Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in some other guy's LiveJournal:

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Thursday, December 7th, 2006
11:12 pm	( a pretty plain old vanilla sort of survey ) Current Mood: calm (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, November 24th, 2006
4:01 pm	I always wondered this... What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio. The West Boston The South The Northeast The Inland North Philadelphia North Central What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, November 5th, 2006
8:16 pm	Back in June, I desperately wanted to read Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain. Of course, something about the idea of actually reading a 900-page book with itty-bitty print about a bunch of troubled intellectuals sitting around talking at a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps just before World War I broke out made my head ache, yet still I wanted to read it. More than anything, I suppose my desire reflected a profound wish to escape into early 20th century Europe, a world which fascinates me perhaps at once because it seems so utterly suited for me and because it is utterly gone forever. I never did get around to actually reading it, but I did find a girl who, to a remarkable extent, embodies for me some of the very same qualities. I'm on my third straight weekend of Nothing But Alyson, aka diptutod. And, well, I'm nothing short of thrilled. It's only been four hours since I last saw her, but I already miss her. When I first got to university, I had this vague notion that I'd stay unattached the entire time, and just have random flings. My few ventures into that sort of territory were pretty boring and/or disastrous, but somehow I wound up with a girlfriend. And not just any girlfriend, but the kind of girlfriend I've wanted my whole life. Finding someone who shares my love of history and pre-1950 culture alone would have been pretty spiffy. Finding someone with a general whiff of old-worldly classiness about her would have been spectacular. But all that would have been pretty self-defeating if she'd been a prude or at all prissy. But Alyson also has this streak of wicked irreverence that I adore. One of the things that struck me most when we first met was how often she laughed, and how lovely she looked when she did. She reminds me of Barbara Stanwyck's character in The Lady Eve - equal parts classy lady and fast-talking con artist/adventurer. More than anything, I'm amazed at how easy it is to talk to her, how fun it is to hang out with her no matter what the context is. We went to a fairly boring party a couple nights ago, and instead of just standing around awkwardly like one might expect, we just hung out together and had a good time. I'm excited about seeing her no matter what we're doing, playing pool or having dinner or going to a movie or just sitting at home, because she's always a blast. And on the off-chance you didn't get enough of her, Alyson... -is fiercely, wonderfully independent and self-reliant, but also quite affectionate and sweet -is, of all the people I've met who claim to be witty, the only one who actually was -has a wickedly adorable smile, and cute expressions in general -hates quite a few of the same things I do (gamers, in particular) -is maybe the only person I've ever met who completely "gets" my sense of humor -is really, really, really, no I mean really gorgeous, God you won't even believe it how did I get so lucky -claims not to be well-read, but is nonetheless fearfully articulate, in the slightly awkward manner of one who grew up reading big words that one seldom got the chance to speak aloud (or, as her aunt put it, more succinctly: "He talks like you!"). -not only tolerates my peculiar, random tangents but actually listens to and enjoys them -is fascinated by early twentieth century Europe, Nazism, lists Heinrich Heine and Egon Schiele as favorites, etc etc etc -has told me that I resemble a cross between Bertie Wooster and Jeeves, and on our first date drew an approving comparison with, of all people, (I'm not making this up) Cary Grant -is a really, really good kisser (sorry, you probably didn't need to know that, but it's pretty important as I'm sure most of you will agree) -enjoys long walks and doesn't mind that I walk like five times as fast as any reasonable person should. -enjoys Christmas/the holidays in exactly the same way I do (this is going to be my first December in, um, as long as I can remember where I wasn't alone and miserable! imagine!) -genuinely adores and appreciates me -EDIT: I forgot to mention her deliciously wry, dry, sardonic voice! -too many other small things to name On a weird side note, she went to my elementary school and lived about a minute's drive away from me during both of our formative years. She was apparently in my brother's kindergarten class, though he doesn't remember her. We took a late-night walk down past the park to see her old house the other week. I think I've been kind of stunned by the whole thing, but even though it's been going super fast (we went on our first date a month and a half ago and made it official on Oct. 15) it all feels very natural. It's funny that I, who generally can't stand seeing even my best friends for more than two or three days in a row without feeling kind of panicky, not only have no problem seeing Aly for like five nights in a row, but spend most of the remaining two days of the week wishing she was around. Current Mood: indescribable (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, August 31st, 2006
1:56 am	I interviewed KRISTIN HERSH! She's playing here this weekend, so I sent an email to her publicist last night to see about an interview, and got no reply. Two nights ago, unable to muster up much enthusiasm for the boring article I was going to end up writing (talk to two or three local bands + publicist = mundane filler "we're all really excited about the show" type article), I sent a somewhat rambling but nice message to her personal email (which is on her site), mentioning that I'd met her after her last show (4 months ago) and talked to her for a few minutes. I figured it was worth a shot, but I didn't really expect a reply or anything. So the next morning I sign on and there's an email from Kristin Hersh. It's short, so I figure it's just a polite refusal, but hey, it's cool that she emailed me, right? I open it and it's all "Yeah! Sure! Thanks for asking! Call me anytime! Here's my cell number! Unless you'd rather just email me questions." Yeah, like I'd really rather send an email than talk to Kristin Hersh on the phone! So I call, leave a message, and she calls me back at the office a couple hours later. We talk for about twenty minutes, and by the end I"m really wishing I could think of more questions to ask. I wish I'd tape recorded it, but I managed to type up most of the good stuff as we talked. Things are not that great otherwise. Well, they're okay. Could be worse. I've got a Russian quiz tomorrow and I haven't studied a bit. It's two weeks into the class and I only know like 3 very simple phrases by heart. And my personal life is the usual pathetic shambles, but I don't particularly feel like writing about it, other than to ask myself why I continue to make the same mistakes over and over and over and over and over again. And again. And again and again and again. Because when it comes to certain things it's like I'm still 16 and completely clueless about the way the world works. If liking someone means getting your heart battered mercilessly by some careless, immature blunderer, then the hell with liking anyone, right? But then of course you go and do it anyway. What a charming system. The interview was kind of free-flowing, but I went through and organized it into Q and A format just for the record. Anyway, ( Here it is... ) (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, August 24th, 2006
4:05 pm	i for one am fuckin' pissed that Pluto isn't going to be a real planet anymore! Pluto was always my favorite planet when i was a kid, because it was so mysterious and it didn't get talked about as much as the others. plus i always felt kind of sorry for it, i figured it must get lonely being all the way out there with no other planets around. i remember seeing a picture of "what it might be like" in a book i had when i was little, all dark and icy and covered with frozen gas craters, and it looked like the coolest place ever. and now they want to banish it from the books just so they don't have to qualify three other small objects as planets too? well, you astronomers can go to hell. (Comment on this)
Thursday, July 20th, 2006
4:17 am	a voice of the old republic, revived Very few things can make me feel good about the future of our country these days, but this did. Jean Sara Rohe, 21, was one of two students invited to give a commencement speech at New York's New School on May 19. After working on her speech for weeks, she realized the night before the commencement that she'd be speaking right before Senator John McCain was to give a speech, the exact same one he'd already given at two other colleges, including Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. After reading McCain's speech online, she decided not to pass up the opportunity of a lifetime. Understandably nervous when she met McCain before the commencement, she writes: "He didn't even make eye contact when we shook hands, so I figured I didn't owe him anything." Here's what she said. I won't quote from it, since I think it deserves to be seen in full. What strikes me most about the speech is that while the words are scathing, she doesn't come across as angry at all; she's full of joy. She seems to glow as she goes along, caught up in what she's discovered: The wonder of being a citizen of a republic, not an oligarchy, who can address a senator or a president as an equal. The ecstasy of being able to speak your mind. Most of all, perhaps, the sheer release of being the one person in the room capable of saying what everyone is thinking. After the speech caused a very minor media ruckus, McCain smeared Rohe secondhand through his chief of staff, Mark Salter, who called her "an idiot" on a blog post, adding: "It took no courage to do what you did, Ms. Rohe. It was an act of vanity and nothing more." I can hardly imagine the courage it must have taken for Rohe to do what she did. I can easily imagine the small-mindedness and meanness and blustering shameless self-regard of Salter's remarks; we see it in our politicians every day, and in the vile contemptible pundits who fill our news channels with simpering lies and obedient omissions, poisoning the public discourse, throttling the very soul out of the citizenry. But civic courage of the sort displayed by Rohe is so rare that we barely know what to say when we see it. This was a brave act in part because McCain is the most revered and trusted man on the right. He's attracted almost none of the bad feeling that's started to stick to the entire party like a sour smell. The press has been bleating for his "courage" and "integrity" and "incorruptibility" and "Lincolnishness" and so on ever since 2000, and six years later, it's paid off: He's easily the only Republican candidate I've heard anyone get excited about for 2008. We hear that he's a "radical" - one who opposes abortion rights, one who voted for the Patriot Act and one who both voted for and still noisily supports the Iraq War. One who still stands by his protege, the contemptible Fife Symington, Arizona's governor in the '90s, forced to resign in '97 after being faced with seven charges of fraud. What manner of radical is this? The plain and painful fact about McCain is this: Can you imagine a better way for a Republican to make a career for himself than by loudly lambasting the Bush right at every turn, while actually quietly going along with them at nearly every step? McCain's reputation as a radical is entirely the product of what he says, not what he does. Does the fact that McCain spent time in a POW camp - as did thousands of other soldiers in Vietnam, and World War II, who did not attempt to make a political career out of it - make him an honorable man, whose every action is to be read through that fact? And here is this valiant self-appointed tribune of the people, this truthless pretender to democracy, reduced to cravenly smearing a young citizen's character when all she has done is point out the truth. As the great journalist Walter Karp said of Bobby Kennedy: "What was truly singular about [him] was that he aroused the most extravagant political hopes while standing opposed to all that was best and most promising in his day." The Founding Fathers would be proud of Jean Sara Rohe. It was George Washington, after all, who begged the nation to "beware of the impostures of pretended patriotism." It was John Adams who said that the people "have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible divine right to the most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers." So would Abraham Lincoln, who said, "Let the people know the facts and all will be safe." So would Senator Robert La Follette, the great Progressive candidate, the Ralph Nader of his day, and one of the few public figures willing to stand firmly against America's disastrous involvement in World War I. In 1921, running one last time for the Senate after years of being smeared and denounced as a traitor by half the nation, La Follette had his own Jean Sara Rohe moment: Moments before the white-haired Senator climbed to the podium on that cold March day, he was warned one last time by his aides to deliver a moderate address, to apply balm to the still-open wounds of the previous years, and, above all, to avoid mention of the war and his opposition to it. La Follette began his speech with the formalities of the day, acknowledging old supporters and recognizing that this was a pivotal moment for him politically. Then, suddenly, La Follette pounded the lectern. "I am going to be a candidate for reelection to the United States Senate," he declared, as the room shook with the thunder of a mighty orator reaching full force. Stretching a clenched fist into the air, La Follette bellowed: "I do not want the vote of a single citizen under any misapprehension of where I stand: I would not change my record on the war for that of any man, living or dead." The crowd sat in stunned silence for a moment before erupting into thunderous applause. Even his critics could not resist the courage of the man; indeed, one of his bitterest foes stood at the back of the hall, with tears running down his cheeks, and told a reporter: "I hate the son of a bitch. But, my God, what guts he's got." (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 28th, 2006
12:03 pm	to burn a flag If anything could depress me more than the best band in America breaking up, it's the sight of the Senate coming within one vote of trashing the First Amendment: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/27/washington/27cnd-flag.html?hp&ex=1151467200&en=3caeb149d9e60823&ei=5094&partner=homepage Is there anything scarier than this? Apart from maybe Arizona candidate for governor Don Goldwater demanding that illegal immigrants be put in Stalinist concentration camps, no. Why would the Republicans move to banish flag burning at a time when no one actually burns flags anymore? More importantly, why would they try to shove this blatantly illegal measure into the Constitution itself? Not because they care about what the flag supposedly stands for. After all, if we ban this, why not ban other things that are even more offensive? How about the religious fascists who protest soldiers' funerals because they're "defending a country that upholds homosexuality"? If they want to make it illegal to burn U.S. flags, why not also make it mandatory to burn Confederate flags? If displaying the one flag proclaims your love for America, then displaying the other flag just as surely proclaims your love for slavery and treason. But then, the Party of Lincoln is more like the Party of the Confederacy now, and the same party that embraced racism and waves the hateful banner of "states' rights" to discredit the opposition certainly won't hesitate to abolish the Bill of Rights, one amendment at a time, if that's what it takes to stay in power. Of course, the simple act of burning the flag isn't what's being outlawed. Retired flags are burned all the time: It's standard military procedure. What's being outlawed is burning the flag as a statement. Nothing more. "I have sworn," declared Thomas Jefferson, "eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." Even John McCain disgraced himself by voting for this twisted and shameless stunt. But let Orrin Hatch rant and rave all he wants about the "wrath of the voters" coming down on those who opposed this vile anticonstitutional measure, froth all he wants about "an ongoing offense against common decency." The majority of Americans saw this for what it was: A waste of the Senate's time and an insult to the intelligence. "This objectionable expression is obscene, it is painful, it is unpatriotic," declared Senator Daniel Inouye, who voted against the amendment. Was he speaking of the war party's vendetta against freedom, its bitter hatred of liberty? No, he was speaking admiringly of the right of the government to define "patriotism" as obedience to the powerful, to punish dissent and arrest "sinners" who commit heresy against the cult of the flag. Even those who disapprove of the measure must make sure to express their contempt for those who exercise their freedoms. Why not just admit the obvious: That this is a religious measure? Nationalism is a religion and the flag is its highest and most cherished idol. Does it have anything to do with real patriotism? No. No one gave a damn about the flag before the early 20th century. It wasn't until World War I - and the ensuing campaign against dissent waged by the Wilson administration, which sent thousands of people to prison for criticizing the government - that the cult of the flag changed it from the tattered emblem of the Revolution into a stern and imperious symbol of the American Empire. Walter Karp once noted that in school he learned more about the Panama Canal than about Abraham Lincoln and more about Betsy Ross than about the Founding Fathers. Today, the majority of the U.S. Senate would prefer that we know more about the flag than the Constitution. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 27th, 2006
11:55 am	wow. damn. Sleater-Kinney just broke up. :-( more later if i can think of anything to say. Current Mood: sad (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, May 8th, 2006
9:00 pm	I wound up staying up for 27 hours straight yesterday after realizing I really wasn't prepared to take my first final today. I spent most of the night in the UA library studying, then stayed up all morning so I wouldn't sleep through it (as I probably would have). I think I did pretty well, but now I'm probably going to have to stay up most of tonight cramming for tomorrow's final! so my first semester at the Wildcat's over. if anyone's interested (which I doubt), you can see all of my stories (minus a few short CD reviews) here. Current Mood: drained (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006
11:02 pm	in honor of the current controversy over some unAmerican devils daring to translate our beloved national anthem into Spanish, I would like to propose - wholly in the spirit of compromise - that we dump the current words, penned by some lawyer hack back in 1814 and best described by Kurt Vonnegut as "gibberish sprinkled with question marks," and restore to their deserved place of glory the absolutely amazing original lyrics. I mean, can you imagine Celine Dion singing THIS at the Super Bowl? The news through OLYMPUS immediately flew; When OLD THUNDER pretended to give himself Airs_ If these Mortals are suffer'd their Scheme to pursue, The Devil a Goddess will stay above Stairs. "Hark! already they cry, "In Transports of Joy "Away to the Sons of ANACREON we'll fly, "And there, with good Fellows, we'll learn to intwine "The Myrtle of VENUS with BACCHUS'S Vine. now, isn't that better than some drivel about "the rocket's red glare"? but no, here's our humorless commander in chief: "The national anthem ought to be sung in English. And I think people who want to be citizens of this country ought to learn it in English. They ought to learn to sing the national anthem in English." got that? got that? got that? if you didn't (if you didn't, which is to say if you didn't), i guess he should probably repeat it again, repeat it again, or maybe repeat it again. but enough about the national pastime (immigrant-hating, that is). here's my take on every patriotic pro-America song I could think of: "The Star Spangled Banner" = despite what I said above I do actually kinda like TSSB, though hearing a million awful stadium-rock versions at baseball games and such has nearly ruined it for me. "America (My Country 'Tis of Thee)" = I remember singing this when I was like 8 and being completely baffled by the line about "land where my fathers died," since i only had one father and he wasn't dead. did you know it has the same tune as the British national anthem? ("God save our gracious queen...") "America the Beautiful" = kinda dull-ish. the message basically comes down to "America is pretty! Therefore, America is good!" I mean, if our pretty landscapes are the main reason we're good, why did we clutter them up with a bunch of ugly cities? "God Bless America" = worst song ever! one of the worst things about the three or four months after 9/11 was that you couldn't go anywhere without hearing this crap. "Battle Hymn of the Republic" = good but i wish they'd kept the original lyrics, about the abolitionist John Brown, whose martyrdom helped spark the Civil War: John Brown's body lies a-moulderin' in the grave, John Brown's body lies a-moulderin' in the grave, John Brown's body lies a-moulderin' in the grave, But his soul goes marching on. He captured Harper's Ferry with his nineteen men so true; He frightened old Virginia 'til she trembled through and through. They hanged him for a traitor, themselves the traitor's crew, His soul goes marching on. The stars above in Heaven are a-lookin' kindly down, The stars above in Heaven are a-lookin' kindly down, The stars above in Heaven are a-lookin' kindly down, On the grave of old John Brown. CHORUS: Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His soul goes marching on. totally inspiring! doesn't that make you want to go torch a few plantations? sadly, the Union's great marching song was eventually watered down with some typically hymn-y religious lyrics, though the resulting implied identification of John Brown with Christ ("As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free!") was probably not intended. "The Stars and Stripes Forever" = I don't even know if this has lyrics, but there's always been something kind of hilarious about it to me, probably because I'll always associate it with the scene in "Duck Soup" where Harpo Marx spends five minutes trying to smash a radio that's playing it. "Back in the USA" = not really an anthem but I include it so I can tell this story: one late night a few years ago I was rambling on (in old-school me's typically obnoxious wannabe-rockcritic manner) to one of my friends about how brilliant and ironic it was that Chuck Berry would write a song about how great it was to be a teenager and go to hamburger stops and drive-in movies and all that, when, at the time he was a teenager, he couldn't have gone to half of those places because he was black. and yet there's not a drop of irony in the song itself. she looked at me curiously and said: "Chuck Berry was black?" "Dixie" = it breaks my heart to say it but this is easily the best anthem the United States ever had. I used to have an mp3 of a wonderfully jaunty version by Ernest Tubb (I think), which was inspiring enough to make me understand something that i never really wanted to understand: listening to it, whatever you believed, you were almost overcome by the image of brave, defiant young soldiers fighting for their homeland. it wasn't the whole story, of course, and that's why the greatest version of "Dixie" is Elvis's in "American Trilogy." after a solemn, dignified rendition of the Confederate anthem ("In Dixie land I was born/Early, Lord, one frosty morn'" - surely no one else ever made that "frosty morn" sound quite so chilly, so bereft of hope), you've almost been sucked right into the past; the mood is that of the lost cause: the air is thick with regret. then, on the very brink of kitsch, Elvis suddenly breaks out into an old slave song: "Now hush little baby, don't you cry/You know your daddy's bound to die..." for a second it's as if all the emotions and contradictions of the ancient war have suddenly come flooding into the room, and it's almost unbearable: the singer's own fate, you feel, is not far off. then Elvis roars back into the chorus of "Battle Hymn," and the song wraps up with a big political-rally finish. "This Land is Your Land" = a very good song, and perhaps the only one on this list whose sentiment I can completely stand behind. but it'll never be the national anthem because it was written by a damned commie. "Yankee Doodle" = I nearly forgot about this one! it doesn't get played much anymore, probably because it doesn't appear to have any message besides "Americans are goofy and full of themselves." but these days that message seems a lot more relevant than that of "The Star Spangled Banner." (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 15th, 2006
12:48 am	i will be forever grateful to brooknononsense for alerting me to the fact that the best snack in the world is, sometimes, hot buttered toast. (Comment on this)
Sunday, March 5th, 2006
11:25 pm	i only tuned in for the last half of the Oscars, since this year i just couldn't bring myself to sit through four hours of BEST SUPPORTING SOUND EDITOR IN A FOREIGN FILM. so just for a change of pace, i just looked at the complete list of Best Picture winners, and these are the ones i think are great: 1929-1930 All Quiet on the Western Front 1940 Rebecca 1943 Casablanca 1946 The Best Years of Our Lives 1950 All About Eve 1953 From Here to Eternity 1954 On the Waterfront 1960 The Apartment 1964 My Fair Lady 1969 Midnight Cowboy 1975 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest 1977 Annie Hall 1992 Unforgiven 1993 Schindler’s List not that i've seen all of them - i bet there's no one left alive right now who's seen Broadway Melody, The Great Ziegfeld, or Cavalcade (though i actually have seen Wings, the very first BP winner, from 1927! i rented it when i was like 10! no idea why...) and yeah yeah i know i didn't include either of The Godfathers, but i've accepted that i'm pretty much alone on that one. for some reason i think it's kind of sweet that Around the World in 80 Days won it in 1956. i remember liking that one when i was a kid. i can't imagine it winning now! of the ones i haven't seen, these are the ones i want to: 1931-32 Grand Hotel 1935 Mutiny on the Bounty 1945 The Lost Weekend 1947 Gentleman’s Agreement (no critic in all of history liked this! but for some reason i think i would) 1961 West Side Story 1962 Lawrence of Arabia 1970 Patton 1973 The Sting (i had a friend when i was 15 who said this was her favorite movie and i just HAD to see it - 8 years later, i still haven't) 1984 Amadeus (somehow i made it through high school without seeing this - probably i didn't have enough drama/band friends) 1988 Rain Man of the ones i've seen, these are the ones i really don't like: 1939 Gone With The Wind a mildly entertaining soap opera that gets awfully boring in the last half, and a vile whitewash of history that's probably been a lot more harmful, in the long run, than the long-discredited Birth of a Nation. plus 1939 was probably the greatest year in movie history - Young Mr Lincoln, Mr Smith Goes to Washington, Ninotchka, or even The Wizard of Oz all deserved it a lot more. 1948 Hamlet not terrible, but i've never really liked any film version of Hamlet - and no, i don't like the Kenneth Branagh OR the Mel Gibson version. the weak spot is always the lead performance. every reader imagines his own Hamlet, and it's near-impossible for an actual actor to live up to that. 1971 The French Connection this is OKAY and all, but i never remotely understood why it got the acclaim it did. it's like an okay '80s hour-long cop show stretched out to an hour and a half. (and don't get me started on cop shows!) 1990 Dances With Wolves Pauline Kael: "Costner has feathers in his hair and feathers in his head." 1994 Forrest Gump i feel sort of bad picking on this film. remember when it was this really big deal and everyone quoted from it all the time? and now it's almost like it never existed. 1999 American Beauty my first lesson in "just because your cool friends loved it does not mean you will." (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 8th, 2006
12:36 am	I decided to start my own LJ meme for a change. Here are the first lines from ten books I like. Try to guess what they're from if you like (tho some of them are pretty obvious), and post your own in your journal if you want. 1. "Like most people I lived for a long time with my mother and father." 2. "On the last day of summer, ten hours before fall, my grandfather took me out to the wall." 3. "Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested." 4. "One summer afternoon Mrs Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary." 5. "Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale." 6. "The grandmother didn't want to go to Florida." 7. "From inside a London tea room, two well-dressed women look with mild disdain at a figure in the rain outside." 8. "Friday, in the evening, the landlady shouted up the stairs: 'Oh God, oh Jesus, oh Sacred Heart; Boy, there's two gentlemen to see you." 9. "May I, monsieur, offer my services without running the risk of intruding?" 10. "This is a sequel, not a formulation of prolegomena." (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, January 21st, 2006
5:41 am	congratulations to Matt and his girlfriend on their two year anniversary this week! i've decided to start keeping track of all the books i read this year. it makes me feel like i'm actually accomplishing something. i tried to do this with movies one year but i only made it a few weeks before getting bored and giving up. (Comment on this)
Friday, January 13th, 2006
12:24 am	i've decided i have a total crush on carson mccullers. is it just me or is she the most adorable writer of the twentieth century? (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, January 5th, 2006
5:28 pm	words fail me. isn't it about time god considered legal action for defamation of character? NORFOLK, Va. - Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson suggested Thursday that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke was divine punishment for "dividing God's land." "God considers this land to be his," Robertson said on his TV program "The 700 Club." "You read the Bible and he says `This is my land,' and for any prime minister of Israel who decides he is going to carve it up and give it away, God says, `No, this is mine.'" Sharon "was dividing God's land and I would say woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the EU (European Union), the United Nations, or the United States of America," Robertson said. In discussing what he said was God's insistence that Israel not be divided, Robertson also referred to the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who had sought to achieve peace by giving land to the Palestinians. "It was a terrible thing that happened, but nevertheless he was dead," he said. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 3rd, 2006
4:42 am	survey taken from cat! something you did you hadn't done before: was editor in chief of my college newspaper, started attending the university of arizona, tried to write a screenplay (actually more like five screenplays). someone close to you who got married: i know a few people who got married but not anyone really close. someone close to you who died: my 17-year-old cat alex, back in september. i still get really depressed when i think about it. maybe that's stupid but i'd had him since i was 5 and even though it's been a few months now it still feels weird not to see him around. countries you visited: mexico, that's about it. what do you want next year that you didn't have this year: a tangible purpose in life, an apartment of my own, a girlfriend, a job, and a partridge in a pear tree. dates from 2005 you will remember: i don't know, i'm bad with dates. i can't remember what i did on my birthday most years. biggest achievement: see "something you did you hadn't done before." biggest failure: still not finding a job! illness or injury: i had two pretty bad colds this year, but the worst seemed to last only a day in both cases. best thing you bought: some cds i'd been looking for for a while, "the rules of the game" and the elvis comeback special on dvd, the complete peanuts 1955-58. where most of your money went: food, gas, DVDs, buying random stuff. what you got really really excited about: pretty much anything new i discover gets me really excited, whether it's a great song or a nice rainy morning or a new friend. songs that will remind you of 2005: hank williams' "alone and forsaken." what you wish you'd done more of: well, during the first half of the year i wish i'd worked even harder at the paper than i did. second half i wish i'd tried harder to find a job. other than that it was a pretty busy year. what you wish you'd done less of: slacking off while i didn't have a job (what she said) fall in love in 2005: i fall in love like every week! it doesn't often last very long. i do sort of like someone right now but i don't really want to say more. one night stands: none really, but i had a lot of one night CRUSHES. favorite tv shows: veronica mars is pretty good but i refuse to watch any of the new season till i finally get to watch all of the first season. firefly was also good. i saw an episode of how i met your mother the other week and it was pretty funny for a sitcom, i thought. plus it has willow! best book you read: i read (or at least started) a bunch of presidential biographies this year. i also keep starting "don quixote," which is really great and funny. a few weeks ago i read dh lawrence's "studies in classic american literature," which has pretty much changed my life. best new book this year was sarah vowell's "assassination vacation." great musical discovery: hmmm, there's quite a few. albert ayler's "spiritual unity" (one of the first jazz albums i've actually liked as opposed to just sort of respected). elvis presley's '68 comeback special (because it's so good it deserves two mentions on this survey). "the compact XTC." "no sleep tonight" by the faders is one of the best singles i've heard this year. "telstar" by the tornadoes might be the best old single i heard for the first time, though there were a lot of other great ones. "some velvet morning" by nancy sinatra. "girl/boy song" by aphex twin. "i will follow him" by petula clark. anya's lost song from that seventh season episode of buffy (the saddest moment on television ever). "birthday" by the sugarcubes. "blind willie mctell" by bob dylan, which seems greater every time i play it, seems more and more like...the last song, something you could play in the last five minutes before the world ends and not feel embarrassed by. what you wanted and got: what i wanted for christmas, mostly. what you wanted and didn't get: like homer simpson, i would like to see washington's birthday and lincoln's birthday back in separate paid holidays. presidents day? what a ripoff! favorite film: the best new film i've seen recently was "good night and good luck." the best film in general was probably either ingmar bergman's "persona" or "wild strawberries." or "kiki's delivery service." what you did on your birthday and how old you turned: i turned 23 this year, i think i hung out with davida, i don't remember exactly what i did though! i remember i saw mary timony a few days before, that was cool. political issue that stirred you: i get into arguments with people about the civil war all the time! there aren't many things i find more offensive than revisionist attitudes about the confederacy. other than that...i got into a huge argument with an extreme-liberal friend the other night where i found myself taking sort of a conservative stance. i'm pretty much an old-style new-deal democrat in most respects (which the democrats themselves don't much resemble anymore, having caved in to reagan in the '80s), but i sometimes find myself feeling sympathetic to people like christopher hitchens, who feels that much of the left-wing has put itself in the position of apologizing for fascism (i won't say "islamo-fascism" as i find that term completely deceptive and useless). i definitely can't go along with a lot of what he says (much of which seems driven by his personal disgust and prejudices as anything else) but much of his criticism of the left is pretty right-on. i find it hard to discuss this as i HATE aligning myself with the right-wing in any way (and i find libertarianism as repellent as any other form of right-wingism i've encountered, so don't take me for one of those), but when i talk to someone who shares most of my political beliefs yet can seriously entertain the notion that the US government was involved in sept. 11 i get that old "the person you think is on your side is really a pod person!!" feeling all over again. who you missed: di, some old friends i don't hang out with as much anymore. best new person you met: davida! and mandee is pretty sweet fruit too, haha. and that's it. 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Saturday, December 31st, 2005
9:30 pm	in honor of the end of the year, my five favorite movies of 2005: 1. Good Night and Good Luck 2. Broken Flowers 3. Capote 4. Serenity 5. Me and You and Everyone We Know (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, December 15th, 2005
2:33 pm	I wish the US postal service wasn't so slow. Some days an empty mailbox just seems like a slap in the face. Current Mood: blah (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, December 8th, 2005
2:01 am	since it's the 25th anniversary of john lennon's death, i suppose it's as good a time as ever to ( say something that's been rattling around my head for a few days. ) (4 Comments |Comment on this)