old school teenage xanga entry of the day: I'm just so happy. for no reason.

2 things

1. I never quite realized this, but I love the color of donkeys. We don't appreciate donkey color enough. Not enough has been said about this. Can enough be said? Doubtful. Better not to speak of it...

2. I would take a photo of the painting I got from good will a few days ago and show it to you. It's hanging on my wall and every time I look at it it's clearly a different thing. A monkey gripping the side of his cage which is also a boat floating on the ocean. (That is just one of them.) But I am not going to because I feel like it's just too much for you to know. It's not fair. I don't have a blog of your life. I don't know what you look at, let alone what you think it is. I repeat: it's not fair.

why is my family so weird.

Every day when I take my lunch break on the fourth floor I look out this window and read this sign the art co-op made (by printing one letter per sheet of computer paper and taping it to the windows) that says "Everything will be okay."

weird things people said to me today. cool.

I went to see a nice, tall, bald guy about a computer today and as he was trying to fix the video card so that the monitor would display, we heard a little kid laugh downstairs, and then he said, "That's my daughter. She's SO. FUN. Oh man, she's just so much fun. It's crazy. She's nine now so I keep waiting for her to disrespect me but she just keeps being fun." How cute is that?

And then I got home and my new roommate said he was wondering whether or not I'm seeing someone because he didn't know if I'm cool with hanging out with black people...? Is he wondering if I'm single and racist? Or if I have a white supremacist boyfriend? Or if I'm trying to get with his friends? (I am.) Um...cool.

Wait, why do I say this word all the time? That doesn't make sense.

Verb

boughten

1. (archaic) Past participle of buy.
   

   He has boughten that brand of cereal before.

   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   I say "He bought that before," or "He's boughten that before." Ha. 
   
   
   Hey, at least I don't say "warshrag." 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

nothing's funnier than high school.

from my sister's homecoming dance this year. why are all the boys doing the '50s shuffle?

I want to go to London. I miss that place. Anyone down?

What happened when I tried to go to hulu.com to watch It's Always Sunny at this coffee shop. Treated.

what if our names lose their vowels? apocalypse?

Facebook suggests I become friends with this kid I know from home whose last name is Tower, but he has it listed on facebook as "Twr." This fascinates me. Isn't that sort of audacious? No?

And is Hanna (and Kierkegaard) right that anxiety is the dizziness of freedom? I think I become anxious when I lose consciousness of freedom. Hmm...


(I am in a capitalization phase. My roommate has chainsaws and possibly a homeless man.)

(You can trick people into thinking you're writing something interesting when you juxtapose short and unconnected thoughts left unexplained. Confident brevity is the key to trickery! In real life, too. But then annoying men in coffee shops might call you fascinating and/or mysterious and you might get bored.)

first snow.

Corning, Iowa.

My mom just texted me this, forwarded from my aunt. or uncle. or cousin. It is cool.

I'm starting to think that French films are just about beautiful people being beautiful and refusing to make meaning. in black and white. while smoking.

books to read

1. Ulysses 
2. Moby Dick
3. Stanislas Dehaene's book on reading and the brain
4. Robert Goolrick's A Reliable Wife 
5. Lorrie Moore's Gate at the Stairs
6. Jim Lynch's Border Songs

Whoa, Urbana Free Library. Whoa.

I'm actually really surprised that the librarians' teenage-imitation-speak is so accurate. They know that starting a sentence with "um" and using the word "random" are convincing ways of sounding like a teenager? Those research librarians. I've underestimated them.

T.T.D.

1. Upload new ipod songs and charge ipod.
2. Eat actual non-coffee food.
3. Learn how to make non-cloudy coffee.
4. Buy $25 Amazon espresso machine.
5. Buy typewriter.
6. Buy kayak.
7. Attach typewriter to kayak.
8. Apply to more schools.
9. Make a budget?
10. Figure out bus schedules.
11. Find a place to live.
12. Fix computer- delete pictures- update new OS.
13. Pack/unpack/remove unpacked things from car.
14. Find non-oppressive small group.
15. Watch Birth of the Nation, movies by John Ford, movies by Bergman, Chaplin, Eisenstein, Fellini.
16. Steal Biscuit from family.
17. Clean the house.
18. Do laundry.

19. Stop posting pictures of your adorable dog everywhere.
20. Care about your blog.
21. Learn about more things you don't know about at all, and that don't come easy. (Turns out you learn more this way)
22. Find out about public lectures.
23. Eat vegetables.
24. Join Cornfield Desert Hiking group.
25. Return Nabokov, start reading Ulysses.

Okay, this is the shortest and most inconsequential t.d.l. of my life. I've traded sleeping in but always being on the clock for waking up early (maybe the thing I most hate) and freedom. And stress for pressure. It's a nice change of pace.  But I still get home from work every day and wonder where my homework is. And I totally feel guilty watching a movie without simultaneously catching up on emails and skimming articles. There's no rewards system set up. I don't say "okay, you can watch this movie because afterwards you'll read/write for four more hours." I keep pushing the play button and then stepping back and thinking "whoa, should I just sit on the couch now??" I don't actually need to be on my computer! So weird.