Quit my job today. Could NOT take it anymore. What this represents for me, though, is a full embrace of my artistic self. I can't keep trying to fit into a normal lifestyle. I am a poet, and we all know poets make terrible citizens.

:D Every minute I'm not soullessly staring off into space at work will be spent now devoting my life to creativity. I've got it. I might as well start using it. Relying on it, even. Holy shit.

I can't keep living my life in a way that makes me depressed. :) For all I know I'm perfectly capable of being bipolar and COMPLETELY functional, and all it would take is a bit of an attitude adjustment, and a little bit of real faith in my talents and abilities.

I'm gonna move to Tumblr after this. The livejournal will fall by the wayside, oh noes! In favor of new technologies, becoming a real artfag, living every moment like even breathing is important.


Obviously, my job was driving me insane. All better after tomorrow!

Starting to feel disconnected again. These whereareyougoing whatareyoudoings are driving me mad. If I knew, wouldn't I say?


The end is in sight. I can write down the remaining assignments on a single whiteboard, I'll be knocking them down piece by piece. By now I've written five poems, three memoir pieces, and countless bits of fiction, this semester, so I'd say that's fairly productive.

Pipedreaming lately, about New York, or Portland, about menswear and men. People I miss. Aspects of myself I'd like to explore. I'm working on some new hobbies, though that's not news.

Looking at my memoir piece for this week.... augh. I can't get the poetry out of my system, for one, and I can't seem to write anything long and meaningful right now, it's as though I'm so afraid of spoiling things with length that I don't even try past a few stanzas. Sucks that all my longer pieces will be coming due this month.

Zoo project... if I finish that, graduation is assured. Why do I want to try to get out of it, now???


Need to be working on my online portfolio, but have yet to find a content management system that suits my needs. Augh. I'll get there, or design one myself. Meantime been teaching myself guitar and my fingers feel wonderfully numb on the ends. :D I have tiny hands, bee tee dubs!




My poem for the week, based on the myth of Izanami and Izanagi...

They Put The Children In The Boat

Izanami framed in light
so oft trickle from the bulrush shoulders
of giants, mountains, the fog in the hills
lingers chill. And he
risen to full height, stern,
Did this do her in? Or startled,
the departure of crow flock wings
arise from her white, soft throat
his name only, even whispered, heard.
After the act the swell
of hips abated, she is full of him and deeply
tied to disaster. Full. Presumptuous,
when she has forced out
their boneless, lovely forms
like putty too long left in light
too weak to leave her,
no fixing them for hindsight and her own
forward nature. They put the children in the boat
to mercy’s end, turned away. Dazed
by his countenance, now leading man,
she almost forgets their small faces.

Haven't updated here in a while, feeling down enough at work that its about time I do so.


Life has gotten progressively weirder, as it is wont to do with me... I'm working through my fiction/memoir/poetry assignments as fast as I can, and while I'm not always totally on time my work has shown some improvement over the last couple semesters. People are pulling me aside in classes to talk to me about my work. That's an encouragement, to say the least, as I felt I was stagnating. Now I have no idea what fiction means anymore anyway.

Also, are you really allowed to bring a dog into the labs on campus? There is a girl with a little fluffy white dog here in the computer lab where I work, and I'm not pissed off cause it's just so damn cute... :D

My love life is all blowed up in my face. Aaron is waiting for me down in Texas, I suppose, which is lovely, lovely, considering all we've been through. I'm skittish about writing in this thing ever since "what we've been through", haha. But we've survived. Of a sort. I am flying down there for Halloween to go to costume parties with him, and we're both looking forward to my graduation when I can finally be free of this contrived life as a student.

I retreat back into fabulism, rather than actual journal entries about these things.

Gonna be using my writing blog in the future I'm hoping, though most of this stuff just goes on Facebook. I don't have enough of a following outside of people who know me in real life to have a digital presence anyway, though I planned on changing that if I get the chance.



Can't keep staring at my phone like this, though. Have to live life, or at least write about it.

Lesson. Lessen.


I apologize like this
for the way I am
plotting to overcome
the furrowed lines earned
on your age thirty-six brow,
subtly jagged slopes
a forehead of lonely pink hills
shiny, scarred by a crash
we’ve already spoken of, that crooked
searching branch through windshield
glass to lovely, healed-over marks.
Our age gap is more
a puddle, stepped over
once hesitation has left us
like sunburst tomatoes, overripe
open edges, panting lewdly
in the fat heat of summer.
We can say nothing. Hope
for the linger-too-long, rival
army ants, black shells march
to a collision as yet unknowing.
I’m too lazy to practise, you can tell. I lean
on something familiar, ink flag-top notes
pressed to the page over the warm thickness
of your shoulder, brush of small stitches at
the joint of arm and collar—I must have
forgotten the words—so far
from clove smoke trapped in the careless
blond root of your scalp. Relief, then, the clean rust blond
eyebrows staying handsome in-bounds,
you the artist have better concerns,
faculty meetings, the enamored, no time
to tend to errant hair while silver tweezers
slip from the sweat of your palm,
thinking you are ruined, missing the family
built as a chord. You have agreed to the trap,
to taking this show on the road, somehow
a karaoke bar is defensible to the lines
we must be crossing by now, over our tipping-
-point, crashing into one another as though
we never meant to. I will be braver for dark
and amber frothy mess in our mouths, bitter
grain, the neon backlit edge of our real voices,
our hearts boozy numb, dogged and mindless,
lose all but the learn to let go.


---
Something I'll turn in for poetry tonight. HAAAA so terrible and scattered. I am having a hard time coming up with the meanings for certain things that have happened to me now. Well, this one hasn't happened per se, but this is the scenario I came up with in response to a hastily scribbled "Modern day love stories: prison inmates and pen pals, student and teacher."


Yeaup. Prison inmates and pen pals is a pretty hilarious prompt I'm saving for later. Fun times on the way, lol.

:3 I always forget to update this thing when things are going well.

And they are, generally. I'm "functional", yay!

I'm just still in STL, working on art all summer (I haven't written anything, I feel like a fraud), getting ready to move out of this apartment. :( I will miss this place--I've lived here for the last three years, and it's really a great home. But this house may actually be too big for these cats (they keep me up all night roaming around).

I'll try to update more frequently. :3 Best place to see what's going on with me at any one time is my deviantart, or my twitter. <3


Meantime, watching tons of Disney movies to draw fanarts. These movies are hilarious, and I miss the days when Disney was less PC all the time.

Unless your kids are extremely well-adjusted, and not at all prone to the typical stress and misery of college, not remotely interested in alcohol (or at least smart enough to use it moderately), and totally healthy in every goddamn way imagineable...


Don't send your kids to Sewanee.


*shrug* That's all.

I made Dean's Liiiiist. But I'm still stuck in college. I really hate it, now, but "the economy" this and "the economy" oh no. :\

I'm down in Midland, staying with Aaron while I'm here. It's a'ight, though I wish Midland weren't in the middle of nowhere in terms of classic amenities. I do miss the city, I won't lie. Even just for the cheap prices.

Start my incomplete work with Sussman on the 18th, so I'm flying back the 17th. I miss my damn cat. Persephone (Aaron's brat) isn't any kind of Saffron, I tell you what, no matter how obnoxious my cat is. (Though to be fair, Sepphe is pretty.)

I'm just tired all the time. It'd be really awesome if I could get my medication reliably. I have healthcare from my tribe now, but for what? I can't seem to get my meds refilled in any kind of timely fashion because I DON'T live in the HELL ON EARTH that is the reservation. That's a lie, it's beautiful up there. :( I would totally live there in a heartbeat, actually, if I had family up there. I at least enjoy being near my dad, though it's a bummer that he's gone for most of my trip this time.

I dunno what to update, really. :) I'm working on my poetry and fiction and art. Doing really well in voice, too. Really nice to have lessons again, and Ian is a godsend of a teacher. Dad gave me the go-ahead to take summer lessons from him, so I imagine I'll email him about that.

Doot doot dooo. Tryin' to be mellow. <3

Because I use this thing almost solely for writing, but because I like to keep my life seperate from the things that draw directly from my life (writing)...

http://kenziewrites.blogspot.com


Yup.


I'll leave my crazy in here, though, hopefully. Just more infrequently, because I almost don't even have time to write all my crazy down.

A sense of belonging, this grandmother’s
fingers cool and light guiding back on my neck
to stairways where we rested. She spoke gentle words,
not “they made rats cute,” “this is unsatisfying,”
“what is the point?” Her motivation, purpose instilled
never embodied, copper green roofs like silver polish
dried and discarded amid brick and mortar, mortar
and pestle, buddy boy, who need no introduction,
just the clothes off your back, breath held and exhaled
to wait for results, a cola-hiss cool glass on teeth slide writhing.
And when grandmother is gone the uncles talk
of green Wedgewood, manger scenes, who gets
the house gets the debt gets the crystal and silver,
polished no more by toothbrush caked turquoise, no more talk
of grasshopper pie, her blind eyes like sea foam, her crème de menthe
sundaes and black beans and rice, no talk of the woman
or the proper way to polish, just who comes out better off.


------
Exercise today was to go FORTH, into campus, and find various elements of a poetry treasure hunt. :D Something you picked up off the ground, something from your pocket/backpack, a word donated by a fellow poet, three things of the same color, overhead conversation, found text, etc etc. Yup.

Thanks to K. Harrison for "the mortar and the pestle, buddy boy, need no introduction", a line he has been trying to work into a poem for ages. :) I might win this one yet.

Helplessly momentous, Kamala, switch-twitched by Hesse, held impotent in opulence and red in times of fair-skin fairness, gold-thread zari. You took feet to dirt like lovers might dust of the world, unafraid or jaded, his hands no more brown than your masters’ should you have one, fair hands, and Radha no, redder than Radha, but capable, willing. Catalyst and content, only so mysterious as one familiar, time-honed might be, no gopi child raised praising God, avaricious, whose father’s hands might have guided the abacus left, right, whispered sums in your small ears, countless silk threads in your pillows the trick to an understanding among men, jangle bracelets louder and more brilliant in droves. Readied for life among pleasure gardens, sedan-borne, coveted, all aware, functional by design and useful, fertile. What could you do knowing these men, seeing the prince unadorned, filthy, lovely, soul of the earth amid braid-trimmed cushions elevated? Vehicle, avatar for his ascent, you called to him in your smartest voice, your best attempt at cleverness, cunning, hollow for the role, rebellion marooned for man’s wishes ever the start of you. Buddha has to come of age. Every Krishna needing supplication, supplicating, every Radha needing Krishna. She liked nice things. Of course she’d fuck him.


----
Prose-poem. Turning it in today for workshop next week. @_@ I have a weird head. More Siddhartha.

Like slices of pomegranate slipping round one another, her lips at their opening flashing teeth like white stones, pulpy, yielding lips. Open to air the flesh breathes swollen wound vapors and the sticky sweet red in my mouth, it is enough, this ripe, this ripe for picking. Kamala, lotus-blooming woman curved like a pear, her skin peppered crisp in my teeth, she is ready, yet nothing for the tiny exhalations, quick turn from leafy to brusque, vulgar rotting. A momentary word, ripe, what instant referred to as optimal, whole, mature and ready, or even already expired. Were her lips just too sweet, salacious and off to the air in one's mouth, flash gone yielding to passive, pulpy to putrid, gutted Kamala, lips once fresh cut and juiced in red velvet gone soft, wistful, older than one would have liked but edible.

------

A poetry exercise about language. Choose one word and then freewrite for 20 minutes on that word or what it represents. My word was "ripe." Kamala is referring to Siddhartha by Herman Hesse... cause... that's where I went. I might delineate it later.

Sweetiepie

I think the cat is dying
this time. Quiet, still,
and if flies set upon her delicate ears
she’d welcome them gladly. Shit,
don’t die, you precious
fat beastie, Angelica,
sweetiepie sugarmuffin. I knelt
on the floor beside her and hovered, the way
I’d seen James do in his moments
of eyes red and weary, with my hands
unable to reach for this
cancerous thing, his
sweetiepie. I couldn’t quite manage
his saccharine adoration.

He should have some woman
to petsit for him. This cat
cannot be a substitute for a live-in
girlfriend—he isn’t that old,
though news of the loved going out
kamikaze-style brings him closer
to this. Now desperate
his live-in cat girlfriend
won’t succumb to those tumors
distended out of her yellowed neck ruff,
I watch the ripple of fur under breathing,
torn between burial and cremation, trash bags
or newspaper wrapping. Better it were a goldfish,
where there are rituals for the inevitable, expectations
of water graves and moving on.


----
I honestly think the best part of writing this was workshopping it. I was tickled to death to hear other people describing the events of this poem ("This tumescent beast thing is so inconvenient!") and realising exactly how absurd it really is (but I was glad they still felt it was believable, haha). Also, my professor's comment: "Kenzie, this is really & truly one of the -only- successful poems containing a cat that I've ever seen; they often spell certain poem-death."

Kerri Webster issocute.

But seriously, what about Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes (Thomas Gray)? XD I think this poem was probably inspired by his, on some subconscious level. Well, honestly, that one's even a little too lighthearted to have much success about the cat. Hmmm. But maybe the cats have to die in poems for things to turn out well. Heh. Still, it is probably time for me to move on from all this cat business, hee hee hee. :D

Lol, thanks K-dawgg, for providing the fodder for this. XD Poor Kenneth. <3

So that's the final version (as of this moment, "so far"). Thought I'd repost it.

And the other piece I turned in today:

---------

Andes

At first, only grey, black
intermittent and shifting of light in
sifting floor and wet, a flood
of crumpled seats into the fuselage,
tethered souls, the drip ticking of night.

Who are these voiceless wraiths, ghosts
who move through white and white
hands, either dead or my own. Their open mouths
the resentment of hunger, an avalanche
calling ceaseless white.

When did my body begin to die?
In the height of the air, the collission
or pieces of skull yielding, or now
with white fingers in my fingers
slippery, needful meat.

Or even before, in all my human weakness.


Based on Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571.

Meh. Describing the same picture, a la Raymond Queneau's Exercises in Style. (Edward Hoppe's Nighthawks)

Artistic Vision
And there in the shadows somewhere was blue, or blue-green, or the tiny moments of ochre where light pervades. Warm of yellow in the teetering corners, the impression of vinyl in reflected light seat cusions, lined in rows, below the horizon line, perspective mirrored in carmine glossy bartop and also the lines of the men beside her, recalling blue, blue-green, yellow, carmine, a triangular gaze and triangular stools and the line of the maltman's eyes on the dip of her low red neck.

Tactile
There is at first the breath of warmth, it makes the tiny hairs on your arms shift when you enter and feel the floor become springy, yielding. The top of the stool pebbles leather and sticks to the bottom of your thighs, presses redly into your hips where the dress, satin catching the tips of your fingers calloused, has now sighed farther toward your lap. And now there is the slick of the counter, the laquer grasping at your fingers, which have begun to get warm, to sweat, and now grant no purchase.

As Reflected
At first, farther, only colors. Payne's gray, the ghosts of red memory, moon yellow and indistinct, more approachably vague. Closer, still, the silvered cans, paint movements, darker and with light faces they pass, twist, gape, resolve. Upon inspection, a young man, stooping and when he dips his head he falls over the cylinder's edge to a funhouse mirror, suddenly tall and spindly ferocious. Her hot response, a she because of the red curves all coke bottles in the surface, and far away the other shape, who remains unclear.

I'm going to try. I'll use it for my daily writings if nothing else.


But for now, another of my favourites... I have yet to find someone I love more than Stephen Dunn, so I guess I just really like the guy's work.

---------------
Before the Sky Darkens
by Stephen Dunn

Sunsets, incipient storms, the tableaus
of melancholy--maybe these are
the Saturday night-events
to take your best girl to. At least then
there might be moments of vanishing beauty
before the sky darkens,
and the expectation of happiness
would hardly exist
and therefore might be possible.

More and more you learn to live
with the unacceptable.
You sense the ever-hidden God
retreating even farther,
terrified or embarrassed.
You might was well be a clown,
big silly clothes, no evidence of desire.

That's how you feel, say on a Tuesday.
Then out of the daily wreckage
comes an invitation
with your name on it. Or more likely,
that best girl of yours offers you,
once again, a small local kindness.

You open your windows to good air
blowing in from who knows where,
which you gulp and deeply inhale
as if you have a death sentence. You have.
All your life, it seems, you've been appealing it.
Night sweats and useless stratagem. Reprieves.



I think he reminds me of my dad. But my dad's poetry is far different, as much as I can tell from that brief glimpse I managed over Christmas Break. Truly earth-rocking whole-heaving.

by John Ashbery

Orpheus liked the glad personal quality
Of the things beneath the sky. Of course, Eurydice was a part
Of this. Then one day, everything changed. He rends
Rocks into fissures with lament. Gullies, hummocks
Can't withstand it. The sky shudders from one horizon
To the other, almost ready to give up wholeness.
Then Apollo quietly told him: "Leave it all on earth.
Your lute, what point? Why pick at a dull pavan few care to
Follow, except a few birds of dusty feather,
Not vivid performances of the past." But why not?
All other things must change too.
The seasons are no longer what they once were,
But it is the nature of things to be seen only once,
As they happen along, bumping into other things, getting along
Somehow. That's where Orpheus made his mistake.
Of course Eurydice vanished into the shade;
She would have even if he hadn't turned around.
No use standing there like a gray stone toga as the whole wheel
Of recorded history flashes past, struck dumb, unable to
utter an intelligent
Comment on the most thought-provoking element in its train.
Only love stays on the brain, and something these people,
These other ones, call life. Singing accurately
So that the notes mount straight up out of the well of
Dim noon and rival the tiny, sparkling yellow flowers
Growing around the brink of the quarry, encapsulizes
The different weights of the things.
But it isn't enough
To just go on singing. Orpheus realized this
And didn't mind so much about his reward being in heaven
After the Bacchantes had torn him apart, driven
Half out of their minds by his music, what it was doing to them.
Some say it was for his treatment of Eurydice.
But probably the music had more to do with it, and
The way music passes, emblematic
Of life and how you cannot isolate a note of it
And say it is good or bad. You must
Wait till it's over. "The end crowns all,"
Meaning also that the "tableau"
Is wrong. For although memories, of a season, for example,
Melt into a single snapshot, one cannot guard, treasure
That stalled moment. It too is flowing, fleeting;
It is a picture of flowing, scenery, though living, mortal,
Over which an abstract action is laid out in blunt,
Harsh strokes. And to ask more than this
Is to become the tossing reeds of that slow,
Powerful stream, the trailing grasses
Playfully tugged at, but to participate in the action
No more than this. Then in the lowering gentian sky
Electric twitches are faintly apparent first, then burst forth
Into a shower of fixed, cream-colored flares. The horses
Have each seen a share of the truth, though each thinks,
"I'm a maverick. Nothing of this is happening to me,
Though I can understand the language of birds, and
The itinerary of the lights caught in the storm is
fully apparent to me.
Their jousting ends in music much
As trees move more easily in the wind after a summer storm
And is happening in lacy shadows of shore-trees, now,
day after day."

But how late to be regretting all this, even
Bearing in mind that regrets are always late, too late!
To which Orpheus, a bluish cloud with white contours,
Replies that these are of course not regrets at all,
Merely a careful, scholarly setting down of
Unquestioned facts, a record of pebbles along the way.
And no matter how all this disappeared,
Or got where it was going, it is no longer
Material for a poem. Its subject
Matters too much, and not enough, standing there helplessly
While the poem streaked by, its tail afire, a bad
Comet screaming hate and disaster, but so turned inward
That the meaning, good or other, can never
Become known. The singer thinks
Constructively, builds up his chant in progressive stages
Like a skyscraper, but at the last minute turns away.
The song is engulfed in an instant in blackness
Which must in turn flood the whole continent
With blackness, for it cannot see. The singer
Must then pass out of sight, not even relieved
Of the evil burthen of the words. Stellification
Is for the few, and comes about much later
When all record of these people and their lives
Has disappeared into libraries, onto microfilm.
A few are still interested in them. "But what about
So-and-so?" is still asked on occasion. But they lie
Frozen and out of touch until an arbitrary chorus
Speaks of a totally different incident with a similar name
In whose tale are hidden syllables
Of what happened so long before that
In some small town, one indifferent summer.

Dear President Bush,

Lord love ya, but having grown up in "your country" (Midland) and having seen the rabid fanaticism with which people either totally support you or denounce you, I have to say I think you've hoodwinked many. It isn't as though you aren't a nice person--I get the feeling that is often what your supporters are disputing (one of the most fanatical being in my family). But the problem is, even if you were more than a nice person, were actually qualified for the job, you have given our country its worst international reputation in time.

We were never terribly well-liked by the world, but now we are known as the Crusaders, and it's offensive to your constituents who truly believe in the separation of church and state. We are not a Christian nation, much as you might like us to be. We are a nation of diversity.

I think you've taken some serious missteps here, but instead of correcting them you have simply used subversion and secrecy to continue down this path, like a frat boy might when told "no" by the woman he is inadvertently raping. I thank God every day that your last term is finally coming to a close, and the people who worship you will have some distance from unwarranted nationalism (patriotism being, in my mind, wanting the most qualified person running your country, not just a "nice guy"). Perhaps when we can look at your presidency in terms of history more will see the damage that has been wrought, the perilous position we find ourselves in now. It's regrettable to me that a good portion of the educated simply don't have a clue what the American public was thinking in electing you. Is this why you have so botched educational reform?

Thank you for being such a sweet person in office, and for giving us some of our best comedy these last eight years. I only hope you will turn your last days in office around, contribute more to the greater problems at hand, and let go of this need to impose your religious position on your own people. Just say we want the oil outright, next time (thank God there won't be one), and people will be more likely to believe you.

Cheers from a fellow Texan, hoping people will forget you were from there, too,
- K

---
I can't quite place it, but there is some kind of song playing in one of Obama's videos, and it's Yellowcard. They're Obama supporters, I guess. But I loved hearing it... haha, Obama talks about things that didn't happen before I was born, once in a while. Nice respite from McCain's weird history lessons. (history important for not repeating mistakes, but connection is pretty paramount, too)


I found WWYSTTP.com today (What Would You Say To The President). It's www.whatwouldyousaytothepresident.com Found this video, too, pretty interesting. It's a message to John McCain. Man, the political process is totally different with the internet becoming such a huge factor. I kindof agree with this guy... but I do feel bad for McCain... except it might be karma.


Obama (via my ringtone) is asking me if I'm fired up and ready to go. Lol, thanks, Obama, you're right, I do have class in fifteen minutes. :D LETS GO KNOCK ON SUM DOORS LOL

(And actually, for the first time in my life, I feel inspired by a politician to go knock on some doors--I'm making my rounds on Saturday. I've gone from total skeptic to Obama volunteer, and I think that's happening all across America. Not because politics have been reformed, but because Obama might be the right kind of politician here. I hope nothing happens in the next few months to discount that, but I think it's the closest we've come to a true moment of political enlightenment, past parties, past bullshit, in a long time.)

I have gotten to the point of being inwardly kindof scared of Republicans.

Nahh, nothing so dramatic as that, but I really start to question whether some of the teeth-gnashing conservatives (as opposed to the normal kind) are really working with reality here. There is a distinct lack of anything approaching logic or reason or frankly relevence in the Republican campaign lately. That Sarah Palin refuses to even answer questions posed in a debate (implying a response to questions) is just beyond me, but it's also a very physical, obvious sign of a tendency in the Republican campaign to focus so much on being folksy and quaint at the expense of making any sort of sense. Most people I have talked to about John McCain primarily support him for his policy about the war effort. I can't really examine that as an issue--you are either for the war or you are against it, and no amount of factfinding or reexamination is going to change anyone's minds about it. But beyond the war effort, most people actually acknowledge that McCain's policies on energy etc are just strange. The people who believe we should drill more... I don't know. Read an economics textbook. Read the current research in energy. The base fact is we should be conserving our oil now because in thirty years we are gonna need it, and it'll be hella more valuable. But there's a difficulty with doing hardcore research on the red side. It's as though they don't want to be wrong so much that they'll actually ignore all evidence to that end. I guess that makes sense... if you weren't damning the rest of us to your crazy economic and social dark ages.

That's just it... Obama, Biden, they've proved they are willing to reexamine issues, to react to new evidence. I mean, this is a broad generalization. But I do get that feeling, and there's research to back that one up from their voting records. Frankly, the Democratic ticket usually relies on logic and facts to try to prove their point. They OF COURSE use the facts they need to use, it's not all sunshine and daisies and honesty here necessarily, but there is some sense of accountability. Some sense of transparency. I got no sense whatsoever of Palin's place in this entire thing. She's a hockey mom from Alaska. Great, she's a neat person. How does that qualify her to be president? There is so much emphasis on her being an outsider, "Joe Sixpack" (this term still perplexes me)... "just like you." George Bush was a C student, and look where it got us. I don't want someone like me. I want someone smarter than me. Someone who is willing to adapt to a rapidly changing world. The Republican ticket just seems all tactics. They are emphasising their care for reform... "change" which Palin accidentally keeps using and which McCain tries to remind is "reform"... because change is needed. Everyone openly acknowledges it. What's strange to me is the avoidance of explaining what McCain's real plans are (based on EVIDENCIAL RESEARCH and not just wild bizarre ignorant assumptions about the way science, economics, business, technology works) for enacting that change rather than just attacking the "evils" of Obama's campaign.

I don't know, I have a hard time buying into anyone calling the other team evil. It's like a last resort when you don't have a real reason for being against them. What's your beef with Obama? Ooh, he's friends with terrorists. What? Who fed you that trash? It's all based on conjecture, making connections where you really can't. He was friends with some people who were friends with some people who might have been friends with terrorists. You seriously haven't had friends where you could not figure out why they were friends with that total bitch? And yet what argument is presented for Palin's appalling academic record, her rampant inability to parent even when NOT burdened by governing a town larger than 7000... She insisted condomns not be made available to people in Alaska based on her inability to seperate church and state (which despite everyone's complete fanaticism for putting the two together in a candidate is still illegal), and her teenage daughter got pregnant. I mean really? No, I'm sorry, you aren't going to convince me that couldn't have been better handled with better parenting. Heaven forbid you should talk to your kids and try to be in touch with them. Shit happens, even despite amazing parenting, accidents and acts-of-fate still happen. I'm not convinced there was amazing parenting going on here given the circumstances. You have hard evidence for Palin's decisions here. And so instead you ignore that and focus on contrived traitorism in Obama. This is getting perilously similar to a witch-hunt, or "gotcha" journalism. Enlisting the same mentality used by that bane of Sarah Palin's credibility. Nice. Stop stealing "Katie Couric's gig", guys, or at least cut the girl a check. :D I personally think she was just trying to get Palin to be a little more transparent... and she did, but there just wasn't much there, haha.

Why are people willing to give her so much slack? Oh, it's okay, she's having a bad day with Katie Couric. Uhhh... we expect our president to take care of our country and be diplomatic and well-spoken no matter what is going on. He should be educated, and well-versed in the background information relevant to the issues of today. Why are we suddenly able to dismiss that because we don't want to vote across party lines when a candidate is obviously totally unqualified? The argument: "She's just running for Vice President"... UHHHH what does the VP do? Takes over for the president plenty, even when the president isn't physically incapacitated. Did I mention there is a 1 in 3 chance of McCain dying in his first term? He's in his early 70s, but he's had face cancer five times. I am appalled that people supporting this ticket claim to be doing so in the name of country. If you love your country, shouldn't you want the best person for the job to be running it? Not saying this is Barrack Obama... can't say that at all. But it is certainly not something you should be lax about. You should take it as paramount that the person for the job be perfectly qualified. Brushing over someone's inadequacies does not make them more capable. Excusing incapability is as unpatriotic as it gets.

Cut her some slack?

No thanks, I give a shit about my country. And I'm not going to play into the fear-mongering the reds seem to thrive on. Oohhhh Obama's a terrorist! Calling people terrorists is what got us into this mess. The Nazi's could have gotten away with it, I guess, if they'd just called the Jews terrorists. God, I need a drink. I'm going to go mix myself a Mai Tai while you go check your facts on this one.

Meh, I'm not proofreading this for now. Better to keep my journal a place where I just spout off ideas whatever side they may be. XD I'll write more about it later, though, with some research too.

I think my favourite part of growing up was the moments my dad would suddenly let loose with some kind of weird bawdy song or joke. My favourite of these is "Seven Old Ladies"...



There is a great tradition of bawdy folk songs like these all recorded by Oscar Brand. He's a neat guy, real connosiour of folk music, and no one particular kind. This is Seamus Kennedy, of course, who's rendition I particularly liked. :3

Finally I get to take Hindi. :D Fun. Not sure I wrote that right, though.

I realised this morning that my birfday is the day after tomorrow. @_@

I don't think anything special will go on. I feel very much like Karan's friend in Hum Tum, who is just suddenly like "It's my birthday today," in the middle of conversation. Very sad, and awkward, and lonely.

Well, anyway, I can make references to Filmi when around Sarah at least, from Hindi class. She may be more obsessed than me. :)

I keep running into people I don't want to run into at work. :( I work in the computer lab for ArtSci, it's TO BE EXPECTED I will run into these people. But it still kinda sucks. And it isn't as though I'm going to be anything but nice to them, but I am glad I have avoided most conversation. Anyway, job is going well, I work in ArtSci M/W/Th/F, and the Art computing lab on Sun/M. So it's a good schedule, I don't have long hours just lots of little lunchtime hours crammed in between classes. I think it works, except I'm with this one guy for most of my shifts. He's nice, I just don't have any idea how to talk to him without getting an "okay......." and feeling like an idiot for even bothering. ^^;; Make it work, says Tim Gunn, so I shall make it work. Anyway, I am now a working girl, finally.

Weird conversations, weirder interactions, lately. I'm surviving. Dave and I are making progress. And that's all I feel like typing right now! :D So I shall just have to try to update more frequently these days, now that I am back home and somewhat settled.

Okay, one more thing. I've found my "online speech" has gotten very watered-down, minimal, and my syntax very simple. I think it's actually a result of being around so many international people online lately (on my webcam, on deviantart, on Gaia), such that I've adopted the syntax and sense of humor merely because it puts people more at ease. I am literally dumbing down my speech online to this silly "I'm foreign, oh, haha, I don't know things, haha" kind of talk... in an attempt to seem more humble, perhaps, or accessible. The sad part is I think it's working. @_@ It's hard to cultivate one's mind in too many directions at once, so I'm finding it hard to balance being on the level with my various sets of peers and still strive towards the Intelligencia I so crave being a part of (I probably am already, la). I miss my dad, and I wonder if I will ever meet a boy as smart as he. I don't think so. I should obviously start hanging around the Biology building more though. XD

M********r: I love this movie! Hum Tum.
El******t: istherelotsofsinging.
M********r: UMYAHAWSUMSINGEN
M********r: And happy songs and then SUDDENLY SO REAL
M********r: TOO REAL OH NO but there's another happy song!
El******t: haha

That would be Bollywood, yeah.

Best movie evar. CUUUUUUUUTE HOMG

Only thing that could make it better: Shah Rukh Khan. I think you all know where I'm going with this.