Ms. Bobo the Mediocre's LiveJournal

Subject:	Raped at 11
Time:	12:49 pm.
Mood:	mellow.
Music:	Ours - Meet Me in the Tower.

I am reading this great book by Aldous Huxley - Those Barren Leaves. Not one of his better-known books. It's this beautifully satirical thing about a community of intellectuals gathered around this old woman, and they are all annoying as shit and completely pretentious. In the most recent part I read, this one woman was describing how her subject of specialty is "life," and she goes on and on about how beautiful life is, how she doesn't understand how those who are miserable can really hate life. Heh heh. This book is almost as brilliant as the scene in the film Happiness (oh, yes, one of my favorite films) where the novelist is crying "Raped at 8, raped at 11, oh I'm so full of shit, why couldn't I have been raped at 11?"

My own book has stagnated, I haven't been making any time to work on it, and the inspiration is gone, gone, gone. Perhaps things will change this summer.

The good thing about having a huge Irish Catholic family is that when you graduate from college, the mail is full of checks from relatives.

Paco might be coming to visit for a few days, which will be fun. Poor W. (the guy I'm dating) sounded jealous when I mentioned this to him. I think I have too many male friends. I think that goes with the territory of being unladylike, though, doesn't it? One dead baby joke too many, or one dick joke too many, and the other girls go running away. Alas. I think any guy I date will have to deal with my having close male friends. Unless all of my friends stop being friends. Who knows.

Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	Infatuated.
Time:	3:42 am.
Mood:	dreamy.
Music:	Roberta Flack - The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.

Is my head screwed on tightly? This man is going to have me believing in God again. That whole "God is Love, and Love is God" thing. I thought I'd stop believing in love, but noooo. Now I'm joining the "love at first sight camp". What has gotten into me? I must be a fool. How did I let myself get infatuated that quickly? Why did the world's most incredible man decide to fall for me? Why is he so perfect? Why does life feel so good when it's good? Why, why, why.

Other people ask what they did to deserve such misery. I ask what I did to deserve such happiness. I'm nauseatingly, disgustingly, pathetically happy. And obnoxiously optimistic about this guy. If you hate me for this ridiculous sunshiney happy cheerful optimistic crap, reassure yourself by reading some of my self-pitying, self-hating, bitter, older posts.

I am the woman in the flowered dress in a deodorant commercial, running across a field of wildflowers and throwing herself into the arms of the strapping young sailor running across the same field toward her. If all goes well, the deodorant commercial will turn into steamy pornography in awhile.

God help me to avoid being an idiot, help me to keep the L word off my lips. I don't want to fuck this up.

Comments: Read 3 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	Dream & date
Time:	9:41 pm.
Mood:	missing my friends.
Music:	London After Midnight - Where Good Girls Go To Die.

Last night I had another dream in which I discovered a new, hidden portion of my house. I always have these recurring dreams of finding huge, interesting places (i.e., extra rooms, etc.) in already-existing houses or buildings, and I always wander around in these new places in the dreams. If only this sort of thing could happen in real life. Discovering that there is a hidden apartment in your house, or discovering that your basement opens up into a labyrinth of a castle. Life is so boring next to dreams.

I have met a really incredible guy online, and I may have a date tomorrow night if I can figure out how to assuage the worrying, overprotective parents who forget that I'm 22 and have been living on my own for the past 4 years. He is a sailor in the Navy. (Don't tease me, please.) Gorgeous, sweet, very intellectual, blah blah blah. Sounds like the embodiment of so many of my fantasies, and I don't just mean sexual fantasies. Sounds too good to be true; so, pessimistic realist that I am, I am now worried that it won't work out, because the "too good to be true" part makes me wonder why the hell he is interested in me. We haven't met in person yet, and I'm worried that he won't be attracted to me. He's a foot taller than me, thin, and extremely cute, and I am afraid that I'll seem short and fat and blah to him. But if that's the case, get it over with now, right? Wish me luck.

Comments: Read 7 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	Commencement?
Time:	3:24 am.
Mood:	sad.
Music:	my CDs are all packed.

I graduated from college today (Sun., May 26th). The New England Patriots coach - who is an alum of my university (this is so cool) - was awarded a medal. THAT was one of the high points. I made a moron out of myself and shouted a loud obnoxious "Wooooo!" when he got to the podium. Not like me. But it was graduation, so I felt entitled. So many students. 700-something in my class. Other schools are huge, I know, but my high school graduating class was 28 girls. So 700-plus feels enormous to me. When we walked in procession, we passed through a double-line of professors, all of whom were clapping for us. My thesis advisor stepped out of line to give me flowers and a hug. It made me teary-eyed.

Today I crawled around my backyard on my hands and knees with two toddler-aged nephews riding on my back. Now I know why they put saddles on horses. I ran and played with my nephews as if I were their age again. There are few things in the world that make me happier than hearing the screamingly happy giggling laughter of children. Probably scared my friends, who have never seen me with kids. I used to work after school while I was in high school, at a day-care program, where I watched about 7-15 little kids, from toddlers through about fourth grade. I was the one who'd be on the floor with a ton of little kids crawling on me and laughing and asking for piggy back rides.

But sad, sad, sad was the goodbye part of the day. I've never hugged my friends that tightly. I tried to show them through my hug that I loved them and already missed them, even though we were still hugging. I'm terribly sad that I may never see some of them again for a very, very long time. And I lived with some of them for the past year. And I've lived with Jaco for the past 2 years. I need to hunt him down in his summer place, because I am going to miss him like hell. He's been my best friend since basically the first day of our freshman year of college.

I am going to miss so many things, so many people.

Comments: Read 5 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	Morons.
Time:	2:35 am.
Mood:	bitter.
Music:	Swans - Goddamn the Sun.

Packing is so depressing. My entire life from the past year is ending up in labeled boxes. The street has gone mad. It is teeming with drunk college students at 2:12 a.m.. The meatheads. They are playing stickball with empty beer cans and shouting "Wooooo!" every time someone hits a can. You're supposed to cheer when your dog hits a moving target, not when an adult human does. Keep counting your testosterone points, morons. Motherfuckers. They just hit something onto my porch. They're going to break my fucking windows. I wish I could breathe fire. I would incinerate all of them.

Tonight was the senior banquet. Needless to say, I didn't go. No date, and my friends were all going with other people. Sometimes I can handle playing the wallflower when there is ample alcohol available, but it's difficult when you're stuck there from 5 p.m. to midnight. That's a bit too much for my taste. I am such a nerd. I got to watch about 70 seniors all dressed up in suits and cocktail dresses walking to the buses that took them to the banquet. I was wearing a tank top and blue jeans. I felt like a trash bag. And I kept wishing that a pack of starving Siberian wolves would drop out of the sky and devour them all, leaving the street a bloody mess of skeletons and cozily drowsily dozing wolves.

There goes something else flying onto my porch and smacking into my walls. I don't want to move back into my parents' house, but I will go mad if I have to stay in this inebriated Lord of the Flies kindergarten amusement park much longer.

AAAGH! I'm going to fucking kill them. They just hit my frigging window, and I think they broke the glass. Time to go outside and be a bitch. I hate having to do this.

Comments: Read 3 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	Americana at its best
Time:	4:12 am.
Mood:	vastly improved.
Music:	in my head - Guns 'n' Roses: You Could Be Mine.

What a good day.

I went to Boston today to see the Red Sox game (vs. the White Sox - the Red Sox won, of course). We got to Boston at noon, and my friend A----- came with us to spend the day with me, which made it so much fun. She and I had lunch with pritchkate at this wonderful bookstore-cafe on Newbury Street, where I had a delicious lunch. (Don't worry, I made up for it later at the stadium.) After that, we went to a few shops on Newbury Street - had our photos taken by the Hello Kitty photo sticker machine in the Hello Kitty shop. Very amusing; I'm too much of a jackass for the photos to have come out looking normal. In one, I was biting the head off of Hello Kitty and A----- was bearing her teeth and glowering. You'd think I would have outgrown this type of nonsense years ago. But no. After Newbury Street, we went to the Boston Science Museum, which was oodles of fun. I love the damn science museum. I know it too well now. Know it well enough to drag my poor friend into the horrifying "How you were born" exhibit about pregnancy and birth, complete with the video tape of labor and slippery infants. And of course the little exhibit that will blend your face with the face of the person sitting across from you - seeing A-----'s and my lovechild at age 22 was a disturbing experience. Then of course the virtual volleyball and the one that freezes your shadows onto the photographic plate behind you; the teenage boys ahead of us mimed anal sex and masturbation positions (of course). We mimed several sacreligious Catholic-themed poses you probably don't want to know about - but don't worry, they weren't sexual; the priests and little boys routine is so overdone that everyone expects it in every joke. After the science museum, it was the shops near Quincy Market, and from there, the Fenway. The game was awesome. I managed to refrain from being an annoying intellectual during the game. Instead, I got really into the game - nearly scared myself by how "into it" I was. Oh yes, when No. 5 (Garcia-Parra) was at bat, I screamed along with the rest of the rabid fans. Don't worry, though, I didn't buy one of those gigantic foam fingers. (Though I was tempted, just because the damn things are so funny.) I did get a baseball cap, though, which was sorely needed as a souvenir anyway, because my last 2 baseball caps were from the Metropolitan Opera (OK, but not always what I want to wear; sometimes I try to hide the fact that I am a geek) and the San Jose Sharks (hockey team from San Jose, CA, where I used to live). The last time I was in a baseball stadium was when I saw the Expos in Montreal, but I didn't get to stay for the whole game. The horror of the evening was riding home in the car with the guys who decided to play some kind of absurd truth-or-dare type of game, in which the rules broke down and the conversation devolved to yet another one of my housemates' testosterone fests, in which it was agreed by all (except me) that I sound like a porn star when I'm having sex. Great. Just what I wanted. Ugh. I'm going to have to move into a soundproofed room if I ever want to have sex again. Wait, there was another horror. Some a capella group from Wellesley College sang the national anthem, which was unbelievable. I'm telling you, they were so, uhh.... what's the word? unique? - who would have thought you could do four-part harmony while each part does an extended free-form microtonal improvisational cadenza at the climaxing high notes of the song? It sounded as if it had a Ravi Shankar / John Zorn influence. (Can you tell I'm trying to find the nicest possible way to say it sucked beyond all recognition?) I was tempted to be really rude and howl like a dog to mock them, but that would have been cruel, and although we've already established that cruelty is funny, it wouldn't have been funny to an entire stadium of angry patriotic flag-waving baseball-obsessed Americans. Throughout the game I sat next to Jaco, whose sense of humor is fabulous. He suggested several sarcastically meathead-esque shouts that we could yell out and see if the crowd joined us (as a test to see how low the crowd would go); among them, "Why don't we shove that bat up your ass, you Chicago pussy?" for when the White Sox were up at bat. I hadn't realized how phallic the imagery of baseball is. The balls resemble testicles, the bat resembles a cock . . . Though I suppose the imagery is more one of violent castration, with the balls flying off in the air at 90 mph after being smacked by the bat (i.e., another man's cock? what a way to be castrated) and whatnot. Hmm. And what does it mean when a fan catches the flying ball and puts it in a trophy case at home? Someone should deconstruct that one. I thought of this because on the way home we passed a balloon maker who had this one gigantic red balloon that I guess was supposed to be a baseball bat, but what looked for all intents and purposes like an enormous red cock, and I was laughing because little children were standing in line waiting to get balloons - I was wondering what poor little kid was going to be carrying around that hideous monstrosity.

Anyone want to guess my cholesterol intake for the day?
Lunch: French onion gratinee (soup) with a side salad, some French bread, & a fruit smoothie
Later: Chocolate & Coconut Gelato (shared w/ A-----)
At the stadium (this is disgusting, but I don't care): Hot dog smothered in relish, ketchup, & mustard; 1/2 bag of popcorn; soft serve chocolate ice cream in a cone

Yesterday was pretty disgusting, too. A pint of ale and a plate of buffalo chicken fingers at Eli's (a.k.a., "the bar"). Nothing else all day. I eat like a Sumo wrestler.

The previous day I had a couple of bites of French bread and a protein shake and lots of cranberry juice (no, I don't have a bladder infection, I'm just obsessed with cranberry juice). Tomorrow I'll probably have some oatmeal and vegetable soup, maybe some raspberry sorbet, and lots of grapefruit juice and soy milk.

I never talk about food in my LiveJournal. Why is that? It doesn't make sense. I'm obsessed with food. I love food like I love nothing else in life. Well . . . there are things that outdo food, but I don't have any of those things right now. I'm craving Maine lobster at the moment. Even after all of that disgusting stadium food. That ought to tell you something.

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Subject:	Melancholy - bleh.
Time:	5:08 pm.
Mood:	sad, lonely, cynical.
Music:	Jefferson Airplane - Embryonic Journey.

This picture (the painting) is what I don't have. What I might never have again.

Tomorrow is the Red Sox game. I will be dropped off in Boston early in the morning and left to wander the city until the game, which is around 7 p.m. or something like that. If any of you live in the Boston area and would like to get together for lunch or something, let me know. I'll most likely be wandering around alone with a camera and not enough money to make it interesting. My friends are all ditching me. Jaco is going on job interviews, Paco is visiting his ex-girlfriend, and Waco is visiting another friend. Why is it that I'm the one who has no friends in Boston? I feel like the quintessential loser.

It is an absolutely beautiful day today. It's cool out, but it's bright and sunny. I would like to be lying on the grass in the arms of a lover, reading a book, or talking about philosophy. I miss having someone to talk to. I'd even be happy to be lying on the grass with a best friend. I think I scare people away.

I just finished reading Ann Pearlman's "Infidelity." I'm quite sad from it now. It's an autobiography about a woman whose husband has an affair and leaves her. So depressing. I could relate so well to a lot of what she was feeling. The poor woman. Thirty years of marriage down the drain, thirty years of her life wasted because her husband wanted to be a narcissistic, selfish, asshole, taking advantage of her love for him. I am getting so cynical about relationships. It makes me wonder if I'll ever be able to trust a lover again. As soon as you trust, they cheat. I feel almost like I am doomed to be the woman whose husband/lover always cheats on her, simply because I would never cheat. I wish I could stop thinking about this stuff. I wish I could stop being so cynical and pessimistic. But how? It would take a new relationship to change my mind about these things, and I don't think I'd be able to trust anyone enough to have the kind of relationship that would change my mind. The last lesson I learned was that when you trust someone, you get betrayed.

As Ambrose Bierce would say: "Fidelity. A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed." ["The Devil's Dictionary" (1881-1906)]

Ugh.

Comments: Read 7 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	Trite.
Time:	1:08 am.
Mood:	lonely.
Music:	Chris Isaak - Wicked Game.

So many people in the world, so many of them lonely, so many who pretend to be so superior to belief in the concept of love that they laugh at the word and hope that the rest of the lonely laughers aren't listening, because it's all so infernally embarrassing to sound like a Hallmark card, isn't it? And the reason we're all so afraid to say we're lonely is because we're lonely and don't want to scare people away. So we "bond" by cracking jokes about how stupid "love" is. Yes, it's just that, isn't it? Stupid.

Since I'm all done with work for awhile, I've been working on sketches for a new painting. This one is for my mother, who will cry when she sees it. When I paint, I often miss my grandfather. He made things for those he loved instead of trying to make money or become famous. This is more or less how I work as well. He had much more artistic talent than I have. But talent or the lack thereof doesn't really matter when you're painting something for your mother or your granddaughter. I have a doll's bed that he made for me when I was very little, and a life-size wooden pony that he made for me when I wanted to be Pippi Longstocking one year for Halloween. He died of renal failure from bone cancer on Christmas Eve in 1989, and I was there in the moments during which he was in the process of dying. This post sounds like a Disney film. But what is it, is love only good for trite camp humor now?

It doesn't matter. Love doesn't cure loneliness. At least we can laugh at what morons we are.

Comments: Read 6 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	Baseball is more interesting than hormones
Time:	6:12 am.
Mood:	horny & irreverent.
Music:	Swans - No Cruel Angel.

Woah. Had another date with "Johannes" tonight. What a sexy young man. What a good kisser. . . .

. . .

What, do you think I'm going to give away the ending? Not a chance.

What I will say is that kissing this guy was nothing like kissing my most recent ex. Kissing "Johannes" made me feel like I was high. Is a kiss supposed to do that?

No matter. It was an interesting episode in my life, and it's over now.
__________________________

In other news, I finished all of my work/classes, etc.! This means that all I have to do now is some errand-running busy work. Then lots of computer games, job-searching, packing, and - on Monday - a Red Sox game! I've never been to a baseball game before. My housemates and I are all going to Boston for the May 20th Red Sox game (it will be the Sox versus the Sox, if I recall correctly). Hopefully I will manage to avoid getting drunk on stadium beer and puking on the bald guy in front of us. But Jaco & I have already planned in advance to sit there drinking stadium beer and eating hot dogs and being ridiculous overeducated caricatures of Americana. We'll probably buy those foam "#1" fingers to wave around obnoxiously. There comes a point at which one has too much appreciation for condescendingly sarcastic camp humor. We'll probably buy roasted peanuts. One of us will probably be wearing some form of Red Sox paraphernalia. If we were really obese, we'd probably be talking about plans to paint "GO SOX!" in red body paint on our bellies. And we'll do all of this while sitting there talking about Stockhausen and Xenakis, deconstructing baseball and inserting the phrase "Well, you make a good point, but according to Foucault . . . " wherever it is least appropriate. (Don't worry, we'll exchange "Foucault" for a few of the other droppable names - Derrida, Lacan, Bataille, Sontag, etc.) Someone will kick us out of the stadium for being assholes and not taking the game seriously enough. The last time Jaco & I were anywhere near a baseball game was when he took his little brothers to a Red Sox game and I went with him to keep him from being bored in Boston because he wasn't interested in the game. So we sat outside the stadium, chainsmoking and watching people buying Red Sox paraphernalia, and we made fun of all of the rabid fans who had their faces painted red and who stumbled out of the stadium hooting "Woooo! Wooooo!" Yes, we made fun of them. But now we can take our amusement to the next level and BECOME these people.

God. Look what my expensive liberal arts college has done to me. I am an obnoxious bitch.

Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	regression - nutrition - instinct - commitment? bah! - happiness
Time:	3:44 am.
Mood:	decent.

If you are the sadistic weirdo who is responsible for my receiving another one of those bloody crush e-mails, fuck you! I do forgive you, though. It may be cruel, but it is funny. Cruelty is usually funny. I'll bet you knew that I'd create enough e-mail addresses on AOL to get all of the possible clues, and I'll bet you knew that I still wouldn't have a fucking idea who you are, you cruel bastard/bitch. I'll also bet you knew that one day when I'm on another one of my ecstatically-happy mood kicks I will find some way to convince myself that someone actually did have a crush on me (I'm not as smart as I pretend to be), and when I find out at age 40 that it was only someone playing a practical joke, or only someone trying to find out if I had been responsible for some crush e-mail that he/she/it had received, it will rocket me into a mid-life crisis and I will realize that my entire life had been a lie. I will then eat an entire gallon of chocolate ice cream and chain smoke ten packs of cigarettes and lie in a pool of melted ice cream and cigarette ash, motionless while my dogs urinate on me and chew the leather off of my shoes, and I will continue lying there until someone mistakes me for an art gallery installation. Fuck you, someonelikesyou.com!! Fuck you with a ten-foot-long charged cattle prod!!

In other news, I read some exciting information tonight about nutrition. A lot of the unpleasant nonsense I've been feeling can be linked to a deficiency in carbohydrates and B-complex vitamins. This is extremely good news. The last time I had a problem with extreme fatigue, I saw a nutritionist, got advice on blood sugar management, and my problem was solved. I think I am going to try to score an appointment with a nutritionist again to find out as much as I can about preventing vitamin and mineral deficiencies in my diet. If eating a potato twice a week will have the same effect as taking tranqs, I will laugh at the psychiatric profession for the rest of my life. Psychiatrists are prescription-trigger-happy. Why, when I have so many of the "classic" symptoms of a particular vitamin deficiency, did they not try to rule out a deficiency before prescribing habit-forming (addictive) tranquilizers? Psychologists and psychiatrists should be required to receive continuing education in current nutrition research. I'm optimistic about this news, because I haven't been getting many carbohydrates or B-complex vitamins in my diet, and I have many of the symptoms of a deficiency, which means that if I start to fix this problem in my diet, I may not need the tranquilizer! This will make me feel like a normal human being again. I'm tired of the "circus freaks on Jerry Springer" feeling.

I went to my nephew's third birthday party yesterday, and my 5-month-old niece (who is gorgeous, she looks like a tiny doll) fell asleep in my arms on the rocking chair. It was such a beautiful feeling. The fact that it moved me (emotionally) frightens me. My plan was to adopt a needy child as a single mother when I am financially stable. I'm beginning to worry that my maternal instinct might kick in with a vengeance within the next few years and tell me to find a husband and have my own children. Which, as every feminist knows, leads naturally to one's becoming a 1950s-style Valium housewife who takes the family to church every Sunday and cooks family dinners and straightens her husband's tie before he goes to work and ... AAAGH!! They'd find me with my head in the oven like Sylvia Plath. I don't want to be dependent upon finding a husband, nor bringing new children into an overpopulated world. And I sure as hell don't want to be considering a man as a means to an end (the end in this case being our children). It's hard to explain, but holding my tiny baby niece and watching her fall asleep in my arms gave me that "Ut-oh, I'm starting to like this, and that can't be a good thing" feeling. Instinct is a horrifying thing. It frightens me to have to admit to myself that I really felt something special with that sleeping baby in my arms. God help the world if I decide I want to have my own kids.

I wonder how much of my "Nah, I don't want little kids" feelings came from my ex-boyfriend. He didn't want children at all. At one point I did consider spending my life with him. I decided that love was more important to me than having children. Now I'm beginning to feel differently. I think if I had to choose, I'd rather raise a child and be a loving mother to that child than have a romantic relationship with someone. In theory, children are a by-product of a loving marriage. But in theory, marriage is a lifetime commitment. In theory, communism works. In theory, there are no rats in McDonald's hamburgers. When you're on the altar, you're not thinking, "I'd like to get divorced a few years down the line." I'm considering giving up on the possibility of love or marriage, so that I can ensure a happy future for my child(ren). I don't want to subject them to the pain of divorcing parents, and the divorce rate is so high now that there is no way to realistically predict whether one's marriage will fail or survive before you start having kids. And I don't trust Miss Cleo. No couples on the altar expect that they're going to get divorced. They all think they'll be together "until death do you part." I have more faith in national divorce statistics than faith in my own ability to judge a romantic relationship's potential. And while I might have a lot of confidence that I'd work hard at a relationship and do everything in my power to keep it happy and healthy, I have less confidence in my ability to find and choose someone who'd be doing the same thing. I have a lot more confidence in my ability to find guys who lie to me and decide that I'm not good enough for them. Which will not contribute to the future happiness of my children, should I have any. So my current theory is that I should bludgeon to death any desire for romantic love and move on to things that are more likely to produce predictable results of happiness.

Like dressing up in a blood-spattered clown costume and handing out smiley-faced balloon animals made from condoms to small children at airports.

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Subject:	VIOLENTLY happy (it's disgusting, really)
Time:	4:00 am.
Mood:	extremely happy.
Music:	in my head: 1950s pop tunes.

"Johannes" turns out to be something of a gentleman. Not what I expected at all. That ought to teach me a lesson. I shouldn't assume that I can judge someone's motivations without getting to know the person well beforehand. Stupid me. A lesson I needed to learn. We went out to the diner instead of the bar (this makes me very happy), and he tried to pay for me (I adamantly refused, and I would have been irritated with him if he had tried to fight with me on that one, because I get really annoyed when guys insist on paying when the girl makes it clear she really doesn't want him to pay for her). When I made it clear that I really didn't want him to pay and wasn't just being polite, he gave in, so that's fifty points for his trying to pay, fifty points for respecting my wishes. THEN (this is awesome), when he was driving me home, he didn't even pull into my driveway (he stopped on the street in front of my house where he couldn't have parked), which made it clear that he had no expectation of coming in and fooling around, which - in theory - means that he really respects me, given his knowledge that I have a crush on him. He did, however, give me a hug before I left, which was 100% appropriate and very sweet. So . . . the crush is back with a vengeance. I really wonder where this will go. I could be telling myself that all of this just means that he's not attracted to me, but I doubt that he would have hugged me if that were the case, given his knowledge that I am attracted to him. Why am I analyzing this?

On a less happy note, I missed The Roots today! :-( They played at Spring Fling (annual outdoor concert) today, and I had to go to an appointment with my neurologist at Yale. I was bummed. The rest of the day made up for it though!!

To be obnoxious and end on two more happy notes, (what is a happy note? F-sharp? it was Takemitsu's favorite pitch, and in German it's "Fis," which sounds kind of like "fist" ... ) . . . 1) I visited my old boarding school today because it was on the way back from Yale, and I hadn't been there since 1994-1995, when I was 14 & 15 (I had to leave for financial reasons after being there for my freshman year of high school). My best friend J--- from that year (the one who is the reason I studied Korean, the reason I ended up studying ethnomusicology, and the reason for so many other wonderful parts of my life) and I used to go to this ice cream shop in town all the time, and we used to sit there looking at comic books and sharing fountain sodas and Hershey's ice cream and listening to music from the 1950s (which was always playing), which we then became obsessed with & sang together. Well, I tried to find the ice cream shop, and it was gone, a jewelry place was there instead. I was heartbroken, because I had wanted to stop in to get an ice cream cone to sit with the bliss of old memories. Well, I passed another ice cream shop down a side street while wandering and walked in, and it was the same ice cream shop, it had just moved to a new location! So I went in and bought an ice cream cone, and they still had the 1950s comic books I used to look through and the 1950s decor and the 1950s music. It was unbelievable. The same woman was working at the counter who had been working there when J--- and I used to go together. So she didn't recognize me (not surprising), but I told her that I hadn't been there since 1995, and I told her that my friend and I used to go to her shop all the time when it was on the other street, and she asked what I was doing now, and I mentioned to her that I was graduating from college in a couple of weeks, and it was just a really really happy moment, and ... God, I can't put it into words. It made me feel so good I thought I was going to explode. It all felt like it had happened so long ago, but 7 years isn't really that long, is it? Anyway . . . I saw my old dorm and my old window and the old arts buildings where I used to spend so much time, and the old field where we used to do archery . . . the whole experience was just unfit for words. *sigh*

2) (second happy note, or third): I saw Spiderman tonight with jimmytones and pritchkate, (who by the way are awesome people whom the rest of you should get to know) which was by far one of the most enjoyable experiences I've had watching films in the recent past. This is not simply because Tobey Maguire is an attractive young man (I'm very attracted to him, don't get me wrong), but because Sam Raimi (director) has a fucking hilarious sense of humor, and Willem Defoe (who played the villain character) had this maniacal bad-guy laughter that was so fucking good I'm still laughing about it. And the love interest wasn't just a miscellaneous beautiful woman who happened to be the hero's flavor of the month, it was (literally) the girl next door, whom he (Spiderman) had known since he was a little boy and had desired for a long time without ever telling her (he was a nerd). Danny Elfman did the score, and I don't care if the scores for all of his films sound the same, I love him anyway, I've always loved him. Ahh, you should all go out and watch it.

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Subject:	Spring can really hang you up the most
Time:	1:16 am.
Mood:	horny & sad (Mulholland Drive).
Music:	Low - Laser Beam.

Ah, well. It's spring. The birds and the bees are stinging people and shitting on windshields. All of the drunk college students are out in the sun, fornicating and acquiring skin cancer. I'm sitting in my room, crying for no good reason. It's not spring. It's happiness. Or the absence of it. (That one's for you, jimmytones and pritchkate.) Tonight the young man on whom I had a crush last semester (if you've been reading my journal for a long time, he's the one I nicknamed "Johannes") called me. So I sent him a message online. He wanted to hang out with me. I'm graduating in a few weeks. Hmm. Let's think about this one.

So we chatted online and eventually I asked him if he knew last semester that I had a crush on him then. I enjoy flattering people by telling them when I am attracted to them. I don't do it because I expect it to turn out positive results for my sake. In any event, he was flattered, so mission accomplished. We're going out tomorrow night, so I suppose that is something fun to look forward to. Don't worry, I'm not planning to be much of a bad girl. Though we are going to a bar, so who knows.

I usually feel good when I make others feel good. Why do I still feel sad and yucky? The combination of horniness inspired by talking to this guy (he's an attractive young man) and the sadness inspired by God knows what, is making me feel like I ought to be in a David Lynch film. Ah, well.

Milla Jovovich looks like one of my exes. I was gazing at photos of her on the internet because of the resemblance and because this particular ex came up in a conversation. Milla Jovovich is very attractive, but she also has a very unappealing body type. It looks great when clothed, but some of these photos had in her in very little or zero clothing, and I don't quite get it . . . she resembled a Holocaust victim or a dying cancer patient. Completely emaciated, skeletal. Her body is too thin and too tall to look youthful. I wish I found this body type attractive, since it's the dominant form advocated by the media. Unfortunately I am a fan of flesh and curves. Good thing I have lots of fat on my body. I may have the "Ugh, I'm fat" reaction when I look in the mirror, but at least I don't have the "Jesus Mary and Joseph! I look like a frigging Holocaust victim! I'm sick! I'm going to die soon! Help!" reaction.

Hmm. The current standards for female attractiveness are weird. I'm not much of a necrophile, I guess . . .

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Subject:	Child or adult?
Time:	1:08 am.
Mood:	sleepy.
Music:	Arvo Part - De Profundis.

Interesting weekend. I presented a paper at an academic conference with a bunch of ethnomusicologists who were surprisingly not-intimidating (unfortunately I can't tell if this was because they were genuinely very friendly and nice or if it was because I was on tranquilizers [don't worry, nothing illegal, I have a Rx]). It was really refreshing and nice to spend the day with older intellectuals, because I get sick of college students (no offense meant toward my friends - I'm quite sure most of you get sick of college students as well, we're an annoying lot). Anyhow, when I got home from the conference, I had an e-mail from one of the professors from Brown, who seems really interested in reading my thesis, which makes me quite happy, because I was afraid the damn thing was going to sit on a shelf for the rest of its life. Following his e-mail, however, was one of those infernally annoying "Someone likes you!" e-mails. It seemed absurd to have the one next to another, as if half of my life is pretending to be floating around with adults in academia and half of it is stuck back in junior high, passing folded-up notes and fussing with hair in a mirror taped onto a hallway locker door. The twenty-somethings are strange years. When my mother was my current age (22), she had two children already. It makes me very curious about what she was like when she was my age.

I'm embarrassed to admit a bit of irritated curiosity about who is responsible for my getting that stupid crush e-mail, because this site gives you clues each time you list five guesses as to who the sender might be. In theory, I might be able to get enough clues as to who a possible culprit could be. So far I've only listed my own existing active e-mail addresses, so I haven't gotten many clues. I could try sending it to my defunct e-mail addresses in order to get more clues, but I'm hesitant to get fixated on this nonsense, given its inherent ridiculousness. I'm not stupid enough to think that it might be someone who is actually interested in me. The two possible scenarios are that A) someone sent it as a joke to test my vanity, or B) (this is the most likely) someone sent it because he/she had received a crush e-mail and thought I might have been the sender and wanted to find out if it was me. Assuming the scenario is B, then this makes me wonder if the person knows me well enough to know that I'd only do such a thing as a joke, or if the person genuinely thinks that I might be attracted to him/her. If I'm giving off an "I want you" vibe to someone (or anyone), I want to know about it so that I can do something to fix it. The reason why I decided to stop wasting my time was that it listed the individual's age as between 21 and 25 but listed the hair color as gray. This means that the individual was either answering the questions dishonestly (in which case the clues won't help in the least), or the individual is someone whom I don't know (in which case it is a fool - why list someone who doesn't know you?). It's still embarrassing and frustrating that I'm actually curious about who sent it, though.

Back to the conference, anyway. The end of the conference concluded with what was listed on the schedule as an Irish music sesiun and workshop, but what turned out to be Seamus Connolly playing a bunch of clips of Irish music from his CD collection and telling long stories about musicians he knew and what makes something traditionally Irish and what makes something distasteful (i.e., the addition of a blue notes to a jig). He didn't play much on his fiddle - I was hoping he would play more live music, but it was mostly him talking. Disappointing. I had been looking forward to a lively sesiun, as the program suggested. There were supposed to be other musicians, too, and Seamus was the only one. Unless you count the CDs. (And I don't. I already listen to that stuff on my own.) He also lectured to the lowest common denominator, as if none of us knew anything about Irish music. I kept hoping he would narrow down his talk, but . . . Why am I complaining about this? I must have a good reason, right? Ah, well . . . .

As graduation draws nearer, I am growing increasingly worried about how I will find friends when I'm no longer at college. I'm not going to go to bars alone. I'm not going to go to clubs. I'm too shy and too polite to bother random strangers at bookstores and cafes. And I'm definitely not counting on meeting friends in the workplace. The jobs I end up working usually have mostly middle-aged employees; the ones my age are usually not potential friends, for various reasons. Should I just plan on finding an apartment that can accomodate lots of cats?

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Subject:	Fear and trembling
Time:	9:22 am.
Mood:	intimidated.
Music:	Isang Yun - Quartet for Oboe, Violin, Viola & Cello (this is beautiful).

AAAAAAGH!!! On multiple counts.

First, I had several dreams last night that my house was invaded with bats. I woke up, and I still thought there were bats all over my ceiling, so I was lying with the covers over my head. In my dream, I watched a cat attack a squirrel, and the squirrel was finally killed by one of the bats, who bit it in the head. That was horrible. Then, also in the dream, members of the music department (mostly graduate students) appeared on the hill outside, laden with instruments of destruction - a fire extinguisher, rope, an axe, and I think guns as well. One of the grad students flashed me and the others who were in my house. My house, in the dream, was not this house, but a house I was living in with several students who had been invented by the dream. Because I could not sleep in my own bed (because of the bats), I had to wander around downstairs until eventually I got too tired to pay attention to my "space bubble" and curled up next to one of the male students, who was sleeping on a large couch. He was oblivious to my presence, thankfully, but the bats were not. We found out that the bats had somehow made their way downstairs, and we were hiding from them under a blanket. It was horrifying, I kept fearing that they would fly into my hair and attack my head in a swarm. This is what I get for taking walks at night to admire the bats at the abandoned school, I suppose. Nature is mocking me and my faux-Thoreauxiean aestheticizing the "beauty" of nature. I'm an overeducated college kid who's taken too many philosophy classes, and so I end up looking at these horrible beasts thinking, "How pretty, how strange, how interesting," but if the damn things were in my house, I would be gnawing my hands off with nausea and fear. How white suburban college student of me to be walking around admiring bats of all things. Just because I've taken a class where I've read Thoreaux and some faux-Buddhist (Western Buddhist) stuff, I think I can "understand" and see the beauty in nature. Ha. Nature is disgusting. It's a lot of rabies and bloody fur. Serves me right to be getting these nightmares.

Second reason for the fear is that I just received an e-mail notifying me that my paper was accepted for the 2002 NECSEM (Northeast Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology) conference, which is (AAAAGH!) this Saturday at Boston College. God help me. I had assumed, since I had not heard anything, that they had not taken my paper proposal. Now I have to write the damn thing, and I have never presented at an academic conference before, so it's going to be hellishly stressful. I'm already getting the usual upset stomach. < sarcasm > I'll be in great shape to present. < / sarcasm >

Maybe if I'm lucky they'll give me some Valium this afternoon. I'm sick, and I'm tired, but I can't sleep, and this is going to make it even more difficult to sleep.

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Subject:	Tales of Hoffmann
Time:	5:55 pm.
Mood:	neutral.
Music:	The Chieftains - Boil the Breakfast Early.

I went to the opera last night - Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann, which was quite good. It wasn't the Met, but it was still quite good. My professor and his wife drove me there, but I sat by myself, amidst many people who were not sitting by themselves. Those who were around my age were couples out on dates, dressed up and holding hands. Those who were younger were with affectionate parents who smiled and pointed at the stage and told them what was going on. (The young ones were excited. I found myself wishing that I had a child so I could take her to the opera and to the ballet and to the symphony and to all of the things I loved when I was a little girl, even tourist stuff, like mini-golf and playgrounds and children's amusement parks and zoos.) There were many who were older. Much older. Many bald heads, much gray hair, many wrinkles, and much unpleasant perfume. I felt conspicuously alone and somewhat lonely, but it was alright. I think this is how it's going to be when I'm living alone, until I have saved enough money and gained enough financial stability to adopt a child. I'm hoping they'll let a single woman adopt a child.

I had not seen Tales of Hoffmann before, and I'm unfamiliar with Offenbach's music, although I have read many of E.T.A. Hoffmann's tales, so the opera made sense. It made Hoffmann look a bit ridiculous, however, which bothered me somewhat, since Hoffmann wrote with a lot of irony in many of his tales. I would have preferred to have seen Hoffmann portrayed as simply a writer and composer, not as a ridiculous fool who made love look like a parody of itself. The opera made him into a Berlioz. Oh, well. Hoffmann is dead, I suppose art can make him into whatever it wishes him to be to entertain a crowd. I did cry, and I suppose those sitting next to me must have thought me a fool to be crying at that particular opera. It doesn't bother me, though.

I really want to get on a plane and travel, or perhaps pack a car full of clothes and money and drive across the country with a camera, a canvas, and lots of paints. I don't care about finding friends or a lover anymore. I'm good at being alone when I get used to it.

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Subject:	Strangeness
Time:	5:00 pm.
Mood:	disappointed in human nature.
Music:	Depeche Mode - Strangelove (yes, it's a coincidence).

Academia is so strange.

Yesterday evening I gave a presentation on my thesis at the music department colloquium. None of the undergrads attended (which made me a little sad, but I don't blame them). Anyway, the people there were all graduate students and faculty, and I wasn't expecting the ridiculous challenges that they threw at me after I had finished talking. They got into all of this absurd postcolonial theory nonsense and whatnot, nitpicking about each detail that I was not an expert on as if their goal was not to learn from what I know and teach me what they know but rather to prove to the others present and to me (and to themselves?) that I'm an incompetent scholar and that they are more educated than I. (Well, duh, I'm 22, they're in their 50s and have already been acknowledged as published experts in their field.) It was absurd. They were sitting there in their gray and balding heads, attacking the 22-year-old college senior who doesn't even know what career she's going to pursue yet, as if I were one of their gray-haired colleagues competing against them for tenure or something. Don't they realize I'm going to spend Saturday night getting drunk at a cast party, that I still do Tom Jones impersonations, that I'm still (at least in part) a child, and that I've no intentions of dethroning them from their positions of gray-haired expertise, and they have no reason to feel the need to debunk me? I did look up to these people . . . until they opened their mouths at the colloquium and started into their competitive nonsense. Of course they're going to know more about this shit than I, why do they think they need to prove this? Are grown adults really that insecure? I always thought that by the time I started developing gray hair, I wouldn't be that insecure.

I'm telling myself that it's better to take it as a compliment (i.e., it's great that they take me seriously enough to react so strongly) than to feel embarrassed for these people, but I couldn't help feeling somewhat awkward today when I saw them on campus. It was as if I had seen them throwing a temper tantrum over a toy. Though there is something more honest about temper tantrums. I don't know, perhaps I'm overreacting to their comments, but they just made themselves look silly, and it was disappointing. I had higher expectations of them. Oh, well. That taught me!

Why do scholars take this crap so seriously? Don't get me wrong, I find the research I've done and the research others have done very interesting. What I don't understand is why they need to act irrationally and get so emotionally involved that they end up wasting their time nitpicking a college kid's senior thesis.

Second gripe: My thesis advisor is awesome, and apparently the department is really upset with her and is criticizing her because she didn't tell me to read and cite the B.A. thesis that another Wesleyan student had written, which refutes one of the very minor points I made. What bothers me immensely about this is that my advisor is an excellent, excellent advisor, and I don't feel that she neglected a single area in helping me to do a good job. She probably avoided telling me about this other girl's thesis simply because she was aware that it was only a very minor point and would not have affected my thesis in any significant way if I had read this other girl's thesis and changed that one little point. If anything, it would have taken me a lot of time to read this other thesis, and my advisor probably realized that it would have been a waste of time that I could have spent strengthening the theoretical aspect of my arguments. Anyhow, it sounds like the entire department is criticizing my advisor for this, and it's making me really angry, because it's 100% politics. The girl who wrote the thesis (who's now a grad student at Wesleyan) came up to me after my presentation and said, "I know some people in the music department were talking about my thesis and some problems they saw with your thesis, and they wanted us to talk at some point. I don't think they were blaming you, I think they were upset with your advisor. But we should talk. You can e-mail me." What the hell. Why are these people so strange? I wanted to say "Jesus, relax, I'm not publishing the damn thing, let's go get some coffee and talk about midget porn or something and stop taking ourselves so seriously."

Academia is so strange.

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