There is something wonderful and hideous about being a 5th year undergraduate student on the first day of classes.

I lounge on the Diag and read a novel in the sun. Freshmen and sophomores (wander? rush? it's both, but neither) by with schedules, maps, lists, studying them intently, as if expecting to be quizzed on their contents. A girl on a bike, clearly no more than 17, stops to ask directions to a building she's unwittingly staring straight at. Where's Angell Hall?, I snicker, as she rides away bewildered at this creature who knows all, and without even a guidebook in front of her! I haven't seen a guidebook in years, barely even looked at my schedule this morning, because I already know where things are supposed to be, have learned long ago how to remember room numbers quickly, know every twisted hall in the MLB, could draw you a map of the Chem building with all the rooms properly labeled, even though the numbers in the Chem building are a far cry from sequential or even sensical. I also know not to venture into any bookstore today. I'll avoid them for a week, because they're crowded, yes, teeming with (gasp!) younger students, whom I dutifully despise as the walking representations of everything that's gone wrong lately. (When I was a freshman we at least tried to blend in... I don't remember the sorority girls whoring it up quite so much on the first day... and oh, just look at those goddamn hippies! Why the fuck do they feed the squirrels like that? Squirrels breed disease, breeds brain damage, breeds hippies dumb enough to feed squirrels, breeds more squirrels, breeds disease. Fuck.) I know that I am too hard on them - on all of them - the lost teenage boys and the awkward girls in too-tall shoes and the misguided nonconformists (the ones who all look roughly the same). I do not care. I hate them all for the chance they have, which is: not to become me. If their perfect little schedules go as planned, they'll never sit here, ignoring the bees and Mormons, contemplating the ruined symmetry of the five-year plan, calculating the worth of one more year's experience navigating East Hall against the tuition paid for it, and hoping not to be bothered by anyone still enthusiastic about the coming of a new semester, a new year, new possibilities.

I am a ghost here, a shadow, an intangible cynical presence with a sharp word and a backhanded compliment for everyone and everything, because all I really have to do any more is lash out. I can't be taken seriously, because of course anyone with a valid argument must have been smart enough to have graduated in four years; I can't be ignored, because I'm right, I have a point, I thought of something that never would have occurred to you and fucking goddamn you and your AP English ideas (yeah, I took that class too, once, but it's not the end-all of literature - leave it back in high school. Grow or Perish.). Now I am just waiting for the end.

-C

I was told today that in internet years I am an enfeebled old hag only clinging to life by the shred of joy I still get from diminishing the quality of the lives of others, because in order to be dead I'd have had to have used IRC like a religion in middle school, instead of what could be more closely likened to casual experimentation. And then one of the flunkies chipped in to remind me that my posting frequency actually reflects this pretty accurately.

Sorry 'bout that. And please don't tell me what you think I meant by "casual experimentation."

Since about the time I stopped posting regularly, whole volumes of chapters of my life have come and gone in such a way that I can't begin to record it concisely enough for one grand "catch-up entry." My feeble solution to this problem is to skip over it - I'm sure things will come up in later entries and in the mean time, if you want to know something, ask. Just know that I might decide not to answer you. Also, I do not promise to resume updating regularly. I do promise to stop whining like an angsty, impotent teeny-bopper, though, and that... might be something.

-C

Dear Pot,

Please stop it. I can understand how it would be convenient to post that kind of slur on the internet, but quite frankly, I have always expected better of you. I can't believe you'd be such a selfish fuck as to think that you're the only one who can truly judge the situation and hand down your decisions from on high, thinking that nobody is capable of seeing things the way you do. I realize that you are better than all of us, what with your decision making capabilities and moral capacity and all, but I'm still not sure you really get it - whether you like it or not, most people are considered the authorities on their own lives. In conclusion, I would like to point out that I am fully aware that this is the most childish medium I could have chosen, but who the hell do you think you are?

Love,
Kettle.

grlathena Magic Number 14 Job Leader of the Free World Personality Slacker Temperament Unflappable Sexual Just Say No Likely To Win Nothing Me - In A Word Startling Colour Brought to you by MemeJack

Pretty good, except for the one field there.

-C

I have never been so in need of a new job. Telefund makes me want to claw my eyes out and/or maim people, and I need to quit in the worst way so that I don't continue to snap at my friends and act like such an angry bitch all the time just because I feel guilty about my job calling people at home at dinner time to ask them to donate to the U, and the library will only give me 10 hours a week - I therefore need to find another job so I can justify quitting the nightmarish ordeal that is my Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday calling schedule without trying new experiments in poverty, or slowly drive myself mad in an overly melodramatic fashion and try to slit my wrists by means of paper cuts from Telefund caller tally sheets after strangling the managers with my headset cord.

And in other news, Cottage Inn has become my sworn enemy by being closed and yet having a live person answer the phone the last two times I tried to order the late night special at midnight, when they are purportedly open till 3am.

Bitches.

-C

This entry contains neither midgets and beer nor jobs that make me want to claw my eyes out, and also is not coming to you "tomorrow" relative to my last entry, because I am a giant fat liar.

I would, however, like to share some tidbits from a party (wedding shower, really) my extended family threw over the weekend. The highlights included:
- Punch tasting at 11am: there was some question as to which bowl had been spiked for the benefit of the adults, so I was called in to arbitrate (by which I mean drink a lot of it before noon), because it's obviously in the college student's range of talents to determine which drink is alcoholic
- A lengthy debate about how to label said bowls, for which the suggestions included "diesel" and "unleaded"
- Repeated re-filling of the former of said bowls every half hour or so
- Gift bags for the men containing small silver flasks and bottles of Jaeger, which I was asked to describe to my mom and aunts (because, again, the college student obviously knows about the liquor)

This combined with our usual scheming makes my family hilarious beyond belief. It's too bad there were no games this time, I was looking forward to the normal rampant cheating ("It's a team answer! We were working together, cooperation baby!").

-C

Children! I return!

... kind of.

This entry comes to you from the recently classified as infamous app MacJournal, made by everyone's favorite soon-to-be displaced miscreant. Diasporic consequences of college graduation aside, though, it's a neat application that I avoided using for far too long because I fear and loathe change. And, not to get your hopes up, but now that I don't have to fight LJ's shitty interface to update, I just may do it more often! And the people cheered, huzzah!

There's not much else for you right now. Tomorrow, though: stories about midgets and beer (where by "midgets and beer" I mean "jobs that make me want to claw my eyes out")!

-C

Date:	2003-05-12 14:58
Subject:	I think I'll go for a walk
Security:	Public
Mood:	listless
Music:	Ben Folds - Not The Same

So, I've been gone a while. Nothing terribly interesting to report from my absence, unfortunately, except that there is no possible way for me to catch up on everyone else's entries from the last two weeks. If you think I missed something spectacularly interesting in your journal, drop me a link.

The new apartment isn't bad, although it's slow to unpack. We don't feel particularly rushed, I guess.

The library job is going okay, the telefund job is annoying, and I have a training/interview for the composition rater thing on Thursday. (Apparently getting to the interview depends on my success with the training. Linguists can't do anything that isn't backwards.)

All in all, I'd have to say that this life might have been fine, if I hadn't gone expecting things out of it.

-C

Date:	2003-03-31 15:46
Subject:	Interim new screen name
Security:	Public
Mood:	cynical
Music:	Ben Folds - Rockin' the Suburbs

I can be reached at diacciaccatura, until some things can be decided.

An acciaccatura is a grace note, very short and usually a half-step below the note it precedes. In Italian, it means "to bruise" or "to crush."

-C

Date:	2003-03-12 00:12
Subject:	...and I'm ready to forget the reasons that keep me here
Security:	Public
Mood:	cranky
Music:	"The Quick and the Dead," apparently.

I don't mean to be screaming discontent at you guys all the time; it's just that when I'm in a good mood is usually when I can find something better to do with my time that write in this thing that barely anyone reads anymore, and when I feel like crap I get too self-indulgent to go looking for anything good to do, and it's also when I start noticing things about myself.

It seems that lately I can't just let good things happen to me. There are instances of this all over the place, nowadays, but let's just take today as an example: in the satire class this afternoon, I got my first really solid A on a paper in a pretty long time after being stuck in some kind of universal B/B+ rut, with all sorts of great comments about my argument as well as my style. And what do I do instead of just letting my ego have some of it for once? I purposefully go after the worst possible section of my German homework to make myself feel totally inept again.

I'm so tired of school. I just want to leave.

In an unrelated story, TNN has decided that Sharon Stone + Gene Hackman + Leonardo DiCaprio + hackneyed Western setting = a "Movie for Guys who Like Movies." Um... ok. I'll let you come to your own conclusions on that one.

-C

Date:	2003-02-27 23:07
Subject:	Spring Breeeeeaaaaaaaaak
Security:	Public
Mood:	lonely
Music:	Sissa and the Kids (new band, or the 'rents' basement?)

...or something.

I would like to say this: that spring break is boring and counter-productive. Because I am poor and uninventive (and the only one of my friends from UMich with no travel plans, and the other schools' breaks don't start until next week or the week after next), I have spent this week practically alone in my parents' house reading much more slowly than I should (I was way, way behind in coursework last week because of the now infamous midterm exam debacle: "Triple threat? No big, add a paper to that bitch!"). I seem to have overcompensated nicely by buying a lot of things to make myself feel better and making a number of other foolish choices, though. I'm a little ashamed to admit that shopping really does make me feel better sometimes, but I've spent this week feeling burdened with thick and boring novels for class, abandoned by everyone I talk to or see on a regular basis and crippled by a sprain that won't heal because I won't keep off of it; I can't explain how new clothes help with that, and especially clothes I won't wear until the snow melts, but it does. Eh.

Back to AA tomorrow for the Fourth Friday and First Saturday dances - I haven't seen the SwingAA kids in a long time because of the sprain, and it'll feel good to get in some Lindy again, but nobody else will be back until Sunday so I get two days alone in the city. Ann Arbor is seriously creepy when everybody's gone for break: no sirens, ample parking, and you can walk down the street without bumping into some drunk pissing on the sidewalk.

Maybe "creepy" isn't the word I wanted there.

-C

Date:	2003-02-01 15:08
Subject:	Obligatory
Security:	Public
Mood:	numb
Music:	The Beatles - For No One

I'm sure you've all heard. I'm sure we won't stop hearing for weeks. And I'm sure everyone else is posting the same entry right now.

I was 4 when we lost the Challenger, and it's the first really sad thing I can remember. The first teacher in space and six other astronauts died 73 seconds after launch, at a time when teachers, astronauts, doctors and the president were the only people besides my parents that I knew to look up to. I watched it happen, and I didn't understand for the next few years what it really meant, but I understood that I was meant to feel lost and scared and sad for the families and the program and the country. I think I even learned the word "tragedy" just for the occasion.

I don't know what the political ramifications are going to be, this time. I hear that some people are already screaming terrorism and it makes me want to claw out my eyes. But it all feels just the same to me - a lost and scared and sad little girl watching the bright spots in the sky on tv and thinking that the whole sky must be falling down.

-C

Date:	2003-01-28 20:03
Subject:	I'll be the moon when the sun goes down
Security:	Public
Mood:	sick
Music:	Otis Redding - That's How Strong My Love Is

I think I may be dying, so of course, updating my crappy online journal is definitely the best use of my time right now.

I don't get this. I'm never sick, I never get "that thing that's going around" (particularly when I don't actually know anyone else who has it), and I especially never can't eat. I'm starting to reach the point where I'm so tired of this that the pain doesn't register as much as the pure absurdity of the situation. Not to diminish my pain in any way; I'm definitely impaired in my ability to function as a normal human being, I'm just also more focused on being annoyed than passively miserable. And not that that does any good, either; I'm just a big fan of futility. Come on, if you haven't learned that by now, where have you been?

-C

Date:	2003-01-15 16:33
Subject:	Requiem
Security:	Public
Mood:	morose
Music:	rattle, clank and buzz

I don't expect an answer when I ask what happened to you along the way. I know you can't ever give me one. But I know that sometimes it's more important just to ask, especially when the answer is unknowable; with information missing our knowledge base resides in a kind of limbo, a purgatory if you'll indulge me, struggling with some permanently deferred conclusion - but the ritual pursuit consoles us at least a little. And then, we're left to remember.

I remember you, short-haired and flat-chested, playing baseball and falling down in dirty belted blue jeans your mother said you'd grow into soon enough (although it seemed an age to you) and knew you'd grow out of (much sooner than she was ready). You let your hair grow long again and your manners softer when you began to realize the transgression, although it went unmentioned and unpunished. I remember you just a little older, crying when your hips and breasts swelled to curves that left your waist seeming dwarfed or lost or left behind, and I knew but couldn't tell you that your mind would seem that way too for a long time following as it fought this new body and new knowledge, or maybe not new but at least having lain hidden all this while. But despite your fear and questioning I never had to tell you that the stars were always in the sky to be stared up at with an ethereal sense of wonder independent of anything in this world or any other. And I remember, too, a hundred things I can't place but are all a part of that fragmentary past you built so intricately, which stand alongside the gaps and spaces left by pieces forgotten and irretrievable but just as terribly beautiful and terrifyingly vital to the Genesis of You - the making of your world - as any one memory, yours or borrowed, kept or lost, could ever be.

Memory, though, all gossamer and shine, can never bridge the gap between who speaks and who is silenced.

-C

Date:	2002-12-26 01:11
Subject:	Still those soft skin boys can bruise you
Security:	Public
Mood:	amused
Music:	Rufus Wainwright - California

Sometimes my life is more amusing than I can accurately explain. Time with the old gang at the Denny's "reunion" (moved way the hell out to the Gratiot location, since they've now closed all 5(!) of the ones we frequented back in the day) was interesting if not well spent, and Christmas dinner at my aunt's was, as usual, more filling than you'd think possible. I do not relish the idea of lounging on the beach over bowl trip after having eaten this much this week. I'll still probably be full from dinner today during the football game on January 1.

At any rate, I have some incentive to practice the old bassoon more often (potential gig at my cousin's wedding...?) and a date with some of the old gang again tomorrow (Bethi and Kevin and me, just like old times!). Maybe we could get lost and have a car accident on a road trip to nowhere, as seems to be our custom. I'm sure the FOUR INCHES OF SNOW that we got in a MIRACLE OVERNIGHT CHRISTMAS BLIZZARD would be happy to help out with that, although I'm of the opinion that if it couldn't kill me when it was coming down like mad and completely eliminating any visibility on the road it probably can't hurt me when it's sitting inert on the ground. Nyah to you, snow!

I would, however, like to make a snowman tomorrow, if anyone's game. Let me know.

-C

Date:	2002-12-21 23:16
Subject:	There's no place like
Security:	Public
Mood:	uncomfortable
Music:	some movie with Michael Douglas

Suddenly, "The Big RO" isn't feeling quite so homey.

Where are all of my misfit RO friends? And why did my mother go crazy and decorate the Christmas tree by herself while my sister was sleeping and Dad was who knows where, and before I even came home from Ann Arbor?

-C

Date:	2002-12-14 23:48
Subject:	Princess do you
Security:	Public
Mood:	lonely
Music:	The Chemical Brothers - The Sunshine Underground

I always want to talk the most when nobody's around.

Equally as unfortunate a correlation: I only have time to update the old LJ when I don't have anything to say except that I'm feeling sorry for myself.

Ugh.

-C

Date:	2002-12-09 00:12
Subject:	Tell me all of your secrets
Security:	Public
Mood:	dorky
Music:	Smashing Pumpkins - Cherub Rock

Right, so. That "posting regularly" idea isn't working out so much. Here's some stuff to skim over, though:

I have discovered blue glow-in-the-dark silly putty and it is good. I may never fall asleep in lecture again.

The trip to OSU was quite the educational experience, I must say. If not for the astute man with "BUCKS" painted on his forehead I may never have realized that I, as a member of the Michigan Marching Band, am a dork. He definitely shattered my confidence, I tell you what. Any road, I still count the final score of the game as GOALPOST 1, OSU 0.

Semi-related train of thought: so we're headed to Florida for the n-th year in a row. At least we a) have a shot at winning our bowl game and b) are playing the Gators. I actually know some Gators fans; this makes me much more interested in this game than the last few bowls we've been to.

I bought a hat that I'm told makes me look like "some kind of skater punk or something." This idea makes me laugh heartily and want to buy very large pants and a chain wallet.

Somebody decided along the way that I must be an advice columnist and I guess forgot to tell me, because I've been getting a lot of inexplicable and unsolicited pleas for help recently. Some of them are pretty funny; look for a list here some time soon. Names will be changed to protect the particularly guilty.

I seem to have aquired a new LJ friend. Hello there crasch, I'm curious as to how you found me. Possibly through joelgrus or thehat?

Sarah and I made a Christmas tree on the Lite-Brite (R) today and set it in the living room to keep our housemates' menorahs company. I just like to look at it, now. It makes me giggle inexplicably.

And to wrap up - finals week is about to start. This is disheartening in a few ways, but I'm particularly dismayed about the prospect of not being able to fake my way through Tom Jones or Tristram Shandy any more. If anyone has advice on getting through these bastard-heavy novels with my cerebellum intact, help me out. And don't bother mentioning study guides, I actually need to read these fuckers. Curse of the English major, blech.

-C

Date:	2002-11-17 13:30
Subject:	You should have seen that sunrise with your own eyes
Security:	Public
Mood:	discontent
Music:	John Mayer - 3x5

Incidental question for you all - how can you tell if you're being called out by someone who normally is happier to pretend you don't exist?

And the real question - how am I supposed to reconcile myself with the fact that I have no early mornings on Elbel left? Of course all we seniors went through the whole emotional gamut of the last home game yesterday, and if you really want the details, you can ask. I feel kind of cheated that the last regular season game is still next week in Columbus, though, and I think the rest of the seniors feel similarly. Sure. traveling is fun, but "the Shoe" isn't anything like The Big House. Our Big House. Even though we don't know when we'll see it again.

-C

Date:	2002-11-15 21:58
Subject:	So what, so I've got a smile on
Security:	Public
Mood:	intimidated
Music:	John Mayer - Why Georgia

I'd almost have forgotten all about this thing, if not for the drama currently unfolding in somebody else's journal. I can't tell you how amusing it is to read completely misguided opinions involving yourself written by somebody who's obviously forgotten that you read their posts.

Anyway.

My last game to march in Michigan Stadium is in 15 hours and I feel strangely indifferent. I know it'll hit me hard tomorrow, probably in the tunnel during my customary pre-pregame freak-out. It's the same every time:
Carolyn: Oh God, Meghan, I can't do this.
Meghan: Yes you can, Carolyn!
Mel or Sammy: You will be fine! You've done this a thousand times!
Carolyn: No, I'm not ready, I'm-
...and then there's the announcement and the whistles and the drums and we're off. And this time I think it'll go more this way:
Carolyn: Oh God, Meghan, it's the last one. I can't do this.
Meghan: Yes you can, and it'll be the best one, because it's my last one too!
Mel or Sammy: You will be fine! We'll miss you next year.
Carolyn: No, I'm not ready, I'm-
...and announcement, whistles etc. And I am bringing a Sharpie.

Oh, this is going to be tough.

In other news, and for the record, the final academic plan is now a BA in English with minors in Linguistics and German, projected date of graduation December 2003. After that, I have no idea, since by then I'll have succeeded only in making myself the most uselessly educated person alive. But that's a story for another time.

It's all going to be tough, isn't it?

-C