exhaling is an important part of breathing

( or is it a warning... )

http://community.livejournal.com/fatshionista/727400.html?view=10561896&style=mine#t10561896

well i for one am relieved.


wait... WHAT?

the remote is missing. i have looked every place that i have ever, in moments of pure spazzery, have ever set it down. such bizarre locations include (but in no way are limited to)in the fridge, freezer, my underwear drawer, the keyboard slide out part of my desk, and under my pillow... it is NOWHERE. thus, i must conclude that theorizing one could travel within his own lifetime, [my remote] stepped into the quantum leap accelerator, AND VANISHED."

it's only companion on this journey (i deduce by virtue of its frequent disappearances) is the charging cable for my cell phone which appears to it as a hologram.
right now i imagine it is somewhere in 2004, short circuiting so as not to allow me to watch Something to Talk About on TBS for the tenth time... hoping (in vain, of course) that its next leap, will be the leap home.

BACH TO THE FUTURE



i just died a little inside in the best sort of way.



ETA: derek and i just discussed how we should both give up all of our artistic endeavours because Bach to the Future is clearly the platonic form of art. it is the stuff of legend.

between Old English, Bio and Critical Theory there is a serious lack of whimsy in my life.
because i obviously suffer from false consciousness and literally buy into the promise of happiness that consumer culture has to offer me, i am thinking of purchasing a Lite Brite. i never had one as a child, so i've got about 23 years of building it up as something mystical and enigmatic as well as the solution to all my problems as opposed to the plastic death trap it is in reality. i imagine having it in my living room and derek and i leaving each other dirty adorable drawings and messages on it. i also imagine the apartment in flames and some sort of evil Lite Brite light bulb clown laughing.

i know there are new battery-powered ones but they run on 3 D batteries and the blood of the bird of paradise or some crap.

derek has two from the 80s. why do all 80s children toys have to be so flammable?

according to Time magazine, our generation is lacking an authorial voice. we have no salinger or hemingway or updike or any of the other drunken misogynist recluses great men that people tout as speaking for/to the masses.

don't fret though. its just because i haven't written MY novel yet.


just kidding.

or am i?

i know it's probably ridiculous and self-indulgent and vainglorious (and a plethora of other synonyms for narcissistic) but i am still feeling really anxious and restless (i almost typed that with a "w" right now because i am obviously preoccupied with wrestling at all times) about the fire on Sunday. the smell of smoke is really present in the halls still and its probably going to probably hang there for months (i would say linger, but lingering seems pleasant, just like "aroma" and they both seem like they should belong in some sort of Chicken Soup for the Soul type story about feelings, and grans, and memories and tea time:

"she was in such a hurry to grab the sugar for her gran that she toppled the cinammon and it shattered on the botton shelf of the pantry. the warm spicey AROMA LINGERed years later-- even though she had been extra careful to sweep up all spilt spice and bits of glass because gran was close to nature and insisted upon walking around barefoot--long after gran had passed, and it always reminded her of the fiesty older woman who'd never lost her flavour."

(sick, i know. i promise i never wrote anything for that series*)

i think that d and i will get apartment insurance because we never really have any extra money so if our apartment really was broken into or burned to the ground or flooded or attacked by pterodactyls and/or mastodons we would really be S.O.L. in terms replacing anything/everything.

i'd be lying if i didn't admit that part of the uneasy feeling obviously stems from my "youthful" sense of entitlement/immortality being disturbed (like the cast of fame, i sort of get around those squicky questions of life and death by telling myself that "I'm gonna live foreverrrrrrr!"). but i think that most of it is the result of my high paranoia kicking in because i have come to realize how very little actual privacy i have where i live. don't get me wrong, the soundproofing is EXCEPTIONAL considering that it's an older building (i've never heard the tenants above, below, beside or across from me bumping uglies, for which i'm grateful) but it still isn't flawless. through the interconnected and echoey bathroom vents i've learned that the people above me have a small child who really, really despises bathtime and the intermingly smells of cooking in other suites used to invade our kitchen (sometimes so much that i could pick out what people were having for dinner) until derek covered the vent to keep the cool air in the summer. it's weird, it's like apart from the occasional overheard conversation while i'm in the shower and the stealth whiff of boiled cabbage i am hardly aware of all the lives in their own orbits around/alongside/outside of mine. i'm only half aware of all the people that box-in my box at any given time and my odd hours sort of allow me to come and go without ever really seeing my neighbours.

in my post about the fire imperfectmedium said that she only ever got the most "tantalizing glimpses" of the lives of her neighbours and i thought tantalizing was an interesting word because i have a sick imagination and try not to think about the things that the people with whom i share a washer and dryer might be up to/into.

in my Critical Theory class (the one class i'm really in love with this semester) the focus is the theory of everday life, which we've been describing as those things which are fleetingly glimpsed or forgotten, the flotsam and jetsam not usually worth taking a good long look at. we have to do a workbook (instead of seminars) to be handed in at various points in the year and mine has kind of been taking on the form of a zine which is kind of funny since i've been trying so hard to assemble per and fanzines with no success and here this one just up and happens in spite of me. anyway, i think i might write a bit about the fire and how being overwhelmed with all my quirky cohabitants all at once made me think about how an apartment complex might be a good analogy or at least correspond in some way to the language we have been using to try and examine the everyday because there are all these things happening in every corner that you never see, you only get the most fleeting sense of the sounds and smells that drift under the doors and through the vents, or when you sneak a curious glance into someone else's place if they're coming or going as you walk by. i'm rambling, i know, but it feels good to be engaged by something.

i'm really struggling with my Biology and Old English courses. yesterday after bio class i called pseudohistorian laughing hysterically (because if i didn't burst out laughing i was going to burst out crying) because i understood about 1% of the three hour lecture about amino acids and DNA and RNA and chemical formulas (what i just wrote there, that's what i walked away with) and i was like "so far all this course has taught is to hate the human body down to its very molecules". the only way i seem able to grasp any of the scientific concepts is by anthropomorphising them in fraught and silly ways ("every element wants to fill its outer shell with 8 electrons, 8 makes it full and happy" and "covalent bonds are like traditionalist monogamous relationships because they are strong and stubborn and hard to break whereas hydrogen bonds are more like casual undefined relationships because they come and go at random") and/or thinking about them and the relationships they describe as love poems/trysts or romantic entanglements. some of the "subcutaneous" (<---i learned that word in bio!) relationships of the body seem much more simple and therefore more easily romantic. we keep emphasizing shape, and how in the body (atoms, molecules etc) the shape is the most important because it dictates function and these melodramatic little lines keep whispering past my ears about how if we could just get all these surface organs out of the way we could really have (if gross and gory) experience love together inside the body, down to our very bones. if anything i might get some wacky science-themed haiku out of this whole thing. that would be alright.

i won't even talk about Old English because class ended at 1pm and it was only now that i was able to pull myself out of a fetal ball on my office floor.

i should say a few words about the juice launch because all the readers and matto, as host, especially, were really spectacular and i felt so proud of everyone/the project for the first time in months. (the months leading up to publication are always so stressful and tragic that the book kind of becomes my arch-nemesis until it is printed and bound and safe and sound in my hand. that's when we can become friends again). the university book store sent us flowers which was really sweet (i was so shocked i just kept touching the petals because i couldn't believe we were receiving tangible recognition from another org. that isn't the writer's collective on campus). it made me feel better about The Uniter (campus newspaper) totally shafting us in terms of media coverage, because it was like YES, somebody recognizes the part we play in the arts community on campus. FINALLY.

i took a picture of the flowers (gerbera, gladiolas (my favorites, swoon!):



and if you look behind it you can see the hilarious collage matt made me when the whole morrissey seal hunt scandal went down a few months back. i love that kid. it's his birthday tonight and after nacHouse with chavvah and (i hope) prairieheath and xandersgirl i'll be heading to the K.H. with a special collage (including gray hulk!) for him. Sadly, the dvds i've ordered** for him (Vertigo and Foxy Brown haven't arrived yet. i'm hoping that he likes these films/that we can watch them together because i really love discussing film and literature with matt. i'm sad that we aren't in one of debbie's courses together this year, and that we will both be graduating (and matt probably leaving the city) and going in different directions because the work we've done together (our seminars for woolf and stein, our tree for woolf) is some of the best work i've ever done. we have a weird artistic connection that seems to nullify both or tendencies to severely procrastinate. when i'm working on something with matt, i always get it done and i get it done right and vice versa.

this was a long one. the writing has been bubbling up in me lately. thanks for reading.


*fingers crossed yet

** well technically pseudohistorian has ordered them because my bank and credit card company suck and i've been having problems ordering online even though there is (for once in my life) room on my credit card.

this made me the happiest person on earth this morning. you have no idea.

i've been going on about it for years and like nobody remembered it. except for my brother, who really watched everything else i did as a kid, so it makes sense that he would know how much crystal gravy means to me. ha ha.

also, don't eat your spinach ljland. i know that it seems like a good idea because it gives popeye powers but i heard on The National last night that a bunch of the U.S. shipment of spinach is contaminated with E.coli and that several people have died. Good thing this was after I'd just finished eating a giant spinach salad. fucking hell.

i never watch the news.. shouldn't they be required to post notices about this at the grocery stores for those of us who can't be arsed to keep track of what's going on outside our little bubbles? has society up and decided that if you don't watch the news you don't deserve to live?

so some of you might know that a fellow friendlister and i are in the early stages of a creative project that focuses on the thing mentioned in the subject line. because of this, i have kept a lot of my thoughts on these subjects (there have been more and more lately as i've begun to consciously theorize my past and day to day experiences as a person "of size") out of this medium. not because i think anyone here is out to purloin my ideas, or that my ideas are indeed so fabulous as to warrant purloin(ery?)ing, but mostly because a lot of them are still embryonic, in that belly tugging stage. i don't know if any of you experience inspiration as an awkward twist in your guts that pulls you to thought and action, but i do. and usually there is a big gap between my experiencing the pull and my brain being able to explain this pull through my fingers and mouth. so this post will be disorganized, but i want to commit some of these wisps of thoughts (thoughtlets) to (digital) paper before they get tangled and lost in the disorganized heap of my everyday life.


( sizeism )


( myths about the psychology of fat people )

so there's my stance, maybe not as clear or as objective (i still have some anger mixed in there, can you tell?) as i would have liked but i think you get the idea.

i won't tolerate any more sizeist comments in my daily life. i sat by and put up with it for far too long, feeling that i deserved such scorn because of my body. well i don't, and if you can't check your sizeism around me, than check THE FUCK out of this space.

you know, it pains me to say this because Tom Hanks, as bezier has so astutely observed, has the best chemistry when acting alone with animals or inanimate objects (Castaway=Wilson, The Terminal=Jazz can) there is still *ONE* thing that could've made this screwball doggy-cop comedy even more stellar than it already is:

( AHEM. )

previous public posts will be left public. court me through comments, if you would like to be added to the list.

ETA: this isn't a cut from my current f-list (obviously you're all fab.)

the morning after.

i just tried to flush the toilet by flicking the light switch. needless to say, it didn't work.






ETA: less than an hour away from DCfC... hence my finally uploading/formatting the new layout. otherwise, i would've paced a hole in the apartment.

( in which the author goes on and on about her sartorial choices for this weekend )


i should be writing my long overdue essay, but instead i've spent the majority of the morning raising my own personal army of robots.

good saturday. lots to look forward to. i'm feeling happy.

so i'm writing a poem about mimes. that's right. don't make the joke that it will be a blank page, or that i'll have to act it out. you have been warned.



( quizzizin' )

This morning, while I was still asleep the other citizens--and one hopeful immigrant--of the apartment got a hold of my laptop and sent Derek the following emails:



Dear Derek,

Please don't leave me so filthy. Why do you hate me so? If you use my facilities, at least have the respect to soak me and wipe me down so that I am not a crustackular embarassment when chavvah comes over for NacHouse night.

love,

The Kitchen


Dear Derek,

WHY WON'T YOU SWEEP OR MOP ME??????? WHY? WHY? WHY?

love,

the Floor.



Dear Derek,

WHY OH WHY DIDN'T YOU DO MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!?

love,

the Dishes.


Dear Derek,

Why don't you ever buy me for your FABULOUS-beauty-rivaled-only-very-slightly-by-me girlfriend when you walk past in the store? It seems only fair, don't you think, given how much time she spends scouring the other rooms in the house??? Also, having me in the vase might persuade her to get the Apartment to stop sending you such demanding letters.

love,

FLOWERS


Wow, when did my apartment get so needy???

cineaste-cum-philosopher "mangopork" brings us this insight on eroticism in film:


"I LOVE sex and nudity.

But the two just DO NOT EVER mix together."

nolemonsnomelon: 2

glass objects in the apartment: 0


in the last 12 hours i managed to break one of our glass end tables--more like obliterate as in i bumped the bookshelf i was painting which caused it to tip back catch the corner of the tempered glass table which then proceeded to EXPLODE into a zillion tiny shards coating everything within a 100 kilometre radius in glass. (sorry everyone, hope none of that got you in the eye.)--and, mere hours later, one of the fancy Bodum glasses i bought Derek for Christmas.

so i called Derek (who came home from work last night to discover the table)and was like "so i think i might actually be part bull or rhinocerous because i just broke your glass" and he was like "okay, so i want you to sit on right where you are and touch NOTHING. just stay still."

shaping up to be a good Monday already.

Obviously the most noteworthy things about being born on this day are that:

a) i'm a big fish (pisces).

a) people get to tell me to "BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH!" and feel oh so clever year after year.

4) Fabio (yes, i mean the flaxen-haired pouffy shirt wearing italian model Fabio) and i get to hold joint birthday parties with Eurovision Song Contest winner Jørgen Olsen, actress Park Overall of Empty Nest fame, the lead singer of Poison ("every rose has it's thorn....--CPET class of 2001 grad song, go transcona go--), and David Cronenberg.

mxvvii) today is the day that the turkey buzzards, no seriously, return to Hinckley, Ohio:

"... each March the buzzards (also known as turkey vultures) return. There are at least two stories that purport to explain this inspiring phenomenon, both of which take us back to the early 1800s. One involves witchcraft and a curse put upon the community; the other is the theory of the "Great Hinckley Hunt." If you look up, you might even see some of those vultures flying above–they hold their wings in a V shape and sort of teeter when they fly."

[emphasis mine.]

thank you all for the good luck wishes re life the universe and everything.

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