beautiful girls, all over the world

this morning on the trolley there was a girl like dead asleep in a mcdonalds uniform, and when we got to 40th street i woke her up because that's where mcdonalds is, and she got superrrrr huffy and was like, "I DON'T WORK AT THAT MCDONALDS, THAT'S NOT THE ONLY MCDONALDS, UGH." fair point, but i'm a vegetarian ! that's the only one i know about ! i was trying to HELP !!!!!!!


mcrib, if i ever break vedge, i swear to god i'm coming to find you

blahhh. yesterday i was having a major freakout about history class. the six week format is pretty overwhelming- there's so much reading and so much work to do every week ! and i was starting to panic about feeling really stupid compared to my classmates and like i just wasn't GETTING it. we haven't gotten any feedback about our assignments yet, so after breathing into a paper bag for a few hours, i finally took the suggestion everyone was giving me to write to my professor. i was reluctant because she's a ph.d. candidate and every ph.d. candidate/grad student i know who teaches undergrad poisonously hates all their students. ibrahim helped me compose a letter:

If you have the time in the next week or so, would it be possible to provide me with some feedback on my work and responses? This is my first college level class in 10 years, and I want to make sure I’m on the right track early on and know where to focus my efforts in studying and composing my responses. It is absolutely all right if you are unable to, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask!

and she wrote back immediately !

You're doing quite well--there were some areas you needed to improve from the first discussion post, but you've filled all that in with the post for this weeks with citations and clear examples. The only thing you might add is a thesis statement to sum up your argument at the beginning of the post. Your timeline and participation are also on track. It's a hard first class to come back to, but you're doing well!

roxy #1 usa usa usa

i'm still going to have to work really hard and try to get better about doing my homework on the weekends. i didn't start my reading until monday this week and got wayyyyyyy overwhelmed. i also read supplemental material and watched the lectures before reading the textbook, and that was the wrong way to go. i feel like my understanding of the events for this time period is a lot shakier than last week. i'm going to hide in the basement during lunch today and do some reading.



german class is going okay. so far the workload has been pretty light and i'm retaining stuff. you may notice me posting on my class' wall on facebook, that is not because i'm a nerd, it's an assignment ! last night, though, i was getting kind of irate about having to essentially spend 1.5 hours speaking baby talk, but that's... what learning a language is like ! haha

after class last night, ken and i finally played resident evil 5. i had some reservations because it's way harder than left 4 dead 2, and i feel like i've barely had time to play and get used to the controller since i started school. i also did have reservations because there was some controversy over the game's racial undertones- basically, you're a team (a white guy, and an ambiguously brown but light skinned female with caucasian features) trying to stop the spread of a disease in africa (a zombie disease created by an evil pharmaceutical company? or something), and since you're in africa... 98% of the people you are mowing down are black male zombies. i don't think that the people who made the game even thought about this (not saying that makes it NOT racist), and it makes sense within the overarching storyline of the series of games but i did feel uneasy at times.



i'm still kind of parsing how i feel about it- within the game they do address imperialism and the exploitation and oppression of african people but is that enough? are people who aren't aware of it going to even pick up on it? aside from that, the game is super fun and really fucking scary. there were points where my heart was beating fast in fear, and i was scared to go to sleep last night. i'm going to play a little more with ken and see how i feel about it, but it isn't a good sign when playing a video game makes you feel guilty.

on a lighter note, i read stranger with my face yesterday. hooooo boy. if you've ever read anything by lois duncan (down a dark hall, i know what you did last summer), you know that she writes like a 7th grader trying to write like a 75 year old woman- like a weird mix of fanciful shit that a little kid would think was cool and glamorous and weird stilted unnatural super formal dialogue.



the premise of the story is that people keep seeing a person who looks identical to the protagonist, laurie stratton, around the glamorous island she lives on. there's a few genuinely terrifying moments, like looking at her reflection in a sliding glass door and then when she was about to fall asleep, realizing her reflection was smiling when she wasn't, but instead of being an actual doppelganger or a physical evil twin, it turns out that she was adopted and is native american and her evil twin is ASTRAL PROJECTING to her and trying to ruin her life and steal her body. this problem is solved by laurie astral projecting, which she can do obviously because she's native american. and, you know, they have powers. interestingly, the turquoise bird necklace in the picture is what kills the evil twin (cause it's a native american idol to ward off evil spirits ! powers !) so it's weird that she's wearing it there. stupid book, terrible dialogue.

blehhh i gotta do some work now blehhhhhhhhhhhh.

p.s. i think mouse and i are going to a minor league game this weekend with nate and anna?
p.p.s. i want peanut m&ms