we can finally start a family

i'm uncharacteristically updating my blog on a friday night ! i want to make sure that i cover all the great stuff that happened last week, despite the one major, major, major, major bummer.

last wednesday, nick and sandi came down from nyc and we had the besttttt timmmmmeeeee. we went to south philly tap room, where i got the most delicious eggplant parm i've ever had (and everyone else had the best brussels sprouts they've ever had- but they had bacon) and a really delicious apple and watercress salad, as well as a couple of delicious san diego beers (recommended by gavin, the biggest proponent of san diego ever). nick and sandi were like... fucking adorable and delightful and hilarious as always. nick has a new haircut where he looks like half of a depeche mode video and sandi said a thousand hilarious things. we came home after dinner and (wahhhhh) played with weirdo and had the best family night.



on thursday, i cooked all day and like... every single thing i made came out weird. it ended up not mattering, though, because jeanne's new roommate alexis made a shitload of super delicious food. jeanne, mike, alexis, ned, and i had a good thanksgiving and watched the kids in the hall.



the menu was:
- seitan turkey
- vegetarian ham
- stuffing
- cornbread stuffing
- mashed potatoes
- shepherds pie
- cranberry sauce
- orange honey cranberry sauce
- delicious gravy
- roasted vegetables (potatoes, sweet potatoes, brussels sprouts, parsnips, carrots)

there was a surprising lack of dessert (the dessert i made was overcooked and i burnt my ganache !) but i'd rather have food than dessert anyway. i had the best time, though ! ned had a good story about his customers that i am still laughing about, alexis is super cute and nice and has a really cool mean cat, mike is my favorite, and jeanne is ESPECIALLY my favorite. vinegar and fig too !

on friday, i worked on school work a little, and then christina and i braved local 44 again. i don't know if i've talked about it here, but i had the worst meal of my life at local 44 when i went with bill and christina- it was like... "mushroom stew" that was just unseasoned boiled mushrooms, pearl onions, carrots, and potatoes, and it tasted like they were boiled, rinsed, and boiled in new water. i seriously like recoil in horror every time i walk by because it was so gross ! anyway, we braved it because we were cold, and the food was awesome. i got a vegan reuben, and we split disco fries (fries with onion gravy and cheese) and it was... very heavy, but delicious.



i also tried some new scotches- i tried laphroaig and dewars, and of course they were both gross. guys, what's with scotch? why do i keep drinking it? one of these days, though, i'm going to love it. i know it. on saturdayyyyyyyy, mouse came over and we watched a few episodes of it's always sunny in philadelphia and ate delicious food and played with weirdo (wahhhhhh).

on sunday, i met up with mouse and kati to go to berlin mart in new jersey ! we met up with meesh and greg there, and we saw a lot of funny things and mouse made me laugh so hard that all of the people at the flea market thought i was behaving inappropriately for a flea market. it was a great fucking day ! i got:

- a greedo
- a yoda
- two jawas
- a grizzlor (a he-man guy- i got him for jeanne cause someone made him into a magnet)
- some work gloves (even though i don't do work)
- the best possible hairclip



after that, we went to blackbird pizza, where i was psyched to try a seitan cheesesteak, but they were out of seitan. they had some pizza and stuff butttttttttt i'm not vegan and i can eat real pizza so spending $3 on slices of vegan pizza didn't seem appetizing, so i just had some water and a good, awkward sulk. annnnnnd then we came home and weirdo died.

this past week has just been... stress and studying. next week is my last week of classes, and i have four papers to finish- 1 two page but with heavy research, 2 one page with heavy research, and one 10 page with heavy research. my genocide final paper is stressing me out a lot- i wrote a proposal that was mostly based on like... my strong emotional reaction and not a lot of research that i did, and my professor wrote this back (she actually wrote one email with this praise and then wrote a second cause she forgot she sent the first, with MORE INTENSE PRAISE):

"This is going to be a great paper. In fact, you could probably publish it--if you feel like putting the extra work into it (which need not be done for the version you hand in as a final paper in this class). I would be happy to help you polish it and send it out. The idea you will be pursuing is very innovative and also very important. It could put women on the genocide map, so to speak. And it would bring necessary attention to their suffering--their suffering as survivors not just of a genocidal process, but also of genocide written on their bodies and lives"

i know that someone suggesting that an undergraduate freshman publish something is a big insane compliment, but it put this insane amount of pressure on me- i feel super unsophisticated and emotional and like i barely even know what i'm talking about? like i'm just kind of chauncey gardenering my way through this.



so, this week? studying reading freaking the fuck out and not being able to do a bunch of shit and alksdlksajdlkjalskjdklsajs alas poor roxy. anyway, i just wanted to get that out.

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 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 !

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.

gucci mane

what's up ! hey ! on friday mouse and i went to mike bukowski's art show at benna's !!! it was all monsters inspired by d&d manuals and everything looked amazing. i was basically having an anxiety attack about getting there first to get the owlbear and i'm glad i didn't sleep on it because everyone kept admiring it and a few people were coveting it. i also bought the giant troll. i wish i had some pictures of it but i was too excited ! here are a few that appeared in the interview he just did for denis' bloggggg.


"an Achaierai, a Grell and a Necrophidius"

jeanne also made a really cool vegan axe cake, which mouse cut with a plastic axe. it was pretty awesome because the handle basically looked like real wood and the blade looked like an iced fart. no offense jeanne !!!



after the show, we went to the pope and i had the best vegan meatloaf i've ever had in my life, with mushroom gravy, broccoli, and mashed yams. holy shit. i wish i was eating it right now, and also forever. i also decided to try scotch on the rocks for the first time, to debut my signature drink, and it did not go well. i got a johnny walker black first and it was pretty repugnant- it was also a gigantic glass of scotch (i figured a... whatever, on the rocks would just be a shot on ice? but it was like a full glass of scotch).



mike and jeanne's friend justin g. (maybe my friend too? i'm gonna add him and his gf on facebook RIGHT NOW) suggested that i try glenfiddich 12, which he said tasted like honey, so i got a shot of that with ice. i discovered that... it tasted like scotch, but at that point i was like, 'hayyyy' from drinking a bunch of scotch so i didn't feel betrayed or anything.



after that, the waitress (who was extremely nice) suggested that i try irish whiskey if i wasn't into scotch, so she brought me a tullamore dew, which at that point did not taste perceptibly different to me because the scotch had burned off all of my tastebuds. at that point, she suggested i try tequila instead- not that night, but if i was ever at cantina. she was referring to a local establishment called cantina los caballitos, buttttttttt i thought she was talking about this cantina:



and was like, "why would i ever be there? that isn't even like.. here and now." and felt pretty dumb. i had a great time though, and mike, jeanne, and ryann invited me to come to new hampshire with them this weekend to see a bunch of cool pumpkins and junk !

on saturday, i intended to read and study all day, but early in the day i stood up and something horrible happened to my back. i got a really really horrible not right pain and barely made it back to my bed (i was in the living room). i basically spent 8 hours saturday laying face down on my bed, holding in my pee, totally unable to move. it was really fucking scary- a bunch of people offered to help me, and i really wanted to go to the hospital, but... i couldn't get up to let anyone in.



it was really weird and shitty ! if you aren't a fat person, you may not know that doctors are really shitty to fat people. despite many thin people i know having back problems and having similar stuff happen to them, i know what would happen if i went to the doctor- i have gained weight lately and i'm sure it's related, but what's probably more related is that i have done very little physical activity since starting school- i feel like i have very little time anymore to do anything, and since this side was injured a few years ago, i think i have to be more consistent with doing yoga/walking/riding my bike to keep it from getting reinjured. anyway, i knowwwww i should talk to a doctor (a friend with similar problems suggested sports medicine) buttttttt i don't want to have to deal with it.

anyway, around 9 or so i was able to get out of bed and walk around and take a shower and pet my poor stupid kitten and felt more human almost immediately. by the time i went to bed, my back actually felt pretty good. today it feels even better, though i keep getting an on and off nerve-y pain in my thigh, but my back itself feels better than it has in weeks. i think this is like... when a coconut falls on someone's head and they turn into a sexy version of themselves? and then all that has to happen to fix them is another head injury?


for instance, something that probably happened to all of these women

on sunday, i did some studying (finally), and went to mouse and kati's birthday party at ed's. alan, nate, and anna came and we had the best time. i got a greek salad and it was totally the worst, but all of my friends are so cool and funny i can't stand it? mouse looked particularly sharp in his button suspenders. the only real disappointment was that benji wasn't able to make it, because mouse realllllly wanted to wrestle someone for his birthday. pooooooor mouse. we got gelato after dinner (at my nudging) and i picked up some new cat litter for the kitten (she is not psyched about feline pine, because the granules are bigger than her feet), and came home to do some reading and pet her a little bit. here are some pictures:


weirdo is as bored by this asinine book as i am !





right now i'm reading critical essays about huckleberry finn (i don't careeeeeeeeeeee), that gerald graff book (ughhhhhhhhh), and we wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families by philip gourevitch (hooray). i actually wish i'd opted for a writing seminar with less reading because these books are such a waste of time, and my genocide class requires SO much reading.

so, that's about it. my back feels okay, this is going to be a busy week at work, i have a lot of reading to do so i'm going to try not to do anything fun this week, and and and.. i don't know. i have to go because the receptionist is being fucking annoying because she doesn't understand what the job of a receptionist is.

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.