And your writer's block, it do't mean shit

So the obligatory what-I-got-for-Decemberween:

-camera
-boots
-moleskine journals
-purse
-blouse
-sweater
-e.e. cummings
-symbol book
-two decks of blank playing cards
-makeup
-sharpie 4-pack
-camera bag
-candy
-the dark knight
-card deck of cocktail recipes
-threadless shirt
-watch
-socks
-4 bottles of unibroue

um that's all i can remember for right now! i think that's it. go me. i also gave some pretty sweet-ass gifts, if i don't mind sayin' so meself. the best part is that they can all fit in a suitcase! aw yiss!

the blank cards and sharpies, by the way, are for the tarot deck that i am designing; hopefully it'll be done by january.

(what a useless post, right?)

I know this is an odd phrase, but the facts were these. These were the facts.

Let's just say that, in regard to this season of Pushing Daisies, I am suddenly both pleasantly surprised and surprisingly pleased. Though I haven't watched the entire series yet, just the first two or three and then the last few that are online at abc.com, I've found a suitable flavor to wash out the funky taste that the first impression had left in my mouth. Perhaps its because I know that it's been canceled after this season, but it looks like they've dropped the silliness and terrible CGI and added in a few nice twists and turns. Yeah, a lot of it is a bit too coincidental (I don't want to spoil anything, but I will say that the season's two themes are Family and Trust, and that they crop up in obvious but well-intended ways. However, if this series ends without resolving the problems with trust and happiness surrounding one Olive Snook, then I will be seriously upset. I was going to make a list called Five Things To Love About Pushing Daisies That Are Not Lee Pace, but it would just be Olive Olive Olive Olive Olive. In fact, as great and quirky as the show is, I don't think I would like it half as much if it didn't have Kristen Chenoweth's bubble of joy bouncing around in it.

And beside that point, what happened to Digby the dog?

But since I am in the mood for list-making, here goes:


Five Things To Love About Mad Men That Are Not Don Draper And Joan Holloway



AMC's Mad Men is no longer that sleeper hit that only the cool kids talk about liking. It's the first basic cable show to take home the Best Drama Emmy, and as far as I'm concerned, it's the best show on television. Let's be fair, though, I only watch like three actual shows that are currently running, Mad Men, Pushing Daisies, and 30 Rock. Of the three, Mad Men is the most consistently pleasing, it has two solid seasons under its belt and a promising third one to come, it doesn't seem to have any sharks to jump, and for once I've found a drama that doesn't seem to guilt me into watching another episode. Mad Men goes along at a steady pace, there are no chung chungs or cliffhangers. It's a mature show, that seems to show enough respect for its audience to earn its popularity. However, when you ask someone what's so great about Mad Men, they usually come up with something like this:

Or this:


True, those are both Hot Things. And though Mad Men could easily be balanced on the perfect chin of Don Draper or the smashing curves of Joan Holloway, they are not what makes the show great. Aside, of course, from the aforementioned pacing, writing, and plot structure (especially that surrounding Don Draper, which is safe on this side of Back Story Unbelievability), here are five things that should entice you to adore the show:



5. Roger Sterling
Where Don Draper is a womanizer and a drunk, we can forgive him. I mean, look at the guy: Don's got a face that would crumble Mt. Rushmore. Then there's his awful past, his stunted creativity....there are plenty of things about Don Draper's detached personality that would point him in the direction of philanderer. If nothing else, he does it so that he can reach out to other people, understand them, dominate them, whatever. For Don Draper, there is always something going on beneath those steely eyes.

But Roger Sterling? He is just a dirty old man. And I love him for it. Where people like Don and Pete fool around in order to feel whole or accepted, Roger Sterling does so out of privilege. He is a constant drunk, makes passes at every woman he sees, chain smokes like John Wayne, all because he is just entitled to; born into wealth that he keeps afloat by relying on Don Draper's creativity and Bert Cooper's organization. I mean, the man has a heart attack from too much horsing around with a young woman, then only three years later we see him up to the same tricks, promising to marry a 20-year old secretary once he divorces his wife. Roger is the face of the so-called Greatest Generation, but seems to hold no pride at all; a man who seems to be mostly an empty shell full of smoke and booze and lies. He is detestable at the same time as he is charming, affable an unsettling at the same time; a man who is trying hard as he can to hold on to any sort of power and privilege that he has.



4. Smoking and DrinkingAh, to live in the good ol' days. Back when Bayer was just morphine, methanphetamines weren't bad yet, and everyone–everyone–smoked like a chimney and drank like a fish. Men, women, old, young, pregnant, all of them wander through the scenes holding highball glasses and lucy strikes. Even doctors light up while conducting an examination. Now I'm not saying that I am a drunk or that I am a serious smoker, but I can't deny that the idea of living in a time where you could add that much dramatic emphasis to yourself–inside, outside, on a train, plane, bus, office, restaurant–creates a different, almost alien atmosphere, where nothing was dangerous (this is best shown in the first episode, where the Mad Men must deal with the terrible new discovery that smoking -gasp!- causes cancer).


3. Betty Draper

A beautiful face can cover a seriously tainted self, and nowhere is that more true than the slowly awakening Betty Draper, wife of Don, former model, and Perfect Homemaker. Betty, with her Grace-Kelly looks and soft, laughing voice is a character that, doubtless, every woman in the neighborhood would envy. She seems oblivious to her husband's past and his infidelities, yet we learn that she knows all about the latter. She has nervous breakdowns fueled by her inability to accept the death of her mother, with whom she had a troubled, emotionally straining relationship. She often appears to be an oblivious mother, though much of that is likely to be a sign of the times. She talks about insipid things to her neighborhood group of mothers, and at first sight seems to be elitist, vain, and prejudiced; yet bit by bit this is worn away and we can start to read the lying tone in Betty's voice, and we start to understand that, in her quest to be the perfect looking woman and the perfect housewife, she has forgotten to be herself. This one thing that ties all of Mad Men's characters together: they all have work personalities, which fit them into whatever niche needs filling, then there is the person beneath that, the personality that motivates them. Betty is a great example of this because, unlike the men who can leave work and go drink or mess around in order to blow off a little steam, Betty has to work full-time as Mrs. Donald Draper–which is why her breakdown is all the more sudden and self-destructive.

2. The 1960s
The Swingin' 60s or whatever you want to call them are a tough decade to record on film. Too often do writers or directors try to Forrest Gump the whole deal, having characters in Vietnam and marching in Alabama while also being involved in, say, the Space Race and the counterculture. Mad Men succeeds because it avoids stereotyping the 60s, presenting instead what seems to be a purely honest portrayal of the early years of the decade. They don't go the predictable route and create a Feminist or an African-American character who shakes things up and changes people's hearts. Even though that was happening at the time, no doubt, that doesn't mean that every company was affected by it. In the first season the Sterling-Cooper staff is assigned to work on Nixon's campaign against Kennedy, no one questions it or stands up for JFK. Salvatore, the show's main homosexual character, is closeted and seems to be insistent on staying that way, even when a young co-worker at S.C. comes out in the break room. Counter-culture of any kind is almost completely absent. The only exception is a young Bohemian artist with whom Don has an affair in the first season. Though Don meets with her friends and fellow bohos, he takes nothing from their movement, scoffing at her boyfriend's droll "Would you like to join us? We're going to get high and listen to Miles." and their insistence on pegging him as part of "the machine". He laughs at their hopeless radicalism and leaves, content to go back to his comfortable life inside the machine. Aside from the general treatment of 60s society, Mad Men stays almost photographically true to the look of the era, down to the button. Men tend to be a little more round, and women are more curvy. Glasses are thick, hair is slick–there are no pratfalls to draw in a modern audience, Joan Holloway looks like a sex symbol despite being more curvaceous than Jessica Alba, and with good reason. Mad Men re-creates the 1960s but doesn't re-imagine it so that it can sell out to any 21st ideal, it is what it is.



1. Pete Campbell
Pete Campbell is the perfect secondary character: at first he seems like nothing more than a piece of gum stuck on Don Draper's shoe sole, part of the secondary What Everyone Else In The Office Is Doing plotline. But then time goes on and you start to see that Pete Campbell is so much more than that, he is a wad of gum with a consciousness and a desire to do right but the immaturity to keep him from knowing how. That's Pete Campbell: he is the ultimate man-child. Not the Rogen-esque "I don't want to stop playing video games and be responsible and I like poop jokes" sort of man-child, but a more complex and sympathetic sort: Pete is a little boy in man's shoes, and he is desperately trying to get his feet to grow out enough to fit them. Out of the three main male characters–Don Draper, Roger Sterling, and himself–Pete is the only one not to have fought in a war. He is a newlywed and his infidelity with Peggy is not out of desperation like Don's or Roger's, but out of a loneliness that turns into love. Pete carries a persona of the perfect man, the slick salesman with a buttery voice, but when he speaks candidly–to his family, or to Peggy–his voice is soft and almost raspy, as though he is tired of talking. He is a bundle of male insecurities and immaturity, which is what you could say for a lot of people except that Pete, like Betty Draper, rarely has an outlet for himself. He hardly has the chance; Pete is not completely immature, much of his stuntedness comes from a lack of control. He is alway under the thumb of someone else; be it his father, mother, wife, boss, father-in-law. The only person who could have that sway over him and doesn't exploit it is Peggy, who seems to be the only person that Pete cares about. At first, of course, you hate Pete Campbell. You hate his blue suit and his slick voice, his perfect hair and boyish good looks. But then you get it: under all that façade is just a little boy who wants to be a strong and independent man, but is crushed too often by the feet of everyone in his life. His struggle, though less pronounced, is much like Betty's, and I secretly watch every episode for his sake.

Christmas cleaning! Yuletide readings! Fa la la la la oh dear I'm boring.

I changed around the side bar, mostly for my own benefit. I feel all constructive all of a sudden. Also, I get to change my books into books that I don't really have to read, because except for one upcoming easy final, this semester is finito.

Anyway I've been getting in the Christmas mood lately. Well, that and I move out of this lovely hell-house on Tuesday...I swear to gosh, I have an awful landlord who seems to enjoy breathing down people's necks, and thankfully I'm getting out. I mean it's gotten so bad that I'm afraid to make myself dinner because he's always down there, ready to passively-aggressively insult me for, like, not cleaning the lint trap in the dryer. So I just stay in my room and make tea and eat cliff bars and brood. So, long story short: lots of brooding.

Don't ever live with your landlord. Just don't. He walks around in my room when I'm not here.

So that's getting over with. I'm moving further away from school, near Commercial Drive, in the most adorable basement suite (I know, right?) with only one other person. I will start cooking full meals! Of course, this means that I have to get packed up and get most of that done tomorrow, since people are coming to look at the room Saturday and Sunday. It will be fun, though! Hasta la vista, butt-for-brains.

Oh, right, the books. Well I went around thriftin', which for me means shopping for clothes but buying books. Bought my own copy of The Awakening, and then got O! Pioneers by Willa Cather which so far is lovely, Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco which is pretty good so far but like smarter than I will ever be, but I like the language, and Lady Chatterly's Lover by D.H. Lawrence, which is apparently tittilating. That, and I'm re-reading The Bell Jar since it's in my Feminism class next semester, and it would be nice to find out what it was that blew my mind so much when I was 14. To be frank: The Bell Jar was integral to my coming of age. It was my "literature can be beautiful" and "god I want to write like this". It's probably what got me started into seriously considering English Literature for formal study, and one that I'll throw on my list of things that made me want to be a writer more. But honestly, I don't remember much of it.

On top of those I've got Tess of the D'Ubervilles, which I picked up at a book sale at school (fill up a bag for five bucks!), where I also got a collection of Transcendentalist essays, a history of the American South from 1800 to the Civil War, and a history of the American Fronteir. Oh, and I'm still going through Dorothy Parker's short stories.

Plus my mother is lending me Campbell's Hero With A Thousand Faces and V by Thomas Pynchon.

And I can spend two weeks of Christmas Break reading as much of that list as I possibly can. I can feel in my bones that next semester's gonna be reading-heavy, and I want to get as much me-reading time in as possible, along with me-writing time, and sleep. And work.

Man it's like I don't ever want friends.

Oh and I started working on another writing project. What.

That effing movie

Twilight

Okay, look. I know that I say, sometimes, that I'm open-minded, and that I'm glad to hear everyone out, and blahbitty blah. But look: With this movie, I am a hater. H8RZ. Here's what I remember about it:

Opening scene: Shitty narration by Kristen Stewart, who is playing the outstandingly bored Isabella Swan. Yes, that is her name. Shitty narration tells us that baby Bella has to go to Pissbucket Town, Washington, to live with her father.

Things to know about the town: small population, everyone eats in a diner. Her father, who is also boring (THAT'S where she gets it) spends his time drinking knockoff PBR and brooding about fuck knows what. Bella goes to school, where she tries to be alone and aloof yet somehow attracts the biggest collection of Cool High School Kid Stereotypes. They talk like gangstas, they talk about the school paper, and they worry about prom. And they think that Bella, whose character would make a three-toed sloth look like fucking Hamlet, is the greatest shit that has ever landed in their rainy, lonely, grey town, and all the men decide to call her their "home girl" and ask her out, though her obvious superiority and beauty makes them nervous.

Oh, by the way: even though everyone talks about how Pissbucket, WA is nothing but rainfall, you don't see a single umbrella or windshield wiper in the whole movie. This in itself is a perfect metaphor for Twilight: it always looks like either the sun is going to shine through or a torrential rain is gonna fall, but in the end it's just grey. Grey. Grey.

Enter the Cullen family. These are a group of "foster children" who go to Pissbucket High. They are all pasty white, keep to themselves, don't eat, and don't ever show up to school when the sun is out.

See, they're Vampires. And no one has clued into that in the least.

All the Cullens are paired up with each other, except for one, because he makes weird faces and looks too feminine. His nom de lame is Edward. All the women want him but he denies their advances. Then he meets Bella in Bio and Barfs (almost). Bella is moderately insulted by this and vows to confront Eddy Blahzzard about it, but he doesn't show for, I dunno, like a week. Maybe two.

Meanwhile some dude gets killed by what everyone thinks is an animal, BUT since we saw it happen we know...it was a bunch of vampires! Thanks, movies!

So Edward shows up again and he and Bella spend a whole class biting their lips and gazing at each other, then he runs off for no. Reason. At. All. Then Bella plugs in her iPod and goes to her truck (why did she need the iPod if she's just gettin in her car? Did it take that long to walk from class?) but she catches sight of Edward and stares at him so fucking hard that she doesn't notice the big fucking van that comes careening around the corner of a parking lot (parking lots full of people: the perfect place to take a curve at 55), so Edward saves her and then runs off, though really if he hadn't been staring back at her maybe she could have stepped out of the way. But there's Bella for you: since she is a female protagonist, she must be helpless and completely in the hands of this passive agressive douchebag vampire.

Anyway some boring shit happens and Edward's a total dick but she's still drawn to him (cause that's how love happens; am I right, ladies?), then she and the Sweet Valley High gang go to the beach (cause they surf more than just the web! ZING!). She asks Edward to come but he doesn't show, and this oddity is explained by her Native American Buddy. You know who the Native Americans are, because they all have long hair. So anway, the Vampires don't come to the beach cause the indians don't like them.

Why don't the indians like them? Because the local tribe is descended from WOLVES.

Do you think that Stephanie Meyer ever met a Native American? I mean, aside from the weird Mormon version of them (ZING!).

So these wolf-natives (spoiler: apparently they turn out to be WEREWOLVES! OMG, so creative! Bite me.) met the Cullen clan like a hundred years ago, when the Cullens were dressed like scenesters circa 2002 (seriously), so the wolf-man-people-clan told them to piss off, which they did.

So Bella does some Detective Googling and goes to Port Notsuchashittytown to get a book on Native Legends so that she can get to the bottom of this whole whodang. (Hey Bella: he's a vampire and he's totally a dick) When she leaves the bookstore she gets almost-raped by about seven guys, and can't do anything to help herself until Eddy shows up in his silver Prius to kick some rapist ass. He takes her to dinner, they get kinda close, then on the way home find out that another dude got attacked by an "animal". Bella talks to her dad, Capt. Boring 'Stache and he, knowing that two middle-aged men who work in big abandoned shipyards have been killed, gives some pepper spray to his seventeen year old daughter for when she is in high school.

Another bout of all-night Googling for the truth, and Bella suddenly realizes: Teh Edward is a Vampire! Holy fucking jesus balls! She confronts him about that, and he agrees that yes, he is among the Undead. Or rather, the Uninteresting. In order to show her what a monsterous, disgusting, beastly being he truly is in order that she might understand his godless nature, he rips open his shirt.

Why don't vampires go out in the sunlight? Well people usually think that this is because they will burn up or turn to dust and that it will kill them. "You dummies," Says Stephanie Meyer, "It's because they are made of sparkles!"

Glitter Vampires. Be very afraid.

Edward goes on to tell Bella that he is drawn to her and vants to suck-a her blood, cause she smells crazy good. Bella thinks this is a reason to be BFFs, or at least dating. They hang out in the forest. They hang out at school. They hang out at Edward's family's house, where everyone is dating everyone, which is not in the least bit weird. They listen to what Stephanie Meyer must have found when she googled "classical music". Edward jumps around with Bella on his back, like he's a mix between a koala and a monkey.

Then one night Edward gets into Bella's room and they start makin' out. But he stops himself before he gets too into it...after all, what if he tries to kill her?

This is what I hated about the movie (and I can presume the book as well) the most. Everyone knows that vampires are sexy; after all, Dracula was just a big shiny metaphor for Victorian sexual frustration. Put that in the hands of an uber-Christian, and what do you get? A thinly veiled message of celibacy. Because if I kiss you too much, I might want to bite you (fuck you)! And that would mean death! It is bad and we should not do it. But hey, talking is great. Just chatting about, you know, Debussy and, like, not sex. Sex is bad. Can't we just be happy without it? I hope so. I'm sure we can, so long as we love each other. Without touching.

Look, I got no problem with people wanting to wait until marriage or whatever. But don't take the ultimate symbol of human lust and sexuality and make is some wimpy guy who's happy just watching you sleep. Every night. Without you knowing it.

So then the vampires have a baseball game for no apparent fucking reason. So that they could play a Muse song? So that they could show that they are strong and fast? Baseball? What's wrong with Vampire Soccer? Or Vampire Wii? Or what about Vampire Polo? Shit, I'd love that. But baseball is just a weird choice, especially when everyone, even the bad vampires (you know they're bad cause they're dour) who show up seem to agree that playing baseball will just be the best way to end a day.

But oh no! One of the bad vampires, Shirtless, gets a whiff of Bella's shampoo and decides that he wants to kill the heck out of her. Begin the dullest chase scene ever, ending in a ballet studio in Pheonix (guess what: Vampires DO have reflections oh jolly), where Bella gets bitten, Shirtless gets killed (suprisingly easily), Edward has to suck the poison out of Bella's bite and almost loses is but he holds back from drinking her blood because he is BETTER THAN THAT. Bella survives with a broken leg (what?) and they go to prom.

At prom Bella is all "hey I wanna be a vampire so's I can like get all sexy with you and never have to leave you and the way you and your wimpy family act it doesn't seem THAT bad anyway" and Edward's like "you don't want that." And Bella's like "yes Edward you are right I don't. Please make all my decisions for me."

The fucking end.



Why are so many tweenies eating this shit up like it's chocolate? It's a terrible representation of vampires (I know, there aren't that many good representations of them anyway but still). It's got Rag Doll Brainless Bella Swan as its female protagonist, hell, as its narrator, and her obsessive and controlling boyfriend who she can't do girlfriend-boyfriend things with. In a perfect world, even if this crap had been published, it wouldn't have gotten much further than an insignificant spot on the YA section in your local B&N. You know, I actually saw somewhere online someone was like "hey, if you like Twilight you should check out Dracula by Bram Stoker", and I wanted to smack them with a Moleskine notebook. Maybe you should check it out? Dude. That's like "hey, if you liked The Da Vinci Code maybe you should check out Paradise Lost.

In conclusion: I laughed my cruel little heart out at the bad acting and thin plot of Twilight, but avoid liking it or giving it any merit. In the meantime, somebody find me a decent vampire yarn.

And no, not Anne Rice or Anita Blake.

Mid-Studying Post-Election Political Commentary

For the love of everything, no.

I mean, I thought that one of the nicest things about that beautiful sound defeat of Ms. Palin and that old guy almost three weeks ago was that it would shut her up and cart her back to Alaska, where she can make mooseburgers and go hunting with Maurice Minnefield and dream of Chris In The Morning. Like everyone in Alaska does.

But talk shows? Movies? Oprah? Come on, media. Leave it alone. Sarah Palin was a bad idea, was one of the reasons that so many independents left the Republican ticket, and one of the most embarassing examples of what the old Conservatives like to call the new Conservative values, oh, and also feminism.

Does anyone sort of snort when McCain and the others call Palin's policies and so on "fresh" or "new"? I mean, say what you will, but she stands for the same shit that they've always stood for. And a New Conservative is an oxymoron. What, are you going to change even less than you already were?

And is what Sarah Palin does now really count as "Politics", or is she just a celebrity? The folksy Paris?

To her credit, I have seen a few interviews with Palin, and it seems like the first time that she's being candid, which makes me feel almost sorry for her. I mean, if she's that kind of honest when it's just the local Anchorage station, how much scripted crap did they have to shove down her throat when she got on the ticket? Though the interviews tell me that she's informed, more than she seemed before, she still comes across as a bit too small-town folksy, she gets the facts but doesn't seem to turn them into ideas.

But hey, Coulter loves her. I know, right? Nothing says "you will do well" like an endorsement from Ann "The Man" Coulter.

I'm being mean.

At least I've seen Palin back down from that stupid hockey pitbull persona that irritated me so much, and just admitted that they lost because people wanted change and she wasn't it. She seemed more tired than irate, more normal than the conservative messaiah that so many claimed that she was.

So just back off. Leave her alone. At this point I don't care if she's just like me, or the Republican me, or if her doctor is Joel Fleishman, or if she's the Zodiac Killer, or if Bristol actually got an abortion and they were just faking that life thing. Look; she's not going to run for president in 2012, she's not going to try for Ted Steven's absent senate seat. She's going to finish her term(s) as Governor, maybe become and advisor or some shit, and just disappear from the national spotlight. That's what's best for everyone; even if she stays around, doesn't it seem that this candidness that she's showing, this sudden understanding of what's going on without stumping, won't that make it obvious that she was being molded by McCain and Co., that there really was (har har) something going on with that campaign?

There's my two cents. Man I wish that I was able to write essays in my sleep, because I have two to write, one tomorrow and one for Thursday. God, one week of school left. Also, one week (exactly) until my birthday. I found out that my family is coming to visit for that weekend, so I'm starting to look forward to it, because oh my god they are taking me shopping in Seattle. Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

Les Histoires D'Henri Ennui

I think I will seriously make up a character named Henri Ennui, to be my French Existentialist asshole guy. Go me. He would sit outside cafés and smoke cigarettes and say stupid French things like

"Paris, q'est-ce que c'est? Cette un ville....des images....et des rèves....et du mort."

Which are usually the words that are used by English-speaking people who want to sound fancy, so they always title, like, their Myspaces with something relatively francophone, like "Elizabeth De La Belle Epoque", which doesn't exactly make sense next to a picture of her forehead and some eyeliner, to the tune of Fall Out Boy.

I stopped using Myspace. So glad.

Anyway, the reason that I have been thinking upon ennui, is because I am experiencing a certain brand of it:

Birthday Ennui: noun. The experience of disinterest, dissatisfaction, or relative boredom in regard to the observation or celebration of one's birthday. See also: Anniversary Apathy, Christmas Carelessness, Fuck The Fourth Of July.

So that's where I am, right now. Apathetic and self-effacing.

So I'm sitting in American Poetry class the other day, and the prof sticks me as the "leader" of the "group" that's supposed to discuss how William Carlos Williams uses American history in this one part of Paterson. Okay, fine. She always lands me with that crap, because she thinks that I'm, like, the ambassador for the United States at UBC. Anyway, this girl joins the group, claiming to be an American Studies major, and she starts railing on how crappy the U.S. is. Now, usually I can take that sort of talk from the Canucks, seeing as they always rag on the States (to which the American response has always been a bored "whatever."), but this was only, literally, TWO days after the election. So she could have cut some slack for the Capitalist Behemoth Of The World or whatever they call it up here, but no; it's all materialism, how we hate paying taxes and detest socialized medecine, how we're impolite and gross and smoke too much and cause problems for everyone else and don't ever listen to good solid advice and enjoy bombing like the world is out piñata blah blah blah. So I mention that FDR made some of the best advancements in Western socialism but was still an American president, and that Teddy was cool too, to which she replied

"Teddy Roosevelt? Oh, I didn't like him. I mean, we just see him as rude."

To which I replied:

"Yeah, we call that badass."

Apparently there's no distinction, apparently no matter what you do, being a Rough Rider who started the Bull Moose Party, held meetings on hunting and safari trips, inspired the Teddy bear and gave everyone the visual that, while you are whispering sweet nothings in their ear you are grasping a two by four behind your back is just plain rude behavior. No. That is badass.

There's something too soft about Canada. True, they have fought bravely in both the World Wars and helped to win them both (my great grandfather was in the Somme, my grandfather on Omaha beach, both were from Ontario), but the general idealism of the country is to speak softly and not make eye contact so as to not seem indimidating. Come on, guys! Pick it up! I mean, there's no point in being an arrogant warmonger who would rather buy some uranium than buy some, like, food for poor people; but still, a land with no spine is not a land. It's like a sponge land. You just absorb all the other cultures and they mesh together, but you're one of those sponges that doesn't have the steel wool on the back so you just have to wait until the scum is really soggy to wipe it off. I took some pain killers, this doesn't make sense.

But Canada! Grow a pair! A big pair!

I need sleep or drink. Or drink and sleep. What?

Dear Conservative America: Do The Worm!

Stop being so sweet and nice. It's making me sick. I want to laugh in your face but all I can get out is a "yeah...well...we all have to work together...."

Bitches, we ain't gotta do that 'til January. You have like 70 days to be confused and sad and upset. Go back in time and talk to me, four years ago. It shouldn't be that hard. Go on, it's okay. Just don't stop me from being proud cause you're all sugary and nice and crap. Ugh. I know that I wouldn't be happy if McCain won (can you SEE the unmentionable woman's face if that had happened?), so stop the show and start freaking out and going "oh god what happened to our country oh god they beat us oh god there is no hope, cause we got out butts beat by a black dude and a bunch of kids, oh no oh no...."

I will not be denied satisfaction. Time to read the Coulter Blog and pretend that she's the floor.

Yes We Can

And Yes We Did. And Yes We Will Do, for the next four years, eight years, how ever long it takes, to reach that more perfect union, to advance ourselves and to make our country-our world-a better place for us and our children and theirs. It is not just about Barack Obama, or Joe Biden, or the race against John McCain. It was about change, and hope, and moving forward and never going back. Now we can hope without cynicism, dream without the false sense or "realism" that says that there will always be bipartisanship and bigotry in the way of greatness. That is not Us anymore. We The People proved that we can be strong, and We The People will be, together, moving forward.

Um yes

originally posted on Cute Overload

This is it. Don't get scared.

Oh god oh god oh god.

It's tomorrow. Hell, it's practically today. I doubt that I'll be able to sleep or focus. I just want it to be over. And I want....I want to be happy. I want to be happy and cry so damn hard and know that no matter what happens now, at least I've got this hope. At least I've got this...

More on Wednesday.

Twenty days means a huge dump

Since I last blogg'd. Dear lord. Too much has been happening: school, not having money, owing money, maybe getting a job, friend issues, family issues, and good lord in he'un, the ELECTION.

Like, I'm about to lose sleep over it. How will I focus for school next Tuesday? Five days. FIVE days and it'll all be over, over two years of campaigns that rounded out eight years of pain and misery and GOP cronyism. And Obama is ahead. Knock on wood, but he is ahead by 7% in the poll of polls, and right now, as they all stand, even if McCain gets all the states that are "swing" states, he would still lose to Obama by nearly 30 electors. Or points. Whatever they're called.

I mailed in my ballot last week. It was then that I really started to understand what Obama meant when he said that the election wasn't about him. In the same sense, it wasn't about John McCain either. It's about voters–it's about people–making up for the mistakes that they (or those who were able to vote in 2000 and 2004) had made. Obama might be the face of the change that I believe in (as McCain and the other candidates are for what they believe), but he isn't the heart and soul, he isn't the blood and brains that have kept the ticket running, that have made us all start running towards this final end. Barack Obama isn't the one who's lining up in the rain at early polling stations, nor is he volunteering and getting people registered. That's us, that's We The People, right there. An election is really only won if everyone who can contribute does. And I've done my part, and I'm proud, and when Barack Obama stands in front of the Capitol building in January, the chief justice won't be swearing in just one man, but millions of men and women who stood up and did their part and wanted change.

E Pluribus Unim, motherfucker. Also, no matter what happens, it's gonna beat the everloving crap out of the Canadian election, which you probably don't know happened.

Speaking of Canada, $1 USD=$1.30 CAD. Har har.

I'm sure that no matter what happens next Tuesday (dear god, Tuesday) there will be plenty of beer, and I'm thinking of splurging on at least a few Sam Adams or Rogue Ales, to get me in that American spirit. And I am thinking.....KFC? Something trashy. An early Thanksgiving. Or the worst day of my life. It's like the anticipation of Christmas, except that you have to wait all day to get your presents, but you don't know if they'll be presents or, like, shrapnel bombs? Or waiting to get married when she hasn't actually said "yes" yet, even though you're still having the ceremony and everything.

So the potential job? Transcribing and editing texts for an online archive that is accessible for the visually impaired. The potential pay? $16.16/hour, 10 hours per week. That's about $600 per month, which will help out not only rent, but livelihood as well. I'm 90% sure that it's mine.

What are we reading?
Chaucer: The Legend of Good Women
Children's: Coraline/Neil Gaiman
Poetry: Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction/Wallace Stevens
Ovid: Venus and Adonis/Shakespeare
Film: Treasure of the Sierra Madre

All pretty good, and I'm even starting to tolerate Poetry, thanks to Wallace Stevens being so damn good. Check it:

You must become an ignorant man again
And see the sun again with an ignorant eye
And see it clearly in the idea of it.

Never suppose an inventing mind as source
Of this idea nor for that mind compose
A voluminous master folded in his fire.

What else? My birthday is in a month. 32 days, to be exact. Numerology tells me that this year, or at least this birthday, will bring me love. I hope that will come true. And, because I love talking about these things, here's what I want for my birthday:

• This watch
• A pocket-sized Moleskine notebook, ruled
• Some Faber Castell black fineliners
• A sketchbook, 9x11, preferably heavy paper
• A soft, warm scarf
• A set of charcoal pencils

The socks are just a tag-on, since I have, like, no socks. I would also adore a bottle of wine or beer, but that's not the long-lasting love that one wants on one's birthday. Also, I feel as though I deserve a particularly good one, since the last two birthdays that I spent with friends were in Versailles and Avignon. So. Life owes me one.

And I really want that watch. I'm bored to death with the one that I have, and it looks so classy and it's a Fossil, and I adore Fossil more than anything, unless someone out there wants to get me something from the Balon Bleu de Cartier collection, which I would not sniff at in the least.

Halloween, in Canada, apparently means fireworks. The plan so far is for me to go as Huck Finn.

PoliBLARGH

Two new idiomatic expressions, one which is highbrow.....and one which is not.

The Highbrow

You're talking to your friend, and they describe doing something. Let's say, "I'm gonna meet Mona and then we're riding to school."

You answer: "Do you mean that in the regular sense or in the John Donne sense?"


*the joke: John Donne, a contemporary of Shakespeare, was famous for his ridiculous double entendres (in fact he most likely invented the double entendre in it's modern form) in his poetry. Most famous is his use of "little death" as an orgasm (true, that's what it means in French, but whatever, it's dirty). One can always imagine John Donne standing around a group or courtiers and nudging the guy next to him whenever the ladies walked by, jabbing his elbow into the man's sides and going "eh? EHH?" In short, saying something in "The John Donne" sense means that you are taking the active verb out of the phrase and replacing it with a form of "fuck"*

Regular sense: Yesterday I stayed at home and studied for my chem final.
John Donne sense: Yesterday I stayed at home and fucked for my chem final.



The Lowbrow

You are discussing one of any various topics with a friend, and they bring up a specific item that annoys you. Let's say:

"Hey, have you seen Seven Years in Tibet?"

And you reply: "Seven years in Tibet? More like Seven Years in BLAAAARGH."

*the joke: people often use this form of sentence with the last word replaced by some sort of pun or jab. This time, we replace it with a barfing noise.*

Variations: If you think that it sounds better, or if the word has a "Mc" or "Mac" in it, go ahead and just put the barfing in the last syllable.
Example:

"Hey, I don't pay attention to the actual world, so I think I'll vote for John McCain."
"John McCain? More like John McBLAAAAARGH."


And while we're on the subject of John McCain: Boy oh boy am I sick of the whole "Liberal Media Gotcha Journalism" tripe that they're trying to sell.

First of all: they're slamming McCain/Palin for, like, lying. Repeatedly. About things that they should not lie about.

Second of all: they get on Obama's ass about it, too, and Biden's. But hey, you know why they don't do that so often? Because they check their facts instead of pulling them out of their asses.

Third of all: Come on, guys. If Obama ever pulled out a stunt like lying, or being immersed in Lobbyists, or picked a completely inexperienced runningmate, had a wife who had been addicted to Vicodin, a daughter who was pregnant at 17, or was endorsed by a preacher who claimed that the Holocaust was God's work, he would be out of the race. Hell, he would have to leave the country or be dragged out on a rail. But John McCain and Sarah Palin have been pulling out these exact things, and yet they remain, hell, they are the head of one of the largest political parties in, like, the WORLD. If the media had really maintained the so-called "liberal bias", then there would be no McCain/Palin. Look at what happened to John Kerry, and then tell me that the media is liberal. Knock it off, Republican Strategists.

Do you ever think that, between elections, the Republican Strategists and the Democratic Strategists get together and play risk, not to have fun, but to sniff out each other's weaknesses and poison their brandy? I do.

They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm

I have never desired to keep it secret that I adore Dorothy Parker. As sad as her life was, as atypical and un-tortured as her writing could be, she was the wittiest wit of her time, and I am in love with it. I'm heading to Portland this weekend, and if there's anything that I'm going to buy at all, it will be a new copy of the Portable Dorothy Parker, since mine was lost to stupidity long ago. To tide me over, here are a few Parkerian zingers:

"A little bad taste is like a nice dash of paprika."

"I don't care what is written about me so long as it isn't true."

"I've never been a millionaire but I just know I'd be darling at it."

"If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be a bit surprised."

"Well look at you–a rhinestone in the rough!"

"She speaks seven languages and she can't say 'no' in any of them."

"If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to."

"Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves."

"I'm never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don't do any thing. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don't even do that any more."

"The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity."

"This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."

"She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B." (speaking of Katherine Hepburn on Broadway)

"That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment."

from a dream:

"...And only then will the world be ruled by men of no god's choosing"

Shame Shame Shame on me

So I've started to do a blog that updates regularly with Webcomics, since I don't have a life that's really any better than making jokes at my computer.

Literary Vaudeville

So there you have it. There's only one comic up there right now, cause I'll update usually around 12AM PST on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. You know; because MWF is a lame update schedule. Possibly could change to M-F, depending on how much I get done. Currently, I have 15 already set up to go, just not sure where we'll go from there.

PEACE.

A few short things that I've come to like:

I do not find peace, and I do not want to make war,
And I fear and I hope, and I burn and I am of ice,
And I fly above the sky and I lie on the ground,
And I grasp nothing and I embrace the whole world.

Someone has me in prison who neither sets me free nor locks me in,
Neither keeps me for himself nor undoes the bonds,
And Love does not kill me and does not unchain me,
He neither wants me alive nor draws from the tangle.

I see without eyes, and I cry without a tongue,
And I long to die and I ask for help,
And I hate myself and love another.

I feed on pain, weeping I laugh,
Death and life displease me equally.
I am in this state, Lady, because of you.

-Petrarch; from Rime Sparse

"It is not too much to say that whoever wishes to become a truly moral human being (and let us not ask whether or not this is possible; I think we must believe that it is possible) must first divorce himself from all the prohibitions, crimes, and hypocricies of the Christian church. If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.

-James Baldwin, from The Fire Next Time

And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.

-Carl Sandburg, from "Chicago"


No matter what I'm reading, usually, it's good to be reading again.

Last night, in a fit of boredom and self-pity and sorrow, Amanda and I decided that, instead of talking about how lonely we are and how little we get out, that we should go somewhere and get drunk. We went to the Whip, an expensive yet delicious bar on Main and Broadway. Two whiskey sours and five beers between the three of us, with nothing but a slice of pizza per stomach, was enough to knock us out of the funk we were in, and it ended up being a good evening, in a sad sort of way. Of course, I left my credit card at the bar and had to come back and get it today, and I have a tiny bruise on my head from when, at 5 AM after getting some water, somewhat concussed myself and ended up passed out on a floor that I didn't even know was my own. Whoda thunk. I missed having blackouts, it brought out the best in me. Really. All those times of waking up in a pool of my own nose-blood, stars dancing in front of me, wondering if I was, perhaps, blind, or that my spine had given way and that's why I felt no pain. Searching the room with my hands, dragging my blankets to the floor with me because that was the most comfortable place I could possibly be, waking up in the morning in a tangle of sheets and drool to discover that during my time of no remembering, I had either placed or answered several phone calls from numbers I hadn't recognized, and also had the time to sketch a pretty accurate looking bird in charcoal that had since been spread all over my face, wondering how I had gotten into my room, because I was pretty sure that I was still in England, then exclaiming out loud "I didn't throw up at all!" before spilling water all over my front as the hand that held the water glass had fallen asleep due to me sleeping on the floor.

I've become better and better at handling hangovers. If they're hard alcohol, well, not so much; but still, I'm not knocked out or sick for a whole day. I wake up with a headache, put on my sunglasses if it's too bright and take a few Advil, and by the afternoon I'm right as rain, with the occasional ringing in the ears.

Now I know I have work to do, but I'd much rather write. Write what? No clue. I'll get back to you on that one.

Done done done done done done done done done done done done done done done done done done done done....

With chapter one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one.



And here's the first paragraph:

"His mouth was full of the salt in the air, he could feel sand rolling around in his shoes. The sun was violently bright, but no one else seemed to mind; they walked about with wide hats and dark glasses, lips held open in laughter. he hated all of them, simply for annoyance. It was early May, and Atlantic City was wearing short pants and a cap, while Michael Shea was wearing a gray suit with a black tie. He could feel his shirt sticking to his armpits. The air was damp and hard to breathe. His face was flushing. He was miserable."

Yeaaaaah, boy. FINISHED. And satisfied. And FINISHED. Now I only have like....thirty-eight more to go. But seriously. HA. Screw you, actual schoolwork.

Splits apart like a jaw, like an eye

"Um, I'm thinking...that a lot of my internal conflict and malaise comes from the tension between the life i ACTUALLY want to live, and the stories I'd love to be able to tell?"

Thanks for that, Dino Comics. Thanks for saying what's true inside of me.

Writing is going so slow. It's like I care, but I get so distracted. I need, for instance, to not talk to people online, or be connected to the internet. And I know these things are bad for me, but I do them. Why? Why did I waste a whole weekend reading Anne Of Green Gables and Carl Sandburg and watching videos of Disney World attractions and episode after episode of "30 Rock" and "Carnivàle" and a little of the first season of "Mad Men"?

Okay, the books were for class credit. But the shows? The endless WikiHopping through articles about the films that I'm watching this year? Damned internet. Distraction.

Oh and I saw Okkervil River and it was amazingly good, and I feel like I'm five years younger and freaking out as a fan, but seriously, Black Sheep Boy changed the way that I listen to music and look at storytelling, and a pretty good portion of how I look at life, so when I was standing there in that crowd of Vancouver Hipsters and trying my best to be cool, I decided, fuck it, I love this band. So I was all crazy and singing along, like I was atmy very own version of what it must be like going to a Miley Cyrus show, only this cost twenty bucks and I had beer and I almost cried at certain moments.

Suck it, Hipster Vancouver. Stand there looking cool and talk about your bicycles and your organic choices and your cigarettes and what the next tattoo of a bird you're going to get, and enjoy the fact that you'll never be able to really enjoy something like a concert, because enjoyment comes from the heart, and you don't want to do that, because then you wouldn't be ironic. Go break up with your girlfriend and drink fake absinthe, go drop out of school and work at American Apparel and blow your money on shit you don't need. Call yourself a socialist, even though you're a cog in capitalism, and it gets you off.

That rant went nowhere. I need to get back to work.

Also, my American Poetry professor keeps pissing me off. And my landlord is insane. And there's not much I can do to help myself in either situation.

But I'm going home in about three weeks and can do lots of wonderful things. Swan Lake!

With a hey na nonny and a hot cha cha

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

For some reason I can't get myself in the mood to read anything, which is weird. Edmund Spenser? Meh. Geoffrey Chaucer? Blah. Walt Whittman? No, but thanks. L.M. Montgomery? Okay, but only because Anne of Green Gables is the most eager-to-please book I've ever read. Seriously, how did I go through my childhood without such happiness?

Oh. Right.

Watched Duck Soup this Monday in film studies, and I have to say that I was mildly disappointed. I was expecting subtlety and sarcasm, but what I got was puns and canned dialogue, and Harpo Marx giving me nightmares. Like, really, he's scary as shit. And I don't even know why Zeppo is there. Probably just to look hot. And all four Marxes seem, er, bored.

But apparently they were really mad at Paramount, so that might have something to do with it. Still, I can appreciate what it was going for, but as far as old Hollywood comedies are concerned, I prefer things like Some Like It Hot or stuff with Cary Grant in it. The thing about the Marx brothers, especially Groucho, is that they were great at one liners. The funny thing about one liners is that they are one liners, and having an entire movie of them is a bit like overkill.

The week before that was King Kong, which was the most fun that I've had in the movies in a long time; even though it is obviously dated, I was a bit astonished by the special effects (given that they looked so good for 1933) and, though the script was beyond laughable, it said a lot about what the climate was like then, between the film business itself and, perhaps, the real world. And oh my god it was sexist and racist, which oh my god was totally awful. But it also made me laugh.

And I now have a thing for Fay Wray that is a serious thing for Fay Wray.

In other news, I'm still trying–trying–to write a goddamn novel. I'm going like two paragraphs per night, and though it's good, it feels so sluggish. I think I want to take Saturday to myself for the most part to write and read in the evening, and maybe Sunday too if I have to; though I promised my mom I would go job searching at some point. Soon.

Concert tomorrow. The Book Of The Duchess tonight. Soon I'll be able to write a blog in Middle English (blogge? Blagge?)

Oh, and a film list!!! Here's what I'm watching in class this semester:

We worship an awesome god in the blue states, and we've got some gay friends in the red states

I'll get this out of the way before this turns into the "Sarah Palin is the Worst Thing Ever Blog". Here's my ultimatum thought on the matter:

With the choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain has finally shown what this election is all about: the true, honest-to-god intelligence of the American people.

Look, we can't agree on the same things with a lot of these issues. For example, I would say that investing in tons of solar and wind energy over the next ten years is the most important thing to lead to energy independence, others will argue that offshore drilling or opening up Alaska will immediately fix the problem, as well as lower the cost of gas at the pump. I could tell you that allowing a woman to choose what she feels is right for her body and the pregnancy that she might not want is constitutional and has nothing to do with whether you think that life begins at birth or conception, others would say without a doubt that allowing abortion is the same as allowing murder and perpetuating death. I say tax big business, they say cut taxes for the wealthy to boost the economy. I say get out of Iraq now, they say if we leave we surrender, and we are close to a victory. Fine. Whatever. We don't agree, and seldom do people change their minds about certain issues in a matter of months. And as much as I want an election to be about the issues, it's really about the people, sad as that is. I mean, the Democrats always stand for the same things, same as the Republicans. Boys will be boys.

But whether red or blue, old hat conservative or young liberal, we can all agree on one thing: liars in public office suck. They do. Nixon sucked. Bush sucks. And yes, for a little while there, Clinton sucked. They lied on television, they lied to the American people who (at least the majority of which) elected them, they lied to the fucking constitution. Liars. Suck.

And it's not so much that McCain has been a serious liar. True, he's a hypocrite and no longer deserves that pretty little "Maverick" label that's got people so jazzed for god knows why. True, he won't really change anything, and he hasn't really said that he would change anything except getting those damned do-nothing congress people out...despite the fact that he's been part of the Republican filibuster that's been blocking anything from being done in the past two years. But I mean, he's not that bad. He's old, cut him some slack, he forgets things about, you know, policy. But he could still be president!

Palin, though. PALIN. There's a liar for you. Like really, she lies about things. Not just in her attacks on Obama. But in her commendations of herself: the bridge to nowhere. Being anti-earmarks. Being a reformer. Being progressive. Getting rid of the old boy's club. Lie lie lie lie lie.

And it goes beyond that. Look: I want terribly to see a woman in the white house. But this is what I stand for, as a woman (and, god knows, a feminist):

Pro-equal pay, pro-choice, anti-assault weapons, pro-gay, anti-war, pro-first amendment, pro-public education, anti-big business, green, environmentalist.

Here's what the McCain/Palin camp seems to spout so far:

No mention of equal pay for equal work, pro-life, pro-gun, anti-gay rights, war hawking, censoring, vouchers instead of public school, tax cuts for big oil and big business, more drilling for oil, less plans for efficiency and green energy, and drilling in the environmentally threatened Alaska Wildlife Refuge and off the coast of Florida.

So there you have it: having a woman on the ticket doesn't really seem to be doing anything for women.

Also she's a liar. Outright.

So here's what I say it comes down to: if McCain, after his pick o' Palin, wins, then Americans are stupid. If he loses, then they're smart. Not because of the issues, but because of the people that they would be voting into office. That's my final worrrrrd.

laugh, for life's not a paragraph

Okkervil River tickets: CHECK. Finally going, and it's next Thursday, and I'm excited excited excited. Also, I'm fully moved into my place, meaning that there is stuff on my walls and I'm mostly settled in. Always do your dishes, clean the bathroom on Tuesdays, keep the door open to let in light. All that and a few other things.

I'll get by.

Classes! I haven't gone to Hollywood cinema yet, but I know the prof, so it's going to rule. Other ones: Chaucer yay, American Poetry meh (prof is dry), Children's lit yay, Ovid meh (again, prof is dry). Here's what my reading is looking like right now:

Chaucer: Troilus and Crysede
Am. Poetry: Walt Whitman: Song of Myself
Chil. Lit: The Secret Garden
Ovid: Metamorphoses, Book I

Haven't really read a lot of any of those. Luckily, the classes are big enough that I don't have to push myself to get all my reading done by a certain time. Also, the schedule seems put together well enough that I won't have any Weeks of Death this semester, so far as I know. Of course there will be stuff for film, but I enjoy writing that so dang much that it really doesn't worry me. Hell, I wrote like 15 pages for my final last year. This is gonna be enjoyable pie. A la mode.

Oh yeah, E.E. Cummings:

if everything happens that can't be done
(and anything's righter
than books
could plan)
the stupidest teacher will almost guess
(with a run
skip
around we go yes)
there's nothing as something as one

one hasn't a why or because or although
(and buds know better
than books
don't grow)
one's anything old being everything new
(with a what
which
around we go who)
one's everyanything so

so world is a leaf is a tree is a bough
(and birds sing sweeter
than books
tell how)
so here is away and so your is a my
(with a down
up
around again fly)
forever was never till now

now i love you and you love me
(and books are shutter
than books
can be)
and deep in the high that does nothing but fall
(with a shout
each
around we go all)
there's somebody calling who's we

we're everything brighter than even the sun
(we're everything greater
than books
might mean)
we're everyanything more than believe
(with a spin
leap
alive we're alive)
we're wonderful one times one



I don't know if I've put that one up before, but there you go. My second favorite poem ever (my favorite being "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot, which is too long to post here. Enjoy! Goodnight!

Oh here I go

Things that get me in the mood to travel:
Time alone and Hounds of Love.

To celebrate, here's a sentence that I wrote on the back of one of the GCI posters that we used under the carbon copies at work. Yeah, I should have been working:

"Nevada was a crematorium that burned slow, waiting for her to rest, to die, to crumble back to dust and blow away with the sand, mixed into tumbleweeds and swallowed by vultures."

It's from Secret of the Clockwork Mouse (or the second name I think of).

So I was out the other night and went to my friend Tiger's house to talk and drink rum. She was doing homework for her poetry class, and for the first time this summer I got to really talk about literature and what I thought art was, and aestheticism. I mean, it's not like talking about the election all the time is bad, but it reminded me that my true love is literature, and that I totally belong in a place where I can talk about it. And that place will be where I am Monday, or tomorrow if I'm lucky.

I'm going back to Vancouver!! I hope that my housemates aren't bastards. I hope that my landlord isn't an asshole. I hope I can reserve the TV for the debates and the election and the occasional movie night, and that I can have people over, and that my friends from PDX come visit at least once per person, and that I don't run out of money two months in, because that will be a problem. I hope I get a job somewhere close enough that has decent hours, and I hope that I have enough free time to enjoy my last year there. And for fuck's sake, I hope I see Okkervil River. I'd better fucking go see them.

Anyway, I have to get to packing. It's taken me about three hours to pack one bag...oy. Vey.

Just a couple more points...

Number one:

Tonight, I say to the American people, to Democrats and Republicans and Independents across this great land – enough! This moment – this election – is our chance to keep, in the 21st century, the American promise alive. Because next week, in Minnesota, the same party that brought you two terms of George Bush and Dick Cheney will ask this country for a third. And we are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look like the last eight. On November 4th, we must stand up and say: “Eight is enough.”

His speech (which I did not get that chance to see live) gave me goosebumps, and had me in tears at a few moments. He got angry at the end, he got more impassioned than his speech four years ago (which is still one of the best that I have experienced) and, though of course he didn't close the book completely on any of the attacks–McCain will always use them, no matter how debunked or outdated they are–he certainly shot them down enough that it will make the GOP and FOX news look just a little dumber than usual when they bring it up.

And I know that it's part of his whole deal, but I'm actually pretty glad that he didn't spend too much time talking about his and Michelle's life stories. For me, it's gotten old to the point that it seems like more and more of a ploy when he uses it; though Bill Clinton made it look fresh last night, so it still works.

In conclusion: I wear my Obama sweater with pride and cashed my last DNC check today; I am proud and excited to be a part of this movement and will continue to do what I can (though my funds are low right now), even in Canada, up to November 4th.

Now here's point number two:

And all over the country was heard the rallying cry of "what the hell?"

Fine, John. Well played. Slick move. Because the best way to get Hillary supporters on board, close the age gap, and renew your whole "maverick" persona is to go with a 44-year old first-term female governor who is out of the beltway and does seem to have a record of fighting Republican corruption. Yeah, that sounds like someone sort of Hillary-ish. Of course, she has less experience than Obama, is a militant pro-lifer, a card-carrying moose-hunting member of the NRA who is outspoken against the LGBT community (though she does say that she has "gay friends"), a conservative Evangelical who has conservative Evangelical views, who supports drilling in the Alaskan Wildlife refuge, was supported by now-indicted senator Ted Stevens, has no experience with Foreign Policy and has very little with Economics, and is in a scandal of her own; not exactly Watergate, but she certainly ain't teflon.

And true, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee aren't the smartest cookies in the basket. Neither is Giuliani, though Lieberman would have been smart enough to hold his own–and would probably have done better to sway over independents and those who are still under the impression that he's remotely liberal. But at least they're experienced on working or debating at the national level. She'll be a mouthpiece for McCain in the VP debate, and Joe Biden will tear her apart.

What a stupid choice, if you really think about it. What she represents, yes, that is important. But what she's actually done, who she actually is, doesn't really impress me in any way.

And I will be damned if I see the first woman in a presidential position be someone who isn't Hillary Clinton, who isn't progressive, who isn't wise, and tried, and true, and hasn't really done anything to earn it. Hillary–though I wasn't as strong a supporter of her as I was Obama–fucking earned it. She fucking struggled and fought and in my opinion women all over the country are in her debt. But our grandmothers and great-grandmothers, our aunts and, yes, quite a few of our uncles have not fought and bled for decades just for this. She might be a woman, and I respect her for her career, but just because we are of the same gender doesn't mean that we automatically represent the same things, that I have to applaud this choice by default. Never will I do that; just as I have never respected Condoleeza Rice. Just because you have the face or the body of a minority does not mean that you support their interests.

I have not waited my whole life, our country has not waited so long just to see the first female vice-president be nothing more than a stooge for the historically sexist GOP. No, never. I would rather wait fifty years than see that happen. And I think that the real Hillary supporters, the ones who are feminists AND progressives, will agree.

Fire it up, I'm ready to go

I think that I speak for a helluva lot of people when I say this: HRC owns my shit. Woman is a powerhouse, a tough cookie made of gold and punctuality and smarts that very few women, let alone people, can come close to being; and I am lucky to be among the generation that grew up under her husband's administration and watched her make history. I can say with complete confidence that, sooner than we would have ever hoped, a woman will take the oval office as more than just a first lady, but as a leader of the country and of the free world.

So I've been watching the convention for the past two days, and again, for the most part I find a lot of the speeches underwhelming; seldom do we stray from "Barack Obama is the change we need, John McCain is more of the same". And though that's surely the truest thing we could say right now, there's more urgency than that, and it's too bad that Clinton was one of the few to really thoroughly address that.

The best part of the night, and probably my favorite part of the convention so far, has been when the announcer asked everyone to stand up and face the back of the hall for the panoramic photo. They all stood up and turned around, and the camera started panning, and a few people cheered and waved, then one person yelled "fire it up!" and some people responded "I'm ready to go!" this got bigger and bigger, until the whole hall was shouting "Fire it up! I'm ready to go!" Without the aid of anyone at the podium telling them what to say or what to chant, the delegates on their own showed the true colors of the Democratic Party in the best and simplest way: that they were fired up, and they were ready to go. This is the party of change, of progress, of hope, of the American dream. Suck on that, RNC.




All out of thoughts, have songs from Across The Universe stuck in my head, I might want to watch it. Bad, Meg, BAD.

Go sing songs, go rock on

Check it out:
This makes Minneapolis/St Paul the place to be next week:
It's right outside of the airport! I know that I haven't watched The Daily Show in forever, so this reminds me of how nice it is to see Jon Stewart and his pack of well-dressed satirists tearing the GOP a new one. God bless America.

So yes, I did see day one of the Democratic National Convention; or at least most of it. I made the stupid mistake of thinking that CNN would do more than "Dear god, what will we dooooooo about CLIIIIIIINTOOOOOOOOOOON?!" for hours on end. Give it up, you guys. So I switched over in time to C-SPAN to see Nancy Pelosi speak, and though I enjoyed all of the speeches, for the most part I was underwhelmed by the overall feel of things. Yes, we have Hope, and we want Change, and we'll fight for Obama. Pelosi did the attacks (which I've been waiting for the most) the best, getting the crowd to chant over and over, "John McCain is wrong", and what she said about his record was a great attack: "The Republicans say that John McCain has 26 years of experience. We say that John McCain has 26 years of being wrong."

And of course, I got a little misty when Ted Kennedy came out to speak and said that nothing would keep him from being there. The fact that the entire remainder of the Kennedy family supports Obama is a huge deal, and it seems pretty obvious that the camp is glad to have it, what with all the Kennedy signs flying through the audience...with "barackobama.com" printed right below them. I enjoyed hearing Jesse Jackson, Jr. speak, as well as Michelle Obama, and I was glad to hear her acknowledge–however briefly–the 18 million votes that Hillary Clinton won in the primary elections. I think that, overall, they did a good enough job as showing Obama as the family-loving everyman instead of just the high-minded intellectual celebrity that the Republicans like to peg him as.

Of course, the big question on everyone's mind, as CNN showed before, is what will happen with the Clinton camp: the inclusion of her name in the vote as well as giving voice to Michigan and Florida, two states that she would have won, as well as the selection of Joe Biden for VP instead of Clinton has re-opened the can of worms that is the so-called rivalry between the two senators. And though I know that Clinton and Obama aren't the best of friends right now, I doubt that Hillary is so immature that she would continue to bear a grudge up to this point, or to allow her supporters to. Tomorrow night, and Bill's speech on Wednesday, will hopefully clear the air on that subject and put it to rest, and hopefully shut down the two recent attack ads that McCain aired that urged Hillary supporters to vote McCain.

By the way: if you support Hillary Clinton, then do what she would do and vote Democrat. Voting on a grudge because your candidate didn't make it is the wrong way to vote, period.

So tonight I think that I'm going to write as much as I can, since I've become so bad about it in the past while. Tea and writing! socks and hummus!

My life is getting sad. My job is over, and it's making me feel a weird unfulfilled sensation, which only happens when you leave school after a good semester, or say goodbye for what you know will be years. The irony is, on my first day not working with the DNC, my Obama sweater came in the mail and I watched the convention. Talk about not letting go easy. But this time next week I'll be settled into my new home, going out to dinner with Amanda and Aletheia and hopefully Peter and Esther, enjoying my return to BC and to University, and entering into my last year.

One last thing before I disappear for another week:
Listen to it (when it comes out legally, yuk yuk yuk). I'm actually liking it more than The Stage Names. Less of that meta-fiction self-awareness shtick that made The Stage Names a bit tiresome after a while, though when it needs to be, The Stand Ins has plenty or well-matured cynicism. Also, it sounds like it would be good live, and I'm going to see them on the 18th. YAY.

Really, I mean, now, come on.

From CNN's Political Ticker today:

...curiosity over the vice presidential search is as high here as in the media. At a town hall Wednesday, one of the very first questioners asked McCain, " I heard a rumor that you're going to pick a pro-life VP, is that true?"

The presumptive GOP nominee gave his usual answer about the campaign still going through the process of picking the vice presidential nominee while emphasizing his prolife credentials.

"I respect the views of others but I also happen to believe that the noblest words ever written, in history, were those that said, we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all of us are created equal, and endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," he said. Then he added to applause from the audience," I think that life applies to those that are not born as well as those that are born."

How dare you, John McCain. How dare you. Thomas Jefferson should rise from the grave and slap you with his sexy hand. You want to talk abortion rights, Mr. McCain? Have you ever had that choice or faced that dilemma yourself? You shouldn't fucking talk. And I will always say that...men don't really have the right to rule on the issue of a woman's choice. Per-fucking-iod.

And all this crap that Rush Limbaugh is pushing (and the Coulter woman too) about "killing babies after they survive an abortion" is (1)unfounded and (2)irrelevant. I can't find the links right now 'cause I'm lazy, but boy howdy it's making me mad inside.

Well that and there was a pro-life rally outside the new Planned Parenthood that I walked by on the way to turf, and women getting 12-year-old girls out there holding signs that say "After their Birth Control Fails, Will You Let Planned Parenthood Kill Your Baby?" with a picture of an aborted fetus on it gives me shivers on the inside.

Anyway, this is my last week of work, so probably the last time that I'll get a lot of this out. But Edward Scissorhands is on, so I'm gonna go with that.

Bela Karole should be at my family reunion making hot dogs

Which would be awesomer than awesome.

Though I gotta say: hey y'all judges, stop screwing over us American girls. I mean, we already have a pretty well-founded idea that maybe, just maybe those Chinese girls who look like they're 12 (and there are records of competitions which show that yeah, they're younger) shouldn't have been competing. Let them come back for the gold in London, when they're as old as all the other girls that they're competing against.

I just have such a thing for Nastia Liukin, not just like a thing-thing but because her uneven bars routine is the closest thing to ballet that you can get on the event (as is her balance beam and her floor exercise). And it's good--it was 16.9 good in the team, which is the closest to perfect in the whole competition. In my opinion, that's enough to merit the individual medal, and when you tie with the Chinese gymnast, Kexin He, and the tie-breaker works against you even when your average score was the higher of the two. Fuck the computer tie-breaker. She got robbed.

I wish I was a dude so I could hit on Yelena Isabayeva (pole vaulter, Russia). "Honey, you can vault my pole aaanytime". God I love her uniform. It shows her abs and I like those abs. She vaulted 5.5 meters. I'm only 5'6".

I done that math. Werd.

It means nothing, if you say so

This cookie that I'm eating tastes like fish? I think that it does.

I was looking over my poetry just now; the few poems that I can still find from my miserably bad submission to the Creative Writing BFA program. It's been only a little over a year since I made the submission, and already they (as well as the fiction piece that I wrote for it) seem to be dried out and uninteresting, like a boat built for water that wasn't really there, sitting above a year-old tide line, dried and cracking, looking to all the world like a waste of wood.

There are only two out of the bunch that I put up on DeviantArt that I still think hold some sort of resonance. I will say this, though, before getting into them: I had depression back then. Like, I know that I have ups and downs, but holy shit, if my mood had been a physical place, that place would have been the bottom of an oil rig in the North Sea.

So without further ado, Meg's Angst:

I am made in my own image,
And I killed my better half out of pride.
I have cursed myself to the wilderness.

I have felt the flood inside me.
I have taken two of every thought
To save in hope.
Suspended on a ship in the waters,
Daring to scrape the sky of my skull
To wait out the rains.
I have let out the dove
And waited for its return.

I have felt the fire inside me.
Brimstone eyelids,
Hair falling down like stone
Razing my shoulders.
I cannot run, but stay,
Cannot look back, but all around.
It is all me.
I am salt.

And I cast boils
And plagues
Poverty, disgrace,
Forsaken my own skin,
Mind, soul.

I wager my salvation.
I walk on coals
In the black belly
Of my own whale.

I liked that one because of the pace, and the sharpness of the verses...and also, I love making biblical references. For me more than anyone else, really.

Then there's this lovely little piece:

In proposals you sounded confident to take my challenge and
I was sure to make improvements: in five weeks, I'll return.
I will be able to reach back and undo the mask so that
My eyes will learn to focus and my brain will learn to breathe.
And I will see all my mistakes and know that they were mistakes.
I will know all of my exes for what they really were and are still,
And then divorce myself completely from what I thought it was.
And you will learn to listen to me and trust me with the car.
And you will realize that I was in a phase, like the moon,
And I was waning once and dark and new but now I'm full
And oh so light and oh so ready to come back with a smile.
I will return, with some nails and some wood to rebuild
What I'd burned when I thought I should get away
And you will wait with arms outstretched on the other side
Ready with comfort and a joking tone of voice
Laughing when you say "why did you think you could go
Because it really was a phase and you were just in shadow."

Mother, it means nothing if you say so.
If this silence will keep our family together
Then when I come across my new bridge,
Meet my lips with a needle and thread and love.

Again, good, and I like my word choice in it a lot, and the extended sentences, but god freaking damn, did I not like my mother. And it's weird. I love my mother. I mean, I still understand the feelings that led me to think this way, but really now I'm more ready to just let it go. I think. Also, it sounds too much like those whiny "I'm in the minority!" pieces, which are good, but, well, whiny.

Going to Vancouver again this Saturday to find me a place to live; because something being easy is boring and I want to put money down two weeks before moving in, that's just how I roll. With danger.

I want so much to possess the motivation to just write the fucking novel and get fucking published, so that I can quit school and find somewhere to live on my own for a year or more. I never get to be in a place alone anymore (though my bedroom door here finally closes all the way). I just want to be a hermit. Not that I hate my friends, or my family, but I just want to think about my life, and not so much about how other people's lives influence me.

Or at least, I could graduate and then go on an unexplained hiatus for a year or so. I've been dreaming of that for a long time, actually: one day to just leave and not come back for a year; no arguing or leaving contact info, just disappearing and leaving a note: went out to find myself. Back in a year. No need to call. Then I would be free to find out who the person inside my skin is, outside of what I am now, which is a bunch of labels: Democrat, Canvasser, Student, Lit Major, Floridian, Canadian. It's all where I've been and what I do, and I'm still having trouble finding the I Am in there. Of course that's always a transitional thing, shut up, I know, but I still think that I (and anyone else who wants it) should get some personal time off from life's obligations.

That being said, what's probably going to happen is that I'm going to graduate, take a year off, earn enough money to pay for grad school, and depending on who is President, get my teacher certification and work. If (when) Obama wins, I will come back, apply for his teaching program as soon as it's up and running (hopefully soon), go to school for free, then teach for four years at a high needs school, which I think will be a strengthening experience to say the least. Then there's whatever comes after that, and if I like teaching, I'll stick with it.

If Obama loses, then I'll stay in Vancouver (provided that I get a job), and then either get my certification for teaching K-12 or find a TAship and hopefully get through grad school to a masters in English or, hey, go for that Creative Writing deal again and even work up to an MFA instead of just the BA. End result: I want to get some form of Grad School, unless I find something super-successful in the meantime that I can stick with.

My stomach hurts, I'm tired, and I have a physical tomorrow. A girl physical. Pray for me and my uterus.