it's too much for me

yesterday i actually took care of business and did some reading for my class ! it was ESPECIALLY hard for me because i had plans later in the evening, but i went to green line after work and powered through a thing about aboriginal child removal and about half of a chapter in adam jones' genocide textbook, which is fucking great. i've felt intimidated going back to school because... i have very little experience in school, and some of the readings i've had so far since the summer have been hopelessly indecipherably jargon-y, and this textbook is really well-written and accessible. like, i've never read a textbook before that really felt like i was reading a good book.



after that, i went to meet jeanne and mike b. at their friend's house (he is also named mike b.)- he owns a really beautiful house in west philly that filled me with envy. i should buy a house in my neighborhood with my millions of dollars ! that i have. i drank 100 iced coffees and had read so much genocide stuff that i felt like somber cornholio. anyway, we watched black death, a movie about.. the black death ! the premise is that a bishop sends a group of dudes to go to this remote town that they heard is untouched by the plague because a necromancer/witch is raising the dead and protecting them and crap.



boromir is in it, as well as a redhead jeanne likes whose name is EDDIE REDMAYNE (what are the odds). the movie was really fucking cool and understated and grim- there is a quartering scene that made all of us make audible noises of disappreciation (i never thought about how slow a quartering would be) and the bubos were totally gross. the best part was that the necromancer/witch was this beautiful badass blasphemous lady



i was so into her, and the movie didn't fall back on a lot of shitty sexist tropes (like, a movie that takes place in ye olden times without any rapes is a rare thing), and she was such a great character and obviously the winner of the movie... until we got to the kind of unnecessary tacked on ending in which women lose throughout history. i recommend stopping the movie like 8 minutes early !

jeanne and mike walked me home after, and i came home and i did slightly more reading and painted my nails with christina's um, parlez-vous opi



and went to bed at a reasonable time ! oh, and while we were watching the movie, i got a lot of knitting done, which is nice. the baby sweater is knitting up fast, but between the two classes, i'm nervous that i won't have that much time to knit.

bleh. i have a slightly busy weekend (of my own doing) which involves getting the kitten on friday, so i really need to buckle down and get a jump on my schoolwork. i have to write a loose proposal for my genocide research paper by next week, and i'm sort of panicking because i don't know how to do that and i'm not really sure what i want to write about. i see that adam jones has another book called gendercide and genocide that looks really interesting, but i'm not sure what my paper would really be ABOUT, and... my professor is especially interested in this topic, so i'm afraid she'll be disappointed by what i write. academic insecurity !!!!

i have to go pick up stuff for a stupid thing. bleh.

throw every last care away

ahhhh my back is ruined ! i fell asleep in a crappy position when i was benadrylled out and hurt my back and it's felt crappy for a week ! it's specifically the muscle i use to get up and sit down- so it's fine when i'm up walking around or laying down or sitting (except in my work chair, which is a problem), but having to sit down and get up from a sitting position is torture. TORTURE !


it actually hurts right about where the skeleton is hurt

i had a good weekend ! on friday i intended to do homework but ended up taking a nap, eating dinner, reading a non-school book, dropping my laundry off at the laundromat, and loafing. i managed to finish my outline of a chapter we had to read but i still have an essay to write before my class tonight ! i'm nervous that i won't be able to get it done because all of the material for the writing seminars is poorly written and i don't think i understand the instructions, but i'm sure i can bang something out- it's a first draft, anyway.

on saturday, i got a car and went to the bank and picked up kitten supplies. i got a tiny litterbox, a bunch of (tiny) cans of kitten food, and ordered a broken heart best friends necklace for the kitten and pizza's collars.


i didn't get THIS one cause it was $220

after my errands, mouse, nate, and anna came over to watch the phillies game, which was a total bummer. fuck the mets. we got pizza from ed's buffalo wings and pizza, since they have vegan pizza. the vegan pizza was probably the best vegan pizza i've ever had. the non-vegan pizza was probably one of the worst pizzas i've ever had. the vegan pizza was better than their regular pizza ! probably the best development of the night, though, was that nate and anna decided to come with us to the old timey baseball game on sunday !

...the old timey baseball game got rained out on sunday, but we all went to delaware anyway and went bowling with kati and alan. i didn't bowl because i'm too competitive and also too bad at bowling, but i knitted and drank a giant fountain coke, so i had a really good time. the bowling alley was blaaaaring like... weird tween music? like a mix of bad teen pop music and... adult pop music being covered by teenagers? also they had cosmic bowling at 2pm.



i like all that stuff though ! after bowling, we stopped at a kind of crappy thrift store (this was like, the most teenagery day ever- bowling and thrift stores !) and went back to kati's, where she and alan made us dinner- sweet potato fries and those veganomicon chickpea cutlets. kati also had cherry cider which was excellent. their house is so cute. they also have a very handsome 3-legged cat named sandy who sort of has a half leg? and the tip of his half leg is hairless and the nub feels like a paw pad ! pretty exotic. he is the cutest and he and anna formed a special bond.



sandyyyyyy. after dinner, we came back to philly and i unwisely took a nap before starting my homework which means i.. didn't really start my homework. i SORT OF finished huckleberry finn, because the essay i have to write is about the end. i'm probably going to write the essay at lunch today. basically i have til 5:30 to cobble something together. i sort of hate this writing class? no one wants to be there so the environment is weirdly hostile and i don't really have a class friend. oh well, i like the professor and it's a good class to take alongside a hard class.

hmm, what else? i started the presto chango jacket for helen's baby. it will look like this but less purple, more red, and cooler with cool faux jet buttons:



i'm going to go find breakfast or something and then get to work on... work.

consider this the hint of the century

class was great last night ! i was nervous because i hadn't finished the book, but i ended up being able to answer every question she asked. unfortunately, i became the old person who talks too much in class, but it makes me feel awkward when people don't raise their hands so i always blurt something out. we had a pretty good discussion about genocide in darfur, and the problems with mahmood mamdani's book, and we watched the devil came on horseback, which was pretty interesting in contrast to mamdani's work. we also had a pretty good class discussion about the investigation and results that led to the US calling it genocide (janjaweed identifying themselves as "arabs" [even if that is not technically true, as mamdani points out] and identifying their victims as "africans", stating that their intent was to kill all africans, systematic use of rape of men and women, killing children and babies, killing livestock, poisoning water, breaking cooking pots in villages, only attacking "african" villages, etc.) in contrast to mamdani's insistence that the genocide distinction wasn't accurate.

the documentary is primarily about brian steidle, a US marine who took a job in sudan to monitor the ceasefire, and ended up documenting the genocide in darfur and trying desperately to get someone to intervene. it is currently available on netflix instant viewing if you want to watch it !



i also got an A+ on my first paper !!! i'm pretty excited and i'm excited to get into this week's reading- too bad i have homework for my writing class too. blehhh.

after class, i um, got taco bell for dinner (a horrible tradition i have started, since i get out of class at 9 on thursdays... across from a taco bell) and came home to raid for the first time in months. i have to say, i've really missed some of my guildmates (i mean, they're people i talk to anyway, but i enjoy playing with them) but i really fucking hate icecrown citadel. maybe it's because we did it so many times so recently? but it's so flat and tedious and boring. the only fight i really like is the bloodqueen, because i get to turn into a vampire.



that said, with the 30% raid buff we basically one shot everything and we only have that dragon guy and the lich king left. we're going to try it again next thursday. i have to say though- with school and everything, losing four hours of my life to a video game kind of sucked? before i knew it, it was 1am, and i didn't have time to do any reading or anything. i don't know if this means i won't go back for cataclysm (i probably will. haha) or what, though. i AM interested in being a goblin.


most accurately, i wish i could be a warhammer goblin, pictured left

ahh, the weekend ! tomorrow i'm going to watch the phillies game with mouse, nate, and anna- we also have plans to order pizza from ed's, a place in west philly that serves vegan pizza made with daiya, which i've never had-



though i'm disturbed that their vegan pizza description says: Dairy-free Daiya cheese, cholestrol free, Eggless dough. A perfect blend of vegan italian shred and a vegan cheddar shred. cheddar cheese on a damn pizza?

on sundayyyyy we're going to an old timey baseball game in delaware with kati ! i'm not exactly sure what that entails. probably mustaches.

also on the agenda this weekend:
- doing my writing class homework which means finishing huckleberry finn, writing a justificatory essay (whatever that is), and writing an analysis of the second chapter of beyond the culture wars.
- dropping my laundry off TONIGHT
- cleaning my room
- starting my genocide reading
- going grocery shopping maybe?

hold me to it ! hold me to it ! okay i'm gonna go eat a sandwich.

fall back to stone

one work thing that stresses me out a little- i have a coworker friend (like, we enjoy each others' company at work but are not friendly outside of work, as it should be) who, over the past 3 or 4 years that we've worked together, somehow got the idea that i'm into old movies/kitsch/pop culture. i have never had the heart to tell him i'm not, or that i don't quite get his references. i was born in 1982. unless carol channing was a ninja turtle, i don't know who that is. when you mention charles nelson reilly, i think you mean this guy:



yesterday i had class, which was slightly annoying- the conservative person who announced she was conservative apropos of nothing once again displayed that she doesn't actually know that conservative as a word has meanings outside of politics, and the departmental slides our professor had to show us seemed... confusing? like, i copied them down but i have no idea what they were really about.

after work, i went to green line to try to do some reading- i was doing okay for awhile, but some older dude with a giant stack of newspapers came in and started... tearing the newspapers up? and rustling the newspapers. i know a coffee shop isn't my office and i could just read at home, but i think the ultimate thing you can just do at home is tear up some newspapers. i ended up going home again. i read about 100 pages, and then i gave up- i know that kind of sucks, but i'm just really not into this book. we have to turn in ten response papers over 13 weeks, and we can skip any 3 weeks we want, and i think i'm going to skip this week. i think i have a decent understanding of what he was trying to say, and i read all the other material, but i just couldn't get through that book.



it's weird because i love tedious histories, and i didn't know much about the history of sudan before, but there was just something that wasn't clicking for me with his interpretation of sudan's history. i ended up reading a few other sources about the history of sudan instead to better understand the conflict because i couldn't get through his. i'm bummed though, i hate not being prepared for class and i especially hate not finishing a book.

i also need to work on not being so easily distracted. the following things were all more interesting to me than studying last night:

- a video about how to put on a female condom, which was linked from
- a video of some ice skater guy skating to "sex bomb", which i found through
- a discussion about how "slow hand" by the pointer sisters is a gross song to sing with your sisters.
- a text message conversation with mouse about our favorite jiu jitsu people, which turned into a conversation about joe rogan?
- the wikipedia for troll dolls (called GONKS in the uk)
- looking at nail polish on amazon
- trying to untangle a knot in my hair by hand



class tonight, and then... possibly trying to kill the lich king? our guild kind of petered out over the summer so most of us have never killed him, but there was talk of some of the wow dudes i actually like wanting to try it out tonight.



who knows, though? none of us really care and i don't think we have any tanks lined up. okay, back to work !

how to boil water

okay i haveeee to complain a little about my writing class again. we have a class blog that we have to write in, every day, monday through thursday. we have to write at least three lines, about any topic. nearly everyone is acting like the professor tossed them a scalpel and asked them to perform brain surgery. so far, many of the blog entries are like, HOW CAN I FIND TIME TO DO THIS EVERY DAY? HOW CAN I REMEMBER TO DO THIS EVERY DAY. like, how do you remember to do anything every day? just do that. i personally put an outlook reminder on my calendar for every day, monday through thursday, until the end of the semester. put me in, coach !



i don't know- i guess i'm surprised that people are acting like whiny high school kids in college? like IS THIS GOING TO BE ON THE TEST? GOD THERE'S SO MUCH READING I DON'T HAVE TIME, THIS SUCKS. THIS CLASS SUCKS !)(!#@())(###

oh, did i mention that getting my courses evaluated has been a total bust so far? i had 7 possible classes that i was told "would transfer" (which i think was a poor choice of words on the part of my adviser, who seems to be... totally clueless. it took 3 days and 6 emails to get her to actually attach the attachment she forgot to attach to the first e-mail). of the six courses i was able to find syllabuses for (out of 7), 1 has been accepted, 2 have been denied, and 3 are in various queues. my dream of knocking a year off of my school career (in exchange for attending 2.5 years in the early 00s) isn't going to become a reality.



last night i desperately tried to read for genocide class- still reading saviors and survivors. it is a very intelligent and well-researched genocide denial i think? but it's frustrating me because i don't actually know enough about darfur to say this guy is wrong, and i only know that some people who DO know about darfur say he's wrong. i am also frustrated by his recounting of the history of darfur, including the ancient history- this SHOULD be interesting, and the history of race and politics in sudan and specifically in darfur are super important to understanding the current climate and conflicts, buttttttt he's just rattling off lists of names and dates and it's fucking boring ! it's frustrating because 1) i love history and 2) his writing was engaging in the previous chapters ! so i don't know what's up.


mahmood mamdani

anyway, all that aside, the main point is that i didn't do as much reading as i should have. i have a good excuse- my back is sort of fucked up and sitting in a crappy chair at the green line away from my computer and xbox and stuff seemed painful. haha. so after my writing class tonight, i have to do exactly that- no excuses. i need to read like 200 more pages tonight.

so far this entry has been all complaining and genocide denial so i'm going to cut it with knitting and kittens. first, here's a picture of tavi in an awesome sweater (let's ignore the fact that kathleen hanna gave it to her):



all of my knitting dork friends are trying to figure out how to make a chart for that so we can all be huge copy cats of a 14 year old. granted, a super smart and sharp 14 year old who makes our 14 year old selves look like total posers. i definitely think that pattern would work well on a scarf.

in other news, the kitten i'm adopting is very cute. here's proof:



i'm going to have to look into teeny kitten accessories for her- like a collar tiny enough to fit her, a litter box (though she'll probably use a pizza box til she gets a little bigger), toyssssss, etc. i'm also going to shop around philly vets because mine is in the suburbs and it's sort of annoying to go there, and the little lady needs her vaccinations and needs to get spayed. ahhhh my baby. i hope pizza likes her.

i have to go get ready for a stupid meeting now. blehhhhh.

men like you can never change

man. my writing class. i'm not sure what's up, but like... everyone curses and criticizes the class and class material constantly in class and in our writings, and it's the weirdest classroom environment in the universe? i feel like i'm on the bad news bears.



in class we had to bring an extra copy of the essay we wrote and do peer review of other peoples' essays. we weren't allowed to edit the copy, we just had to make an outline of the paper from our point of view so they could review it and see if their paper was actually saying what they meant to say. i guess that's a useful exercise? the paper i got needed editing but since it wasn't my job, i didn't do it. it did say "huckleberrey finn," "huckleberry fin," and "hick finn" in it though.

i feel guilty or like i sound snobby (or worse, classist) about this but my class is comprised half of privileged ivy league snots and half adults who have been working in professional jobs for 5+ years.


some dunces

after class, i came home and typed up my peer review and... watched tv for like 4 hours. i was in a really thick haze of allergy medicine fog (how do people with allergies DO this every day?) and couldn't make myself pick up another book. today, i'm refocused- i'm going to:



1) re-write my essay based on my peer review
2) read more of that mahmood mamdani book at lunch
3) write a quick paragraph about whether or not the kent state shootings count as genocide (someone asked this in class so we have to write about what we think)
4) go to the green line after work WITHOUT MY LAPTOP and read more of that book

i think i scheduled my classes well- having tuesday and friday as no class days gives me a lot of time to work on homework and special projects and reading and stuff. oh, and my eye feels a lot better today- it's still itchy but it isn't swollen or red. maybe i'll take the opportunity to put my new sheets on tonight?

okay, time to get to work !

p.s. hannah sent me a video of the kitten playingggggg. i wish i knew how to post it !

walk the dinosaur

hey dudes ! i had a wonderful and very benadrylled weekend ! on friday, i came home and actually wrote my essay- i had to write an essay about huckleberry finn, and then write an essay about my essay where i went through every line and had to paraphrase each line (to say what it SAYS) and then explain what each line DOES. it wasn't as tedious as it sounds ! then i had to read a chapter of beyond the culture wars by gerald graff and do a SAYS/DOES outline for that. what a weird book- this is my first year back at school in a billion years and it is some like... weird academic-y jargon-y book about problems in academia. why would i care about that? i have no clue what he's even talking about. like, going to school to learn about going to school doesn't seem interesting to me.



the class is pretty rough. so far it is like... middle school type stuff, but the instruction is muddled and the assignments are tedious. i'm bummed, because i have a lot to learn about writing and i'm not sure i'm going to learn it in this (required) class. we have to do a class blog and i know that not everyone is a superstar blogger or whatever, but everyone's entries are so weird and tedious and are a mishmash of incomplete sentences. also even though they can be about ANYTHING, most people write about the class. i feel like a jerk complaining about it though !

on saturday, i went to hannah's to meet my new kitten !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! hannah found a teeny tiny baby kitten, and i get to take her home in 3 weeks. she's about 3 weeks old now (though she seems to be around 4 weeks developmentally and 3 weeks in size? so she may just be tiny). she is seriously like... the cutest kitten in the world. she put her paws on my face and nibbled on my chin and alksjdkaslks she's so cute. hannah is a saint for taking care of her !



after that, i went to target to get some qtips and new bedding and ended up running into jeanne, mike, ryann, and ned ! and then a few minutes later, benji ! it was pretty neat, except i was self-conscious about my eye and the fact that i was sort of covered in kitten pee. i got some bedding and some qtips and headed home, where i met up with mouse and benji (again !), fresh from their jiu jitsu lesson. i made them spaghetti with field roast sausages:



and mouse and i tried to sell benji on band of brothers. benji isn't a tv person but he's a cool human so he'd probably love band of brothers. i got to hang out with mouse a little too after benji left, which was nice because i don't get to see him as much because of school.

on sunnnnnday, i did some reading for my genocide class- this week we have to read saviors and survivors by mahmood mamdani. it's about darfur, and my professor said that she considers it to be genocide denial. so far, that seems pretty right on, but i have to claim ignorance here and say that i really don't know enough about darfur to know if what he's saying is completely preposterous.



i have a lot more reading to do, because i hope to write my paper for the class about genocide denial, so i think i need to actually stick to my plan of reading when i'm supposed to be reading ! after doing some reading, though, i went to jeanne and mike's house for fake thanksgiving ! ryann came too. we made quorn roast, gravy, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and brussels sprouts, and i brought a cherry pie and some pastries. the food was so good and i had the best time, and i'm glad i got to hang out with ryann again cause she's cool. also thanksgiving is the best possible meal of all time and i want to have it again right now?


someone else's vegan thanksgiving

what else? i'm off of work today because my eye totally sucks. benadryl made the swelling go down, but i didn't take it last night so i could get up for work today, and it came right back. the hydrocortisone my doctor suggested (did i mention that? my doctor suggested benadryl and hydrocortisone on friday for 3 days, and if it wasn't gone today, come back) seemed to make my face redder, and the really itchy spot is my tear duct. this really, really sucks.

what else? oh, in times of stress, i get fixated on stupid things. troll dolls. bill paxton. floaty pens. right now, it's, uh, how i met your mother. i will say right off- this show is not funny. it has a good cast (minus the main character, who is like jimmy fallon taped off the radio, and then someone made a tape of that tape, and so on and so on and so on) and good writers and almost good jokes, but the delivery of every line is so horrible, the laugh track is really weak and oddly placed, ugh. it's a TERRIBLE show. and yet i am downloading all five seasons and have bought some episodes on itunes.



- why would the main character's voice change as he aged so he turns into bob saget instead of having the same voice?
- how do two assholes in nyc afford such a HUGE apartment?
- how do they afford to go drinking every single night?
- why bother living in nyc if they don't go anywhere but their apartment and the bar directly downstairs?
- some of the stuff barney does is super sketchy/sexual assault-y. why are they friends with him? especially the women?
- who on earth would tell their children some of the stuff that goes on on this show? why would a child ever care how their parents met?
- why am i so attracted to jason segel?

these are questions i cannot answer. i hope this passes soon.

anywayyyyyy see you tomorrowwww

a race against the clock !

hayyyy. i have to start getting ready to go to the doctor at 10, so i have to MAKE THIS FAST ! my eye is getting progressively more swollen and itchy every day- like, it goes down by the end of the day with zyrtec eyedrops + zyrtec, but every day when i wake up it looks worse than the previous morning. today it's veryyyyyy swollen. if it's allergies, which everyone keeps saying it is, i'm obviously allergic to something in my room, because it gets horrible overnight. and maybe it's no coincidence that it's my left eye, and i sleep on my left side.



christina just said they might SWAB MY EYE ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

on wednesday, my writing class went okay- we were assigned a short paper to write over the weekend and another reading assignment, which should be fine, and we did group work, which was, as always, infuriating. the lady i got grouped with was super nice but she hadn't read huckleberry finn and hadn't done the reading for her class but was arguing with what i was saying based on what she thinks the book is about. buhhhhhhhh.

lasttttt night was my genocide class, and of course i loved it. we watched a christiane amanpour documentary for cnn called, scream bloody murder. it's available on youtube, and it's about the people who saw genocide happening and how no one listened to them. to break up the heartbreak and injustice, christiane interviewed everyone and seriously to every person was like, "would you say you... SCREAMED BLOODY MURDER?". also despite being so interesting, the last segment (part 14 if you're watching it on youtube) was pretty horrible and was about a hutu man apologizing to a tutsi woman for killing her family, conveniently leaving out the fact that the government required him to do so.



i'm so, so excited about this class. it's going to be tough because there's a tonnnnn of reading and a tonnnnnnn of writing, but it's so interesting and the classroom discussions are great. i want to talk way too much in class though so i'm going to have to curb that so other people can talk and so i'm not the older student who dominates the conversation and demands the professor's attention (aka the person i hateddddddd when i was 18).

oh, so far, the worst thing about going back to school, by far, is christians in the classroom. i don't think that religious people realize how boring their religion is to other people and how alienating it is when they talk to a group of people from other cultures/countries/religious groups in a university setting about their faith like it's an absolute given and absolute truth. like, the only book you like is the bible cause you DON'T LIKE FICTION? cooooool. you don't worry too much about the problems with the genocide convention that hinder prevention, international intervention, etc. because the victims will go to heaven and god will judge the perpetrators? that's so interesting and also like, almost sociopathic. jesus is probably rolling over in his grave right now because you're using him as an excuse to not think critically about the world around you.



okay, gotta go get ready to go to the doctor. i'm gonna go to work afterward i think, if only because i left my school books at work.

this weekend: studying, studying, studying, going to target to get allergy pillow covers (if the doctor says this is allergies), making dinner with mouse tomorrow, studying, having vegetarian thanksgiving with jeanne and ryann on sunday? and also possibly meeting a kitten to adopt (i don't want to get my hopes up yet !)

we are 139

yesterday was my 138th entry ! hayyy.

this morning my eyes were so swollen and i looked like this guy:



christina put zyrtec eyedrops in my eyes, which was super relieving, and i took a zyrtec- the alavert i was taking just wasn't cutting it, and i feel a little better, but i also had to drink a 32 oz iced coffee to combat it and now i feel like, Very Insane.

the bigggggg news is that weirdo's owners found out we had her, so we had to bring her back to them. it was a bummer because she's back outside already. the cat seriously has zero street smarts and is constantly almost getting hit by cars. i guess they'll be sorry when she's dead? we'll miss you, weirdo (and i reserve the right to name any future cat i get "weirdo II" with a silent "II").



at least jeanne got to meet her ! jeanne came over and petted her forever, and then we ordered delicious thai food. i had crazy allergy head/face so i didn't feel like going anywhere, so we hung out at my house and talked. jeanne is coooooooool. after she left, i read some of huckleberry finn. wow, huckleberry finn is a total sociopath ! i remember his exploits sounding a lot more fun and clever when i was a kid and now i'm like, "what a maniac." i'm kind of kidding, but kind of not kidding too. reading nothing but huckleberry finn and a million genocide books and articles this semester is probably going to turn me into an empty shell of a person who eats a lot of corn pone.



i got some yarn in the mail, too, to make baby stuff for some babies ! first, i'm making mouse's nephew scottie a tiny little mailman replica cardigan (using a patch from one of mouse's old work shirts), and this pattern:



and knitpicks worsted swish superwash in dark navy:



and i'm going to make the presto chango cardigan for helen's upcoming baby



with garnet heather swish worsted yarn, which looks a little like this but is more vibrant with black heathering:



and these faux jet buttons from etsy:



i'm pretty excited to do some baby knitting, since it seems like things will knit up fast and i have a little while before i need to finish, but i ammmmmm a little worried about knitting time vs. school time. i barely knitted anything over summer, but knitting in the summer also kind of sucks. oh, i also bought these buttons on etsy, for use with... some other baby thing? maybe a fancy baby sweater?



they seem too beautiful to waste on a baby (i love babies, but they don't know an ornate button from a shit-lined shoe) but they're also super tiny and i think they'd get lost on any kind of adult garment. i just need to meet a really elegant and fancy and worldly baby. maybe a millionaire baby? dannielynn birkhead? hillary swank?



i guess i should get to work- i'm going to read huckleberry finn on my lunch break, and do a little reading for my genocide class. i have to write a response paper for that class, which is intimidating because i don't really know what that is. here's what the professor wrote us:

I encourage everyone to try out a response paper for Thursday. This will help you codify the definitional questions involved in the study of genocide and perhaps clarify some deeper thoughts you have on the subject. It will also give you a chance to see how these response papers work. As I mentioned last Thursday, guiding questions will be posted each week. Feel free to use them as a guide when writing your response paper. I have found that the most successful response papers engage one question or a set of closely related questions in a sustained way. Response papers are semi-formal--please correct spelling and grammar before handing them in! You should also feel free to draw on personal experience, and by all means use the first person.

hopefully this all works out and it isn't graded too harshly- we have 13 weeks in class and only have to write 10 papers, so i could skip it, but i want all the feedback i can get, so i'm going to try my best and try not to be too worried about "doing it wrong."

okay cya !

the winds of quiet change

mannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn i woke up this morning and my eyes were dry, swollen, and itchy. i've never had this happen ever, but i've deduced that it's probably allergies? but allergies to WHAT ! i'll never know. i'm going to die.

hayyyy. so last night was my first writing seminar and... i'm underwhelmed. the professor was very nice, but there was a weird exchange at one point- i missed the first class, and we were supposed to bring laptops to do a writing diagnostic (which just involved... typing in a word document? why couldn't this be done on paper?), but i didn't have mine with me because i wasn't at the first class. i had to use hers, and we had this exchange:

her: please don't look at any of my documents
me: i wasn't planning on it !
her: good. that would be very disappointing



it seems like it will be a pretty easy class (knock on wood) so i'm not too worried. what i ammmmm worried about is that i bought my textbooks on amazon (because they were... $111 cheaper) and i may not get them by tomorrow. i really hope i do- amazon prime hasn't failed me yet. in the meantime, i may stop by the last word after work and see if they have a used copy of the huckleberry finn book (which is not just huckleberry finn) that i can take a look at.



i have like.. nothing else interesting to say because i'm hungry, dying of allergies, and dying of death, and am miserable. my morning was obliterated by a stupid meeting, and also i just realized i have to read like 238293088923 pages for genocide class !!!

p.s. remind me to talk about knitting tomorrow

shyness is nice and shyness can stop you

what a wonderful weekend ! friday was jeanne's art show at benna's and it was phenomenal ! jess and laszlo came down from new york to go with us. everything was so beautiful in person and a million billion people came ! unfortunately, kat bought the sirin, but i bought a print of it ! and also bought prints of like.. every other possible thing. christina bought this one:



it was the most fun- jeanne's art looked so great and it was so impressive. there were a ton of people so i kept getting like social anxiety horror feelings, but i made myself stay inside and talk to new people and act fairly normal, though at one point i almost reached out and stroked a girl's hair? we were packed in like sardines and my brain misfired and was like, "if someone is this close to me it means we're on hair petting terms". luckily i didn't do it ! there were a million people there that i know and kinda know, and i got to meet nate's brother (finally) which was exciting !

after the show, we tried to go to the pope and were REBUFFED, so we went to the pathetic adobe which is always empty. i split a pitcher of apple margaritas with someone and got instantly hammered. p.s. apple margaritas taste like garbage. i actually got to talk to labuda for awhile, which is a feat (since i never leave my house) and got to talk to ryann and ned (ryann, ned, and kat are the friends of jeanne's that i'm trying to pokemon) !



on saturday, jess, laszlo, christina, and i tried to go to mi lah (not to be confused with my lai), a vegetarian restaurant in center city with a really amazing looking brunch menu. we got there at 2:30 (brunch is from 10-3) and.. were told that the kitchen was closed. we ended up going to monk's since we were already on 16th street, and we had a good time. i wish they lived here, but i'll have to settle for emailing jess and getting a weird al bro tat with laszlo.



when we came back, there was a beautiful stray cat on our porch and we petted her before dropping jess and laszlo at the bus station. then we went to whole foods, where i got a vegan carrot cake for carol's party that night ! when we got home we couldn't resist the beautiful stray anymore and i decided to take her ! so, if everything works out with her health / her relations with pizza, i'm going to keep her. her name is weirdo and she's really super tiny (like 6lbs) and very sweet and nice and has big eyes and a teeny mouth !



god she's great ! she's so soft ! and tiny ! after getting her situated in christina's room, mouse picked me up and we went to carol's house. i only got to see carol for a little bit, but i got to pet three great cats and hang out with jeanne and look at all of carol's stuff in her bedroom- she's the only person i know who has a kurt russell action figure.



i also saw her lil wayne - the carter record's spine and thought it was a tia carrere album about wayne. everyone was hanging out on the roof, and i was wearing a dress and didn't really know anyone and didn't feel comfortable like, awkwardly climbing out there and showing everyone my vagina so that was sort of a bummer. we left around 10:30 and went back to my house and tried to find videos of dusty's love on the internet (dusty's love being a saturday night live thing mouse is obsessed with, about a blind girl played by sarah michelle gellar who is in love with a disgusting alien who eats horses?). SURPRISINGLY, we came up empty-handed !

on sunday, i tried to do some reading for that social contract class but it was so oppressive and uninteresting that christina and i cleaned the livingroom as a distraction. after assessing the reading for the class, though, i decided that that class would be too hard to take in conjunction with my genocide class, and i dropped it. i signed up instead for a mandatory writing seminar (which i have to take at penn- no previous composition or english course i took can be used to fulfill that requirement) about huckleberry finn.


i'm your huckleberry

What is a literary education good for, anyway? What makes a Great Book? In this class we will look at the debates and crises that have shaped literary study over the twentieth century. Our entry point into these controversies will be Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which has been alternately celebrated as a “Great American Novel” and trashed as a childish, racist, and outdated relic. As a critical community, the class will engage with debates over this novel and reflect on our own literary educations—what they have been and what they should be. Students will write, peer review, and revise several short essays throughout the semester. They will also keep a class journal, in which they will write informally both inside and outside of class.

the class meets on monday and wednesday, but only for 1.5 hours, which shouldn't be toooooo bad. hopefully i can handle it with the genocide class !

oh, mouse came over to to meet the kitty and to copy some good music from christina (i also might do that soon). tonight is my first meeting of the aforementioned writing class and i'm nervous and excited. i hope i can do it !

okay talk to you later.