" I just had to ASK A CLERK for orange juice 'cause they don't have ROOM for it in the case 'cause of all the MONSTERXTREMEROCKSTARFRUCTOBULLZ" -- Jeffrey Rowland (I hate that about the world today...and I don't even like orange juice.)

This weekend for me started at 10:00 on Wednesday night. A very dear friend of mine bought me another very dear friend of mine because it is legal for the former to do so, though I am too young. I downed about a third of that bottle, then my first very dear friend mixed me a shot of raspberry vodka with pineapple and blueberry/pomegranate juices. After that, another friend used a similar recipe - this time with added cherry Mountain Dew, which was surprisingly tasty - to mix me four more shots. And then there was wine.

Thursday: BetotheEtotheN turned nineteen. There was a party at his place which was very crowded. I drank very little.

Friday: One Halloween party where I won't know anyone. I was invited by my roommate. A second Halloween party where I will know almost everyone, and where there will be jungle juice (and gay men make the best jungle juice). A third, intimate Halloween gathering which will include a blanket fort. I'll be dressed as a wench. Maybe there will be some Rocky Horror viewing. I hope so.

Thus far today I have seen several Halloween costumes (and several outfits I can only pray are costumes; NOBODY should EVER wear cutoffs, let alone cutoffs with Uggs. When it isn't cold.) The best costume I've seen so far has been a person in a lab coat with construction paper wrapped around their head... BEAKER. http://a3.vox.com/6a00c225239bda604a00e398ec4d730004-500pi

The End of an Era

After a month, I reach this conclusion:
He thinks I'd make a good prosecutor, with the way I twist people's words around? Well I think he'll make a wonderful politician, the way he takes other people's word for what he should find out himself, the way he dodges important questions, and the way he mangles reality so he sees what he wants to see.

And now I'm done blogging about him. For good.

Text Messages

"Sup sexy?" "Nothing. Just being sexy at my house."

"Ah [Keystone] Ice. The piss of the worst. Congrats, you are definitely in college."

"Everyone was really impressed that I could drink tequila straight... then I brought Shawn home."

Re: my mother - "She bore you so I hold no grudge."
Re: my bra - "Never! It is my arch nemesis!"

"I prefer sleeping with you to sleeping without you." "And I prefer having you within arms' length."

Videos

I posted some new videos on YouTube today. Here are some:

This is Tyler belching.



...take two.



And, of course, we had to do a third:

So here's what's up.

Today's a rainy, bleary day.

My roommate was on the radio! She, along with another of my friends and a guy I met once, represented the University of Iowa Anti-War Committee. They discussed their organization, what they stand for, their participation in the protests at the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, and their upcoming events. Check 'em out here: http://www.uiantiwar.org/

Other than that, all my classes were canceled today. Methinks I'll read some Thoreau in my free time... or perhaps nap. I'm a college kid; these are my dilemmas.

Damien Rice, "Coconut Skins"

You can hold her hand
And show her how you cry
Explain to her your weakness
So she understands
And then roll over and die

You can brave decisions
Before you crumble up inside
Spend your time asking everyone else's permission
Then run away and hide

Or you can sit on chimneys
Put some fire up your ass
No need to know what you're doing or waiting for
But if anyone should ask
Tell them I've been licking coconut skins
And we've been hanging out
Tell them God just dropped by to forgive our sins
And relieve us our doubt
La la la la la la la...

Oh you can hold her eggs
But your basket has a hole
You can lie between her legs and go looking for
Tell her you're searching for her soul
You can wait for ages
Watch your compost turn to coal
Time is contagious
Everybody's getting old

So you can sit on chimneys
Put some fire up your ass
No need to know what you're doing or looking for
But if anyone should ask
Tell them I've been cooking coconut skins
And we've been hanging out
Tell them God just dropped by to forgive our sins
And relieve us our doubt
La la la la la la la...

The Arcade Fire, "Headlights Look Like Diamonds"

The red lights mean you're leaving
The white ones mean returning
Tell me how this story ends
And I'll keep them fires burning

The headlights look like diamonds
The taillights burn like coals
Tell me how this story ends
Before the fires go cold

The countryside's deserted
There's no one on the farms
The suburbs all are sleeping
The earthquakes set off car alarms

All after all now we aware
All after all the time we share
There's so much fears of world,
Hopes of world, tears of world

Nick Cave, "Into My Arms"

I don't believe in an interventionist God
But I know, darling, that you do
But if I did I would kneel down and ask Him
Not to intervene when it came to you
Not to touch a hair on your head
To leave you as you are
And if He felt He had to direct you
Then direct you into my arms

Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms

And I don't believe in the existence of angels
But looking at you I wonder if that's true
But if I did I would summon them together
And ask them to watch over you
To each burn a candle for you
To make bright and clear your path
And to walk, like Christ, in grace and love
And guide you into my arms

Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms

And I believe in Love
And I know that you do too
And I believe in some kind of path
That we can walk down, me and you
So keep your candle burning
And make her journey bright and pure
That she will keep returning
Always and evermore

Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms

Bestest Week Evar!!!1!

This week rocks.
It's Tuesday... and...
1. I skipped both my classes yesterday. One I get two free misses from, and that was my first. The other I get five, and I've now missed... four, I think.
2. Film classes are canceled this week! I just have to meet with my TA for fifteen minutes tomorrow. That's it.
3. Spanish classes are canceled tomorrow and Thursday for fifteen-minute oral midterms.

So... here's what the rest of my week is.
Wednesday:
- 12:30 film discussion: CANCELED
- 2:00 Spanish oral midterm
- 2:30 Spanish class CANCELED
- 3:30 film meeting
- 6:30 chem lab
Thursday:
- 2:30 Spanish class CANCELED
- 3:30 film lecture CANCELED
- Yeah, that's right... NO CLASS THURDSAY.
Friday:
- 2:30 Spanish class

Sometimes I amuse myself.

Me: "Would you be into getting sandwiches and/or studying for Spanish and/or sex and/or any combination thereof?"
Him: "Trifecta!"

...my life is so cool.

Miles

These are quotes from the book "Miles" by Quincy Troupe. I only got to read a bit of it before I felt compelled to return it to the guy I borrowed it from, but these were some good things:

"...black people in St. Louis love their music, but they want their music right. So you know what they were doing at the Riviera. You know they were getting all the way down." -- p. 9
[Hey man, white girls in Iowa City want their music right, too! God damn. I wish I'd been around for more of jazz.]

"...Dizzy was also very, very beautiful and I loved him and still do today." -- p. 10
[I have this concept of Dizzy Gillespie.... he was the coolest dude ever.]

"...I remember it also like some kind of adventure, some kind of weird joy, too. I gues that experience took me someplace in my head I hadn't been before." -- p. 11
[I love those experiences. I wish I had more of them, but they're hard to seek out. They have to just occur.]

"He wasn't supposed to be smart, smarter than them. It hasn't changed too much; things are like that even today." -- p. 12
[I'm a white person who knows too many smart non-white people to think like that. People are smart - and not smart - and it has nothing to do with skin colour or ancestry. Nothing at all.]

"They sent us to war to fight and die for them over there; killed us like nothing over here. And it's still like that today. Now, ain't that a bitch." -- p. 15
[I hate being part of this "they." I fucking hate it. It makes me angry and sad and frustrated... gah.]

"My brother Vernon was born the year the stock market crashed and all the rich white men started jumping out of them Wall Street windows." -- p. 15
[I just like this image.]

"And I don't think I'm arrogant, I think I'm confident of myself. Know what I want, always have known what I wanted for as long as I can remember." -- p. 19
[I can say the first sentence about myself and aspire to be able to say the second.]

"That's why I used to love to go to my grandfather's place in Arkansas. Down there out in the fields, man, you could walk with your shoes off and you wouldn't step into no pile of shit and get it all running and sticky and funky all over your feet, like in elementary school." -- p. 20
["Out here in the fields, I fight for my meals. I get my back into my living. I don't need to fight to prove I'm right. I don't need to be forgiven." -- the Who, 'Baba O'Riley' There's something about nature that's awesome and can really be connected to. I love that about being human.]

"Shit, that fish was a motherfucker." -- p. 20
[I just love these expressions.]

"That kind of sound in music, that blues, church, back-road funk kind of thing, that southern, midwestern, rural sound and rhythm. I think it started getting into my blood on them spook-filled Arkansas back-roads after dark when owls came out hooting." -- p. 29
[Oh my god. I love this music, I love that sound, and this is image is a motherfucker, if I may put it so boldly.]

"When I got into music I went all the way into music; I didn't have no time after that for nothing else." -- p. 29
[I love stuff like that. I love losing myself in something I adore.]

The Ozarks

Vance Randolph once compiled a bunch of Ozark stories in a book called "Stiff as a Poker." It's kind of cool, pretty funny, and an awesome concept. Here's a quote I like from the introduction:
"...the profanity which adds force to an oral narrative becomes monotonous in print." -- p. xii

I agree. I use profanity a great deal in "real life," but far more seldom when I'm writing. It's tedious. I'm kind of melodramatic, so in my life everything's "fucking" this and "fucking" that and "damn" such and such; I have a great amount of feeling to express, but when telling a story out loud, there's considerably less time to express it in due to listener attention span. However, when writing a story, the audience has a longer attention span and a writer has longer to decide on the perfect adjective - or other descriptor - for an emotion.

And I like that. In both cases. I like the distinctions and nuances. I enjoy both methods of storytelling and appreciate their differences, because it gives them character and colour. Huzzah.

From the Iliad - Again

Man, the Iliad really looks down on women.

"...me, who am a nasty bitch evil-intriguing, how I wish that on that day when my mother first bore me the foul whirlwind of a storm had caught me away and swept me to the mountain, or into the wash of the sea deep-thundering where the waves would have swept me away..." -- Helen, p. 162, book 6

Okay, Helen... you're a total hottie, there's a war being fought over you, and all you can say is "I wish I'd died so men wouldn't fight over me"? For reals? You could have, um, not slept with Paris... but no matter. I doubt she really thought that of herself; no woman I know would be that self-deprecating in her situation. I mean, we're all self-deprecating sometimes, but most of us usually stick with calling ourselves bitches - which we, as self-respecting, intelligent women, have been told by society that we are.

It's a little sad, I guess is what I'm trying to say.

And later on -- see this post: http://talkingstove.blogspot.com/2008/09/notes-to-self.html -- Andromache falls all over the place telling Hektor/Hector how FUCKING AWESOME he is. Gross. C'mon, ladies. Respect yourselves.

From the Iliad

"He...handed him murderous symbols, which he inscribed in a folding tablet, enough to destroy life, and told him to show it to his wife's father, that he might perish." -- p. 157, book 6

So, this king dude wants to kill this other guy for no real reason... but rather than do it himself, he writes a letter to his father in law and hands it to the guy he wants dead. The guy then delivers it to the father in law, who reads it and sends the guy on various quests, doing various heroic deeds, in hopes that he'll die. (He doesn't.)

But the insinuation, in Homer, is that the writing itself will kill the guy. (Who, if you're curious, is Bellerophontes.) The writing is so powerful that it could kill Bellerophontes simply because he cannot read. How ironic! This man carries his own death sentence to someone who will carry it out, and he does so because, due to his inability to read, he doesn't know it's a death sentence.

:awesome: