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 !

philadelphia freedom

hey guys. hey guys !!!!! last night i had class and i was super exhausted and kind of unprepared so i felt stupid in both. in german, i just sort of babbled and guessed for over an hour, and in my history class, i blurted out that they don't let you sit in george washington's chair at independence hall and immediately realized no one else would want to or try to.



afterrrrr class christine came over and it was like, the best? she and i were both like... jumping up and down and flapping our hands and spazzing out when we saw each other. she's like... the funniest weirdest person? with the best facial expressions. and a high school freshman knowledge of like five different languages !!!! she also was a major cat creep and used the phrase, "whatever baby wants, baby gets" MORE THAN ONCE to pizza, and kept a little tuft of her hair.



oh my god it was the best. christina came home drunk, with harpoon crystal wheat (which is the best and tastes like lemons), and we spent our final hour together talking about cats and ukrainian people. after that, instead of working on my homework i watched an episode of fraggle rock with ken. hey, i didn't notice this until yesterday, but fraggle rock kind of sucks? they're always fucking singing ! ken thinks that's what the "rock" in fraggle rock refers to, whereas i take that to more literally mean the caves (made of rock) that they live in. also look at this weird fraggle from wikipedia:

Powerdriving Cecil, a friend of Red's. Has a peculiar habit of asking female fraggles if they want to be "powerdrived".

that is the weirdest and is making me think that maybe someone invented bogus fraggles for the wiki? anyway, the only aspect i was really into was how small the fraggles are compared to the gorgs



what else? oh, i submitted my application for school today. i have been sitting on it for awhile, but the deadline is august 1 and i finally just bit the bullet. i really hope i get accepted- i've been doing pretty well in my classes and despite hating homework, studying, giving up free time to class time... wait, where was i going with that? i guess i like it. i don't know. wish me luck !

tonight mouse and i are going to mike and jeanne's house to eat food and maybe watch a movie ! i'm really psyched because jeanne just moved in and her cat and mike's cat are friends, and i don't think i've ever seen jeanne living in a real grownup house (we lived together in two different hellholes though !). we were going to maybe make pizzas- a vegan one for mouse, and maybe this olive potato pizza that mike g. and i made once:



but i'm having a weird allergic reaction on my face and i don't want to eat food or have anyone look at me so maybe i'll just bring a popsicle and sulk. blehhh. tomorrow mouse and i are gonna watch movies, and sunday i may go to shakespeare in the park for free and watch a bunch of insufferable fucking nerds do a midsummer night's dream !

blehhh. to-do list for the weekend:
- finish history reading
- finish history timeline
- take german test
- do german voiceboards
- write german essay
- START HISTORY READING FOR NEXT WEEK
- try to watch the netflix i have
- go grocery shopping

p.s. a cursory google search reveals that "powerdriving cecil" can ONLY be found on wikipedia !!!!!!!

a bear oughta go on a diet

heyyyy dudessssssssss. i had two days off, so i didn't update because updating a blog from home is a draggggg.

what have i been up to? not much. catching up on sleep and doing schoolwork. on tuesday, ken and i played resident evil 5 for awhile and beat the second level- it's going pretty slowly because i don't have a lot of time for video games right now. still super scary, and a pretty fun game, though the first level was way scarier than the second. i'm enjoying the co-op aspect but it sort of stresses me out because i occasionally have to do important things to help my team and i'm used to like... hanging back and dps-ing a boss. the thing that i like the most, though, is (and forgive me if i screw this up, i'm too ADD to ever read or synthesize any VIDEO GAME LORE) the bad guy we are hunting right now is named IRVING.


ACK !!!!!!!! irving is in another castle !!!!

i guess technically his name is ricardo irving and he once had the terrifying job of researcher at whatever company made the gross stuff and maybe he had to infect himself and he turned into a tentacle guy? i don't know.



i also bought fallout 3 for $8 used on amazon. i don't know when i'm going to have time to play it, but it was highly recommended to me ! i look forward to not learning the backstory of this game, too.



what else? school ! school is going okay. i had a really hard time with a history assignment where we had to be creative and write about a fictional mob (using real colonists based on their biographies) and then analyze the actions of the mob. i ended up making a mob who hung a stamp distributor in effigy, but i'm not really sure if i did it right.



after i finish classes tonight, my summer semester will be halfway over. i haven't actually applied to school for the fall yet, so i need to get on that. i think i'm going to submit my application tomorrow !

oh yeah, i met with mouse for a little bit after he got off work, before my class- we got coffee and i got super amped up because i had a giant iced coffee in addition to the two mexican cokes i had earlier in the day. mouse is funny. his back is kind of hurt and i had to convince him not to go to jiu jitsu. i mean, he went anyway, but he promised he wouldn't do any jiu jitsu.

the moooooost exciting news is my friend christine is coming up from baltimore today and we're going to hang ouuuuuuut. i have class, but either christina will entertain her or she can sit quietly and pet pizza until my class is over. one exciting thing about christine is her cat is a fig pizza.


my cat, pizza


jeanne's cat, fig (pizza's bff)


philomena, the fig pizza

isn't that exciting?

blehhh i have to go do work but i have lots more exciting stuff to tell you guys tomorrow, mostly about homework and shit !