moving on

finals week!

dear u.s. government,

Tragic story out of Kato today: http://www.mankatofreepress.com/local/local_story_126091507.html

Can't say I blame him.

one of those conversations

I think I'm going to go to Montana next week. First North Dakota, then Montana. Will you drive? No. Take the train out of Minneapolis. When? Right after the movers come and clean my apartmnent out. Why? Because I don't want to go home just yet. How come? I have my reasons. What are they? My fault. Are people going to be mad? Yup.

what my iTunes top 10 Just For You song selections might say about me

Me and iTunes have a special connection; you might call it a thing. I give iTunes things (money) and iTunes generates long lists of you bought X Album, which means you should spend $9.99 on Y Album. Our relationship is strictly monetary. We don't call each other and chat about how the latest Broken Social Scene album lacks the umph of the Feist years and we don't think to send one another themed compilations via snail mail. It's rare if I purchase a song from the Just For You list, songs iTunes tells me "have been chosen just for me" because I know what I want to buy before I get onto the site. iTunes is not my store, it is the register that allows me to walk out of the store without the alarms sounding off. There's no annoyed riffling of money by the young goth chick stuck behind the counter at the record store who sees that I've purchased some Pixies and wants to know if I've heard the new Breeders album. On iTunes, if I purchase the Pixies, they might tell me I should purchase Colbie Caillat (just puked in my mouth a little).

But, what if there was actually a person behind my Just For Me selections, plugging all my purchases into a database, cross-referencing genres and artists to come up with the perfect musical cocktail? What on earth must this person think of me? What does my iTunes top 10 say about me?

10. Fools, The Dodo's
This girl has bookmarked Pitchfork. (...and visits it at least once a week.)

9. Flourscent Adolescent, Arctic Monkeys
This girl likes internal rhyme that's clever without being annoying (true, as a writer I pay attention to the sound of words) and she likes obscure nature references (also true! I'm a NatGeo/Nova/Discovery nut!).

8. Choo Choo Ch'Boogie, Asleep at the Wheel
Umm. OK.


7. Run Rudolph Run, Chuck Berry
Okay, I get Christmas songs a lot. It's for my annual Christmas mixes. I hate them 11 1/2 months out of the year, but it's all worth it once December rolls around and the fam is dancing and singing and drunk and waiting for Santa.

6. Baba O'Riley, The Who
Rock musicals...hell yes. She's got Hedwig and ATU. She's gotta love The Who.

5. School of Hard Knocks, Van Morrison
Hmmm...from the looks of it, a priviledged white girl. Better throw this one in.

4. Everything She Wants, Wham!
This is one of those out-of-left-fielders. For the record, Faith and Freedom George Michael does not equal Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go George Michael.

3. Things I Don't Remember, Ugly Cassanova
This girl likes Modest Mouse. (This makes me think there's more to this list generation than I thought because all the MM in my library is from my own personal collection; none was purchased on iTunes. They might just be on to something.)

2. Little Boxes, Pete Seeger
(Maybe you do pay attention, iTunes! Bravo.)

1. Bleeding Love, Leona Lewis
(Shit. I'm not mad. Just dissapointed.)

hugs n kisses, bitches

I'll be leaving my home in Minnesota soon, so hugs n kisses to all my bitches!
I've learned some things while here. Here are just a few:

• It's never a good idea to get online when high. Enjoy your high. Don't spend it dicking around on Gooble at 2am. Especially when W is passing out on your couch and you had initially planned on spending the night and the whole next day by yourself without even your phone on because you just wanted to forget about people for a day. Now you're gonna have to wake up to that day with one in your living room. But come to think of it, that's probably what killed your high...dicking around online is just fallout.
• Whenever possible, please please please listen to your music through headphones. Preferably those big, suction cup-looking ones that block out all the other noise. If this is absolutely not possible, use the ear buds. All other music listening should be done thusly, in priority order: 1) live, 2) in the car on a decent system, but with the windows up and the bass up, 3) anything else.
• There are a lot of stupid, propagandizing, ignorantly raging, faux intellectualizing feminists out there.
  
• There are a lot of smart, inspiring, creative, active, informed, human, bold feminists out there.
  
• God is created by man. god is not.
  
• People inspire me.
• When students send you funny YouTube videos, it means you're making a real difference!
• Music captivates me, art astonishes me, creativity overwhelms me, so I know why I am doing this.
• Bjork is a trip.
• But an even bigger trip, like of the blowing-your-mind-caliber, is flipping back to your iTunes and realizing that the song you thought was a Bjork outtro was actually a Rocco DeLuca intro...techno/etherial sounds, potential for animal/Bjork random noises at any moment, and all! Ahh!
• I've seen a lot of fucked up stuff the past few months with new eyes. I feel like I'm in on it now.
• I've always imagined that I'd be one of those right-justified, small-fonted first and last names sitting unassumingly under a powerful, quotable, loggable, memorizable, recognizable quote. You know, something people know. Something high school girls basketball teams might write in glitter letters to team-mates for inspiration before a big game. Something archived by category, author's last name, or chronology and posted on Famous Quotation web sites all over the web. Something that might be turned into a cross-stitch pattern and laid into pillows, blankets, jar tops. (Okay, not that. I wouldn't want anything I write to be displayed by the general population in this manner.) Anyway, obviously, the major worry was that I'd never be able to come up with anything close to a quote- and follower-worthy statement. Tonight, I think I've made a good step in the right direction on my path to be respectably quoted:

It seems to me that you cannot and should not wholly trust any source that claims it provides all the answers you need.

In other words, I think the Catholic Church is a crock and too many people believe too blindly.

• Getting so high then staring at a bright screen in the dark makes me sleepy. Goodni...
  

mom's dream

Opened up this email in the library today. Laughed out loud. Thrice. Got sideways looks from a few folks.

Hi Punkee,
This is what's going on around here. I had just woken up from a nightmare that you and I were kidnapped and held as hostages, except that you were a little boy and we were being held in my Grandparent's house and I actually had a small hand gun in my pocket that the perps didn't know about and I had just called the police to report our situation and the po-po had just pulled up to rescue us even though I think I could have handled the situation, when our actual phone rang at 6:00am and it was the actual DBQ police calling. The officer was wondering why our Jeep (even though we had registered it in Emily's name) was sitting in the middle of Park street. We suggested he ask Emily. He proceeded to knock on her door to inquire. It seems that the car rolled from its parking place and ended up where it did. #!**
Love, Mammy

Mother, if I have inherited anything from you at all, let it be your skill with the run-on sentence.

Oh, and your pistol-wielding dreams.

And your awesomeness.

preposition + noun = paragraph

On exams:
Comprehensive exams are over. Well, the test-taking part anyway; the evaluation and pass/fail-part is not over yet. But still, stress has been reduced by 90% in this matter, and for that I am grateful. Now, all the things I've put aside because I was too busy not studying enough for my exams, all those things can be addressed. Things like:

Reading the book Annie Dillard names as one of her favorites: The Great American Forest by Rutherford Platt, 1965. After checking my email to make sure my electronic Word document of my exam had been successfully sent to faculty, the second thing I did was to go to the MSU library website and see if they carried this book. Sure as shit, they did.

I curse being required to read 6 books for the exam with the vim and vigor of Tom Cruise on a Scientology rampage. Why, while I'm plowing through my chosen books, am I making lists of books and why am I compelled to count down the days until the exam is over just because that will be the day I get to read anything else? Why do I resent my favorite book of all time because it prevents me from reading an old hardcover with due dates stamped in various colors, a loose spine, and that distinct old cardboard smell? Avoidance. That is all.

*

On names:
I realized that I need to marry someone with a last name that begins with the letter "D."
Ani DiFranco
Annie Dillard
Anna D______
This will not fulfill me. I am not that pathetic. It'd just be kinda fucking cool.

*

On names for dogs that I do not yet own:
"Jem" and "Scout" are out. (And for that matter, so are "Boo" and "Dill," or worse yet, "Atticus." Can you imagine?) I thought the To Kill a Mockingbird theme would be fun, but I think it leans more towards pretentious.

Here's where my thoughts lean: Fella and Mr. The first, an ode to the greatest poodle ever, Jackson, as it's the nickname Ma often called him. The second, Mr. (pronounced traditionally or as mee-sta), works on a few levels because a) it matches in theme with Fella, b) it can be an obscure reference to the great book and movie (and okay, even Oprah's Broadway "adaptation" wasn't half-bad) The Color Purple, and c) I can't wait to write it at the vet's office or when signing him up for agility tournaments.

shiny happy person

In the spirit of the last post, I'm making another list. For some reason I'm having difficulty lately conceptualizing ideas in chunks of prose, which is my usual thought process. Needless to say, this doesn't bode well for all the thesis writing I have to get done by the beginning of next week. I'm sure it's a symptom of avoidance...on a very sub-conscious level.

Let's simplify things. What I'm happy about:
1. A 50 degree day today. Loooong fingers of water reaching across parking lots, snow mites on the surface eating decayed leaves, sun sun sun, warmth warmth warmth. It's scary how much weather regulates my mood--how a warm, bright day that comes just after turning the clocks ahead can snap a funk so easily. I need to bottle that shit and sell it.

2. My iPod shuffle selections tonight have been marvelous. Hit after hit. The last three have been St. Vincent's Marry Me (favorite song of the moment), Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Rich, Ray Charles' Lonely Avenue, and Missy Elliot's Hit Em Wit Da Hee. Quite a mix. Outstanding.

3. The potential opportunity to go to Korea for four weeks at the end of the summer and teach English to middle-schoolers.

4. My parents waited until after exams to tell me that we'd be taking a family vacation to the Ritz Carlton at Amelia Island in June. My aunt and uncle took them (and all the sisters and brothers but none of the "kids") last year to participate in their wedding (their second to one another, after a divorce a few years ago). My parents loved it so much they've decided to return and take us with them. The funny thing is that they are basically going on a vacation to the Ritz Carlton, not Amelia Island. They love the hotel: the food, the entertainment, the free bar with over-the-top cocktails in the lounge on every floor, the beds. They couldn't stop talking about the beds. I'm just happy to be going on a trip with my family again. It's been awhile.

5. Speaking of family and aunts, I'm also happy about Aunt Jane sending me a Happy St. Patrick's Day card two weeks early and signing it:
Love, Gary & Jane (and Rocky Boy Floyd)

6. Productivity. I sent off two job applications today (and one I might actually have a shot at), graded six research papers, kicked my ass at the gym (and L's ass, too), and enjoyed a bit of the day.

7. My clean apartment. I'm generally a kitchen/bathroom neat-freak, so those weren't an issue. The issue was the multiple stacks of books piled into mini Pisa's in my bedroom, living room, and in a not-so-convenient perimeter around my dining room table. They are now on shelves, organized by genre first then height. All spines facing the correct direction. Order. Balance. Need these to survive.

8. I finally saw Into the Wild the other night with the P-ster, and it wasn't good. This is not the "what I'm happy about" part. Though I would have liked it to be a good film and for Sean Penn to have succeeded, this just confirms my opinion that Into the Wild was one of the best nonfiction books ever written in its execution, research, reportage, treatment of character, and insight. So good it'd be nearly impossible to re-create the depth of the story on screen. I'll give the movie the final scene where Chris finally expires in the bus (for any unfamiliar with the story, I'm not spoiling anything here). It was moving, well-acted and well-shot. However. I found the script (which I think Penn adapted himself) heavy handed and trying a bit too hard. I found the effects and editing distracting; there was no reason for them. Oh, and the moose scene was riveting for the fact that it looked like real moose was used, but could have been done better. Hal Holbrook was amazing and probably deserved that Oscar nomination, but his performance came across as all the better against the sub-par performances of the others (except for the always good Catherine Keener). And while I'm on actors, every single shot with the lady-friend, Tracy, played by Kristen Stewart (I think that's her name) was ramped up like a sexified preteen beauty in cutoffs sweating it up in the desert Calvin Klein ad and although visually stunning, it took away from the story of the film. In sum, I'm happy that Jon Krakauer is an amazing writer.

9. Taking this spring break to catch up with my work. Like I was saying to someone today, instead of every day being a come from behind victory, now things are more even-keeled. Stoked about that.

10. The documentary My Kid Could Paint That. I don't have the energy right now to go into all the things that I admire in this movie. In a phrase, maybe just the way the narrative modulates. I don't know. I'm still trying to wrap my brain around it I guess.

11. My decision to reduce the five major assignments down to four in Comp. It's Spring Break and we've gotten through two thus far. It seems logical to me to take the last half of the semester for just two more and make them really good and in-depth. I'll have Easter and the onset of Spring figetyness to deal with, so this arrangement will be best for all.

12. I made a pretty delicious fish recipe this evening. Salmon with some garlic, honey, and spice. Not much because salmon is a pretty strong fish anyway. But it was good.

13. Did I mention the warmth? and the vacation? and getting a lot of shit done? So many things to be happy about. Making it to number thirteen on this list, for consistency sake. That's good, too...you know, with the Order & Balance and all.