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Monday, March 31, 2003
18:56 - my history of western civ class being right before mainstream lunchtime, food's always a popular topic. or gift. thus today, talk about the life and times of the average 18th century european peasant kept nudging its way back to diet. how much did they eat? what did they eat? wasn't there anything better that they could've logically eaten? did they have really bad teeth due to eating like that?
imagine living exclusively on bread and cider. or on stew simmered so long that all the vitamins had boiled away in the winter, rotted gazpacho in the summer.
imagine me being suddenly not-so-worried about the preponderance of breakfast foods and coffee in my daily intake.
nothing like a little perspective in the morning...
Sunday, March 30, 2003
16:05 -
mostly from the asg formal; it's too bad they were nearly all taken with strong flash in low light, no one looks nearly as gorgeous as they did in real life when they hadn't the blinky squinty or red eyes.
also featuring some gilded broccoli (which looks far less impressive when you can't watch it sparkle...) and tornado warning documentation with a very muddy jeremy in between.
01:00 - i wonder how long it'll take me to find a legitimate setting for the word "corvine"...
Saturday, March 29, 2003
16:08 - o ye gods of usage, ye evil prescriptivists... can you tell me if this situation is worthy of being labelled ironic?
i get jabbed a lot these days for my suspected allegiance to france... it's all light-hearted, much in the same ludic spirit that motivates me to yell "geek" at husband any time he gives us the "computational linguistics" look -- everyone else in the room knows that i'm at least as geeky and would be a little jealous if i weren't... and ever since the freedom fries incidents started breaking out, i've taken a certain touch of pride in responding to the appellation "frenchy."
one of the favorite tricks is to cut me off at any given time with a big "IRRELEVANT!" because, of course, i'm a dirty hippie socialist peacenik aligned with france.
now, well, unconnected to france, one of my biggest complaints with life at the moment is that everything i do feels perfectly immaterial. i go to class. people on the other side of the world are dying for and against my country. i sleep, i go to work. we americans are "liberating" people who may or may not appreciate the thought. i listen to shostakovich and act moody. bombs are still knocking over buildings, maybe we'll get 'round to rebuilding 'em someday.
i suppose that in a way this angst is selfish: drama queen resentment at not being anywhere near the center of the world, not being able to influence that story. it's not as if it would really help, obeying that primal urge to go running screaming dancing madly in the midst of a battlefield... and the disconnect between suburban american reality and any sense of meaning is no war-time special... i'm just wallowing in it more than usual.
please excuse me if i spend a little extra time staring out into space. i'm feeling irrelevant today.
Thursday, March 27, 2003
19:27 - i've got a cap and a gown now... still not convinced to actually walk the line, though.
13:24 - les dieux m'aiment aujourd'hui. so i'm utterly under-prepared for french literature due to having accidentally gotten six hours of sleep last night.... and french literature doesn't happen! i guess the prof just wanted to sit outside and watch the world go by too... vivent les beaux jours de printemps!
Wednesday, March 26, 2003
15:25 -
Which of Henry VIII's wives are you?
this quiz was made by the proper Victorian ladies at Spookbot
(via srah blah blah)
ok, ok, so i'm a "book-loving rogue-ho." excellent. now back to work.
Tuesday, March 25, 2003
17:20 -
08:24 - and a tad belatedly...
happy afghanistan day. celebrating "the principles involved when a people struggles for the freedom to determine its own future, the right to be free of foreign interference and the right to practice religion according to the dictates of conscience." hope some of that's happening there soon...
(via tom tomorrow)
08:01 - may i just say...
i got up at 5:30 this morning. and thought it was fantastically, disastrously late. and in fact it was.
once upon a time, the nightmare on elm street movies were campy horror-fests, great fuel to reinvigorate slumber parties. these days i identify far too completely with the over-caffeinated victims...
Monday, March 24, 2003
12:52 - being anti-war at this point is irrelevant, i suppose. no matter how much i may drone about international law -- and we are still setting a bad example by preemptive striking -- my pacifism has always been primarily a visceral reaction -- i don't want my government to kill people. or even bully them. even when their own government is poisonous. because this is the twenty-first century, because we should be able to do better than that. but i suppose i'm three or four degrees removed from reality... especially now that we're already in this.
so now i'm just sitting back, numbly watching as bombs shatter lives and families lament their missing soldiers. and hoping it ends with minimal casualties all around. and that we've got the guts to do this right, to follow through, to be a little idealistic. i worry -- are we economically prepared? will the same people who can't handle the thought of pitching in for universal domestic healthcare mind handing over their taxes to bolster a fledgling government on the other side of the globe? and what if not? i don't think i like having this much power...
Sunday, March 23, 2003
14:41 - following a brief incident of bandwidth exceeding, husband's ultra-quick digital pics of the formal last night have been relocated to a non-tripod location. if you need any of 'em full-size, lemme know.
Saturday, March 22, 2003
16:52 - shopping and sleep have amazing therapeutic powers.
i was always a tad skeptical about the shopping part. i tend to associate it more with big stress, must get dress before big event or world will end sorts of stuff. and after all, spending money means having to worry about where more money's coming from. but if you take the act itself, isolate it from causes and effects... being stunningly superficial and not thinking about anything is kind rather nice now and then. and finding a dress that not only fits but is on sale for half-price is... well, it completely ruined my bad mood.
i overslept. my roommates probably hate me again, since my alarms started going off at six a.m. and were still going at ten when i finally climbed out of bed. i had plans to go to a poetry workshop run by an old friend who's just in town during his spring break. i hate to miss that. but i guess it's just as well, since i'd been so bleary the last few days that i'd forgotten to give away my work hours. erk. but isn't sleep awesome?
Thursday, March 20, 2003
18:47 - things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.
the normalcy of today keeps crescendoing. it's sunny, everyone's talking and laughing as usual. i'm talking and laughing as usual. crushing dissonance... some of the seams feel like they're wearing thin.
i was walking toward a french mid-term today when i ran into kurt. in uniform. on his way out of town. magic knock on the door this morning...
i got into purdue.
war-on-tv still looks as green and eerie as it did a decade ago. strangely sterilized.
i need to read half a book and write a paper about it tonight, not to mention physics. these things seem irrelevant, but i can't afford to roll up in a ball now.
thesaurus.com doesn't list any synonyms for surreal.
Wednesday, March 19, 2003
11:33 - war's most likely starting in 8 hours, classes are cancelled and i'm stuck in the henderson hall basement due to perfect tornado conditions outside, and somehow finding out who all's coming to the dance on saturday is a top priority.
i just rediscovered the word fey. it's a lovely word today.
03:04 - the political commentary for today...
We’ll meet again,
Don’t know where, don’t know when.
But I know we’ll meet again some sunny day.
Keep smiling through,
Just like you always do,
Till the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away.
So will you please say hello
To the folks that I know,
Tell them I won’t be long.
They’ll be happy to know
That as you saw me go,
I was singing this song.
We’ll meet again,
Don’t know where, don’t know when.
But I know we’ll meet again some sunny day.
thanks dad!
Tuesday, March 18, 2003
20:10 - ttu box 7838. it's become a ridiculous obsession. i've looked prob'ly five times today... all i got was an invitation to join an honor society of which i thought i was already a member... or maybe i never bothered -- i remember being invited two years ago, but it doesn't really matter. not a single word from a single grad school. i know that uc davis and columbia have been using my parents' address, yet i still check whenever i get a spare ten minutes. i was never one to stay home and pine by the phone -- what is up with this?!? i don't care if they're rejection notices, i just want to know what my options are... because i have to decide by april 15. and i want time to procrastinate, to waffle, to properly measure the gravity of the situation.
i hereby pledge not to check my snail-mail again until tomorrow afternoon. a complete sixteen hours, mail-free.
Monday, March 17, 2003
15:51 - for some reason... no, stop, i always say my inexplicable whimsies are for some reason when in fact i'm not sure the unspecified cause actually exists... for no apparent reason, then, my brain has been recently begging to place the words "pistachio" and "panache" in close vicinity to one another. and it's had difficulty finding an excuse.
therefore, i wish you a st. pat's day full of pistachio panache.
no need to force it to make sense, it doesn't. my alliterative mania is satisfied. life may now return to normal.
14:03 - clark, live from oxford, gave me permission to create this flyer. it amused me greatly. perhaps if you know him it'll amuse you too.
Sunday, March 16, 2003
23:21 - cookeville's getting trendy. roommate kristy reports that spankie's is dishing up the freedom fries and "american" dips these days. in revenge, i used my counter-anti-frenchy sentiments as an excuse to splurge and buy myself some camembert and bordeaux. so hah! take that, peugeot-bashers!
20:46 - i'm smart. tomorrow's st. patrick's day. guess what color i'm wearing today. guess what color my other clean shirts aren't.
oh well. if i'm going to celebrate my heritage, guess i'll have to find some guinness. no complaints here.
14:52 - my french literature book refers to those who can't identify with baudelaire, who just don't get les fleurs du mal, as non-spleenetiques. which for some reason delights me immensely. it helps, it's comforting, this knowing that the next time i get absurdly, existentially melancholic i can call myself a a spleenetic until i fall over laughing at the splendid, useless inanity of it all...
00:49 - california... i like california.
davis isn't as dazzling as berkeley or monterey or san francisco or... well, any beachfront community in northern california, i'd imagine. i didn't get to see that much of the town itself... my mother only looked at pictures, but her somewhat disparaging comment -- "it looks like the sort of place yuppies would go to raise their kids" -- is prob'ly pretty accurate. among the more bizarre bits of advice i garnered was to bring lots of socks and underwear if you come, as it's hard to find anything but expensive stuff like gap in the town. and the most apparent danger is getting run over by a bicycle. but the linguistics department wowed me. dynamic classes, interesting and personable faculty, enthusiastic grad students... by the time i got on the plane to come home on friday morning, i was sold.
then i got home friday evening. and received the e-mail saying i've been accepted at the university of hawaii. which is, after all, in hawaii. all of a sudden, i feel much more angsty and indecisive again about where to go. even if i have the distinct feeling no one's going to be very sympathetic when i whine and carry on about this...
back in cookevegas now, attempting to put my head on straight again.... and, er, most likely driving everyone mad with the endless mantra of "california or hawaii?"
Tuesday, March 11, 2003
20:25 - *blush* so now that i have the tickets in-hand, i understand that i'm flying through ontario, california, not ontario, canada. it's a little town right near los angeles. i didn't realize it existed. so welcome, ontario, california, to the k-tron's universe.
in other news, i failed to realize in time that "long layers" means lots of hair involved in the layers instead of layers just at the end to make them flippy. so now i look rather poodle-like. i severely dislike.
and now on to packing... my abused but wonderful dad drives me to the airport at 2 a.m.
Sunday, March 09, 2003
22:48 - cookeville's not properly equipped for formal brooding. especially not on sunday nights... nary a quiet, dark café to be found... not even one with a few dark corners from which to mull over a bitter espresso and glare at the folks stopping in for a cheerful dessert on the way home from church. i walked by poet's at 18:30... it'd closed half an hour before. how depressing.
21:55 - mini-rant: it's just not fair to assign the cliff-hangered first volumes that need sequels as required reading.
i finished angels in america: milennium approaches this morning. and now i'm trying very very hard not to be impulsive and order perestroika. don't you understand? my "free time to read" to "books owned and yet unread" ratio is already infinitesimal?
have to admit, though, that i'm looking forward to designing a theoretical production of the play, as per assignment. i wish i could draw... but the prospect of digging out reagan-era clothes and communications equipment sounds... fun. dammit, this class is a dumb graduation requirement, i'm not supposed to be enjoying it like this...
ooh, pretty. kushner also recently wrote a play about afghanistan. do they have support groups for this?
15:09 - i was planning to drive home tomorrow morning. realistically expecting to get there sometime in the afternoon...
my mom made me an appointment to get my eyes checked at 10:30 a.m., which suddenly manipulates me into having to be there in time to have lunch with her.
i mentioned that my glasses work fine, that i still only wear them when driving or watching movies or being educated. or occasionally when i'm wanting to just observe, to avoid interacting with the world -- i realize glass is transparent, but it can still feel like hiding.
appointment's on anyway. it's infuriating, it's sweet, it's inconvenient... but i'll make it there on time.
Saturday, March 08, 2003
15:01 - if you wake up and notice you still have a stuffy nose, it's prob'ly not the best time to go incense shopping. even when it's so bloody gorgeous outside that you're making up excuses to walk anywhere. really. i just caught myself furiously pretending the vending machine downstairs and all vending machines everywhere out of existence for the sake of walking across campus to the minimart where i paid nine cents more than normal for a soda. and it was completely worth it. it's the sort of day that demands some form of euphoric catharsis, whether you're ready for it or not. how's that for an emotional state? artifically-induced premature euphoric catharsis. except weather's not artificial... but the expectation that life's events should harmonize with it, that's all celluloid and grimm brothers. i think... then again, sun does release happy brain chemicals, doesn't it? and we just finished a freaky-long grey and gloomy streak. but moving on...
so, yeah, i was talking about being a bit idiot this morning, wasn't i? i ran out of incense a couple weeks ago... my room was starting to take on that old run-down rental house smell. either that or the "essence of about a hundred square feet containing more than ten pairs of old shoes." not sure which, not sure i care as long as it goes away. the stuffy nose was probably a mysterious biological survival mechanism. i'm usually busy during normal business hours... and my preferred incense source is frighteningly close to being a normal business. wal-mart, which is a scary humongous monster of a business but open at 2 a.m. and relatively cheap -- thus guiltily patronized for normal groceries, has air fresheners, but let's face it: odor improvement just isn't as much fun if it doesn't involve burning things.
anyways, since i couldn't completely smell the stuff, i couldn't decide which sort of incense i liked best. i ended up buying five packets -- five! -- in the hope that at least one of them is savory and incredible. i suppose that even if any of them are hideous, they can't hurt in the living room battles against litter boxes and rainy-day dogs...
Friday, March 07, 2003
01:16 - speaking of caffeine. so my three human roommates and i can go to waffle house, in fact we do nearly every wednesday night after playing walleyball... we all get coffee. i counted one night... and we can use forty of the little creamer packets in a couple hours. which is sort of scary in itself. but even scarier when one considers that i take my coffee black.... in their defense, i'm the one who uses half the bottle of ketchup on one serving of hashbrowns...
00:48 - my diet coke intake levels have been rising to amazing, dangerous levels here lately. husband claims i'm attempting to mummify myself, pre-death. i think that sounds kinda nifty. snopes.com says that the rumours that coca cola can clean your toilet bowl are false.
00:32 - {i'm trying to decide how to pack, so here are good clothes for sacramento...}
Wednesday, March 05, 2003
17:24 - dude. so uc davis is flying me out for a day to have a look about the place during my spring break next week.
i found a cheap ticket. it goes: nashville to dallas to ontario to los angeles to sacramento.
in what universe does flying someone this way cost less than, say, going through st. louis?
but i've never been to canada. so that's kind of cool.
and now back to your regularly scheduled stressing out. history exams are not fun.
Tuesday, March 04, 2003
17:44 - happy mardi gras...
Sunday, March 02, 2003
16:45 - closer is playing over at the backdoor playhouse. i saw it thursday night. it's the most painful piece i've seen here, but i keep finding myself telling everyone i know to go see it. it resonates...
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