The Naming of Cats

"The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there's the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, or George or Bill Bailey -
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter -
But all of them sensible everyday names.
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that's particular,
A name that's peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum -
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover -
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name."
--T.S. Eliot, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

While T.S. is a wise man, I feel he may have missed the mark on the number of names a cat has. My cat, Zoey, has her singluar, commonplace everyday name. I will never discern her secret cat name, that I know. But as to the fancier names, she has many already. Ours are not so brilliantly fanciful as T.S.'s, but so far she morphs from Zoey into Tiny, Tweaky McGee, Batshit Catshit, Gollum, Gremlin Cat and Snoodles.

I am sure there will be more, as I have seen Marcus' cats morph from Jazz and Ruby to Jizz and Splooge. With Jazzy's death, her sister has become Ruby, sometimes Ruby Tuesday, sometimes Ruby Spoogeday, sometimes Spoo, sometimes Sploogy and, during episodes of Carnivale, Rubes.

Holly Golightly may have been on to something by simply naming her cat Cat.

I get drunk and sing showtunes.

This is Broadway fodder I'm stealing from my Manly Man. Non-theatre kids can ignore at their leisure.

Name 10 of your favorite Broadway shows

1. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
2. Cabaret
3. Sunset Boulevard
4. Urinetown
5. Last Five Years
6. Avenue Q
7. RENT
8. Man of La Mancha
9. Nine
10. Damn Yankees

Have you ever seen these shows live? On Broadway: 2, 4, 6, 7, 9. In San Francisco: 4, 7, 8, 10. In L.A.: 7, 4. Community theatre in Bay Area: 1, 2. Never seen: 3, 5.

What's your favorite song from show 2?
"Maybe This Time"

Who's your favorite character from show 4?
My favorite characters are usually the ones I want to play the most, so I'd have to say Miss Pennywise. She's a great character when played well. But at the USC production, it was definitely Hot Blades Harry. That kid was RIDICULOUS!

What's your favorite scene from show 5?
I haven't actually seen show number 5, but my favorite song is "Shiksa Goddess" because it always makes me happy to hear it knowing Marcus could be singing it about me. (Even though he never actually will.)

What's your favorite lyric from show 8?
"To dream the impossible dream,
to fight the unbeatable foe,
to bear with unbearable sorrow,
to run where the brave dare not go.

To right the unrightable wrong,
to love pure and chaste from afar,
to try when your arms are too weary,
to reach the unreachable star.

This is my quest,
to follow that star --
no matter how hopeless,
no matter how far.

To fight for the right
without question or pause,
to be willing to march into hell for a
heavenly cause.

And I know if I'll only be true to this
glorious quest
that my heart will be peaceful and calm
when I'm laid to my rest.

And the world will be better for this,
that one man scorned and covered with scars
still strove with his last ounce of courage.
To reach the unreachable stars."

So that was an entire song, but its just that good.

From show 10, which character are you most like?
I would say Lola, but really, I'm a lot more like the news reporter, Grace, you know, given the job and all.

Can you quote every line from show 1?
YES!!!! I am the worst person to sit next to at Sweeney!

How many times have you seen show 3?
That's one of the ones I've never seen but love the soundtrack . . . and the original movie!

If you could be anyone from show 6, who would it be? Why?
Princeton. Because he and I share a completely useless major. After all, what do you do with a BA in English?

What's your favorite song from show 7?
It used to be "One Song Glory," which is brilliant and moving in its own right, but I really love "What You Own" because its so incredibly true.

What's your favorite quote from show 9?
"My husband makes movies. To make them, he lives a kind of dream, in which actions aren't always what they seem."

Out of all these shows, which one is your absolute favorite?
Sweeney Todd, Sunset Boulevard and The Last Five Years. Sweeney Todd is a brilliant peice of work about the darkness in ourselves and the extremes to which we are willing to go for love. It is both dark, beautiful, and comic all at once. And I still want to see a certain curly-haired singer I enjoy singing the role of Anthony Hope, and telling a Joanna that until he's with her then, he's with her there, buried sweetly in her yellow hair. Sunset Boulevard is by far ALW's best work, and its because Billy Wilder gave him a good framework. Plus, I have a soft-spot for starry-eyed young writer Betty Schaeffer and can sing her alto lines. As to The Last Five Years, this show has kept my relationship strong. Our goal is to not end up like Jamie and Cathy, to not lose because they can't win. We can do better than that.

Who's the best Broadway actor?
I adore Alan Cumming and Norbert Leo Butz. I also

Who's the best Broadway actress?
Gotta go with the Bern. Idina Menzel is a true talent, though.

What's the best musical they turned into a movie?
Chicago is a better movie than it is a stage show, but I think the best musical movie is Hedwig and the Angry Inch because film was able to bring that incredible story to more people than the stage production could access. And Hedwig needs to be seen. (Also, Reefer Madness makes a damn good movie, stoned or not.)

Is there a musical you DON'T like?
Yes. I've been in a couple bad ones.

If so, which one? Why?
I fucking hate Les Mis because its just plain bad. You cannot connect to anyone, the music is just a conglomeration of notes, and that stage can revolve forever and not make the show move any fucking faster.

Do you think the movie versions are better, or the original Broadway shows?
I think the movie versions allow access to shows that a good section of the country doesn't get to see, but there really is nothing like seeing a show live. Unless it sucks live. Like Chicago with Melanie Fucking Griffith.


This or That:

The Producers or RENT - RENT. The Producers is lovely and fun, but RENT gave me, and a lot of my generation, a new lease on life.

Wicked or Chicago: I hate Chicago onstage because it has no meaning, which I also think is Wicked's problem. That book is complex and actually very interesting. The show loses everything that makes the book good.

Fiddler on the Roof or Oklahoma: Fiddler, in the name of Tradition.

Thoroughly Modern Millie or 42nd Street: Haven't seen 42nd and I abhor Millie.

Hairspray or Grease: "Hairspray." It was good as a John Waters movie, and great as a show. Hairspray has a wonderful message that tells girls they can be any size, shape or color and still be loved. Plus, Penny Pingleton is a great role. And it's totally mine. And I will kill Amanda Bynes for it.

P.S. I am known to sing showtunes when drunk.

The best thing I have ever overheard.

"Do you have a throat infection or are you pregnant?"
--said in a slightly British, slightly bitchy manner by a man eating a sandwhich with his friends

Dear Man Creatures of the Santa Barbara Area and World in General,

Please stop feeding us lines.

If we have a ring on our left ring finger, you should abort your mission. Telling us how beautiful we are or that we are "works of art" is not going to make us leave our significant others. In fact, it's just going to make you seem like a douchebag.

Don't ask to be my fucking friend after a failed attempt at picking me up with a line. If you really wanted to be my friend, you wouldn't have wasted your time and mine trying to bed me.

Don't assume that because I am getting married I don't have any freedom. It really pisses me off and makes you one step closer to no longer having testicles. My stilettos don't know the difference between flesh and concrete.

To all of you who follow the advice in Neil Strauss's The Game, I hope that he gets a lot of money for each of his lines that you use. And I hope that Mr. Strauss laughs all the way to the bank each time you fail.

You would all be much better off just being yourselves instead of being sleazy bastards.

P.S. If a girl says she's gay, don't ask to be with her and her girlfriend, you fucking peice of idiot trash. She's gay. She doesn't need your cock, nor does she want it, nor does she "not know what she's missing," nor can you turn her. If you actually fucking think that, you really ought to rethink your entire construction of social relations.

P.P.S. This message is aimed at only a few Man Creatures, as most of the Man Creatures I know and spend time with are wonderful human beings. Which I think goes to prove my point that no woman wants to hang out with a fucking sleazy douchebag.

Thanks, News-Press.

There is craziness going down at the Santa Barbara News-Press. It would have only been better if someone defecated on the morning edition before being escorted out of the office.Sorry, News-Press.

My editor is quoted in that one.

And this is all the News-Press has to say about it. Way to make a statement, Armstrong.

Dance, dance. We're falling apart to half time.

Okay, before I get to the point of this, I must interject that the cutest thing in the world just occurred. Zoey, the kitten, just crawled up from my lap and sat on my keyboard. Disturbed by the noises, she is now hunting her Octopussy.

I love this cat!

Now I go on to prove the point that reality television is actually smarter than we give it credit for. On last night's Dancey Dance Show aka So You Think You Can Dance, Ashlee and Dimitry danced a crazy contemporary routine to, of all the horrors of the world, Fall Out Boy's "Dance Dance."

I, too, was suprised at how wicked awesome this was. The dance told the story of a doll brought to life by a wicked circus ringmaster, and the choreography was wild and violent and crazy. It was fantastic.

What was even better, and proves that I am actually learning stuff in school, was how uncertain Nigel Lythgow was about the dance. He told Ashlee that he wasn't sure "if she was Dr. Coppelieus' Doll or Frankenstein's Monster."

I am currently enrolled in English 165MM: Making Up Monsters and I not only just finished Frankenstein (for the 5th or 6th time), but I also just read the story from which the Coppelieus reference comes. That is a reference to the animated doll at the end of E.T.A. Hoffmann's 1816 story "The Sandman," the destruction of which drives the main character into madness because, not only had he fallen in love with this automaton, but he too was once disassembled and reassembled in this fashion by Coppelieus, his evil "Sandman."

My question is this: who the hell has actually read this odd and obscure story? Clearly British people remain far more well read than Americans, and I feel extra smart for getting the reference. Though, I had just finished reading that story before joining Magen in Dancey Dance Debauchery.

Though I do have a note for Nigel: Coppelieus is a lawyer, not a doctor. Oh, and by the way, he may be Nathaniel's Sandman, but the maker of the doll is the similarly named Coppola, whom Nathaniel only imagines to be the same man.

And I think I agree with America: Ashlee was more like Coppelieus' doll than Frankenstein's monster. But she still had her eyes in their sockets.

Isla Vista will not be missed.

My new apartment is awesome.

What is also awesome is that Netflix allows you to change your gender on your account. How progressive of them!

What is not awesome is that I hurt (and look) like my boyfriend beats me. Bruises galore from moving and my muscles have suddenly aged 30 years over night. Goddamn. That shit is brutal.

Oh, also, my booze (i.e. my Kaluha, Baileys, Jameson) got left behind, along with a gorgeous new bottle of absinthe that was sent to me for free by my "dealer." And the cleaners totally either stole it or threw it out!

I was so looking forward to drinking that. Boo.

Little bits of Hobbit.

I am never going to have to actually read the Lord of the Rings series because I continue to receive it paragraph by paragraph at the end of spam messages in my inbox.

Given the length of the tomes, this way is easier to digest.

At least I've stopped getting bits of Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

A Hobbit loophole.

A selection from Tolkien this morning.

dark-green hood. As soon a the door was opened, he pushed inside, just as if he had been expected. He hung his hooded cloak on the nearest peg, and Dwalin at your service! he said with a low bow.
Bilbo Baggins at yours! said the hobbit, too surprised to ask any questions for the moment. When the silence that followed had become uncomfortable, he added: I am just about to take tea; pray come and

It was in a Viagra ad. The sender: florie@burtprocess.com; which is an address that has obviously already been deleted. Because Burtprocess.com, which is a company that created pH neutralization systems, is definitely not selling Viagra in any way, shape or form.

The thing about copying from Bach and Tolkien is this: despite how well known both authors are, I think that the copyright on the works has expired. Avon is no longer publishing new copies of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and there are a variety of publishers who have attained the rights to Tolkien's work, therefore leading me to believe that the copyrights have a. expired and not been renewed or something else that would really piss off both authors, were they still living.

I'm sure that most people do not care. I myself was amused at first by the selections on these emails, but the Bach and Tolkien bits are stirring.

I don't see how its fair for their work to be unlawfully copied and distributed with the dastardly intentions of stumping spam-blockers. Is this really what we're coming to? A world without respect for other's artistic and intellectual property?

Bullseye here.

You can literally see the jealousy when Jennie announces that she and Sam are going to go shopping at the Target in Santa Maria.

This is why Santa Barbara needs a damn Target. They can stick it in Goleta, out in Ellwood. It doesn't matter. It doesn't have to be downtown, flaunting its contemporary architecture and hugeness over our mandated Spanish-style building codes. Stick it on Turnpike! On Hollister! Doze the now abandoned $3 Theater and repave it with the glory of a Target!

The seeds of a Target revolution need to germinate somewhere. And soon.

Richard Bach should shoot these people in the face.

This was todays spam finding. And I can sure as hell identify the work from which it was stolen because I've read it:

popular with other birds. Even his parents were dismayed as Jonathan spent from? Oh, probably from the last pylon. He's right, it wouldn't be further
this: though there are battles and fights and blood and death where the without question. If someone starts fumbling or asking questions I'll hit the moonlight. "You are learning again, Jonathan Seagull," he said.
"You probably mean stalkers!"

at the horizon itself, flew a few others. New sights, new thoughts, new
"Thank you. How do you feel about turboplatforms?"

I can't believe they were stupid enough to include the first and last name of the titular seabird, which I decided to make bold to emphasize my complete disbelief.

This must somehow be plagiarism. Even though these people are copying only lines from random parts of the books there must be some way to put an end to this. These texts, while kind of amusing when they're bits of erotica that I can try to string together, belong to their authors, not spam stock-porn-pharmaceutical email jockeys.

Words, words, words.

I have been following Shelley Jackson's Skin project for some time. I am, in fact, writing my thesis on it. And only when I got up the gumption to finally stick to a thesis on tattoo fiction, did I apply to become one of the author's words. I have not (yet) been chosen.

However, Jackson has recently updated the map of where all the words live. When I saw the map, I found the poetry of the thing so overwhelming that I was choked with tears. While I am not officially a word, I feel like I'm part of this community somehow, in some abstract way as I watch it evolve and I document it and analyze it. Seeing who belongs in these sentences is a fascinating study in connection and isolation.

And I just found out that the word "look" lives in Isla Vista. "look" if you read this, I want to meet you. I am not in your sentence, but I want to know who you are. I met "floating" a few weeks ago at the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and I hope that you will be able to further my understanding of what it is like to be a literal text.

And Tom squeezed the Horchata.

I got part of a legitimate story today amidst my porn/erectile disfunction emails.
this doesn't sound like a rule for a loop.
So I went to the locker room, pulled on my lab clothes and lit up. All
"I say you are free."
So I decided the hell with it. The last time I had gone into the Zone at
"I'm ready " he said at last.
"Once the time I spent thanks to you was over, I went straight. Quit

forgotten its insanity, but Fletcher had not. "Jonathan, remember what you two copper disks the size of a saucer, -about a quarter inch thick, with a

That's all they gave me.

I can't tell if it comes from some peice of gay male erotica or not, but I have the sneaking suspicion that it might be. I imagine it involves a jock, like E. Lynn Harris' Invisible Life and The Front Runner (a.k.a. the greatest gay love story of ALL TIME) both do, pinnacles of traditional masculinity, and some sort of geek-jock hybrid who wears his lab clothes in the locker room and smokes a lot of weed. Seems like the kind of narrative that turns on the ideas of "straight-ness" and "gayness." One of these boys, probably the jock, and I can't tell from the punctuation if that's Jonathan or Fletcher, has a life changing experience with the other and can no longer tell if he is gay or straight. And the point, after all, will be that sexual identity is fluid, and just a label, and it doesn't really matter who you choose to love.

I'm finding that my spam filter's malfunction gives me something to do in the mornings before I can start hounding people for stories and information like the hard boiled Girl Friday I am quickly becoming.

Porno Poetry

I find that my work email is continually spammed by porn offers and stock tips. Thanks for you consideration, but I can find hot Russian teens on my own, now that I speak Idiot Level Russian, and I'll choose my portfolio based of non-emailed tips. P.S. I have no penis, therefore, don't need Viagra.

However, these clever bastards have figured out a way to get past spam filters by filling their secondary messages with strange, Exquisite Corpse poems like the following:
onion smudge mid-block painter stainer moon-mad Opus anglicum
oil cup nymph pink noble-natured omnibus train passage boat
pale-looking narrow-leaved Old bactrian osmund brake

Nov-esperanto mug-wet over-and-over stitch moisture-absorbent pari-mutuel morphological botany muscle-kneading
offhand position old-womanish out-of-bounds
oven furnace number field new-mown neb-neb olive acanthus parti-mortgage pearl-encrusted Paris yellow Non-european para red palm marten old-bachelorish mithridate mustard
never-twinkling moon-mad organ gun mis-sing northern redtop
peacock-feathered naked-flowered miter clamp narrow-breasted

one-flowered Non-quaker oval-figured omnium-gatherum mill-headed Mocha stone morass ore modern-practiced morning-winged old-clothesman paper-stamping Mongolo-turkic open-timber
Panama congress nine-point oat-fed openside planer passenger locomotive
micro-movie nose dive oblong-leaved one-pounder

midnight sun ox-eyed orange berry needle valve mint sauce narcissus fly milk-condensing
newel stair nerve stretching opus pectineum
navigating officer Pan-america nitrogen balance Mont blanc ruby naked-bladed ovate-cylindraceous mist-shrouded mood phrase

I thought that one was pretty good. It's called "open-field ;)" or, at least, that's what my email was called.

I also like this one:
"paper plant Moon type nigger pine ore-roasting mill-run
nut-shelling palm reader Non-semitic morning-winged middle-rate
mix-up mild-mannered oyster-shell bark louse otter brown

oven-dried oak-wainscoted news agency orderly room new-built paint-stained Mid-november
paint brusher ore body Mid-african
moth blight Non-germanic peace guild Moeso-gothic paroquet bur paraffin paper navigation act Nodus secundus old-field lark overhead price mole catcher Mumbo jumbo monesia bark
open-endedness own-rooted mole catcher pearl-bearing Nankeen porcelain
palm branch mind-set obtuse bisectrix mustache monkey

old-worldish Monmouth cock navy yard night-filled paper works open-chested old-bachelorish mis-send miter box neoza pine meter-kilogram mulct law ovate-deltoid
nake-footed Neo-kantism muzzle ring mind cure ovate-subulate
palm-shaded off-turning pan fish Mogul empire

Non-asiatic palm grub open-breasted night-wandering mis-humility movable-do system midsummer daisy
near-coming out sister passion-fraught
nose ape olive dun Non-zionist nutty-brown moisture equivalent mud house mine-run mile-ton"

That one is called "Your money, nonre-eligibility."

These people are on to something. They should be submitting to literary journals, not my inbox.

This is our emo band name.

The Teapot Fire.



Or The Fiery Teapots?

I can't decide which is better, but both of these pictures can barely do justice to the flaming mess my teapot became. Negligence. Plastic handles. Hot metal. You do the math.

I am now short one teapot. But it's okay. I got it in Dad's garage, where everything is free and comes in bulk.

I will purchase a new teapot tomorrow after work. Preferably one that won't do this:

A Vendetta Against Fruit

And those who throw it.

As I sit down in my vehicle this morning to drive to campus, I notice that there is a large, semi-circular crack beginning around the area where my rear-view mirror is and arching perfectly down into my field of vision and my passenger's.



How the fuck did this get here?

According to the pulpy goodness stuck in the middle of this crack, I blame some sort of citrus fruit, thrown, clearly, at such a speed that it might crack a windshield.



Who fucking throws fruit at that speed? Who fucking throws fruit? This is what I want to know.

As I drive to campus, I find the rogue peice of produce wedged in the crack between my hood and window, held in place as I drive by my windshield wiper.

The offending fruit has since been placed in my evidence locker. My evidence locker being the wineglasses I stole from Bryna's wedding two weeks ago and still haven't taken out of the backseat of my car.

I can dust it for fingerprints if I need to. Because I've decided that I'm fucking Veronica Mars and I can do this kind of thing.

I am considering taking my "evidence" to the manager of the building behind me, over whose fence the projectile lemon was launched, and telling them that their residents need to stop throwing things over fences with such blinding force because what has happened to poor little Lola (my car) is technically a. vandalism (if intentional) and b. destruction of personal property.

(The fence: intended to keep fruit off my fucking car.)


The Good News is that my insurance will replace my windshield, as long as I tell them that the projectile lemon came off a lemon truck as I was driving through the lemonfields of Goleta one day.


(An accessory to the crime.)

Jean Blues

I am so certain that designers create these concoctions out of denim and have no idea exactly how they are supposed to fit anyone who isn't straight as a fucking board.

I have 36" hips, which are massive compared to the 32" bust line, small shoulders, and 29" waist.

I went to 6 different stores downtown today and tried on tons and tons of jeans, only to realize that every pair fell into the same problem categories:
1. If the jeans were low rise, they just make me look short. And I am not fucking short. I am on the tall side for a gal, so fuck you for cutting me down to hobbit size, LEI and Paris Blues.
2. If the jeans were a flare leg, or a wide boot cut, they also make me look short. That helps fucking no one. No one wants to look short.
3. Gap jeans has tried to make a series of jeans for "curvy girls." I thought I would be one of these girls. However! I argue that Gap's curvy jeans just make girls look fatter. Why, oh, why would you put a wide waistband across the hips of a girl who calls herself curvy? You're emphasizing the biggest fucking part of her body, and no shirt seamed along the ribcage is going to make up for that. Tilt jeans are guilty of this crime as well.
4. Any midrise jeans I tried on somehow gave me a "front ass" out of denim. This was also Gap's problem. Apparently, a size 8 gal, albeit I was told that was the national fucking average, comes with a front ass of her own. I'm not there yet. And I hope not to be until I have children and have an excuse.
5. Pegged jeans are fucking everywhere. No thanks, I'd rather eat that ice cream cone than look like one. They've even crawled into Express, which makes me wonder exactly what the world is coming to.
6. Another trend that fucks over girls who were designed to bear children: fucking whiskering on the thighs. Really? Please, just further emphasize the part of my body I hate the most. I fucking love that.

So I pretty much cried in every dressing room and blamed myself for being a model discontinued in 1954. But then I remembered that there's technically nothing wrong with my body, and a whole host of things wrong with modern design.

I finally found some good standard bootcut jeans in Robinsons-May, of all places, and I was a fucking quarter of the age of everyone in there, so I don't know what business the store has selling jeans in the first place. And Calvin Klein and DKNY, at that. I bought a pair of CK, at $70, and a nice pair of Levi's at $36. (To these people, and this is the phenomenom that happens with high-end stuff, I am a size 6. And that makes me feel nice, although I know they are lying to me just to get my to buy more from them. But you know what? It's a smart marketing scheme and it's fucking working.)

And I will not go jean shopping again for a long, long time.

I don't need to put myself through this kind of fucking self-loathing on a regular basis.

And while I am still mad about fashion, fuck leggings. Fuck them. Fuck them. Fuck these stupid skinny-ass girls who wear this shit and think it looks nice. You look like dirty street trash. Comb your fucking hair. Get some clothes that actually fucking fit you. Stop putting your fucking dogs in purses. Congratulations, however, on being part of a trend I hate even more than mini skirts with Ugg boots and trucker hats.

It's time for more Deadwood, which explains all the expletives.

Four Funerals and a Wedding

On the way to Josh and Bryna's wedding in Aptos, CA I witnessed the most macabre traffic accident I have ever seen.

Traffic comes to a stop just before I get into the civilized (re: no farmland) part of Salinas. I wait for about 20 minutes in traffic, before the highway patrol merges the two-lane highway into 1 lane. As I drive take a gander at the car turned on its side by the center divider so that I can see what the hold-up's been.

Not only is there a car turned on its side, a large open-backed truck, but there is a dead cow on top of it. And two dead horses on the roadside. And another dead cow in the middle of the lane.

No human driver was found in or around the over-turned vehicle.

A bizarre sight for a wedding-bound drive. (Not an omen.)

On another note, Josh and Bryna are now wed. Lovely, simple wedding. Short and sweet. Lots of old friends. I salute Josh and Bryn for forging a new path for all of us. I think we're next.

I stole new wineglasses. Marcus caught Bryna's garter. Josh somehow managed to shoot the cork from his champagne right at us. (Omen.)

Holes in my ears and head.

I have had a string of bad earring luck lately.

On Thursday, I somehow managed to spend an entire day wearing two completely different earrings. One was a thin chain of green beads, maybe an inch long. The other was a crazy dangle earring with many strands of purple beads and glass that is roughtly 3 times the length of the other. Why did no one tell me this?

This second instance is more proof that Heather is Jesus.

We're up in the bay, chillin' at Target and purchasing goodies because we in Santa Barbara are sadly lacking in the Target department. I go try on a ton of things because my mommy was going to buy me a sweet new suit to celebrate my getting of an actual job (no pleasing suits to be found in my 36 waking hours at home, hence why we're buying other goodies at Target). Somewhere along the way, I evidently lose an earring--a favorite of mine; a vintagey-looking pair with lots of blue beads on 'em--which I don't notice until I get home and look in a mirror.

Heather comes into the computer room where I'm hanging out with Cassie and have sadly set my lone earring by the printer. She sleepily rubs her eyes, and pulls my other missing earring out of her jacket pocket.

Heather: Oh, Stevi, I found your earring. I saw it on the ground in the dressing room and went, "Oh, that looks like Stevi's." Lucky I happened to go in the same dressing room as you, huh?
Me: You are Jesus.

Computer, Earl Grey, Hot

I hate automated answering systems that are designed to be friendly and warm-sounding and have speech patterns approximating a real person, or, at the very least, a female version of Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation. They make me say ridiculous things to them, and consistenly mishear whatever I say because the linguist that designed the damn program must have failed phonetics.

These are the bane of my existance. There is a reason Rachel Dratch does impressions of them on SNL.

It's because they suck.

I'd really rather just press buttons on a cold, distant machine, thanks.

Oh, and please don't make your hold music crappy pop music, Hollywood Video Corporate and Technical Support.

Get Rich or Make a Bad Movie Trying

No matter how great of an idea ya'll think it would be to drink gin and juice and watch Get Rich or Die Tryin', it really isn't a good idea.

The booze does not make this movie good.

It pretty much doesn't have a plot, even though a lot of stuff happens. Also! Where is the music? I want more music in a movie that stars a rapper.

8 Mile and Hustle & Flow = Good.

Get Rich or Die Tryin' = Jim Sheridan, Please Stick to Making Movies About Irish People.

"No matter how hard I thought he was before, I now think he is a pussy. Terrance Howard is clearly way cooler, and way better." -Heather, on 50 Cent, because she fucks bitches, and doesn't let bitches fuck her.

Unrelated:

Heather just said (about a woman's right to name her child whatever the fuck she wants simply because she has to lend the child her body for 9 months): "If I wanna name it Employee so I can get in through the Employees Only door, so be it!"

Three drinks for foriegn words.

My coworkers from the newspaper invited me out to happy hour with them on Friday night.

Bill and I invented a Boggle drinking game.

This is what people who work at a newspaper do.

This internship really is the best thing that I've ever done. I may not be really into hardcore business news (and, really, I doubt I ever will be), but I love the atmosphere.

I love having my own desk. And going out for drinks after work (and not at someone's house at 1 in the morning).

I also love proofreading.

Now if only the Business Times were Food & Wine . . . or The Believer.

I bet the crew at the Believer would be very receptive to a Boggle drinking game.

Let them eat cake.

My DVD player is broken.

New rule:
Never trust anyone who only has enough stuff to be able to live out of their car.

I actually made that up a few weeks back, when said DVD-player-breaker was also being a homophobic iPod-stealer and a pathological liar.

Another new rule:
Never trust anyone who honestly believes a lemon and water diet is a good idea.

These people also do not punctuate.

Can we say LIVID?

I sure can.

Tirty-Tree and a Turd, Tanks

Ireland is breathtaking and ancient and cultured and lively and wet (in all senses of the word). And it stole all my money.

Well, I guess I gave them my money pretty freely . . . as long as pints kept appearing in my hand.

I spent the past week wandering around literary Dublin, tripping on cobblestones in heels (because I saw Irish girls walking on cobblestones in heels, so I thought I could, too . . . and then I remembered that I suck at balance), and generally drinking and being merry. I walked along the River Liffey like James Joyce, flirted with Oscar Wilde in Merrion Square (he turned me down for Marcus), and fell in love with Yeat's brother Jack at the Irish National Gallery. (Seriously, Jack Yeats is an incredible painter. I can't believe he's not focused on more.)

I surveyed the Book of Kells at Trinity College, drank with my buddy Lauren who's studying there, and rambled about thesii and life with her like good drunken college students do.

Marcus and I took a day trip to the fishing village of Bray, where we had coffee by the seaside and watched people walk thier little dogs. And later took a 2-day trip across the island to the seaside city of Galway, which was gorgeous and romantic and filled with great bars.

I love Ireland, and I'm glad I was decked out with my triskel tattoo before I embarked. Seeing that symbol in the Book of Kells and on street grates all over Galway was an awesome connection to a part of my heritige that I've only been in touch with through the goddess and harp.

However, as my tattoo is behind my ear, Marcus seems to think its an on-off button of some kind and pokes it often. This irks me.

As does my empty wallet. Tanks for the good times and the Guinness, Ireland.

Rewarding mediocrity.

You must all expect how angered I was by last night's Crash upset. My initial response to the film when I saw it in theatres back in April was "like", but not with any great sentiment to sway me into either loving or hating the film. Crash was simply mediocre, and very, very problematic. And I recognized that immediately. However, in April, it was on my top 10 list, though no where near the top 5. Now, the name fills me with rage and disappointment. Both at the same time.

We are asked to forgive a stupid rich bitch and a cop who doesn't follow protocols (in any sense of law and civil rights) simply because they have no friends and are taking care of their aging father. These are not reasons to forgive these characters. Furthermore, the issues presented in the film are overly stereotypical and, as we say in the business, very on-the-nose. I don't think a film that wins best picture should be so blatant and obvious. Think about how heavy handed the direction is, and the writing. And no, it's not a deus ex machina, or fate. Magnolia had that and did it well. Crash is a shallow movie that manages to pretend it has depth because it addresses so many issues inadequately.

It's a think peice for people who don't actually like to think.

I feel the following quote from Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan helps support my last point:

"Despite all the magazine covers it [Brokeback Mountain] graced, despite all the red-state theaters it made good money in, despite (or maybe because of) all the jokes late-night talk show hosts made about it, you could not take the pulse of the industry without realizing that 'Brokeback Mountain' made a number of people distinctly uncomfortable," he said, adding:

"So for people who were discomfited by 'Brokeback Mountain' but wanted to be able to look themselves in the mirror and feel like they were good, productive liberals, 'Crash' provided the perfect safe harbor."

That's exactly what Crash did. It allowed people to feel like they were involved in a deep social issue. It made audiences feel good about themselves because they, too, are not fans of racism.

I'm not a complete advocate in the "Brokeback Mountain should win Best Picture" camp, but I do feel that Crash robbed four very deserving films of the chance. Brokeback is revolutionary, and though I was moved by it, I would call it a love story that happens to be about men who have homosexual sex, because neither Jack Twist nor Ennis Delmar would have called themselves gay. (They'd be trade if anything and anyone who's queer knows it.) It's not a gay love story, but it is a love story and that, I feel, is the revolutionary bit. Brokeback is a love story about men--and that's what's new and different about it.

Good Night and Good Luck is about one of the most important figures in journalism; likewise, Capote is a film about a man who changed the face of 20th century literature. Munich was more about racism than Crash could ever hope to be. And I can tell that from the short clip they showed at last night's awards without having seen the film. Each of these films deserved to be in that category. Crash did not.

Rewarding a problematic film like Crash continues our longstanding American tradition of rewarding mediocrity.

Domino goes zombie hunting.

My friend Amber lives in a terrifying place. If you follow Patterson past recognizable signs of civilization and take several awkward twists and turns through some kind of bizarre nursery, you will eventually make it to a series of creepy abandoned green houses. And there, behind them, you will find the tiny house in which she lives.

Actually, to call it a house is a complete misnomer. It's somewhere between a trailer and a toolshed.

This is the fucking scariest place I have ever been. It would make an excellent setting for a horror movie in which the Hollywood Video and Game Crazy crews go zombie hunting in the rain.

What sweetens the deal is that this creepy nursery is allegedly built on an Indian burial ground.

Zombies for sure.

Domino goes zombie hunting.

My friend Amber lives in a terrifying place. If you follow Patterson past recognizable signs of civilization and take several awkward twists and turns through some kind of bizarre nursery, you will eventually make it to a series of creepy abandoned green houses. And there, behind them, you will find the tiny house in which she lives.

Actually, to call it a house is a complete misnomer. It's somewhere between a trailer and a toolshed.

This is the fucking scariest place I have ever been. It would make an excellent setting for a horror movie in which the Hollywood Video and Game Crazy crews go zombie hunting in the rain.

What sweetens the deal is that this creepy nursery is allegedly built on an Indian burial ground.

Zombies for sure.

Vui ne znaete, gde mogy kypitz . . .

Telephone midterms are by far the weirdest things I've ever experienced.

Situation: I am renting an apartment in Moscow and need furniture. So I call an ad left in the lobby of my building. I ask this person, who knows no English, played by my professor, if they are still selling stuff and where I can buy stuff if they don't have it.

Tre bizarre.

However, I have to give mad props to the Slavic department because I am actually learning and using Russian. Not that I can have conversations with Dima, his mother, Ivan or Anna in Russian yet, but if I ever need to purchase furniture from them. I am set. I could probably have conversations about UCSB with them, and their alcohol preferences (which better be vodka or congac). My speech is ochem limited. But I am actually learning.

This is more than I can say for the Italian department, where I have learned absolutely nothing that I didn't know in high school. Oh, except for the passoto remoto. Which is fucking useless.

Now if only I had Cyrillic fonts on this computer, the title of this entry would look right. (Though I realized just now that I was typing the letters to make them look like the Russian and not how they would be pronounced in English. I spelled "gde" as "rge"--which is how it is actually spelled in Cyrillic.)

Long live the Octoberists.

I am a bounty hunter.

With the impending release of Tony Scott's Domino, and the massive buzz about it around the video store. The boys have taken to calling me Domino. Josh explained that I reminded them of her because of "the hair" (which apparently resembles Ms. Knightley's cut in the film) and my "insatiable urge to kill."

I take this to mean my intense rage and propensity toward yelling.

Apparently, Knightley's Domino also has a propensity toward yelling. And she fancies tattoos. And throwing stuff.

I like projectiles.

And I've gotta say, I wish more people noticed that they really wouldn't like me when I am angry. Because there are a good handful of people who managed to piss me off today.

Let me tell you, kids, my new nametag at work doesn't just say "Bounty Hunter" because I like to make geeky movie jokes.

Oh, no. This is business.

The Vaginas are Coming!

The Vagina Monologues are coming to the UCSB Hub on Feb 23, 24, and 25!

Tickets are available at AS for 8 dollars, or at the door for the same price.

Doors open at 8:00 PM, show starts at 8:30.

All profits from the show will go towards women in need, both locally and worldwide!

Whose angel are you anyway?

There is nothing more serene than the sound of Heather singing with an acoustic guitar.

She has such a deep, velvety voice. It's hypnotic.

I don't know why she doesn't do this more. Or play coffee shops.

The Voodoo Club could be your Schwabs.

Kids, it's finally happened. I finally got an internship. I now work at the Pacific Coast Business Times.

This is life beginning. You all have no idea.

I start Feb 27.

I'm calling my Dad now.

Rejoice in the Ides

Best friend is coming to visit in March!!!!!!!!! It's only for two days, but it will be an awesometacular two days because he'll be here for or Jamacian night. (And you all know what that's going to entail.) And then we'll get tattoos . . . and and . . . then maybe he'll actually buy me a birthday present!

(God, that's far too much excitement for 9 AM.)

F is for France

(I know . . . there's a lot of letters missing between B and F, Stevi . . . I'll get back to them.)

France was supposed to be small because of the presence of an expensive green liqour imported from Czechoslovakia.

France was not small. But, somehow, I still have Absinthe. I wager that this is probably because no one enjoyed the Absinthe 35, which is a white absinthe that is supposed to have more wormwood and make you trip harder. It tastes like death. When we had a regular old run-of-the-mill green absinthe at my 20th last year, it tasted like death, too, but a welcome, licorice-y death. We have much less of that kind left over.

This dinner was the first one that we actually served exactly when we said we would. Usually "Dinner's at 8" in my house means "We'll be eating at exactly 8:30." But dnner was served promptly at 8.

I made fancy menus and decided that my true calling is to be a menu writer . . . a step down from editing for Food & Wine, I know. But someone has that job, and it may as well be me. Below, you may observe my craft at its finest.

Prosciutto Salade
mixed spring greens with thinly sliced Italian ham, candied walnuts,
and raspberry vinegarette

Tourin Perigourdin
a garlic and tomato soup served over gruyere cheese
and freshly baked French bread

Crepes
warm French-style pancakes served with your choice of
carmelized onions sauteed with white wine and herbs
or
gorgonzola, candied walnuts, and sliced apples

Provencal Vegetable Gratin
baked eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes, onions and garlic
topped with a layer of breadcrumbs and parmesan cheese

Ganache au Coulis de Framboises
a rich chocolate custard served with fresh raspberries

Charles Shaw Chardonnay
a crisp, sweet white wine from Northern California

Absinthe
a green liquor imported from Czechoslovakia that will make you trip balls

(I am especially proud of that last one.)

Kitty Wittermans.

Let me begin this post by saying: Megan--I both love and hate you for this. I wish you had never posted this on your blog because I will spend hours at this site. However, it is an instant cure for depression, so I can't be angry for that.

The title of this post is an exclamation I say every 10 minutes or so of perusing this webpage.

Oh yes. Kitty Wittermans.
.

The hits just keep on coming.

I do these things because I know that Jenrikay actually cares and will read them. We only know of one another's lives through blogs and occasional run-ins on campus.

Three Names you go by:
1. Stevi
2. ZZ
3. Stephanie

Three Parts of Your Heritage/Ethnic/Cultural Background
1. Italian
2. Irish
3. Intellectual

Three Things That Scare You
1. squirrels
2. clowns
3. unabashed ignorance

Three of Your Everyday Essentials
1. mascara
2. engagement ring
3. pens

Three Things You Are Wearing Right Now
1. white pajama pants with big fat pink kitties on them that say "miao"
2. eyeglasses
3. my fox ears that Corey made me for my birthday

Three Things You Want in a Relationship (other than Real Love)
1. commonality
2. conversation
3. commitment

Two Truths and a Lie (in any order)
1. I design clothing, but can't pattern make to save my life.
2. I have gone hiking in the Italian Alps.
3. Robert De Niro is family friend of ours.

Three PHYSICAL Things about the Opposite Sex that Appeal to You
1. eyes
2. facial hair
3. haircut in general

Three Places You Want to Go and Haven't Gone
1. Spain
2. Russia
3. Argentina

Three Things You Want to Do Before You Die
1. Take lots of ballroom and swing classes.
2. Publish a novel.
3. Make gnocchi from scratch.

Three Ways that you are stereotypically a Girl/Guy
1. I love clothing more than any sane person should.
2. I heart shinies.
3. I adore high heels.

At least I know I'm on the right path in life.

You scored as English. You should be an English major! Your passion lies in writing and expressing yourself creatively, and you hate it when you are inhibited from doing so. Pursue that interest of yours! Linguistics 100% English 100% Dance 92% Journalism 92% Theater 83% Mathematics 75% Philosophy 75% Sociology 67% Art 67% Anthropology 58% Psychology 42% Engineering 33% Biology 33% Chemistry 8% What is your Perfect Major? (PLEASE RATE ME!!<3) created with QuizFarm.com

A warm mug of liquid sleep.

Worst sleep of my life! I tried, around 2:30 this morning, to go to sleep. I had no plans of waking until about 10 am.

Trying to fend off an approaching coughy cold thing for fear it would ruin my birthday drink-a-thon, I took some theraflu.

Theraflu usually knocks my ass cold. I have no tolerance for the stuff. It's like a warm mug of liquid sleep.

However, the stuff I took last night was not what I expected. I woke up at 4 something, and fitfully slept again until 6. I tried to put myself to sleep again at 6, but after an hour or so of tossing and turning I gave the fuck up.

I don't feel tired. Or sick.

But it is 7 am and I haven't voluntarily seen this hour in quite a long time.

I am so restless; it's like I took speed instead of liquid sleep.

I just went and looked at the Theraflu box and under common side effects it lists typical things like "marked drowisness" and, at the opposite end of the spectrum, "excitability in children." There is also a notice printed in very large letters that one should not use Theraflu if the sealed package is open or torn.

That's common sense, right? Well, apparently, I've none of that.

As I shook the contents of this morning's Theraflu packet, little bits of sandy sleep capsules flew about my kitchen from a tiny tear in the bottom. Figuring that either I or one of my roommates had caused said tear in another bout of sickness and in urgent need of rest, I said, Whatever, and prepared my disgusting beverage anyway.

And now it is 7 am on my 21st and I have slept, collectively, between 3 and 4 hours. This is not the turnout I'd desired.

A day late and a dollar short.

On the morning of my 21st birthday, I return from work to find that my prodigal roommate's car is parked outside our apartment complex.

She skipped town without leaving me rent money.

Which was due on the 1st.

I want to kill her a little bit.

I find her asleep and in my room I find two checks. One for nearly $400 for rent. Another made out for $10.50 for electric.

I am glad to finally have the money that I had to front so the rent would be on time. (Which was my fucking birthday money, mind you. That money should be spent on booze and shoes! Not roommates!) However, it is still 2-3 days after the rent has been paid and rent has always been due to me, the Responsible One, on the 28th of the month. By my count, it's about a week late.

Now I just want to rough her up a bit. Especially because I am a fucking Birthday Princess today and I may do as I please.

I should hit her just for writing two checks when only one was necessary. "Waste not the young saplings, bitch!"

Just add water.

How is that you can give someone a grocery list full of items and they return with a bunch of snack foods and other assorted crap that doesn't actually help you make a meal out of anything?

This baffles me. This is why I buy food for the house. Clearly, the other person with a car cannot be trusted.

But maybe I'm being too hard on her. After all, I've never seen her cook a damn thing since we moved in here. How would she know that snack foods aren't meals?

Dani is leaving soon, and our new roommate, Miss Ashley, will be entering our strange universe. I can only hope that she will adapt well . . . or we will completely scare her off. One of the two.

You gotta work blue.

(Dave Chapelle is on TV in the background)

me: You know . . . I don't really like any black comedians.
heather: Dave Chapelle?
me: Not funny.
heather: Chris Rock?
me: Chris Rock is really smart, but if he weren't so damned annoying I might like him.
heather: Well, what about Richard Pryor or Eddie Murphy? Ok, like, 80's Eddie Murphy.
me: Maybe a little 80's Eddie Murphy. And I don't really know Richard Pryor's stuff.
heather: What kind of comedy do you like?
me: I like Jewish comedy a lot.

(About five minutes of silence pass as we change channels. We come across Triumph the Insult Comic Dog on Conan.)

me: Well, I do like Triumph.
heather: Stevi . . .Triumph's not black.
me: He is a rottweiller. Of course he's black.
(Heather stares at me incredulously.)
me: Oh, come on, he has black fur!
heather: Oh, I am so putting this on facebook.

I've missed your sweet clacking.

I have returned from the darkness that is the loss of the internet. A new adapter has finally been purchased, and I may begin again to chronicle my Costanza moments as well as the cooking adventures we embark upon.

Soon I will regal you with tales of: Cambodian food, raging dykes, Danish food, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, Egyptian food and the porno I bought my coworker for Christmas.

But not tonight.

Tonight, I write Christmas cards.

The Bee Box Revisited

I want to personally extend my thanks to poet Lowell Parker who added his poem in a comment on my post "The Bee Box." I read his poem some years ago and it came to mind again when I saw the sparkly peach mummified bee ring at a jewelry vendor on campus. I'm very glad he provided the text so that others may read it and understand the sacrifice that love ought to be. I've reposted the text below so you won't have to search through the comments for it. Thank you, Mr. Parker.

"The Bee Box"

In this small box, my love,
you'll not find a ring,
but instead, a brave, little bee.
He'll be dead by morn, having given his life
defending his flowers against me.
I felt his sting
while picking the small, purple pansies
growing wild along the roadside,
in hopes of an afternoon bouquet for you.
And I grieved the sting,
more for him than me,
knowing full well the price he paid
for my small pain.
And I allowed him his victory,
leaving his flowers as a memory,
and brought you instead
this brave, little bee,
who proves there is love
even in the smallest
of things.

-Lowell Parker

Not Your Advert Whore

Due to the fact that people are using my comments section for their own devious purposes, I've changed my comment policy.

I realize that the internet is a public forum, but comments are intented for commentary (hence the word), not for advertising.

B is for Britain

Pip-pip, cheerio and all that rot.

We have successfully pulled yet another international meal out of our asses, or, rather, our tiny oven.

The Menu:

• Cold Cucumber Dill Soup
• Creamed Artichoke Hearts
• Coronation Chicken
• Bangers and Mash
• Cinnamon Plum Crumble
• Blueberry Scones
• Tea

I would like to state, first of all, that I am the soup master. Yet again I made a soup out of something you would not normally expect to be a soup. Granted, cold soups are meant to be palate cleansers, so something made from a crisp-tasting cucumber seemed a natural choice. You've really just got to taste this stuff. We still have a bunch left over.

The coronation chicken is a British excuse for a chicken salad. It's literally shredded chicken, onions, mayonnaise and pureeded apricots. It's deceptively good. All it's missing is bread.

This was my British discovery: with the exception of the bangers, everything we made could be eaten by people "wif no teef." Hmm . . . sausages and foods meant to be gummed? You do the math, people. I see what those dirty Brits are up to.

Right now, I've a Shepard's Pie in the oven.

A is for Argentina

In one of our typical post-midnight kitchen chat sessions, the roommates and I hatched a brilliant plan to learn about the world by having one international food night each week--that will be prepared entirely on our own through recipies we find on the internet.

We started with Argentina.

And we pulled it off.

The menu:

• Sopa de Manzanas
• Empanadas (chicken and cheese)
• Argentinian grilled eggplant
• Flan
• Argentinian fruit salad
• Sangria
• Red wine

It was a pretty amazing feat. None of us had ever made anything on our menu before, but somehow everything was entirely edible. (Though, the flan did take two tries and didn't turn out so much as flan but as a sort of cakey custardy thing.) Corey made the empanada stuffing, while Kirsten covered herself in flour and kneaded dough. Cassie and Heather figured out the flan. I made the apple soup all by my lonesome. Cassie grilled eggplant while Corey and I fried the empanadas. Dani made fruit salad while I conjured up a pitcher of Sangria and Liz photographed the entire event.

We all dressed like tango dancers and listened to crazy latin music.

If we can manage Argentina, I think we can take on the rest of the alphabet with the greatest of ease.

Next week, Britain, including shepard's pie, bangers and mash, spotted dick and other naughty-sounding taste treats.

The Drag Party

This is all the crazy shit you missed.

30 people in my apartment. Hotboxing the bathroom. Jello shots. Lady-boys. Fabulousness. 7-in heels. Crotch-socks. Absolutely nothing straight allowed. Moustaches. Stuffed bras.

A party so good, the cops had to shut us down.

After all, it's not a party until something gets broken.

Obey or suffer the consequences.

These are things we do not do.

1. Name our children after superheroes. I suppose that naming a kid "Bruce Wayne" or "Peter Parker" or even "Clark Kent" wouldn't be so bad . . . but Kal-el? Nicolas Cage is a Piasano . . . only someone who actually knows Hebrew should be allowed to do this and have anyone respect them.

2. Have sex with Katie Holmes.

3. Rename products to demonstrate your sensitivity to global catastrophes. Case in point, I was at Jamba Juice the other day and I ordered that I thought was a new item, a Strawberry Surf Rider. Only after I ordered it and tasted its strawberry goodness did I realize that something was terribly wrong. I knew this taste. This taste belonged once to the Strawberry Tsunami! I understand the need to be culturally sensitive, but, fuck, tsunamis are not going to cease just because there was one really bad one. Should we rename all carnival rides called "hurricanes" and all little girls named "Katrina" as well? It's one thing to remove the Twin Towers from Spiderman because of 9-11, but to attempt to remove any evidence of a natural phenomena? Something about this is a little off.

4. Park in my space when all I want in the world as I return from work at 1 am is my parking space and a peice of fucking cake. (Yes, in the whole world, that's all I want.)

Jenrikay's Music Tag

I've been tagged, and I am probably going to give her the strangest responses she'll ever see.

1. "Coin-Operated Boy" by the Dresden Dolls
2. "Hallelujah" by Rufus Wainwright
3. "Save My Soul" by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy
4. "These Words" by Natasha Benningfeld
5. "Shiksa Goddess" as performed by Norbert Leo Butz, from Jason Robert Brown's wonderful, wonderful, wonderful little show The Last Five Years

You couldn't get past this without at least one song from a musical.

Be suprised that there aren't more.

The Bee Box

I stopped by the vendors who like to entice me to spend more money at my University than I need to only because I heard Mercy trying to talk herself out of large earrings.

I promptly talked her back into them. "Mercy" and "downsizing" are not words that belong in the same sentence.

She tried to talk me into earrings. This is Mercy. This is what she Does.

Instead, I saw one of those giant plastic pseudo-mod/semi-rave rings with a bee inside it.

I was immediately lovestruck. And it was $3.

It is peach, with sparkles, a mummified bee inside it, and it is in the shape of a heart. It reminded me of a poem I read once, "The Bee Box," in which a male lover wants to get flowers for his beloved, but finds that he gets stung by a bee in the process. Noticing how the bee bravely chose to give up his life to protect the thing he loved (in his bee way), the man decides instead to give his beloved "this brave little bee, who proves there is love even in the smallest of things."

Wide awake, despite appearances.

Received a note in the mail today from Mr. Cardoza that was written on a peice of paper he'd found in his desk . . . with a quote I wrote down sometime after I (inevitably) must have had a breakdown in his office. My quote read: "I think I'll be better when I get out of high school because then I can learn to, like, sleep."

Ironically, this arrived today. Of all days. I got about 5 hours of sleep last night, woke up at 8 am, was in class until 4:30 today, and then had a film screening from 6-8. And I cannot sleep yet because I have to hang out at work while we get our floors waxed.

I still haven't learned to sleep.

Am I better?

Waterworld.

This is the progression of hellish plumbing events that occurred on Saturday, September 18, 2005 at the Colonial Apartments in Isla Vista, CA:

1. Apartments 13 and 14 flood during the early morning hours.
2. I wake up at the crack of noon and find that we have no hot water--which is highly unusual because our building doesn't have legitimately cold water ever.
3. This progresses towards us having no water at all because the plumbing in the two flooded apartments needs to be fixed ASAP. (Note: This was not a good thing because I was not feeling well and it was very hot in our building that day, both of which would have been fixed by a shower.)
4. At about 3:30 PM, we get water again and all three of us at home take showers to revel in the glory of running water.
5. Now Dani and I cannot get our water to turn off. We have a scalding hot bathtub for about an hour until one of the plumbers on-site can get a chance to fix it.
6. My sink is backed up and it takes literally two hours for a sinkful of water to drain down. Plus, the garbage disposal spits food up the other side. Wonderful.

Everything is back to normal by today, but nonetheless, Saturday's plumbing disaster was horrible. I have never been so happy to do dishes as I was this morning.

Ring-a-Ring O Roses

Marcus and I are up in Ashland for the weekend. Tonight's adventure was Kit Marlowe's Tragikal History of Dr. Faustus in the Elizabethan Theatre.

So, the Elizabethan Theatre is, as the theatres in Shakespeare's day were, open air.

Ashland is, as Northern coastal states are in September, prone to rain.

I am now a resident of Southern California. I no longer own real shoes.

All of this is a recipe for my tiny little body to have a true Elizabethan theatrical experience.

It drizzled on and off throughout the course of Faustus, and I, in my lack of warm clothes and vastly inappropriate shoes, was soaked to the bone by the end of the show. Therefore leaving me, as well as other members of the audience, the possibility of returning to our hotels to develop pneumonia/catch the plague and die.

But aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

Here's how Marcus and I summed up the works of Kit Marlowe:

Me: You know, all the funny bits with Robin and Wagner didn't really come across on the page.
Marcus: That's because Marlowe isn't funny on the page. In Edward the 2nd, someone gets a spear shoved up their ass.
Me: Now that's comedy!

The God of Small Things

Heather and Miyuki are here, and they've come bearing massive amounts of small but wonderful gifts.

Miyuki brought us all little gifts to say, "Thanks for letting me stay with you because the University screwed me out of housing." We all received a little paper folding cup-thing with various designs. Mine, naturally, is red. She also gave us all a small notebook, and these things truly are the Way to my Heart, notebooks and the like.

Heather, after 5 months in Japan, returned with a host of little goodies for each of us. We all recieved a sake cup, a soup spoon, and an individualized rice bowl. We all also got two fans, one with a cultural design, the other with a Disney character because the Japanese are evidently all about Walt and his creations. (Cassie got Ariel because she loves mermaids, Dani got Marie from the Aristocats because that's her middle name, and I, naturally, got Tinkerbell. Jen also got Tinkerbell, but that was more of a default "there were only 4 designs" kind of thing. Hers is not as awesome as mine.) We all got a Japanese candy, and from there the gifts begin to vary. Jen got two great Engrish shirts and a pair of Japanese Ped socks, which Japanese girls wear with their high heels. Her pair is brightly striped. Cassie got a lot of weird-ass arcade items, because she asked Heather for 'random crap,' and an Engrish shirt that Heather said reminded her of fart jokes. Dani got an Engrish shirt that actually made sense, as well as a purse from Hiroshima that was hand dyed. Dani and I also got hairclips, which was odd, because we both have short hair. My Engrish shirt was the most awesome of all, though. It is a white tank top with piles of pink glitter over the letters that reads: "I can't dance / I'm a bad driver / Fuck rockn & roll / I like to jerk off / Spiga jeans girl." And I am totally wearing it to class tomorrow.

Heather also brought each of us a unique cultural gift. Dani received a geisha doll, Jen a lace fan used in tea ceremonies, Cassie an opium pipe, and I got a Japanese calligraphy stylus.

I could not be happier. Last night, I was sleeplessly perusing eBay for antique pens because I hadn't acquired any new ones since Venice last summer, where I purchased a lovely red glass pen with changeable nibs. I found a couple of unique antique ones that I'm vaguely interested in, but this pen is just what I needed. It's the first Japanese pen in my collection, and, to go along with it, Heather bought me what turned out to be a marriage record book, which is intendd for a married couple to record their wedding and the fruits of their union. I am going to treat it like a pillow book, because, in a way, that's what it is. Regardless, it's lovely, and the absolute perfect gift for me.

These small things are the way to my heart.

Do not touch the electric third rail.

The fact that my landlords are ridiculously bad at explaining things is very problematic.

Somehow, they keep finding more and more ways to suck money out of my bones as though it were chewy tasty marrow and they starving junk-yard dogs.

There has been a green sheet of paper sitting around my apartment for a week with some kind of inexplicable charge on it, which, naturally, no one has investigated and it becomes my duty to do so on my day off because I am Responsible.

Evidently, we were supposed to have called and changed the billing name and address for our non-included electrictricity. When I moved in two months ago, you think they would have told me this. But no.

So now, in addition to the extra 60 dollars they started charging us on our rent every month to include the originally non-included cable, I owe them $23 for July's electric. And I owe the electric company an $80 dollar security deposit and another $12 dollars for changing service.

I cannot get a fucking break from these people. And if they would just do their tennants the service for telling them shit, I would be far more prepared for the slow draining of my resources.

The Rise and Fall of Kevin Bacon

Work last night = totally awesome.

Tyler, Josh and I played the movie game for a good hour and a half, interspersed with running returns and helping customers as punishments for lost rounds. Josh and I totally schooled Tyler, but Josh stumped me really well when I couldn't name anyone else in Swept Away besides Madonna, who linked us to that damned crappy movie in the first place. (Really, could you, off the top of your head, name the Italian man in that movie?)

Then Tyler and I played 6 Degrees until close. Well, to be fair, it was mostly Tyler giving me challenges, because I'm much better at it than he is.

These were my 3:
1. David Carridine : Robert De Niro
David Carridine was in Kill Bill with Darryl Hannah, who was in Splash with Tom Hanks, who was in Forrest Gump with Robin Wright Penn, who, besides being married to him, was in Hurlyburly with her husband Sean Penn, who co-starred in We're No Angels with Robert De Niro.
2. Helena Bonham Carter : Bruce Willis
Helena Bonham Carter was in Fight Club with Brad Pitt, who was a sexy drifter in Thelma and Louise with Susan Sarrandon, who was one of The Banger Sisters with Goldie Hawn, who was in Death Becomes Her with Bruce Willis.
3. Topher Grace : Cary Elwes
Topher Grace romanced Scarlett Johannsen in In Good Company, and she was in Lost in Traslation with Bill Murray, who played a ventriloquist in Cradle Will Rock with Cary Elwes.

My job is awesome.

The snowy plovers cry for us tonight.

I am well aware that my university's reputation as a "party school" vastly precedes any other reputation it may have. However, I don't believe that the current decision by AS Legal Resources to allow the fraternity Kappa Sigma to use the university's name for its new calendar is going to help the University of California, Santa Barbara in its life-long quest to bolster its academic reputation and extinguish the party school stigma.

Though I am a feminist, I am not offended by the images from the "Girls of UCSB" calendar that have been posted on this website thus far. I rather like pin-up art, particularly pin-up art from the 1940s. I feel that the pin-up actually controls the male gaze, rather than being controlled by it. I not-so-secretly want to be a 1940s pin-up. Like everyone else, I like to look at beautiful women. I like to look at women in general. I even have a subscription to Maxim.

The biggest problem I have with this calendar is the use of the university name. We are an academic institution that has had 4 Nobel Laureates chosen from our faculty. Playwright Naomi Izuka teaches here. Stephen Hawking visits our Physics department regularly. This calendar and the AS Legal Resources people's decision to allow the university name on this calendar is certainly not helping us to promote the academic merits of UCSB. It's promoting everything that we don't need to promote.

It doesn't matter that portions of calendar sales will be donated to the Shoreline Preservation Fund. If the university name is going to help preserve the shorline, it would be better done through a direct donation from the university or, perhaps, Kappa Sigma and other student groups could go out and clean-up beaches instead.

I'd like to believe that everyone who decides to attend college is doing so because they truly want to, because they are genuinely invested in their educations--not just because college is the thing you pretty much have to do in order to get ahead in the world and maintain the lifestyle to which you have become accustomed. Unfortunately, I know that the reality is the latter. People go to college because it's what you do. The natural progression of things. High school, college, career, marriage, babies, more career, retire, die.

The function of higher education is not to party in Isla Vista, and that's the general image of my university that this calendar is helping to promote. I do party in Isla Vista, but I'm here at UCSB to foster academic criticism and participate in a scholarly community of ideas. I'm here to continue to live a life of the mind.

The Kappa Sigma "Girls of UCSB" calendar is not helping the university, and those of us who are truly invested in our academic lives, separate itself from the surrounding community of Isla Vista. And I could not be more sad than I am right now to learn of this backward step taken by AS Legal Resources in further entwining the university name with the party school stigma.

Lead-based paint chips are indeed good for your health.

Realization: I have not yet posted about the glorious oddities of my new apartment. This shall be rectified.

Item 1: I have no idea who could have possibly wired our house. We technically have no real lighting in this place. We have two cute little contemporary/art deco style wall lights in the kitchen, a hall light of the same style, and matching lights in each of the bathrooms, plus vanity lights in the bathroom. But that's it. Seriously. The bedrooms do not have lighting systems at all. Just really large windows, which don't do me a lot of good at night. Now, about the wiring . . . in those rooms that don't have lighting systems, there are curiously still light switches. What exactly are they for? The two light switches in my living room turn on the lights in my kitchen, the light switch in my kitchen doesn't turn on anything, and the other light switch in the living room goes to the hallway light. What? Also, there are three switches in each bathroom: one for the vanity lights, one for the light, and, presumably, one for the fan. One switch does indeed light the vanity, yet the second switch turns on the light AND the fan while the third switch sits on its ass and does nothing. I think my apartment was wired by Sarah Winchester.

Item 2: I just realized today that the wall separating the living room from Jen's room (aka The Den) is not a wall at all. I always found it odd that it was made of plank wood when the other walls weren't, but only today did I knock on it and notice that the boards BENT INWARD as I did so.

Item 3: My bathroom doesn't really get cold water. The hot and cold taps are switched on both sinks, yet the "cold" tap becomes scalding hot after a minute of running.

Item 4: My ceiling is crooked. It is very hard to hang things.

Item 5: Dani's side of the room does not like things to be stuck to its walls.

Item 6: When I first moved in, my garbage disposal would chew up food, and then spit it up the other side of the sink where food is most certainly not supposed to be.

Item 7: Due to the layers and layers of paint that IV landlords heap onto the walls/doors/cabinets of their rental units every time someone moves out, half of the doors in this house either will not shut or will not open without serious application of force.

Item 8: There might be a ghost who really likes to change the channels and volume. Yesterday, I was hanging things in the living room listening to VH1, and suddenly, the TV was turned to a Nascar race.

Maybe its a good thing Mrs. Winchester's people wired this place with confusing light switches.

Exchanging.

Dani and I spent the past weekend hangin' in the East Bay with exchange students from Norway, Sweden and Holland. And that shit was gangsta'.

I convinced my mom and dad to get exchange students through Lions Club because having a cool host family is a key part of the exchange experience. Two of my Italian host families were awesome, and that made my time trapped in their small mountain towns awesome. So my parents offered up their house to Sara and Mirjam from Sweden and Holland, respectively. Our friend and fellow Lion Bill had hosted a couple of years ago, so my parents convinced him and his wife Darlene to do it again. They got Rebecca from Norway, who does everything with our girls. I think my dad and my like having the girls around, since I'm not home anymore. My dad really loves schmoozing and being with young people. (I mean, he is a teacher, after all.) So I think they both are really enjoying the company of these young ladies.

Dani and I arrived Thursday afternoon, and Thursday night we took our foriegn girls to their first American baseball game. It was also Dani's first baseball game. So after a lot of explaining of rules and strategies, I think my Dad and I managed to clarify the game and got the girls into it. We took the girls to another game on Sunday, during which Sara told the man sitting in front of her that she was married to Jay Payton, the Rockies' left fielder we got in the Eric Byrnes trade. Everytime Payton made a play or came up to hit, this man would look over at her to see if she was paying attention to her "husband." My family sits in the section right next to the wives and family section, so we know for a fact that when baseball wives come to a game, they are not even paying attention to the game at all. I don't think I've ever seen Alex Chavez even notice her husband (with all his Golden Gloves) make a catch or get a hit. In any case, this dude totally believed Sara. Which was pretty funny to the rest of us. Unfortunately, Sunday's game went into extra innings--5 extra innings. So after 5 extra innings, Bobby Kielty hit a long ball to right field just over the wall to win. Finally! I think the girls all liked baseball, but extra innings was a little much even for someone like me who goes to a lot of games.

On Friday we went to Muir Woods and Stinson Beach--two places to which, in my 18 years of Bay Area residency--I have never been. Naturally, as I never go swimming or to the beach at home in the bay, I did not bring a suit. So I fell asleep in the sun at Stinson and burned the back of my calves very nicely. That night we went disco bowling up at Travis and no one in the bowling alley could figure out why Dad and Bill were hanging out with 5 college girls. The music wasn't loud enough at the bowling alley, but Sara and I were nonetheless trying to dance like Beyonce when "Crazy in Love" came on.

On Saturday, I took the girls shopping on Telegraph. European money is worth so much here, and my money worth so little there, so the girls had a lot of vacation cash to spend as everything seemed cheap to them. They found some cute clothes to wear that night to the Lions Club installation dinner, at which their presence was required. Before dinner that night, Bill had us hunt for District Governor Walter's wedding ring out in the rock garden where he had lost it earlier that day. Walter promised us $300 if we found it, and found it we did--after only 4 minutes of searching. (Word from my Dad is that Walter paid the girls yesterday, so $120 dollars is coming down to SB for Dani and me via mail.) The dinner itself was super-ass long and boring, so Dani started passing notes around the table.

When the Lions dinner was over, we headed into San Francisco to hang out with my best friend, Eric. Eric had planned an evening out dancing for the girls . . . but we wound up at some weird 80s club where only 30-year-olds were dancing to the worst 80s music ever. And this place was rated one of the hot 18 & Over clubs by SF Weekly . . . And we found this out after waiting about 30 minutes for our second cab to arrive at the club! In any case, we all had a really good time. I think Rebecca had the best time out of all of us because she was only 17, so we snuck her into the club with my military ID.

Dani and I had to leave on Monday, but we went with the girls to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory before leaving. They're all such cool girls it was a difficult good-bye. Sara wanted us to stay until Saturday, but, unfortunately, we both have to work. We miss them already, and I hope they had a good time with us!

Stuff I've Been Reading Vol. 4

Books Read:
The Sandman: Preludes & Nocturnes--Neil Gaiman
Y: The Last Man--Unmanned
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay--Michael Chabon

Books Bought:
The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist Vol. 1--Michael Chabon et al.

This month's theme is comic books. As finals approached rapidly and I spent all my time desperately trying to finish heavy peices of modernist prose at May's end, I decided to start reading graphic novels. And, in reading the aforementioned graphic novels that I had borrowed from my friends in the winter, I decided that the one novel I should pull off my jam-packed bookshelf would be Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.

I don't actually know why it took me so damn long to sit down with Sandman. I borrowed it from Corey on my birthday in January, and it sat on my desk unread until June. As to The Last Man, Cassie's boyfriend brought it over when they started dating in April and it sat on our table until every last one of us had read it.

Here's why I adore the graphic novel: the graphic novel is the link between books and movies. Graphic novels employ cinematic cuts and "camera angles" to emphasize the active and emotive qualities of the story, as films do, but relies on a literary format to do so. They're thicker, generally, and more complex than comic books, often dealing with incredible mythologies (like Sandman) and more adult subjects (like The Last Man) than their comic cousins. Comics and graphic novels, alike, though allow their readers easy access to complex themes and provide an introduction to basic literary conventions. They're also much easier to digest on the whole.

Sandman Chronicles I think most readers have heard of. And I can now personally vouch for the merits of Gaiman's characters and his stories. The art in it is beautiful: a nice blend of gothic style with classic comic drawing. It's a great graphic novel for those who like the resonance of Frank Miller's naratives (specifically through repetition of phrase), but with a touch of Baudilere under them. I liked them, but I liked The Last Man much, much more. Let me begin on The Last Man by introducing some topics that recurr throughout the first issue: feminism, gendercide, gender issues as a whole, american politics, Jewish mysticism, and sources of power. Also, there is a monkey. The Last Man is the story of Yorick, the only man to survive a strange and sudden plague that eliminates anything with a Y-chromosome . . . except for Yorick and his male monkey. This turns the world into chaos. Supermodels have no purpose in a society with no male gaze. (They can now only make money by collecting the dead bodies of single men who rotted away in their apartments.) The Secretary of Agriculture is now President. And a brigade of feminist "Amazons" who believe that the man-killing plague is a sign of male inferiority and the female right to rule are taking over the land. When I finished the first issue of The Last Man, I immediately wanted to find the successive issues. It is an incredible character driven, theme-laden narrative that addresses so many crucial social concerns. I was thoroughly impressed. (Also, the cuts leading up to the man-plague are so intense I can barely begin to describe them.)

It's nice to think about the fact that The Last Man's Yorick is introduced to us as an escape artist, because that is also how we are introduced to Josef Kavalier in Chabon's Kavalier & Clay. Escape worked so well as a central motif on which Chabon chose to hang his story. If there's one thing I can say for Chabon it is that he writes a very tight story. Nothing is extraneous. "Escape" certainly isn't thrown about lightly. It is the one word that both Kavalier & Clay understand. For Josef Kavalier, like thousands of other European Jews before WWII, escape was the only means of survival. Josef manages to escape because he is a trained escape artist, schooled after America's most famous immigrant, Harry Houdini. It is Joe's escape from Prague and Nazi rule that inspires the comic book character The Escapist, which ties nicely into his American cousin Sammy Klaymann's world of escape: comic books. Sammy's dreams of escaping his current lifestyle and polio-ridden legs are invested in the masked heroes that he and his cousin create. The Escapist encompasses both men at once. This is exactly what I mean when I say that Chabon writes a tight story. It goes on to be more complex, with more escapes of many other kinds: escapes from traditional family roles, escapes from traditional lifestyles in general, escapes from reality and from life (though this is more of a Houdinian disappearing act than anything else).

Kavalier & Clay is a long read, true, but it is so well written that one is constantly driven forward in the narrative. I find recently that I am increasingly dissatisfied with the ends of novels. I realized reading Kavalier & Clay why that is. So many novels I read tend to stop in the middle of something, with no sense of finality. You can get away with this if you are Zora Neale Hurston and end on a beautiful metaphor as in Their Eyes Were Watching God, and, naturally, if you are Toni Morrison you can get away with this as well by ending on a beautiful sentence. If your point is that there is no finality, I think this is also acceptable. However, when a book doesn't have a great finish and just fizzles out (like Life of Pi), I lose my faith in the entire book. Thank you, Chabon, for writing me a definitive and beautiful ending. Chabon chooses to end on the names of his protagonists written hastily on a calling card, and this is a powerful image to end such a colossal and moving book. So much of Kavalier & Clay relies on faith and dream, and I could not be more pleased that Chabon allowed his readers to keep theirs in his book.

What's also pretty damn cool about the Kavalier & Clay universe is that two subsequent volumes of comic books related to the novel were published. I came across The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist Vol. 1 in Copperfield's up in Calistoga just sitting there on the sale rack. I grabbed it immediately as I had not two days before finished Kavalier & Clay. Escapist Adventures includes Chabon's origin story, plus several other stories written and illustrated by current comic artists that fill in some of the stories to which Chabon alludes, mostly to define the changes in the way the character was drawn over the years. The edition also includes a few Luna Moth stories done in extremely different styles: one in Rose Saxon watercolors, for instance, and another drawn in 1950's pulp fiction style, which was my personal favorite. I'm told that Vol. 2 features the infamous Escapist punching Hitler cover, and I look forward to acquiring it.

Jesus . . . ham sandwich

I just hope that everyone noticed that on tonight's episode of Family Guy, Jesus had a painting of sheep in his living room.

It could only be better if he also had a painting of a messenger--nude.

Big S, little a, little n, big D, little e, big E with a star.

Edan Dekel is the coolest person I know.

And he is soon leaving the bay area to start a professorship at Williams' College in Massachusetts.

I am so glad that I got to spend the afternoon with him today. We spent about 4.5 hours just talking in a restaurant in Larkspur, slowly annoying the hell out of our waitress for simply being there so long.

This is what happens when you get together two people who are exceptionally gifted at running their mouths.

I am also so amazed that Edan always treats me like a friend and intellectual equal--especially today. He told me when I saw him last summer that I could hang out with him anytime, and I didn't have to crash his summer classes to do so. And I was really touched at that. Today, he told me that he was glad his other lunch plans cancelled because he really didn't want to see them, anyway. I got their coveted Thursday afternoon timeslot, and I am very lucky to have received it. He said he was glad he didn't have to rush our conversation.

Conclusions we came to over the course of our discussion:
1. David Hyde Pierce is the Tony Randall of our era.
2. Steve Martin is genius.
3. LA Story is one of the best movies ever written.
4. Seth McFarlane may be the most seminal man of the "Aughts."
5. Junior High is designed to make girls feel bad about themselves.
6. People who say that high school was the best time of their lives clearly never went to college.
7. I would look really good in one of those epilepsy helmets that Natalie Portman wears in Garden State.

God, I'm going to miss Edan.

With a soundtrack by Billy Joel.

The only thing that displeases me more than people who don't keep appointments is moving.

I really, really dislike packing my life into tiny boxes. I hate it for the reason that I have too many things, and that I cannot decide which things should go in which box. It's very difficult for me to sort through my mass of commodities.

For the first time in my life, it's not just a question of choosing what to leave at my parents' house and what to take with me, but a question of what I should put in storage. Some of this is simple enough. For the three weeks that I'll be squatting at Mom and Dad's in the quiet hamlet of Crockett, I won't need my futon, my profusion of alcohol paraphernalia, my TV, DVD and VHS players, or the entertainment center on which they sit. I also won't need plates and dishes and toiletries. Those amenities are provided for me where I'm going.

There is, however, an extremely difficult choice in deciding what clothes to bring. I am a costume designer. I have an obscene amount of clothing. I rifle through my closet here and have already decided to purge it of a few things. I have rid myself almost completely of long skirts. But what do I see fit to lock in a shed for a month? Winter clothes are obvious. But there's really no need for me to bring home every dress, shirt, pair of pants, pair of shoes, skirt, top, or jacket I own. And the idea of limiting my clothing is really unsettling. I mean, the reason I have so much random crap is the following mentality: "This peice is really unique. And besides, you never know when you're going to need a bright teal 1950s-style diner waitress dress." You really just never know. This is mostly just a giant inconvenience in my eyes.

What really tears me up is knowing that I have to lock up all my books and journals and a good deal of my writing instruments in storage. I know I won't be using them when I go home, so I understand the necessity of this, but the idea of locking these things up, knowing that I won't be able to grab a book of the shelf and read or reference a poem in conversation, this is maddening. The quills, though, I could never bear to lock away in storage. Even more than some of my favorite clothes, these things I cannot have outside of my immediate care.

Not to mention how stark my room becomes when it is stripped of things. The room just looks . . . sad. Even hotel rooms put cheap art on the wall to give us the comfort of commodity. We all need a few decorations to brighten our sad lives.

My only comfort in all this packing is knowing that these things will not remain away from me for long. In July, I get a new apartment that will be so much less sad than this stale little room.