I'm alive!

Okay, if you guys get an email from blogger, totally sorry about that one, I forgot what my login was and they just sent an email to everyone. Also, crazily enough, I honestly forgot this blog existed. I'm sorry, that was really lame of me. Anyways lots have been going on, and I dunno how much you guys know, so here's a rundown:

1) Didn't get into medical school

2) I'm okay with 1) because this means that I can get a job and be financially independent by the next time I apply, meaning I get better loans.

3) The other reason that I'm okay with 1) is that I found out that my dad wants to start his own company and this makes it way easier for him to do that since he doesn't have to worry about paying anything for me (as opposed to having to pay for medical school tuiton and living expenses) for the next couple of years.

4) I've got a job doing research at UCSF, like a real "I'm on salary job not just washing dishes for 10 dollars an hour job"... which means that I'm moving to San Francisco. Currently, I'm looking for apartments.

5) It's been about a month since I got back from Southeast Asia... you guys knew that I was going there for a month, right? Anyways, me and Eric have pictures up on Facebook if you guys are interested. I can't wait to go traveling again!

Edit: Been reading the older posts, the layout looks great leeann. Your posts do intimidate the crap out of me to write anything because I sound like a kindergartner next to you (no offense all you 5-yr olds out there reading this), but they're great too.

remmuS: A Photo Essay

Suckwagon, 2007 BUDA Summer League Champs: In some absurd twist of events, our 8th seeded summer league team won the Boston Ultimate Disc Alliance's summer tournament this past weekend in Devens. We're a bunch of Harvard alumni and students, and we are called Suckwagon. We cheer for dysentery and cholera because that's the stuff that kills you in Oregon Trail (a game in which, I am told, you ride in wagons). I call it an absurd twist of events because for most of the first day of the tournament, we felt and played like this...
ZSRT has died of cholera. Here Lies ZSRT: This is a kid we call "Scuttle." I find that our Harvard teams aren't big on cheering and nicknaming, but a few names stick. Like this one. I think he is called Scuttle because one of his middle names is Sebastian, and Sebastian is a crab in the little mermaid. Speaking of mermaids...
The East Coast: I discovered that East "Coast" is not figurative and that there are beaches, too. And some of them are glorious and lovely, like Singing Beach in Manchester-by-the-Sea. Granted, it costs a $5 entrance fee and an hour and a half of travel on the subway and commuter rail, but that's the price you pay when you live in a godforsaken place like this. I went out to Singing Beach three times (luxury!) this summer, where the water is frigid (brainfreezes from going under!) and there are no burritos nearby. However, there is...
"Eat More Ice Cream": On the ten minute walk between the commuter rail station and Singing Beach is a little ice cream shack belonging to a one Captain Dusty. Not shown in the picture is the flag which commands passersby to "eat more ice cream."

Fresh Frozen Chinese-Takeout: In spite of the captain's orders, my roommate and I tried to avoid consuming an all ice-cream diet. Pictured here is what appears to be Shaw's attempt at spicing up the frozen vegetables section.
More sweets: My mom came to visit, and we hit up the best eats and sleeps of Boston and Cambridge--The Charles Hotel, Casablanca, Legal Seafood, Changsho, Henrietta's Table brunch, Upstairs on the Square, and of course, on the last night, Finale's for dessert and the appropriate dessert wine (here, a Muscat, I believe).

Yellow fever: Went to Chicago, played frisbee, hung out with the Simpsons (and Lindsey!).
Became a Simpson.

The Lube: I worked in a space known fondly as the Cube. It is part of the Media Lab at MIT. It looks like this. It is a Lab... in a Cube. By another absurd and welcome turn of events, I will keep working with this professor and possibly accompany him to his opening in Beijing next year.
Fighting the power, lo-budge: We do wacky things like (clockwise from left) make Unmanned Aerial vehicles to track anti-immigrant vigilante groups on the U.S. - Mexico border, jackets which can be activated to shock aggressive attackers, and unmanned ground vehicles to protest outside Foster-Miller, maker of such military devices as SWORDS.DeWolfe: My humble abode.
The first thing I did when I got to my humble abode was put up the things that reminded me of the good people back home.

Danger!

There were five of these signs on the ceiling of North Station.

LeeAnn runs the show

I love what you've done with the place :) I feel like I never do anything worth mentioning on here anymore. I suppose my baseball roadtrip which ended in Chicago with a visit with Lindsey on her first full day there is probably worth mentioning.



And perhaps my visit to one of the new wonders of the world, Chichen Itza would be worth mentioning and maybe even putting a picture or two up.



Now I'm just back to working my hostess job, finished up my resume, and hopefully applying to be a real life grown up in the working world soon. That's definitely not exciting. I'd much rather read about all your adventures in places that we haven't all lived in for at least half of our lives (San Diego... yes I'm still here).

So there's my input. I didn't want LeeAnn to feel alone. I'll be back in a couple months to type a couple more paragraphs.

edit: I added pictures and after adding these I realized that both the days I mentioned ended it tremendous downpours (the first picture you can see it's about to come and the second one you can tell Nicky and I are soaked)

new project!

While I continue to muck around at TECH and MIT (waiting for the end, really), I've decided on a new, time-sensitive project: christening the mailboxes of the newly relocated. This week we start with a nature center in Alaska, an apartment in Lincoln Square in Chicago, what I'm sure is a crumbly old house in North Park in San Diego, and some flat in London... where will my precious parcels land next? You decide. Email me your addresses and I'll feed your long starved mailbox, too.

hullo?

I have a lot of things to do for work and play and to prepare for my mother's visit, but I got the urge to mix up Halfwhat--just to see if anyone's watching. Lindsey, Jen, Juli-- pictures? witty tidbits? suggestions for links, photos, etc.? I am learning CSS so I'm going to try to make it look less boring. Eventually. And Juli, I don't actually know if you're in San Diego, I was only guessing.

This feels like an email. It actually is sort of an alternative since I don't have all of your email addresses. Anyhow, I was just telling my friend the other day that I write for a group blog with three girls I knew from high school. I was thinking about how it started, with Mixedtape, my defection from the other blog, with Hankerchicks and Cherry Pie a la Mode (Orange you glad?); and I was looking through the years (!) of archives, and thinking about how incredible it was that we were blogging here when I was still in high school and you were all graduating. Now that you've all graduated again and this blog has become a one-woman shitshow (perhaps that's too strong, but yeesh that last post was horrendous), I'm wondering if Halfwhat's just in another dryspell or if I am scaring everyone away with my posts. Soo... anyway, holla back if you're alive?

Venus im Pelz

Titian, Venus with a Mirror, ca. 1555

Venus in Furs receives her slave. I see that you are no ordinary dreamer. You at least don't lag behind your dreams. You are the sort of man who carries out whatever he imagines, no matter how insane. I must confess I like that, I am impressed. It shows strength, and only strength is respected. I even believe that in unusual circumsances, in an era of greatness, you would reveal your seeming weakness as a wonderful strength. Under the first emperors you would have been a martyr, at the time of the Reformation an Anabaptist, during the French Revoluations one of those inspired Girondists who mounted the guillotine with the Marseillaise on their lips.

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Venus in Furs, 1870

Upon recommendation, I just finished reading Venus in Furs, a novella written by von Sacher-Masoch as part of the larger work Testament of Cain (sometimes Legacy of Cain). It was a short, strong whirlwind of a narrative--utterly insane and passionate, a story that makes one believe that love is more important than going into work.

I find that I spend much of my time with friends who are immersed and believe fully in the complete, unquestionable nobility and truth of the sciences--in biology and physics, in chemistry and medicine, in the engineering of new technologies housed in aluminum, enlivened by electricity, powerful with their capacity of language and memory--commands and digits writing new worlds in mesmerizing high definition. They find ultimate meaning in prolonging life, in growing cells that will one day cure breast cancer, uncloud the brains of Alzheimer's patients, or bring back hearts that are intent on stopping.

Another large majority spends a good deal of time and zeal analyzing and reimagining society, laws, management, business-- they patiently and carefully pick apart the complicated mesh of a million-word world of contract and currency either in order to climb the structure or else to bring the whole thing down or else to make it more sustainable.

I often tell people, when they ask me how Harvard is, that there is one common characteristic of the students I meet here--it is as close as a generalization can get to encompassing everyone here--it's one that bores and saddens me at times and utterly fascinates and humbles me at others: everyone has something about which they are very, very serious. And I don't mean that everyone has a talent. Whether its music, or sports, or cooking, or academics, or romantic obsession, or just keeping a daily, disciplined routine, there is, hardwired into the system of almost every person, a very serious streak. It didn't exist in everyone I knew in San Diego. It doesn't exist in all the people I meet elsewhere. And so now I find myself writing, in the flowery way that I do when I've just read something very moving, and wondering where the dreamers have gone.

It's been a long time since I've read something about humans. I've taken to reading non-fiction about architecture, textbooks on engineering, and reports about army technology. Venus in Furs is recognized as one of the seminal literary expressions of sadomasochism (it contributed to the introduction of "masochism" as a clinical category in the book on sexual psychopathologies and is often cited in writings on the subject). But though it is fiction, von Sacher-Masoch himself subscribed to this sort of life--he and his lover played out the dramatized story in the novella, of a mistress and her love slave who live by alternately struggling against and riding on the throes of pain and love, both physical and emotional. There is little significant consideration or analysis of society and/or historical events of any kind, it is focused completely on two lovers, out of time, out of place.

I have met people here who dream about ways to save the world, ways to hike all the Presidentials in one day, ways to live their lives fully and well and maybe even recklessly, and yet, I don't think I've really heard anything or experienced anyone who lives life appealing completely and solely to emotion. I hear successful classmates poo-poo their black sheep younger siblings who smoke and drink and do stupid things. I hear rebels in blueblood clothing assert their repression by counting their inebriated and incapacitated nights. But that's disdain of recklessness and that's recklessness for the sake of rebellion or revenge. I know no one who is so completely true only to passion, who is obligated to no one but themselves, who cares always and only to dream and realize dreams--I don't miss recklessness or rebellion, I miss honesty to desire. I don't think it's that true dreamers don't exist in the world--I know they do, I've met at least one.

So now I suppose I am also wondering if that's the kind of life I care to live. It is hard to really, totally indulge and really be a hedonist. I just wonder if I could do it. It's an intriguing idea. I don't mean to drop out of school, or quit jobs or drop out of society, I just mean to live for myself. To be wild, and to be a lover, always. It's all crazytalk, I know. But I do wonder if I could live like that. I wonder how it would suit me to really live in furs.

Integration... that's an MIT thing right?

A few weeks ago, my boss/professor friended me on the Facebook. Okay, weird, but you can't refuse, right?

Yesterday, in response to my email about the flexible spider couplings arriving, he replied:

MMmmmm, spider couplings.

Spider Couplings!
Spider Couplings!
Does what ever a spider coupling does!

Spins a web? No it doesn't. It's a coupling.
Look out! Here comes the spider coupling.

(I just had my first half cup of coffee in 4 days)

Good thing I saw the Simpsons movie last night or I wouldn't have been able to come up with a properly hilarious response.

Today, he sent an email to the group with no body and the subject line: "ouch. hard drive crash. my life sucks. I blame leeann."

(For context, earlier this week my hard drive crashed for the second time this summer. Dell, I hate you. I hate you so much.)

Generally, I would say it's a bad thing when your boss/professor blames the suckiness of his life on you, but I think this may just be a sign that I'm finally being integrated into the group. The Harvard jokes have decreased drastically, and I proved myself a few weeks ago by helping lift the 135-lb. battery we got for the kayak. I may not be an engineer, but perhaps I can find a niche at MIT as resident book-appreciator and weight lifter.

(Oh, and for more context, his fiancee was my tutorial leader this past semester and he basically took me upon her recommendation. And he went to UCSD for his MFA. And his father was one of the leading scientists in the positive psychology movement, and wrote a book that my other boss at Harvard adores and gave to me as recommended reading.)

Humility, Forgiveness, Hospitality

I think that people mistake humility for a lack of pride, forgiveness for weakness, and hospitality for prostitution. I think people mistake acceptance for copping out.

I think that love doesn't last because people have learned that they should fend for themselves and that they shouldn't tolerate anything less than what they deserve.

I think that sometimes you will be treated badly, and sometimes you will make mistakes; I think that no matter how much you really care or really love or really want something you are going to mess up and be a bad person, a bad friend, and a bad lover, and that you should always try, even if you aren't forgiven. I think you should take the lessons given you, even if they tell you you are unwise, you are petty, you are lacking, you are wanting. You should take the lessons given you, and try again. And try to be better.

I think you should always forgive. You should always be able to forgive, no matter what's been done to you.

Ultimate Post

I am making a new calendar.

I love making new calendars, new schedules, new plans. There is so much potential I can just feel it; I could work it and squeeze it like meat through a grinder. (What a weird simile. I was thinking something juicy and mushy and a little bit gross but powerful. Did I tell you guys that I'm a vegetarian now?)

I am making a calendar for Quasar. A list of skills, a schedule for fitness, some ideas for parties, some hopes for new tournaments. I wonder if everyone feels this way before the start of the season: excited without reserve, cruising full speed in no direction without the drag of frustration because nothing has actually begun or failed. It's much faster to type out a list of skills you'd want to see by December than it is to teach a rookie to throw a accurate, flat forehand with enough spin. But I can't see any downside to excessive buoyancy of spirit at this point. I've got further to fall, yes, but I also have that much more resistance to the downward pull. Besides, our crowd is so social this year (my own class alone can carry a raucous party or a 12-hour car ride: Harvard's ultimate frisbee class of 2009 is not only large, but diverse, friendly, and good-humored) that even if the technical things don't pan out quite right, it's going to be a lot of great camaraderie, stupid inside jokes, and very good mix CDs.

Copy, Red Dog.

So I work in a cubicle during the day and a building called the "Cube" in the afternoon and evening, but once in a every long while, we do fantastic things like kayak on the Mystic River while waiting for the battery to charge from the prof's car battery before remote controlling a rudder & motor attached to another kayak (unmanned water vehicle!). So maybe I just watched the little high school computer programming intern control it, but I will soon be controlling the unmanned ground vehicle. The UWV and UGV and the UAV (air) are all going to be employed in protest against such looming injustice and/or promotion of inhumanity as military use of robots like SWORDS and the Minutemen patrolling the U.S.-Mexico border.

Permissions

Facebook allows a user to set all kinds of different levels of privacy for every part of the profile in order to ensure a sense of safety and degree of restraint (as false as it may be--but I'm not actually interested in debating that here). That's something that makes people so much more open on the Internet; it's like lacking the inhibitions that are similarly dispelled with alcohol, but being able to set parameters that say, "Creepy Joe Shmoe can't see my phone number and photos, but BFF Lindsey Mindsey can," and to have that be so. (Again, let's ignore the fact that entering your phone number anywhere online means that it's out there for CyberStalker Joe Hacker to find.)

Real life is decidedly less simple. There's a variably fine wall that separates hospitality from "come hither," and sometimes, depending on the guest-cum-invader, the stakes are pretty high if one missteps. College is such a strange time and place; the combination of living, working, and playing with your classmates makes for a volatile foundation, especially when additives like alcohol and manipulative (if well-meaning) friends come into play. Setting boundaries requires one to strike some balance between definition and delicacy; too harsh, and you lose or hurt friends; too delicate, and some people just don't get the hint. You end up stiffly spooning with a well-meaning young lad and counting the hours until he leaves.

People are such an easy commodity right now; I've heard many stories about the terrifyingly stagnant pool that is the social scene post-college (one defined by the boundaries of the office and the apartment building), but sometimes I think that the ease by which college folks can meet and dump each other makes us take each other for granted.

Since when did an invitation to dinner translate to an invitation to my room? My door needs privacy settings. Maybe I should be more detailed in my facebook profile. "About me: Prone to hospitality. Eager to cook for numbers and lend couch space to temporarily homeless friends. Disclaimer: helping me make dinner and revealing feelings while drunk does not grant permission to enter my bedroom after I excuse myself for bed. Uncomfortable with confrontation, so just... don't go there."

Oh, dear!

Yesterday morning as I ran errands in the square, a scruffy man walking half-asleep past the Gap window display jumped and sputtered a very audible, "JEEZ-us!" He shook his head quickly like a dog shaking off uncouth fleas and pulled on his red, grease-stained shirt to recompose before he continued on.

As I walked past, I saw the display, three sets of bras and panties neatly displayed on wooden hangers, asking, "What's in your top drawer?"

The whole event was incredibly adorable.

Wow, this blogger's in Thai

We flew into bangkok and stayed for a day, it wasn't all too interesting, so we went on a 12 hr bus ride to chiang Mai. We arrived in Chiang Mai yesterday at 6am. I slept pretty well, Eric and Jordon not so much. No matter, we rented motor bikes and rode them up to the jungle to ride ele[hants. That was alright but overpriced, riding the motor bikes was way cooler, and we rode them far enough to these little villages with no tourists and ate grilled chicken for lunch that was way better then Ell Pollo Loco at a small hut where no one spoke english, we had to point and put up three fingers for the three of us. It was great. it rained on the way back and Jordan and Eric got soaked, but I didn't because i was riding with with eric and he blocked all the rain from me. Then last night we watched Muay Thai boxing... there were fights between like little kids, but they weren't grusome at all (i was a little worried), and there was a really funyn match where they jsut blindfolded the kids and let them go. We're planning to head to Laos tonight.

I realize the messages that I've bene sending people are quick and not written very well, but i don't have a lot of time and i have a lot of messages to werite, so I apologize. I hope to get pictures up somehow at some point, those will be better.

Day 1

I learned to weld and grind hot rolled steel, use a horizontal band saw, and illustrate parts in SolidWorks at at the MIT Media Labs. This is a hell of a lot better than Engineering Sciences 120.

Tomorrow I go into a Harvard office to pitch ideas to Mr. TECH. Wish me luck.

Bring it!

Hey, half of halfwhat will be in Chicago at the beginning of July. Can we up that ratio?

Almost hired.

One job confirmed. Two interviews to go. 10 fingers still crossed.

I just found this photo--perhaps it should have been saved for a post about how you all are graduating...again.

p.s. Who remembers mixed tape?

Bad habits

Mine? I just started reading online personal ads. Like on Craigslist and The Stranger. Not because I'm looking for someone, I just find them entertaining. The missed connections ones are pretty good, but I like reading the actual personals and see how people like to portray themselves. I'm weird.

The Present, The Past, and All those Ultimate Ghosts

Warning: Ultimate post.

I am back from regionals for the second time.

While I was standing on the sidelines of the Dartmouth - Tufts womens final, I realized, suddenly, that this was deja vu. The same teams, the same field, the same people on the sidelines, the same results for us the previous day (2-2, two frustrating games in which we could have played better, a B-team game and a consolation game), perhaps it would result in basically the same blog entry.

Of course, key things were different: our men, in the backdoor bracket this time, had a contentious, heart-breaking loss that lost them the bid to nationals; Dartmouth women handily destroyed Tufts and made them play for the backdoor bid (I don't remember this game being so one-sided last year, but maybe I just wasn't aware); and we, for all the frustration and bad play of our important games, hadn't had a complete emotional implosion that would lead to a sad exodus of departing seniors Saturday afternoon. Instead, Sunday morning's sideline starred a healthy, smiling handful of excited Quasar rookies yelling for their struggling men's team and still abuzz with hope for the years of ultimate they had left to play.

Last year, Spring and I were the only rookies left at the tournament the second day of regionals. The day before had been sad and cold and full of watching for me; I was one of very few rookies who came to the tournament at all and spent most of the time watching the seniors give themselves a hard time for the last time. This year, though everyone, rookies or otherwise, got substantial play, I was playing as an integral part of the team. I'm suddenly a part of the line that gets called when business needs taking care of. By virtue of the numbers on our team and the large loss of players from last year, I am now someone to look to, someone to depend on to make the catch, someone who can be put on Ralph, Petra, or any other girl we call by name because she's so freaking spectacular.

But I'm no star. And really, none of us who are left are stars. All of us have strengths, but none of us yet warrant first-name recognition, I don't think. I don't think this is a problem. In fact, it may well be the start of something very good. I remember taking to a Tufts alum I played with in Taiwan, and she told me that they had had a star player who kept the team going for a few years, but after she graduated, the truly great thing was that they had a huge group of girls who had been playing together for four years and just knew each other so well that everyone was reliable and they were able to make it to nationals, without the star--just with a lot of depth. Of course, depth isn't really depth if throwing and catching and reading and defense aren't improved, but numbers and spirit are always an important start. It isn't reaching to say that we'll be returning 15 of 17 next year: two nationals caliber grad students, one former junior nationals player, two solid second year players, two off of ACL tears, and eight rookies. One departing team member may even be back to coach. Talk about rebuilding.

And now I recognize that I am planting the seeds of what could be a very difficult parting a few years doen the road. I am investing myself--I do want to see this team go somewhere. I want to take this team somewhere. I think it'll be harder for me than I thought to keep the ideal attitude I described last year after watching the seniors go out the way they did:

I'm sure I'll feel differently when I'm a senior or a first-year grad, banking on a bid to nationals, playing my last tournament ever... but I hope that even then I'll be psyched to go up against whoever the current superstars are, and be psyched to get a layout D (have yet to do that) or go deep for Nina or watch Lucy pump us up with pom poms...

Well. Nina didn't play this year and Lucy had pedialyte instead of pom poms... but I can work on making that happen. Ha, and ironically, since I think I've just avoided getting into a relationship with a fellow ultimate player:

Another odd thing I noticed--less to do with playing ultimate than being a part of an ultimate community, was the pervasion of ultimate couples. On day two, I tried to find myself a place on the sideline, somewhere between Kolthammer and Lucy, Mack and McDunks, Katie and Sam, and Jefe and McCrazy's flirtations; keep in mind that Harvard Men's (regionals champs!) coach Josh McCarthy and Tufts Women's (regionals runner ups!) coach Sangwha Hong (?) are also married. I not only felt young and short-- but a little pathetic playing with a disc by myself.

I'm happy to report that all of these couples are still together, as far as I know, and I didn't have to play with a disc by myself on the sidelines. Things are looking up for Quasar, I'm happy to say now --but I hope I'm not posting the same thing again next year.

Hey, would you say I'm on the rebound?

Beulah "The Coast is Never Clear"

On repeat for days. So good.

$0.02

Something was caught in my throat--maybe my heart, maybe my pride, maybe just my tongue or my breakfast. Whatever it was, it was making it hard to sit without fidgeting wildly as I watched her tiptoe with her words and make commentary with her eyes.

"So you seem to be someone with a lot on her plate," She said, cocking her head to one side and giving me the playful look of suspicion out of the corner of her bright blue eye. Her hair is platinum flawless and her suit is the perfect combination of polka-dot retro 50s hourglass housewife and high-powered, high-priced administrative academian. My Allston Burr Senior Tutor (something like a Resident Dean), whom I've always considered from afar to be a tragic woman (unbearably cute and unbearably spoiled child, distant and only mildly attractive husband), was now giving me a talk about the precariousness of my academic standing.

"You know, I give this talk to a lot of students every semester. And really, I don't know what your goals are. There was one student several years ago who has since graduated who just, who just wanted to...to pass," A wide sweeping gesture with her hand, attempting to indicate his physical passing out of Quincy house, or perhaps to show her own suspension of disbelief in dealing with the student, or maybe this is how she emphasizes her speech. "Give him all Cs, he was thrilled! And I don't know what your goals are, but remember I'm only sad about this if you are."

"This" being failing my first math midterm and being in danger of failing a class and being put on academic probation.

I have been on an ambitious quest to create a concentration here at Harvard that would allow me to explore materials from an engineering perspective, from social and historical perspectives, and in context of their uses in the art and architecture of daily living. Of course, I dicked around so much with courses during my first year and a half here (choral conducting, French A, neuroscience, linguistics, oil painting), that now I am left with a c.v. which leaves me few options for graduation and a resume that is painfully thin in expressing any coherent interest in future vocations.

My quest, with its strong (and I assure you, very genuine) personal motivations and resulting exquisite theoretical expositions on its legitimacy as a study, has crumbled in practice. I withdrew from my Engineering Sciences class after struggling through weeks without sleep or exercise. I couldn't find time to go to classes in order to complete the work for the classes; I couldn't find time to think between problem sets or lectures or reading. I was taking the perfect schedule to accomplish my goals on a 4-year Harvard timeline, and I couldn't hack it.

There is a tremendous and disheartening disconnect between the theoretical ideals I learn about in this liberal arts setting and the manner in which I am told to learn them. While the Resident Dean can tell me through her ruby lipstick that learning is lifelong and that an undergraduate concentration is no blip on the radar, she only says this because she knows that she has to pad her real message with something consonant with the trendy theoretical underpinnings of all the hundreds of pages of reading that social studies concentrators pretend to do every week. Really, she knows that i-banking interviewers, law schools, and whoever else can provide recognition--the keystone of academic success, for in this society learning is only for yourself in coincidental circumstances--needs something more than genuine personal motivation in order to give a seal of approval. She knows that taking more than four years, or a year between graduation and grad school, or taking the summer easy just doesn't look good, and will get you no further than your bachelors. Maybe she even knows that my mother, with all of her good intentions for my wellbeing, places so much less emphasis on hoping for my cultivation as a moral human being and positive contribution to civil society than my current academic success in the form of fellowships and degrees and future economic success in terms of job security and advancement.

I like reading. I like writing. I even like math when given the time to do it. Above all I love comprehension. But I can't do it all--not with only 24 hours in the day.

It's hard for me to keep a level head about this. It's hard for me to keep this in perspective, to remember, as a good and great friend told me as I sobbed to him on the phone just after the meeting, that failing a class is the least of my worries, and that my parents will always love me. It's so simple and so true, but everything in my life signifies messages to the contrary. I have been greatly discouraged by my environment and I would so like to succeed, but failing that, I would like nothing more than to break and live life somewhere out of the way--where nobody cares that I don't have the money for a nice suit or the resume to fill it. I want to keep a good attitude and take advantage of my situation, but I just don't feel like I know how.

I left her office with no solutions, just an ultimatum. And I cringed as I hit the air outside the building--air that, later in the April day, would bring snow--and I started to cry. I was trying hard to be neither jaded nor in despair, and as a result I just felt alone. And I was; I am, mostly because I choose to be. I don't want to share these feelings and I don't know that external advice can do much besides ease the symptoms--dry the tears and so forth. Whatever is stuck in my throat, I will have to clear myself--and if I believe, I have a lifetime to do it.

Southward!

Off on a 15-hour drive for a week and two days ultimate frisbee, Southern hospitality (?) and general spring break revelry. Oh and hundreds of pages of reading on Confucian Humanism.

Onward, ho!

puzzling

In response the the new-blogger, old-blogger question: I don't know who's the creator. I'm not because i just switched over and it wouldn't let me switch this one. Maybe Juli? We're the two admins.

no more booty calling!

My cell phone died, so please e-mail me if you need to contact me.

Oh my gosh, I just realized that means I don't have anyone's number. Oh. Oh, that blows.

Eye Candy, Food for Thought

One of the best photos that was overlooked.
-------

"Before, I spoke of clear periods, those on which the light fell. Now I'm talking about the hidden sketches of that same youth, of certain facts, feelings, events that I buried. I started to write in surroundings that drove me to reticence. Writing, for those people, was still something moral. Nowadays it often seems writing is nothing at all. Sometimes I realize that if wirting isn't, all things, all contraries confounded, a quest for vanity and void, it's nothing. That if it's not, each time, all things confounded into one through some inexpressible essence, then writing is nothing but advertisement. But usually I have no opinion, I can see that all options are open now, that there seem to be no more barriers, that writing seems at a loss for somewhere to hide, to be written, to be read. That its basic unseemliness is no longer accepted. But at that point I stop thinking about it."

Marguerite Duras, The Lover

Boys with Guitars

They are a rarity here.

What a shame.

Scraps

Air - Talkie Walkie
Album of the Week

--------------------

Choice quotes from recent reading for class:
"Fat sheep make good mutton but poor parchment."
Thompson, The Materials of Medieval Painting.

"...Or take the umbrella. It is an ingenious, thoroughly functional device, neat and practical. But you simply cannot imagine it in company with the racquet or the riding boot. They do not speak the same language. There seems to be something finicky about an umbrella, something rather cold and reserved--an air of diginity which the racquet utterly lacks."
Rasmussen, Experiencing Architecture.

"When the possbility of sudden failure exists, a larger factor of safety should be used than when failure is preceded by obvious warning signs."
Beers et. al. Mechanics of Solids.

"The 1370 foot high tower that serves as a prow for Manhattan continues to construct the fiction that creates readers, makes the complexity of the city readable, and immobilizes its opaque mobility in a transparent text." This one isn't funny. It just makes no sense.

It's Saturday afternoon in San Diego and it's 84 degrees out. I'd love to stay here and tell you more, but I'm going out to my balcony to enjoy this crazy February weather. I have homework due tonight so I'll be doing that... but it's so nice out I don't think I'll mind too much.

My bone

My intention is not to make you jealous (hey--i might be in your neck of the woods next year) but it's probably in the 40s or 50s? And it's not raining yet though it's supposed to.

Have I ever told you that I love your words? I love your words. You say everything I want to say, everything that's trapped in my mind and i'm afraid to admit, everything I can't articulate in words or sounds... i'm so far gone into journalism that I can't write about my day without a lede and a nut. Feelings? They have no place in a news article. And I can't talk to anyone without my list of questions.

The "you" I am talking to is LeeAnn.

Four years into college I can finally admit I do not like weekends. Weekends in college are like bricks thrown into my face every week, bricks that tell me I do not have any friends, nor can I do anything productive with limitless free time. I've almost given up on them, content to stay at home on a Friday and watch a movie by myself, content to not even make an effort to go out. It's always the same boys and beer and shots anyway, walking with heels and taking makeup off, making meaningless conversation. I used to go out with the hope that i'd meet a boy. But now that i'm on the older end of the college crowd, most do not exude the level of maturity i'm looking for. I then went out for the alcohol. The amazing freedom of conversation and action it provided, the endless random excitement. But now I never really get drunk enough to stop thinking about what I really think of the guy i'm talking to. I also went out because I knew people. And now I know people, but if I see them we stay in. So it's the weekend. And I have a paper to write and four books of Victorian blank verse to read and a future to plan and a full Netflix queue and a whole week of work ahead of me. And a few actual plans. Can't I just enjoy that?

I could just enjoy that. I might just enjoy that.

My random evening that consisted of everything I already mentioned also consisted of me and two friends ending up in the apartment of two girls I barely knew in high school. Different social circles, that sort of thing, but four years later we can have a beer together and admit we know each other's names and had classes together four years ago. It's funny the extent to which all that just doesn't matter anymore.

Hey Halfwhat

I'm losing perspective, here. Throw some bones from your respective Californian locations--I'd like to forget that it's 20 degrees (feels like 6) out!

Are you hip?

Ukulele's are so hip right now.

Measurements

I am testing the space between his jaw and his shoulder, measuring with the modified arc built of my forehead nose and lips to see if I fit there.

Along the landscape of a longer neck that fit upon a broader collarbone, one that usually smelled of bread and cigarette smoke and sometimes of sheets and soap, I had once found a hollow that held my cheek and my closed eyelids and my hair-draped forehead against it as a cradle held its charge; that is, dutifully and gently.

The space is smaller, though, on this one. His jaw is in the middle of my forehead, my chin rests on the plain of his chest. I think I can fit here, though; I can imagine getting comfortable with this uncomfortable position. After all, crossing the street, opening the front door, embracing, kissing-- at different, earlier points in my life I didn't like to do those things, either; and all still hold their small and thus insidious elements of danger and risk.

His hands aren't much bigger than mine, and he wants to hold me in them. They get clammy fast, with too much touching, and I let go to spare him the embarassment of realizing this for himself. I know exactly what to do and what to say, which words and expressions to deliver in how many doses to make him sufficiently desirous, to make him feel sufficiently at ease. I am overestimating him in order to feel like less of a predator--he must know my game. (This conclusion, of course, is irrational. He doesn't even know me. He wouldn't know a game from the most genuine sentiment. He is nothing to me; I could be anything to him.)

But at some point, I didn't play and I didn't know, either. I took it slow and did it by intuition, by touch, by moving slowly, uncertain day by uncertain week, feeling my way through and closing my eyes when hoping not to come up short or overshoot. I wrote pages filled and overflowing with those innocent expressions of first infatuation; I wrote and deleted and saved countless emails; I waited for him to emerge and I waited for him to leave. I couldn't control anything. It brought about the best sort of inexact and overwhelming and satisfying love--slowly built by serendipity after serendipity. I can't hope for it again, so I won't. I won't wait for the shoulder that's just right; he's come and gone. I could settle for this. I could settle for a little bit smaller, a little safer, a little more sterile. I can't adapt, I can squeeze in like I belong here. There's no infatuation to swell me up and give me away; there's no uncontrollable desire to make these lips move in ways I don't want. This could be safe; this could be right by decree.

But decree leads to repression; safety leads to curiosity; I will balloon with guilt and longing for nothing in particular.

This is bullshit, dude. Can't do it.

Blank Wave Arcade

The Faint
Blank Wave Arcade

---------------------------------------

And to continue in my return to regular program, I'll blog about the weather.

"ARCTIC AIR WILL CONTINUE TO INVADE SOUTHERN NEW ENGLAND TODAY. THE
MERCURY IS ONLY EXPECTED TO REMAIN IN THE TEENS DURING THE ENTIRE DAY.
THE WINDS WILL BECOME STRONGER AS THE DAY PROGRESSES...WHICH WILL ONLY
ADD TO THE BITTERLY COLD CONDITIONS WITH WIND CHILL VALUES REMAINING
BELOW ZERO FOR MOST OF THE DAY."

Cookies for you, then, buddy.

Dear Self-Righteous Pole Vaulting Star,

I find it terribly silly for you to say in that terribly haughty voice, "I don't smoke marijuana" just after telling me that your butt is covered in marker from your drunken evening of Track & Field Initiations.

Sincerely,
Me.

SPAWN!

When did Harvard become a breeding ground for bankers?

For God's sake, keep your souls for yourselves and let Goldman Sachs suit up someone else! (This I sigh when I know the girls who work those 15 hour days and go for schmoozing weekends in New York--not weekends in museum galleries that aren't opening, closing, or throwing a gala--are the ones who can afford to try on heels at Christian Louboutin. It is a twisted world.)

Heads Up

The Roots will be in Universal City with Jill Scott & Lupe Fiasco on Feb. 10, and then at the House of Blues in San Diego on Feb. 12 (without Jill Scott).

Or come to Boston and see them with me in March!

Another journey on the road has yet to be documented. New York, New Jersey, three museums, one concert, one surreptitious jam session, some really spicy vindaloo--altogether a good time.

Hell freezes over?

Leeann's post reminded me, last week there was snow in LA. Weird, yeah?

I don't own a camera; this is better.

The View from Here

It's snowing.

It's beautiful.

I'm... almost done with finals.

Revelation

So cool.

Just wondrin'

Is it against some kind of unwritten law if I listen to the soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas after Christmas? It should be called A Charlie Brown Walk in the Cold Morning Air.

What to Do When you Get a Splinter

Yesterday, I was gleefully sanding down the edges of my simple woodshop project of the weekend (backing Masonite boards with frames for my triptych), moving my hands quickly as if to simulate an expertise that I surely do not have. Suddenly, my hands fly apart, and before it's actually registered with my brain, my eyes are staring at a sliver of wood peeking from my cuticle. It appears to be very small, and begins to moisten and become translucent as it settles into my finger. I'm picking at it with my fingernails, trying to act the part of tweezers and tug it out, but it doesn't want to budge. I think first that I might just be picking at flesh, but wiggling it causes a sharp, hard sensation; I then imagine that the monitor on duty in the shop reading his paper might be able to help, but he hasn't looked up yet, and it looks small enough to get out with some perseverence.

I am starting to panic, and it's trickling blood; I wonder if I could just leave it there till I get back to the room and ask my roommate for eyebrow tweezers, but I still have quite a bit to finish up. I wonder why it's hurting more and sort of flail my arm to make it stop. Finally, the adrenalin and frustration peak, I shut my eyes, and take a final, swift, wild pull at the nub, and then stare in wonder at the inch-long splinter that emerges as my finger begins to throb and pump blood. What a terrible relief.

I can hardly see the entry wound now, but just beyond my cuticle, the finger is sore for about 3/4 of an inch.

On New Year's Eve, I made some bad choices involving gin, rum, whiskey, vodka, and champagne (although, in retrospect, I think the champagne doesn't count), and ended up with my head in a bucket, letting the tears flow along with the other internal juices. They say alcohol makes one more truthful, and there I was in Taiwan with a few near-strangers (including two saints) telling them, emphatically, without reserve and with the greatest humility the most plain truth of all: "I miss him. I miss him so much."

It's the special kind of drunk saved for New Year's Eve. A total uncorking of the last repressed feelings, a total disregard for responsibility or decorum or precedent or consequence as you panic in that moment between last year and new year. All of that residue lodged numbly in your being is removed; it's catharsis, or at least, it's a giant vomitous mess, unleashed. And boy, it's the kind of drunk that makes you really glad you're leaving the country later that day and not going back for a long time.

I am currently attempting to create a special concentration involving elements of Engineering, Chemistry/Physics, Visual & Environmental Studies (Studio Art), and History of Art & Architecture. I know, it takes multiple breaths for me to say it, but I like to call it "A Comprehensive Study of Materials." I hope it will take me to Venice this summer, Paris next spring, and to a dozen labs, firms, and studios where I can work hard with my hands and forget what I'm feeling in my heart.

If I could rule the world

It should be a law of physics that whenever I'm bored, there is always something I want to watch on TV.

P.S. No, I don't have on demand or TiVo, you spoiled ninnies.

Time.

Time's Person of the Year is YOU.

Both Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert made fun of it in their shows and I thought it was silly until I actually read the magazine and realized it's true... we make things happen. The Facebooking, Blogging, Googling, YouTubing, iTunesing, My Spacing generation is what it's all about. The UCLA taser cell phone video on YouTube is a perfect example of how many people are active participants in the Internet, how many people see the little things that happen around the world. As a future journalist (or, as a current journalist), this trend is very important to me. It makes my heart beat faster and puts a warm feeling of contentment in my belly... people do care. And of course, this Internet phenomenon makes my job that much more convenient. Remember the days of looking students' names up in the school directory? Now we just use Facebook.

And then I realized I have a blog and I should use it, after all my voice is part of this revolution too. I had a lot to say when I was in Spain, but my flow of words seems to have stopped since I returned. And then I come here and see that LeeAnn and Jen do use our blog and their voices. Of course they do. That warms my heart too.

I'm going to Disneyland tomorrow.

I wish I had an ounce of musical talent

Emily Haines and Neko Case. Both known for their work in more rockin' music projects (Metric and The New Pornographers). Both put out solo work this past year. I enjoy both CDs very much. It's all about those voices.

EDIT: Also, hour long The Office episode was on last night. You better have watched it. The new Ricky Gervais project Extras is also very funny, even though I only watched about an episode and a half of it (I do not have HBO at my apartment). Anything involving Kate Winslet teaching someone to talk dirty while dressed as a nun is awesome in my book.

NEWSFLASH: Sleep-deprived interns kill people, hurt themselves

Wow! Finally! Scientific proof that working for 30 hours straight is not good for you or your patients' health!

Doctors in training who fall asleep during surgery or while examining patients make four times more errors that cause deaths than their better-rested colleagues, the research reveals.

Young doctors also suffer from their mistakes with emotional problems that can haunt them for years. They admit that their distress includes fear, guilt, anger, humiliation, and decreased compassion. What's more, the distress coupled with reduced empathy can increase the odds of more medical errors and even alcohol and drug abuse.

If interested in official publication of more things we already know: Links to an article and a study.

There's Something Happening Here

For a few weeks now, there have been some mysterious, vague, uncomfortable rumblings.

Last week, there were a few considerable shifts in the ground beneath my feet, some visible churning in the water.

Next week, I predict another seismic shift, a sudden surge of the waters, an eruption--something new, spontaneous, and slightly ominous.

I'll keep you posted.

So that's where it was hiding!

Remember that gore I was looking for when watching Hostel? I just watched Apocalypto last night. FOUND IT!

The night before I went to see The Faint/Ladytron/Ratatat/DJ Aoki (You know that weird-looking asian girl from Sin City and those Fast and the Furious movies? Her brother) with Oliver and some of his friends from the O.C. (shout out to the O.C.! Wha what!). It's nice when you go out to hang out with friend's friends and everyone just gets along so naturally that it soon just turns into a group of people talking. No weird divisions within the group, no one trying to accomodate the one person who just can't relate to the main conversation going on. NICE.

Too Much Monkey Business!

Yesterday, three stops, one concert, a whole lot of good stuff.

1: Newbury Comics. I'm at this stupid chain store (music, movies, and a whole lot of Massachusetts ultra-liberal 'tude) to buy a fun Secret Santa gift. I am drawn by neon stickies "8.99!" and "9.99!" (...and "USED") sprinkled throughout the CD section.
Booty: Elliott Smith "XO" and Squirrel Nut Zippers "Perennial Favorites." Hooray for sweet packaging. Total (less fun Secret Santa gift): $20.

2: In Your Ear. On a "just bought stuff" high, I go down to the musty old basement that is the In Your Ear "Records Tapes Bought and Sold" store. Lots of dusty old things. More neon signs. I take another adventure into a jungle of cheap stuff by artists I recognize. Last time, I ended up with a record by Andy Stochansky that was so bad I almost threw it out of the car the first time I heard it. So bad. Hope I fare better.
Booty: Leah Andreone "Veiled" (this is a surprise for my roommate, who loves Leah Andreone, a tortured angry chick who happens to be from San Diego). The (International) Noise Conspiracy "Armed Love". Remy Zero Promo EP. Total:$15.

3: Tower Records. The neon signs outside this one have been changing for months: "GOING OUT OF BUSINESS SALE," "EVERYTHING MUST GO," "10 MORE DAYS!" I stop inside. It's very sad. Tall piles of CDs no one is going to want even at 99 cents. Bad hip hop, ruins from the 90s, best of's that suck. Hopefully I can go back in a few days and see if the better CDs are even cheaper.
Booty: Fugees "No Woman, No Cry" Australian Tour EP. Elvis Presley "Elvis Sings Flaming Star." Total: $5.

4: Sanders Theater. My roommate sings with the Harvard Radcliffe Collegium Musicum.
Booty: They sing Josquin des Prez, contemporary composers Donald Martino and Lorten Lauridsen, Brahms, and Bach. My soul expands. This stuff is beautiful even if you hate music and happiness and all of humanity.

Summary: So I binged. But you miss the point. The point is this: Elvis Presley is the shit. I had no idea. No joke! So good!

Boobies+Blood=Moderately Successful Horror movie

I just watched Hostel, mostly because I wanted to see how gory it was. WAY disappointed. It's funny how bad horror movies always compensate with naked women. It was like entire rooms of nakedness in the form of a whorehouse, a spa, and a hostel. And I guess us consumers have no shame because enough of us keep watching them that they keep making more. Oh well, bring on the (only kind of) grusome!

Correction

In junior year, I wrote a review of Belle & Sebastian's Dear Catastrophe Waitress for that high school publication we all grew to love so well. I gave it a B and called it trite and nothing special. Danny Mullin said I was a whore.

I was.

What a fantastic album.

Cool kids

You know what's cool? "Down by the bay..." Oh yeah and beating USC. Take that Mothafuckas!

On the Road vol. 2 Mary Poppins rejoices!

College makes you cherish the trips whose destinations do not require you to pack shower shoes, towels, or sleeping bags.

On the Road vol. 2 Mary Poppins Reincarnate!

There is something very satisfying about being able to fit two books in addition to your umbrella, wallet, hairbrush, pens, change purse, keys, chapstick, iPod and IDs into your purse.

Then again, it also makes it so much sadder if it gets lost or stolen.

On the Road vol. 1 The Bus to New York.

Veteran's Day weekend, I took my second annual Birthday visit trip to New York City to see Matt Franks on his birthday (if you all lived on the East Coast, you could bet I'd be on your doorstep with a batch of brownies and a big hug on all those October birthdays, too). After what happened last year (a few hours of sleep in piles of silly string, crushed potato chips, and other puddles of foul, sticky spoo), I decided it would be wise to bring a sleeping bag, despite my new mantra of packing as light as possible. This would also be my first trip to Princeton New Jersey to see, for the first time, my brother's band play a show. Friday morning, toothbrush, shower shoes, PJs, towel, change of shirt socks underwear, sleeping bag and 500-page biography of Willem de Kooning in bag, I made my way to gate 3 at South Station around 1 p.m., despite my long history of early morning departures.

Bus trips (and plane and train trips) have always been a very romantic idea to me. The trip, from the gate to the destination, feels like a complete dramatic episode, one with an exposition, a conflict, a climax, and the sort of abrupt and inevitable resolution that leaves one a little nostalgic and a little relieved. It's the people being held in an intimate, anonymous, and palpable (by the end) tension for the entirety of the 5-hour journey that really do it. You wait around with people who may be coming from somewhere different and may be going somewhere different, but for the timebeing will be just like you, on the Peter Pan schedule 1886 to New York City, Port Authority.

At the gate, the signs, big and friendly like the ones in the San Diego airport, and the tile and the stainless steel framed a bustling scene of Veterans Day travel. The wait for New York City is the longest, and I find myself in the company of a rich girl who's wrapped in the spandex and leather boots of the season, fiddling with her iPod and sipping at her coke; a clean cut white kid in a striped polo who is highlighting a coursepack in between checking the clock; a couple arguing in Canadian French over how the schedules work and when they need to be where and whether or not they need IDs; a mother-daughter pair of overweight midwestern tourists doing the same in English; a girl in a BU sweatshirt, a guy in a Tufts sweatshirt, a guy in a UMich sweatshirt, a girl with matching Vera Bradley quilted paisley totes, a girl in a Williams sweatshirt; an older black gentleman in a Red Sox cap and quiet. There is almost a sense of antagonism in the air, although none of us are really going to have to passive-aggressively fight each other for a seat (that happens later, on the ride home from New York at the end of the weekend). Everyone sneaks peeks at each other as though wondering who will have the balls to try and sit next to them when it comes time to settle in on the bus, and when it's perfectly clear that they're happy sitting alone with their music and their head against the window.

Of course, nobody sits alone on a bus to New York. So, slowly, and with adorable, hesitant steps (or not-so-adorable, forceful motions) everyone fills in the seats next to each other. A small woman with dyed red-black hair who speaks as though her mouth is full says, "Man, full bus, huh," and sits down next to me. She barely fills the seat. She is pale but has shadows in her face and under her eyes. We don't talk and both fall asleep. When I wake up two hours later, she is even crumpled even smaller, with her pale face hidden in her oily red-black hair and blacker coat, looking like a wet bird buried in sleep, or cold. Everyone is sleeping or pretending to, and so I look out the window and drift off.

Eventually, about 3 hours into the 5 hour ride, people are awake, talking on cell phones (loudly, about picking classes or being really wasted the night before or about who played whom where and who won), or reading coursepacks. I guess I don't really know what the non-college kids were doing because they aren't so vocal. Or so brightly colored. We stop at a Roy Rogers, and my bus-mate comes back with a burger meal. We start to talk. She's from Maine, living with a man she met on the Internet. It was love at first email, she jokes, and laughs, and wheezes. She's commuting home to New Jersey by bus this time, because her husband's mom is sick. It's cold up there, and it's cold on this bus, she says. She asks if I'm going home, and I say no, that I'm going to New York City, but I'm from San Diego. She doesn't hear me and asks if I'm going to see my folks at the station. We have trouble understanding each other; I think I speak too quietly, and she speaks as though her teeth are getting in the way, but really she is just slurring her words.

Just outside New York City, we start to hit traffic, and here, as it would in a movie, little things begin to pile up and stick on our nerves--people try to call their parents, friends, and family telling them that we'll be late; my busmate falls asleep and drops her Coke on the ground, and apologizes profusely, saying that she's just so tired, and I tell her that I know, and I get paper towels from the bathroom and clean it up for her while she frets and attempts to soak it up with a stationary envelope from her backpack, the black, bespectacled woman a row behind us wakes up the college girl the row in front of us to tell her to move her bag before it gets wet, the college kid with the coursepack to our left looks over wondering if he should help, wondering if I'm annoyed.

And then she gets on the phone to call Steve. Steve, I gather, is her brother. And for the next hour, as the traffic thickens, and the sky darkens, and the red and orange and yellow lights of cars and street signs and New York City life fill the windows, the conversation that fills the bus at terrifying intervals goes something like this:

Steve, it's me.
No, listen to me. No. I tell ya, I ain't on anything. I fell asleep on the bus. I've been on the bus, I'm so fuckin tired and I'm sick of this.
No, I ain't. I told you, I ain't.
Have you talked to her yet? She's supposed to talk to
That evil bitch of a woman what's she been sayin'
I told you. I ain't. I ain't. I just got out today, and I got the bloodwork and everything. I am so fuckin tired, physically, mentally
I told you. I'll tell you what, Steve, after this I ain't talkin to nobody in the family. Ever.
Please, Steve. Just do this for me. Talk to her. Talk to Aunt Fina. What'm I supposed to do?
So what're you gonna do? Just leave me in Newark?
Yeah I wish Aunt Fina was on my side, she's supposed to be on my side. She'll have the cops out there. Just call her. Steve, just call her.
I got out today. I ain't on anything. I'm just tired. And you want me out there with the fuckin bronchitis, I can't believe this.
So what, the kids are gonna be fucked up because I'm sleeping in one goddamn room in the house? She'll have the cops there. She's supposed to talk to my mother.
I can't yell. I'm on the fucking bus and everyone's gonna be lookin at me like I'm a fucking insane person.
Look, I'm tired. Just call her. Steve, just call her for me.

And by the end of it, at 8 p.m. as we inched our way toward 42nd street, she stared out the window, defeated. And I was small in my seat, trying not to be there, and trying to avoid the stares in our direction, the black woman over her spectacles, the kid out of the corner of his eye, everyone else, from the backs of their heads and behind my head. And before the bus unloads with steamy haste into Port Authority, before most of us are swept up into the arms and legs and coats and bags and hats of New York she says "Man, it's a long ride, isn't it?"

Brief Ultimate Confession

Since I haven't burdened you all with much ultimate news lately, I do want to make this funny little confession:

At points during Peter Mulvey's set last night, I started to nod off, and I had little snippets of dreams that would really have been a nightmare all strung together. I was seeing brief scenes of getting point-blocked, being turned around by my girl on defense, and seeing a huck go off of my crappy mark. I sort of panicked, physically (a brief thought of, "Oh crap!") until I came back to the music. I wonder if having a phobia of bad playing helps someone be a better player. Maybe I could induce some sort of morbid fear of being out-run or out-jumped or dropping discs and then it'd never happen again.

*Note: I have been reading papers about behavior therapy for anxiety disorder. Man, I need to not be a psychology major. Also, stay tuned for photos of me dressed and playing as Elastigirl this past weekend at Brown's Huck a Hunk o' Burnin' Pumpkin Halloween tournament.

A Pixie Full of Tunes

So the wife of the brother of the guy that my brother is going on tour in LONDON with this Thanksgiving came to play in Cambridge last night. She opened for Peter Mulvey, an Irish Catholic singer-songwriter with a growling baritone and a penchant for impressions, guitar tricks, political humor and other liberal intellectual stuff (pokes at Edvard Munch and Lord Byron, angry ranting against the institution that is TV).

Devon Sproule (pron: Sproll like roll and troll and boll) was tiny and delicate and lovely; not a manhandler of the guitar and exploiter of the voice like Ani Difranco, but a plaintive, humble coaxer and whacker of the guitar and a whimsical plucker and stretcher of her voice.

I'm a walking advertisement, I know, but it's always a bittersweet thing to know the opener of the show and not the main event. I get a little bit resentful of the main act, wondering why Devon has to play a humble little set to polite applause when Mr. Mulvey gets a full, whooping crowd. Anyway, her stuff is on iTunes for the buying. E-mail me and I'll give you a song preview, if you like, and then you can buy! All of a sudden I'm into this whole support musicians and artists by buying their shit.

-----

In other news, I think I've given up a $30+ Ani Difranco concert in favor of a $20 student rush ticket to the Kirov Ballet's production of Swan Lake. I wish I was around 10 years ago when she was still hopping folk clubs, open mics, opening acts or small headlines; I don't think I'd dig seeing her through binoculars 100 yards away, but all she plays are theaters now, and for over $30 a pop. Oh well, everyone's got to eat; I guess she's earned her feast.

Straight out of the movies

Have you ever had a moment where you thought "hey, that could have been straight out of a movie?" Well last weekend Jenna and I were doing some last minute shopping in Pacific Beach. We were standing on the corner waiting for the light to change so we could cross when this bus drives by. I just so happened to be wearing a skirt and yep, whoosh, up flew my skirt and exposed my cute underwear, little pink bow and all.

I can't stop.

I keep eating chocolate.

Help!

Damn you Eric!

I was supposed to have spent all weekend studying for my cell biology midterm tommorrow. Instead I spent about a third of the weekend studying, a third sleeping, and the last third watching episodes of The Office that Eric put on my ipod in exchange for all the Calvin and Hobbes comic strips in existence. That show is really funny. Watch it. Like right now. Go on, go.

Hahaha

Cnn.com headline: George Michael "smokes joint" during interview

I like that "smokes joint" is in quotes.

I'm cooler than Lindsey

Why? Because I'm gonna tell what I did on my 21st b-day... which kind of lasted over three days. Midnight on Wednesday (Tuesday night), a few friends came by and surprised me with a cake and cheap wine... the weakest they could find, they told me. This was fun, eating cake and drinking late at night, but it was a surprise and i wasn't prepared. After they left, I ended up having to study until 4 am. I'm okay with it now that I've slept all friday afternoon.
Wednesday night me and a group of people that included Eric, Steve, Marijana, Alex and Angela (last two are my roommates) went out to dinner at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Everything Forrest Gump... the drinks and dessert card ads that you find at chili's were on a ping pong paddle and the waitress quizzed us on Forrest Gump trivia. Eric stumped her with a question... jerk. The question: Who plays Forrest Jr.? The food was really good (I got shrimp... of course) and Eric bought me a Peach, Love and Rock n Roll as a drink for me, of which I could only drink half, Eric finished it off. I think he's going to go drinking with me more often just so he can drink the girly drinks that I can't finish.
Okay, so Thursday night we all went out to this 21 adn over bowling place, Lucky Strike. There were seven of us (same list as Wednesday night but minus the roommates and add Shanon, Nikki, and Aneri), and the van cab we called never came. Instead, we found a regular cab whose patron had not showed. We asked the guy if he would fit 7 people, and he said okay and did it off the meter. So we fit SEVEN people in a cab, Eric and me in front and the other 5 somehow fitting in the back. The driver ended up getting so freaked out about getting found by the cops, that he told us he was shaking. So shady factors include: fitting too many people in the cab, doing the job off the meter, AND the displayed license was NOT him. We got to the place alright, and bowled a game. I lost. Like I'm not very good at bowling, but this was bad, even for me. Still had fun, perhaps I'll put up pictures. A friend ordered me a Midori sour, but I got a headache before i could finish it, I have got the be the biggest lightweight. The group bowling next to us used really dirty names to display on the tv scorecard... too inappropriate to say on here. After bowling, we ate at Mel's down the street, and then took a cab home. This driver was not nearly as cool as the one we had there, just a deaf chain smoker. Nicest part was, my friends didn't let me pay for a thing... not even the food I ordered at Mel's (had I known this, I would have gotten my BLT without avocado and without the onion rings). It was very sweet of them, and I understand that it will never happen again.
And that was how my 21st b-day went. Now it's time to order chinese food, watch some tv, and recover before it's study time!

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday Jen!!!
You're finally a real person! You can go out with all your friends to all the awesome LA hot spots and have a drink or two and get smashed (cuz that's what us light weights do)! Next time I see you I owe you a drink ;)

Happy Birthday!

Speaking of 21, Little Richard says...



You're now the envy and the potential boozehound of all of your little Nexus underlings and other underage friends.

Of course, you have always been fabulous to me!

I wich I could dance at 21...

...but I don't want to wear the clothes. I was helping my neighbors dress for their night out clubbing tonight. Tight jeans, cleavage-bearing tops, and too much makeup would make for a very self-concious Jen. Too bad, I was dancing the hell out of the techno beats playing at the Beverly Center yesterday.

On another note, an H&M opened up in Pasadena. I just have one question: WHO'S COMING WITH ME?!?

PADRES!!!
They're going to the playoffs. That's all I have to say.

Last Night

I discovered that Joanna Newsom makes much more sense in person.

It helps that the Boston Museum of Fine Arts courtyard has an otherworldly weeping willow looming in one corner and other looming, luminous trees scaling the surrounding limestone walls, and that they lit the stage from below (as there was no roof) with the pink red purple light common to all indie concerts, because when she came on the stage with lemon and honey in a wine glass and her bangs grown out and hair flowing down behind her onto a similarly flowing dress, she looked like some nymph, druid, mystical creature taking her place behind the harp. It makes so much more sense to see all that and then hear her sing.

In other news, wouldn't you all think I was a lot kooler if I had a keytar?

Two things I learned today

1) How to use a macbook (because I have a brand new one!!)

2) My mom knows more about computers than your mom.

I learn slow. ly.

The anger and frustration that accompanied my meteorish landing in Cambridge have faded, a little, so that they're vaguely stuck like smoke in the air after one of those great Moonlight or La Jolla Cove bonfires that we used to fuel with anything we could find on the beach. And a shot or two of lighter fluid for good measure.

I miss my friends. I succumbed to this great and novel realization in trying to figure out where the rage was coming from. (Ah, introspection, the first step to a great blog entry, eh?) It always was a silly idea to me, to miss people, as I always felt I'd see them again, or could keep in touch by mail, email, and phone, and that distance and time were never any reason to despair. But this summer I was shocked by not really not being able to keep in touch while I was in Taiwan, and then, when my time at home was shrunk down to a day, I was shocked by the how limited the time felt, that I would have only three hours or a few minutes to sit and talk with the greatest people I know, and I was shocked by the pangs of disappointment when I realized there were many people I'd have to go another four months (hopefully not another year) without seeing. I always took it for granted that there'd be more nights at Hot Java or with chalk in the park or for midnight burritos or even for movies at the Highlands or for the concerts at the Che and elsewhere.

There won't be, though. The next great step in the realization is that there may never be. In the future, if I ever have the good luck of seeing these kids again, we won't be kids (at least, some won't), and the rendezvous will be tamed into lunches and coffee dates and drinks after work things in between our real lives, and always they'll be somewhere else--Seattle, New York, the Carolinas, wherever we may roam. People are astonishingly irreplaceable. Emails, blogs, letters, phone calls even-- they're insulting. But I guess it's all I've got. So it's time to sack up, and be quaint, and go write some letters. If nothing else, at least the recipients can ball up the paper and build a fire when it gets cold wherever they are.

Re-entry

I told someone today that I didn't even want to go to ultimate frisbee practice and he said, "Wow, something must really be wrong with you."

And there is. Since freshman fall I have not not wanted to play ultimate or throw if given the chance. But I arrived back at school late Thursday night, and went to practice on Friday and then two days of a tournament for which my poor excuse of a body was not ready by any means. Load jet lag onto general out-of-shapeness onto no longer being a rookie on a undermanned team, and you get a little Asian who's neither speedy nor fierce. I have been back at school for four entire days now (back in the States for five), and I'm still sitting here very uncomfortable with my new surroundings, the old atmosphere of Harvard, the absurdity that is college, and the terrible, big empty sadness that I find to be distinctly American.

I played a lot of ultimate this summer, and yet the tournament was a slap in the face--physically and mentally. Forget the physical part--I can get in shape, start running and lifting and swimming--but it's the mental attack that's astounding. I'd forgotten what it felt like to have the pressure, the strange reminders of the politics of an all-female team, the implicit expectations, the tacit understanding and acknowledgement that everything is a competition to be won, that we ought to be better, that we ought to have INTENSITY, yada yada yada. I played a lot of ultimate this summer, but it was all for love of the game. Playing for hours in rain and muck, or through ungodly humidity and sun, layouts and battle scars and the big guys getting pissed on bad plays or bad D--it was all intense, and some of it was really good playing, but none of it ever left a bitter taste. A bad point was a bad point but it carried no repercussions. Celebrations were never forced for the sake of team morale. It was good disc with no strings attached. There's so much bullshit to be caught up in here.

And it doesn't just apply to Ultimate. It's just the general college (or perhaps Harvard) view of things. Everything for the sake of image or impression, everything for the fear of results and repercussions. It's this general feeling of intensity to the point of unfocused frenzy--it's all very meaningless and I don't know what to do about it. Most likely nothing. Classes will start and maybe I can bury my nose in the books and tune out everything else.

Ewwwwww green and orange? Ew.

OKAY

We're switching to http://halfwhat.blogspot.com.

I hope. So...i'll give you til Friday to change your bookmarks and then we're switching! Get ready! On your mark! Get set!

The end

I hadn't checked in a while, and I figure none of you have either, but in case you're interested, the end of the saga: http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/06/27/news/coastal/21_08_506_26_06.txt

My legacy at Torrey Pines: a blown up newspaper that was scorned by Atlanta but more memorably by a one Mr. Will Harvie, a huge fundraiser that lost money, a musically dilapidated version of the Mystery of Edwin Drood and a scandal-ridden, profane Literary Magazine that drew a lawsuit and was really pink.

Well, at Harvard I've already had my hand in letting the music in musical go to rot; hopefully I won't continue the curse by thinking big again, losing the respect of an incredible professor, and getting Harvard sued.

I think I should just focus on playing frisbee from now on.

Taipei

The Chiang Kai Shek Memorial


And just across the plaza, students and other dissenters call for Chen Shui Bien's impeachment and/or resignation. This photo was taken in early July. The impeachment never passed, though these kids vowed to stay at CKS fasting and spreading the word until he was. He wasn't impeached, he hasn't stepped down, but I believe they've gone.


A typhoon was coming. Below on the left is the National Theater, and the tower is the Shinkong Mitsukoshi department store which I believe was the tallest building in Taiwan until Taipei 101 came along.


Penguins along the rails of one of the train stations. I forgot which.


Spotted: POCKY in bag form.


Asian Schoolgirls. I hope this doesn't bring fetishists to our site.


Worn out and split open. You've served me well *sniff*.