Better than fruit salad

MY EVENTFUL SATURDAY

1. BOOKCASE

I had about three stacks of books next to my existing bookcase that I took from my last apartment. I have been waffling about whether or not to buy a new one — yet another piece of furniture to move, right? But then it’s not like I was going to get rid of any books by and large*, and they’d need a place to live in Oregon just as much as they need a place here. So I broke down and after an unsuccessful thrift hunt, bought a shelf. It looks very smart although it was a bitch to set up, just becuase I don’t think Target fully understands the idiocy that is cam locks. I am drafting a letter to this effect as we speak, and fear that I now am in possession of two bookcases that need messy wood glue/nails reconstruction after every move. Still though, I’m glad I did it.

WARNING: THIS PART IS PURELY SELF-INDULGENT AND PROBABLY DOES NOT INTEREST YOU IN THE SLIGHTEST

New-shelf houses all my ‘reference’ type books: language, religion, feminism, sociology/cultural anthropology, philosophy, political philosophy, art history (sort of — most of that stuff is upstairs) and then all the NORTONS. I have six Nortons at this point, and seeing them all next to each other on a shelf is pretty impressive.

Then on the big bookcase we have the rest of non-fiction (a smattering of ‘random fabulous old books’ like “The Skin” and “Vitality Supreme”, then gardening, then autobiography, then poetry, essays) and finally FICTION picking up the rear. I am a geek. And proud of it.

*I did of course make a small pile of books bound for the second hand bookstore. But how many books ended up in that pile? Nine. Twelve if you count the three holding my floor lamp up. How many books do I have? Nine shelves worth.

2. LEARNED TO DRIVE STICK

Can you drive stick? I can workably now, so if you do and we went to the bar and you had too much to drink I could drive you home in your car. As long as you weren’t TOO drunk, since my stop-to-first transition is not graceful and I’d hate to make you MORE nauseous. I graduated from the parking lot and drove around some neighborhood streets, and then actually drove the thing back to the parent’s house out in the country. So again, I could do it. If I needed to. I’m not sure that I prefer it to an automatic, (resenting stop signs for tangible I will never get this car started again thoughts do not seem like a wise thing to condone), but it was fun and I would raise my hand if you asked me, ‘who wants to drive’. And I have been experiencing phantom clutch for the last few days.

3. HUMAN RELATIONS

There was a strange skirmish Saturday night which threatened to get messy but then had a great save, so that was good. The night ended with us talking about dancing, bees, materialism and Just How Great We Are. I also ended up buying Maira Kalman’s book, which I’d actually already borrowed from a friend of mine. It led me to finally break down and get a good set of gauche already, because I’ve never really had a good set and you have to start somewhere. And now I am seeing the world in this new magical way all over again, and it’s neat.

Then to Fort Collins, to say hi to some people. Halo is not my hat, so when they settled in, I took advantage of the fact that we were a mere parking lot away from a good friend of mine. I eeled to see what she was up to, and it wasn’t much.

It was good to see her. She’s getting married in May, which is probably about the only Big Difficult Thing I’m not doing in May, so we had a lot to talk about.

NON-SATURDAY MATERIAL

1. Sunday was a Lazy PJ Sunday, which is a wonderful, wonderful thing. This week’s dumb horror movie was Ginger Snaps. I have oodles to say but it mostly boils down to: better than Carrie, yet still without joy. Or oumph. Or anything. Utterly forgettable. But I’m cool with that.

2. More underwear (NSFW) came from the internet and I couldn’t be happier. I think I now own about 10 pairs of these, all in different colors, and I think I can safely begin the process of eliminating my other underwear so that someday I will only have these to choose from in the drawer. Great colors? Total booty coverage at every moment of the day? Cute cute cute? Fabulous. Sign me up.

3. That’s actually all I’ve got. Aside from the SWOLLEN RIVERS OF TASKS EATING AWAY THE SHORELINE OF MY SOUL there isn’t much going on. Really though, it’s just that I haven’t had time to focus on it. And I’ve been painting.

FIRST OFF

Things are better than they were ere we last spoke. In fact, they are much better, almost impossibly flipped because today was a rather good day, and not just by comparison. Nice happy muppet feelings, interesting things witnessed, enough mental commentary to generate a nice meaty entry about them.

The reason is twofold. First, a nice healthy day and a half of freaking the fuck out, which seems counter intuitive. But nothing says YES BRAIN I’M LISTENING like laying on the carpet motionless. And nothing says YES HUMAN I’M LISTENING like a comrade who is willing to hang out with you even when that is all you are capable of doing. So that helped. And one good night’s sleep and a breakfast outing later, things look a little better.

Second, I discovered Getting Things Done via NPR. The website itself is a little corporate and daunting, and so before really delving too deeply I instead read a bunch of archived entries on 43 folders, which is a nice geek/student/layman’s way to go about this. I have not begun to get into this stuff at too much depth short of initiating the system itself, or rather a system that resembles this. By which I mean: I created a new folder in my documents folder, and within that folder made other folders for all my text files to go into.

This would be a really good place to discuss McLuhan, and how our society definitely must be suspect to its own media if we (human beings) are externalizing processes like a computer does because our own brains cannot handle this with any degree of sanity. I again want to talk about our living quarters as our head space. I also want to think about OCD, and how any sort of organizational tool or regime resembles a prescribed OCD and isn’t that messed up. But then I also want to counter and say:

a.) there is no habitual compulsion in me. I have to come up with these stupid systems in order to appear organized, to function at all in this organized world. I can locate things in the muddled clutter, but it makes me insane because sometimes I can’t, and nothing drives me more crazy than not being able to remember where I put that thing, whether it’s my keys, a note-to-self, or a *DON’T FORGET TO DO THAT THING*

b.) I really like these systems, these illusions of order, because that’s all they are really: illusions. While I am going to try my damnedest to play this game at least for the next 4 months, its not like I am signing myself up to live by this for eternity. There is constant change, etc.

c.) I line up pretty solidly with all these ‘geek’ characteristics. Meaning, I will tackle this, but with the half-assed abandon that I do so many other things. I will do this, but not freak out when I don’t for a few days. I am using this to eliminate or alleviate stress and this nagging feeling of drowning in my responsibilities. Because there are a LOT. I need a system for all of it, I think. This is discussed ad naseum on the 43 folders site, and I don’t really want to do that here. Frankly getting at a nice external “processing” system is really what it comes down to for me. I have a rough shape of this for my work-things, but nothing for my not-work-things, and that is where I am struggling most. So, let’s prioritize. And in the meantime, let’s get on with it.

TWO (INAPPROPRIATE) REACTIONS TO THE CASTRO THING

1. I caught the tail end of our monkey president pushing for Cuba to become Suddenly, Democracy! He said something like “and uh, eventually, this transition, um, oughta lead to free and fair elections — and ah mean free and ah mean fair.”

To my radio, aloud, I shouted: “Bush? You? Pushing for free and fair elections?“

2. All these people discussing this in Miami have very, very sexy accents. Rrrawr.

Today in Russian history we had a guest lecturer. He relied heavily on a Power Point entitled “Stalinist Modernization and the Ukrainian Terror-Famine,” which delighted me because it has the exact cadence of a children’s book title.

He also had a list of key ‘words,’ which I would like to share:

Dekulakization
Dizzy with success
First five-year plan
Magnitogorsk
Stakhanov
Holodomor
Indigenization
Walter Durauty

HERE IS A MILDLY UPSETTING THING

Event: I was driving to work today and saw some people jumping on a trampoline. Not young kids but like freshman in college type people. At first I thought, how nice to have that much free time. But then I thought, maybe it’s a break from studying — a kind of mental health break. Or maybe it’s for exercise.

Immediate mental hyperlink: “this serves no purpose” — which is a thing that I used to joke about with my Mom — it’s from some Star Trek thing all those years ago, and YET ANOTHER THING I CANNOT VERIFY THROUGH YOUTUBE although I have been trying. How is it possible that I know all these televised things YouTube doesn’t??* It was some brainwashed- or robot-lady who watched someone playing a game that used to be her favorite game. Instead, she said “this serves no purpose” in this hilarious pouty voice.

Reaction to caveat + IMH: Irritated with myself. It’s sad that I have to justify someone else’s activity for them.

I had a particularly grueling literature class one year that forced me to think about the question, “so what”. Whilst dispensing every paper assignment the professor said, “and answer the question ’so what’.” To me, the joy of an argument or stance had always been merited by the thing itself, so this ’so what’ question was very troubling too me. I mean, obviously a paper that talks you into Something and negates every other position will be effective, and I feel like I was thereby answering the ’so what’ there anyway by osmosis. Maybe not. Maybe stuff is flat and uninteresting and people are too jaded. But I tend not to think so.

It was a terrible time, and I literally spent the rest of the semester in this sort of bewildered silence. Because If I couldn’t answer ’so what’ satisfactorily in a paper I certainly could not do so in the day to day. And furthermore this was a daily thing for us in the class as well. It was not enough to comment on something — we had to have a reason. Good yes, but utterly debilitating. When you start asking ‘why’ about one thing extra-paper-ly, there’s no good place for it to end. Why do I walk to class, why do I go to class, why do I eat. Logically there are all VERY GOOD reasons for this, but again it has depressing implications. Why do I rub my fingers together? Why do I play with blocks? Why do I bathe? Why do I spend time with people? Why do I bother.

Anyway it took a while but I finally got there. And now I can usually (usually)** make a pretty good case for something, even if it’s insane and wrongheaded, which would have bothered me before because I’m all about Truth and Being True To Thy Self and all that hippie nonsense. (Which is not nonsense, damn it.) But now that plus this UberEfficiency mode I’ve needed to be in to make sure everything gets done makes me involuntarily make a case for trampoline-as-exercise and other bullshit like that. Because if I have no explanation for something, it must serve no purpose! Then I go nuts because what, am I a robot? Maybe.

*For those keeping score:

1. Gilda Radner’s impersonation of Jackie Onassis in SNL’s celebrity weightlifting, 1970-something (it’s on the damn ‘Best of’ DVD, come on nerds!)
2. Johnny Bravo’s turkey thing (Carl’s voice over: ‘a bird so stupid that it looks into the sky until it drowns’)
3. Flowers and sausages
4. “This serves no purpose”

Who wants to do a YouTube project that would give joy to only me?

**Echolalia! I just learned this word! I’ve known about what it is, but not the word itself!

LANGUAGE TO DRIVE ME BONKERS

“Attached please find [x]“

“Find” seems like an inappropriate verb for “click on the icon” or “download the item”, or I guess in this context it’s more like “lookie what I’m sending you.”

I understand the need for formality, but I chortle at the ridiculous image of my searching in vain to find an attachment. Help help where is it I’m lost.

AND FINALLY

I am doing a little booty dance on Faye’s behalf.

[Insert a lengthy discussion about gypsies and Quakers, which have nothing to do with one another really, except that I've been thinking of both groups at length a good deal lately.]

I continue to swing wildly between walkin’ on sunshine and plunging down down into the Darkness! Imprisoning me! (All that I see! Is absolute horror!) My latest ailment is that I can’t seem to stay in my clothes, or rather, I cannot DECIDE on which clothes to stay into. I made about 3 sweater changes before I left the house today — this one is too loud, this one is too flimsy, this one is THE SAME SWEATER I’VE WORN FOR FOUR DAYS — and even now I am itching to be in something…else. But what? My taste has taken a slight swerve away from the weird which makes my inner child sob don’t you love me anymore? which is a laugh. Since it’s still most assuredly “me”. Then I get exasperated with myself for having the gall to consider wardrobe to such an extent when there are obviously MORE PRESSING MATTERS AT HAND.

I need to pull myself together, becuase this wandering bleakly through the empty house sobbing because I am not sitting on the couch reading for class is very counter productive. In the truest sense. My meeting in the Springs went well, but almost too well becuase instead of thinking “that would be a good plan sometime” I had to muscle it up to the front, with the rest of everything, and nothing meshed well. I think that is mostly the reason for the sad, for the bleak, for the getting irrationally hurt by Anthony’s latest hair adventure.

POSSIBLE NAMES FOR MY FUTURE FREELANCE COMPANY

- Miette
- Pequenita
- Dingbat
- Dave and the Fishstick all-stars
- [Real name]

The first is strictly for the sound-pleasing, since I think ‘crumb’ is not the best image for a self-made design firm. Plus it’s already a name of a relatively well known pretty cakes company here in the states.

ARE WE HAVING FUN YET?

1. I can’t type. I mean I can’t type with all the right fingers on the right keys. Before I just felt this was a stupid bourgeois privilege, since I was raised on AIM and blogging I figured my hijacked chicken-picking would suffice, but I tested my typing the other day against the clock and apparently I average about 22 WPM. Twenty-two! This is unacceptable.

2. I just added “stupud” to the dictionary. FUCK!

3. I had a talk about making earth our head-space. This story is an extension of the room/house as head-space concept, which I will have to get into some other time, when my eyes aren’t overfilled saucers of dread and my spine is a little less glassy.

4. My friend the DJ? he looks like a spitting image of Rasputin. With glasses. I just noticed that today. It’s more than a little unnerving, because he’s also an angry communist and is a bit of a Slavophile, so it all works out. Still though. If you start resembling figures from the context you worship, maybe it’s time to take a step back and become a little more self-actualized. Maybe.

I REFUSE TO APOLOGIZE FOR THE USE OF MY BRAIN

It’s funny that we’re trying to pass this immunity bill, aka liability protection, so we can “keep an eye on suicide bombers” …or so we can continue to let companies and the president break the law and not be prosecuted in certain situations, depending on who you’re listening to…while we have yet another ’suicide attack’ on students.

Hmm. Sounds like we’re spending time in the wrong place.

I’m not saying we need to spy on high school kids — if nothing else that would aggravate the problem. High school is hell, and college can be hell if you have that kind of mindset. And we need to: a.) work to make it less of a hell, and b.) work on helping people cope with hellish conditions. This black-garbed-gunman thing has become an option for people in the same way that suicide is an “option”, and that’s alarming. It is certainly not, as I have said before, a productive option.

I’m reading an article about book challenges, and one of the reasons a board member had objected to Harry Potter was that it might “promote anarchy”. He attested that although he had not read the book, the decision was a “preventative measure” against school shootings. To that I can only say: What. The. Fuck. It’s bullshit like that that drives people to the gun in the first place. Free access to information, trust and assistance cannot, in my eyes, possibly lead to the destruction these people are after. Caring for the plants — watering, giving enough light, listening — makes them grown. Over pruning and nit-picking and keeping them in the darkness will make them WILT. And ROT. Not a good thing for a brain.

RANT OVER

I invented the portmantu “experimentality” the other night when I was brushing my teeth. Except according to Google I didn’t.

I had McDonald’s Wednesday for the first time in I think years. That’s not a snotty foodie thing although it should be — I am just usually too poor to buy fast food, and then when I do it’s the Wendy’s dollar menu or Burger King’s chicken fries. Out of the plethora of fast food joints here, McDonald’s is actually the least accessible, and the one near my house on Fast Food Row is a right turn only if you’re in that lane, and be careful not to accidentally get into the Domino’s becuase then you’re stuck. It was an incidental thing, since McDonald’s is right next to the bowling ally where the class is. And it was kind of…awkward. Having been partially raised under the golden arches, I had expected the food to have a kind of orgasmic taste. Something that I had perhaps been denying myself for religious reasons but now I was indulging, it’s so wrong but feels so right, et cetra. But it tasted..bad. This eating of warming-tray burgers and tasteless french fries. And it wasn’t fast-food bad, but in fact bad for fast food. Lower than the lowest standard. And why. Do people eat this rubbish? I only ate a third of the burger and finished with some carrots from the fridge, because at least those were REAL FOOD. Something with TASTE and INTEGRITY.

Lately I’ve had this problem with radio. These days I can’t seem to actually listen to a full news broadcast all the way through. I’m fine with the front matter, the world news segments becuase I’m very interested in that, and I like all the later features that are silly and have nothing to do with the Grim Grim World, but it’d that middle bit. The bit where they start letting the presidential candidates speak in their own right. It has this strange effect on me. I immediately, without thinking, reach for the remote and switch on a CD or turn the power off, anything just to MAKE THE NOISE STOP. This is unhealthy, since the whole point of this pre-election atmosphere is to make decisions based on what you see or hear, but I can’t help it. It’s an involuntary reaction, like hitting the snooze button in the morning. I’ll work on that this week.

I feel a bit overwhelmed lately. Okay, really I’ve felt overwhelmed for the past few days, which is my damn fault for procrastinating on some Big Things. Said things were due for each class I allegedly had today. (Ahem.) Skipping classes makes me despondent, which makes me want to skip more classes, until (I guess) I am reduced to a mushy pulp and do nothing aside from lay in my bed and stare blankly at the ceiling. I don’t let it get to that point, but I’m always worried I might somehow, that my brain and arms and legs will all part ways without my consent and I will be left hanging. But then what I do is, well, pull myself together. If you will.

It’s easy to reassemble yourself when you have some time in the evening to really sit and unwind with a cup of tea and a good book or some cartoons. It’s not as easy when you have to read this 23 page article, compare it with that 18 page article, write a short research paper, go to work somewhere in there and Fix Big Problems, write a piece about Nikolai Bukharin, read more articles, write a creative non-fiction piece, fix up the resume before that great job gets snatched up by someone more qualified, write a stellar cover letter for the resume, eat dinner, read the dry novella about [russianname] and what else? Oh sleep. Right.

It does not help that on top of this I am getting a little daunted by this look-for-a-job thing, which is hilarious because I’ve barely started. But trying to do that whilst accomplishing countless school tasks is no light fare. Last week things were reaching critical mass to the point where I had this meltdown on Wednesday for no reason. Everything was fine until something clicked in my head and suddenly it was stop everything and sleep time. This didn’t really mesh well with how the evening had been naturally winding down so I kind of got anxiously self-conscious about that, particularly becuase I stopped the aforementioned Amy Winehouse inquiry. And then even though I was VERY TIRED I could not sleep, which is a recurrent problem I have, so I kind of rolled around and around in my bed. Eventually I went for a cup of water, but then on the way back to the bed I tripped on a pizza box and ate carpet. I had been kind of crying anyway, so when this happened (loudly) and I made no sounds to accompany (because otherwise it would have been a kind of strangled sob) Anthony did the heroic thing, which was to switch on the light and come RUNNING, and then we sat on the floor for a while in a big tangled up heap.

Sigh. I know it’s not bad. It’s overwhelming, daunting, and more than a little upsetting when things don’t magically settle into order. But it’s not bad. Things get done, banana bread is eaten, and we move on with our lives.

I had a very strange dream the other night, involving my Mom’s house in the semi-darkness, my Dad, toplessness, and doing Anthony in my little twin bed that was of course much littler in my dream. And then going to church afterwards. My closet and bed were on the wrong sides of the room, and actually now that I think about it I never actually went to church, I just was sort of picking clothes for it and imagining being there.

The toplessness can be explained by my watching Carrie Sunday for the first time. Have you seen this movie? I’d avoided it because of the horror, but now I realize that in truth I’d avoided it because of the awfulness. God, it was bad. It was a b-movie that really wanted to be a softcore porn, it was poorly written, and it featured a main character with the emotional age of approximately two years old. (Which is funny, because she also reminded me EXACTLY of this girl I knew in high school, except for the actual telekinetic ability. She really was that feeble and needlessly misandristic though.) The plot was…we hate Carrie because she’s small and vulnerable! And every time we try to teach her a lesson, we get caught! How totally unfair!” And then everyone dies. I don’t get it either. Lots of women were slapped, but that was not any kind of big deal — it was just a fact of life kind of thing which I can buy I suppose but it was distracting for my 21st century feminist mind, particularly when it came from the John Travolta character.. The movie felt it necessary to SPELL THINGS OUT, by literally filling the screen with the definition of telekinesis from a book, just in case you were going to side with the insane fundie mother and think she was a demon.

I could go on. It was a movie without joy.

Also, why do women shower with their mouths open in horror movies? I thought we were focusing on the violence as a twisted sexual thing, not showering. It reminds me of the turkeys from Johnny Bravo, which was such a brief and meaningless interval that apparently youtube doesn’t know about it. And that is a CRYING SHAME.

I am taking this scary movie class, and initially I thought that this class could be a way of talking me into horror movies (at least the less violent ones) but now I’m simply rejecting the movies for their complete lack of merit. Which I suppose isn’t a bad thing. Maybe after this class I can simply say “I don’t watch BAD movies.” Film. I will stick to film.