i will follow you into the dark

mannnn. not sure how to start this entry, because i really don't want to write it, but weirdo's kidney's failed suddenly on sunday and she had to be put to sleep. she was fine on saturday- playful and energetic and annoying and cute, but she didn't finish her dinner. on sunday morning when i left, she was playful but sleepy (kitten attacked my hand when i petted her goodbye), and on sunday evening when i came home, she was completely lethargic and her gums were white. i didn't notice anything strange at first because she was kind of a little floppy noodle cat when she was tired anyway, but after about a half hour of that, we started to get worried.

mouse dropped me off at the emergency vet, and they took her right back. the first time the vet talked to me, we talked about what i should feed her when i got home (i transitioned her to regular cat food, but they suggested i keep her on kitten food for awhile), and then she went to check her bloodwork results. when she came back, she was carrying a box of tissues.


the last picture i took of her

the vet said that it looked like she had congenital kidney problems and at that point, she was so sick that there was nothing she could do. christina came and met me there, and we got to say goodbye to her (and sob and use the entire fucking box of tissues) and hold her and pet her and tell her how much everyone loved her. i had to hold her while she was put to sleep, and she went in about ten seconds.

this... fucking sucks? i don't really know how else to talk about it. i really, really, really miss her and i hate that this happened. like, on saturday specifically i was thinking about what she'd be like when she grew up- any time i picked her up and rested her head on my chest she'd fall asleep, and i was wondering if she'd still do that when she was big.

bleh. what a great little friend.

p.s. christina has been really amazing throughout all of this- i know she loved weirdo just as much as me, but she's been super supportive and great and funny and caring. she also made a donation to citykitties in weirdo's name.
p.p.s. i had a great thanksgiving weekend filled with terrific people who love me and weird stuff and maybe i'll write about that later this week. right now i'm pretty bummed.

cool thoughts on the present situation

first ! christine, brooke, and i started our history blog, cool thoughts. the name is based on a document brooke and i saw at the benjamin franklin underground museum called cool thoughts on the present situation of our public affairs (authored by one benjamin franklin, alias mrs. silence dogood), and the blog is woefully located on tumblr because the name "cool thoughts" is literally taken everywhere else, and is mostly parked domains or blogs of like, "confucious say..." shit and doors quotes. alas ! anyway, the purpose of the blog is for us to post anything we are reading about or interested in throughout history, in any format, whenever we want. if you'd like to contribute something (anything !), please send it to coolthoughts@nervous.org.



one of my main goals here is to get comfortable talking about things i know about< without the crippling fear of being wrong or considered "not smart enough"- this is a problem many people have, i'm sure, but women specifically are made to feel intellectually inferior or like they have to apologize for or soften their opinions. it may not seem like i have a big problem with this if you know me, but it's something i struggle with every day- especially in regard to my lack of formal education.

what else ! i've been taking an ill-advised break from reading for the past few days because my brain needed a break, which means i'm going to have to really and sincerely bust ass all weekend to get everything done. i have a research proposal, a few essays, and a rough draft for my genocide paper due. i'm actually waiting for my professor's feedback for the rough draft- she's really awesome but can be a little slow with stuff over e-mail, and our class meeting is canceled this week. anyway, i've been mostly farting around watching simpsons dvds, and it's been... heavenly.


i only have seasons 5-9

i also ended up breaking down and buying cataclysm, the next world of warcraft expansion. i am waffling about whether or not i want to play- like, i just don't have time for wow anymore with school, and i have mixed feelings about the new 10 man raiding structure. like, i love the dudes (and two women) i play with, but i often found myself being the 11th man when 10 mans were forming up previously. i'm not the most amazing player, but i was better than some other people who were chosen, and that was because i had a lot of personality conflicts with some shitty random norms in the guild (like a handful of idiot privilege denyin' dudes who wanted to be able to call women bitches and stuff). luckily those dudes were sort of phased out or alienated (by me !) so there's a small chance things will be different now, but who knows? yesterday was a patch day, and the world was ripped apart and orgrimmar was redesigned, and everything honestly looks pretty cool. i also saved the name astralweeks for a goblin shaman. sigh. i really like this fucking game, who am i kidding.



what else ! oh ! nick and sandi are coming today ! sandi told me not to eat anything in anticipation of a family dinner? which is exciting and also easy to do because i'm only at work for 3 hours today and i forgot to bring lunch and also i have zero groceries that aren't thanksgiving ingredients (actually i have some trader joe's burritos i guess). i'm excited to see them because it's been figuratively forever. also i get to bro down with christina, who just got back from san francisco.

my plans for the break? cooking, hanging out, thanksgiving with jeanne and mike, reading, writing, agonizing, procrastinating, simpsons, history, internet. i gotta get some work done in my last 30 minutes at work, though, so.. ttyl. happy thanksgiving !

he knows where she is

hollllllllyyyyy shit ! everyone is so fucking annoying this morning ! my coworkers will not stop fucking talking to each other ! guys, shut up ! it's fucking monday ! shut up ! stop talking ! that said, we had a staff breakfast this morning and they got vegetarian sausage just for me, but i'm not sure it was worth it i'm currently on hour two of breakfast being THE MOST INTERESTING FUCKING THING TO EVER HAPPEN that everyone can't stop fucking talking about !



i'm so reluctant to do anything today that i've been read the wikipedia entry for vladimir putin's dog for like 15 minutes.

so ! the weekend ! on friday, i came home and farted around and went to bed super early (midnight, which is early for me), because i had a day of exciting errands planned ! but i was incredibly exhausted all day and ended up... sleeping until 2pm. i didn't even take a shower or get dressed until like... 7? i had a runny nose and headache and was sure i was getting sick, but i think i just needed water and caffeine. i met up with mouse, benji, nate, and anna for all-you-can-eat ethiopian at ethio cafe, a new ethiopian restaurant directly next door to the one i usually go to.



the staff was super nice, and they specifically referred to everything as "vegan," and the food was good, but i can't eat all that much ethiopian food. a regular entree at abyssinia (the place next door) is the same price, and i probably eat the same amount both ways. i may continue to just go to abyssinia, though i feel guilty cause the women running this place were so attentive and sweet, and the quality of food was not appreciably different.

after dinner, mouse came over and let me windbag him with my incomplete knowledge of genocide- it was a very interesting role reversal, because usually HE is the windbag. it felt like how it probably feels when those high powered businessmen on craigslist have to dress like a baby and get spanked to have an orgasm ! i didn't have an orgasm though, i guess. maybe mouse did, i forgot to ask.



on sunday morning, i woke up and met mouse and kev for breakfast at green line, where we had bagels and coffee. i love when jesse (and patchie) are working because they make the best lattes. i love when eric is working too because he's funny and has a great beard, but he makes coffee drinks that actually taste like coffee which isn't really my m.o. it was nice to see kev and catch up, because i haven't seen him in a million years ! after breakfast, i got a car and went to whole foods and got cat food. i'm preparing my menu for our delicious friendsgiving at jeanne's house- she and mike are getting back from romania right before, so we are going to have thanksgiving at their house (plus her friend alexis who i am super super excited to meet will be there and cooking !). here's what i'm making (vegetarian versions of all):



vegetarian ham ! i'm going to make an apple cider/brown sugar/mustard glaze, which i don't usually use a recipe for and just WING.



caramlized onion and cornbread stuffing



roasted potatoes, carrots, parsnips, and brussels sprouts



orange honey cranberry sauce



mini orange chocolate chunk cakes (jeanne's will be an orange pecan cake since she doesn't like chocolate !)

anyway, after shopping i came home and relaxed and didn't do any school work and felt okay about that. i got through a whole lot of simpsons episodes this weekend- first i flagellated myself with DVR'd recent episodes and then i rewarded myself by watching season 6.


no, you owe ME $900 !

my goals right now are to get through this week at work (2.5 days !), get through class tonight, finish my essays for writing class, and write my paper for genocide class. my BIG paper. it's going to be a super fucking busy holiday ! also, brooke, christine, and i are starting a history blog together and i need to work on that !

p.s. christina gets back from SF tonight and i can't wait to hugggggg her

i'll never tell

dudes. i'm so far ahead on my reading for genocide class ! and by "ahead" i mean i am exactly where i should be. i've gotten into the habit of procrastinating all week and then panicking and trying to read everything/write everything wednesday night or thursday at lunch, and right now i read a whole book and one chapter and just need to read an article and another chapter. i'm psyched to read the article because my professor wrote it and i think she's a genius.

i went on a really exciting shopping spree yesterday, in which i purchased mostly books for $0.01 on amazon and a pair of sensible shoes. books first !


mass rape, ed. andrea stiglmayer


rape warfare by beverly allen


gender & catastrophe, ed. rohit lentin


a problem from hell: america in the age of genocide by samantha power


eichmann in jerusalem: a report on the banality of evil by hannah arendt


regarding the pain of others by susan sontag

remember how like five months ago i read nothing but young adult novels? most of these are either for the paper i'm writing or have been recommended to me or cited in several other things i've read. this should be a super fun thanksgiving !

i also uh, got a pair of saddle shoes. my friend sarah got a pair of bass enfields in brown and i decided to give up and be a total herb. i hope they're comfortable and don't look weird on my big, impressive feet (i had to put "impressive" in there so it didn't sound like i was disparaging my feet- they're useful and i'm glad they're big, for balance !)



what else? yesterday i went to penn's library for the first REAL time- i've had to look at periodicals there before, and use computer stuff, but i've never really gone um, into the stacks. i actually started panicking a little bit because the library is so fucking big. the library is like.. a block long, and there's just shelf after shelf after shelf of books ! that seems like it would be a total paradise for a terminal bookworm but it was so empty and so big and i felt like a monster was going to start chasing me or a creepy person would appear and say "may i help you" and startle me (both equally scary to me).



that's just in one direction and it's just as long in the other direction and there's like 6 floors of that !!!!! scariest. also it was full of young rich teenagers which is scary for other reasons.

when i got home, we attempted to do ICC, but it didn't work out- some people were having problems zoning in (oh i just started talking about warcraft like it's a real thing and you guys care about it) and some people were grumpy, so we postponed it until thursday. i did some pvp with gavin, josh, and rachel, but i really suck at pvp and mostly just wanted to talk to them cause i like them. and get some poison on some jerks.


harridan

so today- work, writing essays, class. reading. i'm meeting a classmate about... something? at 2pm today. she said we should "get together" and she said it with such authority that i was like, "oh, okay" except i don't know why we would get together. we're both pretty far behind in our writing class, so i think we may have to team up to peer review each others' late work. i was just about to write out a rant about this class but i realized that i already posted that rant on monday. in the beginning of the semester, i couldn't understand my classmates' ire and lack of cooperativeness and now i'm just like, "GOD FUCK THIS CLASS I FUCKING HATE IT, GODDDD FUCK IT I HATE IT."

p.s. i hate it for real.
p.p.s. i HEARD TELL that we may only have to take one critical writing seminar now instead of 2 to graduate? the women in my class were talking about it but i was half-listening, because the class is sucking the life out of me and i can't even make myself listen to gossip.

yes we arrre, yes we arre

this was a long fucking weekend ! but guess what guys ! i actually got some work done. not as much as i should have, but it's a vast improvement over previous weeks.

on friday, i did some grocery shopping and read half of s.: a novel about the balkans by slavenka drakulic. it's not a long book, and i probably could've finished it, but i felt like i was having a fucking panic attack halfway through and i had to put it down.



okay, i understand that i'm writing a paper about genocide and rape and sexual violence, so this stuff isn't exactly avoidable, and i should steel myself for it. however, i don't necessarily see the merit of reading a super super in depth descriptive novel about how rape makes you feel. like, on the one hand, of course it's important to understand and appreciate the horror of what happens in these situations, but the book was pretty vague on facts and high on emotional response, and an unfortunately high number of women are already personally aware of these feelings. like, not comparing and weighting experiences against each other or anything (since systematic rape during war in camps set up for rape is obviously not the situation in which most women are assaulted), but i don't necessarily think that it's important to make undergrad students feel, experience, or relive rape and the trauma that follows rape in order to teach them about rapes that have occurred (especially since undergrad males across the country are doing such a great job of making sure college-age women are aware of them). at the very least, i think it was kind of irresponsible to assign the book without a disclaimer, as most of the other material we're reading is straight statistics or dry facts. i know it's a class about genocide, and that i'm going to have to read many, many, many horrific things, but i think rape is unique because it's so personally relatable and familiar to so many women, no matter the context it occurs in.*



it's sort of hard to switch to light-hearted stuff after this ! but i need to ! for my brain ! christina's friend chris stayed over that night, and in the morning we all met up with mouse (whose name, if you didn't know, is ALSO chris), and got ethiopian breakfast and got coffee at green line. jesse made me this beautiful mean latte:



and i got some reading done and eavesdropped on people ! on saturday night, mouse and i went up to his mom's so i could hang out with scottie the baby (his nephew). ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh god he is the cutest fucking baby ! daisy the dog (and rookie the dog) was also there, and she seemed... a little jealous of the attention the baby was getting.



we had a great time though. scottie just learned how to do that buhbuhbuhbuhbuhbuhbuh thing where you put your finger in front of your mouth and make your lips vibrate. also he just laughs randomly and it's really cool ! i also wore my hair down so he could pull it a little and he was psyched. after that, i came home and read more- i finished s., and i read part of the chapter about bosnia-herzegovina in our textbook.

sundayyyyy i went to trader joe's to get stuff for lunch (which i forgot to bring to work today !) and mostly chilled out with christina and the cats. christina cooked a bunch of delicious food and let me eat some of it, and i got sort of panicky about my writing class essays and only finished one. i really really need to get my shit together ASAP so i get an okay grade in this class. i just like... can't make myself care about it, and the instructions are all so muddled and weird. i think it speaks volumes that i'm getting As on every single paper in a 400 level history class but doing subpar work in a 100 level required writing class. i'm not trying to downplay my responsibility here, since i've been a pretty crappy student, but it's a pretty crappy program. even with a good instructor who's doing her best with the material she has to teach, it's incomprehensible. hateeee it.

um, what else? i got my eyebrows waxed on friday and they gave me a free nail polish because one time in the winter they were closing and couldn't do my eyebrows. they've already given me a free eyebrow wax, a discounted eyebrow wax, and a different nail polish for this same incident, but i'm not complaining. nail polish is my one stereotypically feminine vice- in middle and high school i painted my nails a different color every fucking day even though i didn't brush my hair and i wore old man's pants and t-shirts from the flea market. the color i got is um, lucerne-tainly look marvelous? which is like a gun metal with teeny glitter.



oh yeah. i possibly registered for spring classes? they aren't on my schedule now but christina thinks that they're off while they're working on registrations and crap. the classes i selected are:

Course title: Elementary German II
Course description: A continuation of GRMN 101. The student's expression and comprehension are expanded through the study of literature and social themes.

Course title: Creative Non-Fiction Writing: Perspectives in Race, Class, and Gender
Course description: A workshop course in the writing of expository prose. Assignments include informal as well as formal essays, covering such topics as autobiography, family history, review, interview, analysis of advertising and popular culture, travel, work, and satire.

imaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagine how fucking annoying that second class will be ! imagine ! i can't fucking wait. i think my plan is to see how the creative non-fiction classes are and then take a couple of them, because it will come in handy for history windbagging.

anyway, this was a pretty good weekend. my plan for this week is to get caught up with my writing class (like tonight, or tomorrow) and get more into my genocide research for my big paper. luckily these idiots are committed to helping me:



i swear this blog will get interesting again once school is over, and then become not-interesting again when school starts again.

* please note that i'm talking about teaching this material in a specific context- an american ivy league university, undergrad class, in 2010, with a specific student population. i know that there are many, many places and times in history where other factors of genocide besides rape would be familiar and palpable and real to people learning about them

watching the whites of your eyes turn red

saddest life of just monday and friday bloggggggggs !

yesterday was, to say the least, a shitty day. i spent most of the day reading about rape and genocide and war, gendered violence during genocide and war, how/why rape is used as a tool to control and terrorize and destroy women during war, etc., which was rough, and then went to genocide class (which is a great class but always, uh, a downer?) and thennnnnnnnnn on my walk home, two dudes started saying weird fucked up shit about my body ! generally i don't react to stuff like this, but i told them to fuck off, and one "jokingly" said to the other, "we should rape her"



i wasn't scared that they would do it- it was obviously a hilarious joke meant to intimidate and scare me, but at the same time like... howwww fuckingggg depresssinggggg that men know the weight a threat like that carries, and use that threat because they understand how that would terrify and intimidate and demean a woman ! misogyny, amirite??!?!! i have a lot more to say about this i guess but it's making me depressed to think about it.

on to less depressing news- genocide class was good last night. we covered cambodia and argentina, and watched the documentary new year baby, about a woman who was born in a refugee camp after the DK were overthrown- she goes back to cambodia with her parents and finds out the truth about what happened to them (and about her siblings). it was a great documentary, funny and sweet and gutwrenching and moving, and of course i was the only one crying (my professor cried a little too). this week we read why did they kill?: cambodia in the shadow of genocide by alexander hinton



which was really readable (except for the part where he talks about eating someone's liver for like 6 pages), but the big thing for me this week was the article we had to read, "political violence in argentina and its genocidal characteristics" by daniel feierstein. i don't want to windbag too much about it, but the conclusion of the article absolutely floored me and helped me focus my research proposal a little. he was discussing the problem of calling the holocaust and the political violence in argentina in the late 70s/early 90s both genocides or genocidal, and made the point that he wasn't saying they were exactly the same or equal:

However, using the same concept does indeed mean that we suggest the existence of a connecting thread which makes reference to a technology of power in which the “denial of others” reaches its peak: their material disappearance (the disappearance of their bodies) and their symbolic disappearance (that of the memory of their existence). A technology of power in which, unlike war, this disappearance has an effect on the survivors: the denial of their own identity as the synthesis of a being and an action; the disappearance of a given form of articulation, precisely, between a way of being and a way of doing (a particular type of identity which is defined, like all others, through a particular way of living). That is the reason why the specificity of the term genocide appears only in the middle of the 20th century (and, in any case, the specificity of its historical practice towards the end of the 19th century), to designate a disappearance which exceeds the extermination resulting from a war, because it does not end with the deaths that it generates, but begins with them.

my paper is (loosely) going to be about rape and gendered violence against women during genocide and the way that these things are truly genocidal (something that most people associate with murder, and quantify with a body count) precisely because of the effect that they have on the living survivors of a targeted group, and his quote sort of articulated how i feel about... what i want to say. i've been thinking about it since we watched my neighbor, my killer in class, where several women who survived rape and witnessing the murders of their partners and family and children repeatedly referred to the genocidaires as "our killers," even though they were alive.

um, enough about genocide. and rape. i bought some boots? this is also kind of a bummer because i betrayed my "i don't buy accessories from stores that don't sell plus size clothing" thing to get them, and i'll probably have a crisis of conscience and return them.



they're backordered for now butttttt i will keep you guys posted on how well i stick to my guns here.

um, what else? reading for school, writing for school, sleeping, eating canned soup from cvs, petting some cats. weirdo has been valiantly helping me study:



sorry this entry is so disjointed, i'm exhausted and antsy and stressed right now, and i uh, had a crappy day yesterday. this weekend = grocery shopping, reading, mouse? maybe getting to bro down with mouse's nephew?

p.s. right now for class i'm reading s: a novel about the balkans by slavenka drakulic, and this week is gendercide week, soooooo this will be a grim week.
p.p.s. yesterday i bought used copies of the books: rape warfare, mass rape, and gender & catastrophe for my paper. seriously, this will be a really grim week.

i'd love to love you, lover

dudes ! dudes ! i seriously did zero work this weekend and i'm freaking out ! i don't know what's wrong with me ! usually i am a master procrastinator, which means i procrastinate but am able to get things done by a deadline, but i really dropped the ball. i think my big problem here is my writing assignment, because nothing on earth interests me less. to be fair, though, i'm behind on a genocide assignment too, and nothing interests me more.


the most interesting search result for "procrastination." poor guy.

on friday, i...? i'm not sure. i got a car to go to whole foods, but i didn't realize it was like 9:30 at night, so i ended up dropping my laundry off and wandering around cvs for awhile. i'd had 9 shots of espresso at that point so i was mentally insane, and i stopped at a light next to a giant mcrib billboard and was totally perplexed by it. now, i have eaten a mcrib before ! i know about mcribs ! i call those morningstar riblets 'mcribs'. furthermore, the billboard featured a giant picture of a mcrib. despite all of that information, i stared at it for the duration of a light and could not figure out what the sign said. i was like, "m.. crib? m.c. rib? m crib?" please note that i also know what mcdonalds is and am familiar with their naming convention.



on saturday, i cleaned my room a little (not totally) and went to the green line to study. this did not go well, but i had a wonderful time hanging out by myself listening to weird al. also, patchie came in and hung out with me and it was the first time i ever hung out with her FOR REAL, and she is fucking cool. she let me windbag her about genocide and we talked about what a dork god is. mouse met up with us after that and he and i went grocery shopping and came back to my house to watch the masque of mandragora. it was awesome to hang out and watch doctor who with him (and eat the thanksgiving food i bought for $1000000 from whole foods' hot bar !) because we haven't had time to hang out for real in weeks.



i have the novelization of this story (because i suck), and i'd always pronounced it man-dra-GOR-uh but it turns out it's man-DRAG-or-uh ! fascinating ! basically a ball of energy and that dr. doom guy were going to prevent the renaissance from happening through fake doctor who science and some people got caught on fire and the doctor stole two horses. not too bad? i have specific interest in people getting all burnt up in a movie (especially if a charred skeleton is left behind !) so i was satisfied, but mouse was disappointed that the doctor didn't kick anyone in the nuts. after mouse went home i stayed up late and accidentally ended up watching a softcore hbo porno called "cougar school" which had serious script problems.

on sunday, christina invited me to get ethiopian breakfast with her and amber !!! i had to study, but i realized that i wouldn't have actually studied if i didn't go, so i went with them. amber is the best- she's so funny and cool and it's great to have other friends who understand anxiety junk. neither of them had ever been to abyssinia for breakfast/brunch before and they loved it as much as i do ! sigh. amber got the ye'inqulal tibias (which is scrambled eggs with cool spices and hot peppers and tomatoes and onions), and christina had her first bowl of foul <3<3<3<3<3 i also got dabo fitfit for all of us, which is just... french bread ripped up and soaked in a spicy tomato and onion sauce, which sounds super simple but is like one of the best things i've ever tasted.



we got coffee at the green line after that and had a wonderful time talking and sitting in the window seat. eric was working and he told me he saw me on ravelry, which is probably like... the least embarrassing time anyone has commented on my internet activity. i trieddddd to do some work when they left but i got caught in a weird youtube loop where i tried to find every instance of cookie monster wearing clothes (healthy food rap, various monsterpiece theaters, etc.). jesse and her friends also came by for a minute and entertained me, so i gave up and spent $40 at cvs buying like, lipsmackers and arm hair bleach.


i'm beggin' of you, please don't burn my arms

at hoooooome i tried again to do some reading, but i ended up talking to christina about the x-files, fucking with the cats, posting romantic stuff on facebook, and re-organizing my itunes. i did like one third of one assignment at some point (which took like 20 minutes, leading me to believe that i could've done all that work in 2 hours or so !).

sooooo today i have a bunch of work stuff to do, and i'm going to try for a miracle as far as getting school stuff done at lunch. i need to take a trip to the mouse-infested library (i mean that in a good way, because i have positive feelings about vermin) at some point today too because i need to bring shit to class. ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh i have so much to do !

p.s. i'm taking a mental health day tomorrow !

know that i'm important in your life

seriously next week i'm gonna stop drinking so much coffee because i want coffee all the time and my mouth always tastes like shit anddddddddd i spend $4-$16 a fucking day on coffee !

the only reason i'm updating my blog today is because i have a research proposal and a paper to write today, as well as a chapter and the rest of my stalin book to read. i woke up at 6am today intending to study, but instead i laid in bed for an hour watching rancid and no doubt videos and stewing about what posers they are. i don't have much to say about rancid besides the fact that they're nerds and i'm embarrassed for them, but seriously like... gwen stefani is such a pud. i cannot stand the awkwardness of that album being all about her mooning over SOMEONE IN THE BAND. why was everyone afraid to tell them that that was weird and that it made everyone uncomfortable??? i'm convinced that the only reason that they sold all those albums is because everyone was too wimpy to tell them that. i've never met a single person who ever liked no doubt but i think my friend type might be "people who never liked no doubt".


this was NEVER cool

not much going on this week besides studying. i've been at the green line basically every day, and i haven't made that much headway. i'm pretty behind in my writing class, but i had a good meeting with my professor and i'm feeling more confident. i know i'm a decent writer, but the critical writing program here is super fucking rigid and we have to follow pretty asinine guidelines (written by a person who legitimately, from her instructions, appears to be some kind of rude maniac?) and i was worried that i was failing to follow the guidelines. i was at ease during the meeting though because the basement of van pelt library is infested with mice so i got to look at a bunch of cool mice during the meeting !



what else? blehhh i upgraded my cellphone. after breaking three blackberries and not being eligible for an upgrade, i got an iphone 3G for $99 (since they were trying to get rid of them) a couple of years ago. i basically hated it the entire time and it became basically non-functional when the iphone 4 upgrades came out. i figured i would always like, get some other phone when it was time to get a new phone- i used paul's droid thing in california and it was awesome ! buttttttt i ended up getting an iphone 4 and it's actually a decent phone so far. maybe it's just because my phone has been non-functional since the summer so this seems great in comparison, though. whatever, i feel like a disgusting yuppie asshole jerk and i am ashamed that i have a phone that a poor child probably assembled. what apps should i get?


i'm being flippant but i really hate that it's 2010 and i'm posting in a blog about iphones

i also don't want to make this a list of stuff i bought but i got a necklace on etsy made of a deer's rib from a found carcass, and i've had the most annoying conversations about it at work.



everyone keeps saying that it's "sad"? like, i guess it's technically sad that everything on earth doesn't live forever, but like... all of them eat meat? how is that less sad than acknowledging the fact that animals having skeletons ! i am so insulated by my social circle that i always feel like a fucking teenager at work when anything related to animals and vegetarianism comes up. it is so fucking bizarre to be almost 30 years old and still have to have this conversation or have people who are 30+ years old be like, "MMMM MEAT I COULD NEVER BE VEGETARIAN OH SORRY I'M EATING MEAT ARE YOU OFFENDED WHY ARE YOU VEGETARIAN IS THAT VEGETARIAN??? WHAT'S IN THAT??? MMMMM MEAT" to me. i'm not offended by people eating meat. i do not care that other people eat meat. i do not want to have philosophical conversations about not eating meat. but anyway, no, my deer rib necklace isn't sad, it makes me look like a cool witch. and not a fucking wiccan, a witch ! fuck you !

this is the worst blog entry i've ever written. back to JSTOR or what the fuck ever.

i know the nervous walkin'

dudes ! last night i got two hours of sleep and i feel suspiciously okay? this morning was a little rough, especially because it's too cold for bare legs and having a kitten try to climb your stockings is really fucking annoying ! but also cool. ideally i would be watching her climb someone ELSE's stockings, but this is ultimately okay.

so ! this weekend ! on friday i went to the green line after work, where i am permanently installed until this semester is over, and drank like, one metric cornholio of soy lattes. i barely got any reading done (of course), but my friend gavin (who is cool and GENERALLY has good taste in everything) recommended that i listen to the pj harvey album that came out in 2000. i've sort of pretended that nothing came out after to bring you my love, but i figured i'd give it a shot.



welllllllllllll i fucking love it. it has some low points, and lacks uh, some of her balls? how do i express this without using male genitalia as a sign of courage? and the whole thing is new york city themed which i don't care about, but it's is a great album. the first time i heard pj harvey i could tell that everything she was talking about was feelings i didn't understand yet and like, i guess she's still doing that. i figured i would've acquired some emotional depth by now, but here we are. fart !

after that, i decided to go be the person i pretend i am and went to fiume (the bar above abyssinia) BY MYSELF and sipped scotch while reading:



the bartender was very helpful in windbagging me about scotch, and i ended up trying something that was the best of all the scotches i've had. i don't remember the name though and every name i make up is actually something from LOTR? wait, christina took a picture of it and sexted it to me so i'd remember !



i'll be honest, it still tastes like shit, but it's the best i've tried so far ! for some reason, people keep telling me that different scotches taste like honey or caramel and like... they all taste like poison? it's like no one wants to be the first to admit that scotch is gross. i'm brave though- emperor, u naked. i'm still going to drink it though ! oh, but, yeah, after the first couple of scotches i was totally trashed and called christina to come keep me company and she came down and we talked about farts and got pizza fries and went to cvs and bought a bunch of candy and i woke up to see i'd sent my friend a 2000 word IM to the aforementioned friend gavin about what makes the average hulk TRULY incredible and how one pj harvey song reminds me strongly of blood-queen lana'thel ("and i draw a line / to your heart today / to your heart from mine"). so much for adult roxy.



on saturday, i did a minimal amount of reading again ! i got a car to run errands and was going to go get a bouquet of fake lilies so i could be a WIDOW, but i got stuck in traffic for 45 minutes and just came home. and then jeanne came to west philly and christina put makeup on me ! i don't wear makeup, and she really put a minimal amount on, but i felt like i was painted like a clown. the overall effect was pretty fucking cool though:



it's weird, though- i got an overwhelmingly positive reaction to me wearing makeup and a thousand different people told me that i looked pretty, and it was a total mindfuck ! i was like MAYBE I SHOULD WEAR MAKEUP ALL THE TIME !!!!! and even looked at makeup at cvs (and was like, 'what is all this shit?' and realized that i have tried very hard in life to NOT know that) and then remembered that i think makeup sucks. i understand a lot of women choose to wear makeup and what could be more feminist than a woman making a choice !!!!, butttttt i am too creeped out by the beauty industry and uncomfortable with the idea of giving my money and time to an industry whose function is to undermine womens' self-worth and manipulate them into thinking they 1) need to be "beautiful" and 2) need to buy all this shit to be "beautiful". i don't know ! it's fun for a costume but like, a colossal bummer for me for every day life. like, the sheer power that people calling me pretty had on me even at this age with this level of self-awareness was INSANE.

anyway, we went to the west philly coverband show and met up with mouse, but we missed the pj harvey band (boooooooooooooooooooooooooo) and dk band, saw the wipers, and then went upstairs and sulked on a couch and then left early ! there was a neutral milk hotel cover band and we got caught in like, an aching pit of sincerity where people were earnestly singing along, and like... that + bell peppers is the portrait of hell for jeanne and i. we stopped on the way home to get cookies, and then came to my house to pet the kitten and eat cookies. i made a grave mistake and got oatmeal dark chocolate cherry almond cookies which sound delicious but they were all cinnamon-y :(



on sunnnnnnday i mostly slept and went to green line again to try to finish reading. i read like... 25% of the stalin book. basically it's a long essay arguing that stalin's mass killings are genocide- in general, they are widely believed to NOT be genocide, largely because of soviet pressure during the genocide convention to exclude political and social groups from the definition of genocide. i'm excited for this week in class, though i have a lot of work to do- i talked to my professor after class last week (because i realized that, despite hearing about the holocaust my whole life, i never ever once heard anything about sexual violence during the holocaust, and it's such a huge factor in almost every other genocide) and she told me my papers were some of the best in class and we had a great conversation- she really is like, one of the fucking coolest people i've ever met? i'm so psyched to be in this class, even if the work is killing me a little.


why are the hot ones always jerks !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

okay ! two last things ! that grand army messenger was a good buy- it fits all my school books and my laptop, the strap is really comfortable, and it looks cool.



also, last night while i was trying not to study or sleep, i dug out a mixtape that my friend shannon made me like ten years ago:



this is the most romantic thing i've ever gotten from a dude who wasn't in love with me. the front of it has a termite squished to it, under packing tape, with the caption, "termites. devour my heart."

side A:

swans, "live through me"
the black heart procession, "on waterfront"
electric wizard, "funeralopolis"
eyehategod, "thirty dollar bag"
supermachiner, "flight of vultures"
supermachiner, "i am legend"
neurosis, "belief"
the black heart procession, "til we have to say goodbye"
harvey milk, "brown water"
swans, "secret friends"

side B:

harvey milk, "one of us cannot be wrong"
converge, "disintegration"
today is the day, "ripped off"
eyehategod, "methamphetamine"
boards of canada, "the color of the fire"
mogwai, "stanley kubrick"
the black heart procession, "a light so dim"
swans, "the sound"
slowdive, "here she comes"

this is one of the only things i brought with me from florida and i've unpacked it at every single house i've lived in. of course it is dorky as shit, but it was significant for me because shannon is my first friend who i ever realized was cooler than me. of course, lots of my friends were cooler than me (erica was a feminist in like, ninth grade ! natalie introduced me to pj harvey in middle school !), but he was the first time i REALIZED it. he is the most incredible gifted maniac weirdo and ever since i met him i have been committed to only being friends with people who are cooler than i am (or at least equally as cool) and this has enriched my life beyond belief.

okay ! this is a windbaggy entry and i forgot a lot of stuff ! but i have to do some work now ! bleh !