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Thursday, February 27th, 2003
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2:31 pm - too introverted to go alone
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| Tuesday, December 17th, 2002
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6:13 pm
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hipster retirement: im going to law school in nyc in january. bye everyone! im selling off my stuff and starting anew.
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(11 werds | werd to yer mother)
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| Monday, October 7th, 2002
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2:32 pm - the quick run-down
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i forgot my number 2 pencils. i ran, i mean RAN to mission hill from roxbury crossing in search of a convenience store. thankfully i had gotten there arbitrarily bizarrely early (woke before my 6:45 alarm) so i had a few minutes to spare, but it was so hard to find someplace to go! i asked the security guard at the school and she was all.. um. i dont know.
d00d. thanks.
finally found a convenience store, and i was like, do you sell pencil sharpeners. No. of course not. how much of a flake could i be? eeee! but he found something to do the trick, so i took my LSAT with a certified ghetto-sharpened number 2, which hopefully brought me a little luck.
it went ok. i think. im still thinking about cancelling my score and retaking in december, but ill probably just leave it be. if it's really horrible, ill take it again anyway. whatever. the die is cast.
finished most of the sections, three of the five like 10 minutes before the end of the time. thanks mom for teaching me to read so young (and so fast). i finished one of the logic sections just barely in time, and the other logic section i completely didnt finish. like i had four to go. we'll see. at this point, i dont care where i go to school, i really just want a plan.
if all else fails, ill just spend next year cramming another degree in like biology or biochem.
so it's all ok.
current mood: glad it's over
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(5 werds | werd to yer mother)
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| Friday, October 4th, 2002
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11:21 am - LSAT: 8 AM
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| Wednesday, October 2nd, 2002
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11:58 am - law school
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| Thursday, September 26th, 2002
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4:22 pm - there'll be peace in the valley
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all this gospel music is getting to me. i will do the right thing. everything will be clear when PM gets back.
the real question, though, is why not? really? there's only one conclusion to this story and it's that i get hurt.
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(2 werds | werd to yer mother)
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| Wednesday, September 25th, 2002
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5:57 pm - clothes and centralization
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my little bro is as big a clothes horse as i am:
"I’m not exactly sure with what method I should count the holes in my underwear. Do you count the large frayed section as multiple holes or perhaps just one tragedy of a hole? The elastic is strong, yet the cotton beneath it falters and gives. Most of the important parts of the underwear is still strong and does the all important job of protecting my humility, though I feel the encroaching gaps drawing near.
Of the eight pairs of underwear that I own, only three remain relatively intact. I wear athletic briefs so there is actually more fabric to be destroyed. Naturally I should simply go about my way and purchase some more, except that they run between 8 and 12 dollars a pair. If I buy three pairs, that’s about 1/3 of my weekly salary.
Years ago, I used to value my money in terms of how many CD’s I could buy with it. If I had to pay a parking ticket, I would curse, “Damn, that was 6 CD’s!” Now, I think in terms of underwear.
What’s odd about underwear and it’s gradual destruction is that you never see it coming. One day you’re just happy as a pixie, the next you’re pulling your underwear out of the laundry shocked at its diminished state. I remember the first time I realized I was very nearly wearing a loosely connected set of seams. Worse yet, it was a pair I got from my clothing’s Jerusalem, Value City.
I would be hard pressed to accurately describe Value City. It’s sort of the last stop for clothes before they are down graded to packing material. After they didn’t sell at the retail stores, then the outlets, then the more rural stores, they finally make it to Value City. It’s as though all the clothes sit on the racks with serious self-esteem issues that will never be recovered. It’s where I find my clothes.
I’m not ashamed of my Value City clothes. I have a sort of Christian perspective on the whole thing. The last shall be first. If I can make my pathetic purchases from so demeaned a store look good, than I have achieved a little miracle for Jesus.
I remember an incident back when I was in elementary school where another student chided me for actually purchasing my school clothes there with my mom. When asked what he was doing there, he answered that he was stealing stuff. (Mariah, if you are reading this, you know who it was.) But I wasn’t the least bit ashamed of myself.
Now every time I return to Maumee, I make sure to go back and visit Value City. And if I can score that four dollar pair of athletic briefs again, than I will gladly give my more disassembled pairs a sailors funeral."
PM sent me a site by libertarians agains nice (that is, the nice treaty). very interesting.
a bit:
Paragraph 1 of Article 133 reads "The common commercial policy shall be based on uniform principles, particularly in regard to changes in tariff rates, the conclusion of tariff and trade agreements, the achievement of uniformity in measures of liberalisation, export policy and measures to protect trade such as those to be taken in the event of dumping or subsidies."
Basically this means that what applies to one country in the EU will apply to all countries, there are no individual opt outs in these areas. And some of these have major implications, "uniformity in measures of liberalisation" for instance translates from corporate speak into a regime of privatization of public services across the EU.
Paragraphs 2 and 3 give "The Council and the Commission" power to negotiate agreements with "with one or more States or international organisations". Perhaps the most obvious "international organisations" this will apply to is the World Trade Organisation (although it is not, of course, named in the treaty). The WTO shot from obscurity to fame due to the massive protests outside its conference in Seattle in 1999. The WTO itself admitted the importance to it of the changes to Article 133 in it's June 2002 'Trade Policy Review of the European Union' in writing "Of particular significance to the WTO is the exclusive Community competence that would apply to negotiations of agreements that concern services (with certain exceptions), and the commercial aspects of intellectual property rights upon ratification by all Member States of the Treaty of Nice."[i]
Article 133 will mean that the EU Council and Commission will be responsible for the negotiation of trade deals rather then the national governments of the EU. Why would the WTO be keen on this? Perhaps one clue is found in the Seattle talks where "without consulting and over the objections of civil society and EU member states, the European Commission announced its support for a Biotechnology Working Party, causing 15 EU trade ministers to issue a joint statement of disagreement"[ii].
This is what Paragraph 4 means when it says the "Council shall act by a qualified majority." This means that when an agreement is reached at the EU Council all member states must go along with it and cannot veto it. The 'qualified majority' referred to are the new, complex voting rules that will in effect allow the powerful countries of Italy, France, Germany and Britain (where most EU corporations have their headquarters) to have a much greater say in what decisions are made then the smaller ones.
This will also be relevant in forcing changes on the populations of individual countries where there is strong opposition to such change. The capitalist globalisation agenda has met a lot of resistance in Europe to date. In France cuts required by the Maastricht treaty triggered a general strike in March 1995. The largest demonstrations had 3 million people on them. At the time the international business magazine, The Economist, warned "the danger in France was not a change in government but the spectre of 1968: 10 million workers out on strike, riots in the street and bourgeois society choking on its croutons." All the European summits have been accompanied by major demonstrations involving over 100,000 people and there were significant riots at the Nice Summit.
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(werd to yer mother)
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4:40 pm - soul stirrers
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what with my life falling apart around me, i finally opened the last music purchase i made: 100 great gospel songs. it's exactly the score i thought it would be. a little heavy perhaps on the unaccompanied male quartet type stuff a la the dixie hummingbirds, 5 blind boys, the soul stirrers, et al, but there are also some really excellent original gospel harmonettes and sister rosetta tharpe tracks.
sister rosetta tharpe kicks ass. i mean, mahalia jackson is far more well known in retrospect, but it's so obvious it's only because mahalia has that sort of nice nonthreatening black lady gig. sister rosetta just hollers and rocks it, more in the vein of big mama thornton than anything else. and there's one track on the collection that is such an exact echo of that son house house "preachin' blues" track. really quite kickass.
of course im probably biased because (a) she got kicked out of COGIC and (b) she plays guitar pretty well.
best track on the collection, no doubt, is the duet with her and mahalia. i was dancing around my apartment.
by the way, any of my boston peeps want to go to san fran this weekend? $238 round trip.
current mood: troubled, yet giddy
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(4 werds | werd to yer mother)
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| Monday, September 23rd, 2002
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11:55 am - war crimes comedian
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i met the funniest person ever this weekend. i laughed so hard i cried. he's PMs roommate and friend.
we had coffee, and he did an imitation of the BBC announcer on the brink of divorce. it's all in the execution of course.
the beautiful part is that his business is.. WAR CRIMES. im not joking. he knows all these famous people/journalists through his work as a war crimes investigator. he's in his mid-20s, describes himself as "shifty," and knows the _real_ story behind 9-11 and afghanistan. this week it's rape victims. at least that's that he told me when we ran into each other this morning on the train.
but he's not the vegan of the household.
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(3 werds | werd to yer mother)
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| Friday, September 20th, 2002
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3:28 pm
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when i first moved to boston, my social life consisted of the occasional drum 'n' bass night, the odd "swing" dealy, but the far more frequent trip to the pill, to hang out with our 'cool' friends, kit and jason. they did the cool drugs, hung out with the headbanded girls, used phrases like "mad green yo" and had just gotten back into town from london. they talked about k-holes and kissing boys and watching "junior high school: the movie" (with a 13 year old paula abdul) or "black samurai". jason rode a vespa (before lauren bush, mind you), and kit wore pencil thin suits. gibby was not yet an alpha-mod minor celebrity. he was the boy who made out with the fat girls.
after returning from mississippi, i needed to dance like i never had before. the pill provided. there was a lot of britpop crap, but for those string of black badass Stax girls, i gave everything. and for the boys who looked like they brunched who acted out every movement of "common people," little mini jarvis cocker's in the making? i loved them. i didnt want to make out with them, but i loved that i could go and dance like a maniac and still not look as flamboyant and absurd (and as marvelous) as they.
lately, the replacement kit and jason's (jason moved to san fran, kit's still around i think but he's bigger and not as into the whole deal) are just not as into being overwhelmingly mod. that whole indie thing seems to have infiltrated so most of the kids just look like other music store clerks. i mean, casey is cute and all, but sometimes i want GLAMOUR, dammit.
sure, it was the same tunes all the time, but if you only went every month or two, you could just time it so you didnt get tired of it. ill miss it. goodbye, upstairs lounge.
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(2 werds | werd to yer mother)
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2:26 pm - speaking of opera
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my old friend boris is in town from san fran (via austria and germany)! he'll be visiting this weekend, and i couldnt be happier!
he writes: I just returned from a trip to Austria and Germany, which was quite reinvigorating - both culturally and mentally. It's always nice to shake up and recalibrate one's cultural barometer every now and again by sampling a completely different way of life. This journey, in particular, was very musically enchanting (from the splendor of the Salzburg Festival, to majestic organ performances in churches and cathedrals of Linz, to intimate chamber music sets in palaces of Graz, to rowdy musical shows on the streets of Germany's medieval towns), if gastronomically rather challenging (with the exception of desserts, which were superb... otherwise, there're only so many sausages, game soups, and boiled beef dishes one can stomach - though with some help from Michelin, I did manage to have a couple of top-notch culinary experiences).
Speaking of music and sweets - it's interesting that every city in Austria that I visited has its own beloved (almost *canonized*) musical personage and its own favorite (to the point of kitschy omnipresence) pastry:
Vienna has Strauss and the Viennese cake, Salzburg has Mozart and the Mozartkugeln, Linz has Bruckner and the Linzer cookie, and Graz - Stolz and the knotty ball-of-dough pastry whose name escapes me (some kugeln or another, I am sure)... Even small towns follow suit: for example, Bad Ischl (a spa town that I used as my main base in Austria) has Franz Lehar (of The Merry Widow somewhat scandalous fame) and is saturated with the spirit of operettas. (It also has one of the best pastry shops I've ever seen - Zauner Konditorei, check it out at www.zauner.at - though the Web site certainly doesn't do it justice.)
Well, let me know if you are around this week... maybe we'll grab a coffee and a linzer cookie.
so seriously folks, who wants to go to europe w/ me?
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(4 werds | werd to yer mother)
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1:52 pm - i need a cowboy hat and some spangly hot pants
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i just treated myself to a pair of capezio character shoes. a pair of basic black heels that were actually _made_ for dancing. on a lark, i also picked up a pair of little grey legwarmers, perfect size and proportions. i also tried on some fan fucking tastic ballroom shoes, but unfortunately you can't wear them outside (suede bottoms, you know).
the girl behind the counter told me she's had her very same pair for 10 years and she wears them out dancing all the time. she also told me that she is the brand spanking new trapeze artist for Avalon! isnt that totally hot? and she apparently knows dieselgrrl (though by her admission, not well.) she's so nice though, she asked me what they were for, and i told her that i was just using them for clubbing, and that im really into dancing. i told her that i had go-go danced on occasion at hibernia and lava and she asked me for my number in case avalon needs any extra girls.
isnt that crazy? can you imagine? i really doubt anything will come of it, but im definately charmed. (i mean, for one, i couldnt less look the part.) in my dream life, i live in amsterdam and make my living as a go-go dancer for that one club where they film EuroMTV. you know what it was, ive never gotten over that catwalk action i did there, and also the beauty of the bjork-esque dancers.
HBs in philly this weekend, and i miss him. we spoke on the phone last night and it was some charmed conversation involving latin, flowers, early 90s 1n+ern3t k3w1 ch5+, and amore.
speaking of, happy succot y'all.
Make me a willow cabin at your gate, And call upon my soul within the house; Write loyal cantons of contemned love, And sing them loud, even in the dead of night; Holla your name to the reverberate hills, And make the babbling gossip of the air.
current mood: hyper current music: and have yourself another toke on my basket full of smoke
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(3 werds | werd to yer mother)
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| Thursday, September 19th, 2002
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5:08 pm - random stuff
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4:40 pm - personality quiz
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1. What's on your bedside table? laptop, astroglide, underwear/sock drawer, errant hair thingies, lamp 4. What is your secret guaranteed weeping film? Roma, the part where they are digging to make the rome subway, and the men find a buried room of frescos and then fellini freaking fellates the camera over it, and then after like two minutes you hear this crackling sound and then the whole room disintegrates, due to the new air. 5. If you could have plastic surgery, what would you have done? i dont know how i'd make it happen, but i'd like more of a chin and more cheakbones, and less of a round face in general. i might also get lipo on my tummy. 6. Do you have a completely irrational fear? not really. 7. What is the little physical habit that gives away your insecure moments? twirling my hair, tapping my feet. 8. Do you ever have to beg? no 9. Do you have too many love interests? damn right. im trying to ignore them, but they will keep tempting me. bastards! 10. Do you know anyone famous? i know tons of minor celebrities, or more particularly people who have done cool things. andy o'meara, who made g-force (the iTunes visualization program), about a million djs, todd swalla from the necros and the laughing hyaenas, the soledad brothers, mommyanddaddy (but only sorta, in an LJ way, so maybe that doesnt count). 11. Describe your bed: cozy. queen size, box spring, super expensive, actually, aside from my violin, the most expensive thing i own. one of those pillowtop numbers. cream colored sheets, with a couple of yellow and green pastel pillows. white down comforter with cream cover. 14. Do you know how to play poker? no, but im learning to play bridge. 15. What do you carry with you at all times? keys, passport, my afternoon pria (seriously!), a get-it-on CD (just in case!) 16. How do you drive? i dont. 17. What do you miss most about being little? introversion. 18. Are you happy with your given name? yes, although i sound like a freakin newport yuppie yachting buff. 19. What color is your bedroom? my bedroom is the living room, and it's green. 22. Have you ever been in love? of course. i am now, unfortunately. 23. Do you like yourself and believe in yourself? sometimes, sometimes. i am a lazy mofo and that's the only thing i really hate about myself thoroughly. 25. Do you think you're cute? not basically, but i think i work what i have ok. 26. Do you consider yourself to be a nice person? no.
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(4 werds | werd to yer mother)
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3:53 pm - mod night madness
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i dont have to tell you that last night was hot, hot, hot, hot, and hot.
i didnt make the bright eyes mistake (what with the recent dashboard confessional debaucle), but i did woop it up with some fine ladies to such fine rock'n'roll ( mittenstein take note) as aretha, new order (or was it the swans cover?), the stones, and even a couple of rocket 88 rockin motown classix. everyone was drunker than me, which may account for the beautiful dance moment of the evening. really, you had to be there, but when breesocialite and sadotter and sara_bee acted out "when doves cry", it was... i dont know, one of those true spiritual moments when all is right with the world. i worship their dance finess.
i made an ass of myself with billetdoux and em, but you know. i was feeling all boisterous and interrupting. very unusual for my introvert self. this is what happens when i get my dance on to such a degree. he accused himself of pinching my butt, but in reality, i was the one pinching his! what kind of gentleman is that! an amazing one, ill tell you, letting me off for copping a feel.
and the two old guys who think "dance" really means "butt-grind"? and who think that pulling yourself away and then running across the room means that you really want to "dance" with them? well, they were charming. no, really.
oddly, i heard the tail end of a lot of trash talking. you kids! no trash talking, ya' hear? say what you mean to the people with whom you have issues, if you in fact do. i used to be a giant trash talker, and im trying to get better. i started in last night and then had to stop. i want to believe that everyone is beautiful and people change and it's all the charmed life. channel your inner candie raver, if you must.
but other than that (and that was so small as to be unnoticable), it was a beautiful night. sadotter dances like a maniac! it was so awesome, i was so diggin his stylee moves. bellahalo has some great ideas, i cant wait to see where they go. and bree and sara continue to surprise me. there's depth they hide behind levity. i dont know. i could go on. i love everyone. even hector, especially when he dances. (sorry for the smackdown there at the end, kiddo, i know you dont mean it none, and i like a good shouting fight as much as you do.) and billetdoux... kiddo, we've got some madness to make.
i woke up this morning feeling happy and oddly alone, but in a good way. i spent 10 minutes in an MIT bathroom between the movie and mod night by myself all quiet and re energerizing and my friends make me feel that way too.
by the way, when can i make dinner for y'all? my place is too small, but i think it would be fun to have a dinner for the beacon street posse and the rick posse. maybe do some front-loading?
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(27 werds | werd to yer mother)
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| Wednesday, September 18th, 2002
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5:06 pm - pria!
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(beware, product placement) btw, i totally love pria. so much protein and calcium, so few calories. yummy! im a sucka for the double chocolate cookie.
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(2 werds | werd to yer mother)
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4:40 pm - mi kangol, su kangol
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On Tue, 17 Sep 2002, our beleaguered hero wrote:
> what do you do like that? (in re teaching your friends about classical music)
i solve the problem at the source by dating or hanging around with artists types. God put you on earth to set people like me on the right path. it's your lot in life. i blame it on your parents.
> do you ever try to manipulate your friends > into liking "classical" music by playing > them stuff you think they'll like > even if you know it's pretty second rate?
there's too little time. i go the other way. don't like Webern? "Wow, look at the time, gotta go."
i've always been outside of what other people are doing. i don't really care what other people like. i just pick what i like. i've been like that since high school. it helps to be a nerd-dork-outcast.
you know what's even more depressing? people who can't fuck to modern [ed: im assuming he means contemporary classical, but not sure] music. (classical isn't good, in my opinion. baroque is good though). of course, the disadvantage of dating an opera singer is that she doesn't want to think about work during sex :)
> im really trying to like opera more.
i can only see opera on stage, i've discovered. everything else is a poor subsitute. it's like strawberries. i wouldn't like them if i hadn't had really good ones in California because the stuff you get anywhere else is pretty bad, but i still eat them in Chicago because i want to have a past experience, not a new one. i can't listen to an opera on CD unless i've already seen it. (and following that thought, "trendy" people aren't trying to have old experiences, so maybe that's the deal).
i think people buy opera CDs because they think they should since that's what other cultured people do, but they don't realize that the cultured people have probably seen the opera and even seen the particular performer in that role, so they have a different experience with the CD.
opera has acting, so listening to it without the staging is like listening to a recording of a shakespeare play, or only the sound portion of a film. since most people don't speak german, italian, and french, they listen to the music and it may sound nice, but they don't realize someone is getting raped, stabbed, exiled, or dying of TB. they could read the libretto, but that's more like homework and what would you rather do? dance to a really cool beat or read a dusty translation?
this reminds me of something posh said recently. something (i forget what) reminded him of "the opera laugh". which is the really over-done laugh that people at the opera have whenever a really not-that-funny "joke" is told in the libretto. of course, the beauty is that most of the audience who would be prone to that sort of thing laugh at the joke 30 seconds before it actually happens, due to the fact that they are reading the translation on the backs of their seats. the most glamorous opera laughers of course are the ones who wait until the "joke" is told, indicating how well they know either Italian or that particular opera. the laugh, of course, in either case is equally forced. librettists are notoriously bad comedians.
as i walked over here, two brothers in a hatchback yelled out their car "hey kangol fashion queen... " etc. traffic was really slow and they were going my way, so they continued making me blush for a good 10 minutes. more proof that i should be a nubian queen? perhaps. i guess im just hanging in the wrong neighborhoods.
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(werd to yer mother)
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| Tuesday, September 17th, 2002
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3:11 pm - more, mr mildew!
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thanks to archiedavis for pointing me to mrmustard.
"Growing up male in America puts a premium on understanding sports. It's not enough to know about sports, you have to know about the right sports. I'll never forget the mistake I made by putting up posters of U.S. men's gymnastics and diving team to assure my college dorm mates that I was not a fag. It didn't help that the posters were actually advertisements for bars named "Uncle Charlie's" and "Splash."
I don't want any young men out there making the same mistakes that I did. But I also don't want anyone mistaking barbarism for manliness, or simple silliness for good, old-fashioned American sissyness. So I thought I would give a brief lesson on different sports and whether they were manly, sissy, scary or silly."
more...
d00d he's so my new best friend.
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(4 werds | werd to yer mother)
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2:13 pm - tonight's events
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1:48 pm - deep souths
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a review of a book i want to read about the different flavors of the deep south and their individual reactions to reconstruction. i know all about the delta of course, and that's what most people mean when they say (historically speaking) "deep" south, but this apparently looks at the georgia sea coast and the piedmont.
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(werd to yer mother)
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