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[31 Mar 2004|03:48am] [ music | nick cave & the dirty three - time jesum transeuntem et non reverendem ] Previous angst over being a boring failure in life alleviated by the realization that as long as you joke around and compliment the purses of the various gay boys in your group, you will be loved. Reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and Damned, which is very engaging while simultaneously misogynistic as hell. Damn those women - those ugly, stupid, working-class, broken-down women! Fortunately the title seems to indicate the beautiful ones get their due as well, so at least he manages to condemn us all rather than let the odd one slip out unscathed. Presumably Dr. Wilde is going to have a memorial ceremony sometime this month. There's going to be a bench. A Dr. Wilde Memorial Bench, where everyone can go and sit and think Dr. Wildean thoughts. He'd probably like it if we all sat around and talked about how insightful Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick was. Unfortunately all I remember about her is that she used far too many semi-colons within a single sentence. Several of her sentences were half a page long. She also made me feel guilty for acting so blase when people came out of the closet to me, except there's only been one incident in my life where someone actually "came out of the closet" to me, and everyone involved responded by crying and hugging and generally acting like a Lifetime movie. But secretly we all knew it anyway, so I guess we did Eve proud, in retrospect. My odd fixation with and fondness for Disneyland will be the death of me. It occurred to me awhile back that Tate's hostility toward Disneyland meant that we could never share a true synergy of souls. It later occurred to me that I'm terribly maladjusted and pathetic. But still. There's something to be said for suspending your typical cynicism and letting your mind froth through a gaudy simulated reality. I mean, fuck, he watches Survivor, he has no excuse. I bought earrings that look like water droplets. I bought a book by one of the graduates of the UC Irvine MFA program specifically to work myself into unattractive rage. My unattractive rage is almost exactly the same as my regular rage, only more squinty. I'm done. I'm done, I'm done, I'm done. post comment

[20 Mar 2004|09:17pm] [ music | Peaches - Fuck The Pain Away ] March 20, 2004, 9:03 PM: Finished War and Peace. If there's a God, he'll let me build myself a throne out of Tolstoy's bones. The bookish part of the book was excellent; the second epilogue was tedious, repetitive, and unconvincing. It took me more time to read the last forty pages than it did the last 200 pages of story. I'm tempted to cut out the second epilogue with shears just in case I decide to reread the book and forget the ending's wretchedness. So now all the major reading is done and it's time to study for finals. Hmm. Or else it's time to read The Selected Journals of L.M. Montogomery, Volume 1 and laugh uproariously at the idea of finals. Either, really. post comment

[12 Feb 2004|12:53am] There were no other ways but this way. He believed it -- God bless him for believing it. The word fate meant nothing to him. There was one road and he traveled it, like all good men should. We were quiet together and loud together. We were at odds in our minds but never in our mouths. We were mediated and padded, kept apart by layers of clothes, air, walls, earth. When we touched it was too immediate, too sharp; the joints and folds of the world bent backwards, strained. There was no hour or week where the line ended, the circle touched. We went on and on and on, traveling the road, being human, like all good men should. We never toiled. The way was never rough. We never gave up the pavement for dirt, rocks, cobblestone. I'll find you again someday under the blinking sky. There's only one road. It won't be hard. post comment

[31 Jan 2004|09:17pm] War & Peace is long. I'm on page 555. I was enjoying it up until now. GODDAMMIT, ANDREI, IT'S ALL ABOUT THE CHASE WITH YOU, ISN'T IT? The first eighty pages of On the Road are, um. Sal Paradise? Carlo Marx? My TA tried to push us toward "Sal is an unreliable narrator in that Kerouac doesn't really think all women are these idiotic breaded fucktoys." She was subverted by a largely female faction wanting to talk about how hot Sal was for Dean. I thought it was more like Carlo was hot for Dean, but I didn't want to argue. When Boethius's protagonist was talking to the Spirit of Philosophy in The Consolation of Philosophy, I wanted to crack their heads together. "Your argument is so perfectly correct and incontestable that only the stupidest of brain-damaged primates could possibly say a word against it." I probably would've been more open-minded if I hadn't read it at 6 AM in the parking structure before class started. The world seems even more closed off than it did in winter. I'm so tired of reading. There'll be no solace this year, bitch! 1 comment|post comment

[25 Oct 2003|02:09pm] The sky is the color of sand. Outside in the backyard it looks like the beginning of a snowstorm -- a gentle blanket of white ash and black soot covering the fence, the grass, the swing. The houses and trees outside have lost their color; everything is subdued, overwhelmed, faded to sepia. The sun glows redly far above our heads, dull as a copper penny, powerless. In twenty minutes even the houses will begin to lose their detail, become indistinct, vague geometric shapes the color of khaki. You wondered if the earth was being birthed or dying; ordinary days aren't like this, aren't like this at all. 3 comments|post comment

[30 Jun 2003|12:47am] And now...I'm getting sued! Honestly, it keeps getting better and better. There's no telling what next week will bring. So I got into a car accident on April 1, 2002. It was a three-car chain reaction, and I was the last car in the chain. It took them until last week to finally serve papers. The lady in the first car is suing me and the driver of the second car for something like $500,000 each. 10% of it is for medical bills, the other 90% is for the all-important emotional distress. Presumably my insurance company is going to swoop down and take care of everything, but there's nothing like seeing your name in smeary Courier on a shrill, accusatory legal document to make you want to rip out your hair. 4 comments|post comment

[22 Jun 2003|04:09am] We're home. We have kitties. It makes no sense -- so your brother's cat in Oregon just had a litter of kittens? Hell, let's bring 'em home to California! They are 5 weeks old, black & white, and my sisters have named them Katie and Kairi. They spent the sixteen hour car ride mewing expectantly. The kittens, not my sisters. We got to Borders at 11:55 on Friday night and walked away with our Harry Potter books at 12:45. We were 975th in line, although admittedly most of the folks between 300 and 800 never showed up. I finished it around 4:00 PM, just before we got to Sacramento. I was melancholy all through dinner. Harry Potter and the Debilitating Life Situations That Just Keep Getting Worse And Worse Until You're Staring Into Blackest Eternity And Then The Book Just Ends, Dammit. Also: Harry Potter and the Total Lack Of Emotional Resolution. But I still liked it. He hasn't written me back. Not like I care or anything. Except I care tremendously and my heart is this tremulous little ball of cobweb and it's liable to disintegrate at any moment. This is what love will do to you. Except I'm not in love. Except I love him. When you drive through the town of Weed, California, they have erected a sign that proudly states "Weed Like To Welcome You!" And then, when you go into Weed's local McDonald's and tell the locals "Go ahead, welcome me!" they stare at you with dull contempt and spit in your McFlurry when you turn your head. Such is the life and love of a town called Weed. I really need some sleep. post comment

[19 Jun 2003|03:10pm] I have a four-year-old cousin. He's towheaded and he doesn't mind very well -- when his mother says "No!" he hears "Do whatever you want, you adorable little angel!" He's been indoctrinated by his father to refer to drinks as "beverages" and he loves Star Wars more than life itself. Whenever we come to visit him, we stay at a hotel with a pool and a hot tub, and he'll totter in and out of both of them, composing blank verse about Yoda and Mace Windu. During our last trip, he spent a lot of time in the hot tub, splashing around with his Finding Nemo toys and chatting up the 40-year-old men on business trips. On one evening, I sat in the hot tub with him, retrieving the toys he'd drop and trying to prevent him from drowning. We were sharing the water with a 30-ish man attempting to read a book, one of those "Learn MySQL in 24 hours!" things. For most of the night things went well. His fish would dive-bomb the bottom of the pool, and he'd shriek "No! No! Don't pick them up!" He would stare thoughtfully at the swirling vortex of water for a minute or two, and then he'd shriek "Get them out! Get them out! They're drowning!" By 9:30 I was well-prepared to just let them drown, so I told him it was time to get out and go home. The man was on hour 2 of his MySQL training and he smiled pleasantly at us as we felt along the bottom of the tub for stray fish. We piled them up on the edge of tub, and I stood up in the water to haul my cousin out. He stood up in the water next to me, and cast me a friendly, pleasant look. "Wait a minute," he said. He looked down and gave my right boob a poke. "Now how did this get so fat?" he demanded. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the man bury his face in hour 2 of MySQL, and I grabbed my cousin under one arm and hauled him out of the tub. He didn't seem to mind that I didn't give him an answer, and when I put him down he toddled off happily toward his mother. I wrapped a towel securely around my shoulders and slunk back into the hotel. In retrospect, I probably should've been happy that he didn't start poking at my thighs. 1 comment|post comment

via bookslut [12 Jun 2003|09:05am] I should hardly be so flippant about plagiarism, given that it sucks and it's unfair and it's a degradation of the personal muse and so forth, but some of these complaints ring kinda hollow. Wow, both books feature "a painting which contains, physically, a gold key"? Congratulations! You've both just ripped off a plot point from Sierra's failed 1992 computer game, The Dagger of Amon-Ra! And later, "two people retrieve [the clue] from the safe deposit box as the guys are closing in and they escape by the skin of their teeth"? Man, pat yourself on the back and ship your ass to Hollywood, Perdue! A more wholly original series of events has never before been conceived in the human mind! But still, plagiarism is no laughing matter, so good luck on yer lawsuit, Perdue. You'll be getting a summons from an irate Roberta Williams any day now. 1 comment|post comment

[30 Apr 2003|01:10am] [ music | Travis Morrison - Sixteen Types Of People ] And in news that doesn't revolve around me wanting to psychologically manipulate boys, I got accepted to UCLA. Rock. 5 comments|post comment

[30 Apr 2003|01:02am] I want to crush his head between my hands, gently like, smashing the stiff bristles of his hair against his scalp. I want to bring his face close to mine, gently like, because he's a jittery boy and any overt demonstrations of control would probably leave me with a black eye. I want to pull every ounce of fear out of our respective sternums and toss it all into the air, black and white cotton puddling to form an old-fashioned Kansas storm on the horizon. I want to whisper in his ear, "Could I be anymore clear?" post comment

[18 Mar 2003|04:34pm] I got accepted into the Creative Writing major at UC Riverside. Um, woo? I've talked to several people who think the program is excellent, and then I've talked to several other people who merely shudder and say "Ugh, UC Riverside." Plus, I've talked to several people who've said "Yeah! Creative writing at the upper divison level! Good idea!" and then a lot of others who said "Creative writing? At the upper division level? HAHAHAHAHAHA - " and so on until their mirth has left them a quivering hulk on the floor. So I really don't know what to make of any of this, except that UC Riverside likes me and would enjoy any amount of money I might be persuaded to throw their way. Oh well. One down, two to go. 1 comment|post comment

skipping class = time for a fucking ten [17 Mar 2003|10:22am] 1) 'I'm Taking Europe With Me,' Veruca Salt 2) my insane eight-page e-mail to Tate detailing the flawed methodology my Global Reform professor employs. I'm totally trying to bore him to death, aren't I? 3) 'Freak Like Me,' Sugababes 4) um, war? Yeah, that's a rather big one 5) MeFi Swapset 17! 17! 6) So yeah, what the fuck's up with the number seventeen anyway? Everyone uses it when they need a throwaway number. What glorious mathematical symmetry does it contain? I bet Nate would know. 7) post-nasal drip. Advil Cold & Sinus. It's shaping up to be another wonderful week. 8) 'Stoneface,' Veruca Salt 9) TTAS (when in doubt, fall back on childhood comforts) 10) 'The Snow,' Caroline B. Cooney (ditto) 3 comments|post comment

[08 Mar 2003|05:05am] [ music | Throwing Muses - Bright Yellow Gun ] All right, so the California government is in deep shit, budget-wise, and they're planning on drastically reducing funding to community colleges state-wide. This is pretty obnoxious, when you consider that community colleges tend to serve a greater percentage of the economically disadvantaged, but, you know, the money's gotta come from somewhere. Then, at the individual community college level, they're attempting to cut the programs and services for disabled students by about 53% in the next year. This is also pretty obnoxious, since disabled students have a harder time getting through college and have a much harder time finding employment later in life, but, you know, the money's gotta come from somewhere. The Boss Ladies have wandered around the office looking despondent for several weeks now, making it pretty apparent that if the department budget is cut in half, Brett and Sue and I are out of jobs. Well, that's life for you. If you want things done, you gotta have the dough. This past Monday, everyone in the center got official letters from district headquarters. Apparently, some group of analysts got together, studied the college, and reclassified several job positions. Where Brett and Sue and I were formerly Level 3 employees, we're now Level 6. This meant fuck-all to us when we read it, but then Boss Lady #1 gathered us all together and said it meant an increase in our hourly rate of pay. So. California's economy's in the shitter, community colleges are seeing budget cuts in the billions of dollars, the disabled students' program will be chopped in half, and now they're giving us raises? This world makes my head hurt. 1 comment|post comment

fucking? ten [03 Mar 2003|05:24pm] 1) Bitch, I know you're online. At least have the decency to block me from your IM list so I can seethe in denial 2) 'Valley Girl Intelligentsia' by Julie Ruin 3) my black notebook, although not found by anyone I work with (thank God), continues to be missing 4) 'Shutterbug' by Veruca Salt, although it's a ridiculous song, as evidenced by lyrics like "there's shit on the telly" and the climactic line "you monkey! you left me!" 5) the hypermeaningful kiss mutated into a file of 31K, 5,500 words long, although admittedly most of that's just build-up and aftermath. 6) 'The Salmon of Doubt' by Douglas Adams 7) finally figured out an intro to the book, which means I have intro to wheatgrass to license to hypermeaningful kiss all plotted out 8) 'Quick Service' by P.G. Wodehouse 9) apparently Dr. Hart and Dr. Jensen get together and discuss my future behind my back. They've decided I'd make a good English teacher. Cool! And, um, scary. 10) 'Born Entertainer' by Veruca Salt (complete with Cheap Trick rip-off: "I want you to want me, I need you to need me; I dare you to ditch me, I beg you to miss me") post comment

my own fucking ten [02 Mar 2003|02:26am] 1) my missing black notebook, containing all my ditzy tarot crap, plenty of bad writing and a disquieting amount of information on my semi-crushes. 2) Louise Post's little-girl-with-a-headcold voice on Resolver 3) 'Herjazz' by Huggy Bear 4) 10 articles on the media due in two weeks 5) the hypermeaningful kiss, Paige v. Daniel 6) 'Watchmaker' by Excuse 17 7) Tate's prolonged silence 8) CubeGirl's forthcoming book 9) 'Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby' by Louis Jordan 10) Helen Hunt in As Good As It Gets 1 comment|post comment

[22 Feb 2003|01:39pm] Is the entrance to Hell located in Big Bear or what? I'm getting used to hearing everything rattling around on my shelves. post comment

[18 Feb 2003|04:52am] [ music | rufus wainwright - foolish love ] Well, I did it. I finished the hypermeaningful kiss scene. And it only took me...lessee...six hours to write it! Ugh. I might just be the slowest writer in the entire world. And now I have work in three hours, and then class from 7 to 10:05 at night, and I still have bunches of reading to do, and just generally man, do I suck. Oh well. Let's look on the bright side. At least... Um. At least... Uh. Yeah. This isn't shaping up to be the Best Day Ever. post comment

(aka overblown fiction, part 2) [08 Feb 2003|03:25am] [ music | veruca salt - officially dead ] heartstew: wheatgrass arson closettarot nietzscheboy (part II) crazytown Got caught with my hand in the cookie jar, but I'm not feeling ashamed, I'm cool with it. You always get caught eventually. Gotta pay the piper. Otherwise he'll storm off, piping all the while, and presumably something terrible will happen. This analogy hearkens back to the days of yore, when piping wasn't music but terrible devil-candy, tempting children over cliff edges. These days it takes a little more effort to get kids over cliffs. Frankly at this point the analogy falls apart, there aren't any kids and there isn't any piper, there's just me and my hand in the cookie jar. Also there's no cookie jar. Really, there's just me. ( This is how it went: ) post comment

[01 Feb 2003|07:45am] Shit. A thousand bloggers signed up to CNN's Breaking News e-mail alert, so we can have real-time information when things start falling apart. Fuck, man, what can you say? To the families and friends and the governments and the watching eyes...sympathy. As much as you can hold. post comment

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