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