Youth and Beauty Brigade

Death Is Inevitable

2005-02-22T08:57:00.000-07:00

Something cancerous is devouring my blog.

This Neat Thing I Discovered Called The Internet

2005-01-17T14:29:00.000-07:00

I'm talking to some guy who I don't know. David spent several conversations trying to convince me that this gentleman and I would instantly become best friends. Sadly, I don't even remember his first name. I know that he lives in Nashville and has good taste in music and is humorously depressed sometimes. I know all of this from reading his blog.
Blogs are stupid. The word itself is stupid. The premise, while good, is massively abused.
I am fairly certain that blogs would not bother me if I did not expose myself to them.
It is a proven fact that the same statement rings true for world hunger.
Once I went to Mexico on a mission trip. There were plenty of starving people there. Some of them lived in cardboard boxes. That made me pretty sad.
Luckily, then I came back and had other things to worry about. Cross-country practice, IB English, and that lanky scary boy who sat behind me in English class and wore T-shirts with dragons on them and brought me chocolates and flowers on my birthday. These were all more important than the starving people. What starving people? I already forgot about them again.
Anyways. So I've been reading this guy's blog.
Blogs allow people to become fourth or fifth rate celebrities. At least eight of my friends and I constantly check these laughably horrible blogs.

When we accidentally find something utterly brilliant, we will usually call each other and read highlights out loud. Andres did this yesterday, and it brought me great amusement.

Angelica, who I can now link to, since her blog has died in a fiery storm of self-hatred, said a while ago that all romance is dead. This may or may not be true, but it is true in Greeley. Romance there seems to consist of buying someone a magical number of meals and drinks and desperately wishing that awkward moments in conversation could simply be filled with making out on a dilapidated sofabed.

I have been fortunate enough to avoid romance in the college experience, or at least the sloppy and unpleasant side of romance that ruins people's lives.

At least failed to ruin my life. I have been the object of unrequited love seven times now that I am aware of. None of these seven gentlemen were even mildly successful in their pursuit of me. I may be incapable of the emotion of 'like'. Or perhaps I'm just misdefining it.

I save my own exciting unrequited love for people who don't actually know who I am. This is a much more effective way of being secretly in love with people; otherwise they tend to find out about your feelings and such long before you would like them to. Or I just squander my unrequited love on people like Rich or David. But that's only true if unrequited love is this general idea of 'If we were in a serious relationship, I wouldn't be horribly depressed about it. In fact, it might be fine.' Which, for now, isn't how I would define love. But give it a month or so and it might devolve to that.

But I have run out of people to unabashedly give my exciting and enticing unrequited love to. Perhaps I should just channel it to a more mainstream source, such as Mark Ruffalo.

I am usually very crabby about grammatical structure. Please forgive me.

Cheap Domain Registration

Oh, Denny's. Why Do You Exist?

2005-01-17T14:06:00.000-07:00

I sat and drank a melted chocolate milkshake from Denny's this morning.

I didn't really want to drink it. I didn't really want to drink it last night when I ordered it either, I was just in a pitiful mood and thought that chocolate might have the healing power that I required. It did not, but it did have the same congealed-animal-fat elixir that Denny's apparently puts into all food served after ten.

As I sipped my Styrofoam-encased milkshake, I resigned myself to retaining the will to live so long as that will was not conditional upon hope of my life getting better. Yes, it is true. It is Monday, and I am an incredibly unoriginal pathetic plauged student and artisan. I probably belong at fucking Paris .

Yes, I'm aware that its quite lovely of me to publicly feel sorry for myself and my horrible upper-middle-class white Boulder existence on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Oh, how I wish that I could somehow manage to be piquant and alluring, or at least capable of rational and logical thought, while feeling hideous.

2005-01-17T10:21:00.000-07:00

I sat, thinking depressing thoughts that make no difference, when I realized that I had no idea where I was.
A list of possibilities ran through my mind - my room in the Houssney household, my room from a previous semester, my old, old bed from the dorms, even an old bunk bed which my sister and I somewhat shared in New York.
As I was pondering all of these things, I tried in my sleep-weakened state to sit up, and rolled onto the floor.
I think that I fell asleep in the computer chair and then sleptwalked myself to the couch. There is no other logical explanation.
This is disappointing to me.
I'm trying to find Angelica and I a house. We were discussing the possibility of not returning from Portland at all. Its tempting. Most of the courses that I have left, I could just take online. I wonder if online classes count as 'in residency'.

2005-01-17T01:51:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow, amidst a flurry of travel, I will journey back to Greeley.
People are leaving, people have left. Germany, England,Prague, Russia, France, Italy, even Arizona and California.
And I am going to Greeley. Oh, why couldn't I go on an exciting trip? I'm good at keeping myself busy. I'm good at finding odd jobs. I'm good at dinking around in unfamiliar places.
Sadly, I have three more semesters of college and am relatively pinned to Greeley for the moment.
Why can't I go on an adventure, I asked to myself as I sat in the Trident. The time was 8:38. I lost the will to live.
It took me a few minutes to notice that it was lost. I checked my pocket, my purse. I think that Novelist Man must have sewn it into his 'creative line', because it is most definitely departed.
I don't want to go to sleep, but I just fell asleep for several minutes in an uncomfortable computer chair. My tired body hates me.
Bed. Which is Couch.

No, Angelica.

2005-01-16T15:29:00.000-07:00

Come back to the world of the living.

Sissy.

2005-01-16T14:58:00.000-07:00

Oh, what is to be done this evening, my last full evening in Boulder for at least six days?
Or, more imminently, what is to be done this afternoon, my last full afternoon in Boulder for at least six days?
Apparently reading about the Peace and Freedom Party is the only pressing matter on my agenda right at the moment.

Its a shame that their web site is so ugly.

I completed 'Amsterdam' today, by Ian McEwan. Not that I could write a better novel, but I thought it was contrived and unrealistic while being unimaginative in the same stroke, a difficult feat to accomplish.

It has been a while since I read an entire book that I didn't like...two or so weeks ago I gave up on Ferlinghetti's 'She', although I picked it up last night and realized that I just don't have the mental energy to monogamously devote myself to 'She' - thus, I will never appreciate it.

I saw my most recent ex-boyfriend's truck thing stuck in a snowbank in Greeley this morning. For the eight months that we were together, we had a constant feud about the exact hue of his truck - he claimed it was red, while in reality it was maroon, and at high noon possibly even pink. This argument was good-natured mostly, although it did reach violent proportions once or twice. But it was definitely pink today. And stuck in a giant pile of snow. The snow probably bothers him more than the pink, although its a close call, I bet.

This morning, over breakfast in Greeley with my friend but more appropriately ex-roommate Kim, she attempted to discuss the Patriots - Colts game this afternoon (I had to look that up again). I stared at her blankly, before she remembered that I quite possibly know less about professional sports than anyone else in the world. After ten minutes of prodding, I was able to identify possibly twenty teams in the country, their locations, and most of the time the sport they play. I was fairly proud of myself in a strange way, but Kim was appalled. I manage to have that effect on her - hence the 'ex' thing.

In theory, there are topless pictures of her on my digital camera - apparently she borrowed it to send pictures to an ex-boyfriend who she was IMing with while she was home with an Il Bastardo one unpleasant Saturday night.

I left my camera cord in Los Angeles.

Jesus Sold Out

2005-01-16T14:29:00.000-07:00

Even Jesus has gotten whiny and preachy in the recent months. Is nothing sacred?

I remember the good old days, when Jesus was a simple man who desired nothing more than communing with nature and the company of a few indiscriminate women who resided in the Washington DC area.

But now Jesus is telling us to steer clear of the rampant nihilism which is overpowering our country and giving us advice on love.

Shit, Jesus. I thought you were cool.
Or something.

2005-01-15T04:27:00.000-07:00

I have been awake for twenty-one hours exactly, as of this minute in time.
I put my bedding into the drier, in an attempt to get warm. My moderately-accidental frou frou indie rock wardrobe does not accommodate for snow.
I stared at the drier for a moment, before deciding that it was indeed physically possible for me to fit into the drier. While suffocating me and possibly breaking a bone or two, this would be a far more effective method of warming up.
After leaving Ben to blissfully pass out at the tender hour of twelve after two, I returned to my car and found a phone message from David, drunk somewhere downtown. I picked up David and he suggested Denny's...I was tired, but curious to find out if Bijoy and Michael had successfully appealed their suspensions from CU.
I somehow suppressed the urge to drink coffee. Sadly, for some reason, I am still awake. This is all right - the coffee at Denny's is nothing more than glorified congealed animal fat.
David and I discussed the bittersweet non-sensation of platonicism as I chastized him for his failing (but notedly not yet failed) relationship. For the last few years, I have had no 'romantic' notions towards the opposite sex, save for an occasional and passing 'If I were in a relationship with this-close-male-friend, it would not be wildly unsuccessful'.
But there is something desirable, something distressingly cute about the melodramatic 'feelings' of first loves and high school romances. I suppose that first loves fail to factor rationality or logic into the equation of romance, which is possibly while they are more 'successful' (read: longer) than other relationships.
Due to the lack of constant Internet access at my house in Greeley, any writing that appears on this site is a result of either sleep deprivation or moments of boredom passing between classes. I would like to think that I'm slightly more intelligent than can be observed here, but I'm not entirely sure. It is possible that I am less intelligent than even this pathetic weblog gives me credit for.
Oh, the cheery thoughts that lead me to bed.
Now I shall sleep, and dream, hopefully not about being smothered with a pillow mid-coitus. This was the fate of Penelope Cruz earlier in the evening, but luckily, it was not mine. I cannot think of a more unpleasant time to die, except for possibly in line at the post office.

Stranded at the Drive-In

2005-01-14T19:52:00.000-07:00

Well, my mother urged me to return to my parent's house and graciously gave me permission to borrow my car, which my father had borrowed to go 'skiing' in Breckenridge. He would be home by six-thirty, she said, Come home, I miss you.
At six-thirty, I am downtown. By my best speculations, at seven-thirty I will once again be downtown, or rather, I would have been, I should have been.
But my father, the illustrious professor of Architectural Engineering, has not returned. Upon answering his cell phone, he informed me that his visit to Breckenridge just took 'a little bit longer than he had expected' because he was 'visiting his old TA Craig'. Not skiing.
My speculation, after hearing both stories, is that he went skiing with his new TA, some blonde stringy grad student who probably either admires my father or wants a good letter of recommendation, or possibly both, although that seems unlikely. She has been around the house occasionally, and my mother even invited her over for dinner a couple of weeks ago, much to my dismay.
So my father took my teetering-on-brink-of-death car to Breckenridge with his girlfriend, and won't be home until 9. My mother is playing tennis. And I am stranded at home with the truth and no one to tell it to.

Its Friday, I'm In Love

2005-01-14T13:48:00.000-07:00

Show me show me show me how you do that trick
The one that makes me scream she said
The one that makes me laugh she said
And threw her arms around my neck
Show me how you do it
And I promise you
I promise that I’ll run away with you
I’ll run away with you
Spinning on that dizzy edge
I kissed her face and kissed her head
And dreamed of all the different ways I had
To make her glow

School is done. Hurrah! Only fourteen or so weeks remain. A small piece can be removed from the Music School pie chart.

I am going to Boulder with Angelica - I wooed her with promises of free sushi at Hapa and beautiful music for the drive down.

Already Greeley is starting to quiet down - parking spaces are available once again, for those who are fortunate enough to possess cars. Students fleeing the dorms with rum smuggled into their sacks of laundry, dancing sorority girls throwing underwear off of balconies, teachers smoking secret cigarettes in empty rock corners of West Campus. The weekend is upon us. A weekend and a half, actually.

I have an immense amount of homework - all of my classes are homework-based and personal-journal based rather than exam-based, which is unfortunate. For some classes, one can put off the majority of actual work until a week before the exam, but when the exam is two hundred pages of Bach chorale analysis or 108 journal entries, cramming becomes highly ineffective and almost zero fun.

But sushi is fun. And Angelica is fun. And, for the most part, Boulder is fun, although everyone who I know there has either just fleed or is preparing to flee soon.

The sushi in West Hollywood will surely put Hapa to shame. That is the problem with traveling. Perhaps I should become one of those sorts who just lives in Greeley forever - born and raised and whatnot. At least then I wouldn't know any better.

They Walk Away

2005-01-14T10:24:00.000-07:00

Away, away, down the hall they go,
his thick neck, her shiny bare
legs, to fetch a cup of coffee.
The sun hits their skin, they walk,
glowing, he holds
the door, she fiddles with her
change purse, he reaches
over her shoulder to get
a lid, almost touching her
cheek, almost. Barely missing her
cheek, he reaches, she feels the
breeze of his tweeded arm,
she smells the coffee, they walk
back into sunlight, her skirt is flying,
he smells of cologne, they
laugh, she in her bright red skirt and his
necktie rippling like a crimson
flag, he is revealing
last night's dream, my god,
he's throwing his head back,
she's laughing, she's wrinkling
her brow, he gestures toward
the leafless trees, they walk in
sunlight, her legs bare, in their hands:
coffee, the coffee: hot, the
air: crisp, the sky: blue, and back
at the office, she smells his
cologne, her mouth waters,
his eyes glisten; he's
delighted; he's thirsty; the coffee's
hot, steaming, hazelnut.

-Johannah Racz

Words and Such

2005-01-14T10:04:00.000-07:00

I officially branded myself as the Literary Bitch in my English class this morning, after verbally beating a girl with hoop earrings whose response to 'The Red Wheelbarrow' was simply
"I think that this sucks. Anyone could write it. This Williams guy was full of shit."
Apparently this girl was not aware of the Warholian Revolution, the Imagist movement or the groundwork that Williams laid for the beats and American poetry. I, being moderately more informed than she was, tired, cold, and lacking caffeine, decided to educate her. It was fairly uncharacteristic of me, because I usually let stupid comments slip by with only a mental note to myself. I also try to stay away from conversational subjects that I am not very educated on - which, sadly, is far too many right now. That is the downside of selecting very specific areas to learn about at a time - no general knowledge of outside subjects.
I patronizingly explained 'everything is art' to this girl. After twenty or so seconds, a young man with eye makeup (I was too tired to put any makeup on at 7:38, or too busy running to my class in the snow, but apparently this gentleman dragged himself out of bed a few minutes earlier to prepare for the day) jumped onto my side and started spouting Warhol and Pound. Our teacher, who smells obscenely of cigarettes and has leather wrinkles spread across his hands, leaned back in his chair and smiled, refusing to protect Hoop Earrings, who will probably go home, cry, and vomit up her breakfast in defeat.
Ranting is occasionally enjoyable. Ranting about subjects you actually understand is simply divine.
Cullen was immensely disappointed that I do not know how to ski. He has insisted on teaching me, at some arbitrary date in the future. Our friendship is based solely on the principle of mutual fulfillment - trading information about music and theatre, about literature and cinema, about fine cuisine and automobiles and skiing. We drunkenly shared the secret of our intact virginities one night in October of freshman year, and he drunkenly professed to me his intentions to marry me upon graduation that April. Luckily, he did not remember this the next day, or was too embarrassed to admit to it, and I followed suit.

Items Found In Jason Palmer's Old Piano

2005-01-13T14:46:00.000-07:00

Gold and red glitter

88 wooden boards

Rotting cyan felt

1 unopened package of Parliament cigarettes

Dust

Dirt

Countless microscopic ants

1 tiny Ziploc bag, containing
3 blue-tinted replacement Christmas light bulbs
3 red-tinted replacement Christmas light bulbs
1 clear replacement Christmas light bulb

Shennis of the World Unite

2005-01-13T11:19:00.000-07:00

This picture is named 'shenni.jpg'.

This confuses me. I'm not sure what the mathematical odds are of someone creating the same word that my parents did when they realized that it would take a few years for me to accurately pronounce my full first name.

I'm also not sure why 'Shenni' seemed to be a good name for a giant stone canine warrior.

After looking at the source page, the creator of this canine warrior tells us that the drawing is for his dear friend 'ShenniBabee'.

I wonder if Shenni is an actual name that parents in some faraway country actually give to their children - or if its a common abbreviation for some other complicated S-name.

I've never met another Shenni, or even another Shenandoah, aside from a valley, a university, a
brewing company,
a music festival,
a poultry machinery plant,
an airport,
a river,
a bluegrass band,
a vineyard,
a Jimmy Stewart movie,
an astronomical society,
and a non-profit Shakespeare organization.

Apparently in Virginia, they throw my name around as if it's some type of B-class obscenity.

I'm going to a class called 'Activities for Stress Management'. I envision these activities including smoking skinny cigarettes through Cruella DeVille filters, drinking brandy, lounging about in red velvet bathrobes, playing darts and bumper pool, laughing heartily with deep, booming vowels, and eventually, after we have become acclimated to these activities, illicit explosions of casual sex in the poorest-lit corners of the room. Sadly, I have a sneaking suspicion that it will involve napping, drinking tea, yoga, and occasionally hugging smelly UNC students.

Yesterday my music theory teacher gave our 13-person class a spelling test. These students have all been in 'music school' for at least as long as I have, some longer, and most have been playing their instruments for years and years, and they're allegedly going to go be famous musicians, or respected educators.
But they can't spell 'rhythm'.
They can write down words like rhythym, or rithym, or even rithum. They know what it means. They just can't spell it.
Shameful.

2005-01-13T08:59:00.000-07:00

Today only being the first species of 18th century contrapuntalism, it was all right that I woke up six minutes before my class began. I live less than two blocks from the music building now. It's oh so very convenient. I contemplated taking a very very brief shower, but decided not to push my luck today.
We are not allowed to use secondary dominant chords in our homework assignments - it all needs to be diatonic for the first two weeks.
This makes my head spin.

2005-01-12T20:10:00.000-07:00

A door opens to me. I go in and am faced with a hundred closed doors. - Antonio Porchia

A few weeks ago at Starbucks, I somehow wound up in conversation with a girl of only sixteen years. She was in love with her best friend (male) and was agonizing over how to tell him.

"Don't," I said. "Are you friends?"
"Yeah, we tell each other everything, and we hang out all the time, and we trust each other..."
"Good. Don't tell him."

The Art Of Quitting

2005-01-12T19:56:00.000-07:00

Over the last four days, I have come to an important decision. I quit.
I'm not exactly sure what I am quitting, or what 'quitting' entails. The thought crossed my mind to quit school, that being the most obvious choice, which would involve returning my textbooks and dropping my classes. I also contemplated quitting my job at the Religious Science church, even though doing so would permanently hex my parking space juju. I can function perfectly well in school and get good grades on assignments, but the only things that I feel truly motivated to do are learn songs that are too difficult for me to play on the piano, build some form of log cabin for myself in the Appalachian Mountains (by the way, Aaron Copland is the worst famous composer to ever walk the face of the earth: he is credited with starting the Americana subgenre of classical music, which led to paintings of roosters and teakettles and Charles Wysocki jigsaw puzzles), and possibly create a new language that I would use when conversing with myself in aforementioned log cabin.

There isn't anything concrete for me to quit. There should just be a room somewhere, where I could carry all of my books and time into and throw them in a pile on the floor, and simply state to the nice-looking young man in a business suit, "I Quit now."

Quitting in general is a refreshing emotion. Even mentally quitting something that you're still physically involved with, like a university literature class that makes you read F. Scott Fitzgerald, is refreshing.

Spanglish

2005-01-12T17:22:00.000-07:00

It took me a moment to realize what my contraseña was (password). That is what I get for using the español computer in the Boulder Public Library, I suppose.

One of my friends hasn´t been in choir all week - normally people not showing up for things is to be shrugged off and disregarded, but this particular choir happens to be the crown jewel of the UNC music program, and I believe that you get kicked out after two unexcused absences...

So I gave him a call to see what had happened.

He quit school, two semesters prior to graduation.

Apparently the seed for this was planted one night during finals week, when he and I were consuming Blue Moon at my house and my roommates had already fallen asleep on the couches around us. He told me "I´m so sick of being in Greeley. I just need to get out of here. I don´t want to finish college."

"You probably don´t have to," I replied. Which is essentially true - getting a music degree isn´t really going to get your foot in the door at Mercury Records.

"Yeah, I should just quit."

"You should."

As I said this, I realized that some shallow part of me would never really take someone without a college degree very seriously, unless they had a reason that was more substantial than ´I didn´t want to anymore.´

The next evening, as I heard it, my friend was wandering around the music building, iPod in hand, singing along loudly in the deserted halls. "I don't belong here, I don't belong here..."
I am not sure of the title or the artist of this particular song. I can think of several songs which prominently feature those exact lyrics.
A door opened down the hall, and his voice teacher (my voice teacher as well) appeared.
"You're right," she said, and shut the door.

He unregistered for the spring semester and is playing guitar a lot now...he hasn't moved back home, and thats a start, I guess...

2005-01-11T02:10:00.000-07:00

This evening, after reading several depressing utilitarian correspondences from various friends, professors and family members, I sat over an iced coffee and felt my synapses unravel. I usually muster up the forced optimism to get at least halfway through a semester cheerily, but I made it through exactly one class this time. Ah well, better luck next semester, I suppose.
Every semester I have the unnerving feeling that something monumental will happen in my life and I will no longer attend school - but now I only have three semesters left, and I'm not sure what exactly is supposed to happen after that.
The sermon at the Religious Science church on Sunday was all about how God will save you parking spaces and alter weather conditions around your social calendar as you become closer and closer to him (and thus to yourself, or vice versa, depending on the practitioner). But what about people with bicycles? Shouldn't it be perpetually sunny for them, with pleasant blue bicycle racks awaiting them at every corner store in America? What happens after you reach the weather-manipulation level? Do you find large bundles of money on the street, or is it just deposited into your bank account? Do swimsuit models fold themselves into your mailbox?
I left some of my music in Boulder, and we have a concert with the Greeley Phil this weekend. This means that I will have to commandeer Angelica's Volvo to return home for a measly few seconds to pick up a single black folder and then drag myself back. This is a ridiculous waste of time. Nothing else can be done, though...and I don't feel like asking my parents to Priority Mail it to me. It will regurgitate itself into countless conversations in the next ten years...
"But don't you remember that time I drove your folder to the Post Office and mailed it? That cost eight dollars and wasted my whole afternoon!"
It's just as well that my afternoon be wasted - partially because it is my fault the folder is not where it needs to be, partially because I am young and have many more afternoons left to waste than either of my parents do.

Dear Friends and Family

2005-01-09T20:03:00.000-07:00

I ran away from home.

And I'm not coming back.

For at least five to thirteen hours.

I got back to Greeley. I went to the Religious Science church. I went home. I unpacked. I gave the key to my old house to Kyle so that he could move in. I went to the bookstore. I made a list of things that I needed to do this week.

Angelica got back to Greeley. Since I no longer have a working car, Angelica was my golden ticket to freedom.

We went to unload Angelica's car in her dorm room. Her large and unpleasant roommate informed her (unpleasantly) upon arrival that they had been written up for having Mod Podged empty alcohol bottles in their room. Angelica and I left, as she proclaimed furiously that she would set the town on fire.

I needed more shelves. We went to Wal Mart. Wal Mart is the only place that is open in Greeley. Ever.

Greeley smells awful.

We parked in the Wal Mart parking lot. We were listening to Kings of Convenience. Angelica decided that it was a good time to leave Greeley. Having been there for nearly eleven hours, I agreed.

We left. We are gone. We are not coming back.

Pathetic Blog Entry - I Hate The Word 'Blog'

2005-01-09T01:13:00.000-07:00

I feel extremely compelled to write, but my brain is being clogged by the following:

1. Caffeine
2. Sleep deprivation (see #1)
3. My imminent return to Greeley
4. Self-loathing for imposing #3 upon myself
5. General bitterness
6. Cold sensation - where are my socks?
7. Mild jealousy towards everyone who just left or is soon leaving the country, or at least Colorado
8. Desire to finish reading 'Chronicle of a Death Foretold' simply because its so short that I can probably finish it before #1 disappears
9. Unhappy (yet unsurprising) realization that, when tired, my brain stops thinking about pleasant things, such as hot air balloons, Jon Stewart, and chocolate milk; and focuses instead on pathetic things, like my negative feelings, which are pretty all-encompassing right at the moment.

It was a good day though.

I'm going to sleep now. Perhaps my subconscious mind will produce some brilliant yet incredibly far-fetched ideas while I'm sleeping. Those are my favorite kind.

2005-01-09T01:01:00.000-07:00

The damn Jazz Studies department scheduled Solo Night on my birthday. Which is also Valentines Day.

If stores are going to specify one automatic door as 'in' and one automatic door as 'out', then why do they put weight sensors on either side of each door?

Somewhere Somehow Sometime

2005-01-08T17:18:00.000-07:00

Apologies for quoting horrible West Side Story.
I squandered away my last day in Boulder...well, at least the seven or so hours that have passed thus far. It will probably become infinitely less wasted in the space of a few hours into the future, but as of now, I do know for certain that it will involve food, which is always a good idea.
I should go stock up on books for the hours that will be spent in Greeley in days to come. Angelica and I will probably be coming down on Thursday night to visit our three most-defaulted-to visiting places in Boulder: Hapa, Trident and Denny's, probably in that order. Greeley is not a cold turkey destination. Greeley must be eased into gently, with small pieces of Loveland, Denver and Boulder as rewards for maintaining a will to live.

If Not Pasta Jay, Then Who?

2005-01-08T04:03:00.000-07:00

In the airport, Santa Ana, CA.

Female Baggage Clerk: Can I see your photo ID?
--- Yes, hold on. Sorry.

*general rummaging, leading to eventual relinquishing of drivers license*

Female Baggage Clerk: Ah, Boulder. Have you ever been to Pasta Jays?
--- Yes, actually I went there for the first time two weeks ago.
It's very good.
Female Baggage Clerk: Yes, my lover used to be married to Jay.

Not even Pasta Jay has had a perfect life...is there really any hope for any of us?

Mantra for the Greeley-Bound

2005-01-08T03:18:00.000-07:00

Seek intense intellectual inspiration rather than shallow social stimulation.

Journey To The Cold Place

2005-01-08T02:55:00.000-07:00

(3:04 pm)
I got marked for the Gold Star security treatment at John Wayne Airport. I always get marked.
The fellow behind me was sporting a JewAngloFro and a Pink Floyd hoodie. Apparently my presence posed a far more imminent threat to homeland security.

The problem may be my lack of designer carryon luggage. I never bring a carryon bad with me because I always accumulate miscellaneous items when I travel, far more than I left with, so my 'carryon luggage' is always the largest plastic bag I have received in the course of my vacation. Wires, Sobe and books were all poised at the top of the bag, ready to make their escape.
The other problem, I decided while staring at my reflection in the bathroom mirror only minutes ago, is that I must look like a habitual drug user. Which drug or drugs in particular, I'm not sure of. On a good day, I've been told that I could pass for a cokehead, but today is not one of those days.
Whine, whine, whine. I don't like living in Greeley. It looks grey and sickly out, and that is in southern California. Greeley is undoubtedly far, far worse in appearance. And Greeley doesn't even have Hollywood or Disneyland to bolster its soggy appearance.
I'm listening to 'Clark Gable' by the Postal Service. It depresses me. It reminds me of my pathetic brush with romance this past semester - a cute indierock Christian kid who was 22 and had never been in a relationship. We weren't dating. We were 'spending lots of time together' and 'getting to know each other' over meals I didn't pay for and movies I didn't want to see. I introduced him to the Postal Service and he spent a month or two singing lines from this particular song back to me in smooth indierock tones.
'I kissed you in a style Clark Gable would admire; I thought it classic.'
The past five months are comprised of a few golden, idealized moments and thousands of hours of grey mediocrity. A trip to Wyoming, a night at Margie's, a sunrise, a moonset, a slow dance, a cliff dive, a freezing roof, an eggshaker on the Hill, a poetry reading, sushi, sushi, sushi.

Sleepover Parties; Black and White

2005-01-07T09:57:00.000-07:00

I've never really been able to sleep as much as everyone else. Often, I congratulate myself on this fact, being proud that fewer of my hours per day are wasted on being unconscious, but this morning I realized that in the hours between my awakening and the stirring of those around me, there is virtually no way to politely do anything fun.

I was seven, eight, nine, and had many sleepover parties. These were not sleepovers in the traditional young-girl sense of the word since I was homeschooled and had no friends; they just involved myself and my eight-year-old best friend, Kristina. We would giggle on the basement pull-out couch in her split-level Clifton Park, NY home and try to stay up until the green digital display on her VCR read 12:00. We only accomplished this mission once, and we found Waldo probably sixty or seventy times in an attempt to remain awake, navigating ourselves through the red, yellow, and blue Waldo editions.

It is raining in Los Angeles this morning. I stepped outside with the dog for a few minutes in my bare feet, which are now damp and unpleasant-feeling. I stepped back into the kitchen and could not decide which floor tiles would look less aesthetically disastrous when slathered with dirt - the black ones or the white ones.

I dreamt last night that I was at the Trident, but the Trident was located in the space where Prufrock's used to be. I dreamt that everyone in the Trident was smoking long cigarettes and I was coughing.

2005-01-06T01:03:00.000-07:00

It is easy to proclaim yourself
the last of the materialists
as you blow your medicine on your palm
and dance with the luggage
of complete determinism
crawling slowly across the horizon
for an enforced silence
smaller than a real world.

But living in a slogan
uproots memory
like the vowel in butt
bursts into flames
and you paint the town
anything but red.

A child born on this date
should avoid crossing bridges.

Afloat in Sappho's boat.
Not a writer, but a poet
(a distinction Spicer made)
Agony improved you, too
like a crumb in your bed
seems huge and imposing
against your skin
where it belongs,
come to think of it.

-Mitch Highfill

Beds

2005-01-05T20:32:00.000-07:00

I'm sleeping on a queen-sized bed that has been overrun by piles of books and my clothes.

In Boulder, I've been sleeping on a loveseat couch that only accommodates me when I am curled up in the fetal position.

In Greeley I have been sleeping on a Lebanese floor mat. I was awaiting my return somewhat eagerly, because my overhelpful roommates had offered to move it for me while I was gone.
However, I received telephone notice from my ex-roommates notifying me that in their zeal to get me completely out of their Suzy-homemaker house, they may or may not have broken my futon beyond all repair.

Perhaps it would be better to stay here...however, I have already purchased my plane ticket back home.

I once purchased a plane ticket to Europe that was considerably more expensive that I ended up not using, due to the melodrama which often surrounds those things which are ambiguously not relationships.

They would be considered as such to the regular individual, but were merely a travesty of some sort to one half of the parties involved.

All this happened one million years ago and is no longer of any concern.

Recipe for Happiness in Santa Monica or Elsewhere

2005-01-05T16:45:00.000-07:00

A Dull Explanation of My Day

2005-01-05T09:53:00.000-07:00

The morning was spent watching 'Blue', as we were all far too tired last night to start another film. I enjoyed it very much - particularly the dramatic leitmotiv that audibly appeared after each revelation or turning point.

This afternoon, as I previously stated, we assembled the goods for a David box.

When faced with the difficult decision for which 'short film' to watch before dinner, 'A Short Story About Love' or 'A Short Story About Killing', we foolishly chose at random which one would be viewed. 'Love' was selected, and it was quite possibly the most depressing film I've ever seen...it wasn't really short either, 80 minutes...

I'm attempting to write as I talk to Nate in Stibranispeak, a written dialect based on phonetics rather than correct spellings. It is difficult to keep both thoughts straight.

This evening, we went to Good for dinner, which lived up to the name...if it had been titled 'Fabulous' or 'Spectacular', I would have been disappointed, but I feel that 'Good' is an adequate description.

Los Angeles doesn't seem to really card people...between the house hot sake at Shin last night and an apricot ale shared between Gillian and I this evening, it seems like most places don't really mind how old you are. Drinking small amounts of alcohol, while never unpleasant, is immensely more enjoyable when out and about.

We then made our way to Pasadena to visit Cafe Equator and ordered a strawberry hookah and vanilla ice cream. I am now lying in (my?) bed in Gillian and Billy's house, and it's only midnight. I'm tired, not in the need-sleep sort of way, but in more of a unable-to-function type of feeling, a pleasant but useless strawberry euphoria. The light switch was on for a significant amount of time and I stared at it, attempting to use some kind of supernatural power to turn it off.

My favorite book when I was younger...I can't even remember the title of it now, but it involved children whose parents had been expoesd to some kind of drug while they were pregnant, and as a result their children all had silver eyes and unique superpowers. One girl had ESP, another could fly, and some other child could move objects with his mind. Having been homeschooled for so long, I had no knowledge of the X-Men or any books outisde of L.M. Montgomery, the Bobbsey Twins, the Chronicles of Narnia and Trixie Belden, I found this book to be the most incredible idea ever and hid it under my mattress where my mother could not find it. My mother did not approve of supernatural events - in seventh grade I read every book that had ever received a Caldecott or Newbery Award, with the exception of Ms. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, which was deemed inappropriate for me. I wasn't even allowed to watch the Smurfs, as my parents had once attended some type of Paranoid Christian Parents conference where they were told that the Smurfs were really all undead beings.

I'm nearly finished with David Sedaris now, and then will return to Thomas Mann. I was attempting to read them concurrently - thirty pages here, forty there...but it proved to be more difficuly than it would seem.

I'm unsure of what to start next - Andres recommended 'Chronicle of a Death Foretold', but I believe that its fairly short, and I have seven hours of traveling in a few short days.

I am a devoted reader. I cannot tell a lie.

Gillian has to give a consultation this morning, so I will be dropped off at Cafe Tropical or Psychobabble to fend for my own amongst the infamous Silverlake hipsters.

Sprechstimme

2005-01-04T18:45:00.000-07:00

In case anyone might have thought that I hadn't written today because I was out on the town exploring, think again. I'm actually working on moving this blog, along with some other projects, onto sprechstimme.com, which will eventually be the home of this blog.

Gillian and I went David-shopping today. It was most enjoyable.

In a little while, it's off to 'Good' for Tuesday Happy Hour, and then to a hookah bar in Pasadena. Then we will return home and watch A Short Film About Love and A Short Film About Killing. Although I'm not sure which order we'll watch them in yet.
Won't that be pleasant.

Symphony in Stainless Steel

2005-01-04T10:55:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was spent visiting the Disney Opera House.

After taking an extensive and very enjoyable audio tour of the Opera House, Gillian attempted to give me a brief tour of Downtown Los Angeles. Gillian has never spent time downtown, so an accidental turn dropped us in Little Tokyo.
We returned to the house, drank merlot, had a pillow fight, and then headed to Shin for some delicious sushi. After dinner, we stopped at Jerry's Video, the Los Angeles version of Video Station, and picked up Vincent Gallo's 'Brown Bunny'.
Vincent Gallo's first film, 'Buffalo-66', starring himself and Christina Ricci, has developed something of a cult following, and Gillian's boyfriend says that it is the most beautiful thing that he has ever seen. I assume that this excludes Gillian.
His second film, 'Brown Bunny', was ripped apart by critics. Vincent Gallo, being unbalanced already, proclaimed that he would never release another movie.
After seeing 'Brown Bunny' for myself, I doubt that he would have been given that option.

"In particular, Roger Ebert called the film "the worst in the history of Cannes" to which Vincent Gallo responded that Ebert was a "fat pig with the physique of a slave trader". Ebert paraphrased a remark of 'Winston Churchill' 's and responded that "although I am fat, one day I will be thin, but Mr. Gallo will still have been the director of 'Brown Bunny'". Gallo then put a "hex" on Ebert's colon, to which Ebert responded that "even my colonoscopy was more entertaining than his film".
-IMDB.com

Flying and Such

2005-01-03T11:44:00.000-07:00

I found a ridiculously horrible flight back which stops in Portland, but was over one hundred dollars cheaper than the other available flights. I won't be getting back into Boulder until after midnight on the 7th.
I managed to somehow acheive the mediocre grade of 'C' in both of the classes I did not attend this semester. I'm not sure how this was accomplished, since I attended each of them possibly three times. The grade of 'C' is not one that I get very often and not one that I am particularly proud of, although it is impressive, at least to myself, that I got any credit for these classes at all, having prepared almost none at all for them and having never attended. The worst part is that many UNC students were attending this class every day, taking copious notes, reading the textbooks at night, attempting to live the "2 hours-for-1 class hour" college professor dream. These people were striving for Cs. They formed study groups which met in people's kitchens. They hated me for never coming to class, when I understood that the information covered could be garnered by attending an 8th grade social studies class or by reading the texts three days before the final exam.

Pertaining and Not Pertaining to the Trek

2005-01-03T02:22:00.000-07:00

This morning I threw my tiny brown suitcase and a large box of food into Gillian's PT Cruiser and we departed for Los Angeles. The cardboard box contained food which is incredibly unhealthy and thus unappetizing - Sobe bottled drinks, Skittles, wafer cookies, Cheese Nips, honey roasted peanuts - but for some odd reason, unexplained by science, when one is driving a car for many endless hours and the only alternative is a McDonald's every fifty miles, these foods become the only source of nourishment available. It was a very large box, and it was very full. My mother is good at these things - soccer snacks, baking cookies, reminding everyone to take their vitamins at breakfast - motherhood being her only occupation for the last twenty years.

When I awoke, I realized that my iPod had somehow turned itself on in the middle of the night and had a single battery bar remaining. It still somehow miraculously gave us eight hours of sweet, sweet music, but you will hear more about that later.

We drove and did the things that people do on road trips. We listened to Damien Rice and highlights from Otello. We read David Sedaris to each other. We passed an incredibly obese girl in a white Jetta and I spilled honey-roasted peanuts all over my lap.

Three or four hours passed. I took a turn behind the wheel and discovered all of the magic that is cruise control.
I have never before experienced cruise control - for lack of a better description, it essentially turns a three or four lane highway into an intense game of Frogger, and the levels became increasingly difficult as it got darker and heavy fog and rain was cast upon our automobile.

I accidentally said 'shit' in front of Annie Hall, who is an 8-month-old Pointer mix, and immediately winced, realizing that by inserting this word into her vocabulary I had instantly sent her spiraling into a disturbed youth to a life on the streets, shivering outside her heroin dealer's doorstep at three in the morning. I then remembered that she is a dog and is unaffected by obscenities in most social situations.

A song played on the iPod forced us to realize that neither of us was familiar with Myla Goldberg. I had assumed that she was some kind of fictional character, but as it turns out, thanks to two minutes of poking around online, Myla Goldberg does exist. She is an author and '96 graduate of Oberlin. She has actually had books (well, a book as of this blog entry) published, making her about one thousand times more reputable than ninety percent of the 'authors' that I have met who claim to be such. She did production work on a Stephen King movie until being fired, giving her six months of unemployment benefits and plenty of time to write a novel. I wouldn't mind being Myla Goldberg. I even like her name better.

I was so awestruck by the large-scale Frogger occuring all around me that I did not notice the gas meter slip below a half-tank, then below a quarter-tank.
"We need to stop for gas."
"Okay, we'll stop at the next station."
"There isn't a station for eighty miles."
"Oh...well, I bet we'll make it. We'll be fine."
"Yeah, yeah, don't worry about it."
"No, I'm not worried. It's not a big deal."
We were lying and we knew it. There we would be, stranded in some canyon in Utah, twenty miles away from an exit, much less a gas station, at the mercy of the Church of Latter-Day Saints.

We continued driving in a silence peppered by blank, comforting remarks that the car would certainly find gas. When our spirits could not get any lower, the remaining bar of battery in the iPod departed, leaving us with an empty flashing battery, no radio stations, no gasoline, and no cell phone signal, in a state where over seventy-five percent of the population is Mormon, according to the Deseret News. I doubt their validity.

Somehow we drove for over forty miles while the gas light was on. The gas station that we stopped at was in Mormonland, a desolate location. The only sign of life was a plastic attempt at some kind of Christmas tree, which had been propped up in the grass dividing lonely gas station from lonely highway. Annie Hall, who has a more active imagination than I do, apparently recognized this disgusting molded mass as something resembling a tree and urinated on it. Of course.

Magically, just as we pulled away, a single bar of battery life returned to the iPod. In a moment of rare and unnatural happiness infused with Diet Coke (soda being something I have not consumed for months and months), I gleefully shouted, "Praise be to Allah!" Praise indeed.
This miracle lasted until 4:29 Colorado time, when it died completely. No hope of recharging it until we reached Los Angeles, but it at least guided us through Mormon country.

They should install signs of some sort, or at least wizened natives at the ports of entry, warning everyone of the inherent danger that lies ahead. Perhaps just a flashing road sign - Turn Back! Turn Back!

The iPod was dead. We attempted to browse the many radio stations available in Utah, finding only a country-western song featuring a young woman saying in hardly any more words than these, "I was born three months premature but God saved me because I was born to love you and you are attempting to abandon me, thus negating my existence."

We turned off the radio and had pseudo-intellectual conversation until both of us admitted that we had strayed far from the original subject and neither of us actually possessed any knowledge on our subject of the last ten minutes ago. Somewhere during this conversation, I realized that I no longer knew what the word 'vicissitude' meant. I confessed this to Gillian as well, but she was unfamiliar with the word. Our intellects stimulated and mouths watering, we pulled into Virgin River for the prime rib dinner, and after consuming our dinner, decided that something about animal products is incredibly nauseating and that we would be vegan for the remainder of our trip.

We perused Gillian's CDs. We tried to learn French, but were too tired, and could only find 'Learn Italian' discs 3, 4, 5, and 6. Instead, we conversed in Spanish for about an hour, until I somehow located the Postal Service. While I enjoy the album, after listening to it today for the umpteenth time, I decided that Jimmy Tamborello could have and should have found a different lyricist/vocalist for the collaboration project, and that Dntel creates infinitely and inherently better music than Death Cab for Cutie does. I wanted to tell someone, to argue with them about it, to extract nonpoetic and just plain ugly lines from the Postal Service and prove someone wrong. But I was tired and Gillian was depressed and I took a nap.

We drove through Vegas and the last five hours were filled with construction, rain, no iPod, and my first big-city driving experience. It was mildly terrifying to me while being tremendously exciting. It's astounding to me that I can be driving fifteen miles over the speed limit and see a flash of metal inches to my right as someone rockets past me at triple-digit speeds in torrential rain and wind.

Although it is raining very much, the temperature here is still fifty degrees, which I appreciate. I would not mind living in a climate that was perpetually alternating between sixty-five and fifty-five as the sun and moon drifted through a blue sky.

I need to purchase a plane ticket back to Boulder soon, just so I can be certain that I will return at all. When I was here in July, I bought one the day before departure and had something impressive like three dollars in my checking account afterwards. That won't happen this time, but I do have another finite semester of school that must be dealt with in the very very near future.

And I need to buy books...but I can worry about that when I return.
That and everything else.

You're No Rock and Roll Fun

2005-01-01T18:27:00.000-07:00

All right, so I thought that I would be heading west right now, in Gillian's PT Cruiser, with roughly 2500 songs at our fingertips and a gigantic box of snack foods to gorge ourselves on, compliments of my mother, the amaranthine soccer mom.
However, that is not the case, which I suppose is just as well because I was incredibly tired, having got home as my family was arising. Sheer brilliance.
My blogging this evening is a sea of fractured sentences tied together by commas in an attempt to at least make them look useful.
I'm not entirely sure of how to spend my evening now...it seems as though it should be well-spent, being my last in Boulder for a while...and the Trident, as always, is a fairly precarious place to be. One is never sure of who they will be accosted by on any given night at the Trident.
One thing is for certain - before I leave my house, I will have to select a jacket to wear that is not quite so frou-frou indie.
New Year's Eve ended up being much much more enjoyable than I had originally given it credit for. For all practical purposes, it should have involved relentless intoxication and severe disillusionment from all sides, but instead it was very pleasant.
I expected the evening to inspire me that I needed to exit Colorado at once, for Los Angeles, for anywhere outside of this state. Four months of existing only inside of a 200-square-mile circle is entirely miserable.
But perhaps Los Angeles is not really where I want to go, just not-Colorado, anywhere, possibly not-US. I should leave this summer. I just worry that I might not bother coming back, any time that I go anywhere more interesting than here.

What are you doing New Year's Eve?

2004-12-31T18:38:00.000-07:00

That is the question of the hour...I suppose it's too late to really ask about, since there are only fiveish hours left of New Years Eve.
I'm unsure of the social etiquette rules involving New Year's Eve parties. The average college party starts at ten or so and people show up around eleven-thirty, peaking in the early hours of the morning. But New Year's Eve is completely geared towards midnight.
The other difficult question is which party one should be in attendance at for the strike of twelve. During the desperate sprint for lip-locking at the midnight hour, driving in between parties is the last place to be. In New Year's past, I have never actually been at a party at midnight while everyone else was kissing strangers and giggling and spilling champagne on themselves, and I've never been kissed at the stroke of twelve. This year will probably not bring any such luck for me either.
Gillian's shirt for the evening is attatched to her body by a single thread looping across her back. Gillian will certainly receive a New Year's kiss.
Last year I received a New Year's kiss at about four am. My then-boyfriend was in Illinois, celebrating the holidays with his Mormon family. It is slightly obscene how little I think of him now. It is quite pleasant being the one to end a relationship and thus not being obligated to care about the endee for another moment after the breakup.
Gillian has decided against the thread shirt in favor of a sweater, thus cutting her chances of a New Year's kiss in half, at least. But Gillian does not require a New Year's Kiss, because she has two boyfriends eagerly awaiting her return to California. I have no boyfriends eagerly awaiting my arrival anywhere, and I have not been kissed in an embarrassingly large amount of time.
My mother was complaining about not having enough money to do anything this evening, right after she and my father got back from an expensive dinner, and I calmly asked her "Why don't you get a job?"
This apparently was an inappropriate comment to make and it made my mother quite upset. It doesn't seem like such an obscene idea. I'm sure lots of women have jobs these days, in addition to driving cars, voting, and balancing their own checkbooks. My mother does none of these things - instead she plays tennis for two hours a day and homeschools my youngest sister.
Homeschooling is something for women to do when they don't have any friends and they don't want one of those pesky 'job' things.
I was homeschooled for nine years.
A lot of pretty cool people died this year: Marlon Brando, Ray Charles, Rodney Dangerfield, two Ramones, President Reagan, Ol' Dirty Bastard...and I will miss them all.
Or something. I probably won't really notice. I haven't thus far. That's the problem with people - when they're not around, you tend to not really notice. There's something like a hundred thousand people who have died from the tsunami - or rather, a hundred thousand bodies - and they think five million more will die without aid. And we all know this, but we don't see it so we don't really care very much.
I bet that if a hundred thousand bodies were in a giant pile in your front yard, you would notice.
Perhaps that could be arranged.

Resolves to V

2004-12-31T02:35:00.000-07:00

This year only has one day remaining.
Actually, it already is today.
The year ending should apparently have some kind of significance, aside from reminding everyone that they are alone and that they need to inebriate themselves enough to kiss a complete stranger, just so long as they are not the only one without a partner at midnight.
Nothing particularly of merit occurred to me this year. I hacked my way through the second half of a markedly unsuccessful eight-month relationship, visited Los Angeles and Tempe, went camping in Canyonlands (again...I love it there), hosted five large and seemingly enjoyable get-togethers, ivory-tickled my way through two semesters of college tuition and housing, moved three times, finally began to outgrow the oat-sowing phase of my college experience, officially lost touch with almost everyone from high school, became friends with my sister, and somehow managed to be very nearly completely devoid of any romantic letdowns.
Last night from two tables over, Dan Kohler and I realized that our mutual hatred of each other (from high school) is now overshadowed by our mutual hatred of everyone else (from high school). It was enjoyable, and I ended up having the first non-hostile conversation with him that I have ever had. It was surreal, but good. Not that winning over enemies from high school is some kind of accomplishment, or something that one should be worrying about at all. I wasn't worrying about it, and the event itself will have no effect on my life, but I suppose I'm still glad that it happened.
Last night Nathan once again served as a 'more accessible version of Jesus',, or at least the minister I turned to at four-thirty in the morning to confess my emotions to, if emotions are these pathetic mini-dromedies that one can physically create and manipulate within one's own life. That's almost the same as an emotion, I suppose.
The sooner I go to bed, the sooner I will wake up and see that it is New Years Eve. And as soon as thats over, I can go to California and forget all about the semester that is drawing near.

Si je t'aime, quel souci est-il à vous?

2004-12-30T15:50:00.000-07:00

That is all.

Fleeting Thoughts

2004-12-30T01:34:00.000-07:00

I am intoxicated at the house of a friend of mine.
This is a somewhat normal-sounding statement, but the aforementioned friend is out of town, it would seem, out of the country. But the back door to the garage was unlocked, so here I am, with several other drunk and happy people.
We just put in 'King Arthur', a movie that I have not yet seen. Probably my life will not be significantly improved by watching it, although perhaps I'm just being cynical and nihilistic.
I'm very much a girl that Ernestine Rose would have hated. I am very skilled at speaking when spoken to, but cannot start a conversation with anyone. Today someone said hello to me and I honestly could not muster up a reply aside from a 'hello' and a few moments of brief contemplation on whether or not it was worth uttering 'how are you today?'. I decided that the somewhat mediocre and short conversation that would inevitably follow was not worth the possibility of a distasteful glance and a turned shoulder, thus cutting my chances short before they began.
I am more and more tempted to become a hikikomori as school comes closer and closer to beginning again. I would very much enjoy confining myself to living quarters containing nothing more than books and a computer, with food shoved through the door at varying intervals throughout the day. Not that I eat very much - possibly coffee could be shoved under, or perhaps some type of very long straw hooked up to a Mr. Coffee. The goal of obtaining coffee is the only reason that I wake up in the morning. At least I have a reason, I suppose. Most days.
Morgan informed me that my buck-fifty-lost-love from a few days ago was, in fact, not falling desperately in love with me on a street corner. This is mildly disconcerting. I have been under the impression for almost an entire year now that the only thing I am somewhat skilled in is the art of inadvertantly causing strangers and mild acquaintances to fall in love with me, and if that is lost, then I have no hope remaining for love.
Someone told me several days ago that if two people hold eye contact for more than twelve seconds, they will either make love or kill each other. This seems far-fetched and nonsensical. If I were to maintain eye contact with someone for twelve seconds I would probably have very strong inclinations to do both, although I am uncertain of the order.

In which I am completely spineless.

2004-12-29T14:05:00.000-07:00

I thought that I wrote about this last night, but upon reflection I realized that I have not touched a computer in twenty-one hours, which has to be some kind of a record for this Christmas break.
Last evening, I officially lost all remaining faith that I had in myself as a worthwhile human being. I headed to the Trident alone, to half-heartedly read Ferlinghetti, who I appreciated less than I had hoped I would. I ordered a florentine. I listened to Belle & Sebastian. I read about the giant phallus wandering the earth and all of the absinthe-induced lucid visions of Ferlinghetti. I spoke briefly with Duff, and with Bicycle Man, and I shuffled out the front door shamefully several times to answer my phone. I talked on the phone, and I looked through the window at a smile. Of course it was not directed at me. I am completely incapable of striking up conversation - the only thing that automatically comes to mind is 'Gee, how are you today?'. Luckily, I don't usually say that. Although a couple of days ago, I said hello to someone in line and they just turned around and pretended I wasn't there or something - and now I shall not speak to anyone for three days, and simply lock myself away to drown in my pool of rejection.
I retreated in self-loathing to my table. I was thirteen again, the homeschooled girl, the new girl, who cries in Mr. Davis' art class when a nasty boy with one of those gel-induced surf wave hairstyles tells me that my favorite shirt looks like a towel. I can look back on this without feeling ridiculous now, because my pain has since been vindicated - the boy who made the remark has since become a flaming and unsuccessful homosexual and the pig-nosed girl who laughed at his joke lost her virginity to Lucas Steuber. All has turned out equally, I would say.
I stirred my florentine and attempted to read, but reading bothers me. Ferlinghetti writes in stream-of-consciousness and the words are lush and deserve being read slowly, but I know that as he was writing them, they just flowed and he did not know what he was about to say until it had alreay been penned. I wish that they could just flow into me somehow, that I could have injected them, rather then spending ten minutes on a single page, returning to the original metaphor as it is revisited and played off of in following sentences.
My large black hole of self-hatred apparently won the attraction of a scruffy-looking teenager, who left the girl who he had come in with to accost me with a coffee cup filled with carnation petals. When a stranger accosts you with flowers and seats themself at your table, it is difficult to get rid of them gracefully. I learned that he was nineteen, and that he had read a lot of 'Fer-lingety', as he pronounced it. There is some element of disbelief implied in that last statement.
Then Jordan came into the Trident and somehow managed to scare the kid off, the way that only a bald man wearing a scarf can do.
I drove to Greeley late last night for the sole purpose of cleaning out my old room in my old house, then surveyed it for about thirty minutes this morning before deciding just to pay one of my poor friends to clean it for me. This was a somewhat shitty thing to do, but she appreciated it, and I have the money, and it wasn't worth spending a full day in Greeley.
Nothing really is.

2004-12-28T17:06:00.000-07:00

I have this need to be completely awful to people for about seven hours a week. Luckily, for the poor people who I impose my time upon, this afternoon I filled in for a shift up at the Coldstone Creamery in Longmont. This was four and one-half hours of bliss, filled with telling people that they must buy large quantities of ice cream that would make them even more morbidly obese than they already are and throwing hard gummi bears at screaming children, which makes them gleeful for several seconds. I do not understand why catching a green piece of candy in the eye would make someone happy, but I can't pretend to understand everything.
Last night, as I was making my way down Pearl Street alone, trying to spin through the songs in my new iPod, I was approached by a young gentleman in a North Face jacket.
"Excuse me?"
"Yes?"
"Did you know that at 5:52, you are absolutely breathtaking?"
"...Thank you..."
"Do you like to drink coffee?"
"Yeah, I'm kind of addicted to it, unfortunately."
"What would you say that your favorite coffee shop on Pearl Street is?"
"Um...well, I'm heading to the Trident right now..."
"Great...so, how would you feel about buying me coffee? I'd like to ask you out right now, but I don't have any money on me."
"Actually...I only have a dollar fifty. I was just planning on buying myself coffee."
This was actually true. I don't know what I would have done if I had had three dollars.
"Oh...thats too bad...because if I had gone to coffee with you, I would have analyzed your handwriting and told you secrets that not even your best friends know about you."
This was a lie, but still mildly disconcerting. I like my secrets. I don't have many left at this point.
We stood awkwardly, the breeze of passing interest from the tastelessly romantic pick-up line drifting away.
"Well, do you feel like you're a person that I would enjoy getting to know better?"
I smiled. He had somehow discovered in two minutes what it takes lucky people two hours to learn, and what some people hadn't quite grasped over two years.
"No, I'm really not. I'm deathly boring, except for when I'm being malicious and selfish."
He seemed confused. If he knew better, he would be praising the heavens for delivering him from several weeks or months of hell.
"Well...are you at least rich?"
"No, I'm just a poor college student."
"Oh. Well, I'm kind of looking for someone rich, so...I guess that works out anyways."
"Best of luck," I said and continued walking.
But several hours later, I realized that for a dollar fifty, I could have fallen in love this evening. I suppose that in many ways, it would be better to struggle half-heartedly through getting to know this fellow for a few months than to do nothing but start school again and migrate back to Margie's, the only independent coffee house in all of Greeley. Certainly no one there will call me absolutely breathtaking, which is good, because I fear that if one more person compliments me in the presence of Gillian, she would murder me. And I would not be entirely undeserving of being murdered, either. If someone were to murder me, I would hope for it to be Gillian, I think.
It is strange being in places where you once made love. Things float back...not the emotions themselves, but memories of the emotions, memories of your feeble, ridiculously happy in-love self return and are somewhat nauseating. The thought that you were foolish enough to trust someone that much makes you a little bit sick, and a little bit sad that you were, once again, not right about them.
I'm slightly overwhelmed with nihilistic angst right at the moment. Last night I had the desire to emotionally ravage someone, just to rip them limb from limb and point out everything that was wrong with them in a harsh tone. I didn't, I just sat in a car with Jordan and chocolate milk and we tried to figure out if we dislike each other. I'm not completely sold to either side at this point. Not that it matters. We only see each other for three weeks out of the year anyways, and short spurts of time like that aren't worth disliking someone for.
I really want to go out for dinner right now. But it's barely five, too early for dinner, and I don't feel like calling someone and waiting for the hassle of them getting ready. I'm not ready. I smell like ice cream and I need to shower it all away. I could either offer to buy my nine-year-old sister dinner and deal with the possibility of rejection from a fourth-grader, which would whittle away at my ego, or just make myself some pesto upstairs and dine in the solitude of my room. Which isn't even mine.
All of the day is just passing time until I will go to the Trident and be in love for an hour or two. Its a pretty stupid thing to do, but I only have six and a half weeks of teen angst left. Then I guess I'll be a grown up or something. Pah. I don't think I've matured since I was fifteen, just learned what is allowed to say in front of other people.
Which is not much.

Don't wake me, I plan on sleeping in...

2004-12-27T01:58:00.000-07:00

I've slept for three hours each of the past two nights. Tomorrow I hope to wake up as the sun is going down and feel completely rejuvenated, but this will probably not occur as my iPod is scheduled to arrive FedExed sometime in the morning and I'll finally be able to do something "constructive".
I got music-hiton at the Religious Science church this morning by the guy who was singing, who claims to have received 'most of a music degree' from UNC.
"So, I really want to find an accompanist to work on music for some auditions that I have coming up...do you think that you could help me out with those?"
"Yeah, I charge twenty-five dollars an hour."
"Okay, great! Also, I'm the director of the Christian Theatre Bla-de-hoo-haa in Denver and I was wondering if maybe you could be our accompanist, its like an after school program and you could charge whatever you want; it meets on Tuesday afternoons."
"Well, I have voice class on Tuesday afternoons, so that wouldn't really work out."
"Right...yeah...well, if you ever don't have it, you should really come down and play for the kids, they would love it, we could carpool down there and get dinner beforehand or something..."
"Yeah, it basically meets every Tuesday."
"Well, thats neat...so, I'm in this production of Narnia down at the Civic Center, you should really come and see it, it's going to be really good, it goes up in a couple of weeks..."
"Yeah, that might be fun. I'll be in Los Angeles though."
"Oh, okay...so you won't be here next week?"
"Yeah...I won't be here."
"Oh...okay. Well, there's this really cool vocal group coming to the UCCC in a couple of weeks...the Manhattan Transfer...have you heard of them?"
"Yeah, they've been around for a long time."
"Yeah...they're really great, I hear..."
"Yeah, I have a couple of their albums."
"We should go and see them! That would be fun."
"Aren't they playing on the 7th and the 8th?"
"Yeah!"
"I'll be in Los Angeles."
"Oh, okay...well, you have my phone number, right?"
"Right."
"Great...well, just call me when you get back, okay? And have a safe trip. And a happy New Year. And a good time in Boulder."
"Right...You too."
Tonight I went to DIA to meet Gillian's older brother, and it made me really look forward to the happy day when my younger brothers and sisters will come to me with their stories of sexual mishaps and drug experimentation. It will be just like they're real people, instead of home-schooled, socially awkward munchkins. Won't that be fun?
I'm already dreading returning home from Los Angeles and going back to Greeley. Its like a self-imposed prison sentence. I'm also dreading another semester of being pursued by the loser-musician type, which seems to be all that I accidentally attract in Greeley...which I suppose is better than the loser-drugaddict type that I seem to be reeling in down in Boulder. Neither is really preferable. I thought that my standards for casual dating would eventually dip down into the 'oh-well-its-a-free-dinner' mode, but they've only gotten higher as the months since I broke up with Jon have passed. This is unfortunate since I'm really lonely. I should get a dog.
Los Angeles is a good place to feel devoid of all emotions. There's kind of this spirit of camaraderie between myself and the entire city of Los Angeles, since most of them are emotionally numb as well. When I lived in Albany and frequented the city as a young(er) girl, it always struck me as the city of 'no one cares about anyone but themselves', whereas Los Angeles is simply the city of 'no one cares'. This is a much more friendly concept to me.
Jon's truck was just sitting in front of his house in Greeley this morning. His family is all in Illinois, but I guess he just stayed and had Christmas by himself. This made me moderately gleeful, which I felt pretty bad about, since I haven't talked to him in a few months even though we had the misfortune of seeing each other every day. He's gained about fifty pounds since we broke up though, thus taking up a significantly larger percentage of my vision and making it more awkward to avoid looking at him.
Life is hard, but I persevere on.

Is It A Wonderful Life?

2004-12-26T02:43:00.000-07:00

george: what do you want, mary? do you want the moon? if you want it, i'll throw a lasso around it and pull it down for you. hey, that's a pretty good idea. i'll give you the moon, mary.
mary: i'll take it. then what?
george: well, then you can swallow it, and it'll all dissolve, see. and the moonbeams would shoot out of your fingers and your toes and the ends of your hair... am i talking too much?

Some Tasteless Tying of Loose Ends

2004-12-26T02:09:00.000-07:00

Well, Christmas is officially over, and that makes me happy. In about five hours, I'll be departing Boulder once again, just to go play piano for the Christian Science people for a few hours and then bringing some stuff back from my new house - which hopefully I'll be able to get into. My new roommates haven't exactly made me a key yet, but my guess is that they're all at home with the families - that would have been a good thing to think about before two o'clock in the morning, but its a little late for that now.
I was in a pretty foul mood all day but managed to fake it pretty well for about fourteen hours around my family, which I'm sure they appreciated to some extent. I kind of stranded a couple of drunk people in Gunbarrel so that they could be drunk and not in love for the evening slash morning, and I'm pretty inexplicably elated about that right now for a lot of reasons that are pretty inappropriate for this entry. At any rate, the day was survivable and now its over. My hands are a little numb, which makes it difficult to type.
Since I'm kind of a passive-agressive bitch, I'm going to go and write about this some other place instead of here. Sorry.

Newlyweds

2004-12-25T01:57:00.000-07:00

If I had bought everyone who reads this a Christmas present, then I would tell you that for Christmas, I bought Gillian Season One of that Newlyweds show with Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey. But as far as all of you other people are concerned, I bought Gillian Season One of that Newlyweds show as a late birthday present. At any rate, it was a pretty ridiculous gift, but we're watching it now at two o'clock on Christmas morning. The whole show, or at least the first ten minutes of the first episode, is based around Jessica Simpson being the most vapid person imaginable and whining about being famous, married, blonde, and alive. Just when the act starts to get old, Nick walks into a room without his shirt on.
I would write more, but the fact that this post and this show are even existing right now is pretty depressing.
In a few hours, I'll be woken up by my eager siblings who still give a shit about Christmas. They'll spend half an hour opening presents and my dad will make pancakes. Then I can go back to sleep. I think that sleep is a waste of time, but there isn't anything better to do on Christmas.
Except for after midnight, when Gillian and a guitar and I head to Denny's to serenade Bijoy.

Tamagotchis and Country Western Rhymes

2004-12-24T22:42:00.000-07:00

Finish this rhyme:
"The closest thing to heaven on this planet anywhere
Is a quiet Christmas morning in the Colorado ______."
I don't want to presume that you immediately thought of the word "air", but I did.
And boy did I feel cheated when the word was actually 'snow'.
It's not really fair to take the lyrics out of context like that, because I'm looking at the lyrics page and the lines before that end with 'air' and 'below'. It's an ABAB rhyme structure. But the whole song is ABAB, and any chorus that rhymes ought to be AABB. Some contrast. Not that the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (or any other country-western band) was too concerned with musical or lyrical contrast.
Soon I will listen to music on my iPod in my car and will not have to grapple with these issues.
The more that I reflect upon the Grapple, it makes me angry that they stole someone else's word. While the English language was being developed, someone came up with the word 'grapple', and it was well-received and respected by his friends. Someday soon, the word will have slipped from popular vocabulary and it will only be known as the strange hybrid fruit that murdered the Apple and Grape Harvest Festival.
My sister got a Tamagotchi for Christmas Eve from my brother. It was the only thing under two hundred dollars on her Christmas List.
Even if I had the inclination, I feel as though I am too selfish and irresponsible to be entrusted with a Tamagotchi. A friend of mine from freshman year of college often told me about how much she wanted a baby, but not a real baby, just one that she could behind a closet door and play with when she felt like it. Since then, she has actually dropped out of school to have a baby, and all of the closets in her parent's house are filled with shoes and board games and three-piece suits so she's pretty much in a hole for the next eighteen plus years.
I went to a friend's house for Christmas Eve and wound up playing pool for about an hour and talking about relationships with a pseudo-ex-boyfriend...I don't know...ex-datee...We started to get to know each other during the two weeks before I left for college, and the actual should-we-be-in-a-relationship' talks and associated seventeen-year-old angst proved to be much more interesting than actually dating.
Anyways, we were talking about relationships and how they are ineffective and a pretty dangerous and depressing waste of time and emotion(nothing terribly original), but I couldn't help feeling as though I was being mentally poked and prodded, as if my relationship-potential was being calculated through a rubric of musical knowledge, skills at pool, and deliberately erudite pseudo-intellectual conversation. This was mildly uncomfortable but mostly just preposterous, since I was the one who ended our pseudo-relationship over two years ago. And it wouldn't really work - I've found that I hold people who are six or seven years older than me to a much higher standard than everyone else, because that seems like a good age to be when you have everything in your life figured out. Also, living with married folk has repelled me from committed relationships. I should buy a Russian mail-order husband and then just let him stay in Russia.

We could talk on the phone once a week or so and I wouldn't have to dodge declarations of love from male admirers (as it is, they're hurtling in the air towards me like asteroids). I don't think that I could handle seeing the same person every day, every waking moment, that whole 'last-thing-i-see-before-i-fall-asleep-first-thing-i-see-when-i-wake-up' concept (or is it a pickup line...I'm not sure) is nauseating. Even spending more than a few hours a day with someone would probably get boring after a while. My last relationship got to the point of intensely and mind-numbingly boring fairly quickly. I don't feel like it was my fault. But nothing is really my fault.

Welcome to Cereality

2004-12-24T19:13:00.000-07:00

When you wake up on the morning of Monday, December 26th, head still spinning from the Carlo Rossi that you drank by yourself in your mother's underwear the night before, what will you want to eat? Pancakes are too time-consuming, bacon and sausage too cruelly inhumane, HotPockets mildly disgusting.
You want a good old-fashioned breakfat.
You want cereal.
Luckily for you and thousands of other hungover and cross-dressing Oedipal cereal-consumers out there, now you can get cereal outside of the comfort of your own home.
Cereality.

"Cereality® is more than a place to get cereal. It's a new way of thinking about cereal. A new choice in fast food. And an idea whose time has come. In fact Cereality is so unique, we have a patent pending.
At Cereality, customers choose from their favorite brands and toppings. Pajama-clad Cereologists™ fill the orders. And customers choose and add their own milk, just the way they like it."
- Taken from Cereality.

I've had cereal quite a few times in my life. I've never really found it to be a difficult dish to prepare - in fact, I wasn't going to do this, but I'm going to put my secret cereal recipe online for everyone to see:

Cereal
Ingredients:
Bowl
Cereal
Milk
Spoon

For one serving, repeat as neccessary.

1. Locate aesthetically pleasing bowl. Set aside.
2. Select brand of cereal.
3. Carefully open cereal box. Watch out for paper cuts.
4. Open plastic bag inside of cereal box.
5. Pour cereal into the set-aside bowl.
6. Add milk as desired.
7. Eat.

It may appear slightly more difficult than I earlier led you all to believe, but please don't be concerned. It is simpler than I can describe.
Sometimes I go out to eat. Yesterday I went to Noodles and Company because I wanted Penne Rosa, and if I had gone to Whole Foods to buy all of the ingredients it would have been more expensive than letting them make it for me.
Also, when you dine out, you are paying for the ambience and the company in some respect.
But at Cereality, you are paying for someone to open a box and pour sugar-covered bread granules into a bowl - no, not even a bowl. A glorified Chinese take-out box. You are paying them more to do this than you would pay for an entire box of cereal at the grocery store.
You can add variety to your cereal if you would like. Everything from malted milk balls to bananas to LuckyCharmMarshmallows (apparently they have some type of MexicanBushMonkey fishing all of the marshmallows out of the boxes in the back of the store).
David E. Roth, co-founder and CEO of Cereality, said in an NPR interview last week that he knew Cereality would be successful because people secretly eat cereal all day - in their cubicles, in their classes, stealing their baby's Cheerios...
"People were sneaking the cereal around behind their backs, they were ashamed of it."
Not to be mean, but...yes, of course they were. You don't see forty-five-year-old men with potbellies pounding down the street after the ice cream man either, and that is all right. If you see an older person gleefully jumping around in line for the Whirl-A-Hurl, you may or may not assume that they have some kind of mental disorder.
But let's not talk about cereal. Let's talk about Cereality.
I actually visited the first (and at the time only) Cereality store in Tempe, AZ this summer. By visiting, I actually mean walked past and thought it was one of the dumbest things that I had ever heard of.
It is now starting to branch out - one just opened in Philadelphia and one is coming soon to Chicago. This is amusing, because Cold Stone Creamery also got its start in Tempe and has since branched out across the country and become a huge success. What is the premise behind Cold Stone ice cream?
Taking regular flavors of ice cream and mixing stuff into it - bananas, malted milk balls, almonds...
So good luck, Cereality. I sure hope that patent works out all right. I hope you can find an inventor's license for mixing bananas into cereal, and I hope you can find one for putting cereal into Chinese take-out boxes, and I hope you burn in Hell.
Merry Christmas Eve.

But It's Christmas, Charlie Brown

2004-12-24T13:37:00.000-07:00

I'm not really sure which I dislike more about Christmas: the blatant religiosity which is mindlessly imposed upon everyone, or the shameful commercialism and materialism associated with it that seems to poison the mass populus, even in Boulder. I also dislike that I have to park my car half a mile away from anywhere I try to go and that I will be unable to partake in food or coffee this evening because Christmas is 'family time'. I was trying to persuade my mother to keep our family at home tonight, rather than trying to cram into a Christmas Eve service in a church. She said it was too hard having six people who didn't want to be there in our living room paying attention. I told her I would rather be around six people who were obligated to be there than six hundred.
Church on Christmas Eve might be the worst part of celebrating Christmas. Not only do you have the twohundredorso folks who feel obligated to go to church every Sunday, but you also have five or six hundred other people who only go once a year and hate the entire hour of it. And these people always end up sitting next to each other and getting angry when the angry twelve-year-old who got dragged away from Invader Zim's Christmas Special starts drawing elves and unicorns on his programme or dripping hot wax onto her hand. Christmas isn't supposed to be for anger and hot dripping wax. Its supposed to remind the people that have money how much they have and likewise with everyone else.
All of these holidays - Easter, Thanksgiving, Valentine's Day...we should just turn them into another three-day weekend that no one celebrates...President's Day, or MLK Day, or Veteran's Day, where everyone gets the day off of school/work and people have the option of just pausing for a minute to wonder "Why did I get today off again? Oh right, because of insert-holiday-here, which has religious/historical/no significance to my life." It would be very pleasant.

2004-12-23T18:06:00.000-07:00

"I was looking for the main character of my life, blundering along, stopping for an absinthe here, a coffee there, following the daylight ghosts of myself through the continuous landscape, death and resurrection in a tongue alack."
-Ferlinghetti, 'Her'

The day was spent shopping and conversing with a pleasant elderly man who did not speak much English, but would not stop touching the sleeve of my coat. I was in a Tibet-esque store on Pearl Street, and the store owner didn't really seem to understand the refined art of haggling - rather than saying "Today only this is sixty instead of seventy-five", when I went to the register to pay, he explained to me, "Oh, you are a nice girl, I give you this for eight not ten. Oh, this is four fifty for you, not six."
Which was nice. I got to buy two books for myself with the extra money. I want to sit and read them, but the Trident has been a horrible place for sitting at and reading in peace these last two weeks. There's always five people I know when I go in, and there's always one that wants to sit with me and have a conversation. And they're all good people who I am fond of, but then I feel nonproductive. I just wish my family would go somewhere, so that I could sprawl out across the couch and read and drink my own coffee, but when six people all live in one house, there's always somebody at home.
This evening I somehow convinced my brother to play the cello while I played the guitar. We just wrote out a few simple bass parts and my father put down his work to come in and sing with us. It was the most family-esque situation I think I've been in since we moved to Colorado...well, with my own family at least. The Houssney household is very family-oriented, which is good on an outgoing day but will sour quickly as soon as I start holing up in my room, trying to memorize.
Soon I will go to Los Angeles and there the sun will shine through a black cloud of smog.

The Inebriation Station

2004-12-23T03:20:00.000-07:00

I am far too inebriated to be doing anything online right now, but Gillian has been on the phone with boyfriend number two for quite some time now and I am superlatively drunk at the moment.
I am eating the last of the Grapples right now.
I feel like talking to someone on the phone, just because Gillian is, and I feel incredibly left out. But it isn't really considered kosher to call people after 3 am. I got called at 2-something last night, and I didn't really appreciate it. I was asleep when the phone call came, and then I just gave up after I was awakened and went out despite my sleepiness.
In general, I feel that some toxic combination of eight years of homeschooling and three years of Greeley has left me with an overwhelming feeling of social awkwardness in all foreign situations.
I feel completely devoid of all emotions right now.
I may always be pretty devoid of all emotions. Except for awkwardness, but I doubt that that is an emotion.
The problem with 3 am is that I always start to want a cup of coffee, but nothing opens until 6, and the decision to remain awake for those three hours is a very enterprising one, considering the hour.
I met some people tonight and I felt very awkward.
Everything in my life is very conufsing right now, and I don't want to go back to school at all. I don't feel like having a college degree will help me to set up a piano studio, or a voice studio, which is essentially all that I can do with my fucking music major short of become famous somehow, which isn't really a viable life plan.
Being famous would be fucking miserable anyways.
Gillian is still on the phone.
I'm halfway inclined to write short letters to everyone who I am certain reads my blog (gdkmjm), but I feel that it would take a very long time and some of my comments would be non-constructive, so I will refrain.
I wish that I was sober enough to go home. I halfway want to go to sleep, but I halfway want to read anneli rufus.
sadly, i have no other choice. confined by my insobriety, i shall remain in gunbarrel for the evening.
some fun remains to be had, naturally, but as of now, it is unclear exactly what shall happen.
one's options are severely limited at 3:20 am in Gunbarrel.
This is most unfortunate.

Picking Up!

2004-12-22T13:07:00.000-07:00

This afternoon will be full of receiving.
I must first venture to coffee, the first of possibly many awkward reunions between 'friends' who don't speak to each other for five month periods. A lot of such 'friends' have called me over break, but this one claims that I am going to receive some kind of material possession just for going to coffee for a half hour or so - that seems like a fair time for coffee, correct?
Then I must journey to the post office to pick up a package that they tried to deliver yesterday - I am a little nervous about what lies inside of it, but the sheer act of opening it will bring me great joy.
Also, I remembered that someone in North Boulder owes me a hundred and someodd dollars, so I should probably call them and go get that, for Christmas presents and what not.
I hate it when you're idly talking to someone on the phone or on aim and they say "ooh, hey, i found your christmas present today".
I hate Christmas. Everything about it is so wasteful.
I really just wish I could get away with not getting anyone any presents. Not that that would be unwasteful, because I would just spend more money on myself, and then I would be faced with my materialism on a day-to-day basis. At least if I'm just giving material possessions to other people, I don't have to worry about it, and they act happy.
This year for Christmas...I shouldn't...no, I'm just going to tell everyone.
Secrets ruined, I know.
I'm getting everyone on my Christmas list Quorn Chicken Nuggets.
They are so delicious.
If I really like you, I may purchase you a miniature bottle of soy barbecue sauce. If it exists.
If the Grapple exists, I'm sure soy barbecue sauce does.

It Was the Perfect Night for an Accident

2004-12-22T01:54:00.000-07:00

As I was leaving Denver amidst the volitant snow, I couldn't help but think that this would be the ideal night for my life to end. This thought was sealed into cement when, bothered by the silence, I flipped my radio on just as 'Time of Your Life' by Green Day was beginning.
It wasn't that I particularly wanted my life to end; it just seemed like all the pieces had come together in a few short hours.
Katie's mother urged me just to stay at their house in Denver, but I politely-ish refused over and over again.
"You can stay in the guest room, it will be fine, Katie can change the sheets, the roads are getting worse, I would feel better if you stayed..."
Earlier in the evening I had left two very cryptic phone messages on other people's answering machines, and neither of them had called me back yet.
I had essentially made peace with everyone (who matters) who I was at odds with earlier in the week.
I had a nice meal with my family before leaving Boulder.
I haven't exactly registered for spring classes yet.
Yes, it seemed that tonight could have been my last night alive.
However, the Green Day song ended, the snow lifted, and it was devastatingly apparent that I would not die.
I was a little disappointed by this realization, but as the miles passed, I became more and more accustomed to it. By Westminster, I had resigned myself to the knowledge that I would probably have at least several more years to live. By Louisville, I had decided that the week before Christmas was probably a pretty bad time to die; and as I slid over the hill coming into Boulder, I thought about how disappointed my younger sister would be if she never inherited my car.
So all is going well. I'm not going to die, despite the odds, and that is all right. So here we are.
I'm turning onto an onramp that I only need to be on for about fifty feet before I reach my neighborhood, I'm going about twenty miles an hour, and all of a sudden, its like I'm watching Campbell's Stars On Ice. My car not only fishtails, but it just spins around in a little circle, eventually stopping about six inches away from a...mmm...we'll say...thirty foot drop. It may have been more, but I wouldn't want to exaggerate.
And I'm sitting in my car, by myself, in the middle of the Ice Capades, thinking "Hmm. I guess now would be a pretty awful time to die. This is a most unfortunate situation. How callous of me to have been toying with the notion of being dead only one hour ago. How very simple-minded of me. Life is precious and you must value every waking moment of it."
I wasn't really thinking that. I was actually just thinking "Shit."
Luckily, or something, I somehow managed to steer my car away from the precipice on which it hung, after a little bit of pushing and a little help from my friends.
Yes, I got by with a little help from my friends.
With a little help from my friends.

Sorry.
This entire incident, rather than actually teaching me the fragility of my own life, just reminded me that I believe that I am invincible, against both death and emotional scarring. So far, I have not been proven wrong. On the death count at least, the emotional scarring is mostly repressed by my complete lack of genuine emotion, aside from unwarranted angst which creeps into my head at awkward moments.
So the evening ended, or, well, is about to end. Neither of my cryptic message-receivers ever called me back to learn the exciting secrets I hold for their ears alone - I should probably write them down, in case I choke on my own saliva while I'm sleeping tonight.
Now that'd be some irony right there.

Someone Actually Made This.

2004-12-21T17:54:00.000-07:00

Now that I have hated humanity for about a solid month, I have come around almost full circle and have started to find small shreds of amusement in their flapdoodle.

They are now making sex-toy devices for cellular phones - one called the VibraExcite will pick up any incoming call from a 1-mile radius and give its owner a 45-second 'surprise'.

Just in time for Christmas, I guess.

Grapple with this for a few minutes.

2004-12-21T17:02:00.000-07:00

"A Grapple (pronounced "grape-ple") is a wonderful eating experience. Grapples are Fuji apples that have the essence of Concord grapes throughout the entire apple. Currently the Washington Extra Fancy Fuji is the only apple meeting the Grapple standard. These apples are put through a patented process and within days the entire apple takes on the flavor and aroma of Concord grapes. The Grapple is born.
Grapple makes an outstanding addition to any salad. The unique combination of Concord grape and Fuji apple flavors make a delicious compliment to other fruits and vegetables. Since the Grapple is such a special fruit, it is the perfect hors d'oeuvre to serve to your dinner guests. Slice up the Grapple and serve it with some sharp cheese as an appetizer that's sure to be a favorite."
-From the back of the Grapple box

The creation of the Grapple, while bringing bored Americans a fleeting moment of amusement, is devastating for the inhabitants of Stanthorpe, Australia, pop. 10,200. Why, you may ask? Well, Stanthorpe is the proud host city of the Apple and Grape Harvest Festival, and they were once looking forward to celebrating the Ruby Anniversary of the festival in 2006.
The festival, originally known only as the "Apple Blossom Festival", was born in 1954, but was revised to include grapes as well in 1966, when townsfolk complained about the exclusion of other fruits which were being harvested along the Granite Belt. Recent additions to the growing energy around the Apple and Grape Harvest Festival include the Miss Delicious quest(see picture below), the Buskers Ball, and a quiet hour, featuring members of the Granite Belt Choir.

Sadly, little do the people of beloved Stanthorpe realize that the Apple and Grape Harvest Festival, which has become both a shining beacon of community and a rural landmark, will soon be completely shut down when the Grapple Harvest Festival opens. And mark this - open it will. Wherever the Washington Extra Fancy Fuji is, there will the grapple be also.
The economy of Stanthorpe is doomed to plummet when their tourism industry is forced to resort to other, lesser attractions - perhaps locals could perform The Vagina Monologues in Town Hall, or possibly some sort of goat run could be arranged...
But these are the glory days, Stanthorpe. Soak up each minute, for soon the Grapple will be upon us all.

Mary Wilkie

2004-12-21T04:11:00.000-07:00

Its about fourish again, and the imminent decision of sleep v. coffee and breakfast faces me yetagain. Only this time, I do not face the decision alone, and this is very comfortable.
One of the voice teachers at school is constantly visiting the animal shelter, looking at all of the animals that are going to be put down...and then she will take pictures of them and try to pawn them off on music majors all week, saying "Look at this one? Isn't it cute? Wouldn't it be nice if you had a puppy/rabbit/kitten/tortoise?"
She just wants someone else to go to the animal shelter and adopt these animals because she just feels so bad for them. She doesn't want to take them home herself, she just feels bad that they're sitting in the pound. But she doesn't want them. She just wants someone else to have them, so she won't feel guilty about leaving them in the pound.
And these college students don't really comprehend that these animals end up costing a lot of money in vet bills, or that they shit all over the carpet and bite the postman. They just see them and think "Aww. What cute little furry creatures!" And then they adopt them.
David dislikes nicknames. My whole existence to most people is in the form of a nickname.
People are too lazy to call me by my whole name. Or they're too Colorado to pronounce it right.
Annie Hall is a very cute dog. I enjoy her very much.

[censored]

2004-12-21T01:01:00.000-07:00

David requested the ability to censor my blog. David doesn't like titling blog entries, so this blog entry shall have no title.
We are currently in Gillian's basement enjoying a bottle of brandy. We are listening to the Decemberists. I love them.
I am very apprehensive of writing this entry because Gillian and David are both reading it as I type.
Someone once engaged in sexual activities with Gillian and then told a mutual friend that they had engaged in anal sex. This was, in fact, a falsehood.
Mixing brandy with prescription drugs may or may not have been a good idea. That remains to be seen.
I am currently in a happy state. This is a miracle, but it is appreciated.
The Killers would be a fantastic band if no one ever listened it.
The computer is being stolen.
I ate a Grapple. Pronounced grape-ele.
More tomorrow.

A Shameful Attempt at Flattery via Blogging

2004-12-20T14:58:00.000-07:00

"Today was an interesting experience of people I've been wanting to look up suddenly popping up in the least expected places...Shenni called me and we grabbed a cup of coffee. It was really cool catching up with her cuz, well, she's a cool person. Hearing about all the projects she's working on at once was inspiring and somewhat frustrating for me. I've felt a lot more inspired lately and have a lot more projects I want to accomplish, but at the same time I realize I'm nowhere near her level of involvement and/or engagement in creative enterprises. In short, seeing her has helped me realize what a long way I have to go and just how much time I've wasted between before and now. I could've been playing in bands since I was 19...I could've gotten so much more involved with the local music scene if I weren't so secretly afraid that I wasn't cool enough or creative enough or what have you. I'm not trying to say I feel like I've been useless, only that by seeing how involved Shenni is I suddenly realize how involved I could be and that there's a lot of potential being wasted right now."

This is probably the most ridiculous thing that I have read all day...
not that that's really saying much since I just woke up about an hour ago...

Perhaps I should use my blog to rant and rave about people who I dislike very much, and them send them links via Instant Messenger to the angry entries I have written about them. Perhaps I should be vague so that everyone thinks my nasty comments are about them. Perhaps I should proclaim how I am secretly in love with someone. But that proclamation has already been made to me twice in the last fourteen hours.

Twenty to forty percent of my friends are secretly in love with me.

And you, fair observer, can see why.

Fee, Fie, Foe, Fum

2004-12-20T14:15:00.000-07:00

I have stirred from my mighty slumber.
Now I shall rise, drink of my black life elixir, and go to the gym.

On a side note, I was just awakened by an acquaintance calling me from Greeley, seeing if I possibly wanted to drive up to Greeley on Thursday to play Schubert's 'Ave Maria' at his boyfriend's father's funeral for free.

First of all, no pianist ever wants to play Schubert's 'Ave Maria'. And no pianist ever wants to play for free.

I think I'm supposed to work on Thursday anyways, so its not really an issue.

Hopefully I will have two gigs on January 9th. One in Greeley in the morning, one in Boulder in the afternoon, playing for a froo-froo CU book signing. Playing at social events is the best, because no one tries to make small talk with you and you can completely eavesdrop on everyone around you and no one thinks you're listening because you're playing the piano. Then, when you take a break, you make a small lap around the room, picking up some pretzel sticks, giving all of the consumers and faux-connoisseurs of music a chance to say "Good job" and make some side comment about the tragic personal like of Beethoven, or the scandal surrounding Clara Schumann and Franz Schubert that is supposed to make me find them both intellectual and roguishly attractive. This is not really impressive to me.
If someone told me that I was horrible and sat down at the piano with some Rachmaninoff...then they would have a deal.

The Call

2004-12-20T04:54:00.001-07:00

I call it caffeine.
It is now four fifty-three in the morning. My noble companion with whom I conversed until ... well, we are still conversing ... is ready to give up the fight and retire for the evening.
However, I am not.
I shall brave the darkness of the early morning (the sun isn't supposed to rise until 7:19, and I hear the sun usually obeys all commands issued from Weather.com) to drive the streets of Boulder, restless and cold, until I find a warm cup of coffee and some type of delicious breakfast pastry. Then, depending on my mood, I will return home and take a three-hour nap before going to clean some more at Bob's house, or just head straight over. Not much cleaning remains to be done, luckily, although that also means no more source of pre-Christmas tax-free income for me.
I am moderately worried that I will fall asleep at the wheel while driving around looking for coffee. By the time I leave, it will be between five and six.
Between five and six...its that small window of time where basically everyone is asleep. The night owls are on their way to bed, and the early risers are not quite stirring yet. No, no one shall accompany me on this pilgrimage...
If only my espresso machine were here, and not still in dismal Greeley...
I am quickly regretting staying up all night.
But I am still unable to sleep.

2004-12-19T14:29:00.000-07:00

I have returned from Greeley. The smell, as usual, was bothersome, but the company was pleasant.
I located my digital camera and photographed myself in celebration.

In my rambling and haphazard thinking, it would appear that I have accidentally offended someone. I would like to extend my apologies to the party who took offense - your perception of the incident, while plausible, was not actually the case.
The Church of Religious Science was an interesting experience. Everyone hugged me. I do not enjoy hugs, especially from strangers. But I persevered.
I do enjoy Angelica and her ability to play the banjo.

I also enjoy David and Gillian, who comprise anywhere between 20 to 40 percent of my total friends. Both of them are currently in automobiles which are headed straight for me - well, within a ten-mile radius of me, anyways. This means that for the next week and a half or so, I will be 20 to 40 percent busier than I have been for the past week and a half, so my entries may be 20 to 40 percent less frequent, but shall probably also be 400 to 800 percent more interesting, full of tales of adventure, sweet adventure which only takes place when the bonds of camaraderie have been forged tightly over many years.
I had many more entertaining pictures to share pertaining to everything mentioned above, but my parent's computer is not reading either CD. This is most unfortunate. Pictures are worth thousands of words - possibly only 850 of my words, though. However, while my words may occasionally cross the line of mediocrity, my pictures are of a lower caliber, and would probably be worth less of anyone's words.

Sparradox

2004-12-17T16:33:00.000-07:00

The Sparrow of Paradox first took flight at three o clock this morning.
My body is sad because I didn't let it exercise today.
I cleaned house for sixish hours, amidst conversation with the dapper young lads who dropped in to their father's house at varying points of the day - one to borrow food, one to help me move a large table, one to dine with his girlfriend.
The kitchen was well-stocked with a variety of organic and Boulder-friendly foods, which I appreciated, but I was unable to enjoy any of them due to an overwhelming nausea that crept upon me after a set amount of dusting or rubbing grime off of cabinet floors.
I was able to take several short breaks to play the piano and switch CDs. I listened to the White Album twice and 10,000 Maniacs MTV Unplugged twice.
I must bring my CDs from Greeley this weekend. Just a select few.
Last night I ran into a girl who knows me who I do not know. My confusion was multiplied when she was introduced as Tom, a male. She had Ace Bandaged her breasts down and attempted to be passed off as a boy for some other function she had attended earlier in the night.
All very confusing.
People are stupid and I don't usually like them.
I didn't say a word until about 1 o clock today. My voice was unused for about fourteen hours. It feels well-rested now.
I'm apparently going to some kind of dinner function now on Euclid. From there I shall compose shitty Madrigalian and Vocal Jazz arrangements with my genius musical counterpart, so that 80-pound high school students can learn and thus butcher old time jazz standards and traditional Shaker hymns. They will detest us for the use of flat eleven chords and contrapuntalism, but little will they know how much worse it could have been.

Our Bamboo Eating Friend

2004-12-17T02:37:00.000-07:00

Uncle Fred taught me how to draw this evening.

I drew a panda.

Earlier this evening, at some point, somehow, I pointed out to Nathan that the correct terminology for panda-panda intercourse would be Spandex.

I'm not sure why I just admitted to that.

This is what happens when you eat Taco Bell. It sucks your mock intellectualism and usual smarmy erudite sayings right out of your bone marrow.

Il mio viaggio alla Flangia del Taco

2004-12-17T02:15:00.000-07:00

I ventured to Taco Bell with Randy.
Was his hairline receding? In fear of appearing rude, I shall not comment.
Did I enjoy myself? Yes, on a strictly platonic level.
Randy's Toyota proved to be filled with many delectable late-night snacks, including Jelly Belly beans and a large popcorn tin.
My car is completely empty.
Gas is only 1.729 a gallon at Boulder Gas.
Talk is cheap. Gas is cheaper.
Why wasn't I an advertising major...

Official Breaking News.

2004-12-17T01:33:00.000-07:00

I officially still have five to ten friends.
The act of ascertaining a delicately balanced friendship was moderately discomforting, but it did occur somehow without the words "we need to talk" being uttered, and without the level of sickening amibiguity that seems to usually be present. Following the statement of our continuing friendship with each other, we shared an awkward handshake, initiated by me, and an awkward hug, initiated by him, all in the middle of the street. Hugs are not often very important things, and I have a lot of good friends (well, if a lot is a number between five and ten) that I never hug really, but it was suitable, I suppose, and it was nice in a 'how smart is it for this to be nice' way
Tomorrow I was slated to return to the land of the cow, but instead I have found financial support in Boulder by cleaning the very lovely house of the very lovely Bob. My tasks for tomorrow include dusting and reorganizing (its quite the 40something bachelor pad, up in the Devils Thumb area) and my tasks on Saturday will be organizing the paperwork for his rental properties and doing some preliminary tax work. Last weekend I was Dishwashing Maven at an office party which was also held at his house.
I am a sucker for menial labor.
I suppose that I should get used to these little odd-job situations now, since that (or something far worse) is most likely to be my career after I graduate with my oh-so-useful Bachelor of Arts in MUSIC degree. And the pay is much more than it probably should be.
I ran into lots of people who I didn't want to see again this evening, while at a choir concert supporting my sister. Luckily, she is a senior, so there's only really one more of these concert things that is 'mandatory' for me to attend. I somehow escaped unscathed in the arms of Eryn, the only person there who I was genuinely happy about seeing. And I was almost genuinely happy enough to stop being bitter and unhappy about all of the other squinched-up smiling faces.
Not quite.

I Am But A Lump Of Clay

2004-12-16T15:56:00.000-07:00

I went for a run this morning up by Chatauqua and had to stop every five steps to shake the large blocks of dirt off of my shoes.
This setback was minor, but still worth mentioning. But it has not derailed me from my quest to become a chiseled and glowing piece of human flesh.
Last night, the point was made (possibly the only semi-worthy point of the evening) that people who are rejected by members of the opposite sex often resort to physical excuses - Oh, he must not have smiled back because I am fat. Oh, she must not have called me because she thinks I am unattractive. This makes the rejected feel better about themselves because it gives them the opportunity to call the rejector shallow and callous. Then, the rejected can ignore the real reasons behind their failed romance - codependence, neediness, possessiveness, jealousy, dim-wittedness, et cetera...
When one is the ender of romantic endeavors, that person would appear to have less personality psychoses than that of the Rejected. I have thus far been the Ender of all romantic endeavors, but have not really entered to Romantic Endeavor world for the last eight months because I had the realization that I might at one point be RejectED and it appears to be one of many social situations that I would rather do without.
However, by utilizing my complete lack of any productive work that needs done over break (piano and reading can only be done for several hours at a time before I begin to feel balmy, and TV is not one of my five to ten friends, luckily), I can chisel myself into a wanton goddess with no defects aside from my passive agressive and occasionally toxic personality, as well as my general disregard for the feelings of those who surround me. Then when the glorious day of my rejection comes, I will be certain that the logic behind the Ender is completely justified and probably a good idea in general.
I am going to shower now. I smell very disgusting.

The End of the Evening

2004-12-16T01:28:00.000-07:00

The evening was unpleasant.
I wrote a pretty large amount about exactly how unpleasant it was and who and what exactly made it unpleasant, but then I realized that living it once was plenty and no recounting was neccessary.
The evening now is over, probably, unless someone calls me in the next ten minutes...but even then, it is probably over.
Unneccessary social interaction makes me want to vomit.
So does eating salami, which I just did several minutes ago.
In general, hybrid meats should be avoided.
The basement of my parent's house is very cold, and no matter which room I sleep in, my sister manages to wake me up at five-thirty when she wakes up to go to school.
I'm really too tired to write anything witty or sententious right at the moment. I'm almost too tired to sleep, in a way.
If I were in my beautiful apartment right now, I would drink some delicious red wine and bask in the comfort of my roommates, three people who I can somehow stand to and enjoy being around at all hours of the day. However, I am in the basement of my parents, and tomorrow I will rise to an empty house again and depart, running errands around town by myself again until they are all asleep and it is once again safe for me to return home.
Then on Friday, I return to Greeley for the weekend, to visit the Church of Religious Science and determine if attending services there and playing piano is really worth eighty-five dollars a week or not...which it probably is, unfortunately...

Pursuit of Knowledge v. Pursuit of Love

2004-12-15T18:00:00.000-07:00

"A love affair with knowledge will never end in heartbreak."
-Michael Garrett Marino
"One part of knowledge consists in being ignorant of such things as are not worthy to be known."
- Crates

I face an important decision - I can stay at home and immerse myself in the unknown, learning about the exciting world which is rotating around me and the history behind it, curled up on a loveseat in what used to be my bedroom, but is now filled with Tupperware bins full of Christmas Spirit...
...or I can go to the Trident with people who are somewhat detestable.
I was thinking about maybe going over there by myself, but, having answered my phone, I will be caught. I hate being caught.
But perhaps by returning now, I can ascertain the ownership of the lonely water glass from this morning.
Also, while it is much more enjoyable at home (a bookshelf and a piano are here), I will not meet anyone by staying at home all day, and will continue to be incredibly bored for the duration of December, until departing for the West Coast. And incredible boredom is not good . . . it may lead to repeated visits back to Greeley, the land of mediocrity and cow manure.
At least the Trident has a pretty impressive array of pseudo-intellectuals, many of whom are fairly nice to look at, but all of whom I am scared to converse with ... I fear that the majority of them would be intellectually educated in far more highbrow subjects than I and all roads of conversation would leave me with a dirty taste in my mouth and a sense of self-loathing for not being able to quote Descartes at the drop of a hat. Memory is not my strong suit. To be honest, neither is selecting books that would look impressive to a young and attractive pseudo-intellectual gentleman. I feel that most of the people who sit there alone only go in hopes of becoming incredibly alluring to another human being. I certainly wouldn't mind it either. Or perhaps there could be two of us, just watching each other for many days on end.
There need to be more younger pseudo-intellectual men in the Trident. I believe that in the early-twenties stage of life, most of the pseudo-intellectual gentlemen in Boulder are either Kerouacing around the country or sitting in foggy basements giggling with their counterparts, rejoicing in their grimy counterculture.
At least, all of the ones who I know are.
Except for Andres, who is moving to Prague. Hooray.

A Rapturous Duck

2004-12-15T17:36:00.000-07:00

This picture was taken at the end of June in Los Angeles, while I was visiting the supernal Gillian at film school and we stopped at a delightful little eatery and were seated next to duck and triceratops. It made me content with the world for a few minutes, just knowing that a vegetarian 7-ton Late Cretaceous animal could live in harmony with a yellow dabbling duck that, in the above picture, seems to shine with the radiant light of Jesus. Perhaps triceratops and ducks do not usually get along, but these two do simply because of their mutual trust and love for each other which is founded in God, or whichever deity happens to be producing such light.

Only At Flatirons Athletic Club

2004-12-15T17:06:00.000-07:00

could I find women three times my age who are in better shape than I am.
I'm not really in excellent shape, not compared to when I was fifteen and ran on the cross-country and track teams in high school. I'm not fat but I do have the little bit of extra skin underneath my chin and the little bit of extra skin at the top of my arm, being precisely why I went to the Flatiron Athletic Club on this fine afternoon.
My plans for the early afternoon were cancelled when the charming Angelica had to attend her brand-new Christmas-break job, which she calls "Selling herself as a Chinese person". It entails sitting at a booth in Flatirons Crossing and attempting to sell bamboo sticks and other things representative of the Chinese culture which she, being born in Longmont, knows nothing about.
"What does this symbol mean?"
"Good luck."
"What about this one?"
"Good luck and prosperity."
"This one?"
"Good luck in love and money."
This is all made up. She is considering simply buying holiday gifts for all of her family and friends from this booth, so that she does not look like a bad salesgirl and thus shame her cultural heritage.
Doctor is finally almost finished, to the delight of no one but myself. Someday I will persuade someone else to care about Debussy and my feeble abilities to play Debussy music as much as I do. Until then, I will rejoice alone. It's not really a difficult piece, but it's not really very difficult.
Next on my plate, after the other five movements, shall be a Chopin mazurka perhaps.
I found a very amusing recording today at BPL of Bela Fleck performing classical piano masterpieces that he has rearranged for banjo and selected strings (and a vibraphone as well). This has provided me with endless hours of enjoyment...about one, actually, for that was the full length of the CD. Alas.
I hadn't visited the library since the summer after I graduated from high school several years earlier and was happy to find that the librarian who assisted me today recognized me from my Fairview Choral Department infamy and removed an eleven-dollar find I had accumulated for the very very late return of "The Beatles: Rubber Soul" many years ago. Now I am free to take things out of the library without fear of being asked for money. This is good news, since my number of friends may or may not have shrunk somewhat drastically in the past twenty-four hours.
Shenandoah is now accepting applications for new bestish friend.
A full list of requirements will be posted in several minutes, after I make some up.

A Wednesday Morning

2004-12-15T14:08:00.000-07:00

This Wednesday marks my one-week anniversary of my mediocre return to Boulder. This event was not marked by a parade or cannon-fire; or rather, if it was, it did not stir me from my slumber.
Some people who are in love, or at least, were in love around eleven this am, came into the trident. They sat in a booth, both on the same side, at one point laughing so heartily that the humorous statement issued only moments before by the female merited a brushed kiss aross her forehead by her male counterpart. I wonder what sort of feat I would have to accomplish in order to receive a brushed kiss across the forehead. There seems to be no book written on this subject.
There is a half glass of water (empty or full, your choice) sitting in the windowsill ,and scraggly brown hairs creeping unceremoniously out of the "fern", if one had the imagination to call it that, in large fake clumps. I'm trying to memorize Debussy, twenty-nine pages of ink that sounds different than it looks in my head and I'm arguing with the page over whose version is correct. But my memorization is halted by the people in love. At first, I was unimpressed by their physical signs of affection towards one another, but on second notice, it doesn't appear to be altogether unpleasant for either one of them. It still bothers me a moderate amount. This is not a place for people to be in love. It is for people to be alone and rejoice in being alone - a small group of people gathered together under no purpose rather than that of solitude, engaged in their own activities or possibly engaged silently in a game of Go or Pente.
I want to know whose water is in the windowsill.
I want to be in love.
John Benjamin enters. If this were a play or television show, his entrance would be a sign from the heavens, and he would be the one for me to be in love with. However, my life is far too dull to be a play,and I would heavily protest it being recorded as a television show, so we did not in fact fall in love. We did discuss 'the life of pi' for a few minutes and he encouraged me to drink some of the tepid water on the windowsill. There appeared to be no lip prints on the glass, although it was not full. I hope that no well-meaning soul attempted to water the "fern". I hope I contracted no disease by sipping it and putting it back on the windowsill.
I feel devoid of all emotion today; as if it would be a good day to burn all bridges I have managed to unwillingly build with humanity and then sit alone for a week, picking and choosing which ones I possibly should have maintained and then rebuilding a select few. Or I could use my wavy brown hair and slender fingers to attract a member of the opposite sex simply by walking around town, perhaps persuading someone blank to fall in love with me - but this also will bring me no pleasure.
Only Doctor Gradus al Parnassum will bring me pleasure.
Possibly the five remaining pieces shall as well. But this remains to be seen.
I drank three cups of coffee at the Trident this morning and now my fingers are shaking too much for me to be able to play with any consistency in tempo or dynamic level. This is most unfortunate.

Five to Ten

2004-12-15T02:38:00.000-07:00

I have very few true friends...enough to count on two hands, but not enough to move onto my toes with. But this is completely acceptable. The friendships that I have forged are those that require a fair amount of time and energy being devoted to them, much like baby tomato plants.
The only time that having a number of friends between five and ten becomes a problem is when one of them manages to vex you past the passive-agressive threshold of no return. While usually I am a very easy-going person who is bothered by very little and shows discontent far less often than that, this particular evening I want to sever all ties immediately, drive my tiny cream volvo to this particular friend's house, awake him from his slumber, re-claim any and all personal belongings of him which still dwell in his house, and take his Teenage Fanclub CD.
However, this would drop the number of friends that I have down to 'four to nine', which makes me wildly less popular and thus less successful as well.
It would appear that I have no option but to grin and bear it.
Or I could peruse through the three hundred or so 'friend' friends that I have somehow unwillingly accumulated in the last six and a half years of my time in Colorado and see if anyone relaly merits upgrading...although usually the real friends just kind of fall on you while you're walking down Pearl Street desiring a pressed sandwich for lunch.
Perhaps I could promote to of them, bringing the working total to six to eleven.
But that just seems amoral somehow.