| I cooked dinner in the dark tonight |
[Jan. 17th, 2005|10:11 pm] |
The light burned out in the kitchen again
So I had to open the door for light
I stirred only dim kitchen shadows
To the glow of the neverblack L.A. sky
Distant fireworks popped above palm silhouettes
Like an imaginary war
My roommates were locked in their rooms
Trying to reconcile themselves with the world
While I ate rice and red beans
To a gunpowder citysong and blue |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 4th, 2004|06:13 pm] |
Well, the sleeping-in-my-clothes trick worked like a charm, and I was up by 8:00. I couldn't actually find Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, so I grabbed Whiffle Squeek and Strega Nona's Magic Lessons and Jumanji, but as it turned out I passed a Borders as I was passing through Concord just as it was opening, so I popped in and bought Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs.
When I finally got to the school, I hung out for a couple minutes while the kids cleaned up and then they sat me in the reading chair to read for the second grade but the first grade was going to come listen too so they spent ten minutes telling me about what they did yesterday because it was field day and the rain was coming down like bullets they said so they all had to take chelter in a boy's bathroom, all 75 of them, and then the first graders finally came in and I read the book to them and they all liked in and they laughed a lot and talked about food and all got really hungry because the book is all about food and it's really good and then <deep breath> they made me go read the book all over again to the two Kintergarden classes and THEY loved it too and they wanted me to read it again but we all had to go do different stuff which was good because I didn't want to read the book a third time in a row even though I really like the book but three tiems is too much and then <deep breath> we learned about alitterationa nd made our own tongue twisters and mine alliterated a lot but it wasn't very funny, not like this one kid who made one about chucking cheez-its, his was really funny but I had a lot of fun helping the kids and then <deep breath> we went to lunch and all the kids were pulling on me so that I knew where to go to get my pizza and they all wanted me to sit at their tables with them so I sat at as many tables as I could and I barely had time in between telling kids what my favorite sports were and if I liked crusts and would I play kickball with them to finish my pizza but I finished my pizza and then everyone went to recess but I couldn't go to recess because I had to stay with Miss Robidoux <deep breath> so I helped her organize papers while she ate gross Eggo waffles and helped a girl named Ashley with her homework and then when everyone came back we drew pictures in crayon and then did watercolor over the crayon to go along with our tongue twisters and everyone liked mine cause I'm older but I really think some of the kids are way better at watercolor than me like this one kid Dan he's a really cool kid and he told me all about his 6000 baseball cards and one Home Depot racing card he has at home and he could watercolor tree bark and grass really well and then <deep breath> we had snack time and this girl whose name I forget but it was like Kila or Kelis or something gave me a pizza-flavored Garfield cracker that was good and then I read two chapters from The Magic Schoolbus In Outer Space while the kids all ate and then <deep breath> we went to art and we started our scratch art where we made pictures with creypas and then put black paint over them and then on Tuesday the kids are gonna scratch into the black paint so the colors shows through and they can make all kinds of cool designs in it and the picture I covered with ink was a landscape of the mountains I saw on the drive up to Laconia and they were really pretty but one girl made a dog and colored it in with some really good colors and I liked hers more and then we played with clay until it was time to go back and wait for everyone's rides to come pick them up and then <deep breath> I hung out with Dominic D and Ashley because their rides showed up a lot later and we did our best slam dunks and talked about the ways football players and ballerinas move the same and then their parents came to pick them up so <deep breath> I helped Miss Robidoux, I mean, Andrea, since school was out by then, clean up her room and then we got coffee with some of the other teachers and I got an espresso smoothie made with liquid ice cream and I had never heard of liquid ice cream but it was really yummy even though it was almost five dollars and then I drove home and I only got lost once and <deep breath> wow, I learned a lot today at school.
How was your day? |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 28th, 2004|05:37 am] |
It's the middle of the night and I'm feeling antsy, which I've realized is the only time I really write in my journal, so I figured an entry will be in order. I'm gonna try to be honest yet discreet here; son't be surprised when I fail at doing one or both of those things.
***
( I have a person i can't stop thinking about. ) |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 27th, 2004|03:36 pm] |
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Gross... That wasn't a pad of post-it notes -- it was a slice of individually wrapped Kraft American cheese. And people wonder why cleaning my room makes me so sweaty. It's from the constant stress of having things that appear to be paper turn out to be aged food products. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 13th, 2004|07:43 am] |
This is my last all-nighter of the semester. I'll be free from stressed-out overnight workloads for the summer after I'm done with this.
It's my third one in a month. I keep leaving shit until the last possible minute and then doing them the night before. This time it's my sociology research paper. Pretty easy, except it was due three weeks ago and the final is in seven hours. I don't even know if my prof will take it, but, shit, here goes nothing.
As I write this I'm settling down with some hot chocolate trying to soothe my throat. I've been going in cycles of feeling shitty: during late nights or early mornings I am stuffy and gross and my throat gets all dry and hoarse. By the middle of the day, I feel fine, all cleared up. Of course, it's currently early morning, so I feel like ass.
But, you know, I've really come to enjoy some of the aspects of all-nighters. I take constant breaks when I am writing an essay because I have the attention span of an epileptic squirrel, and right around 6:00 (which it is right now, actually), I take a walk and check out the really early sun, just after sunrise. people are quiet, but the world is noisy. Bugs are still going at it, and birds are chirping. Sometimes you can see them doing bird stuff, like hopping, or looking at things, or flying away from things. I'd be telling an awfully sappy lie if I said it was peaceful, really, but it's a welcome change, to be sure. It's a really good time to be alone.
Alone is all I have until stores open and I can run errands before my final. It's time to reflect. It's also time to space out, too, since after I've been up past 20 hours or so my brain really starts to tweak out and go haywire, which is both fun and frustrating at the same time.
I think I'll go for a walk before finishing this fairly pointless post.
***
Walked. Cleared up my headache a bit. You know, that headache you get when your brain is trying to tell you, "I'm not functioning so well. Maybe you should go to sleep, you idiot." But I showed him who's boss. Sleep is for faggots and sailors.
But really. The nice thing about mornings here is that New Hampshire just turns this certain shade of green. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 1st, 2004|09:41 pm] |
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I want a place to call my own. And someone to call my own to share it with me. I guess I'm just feeling sentimental tonight. Must be the heat. I'm turning my A/C up. |
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| Samurai Frisbee, Drinks with Andrea, Keith and I muse on human nature, Church pictures |
[May. 1st, 2004|03:00 am] |
So after a lot of bitching our Sociology class got let out a half hour early into the nearly 80 degree weather outside. This is nearly paradise in NH. I came home and puttered around, but close to 6:00 I convinced Shaun to go to Greely Park with me and throw around a frisbee and enjoy the last few hours of sun.
We invented two styles of frisbee. One is Flamboyant Frisbee, which is played by leaping spastically into the air during every catch, flailing one's arms and legs wildly in the air (much like Luigi when he jumps in Mario 2. When I played this game when I was a kid, before I realized that the characters already had names, I would call him "Feathery-Feet".) Flamboyant Frisbee, we realized, is difficult to combine into a catchy, single-word name. Believe me, we tried.
The other was Samurai Frisbee. This involved taking a cool-looking Samurai pose and holding it for long periods of time, and then throwing the frisbee in one, lightning fast motion. The catcher would do the same, and then strike without looking to nab the frisbee out of midair. It was very Karate Kid. If Dragon Ball Z characters played frisbee, it would look like Samurai Frisbee, except with more yelling.
We were going to invent more styles of ridiculous frisbee throwing, but Keith showed up. So we had to pretend to be normal. He had read my away message and just dropped by to crash the party, which was cool with me. Keith is a cool guy. We all basically just caught up with each other, we hadn't been in each others' company for a long time. After frisbee we went to King Kone, got food. Then went back. Shaun went off to Keene, so I called Andrea and me and Keith headed up to Concord to meet her for drinks.
***
I today learned that the only thing better than a margarita is a margarita that Andrea bought for me because she still owed me a birthday drink. And Concord is a pretty town. I hadn't really been there before.
Andrea is an awesome girl, and she really has a heart for other people, but she has a habit of taking all the blame for herself. I mean all the blame, like, wherever she can find anyway. A year or so ago, Andrea's fiancee left her on the altar, and the residuals have pretty much screwed up everything she was used to in her life, including her getting a reputation in her family for being a fuck-up.
Andrea, of course, blames herself for the fact that her fiancee Walter left her, which I can see how that would happen. Walter, incidentally, is a freckled, red-haired Asian. As Keith put it, "He sounds like the punchline to a joke!"
After we left Margaritas we went back to Andrea's apartment and watched the Scorpion king and had some more drinks. I'm going to ruint he ending for anyone who hasn't seen it: The Rock wins by killing the bad guy and getting the girl, there's a big explosion, and they deport Michael Clark Duncan back to Africa, even though he's a good guy, because "his people need him." Whatever, The Rock, you racist.
Andrea drove me and Keith back to my car. She locked her housekeys in her apartment. She didn't want to call anyone because they would think she was a big failure for locking her keys in her apartment, so she planned on sleeping in her car for the night. After a lot of convincing, I convinced her to crash at my place, but she chickened out on the drive out of Concord because there was apparently this imperitive oil change she had to be at the next morning, so she finally woke her parents up for the spare key.
Locking your keys in your apartment shouldn't be an ordeal that causes you to make yourself homeless for a night because you're afraid of social ostracism. Really.
***
This situation sparked a cnversation on the way back to Keith's apartment about self-esteem, and human nature. Basically, the philosophy is this:
We've seen a lot of people, especially girls, who get all this emotional baggage and torture themselves into things like bulimia or sleeping in their cars instead of their houses because they think they're not good enough. They compare themselves to other people. They think there's good people and bad people in the world, and they're one of the bad people, so they deserve to suffer.
What it really is is that people are all bad. or all good, same thing. It's basically two sides of the same coin: Whether we're all good people trying to survive in an evil world, or evil people seeking redemption, it still puts us all in the same boat.
We all have problems. We're all screwed up somehow. No one is perfect. Isn't that obvious? And especially in relationships, stop trying to look for things to fix, because there is nothing you can fix. Whether we're all good deep down inside, or we're all sinners, you can't change a person from being who they are. Salvation comes from within. A person has to decide to change himself.
Keith put it this way: "You'll never be more perfect than you are right now." I really like that. I think it's truer than he realizes.
***
Keith has a really nice bachelor pad. I'm gonna mooch on that place like you wouldn't believe.
***
If you'll remember about the designs I'd suddenly agreed to do for church, well, here they are: Welcome picture, and one for this week's sermon on debt.
I guess I'm redesigning the logo next.
***
Allergies are terrible this year. Sneezing like crazy. Should get an Allegra perscription or something. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 27th, 2004|01:08 am] |
It's official: I got in.
Funny how the pervading feeling today is that I really want something I can't have. What's up with that? |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 26th, 2004|03:55 am] |
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."
--Allen Ginsberg
I don't even like Ginsberg; I think he's something of a nut. But it's pretty true. Although, for most folks, their vigilance amounts to watching little more than tv. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 25th, 2004|04:58 pm] |
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Apparently I just volunteered to be my church's new graphics department. Pays pretty good, too. And by pretty good I mean nothing. What's even going on any more? |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 25th, 2004|04:07 am] |
God, this is never gonna end. Never! I'm never going to get to sleep at a normal hour. I'm going to be condemned to waking up in the middle of the afternoon for the rest of my life. There's no point in even trying to find ways to sleep any more.
I watched Fargo, right? I've seen this movie ten times already, and, man. Fargo is is good and all, but it's still like the asbolute most boring, unexciting movie of all time, and I watched it at 2:00 in the morning and I was so awake, it seemed riveting. I was catching all the subtle nuances of the characters and dialects and little thematic devices carried throughout the movie.
But I'm not supposed to be catching the subtle nuances of Fargo, I'm supposed to be catching some fucking Zzzs already!
I wish circadian rhythms were a guy instead of a medical concept, because if my circadian rhythms were a guy I could invite him over and then punch him in the face for being such a deadbeat dropout loser who is completely fucking up my life. Ihateyouihateyouihateyou. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 23rd, 2004|03:54 pm] |
Been spending time with Liz. To avoid boring people reading this by spooging about how great she is and everything, I'll just leave it at that. I'll have plenty of time to elaborate later.
Erm. I've developed a definite sleeping problem. It's not just going to bed too late, it's also sleeping too much. We're talking 10+ hours a day. I don't know what the deal is. Hypersomnia, perhaps? Regardless, I feel like I'm sleeping through everything important in my life. I miss all kinds of stuff. I only catch the last hours of sunlight. It's wearing on me.
Last night, I took Liz home around 1:00am, and got to sleep by 3:00am, which is good for me. Then I remember waking up for my alarm at 10:00am just long enough to turn it off, and then I woke up again at 1:15 in the afternoon, just in time to rush to my 1:00pm class.
Rushing to class consists of flying down Tinker Road at 45mph. For those who are unfamiliar with Tinker, the road is a Mecca for pot holes and frost heaves, and there's several places on the road where there's a blind curve at the top of a hill that's covered with foot-deep potholes that send your car into a fishtail unless you're going 20, which, of course, I wasn't. I managed to not die or crash my car, but as I was berating myself for being such a slacker who spends all day sleeping and all night hanging out with pretty girls, abbreviated by the crunching sounds of my car bottoming out on the most hellish road in town, Time by Pink Floyd came on the radio:
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.
Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain.
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.
And it scared the absolute fucking hell out of me. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 22nd, 2004|03:53 am] |
I've seen a lot of arguments here on the Inter-Web on topics that range from somewhat trivial to extremely trivial. On the topic of gay mariage, for example, there are obviously people who are polarized to one position over the other. Why can't we just agree to disagree?
Thinking about that last statement, I stumbled across a paradox. Personally, I try tolerate both sides. But if I tolerate a person who is intolerant of of gays, wouldn't that make me intolerant myself? Yet, if I am intolerant of the intolerants, obviously I'm not tolerant.
Put another way, I'm in favor of gay marriage. Should I yell out my disapproval of those who object to gay marriage, reducing my own tolerance for how other people live their lives, yet at the same time strengthening my opinions regarding gay marriage in the process?
Then I remembered a quote...
"Be the change you want to see in the world."
--Mahatma Gandhi
...and I remembered that I strive for toleration, and that instead of showing people what they are doing wrong, I would much rather provide the example for how to do right.
***
Incidentally, after typing the word "tolerate" so many times, it's become meaningless gibberish in my head. It sounds like a monster from pagan Greek mythology, or maybe the name of some Swedish candy bar. I need a bigger vocabulary. |
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| Poem: Sir George Biddell Airy’s Vision |
[Apr. 21st, 2004|04:21 pm] |
Latest poem was supposed to be an exercise where we distill a poem from a piece of prose. That seemed lame, encouraging not only the stealing of other people's work, but the butchering of prose that is perfectly fine the way it is. So instead, I took a biography of some dude and made a poem out of that, adding my own theme and language onto actual facts as the basis for my poem. Anyway:
Sir George Biddell Airy’s Vision
At Cambridge and Greenwich, Airy’s business
Was seeing for other people;
He spotted holes in planetary theory,
Mathematically studied rainbows,
Reorganized the Observatory:
His staff, of course, could not see
For themselves, so he saw for them;
No new scientists were made
Under the rigid discipline
Of Greenwich’s Astronomer Royal.
He developed a lens that corrected
The astigmatism that often bothered him;
A discomforting, uneven fuzziness
When he tried to look at the world.
Truthfully, it is difficult to say
Whether he was experiencing
The truest clarity of vision
Or the hazy veil of hasty romance
When he proposed to Richarda Smith
Two days after he had met her
As a young graduate.
The marriage was postponed
Until he could afford her
The proper income and duty
Of an Englishman, so
Like a proper businessman,
He took up a trade
Until science made love
A practicality. |
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| "Highly readable!" --American History Review |
[Apr. 16th, 2004|04:44 am] |
On the topic of research: I'm never attempting to do research in a book written by a Rhodes Scholar again. I've been attempting to make sense of this book, "A History of Western Morals" by Crane Brinton for the past 20 minutes. If there's anything I hate, it's a smart person who writes exclusively in smart-talk. If the average syllable count per word in your book is more than eight, no one should publish you.
Let me give you an example of what Mr. Look-At-How-Smart-I-Am writes like:
"But the divorce rate? The rate is high indeed, particularly in the United Stated, and reflects in part, surely, the inevitable disppointments of a sexual relation exalted into something ineffable."
Huh?
Now, mind you, even after looking up the words I didn't know, is till don't know what he's talking about. I think he's just grabbing random words out of a thesaurus. Here's another one. Keep in mind this is two sentences:
"I do not wish to be understood as maintaining that the civic virtues at their best in fact -- let alone at their best in words, as in worship of Swiss cantons or New England town meetings -- are an essential to a going state. I mean merely that with all the variables allowed for, including by all means the economic weaknesses of the later empire, the "lack of Romans," the taxing away of the responsible middle class of curiales, even, perhaps, the malaria and the sunspots, all the long, long list of "causes" of the fall, a moral weakness, not so much a matter of the picturesque vices as one of softness, lack of civic responsibility, lack of drive toward a sghared earthly betterment of material conditions, perhaps even, toward the end, a vage feeling of despair, must be on the list."
HUH?!
Havard Ph.D. and Rhodes Scholar at Oxford be damned, you can't fucking write worth shit. Maybe it's because it's 4:30 am and my brain is fried, but when you write to an audience, even a specialized audience, please, please at least try to make some goddamn fucking sense! Stop, take a breath. I will attempt to convicne you, not to, in the future, even, perhaps, feel it is neccesitated to cram it all -- cram it up, even, perhaps, your ass -- into one sentence, not so much a matter of the rules of grammar, making a coherent argument, so much as being, surely, readable, even, perhaps, even.
Go die, Crane Brinton. Die in a ditch and rot for days. Sheesh. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 16th, 2004|02:01 am] |
Here's a nice bit from the Talmud. Not that I was reading the Talmud. The excerpt is from a book called "Everyday Ethics," which I am reading for Sociology. Anyway:
"A Rabbi commiited and infraction, grave enough to call down a judgement from Above. The Divine voice notified the Rabbi that because of his sin he had forfeited his place in heaven. He would be bared from Paradise in the world to come.
Upon hearing this judgement, the Rabbi burst into a joyous dance. Perplexed, his students asked him how he could be so cheerful upon hearing that he was refused entry into Paradise. The Rabbi explained: All my life, I always suspected that my good deeds had an ulterior motive. Whenever I fulfilled the commandments, I envisioned the reward I would receive for my good deeds. Now, for the first time, I can serve God purely without any personal hidden agenda."
Of course, the difference between that and Christianity is that instead of God saying, "Now you can't get into Heaven," it's "Okay, free ticket to Heaven for anyone who wants it." |
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