Last night, Chris and I went on a hot double date with Minh and Robin, during which I spent the entire time giggling through dinner (my dinner cocktail was a little too strong) and trying to decipher the texture of wild rice soup. Later on in the night, I went to a party where boys tried on my dress and consequently broke it. All in all, a great night.
A water pipe broke down the street, so we’re waterless. I’m off to find a way to scrub the party gunk off me.
In the spirit of war, I’ve spent my week fighting with just about everyone and everything possible. It’s been quite dramatic, too, with a smashed drinking glass and a strange case of whiplash, which has disengaged my ability to move my head in any direction besides still.
Most of this, and here’s where I get to lose all my male readers, is due to PMS. I honestly think I might have the worst PMS in the history of the world. I become a raving self-loathing hating conservative. Ha. Minus the conservative part. Maybe. Anyway, every minor annoyance makes me want to top the planet over and feed it to the sun. I looked in the mirror yesterday, and seriously began making a list of the anti-aging products I would need for my 22-year-old face. I have wrinkles! Three in my forehead and two on either side of my lips. Bring me Oil of Olay and a pistol. I feel like I look like I lost a fight with a pack of rabid cougars.
My lounging buddy can’t do anything right, so he mostly tries to make weak jokes about magic beans andZelda while cowering under the bed. My PMS conversations go like this:
Me: Do you want to go out to eat?
Lounging Buddy: No, thanks, I’m not hungry.
Me: YOU NEVER WANT TO DO ANYTHING WHICH MEANS YOU HATE ME.
LB: What?
Me: YOU THINK I’M THE UGLIEST STUPIDEST PERSON IN THE WORLD.
LB: What?
Me: (insert five hours of red-faced crying in which I wipe my nose on my only clean shirt, and then cry about that).
I also just had a coronary on Erik for a reason involving homeless printers that I won’t get into. I screamed, and I mean screeched like a puppy on fire, profanities and then burst into gulping sobs, which I’m sure woke the entire house. I have a few roommates who get evil pleasure in spreading rumours, so I’m sure by tomorrow, I’ll hear of how I was screaming because I was pregnant with six children and a goat, and Erik refused to pay goat support.
I can’t get any homework done. Thinking about starting a paper will either give me a massive anxiety attack, or perhaps, for kicks, I’ll start to hyperventilate, pound on my desk a few times and then crawl into my bed and whimper.
I think I’m dying. This week, I’ve had: meningitis (“whiplash,” but I’m suspicious), skin cancer, ocular cancer (don’t ask), schizophrenia, clogged arteries and St. Vitus’ Dance. My cramps mean I have appendicitis. Extreme mood swings? Means I’m going crazy and will be locked up in Bellvue. Water retention? Diabetes! Of course!
So, if you talk to me or IM me, you might want to wait until next week. If you say, “Hi,” I will be convinced you think I’m fat and ugly. If you ask me how I’m doing, I will cry and throw punches. Any conversation beyond that will most likely result in carnage.
P.S.: To completely be a sheep, I will be using my livejournal more often for more diary-like entries. It will, however, be friends-only, so if you’re on livejournal and want to read, add me or drop a line.
I almost want to delete my little war rant a few entries back because I am so grossly misinformed and ineloquent, and I don’t want to place myself under the naive young liberal thang category consisting of those who have all these great feelings for peace and no plan in which to enact them.
I keep searching for the eerie heaviness in the air of a war about to begin, but I’m only finding it within myself, and I’m sure that’s where it’s nesting in everyone else, too. Zwan is still blasting, blissfully unaware, through my speakers and the dog across the street is tripping after the pigeons in the front yard. So the world goes on.
Links:
Kottke’s war notes
Your name sounds French! Are you from France?
“I have never seen Baghdad like this before.
Robin Cook’s resignation speech
No, you’re not the only one
I know you totally want to read my Participation Positives; in fact, I could hear your wails from across Lake Superior and I, your Duluthian Web Ms., will comply.
Yeah, it’s been a boring day. I ate an entire cheese pizza, watched Bush’s little speech and boy, am I spent. I contemplated sleeping at 7 PM, until I realized that would wake me at about 4 AM, and well, I don’t believe in 4 AM.
Anyway, here’s some goodness for you, courtesy of my lethargy and yawning brain:
Not to be a complete schmoopy mushball, but my lounging buddy tops this list today because he’s gone for a few days and I miss that skinny bastard. I love the fact that last night I spent five hours playing old Nintendo games on his computer while he tooled around on my laptop.
I love that he talks in his sleep and says wonky things like, “Please don’t eat my brains!” and “The octopi have risen!” I love that we eat like heifers together, and that he bought me a strawberry sundae at Dairy Queen last night. I love his rice paper skin and the way he twists his hair and his tongue in his mouth when he’s thinking. I love that he makes me tell the truth, and wakes me up in various creative ways. I love that we can get in passionately stupid fights and then get in passionately unstupid other things five minutes later. I love how he always smells like an orange grove.
Unmush: I’m thankful for the fact that I’m aware of my penchant for 20something college angst and that I’m allowing myself to act my age, knowing this won’t last forever. Also: My windows rattling under March wind. The fact that two awesome kids contacted me today to wish me a Happy St. Patrick’s Day because I am an Irish lass. The quietness and emptiness of the house, something that I panicked about for two seconds, but then realized how relaxing and freakin’ peaceful this place is without the requisite nerd angst. That Erik and I are buddies now, without the fighting, a miracle and a testament to the strength of our friendship, considering having a rather bitter break-up while still cohabiting would’ve destroyed lesser nerds.
My lavender conditioner that takes half a bottle in one washing to be effective, but smells fucking good. The picture of Angelina Jolie taped to my wall. IRC. New friends who understand my deep abiding love for the internet.
With all that love spilled forth, I think I’m going to crawl into my cloud bed and attempt sleep. Goodnight.
Well, cockle-o-doodle-doo, there’s no one here but us chickens(1). I’m on Spring Break, and spending it in the action-packed way I’ve spent every Spring Break of college, which is to say I’m lounging in Duluth for a week, lamenting the homework I have to do, running around apartments naked since everyone is gone and singing loud and operatically to Blink 182. The only nerds left in this town right now are me and Erik, which is odd since I can’t remember the last time the two of us have been bored in tandem.
I have lots to say, but nothing that would make a unified coherent paragraph. I’m so horrified and disgusted by most conservatives and the pro-war/anti-left movement right now that I have trouble engaging in any type of debate with my rightist friends. I wish the war would hurry and be over so that FOX TV movie can be produced, starring Angelina Jolie as Saddam and that kid from Malcom in the Middle as George Bush.
A protester was trampled by a bulldozer. This kid on a forum I frequent is excitedly counting down to war. I love the kids who haven’t been out of America and haven’t yet reached their 20s, yet still feel they have the experience, knowledge and breadth of intelligence to say, “Duuuude, let’s blast Iraq to the ice ageee duuuuuude, FRANCE SUCKS, I mean, God they really suck because they WON’T DO WHAT WE WANT! Fuuuuck!” and so on. This is obviously not an original thought, but I think it’s absolutely terrifying how everyone has seemed to forgotten that innocent breathing people get killed in war and that yes, it does matter, and no, saying that “that’s how the world works” is not an excuse.
Anyway. On a lighter note, I’ve discovered something absolutely mind-numbingly life-changing. Your five senses: you can taste a tongue, smell a nose, feel fingers, see eyes, BUT you can’t HEAR EARS. Now think about this for a second. You can’t HEAR AN EAR. I’m patenting that. Don’t steal it.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day. I’m an Irish redheaded lass, so you may kiss me if you wish, but only a chaste peck on the cheek because I think the novelty of my newfound sexuality is beginning to wear away.
Drink a green river for me.
1. A direct quote from the movie The Passion of Ayn Rand, which Chris and I rented because he is intensely interested in Ayn Rand. The movie was an objectivist softcore porno, if such things are possible.
Dudes, I totally had a Young and the Restless fight with my roommate tonight. I walked in from grocery shopping, my mind focused on the 1 lb bag of potatoes I bought because really, why did I buy potatoes? I’m never going to use them. Anyway, I’m shoving stuff in the freezer and grumbling about potatoes, and then my roommate does this swively pivot thing and snaps, “Why have you been snooping in my stuff?” And I’m all, “What? I haven’t been snooping in your stuff.” (There’s a long complicated backstory to this, by the way, that I’m not going to get into right now. The basic premise: my roomie thinks I did something, which I didn’t do and since I’m pretty apathetic to the whole thing, she, and the 9,000 people she told about it, are convinced of my guilt.)
So, then we spar a bit, and I go back to putting my Parmesan cheese in the fridge, when she’s all: “I cannot believe you dared to show your face in this town!” or something of that nature, and by this point, I’m expecting her to pull out a six-shooter and a tattered cowboy hat.
So, then I giggle a little because the whole argument feels ridiculous and then I expect her to drop the Susan Lucci charade, but she is dead serious. So then I stand in the hallway, trying desperately not to laugh because I know this is serious business for her and I’m all, “Dude, fuck off, leave me alone, I didn’t do it” and she’s all, “Fuck off, you’re full of shit, you did, too, I can’t stand to see you,” and I’m all, “Dude, then go out of your way not to see me,” and then if this was a real soap opera, she would have tossed the paring knife she was holding at my shoulder and screamed, “You slept with my twin sister’s stepmom, you bitch!” but instead, she looks down at the bread she’s cutting and says, “I’m not leaving you alone until I have answers.”
Then my lounging buddy, who’s been slinking in the hallway this whole time, pipes up, “Hey, I heard you have proof. Show me your proof!” And my roomie about pees her pants trying to show him, but I am all, “Dudes, are we in a Nancy Drew novel?” And even though I so wanted to come back with something witty and brilliant, if I had opened my mouth, I would’ve laughed until I cried, so I waited until I got to my lounging buddy’s house where, and pay close attention now because this is what makes this completely Young and the Restless, my roomie had IMed him with the almost-exact phrase: “Isn’t it funny your precious little whore didn’t want you to see proof?”
And then I lost it, and the giggling came out in loud crying bursts. I think I have been waiting my whole life to be called a “precious little whore,” and I must either be the happiest I’ve ever been or the twisted, because it made my night.
The purpose of recording this, at least for myself, is I realized tonight that I am, indeed, the happiest I’ve been in a year. Last semester, a confrontation like that would’ve unhinged me. Now, it just seems so trivial and comedic and I can’t tell you how thankful I am to have my light-heartedness back, something I thought was destroyed in The Most Depressing Angtsy Semester of the 21st Century,
So, really, the moral of this story is that buying potatoes makes you precious, little and without a doubt, whorish
Juxtaposition of professional vs. personal, first in a series:
Monday evening: Sitting in the ornate Meeting Room 355 for the SAUMD meeting, listening to quite articulate and well researched people give eloquent speeches. I try, despite my old jeans and oversize hoodie, to sit up straight, speak without verbal tics and look determined and very serious.
The previous Saturday evening: Sitting around a card table in a party house with the same people mentioned above. I, pumped full of a rather disgusting combination of whiskey, orange juice and Pabst Blue Ribbon, babble incoherently about my sex life, claiming to be a 13-year-old boy while one of the leaders of above mentioned organization challenges me to a fist fight and calls me a “hornball.”
I know you’ve been absolutely dying to see a picture of the Floridian skull, so here you are.
Speaking of dying, I really have nothing to say except I’m ill with some achy sore throat death thing, and I’m being my usual whiny baby self about it. I moved a total of three inches yesterday, and that was contained within the borders of a bed. I feel a little better today, but my throat is still juggling razor blades, so I’m giving myself one more day before I return to school.
I owe people a lot of e-mail, especially this beautiful Canadian redhead, who should also check her regular mail soon if I survive this illness and make it to the post office. I’m never home lately, and I didn’t transfer my inbox to my laptop, so all my unanswered e-mails sits dusty and neglected on my home computer.
I’m 89% sure I made the decision to move to Minneapolis after this semester. But now I need a place to live, preferably near the university and/or a bus line, so if you have a heads up, let me know.
So now I’ll go back to coughing dramatically in bed while reading American Psycho, which I’m afraid to bring out in in public because I’ve heard people give you the squinty-eyed-you-pervert look when they see a copy of it in your ha
And the number reason Chris is the coolest kid in the world:
1. While in Florida, he bought me an ashtray/container in the shape of a scary skull, and I couldn’t have imagined a more perfect gift. And when his relatives asked where he was going, he replied, “I’m buying a skull for my girlfriend.”
It’s true love, my friends and nothing says true love like a skull ashtray with a removable scalp plate.
Well. It certainly has been an interesting weekend, one of those weekends where you take your usual Fri-Sat-Sun routine and smash it against the bar wall. I usually spend my weekends with my lounging buddy , but he was spending his weekend riding roller coasters in Florida, the state where people wear thin-strapped camisoles and cut-off khaki shorts to reveal their deeply February-brown legs.
So! I saw movies: The Pianist, the feel-good movie of the year; The Ring, for the second time, and still the only part that horrified me is where that fucking horse bucks against the side of the boat; and Magnolia, also for the second time, but with someone who hadn’t seen it, so it was satisfying to watch her forehead crinkle and a “what the fuck” form on her lips when the frog part came on.
I also went to Pizza Luce on Friday with the nerds Alex , Robin, Minh and Timothy. The restaurant was having some huge party that felt faintly like a Big Wu concert. So, I gulped a 7&7, and pushed myself to the front where the band was playing and danced and danced.
It reminded me of the Big Wu Family Reunion festivals the nerds and I went to a few summers ago. I forgot how wonderful and colourful and completely immersing the vibe is at things like this. It was wonderful. I felt the sort of complete happiness that comes only with a total clarity of mind. Alex handed me a beer. I joined him in the bar, leaned against the wood, contemplated stealing the drink to my left elbow (but uncontemplated after remembering my date rape drug lecture on Friday in Women’s Studies), took two drags off his cigarette and exhaled blue smoke.
I need a long shower and about 36 more hours of sleep, but both will have to wait. It’s 40 degrees in Duluth in March, and my skin is inside-worn.
