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

i don't want to change the world

goddddd i'm the worst blogger in fucking history ! i've been really fucking busy lately, almost entirely doing reading/writing for school. i'm seriously almost regretting my decision to go back, because i have so little time and i feel like i haven't seen any of my friends in weeks. i barely see christina and we live in the same house. blahhh. all this for a degree that will be totally useless ! five years of AGONY !!!!!!!!!!!



i had a good weekend last weekend- on friday night, i forced myself to do some homework, KIND OF. which is, incidentally, also what i did on saturday. i seriously have never, ever, ever in my life had such a hard time reading a book as i did with beyond the culture wars by gerald graff (and i remember my recent experience with that mamdani book !!!!!). basically the book is about how educators should teach their students about conflicts and controversy surrounding literature and like... every single line of the book is a restatement of that sentence. and like... no offense gerald graff, i'm sure you are a really rad person, but you are a windbag of the highest degree and i hate your book and i fucking hateeeee you.


i'm gerald graff ! i'm a professor ! blah blah blah ! teach the conflicts, kids !

i spent most of the day studying at the green line, half with christina, half without, almost all with jesse (she was working), butttttt i didn't really get very much done. on saturday night, mouse and mike came over to watch the phillies break my heart and we got thai food (well, mouse got chinese food) and the boys played with the kitten. that was cool for me because she's a pain in the ass. i love her, but she's in like... extreme attack mode right now and my arms and neck (she likes to hang out on the back of the couch) are a mess of little bite marks and scratches. anyway, mike played feathers with her for awhile and mouse let her attack his shoes. i was happy to see them both because it's been forever. mike got mouse eskrima sticks for his birthday, so i'm looking forward to getting hit with eskrima sticks while i try to knit or watch movies.


i chose this assortment of nunchucks and violence sticks because it says "quality wood"

speaking of the kitten, she is still totally obsessed with food. it is the weirdest thing in the fucking universe- there's nothing medically wrong with her, yet she constantly acts like she's starving to death. any time anyone else besides her is eating, she starts yelling at them and trying to get the food ! this past week, she has bitten, eaten, or tried to bite: vegan pizza, mushrooms, peppers, spinach, TOFU SCRAMBLE, pretzels, a piece of pineapple from pineapple fried rice. what the hell ! here's a picture of her being really cool:



on sunday, i ran some errands and went to whole foods to get food to try to make myself eat food (ED stuff has been weird lately. understatement). i got vanilla yogurt and gingersnap granola from the bulk bins (!!!!!) and pears for breakfast, and i'm gonna try to eat that in a minute. after doing mooooooooore studying all night (at the green line, where patchie entertained me and played good music), francesca came over because she was in town ! holy shit ! i didn't even notice she was short because she acts so fucking tall. she ordered vegan pizza and i ate some pretzels and it was neat. i'm sort of embarrassed because pizza was being aloof and weirdo was being a weirdo.

as for the rest of this week, i've been cornholioing on lattes and studying and i'm still pretty far behind despite my professor giving us a much-needed extension on our genocide paper proposals. i'm going to do my damndest to catch up and get all my work done today and tomorrow. i seriously doubt i'd spend so much time studying if my study habits were more efficient- as it stands, i spend like 8 hours zoning out and read like 2 pages and then the next day spend 5 hours freaking out about how i spent so much time zoning out and then read 2 more pages. life ! is weird.

the only other news is that cam was totally right and my laptop didn't even come CLOSE to fitting in the h bag. i'm going to return it (i guess? i really like it but $58 is too much for a bag i can't use every day, even if i have to bring my laptop to school) and i got this bag instead:



i love it, and it should fit my laptop and school books and crap. and jeanne described it as looking like "something you would put horse feed in" which might be my style? if i wore leather or boots fit my calves i'd either be a robin hood person or look like someone who rides or tends to horses.

i wanted to make this entry more enriching and entertaining but work is fucking annoying ! i hate everything right now ! byeeeee.

oooo-ooooh BLACK DIAMOND (replacements version)

i'm not kidding, guys- school has been the busiest ever the past couple of weeks ! between school work and work work (plus... not doing any school work over the weekend last weekend) the past week has been oppressively brutal. but on the plus side, you really haven't missed anything besides me reading books.

last night was genocide class, which was great as always. we talked about the armenian genocide and watched voices from the lake. there are a lot of totally brilliant people in my class but it sort of bugs me how some of them (even the brilliant ones !) kind of like, fuck off on their laptops and laugh at stuff when we're watching movies about... actual people being slaughtered? kids these days. i love it though, aside from that, and i can't say that there's one person who doesn't contribute positively to the discussion (though the guy who is studying religion and obviously sort of hates muslims is pushing it sometimes).


to avoid posting more grim genocide pictures, here is a turkish van, a cat who is from around lake van in turkey, where the armenians used to hang out

so... i'm excited about genocide. i'd love to study it FOR REAL once i'm ready (like, once i learn how to actually go to school). i'm kind of bummed that i took this class so early in my career because i feel like i'm not really able to engage fully or express my opinions in an intelligent way. every paper i've gotten back has been an A+ with really encouraging notes, but while i'm writing them i feel like a total clueless idiotic idiot. i guess i've been talking about it a lot lately, though, because my coworker printed out an article for me about ratko mladic.


f u ratko

i have to write two research paper proposals this weekend, which means i finally have to read this asinine book for one class and check out a bunch of articles my friend anna (a genocide scholar ! and like, an infinitely valuable resource to me as i'm exploring my interest in genocide) suggested to me and skim a few books (gendercide and genocide by adam jones and gendercide by mary anne warren), plusssss do my regular reading for genocide class and write my response paper for it.

right now everyone is trying to hang out with me this weekend, which is like... a really wonderful problem to have, but i might have to break everyone's hearts and hole up and read/write for most of the weekend.


some other notable heartbreakers

what else? oh, i figured out that i like lattes. i figured this out on our road trip when we stopped at a dunkin donuts of all places and i had what i now realize was a really disgusting latte, but without the context this week has provided, it seemed great. now i've had one every day of this week and have been somber cornholio with loose stools for days.



on that note, i think i'm going to switch to soy lattes next week.

i bought a large H bag from brooklyn industries just now because i need a big bag that fits my laptop and some school books (also i had a $40 GROUPON), but some evidence (testimony of camille cruz) suggests that my laptop may not fit in it.



i'm sorry that all my problems are so fucking stupid privileged. my expensive laptop won't fit in this expensive bag ! i have too many friends ! my completely free college education is stressful !!!!!

what else am i gonna do this weekend? knit baby stuff for helen's baby (i've BARELY had a chance to do this), clean my apartment this weekend (it is horrifying me and stressing me out), go grocery shopping. spend a lot of time actually studying at green line (cause all my stuff at my house is too cool).

okay, i have a bunch of work to do at work right now so i'll TTYL LYLAS.

oh how happy you have made me

blahhhh hi ! class last night was kind of rough- this week we were covering settler genocides and specifically aboriginal child removal in australia, so we watched rabbit proof fence, a movie based on a true story of three "half-caste" (of indigenous australian and european descent) girls who were taken from their indigenous australian parents and put in a "school" (to be trained as servants and bred with europeans to "breed out the black"), who later escaped and walked 1000 miles home.



it was a great movie and it was brutally sad, and of course i was the only one crying. i'm not sure what is up with like, the dead-eyed unsympathetic generation that i'm going to school with? anyway, i have to write a paper for this class, and i'm thinking about doing something about gendercide. i got gendercide and genocide by adam jones, and gendercide by mary warren. i also have some other books already that may be relevant (rape of nanking for one). wish me luck !



sooo what else, besides genocide? i came home from school and remembered i had to raid. our plan was to kill the lich king, buttttt we kept wiping on sindragosa. we don't have a ringer group right now since no one is really playing, so it wasn't an ideal set up, and paul was cranky because the padres blew it.



oh, also ! ALSO !!! tonight i'm picking up my new kitten. hannah was fostering her, and she dropped her off with jeanne last night to babysit (since i had class), so i'm going to get her after work. according to jeanne, she enjoys playing and eating and putting her paws on you.



i'm excited ! and a little nervous. it's been a long time since i had a kitten.

weekend? hanging out with mouse (i feel like i've barely seen him lately), going to linvilla orchards (unless the weather blows?), hanging hard, doing homework.

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.