Uploading pics is a pain in the ass on friendster– so I put them up on my duplicate myspace blog instead– it’s easier.
I only ask that you judge not, if you weren’t there. And to please remind me EXACTLY what happened if you were.
On second thought, don’t.
Love.
Songs of the Hour: Dry by Bril; Broadcast Debut, Idaho, ect. via Pandora
I need to confess something ridiculous. Right now, my purse-bag-thing weighs approximately 15 pounds. It’s contents? I’m glad you asked.
2 magazines (Time and Entertainment); 1 bottle of diet green tea, citrus, 20 oz; 1 scientific calculator; 3 notebooks of various sizes, from 4 sq. inches to 6 x 8 inches; 1 make-up bag full of make-up I rarely use; 1 wallet containing at least $3 in change crammed into the fold; 1 pack of cigarettes, 1 box of tar-removing filters; 1 mp3 player; 20 useless pens; 2 chapsticks; 1 container rose scented hand lotion; 2 unlabeled cd’s I’m too lazy to pop into the computer to identify and instead carry them around wherever I go; 1 digital camera; 1 bottle aleve; and 2 packs of icebreaker mints.
I ask you, is this necessary? I think not. The saddest part is that if I actually want anything out of my modern bag-of-holding, the thought of having to actually grope around for it so distresses me that I decide I don’t really need it.
sigh. What a piece of work is man, I am I am.
Perusing Time Magazine last night (in my head, I hear Ginsberg "I’m obsessed with Time magazine" he says in ‘America’ "Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore,"). Last night, I read in the notable quotes section, the line "We thought it was going to be easy". Taken from a contestant on a radio show in the contest "Hold your wee for a wii" in which a 28 year old mother of 3 died from water intoxication. I don’t know, I wasn’t expecting something like that. Tucked in between comments from war personnel, and Nancy Pelosi on smoking in the Capitol, I didn’t expect anything so… domestic.
It got me. For a second I knew her, I felt her intentions and excitement and dedication. Wii’s are friggin expensive, like $400. The happy thought of being able to randomly surprise your kids with one, the anticipated joy of seeing their little eyes widen in surprise and their jaws drop– I know that feeling, that joy. That anticipation creates a certain amount of endurance and tolerance. She must have consumed a few liters rapidly, but lost the contest and gone home disappointed, dying a couple hours later. Water intoxication isn’t a pleasant way to go. This is getting morbid, sorry. It freaked me out, so of course I started crying a little, as per my usual obsessive tendencies; I pictured her kids and the grieving and the why -mommy-why’s and how I doubt they’ll ever touch a nintendo game system again. Anyway, I had gotten better with being so sensitive, trying to absorb information and catastrophic events with a more cynical eye– but this snuck up on me.
I also just stumbled on this story, although it’s 3 weeks old, I hadn’t heard it until today. I’ll spare you my commentary, I assure you it would probably make the wii story look like a knock-knock joke. Really, this media underground site in general is proving not to be good for my psychological state. I’m really trying to toughen up a bit, not let my heart crumple with every sad tale or socio-political injustice I run across, but it’s hard. What happened to me anyway? Didn’t i used to be some kind of hard-hearted cynical curmudgeon, a flask full of bitterness and sarcasm ever at the ready? Am I making that up? ugh. moving on.
I saw Curse of the Golden Flower last week, and when it said "soap-opera-esque" in the paper, I didn’t really catch their meaning. Then I saw it. And I did. Though the plot is treacherous in intrigue and takes Guiding Lightish turns of plot, it’s also rather Shakespearean in scope. More importantly, it is very, very pretty. And if you’re into the Chinese Dynasty opulence, or the hottness of Chow Yun Fat and Gong Li, I highly recommend it.
I’m sure you’ve gotten your friendster updates, but in case you haven’t, I am going ahead as scheduled and will turn 30 as of Friday 1/26/07. I’ve tried to rearrange some things and move appointments around, but it just won’t work out any other way. Friday, officially 30.
I don’t usually do birthday things. I had a party when I lived with Andy, attended by my nearest and dearest that were in town, I was… 23 (and yes, david, we still have the video :) ). There was another birthday event the next year I think, or maybe the one after, and if I remember correctly it was some kind of spectacle in a bowling alley that time. Wow. It’s coming back to me now… Christ, with all the things I forget, why can’t that be one of them? Anyhoo. This year, I’m thinking I’ll just hang out at Jackpot and play pool. If you can make it, do, if you can’t, don’t worry about it.
30. It wouldn’t bother me as much if I were in grad school already. But Jesus Kleist, I’m going to be in school until I’m at least 35. It hurts me. I have this urge to live life already, you know? But as my fortune cookie said at lunch (I swear to god), "If you don’t have time to live your life now, when will you?" This is life, and i know it. I just don’t feel like I’m accomplishing anything that will amount to anything other than a few disks and files stuck in my trunk or a storage closet labeled "undergrad".
blah blah woe is me blah blah. okay.
Well, I’m gonna try to cram in another chapter of Research Methods before I call the day done. For those of you who’ve started blogs recently, I’d like to extend a thank you. It’s sooooo wonderful clicking a button and reading your thoughts and lives and feelings. I can’t express it. Happiness.
more later, perhaps when I’m 30,
love.
Songs of the Hour: 16, Maybe Less; Cinder & Smoke by Iron & Wine
Rob Dougan "Nothing at All" (my new favorite song)
Statistic of the Week : 100% of all College websites describing their PhD program for Clinical Psychology SUCK.
I finally got some sleep last night, or more specifically this morning, as I slept until noon (minus of course getting Joss on the bus. sort of…). I hadn’t gotten much sleep the last week or two because I had been obsessively reading Stephen King’s Dark Tower series until like 5 a.m. rather consistently. More on that later. Anyway, I was in a rather good mood with all that yummy sleep… until I found out the one remaining P.E. class with open spaces filled up during my slumber. I think I’ll be taking PE in summer school. That’s like the lamest thing I’ve ever consigned myself to. Archery, racquetball, bowling, weight training– whatever. Sounds like fun, secretly, but not so much 5 days a week with a shitload of paperwork attached to it.
After that depressing tidbit, I decided to look into grad school stuff. There are interesting 3 year programs in the U.K., and 5 year programs in the states. The "good" schools want a a GPA of 3.7+ and a GRE of 2000+ (I just took a sample GRE online, and I sure as hell didn’t get a 2000). My overall GPA right now is a 3.63 or so.
I don’t know what to do about any of this. Maybe it doesn’t matter that much, I dunno. I like the rigorous 3 years as opposed to the 5-6, but I have no idea how the APA works with learning abroad. Lots of tedious research to do have I.
The main factors I’m balancing are time & distance, and then cost. My father’s 68 this year, and I don’t want to be away from him very long. If I’m going to be more than a few hours away, I don’t want it to be for long. Thus the Duke, UVA, UMD, options. The University of Glasgow, and Cardiff in Wales both have highly rated programs that are 3 years (I think it’d be great for Joss, if not a little complicated as far as pragmatics go). I guess the ratings only matter insofar as how I want to have an actual job when I graduate. Otherwise, I dream of getting into Berkley. When I wake up, I’ll make better plans.
As I’ve mentioned, navigating these sites is an atrocious experience. Not a mood enhancer for such as I.
OK, I’ll try not to rant too much, but I have to write about this Dark Tower business. If you haven’t read it and would like to, for the love of god skip this paragraph. I’ve never been a King fan, not liking horror at all, but this particular series isn’t horror… it’s more of a Carnivale/Firefly genre. About 2,000 pages ago, I realized how brilliant King really was. TS Eliot took Browning’s Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, and a massive amount of other literary works, and wrote The Waste Land. Eliot alludes to contemporary social issues, drinking songs, King Arthur, and really it’s more that I can even grasp much less explain. King takes the same Browning poem, and turns it into a Tolkienesque epic; he sorta does what Eliot does, but for his generation– alluding to the Beatles and ZZ Top and Harry Potter and the Wizard of Oz. It’s really absorbing (thus the 5 am reading sessions), and really long. Of course, everyone you grow to love dies in horrible ways, and not until the last 500 pages of 6,500 page series, and it gangs up on you and you kind of want to die immediately as soon as your done. Like I did yesterday. I have constructed a list of things not to do when writing an epic series, and perhaps one day mr. king will find it and recognize the error of his ways:
1. Don’t ever, ever, kill the loyal dog/animal if you want your fans to love you.
2. Don’t kill the children in gory, unnecessary ways if you don’t want your readers to hunt you down to tar and feather you.
3. Baby werespiders are NEVER okay. When a creature is a newborn baby one minute, and gianormous tarantula the next that eats its mother, and then a minute later it changes back to a baby– you’ve gone too far. You just have. Some of us hate spiders and love babies, and it confuses us and never lets us look at babies the same way again.
4. Do not write yourself into your story as a character and have a far more lovable child-character than you as a human being will ever be, die saving your life ; even if the car accident that almost killed you fits nicely into your plot.
5. Don’t give your characters premonitions of 9/11, especially when it is wholly irrelevant to your time frame. that’s not cool.
6. If you want your readers to be content with your cowboy riding off into the sunset of his life’s ambition as the ending, then don’t write afuckingnother one tucked into your epilogue bitching about how your readers should be content and not read it.
7. If you feel you MUST write a second ending, then for fuck’s sake do NOT punish the readers for reading it by making it so godawful horrifying as to put your main character in a Nietzsche nightmare loop sending him back to the first page of the first book to do it all over again, implying that he had already endured you screwed up sadistic plot of pain suffering and death a hundred times before. This is not acceptable. it’s just not. it upsets us, precious.
I have school tomorrow. I was going to write something more, and far more interesting, but I’m out of time. I suspect DD is the only one of you who may actually have read the series. Thank you for your forbearance. Next time, really, something interesting.
love
