Tripping along the road to enlightenment...

pasties

2006-06-08T02:18:00.000-07:00

my skin is warm and slightly moist. i use ticket stubs as bookmarks - nice little memorandums - bookmarks for my literature and external activities. while i lounge back on my couch, reading and slacking away the evening, i paste the stubs to my chest using the warm suction of my own body. i don't know why, but i get such a kick out of it.

not a vulcan

2006-05-23T13:55:00.000-07:00

i have a bit of a headcold. mostly a stuffy/runny nose, nothing so terrible, but i'm not terribly pleased with it, either. i recently got a memory upgrade for my computer. now, i would like to install it, but at the same time, i'm thinking i had better wait till i feel better. so i don't getting any germs in my computer when i open it up. and i know that sounds absurd, i really do. but i still think it would be best if i held off a while.

like a literary Travis Bickle

2006-05-17T04:04:00.000-07:00

i am so horribly mutable. anything i read strikes through me like a lance and i'm left even thinking in the words of the author. this, more than anything, is why i tend to read so very much meaningless crap - i'm much less susceptible to its mediocre influences. unfortunately, tonight, i picked up lady chatterly's lover, determined, finally, to put a positive dent in it. the mood is all depressed rejection of humanity and wistful lonliness. now, i am a cynic when it comes to people, a coward when it comes to love, and a depressive when it comes to la, but all in small quantities, which are sadly amplified by the malaise of the title character. i feel like sighing and languishing quietly somewhere, or else running out into the night to visit a planter of jasmine - all in full bloom - that i noticed on campus today. (fact: jasmine smells best at night.) best i just go to bed, though, not let it get to me. the pre-dawn songbirds are just beginning to go nuts.

dream men

2006-04-14T21:23:00.000-07:00

i had a dream over christmas break - i was in a satanic cult. i had been accepted into college on a minority scholarship and moved into a special minority dorm with turquoise walls and religious overtones. i didn't really fit in, though, not having been raised in a disadvantaged background, not being black or overtly hispanic. the only friend i made within the first few days was the maid, an older hispanic woman who never went to college, herself, and was very encouraging to the tune of getting good grades and graduating is the only thing. within a few days, i moved out of that dorm and into a satanic coed frat. the head of it was an aleister crowley-type older man with a foreboding air and ambiguously extant evil powers. he lead the little coven. surprisingly, i did have friends among the worshippers. there was a repentant and trapped-feeling ex-christian girl who had given up her faith and a slightly overweight girl who was wicked, but not precisely evil. neither were really into that whole satan-thing, though.

we were sent by the old man to fetch some sacred coins. they fit into a grey stone wall carving in the lower levels of the frathouse. four more (or so) were needed to open the seal and unleash evil. eeeevil. as a new intitiate and a very promising convert, i was sent to collect one of the remaining coins. it was nestled within a bible, atop an ancient bell in an outdoor alcove of...the minority dorm. gasp! so i had to sneak back in, which wasn't too difficult, since i had lived there once upon a time. i got into the strange exposed rectory without any trouble - i was stopped by the housekeeper, who i think was chatty and possibly religious at me, but in a friendly, inspirational way - and i found the bible. i had to lean out of a window, and possibly climb something, as well, to get to it atop a very large, old corroded iron bell. the coins were inside as well as a couple of large bills with a curse to the effect of, "whosoever taketh..." (biblical curses are always written in an archaic and flowery way) "...this stuff...is cursed pretty bad for greed. seriously." death death doom doom. i really don't remember what it said, just that it was very foreboding. i took everything out of the bible, replaced the book and headed out unchallenged.

as i was heading back, i was struck with overwhelming doubts. about damnation and demons and evil magicks. i think, while i still didn't believe in god and the devil, i was afraid that assembling the coins would release something very bad, and i was also not unconcerned with my own fate concerning the curse. but it was too late and i was already in the room with the coven leader when i got to that conclusion. so he took the stuff, and i freaked out and begged him to at least put back the money. he praised my insight - best not to bring a curse down upon us for simple greed when there were greater plans yet to be laid. he took the coin from me.

i was walking back from the dorm and i ran into someone i had known from earlier, my time in the first dorm, i suppose. he was actually the dream image of my overweight christian neighbor from freshman year. in my dream he was a smug, self-satisfied preachy christian i disliked thoroughly. then i was back with the satanists and it was night and we were having an amusing event. the entire frat was shooting things at a christian frat or dorm (the details in this part are really choppy and fuzzed now) using a giant slingshot. it's also possible we were swinging on a giant swingset and jumping off, landing blocks away. whatever. it was fun and team-building.

the next day, i was walking back from class beside an above-ground parking lot and i saw a guy who caught my eye. a very good-lookin' black man. something about him sort of called to me and i approached him and asked to walk along with him. he was goin' my way (his car was parked somewhere on the street toward my frat). we walked together and talked. turns out, and i suspected this more before he said it, he was a dissatisfied christian, like, seething with rage at god, for some reason. we talked as we walked. i thought to get him to join me and the satanists, so he could help me defeat them. as we walked, we ran into my two satanist friends, who were, i'm afraid, vandalizing his car. i had them stop and switch to the car of the obnoxious christian guy i disliked, parked nearby.

just as my companion announced he was renouncing his faith, i threw my arms around him in an impetuous, flirty hug. and i froze. he felt just like home. warm comfort and calm, perfect chemistry. and i'm sure he felt it, as well, as we just stood there frozen for a moment. then i woke up slightly and my arms were circling nothing in my bed. i couldn't get the dream out of my head all day. i was left dazed and wistful and confused.

this afternoon, i took a nap. i had a long, elaborate dream i didn't quite remember upon waking, but the last moments are clear in my mind. i had been in bed on one side of a room, and i got up for some reason. instead of going back to bed in my own bed, i crossed the room and laid down behind the guy sleeping in another bed there. just as i put my arms around him, i forcefully woke up. felt a little bit lost for the next hour. it just made me think of the earlier dream, i don't know. they're awfully sad.

(and i really don't know what my thing is with the devil. i am all weird dreams.)

jam-tastic

2006-04-11T23:55:00.000-07:00

my family has one long-standing, rather charming, loosely-held yearly tradition. very specific category, no? ever year or so, we will all drive down to a little farming town along the central coast and pick berries at a farm that seems to do amazingly good business making tourists pick their own produce. we gather a couple of flats of ollaliberries, or my favorite, blackberries. mm-mm-mmm. i always get very competitive and brag to my father about my greater speed and bucket full of riper fruits. look, it's a wholesome family activity and it's very difficult to sex up that subject any.

anyway, the result of all this farm family fun is jars and jars of momma's lovely homemade jams. and they're not restricted to berry types - she will buy plums and strawberries and peaches and reduce them all into tasty poultices to be spread on toast. i don't eat jams very often, as i infrequently consume toast at home, but i'm an absolute fiend for mother's brilliant concoctions. this first came about when i was quite young and mother got her hands on some plums. oh my god, the plums. she made a delictible plum jam that rocked my tiny, prepubescent world. since then, i'll go through phases in which all i can think about is mother's jam. this will include nights when i'll go to bed with a jar of jam, a box of saltines, and, of course, a knife and i'll kick my legs and giggle.

while home for spring break, my mother raved to me the virtues of jam mixed in with plain yogurt. i tried it. it was tasty. i stole the largest jar of strawberry jam off the counter and shoved it in my carryon. i had plans of yogurt and jam and ice cream and jam and spoonfuls of jam shoved into my mouth and savored. well, long story short, the lam broke somehow on the plane, but i could not bring myself to toss it. such good jam. so, i shoved the jar in the fridge, and waited for my will to break. it did. i bought some plain yogurt and emptied all the jam into a bowl. first couple of times i had jam with things, there were no glass shards in - lucky me. and such tasty jam, i still could not bring myself to dispose of it. i knew it was only a matter of time before my love of jam would cause me bodily harm. so tonight, when i made myself a big bowl of jam and yogurt, i was not surprised when i fished the shard out of my mouth. i was a bit shocked that i hadn't cut myself. good luck. i did the best thing possible under the circumstances of addiction - i asked for help. i admitted i didn't have the power to help myself and i put the situation into somebody else's hands. i asked kat to save me from myself - from my love of jam. she emptied the jar into the disposal, and i was freed of my dangerous addiction. sure, i did get my mother to send me another jar of her pectin love, but this one does not have glass inside, so it's okay.

in light of this, i'm amazed i haven't died from some crazy obsession of another. massive tongue lacerations, perhaps. god, mmm, i just had some jam and yet i crave more. more tasssssty jam.

indistinct mutterings to describe my day

2006-04-08T12:57:00.000-07:00

thursday was a bad day for dietary health. sure, i did have a salad for lunch, but my dinner was: a large stack of pringles, several ginger cookies, a couple handfuls of chocolate covered raisins, a quesadilla, 5 shots of jaeger. (from that list you can probably divine my activities for the evening. fermenting on the couch and then a party?)

after such a productive and healthful day, i decided to go for a walk. to borders many, many blocks away to buy a shakespeare play. after a couple rejections (would you join me? would you join me? no.), i struck out on my own. i ran into daphne (will you join me?) by wilshire, but she had things to do. i got as far as the movie theater a block before the store. it was 5:15, the next showing was 5:20, and i had been wanting to see thank you for smoking. so i bought a ticket and sat down in the nearly empty theater. very pretty interior - very old glam hollywood - completely out of place in new, trashy la. to give you an idea, i think it was situated between a psychic and a bargain vet. the movie was v. good. towards the middle end, it threatened to get sentimental and prosaic, which would have destroyed the entire appeal of the scrupleless lobbyist, but it turned it around in the end. it was slightly anticlimactic, but it ended on a strong joke, so i forgave the movie. many v. funny lines. and the film was a testament to the beauty and glory that is bs. how could i not appreciate that? when the movie let out, it was amazingly still light out. thank you, freaky, unnerving daylight savings time!

went the rest of the way to borders to discover they were out of the play i needed. how can a bookstore run out of a shakespeare play?? alright, sure, i know this wasn't one of the more popular ones, but still. you're a bookstore, have some class. walked back and stopped to buy a mango. last one i got was pretty ripe. actually sweet, soft; not perfect, but it was still a pretty freaking good mango, made all the more tasty by the fact it had been many months since my last tasty man-go. this batch, in comparison to the last, looked pretty pathetic, though. all hard, still mostly green. i grabbed what looked like the best option and was on my way again. (oh, i did pay for it, of course.) with mango in purse, i made the somewhat tedious trek uphill to my apartment.

i was on my way, when some guy, who i had noticed in passing walking antiparallel, crossed over to me. he told me he thought he had seen me on campus several times - in kerchkhoff, right? i replied, yes, i spend some time there. and we struck up a conversation of rather animated, and on his part slightly effeminate, small talk. and then he invited me to dinner. his treat. i tried to resist - i just wanted to get back to the apartment and tear into my high hopes mango - but he would have none of it. he wheedled, and, since he was offering to pay, i finally relented. like, meh, alright, i'll make a new friend. so we dined on, at least for my part, slightly watery undercooked ravioli and a big, plain salad, and made eager conversation which, unfortunately, got less interesting as the meal wore on. he kept praising me for my cool spontenaity. damn straight. and trying to make tentative plans with me to go clubbing, visit santa monica pier, go out to other dinners, go to bars, buy me a particularly tasty lemon drop (martini, duh) somewhere or other, and get coffee some time. gaah! also, it came out he was straight, damn you, faulty gaydar, also, did he not lament guys did not hit on him earlier in conver...what? was that just an inept joke? so, good, guy i have no interest in is making "plans" with me. finally, i was making bored faces, being ever so bad at concealing "emotion," and he graciously decided he was through with his dinner, having only a little salad left, anyway. so we walked back toward the spot where he had accosted me in the first place, and i gave him my phone number, doubtful i would actually keep up the association for much longer, anyway. but i did agree to meet him on campus for coffee on tuesday. i figure, i'll give him another chance to wow me conversationally.

went back to the apartment and finally did get to eat my mango, which turned out to be underripe. great, underripe fruit equals the runs. i finished it all, of course, as it was still almost okay tasting, and also, i'm painfully cheap. then, curled in my blankey and watched tv the rest of the evening (new dr. who is pretty good - i wish i had seen old dr. who), rather amazed at my day. it was mostly good times, and i did have me an adventure. (all my most satisfying adventures seem to happen when i'm all alone.) but, mostly, i feel slightly amazed about my day. like, hunh. hmm. oh.

rat trouble

2006-03-28T01:49:00.000-08:00

as my parents picked me up from the airport, my mother warned me, "at home, don't eat food that has fallen on the floor." which seemed a stragne warning. but she went on to inform me that the house, as well as the houses on either side of us, are infested with rats. last time we had rats, my parents went a little crazy, setting traps all over the kiten and garage, and doing strange dances of glee whenever one of the traps snapped. not my most exciting adventure with rats, however.

two thursdays ago, i was coming out of a rather difficult test - identify various dead and stuffed birds and mammals that have been laid out on tables for me - and found a white rat snuffling around the sidewalk just beside campus. i stopped to stare at it in surprise and it came up to me and sniffed my shoe. so i took it home.

walked from campus to my apartment with the little guy nestled on my chest. it was very sweet and docile. no, it did not bite me. when i got back to my apartment, it climbed up to my shoulder and burrowed into my hair. please, make jokes about my fuzzy hair being a rat's nest. i woke kat up from her nap to warn her i had brought home an animal. practically the first thing she said in her groggy state was, "does it have fleas?" oh. i hadn't thought about that. i worked the thing out of the tangle that was my ponytail and put it in a bag with some lettuce and a carrot. then i went and scrubbed every inch of exposed skin and resolved to shower. great, paranoia. when kat wakes up and makes disbelieving noises at me. suggests i move the rat somewhere bigger. we empty the drawer in our "media cabinet" and line it with newspaper (finally a use for the piles of newspaper we've been accumulating for months) and place the rat in it's temprary enclosure. we both camp out in the living room for the evening, every so often our eyes sliding to the rat box. i obsessed over my rash deed all evening, in the process bitching to just about everyone online. fortunately, gloria knew someone with an empty cage. she gave me his number and moments laater, i was out on the street walking past clusters of partygoers to procure a place to put my new critter. i had to walk back to my apartment carrying the large neon cage through the revellers, as well. i hoped desperately i wouldn't run into anyone i knew, it was one thing that my friends abstractly knew the story, quite another for someone to see me carrying that thing - don't wanna put a visual to that sort of insanity. the cage was a crazy thing that used to hold mice. had two levels and the entire thing turned like a running wheel. we put the rat on top with the food dish and water bottle, but it was too timid to use the tiny tunnel. kat tried to make the rat more comfortable by disassembling the cage and reconstructing it in various, roomier configurations. the wheel on it's side atop a pad of newspaper. the wheel, open and in a larger box. the platform in the box with a homemade bed of cardboard and cloth. finally, she gave up and put the rat back in the reconstructed cage. it slept hunched on the platform inside the food dish.

the next morning i woke up with a rat in my apartment and a sense of dread obligation. every morning it was in my apartment was a day i began stressed out. she thought i ought to release it, let it live a free and ratty life, no matter how short, but i couldn't consciounably do it. it was a snow white rat, bred in captivity, probably raised in a lab, and there are hawks on campus - i've seen them. it's basically the least cryptic animal ever. i half-hid the cage in the big box and put it on the balcony during the day and let it inside at night, with the large box upended over the cage to block the light from our late night revelries. the third day, i put the rat in the bottom half of the cage that she could get some exercise, and she finally learned to use the tiny, narrow tunnel. we got some amusement watching the critter awkwardly crawl through the tiny passage.

that sunday, kat drove me and the rat to an animal shelter. two, actually, as we discovered the first did not service our particular district of westwood. in both places after i had put the box containing the animal on the counter, the attendant asked me whether the rat was dead. i found that a bit peculiar. do i look like someone particularly prone to dropping off dead rats at shelters? or perhaps it's simply policy to ascertain vivacity when the animal is not in plain view. at the second place, the woman asked me to place the box containing the rat on the ground after she discovered it held a rat (ewwwwww!). unreasonably prejudiced broad. not too hard to believe. during its visit, kat was too cautious to touch the rat directly for fear of disease. i was as well, but mostly out of paranoia, as i was certain, irrationally certain the rat was perfectly healthy. still am. good thing the apartment came with a box of latex gloves. i have to say, kat was great about it, though. we left the rat with the shelter. that night, i cleaned and returned the cage. not to its owner, but his neighbor, who was home. so now, there is a good-sized contingent of people out there - the friends i've told, the strangers who have heard, and the people kat complained about her wacky roommate to - who think i'm irrational and strange. great, i'm the weird chick with the rat. but, i just have a soft spot in my heart for things that scurry. so think me strange and crazy, but at least i chocked up a great big hunk'a karma.

snow snub

2006-03-21T23:06:00.000-08:00

i was unvited to go skiing tonight. through my roommate, no less. she was asked to go skiing with some mutual friends and their friends a few days ago. i hadn't minded the lack of invite at all. these mutual friends are more hers than mine, and our relationship can pretty much be characterized as awkward. so i didn't mind not being invited, seemed about right. but being invited less than a week before the event and through a proxy seemed less like a genuine invitation so much as an insult to my intelligence. or something like that. not sure what it was actually an insult to, all i know is i am full of vague indignation. i can be that, you know, it comes from having two x chromosomes. i didn't care when i wasn't invited, but invited just for apprearances, and in such a way i was all but encouraged not to accept...view my bubbling ire.

i just wanted to yell about that in a medium that won't get back to them, so i can be civil later. what is so offensive about an unvitation? i would just prefer the blatant snub.

a very bad call

2006-03-18T23:33:00.000-08:00

greg complains when i don't update regularly enough, so in the meantime while i get my next masterwork in order, a brief tale from the annals of my stint as a shopgirl. this has been transcribed as faithfully as possible.

"hi, we're not home right now, but if you leave your name and number, we'll get back to you as soon as we can."

*BEEP*

"hi, this is -me- from -store-. this message is for carrie. um, we have the lafayette spoons you ordered in. um, it looks like you ordered them a long time ago, so i don't know if you still, um, need them. or if we've already called you and told you they came in. heh, we're actually sort of disorganized here, what with marking whether we've, uh, called special order...uh...customers. or not. so, if you're already been called and actually gotten your spoons, uuh, yoooou can ignore this message. but if you do need the spoons...or, erm, if you are not in fact...uh...carrie, because the number is slightly illegible - lewis has pretty bad handwriting. um, i'm sorry this is a really bad message. anyway...sorry. uh. -store- has lafayette spoons if you do need them. thanks."

at this point my co-worker is staring at me because normally i'm the most erudite person in the shop, and she had just witnessed me puke nosence into the phone.

this post is dedicated to anyone who has ever wondered why i claim to be a bad phone person.

end of it all

2006-02-17T14:39:00.000-08:00

i'm exhausted and the words "heat death of the universe" have become fixed in my brain. except, i keep turning it slightly so that the words, "sleep death of the universe" continually trundle around up there. i get very self-absorbed when i need a nap.

city trek

2006-02-16T18:54:00.000-08:00

i didn't blog for so long because i had nothing of interest really to say. well now i have a story. i had an adventure!

last saturday, i was supposed to go on a class field trip to the la brea tar pits, aka. page museum. whee. and i slept through it, i slept through it hard. so to make up for it, i had to go alone. thursday my schedule is nice and open, so perfect time to go, no? the museum is a couple miles down wilshire and thursday is kat's busy day, so i thought, why not make jim drive? haven't hung out with him in ages and he has a car. called him weds and he told me he was free thursday afternoon, so plan was set! got out of class at 1 and called. called. walked back to my apartment and called. ate lunch and called. watched an episode of west wing and called. then walked to the bus stop. i had forgotten to bring quarters, so i changed a dollar at the gas station ande bought some gum. he called me back when i was almost at wilshire, and by then i was seething with the rage of the blown-off. but apparently he had only then gotten out of class. i said screw it, i'd take the bus. this is where it got interesting.

i had written on the three big fingers on my left hand the streets before, at, and past my bus stop. i watched the clock and willed the bus faster as it got stuck in mild downtown traffic. i thought the museum closed at 4 - pit 19 closed at 4, the museum closed at 5. oops, hehe. i sat in the very front and watched the banner intently waiting for wilshire & __ or really any of my finger streets. finally, finally the last of my streets danced across the banner and i bounded out of my seat, on what was now a very crowded bus. a small, elderly lady shuffled into my spot, to my immense, spry chagrin. i bounded off the bus and headed back the way the bus had come a block or so and it didn't look right, so i headed forward about twice that distance. i did not see a museum, but i saw a coffee bean/tea leaf in the distance and headed for that. now, our lovable pothead apartment manager had lost the key to our apartment some days ago, and only told kat yesterday when she went in to complain they hadn't fulfilled a work order a week since it was placed, son in full laptop paranoia, i've been carrying around my baby all day. i bought a chai latte and $3.85 worth of internet and promptly googled mapped my location, using the address of a tire shop accross the street. i found i wasn't too far from the museum, namely 1.1 miles west. i asked the man next to me what direction was east (forward) and headed off with my brimming spicy drink. i speed walked and precision sipped several city blocks all the way to museum. on my way, i saw window washers cleaning a shiny, modern, black office building, and a huge statue of many bulls, and a white suv with the lisence plate "iketrnr" (like ike & tina, which brings up many questions: is tina's husband's surname actually turner? did he take la tina's last name when they wed? did she marry him before being famous? am i thinking of the wrong people? do i care enough to answer these? hah, no!), and various men who smiled or waved, and my sexy, sexy relfection. it's weird that i only ever feel sexy when i'm essentially alone. i finally got to the museum with half an hour to spare. half price admission! the tar pit looked a lot like a muddy pit. the bones were pretty cool, i liked the big, scary, skeletal birds - very gothy. but the museum wasn't particularly informatinve and i had to collar a docent 5 in before closing to answer my questions. basically, i held up my homework and he went through each point, laughing. i stopped on a grassy hill outside above a sculpture of two prehistoric lions posing so pretty and copied down what i remembered of his answers and billowing in the breeze.

as i went back, i contemplated hanging out at lacma for a bit, but it was late and i needed to stop at ralph's. took a rapid bus back that trundled down the street at high speeds, jolting as if it were running repeatedly over the curb. and small tanks. got back and went to ralph's, filled kat's shopping list. on the way back down to street level, my headphones caught in the elevator door and an earbud was torn completely off. so of course, i took the elevator back up and bought replacements at best buy. trudged back to the apartment and called jim, aplogising for being pissy on the phone when he called me back. i figured, i had had a lovely trip without him, and likely more fun wandering the streets alone. and i couldn't really blame him when i hadn't said what time i had wanted to go.

after all of that, i got back home and collapsed. tiring day.

she dreams in digital

2006-02-13T04:14:00.000-08:00

me: i had this really great dream last night.
me: well, afternoon
mat: do tell
me: it's kind of hard to explain
me: i mean, the narration can't quite capture how awesome it was
mat: k
mat: fair enouigh
me: i'll try, though, for your viewing pleasure
mat: do your best
me: okay, i'll start with the villain
mat: does it involve you, naked? cuz you know, that certainly ups the viewing pleasure
me: haha, mental projectionist's reel?
mat: mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm hmmmm
me: no nudity, i'm afraid, but if you'd like to picture me naked while i recount my story, you're welcome to
me: now no heckling, i'm about to begin
mat: yes, sweetie
mat: is it ok if a drool while i imagi...listen to you?
me: haha. shush
me: alright. i'm beginning with the villain
me: a brilliant programmer
me: he has created a extremely lifelike virtual world - the best virtual reality to date. think the matrix. it's exactly like the real world - sensations and amazingly high res
me: but it has its limitations, too
me: like in a video game, you can only go into the parts of it that have been mapped out, everything else is just sort of scenery. surfaces that may look real, but that you are unable to interact with
me: it's sort of a stub-world
me: and the programmer has maybe 100 people or so trapped in his creation.
me: think the matrix, again, if you must. their brains are trapped in it, and they cannot break free, because there are no physical confines to break out of
me: we're all trapped in a room. it looks like a small room, but we can all stand there without being crowded
me: and opening to my left is a set of french doors and a narrow balcony that juts far out over a deep, deep chasm
me: outside, several leagues below the room is, what can only be described as a large canyon floor - large enough that no walls can be seen, but there was the impression that we were very solidly situated atop a cliff
me: a dark pine forest covers the canyon floor as far out as i looked
mat: several leagues? hah
me: the scene was vaguely reminiscent of those japanese scroll paintings...but i go on
mat: sorry, continue
me: we weren't happy, to be trapped, obviously, and as soon as we got through yelling at the programmer that he couldn't do that &c. and he vanished in thin air, i promptly launched myself onto the balcony and into the air in a glorious free-fall
mat: (naked)
me: (only if you have the cheat code)
mat: oh, i do
me: (a warm room, alcohol, and a sinatra mix tape?)
me: rather than this being a suicidal move, i suspected that the scenery below was merely in place as a sort of psychological deterrent for people trying to exit that way, and that the programmer had in fact not created any boundaries in that part of the world
me: i dove straight through the image and came to an unmemorable stop somewhere below the gif
me: i was in an off-white room resembling a classroom (empty walls, a floor that gave the impression of mismatched vinyl tiles), dimly lit with fluorescents
me: and huddled in the room were all sorts of brightly colored cartoonish creatures, like escapees from a fantastical zoo
me: they told me they were refugees in the program, hiding from the programmer in that sub-routine to escape being put in the room with the other prisoners. they though they had a better chance of escaping from where they were, you see
me: they looked
me: i guess i must have left that room and wandered around a bit, because the next thing i knew, i had been caught again and was with the other prisoners in the balcony room. i had no idea what had happened to the toons, i suppose they were caught
me: as soon as the programmer left (by then he had developed the typically villainous attitude toward me as the amusing creature who foolishly, futilely, and a bit obnoxiously was determined to thwart his plans), i launched myself back off the balcony
me: i assumed he had done some reprogramming to prevent me from going the way i had before, but it was still my best chance of escape
me: (to go back a moment, i forgot to mention the others - my friends - who were among those trapped in the room. there was a single mother with one or two young boys also trapped and the programmer's wife, who was not pleased with him. both were very scared, and hugged me in relief when i was returned)
me: so, when i leap, this time, instead of not really landing, i faceplant hard and a little painfully on a tiled porch
mat: haha
me: i get up slowly, but not injured and the programmer is lounging back in a wooden reclining patio chair, at a table with similar chairs all around
me: he has one hand resting on the table with a drink
me: he leans forward with some interest and begins asking me, did i really think he would let me go, what did i expect would happen the second time and other slightly mocking things, making him sound like a bond villain
me: somehow, and this part is blurry, i break free of the program. maybe i run, maybe i attack him image, but somehow i make it back into the real world
me: i think then i must go and try and free the others. i guess he had most of them physically in a central location, hooked up to his vr
me: when i get, there, however, the people are being let free
me: my friends are rushing away from there like bats out of hell, but they stop and talk to me
me: they're both terribly glad to be let free
me: apparently, the programmer hadn't taken my escape attempts seriously, thinking no one could possibly want to be free of his computer realm
me: when i succeeded in breaking out, it had sort of burst his bubble. he realized that no one wanted to be a part of his new utopia and became despondent
mat: aww poor nerd
me: realizing the people did not in fact view him as the hero he envisioned himself, he opened the borders of his realm. now anyone could reach it and come and go as they pleased, and the women were rushing out of there as quickly as they could
me: i tried to stop them and tell them that since it was opened, they could live in the program freely, but they wanted no part of it after that and left me behind rather preoccupied
me: i, on the other hand, jacked back into the world
me: i met someone in there, a man who was the programmer's sort of agent within the program, a deputy if you will
me: he worked for the programmer, and since the programmer was off, pouting, most like, he fancied himself in charge and was a controlling sort
me: also, kind of a smooth operator manly sort
me: he was in a tight room, resembling a kitchen with dark cabinets and counters, but without kitchen fixtures
me: people were crammed in, trying to set up residence in the world through this man
me: i went in and joined him behind the counter
me: he knew who i was and we got into a row about whether i was allowed to stay, being the reason that the first settlement collapsed and the reason the programmer was now in a funk
me: i declared that i would ask the programmer and he would surely let me remain
mat: naughty carla
mat: mmm yes....naughty...
me: he said that i would never even be allowed to see the programmer
me: so i turned away from him and clapped my hands twice very commandingly
me: and then sort of waited, hoping it would work and i wouldn't look like an idiot
me: and sure enough, the programmer appeared in front of me on the other side of the counter, looking very resigned and sort of sad
me: he looked at me not quite with reproach and asked me to please never summon him that way again
mat: you can be demanding
me: i wasn't really sure what had given me the power to summon him that way, but i had been nearly sure when i did, as i was then, that he liked me and would come when i called. not liked me on a personal level, but had a thing for me, so he couldn't quite help himself.
me: i apologised and told him i wouldn't unless it was urgent and asked if i might stay
me: he got petulant then, and asked why i wanted to stay, when i had just got through escaping
me: i responded that i was free now to come and go as i pleased, so given a choice, how could i choose not to live in the computer-generated world, where everything was much more amazing
me: the programmer seemed sort of pleased at that and didn't quite acquiesce that i could stay, but it was obvious that i would be allowed to
me: the lackey was upset and left in sort of a huff
me: behind the counter with me were shelves crammed with worn paperbacks
me: i asked the programmer, who joined me back there, if there weren't any more books in his world,
me: he said there weren't as if they weren't very important, at which i insisted that he get more as they were very important
me: he turned away from me, and said he'd see if he could work them into the budget and made some writing gestures in the air
me: then he disappeared and i was left there, now sort of a default librarian assuming charge of the books
me: then the dream cut, and i was walking through an arch into a dark, arcade-like room
me: there were parents and children around me with balloons and cotton candy and the like. it was a fair or an amusement park, and it was also the opening to the virtual world
me: beyond the room with the games and flashing lights, i went into a large, round room. a lobby of some sort.
me: a friend of mine, a woman with mid-length curly black hair was showing a video to a group of children on a dais to one side and teaching them about something or other
me: and i walked through
me: up to the next level where there was my small library
me: and above that were there were classrooms
me: in several of the classrooms, my friend downstairs was teaching also, and some other teachers were duplicated, as well
me: i went up to the next floor, a sort of lounge, and met a family
me: there was a staunch-looking father, a rather tight-lipped mother, and a bright-looking young boy with them
me: the father wanted to send his son to school there and he wanted to make sure he was taught properly. he was rich and no-nonsense and wanted his son to have the best education, so long as it turned him into a serious, heterosexual, man with no imagination - he didn't want his son learning any silly, absurd things or sissy stuff
me: and i listened to him and assured him his son would have a proper, moral upbringing and be well-prepared for life, and secretly thought that once the parents were out of the way, as it was a boarding school, in a sense, the child would be free to ask questions and free his imagination and be silly and all the other things a kid ought to do and really, if he were taught here, he would have a much better chance of being a good person than if left to his parents to raise
me: so, i was showing the family the grounds, and we went down a floor and i intended to show him the classes, but we ended up in a giant, circular library (because remember, the entire building is circular) and it is huge, going around all the sides of the room, and open in the middle, with stairs going down to the next floor which is also a library floor, and there are shelves full of books and desks to study at and plush chairs
me: and all of this is my library
me: so i sit the parents down and tell them more about the place
me: and i'm thinking that the programmer must have changed the code to add the library when i was elsewhere
me: and that he had really done all of that for me
me: and it was thenabouts that i was woken up by a call on my cell phone
me: THE END. now respond

(i want to mention that the programmer was in a sense, satan, and also to apologise for any inconsistencies in spelling, grammar, narrative, or intelligence, i wrote this at 4 am and am not know to be my best at that hour.)

ramblin' man

2006-02-08T16:12:00.000-08:00

when greg called me yesterday, he noted it's been a while since my last post, which is a malady i've been aware of since my last post. somehow, i've cooled on the whole blog thing. though i still want a record of my college experience, i seem to lack the motivation to write, or any compelling topic. or rather, any topic that remains compelling for more than 5 minutes at a atime, until my attention span shifts and i become consumed with some other minute issue of my life. that and i'm busy. busy, and for once, finally getting down to work. that is, when i'm not obsessively watching the west wing. i've downloaded the first four seasons since the beginning of the quarter and i'm nearly done with the fourth. it is a show that makes me giggle and bounce giddily in my chair. and it has made me jealous of conversation. i find that more and more i spend my time sitting in silence, watching television, reading, or otherwise silently occupied. i am craving banter. but at least i'm feeling intelligent. i go through strange oscillations of self-image in which i may be bored and inert, or sparked wih some creative force that pervades my thinking. i do wish it were not so unpredictable. i can't quite be sure what to attribut this new change to, perhaps my new workload. i am completely swamped. between memorizing the genus and species of several score of organisms across several genera, researching a paper on sexual traits of monkeys (i spend my evenings typing "primate penis phylogeny" and "primate female orgasm" and "primate infanticide" into google), and just trying to stay afloat in physics and calculus, i'm covered in a faint film of dread whever i go. at the same time, i think the stress my be good for me, preventing me from sinking back into stale oblivion. through it all, i'm still wondering exactly what i will do with myself "when i grow up." more and more i am becoming convinced that biology is not the field for me - i genuinely enjoy the science, but learning about it is a distasteful process bereft of any sort of critical dialogue. if i would like to inject my studies with problem-solving, i would best begin research of some kind, but with research comes a battery of dull, repetitive experiments and exacting requirements for time-management and fiscal responsibility. i think i still might like medicine, but the studies required would be worse, even, than general biology, extremely heavy in memorization. then there are writing and law, both fields i had hardly considered till a year ago, but both incredibly competitive, though in different ways. i'm not sure i could stand either lifestyle of intense molar-grinding competition, or probable starvation. and so, nothing really seems interesting or novel enough to write about. i wish i had more freedom to explore more diverse subjects. already, i doubt i will be able to graduate at the end of my fourth year. at any rate, i am feeling very insufficently competitive to enter any professional school. i may have to go another route and take time off between tiers of education. africa still appeals to me. i think i'm in desperate need of a vacation in which i neither sit around slothfully nor work, as i do whever i go home. i'm going to try and do something a little more diverting during spring break, but my inspiration is short. so please, do contact me with suggestions. othwise i will just spend my time on couches and in bed, unrefreshed and unhappy. cheers, and till i write again...

predictions?

2006-01-01T14:09:00.000-08:00

evidence indicates i will spend '06 sandwiched between two friends and laughing. maybe i'll have bite marks, maybe i'll be kissed by sadaf, maybe it will be all dimwits on tv all the time. (why were ryan seacrest and carson daily involved in new york ball drop, anyway? ring in the new year with 2 of the biggest tool on tv?) so far, i have to say, i'm enamored of the new year. i've got the day off of work, the wind is blustering madly outside, and i'm warm warm warm. now, i'm going to go use up all the hot water in the shower and consume lots of hot cocoa.

jolli-holi-day

2005-12-26T00:43:00.000-08:00

happiness. i have secret little habits that are born of my own joy. good food makes do a seated little happy bouncing wiggle. when i'm reading in bed, all warm and content, i mutter in my own language of contentment "uh-duh-vuh" as i shift around. and while gazing at my so pretty tiny new digital camera, i coo and whisper dotingly. because it is the prettiest little camera ever, with the small and the shiny. and looking at my little christmas tree, a bedecked, besparkled palm, i just giggle. because 'tis the season to be jolly (falalalala). of course, for my entire life, mom has been singing, "'tis the season to be marrrrried, falalalala-lala-la-la." it was a good christmas. apart from the party incident. tried to convice mom and dad to leave the house tomorrow so i could have some friends by for drinking and fun. mom thought it was a great idea, dad took great exception at the suggestion that he would have to leave his home. he's like a dog pissing on stumps to mark his territory.i can't decide now whether i should still try to throw a aprty with my friends here or no. it would be vaguely weird, but at the same time horribly disruptive and spiteful. buahaha. wait, i mean "ho ho ho." also, i discovered i have pent-up rage from the hurtful words spoken over the tattoo incident. mm, the holidays are the perfect time to explore sublimated family resentment, ne pas? ooh! like resent ment over 2 years ago when dad made me cry by berating me for buying him too many presents (which i had put a lot of thought and effort into getting him). mostly, though, christmas this year has been good. i'm not so completely disfuntionally broken than i can't enjoy it with my family, it's just the last 3 hours of christmas that i'm too dysfunctional to enjoy. tomorrow mumsey takes me to get a memory card for my lovely new cam, which i might name hrothgar, to go with my laptop, which has been dubbed beowulf, and little flash card, grendel.and now what can be said after that, but merry holiday to you!

finale

2005-12-15T00:37:00.000-08:00

another finals season rolls around, and once again i fail to participate in the traditional (rah rah) college activities: yelling agonized obscenities out my window every midnight to blow off stresses, running up and down the streets of westwood in my underwear, and entrenching myself in newly-discovered motivation to study. at least my hygiene remains good. my last wikpedia search was for "dilithim crystals," i keep giggling and saying "boobies" (as in blue-footed or masked), i've been gorging myself on m&m's and i have a rising sense of panic with regular periodicity. 'tis the season. soon, the sleep-deprivation will set in. i've already begun to lie awake torturing myself with thoughts of programming, and i already finished that test. nothing but to plow through and live vicariously through kat's video gamming. i'm not too bitter that she's done.

the shat man cometh

2005-12-10T17:08:00.000-08:00

it's been a while since my last post, and i had a birthday and a trip home since then, but i don't want to write about those. both were very good and in both cases, my friends were wonerful to me. that's really all that needs to be said. what i really want to write about is william shatner. oooh, billy, the shat-man. i just downloaded two of his albums (his two albums?) the transformed man and has-been. and i've been listening to them while trying to study for my programminf final. to ambivalent success. oooh! such good things, i'm horribly distracted. the funny thing is, for all my love of the shatner, i haven't even seen all that much old star trek. i've seen some - but not enough to truely justify this little obsession. it's cult of personality, i think. just too cool to not adore.

woke up today after a dream about having a ghost for a lover. literally. started listening to my shatner albums, knowing i was just procrastinating. went to shower, and disloged a large spider when i pulled my towel off the rack, so i spent some time trying to shoo it out onto the balcony. dressed myself in only outerwear and poured myself a glass of water. put shatner on in over the living room speakers and settled in the easy chair with a blanket and pillow for a good read. felt all clean and fragrant as i laughed at the music. the little things that cropped up that might make me unhappy today haven't. and for that i thank william shatner. and his brilliant rendition of tamborine man.

hollywood stars

2005-11-14T20:02:00.000-08:00

i noticed something about living in la today walking back from campus late. living here, you come to expect to not be able to see the stars at night, so you stop looking up. there was one spot of light that shone clear and bright well above the horizon that caught my eye. far brighter than a normal star or even a planet, so perhaps it was something man-made. a satellite, most likely, beaming brightly the the middle of some strange constellation to faint to make out. so i stopped a moment and squinted at the other points of light in the sky, which slowly resolved themselves in front of my eyes. and the more i looked, the more i could make out, across the entire sky. many more then i ever expected to see. hell, living where i did freshman year, the entire sky was taken up by a sickly green haze of light, bounced off the tennis courts. the night sky from home isn't terribly distinct, either, but in certain neighborhoods nearby you can see an abundance of stars in a pitch sky. it's even better out in the hills. getting a little taste of the natural world, paltry as it was, i now want badly to go out into green space. maybe enjoy the pacific coast highway, get out of the city. it's a bit tough without a car, though. but it would be really neat. oh well.

my name is a killing word

2005-11-06T03:15:00.000-08:00

oh my god. dune is on tv right now and i can't go to bed. i can't. stargateis on the channel just below, so during commercials i get to switch to other sci-fi staple. though, seriously, it doesn't hold a candle to the 4-hour glory that is dune. there are the scenes that are in the tv movie version of dune that are missing from the dvd movie version and they're some of the best scenes in the damn thing! like every scene with shadout mapes. what's that about? and the supercool fremin fight. i already own the movies, but i'm completely desperate for the extended version to become available. anyone trying to think of a birthday present for me, think no farther! yee-hee-hee! kat only watched a little bit with me because she has work, which is sort of depressing, because i so love getting to watch this with others, but i never get to see it all. but before she left she made a brilliant comment.

Mentat Piter (to Jessica): Desire for you clouds my judgment. That is not good; it is bad.
Katherine: I'm a math geek and I'm not getting any!

sadaf, who hasn't even seen star wars wishes to learn the ways of teh sci-fi geek. i think she would benefit greatly from sitting in on one of our conversations. we can sometimes hear the guys across the hall having conversations, or mostly yell at football. we yell at sci-fi. "oh my god! it's wormtongue!!" "i can totally see it!" this movie is great for the famous cameos. we have "al" from quantum leap, and captain picard, and "trey" from sex and the city, of course, "wormtongue" from lord of the rings and the dr. from alien:resurrection, and sting. sting! it's a veritable buffet of references. but i will introduce sadaf to star wars first. it only seems fitting. and shit, it's shorter. i think next weekend, i get to introduce her to proper dorkdom. she's already a programmer, this must be done. anyone interested in helping is welcome to join.

i'm going to continue to watch now and try to think up drinking games based on the movie. it would be too easy to do an "every time they say 'spice'" thing - wouldn't last halfway into the movie, and the thing is damn long. maybe every time they say "thumper." every time baron harkkonen makes you queasy. any time someone mentions "the prophesy." hmm, damn, this is actually really easy.

don't forget to dance

2005-11-02T01:03:00.000-08:00

today, rather than study for my evolution midterm, i'm going to give you, the audience, a crash course in natural selection.

now, there are 3 conditions necessary for natural selection to exist. let us explore them.

1) there must be variation in a population. let us perform a scientific observation to demonstrate this fact. go outside. do not turn on the tv. (tv people are a special sub-species homo sapien coificus and are grossly inbred. needless to say, variation has been reduced in that population.) go outside. see the pretty people? see the ugly people? see the asians? see the jews? that is variation, baby. let us put a big check next to that box.

2) this variation must be, at least in part, heritable. find a photograph of your folks. stare at it for a while. then start yelling at the picture, "i am not like you, daddy! i will never be like you! i am my own person! i am an adult with my own mind to make up about things and i will not marry my mother i will not turn into you, daddy, i will not be like you!!" and sob for a bit. then realize you are exactly like you parents, and pour yourself a big scotch. QED.

3) this variation must confer variable success at survival or reproduction. go to a middle school dance. stand in a corner and watch the kiddies for a bit. maybe request a slow song or two. that should give you a pretty clear picture of things.

that is how natural selection works. the things that make us different also make us better or worse than one another, in pretty much the same way our parents were better or worse than other people. the best people will get all the tail. and possibly go on to become television personalities.

FADE OUT, CUE MUSIC

You look out of your window,
Into the night.
Could be rain, could be snow,
But it can't feel as cold as what you're feeling inside.

And all of you friends are either married, vanished,
Or just left alone.
But that's no reason to just stop living.
That's no excuse to just give in to a sad and lonely heart.

Don't forget to dance, no, no, no,
Don't forget to smile.
Don't forget to dance, no, no, no,
Forget it for a while.

MUSIC FADES

improbable joy

2005-11-01T03:06:00.000-08:00

i have an important midterm bright and early tomorrow morning, i just finished going through all the info for the first time, and it is 3 am. yet i am happy. here's why:

i created a giant poster-sized printout of an excel document with all the relevant data on 3 classes of blood parasite and it's beautiful. and it's hanging above my bed.

i got a new bed the other day. now i have a bed. i no longer sleep quite so near ground leveland i can tuck my sheets nicely in.

i got to justifiably cuss at people. it was past midnight, i was in the lobby of my apartment building waiting for the elevator. button was lit, no elevator. push button repeatedly in ire. wait. no elevator. wait. then i start to hear voices drifting down through the elevator shaft. a couple is arguing. the might be holding up the elevator, i think. but no, who's that stupid? i wait. ire. voices continue. i kick the elevator door a little to relieve frustration. impatient ire. i consider going on a search of the stairs that i know have to be somewhere in the building. finally, i yell, "stop arguing in the fucking elevator and send it down!" i half think that they're not even in the elevator and i'm just yelling at doors. there is silence. pause. elevator noises. guy steps out of elevator, glances at me and rushes out of the building. i get to go up to my apartment feeling all self-righteous. hah!

i am listening to what, with my horrid language skills, i can only assume is a direct translation of that aqua song "barbie girl" into dutch...or german. it is the most spectacular thing i ever heard.it makes me wanna hug a guy in leiderhosen and maybe give him a stuffed pony or a shiny apple for a present.

am happy, so i say, "choose life!"

(that's not so much a pollitical statement, as an endorsement of george michael. pretty sure)

scientific semantics

2005-10-18T00:13:00.000-07:00

my evolution class is giving me problems. the first two weeks of lecture were spent describing fossil formation and geologic forces, which, frankly, bore me. somehow interspersed with that, though, were intriguing examples of speciation - complelling proofs of evolution that i wished we would study more in depth, but was unsure whether i should be taking notes on. conscequently, most of my time spent in that class has been in one way or another mostly unconscious of what is being said by the lecturer, re. sleep or complete absorbtion in a book. the other aspect of the class, a discussion section that meets once a week is also mildly consternating. we read two articles before the discussion and are expected to have thought-provoking questions about them that we will all socratically discuss. i have no objection to discussion, frankly, i am one of the more voluble people in the room, but i can't say i am terribly patient with others' opinions, when, to me they seem uninformed. and in preparation for my next discussion, tomorrow, as it may be, i am reading two articles on adaptive theories. what irritates me is not so much what the authors are saying, but how much of their arguments seem to be based on semantics. or rather, the words we use to describe phenomena perhaps hindering our understanding of such phenomena.

i will, for example, take one of richard lewonton's points in the paper adaptation and turn it to my own purposes. the word "niche" is defined as an organism's interactions with both it's organic and inorganic surroundings. it is colloquially defined as an organism's environmental "role," however. this second and more lingering definition in a way poisions our impression of the character of niches. we begin to speak of niches as occuring independantly of the organisms that fill them. such as "the niche was opportunistically filled by the xxx, which found it vacant." as if niches were rather like apartments, occupied and vacated by various species, being created or becoming extinct at intervals, and occasionally being sublet. this view is erroneous, however, as it implies that the niches are static and well-defined. but by adding new, random parameters, a creative or perverse enough mind could name dozens of unfilled niches and wonder why no organism has evolved to fill them. organisms would over the years evolve to better fit their niches, though by evolving inherently change their behavior and traits. it is pointless, then, to define a niche as an entity separate from the organism itself, or as the organism's "role," as this leads to consternating circular reasoning. describing a niche as an organism's "role" has the doubly upsetting consequence of inviting the use of a whole new set of language to adaption. organisms "evolve to fill a niche" (a phrase often encountered, unfortunately) and suddenly have self-determined fates. natural selection is suddenly given the awkward trait of sentience, as if it had an endgame in mind, suiting the species to fit in its square or round peg.

since both articles i'm reading for tomorrow introduce the potential for that sort of ambiguity of language, i'm pretty sure i'll be grinding my teeth at some point. that, and there is one girl who, in both (?) of the previous discussions, has irritated me in some way by making an irritatingly narrow-minded point. the kind of thing that makes some people go, "hmmm, yes, i wonder..." and me go, "but that's completely irrelevant to everything as it exists now!" i try very hard not to be contentious, but sometimes, that is difficult. so, my class seems like it will be full of fascinating information, that i must sift through detritus and crap to get to. but at least i sort of enjoy arguing.

in-between times

2005-10-14T01:12:00.000-07:00

i've been somewhere between content and full of malaise the past few days.

some things have made me very happy, like seeing a man dressed as wolverine on the street. or watching lots and lots of arrested development. or finishing my programming project with kick-ass competance. boo-yah!

other things have made me dive into gloomfest. mostly, boring lectures. also, the fine white anthers that fall like intermittant snow from the eucalyptus trees outside of boelter and lodge into the seam between the case and screen of my laptop.

and some things have left me feeling oddly conflicted. like making conversation with one of the gardeners on campus and having a nice talk in spanish no less, but then being asked for my phone number and suddenly realizing that it's possible that i was unwittingly being flirted with. hrrrm.

and plenty of things have thrown me into little rages. like the asian couple who sit in the back row of the lecture hall during evolution and mutter quietly to one another and cuddle over the armrest. and the horrible smile that he gave her the other day, like contented condescending sexual posession. it's a smile i've only ever seen in men. and the girl in my parasitology class who leaves her giant purse sitting in the chair next to her, even though she sits right by the aisle and people have to sit on the stairs because they come in late. the fact that my biogeochemistry professor gave us homework problems with several values all with different units that needed to be converted and all in blatantly obnoxious non-scientific notation.

and then there are the little contented moments, like just after i finished snow crash. and three days later, after i finished life of pi. or when i went to bed knowing that i could sleep late because i was skipping my programming discussion section. or when i hug my stuffed hippo. or when i introduced myself to the guy in my parasitology class because it was silly that we were walking down all the same streets almost side-by-side. or when i take my laptop to class and it sits all sleek and warm inside my backpack, waiting to emerge and be just terribly useful.

and one mustn't forget the small annoyances. getting my clothes out of the dryer to discover that they smelled like man-detergent, and thus a little bit like blaize (whose detergent it was). the fact that i still can't seem to sit quietly and just go through my parasitology online lectures like a good, studious girl without serious attention disorders.

and there's the sleepy, woozy headrush feeling after just waking up, or standing up, or not thinking too hard, or when i have to make sense of immunological facts.

and between all those other feelings, has been a sort of shiftless, bored, funk, where the back of my mind seems to be caught in a haze, like a thick fog lingering just at the edge of sight. and it's as if i'm just waiting for something to come along and stimulate me out of that apathy and into some real thoughts. such are the cycles of my brain.

another day

2005-10-08T02:22:00.000-07:00

nice day, today. warm, though not perfect. had classes, which shouldn't come as a shock to anyone. i turned in one c++ program and began another one, which was more complex than i was strictly prepared for, but i think i have it well done. the programming left me all keen and high (have weird love of programming), which was a nice change as i spent most of my morning fantasizing about sexually mauling someone in the halls of the engineering building. actually spent rather more time than is healthy glazed over deep in deep thoughts such as that. got back to the apartment and was startled to see blake on the couch, as apparently he's graduated and living in the bay area, but he was down for job interviews and stopped by to see kat. i kamikazied an overlarge bowl of cereal while watching them make small talk and then lounged on the couch for a bit. read the second third or so of snow crash (in the grand cyberpunk tradition), which actually had kept me glazed for most of thursday's lectures, as i had it out on my lap while i was taking notes. the internet was out at the apartment all afternoon, as was the normal cable television, so i was left to amuse myself in other ways. ended up watching 10 or so episodes of arrested development and knitting a couple of lines on my scarf before dinner. i put my hair into braided pigtails, then kat and i finally went to see serenity. pretty good movie, didn't stray too drastically from the expected, so i wasn't horribly disappointed nor terribly pleased. i probably had a stronger reaction to the season premiere of veronica mars (echoed cries of "that's so fucked up!"), though i can't believe whedon killed off...!!! no, seriously, you killed off, like, my favorite character, you bastard. back to the apartment and down the hall a loud party was being thrown, which i'm pretty sure was in huge breach of rental contract, but, like, whatever, hurrah. read a bit more, fucked around online, and then, bed, and i'm still thinking about my nether bits. tomorrow i have some chemical oceanography homework to look at, a molecular parasitology lecture to read through, and another short program to code. it actually sounds sort of fun, though part of me still really wants to get drunk and then slobber on someone. or at least watch wrath of khan. that's been coming up too many times lately.

a simple summary

2005-10-02T03:55:00.000-07:00

things have happened to me, but i'm afraid i havne't had a terribly compelling way to tell the stories. i moved down to la for school, of course, classes have started. my apartment is very nice this year, and i'm eager to live in a place what doesn't have indoor flooding. father and i were still rather rageful when he joined mom and me in la. after driving down from san fransisco without any traffic violations or overly reckless moments, i drove through a stop sign to get away from him and his whinging, unfortunately, he was in the back seat. i was sad we couldn't sit through a civil dinner, and for such a petty reason, at least on his part, but we parted with tender words of familial concern and i felt sort of bad about the fights. been hemmoraging money in la, but i excuse the expenses as normal new-apartment costs, and anyways kat and i, mostly due to managerial fuck-ups, are paid up through november. we attended a party shortly after coming here. party with booze, but i couldn't get drunk due to upset tum. sober as a mormon, i was hit on by three guy in decreasing unappeal. the first tried to nuzzle my phone number from my neck on the dance floor. the second tried the time-honored technique of dull conversation...on the dance floor. amusingly, he had been trying to catch my eye over the first gentleman's shoulder. i ran into the third on my way out the door, where he lurked with his friends, playing up the cute, ecclectic foreigner bit and wins on the points of originality and humor. i've seen most of my friends in town to mixed receptions - mostly very warm and cuddly, though some distressingly indifferent. i've been spending my time slothing around the apartment and watching episodes of firefly, a shockingly good series. i've also begun a pen and ink portrait, utilizing skills i had feared atrophied with almost a year's disuse. i'm happy to report, though, that my abilites appear to have remained intact and the piece is progressing nicely. it is an activity i greatly missed, however, and i feel as if i have regained something i did not realize i lacked. every so often, i remember a silly thing my mother does and i miss her teribly. mostly, when i'm watching one of the many spanish language channels or the food network, one of her silly chestnuts will pop into my head and i'll grow sad. beyond that, i find that at around 1 each night, i grow terribly anxious and must stretch my limbs, go outside, walk around. as one who has never had much use for jogging, it's peculiar that i am actually fighting the urge to go out into the night and run. and i must find someone with whom i may have the epic sort of conversations i so love. i would rather they be in person than over the phone, but i sit down with so few people here to actually have one of those lovely, long talks. i think that was the simplest thing to relate everything that's been going on in my life during my period of relative radio silence. at least the main points. oh, but i could use your input on a few things that have been on my mind:

1) what is the difference between corinthian and ionic columns (possibly misspelled, possibly just plain wrong) and there's a third type, isn't there?
2) if bizzaro world were really opposite to ours, what exactly would the landscape look like?

thanks, and goodnight. ;)

the thing it is

2005-10-01T02:32:00.000-07:00

ballet on tv. to my left, a beetle under glass. it's been warm in la and my skin itches, hypersensitive to the touch of my clothing. the beetle taps it's hind leg, but does not place it on the ground. the dancers seem unnaturally happy to have apples. i am left wondering if i have hives. i want to get up and jump around, go for a walk somewhere, but it's 2 am. i hate ballets where it's all the coy princess being danced around by the admiring prince and the chorus is all waving their arms. i fear the since one beetle was able to enter the apartment, another, less benign bug may be lurking somewhere within, as well. while this one is docile and contained, the evil beetle is zipping round in hiding, waiting to bite us in our sleep. buggery stravinsky. apparently, male elephants at some point in time have hormonal surges that cause sweeling glands to press up behind their eye and drive them mad with pain. vaguely reminds me of star trek, where vulcans will go into periods where they must mate to go mad. i've been drinking water like mad for the last two hours. still thirsty. i think i'll have ice cream.

wtf, yo, wtf

2005-09-16T02:03:00.000-07:00

i'm not really great with dates and times. i often get the hour or even day of the week confused. networks are fond of placing ads, "watch *this show,* tonight at 9:00." and i'm often surprised, "oh yeah. it's today today." actual quote. also, i'm late to everything. everything. even if i leave with seemingly enough time to get there, even if i wake up early, even if i run - i'm late. i'm like a gas, i expand to fill all the time alloted. in stark contrast i woke up from sleep this morning. wasn't sure what time it was. flashed through my mind, "feels like 11:10." pried my eyes open, kinda flopped onto my stomach, craned my eyes upward toward the clock, squinted. it was exactly 11:10. wtf?

mindfucker

2005-09-14T22:53:00.000-07:00

i used to believe in fakirs. or yogis. you know: lying on beds of nails, slowing their heartbeats and burrying themselves for months, sticking hooks through their skin and not bleeding. and i thought: wow, how cool that these men can become so enlightened as to rise above the physical needs of their bodies and control their physical impulses with their minds. then i watched chris angel: mindfreak. and it ruined all the wonder and mystery of life for me - if that giant jerkoff is doing those stunts for real, then i wanna stab my own head (it'll bleed by the way) because i refuse to believe that that fuckhead is in any way posessing powerful mind...powers. no! it cannot be!! he has to be a fraud, because if he had prescience he would have realized his head is so far up his ass his producers have had to install flourescent lighting. (okay, i'm bad at metaphor.) my point is, he's a giant fungal growth and i hate him. raaaargh!

i've got an itch

2005-09-08T06:42:00.000-07:00

they never tell you about the itching like mad stage of the tattoo healing process. we all know that they hurt to get, and they scab over while they heal (or at least flake), but the itching is like an insider secret. it's gotten pretty bad. last night, my tattoo was even itching in my dreams. which brings me to the big weird, again - the second back licking dream in a month. it was in an elevator. i was terribly itchy, so my friend started licking it, i guess as a less abrasive alternative to scratching. my shirt was off and i was making it tickles gleeful squirmy noises when the doors opened and bunches of people i the hallway saw me in my bra all giggly. did i mention it was a girl doing the licking? two guys walked into the elevator, and i grabbed her hand and we ran into the hall giggling and pulling on my tanktop. later, back in the elevator, i pulled a specialized medicated disposable scratchy wand (like one of those clorox disposable toilet scrubbers) off the wall and relieved my sufferings with that. it was actually fairly enjoyable (as well).

now, my dream brings me to two points: 1) how bad do you gotta itch before your subconscious starts to feel it? and 2) what's with all the back-licking dreams, eh? it's turned into a thing. like a weird little fixation. kink, we'll call it? probably more exciting in my mind than with the actual stickiness and wet and slobber. but i'm gonna just dwell on the other thought, nmm. (oh, but i don't think the girl thing means anything really. surely not.)

p.s. alex trebeck trash talking on celebrity poker? never been more attracted to a canadian.

temp

2005-09-06T17:49:00.000-07:00

oh my god, worst workday ever.

it began at 6:30 when i hit snooze. and again at 6:39 when i hit snooze. also at 6:48. i finally got up then abouts and grogily sat at the foot of my bed and stared at my laptop for a bit in the dark. mom came in whistling and told me to get up. i scowled daggers and thought violences at her. then i blogged. after that, i left my room, headed for the bathroom, where i saw the toilet spider. as of 2:30 am last night i loathe the toilet spider, and prio to that we had never even met! this is my first experience with the toilet spider.

*wavy flashback vision*
i am sitting on the toilet...toileting. i get up, wipe, turn to flush, and, what is that clinging to the back of the inner part of the rim? a ginat brown spider??!! aaah! it was inches from my bare ass. it could have done horrible things, it was perfectly poised! yucky! yucky! yucky!
*end squiggles*

this morning, the toilet spider had left it's wattery commode and wandered disturbingly near my towel. i envisioned returning from a hard day of work and showering. i grab my towel and there is toilet spider!! aaaugh!! i didn't kill toilet spider, but i hated him an awful lot. then i showered. in the shower, i though of all my morning ire and realized what it would take to get me to fight war. all one would need to do is deprive me of sleep enough, and then convince me that the enemy was guarding a giant bed. i would be ripping through human flesh and bone within minutes. and the carnage wroght by my bezerker rampage would increase exponentially if the words "down" or "two comforters" were used. i knew then that my pascifist ways would fall to the wayside - i would slaughter my way through ranks of nuns - if i were sleepy enough.

the day didn't really get much better from there. i got dressed after two aborted attempts at business casual and ran to the car. then i ran back inside for driving directions and some cd's. back to the car, drove, dropped mom off, got stuck in traffic, took exit in directions, realized the directions were crap, backtracked, took exit i thought i remembered was correct, arrived at work a half hour late. bugger.

at work: felt super sheepish walking in, having to be lead to my seat, shown how to do things all on my own, etc. typed slowly for about an hour. then, it was break time. ran into a friend. realzed i had been working in the wrong department - shit. told the same people i had just been sheepish at about the tardiness thing that i was in the wrong place. more sheepishness ensued.
got properly positioned, trained, etc. proceded to spend the rest of the day (excluding brief lunch break during which i forgot to punch out - more sheepishness) identifying whether numbers were the same as one another.

-simulation of my day-
same! *click* same! *click* same! *click* same! *click* same! *click* same! *click* same! *click* same! *click* same! *click* same! *click* same! *click* same! *click* same! *click* same! *click* same! *click* same! *click* same! *click* same! *click* same! *click* same! *click* same! *click* same! *click* not same...*other click* same! *click* same! *click* same! *click* same! *click* same! *click* same! *click* same! *click* same! *click* same! *click* etc.

my eyes went all bleary, my already tired brain went catatonic, i didn't even get to listen to my ipod, and it was cold in the building.

finally, i got to leave, and i braved traffic again to pick mom up and get home. where i promptly got on my laptop to share my horrendous day. there's a moral here, but i can't see the screen anymore and my shoulders are cramping, so i'm just gonna go.

(oh, bright spot, however, was kat's message in comments portion of blog. yay to hearing from her! but mostly my day was like the first day of high school. boredom punctuated by stretches of shame and horror.)

mother just opened my door

2005-09-06T06:56:00.000-07:00

mother fucker. i'll stab you in the neck - don't think i won't. i will fucking bleed you, bitch. i will shove a pait of salad tongs sop far up your ass, your duodenum will rupture.

...*sigh* i hate mornings.

inked

2005-08-31T00:19:00.000-07:00

i keep forgetting. i got a tattoo today. maybe it seems so terribly uncharacteristic that my brain just refuses to accept it. but every time i check the mirror it's there. sometimes it hurts like a sunburn, but mostly i can forget it. so looking in the mirror isn't a suprise, exactly, no more than the fact that i actually went through with the process in the first place. it's just...odd. uncharacteristic, i think.

it was a brilliant triumph of patiently planned spontenaity. for years, i've wanted a tattoo. for months, i considered the design. for weeks, i saw myself grow old with the tattoo. for days, i thought "the next time i'm in fremont with time to kill i'll find the shop...." and finally today was the culmination. i had the time, i found the hole-in-the-wall where kaity got hers done, and i was stuck in traffic directly across from it for long enough to finally decide to pull into the parking lot. well, first i got my nails done, but then i went inside. i asked my little questions and went back to mom's work to print out my design. i hadn't had time to print it in the morning (i had anticipated the need), but fortunately, i had e-mailed it to chris and it was stored in my outbox ready to retrieve. i printed it out, warned mom, and drove off to get inked.

arrived, talked to cute artist some more (asked "are you any good") and headed off to luch while he resized and made a stensil of my design. when i was done with my crappy meatball sub, i went back. he was just finishing and the next thing i knew, i was watching him do the final setup of his tools. i pulled off my shirt, he positioned the design, and then it started. during a lull while he changed the needle (disliked the feeling of the first), i told him i liked the doors and he had that put in the cd player. i sat there, tensed, while he got down to work on my back, and smiled my amused smile, completely in awe of the moment. it was so unreal. so unlike me.

the wailing, beautiful guitar riffs, coupled with the sting of the needle (not so bad as you would expect, actually) made me thing, perhaps a little melodramatically, "exquisite pain" over and over again. it was in the music and in my tattoo. a little melodramatic, but it fit the moment just right. after a bit, i relaxed enough to chat with the artist (very cute and around my age). it was funny. he does tattoos and used to work in a bike shop (motocycles, of course), and those are my two little sub-culture obsessions. always wanted to learn the trade of tatto artist, also motocycle mechanic. i laughed and told him, but i'm not sure if he really got it, why it was funny to me. i probably sounded a bit nervous and juvenile. we talked a bit about our families, books, language. it was pleasant. and then it was all done and i left.

i'm amazed at my own composure through the entire thing. the fact that i never panicked or used the little girl nervous voice that i order restaurant food in. i acted like a decisive adult. maybe now you know why i keep saying it was all very uncharacteristic? i'm not used to just going out and doing the things i want and mean to. it was transcendant in that way. i kept marvelling that i was almost like a different person. or rather, a me that actually had balls. it was nice. i even decided at the last minute to get the tattoo between my shoulder blades, rather than on my lower back as i had always expected to. and never looked back.

of course, my parents hate the tattoo. dad resents the fact that i spent the money and thinks i'm taking advantage of the family as he bought me some tools yesterday and this seems like a waste to him. he prophesied that i'd grow to really regret this. i even handled that like areasonable person and didn't get to hurt by his sentiments. really, it's perfectly in line with his idiom to make these complaints. i'm just over it. mom thinks it's too big and black, but otherwise seems alright. not as broody as pop, but then again, she never was. in her own way, she, too, doesn't like it.

i think it's fabulous however. it is thinker and blacker than i would have liked (oh, that's actually an amusing thing to say, heehee) but it is exactly as i designed it. and it's sort of a brilliant milestone sort of thing. i will never be like diana and at the age of seventy regret never getting a tattoo. and i did something brilliantly efficient and interesting all by myself. i'm happy. and frankly, i don't really give a shit what anyone says about it. i've resolved to love it. and that's what i'm gonna do. *grins*

day & night

2005-08-29T18:38:00.000-07:00

today: second day of my period. organized my last month of employment. got two fillings and had to wait 3 hours at dad's work before i could get a ride home. between cramps and the numbed face i was extraordinarily cranky. seriously. i wanted to punch someone. and by that, i mean my dentist.

now, am feeling much better. ben & jerry's, stargate, knitting, and gibson. i feel happy.

blarg. oh, blarg.

2005-08-26T21:58:00.000-07:00

i'm a bit weirded out by the misapplication of formerly popular hits in commercials. sure everyone loves "baby got back" or "she blinded me with science" but not with new lyrics about back to school supplies. come on, can't you do any better than that? maybe the children gather their supplies from a giant, candy-colored landscape while backpack birds flap through the sky and pencil bugs scuttle around. (what would mick jagger do?)

i spent today in a rather foul mood. woke up early. dentist appointment. i made small talk with the hygenist, which i never do, and another cavity was discovered. went to work and was lethargic and irritable. felt bloated and ugly. my forehead was stiff from a few spots and i just wanted to be home. made it through to closing without bitching out any customers (at least not deliberately bitching them out). felt a bit better when i got home, changed, ate, and turned on the tv. but am still a little bit tired and depressed. i also want to retalliate against my malaise by pestering people. sigh.

p.s. man, the andy milonaukus show is crap.

tomorrow i work from noon. then sunday my parents have some friends over for a barbeque and i have to make small talk, mostly about my studies, i presume, or else listen to obnoxious adult talk with malcontented expression. i want to get more sun and go to a tattoo expo this weekend. monday, i get another filling, bringing me up to an even 5. and somewhere in all that, i go to the library. read eldest the other day. two days actually, which i see as a small feat due to it's length and the short time. bored with the books i still have from the library, got them ages ago and stopped halfway.

i think i need some time of sleep and sloth to return to my normal cheerful state of hometown bliss. maybe i'll take some time off next week and become a proper layabout.

hoary horray

2005-08-21T23:37:00.000-07:00

i have to admit that i have a secret love. oh yes, i do.

kindly, hoary-headed women with attitude. like diane. a co-worker at the costume store way back when. i befriended her specially. she had arthiritis and told me she always regretted not getting a tattoo. or mizz m. the drama teacher from my high school. she could keep a class in line with flashing eyes and projection from the diaphragm and always wore fashinable heels. or jane, a former neighbor of mine, who ignored everybody (including my father who often saw her there) at the gym, but would always greet me warmly. a chemist at a time that women never entered that field. or sue johanson, an eldery woman with a very direct sex show they run late at night on cable. i love how terribly candid she is, when she's all wrinkled and old. also, descriptive hand gestures and toys. and apparently quips: if you're gonna be squirtin' bag it for certain. eep!

all these old women are spry and snarky well into their silver years and gold. and all in some way were brilliantly beyond their time and they make me wanna be a brassy old gramma with tattoos and purple hair and a moped. so horray for them! matronly they are not.

beautiful dreamer

2005-08-20T00:07:00.000-07:00

i've been having very weird dreams of late. started last with a dream in which i made out with __ at my family's christmas party in what appeared to be some sort of barn. there was snow on the ground and although i don't normally see __ that often, he was there because somewhere our families intermarried. i suppose that made us some sort of cousins, though unrelated by blood. bored with my natural relatives (as i generally am), i went out into the snow with __, where i kissed him, um, etc. was very odd as i don't actually think about kissing him during my conscious hours. alone, not that odd, but the next night, i kissed him in an rickety elevator in a very tall blue building at college right after my art class. so it's sort of recurring. um.

i was at a mall, parked rather far from the main section, but off near another wing of the building. (was really big mall.) i was there for some reason that has now been lost. bu i end up in a sort of sport/activity area. with raquetball courts, for some reason. i put my purse down to watch and see that __ is playing with some people i've never met. i hover around, sort of meaning to cuddle up to him after the game, but he goes off with the other people and some girl after a sort of indifferent greeting and i'm either expected to tag along like a puppy or just be left behind. it was more unthinking than mean, but i felt very hurt. i go to my car, but realize that i've left my purse behind. when i go back to get it, the mall is closed, but some people at an eatery within the mall let me in. i go the back way into the sport place as all the doors are still open. someone is setting up projectors to shine against the walls of the raquetball court. it is some sort of performance art. there was to be a game going in the court with porn showing on one wall (deep throat, which i've never seen) and hedwig and the angry inch playing opposite it. they were putting on a practice run with only the movies going and nobody around, so i stayed to watch. on the upper portion of the wall to my left, the porn began with an animated intro, reminiscent of grease, only, obviously, dirtier. hedwig was nothing like the actual move, as hedwig seemed to be a furry man-dog creature and most of the action took place in a garage (as in garage band). i sort of stopped the porn to pay close attention to one scene of the movie and with my focus on it, i sort of entered the movie. i was in the garage and some people came in with hedwig, and they were all loath to touch...well, it, i guess, as it was sort of intersexed dog-creature with inch-long hacked-off penis (something reminiscent of the real movie, at least)...so i sort of petted it. it then got very friendly and i, too, got a little freaked out. then i sort of receeded back into the (all forest green) raquetball court and proceeded to sit in there alone and watch both movies at once until the dream ended. i woke up feeling very sad and disappointed with __. his unthinking behavior was completely typical, i realized and would never change and i was gloomed out with the total pessimism of that thought for a while.

then, i had a dream in which i was in mexico with a tour group of too-cool-for-school bitchy hipster types. i didn't like them. we were hiking around in a meadow when i decided i needed to procure acid for the sort of quiet sensitive artist type in the group (differentiatted from all the assholes) as he was a young jim morrison and i had to get him acid that he might "expand him mind" and therefore learn to totally rock. (also, apparently become completely hedonistic and self-destructive, but in a hot way.) so, i asked for directions from the first mexican i saw on the street (which happened to be a cute sort of old suburb) who gave me rather incomprehensible directions. sort of a street name, sort of pointing. so i wandered in the direction he indicated and wound up in a beat-up townhouse (lt. blue) with all the doors open. i found a group of twenty-something boho hipster assholes sitting around in a tiny apartment on the ground floor, doing something drug related. so i asked them if they had acid. they told me i was early and in the wrong place, but fine, whatever, they'd sell to me then. they had porn on in the background on the tiny tv. for $30 i got two bags of rainbow-colored lsd candy canes and much attitude. i left, faintly nervous, as it was my first time buying narcotics (though for a good cause, i must admit) and walked hesitantly back to the group, who weree on a hill somewhere on the outskirts of town. it was intermittantly turning to dusk. on the way, i ran into my mother, just beyond the giant clock(tower). she was complaining that my grosero father and brother (am actually only child) who were watching porn (linda lovelace starring, though, again, never seen her in anything) on tv in the middle of the afternoon (it was 4 pm.) for some reason she found the early hour particularly scandalous. i thought it was typical of them and sort of shrugged it off, wanting to get back and deliver my goods.

two nights ago, i dreamed that suegol died. me and a group of friends (you were there) were in a sort of hallway that was actually in an alternate dimension. (this sounds way more sci-fi than it felt - my dream was just very matter of fact "oh we seem to be passing through an laternate-dimension hallway. yes.") the hallway's dimension and that of the real world were slowly passing through one another behind us. one person was moving too turned to go back for some reason and lost a leg (cleanly shorn off, no blood) in the grinding between the worlds. we tried to hurry a bit, but suddenly someone called for me to stop. they were holding a bloody pulp with an eye at one end and they told me that suegol had been ground up. i was terribly sad. after we passed through the hallway, we were left in a sort of open parking lot thing with portables. as if this were the staging area of some sort of fair yet to begin. i made my way into a building. there was an art exhibit on the first floor and offices above. i made my way up, intending to see someone for some reason. i saw one room that was the office of "the onion" (america's finest news source), which i recently discovered was based in san francisco, which was where i was, obviously. inside were a bunch of people in school desks watching a film of some sort and taking notes. in the front row i was surprised to find mckenzie, who was a good friend in middle school. i always thought it would be nothing short of completely appropriate if she worked at the onion. we sort of caught up and went downstairs to see the exhibit and i told her about suegol's death which the entire dream i had been trying not to think about or i'd cry.

last night i don't remember so well until the end. it involved my uncle who was in the italian mo. (diminutive, slightly chunky, balding, nice grey suit.) something about being on a hill. something about two guys. the really clear bit is at the end. i was sitting on a hill, near a shack where my uncle was...something something important to plot...under a tree with __. i remember really wanting him to sqeeze lemon juice on my shoulders and then lick it off. i could even taste the salty and sour of the lemon, myself, for some reason. but i couldn't really articulate what i wanted exactly, so there was lotion and rubbing, and i kept handing him lemons, but no cutting of lemons, or squeezing, oe licking. i was terribly disappointed, he was totally not getting it. and then i woke up and i was a bit weirded out about the lemon thing. i mean, why? why?

so that's pretty much the state my subconscious is in right now. i'm a bit weirded out by me.

shat candy porn

2005-08-09T01:54:00.000-07:00

have given my laptop new "theme"! yes! so excited! the background is a candy-colorful, tiled andy warhol-esque pop art william shatner portrait that i photoshopped into existence while watching stargate. it's so perty. to match, my hard drive icon is now the starship enterprise. and my screensaver, in keeping with the theme *ahem* is a slideshow of 70's porn posters...in spanish. yes! all hail the continuity! but if you gots the chance, you must see the screen of shat-man. pretty and it makes my eyes gleam in 4 flavors of joy. mmmm...yow.

summer party

2005-08-07T02:53:00.000-07:00

aw, man. just got back from lovely party in fancy, fancy palo alto hills. dressed silly, as did many other people (though i doubt the poofiness of their sleeves made them feel claustrophobic). drank plent, as did many other people (esp. stephi, whee!). met enjoyable strangers (some friendly germans, stanfordites, and yalies, mostly). passed up a joint (pretty much don't need weed, as already have no concept of time and am rather loopy). i enjoyed the great pheasant hunt. *happy sigh*

starhate

2005-08-05T23:44:00.000-07:00

no, no, not really. i actually just wish i knew what was going on with stargate this season. question #1 where's jack? #2 how is chriton ne colonel mitchell justified and why is he so high-level all of a sudden when just 5 years ago he was an astronaut lost in outer space with a blue lady and a deposed dominar? #3 where's jack? #4 where's carter? #5 where's tal'c? #6 why an apostrophe, why? those mean a letter is left out, so therefore which(#6b)? #7 where's jack? #8 is space rogue lady really supposed to be enough to distract audience from absence of jack? i mean, really people... i missed one season finale, and suddenly nothing makes sense anymore. i gotta say, though, i like vala's strappy leather bondage top and rogue hair. rowr. still not jack. they had to pep up daniel's character just to make the nice foil. not doin' it fellas. is he dead? did i suddenly miss him dying? did i? because that would just suck.

(on another i-spend-my-friday-nights-watchin'-sci-fi-channel note, when does firefly get exciting? yeah, cool idea, but where's the punchy comedy? where are the quirky pop culture references that are characteristic of joss whedon shows? i mean, sure, it's alternate reality some time in distant future space show, but i'm sure even they listened to duran duran while fighting againt the alliance, right?)

road anger, and beyond

2005-08-05T21:43:00.000-07:00

started today with obsesso watching of yakitate!!, bread-themed anime. i cooled a little on it around ep. 21 when they introduced a villan. i want bread and yeast science, not bitches and human drama. bring me the bread lore!! early afternoon i watched america's next top model and did half-assed sets of crunches. a suppose it might have been a good thing, as mom yelled "hola blandita!" (general equivalence: hi squishy!) and patted my belly upon entering the house. then we went shoppin' and i developed a 'tude. started feelin' more and more misanthropic as the day progressed. mom's half-baked and repetitive stories started grating more and more heavily on me as i was dragged from shopping center to shopping center. on the after dinner excursion to bed, bath, and beyond, i saw a woman in the car ahead of me, sitting on the passenger side, moving her hand in the air stream outside her window as if it were a music video and she were "rollin'." i hated her instantly and wanted to yell, "you're not that young and groovy!" when i passed the car, i saw that both occupants were middle age and was a bit shocked not to see a ditzy high schooler there. i despised anyonw going under the speed limit, and even yelled out the window, "sloow!" as i passed a man on the right. jackass, going 5 mph under the limit in the left lane. there was this obnoxious xoupl in the supermarket that kept kissing. the guy was also wearing strong man-scent. usually i'm pretty weak for the smell of cologne, but this just annoyed me. (there's one friend of mine - always smells like man product and every time i scent him, i just want to lick him. nothing else about him prompts that reaction, however. i'm just a sucker for a good smell.) i noticed that the serial killer btk looks a lot like an unkempt kelsey grammer and wondered why the tabloid whose cover i saw him on wasn't looking into that as a possible scoop. p.s. isn't that the name of another r&b reincarnation of immature? when i finally got back home, i just sat steaming for a bit in front of the tv.

bike

2005-08-03T17:01:00.000-07:00

got a bike. it's a nice bike. i like it, anyways. it has a light, but no basket or bell or tassles. so not a perfect bike. but pretty nice, just the same. mat helped me go get it, so i bought him a late. i had chai. but back to the bike. i rode, today, to the library to pick up the latest laurell k. hamilton (completing the series as per what has so far been written). it was a nice ride, but i'm not particualrly stable on my bike, as i haven't ridden since i was about 13. that's a long time of not having to balance on two wheels. i'm still not particualrly smooth on the mount or dismout, or even turning, for that matter. especially turning while riding on the street. you gotta signal with your arm, taking it off the handlebars! that's not easy!but i did not swerve accidentally into traffic, so i count it as okay. i came home and we were supposed to go to the county fair, but that doesn't actually start till friday, so instead, my parents mitakenly dragged me into san jose (reading in the back seat) and made me wander about in full "family" formation as the workers set up the rides and things. i whined and demanded being allowed back into the car to finish my book. done! which also means i have completed the series as it has so far been written, which i find horribly obnoxious, as i like my stories to have endings, dammit! that's pretty much all that's going on now. no work during the week until the temp agency calls to place me. tomorrow i have an eye exam. that's not particularly exciting. my sunburn has lessened into a large peel. the skin makes shucking noises like plastic when i pull at it. i'd now just like to go into the sun and be all one even color, but i don't really see how i could tan normally again. until i fade, at least. sigh. poor shoulders of leprosy. (sunday, when the peeling was fresh, i wandered around the cookware store yelling "leprosy!" and freaking out the customers. actually, i think i had cause to yell it again, watching fantastic 4. dr. doom, hur. it was really bad. the dialogue was so shitty and stilted, but priya and i had a good time mocking it. she's the only person i know who seeks out bad movies as actively as i do with the mocking and laughing at, not with. we also had a lovely conversation over dinner about stargate and firefly. i started getting into the series, though it doesn't have enough silly, yet, to offset the stern "we're all gonna die" of it all. the movie looks really cool, though, can't wait till it comes out. i'm assured that the series gets more amusing, too, so hurrah! oh, and corpse bride looks utterly magical. not in the sappy way they describe disney movies, but the way i say "magical" to mean "freaking awesome, yo!" horray for tim burton, it's about time he came out with another claymation flick. and with that, i'll just leave you with these famous words by pink floyd, because i really am unnaturally excited:

i got a bike, you can ride it if you like
it's got a basket, a bell that rings and things to make it look good
i would give it to you if i could, but i borrowed it

you're the kind of girl that fits into my world;
i'd give you everything - anything if you want things.

was humming snatches of that for the next hour after i bought my bike. whee!

so if temperature is the x axis, and libido is y...

2005-07-26T23:22:00.000-07:00

the weather has heated up. am just thrilled about that.

i spent all saturday at the cookware store working in air conditioned clime. it was horrible, people kept coming in off the street and complaining about the lovely heat that i longed to go bask in. finally, when i got off work, i stepped out to revel in the delicious warmth on the way to a nearby deli for some sandwiches. (was going to shakespeare in the park that evening with mother and kat and needed proper fare) as soon as i hit the wonderful heat, i just melted. i became a tropical, flouncey thing, floating in the summer air. and went into the deli. the male clerk was very, very nice to me in an almost obsequious "anything we can do" sort of way. smiled a lot, i recall. also, the only other customer, a man in with his young daughter, was awfully friendly, come to think. the female clerk who fixed my sandwiches wasn't nearly so nice. got sandwiches and left. writhed and crooned in the warm car. when i got home, i looked down and realized that my nipples were a bit pointy. couldn't think of a plausible reason for that, until i realized how much i had been enjoying the warmth. i think i actually might have been turned on by the weather. but i guess that explains why the men were so friendly to me.

i think my new mercury level/libido direct proportion theory is at least partly supported - i have been pretty horny pretty much since the advent of this last heat wave. and i'm reminded of a corrolary period in january abouts when i had no sexual urges at all. (a very depressing period of time.)

after the saturday night shakespeare experience (a rather meek performance of much ado about nothing), i spent sunday at the beach. t'was suegol's birthday celebration and quite fun, even though it was overcast on the coast, with clouds hovering just above the beach but nowhere to be seen just a quarter of a mile inland. i ate rich cake, watched shahin climb up and down a suicidally steep sandstone cliff, got my ankles wet in the freezing surf (not worth it without sun to warm the rest of me), and finished my bad laurell k. hamilton novel. the lack of sunshine made me recklessly bold and i did not wear sunscreen all day. foolish me, i ended up with prickly, red skin and the inability to stand wearing a bra. actually, i think the shade of dusky rose of my back is rather attractive and i don't mind wearing silk scarves as tops, so long as i don't have to make any sudden arm movements or stretches. i haven't begun to peel, yet, and i'm hoping that i avoid that particular sun punishment. fortunatley, i don't have work at the cookware store again until wednesday, so i can do about the house half-dressed as i am with no one staring. of course, with the continued heat wave, i have taken to playing with my breasts absentmindedly while watching tv. y-you see, they get...all bound flat by the scarf that i wear, b-because i have to tie it tight so it stays up, and i'm not wearing a bra, so...so they're all squishy and flat. *bites lip. blushes.* before i left the beach, i lay flat on my belly and poured cool sand onto my back and thighs and then burried my arms, as well. was very nice. tactile. i like beach.

apart from that, everything's been pretty uneventful this week. happy birthday suegol, whose real birthday is tomorrow. and elissa, whose birthday was...some few days ago. yes.

epic journies

2005-07-18T00:27:00.000-07:00

returned not so terribly long ago from my little weekend la trip for kat's birthday - i only mentioned this to a couple of you. sigh, i suppose it was a rather replete weekend, so much i could say. we drove down friday, taking 101 for the lovely costal view and the avoidance of inland heat. the coast was hazy for long stretches, but it was quite a while before we even reached those regions. i started reading a kiss of shados by laurell k. hamilton aloud on the trip, for kat's enjoyment as well as my own. the writing is not good by any stretch of the imagination and i can best describe its appeal as literary camp. it is just shy of a bodice-ripper, more along the lines of an undersexed goth girl's elaborately thought-out fantasies. it had the same /one woman forced by strange circumstance to sleep with many hot manly men/ fantasy plot device present in compass rose by gail dayton, which i read on the same long drive only a few months ago. all this tells me is that there are very many pining gothy girls out there with belabored prose and overly specific imagery bursting to be free of their tortured breasts. see? i can do it, too, bitches.

we arrived about 9 or 10 in the evening (i'm unsure as i have eschewed wristwatches for the summer) and stopped at whole foods for food and rite aid for liquor. blaize was throwing a party slated to begin at 10, and we were quickly threatening to be late. kat had invited some of her friends, who were more prompt than we were, and she recieved angry phone calls for the hour from 10 to 11 that it took us to show up at amy and elissa's place, eat, and put on our party finery. as so as we were ready, and had stopped at ib's for a little pre-party cocktail (mohitos - nm, not overly fond of drinks mixed with mint), we took out alcoholic purchases and finally made the much-anticipated appearance (at least on kat's side). i met her friends - a former classmate and the ex-boyfriend of an acquaintance both kat and i share, though her relationship with the girl is much more direct. we both imbibed quite a bit throughout the evening, though she had more than i did, and that is the only way i can explain was absurdities ensued.

kat simply grew ill, and apart from spending the later half of the party weakened on blaize's bed, did indelicate things into a plastic bag. i made out with jen fung's ex. backstory: i became aware of the girl in middle school, when she played the much reviled "other woman" to a classmate who was already taken in monogamy (in a rather stomach-churning emasculating way, i might add). oh, and i had a crush on him, as well, and was a ways away from being, but still vaguely, other-womany, myself. this all was very weird twilight-zone six degrees of kevin bacon.

her ex, nick, is a fairly attractive fellow, who says the most absurdly laughable things in aims to seduce, and at the end of the night tried to get me to go home with him. did not succeed. no. now, sure, i must admit that i did make out with him sporadically through the night, but the fact that i tried to escape him several times, mostly with the (very valid and not at all exploitative) excuse of needing to check on katherine. i would get "caught" in other conversations afterwards and simply "become distracted" from seeking him out. but, he'd always find me out again. he was intriguing at first, but anyone who says "i like your style" (leering) and "you're a fucking good kisser" (actually doubtful) without the slightest hint of ironic detachment is not for me. i appreciate praise, of course, but mostly the sort of helplessly (or hopelessly) honest kind, delivered with almost a reluctant compulsion, rather than these unoriginal stock lines delivered without any shame. (jim once said to me "god, you're hard to resist," which i had cause to believe, as, at that time and actually ever since a surprisingly unwise grope while still in a relationship with the now-ex, he'd had an obviously difficult time keeping his hands off of me. was terribly flattered.) at the end of the party, i was able to brush off the guy without even offering my phone number, which i'm sure he found rather confusing and mixed messagey. when he first kissed me (as we were dancing) - and it happened in quite an amusing way, with him asking for permission more along the lines of the morality of having a bit of a drunken party fling after a two-year relationship than a may-i-please-touch-you thing. and obviously, i took it for an even more meaningless party amusement.

i'm now of the impression that more than simply disfunctional - i just have very strange delineations for the types of relationships that i'm willing to interact in. i'll kiss a guy at a party and thing nearly nothing of him, but outside of that sort of situation, i think i'd like a proper relationship. where i can get attached enough to actually want to fuck the guy. there's a big hurdle of trust between my lips and my nether bits.

through my rounds and later, i discovered that quite a few people grew sick at the party, or immediately following. and none of the ones you'd expect. i had a wonderfully bile-free evening, for once, but many of the resident heavyweights or at least the sane drinkers were laid out.

slept at amy and elissa's (alone, hah!) and caught up with a mildly hung-over kat in the morning. she and blaize came by - her to shower, him to have pancakes. he brought the ingredients, but there was no milk to be had, so those plans were foiled, at least until he could get ib's pancake mix (just add water). he made breakfast in amy's kitchen and ib and patty came over for breakfast. i played the old snes aladdin game. and rather poorly.

eventually, we were able to make afternoon plans to go to the beach, but left far too late. blaize, his roommate, some friend of theirs who reminded me vaguely of my aunt sophia - in her youth, before the desperate and unatrractive need to couteract the cosmetic ravages of middle age set upon her, amy, kat, and i made up the party. i had hoped jim would join, but he opted out for some reason unrelayed. we drove a long way to hermosa beach at blaize's insistance and by the time we got there, the sun was hidden behind clouds, and there was no desire to spend time on the actual beach. we had a nice dinner on the peir, but i had really been hoping to sink my feet and hands in the sand. i did get to walk about a hundred yards barefoot in the sand on the way back to the car, but it just wasn't the same as a good proper quiet moment spent, toes curling into the sand and then collapsing to hands and knees, palms digging under until my forearms are burried. then lifting my arms slowly out, by steepening the angle from my shoulders, palms remaining in place, then heels moving apart and body lowered to sitting on the sand. amy had a bit of trouble following blaize to hermosa, mostly due to his inept abilities to lead. she hit a plant, a small, hardy member of the palm family that curled past the curb, while parking and damaged her mirror, dislodging it slightly. we all felt slightly bad. it would have been better to have gone earalier to the aquarium, as i still crave.

that night, after i had progressed further in aladdin, kat and i went to westwood to see charlie and the chocolate factory. on my insistence kat called jim to invite him (i had left my cell phone behind out of sheer empty-pocketed perversity), but he didn't answer so didn't join, and i was again rather disappointed as it seemed i wouldn't be seeing him, then. the movie was incredible, at least in my humble opinion. very campy, with amusingly absurd moments that johnny depp excelled at (poppa?), and just the right bit of irony and dark humor to to keep me delighted. i think i did the shiney-eyed giddy thing all the way through and i came out proclaiming that it was exactly my sense of humor. not everyone liked it, though. i heard one girl complain that she couldn't keep her eyes open all the way through and i wanted to yell at her a bit. i know it's been getting mixed reviews, but i have to say, if you didn't get it, then how can you claim to have any sense of humor. evidently, i define the world by my own, very unyielding, yarstick.

sunday, i woke early and had french honey smacks on elissa's bed with her and amy. (improper syntax, i know.) they had the happy frog on the box, but the cereal was wheaty puffs filled with chocolate. yummy and horribly addicting. completed my aladdin game and packed up. after lunch, kat and i made our leave. didn't really see anyone but the two girls for goodbyes. i felt a bit bad about that, because i'm not going to be seeing anyone else for a couple of months, but can't feel too sad if they were inaccessable. we had the typical 5+ hour drive up highway 5. stopped in humid, cow-scented fresno for gas and ice cream, eaten melting in the car to escape the bovine smell heavy in the air. for the entire trip, i read aloud from the lovely horrid novel and got home around 8. mum fed me, i finished my book, prepared my lesson for tomorrow, and wrote this long missive. excuse the typos please, i'm not going to proof tonight. i must to bed or i'll never be able to face the children in the morning. am terribly eager not to.

i must somehow get ahold of half-blood prince and the sequel to my horibly gothy romance. also, remember not to cuss the kids. man.

nuh-uh

2005-07-10T00:37:00.000-07:00

all yesterday and today, i've had the urge to call people "baby." more specifically, i've had the urge to call people "baby" and then demand that others not put them in corners. this rather peculiar inclination is even extended to my neighbor's cat, calvin, who i am currently watching in her absence. i don't know why dirty dancing is suddenly asserting such a strong influence on my life. perhaps in the zodiac of the cinema, the cosmic film reel is in my second house and the bucket of popcorn is in retrograde, meaning that the house of swayze is on the rise. or else the dancing concessions hot dog is eclipsed by the preiviews rating sign, which means that the star of 80's dance movies is exposed to exert its influence in my fifth house. whatever it is causing my rather sudden and powerful obsession, it is freaking me out a little, yeah.

i fear i have a terrible confession to make. my toenails are painted a dark teal. yes, my virgin toes have been deflowered and now gleam wantonly in seductive hues. i got my nails done yesterday and my fingers are already chipping. i'm so not an elegant lady.

went to work today, and am going tomorrow. at the cookware store. it's been quite busy. next week i begin a whole new session with the children. three classes of strange new children i must entertain, and all three of them are completely full. i fear the unknown. and i fear it in large quantities, especially! i literally had a sudden chill sitting on the couch tonight when i remembered my less friendly job among the youngsters. that's two more weeks of lesson plans and power point. crossword puzzles and photocopies. man, i hate teaching. but i keep repeating to myself $35/hour, $35/hour and feel a little bit more comforted.

i'm spooked a little, but i should be alright, i mean, i got through it once pretty unscathed, i can do it again. and besides, nobody puts baby in the corner. nobody.

wedding bell blues

2005-07-08T23:51:00.000-07:00

tonight, i went out to dinner with some friends and an old high school acquaintance who is getting married tomorrow. sitting around the the table, surrounded by my familiar and beloved faces, was just staring at this girl in a veil. really threw me for some reason. last year, another friend of mine got married and it seemed perfectly natural. but she was different. different destiny. sort of white trash-y (pick-up truck, drinking, country music), community college, thing for heavily pierced and tattooed men. she was one of "those other people" who do things like get married at 19 and work mindless lower-eschelon corporate jobs until they die. my friends are the clever ones. they have verve and ambition. they make pollitical jokes loudly over cheesecake and have summer jobs as programmers at yahoo! they are not the common sort of people. and though the girl at dinner was not personally a friend of mine, she was one of "us." the same eccentric style and wit. and she was about to do this horribly adult thing. i can't really even fathom it. i feel so young, and my friends as well. to think that someone my age was getting married seems just so very wrong. had i known her better, i might have yelled, "but you have your whole life ahead of you!" how can you be sure what you even want at this age? yug! i'm fucking twenty, but sometimes i feel like i'm fourteen. and i can't even imagine being married without being an adult first. having: not just a job but a career, an apartment of my own, the knowledge i can support yourself adequately in real-life living sort of situation, a clue, credit, multiple professional-type suit outfits in wardrobe, regular dry cleaners, a liquor cabinet, a coin sorting machine, framed pictures on walls, a well-stocked fridge, etc. me? i'm not even sure what i want to be when i grow up. and frankly, even the prospect of being in any relationship makes some part of me shudder and want to crawl into a corner. at "marriage," though, it just stands blinking in utter confusion, "could you repeat that word again and slower, please - i didn't understand it." i'm not sure if i'll ever be that sort of collected, self-sufficient person known as "adult". but, can't say i'm particularly in a rush. i sort of dread the day i'll be accountable for my own actions and livelihood and all that. why the hell would anyone deliberately get married so young?

warm summer, cold

2005-07-06T22:30:00.000-07:00

i'm sick. horrible summer cold. unfortunately, or possibly the opposite, it's not one of those colds (at least not yet) with lots of horrid symptoms and physical feelings of ik. noooo...it's all in my head. sure, my throat is a bit achey, but that's definitively copable. i just feel listless and irritable. unable to focus, heady-headed, and very sleepy. many headaches. big dose of apathy. and the feeling that i've been run over by the shit van.

okay, so i admit "irritable' is not a usual cold symptom, but i do have a cold. swear.

that being the case, i am anti-looking forward to going in to teach class tomorrow. and preparing my materials for the next session of classes that begins next monday. oh, hurrah, i get to start all over with another batch of kids whose names i won't remember, either. i need to re-tool my classes to be interesting.

you know what this cold is like? it feels as if i am stuck with that leaden-headed feeling you get, having just gotten up from a heavy nap, and am walking around all day with it. i'm actually almost fine standing up and moving around, but the second i settle into one position, be it in the car to drive, or at the dinner table, i start drifting deep into the depths of my fuzzy, addled brain fur. sigh, it's my bed time now. must wake up and deal with the kiddies once more. i'll probably come up with the lesson for my first class while in the shower tomorrow morning. heaven help me if i'm too exhausted and dense to bullshit. at least the other two are taken care of - watching movies, hurrah, and i just need to guard against falling asleep in my seat.

i left my heart

2005-07-02T19:46:00.000-07:00

mmm, yes! love this place so much. teaching is going alright. my classes are kinda dull, but my kids think i'm cool. i can live with that. had an "incident" in one of my classes, turns out one of the kids involved is autistic and no one told me. stupid people. why not warn the inexperienced teacher that she might have some coddling to do? turns out, i handled things perfectly, though, to which i say "hah!" thursday after work, went to my old place of employment to hang out with the 7th grade daughter of my co-worker. thought it was amusing that i deliberately went to hang out with a kid after a day of teaching them. picked up some eclairs for my parents at a farmer's market, stopped at an antiques store looking for a birthday present for kat, and went out to dinner with my parents. i wore my nice heels and a skirt and felt fancy. dinner was nice - not great - and we were joined by a work acquaintance of my father's and her adult friends at the restaurant. we were there to hear a flamenco band play live, but it was more two guitarists and latin jazz. yesterday, my day off, went to matt's in the afternoon to play wow on his computer. terminator 2 was on in the background and he poked meto get my attention. my druid cow-lady is now at level 6! (hehehe, so geek.) had dinner with my fam and went to the mall to get a bra. got 2 out of weakness and semiannual sale and went to meet my friends at cheesecake factory next door. nearly the whole group was there - suegol, sadaf, clarence, shahin, and yen, as well as sadaf's little cousin. we ate lovely cake andappetisers and laughed raucously. yen and i pulled out my new acquisitions and held them up for inspection in the crowded restaurant. i dropped sadaf and her cousin at home and shahin, clarence, and yen picked me up at my place for a drive. we visited the san jose airport and inspected the "monster construction" signs, drove pell-mell around san jose looking for the source of a sweeping beacon of light (trendy nightclub), and yen and shahin, in an unprecedented explosion of anti-pc behavior, discussed their least-favorite ethnic groups loudly and with much invective. it wa hilarious. got dropped back at home and went to bed. today, took mom to the farmer's market here. there were some old men playing the blues and singing under a deck umbrella and i really dug it. then shahin picked me up and we went to sf. ate chowder on fisherman's wharf and ice cream in ghirdellli square. hiked up steep streets to the koit tower and stared at the lovely view of the bay bridge. went the wrong way on some one-way streets and lucked out on parking costs once we were able to finally find parking. there's a giant inexplicable bow-and-arrow statue beside embarcadero by the piers. and the gap headquarters. and the aquarium of the bay, which is now added to my list of 'quarious i'd like to eventually visit. but first must arrange a group to go to monterey. anyway, had a lovely-ful time. sf is totally one of my favorite places (add to list with monterey). it's all my home. and i love every inch of it.

newton's second law

2005-06-28T23:58:00.000-07:00

so...productive. ow. woke up at 6:45 today, drove to work, taught until 2, went to costco, picked up some necessities and also not necessities (got eternal sunshine, hurrah!), home, washed my hair, had dinner, helped mom in the garden for a bit, set up our wireless network so my airport express was connected to big, fancy airport and i could stream music on the express with the weaker signal while enjoying the fancy's stronger signal and faster connection time (very pleased when i succeeded), then i tried setting up a dos emulator for my mac so i can play old supersolvers games (have to set it up in unix; i don't know unix - problem, but i made a good start). so i did so many things today. and tomorrow will be just as busy. and there are so many things that i want to do in general. i'm amazed at me. usually i'm so lethrgic. but force me to wake up before noon and suddenly i'm a different person. a much more accomplished person. also, i tote my laptop around with me wherever i go. it's useful in teaching. and distracting when the kids are bored. ("look a simpsons episode! if you promise not to hate me, i'll put it on!") we're bonding like cops from different backgrounds and races, suddenly partnered together and then forced to ferret out corruption within our own precinct (laptop and me, not the kids - nooo). and i'm still very protective like mamma bear. i had other thoughts to write, but those will wait until i've gotten more sleep, i think. i may spend the entire month subsisting on 6 hours/day. you know, as is opposed to my accustomary 11. but tomorrow, i may buy a bike or sort through my possessions for things i can give to charity, or start tearing up our scraggly lawn, or re-caulk my parents' tub. you never know what will happen once i get going. yes! and those are just the reasonably expectable things i might do. i could write the next great american novel or train a seeing eye dog to chew the legs off of child molesters. the possibilities are limitless when you're awake!

does jig

2005-06-28T00:13:00.000-07:00

since coming home, it's been terribly difficult to tear me away from the sci-fi channel. i love it! had it been part of my la cable package last year, i'm strongly doubt i would have gotten anything done. tonight, i watched "stargate" for like 6 hours straight while sewing on my living room floor. apart from the back strain, it was great! i can't actually watch stargate in la. because jim and blaize are such fans, any liking for it that i betray seems like i'm sucking up or something. which sucks, because i find the show terribly amusing. the same way i used to watch "sliders" and "quantum leap" every day when i got home from middle school. man, i love me my cheesy sci-fi tv. i feel a little vindicated, though, that priya loves it, ubergeek that she is. so i can actually talk to someone about it without feeling like a dickhead. because, aah, yay! wayne brady played an evil guy for, like, 15 min on friday's episode. i couldn't stop cracking up. and this season, the cast is joined by "crichton" and "aeryn sun" from "farscape." fuck DAMN that makes me happy. i loved that show (mostly while "zhaan" was still a regular cast member). and, as i keep crooning, "it's sci-fi incest!" yes, i just quoted myself. go on and hate me now.

apart from the new domestic hobby and the television black pit off doom i seem to have fallen into, i've been working. i started today! i think this may have the potential to not suck. which is actually quite optimistic, if you know me at all and were not recently hit in the head with a rock. i have another 4 weeks to go (minus a day - the 4th of july, fridays, and weekends), so it's a bit premature to really call it. but ow, my throat has been scratchy for days and days. the same way it gets before i come down with a sore throat, only lasting for far longer. i'm not sure what the deal is. if i were getting sick, the cold should have struck far before now. but no, whatever this is, it just sits here and lingers. guh. unpleasant with all the talking i do. the kids seem cool, some of them very cool, though, so hopefully i'll have some fun. and you know, if this doesn't let up, i'll just resort to taking shots of hard liquor before bed.

i feel really time-pressed through. not in a stressfull way, but more because there's simply so much to do. apart from the fact that i have about 50 million books in the house that i'd like to read, i want to buy a bike (which necessitates me driving down to stanford some afternoon), i need to unpack my clothes still, i need to clean my room and sort out what i want to give to charity, i want to set up some speakers, and re-caulk the tub, and figure out whether i can make the old scanner work with the generic power module, and make a costco run, and sort the rest of my materials for the writing class, and finish my sewing project, of course. there was more that i was thinking about earlier and have forgotten now, but you understand. and these are just the things that are pressing on my mind minute-to-minute. there's a whole slew of other ideas that are on my "back burner" while i deal with everything else. sigh, this is why i'm so spazzy. maybe this friday, i'll just grab someone and cart them to the beach. lie in the sand not caring what crevaces it makes its way into and listen to the gulls, hoping they don't poop on me. sounds lovely. caaaw caaaaw caaaaw

god, i'm exhausted. bed now.

guess what!

2005-06-22T10:59:00.000-07:00

i'm home. hooome! hom.

it took forever to get us out of the apartment sunday and monday: packing and carting and storing. we took all the non-necessary stuff to a storage place and crammed everything else into kat's car. once everything was stored, we had to clean the apartment, but that job was half-assed because we were all in such a hurry to leave. i had to go to the airport and kat had to drive home. the landlord came by and looked around and pointed out the dirty places in our apartment we needed to clean. didn't get to them all, so i think we're gonna be fined. but, oh well, we couldn't help the timing.

jim helped with the storage part and then drove me to the airport, which was really nice, and i made him late for a party. he kind of confuses me - is really (super) nice doing me big favors like that or taking care of booze-sick me, but the rest of the time seems pretty much completely ambivalent towards me with the not seeing and not talking.

on the way to the airport jim was worried i'd miss my flight. i wasn't, but didn't want to say anything. sort of figured it was more anxiety about his being late, rather then me, and that i shouldn't say anything, just let him freak out in peace. but really, i've never missed a flight, even when i've had to get through ginormous holiday out-the-terminal-and-around-the-block lines to get through security, with 15 min before my flight. god seems to smile on last-minute fliers. though jim did start yelling "this is why i don't believe in you" at the sky when a giant turning tour bus blocked our lane and the next just blocks from the airport. i laughed inside, and thought, "this is pretty much why i do," but i think we were talking about different gods.

got home late and convinced dad to let me drive back from the airport. my parents freaked out a little if i put on any bit of speed or swerved in my lane the slightest, because i hadn't driven for months. i thought their concern was unnecessary, but i will admit to a bit of the wobbly driving. gave dad a little bottle of disaronno that i found inexplicably lurking in our cabinet while cleaning. he poured us all drinks in his pretty german provincial shotglasses (i got the one of the litle boy being spanked - i'm still not sure why that's the image - what town chooses that for their emblem). i downed my drink in one gulp to the consternation of my folks. oops. don't drink good booze like you're at a frat party.

mom heated some leftover lasagne for me, while i gave them a very enthusuastic and rather unfocused account of the premiere i had been to, and movies i'd seen, and things i'd learned in my classes that were interesting. discovered that dad seems to have a thing for jessica alba. i haven't decided if it's upsetting when i learn things like that or not. i think maybe not. the conversation was more unfocused due to combined enthusiasm and exhaustion than the alcohol. half a shot of low proof liqueur is not enought to get me anything. but, mmm, it was tasty. not like the paint-thinner shit i drink at school. had a second one, slowly.

kat brought by the rest of my posessions later that night and i crashed. woke up sore at 3:30 the next day. i showered la off my body and lounged about the house. dad went to a baseball game with his friend (i so didn't want to go, dull!), so mom and i went to dinner. it was a nice little vegetarian place we know. stopped at the library on the way back and lounged about some more.

today, i have to begin arranging my lesson plans. i made an appointment to stop in the office early friday and drop off the photocopying i need done. also, i've collared mat into taking me to find a good, cheap mountain bike for getting around next year. i'm going to make him take me riding and show me all the nice trails, etc. i'm hoping to become all outdoorsey in shape.

i've got all sorts of big plans, high hopes, for this summer, like that one. we'll have to see how they pan out, though. but yaaaaay!!! i am so home!

chemind

2005-06-18T03:58:00.000-07:00

it's a bad sign when i make drinking metaphors for chem concepts. weak bases can "hold their charge" like good alcoholics can "hold their liquor."

also bad sign when i start personifying flourine as a crotchety old man, miserly coveting his electrons.

and when i simultaneously (and contradictorily) take umbridge at book/lecture descriptions of acidity as "willingness to give up protons," as if the molecules thinking about it.

when i think of 3,3-diethyl pentane (or any similarly shaped molecule) as "tiny carbon swastikas."

when i start seeing faces in badly-drawn aromatic rings.

i see the group "COOCH3" and think simultaneously of rappers and charro. charro rapping. god.

(the above was written at about 2 am the night before my chem final)

countdown to punken revelries

2005-06-15T01:26:00.000-07:00

one more final to go and i have yet to shrivel up and devolve into a completely incoherent mess of ire. hurrah! tonight i slack, but, tomorrow i dive bodily into the spine of a chemistry book with a spash of functional groups and big globs of pulpy paper. chances are i'll spend all day spazzing out like mad, muttering about sn2 and nucleophiles and strong bases. currently am watching death to smoochy. so far, best fucking movie ever. "heil smoochy!"

so looking forward to finishing finals. going to get drunk (to somewhere before throwup time), and i'm get to do it at another themed amy and elissa bash. brit rock. oooh, girls, you do good. frankly, they're going through a list of all my little boy-fetishes, at least indirectly. mmm...hooligans. unfortunately, if last party was any indication, none of the boys will dress up like sexy, sexy punks. none of the boys will dress up as much of anything. but i can always dream.

musical interlude

2005-06-13T02:28:00.000-07:00

have had a thing for egotistical love songs lately. rolling stones' "under my thumb," dandy warhols' "i love you" jonathan coulton's "skullcrusher island" and, while i'm at it, depeche mode's "it's no good." i keep wanting to quote them everywhere:

i love you (32x)

i only just met you before,
but i can't understand
you don't want me more.

you may-be think I'm
too smart and weird,
but that should only
make you want to hear that,

i love you (16x)

obviously not in love, though, so i can't really say what's really been bringing this on.

ahhh, so thrilled, though. i finally have a flight scheduled monday to go home, get out of my mold-infested apartment, which is now also supporting a healthy population of fruit flies. the biologist in me wants to trap them and expose them to radiation...but that's beside the point, sort of.

i’m so into you
but i’m way too smart for you
even my henchmen think I’m crazy
i’m not surprised that you agree
if you could find some way to be
a little bit less afraid of me
you’d see the voices that control me from inside my head
say i shouldn’t kill you yet

i made this half-pony half-monkey monster to please you
but i get the feeling that you don’t like it
what’s with all the screaming?
you like monkeys, you like ponies
maybe you don’t like monsters so much
maybe I used too many monkeys
isn’t it enough to know that i ruined a pony making a gift for you?

but i'm having a wonderfully wistful time thinking of home and all the fabulous things i'll do when i get there. (when not working, that is.) beach with my friends, evenings at the (newly remodeled) stanford theater watching classic old films, late nights at the donut shop eating pastries and bullshitting with my crew (yo). i'm gonna drag mat out into the hills and make him show me pretty hiking trails. shakespeare in the park is putting on much ado about nothing, my most favorite play ever. (i'm totally beatrice. which means my wit won't ever let me admit to the weakness of being in love - that's right, personality flaw.) mum and i go every year, sit on blankets and just chill. and there are the annual art and wine festivals in every city that we like to go to. and the weekends i can grab people and drive out to sf or down to monterey for shopping of staring at lovely fishes (another remodel that i'm absolutely thrilled about). i'm going to try and re-connect with the costume store crew and maybe tag along to renfaire again this year, dressed up like a right medieval trollop. and the rest of the time, i intend to spend shuttling back and forth between home, the library, and hollywood video. i have whole reading list made up, and i intend on convincing mom to join one of those unlimited rental deals so i can go absolutely mad. i can totally convince her to do it, too. hurrah for powers of persuasion!

It's down to me, yes it is
The way she does just what she's told
Down to me, the change has come
She's under my thumb
Ah, ah, say it's alright

Under my thumb
A siamese cat of a girl
Under my thumb
She's the sweetest, hmmm, pet in the world

though i say mum is more of a puppy than a cat. (this is what comes when you don't buy me a proper pet when i'm little, dad. i make one of my own mother. eh! eh!)

but right now, i have to slog through whole mess of finals and clouds of tiny flies and many, many pages of science bullshit. it's driving me so crazy that today i listened to the same song on repeat for, like, half an hour before realizing it and hitting "forward." the sad thing is, that i was even singing along. my sleep schedule has turned into some strange mess, and my eating habits are spotty unless kat and i do a proper dinner. i've also been slacking like mad, completely unable to concentrate, like some scary lobotomy patient. i just want this all to be over, but at least i'm not in breakdown mode like i was last year - heh. but i hate finals so, i can't wait, can't wait, can't wait until they're through. and then, finally i can get home to the little city i love. hurrah, sigh, and yay. and you must come play with me up north. visit, or if you live there, we will most assuredly hang out. it will be wonderful, you know you can't resist seductive luuuure of the bay.

i'll be fine
i'll be waiting patiently
till you see the signs
and come running to my open arms
when will you realize
do we have to wait till our worlds collide
open up your eyes
you've got to back the tide

don't say you want me
don't say you need me
don't say you love me
it's understood
don't say you're happy
out there without me
i know you can't be
cos it's no good

gift horses and genetics

2005-06-11T18:21:00.000-07:00

so i'm going home in, like, a week and i haven't worked out exactly how i'm getting there. i'm going to end up living out of the westwood starbucks bathroom with my carry-ons for wont of having scheduled a flight outta here. just finished the first final - genetics - and when i came back, felt as if the brain had been eaten out of the back of my head while i was distracted. (very shaun of the dead) did not have a good study for it last night. i kept being distracted by KoL and fanny hill, which i've begun reading because i stumbled across it online one day while being all curious about banned books. i figured, i'll read it for it's amusing social history. namely, the fact that you can't watch aa WWII film or old-school prison movie (where the inmates are lovable anti-heros, and not creepy in ass-pounding way) without hearing it's mention. so i wondered: is it really as titiallating as all these fictional characters seem to think so? yeah, it's pretty raunch. moreso than genetics book, despite the clinical photos of naked "women" who are genetic males. (isn't gender ambiguity grand?) mentioned in an away message last night that studying bio generally makes me horny...which is true, but frankly reading sex scenes doesn't help, either. (i think it's just my default setting when i get bored, actually. at least, during certain parts of the month.) kim read msg and offered to send me a vibrator. as a present, or charity, or something. i demanded it it be new, because - ew. she also offered to draw me a little manual of helpful tips and pointers and prodders. i told her that she had boundary issues, or not enough. on my way to take the test this morning, i stood behind a couple making out on a street corner, waiting for the light to change. i burned myself the other day, and it started to itch and peel while i was trying to not look too put off by their loove. started picking at it. my ringfinger is festering. with the contrast, i though that was a little funny. got to the testing room and dug in my purse for my test-taking materials. found the dna earrings kat gave me months ago and i haven't worn for ages. probably because they were stashed away in my purse. put them on for luck, and decided to see good omens everywhere. i got assigned a left-handed desk - yay, i always deliberately sit in those for test-taking. sign. i got the green copy of the test, not white. green is my favorite color. sign. don't know how helpful my little omens really were, but i came back to the apartment with my eyes unfocused, and went to nap. i deserved it after 3 hours sitting in a tight little aisle, all cramped to the left to write, doing linkage problems and ordering the genes on Hfr inserts. it's enough to drive a girl to drink. another thing i've been wanthing to do since last night's boredom. *sigh* the horny and the binge-y feelings always come at the least opportune times. for example, i imagine they'll be in full effect all summer back home, where it's highly unlikely i'll be able to really satisfy either. (my male friends aren't...just, no.) but i have kim's hypothetical present to look forward to. why is kim sending me long, rectangular packages that whir? i don't know, mom. open it? alright, dad....but, ooh! can't i just do that in my room, alone, and then never speak about this again? you're curious and want to know what i got? trust me, you're not that curious. but awkward boundary issues aside, i'm looking forward to going home. i'm just not sure how. *sigh* so if you see me wandering around westwood in july, clutching a little bag of my effects and shiny plastic shaft, take some pity on me and buy me a hamburger or something, kay?

remember tock?

2005-06-06T00:02:00.000-07:00

had a little run-in with nature today.

i volunteered to help a random grad student with her field work. counting, tagging, etc. of a certain type of californian wild grass. it's been pretty much competed out of its natural ranges due to the introduction of other, faster-growing grasses. so i spent my day slogging through a field in a state park, counting flowering stalks. sort of enjoyable, actually, even though conservation biology is not my fav. i got to wear anti-snake shinguards and eat a sandwich while sitting in dirt. i realized little black beetles have an inordinate fondness for me and i got to beat landscaping into submission with a bit of pvc. saw the cutest little grey bunnies with white fluffy tails and pert little ears (i very nearly went "woodja woodja woodja" it was so cute) and red-tailed hawks and maybe a turkey vulture. i like nature.

had to wake up quite early. was halfway through my bowl of cereal when judi called that she was outside. drank ceral solids hurridly, turned off the billy idol music had been grooving to (mmm...bleached-blonde snarl attitude black leather 80's), grabbed indiana jones hat and ran out. turns out the park was right next to jason's (from last year) house. i mean, right next door to his impossibly posh little gated, fountained, landscaped neighborhood. that struck me as a bit odd in small-world way. was slogging through nettles and stabby grass right nearby, so half-expected to see him jogging past on isolated access road, trying desperately to exercise away death.

it was a bit overcast, thankfully, so it wasn't overly warm. still, slathered on gobs of coppertone, not trusting my nucleotide base repair capabilities, evidently. it got into my eyes and made me blink and burn for a bit. wore my lovely hat and had the urge to pose all day in typically outdoorsey shots - sideways, one leg bent, arm megestically resting on pvc walking stick as if it were royal sceptor, am image of explorer/naturalist/outdoorsey girl.

i thought i handled myself quite well, actually. not squeamish. dove right in to thistley plants without whimper. rolled in dirt. envisioned myself some sort of mountain lion predator crouching in tall grasses, waiting for prey. (which would be tall male, standing with his back to me. as hunter, i would pounce lithely, landing on his back. then i would gnaw on one of his ears for a bit in an obnoxious manner. ...i'm apparently not a particularly deadly predator.) pointed out interesting bugs. did not hate snakes (despite hat). all that good stuff.

was warned, when leaving, to shower and check clothes for ticks when i got back hone. got home. put up cheeky away message "showering to wash off the horrible sunblock. and possibly the ticks." undressing to shower, i saw something on my pants. not the pointy grass seeds i had been picking out of every article of clothing, including my shoelaces and remarkably, bra, all day, but a...gasp! horror!...tick!!

i sqealed and threw the pants (with tick) onto the floor and did "yucky" squirm, the likes of which are only seen danced on tabletops when 50's housewives spot mice. eventually, i worked up the courage to pick the pants up, as well as a little wad of toilet paper to dispatch the threat. but i couldn't find the tick! where'd it go? where'd it go? ew ew ew!! eventualy, saw it had crawled to the inside of the waistband and picked it up to crush it. squished, checked: not dead. squished, checked: not dead. damn resillent tick. freaked out a little. put down paper, started stabbing at it with my hard fingernails until i felt a pop. checked. thank god, dead tick. then i freaked out again. envisioned tick crawling from wreckage of toilet paper grave to suck my blood in my sleep. i threw it away in the kitchen trash. did another icky dance. freaked out about other, invisible ticks hiding in my clothing, dropped off of me onto all my possessions, lurking in wait to avenge their fallen comrade. ticks make me irrational.

flipped out and imed everybody with general "ewwwwwww!!!!!" sentiments. went to go "shower in scalding hot ddt and raid and then scrub off all my moles in tick paranoia." i was terrified that there were ticks hiding in my hair. so, i went back into my bathroom and beat the hell out of it, shaking my head like mad, scratching through it, clapping my hands on it to kill anything lurking (ew!) in my hair. then i showered.

soaped, shampooed and felt some hard foreign object caught in my hair. did another little yucky squealing dance and ran my head under very hot water for a good minute straight chanting "tick! tick! tick! tick!" like the dog in the phantom tollbooth. finally regained the sense to comb through my hair, during the execution of which, i lberated a very frightened pointy grass seed. not a tick. finished bathing, much relieved, after i assured myself there was nothing more sinister caught in my locks.

bundled up all my clothing and ran to do my laundry. get rid of any ticks not clever enough to crawl out of my dirty clothes and hide themselves against later attack. i'm still a bit jumpy, actually.

the thought of ticks gets me all squeamish. and frankly, i'm a bit disappointed no one was around to offer to check me for ticks. grooming me like an ape. we could make jane goodall jokes and have a good old laugh. ("i'll be jane and you can by my gorilla lover." "ours is the love that dare not speak its name." "hey! gorillas do not speak. they converse through an adapted form of american sign language; if you want to say something, just do it that way." ">gesture<" "oh, you damn, dirty ape. (rawr).") it would have earned anyone 5000 points in my esteem and diffused the horror of the previous half hour. but, sadly, no.

...

god those ticks are nasty. ugh!

brain thinks

2005-06-04T02:42:00.000-07:00

i was thinking about george lucas today. been in one of my little irreverant moods in which i can't get anything done at all, but i think about everything. all at once. and it gets brilliantly garbled and spit back out like minestrone soup. it is the mood of bad metaphors. spent much of last night drawing amino acids and lying. tonight, i've been drawing forest animal tea time and chatting rapidly with various people fun. example:

me: "who would win a metaphorical knife fight? honesty, truth, or a cougar?" (from abel and baker - check it out, so cute)
jim: well a cougar doesn't have opposable thumbs
jim: although it does have claws
me: that's what i'm thinking
jim: but since the other two are merely concepts
jim: i'm gonna have to say the cougar
me: also, i bet honesty has some pretty wicked spines
me: like those dinosaurs i'm thinking about
me: or a killer robot
me: i pretty much envision honesty as a killer robot
jim: honesty can be brutal
jim: but the truth can hurt
me: truth is a little cube of wood
me: maybe just over a foot on each side
jim: not exactly
jim: truth is a huge flaming raptor
jim: of death
jim: kind of the opposite of a cube, actually
me: are you saying your raptor of death can defeat my killer robot of honesty?
jim: yes
me: well, bring it on!

a little bit shocked that he humored me. never plays along.

but back to george lucas. so, rumor has it that nicole kidman does do little nose twitch in bewitched remake. and denise was wondering if she really could twitch her nose. i think they did it cgi. everything is now. and if you think about it, it would explain george lucas' neck. yes! it's like those birds that have big, red neck sacs they inflate to attract the ladies. except with a goiter. through some odd quirk of nature, he finds giant goiter-necks alluring and has had his endowment digitally enhanced for maximum rrowr factor.

...well, then you try and explain it, smarty!

right now, someone outside my window is playing phantom of the opera on a flute and someone else is singing. i'm comforted to know that the world has gone crazy around me. horray for nutters world.

bought the best shirt today online. darth vadar is trimming a hedge into the shape of a death star. eeeeee!!! can't wait to get it, only, i sent it to home, not here, so maybe i'll make mom bring it when she comes to drive me up. just so i can wear it sooner.

okay, a little sleepy and maybe if i wake up at a reasonable time tomorrow, i'll achieve things. like school. must try. bye!

i'm just gonna say it again...proboscis!

2005-06-02T01:45:00.000-07:00

have developed dirty new late-night pleasure. well, not so much dirty, actually. not even guilty, really. classic x-files episodes from the pre-mulder-abduction era and laptop, well, on my lap. mmm....baby. kicks everything's ass.

sigh, so i suppose a recap of the past couple of weeks might be in order.

goth party: chatted up several new people, including guy i had little distance crush on last year in the dorms. or rather, thought was terribly cute. but only when he was all punk hooligan-ed out. he wasn't for the party, pity. when not all bleached and leather-jacketed, skinny pants and you could hear the sex pistols in your head, he's a little pudgy-faced jawlineless. actually, vaguely jimish features. talked to his bespectacled bio major friend about star wars and dug the geeked out convo. made other conversations in various stages of drunkenness until i was vomiting unhappy off the balcony. there are photos, even, which amy has kindly posted with the rest of the party picts. not cool, actually. (bit pissed off about that.) eventually, jim carried me home. he and kat took care of me. i showered and changed and passed out and eventually all was well. the next day i spent lying on the ground in my living room reading, trying to fight off the nausia. though i think now, i have a bit of a poison reaction to alcohol. shots make me want to retch and cocktails make me queasy. at least i spend my summers mostly not drinking anyways.

the next monday and wednesday, i had midterms in bio and chem, respectively. bio was alright, well, mediocre. chem was a bitch. i would wake up from dreams with images of chemical reactions in my head and no idea how the mechanisms worked. would panic. learned everything pretty much satisfactorily for the test, took it and it was a bitch. and i did, well, mediocrely. at least by comparison. high: 75, avg: 32, low: -1. yes, negative. shit, right? chem pains me. after that, went home, and napped. waking up, i had images of deep-fried functional groups in my head. i was eating them with chopsticks. ketones were best. stuck my tongue in the loop of the double bond and broke it. num. hung out with jim that night in a, um, cozy way and still kept having mechanism flashbacks. found that terribly amusing, but in one of those -mildly insulting if i share- ways. the chem post-traumatic stress dreams have ended, thank god, but i'm sure they'll return in time for finals.

rather uneventful rest of the week. kat went home, so it was just me and roosh. restocked the fridge friday with all my favorite foods and was in the best mood. friday i spent at sadaf's hanging out with her and the gang. played pool a bit, but mostly watched them. turns out, i'm crap, unless i have someone pointing out exactly where i should hit the ball. yay for kevin's help! sadaf got me dining hall dinner, and i watched the boys brawl amusingly and threaten one another with pool cues. wanted to go to the sci-fi convention sat, but woke up too late for any of the things i really wanted to see. sadaf came by and we cooked a big dinner for her friends. that's how the sink was clogged. people came by, ate, sat around, joked, brawled a bit more, played n64, and watched charade. the rest of the weekend was spent pretty much bitching about the sink and listening to lecture recordings for the final i need to make up. have a lot more of that to do, though.

had tried to go to the long beach aquarium all weekend, but could never make it work. disappointing, but now it means kat gets to go, too. means my firends get to comiserate, sharing amazed and creeped-out looks behind my back as i squeal and giggle and point at the pretty fishies. ten-to-one i giggle and jump up and down a least once. blaize can come, too, complete the set of people who think me lunatics. har. but i will go. will! cuz i do love me my 'quariums.

mmreh, that more or less sums things up. am left with vague, niggling impression that i fuck everything up just a little. but the x-files will comfort me. this has to be te best epp. i've ever seen. it's about a boy with an "eating disorder" - he turns into a weird earless bald thing and eats people's brains. big self-help fan, he's trying to control his urges. his fake ear just fell off and he had to surreptitiously pick it up from the floor and squash it back into place. mulder lurks around and asks him random questions with a smug knowing look. and he said "proboscis!" hee!! i get such i kick out of mulder saying "proboscis," not fair. and now crazy boy is describing the amazing taste of brains to a room full of overeaters, anonymous. they're writhing in joy and foaming at the mouth with him. mmm...brains... (did you just say brains?) no, chicken! i mean chicken! damn i love me that chicken!! (hmm...chicken is good.) heheheh...you don't know what i'm referring to. but i think this post is pretty much dead. like proboscisboy's brain trust victims. tee!

ms. clean

2005-05-31T17:11:00.000-07:00

all i blog about now is my sink, but it is literally most interesting thing in my life at the moment. no, shutup! really. har now i can say i write about everything. har. so the landlord and maintenance man came by this morning to fix it and to supervize fixing it, in reverse order. i was in bed. the progression of events as i heard them, half asleep, through my wll were: stand around and discuss liquid plumber, run disposal, pause, mutterings, run disposal, pause, mutterings, run disposal. at this oint i got out of bed, put on pants and went to see what they were doing. they pointed to the drain and told me it was fixed. sink was running, no water was backed up. i just stared at it. they left.

so, my sink did just miraculously fix itself. my wanting that to happen, my periodic wandering into the kitchen and staring at it, willing that to happen, my whining that i wished it would happen, it seems were not childinsh, then, but oracular. i went back to bed for a bit. woke up again and did my dishes. scrub, scrub, scrub. cleaned my counters. the inside of the toaster oven. the inside of the microwave. the cabinet surfaces. stovetop. burner area beneath stovetop. floors. took the rugs outside and shook them. everything is clean. everything. it only took 4 1/2 hours.

i know not all of that was strictly necessary, but i can't do anything halfway. very ocd. and now that the voices in my head have finally shut up, i can take a shower and eat breakfast. maybe watch a spot of tv, and then get back to studying and learning and all that. well, almost. i do have to run to the store and pick up some steel wool so i can scrub the last remaning crusted dregs of burnt rice out of my pot. it took me about 5 boils with soap, water, and baking soda and then a lot of scraping to just get it this clean. so my world has not been entirely righted. just enough so i can stop obsessing so hard. thank god.

my ocd receptors are going into burnout mode

2005-05-30T09:49:00.000-07:00

maintenance has the day off. the kitchen must remain festering shithole until tomorrow. they must take apart the sink and fix everything. liquid plumber eats away at the fixtures and, evidently, i should have known better than to put too many peels down the disposal. (it's a disposal, frankly, that's what i thought they were for.) but now the entire main room of my apartment is disgusting and guilt-inducing and i'm still disinclined to eat. at least i don't have class tomorrow so i can clean as soon as everything is fixed. oh, and i woke up at 8 today to try and get everything worked out as soon as possible. apalling, right? i am going to chalk this up to a learning experience or something, maturity bullshit. god, why won't you let me clean??

filth

2005-05-29T22:31:00.000-07:00

i hate everything so hard right now. my kitchen is a mess. but beyond the mess, the sink is backed up. backed up and beyond the help of liquid plumber. dishes are fucking everywhere, caked and crusted with old food. burned-on-the-bottom food. the counters and stovetop are filty. all i want to do its clean. i want to clean so badly, all i can do is obsess over how badly i want to clean. it has become a physical need to tidy my surroundings. yet i can't. can't because of the fucking unfixable sink. i'm obsessing. i'm going to have to talk to the landlord tomorrow, and a plumber will need to be called and the sink will need to be fixed and only then, then can i clean. i am going crazy now. i just want the entire thing to be done with. every time i see my kitchen this way, something inside me dies a little. and i haven't eaten all day. i had a pita and a couple bites of ice cream (out of the carton with a fork). i'm just going to go to bed. become unconscious until i can deal with the problem again and have it all fixed. i swear, though, if i dream about dishes, i'm going to start injuring myself. good night.

the essay evolved

2005-05-27T01:58:00.000-07:00

was getting ready for bed when i began thinking about the aquarium. i would really like to go this weekend. and, as a natural thought progression, i started thinking about sea cucumbers, one of my (many, many) favorite sea creatures. i am so very fond to the cucumber because of its remarkable adpatation to escape predators: it vomits up its own intestinal tract. this is not an intimidation technique, or even a reversible process, it is placating its would-be devourer so that what can only be described as "the rest of it," meaning the cucumber, is able to escape as its innards are being devoured. the cucumber, blessed with remarkable regenerative powers, eventually regrows its intestinal tract and is able to live out its life normally, likely not even sensible to the trauma it just experienced.

which got me to thinking about a non-scientist's or even a non-biologist's reaction to this rather extreme form of predator evasion. one might ask, is it really even worth it to the cucumber, going through this remarkable sacrifice, to live? a sea cucumber's life can't be terribly dynamic to begin with, it is a rather lengthy process regerating tissue and during that time, the cucumber would be unable to eat, and so would be sustained entirely by its body's stores. one would imagine that the poor creature would, if it recovered from the ordeal at all, be severly weakened and more likely to become some creature's prey anyway. is life really worth living if you haven't got a stomach?

but the answer to that is, of course, completely obvious. of course the cucumber would do anything within its power to remain alive. the longer it remains alive, the better chance it has to mate. and by "mate" i mean spew all sperm or eggs into the sea and hope they connect. the sea cucumber is merely a slave to its dna, burning to get passed along as many times as possible, and on, and on again.

that is the endgame. for every other species on the planet that is the whole of life. step 1. grow big and strong. step 2. mate. and possibly step 3. ensure offspring grow big and strong. and it's not just the males who are sex-fiendy in the animal world, it's just that the females have a different angle on it most of the time. as a general rule (that is reversed a LOT) males will mate with anything. females want the best sperm. so choice becomes an issue of shiniest coats (healty), longest tail feathers (good provider), best nuptial present (ditto), or mate with them all and let the sperm decide. my favorite has to be some species that can choose whether a specific male's sperm will be the stuff to impregnate her, after she's mated with several fellas. but this is what it's all about for every other species on the whole bloody globe.

and we have to wonder how neurotic we really are, we humans, with our birth control and pollution and little social will-she-won't-she games. from a biological standpoint, we're completely nuts. consider the complaints of plebophobic victorians: the smartest and wealthiest (because to victorians these were equivalent) reproduced at a lower rate than the poor degerates. but really, statistics for decades have reflected that sort of inverse education/fecundity trend. notwithstanding, with increased standards of living, now darwinism is trumped. the weaker are surviving to reproduce and pass on genes.

though you'll never see me complain. progressive-minded always, i can't complain that people are living. how silly. and i'm wildly grateful to grand mechanismic scheme of society that i did not die in childbirth at the age of fifteen in a cave or mud hut. for that matter, i'm thankful to evolution that my children were not bitten to death after a new alpha male ascended to leader of my family-group that i might come into season sooner and father the new leader's kids. i imagine that that might suck. poor apes.

evolution is, frankly, a remarkable thing. and just think, had we not evolved from harem-type (or less-likely, monogamous) ape species, men might have colorful, textured penises, the varied sizes and shapes to rival the selection found on any of good vibration's shelves. but back to the cucumber, shall we?

it's...astonishing to notice how easily we forget that we are little more than dna dispensing machines. truely a biological anomaly. all the silly little social games we play. existential crisis or identity issues, deep down we're all here for one reason. of course, there's more to life that just that. but remember, there wasn't ever meant to be.

additional information on the cucumber can be found here and here and this book, which i have not yet read, but plan to, more or less covers the rest of it. or at least, i am lead to believe.

peace, folks.

costume store of my dreams

2005-05-24T03:06:00.000-07:00

let me tell you the tale of my first real job. the costume shop nestled between a tattoo parlor and a strip club. it's been about a year since i've been there and i'm beginning to miss the store and the people. i had meant to go back during spring break but didn't have the time, or alternately, the volition. was reminded at elissa's party about some great tales. it all started here:

she had a rosette made out of a palm frond on her dresser. i have three pinned to my bedroom wall back home. souvenirs from my first and only renfaire, which i went to with the girls from the shop. they were dressed as fairies and i was a sort of swashbuckling vixen with a knife on my hip and adana's bodice. nicole bought a pair of yummy sheepskin handcuffs, which she and adana put on and became my fairy captives. an older man in a leather mask and loincloth became enamored of me and handed me a palm frond rosette he had just made. i think he did it because i had been staring, intrigued by the mask. well, for the rest of the day, i would bump into him around the faire. he would follow me, throwing his rosettes at my feet from a few paces behind, or from nooks where he was lurking. i picked up a total of three but there were more i either failed to notice or was too bustling to stoop to get. i loved mask man! totally made my faire. also got my bosom nuzzled, giving a waiter his "tip," a dollar bill stuffed into my (even with a bodice on) minimal decolletage. nicole teased me for blushing, so i directed his to start at her ear, a know weakness of hers, ha ha!

a brilliant story of how stupid some people can be. every year around christmas, there is a dickens faire, which is what it seems, a victorian version of renfaire, essentially. our store ads say we costume for many events, including that one. (there was a lovely victorian high-collared black shirt with maroon ribbon and lots of prim tiny buttons that i love, but can't fit my broad shoulders into, alas.) well, late one evening, a woman calls the store asking about our inventory and adana takes the call. the woman asks, "do you have and rabbit costumes?" and adana describes the big furry mascot rabbits we keep around for easter, but that doesn't seem to wax the woman's fancy, so she asks, "well, how about costumes of that the rabbit wants?" and adana, a bit confused replies, "you mean a carrot?" evidently not. what rabbits want is "a costume shaped like giant penis?" which we absolutely did not carry. adana explains that we are a family store and really not into that sort of thing, thank you, but the woman might want to try our competitors, the joke shop down the street as they have no shame. and the woman replies with wonder, "but i have one of your ads here, and it says you do dickens faire!" *groan* we couldn't make this up, folks!

we write all our best customer stories in "the book." i only got to write in the book twice since starting there. both very noteworthy events. the first was a brilliant woman who wandered into our midst most likely entirely unawares. she walks into the store normally and glances briefly at our racks (of clothes, jackass), but then looks over her shoulder as if waiting for someone. but this was perfectly normal, we would often get people meeting at the store to pick out costumes together, or give approval for a play or the like. a pity with the perilously narrow parking lot and competition for the limited spaces with the titty bar next door. the woman comes to the counter and asks me, "did you see anyone follow me in?" no, of course not. and she was watching the door, as well. i tell her, politely, no she was the only customer in the store. she hovers around a bit and i go around the counter into another part of the store. she follows me, saying, "i'm glad he didn't follow me in. he's been following me all day. don't you think it should be illegal for people to stalk you with their minds? i mean, mental stalking is stalking, but the police say they can't do anything about it and i think it should be illegal after all...." woo, a crazy! i smile and nod and agree that mental stalking is wrong and wander back into the main room to flag one of my coworker's attention. shooting furtive looks at karsten and adana, i continue to listen and nod. she then tells me that she has george bush and al gore in her head (possibly cheney, too, memory grows fuzzy) and that they tried to get out and into mine, as they like pretty girls like me, but she stopped them because i really wouldn't want them in my head. and all the time, i kept glancing at my coworkers to see if they were listening, but they were glazed, not caring for the political talk as it was just before the 2000 elections. after she left, i, of course, recounted the entire story and they regretted missing it deeply and insisted i write it all down for posterity.

frankly, some of our best customers were homeless or crazy or a bit slow. one...ah, challenged man, "our favorite customer," knew our stock so well that he'd come in and just ask about the new products. a huge buffy fan, he'd corner karsten in his work and chat him up for hours, always wearing a black backpack high on his shoulders, with the sweetest earnestness. then there was the well-dressed homeless man (off-white leisure suit, rather southern looking) who would come in and buy our military hats, towing a rolling luggage cart that he would then leave in our aisles. he would insists we show him the entire inventory, removing all the hats, one by one, from the precariously stacked shelf. after looking at them all, he might buy one or place a special order, but more often he would declare he would come back at the end of the month to make an actual purchase or check our new hat inventory, and we would all grumble like mad. because, aside from his rather tedious needs, he smelled. he was a right ripe old fellow. and the closer to the end of the month we caught him, the worse he smelled. the first time i helped him, he was so foul, that my eyes were watering and my nostrils twitching in agony. i had to go sit in the stock room for a bit afterwards to collect myself.

and i saw more men in drag, then, than i ever did during middle school. (we had a very strange theater department.) one day, adana and i were talking behind the counter. i looked up and saw a hairy man in an arabian nights costume looking at rack. went on with conversation. shortly thereafter, we both looked up and saw the same man just standing there, dressed like "i dream of genie," and continued our conversation without missing a beat. about forty seconds later, though, we burst simultaneously into laughter, not at the random apparition, but at how blase that sort of thing had become. i've helped drag queens pick out tights, and shown punky transvestites our inventory of skirts. i once sold a transsexual some fake blood to cover the blue haze of her five-o-clock shadow, because we didn't carry the real stuff, and mac was too far for her to get to that evening. warned her that i didn't think it would work very well. sticky.

with the location of our store, we did attract some of a less desirable element. mostly drunken customers from next door who wandered in around closing time. the best at dealing with them was the arthritic but sparky diana who helped out as a special favor to our boss (or more likely, was hired as a special favor for the extra income) around the holidays. we bonded and discussed the military and tattoos. we'd get in some of the dancers from next door, but they were cool. "which gloves go better with pink g-string bikini and a fishnet bodystocking?" "well, i couldn't say for sure offhand..." "oh, well, here (lifts shirt, holds out arm)." more obnoxiously, would be twentysomethings who asked sixteen-year-old me to try on lacy tops for them and asked my coworkers my name. actually, there was only one of these, but boy he creeped me out.

none of those things went in the book, though. what did was my porn proposal. man walks into store. karsten, the quintessential salesman accosts him with hilarious sleazy grin, timbre, and energy - you want costumes? we got costumes, we got 'em by the truckload, so what can i do you for? the man wanted wizards. i half-listened from behind the counter, bemused. the man wanted robes...cheap...disposable...making a film...harry potter...porn. what?! now karsten is a pro when it comes to innuendo, but when someone starts talking about sex in all seriousness, he becomes a bit more shifty and reserved, and in this case, amused. he shows the man the wizards talks about special orders and generally humors the man with his sense of humor. and i'm giggling silently to myself behind the counter in a top hat. i have to assume he was in the area visiting the adult bookstore couple doors down or the titty bar next door. as the man leaves, and i casually try to catch a glimpse to put a face with the story, he spots me and sort of sidles over to where i'm standing. "well, hello there, you're a cutey, are you 18?" **wee-oo wee-oo** *asshole alert!!* "yeeess..." "do you model?" *asshole alert asshole alert, grade 3!! man ironic detachment stations!* "haha, no." (no.) by this time, karsten has noticed the man has not left and his radars are beeping too. *switching to: protector mode.* "ah, i'm a photographer, i'm always looking for new models. would you like to see my portfolio? it's actually just in my car...." (little smile) "alright." he leaves to get it and karsten swoops over to land in the crook of the counter just in front of me and to my left. gives me significant look. the man returns, he's left his proper portfolio at home and just has the little one. starts flipping through it. it's mostly uninspired shots of strippers with the naughty bits expertly covered by little digital swirls. those pay the bills. and then there's his "art." naked women in front of sort of psychedelic universe computer-generated backgrounds. there are several shots of a particularly busty asian woman, who he identifies as his "muse." karsten and i make appreciative mutters. he couldn't show us the last few pages as they were a bit more...risque. darn. and it looks like he's about to leave when...our boss steps out from her office. and he shows her his portfolio as well. my former boss is an intimidatingly tall matronly woman, with a take-no-gruff attitude, and a one of those thin-lipped stares that's reminiscent of legions of angry librarians and history teachers. and i get a bit anxious that she'll yell that we're not working, but instead she looks through his portfolio as i look on in bemused horror. she leaves us to our customer, then, and he writes his contact info on one of our cars for me in case i or one of my friends is interested in posing for him. fat chance, but i keep the card as a token. of mr. photographer "techno eros."

it was an interesting place to work, i must say. the low pay and often dull afternoons offset by the absolute hilarity of a few glowing moments. and despite employee friction, hearing the chronic gripes of one hypochondriac with ibs, and generalized fear of my boss, i had a brilliant time. i'll never forget going back there for an afternoon during my holiday, my first year into college and being set hard to work unpacking a box of pirates and rubber chickens. damn, good times.

star wars spoiler alert

2005-05-22T22:27:00.000-07:00

things happened this weekend but i'm going to forgo all storytelling blather to give my very own, and needlessly redundant review of star wars movie: new. i read olympia's review here, which is scathing and full of hate, and thought, eh, she makes some good points. but, when asked about it, myself, i pause and squelch out a sad little, "it wasn't bad," which is far from rave, but here goes.

it wasn't bad.

not to say that it was exactly good. like luke would desperately like to believe that leia is not his sister, i would have loved it if the movie were remarkable. but she is, and the movie was far from magic.

my vast favorite of the series is empire strikes back, as it should be yours, and if you have any taste, i imagine it is. hoth, yay hoth. yay big furry llama things. yay paternal revelations (that was this one, right?). yay carbonite. but even in the original series, you can see lucas' creativity just puff out with return of the jedi. ewok party anyone? ewok songs? and is anyone familiar with the ill-received christmas special? frankly, it is evident lucas' ability to write a quality star wars franchise ended with empire. and so, seeing the "first" episode all those years ago, i was a bit irked at the asinine characters: blue arab beetle trader, jar-jar - they're ewoks made with computers. at least the newest one because it had no gratuitous child-amusing fluff characters that made me want to bleed from my head.

olympia complains that general grievous (seriously, what's with the name? sinestro taken?) was a skinny 5th element guardian, the tentacle robots, matrix sentinels, etc. i'm not sure that i would go so far to accuse lucas of ripping off those characters if i didn't notice that the tall tentacle-headed jedi chick was shockingly similar to...luxans, i think...from farscape. and obi-wan's lizard/bird mount? the exact same cgi used to make harry potter hippogriffs, just flattened out and set to "spaz."

the cgi, as usual annoyed me. i'm almost always annoyed by cgi. it feels like cheating. such a fan of ray harryhousend, you can understand my total reverence of painstakingly crafted special effects. this whole highly-rendered, entirely computerized background, and all the little spookily liquid-jointed characters grate on me. when something can be created in real life, please, regardless of cost, go that way. i'm still pissed that they make jabba fully cgi in a new hope, when he's a puppet in the other two films. and yoda. new yoda makes me want to pull out a giant flyswatter, as much as i love him.

besides, as part of a trilogy, shouldn't the technology used in the films be at least similar? even the technology within the film (another of olympia's gripes that i share), should that have been scaled down a little bit? i know, modern audience expects dramatic swishy fights, robots going zoom, and all the rest, but come on. anakin, fought so much more dynamically than supposedly more powerful vadar. yoda became hobbly. and luke fought like he was wielding a broadsword. now, yoda is tiny flipping absinthe fairy. that is not the yoda i love.

and they did push his silly little yoda-isms too far in this one. less wise little cackling bugger than foreigner in desperate need of berlitz tapes. on the other hand, i don't have much complaint with the dialogue in general. it wasn't brilliant, but at least the love scenes didn't make me gag. and i think i did actually get little shiver when obi-wan yelled at melting anakin "you were the chosen one, dammit." it was nice they broke out james earl jones to do vadar's voice in the end, i can imagine that anakin's vocal chords were seared or something during the whole jedi-costumes-need-asbestos-lining scene, but the effect was spoiled by the fact that he still sounded a bit like a whinging teen. "what, i like totally killed her? no, i couldn't have, like totally out of the question, man. yo. noooo!!"

and does anyone else thing it was almost amusingly easy to make lukedaddy switch sides? i can cheat death? sweet, yo! sign me up, nucka. but speaking about "too fucking easy" - the ending? yoda going, "i have plan for you in the desert, we can talk to the dead, wow"? that was so fugging unnecessarily pat.

but, no, it wasn't bad per se. can't be worse than its merchandizing. going to have to start referring to him as george "putas" lucas. i swear, darth vadar-inspired slurpee makes me want to injure myself. it's depressing, really, watching lucas continue to ass-rape his cash cow. but i'd buy a set of the dvd's if he re-re-released the origingals without his edits. i suppose that makes me a punter, then.

life, and something like it

2005-05-15T14:58:00.000-07:00

oh darling, what is wrong with you?

life. ah, yes. life. i've been happy the past few days in that genuine, back-to-normal sort of way. but i've had the urge to write enigmatic, slightly philosophical and deep brain dumps everywhere i can. i've been wearing black eyeliner and no socks and keeping myself very well hydrated. my makeup was inspired by a pretentious scandinavian short film from the 60's "the perfect human," in translation. the bare feet are the result of finally warm summerish weather hitting la. and the hydration is probably some brain stem compulsion.

i have been slowly re-reading pattern recognition, starting thursday or friday at the pool. after having discovered that i have midterms wednesdays of the next two weeks, rather than monday and wednesday of this week, i began slacking off again. that, as well as wednesday's apartment find, my parents' cheque in the mail, and the blood donation have put me back into high spirits.

wednesday i donated blood. i may have flirted with the phlebotomist who pricked my finger and made sure i had never had sex for drugs or money, though i really don't know when casual conversation turns into flirtation, so it might not be a worry. went to see maqbool alone, as i could find literally no one to join. but the movie was interesting and i ran into the same "prick" as earlier coming out of it. we talked walking up bruin walk and parted ways on gailey. had to think i never would have seen him again had i gone to the film with someone else, but i hate those "alternate reality" lines of reasoning.

in another reality, that of home during the summer, it seems that my home group will be going camping on the beach. sounds like a good time, but being such quintessential intelligista children of the suburbs, only one of us (suegol) has ever done this sort of thing before. so the group (as loyalties lie): sadaf, suegol, megha, shahin, clarence, yen, myself, and possibly one or two others will be living on a beach for a couple of days, and i can almost hear the agonized cries of "ugh! i got sand in my sleeping bag!!" if i close my eyes.

sadaf and suegol don't want mat to go. i do. frankly, i'd feel a bit more secure with a male there who is, apologies to clarence and shahin, more butch than i am. though i wouldn't go so far as to call mat a "man's man." we really must introduce other men into the group, as the prospect of intradating is just depressing.

mm, but speaking of butch males, friday night at sadaf's and then back in my own apartment, i watched aussie rules football. the game, a strange combination of soccer, rugby, football, and who knows what else, i absolutely amazing. beautiful muscular men wearing shorts and tank-tops to better show off their perfectly muscular limbs run, jump, kick and hit to get a rounded football through a goal on each end of an oblong field. it is perfectly amazing to watch a man running down a field, bouncing an oblong ball on the grass every few steps, to pass the ball along just before being tackled, and to see that man then kick the ball an absurd distance with perfect accuracy, through two uprights that constitute a goal. mmm, and to see the men doing all of this in knee-high striped socks? oh, perfect! it seems i have a rather large weakness for men in striped socks.

the rest of friday night was spent either drawing on steve's ceiling (and my own chest) in blacklight pen during my visit with sadaf, or drooling with kat over televised men.

saturday night was actually spent in quite a similar manner, with kat and i watching one of the next generation start trek movies (insurrection) and making eyes at picard and riker. this was after spending the late afternoon in santa monica wandering around. we ate hot dog on a stick for the first time since prepuberty, to our collective amusement. and ran into cynthia and her boy in the 3rd st. victoria secret. it was a bit awkward, as, technically, she does live with us, yet it was the first time seeing her in at least a month. of course, i've run into mark at least three times in the past week, so it was inevitable that we meet, having left our respective apartments.

another person it's awkward: been talking to kim in a friendly way for a couple of months now. this morning she told me she was feeling depressed, etc. didn't really know what to say, but it was such an absurd de ja vu, as i spent most of the last two years of our friendship before the big split discussing her depression. i didn't want to be put into the role of cheering her, but really, it turned out unnecessary. frankly, i half expect our renewed friendship to be some elaborate set-up. as if at some point, i will see her again and she will have several large men emerge from bushes to beat me up. but i am trying to act like a normal person and i must say, it does seem to be working.

apart from that, everything is more or less normal. last night i dreamed i was in a play, my hair is in pigtails, and i'm still vaguely pining. ah, well. such it is, such it is.

le sigh

2005-05-11T00:43:00.000-07:00

unhappy a little. stress of apartment hunt, schoolwork, making a lesson plan, money (or rather the total lack of any of those things) is driving me a bit crazy. i'm either scary and walled-off, or there's a little core of panic with tendrils extended through all my limbs. i've been getting these pangs of loneliness and the stress dreams are returning. i did poorly on my genetics midterm yesterday, rather to my shock and horror. one test is dropped, though, so i'm not completely disheartened. but i'm behind in all my readings, and i way behind in listening to the lectures for my bonus final. with the security deposit for the new apartment, i'm even more broke than i had previously thought. the end of the quarter is quickly looming. and i have hardly begun preparing fot the summer teaching. my baseline state is rather numb to this all, even almost happy, but if the slightest things tips me towards unhappy, i tend to spiral into a gloom pit worthy of an afi fan. there's one thing i'm kind of excited about, and that is a free movie tomorrow night - "maqbool." bollywood rendition of macbeth. purportedly very violent and about hindi underworld bosses and intrigue. it sounds so cool i could just die. must.go.see. i just need to find someone to join. or go alone, like sad girl with no friends, but i will see it. though, with my current disposition, it would be more appropriate if they were showing hamlet. ah, well.

end of the week

2005-05-07T02:36:00.000-07:00

things i saw:

crow picking at a dead squirrel in the middle of the street. i was a bit scared that a car would run over the squirrel and then the crow would be unhappy, deprived of his picking rights.

single ladie's shoe (black strappy heel) wedged beneath the back tire of a car.

lucía y el sexo por la cuarto vez. teehee. todavía me encanta paz vega. canté suavamente y tomé ron.

life of brian because i didn't remember it, and i toasted and ate a bagel. giggled slightly tipsy and threw my arms over my head in joy.

about 500 newscasts about runaway brides/bridegrooms. why is this news? why? first there was the fake kidnapping and then, as backlash, an la man who was missing for like a year. evidently, he was so unwilling to wed he lived as a hobo on venice beach all year. pity he was ever found.

lucky charms commercial in which "lucky" goes to his secret places all happy no one knows of his covert cereals. but of course, the children always track him like bloodhounds and discover new marshmallow shapes and cereal flavors. (now it's chocolate, as if it weren't sugary enough before.) but shouldn't lucky realize that he's always betraying his own hordes? he should just stay away from those places and maybe get a restraining order against his multicultural young stalkers. though, actually, with the rate at which he revels his secrets, he probably has some passive-agressive need to betray himself to these children. lucky, you bastard.

happy girl.

633|( speek

2005-05-05T18:13:00.000-07:00

i've been having very long conversations with mat (i've dropped the extra "t" from his name as i find it superfluous, it will now be spelled and pronounced accordingly) the past couple of nights. they have been delightfully amusing (omg, lol), especially the one i promised not to repeat to anyone (is that not how it always goes?). but here is the other, from about 2 am last night. comments are in bold parentheticals...enjoy.

mat: i could regale you with tales of our heroic struggle against the fire god, Ragnaros (yet another WoW boy i know)
me: is that who you were fighting last time?
me: final boss?
mat: yep
me: and is his name based on ragnarok? (yay norse mythology!!)
mat: mehidunno
me: one of the creators of that game was in jim frat
mat: well regardless of where the name comes from, we got him down to 73% of his total life!!!!
me: horray
me: and still going?
mat: you only really get three tries every 5 days
mat: and only get 2 hours to do it
mat: so no
me: yow
mat: yeah it sucks
mat: used to be only 1 hour
mat: but you get him down to 75 ish percent
mat: and then he spazzes out and becomes immune and spawns a ton of guards that rocked us
me: yow
me: hehe you got pweened
me: that's a geek word i learned(yeah, i suck)
mat: please
mat: it's pwnd
me: i spell it with e's
me: like i speel leet with a 4
mat: nono
mat: 4 = a
mat: 3 = e
me: i know
me: i'm not leet.
me: i'm late (i'm sooo funny)
me: har
me: :D
mat: harhar
mat: so in this game, you can't communicate with the opposite faction
mat: it just gets garbled
me: "you bad"
me: "i wining" ?
mat: but numbers didn't used to get garbled
me: har
mat: so peole would have lengthy conversationgs in "leet speak"
mat: consisting of numbers and punctuation (i love the geek history lesson, 4 realz)
me: and now, i just use it to piss off my geek friends
mat: haha
mat: but yeah, ben erez and all of us
mat: our guild was the Beard of Zeus
mat: so
mat: we'd yell |= 3 4 |2 + |-| 3 |3 3 4 |2 |]!!!!!! after pwning someone
me: it's gonna take me a week and a half to translate that into normal people text (i'm so not as cool as i thought)
me: i...
me: thingie
mat: |= 3 4 |2 = Fear
me: e...a...r...t...
mat: + |-| 3 = The
me: ooh
mat: |3 3 4 |2 |]!!!!!! = Beard !!!!!
me: i got some of that (shakes head sadly: no)
me: howja make a W?
mat: \/\/
me: those are real letter, though
mat: no
me: oh, no
mat: \ / \ /
mat: slashes
me: n?
me: |\| ?
mat: yep
me: 1 \/\/1|\|
me: har!
me: much shorter
me: no double enteande (i'm thinking "beard")
mat: yeah except you'd just make a macro so you press one button and it says it and you can spam it
mat: sorta like
mat: |= 3 4 |2 + |-| 3 |3 3 4 |2 |]!!!!!!
mat: |= 3 4 |2 + |-| 3 |3 3 4 |2 |]!!!!!!
mat: |= 3 4 |2 + |-| 3 |3 3 4 |2 |]!!!!!!
mat: |= 3 4 |2 + |-| 3 |3 3 4 |2 |]!!!!!!
mat: |= 3 4 |2 + |-| 3 |3 3 4 |2 |]!!!!!!
mat: |= 3 4 |2 + |-| 3 |3 3 4 |2 |]!!!!!!
mat: |= 3 4 |2 + |-| 3 |3 3 4 |2 |]!!!!!!
mat: |= 3 4 |2 + |-| 3 |3 3 4 |2 |]!!!!!! (i really never realized mat was this geeky)
me: well, it's good you write it a lot, so that they have time to decipher it
me: now how do i make a macro thingie? (the prospect of push-button insults really appeals to me)
mat: thats within the game
me: you just cut and paste here, then?
mat: although you can get plenty of 3rd part programs to do it
mat: yeah cut and paste
me: cheater
me: and i was all ready to be impressed about how much better you use macs than i
mat: i could prolly whip something up
me: oh yes?
me: you might (against all seeming) be scary gamer boy, but you haven't convinced me you're that 1337 yet
mat: ok my server has a few thousand Horde characters (my faction)
mat: horde vs alliance
mat: i'd say maybe close to 8000
mat: i'm ranked 171 in amount of alliance killed
mat: so i'mm the 171st best pvper on my server
mat: out of about 10 thousand
mat: and thats without trying too hard (hahaha, woooo fancy.)
me: no, within the game, i'm willing to acquiesce that you scary rawk
me: but in the rest of the world
me: i am not convinced
mat: haha neither am i
me: haha, ouch
mat: i could lift some really heavy things
me: that's not what i meant
mat: would that impress/convince you?
me: lol
me: it would be a start...?
me: i was still referring to computers, btw
mat: oh well i suck at computers
mat: all i know how to do is play games
mat: ask sadaf if you want fancy shmancy computer stuff
me: though i suppose heave lifting is good skill to have. kudos.
me: yeah, her and kat
me: they know things
mat: and i can kick things good, to boot
mat: hah, get it
mat: to boot
mat: i kill me
me: i'm gonna wait till sadaf gets all super-scary programmer and then i'm gonna make her program me a mind-control program which i will spam out in hordes and all clueless microsoft users WILL BE MINE!!! (yes!)
me: (har, mat. har.)
mat: can i be yours in a non possesed way? (mreh?)
me: (actually, "to boot" teehee)
mat: :P
me: how good are you at opening jars?
mat: oh man
mat: i make lids wish they were never born
me: i need a cupboard-man to keep around to open my tomato sauce when i can't
me: kat and i had difficulties last night (fucking tomato sauce)
me: but she used her brain and stuck a rubber band around the cap for friction
me: she's my hero
me: but i long ago decided i need a fella to keep in a cupboard againt that sort of crisis (no, seriously. every so often, i'll talk about my dreams of owning a "cupboard man.")
mat: haha

here it just devolves into more bored useless interjections. nothing too exciting. the end.

moods swinging with slight chance of rain

2005-05-01T21:54:00.000-07:00

long week of manic mood swings. happy, not happy, stressed, depressive, angry, apathetic. the exact order of all that is irrelevant, and a very complicated story. but the main driving forces are stresses about money and the lab internship. i fucked up in the lab and will probably be assigned to a new, less expensive project. but that won't pay. and my savings have momentarily dipped below $100 to my extreme panic. i have a check i can cash, but i'm going to have to call home and demand money for june. but i'm still very full of stress. and i'm a bit upset about the lab thing, i'm a bit sad. there's also...two more things. that i'd rather not talk about as they involve various friends. stress-wise, big bads. mental demons, so to speak. but i've accepted one rather quickly, the other is still...bad bad bad. visceral, and it's something i should have gotten over ages ago. me and my fucking brain. i'd rather talk about the good things.

last friday, went to blaize's roommate's birthday party. drank quite a bit and threw up when i got back to my place. made it to the toilet in time, but it was unfortunately closed. laughed about his later, but at the time, all i could do was clean up as best as i could and go to bed. the next day i scrubbed thoroughly and properly, with lots of antiseptic. spent the first bit of my week studying for a pair of midterms monday and wednesday. went in on mon to see the lab people about what i was going to do, and found out i had mislabeled some samples as positive and wasted a bunch of their time in re-running gels and things. wednesday watched blade: trinity weds with kat, blaize, and jim. i was feeling a little down, but had done nicely on my midterm that morning and had been looking forward to hanging around the apartment drinking and watching a movie with kat. instead, blaize came by and sort of co-opted the evening. we had overcooked steak at his place and went to jim's to see the movie. it was absurd. kat and i mocked it all the way through, as we do. until jim, much less fun, snapped and started yelling at me, "yes, we all know you're smart. oh so much smarter than the movie. now could you just shut up!" which was absurd yelling, as he thinks it's a ridiculously bad movie as well. i flipped him off calmly and continued. went through bout of depression later that night and read myself to sleep with my lovely book, a sequel to eyre affaire, and just as charming. thursday had another meeting with the lab people. i'm on a bit of hiatus after the last faux pas as mentioned before. the stress about the meeting had me dreaming horrible anxiety dreams about pipetting and pouring gels in some sort of carnival. actually, all my stressors were there to torment me in proper uppity subconscience fashion. went to see hitchhiker's guide friday with the same movie group as earlier. bonded with a young girl (seven years) in the theater before everyone joined me inside. sat happily giggling at the film and the mood i had been carrying the past couple of days dropped away. nice movie, well done apart from the overdone sappy love bit. ib's birthday party was later that night and i met two entirely new boys and spent most of the party chatting up. how uncharacteristic. i also spilled sangria on a boy's shoes, kat knocked a drink out of my hand and onto the carpet. come to think of it, the guy i spilled on helped clean that first mess up, too. he left and i moved on to a pole vaulter who had been in one of my classes last quarter. hehehe, pole vaulter. best part of the party was definitely the massive cooler full of mixed drink. fruit wedges floating in dark red pool nearly up to the lip. yesterday, watched shaun of the dead, which i thought was very amusing until the sad bit and then amusing again, and watched dune. was disappointed as usual at the missing scenes (from television movie versions) not in the dvd. (dvd!!!! arg!) today did masses of laundry, including clothing with wine splashes, clothing with soy sauce splashes (dropped soy sauce tub on myself), bathroom rug with vomit splashes. spent the rest of my time utterly unproductive and still in a bit of a panicked funk. it's been sunny but cool all week to my consternation. all i need is a good heat wave to pick me right up, i think. but forecast predicts showers. so if you see me this week, bags under my eyes, thin lips, and haunted stare, be kind. i'm probably trapped in brooding mood. hugs appreciated.

fine food fun

2005-04-21T22:03:00.000-07:00

food has been in the news quite a bit. tonight: science has finally answered the unanswerable - why some popcorn kernels never, ever pop. investigative journalism at its finest. now, the food pyramid has been changed into a strange rainbow stairmaster that threatens to pump *clap* you up. it is made of colorful new vertical pie slices proclaiming fun slogans such as, "go lean on protein," "focus on fruits," and "know your fats." my truest love responded: "hellow fats, i'm john. i love you so much." the daily show is best. and for the recod, "go-lean" is kashi cereal that my mom buys. just one sniff of all that fiber and you're pooping bricks. speaking of pooping bricks, everyone's favorite cookie monster has gone green, too. he has finally learned that cookies are "sometime foods" and that health foods, like fruits and vegetables, are "anytime foods." now, i know that american's children are fat, but you can't reform a monster. that furry boy was so dependent on his chocolate chip junk that a stern talking to's not going to do anything for his habit. send him to the betty crocker clinic! crank up the shock treatment paddles and man the methadone! but habits are absurdly hard to break. i watched a woman get her gastric bypassed on television the other night. she was so fat, that her stomach hung down in two lobes to mid-thigh. it looked as if her camel toe has ballooned to elephantine proportions. she wanted to lose weight so her young daughter could live a normal life. so sad. no one told her about "sometimes foods" - eat foods only some times. pity i'm just rubbish with time. got scolded today for being late at the lab. again. ugh. huge scoldey and i'm now on a bit of probation. must "think about what i want to do in the lab" and whether i want as much responsibility as working on expensie african bird project requires. ugh. very reminiscent of when i got bum rushed out of playing the cello. weep. again, though, it's so typical of me. but if i'm a good girl, maybe i get to be put on payroll. oh well, tomorrow is blaize's party, where i will assuredly be further injured in the spirit of good fuckin' fun. also, a neighbor is having a pot luck that night. made the best dinner tonight. yummy veggies, flank steak, and pasta shells. also some ice cream and fudge. mmm. dinner made me happy. terribly happy. har!

the news, not the weather

2005-04-20T20:52:00.000-07:00

so there's a new pope in the world. creepy-faced, ex-hitler youth, short, and robust. i wouldn't confess to that man, he looks like an evil elf. all he needs are decaying greened teeth and a knobbly stick. throughout the entire popedeath debachle, i've been thinking about the malachy list. a prophet predicted all the pope through history, ending...dun dun dun! with the end of the church. which is 2 popes from now. we have: "ab labore solis" (dead Pope, John Paul II), "gloria olivae" (now pope), "petrus romanus" (Peter the Roman - the last pope). very gloom. check it out: here.

apart from news recap, life goes on as usual. blaize and jim came over last night. the lot of us got drunk and rowdy together here at the apartment. good times! only downer is that i have the usual bruises all over my body from drunken abuse. though it wasn't from my typical brawls with blaize, he was molesting kat. as usual the four of us paired up (which i find terribly amusing due to previous dating patterns) and i was pummled by jim. this morning i found bruises on either pole of my wrist and forearm, upper arm - i looked like a lepur. these were caused, i believe, when jim pinned my arms above my head and he and blaize gave me double raspberries. frankly, i found it unpleasant, but i wouldn't have minded the pin, had it occurred while we were going out. rowr. haha! perhaps i should keep my unusual proclivities to myself. or broadcast them louder, them maybe i'll see better results, hrm. jim and i ended up cozed up in the living room while blaize repeatedly body slammed kat (and demonstrated his new ju jitsu moves). had rather nice sleepy and drunk conversation and he kissed the back of my head and neck. i was lethargically complicit. he left when i decided to go to bad and took blaize's shoes with him. blaize was passed out on kat's bed while she coughed pathetically and made little helpless gestures. well, the antics of the evening efficiently stopped my plans to study chem and now i must catch up.

7 stories and an unreasonable demand

2005-04-19T01:00:00.000-07:00

kim and i have developed a new and rather odd rapport. on facebook. we exchange "pokes," almost daily. i log on repeatedly, entirely to see whether or not i've been poked. and i reciprocate and log off and go on with my day.

today, i was on campus the entire day, i decided to do the spendthrift thing and eat lunch there. went to panda express for my meal. two hours later, still on campus and waiting for my midterm to begin, my breath was growing increasingly rank. i had run out of gum the day before and was just wandering about tasting my mouth. i started thinking, "ig. i have dog breath." yucky. and after about two minutes of that thought, i realized that that could be a rather bad racial slur and felt a bit guilty because i couldn't get it out of my head. going into my final, i was repeating "dog breath. dog breath. dog breath. dog breath," like a strange mantra that i just couldn't shake. and i felt a little bit like a bad person.

in the court of sciences there was a pavilion set up - one of those collapsable deals - and i swear it had a sign on its side comparing free trade to vd. i don't know why, and i was in too much a hurry to stop and find out. but, damn, i wanted to know. i also wanted to call someone up and have them bring me a digital camera so i could snap a shot. of course, my phone is technically a digital camera, but such a useless tiny one.

going into my midterm, i became momentarily paranoid that i had wandered into the wrong testing room. i looked around for my ta, but my fears were only heigthened when i didn't see her at the front of the lecture hall. but then i paused and began musing...i don't actually know what she looks like. i'm pretty sure i don't have the remotest mental image of her. but then i thought if she were there, i would probably be able to recognise her. or at least her ass. she has a very distinct ass. very "baby got back." i normally wouldn't be looking, but she stands with her back to the class in discussion a lot, writing on the board. and the class isn't particularly interesting. it's really quite a remarkable ass. reminiscent of an inverted shelf, perhaps. at any rate, she wasn't there. but i was reassured that i did show up at the right testing place. but i still kept thinking, "goddam, i wish my ta would get her ass here," and unhappily meaning it literally.

as long as i'm discussing asses, i was talking to matt the other day. oh, he's not an ass, no no. he was drunk. and he asked me (blaming it on the drink) how far i'd ever gotten with a boy. aww. the next day, i spoke to him again (previous convo was never mentioned). i called him an alkie, he called himself a lush and informed me he was ass-nude, just having stepped out of the shower. instinct prompted me to creen, issue forth complements and come-ons, and in general behave like a jolly little person. but just as i was typing some sort of lewd comment or other, i remember the mildly awkward conversation of the many complements and realized i couldn't creen at someone who said nice things about me, because it might be taken literally. so i waffled and ended up saying something non-scandal-inciting. felt like a sellout.

been talking a lot to matt of late. also, kim. well, a lot more than i did a year ago at this time. she and i were estranged. it's a bit odd not being hated by her any more. i must admit that i'm vaguely suspicious of it on some odd level. also, suspicious of every positive assurance i have in my head that something is true. (comes of missing a final, i suppose.) i'm double-guessing myself like crazy - the paranoia is becoming insupportable.

well, i can't say i'm keeping up in my classes the way i ought after that final shit. i'm doing pretty well, but am still behind in all my readings. so dull, science reading. i've taken over the coffee table with my textbooks. just sitting out, preventing us from eating our dinners comfortably. on the other hand, my new level of on-campus activity is heartening. and though it leaves me tired and confused most nights, is energising and inspiring during the day. had the idea for a story sitting eating my bad lunch. i'll write it next time someone demands a tale of me, i suppose. i wish other people responded to that request in kind. really, only chris does. and he does a lovely job, but he's online so infrequently that we never have out good, hilarious conversations any more. no time. so i'm left writing little tales for matt and such. who will write me a story, eh? something stupid and funny to pass the time. it's the least you can do.

kung-fu conversation

2005-04-17T00:47:00.000-07:00

i woke up this morning from the most bizairre dream. it managed to combine both zelda:ocarina of time and the cosby show. also, with bikinis as harbingers of doom. was woken up when blaize called for kat, my ailing roommate who, for the past day and a half, has been croaking like a chronic smoker. it's so sad. we were wathing today and quipping, and though she was being lovely and witty, i had to silence her, because her voice was just so sad and tortured. i spent all day doing fuck-all, apart from the occasional genetics problem in preparation for my monday exam. the class i so misleadingly easy that it makes me paranoid that i must be missing something. well, the statistics are a bit tough, but not so bad when i'm not concurrently obsessivly watching the telly. (like now, road house is on. the imdb summary is 4 senteces. the last is "things heat up." what i want to know is: why does everyone in the midwest in the 80's know martial arts?) actually, yay for marial arts. had discussion with rext today about ong bok and the new movie from the same director. want to see them. lots. oh lovely badass fights. with flying. whoo! what can i say? i just love the leet fighting skills men. had a bit of an odd conversation last night with the other matt. about world of warcraft battles and classes and my beauty.

matt: there are some really hot girls at de anza but somehow i doubt they have much...substance?
me: haha. well, as long as they're substantial, it's sort of already a step up, though. (witty reference to earlier masturbation joke)
matt: well one is in my photo class, and is in my lab section.
me: but will you ever talk to it?
matt: asdfghjklwwertyuiopzxcvbnm
matt: no.
matt: just stare at her probably
matt: and hope she doesn't catch me
me: hahaha
matt: oh i'm pathetic.
me: yeah, that'd be creepy.
matt: its not really staring though.
me: well, as long as it's not staring.
matt: yea, i'm generally a corner guy.
matt: so it's not like i'm turning around to look at her
me: haha, good place. subtle like.
me: there's a guy in my bio class who keeps sittin near me. possibly deliberately.
matt: oooo
me: but that's just wild conceited speculation.
me: but you know i'm damn fine.
matt: agreed.
me: that's what i like. blind acceptance of whatever i say.
matt: i know i'd deliberately sit close to you.
me: yeees....flatter me.
matt: you just exude charm and wit.
me: yep. radiates straight from my soul.
matt: straight through your eyes.
matt: which, i must say, are quite lovely and bright.
me: aw, i blush.
matt: i speak only the truth!
me: alright, that's enough.
me: save some complements for later.
matt: hehe

the funny thing is, had that conversation not been held online, i would not have been nearly as poised and clever, with my verbal bobs and weaves. when complmented in real life, i becom flustered and begin to titter like an idiot. or perhaps i'm simply maturing. god forbid. but i suppose my very room is quite the testament against that, with the ever increasing pile of clothing ammassing on my dresser and my bed becoming more and more unmade. (aw. road house is over.) spent most of yesterday in a fabulous mood. got out of long day of classes - sitting mostly motionless with the strongest need for physical activity. specifically, i wanted to dance, to be grabbed and twirled around like mad. actually, i generally could go for that, but it's not so common that i have the need to samba. i need to meet a nice, spontaneous fella who will do that at random intervals and who i can bully into dressing as gregor mendel for halloween. i saw a picture of him in my genetics book and now dream of finding somone whose hair i can shave into receeding hairline and who i can dress in white lacy skirt thing and shawl. apart from scientist-dress-up fantasies, my nerddom has been increasing by bounds. i cavorted a little when i removed my genetics sample problem cd from the wrapping and creened "science!" in joy. and eventually i will sleep. and i will wake up to dreams of random mind pieces bobbing to the surface and battles to save the world. good night.

sunshine and science

2005-04-14T18:34:00.000-07:00

another long day at the lab. i had some funny thoughts earlier that i would have liked to share, but those are gone now. bored out of my mind. the maintenance workers on campus were on strike today. marched around in groups wearing green shirts of protest and carrying signs. i was listening to the clash in the pre-pcr lab when they marched past my window. and, you know what? belligerent chaotic shouting goes really well with the clash. goes well together like apples and butter croissants, mmm.... my favorite janitor, harry, wasn't on strike, though. he was at his post in the hall of the ls building where the lab is, loitering, as he does, around 6 when i left. we greeted each other and said goodnight and he called me "baby," which i found amusing in that jolly old lech sort of way. working in a science building surrounded by profs and grad students working in their labs, he is jolly and sweet and has a sign: "harry's lab" on the door of his supply room. got back to the aprtment and went for thai food with kat. mm, thai food. wasn't quite as good as my little hole-in-the-wall back home, but what is ever as good as back home? i had some thai ice tea and did a little i'm happy drinking tea dance. i called my mom after my morning stint in the lab, standing out on the street in the sun. it was nice talking to her. told her about my classes and, obviously, the labwork. mm, i'm finding my life pleasant but tiring. tomorrow is another rather long day of learning. but at least i'm jolly. shit, i think my first midterm is monday - absurd! but the info is all mendelian pedigrees and shit. i was amazed when some people in my discussion section were having trouble with the concept. so a bit of review and it should be a piece of piss.

no title today - too tired to be interesting

2005-04-13T00:53:00.000-07:00

i've been an active day person for a week, and now i can't sleep through the morning. i woke up today at 7, when really i had to wake at 9, and groaned obscenities into my pillow. i even had trouble sleeping till noon over the weekend, an old favorite - i spent my entire spring break sleeping till the sun was past its apex. but i must admit, being productive feels great. the lab work may be tedious, but i always find strange robotic pleasure from dull, repetitive tasks well done. and afterwards, i get so pleased that i'm not just slacking around the apartment all afternoon. i've also made the effort to read my books and do chem practice problems - the whole proper student thing. i am really digging it. tomorrow, i think i will sign up for yoga during one of my super lengthy breaks between classes, though maybe not. there might eventually be lab time conflicts. hrm. but i've been feeling energetic, sunny, and good. though it seems my skin is responding adversely to la. my forehead is breaking out, and i have a painful little zit at the edge of one of my nostrils. it makes me want to dunk my head in a bucket of astringent. my human contact has been rather low, or at least the interesting stuff. limited to the weekends, i'm afraid. though this weekend i successfully drank 2 days in a row and watched a movie with friends. all the queen's men with eddie izzard and matt le blanc. god it was sucky. i though, hey, it's joey in bad (bad) drag and my favorite executive transvestite, good times...but no. it was poorly acted and not particularly amusingly written. the twist was depressing and the villains, though nazis, were just not all that upsetting. (speaking of ex-friends cast memebers in wwii dramas, i keep seeing this miniseries or something on the history channel with david schwimmer in. he's not believable as a hardened military commander. or a human, really. he should do sci-fi or something. or maybe some sort of outbreak killer virus thing.) the best thing about the movie, amy, elissa, and i agreed, was the pretty lady love interest. the worst was watching blaize get uncomfortable at the tender nonconformist love between izzard (whose character was bi) and a one-armed man. at one point, blaize loudly proclaimed, "my anus is puckering right now!" which made me want to screw with him. the same way i screw with my father when he says stupid shit like that. much more interesting was dr. strangelove, which i watched today while doing chem problem sets. it was obviously a book adaptation, and i could see that most of the humorous parts were lifted stylistically from the writing. the movie wasn't bad, but i think i'd much better enjoy the book. certain authors/writing styles just don't make the jump between literature and film particularly gracefully, and that sort of descriptional ironic humor is one. the sort of thing you'd find in pratchett or vonnegut that just defies non-narrational style. i'm betting that dr. strangelove is in a similar bent. so i'm at least adding a book to my between-class reading list. and with that, it's getting late and i need to get up at 8. these horrible "mornings" are going to kill me. and the daylight hurts my eyes.

hard play

2005-04-10T04:28:00.000-07:00

i wrote a post that was deleted, so let me try to drunkenly recall what i wrote. and of course ad my new antics...

so chris proposed to me. my old friend who i haven't seen since the 6th grade (8th for him). he did it online, which is terrribly underwhelming. i think he's still trying to enter into a scam marriage, but i'm not sure what happened to the other girl. i think he'd prefer me anyways, though. we're terribly old friends (had crushes on one another when we actually knew each other in person), and have always joked about being wed. he's even claimed dibs on my virginity, though i've never dignified those claims with a serious response. actually, i didn't dignify the proposeal with a response - i merely laughed, yerribly flattered that he would want to marry me. after all, he is my favorite boy.

had a terribly productive week in the lab and at class. my days were long and difficult and i did not get nearly enough sleep. but i achieved a lot and for that i am content and proud. at the same time, was exhausted and a bit scared my entire quarter will be like that. so this weekend, i've been drunk. last night was amy's birthday party, emo-themed, and tonight was cynth's. hung out with high school and college friends, as well as a bunch of strangers and got drunk and happy. went to cynth's and had dinner with sadaf and heather, watched after the sunset of possibly something with a similar name in which pierce brosnan and selma haek are diamon thieves. (can't watch brosnan in films after having seen him with a moustache. he looked creepily like my father and i now can't get that association out of my head.) spent a lot of quality lush time at elissa's. evidently, her ex has lesbian fantasies about me and her. we get a bit rauchy when we're together. and i'v found that yen is a belligerent drunk, rather scary. matt asked me to write him a story and i did, tipsey and tired. perhaps i'll post it later, once i've cleaned it up. but now, to bed. g'night!

educational hazzard

2005-04-06T00:41:00.000-07:00

uhhhng, so tired. but happy. yesterday and today have been intense. yesterday was the first day of classes. woke at 7:30 to get to class by 9. was a little bit late to oceanography on the far side of campus from the apartment and had to run through two buildings to get there. had an hour break after class during which i went to the bookstore and started reading mona lisa overdrive. then had chem - my prof is a snarky brit who says "zed" and "al-lu-min-ium" and makes sarcastic comments during his lectures. from all sides, though, he sounds terribly difficult, but i'm hoping it won't give me a nervous breakdown like last year. then i had a two hour break during which i fed the lizards, met with my bio prof from last quarter, talked to a councellor across campus, talked to the prof teaching the bio class this quarter, ran to ackerman to fill my cup of ramen with hot water and then to class. new bio. and my professor was absent, but we had a "guest speaker" - my professor dressed as gregor mendel introducing himself in german and crossing himself. the lecture was in english and about mendel's research, very thorough. needless to say, i was completely charmed. i ate my soup grinning and jotted notes about probability ratios i've seen dozens of times before. after that had my chem discussion. got to it early and stared out the window at a hummingbird perched atopa spindley tree. every time the bird turned its head towards me, its breast feathers glinted red like a blinking christmas light. after a bit, it turned its back and glowed a steady luminescent green. class was short, we were warned again about the difficulty of the brit and left. got back to may apartment exhausted - my wanderings had taken me all up and down campus and i moved rapidly. i napped for a bit and then kat and i fixed dinner and watched sex and the city. blaize came by about midnight and they played mario kart while i sewed. went to bed around 2. woke up at 8:30 this morning, despite the fact i had no class and went in to the lab - i was late. camille told me to meet her "in the 5th floor pre-pcr lab" neglecting to tell me a room number or even building name. i made an educated guess and showed up half an hour late to find doors locked. went into her office and asked ryan where to find her - he told me where i'd been and that i ought to knock. oh. knock. so i did and got in. she's very nice and perky and cute. also, french. we ran a pcr - the lab has 4 pcr machines named after the beatles. we used george, though she had wanted to use ringo, but he was full. i like george almost best. so after that, i went back to the apartment to eat. ran back on campus at 2 to meet with bio prof about the final and found a note left for me - everything was finally arranged, i can take the final along with the class this quarter and my old prof will accept the grade. whee! now i'm taking 4 finals in 1 week, all science. i really need to stay on top of things or i will snap. ran back to the apartment for a couple of hours and watched tv while sewing. cynth stopped by during that time and i was ensconced on the couch, didn't look up when she came in. so she crept up behind me and barked in my ear, making me yelp in surprise. har har. i was shaken even a few minutes after she left. kat got back and we compared days - her arm is grossly swollen from multiple bug bites and her right arm bears the phisique of certain cartoon characters. i went back to campus around 5 to run a gel and stayed in the lab till 8. when i got back kat and i made ourselves meals - i had eggs and a bagel - and watched more episodes of sex, etc. then we went to see sin city, which i've decided is the modern titus andronicus. has ever sort of debauch you could want. i found it highly amusing that there were just about as many tit shots as there were shots of people getting their dicks blown/yanked off. no, not in a fun or sexy way. in a way that makes you empathetic, go "owie." the movie was generally entertaining, though not particularly extraordinary. i wasn't even terribly pleased the way the black and white/color think turned out. it could have been more stylistically done, i think, but perhaps it was closer to the comic book. i did like the way certain scenes were definately like comic book stills, but i don't know, it just wasn't visually very compelling. my favorite part, bar none, was the hooker bit, though. whee, hookers! though elija wood as scary godly cannibal is the shit, too. so now i'm back in the apartment. pleasantly tired. i feel as if i've accomplished a lot in the last 2 days; feelin' good in that happy, content, satisfied, sleepy way. it's nice. i haven't felt productive in so long. and if i keep this level of activity up, i'm totally going to shed some pounds this quarter. or drop from exhaustion. fortunately, the more work i have to do, the more efficient and driven i become. so run that horse into the ground, baby! momma's gotta learnin' to do!

superhero scientist druggie dike

2005-04-03T22:23:00.000-07:00

bit tired, but in a good way. very happy mood and back in la. i can feel the la-ness seep back into me, though i've been holding it back, and even in the ride from the airport i could feel the rising anxiety of the city trying to creep in. i sat back and remembered my friends back home, running their faces in front of my mind's eye in a soothing slide show and grooved the silicon valley. when i got back on firm ground i felt more myself. yen was on my flight and we took a shuttle back to westwood together. she kept yelling, "i hate this place" during the trip. ran into blaize as i was walking from shuttle to my apartment, as i almost knew that i would, and later roped him into getting dinner with me at in 'n out. now that kat's here, the fridge is full of food again, so i can eat properly here in my own happy kitchen. unpacked and tidied up with a fervent bustling energy, but stopped when it came to the point where i'd have to pack my already bursting drawers. got a second wind later and did some serious rearranging. made drawer space, filled drawer space, etc. i now have a secret chace of panties hidden in my closet in case the need ever arises to...what? defend myself while huddles in the closet using nothing but my own dainties...or something. afterwards, i finished and mailed my taxes. a, ah, rather taxing ordeal (groan), as i suck. had my envelopes all addressed (albiet wrongly) and was only awaiting confirmation on addresses and a check. wrote the check ($3, you would think they just wouldn't bother) re-checked the addresses, sealed the envelopes, and then remembered i had put the wrong month on my returns. groan! so i opened the envelopes back up, peeled the stamps off, and glued the stamps to new envelopes with elmer's. at least new envelopes didn't have unsightly scratched out portions of address where i repeatedly corrected my mistakes. did manage to mail them amid pale fantasies about insidious sneaking men rummaging through mail, removing loosely affixed stamps and giggling sinisterly, and rows and rows of identical p.o. boxes that lead to black pits with flames licking their rims. and while i pay taxes, chris is getting married to someone he doesn't love to say "fuck the government." stupid no same-sex marriage thing. but i think he's being royally stupid for legal reasons. besides, how will he ever marry me if he's already got a spouse? we have plans - he will be poor philosophy professor mooching off of me - rich doctor wife. or rather, he made the plans for us. i think i get short end of stick there. but do have to wake early tomorrow - classes and such. mustn't upset plans, even if he goes on and does wed random girl (while still having proper girlfriend of his own). and the schedule next quarter is all science with big gaps between my classes forming a hideous week. must do well this quarter for reasons besides med school: father is back home checking my college grades online. i gave him the info needed to get to my grade report *shudder.* after the whole missed final debachle, he trusts me responsibility a lot less, i think. he asked me very sternly, "is there something you should be telling us? are you sure? nothing you think you should share?" on the phone after i admitted my gross mistake. he was in essence asking, "are you on the drugs? are you sure it's not drugs? you had better admit now to being on drugs, it'll go a lot easier on you if you just admit it now." i'm not fucking on drugs, but his sporadic scowly disapproving looks all break started getting to me. not that i didn't deliberately needle him into them quite often. why else would i ask him what he thought about me getting a tattoo or flaunt my purple hair?...heheheh. he really doesn't understand me (and not in an "i'm misunderstood" sort of way, in a -my father keeps giving me disbelieving stares- sort of way) - i can sort of see how he might think that i'm on drugs. and worse, he once tried to make me promise that i'd never use drugs (7th grade or something)...and i refused. which i actually think took quite strength of character, as i wasn't doing it just to screw with him. i just didn't feel comfortable making such a broad positive statement - call it the scientist in me, i was curious. and didn't want to make a promise i wasn't sure i'd keep. i did have a brilliant science fantasy today. while complaining to blaize about horrible schedule, he responded, "well science is knowledge and knowledge is power." so i thought: wouldn't it be fabulous if the more science you learn, the more powerful you became - in superhero sense. i envisioned myself sporting she-ra/wonderwoman magic metal wrist cuffs, but it could really go far beyond that: gift of flight, eye lasers, shiny tiara, perfect imobile action hair.... that would be so bitchin' - science could make me magical. with wrist cuffs! ka-ping! zing! ka-pow! tee hee! i told him about my little wrist cuff fantasy and blaize told me it was one of the most stupid things he had ever heard me say. evidently, he hasn't known me very long. fool. i responded by telling the story of how i once told kim that my lunch was between her legs. (she was, of course, standing over my backpack which contained sandwich and box drink.) scarringly, priya then decided to greet me for the next two weeks with loud yells of, "carla! my lunch is between your legs!!" not quite as bad as yen, whose nickname in some circles was apparently "dildo" during high school after one particularly naive question asked of the elderly elfin calculus teacher during class one day. it has become sort of a running joke then, or possibly fixation, and her away message all evening was "back in hell... unpacking my dildo," which i just loved. rather hope this quarter won't be hellish, though with chem and all, it very will might. this is the same chem class that gave me the nervous breakdown last spring. i also hope i can keep silicon valley joy inside of me - sink my roots somewhere and dig in. best way not to go nuts. well, bedtime. early start and all.

humor and depression: what's news

2005-04-01T23:27:00.000-08:00

ooh, i had a lovely day today. i've been spending most of my break helping mom visit boutiques in the area or chillin' nights on the couch with the 'rents. sadly, few of my friends are in the bay, and those that are do have lives of their own. (weepy, spend time with me.) but today i woke up with the house happily to myself. i dyed the faded bleach streaks out of my hair with the most insidious purple dye known to man. while washing the color out of my hair, i was left with giant purple streaks across my chest and down my breasts from where the dye-laden water flowed. my hands are still stained, though my breasts are fortunately almost entirely their original color. every speck that fell on the sink basin left a little purple shadow that i had to scrub madly. and it took four shampoos before the suds stopped coming up bright purple. sadly, it took to my hair slightly less ferociously. i now have these lovely purple and maroonish streaks that look a lot better than the sad orange and yellow did. i think perhaps i'll be making a habit of it. it's fierce, but oddly grape-scented. then matt came by and i had my first pleasant lesson in the manual transmission (2nd ever). i learned real quick! i can almost always not stall out now! so then we drove around and he showed me a fabulous view of the valley (not the valley) from a retirement community in the hills. it was great, the air smelled of flowers and wild grasses. and i drove his car all the way home! i stole a shell he had in his car and made it into a necklace.

watching tv with the parents, as i've been doing most nights, i've been watching a lot more of the news, which i typically eschew because it's so depressing. and sure 'unff the news has been upsetting/amusing:
the vegetable-lady death, for example. the hooplah surrounding it annoys me, as well as the absolutely absurd arguments for and against death my forced starvation. good god, if you're going to put her to death, just euthanize her and be done with! i do not see how deliberately starving her to death is in any way more noble, and in fact causes a more unpleasant death, so i would reason that it is less. and congress' blatant opposition of party lines, not to mention congressional jurisdiction. elastic clause my ass, this falls blatantly under the expanse of the 10th ammendment. congress has no right getting involved. the pope is dying, and that just amuses me. i don't know why, i suppose he's rather progressive for a pope (kat tells me so) and popes are supposed to be pretty good men so it's sad that he's going, but the entire hierarchy of the catholic church upsets me. i disagree with their policies (no birth control anyone?), i resent the power they weild, i am disgusted by the persisting chauvenism of the system, and finally, for god's sake the church's massive wealth could be used much more productively (global poverty anyone?). plus there's that whole popemobile absurdity, and having read angels and demons the very concept of popedeath is now funny to me (as is apocalyptic vatican bomb). he's been so old and enfeabled for so long, blessing sheep and break dancers; he's been little more than a bad joke in tiny old man shape that i can't see him as anything less even now that he's genuinely on his way out. and finally, one of my favorite comedians died - mitch hedberg. it saddens me that in the light of all the crap that goes on everywhere, there's a little bit less humor in the world. and when the pope dies, there'll be even less.

evidently j. ro feels similarly. check it out:

home and stone

2005-03-28T18:40:00.000-08:00

the drive home wasn't bad - the parents were in a good mood at first, but dad progressively soured until i couldn't stand it any longer and buried myself in a book and headphones. it was a lovely sunshiny day and the hills were gorgeous and brilliantly green with bare gorges cutting through the grass and bright mustard flowers peeked through, in some places solidly yellow. we drove up the coast and for a while i just sat looking out the windows voraciously soaking up the view. we stopped at various towns along the way: mariposa, santa barbara, and mom stepped out to try and make more sales. no luck until sb, were she sold some furs to a shop i found in an ad. i changed into my sexy new halter in the car and wore it despite the slight wind-chill. we got home after dark and i had to finish my book by the light of laptop glow. got home and was still bouncey-bouncey. yen picked me up and we went to suegol's where we had dinner and watched boondock saints. matt was already there and shahin came afterwards. the movie, which i watched all the way through for the first time, was fabulous and sexy. i kept going into unintelligible little babbles due to the gorgeous tattooed irish men. and willem dafoe was awesome, as well, so i had a grand old time. the only downer was the ending, which annoyed me a little bit; stupid badly-acted interviews. yesterday i just stayed indoors. finally got a thorough night's sleep and only went out for a quick shop. i was supposed to hang out with kim, but didn't want to, so i inelegantly blew her off, claiming exhaustion. i did go to bed early - midnight, which is early for me at least - and slept well for a while. but here's the thing, i woke up inexplicably at (i can only assume) 5 am, my mind racing. it was one of those big revelation moments you can't resist but must ride out. so what did i figure out, eh? mystery...

i've never felt quite myself in la, something always seems to be missing. i get up into the top two inches of my head, does that make sense? the longer i stay there, the more scattered, confused, and flighty i become. and i realized, i lose my depth. i get higher and higher up into myself. but i am back home. i'm complete here, centered in my hips, with all my reasoning faculties intact. i always felt heady there but couldn't figure out how, i took to saying my power base was here, but it's more like my roots. everything back in la feels so impermanent, i'm uprooted - i'm only in my sorrily unfurnished apartment till summer, classes last a quarter, work...even my la friends feel temporary, like i won't keep them past college. (i've always felt my friends back home were mine (as in belong to me - my pack), the ones at school aren't mine.) it's sad, but it's what i've been feeling, without being able to explain it. until returning to my depths, that is. after all of this, i had the image of a well as a metaphor for home. a circle of rough uncovered stacked stones going down into blackness. school is a...nothing, an impermanence, and that's not the way it should be, but it's leaving me in an awkward state. and if you're one of my la friends, meh, sorry.

afterwards, i was finally able to go to sleep. today, i showered, made french toast, and walked all over hometown. bought some cds, scoped out board game prices, went to the bank, the library, and a thrift store. came home, dinner, and watched stargate for hours. whee! i'm supposed to meet the people for a movie, but it's getting late. but good times in my hood.

fear and self-loathing in los angeles

2005-03-26T02:07:00.000-08:00

let me tell you of my finals week. started out alright, only mildly stressful. friday i had my lit final which i think went very well. got back my paper - the late one - and i had done horribly, but no points were taken off for it being late. i was at once relieved and shamed. it was sort of an "i suck" moment, but quickly cast off. that night i went to dinner with my parents. some diner and i had 50's food - gigantic burger, fries, black and white milkshake (because i support integration) - and felt high caloric. saturday i visited the fasioh showcase. mom's gonna get me a really cute backless halter top that i can't wear with a bra. it's fabulous and stetchy tight with little string bits in the back. tre sexy. after that, i pretty much settled down to learn. did biology primarily through wenesday, apart from the slacking and the ice cream cravings. weds at 5:30, the shit hit the fan - i discovered suddenly that the biology midterm i was so dedicatedly studying for was the 22nd, not the 24th as i had thought. wednesday was the 23rd, so you can imagine my horror and shock. i went through all the stages of panic: disbelief, horror, and self-loathing. now, while i developed my mirror obsession after i forgot my paper, this time i just sank into the self-loathing like a fish to water. ran to campus to the life sciences core office, asked what could be done. except i couldn't get into the building. had to go through the nursing school, over a landbridge and across the bearing straight to get all the way to the life sciences building. i was lost at one point, but fortunately for me, a singing black janitor was crooning in my direction. i asked him for directions to the building and he mislead me. i did eventually find my way, despite his obsequeous aid. the office was open and attended - by a snarky gay man who looked at frumpy me like i was a complete annoyance. he answered my questions and i went to find my professors' offices. the first had already left and i headed back into the maze that is the life science buildings. i had my professor's room numbers scrawled on my wrist. i thought my prof's office was by molecular sciences, but on my wrist it said ####chs (ms looks like hs sloopily written on my flesh). chs is career health sciences: maze, so i got lost again. the janitor spotted me again, still singing and insisted on directing me once again. again wrongly. desperate, i walked into a strange lab, asking to use a computer. nice man with stubble let me use his laptop and gave me useful directions out of the building, hurrah! found my prof's room with the help of the computer info, showed up, but he had JUST left, his collegue informed me. admirably holding back tears of panic, i sat down to write a letter which i slipped under his door... went back home and wrote my other prof (same class, 2 teachers) and my ta e-mails and went to bed at 1:30 because i couldn't stand the anxious pressure. the next morning, i woke up at 9 and again at 10 without alarm clock help, all anxious. checked my e-mail and prof #2 said i couldn't take make-up final, but he sympathized...whoo, sympathy. but i was till anxiously awaiting responses from the other prof and my ta. since i didn't hear back and it was 1 pm (so impatient) i went to campus. found my ta's lab using kung-fu skills, and by walking into random labs and asking for help. asked him about etc. he had contacted my prof, was pushing the "incomplete" grade which was a better option than "f - no final" satisfied, but still freaked out, i went home. was alone and depressed in the partment as everyone had left, so i took shower. got out of shower and oh, called my parents and told them about the missed final. fuun. so much fun that i decided to nap. when i woke up, again due to anxiety, i had an e-mail from prof #2 - i could get the incomplete, hurrah! got jim to drive me to campus to visit the lab (had to get dressed, because carla lounging around in the apartment is inappropriate garb for carla leaving apartment)
went to campus, found the lab (without room # this time - just used memory) and once again, he had left. graaaah!!! but i spent the rest of the evening in a better mood, not wearing any underwear, which contributed greatly to the good mood. blaize came by and i fed him, because all the chicken breasts in the freezer were far to large for me to finish alone. wrote two essays and couldn't sleep a wink. i lay in bed awake for unpleasant hours before finally drifting off and on again until i couldn't stand it any longer. at 5:30 some horrible sleepy-voiced girl called the apartment thinking i was the coffee bean. i might have cussed at her, i'm not sure. this afternoon i got jim to drive me to campus again, and again i had trouble getting into the building, finally succeeded, and was rebuffed once again by an empty office. frustrated, i returned to my apartment to finish up the last of my essays. when i got back, i changed back into my lovely indoor clothes. did a nice striptease to the dandy warhols' "not if you were the last junkie on earth," which was lovlier and dorkier than you could ever imagine and half the time i couldn't dance through the giggles. dressed again and wearing undies, i walked to borders to get page numbers for my citations and bought a book. walked back. i was entirely unaware of how much nervous energy i really had pent up until i did that. was skipping almost all the way both ways and i'm still jumpy. but it's good to have gotten out. three days of abject panic pent up in me and i either needed a good exercise or a good fuck, and i'm sure as hell not getting fucked. polished off my essays and printed - there's no sound sexier than completed essays slipping into a manila folder, rrrr... so now i am sitting on my couch, finally finished and more or less concluded, drinking a screwdriver and watching dr. goldfoot and the bikini machine. i drive up early tomorrow with my parents, which sounds like it will be a truely horrible ordeal. but my new book should soothe me a little. and if that doesn't work, i'll remove my panties at some rest stop along the way. freeballin' allways fills me with whimsey, even during the worst of times.

busy, likely malnourished, and pessimistic

2005-03-18T03:26:00.000-08:00

utterly sick of poetry. i've finally finished reviewing for my lit final, though god only knows what sort of good it will do me. i'm generally pretty confident, though, as i tend to do well in literary situations under pressure. i went through all my famous poets and re-read (or in some cases read for the first time) the pieces and took notes on style and message. now, to remember the names at the time of the test.... at midnight, the finals yell of frustration into the night began, today fueled by st. patty's day liquor and went on in it's excess fervor for a while, annoying me out of my study. there were some over-zealous boys in my building or the next who hollared and hollared until i wanted to throw a shoe. bit diappointed i had to miss any drunken revelries tonight, however school comes first (though at the last minute). snacked pretty steadily throughout the evening and we are dangerously low on food. our fridge will soon contain nothing more than condiments and i will have to beg for my supper. i'm not sure exactly what i will do after tuesday, when kat returns home and i am left to fend for myself dinner-wise. i hate cooking if i'm going to be the only one enjoying the result for some strange reason, and if i'm not going to be starving, then i had better entertain constantly or i'll not eat out of sheer laziness and depression. short inventory of proper foodstuffs: cereal, plenty of pasta, quite a few frozen chicken breasts and one last salmon filet, one or two frozen waffles, 5 eggs, cheese, tortillas, carrots, potatoes (beginning to sprout), ramen, and about 5 slices of bread. i suppose i could do the college thing and just eat a bunch of meal components alone - not cook something proper, but this is supposed to last me until friday and i would like some vegetables. or, perhaps...carrot omlettes? i might have to relent and go pick up a head of lettuce or something at the supermarket, just so i don't get scurvvy and die within the next week. on another note, my parents are in la for a fashion show (they got here yesterday in a rather frightening dream-prophesy coincidence) and they might be good for a meal on the town, if we could decide on a place. on the other hand, i'm not sure they want to drive all the way out to west la for a visit nor if i'll have the time for a proper sit-down restaurant meal. rather depressing, really. i'm still vaguely desperate for company (boredom does this to me) and while reading all day, i was praying for the phone to ring or for a knock at the door. alas, such are not my friends. besides, it would be bad to have distractions. (tear) i still have 3 essays to write and a biology final to cram for. there's also a scholarship application due the same day as my last final. i would like to apply so as to not feel like such a horrible shiftless person, however i'm not sure i have the time (cop-out). also, i would need to spend quite a bit of time picking the brain of the guy whose lab i will be working in next quarter. he's very good-natured, but he makes me uneasy for some reason and i'm not sure why. i feel antsy and a bit overeager when talking to him and i dislike that role. i think it's the fact that he's very laid-back and doing me a big favor giving me a lab position, getting me a grant, suggesting a scholarship and i feel as if i should show gratitude, but that bouces off of him in an odd way and i start to feel loud and grating. i will try again, ask for another favor - letter of rec - and try, this time, to be myself. i will almost assuredly laugh a bit to loud and long at something not particularly funny in my attempt to seem friendly and will leave grimacing and feeling as if i need to scratch off a layer of second skin. if i'm clever, i can do everything in the right amount of time, get a's in all my classes, be accepted into program, and become crowned queen of efficiency within the next week. more likely is that i will become completely noctournal, watch far too much television, do mediocre job in everything, let my scholarship deadline pass, and finally be consumed with self-loathing which i will quell after everything is done by buying a book to read on my flight home. i wish i did not know myself so well. well, goodnight.

dreams, sexy men, sex is bad, sex scandal, sexless dreams, poetry

2005-03-16T20:39:00.000-08:00

today was a big day for things.

went to bed at 4 last night, working on the second midterm re-write. finished that, thank god, and decided that sly stallone should be the next governor of california. he was on conan last night and was actually, amazingly, witty to some degree. and he did start the planet hollywood chain along with our current governator. i think he would be the perfect follow-up to the great blockhead himself. another steriod crusty to throw the mantle of governation over his chemically-broadened shoulders, and there'd be a whole new batch of action movie refrences brought into the pollitical arena. though, personally, i hope his policies are a little more liberal that the eraser.

got up in the morning in a big daze. i dreamed that someone was changing my alrm clock settings (somehow the timer was hooked up to his bio signs and when he did things - i can't remeber what - it reset my alarm time). that being the case, i woke up and didn't hit snooze because, for some reason, i knew that the alarm would go off again because of the guy in my dreams. needless to say, it did not and i had to rush to get ready for class. wore the colorful shirt i didn't yesterday and was quite pleased with the effect. walking to class, though, i noticed everyone else was much more bundled up and wearing drab shades of blue and grey. i saw only 2 girls in yellow and 1 in orange and felt like a sore thumb. went to my classes, of couse - it was the last lecture. during my break between, yen and i sat in the bookstore and i read borges and blake. in the last class of the day, we watched the man who would be king, a movie that lasted far too long, but at the same time starred michael cane and sean connery. damn i love sean connery, though he's become really frayed at the edges now. the movie was only just carried along by the cast, and by the end yen was audibly groaning and pacing about. i more sedately checked my watch repeatedly and sighed.

walking back from class, i noticed the christians were out in full force. there was a man outside the library holding a sign warning us about hell, another man in suspenders preaching loudly the dangers of "promiscuous women," and the usual jehovah's witnesses at the bottom of bruin walk. there was also another leprechaun, but that's not so much christian as just neat. suspender man, who i learned from our fabulous intar-net was none other than the irrascible jed smock, confrontational evangalist mental defect man, was in full storyteller mode. v. blood and thunder. his "parable of the five dormies" is not to be missed, though his politics, i pray, were nothing more than a distant memory. yen and i listened through the parables and on into a story warning good girls that if they step foot inside a frathouse they risk gang rape by a bevvy of naked fratboys, as frat boys "share everything." be cautious, ladies, because these naked fratboys are everywhere, lying in wait for a hot young thang to cross their threshhold. particular sites where naked, aroused danger may lurk: under beds and in closets (in pairs). so be on your guard. also, sex pistols and the rolling stones, ac/dc, etc. are satan music; i'm going to hell. and i'm going to rock out when i get there.

but careful, my darlings, because the danger does not stop there, oh no. beware high school band teachers! or at least the former band teacher at my high school. he pled guilty to having sex with 3 minors while teaching at the old alma matter, one count of oral sex with a minor, and one count of child pornography, as cops found a sex tape with one of his juvenille conquests when they raided his abode. these girls were 16, 16, and 15, and he told them he loved 'em. all this can be found in the merc, as i promptly discovered. yen tells me his half-sister also came forth accusing him of raping her, and kiddie porn was found everywhere. i haven't seen anything remotely substantiating those claims, but when she told me, i had images of donnie darko kiddie porn dungeon and laughed; not the most pc thing. laughed outright, i'm afraid. can't help it - too absurd. i'd like to be horrified and sober about the idea. sex scandal at my old high school. my old high school. nope, still funny. i'm now not sure if i'm thankful or disappointed i never took band, he was a very popular teacher, and i wish i had a face and set of memories to set up against new revelations. "no, impossible, he was the cool one!"

came back to the apartment and napped, after the evangelical show. but first, i stopped and asked the jehovah's witnesses what their opinion of suspender man was. they were disappointed: he was preaching things not in the scriptures, they believed in open debate...i was pleasantly reassured that, riiight, not all christians are crazy jackasses. and there's probably a sane, friendly christian with bad teeth just down the street from your ranting lunatic, shaking his head. good to keep in mind. napped the afternoon away and had a very unpsetting dream.

stopped at __'s on my way back from "class." __'s place was a room off of some sort of public corridor, later in the dream the surrounding area seemed to meld into a museum of some sort. down the hall and down an escalator. i stopped by to say hello before...meeting my parents (?)...and was there changing my clothes when __ walked in. i was very strange and affectionate. did get dressed, of course, as i was only half trying to seduce'im. yes, but i knew it was wrong, so i wasn't entirely straightforward. he caught on, of course, and was mildly amused while asking me if that's what i was trying to do. everyone's parents were down for some reason and __'s friend from home was there as well, visiting. she came in and had awkward introductions, then the parents showed up. there was a dining room, well set, for family meals, i believe, and we all moved there. it was dark outside and the room was mostly white with an outside terrace area. i was worried about getting my school bag out from __'s apartment, where i had left it in the rush, after dinner without my parents noticing, because they'd think we were sleeping together, which we weren't. but i needed my school bags as (i don't know why) they had my toothbrush etc. in, and it would be even more suspicious if i didn't have them. my parents were sort of a looming threat rather than a real presence in my dream. his parents, however, were very underfoot. short, pompous old money-types. i had tentatively bondy relationship with __'s friend (a short-haired, good-natured brunette), though i was vaguely jealous of her, too. we went into some giant museum-type room (somewhere on a lower floor than the apartment) where there were escalators going up and down and a very tall exhibit that loomed on the right of a high-ceilinged white room. we went out, on what i believe was supposed to be a tour of campus and appeared somewhere just west of powell, where there are all those paths intersect, i was walking with __ and the friend, torturing myself internally with whether i wanted him or no.

then i woke up in a terrible consternation, pissed off that my dreams would that obviously mirror my mind. i hate allegory in literature, yes, but couldn't my dreams manage at least a little subtlety? got up and heated some dinner...and more or less am here now. must learn to differentiate between wordsworth, coleridge, shelly, and keats by friday. will be off now. stab brain with q-tip as punishment and set down to learn.

beware the dangers of fornication!

things i learn in college

2005-03-16T01:09:00.000-08:00

in the process of revising crappy midterm essay 2 for regrading and better marks. this means i have to revisit arthurian texts i had rather burry in a potted plant....

textual note: merlin was a very hairy baby.

thank you for your time.

colorful, at least in personality

2005-03-15T22:51:00.000-08:00

i've been all over the place the past few days, emotionally: happy, depressed, happy again, then sort of shiftless and sad...it's getting old. last night i went to bed early because i was feeling entirely incpable of work. was laying in bed at some obscenely early hour - 11 or something - and feeling, well, very lonely and strange. i just lay there in the dark with my very strange thoughts. couldn't exactly fall asleep, either. i drifted in and out of this perfectly relaxed vaguely dreamy state wherein i was still aware, i could feel how comfortable i was, but my mind was elsewhere in some sort of prince of persia-type dream fantasy. running on walls, scimitar fights, balloon pants, you know the drill. i kept being jarred out of it by loud noises or my own sometimes too loud thoughts. i did eventually fall into the same sort of strange fitfull half-sleep i had the night before. got up at 11 and felt inexplicably gloomy. i wanted to wear bright colors, but somehow chickened out of my lovely garish shirt and ended up in a more subdued tank top that didn't fit my mood as well. i left without eating anything and walked to campus listening to coal chamber and blinking in the light. had a three-hour review session in my biology discussion, which i got some very useful notes from, but more importantly, snacks. i had a donut, fritos, and soda for breakfast, which i'm afraid did not soothe me at least, though they did give me the blood sugar boost to be up for subsequent efficiency. i had brought my laptop to class and in one of my little unconscious moments, hugged it closer to me protectively when my ta voiced his admiration. i also may or may not have given him a scared little pouty look. after class, it was more coal chamber, which became the absolute perfect soundtrack to my afternoon and i regretted not going with scary bright colorful shirt (that always makes kat laugh at me) - i was thinking, "if i had only worn the colors, my energies would be perfect right now."

***i know, i'ts very new-agey to be talking about energy, etc. but i think i really am sensitive to colors. maybe it's a girly thing, but i firmly believe that the right oufit can pull you right out of a bad mood. or the right song, but that's much more difficult for me to find. but the outfit is easty. today it was a red bra, teal panties, pink orange and blue shirt, and jeans. that's enough color to snap anyone out of a gloom. and now i don't know what i'm going to do for tomorrow. i might have missed my chance to wardrobe my way out it - i'm out of really loud underwear, and without that, what's the point, really?***

i went to the library, amazed that i wasn't chiming, the way my internals felt, and looked up where on campus the english reading room is. went to the english reading room, got a book and read through the supplementals for "research." made some photocopies, ran to another library to put more money on my photocopy card, smiled at the pierced desk guy (who i think is in my english class), made more copies, and returned home. i spent the rest of the afternoon in sloth and ineffectualness. compulsively checking my buddy list to see if anyone i wanted to talk to was there. had the hugest rush of warm fuzzies when chris and i had a little conversation, which is both sweet and horribly sad - i really need to find a guy who lives in this state. in particularly upsetting moments, i consider accosting jim once again, but that would be bad. bad, but difficult to get out of my head, unfortunately. i'm just dying to get back home where i can return to my power base. not in an android sense. i think that once i'm on my own footing, my energy - and mood - will return to normal. either that, or in about a month i'll be mauling people on the street. i'd like to not be all scary drooling snarling fangs and teeth tiger person rawr kill. one thing to say about mental instability, it's good for vague spurts of random inspiration. only i have 3 essays to write, so i don't have the clear conscience needed to follow through any story ideas at the moment.

ah, on a side note...did watch brazil yesterday. thought it was brilliant funny and strange. mostly strange. i don't know, something about it made me not love it as well as i might, but i thought it funny that it had elements of naked lunch. very reminiscent of free state and all the dr. benway bits. i think...i almost wish they had pushed the movie further, but of course, i'm just a huge fan of surrealism. actually, i would have loved it if they had just taken it in a direction entirely like the 5000 fingers of dr. t and kept having flashbacks of that while i watched this movie. kept expecting escher-like staircases and people and elephants propped up on precarious dali stilts. or else the ducts, which snaked everywhere like some pervasive industrial circulatory system, to come alive and walk around. people with ducts emerging from their limbs, walls suddenly being torn down and forced through to make room for more and more ducts, lots of duct possibilities untried.

ah, but everything here is just slightly off. for example, my tears, even, are strange. i yawn and instead of nice, clear, runny tears, i'm met with viscous eye-goo that does not nicely blink away and is only meant for just after you have woken up or when your contacts are dry. i think i'm still having faint allergic reaction to my apartment as well and i'm completely unmotivated. i am hoping home will restore me.

things you should not strip to

2005-03-12T20:11:00.000-08:00

been in a lovely mood ever since wednesday. yesterday was gorgeous for most of the daylight hours, despite a strange thin lingering smog that hung over everything and obscured at distances. la air quality is so disturbing. i went to my classes with large, freshly washed hair done up all frizzed and crimped. it was sci-fi hair with the orange and faded red streaks and the crawling curls. it kept reminding me of asphyxiation. i wore a tank-top and walked around in the chill air that pervaded the skin, feeling like a thin wrap of cold that moved with me as i flounced to class. it felt slimming, constricted from my chest to my hips, and comforting. made my arms want to float up and wave and in all, i just wanted to dance. on mornings like that, i always thank the fact i don't have time to eat - it's perfect feeling all empty and lean and lithe. the sun was firmly out and world slowly warmed, though it never got as hot as i would have liked. had my classes and chatted up my ta, went to meet with my professor about a paper and returned to the apartment. on campus, i saw a jew standing and preaching loudly about something or other, which i thought was quite novel as it's always a white-suited christian on bruin walk, as well someone in a horrid leprechaun costume doing a jig. both made me smile my secret little smile. every ounce of me wanted to run around outside and play, so i called a couple of people to go around. everyone was busy, so i just took a walk to the supermarket and around westwood. i stopped at a boba place and got a passion fruit smoothie...with boba. i'm afraid i got confused while ordering and forgot the word tea, but got my drink with pearls and ended up with weird icy mixture with chewy bits. i felt like a silly white girl and wished i had had amy or kat there to help me order. walked back to the apartment and the clouds had moved in. i ran into jeff on the street corner by my place and stopped to talk. he took my grocery bags from me, which was nice, as they were cutting into my hands and arms after the walk. he was in the area apartment searching with some friends - was going to live with two girls and his girlfriend, which seemed a bit dangerous to me and i told him so. i felt a bit rude and pessimistic having done so, but i just really couldn't fathom not. oh well, it was far from the most horrid thing i could have said. i stayed and talked with them for a little bit and jeff helped me take my things into the apartment. by then, it was cloudy enough that my desire to be outside was thoroughly waned, so i took a nap. woke up and dicked around a bit, ate, watched tv, my normal shiftless actions. eventually, kat and i joined ib at a friend's party, where blaize later met us. we got drunk and then headed to another party with a whole group of indie-rock types. i needled a guy dressed up as ketchup (yes, literally) and generally acted like a twit with too little impulse control. (generally have very poor impulse control, especially verbally, as would have been evidenced by my earlier conversation with jeff.) we got to the second party, where a short guy with a napoleonic complex kicked us out, chanting in some sort of exclusionary mantra "who do you know here?" before slamming the door in our faces. was terribly off-putting and inspired it's own fair share of vitriol. the four of us left muttering rude things about diminutive doorguard dickhead and agreed to meet back at kat and my place in a bit. ib went home to get amy and games; blaize went home for more liquor. we ended up not really watching several movies, drinking, and playing strip jenga. i'm pretty much rubbish at jenga and was soon down to bra and panties, which in a very good moment of foresight that morning were matching red and dainty. blaize was down to boxers, ib: boxer-briefs and a tank-top, and kat was the most steady-handed of us all and only lost her shirt, despite her more daring play. amy napped soberly on our armchair. by the end of the evening, many things had been spilled and we were all pretty shit-faced and jolly. ib spent the night on our couch. i woke up in the morning terribly dehydrated and feeling vaguely reptillian, but it was a good night.

glooms

2005-03-09T19:10:00.000-08:00

i woke up this morning completely exhausted. understandable, as i was up till 4 this morning, mostly at the library with blaize writing my essay. it is very strange studying in the library, but with headphones and a squashy chair, it wasn't quite as scary as i expected the study environment to be. i finished my essay and was pretty happy because i ended up making some sort of salient point in it which is good. i think my thesis turned out to be "blake is better than wordsworth." thing is, i phrased it better there. at some point after he and i left the library to get snacks, blaize told me i was the type of person they make movies about. i was oddly flattered. i took it to mean quirky and interesting. i hope he means that sort of movie, amilie or something, rather than horror slasher. he might have just been foreshadowing the fact that he's going to stalk me and slowly and gruesomely kill off all of my friends - which i'll have to watch out for now. some point shortly after i woke up this morning, i discovered that my essay was due yesterday by 4. i was completely stricken. kept going into paroxysms of, "if only i had checked this earlier, stupid! stupid!" got ready for class hurriedly. i found myself repeatedly looking in the mirror and giving myself glares of disapprobation. i realized at some point that i was actually checking my reflection for some sort of change - any physical manifestation of my own idiocy. as if i expected some sort of biological reaction to take place, a cellular revolt at my own poor judgment. at first, i rather expected i would look in the mirror and suddenly find myself uglier, but i simply looked a bit tired and disappointed, my usual features intact. then it evolved into me searching my face for some sort of more concrete display of my stupidity. the moles on my face suddenly rearranging to spell the word "moron." would have been a start. didn't happen, to both my disappointment and pleasure. sent an e-mail to my ta explaining the mistake and asking if there was any way to recoup the points. went to class and turned in the essay late, mentioned it to my ta, who was kind, but unable to really act. he offered to talk to the professor with me, which i thought was quite nice, but we agreed to see about the essay itself first. had my typical long day of class, which i went through in a deep tired funk. had some coffee, but that did me little good. i kept fantasizing about sitting quietly somewhere and being hugged. watched a horrid movie version of the master of ballatree which diverged so far from the book, that all i could do was loudly proclaim "bullshit!" to my professor's mild consternation, i'm afraid. it's a total pet peeve of mine, movies based on books that differ wildly in the storyline, and boy, did this one ever. i did spend a bit of time in the bookstore. i ended up perusing a collection of poetry by borges. i've resolved to buy it, as it has lovely translations of everything in the original spanish as well as english. his poetry is lovely interesting, and it's exactly the sort of volume i need, being completely out of practice in the language. also, my vocabulary just isn't that good, and i keep losing words. i did have a lovely time walking back from campus with yen, she was very animated and crazy, as ususal. she was proclaiming loudly that she hated the irish because, "they've got no jawlines," which is the most absurd and arbitrary cultural stereotype i've ever heard. though now firmly implanted in my mind. when i got back to the apartment, i went straight to bed and napped for about 5 hours. woke up in still a depression. i ought to fix myself something to eat, as all i've ingested today is water and coffee. perhaps blood sugar will improve my mood. but really, i'm betting on time - it'll just trail out eventually - or a prolonged bout of being hugged - which is just very unlikely to occur.

lofty expectations

2005-03-08T20:33:00.000-08:00

i changed my blog template some time late last night to something a little less barbie and a little more earth mama, not to mention easier on the eyes. i hope you like it. did a bit of upkeep, as well: posted a picture of myself, changed the links a bit, added a couple of topical quotes to the sidebar, purely frivolous things. it took all of 10 min, which was good, because i was in the middle of writing an essay at the time. actually, i'm still in the middle of writing the same essay right now, so you can see my work habits have not improved at all. but i do have some fabulous news i'm dying to share. ta-da! i got the grant. i'm not sure how much it is for and i have yet to begin work in the lab, but i will be working in the lab and i will be getting paid for it, and for that i am pleased. i also had a bit of a panic this morning, woken up by a phone call from my mum telling me i had to get back to the man from the college teaching program i work for during the summer. he needed my class descriptions immediately, or, well, i wouldn't be teaching. sent off a last-minute e-mail before rushing to class and called him again once i got back and all was well. better than well! i'll be getting $35/hr for 4 weeks, something around 3+hr/day. and i won't have to teach math! no more babbling incoherently about integers in front of a class of disaffected 4th graders! i get to teach lit, i'm so happy. one course on greek myth - i'm ambitiously thinking we'll do sappho and plato and oedipus. these are 7-9th graders, you see. ambitious. another class on arthurian legend (i figure i ought to put my newfound knowledge to some use) - we can do a heraldry project and read tennyson, who really wasn't all that bad, and lanval and watch holy grail, tee! and finally, because i was asked to, a writing class of some sort - i'm thinking short story. i can teach grammar to children and watch their faces fall as i lecture them on subject-verb correlation. unlike last summer, i'm not dreading teaching! the moral: $35/hr can make even children sound bearable. hehe! bearable. like childbirth. i just killed it. so i am completely thrilled about the summer, which is good, but even more so about spring break. i can't wait to be home and have all my friends in one place (all my home friends, that it) and to do the donut shop sit around and talk loudly for hours thing and maybe, if i get my way, the beach thing. i don't know why i've had the urge so much of late to go there - if it's nostalgia or a fresh-air craving or simply the desire to be near some large body of water. i'm growing more and more tempted to collar someone with a car and force them to drive me there with scowls and tiny girl-fists of anger. or else sexual coercion or something. though the first thing sounds far more probable. blaize'll be coming up to sf for spring break most likely and i told him i'd drive him to monterey, so i've got an aquarium trip to look forward to as well. not to mention the inevitable library splurge (time enough at last). i'm hoping it'll be brilliant, but before i can have my spring break i'll need to get through what promises to be an oddly specific biology final as well as a research paper and a couple of synthesizing essays. but in general, i seem to have some pretty high hopes. i hope i won't be disappointed.

three cheers for literature, windex

2005-03-05T02:44:00.000-08:00

last night, finally having the resolve needed, i buckled down and determined to not watch television, but instead to catch up on the incredible amounts of reading i have to do for various lit classes. i also did my laundry. all the while, i re-read my wordswoth and my coleridge, began my byron, and finished stevenson. it was quite a prolific evening for british authors. at about 2 am, after coleridge, wordsworth, and stevenson, i decided to clean my bathroom. with all my clothes all nice and clean, fresh towel not smelling of feet, i could not bear to move all my fluffy lovely clean towels into my grimy, fluff-encrusted bathroom. so disgusting every surface encrusted in a layer of fuzz, eyelashes, flakings - it's really been a disgusting amount of time since its been cleaned - far too horrid to even mention. and so i brought in a full roll of paper towels, 409, lime-away, and...hmm something else...not quite sure what. i scrubbed away like crazy, cleaned all my mirrors, every single surface. to do the shower, i stripped down to naked and simply got in (we learn from our parents these sort things, and my mum is insane). started having strange thoughts about various sexual icons. naked martha stewart (an idea introduced to me by an snl sketch, i do believe), french maid, that sort of thing. i find it quite remarkable, the interest in women who simultaneously clean and offer sex. really, it's the adult dream of having a mother-figure to take care of all your needs - mother who you can screw without being in the adirondacks. mused about this while scrubbing and felt mildly vampy and amused. took as shower myself, as i felt jealous of the fixtures getting all clean without me. afterwards, i cleaned the floor with swiffer and this is where all the true filth collected. it had all hidden itself behind the toilet and congealed with the moisture from the steam into clumps of hair and slime. i was disgusted with myself and resolved to clean more often. when bathroom was sparkly and clean i was so pleased i pranced about the apartment loudly declaring my pleasure. finished and went back to the couch where i read byron until 4. brushed my teeth and went to bed. today i went to class and wowed the professor in discussion with clever comments about sexual democracy, felt very proud. hurrah for reading comprehension. hurrah for don juan. hurrah for dying ingloriously in a swamp of stds, but being mistaken nonetheless for great political freedom fighter.

spammich

2005-03-05T02:41:00.000-08:00

"what's your pleasure, squire?" - stoic m. forster

Unbelievable :)

Puang toi
Whenever we confront an unbridled desire we are surely in the presence of a tragedy-in-the-making.
The law is light.
In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

Doing leads more surely to talking than talking to doing.
It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.

Their sighing , canting , grace-proud faces, their three-mile prayers, and half-mile graces.

Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.

Lawyers and woodpeckers have long bills.
One chops the wood, the other does the grunting.

How little do they see what is, who frame their hasty judgments upon that which seems.

Faith is the refusal to panic.
Wine is bottled poetry.

The archenemy is the arch stupid!

In our family, as far as we are concerned, we were born and what happened before that is myth.

Integrity is not a 90 percent thing, not a 95 percent thing either you have it or you don't.
All diseases run into one. Old age.The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of the common man.

Cheerfulness, sir, is the principle ingredient in the composition of health.

trvia

2005-02-28T23:22:00.000-08:00

chris sent me this thing. it's been ages since i've filled one of these out - not since middle school, actually. though ti would, post it in my blog, then invite everyone to do their own in comments section. no one will, but i'd like to believe you will humor me until time has proven otherwise. so pweeze just do it. it's also a good way to learn who reads me. tee!

Copy, not forward, this entire email and paste it into a new email that you can send. Change all of the answers so that apply to you. Then, send this to a whole bunch of people you know INCLUDING the person who sent it to you. The theory is that you will learn a lot of little known facts about your friends. Its fun and easy.

REMEMBER TO SEND IT BACK TO THE FRIEND WHO SENT IT TO YOU

1. WHAT COLOR PANTS ARE YOU WEARING? blue and pink plaid pj pants

2. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? rolling stones, you can't always get what you want just ended...now is the dandy warhols' get off

3. WHAT ARE THE LAST 4 DIGITS OF YOUR PHONE NUMBER? ****

4. WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU ATE? dinner was salmon, white rice, and napa cabbage. dessert was a chocolate chip cookie and a banana

5. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE? forest green

6. WEATHER RIGHT NOW? chilly. even indoors.

7. Last Person you talk to on the Phone? mummy

8. WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE ACTOR? dunno, paz vega?

9. HOW ARE YOU TODAY? chilly.

10. FAVORITE DRINK? oregon tea iced chai latte

11. FAVORITE ALCOHOLIC DRINK? anything fruitier than it is boozy

12. FAVORITE SPORT? raquetball

13. HAIR COLOR? brown with fading red streaks

14. EYE COLOR? mostly brown, slightest hint of green

15. WEAR CONTACTS? god, yes

16. SIBLINGS AND THEIR AGES? no.

17. CAMPING OR HOTEL? hotel

18. LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED? fern gully (before that supersize me, before that taxi driver. i watched a lot of movies yesterday.)

19. FAVORITE DAY OF THE YEAR? no particular one

20. ARE YOU TOO SHY TO ASK SOMEONE OUT? i suppose so

21. SUMMER OR WINTER? summer

22. RELATIONSHIPS OR ONE NIGHT STANDS? relationships

23. CHOCOLATE OR VANILLA? chocolate

24. DO YOU WANT YOUR FRIENDS TO RESPOND? no

25. WHO IS MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND? sadaf

26. LEAST LIKELY? everyone else

27. LIVING ARRANGEMENTS? 2 bedroom apartment, 3 roommates, one absent, got my room to myself

28. WHAT BOOKS ARE YOU READING? norton anthology of english literature, vol. 2, the poems of ossian and related works by macpherson, the master of balantree (?), robert lewis stevenson...english minor *shrug*

29. WHAT'S ON YOUR MOUSE PAD? no mouse pad, i use a tablet

30. FAVORITE BOARD GAME? scrabble

31. WHAT DID YOU DO LAST NIGHT? watched movies with my roomie

32. FAVORITE SMELLS? lilies, jasmine on a summer night tinged with the dusty smell of my window screen

33. CAN YOU TOUCH YOUR NOSE WITH YOUR TONGUE? not in any way you'd find impressive

34. WHAT INSPIRES YOU? genius. and when that fails, irreverence

35. BUTTERED, PLAIN OR SALTED POPCORN? buttered

36. FAVORITE FLOWER? white lily

37. FAVORITE VEHICLE? ferrari dino

38. HOW MANY KEYS ON YOUR KEY RING? 5

39. CAN YOU JUGGLE? god, no

40. WHAT WOULD YOU HATE TO BE TRAPPED IN A ROOM WITH? grinning sadist

41. 7-UP OR SPRITE? i'm not sure i know the difference

42. COFFEE? mmm

43. FAVORITE PERFUME? jasmine essential oil

44. FAVORITE BAND OF ALL TIME? *shrug* i'm bad at having favorites

45. DO YOU FLOSS? no

46. BITE YOUR NAILS? no

47. PET PEEVE? people who just don't get me

48. FAVORITE TV SHOWS? venture bros., alias, america's next top model (beautiful waif traincrash tv)

49. IF YOU COULD INTERVIEW ANYONE IN THE WORLD WHO WOULD IT BE? kurt vonnegut

50. FAVORITE VACATION SPOT? puerto la cruz, venezuela, though i'm now dreaming about going to costa rica some day

trees and a fat-os, both need your love

2005-02-28T01:50:00.000-08:00

i'm afraid, afraid i have done a bad thing. i have signed up, along with katherine, for a hollywood video mvp movie rental thing. $10/month unlimited rentals, 3 at a time. i am never going to achieve anything ever again. you have just witnessed the death of my productivity, pfft! we signed up when we went to return taxi driver, which i finally watched. it was a bit odd, as i used to watch the old television series taxi. i had trouble reconciling the two casts and kept expecting andy kaufman to loll into the frame, bug-eyed, as generic foreign-man latka, babbling incoherently at bickle. "thenk you veddy much." movie was pretty good, cinematography not terribly impressive, though. enjoyed it, though.

so, upon returning the one video, we rented three more with our brand new discount plan. supersize me, fern gully, and rushmore - all katherine's choices, actually, i wasn't feeling too opinionated that night. we got back and fixed ramen for dinner. popped in supersize me. and were, of course, utterly horrified. a panicked feeling at the base of my ribcage prompted me to go outside and just begin running until i was bent over, wheezing and panting, dripping sweat into the street. obviously, i would never do such a thing and instead ate an apple as i watched a man's liver function cease due to excess fat. i don't want to be fat american. i don't even want my mother's thighs. i want to be lovely and svelte forever with my lithe muscles and fabulous wardrobe and wrinkle-free face. very glad i almost never eat out.

after that, we popped in fern gully and were awash in nostalgia and synthesizer music of the early 90's. i identified two voice actors correctly - very funny that christian slater voiced the snarky red-haired man-fairy. after the movie kat and i were beset by white-man consumer environmental guilt. bad planet-killing white woman, bad. i think the character of batty was much more enjoyable as large person who could appreciate "'ah, human!' 'that's a human?' 'yes! yes! kill it! restrain it! medicate it! *takes deep breath* 'puff up! puff up! they hate that!'" ah-haha. classic.

well, it's late and i still have coleridge to read. i'm stuck in the world of wikepedia in one of those compulsive "choose your story" loops of searching through linked articles obsessively. i had better go, if i get off the computer, perhaps i will get this done. so g'night! and hug a tree.

catalyst catharsis

2005-02-25T22:59:00.000-08:00

had a very long and peculiar day. but really, the story begins last night, after my bio midterm. it was a bitch, i wasn't nearly adequately prepared. finished and came back to the apartment to attempt to read william wordsworth. his poetry was interesting, but his preface to lyrical ballads was excruciating - i kept being distracted by sex thoughts and realizing i had no concept of what i read, then cussing, but even without the sex thoughts i had no idea what he was trying to say. posted a short critique on the class discussion board and emerged from my room to join my friends in a social setting. blaize, amy, and ib had stopped by with a handle of vodka that was begging to be drunk and kat and roosh were entertaining. we had a jolly time, drinking, watching mortal kombat which i had actually been craving for a while, and playing scrabble. we had teams; kat and i won, of course. as much language pretension as we possess, it would have been disappointing had we not. the evening was fun and concluded around 4:30 in the morning. i promptly went to bed. my alarm rang at 7:45 the next morning.

i woke up today completely out of my mind. i lay there after my alarm rang and worried that i had forgotten what proteins i needed before i could get to class. for some reason, i was convinced that i needed two big proteins to be able to get out of bed. as if to somehow catalyze my waking up. of course, it was actually a sleep-deprived metaphor for the two blocks of time i needed to be able to arrive in class...you know, 40 min shower and dress, 20 min walk to class. that sort of thing. but my tired and overworked brain translated that into two massive proteins and i couldn't really figure out what was wrong with the thought. and so i hit the snooze button. in my confusion, i decided to snooze until i could remember what the proteins were and how i was supposed to actually obtain them while lying in bed. i was perplexed why, needing these things every day to get to class, i suddenly could not remember what they were. i hit the snooze button 3 times before i realized that i didn't fucking need proteins to get out of bed...so i sort of rolled to my feet and took a shower. i found this all quite unnerving. i mean, physics majors don't go crazy and suddenly worry that coulomb's second law will somehow prevent them from getting to class; english majors don't find themselves incapable of action until they can remember the definition of "zeugma." so what the fuck was that about? 4 hours of sleep, a bio midterm, and street booze is what. turns out liquor from last night was literally found on the street. no wonder i woke up completely flipped out. i hit blaize when i found out. the fucker.

i did manage to make it to my first class no later than i ever really am. even payed attention and took notes. went to my second class, lit discussion, quite spry. the prof sat in on it, observing, and being generally intellectually intimidating in his short, jolly sort of way. first thing we did was look at an example essay answer from the midterm, one that was pretty good, i assume. and so, being told that, the first thing to pop into my vain mind was, "i wonder if it's mine." of course, i realized how terribly egoistical that was and why should it be my essay, anyways? frankly, the essay i wrote for the midterm was pretty much crap, and they would have used a good one for the example. but still, when the transparency was put up, i compared it to my own essay. "hey, they used the same prompt. ah, that sentence looks like something i could have written. and they used the same examples i did. wait, shit, it is mine." so i sat there for the next ten minutes while my classmates ripped apart my anonymous composition feeling more shame for my underwhelming work than the urge to defend myself. hell, one of my "sentences" wasn't even that. i wrote a fragment! not even intentionally out of artistic style, i simply forgot to include a verb. but i did, sadly, have to have the last word, explaining "what was missing" was actually a particular textual example, not what the rest of them were saying at all. this was more out of the desire to show there was a point to the paper; that it wasn't entirely the inept work it seemed. the professor saw what i was getting at after i said my piece, at least. actually, it probably wasn't as bad as all of that, but i really rather hate to see my work displayed when it isn't anywhere near my best abilities and was written, as one classmate put it, "under duress" and extremely limiting time constraints. i got a 50/60 on the work, at least, but i'm still not particularly pleased with it. we moved on to other topics and such - y'know, class. sometime towards the end, i started shaking uncontrollably. unfortunately, i was trying to argue a point at the time. rather uncomfortable. went to my next class, bio, and was so cold and miserable that i just put my head down and tuned out. my head was being ripped apart and i expected that, at any minute, large chunks of it should be falling off. this was a pity as i usually dig my lectures. i left class early, deciding to return to my apartment and nap, forgoing free hot hot heat concert and lit office hours i needed to go to. as i walked back, however, i began to feel better. since i had already started on my way home, i decided not to turn around and just attend the concert, but then ran into blaize headed to campus for that very reason. he convinced me to go and i headed back with him.

stood around ackerman grooving to band. some good songs, mostly mediocre, and the sound system wasn't great, but i enjoyed myself. bought a $1 livestrong tsunami relief band from a girl walking around peddling them to warm and fuzzy co-eds, realized i could never wear such a thing, and gave it to blaize, instead, who is just trendy mainstream enough to pull it off. besides, the band wasn't nearly tight enough to produce that cuff-effect i enjoy in my wrist jewelry. mmm, binding. ran into yen and laughed while she gabbed with some indie rock boy promoting his band. then, feeling much restored, i headed further up into campus to go to the office hours and discuss my upcoming paper. actually, in over-educated new england tones, we talked about ice cream, la traffic, and the body worlds exhibits before the topic of the paper ever came up. i can re-write my disappointing midterm papers, fortunately (i cannot live with a c+ in english, it is too shameful) and it seems i will be exploring the inept heroic qualities of dr. jekyll in my research paper. hurrah! resolution. returned to the apartment and ate an english muffin before climbing into bed and curling into a little girl-ball. slept for 4 hours in blissful nap. talked to mommy on the phone, kat in person, baked insta-pizza, and watched some sex and the city. i am now going to watch taxi driver and then sleep some more and i will be a happy person. or i might pass out first. don't need specialized enzymes for that, thank god.

pit of intellect

2005-02-24T00:26:00.000-08:00

finally sat down to study for tomorrow's midterm. with the focus of a thousand giant magnifying glasses, i learned. these were the results:

aim conversation with steffi:
me: tell me a happy story about little children that find love
steffi: hansel and gretel were not brother and sister
steffi: they were lovers
steffi: and the gingerbread house was their love shack
steffi: in which they indulged in temporal pleasures
steffi: MUAHAHA
me: temporal?
me: and hansel and gretel were always a little too close for my comfort, anyways. they were kids, but veery...bonded. their woodsman father left them in the forest because he couldn't stand watching them. creepy incestuous children.
me: and far too precocious for their own good
steffi: haha
steffi: temporal = earthly
me: oh
me: i always hear it in sci-fi context. "captain we are experiencing a temporal shift!" "don't interrupt me, mr. spock, can't you see that i am currently seducing an attractive, albeit green-tinted alien woman. though i was wondering why it is that we seem to perform the same face-smashing kiss over and over again, yet sustain no injuries nor move to second base."
steffi: hahahahahaha
steffi: that belongs in my profile
me: yay! positive reinforcement. i am witty.

aim conversation at jim:
all me: alright, i don't care whether you actually respond. it's either talk or fall back into crazy screaming study mode. and steffi has gone for food.
so i tried to go to my ls 3 ta's office hours today
turned out to be in "chs" building
had no idea what that was supposed to be at all
but on my way, i ran into some guy i recognized from the lab for that class
hurrah, i thought, someone who might know where it is
he gave be blank looks and said something about the room probably being changed and had no advice as to where "chs" was
i found him utterly useless, but did not tell him so
anyways, i had a bit of a hunch
i suspected, rather randomly, that "chs" stood for "career health sciences" and was somewhere in the grand mysterious complex of buildings that is behind ls
so i made my walk down to the ls building and beyond
one enters on the second floor there, and is suspected that the office was on the third, even though the numbering scheme was entirely different
ls has 4-digit room numbers. chs: 5
so, i went up a flight. found myself on the 4th floor of the med school, so i wandered around a little till i found a stairwell, went down one
found a map and a bank of elevators, but no good, somehow i had gotten myself into...well, i'm not sure what the building was named. it was named after a man, though. that wasn't right
so i wandered about some more, going from map to map, searching for the room
ended up somehow, not in the med school, but the dentistry chool.
every door, it seemed, lead to the hospital, and the grad students were beginning to stare
finally, i back-tracked
found the medical school
and lo, the building had the same format room numbering
i had intended to just return to ls and call off my search, but the numbers above the doors were heartening. i was even in the correct corridor
i proceeded onward, looking upward at the plaques on the doorframes
until, lo! the correct room number was before me
but the possibility still loomed that i was in the incorrect building
none of the nearby maps claimed to be "career health sciences" i was still in the med school
but then, peering through the cloudy glass window, i saw...my ta!!!
i entered, he was with a student, and sweatily proclaimed "a pox on you and your meeting room!"
my questions were answered and i was directed in the proper direction to the ls building
i have traversed the dark, seamy depths of the medical plaza and lived to tell the tale
just call me dr. livingston
*no responce*

aim conversations with sadaf:
me: how i love you, fructose, sucrose, glucose
sadaf: haha
me: apple juice from concentrate, you are my hero

me: distract me
sadaf: no, i can't! i'm freaking out.
me: why now?
sadaf: just b/c i have a whole lot of psychology reading to finish/study for quiz on friday, and i have a maht midterm on friday that i haven't started studying for.
sadaf: purely school this time
me: aaaack!!!
me: oh my freaking god, that's a lot of work!!
me: there's no human way any...human can do all of that!!
me: mother of odin, nooo!!!
sadaf: YOU SUCK!!!!
me: okay, now that i've freaked out, you don't have to
sadaf: I DON'T LIKE YOU ANYMORE
sadaf: that was cruel and mean and horrible
me: HEY, don't say shit like that to me until you know what my purpose is
me: i freaked out, thus eliminating the need for you to freak out. leaving you free to tackle your work without the taint of panic.
me: be grateful, bitch. it's psycological surrogacy
(she forgave me)

and finally, e-mail to chris:
i have a midterm tomorrow. i began studying last night, just before my roommate and i had sex and the city marathon. so, majority of learning was left for today. i began studying in the late afternoon with ambivalence. i became distracted partway through by my finances...just how much money will i not have to live on by the end of the school year. the answer is...? a couple thousand dollars; i'll be a couple thousand dollars short. whoo. well, that is, as long as my grant does not come through. who knows what sort of joyous cash orgy i will be in if my grant comes through. or at least paying rent. i'll be able to pay rent. so that entire situation, as you might imagine, caused me some stress, which i was then deftly able to channel into intense study focus for hours end-to-end. moriaty intense study focus is more intense than your average study focus, as well. it is a soul-consuming pit of learning. frequent food-breaks are necessary least neurons suddenly seize up of starvation. it causes headaches. i become literally quivering mass os insanity and information. imagine pasty white jello imbued with human intelligence and vast knowledge of protein synthesis. of course, one cannot remain sane for very long in this state and the craving for company and conversation eventually becomes overwhelming. i get into the strangest conversations when i'm learning - desperation for distraction, overabundance of body energy. but no one will talk to me now, so i e-mailin.' also, have rolled up sticker of some kind up my nose, it's quite long and tickles. falling. gonna end now. by dear. thanks for reading sanity-inducing words. kisses, carla

i think that pretty much sums it up.

sagacity from a porn advert

2005-02-22T15:23:00.000-08:00

more spam today. this one is from galvnometers i. gunner. it changed my life.

Greetings, white man! :)

Hol di good The real news is bad news.

Between two worlds life hovers like a star, twixt night and morn, upon the horizon's verge.
The chief beneficiary of life insurance policies for young, single people is the life insurance agent.
All work and no play makes one the wealthiest man in the cemetery.
An acquaintance that begins with a compliment is sure to develop into a real friendship.
I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today.
The difficult part in an argument is not to defend one's opinion, but rather to know it.
I honestly believe it is better to know nothing than to know what ain't so.
It's what you do, unthinking, that makes the quick tear start The tear may be forgotten -- but the hurt stays in the heart.

Life is a grindstone. Whether it grinds us down or polishes us up depends on us.

All is but lip-wisdom which wants experience.
A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance. Whatever accomplishment you boast of in the world, there is someone better than you.
Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.
No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.

Mastery passes often for egotism.

In business for yourself, not by yourself.
Keep quiet and people will think you a philosopher.

have i mentioned that the subject line was "FW: Britney Spears Naked on Paparazzi Pohots"? i'm going to save this e-mail and try to live my life by it every day i'm on the beautiful earth. also, maybe dl some of those naked brit photos, eh eh? no.

it's raining spam

2005-02-21T23:34:00.000-08:00

my inbox has been inundated with spam of late. very bizarre and obscure things, though. oh, the topics are all perfectly average "hot milfs looking for love," "local cheating housewives," "horny local cheating weomn" - they even have a running theme! actually, they're pretty amusing, though i admit, obnoxious. the sender box, on the other hand has slowly become more and more outrageous. i'm afraid i haven't kept track of some of the earlier names that appeared, but no matter, the most recent one is the best. vandalizing f. amputee! it's genius, i tell you, genius! i know, these names are created by a random generator, but could a random generator not produce the works of shakespeare given enough time? i submit it would do so more easily than a monkey typing on through infinity as it would have an advantage in that it could only produce true words, rather than the undisciplined key-punching of an ape. of course, punctuation and formatting would also have to be factored in, but i'm sure allowances can be made in the interest of expediency.

speaking of inboxes, i still have not received matt's mysterious mailing and and growing, well, even more impatient. sadaf and suegol both dropped very vague hints over the weekend, indicating it might be a garment of some sort - perhaps - and that i would like it. i am terrible with suspense. even though matt declared toward the contrary, i suspect it will be pajamas. predictable, yes, but who does not love pajamas?

finally, on the topic of inundation... yesterday it poured down terribly hard. so much so that i was kept from my friends in the evening. i missed movie night, i'm afraid, as i would have assuredly drowned slogging to the dorms where everyone was staying. instead, i did a bit of light reading and watched zoolander, inspired in my choice by my distant friends. my ceiling, fortunately did not leak at all yesterday. today, on the other hand, was dry with only a light sprinkle falling. my ceiling dripped steadily but slowly all afternoon. i do not understand what exactly motivates this, then. i suspect it is governed by a whimsical sprite that lives in my ceiling and whose only ruling faculty is caprice. my bucket is till in place, along with the newspaper, so i am ready for whatever might fall. at least i have not yet had to start bailing out my carpet. the others are not so lucky, as the flood has advanced from their window all the way across the room to the door opposite. it is a very perilous place for dry socks at the moment, and we are all growingly terrified of killer mold. my own carpet is a bit damp next to the closet, at the current head of my bed. it is much less an inconvenience, however.

in other news, i have baked two different types of cookie, have watched the one-armed swordsman, eaten amy's chicken carcass soup, and have not begun studying for my midterm yet. that's the news of the rest of the weekend. good times.

whirl(puddle) weekend

2005-02-20T02:03:00.000-08:00

the rains have returned to la once again, making this an uncharacteristically wet season for all i can tell. my green docs have broken and must be repaired, so i was left without tall shoes to repel the water until i remembered my doc martin 6-hole boots. those lovely babies are impermeable unless i am unwise enough to step in water that reaches to the laces. to match my garb, i went goth friday. dark cuffed jeans, studded belt, my black (h.r.) geiger-esque long-sleeved t, eyeliner. the effect of the ensemble were ruined a bit by the pink umbrella and big blue ucla sweatshirt, but i didn't really mind. arrived at my first class only faintly damp, socks blissfully bone-dry, but that was mostly due to having gotten a ride from katherine, who dropped me off not too far from my class (v. good considering torrent). i was, however, able to comfortably slog through puddles of any depth, to my growing glee. spent a couple hours after bio reading in the bookstore, then returned home. removed my shoes to discover blisters. nothing is ever perfect.

the old friends from back home have come to visit - suegol and shahin are here to visit and play for the entire weekend, i couldn't be happier. last night, suegol and mandy (who i don't know despite the fact that she went to my high school) arrived and i played welcoming party: giving them directions from the freeway to the dorms, helping them carry their bags up multiple flights of stairs, tagging along as they tried to find a parking space, escorting them to the rest of the group. the "rest of the group" were at the triangle frat, boozing it up with jim and his lot (quite literally: it seems sadaf and he became quite the confidants before i arrived). i really hadn't intended on going - when sadaf showed up at the party, i was alone in the apartment wearing a bathrobe, eating ice cream, and trimming my nails. the perfect glamorous friday night. i was avoiding party because, oh the drama: jim neglected to pick me up on time to drive me to a seminar on campus on neurulation in fetuses and i ended up not going. i should say, he arrived to get me late, after it began. i was at first disappointed, but i said equivocal things to him that made it seem half my fault that he was late (spare his feelings) - it was bullshit - and then after i hung up the phone i became pissed, really rageful. well, still a bit pissy later in the evening, i did not want to go to his party and make friendly. unfortunately, my whole gaggle of friends was already there, including the pushy sadaf and the visiting shahin, and suegol and mandy wanted to see them. so i reluctantly lead up my apes into hell. well, not really, that's just much ado about nothing. really, i lead them to the party, where i went in search of sadaf, who i found, along with yen, in jim's room. met the rest of the group downstairs exiting as we arrived, and also saw ib and blaize hanging about. quite the cast. so discovered sadaf and yen to a chorus of exuberant drunken squeals, making it impossible to reunite the crew and slip out undetected. besides, that would have been bad form. jim was sitting, distributor of alcohol, with the girlfriend in his lap. her presence made any sort of real conversation unnecessary, so i poured myself somewhere between a third and a half of a red party cup full of gin and left, friends in tow. after a short discussion in the hallway the visitors and sadaf's hallmates ended up at my place, where i played the kind hostess and served tea and water. i drank up my gin with apple juice and thought myself a shame to snoop dog's legacy. sadaf related much of her conversation with jim to me, she thinks perhaps i've been a bit harsh on him, and i must give that come credit, though i believe most of my behavior is defensible. also, to my consternation, told me that i'm prettier than the girlfriend, which, though is a nice my-friend sort of thing to say, is not something i really care about nor need to hear. she did make me a bit pensive, however, as i finished off my drink. eventually, everyone filed out, the roomates came back, i cleaned up, folded my piled clothing, and i went to bed.

in the morning, i was woken up at 8 by the drip drip dripping of water from the ceiling onto my bed. i groaned and considered just ignoring it, but eventually dropped out of bed and rolled it away from under the ceiling puddle. i went back to sleep, a little guilty for allowing the water to soak into my carpet, but too tired to care. an hour and a half later i was again woken, this time by sadaf's call, to let her into the garage so mandy could park. at the same time, i ran into my landlady, who gave me a bucket. i placed the bucket in the path of most of the droplets and went back to bed. until 3. and had the strangest dreams. in one, for example, i was lying asleep in bed, and people kept stealthily appearing in various parts of my room and shouting at intervals to wake me up, then disappearing once again. it wasn't particularly restful, i'm afraid. once up, i showered, nearly passed out from dehydration, ate a little something, and then piled into car - 4 to the backseat - and went with the gang to rodeo drive. we wandered around for a bit in the thankfully dry window of the afternoon, looked at a couple stores, got coffee, and soaked up the ambiance of the posh and the privileged. actually, rodeo drive was mostly tourists, though we did see one (assuredly local) range rover with the nauseating license plate "trendy." we returned, parked at yen's place, and walked into westwood for dinner in the now moderate rain. sadaf's umbrella, held between the two of us, kept dripping down the back of my neck in a painfully comic sort of discomfiture. had a lovely dinner and headed back during another short dry spell. for the rest of the evening, we "partied" with sadaf's floormates and liquor pinched from the triangle frat the night before. i did not get drunk, i did not hook up, i did not pass go; i did not want to. instead, i did the terribly uncool thing of sitting at yen's computer for most of the evening, struggling against "spider solitaire." eventually, once again, everyone broke off and went home, and i walked back up to my apartment alone. it was fortunately not raining, hurrah.

so i have another 2 days of 4-day weekend to go, and maybe one of them i'll get something achieved. it's unlikely and i think i'd much rather play host. maybe get a couple of movies watched and some sweets devoured. i've done nothing to deserve a nice break, but it seems i'm going to get one. so long, of course, as i'm not floated out of my apartment in my bed in the middle of the night by a wave of floodwater and carried away into the pacific. that would suck.

fragments

2005-02-18T00:25:00.000-08:00

i have come down with a cold that tortures me only in the mornings - i am well by noon. was woken up at 9 to the sounds of furniture squeaking against the ceiling. dirty furniture squeaking, so i began my day with the thought, "oh just fucking come, already." fell back asleep and woke up again to much more cheerful thoughts of sore throats and little mexican children. went to my community service meeting grounds to get a ride to the library. teachin' children to read. rain caused traffic and we were in the car nearly till time to return home. went to see body worlds 2 with kat and the sister. innaresting once more. saw one with a soccer ball, another with a fencing epee and was reminded of matt and jim, in turn. smiled a secret smile and thought it good that i have hate for neither of them, otherwise i'd be picturing them flayed. returned and read blake, the marriage of heaven and hell. made me want to scream, but somehow enjoyed it immensely. suegol visits tomorrow and i must show her a good time. amy is here and kat must show her a good time, ferrying her about to colleges. on speaking terms once again with kim, who is happy and sane. much relieved if not emotionally detached. expecting a package from matt - tantalizing mystery gift. pretty much it. righty. been craving amazon orders, ackerman purchases, borders trip. it's silly, i have plenty here to read. ah well.

much love and a present

2005-02-14T00:55:00.000-08:00

oh, i'm feeling fabulous! in a positively radiant mood, but i'll get to that later. last night was one of debauchery, oh yes. finished my horrible midterm essays on arthur and the knights of bore and decided to go out for a bit of fun. fortunately, fun had called me up an hour before and invited me to a party. one of sadaf's friends was having a no-particular-reason dinner/drunk and i decided to reward diligence by stopping by. headed out in the wrong direction from my apartment and ended up nearly in westwood before discovering my mistake and trekking all the way back, past where i live, to the party. was mildly chastised, handed a drink, and set loose in a dark room full of friends and strangers. i made conversation, drank, laughed almost continuously, and stopped sadaf from falling over 90% of the time. it was jolly. i ended up drinking: 2 (possibly 3) double shots of malibu, 1 gin'ntonic (far too much gin), and 1 canned alcoholic energy drink. take note, because that will all become important later. we rounded out the evening with activities a la eighth grade - spin the bottle, suck and blow - games i never ever played when they would have been age-appropriate. ended up drunkenly making out with: steve (coupla times, meh), sadaf, syrus (i don't know him), and tamely kissed some other girl whose name i can never remember. i was very amused. a while after the last of my drinks, after having been lounging around on the floor for a while, i inevitably with that amount of booze in my system, became ill. did the toilet-clutch for approximately an hour (my time-estimating skills were impaired, i really haven't the faintest idea). threw up a couple of times, holding back my own hair, i am amused to note. sadaf brought me water and patted me comfortingly for a bit and then encouraged me to get up and walk back to my own apartment. lo! i was able to stand and stagger out into the night with her firmly supporting me (hugs and much thanks to her). made it all the way back to my room, where i drunkenly imed jim without particular cause, undressed, and collapsed into bed. woke up at 9 in the morning, an absurdly early hour, feeling vaguely ill still, but much better than the night before. when i was unable to fall back asleep, i got up, chatted up chris, showered, had breakfast and felt wonderful. a couple of hours later, i was back to shivering and illness, so i napped for another three. woke up again and went out for a wander. borrowed dr. strangelove from jim, headed to sadaf's and had dinner, went to yen's and copied her notes for the lit midterm tomorrow. all in all, a lovely evening. back here, matt and i chatted a bit online. he very cutely asked whether i'd be coming home over spring break and could we hang out, maybe? got photos from him and suegol from various high school and summer exploits and that put me in the best mood. nostalgia: i love my friends and miss them so! and so i dedicate this valentines' to them, my sweetest darlings, old and new.

(this blog redeemable for 1 big ol' kiss: mon, feb 14, 2005.)

singing in the...insanity

2005-02-11T02:54:00.000-08:00

i was describing to jim the brilliance of the mail-order pajama concept, but he wasn't nearly as enamored of the idea as i am. i tried to make him see. evidently, he's not very prone to flights of fancy. this is what came from those futile stabs at elucidation:

okay...
imagine.
you're at work
sitting in a cubicle
grey fuzzy walls, because that's what cubicles are made of,
bits of paper pinned to them, flickering computer screen, grey industrial desk, black stapler, picture of family...dog...whatever, small bendy plastic novelty figure for personality, coffee mug.
you're in your desk chair. also grey and fuzzy because, why destroy a perfectly good motif?
the chair swivvels, but doesn't lean back. cheap bastards.
you're sitting there swiveling back and forth absentmindedly, when, suddenly, someone comes by your 2 1/2-ft wide door opening. they hand you a manila folder, a couple legal-sized envelopes, and...a big brow package.
what could it be?
you open it, filled, for the first time in your day, with curiosity
and find, folded neatly into a perfect square
cerulean blue satin pajamas. the overhead fluorescent lighting catches playfully on the collar. inviting you. nap.
you turn, the desk, before so dull, so hard, so oppressive is suddenly inviting.
yes, you think. i could nap. but dare i?
yes, you have pajamas which you received in the mail. the rules of the universe no longer apply. you have received sleepware in the mail.
it is as if the man is telling you - go ahead.
the government, the man, the bureaucracy is giving you a giant thumbs-up. they delivered the damn things!
you slip on the pajamas, they fit! and so silky-smooth, you climb on top of your desk and nap.
the heavens part, a choir of cherubs begins to sing, your co-workers are oblivious, nymphs play about your desk chair and a gentle breeze, never before felt in a world of air-con and heavy, immobile high-rise windows, begins to blow.
a smile plays at the corners of your mouth, and you are happy.

he called me batshit crazy. i could never love a man who does not understand when he is caught in a creative cloudburst, and instead of singing, opens his umbrella of scorn. bastard. you get no pajamas.

(p.s. outside, it's actually raining. oh, yes.)

joy-urine and teddy bears

2005-02-11T01:39:00.000-08:00

mum called me today to remind me that tomorrow's (well, today, now) my father's birthday. you have to love that woman - she instinctually knows that i forgot these things if not constantly reminded. i'm going to have to call him tomorrow and wish him a happy old age. i'm thinking of referring to him as "old man pop" at least once during the conversation, just to knead him a little. i'm a bad daughter. this entire stretch of february just annoys me. yes, all that valentines' bullshit. but what's worst is the commercials. this year, there's this horrid adam corolla hawking teddy bears ad that comes on late at night - it's long, obnoxious, and no one really needs a "love bandit" teddy bear from vermont to know that they're loved. but evidently, getting one of these plushy things will make any woman wet herself in glee. and then all of her friends will spontaneously squeal in jealousy and apoplectic rage. would that someone love me well enough to send me joy-urine inducing stuffed animals. oh, sigh. actually, it's not all bad; there's an ad for mail order pajamas - i love the very concept. how i would adore to be sitting in a cubicle, hard at work, and receive a package. whatever could it be? pajamas!? oh, you shouldn't have! i'm going to jump into these right here and take a nap! thank you, u.s. postal service!! zzzz.... also, this one doesn't piss me off because it's not seasonal, i saw one of these commercials back in december. i think i would lose bladder control from the sheer volume of joy in my system if i were to receive pajamas in the mail. that's just fuckin' smart.

but this is the affront every singleton must put up with on valentines'. one trying to remain cool, detached, non-bitter is suddenly assailed by the colors of pink and red. red-the color of rage, the color of spilt blood, of bull fights and vd. how can one remain calm when surrounded by images of weapon-wielding babies and internal organs? there was never any arbor day massacre. a friend asked me whether i was going to wear black on valentines' day out of protest. well, of course not. there's no way one can appear sane on the lovin'est day of the year while outwardly proclaiming their bitter rejection of all that is cuddly. goths do not give out little construction paper bats glued to lacy doilies proclaiming their "wuv." this valentine's day, i will be wearing blue, or green. the colors of air and water. i want to clash with every hideous store front, every themed display. i want to look like a puddle of serenity in a pink world. (pink is not an easy-going color. pink vibrates deep inside itself.) i will drift along at peace with my one-ness. and if i'm feeling generous, i'll send dad some mail-order pj's for his birthday.