy week. do those count as blogs? is the internet a substance capable of being abused? i don't really watch tv, but i guess if i tallied up the hours i spend on the internet every day i would probably be pretty shocked and disappointed with myself, now that i think about it. well, my resolutions are already made for this year, so that will have to wait.

yesterday was my first day of class. i am PUMPED about irish gothic. i was pretty worried that the professor was going to compensate for it being an undergraduate class by making me do a TON of extra work to get grad credit, but it's really not that bad at all and i am poised to completely nerd out on the material. the other class i had yesterday was not at all as boring, dry and grammar-centric as i thought it was going to be. i'm pretty jacked about it. we watched a segment of "ugly betty" and discussed depictions of teaching writing in pop culture and conceptions of "good v. bad" writing in order to later set them aside. also, we get to make nametags and write a "personal narrative." also the professor is pregnant, which i'm really happy about for some reason. i have a tendency to get sentimentally attached to younger female teachers. well, i guess it's really only happened once. she was also pregnant. it's not weird though, everyone was really attached to her. she was a great teacher. in conclusion, i am pumped about school.

except for one thing. this other class i had last night, pedagogy, is the class you take when you get a second year teaching fellowship. i really wanted it, and i'm glad and grateful that i got it. it's not up to me to judge my classmates, but it seems to me that there are a lot of other students who really deserved it and didn't get it, and it feels wrong to be in that class without them. i'm worried that it will divide our class, and this concern has helped me realize that i'm actually pretty invested in some sort of class unity and the friendships i've made here.

on a brighter note, my cat is now giving me the time of day again. when i first got back he wanted nothing to do with me and slept in my roommate's bed, but now it seems that's all in the past and i'm again his first choice at six in the morning when he wants to be fed. it actually really hurt my feelings when he gave me the cold shoulder, and i'm really happy about our rediscovered closeness. my roommate says he's really high maintenance, but i never really noticed because i think i am also high maintenance in that i need to pet him just as much as he needs to be petted. i think that's probably enough getting emo about my cat, school, and everything in general. i'm going to go decorate my nametag and listen to some guitar wolf.

about dern time

well it is!!! i finally came up with some resolutions, some feelings about school, and the resolve to blog about them.

resolutions:
swear less
moisturize more
do things in time to not be rushing (getting up, writing papers, dealing with bureaucracy, buying monthly t passes)
start liking green tea
i already brush my teeth regularly, so i think that about covers it.

well, i realized that i didn't even TRY to blog about portland. let's start with that. i had a great time. i think i was pretty mean to jake for the first few days i was there. i can't really explain why. it's hard to feel like you belong in three different cities and to constantly change your mind about which one you want to try to live in when you grow up, but that's not an excuse. i feel bad about it. but i got better. first, we went to jordon and laine's house, where we stayed at hotel jordo in an empty room, bed and everything, which was great because i was all prepared to stay on andre's couch for four nights and it was way, way better than that. we had a pretty good time on new year's, just hung out with each other, little miles and dave h. the next day we went to see superbad at the laurelhurst. can't beat those three dollar theaters. after that we went to the chaat house, which i dream about sometimes, and then to powell's city of books, which is a dream all on its own. i blew a bunch of money on books i really love that barely fit in my suitcase. we also hit up the avalon, which is a nickel arcade that is both a wonderland and a nightmare. we went to burgerville several times and drank a lot of incredible coffee. it wasn't that cold, and it only rained for like one day. i really miss portland a lot. i also saw sarah and matt (hey guys! i sent you something in the mail), which was incredible. i really love visiting friends and realizing that even in a situation where they could be "just work friends," you have a real bond with them, something that's important enough to maintain over long distances. keeping people in your life is a relatively new thing for me. i was talking to my grandmother about it in the car yesterday when she took me grocery shopping and to buy my books, and i voiced some surprise at how important all the people in my life are to me, and how that hasn't always been the case. i also expressed some trepidation for getting closer to them or, in some cases, living with some of them, and she said that it's perfectly natural to screw up friendships when you're younger but as you get older you figure out how to compromise in order to keep the ones you care about around. that made me feel better about several friends i've had serious "breakups" with in the past that i've been thinking about lately, because i worry frequently that all friendships are going to end like that but grammy made me feel like i'm old enough and not-teenage enough for that kind of thing to not happen anymore. so if any friends are reading this, you're stuck with me, suckers!!!

the day after i went to the zoo, i did a bunch of laundry and didn't leave the house. the day after that, i went to the comic art museum. in terms of their standard stuff, i was surprised at how much information and material i was already familiar with because of my significant interest in comics - there wasn't much about the history of comics that they tried to educate me about that i didn't already know. the edward gorey exhibit was pretty cool, though. apparently, he put together a performance of dracula - sets, costumes, screenplay, everything, and not a reeinvisioning of the earlier bela lugosi broadway production that was made into film either - to be performed on the cape, which became so popular it went to broadway (starring john waters) and was eventually filmed. he had an apartment in new york, but also spent a lot of time with his family on the cape and did a lot of work there. in new york, he attended the new york ballet religiously from the 60's to the 80's in a fur coat and sneakers. he only watched television for one single six-day stretch, during which he only watched reruns of the original star trek. he liked it so much he went to see william shatner in a play on nantucket. the interviews with him were hilarious. he really sounds like my kind of guy. but you probably have to be rich and famous, or at least have a cult following, before you can be publicly eccentric. i wonder how famous you have to be to go to the ballet in sneakers and have people be cool with it. i went to to gift shop and got a copy of the gashlycrumb tinies, obviously. i wanted the original amphigorey but they were conspicuously out.

that night i left for boston on the redeye. when i got in the next day, i was homesick for about a dozen places, and very sorry that i didn't get a real burrito when i had the chance. so i drank a lot of water and cleaned the house, and then went to my haircut appointment. my stylist is awesome. my stepmom has a pretty close relationship with her stylist, and it's something that i've always thought was old-fashioned in a really cool way. people used to know the people that cut their hair, sold them groceries and dry cleaned their clothes, but that doesn't happen that often anymore, so when my stylist told me it was lame that i was going home to clean my room with hair that looked so awesome, we went out for bloody marys. i had a great time, although i will probably never actually go out partying with him because 1. he's way too stylish for me 2. he rolls way too expensive for me. but, it is cool to be friends with him, especially since he gave me an incredible "glam blowout" and i got my favorite haircut of my entire life, again. later i went out for indian food (not as good as either the chaat house or naan and curry, but still awesome) and some beers with other english students.

yesterday, it was sunny and i had brunch at my grandparents' house. if you've read this far you already know what i did afterwards. i said about two words about being worried about getting home with about fifty pounds of books and/or groceries, and my grandmother had her coat on and was halfway to the car. my mom says that they're retired so they're more than happy to spend time making my life convenient, but i'm always a little incredulous. and they're not the only ones either - during the holidays, greetings just flooded in accompanied by invitations to visit and offers of one kind or another from aunts and uncles all over the place. i love being related to people.

i was a little hesitant about being excited for classes because i was so busy vascillating between being homesick for home and being homesick for portland, but as soon as i got my books i got really hyper about school. i'll refrain about writing about them here because i'll probably write about them later and this is probably the longest blog entry i've ever written. also, it snowed last night and i've become infatuated with the way snow looks on bare trees. i've always been mildly obsessed with trees. for a while there, i thought owls were going to replace trees in terms of the main thing that is aesthetically pleasing to me, but i think the terrible pictures i took today prove otherwise.







oh, also, i have bangs now. just, you know, casual bangs. but i have them.