fine, how was yours?

mmm, litmags...

Other changed my clock back. Now I'm only living two minutes ahead of myself or perfectly with myself.

Also boring.

From now on, I'm only writing in fourth person. Once I figure out exactly what that would be.

No - just regular-type.

I haven't changed one of my clocks back, and so it's like I'm living an hour ahead of myself or exactly with myself depending on which one I look at.

That's boring.

Why would I want to buy this book when I have journalfuls of the same type of stuff, minus the raging teen sexuality and plus latent teen sexuality? The excerpt published on Salon a couple days ago reminded me really what it was like to be in high school, something I'm not entirely sure I wanted to be reminded of. It hurt, but so familiarly. Makes you wonder what all of that feeling is good for, other than being successfully felt.

Now is a time of uncomfortable, subtle negotiations. Potential hurt feelings abound. Hidden hurt feelings abound. The surprising gap between the reality of the situation and the imagined, mirroring my mother's, eliciting empathy later than what would have been helpful. Fucking holidays.

My teeth are rotting and my eyes are going bad even worse.

new wool hat

So the excuse I gave for not going out with the "gang" (if you will) after the aforementioned poetry/fiction reading is "I have to finish my notes on this book." So of course I came right home and finished my notes on this book spent 2 hours looking up people I know on Google. And - this was bound to happen sooner or later - I found my long-lost childhood friend. She won some science award. And I'm pretty sure it's her, because on the page listing the awards, there were also pictures. Her haircut's changed since she was 8, but otherwise she looks the same.

I found her e-mail address too.

Would it be too weird? (She's at a school in my home state. Not an hour away from where we grew up.) The last time we saw each other, we made friendship bracelets out of embroidery thread. I still have them, come to think of it.

venga, venga

Tonight there was a poetry/fiction reading tonight. Last night we slaved to make baked goods to sell (but not really -- to suggest donations for, really) at the poetry/fiction reading, but only our signs suggested donations, and the greedy freshmen did not heed the signs. I was too embarrassed to point them out.

So then the poetry and fiction were read, and I realized again how dangerous writers are. When he described girls as "pretty," we remembered that it is his job to notice such things, and perhaps he could aim this noticing at us.

The lotion stings my hands.

selling out: not even uncool anymore!!!

I know that paeans to the internet are needed like holes in heads, but god damn if I didn't just pull up the full text of the Magna Carta in 3 seconds. 10 years ago, at this second I'd be packing up for the library.

yankee doodle had a farm and bingo was its name-o

Why didn't they make the new money ugly?

forget you, where are the doughnuts?

Thursday Night Fun: looking through the senior ads (messages to the student from family or friends, often including baby & senior pictures) in my high school yearbook and thinking of new captions. For example:


"You've made us so proud!!!" ->"Thank goodness your head grew."

"Follow your dreams!!!" -> "Don't fuck up college (and you're GOING to college), get a decent job, and buy a house so you won't have to move back in with us."

"Good luck at IU!!!" -> "Just please don't get anyone pregnant unless she's going to be a doctor. Oh, and she'd better also be white."

"The light of God shines within you!!!" -> "We couldn't think of anything else to say, but we really wanted to put that cute picture of you in the bathtub when you were 2 in here."

pete fell out

When I was little, I was deathly afraid of this medium-sized bust of Abraham Lincoln that my grandparents had. I refused to sleep in the same room as it. Those wild eyes, the crazy hair...

so primitive, and yet we all get it wrong

"I refuse to let anyone think I am doing something great here, when there are people you never hear about, who face long odds and never resort to such escapes. They are the role models," says Rush Limbaugh regarding his drug addiction. Damn! How can we look up to them when we never hear about them? Eh, I'll just keep looking up to Rush.

My books came today. It doesn't look like they're going to get read today, though. Not even close.

is familiarity enough?

Firing off more angry e-mails. Finally took the time to listen to the Fresh Air interview with Bill O'Reilly, and Other did some LexisNexising, and below is the message I sent to ol' Fresh Air.

Just wanted to point out how Bill O'Reilly "spun" his interview with Jeremy Glick, the son of a man who died in the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11. He said in the interview that Glick said that "the attack at 9/11 was an alleged attack - and he proceeded to blame President Bush and his father, Bush the elder, for orchestrating the attack on their own country." Comparison with the transcript of the interview shows that Glick never implied that the World Trade Center attack never happened - considering that it killed his father, that would indeed be odd. Here is what he did say:


"Our current president now inherited a legacy from his father and inherited a political legacy that's responsible for training militarily, economically, and situating geopolitically the parties involved in the alleged assassination and the murder of my father and countless of thousands of others."


Harper's did indeed take out the phrase "alleged assassination," but it's hard to tell exactly what he's referring to. In any case, the attacks were definitely, according to Glick, "murder."


O'Reilly went on, saying
"and he proceeded to blame President Bush and his father, Bush the elder, for orchestrating the attack on their own country."


Nowhere in the transcript does the word "orchestrate" appear. "Orchestrate" has quite a different meaning than contributing to a political legacy that's responsible for training parties who were involved in the attacks - which is what Glick was accusing the Bushes of - but apparently this distinction is lost on O'Reilly.


So I truly hope that none of your Fresh Air listeners now believe that Jeremy Glick argued that George and George W. sat around rubbing their hands and talking about how to get box cutters onto planes. It's so frustrating that the corrections of O'Reilly's statements get out only after damage has been done.


Thank you,

me

Also today I found out where the spider who lives on my car hides. Inside the side mirror. He's quick as a flash, and dilligent with those webs. And huge.

so many google hits for "mexican hat dance," so little time

I will NOT write sarcastic replies to my students, I will NOT write sarcastic replies to my students...


Well, Jesus Christ, Arnold is governor. It'll be interesting to see how bad he fucks this up. Maybe I'll start paying attention again in a couple months.


My Other has taken to listening to talk radio. Says that this is in order to figure out how they think, what their arguments are, what their reasoning is. It's painful, but it's fascinating to my Other in the same way that the religious channel is. I suspect that I'm reaching the point where someone like Bill O'Reilly or Sean Heannity could say "the sky is blue" and my first instinct would be to argue with him. But they just lie so much, to the point where it hardly seems legal. Valerie Plame, just an analyst? How do they get away with this? And Bill O'Reilly has this whole "I'm just a plain old regular guy lookin' out for you, the little guy" schtick that's more pathetic than annoying, until you realize that people are actually buying into it, at which point it becomes rage-inducing. Ugh.

Teen Girl Squad: so good or no good?

you wouldn't want to walk around without a face, would you?

Apparently Jonathan Franzen wrote my thesis already, and published it two years ago. Jerk.

decisions are an important part of everyone's life.

I am an empty toothpaste tube, down to the last molecules of Crest, you hurting your thumbs to squeeze anything out. I am a deodorant stick down to the last crumbles, the blue plastic base scratching your armpit, because you don't want to go to the store in this thunderstorm. I cannot grade ANY MORE.

the butter melts out of habit

Yesterday night I made pumpkin muffins and took them to striking workers. (There is a worker strike going on.) It was damn cold out.

The night before that, Other and I went to a Dean Meetup. I ate a salad and wrote letters to my elected representatives, urging them to endorse Dean.


Other is not sure about who to support - Clark could turn out to be more likely to beat Bush. I want to get involved, though, and Dean is offering many more ways to do that than any of the candidates... I guess I'm torn, too, though. I've also joined the ranks of those fantasizing over a Dean/Clark (or, hell, Clark/Dean) ticket.

Grade or sew? There's a contest.