Friday, October 31st, 2003
1:24 p.m.
You know, I'm really not doing too badly for only getting three hours' sleep last night. I'm still not exactly sure why my body didn't shut down before four o'clock, but I'm feeling pretty good so I'm not going to knock it.  One of these days (nights) when I'm up 'til dawn for no good reason and against my will, I'll repost an essay I wrote at 5:00 a.m. last spring, the morning of the day before school let out.  It's one of my better ones, and I think it would do well here.  Better than it did on Blogspot *spit* anyway. 
     I've been thinking of putting up a page called "sweater puppies" (my personal favorite euphamism for bosoms) that would be full of photos of dogs wearing sweaters.  And maybe at the end, a few pics of me modeling some of my more flattering winter wear.  Or maybe I could skip the dogs and just go straight for the cheesecake.  It's a toss-up. 
     It seems that my whingeing plea for feedback has been answered, and by someone who probably wouldn't object in the slightest to the previous idea.  Here, for the first time, are exerpts from my first official comment.  This comes from someone named "homebru" (I'm guessing he makes his own beer in the basement):
Even today, over half a century after Hope and Crosby broke the fourth wall in the Road Shows, it is still a little startling when an actor faces the camera and addresses the audience. And the same when an author looks out from written words and asks the reader for... what? Feedback? OK, HI! Validation? OK, you're marvelous and I hang on every word. Constructive criticism? OK, keep practicing and one of these days you'll be almost as good as Lileks. Hugs? Oh yeah, baby, come here and let me [SLAP! STOP THAT! Yes, of course, sorry, got carried away, don't 'cha know].
Really, what can I say? You write'em; I read 'em. Is that not a satisfactory division of effort? I mean, Robert Heinlein never asked me for more.
Or are you curious about your audience? Do you wish that we blogged so that you could read our semi-secret thoughts about what we have read? And then to transcribe that into your own blog so that we could re-blog and so on in an infinite closed loop?

Sorry, I don't blog. I read.

Normally I prefer good science fiction. And, since Heinlein and Asimov and Laumer died, British comedy television. Which is very similar to good sci-fi. Both have good story continuity, characters with whom you can identify placed into situations that are nearly understandable to North American males and speaking a language that is easily understood.

And since public teevee is now showing the three-thousandth re-run of "Are You Being Served?", go back and re-read the preceding paragraph replacing "British comedy television" with "girl blogs".

Please, Miss, may I have some more?
Well, in answer to all that, yes I was looking for a bit of feedback, I don't need validation (though it's nice to have), and a girl can always use a hug.  Just not from perverts.  ;-)  As I once said on that early, pathetic, abortive attempt at a blog that I mentioned in passing earlier: "[B]logging with comments and a highly motivating topic is kind of like hosting a call-in show on the radio.  Blogging without comments (or without a highly motivating topic) is more like hosting regular radio, where people call in occasionally, but mostly the DJ just has to guess how many people are listening by keeping an eye on the advertising stats.  And blogging without comments or a hit counter is just plain pathetic.  It's like having a radio station in your basement and pretending you're the real thing."* I guess a broken hit counter counts toward that, too.  It's just nice to have a little response, even if it's from my little sister (known here as Livingstone--don't ask).  I'm not sure if that's pathetic, or just a normal human desire to be recognized. 
     Maybe I should put bits and pieces of my novel up here.  It could be an experiment, to see what people think of my ideas.  I'll mull it over this weekend. 
*parts of the quote were edited for clarity.  I wrote the original while in the midst of an early morning caffeine buzz.
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Wendesday, October 29th, 2003
11:53 p.m.
I reeeeealy don't feel like blogging today.  I'm going to anyways, to keep from falling into the trap of blogger apathy, but my heart's just not in it.  Maybe if someone ever responded by commenting on a story *cough* Livingstone *cough* I'd be more excited about the whole project. 
     You know, I've been thinking about what I'm going to do with this when I go home for Christmas break and Summer vacation.  I do this whole site through Netscape Composer, and my parents don't have Netscape on their computer.  I'm not about to ask them to download it just for me, because their computer is old and close to retirement and I'm not there enough to justify it.  Maybe I could just go to the library every other day or so, and do it from there.  I'd have to put this file and a couple others on a disk, which is a real pain, 'cause I don't have a zip drive!  Whee!  I'll probably end up blogging about once a week, maybe less, but putting some really stunning stuff up here when I do post.  I think that's a fair trade. 
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Monday, October 27th, 2003
10:05 p.m.
Well, I've got good news and bad news; the perfect combination for starting a week off right.  The good news is, I got to go to Buca di Beppo Friday night (more on that some other time), I got an absolutely fabulous coat on Saturday, I got to see my grandparents on Sunday, and I just took my gym lecture's midterm and did very, very well on it. 
     The bad news is, Much-Afraid is engaged to a guy who seems more dysfunctional than she is (if that's possible).  Keep in mind, I've never met the guy.  All I have to go on are her half of the phone conversations she has with and about him, and that's a skewed look right there.  But taking into account that he's already got two kids, I don't hold out much hope for him. 
     Of course, this means that Much-Afraid is now on the phone even more than she was before, yelling at her mother and saying things like "You guys, even if you don't like him, should just say 'whatever makes you happy' and leave it at that" and "Even if you don't like my choice, you should still support me."  Those are almost verbatim excerpts from just two of her conversations today.  This is probably going to go on for the rest of the semester, if not the year.  Just this evening, I had to conciously restrain myself from telling her off about the pathetic little soap opera that is her life.  It's really no surprise that's she has so much trouble; she watches Passions, for God's sake, and that's the worst soap out there right now.  Like my mama always said, you shouldn't watch soap operas too much or you'll start to act like them.  There is just so much that Much-Afraid hasn't been protected from, and so much that has been kept from her, so that she can't even hear the Shepherd's call over the calling of her own heart to be loved.  Maybe I should get her a copy of Hind's Feet.  I have my doubts as to whether she would actually read it, but it certainly couldn't do any harm.  There, but for the grace of God, go I. 
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Thursday, October 24th, 2003
2:50 p.m.
To finish my blogging blitzkreig, I thought I'd make a proclamation.  It's a song, for all you music lovers out there, and it goes like this: 

I love me, I love me, I'm wild about myself! 
I love me, I love me, my picture's on my shelf. 
I wrap my arm around my waist
and when I get fresh I slap my face. 
I love me, I love me, I love meeee! 

Thank you, thank you all.  I'm done for the day.  Good night.  Hi Mom! 
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2:48 p.m.
Read James Lileks!  That's an order.  All hail Lileks! 

Good Lord, I'm such a suck-up. 
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2:45 p.m.
Well, this is an interesting development: according to Yahoo!News, a student here at ol' Fruit Jar Tech bilked a buncha money out of people by shaving her head and pretending she had cancer.  Now why didn't I think of that?  Oh yeah, that's right: I'M HONEST.  Sheesh.  Link shamelessly ripped from Fark. 
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Monday, October 20th, 2003
1:53 p.m.
Okay, first things first: I did get the paper done, and I think it turned out pretty well.  Plus, I now have reason to believe that my English prof, while not the world's greatest teacher, is possibly a Christian.  Score one for the man (boring though he be). 
     If you don't read The Bleat, you don't know what you're missing.  If I were a pagan, I'd abandon my idols and set up a shrine to the genius of James Lileks.  I cannot get enough of that man's writing; he barfs out something in five minutes that I couldn't match if I worked on it all year.  Although, if I did work on it for a year, wouldn't it lose that spontenaity that makes The Bleat, well, The Bleat?  It's just what he says it is: "Dashed-off essays" that are "updated M-F."  All hail the mighty Lileks! 

However, on a more serious note, Evan Coyne Maloney has the complete video of the Rutgers unpleasantness up and running.  It's pretty long (for him), and pretty disturbing.  Steel yourself before you watch; it's not for the faint of heart. 
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4:17 a.m.
There's something about the raging ennui of insomnia that astounds me, and that is its ability to tease and coax a person into believing that she can sleep, when in fact, for whatever reason, her body is simply unable to do so.  So she lies in bed and stares at the wall or out into the room, where everything is made blurry by the darkness, and familiar objects lose their shapes and give themselves over to the indistinct anonymity of night.  
     Insomnia has plagued me in various, increasingly nefarious forms since I was a child.  When I was younger, it was simply a matter of being put to bed and lying awake for an hour or so before falling asleep, but since coming to college, I have had full-blown insomnia on several occasions; until now, they had, all but one, been during finals.  I think my ADHD played a large role in my sleeplessness when I was younger, but now I believe the main culprit to be stress in its purest, most intangible form: that of a looming deadline.  I have a paper due tomorrow at noon, and I haven't even finished writing it--heck, it's not even in the computer yet.  If my notebook were to go up in flames, I would lose everything.  I've been out of class for the past two weeks on account of I was on crutches, and unable to venture past the dining service (and that just barely), and I'm not entirely sure of the purpose of the paper.  Add this to the fact that my printer is out of ink and the essay's physical birth relies entirely upon my being able to find a spot in a computer lab somewhere on campus between the hours of nine and noon, and I find myself blogging at an unholy hour because I can't sleep.  Oh, how I wish I could simply slip into the blissful state of slumber, instead of being awake and floating in the void that is the wee hours of the morning.  Oh well.  At least I'll get to see the sunrise, and I'll be able to have breakfast before my eight o'clock class.  Philosophy just sits so much better on a full stomach. 
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Sunday, October 19th, 2003
5:17 p.m.
It's twenty past five, and the red brick walls of my dorm complex have taken on that orangy late afternoon glow that speaks of comfort and warmth indoors, and crisp air and incredibly blue skies outdoors, and hot apple cider at the campus coffee shop (curse my lack of monies!).  The normally dull grey metal window frames gleam with a hint of silver, reminding me that even the most utilitarian and practical of objects can have an inner beauty that is only revealed under just the right circumstances.  For some reason, it makes me sad--or perhaps melancholy is a better word for it. 
     In her latest enthralling phone conversation, my roommate was discussing a mission trip she took to Mexico in high school, and at one point she was complaining about how disgusting the food was and how all she could bring herself to eat down there was Ramen noodles.  As if this ubersensitivity weren't enough, she went on to recount how an older woman had approached a group of them with two chickens in hand, and then indicated that they were to choose one.  They did, and the woman (horror of horrors!) laid the chicken on a table, chopped off its head, and began plucking it.  She then said (and I quote): "I couldn't eat any of it that night.  It was sitting there alive, and she just chopped off its head right in front of us."  Roomie's tone of voice as she told of this atrocity was one of disbelief and incredulity, and as I listened I thought to myself (while trying to keep my brain from exploding), "So?  What did you expect her to do with it?  Take it away out of sight, and come back five minutes later with a bucket of KFC?  They don't have PETA chapters among the Mexican peasantry."  It was tempting to ask her if the chicken flopped around after it lost its head, but that would have been cruel.  I hate to say this about anyone, but she really is a wimp.  I still haven't decided on a name for her.  It's hard, because I don't want to be cruel, but at the same time a part of me ( a small, easily squashed part) wants to just rip her to bits and then spit on the pieces.  It's not her that I hold in contempt, so much as it is her weakness of character, and her pathetic lack of interest in changing herself. 
     I've been doing some thinking about why I find her so irritating, and I realized that its because she has many of the same problems I had three years ago, when I was seventeen (except for being sexually active).  Her self-esteem is throught the floor (and that, of course, brings along an entire battalion of accompanying neuroses), and she's on one of the biggest self-pity trips I've ever seen outside of my former self.  While it's true that there is much about her to be pitied--she has cancer of the female organs, her family is an unholy mess, and she bounces from boy to boy like a superball on steroids--I find it increasingly difficult to feel sorry for her.  I learned two summers ago that people will be more inclined to sympathize with a trooper than with someone who just sits down and pouts and says "Oh, poor me."  I just wish there was some way that I could tell her that without offending her (a task of Herculanean proportions).  Unfortunately, until she opens herself up to me, there is nothing I can do for her, and I can only try my hardest to rest in the knowledge that everything happens in God's time, not mine.  She might never open up to me; I'm not the easiest person to open up to, and Lord knows I have trouble with opening up to others myself, but come on!  At least I'm willing to try.  She wants so desperately to be  loved, but she doesn't understand that in order to receive love, one first has to give it, and give it unconditionally. 
     The glow is gone from the walls; the sun is low enough that its direct rays don't make it into the courtyard that my window looks out on.  Of course, it's entirely possible that my angle is just all wrong and there is still some light left glinting off the window frames, but I doubt it.  It seems rather appropriate that as I wrote this post, the sun set without my really noticing.  My roommate is dying, and to her mind, no one really sees. 
Maybe I should call her Much-Afraid. 
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Friday, October 17th, 2003
10:25 a.m.
James Lileks is a genius.  If you don't read The Bleat as often as you possibly can, you are missing out on one of the funniest experiences a person can have on the web.  A sample, to whet your palate:

"A cold is en route. I think I’ll just go downstairs, turn on the fireplace, and watch . . . does it matter, really? The best cold TV is all TV; you don’t feel like sticking with anything, so you just click, and click, and click. You watch a few minutes of a History Channel documentary on some Pharaoh, and then you realize A) you’ve seen it before, or B) you might as well have seen it before, because they’re all the same. “We know little of the reign of IHop-Tep, aside from his tomb, which indicates he belonged to a sect that worshiped the god Pan-Kek. He died three years into his reign, at age six.” Cut from a shot of a indistinguishable bust with its nose lopped off to a pan shot of some wall carvings underscored with crude flutes; then a 3D computer model of the Great Closets of Karnak, then some modern-day footage of pyramids in the setting sun. I saw one such doc that had a different tone; it was all about the fertility cults, and judging from the statuary Egypt had several hundred years of Boner Fever. A fella couldn’t go to church without getting his eye poked out. " 

     See what I mean?  The man is a genius.  He writes quite a bit about his three-year-old daughter, referred to as 'Gnat' and about his work and travels as a writer.  It's all very good, and quite an inspiration for an aspiring young firebrand such as myself.  Go ye forth, ye masses, and read ye of it, for it is good. 
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10:17 a.m.
Ugh. 
     I woke up an hour early this morning because somehow my alarm clock got set an hour ahead.  This means that since the alarm was set for seven, it went off at six.  I didn't get to sleep (for one reason or another) until about one-thirty this morning.  I am not blessed by this.  On the other hand, it meant that I had time to eat breakfast before my journalism test that I had scheduled for nine o'clock this morning because I found out about it on Wednesday and all the other times were booked solid.  So now I have a headache from lack of sleep, a roommate who won't hurry up and leave, and a four-page paper to write, due on Monday, about metaphors.  Time to do what I do best: BS out the wazoo, inserting just enough real content to keep it from looking like BS.  Mwahahahaha. 
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Thursday, October 16th, 2003
4:42 p.m.
Evan Coyne Maloney has a new video out, this one only a few seconds long, that he took at the Pro-Palestinian rally-'round-the-burning-flag thingy over at Reuters this past weekend.  The video is short because 'protestors' kept blocking his and his assistants' cameras with their signs, and telling him that he was not wanted there. 
     I can only imagine the sort of spiritually-oppresive cloud that must have hung over that place during that time.  Maloney states in his written version of the event that people seemed to know who they were, and that "I still have not been able to figure out what tipped them off."  Personally, I have a pretty good guess.  It's not like They don't have a pretty good communications system.  I did like how he kept shouting "Why are you trying to censor me?  Why are you censoring me?"  It was a nice touch on his part, and a bit of a double whammy, considering the constant whingeing of the Looney Liberal Left on the subject. 
     I had wanted to go to that conference, if only to get a first-hand look at that sort of thing and to help represent sanity.  After reading Mr. Maloney's account of his adventures and seeing his short (though no less valuable for being so) video, I am rather glad that I stayed home.  For one thing, I didn't have to pay bus fare, and for another thing, I didn't have to pay bail after being arrested for beating a 'protestor' senseless with his own sign.  Ah, who am I kidding, I couldn't beat them senseless with a baseball bat (Boo Marlins!).  They don't have any sense to begin with.  Link via Little Green Footballs
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Tuesday, October 14th, 2003
6:15 p.m.
I love this time of year.  Most people would probably think me nuts if I voiced that opinion out loud, because on a day like this, the thing most people want to do is stay inside with a nice hot mug of something and a good book (preferably with some romance, if you're a girl).  Me, I like stepping outside in this sort of weather, and especially at this time of day.  It's cold (but not bitter), so the air is crisp and clean against the skin; it's misting--not quite rain, more like rain that's playing hard to get.  The wind blows along in its blustery way, weaving through the trees and playing tag with itself.  The clouds make sure that night gets here early, in their looming, frowny way.  I wouldn't say that the clouds are sad, but rather just resigned.  And then there's my favorite thing of all about being outside on a night like this:
     The lights. 
     Ever since I can remember, I've loved the way light looks in a fall or winter rain, when the water just hangs in the air in tiny specks of moisture and reflects all around any source of light, giving it a glow that can only serve as a reminder of the more sacred luminesence that must surround everything when seen through the eyes of angels.  Traffic lights, street lamps, even those nasty yellow buglights take on a specialness when seen in a cold evening rain.  But the most wonderful light to see is a window, lit from within by the love of a family.  Perhaps they're sitting down to dinner, perhaps they're watching tv, but whatever they happen to be doing, the rain gives that window a magnificence that outshines Chartres. 
     Aw, now I've gone and made myself homesick.  Nuts. 
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Monday, October 13th, 2003
6:53 p.m.
Okay, okay, I promised you this, so I gotta make good.  You've been more than patient, and I only hope that I haven't damaged your trust in my beyond absolutely all repair. 
     Steve and Julie are back in a brand spankin' new adventure of seasickness and unrequited love. 
     No, seriously. 
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Thursday, October 9th, 2003
2:03 p.m.
I know I said that this week would be a bad one for blogging, but I'm stuck here in my room with nothing to do, so I thought I might as well just rest my fingers on the keyboard and see what comes out of them. 
     My roommate is having another crisis, which means she is spending every waking moment on the phone.  In her usual way, she doesn't realize how annoying it is for another person who can't get away to listen to her highly disfunctional conversations, so she doesn't lower her voice at all and even with my headphones on and my music cranked up, I can still hear her.  If I weren't on crutches, I'd be at the library right now, watching a movie or just browsing the stacks. 
     I've always liked libraries, and books in general.  I taught myself to read with some phonics tapes when I was three, and I've been devouring books ever since.  Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood was the extent of my television viewing, and I never even used a computer until I was at least thirteen, so my brain is wired to enjoy books and writing more than television and movies.  Now, I'm a visually-oriented learner, so you'd think that I would get more out of the screen than the page, but the opposite is actually true.  My imagination is so vivid that when I read, I see the action taking place on a tiny screen behind my eyes.  The only time this poses a problem is when a book does not provide adequate descriptions, and faces or scenery become featureless blurs in my mind.  I don't like when this happens, and I usually end up trying to create faces for the characters myself. 
     For the last time, roomie, would you either lower your voice or take it outside?  It's not that I don't want you around, it's just that I can't stand to listen to your endless disfunctional cycle of whining to your parents and then griping about your parents to your friends. 
     And don't even get me started on your rather unbelievable rebound after you dumped your last boyfriend in a drunken phone call.  Oh well, at least your new boyfriend gets you out of here on weekends.  
     There are really few things that I like more than curling up in an armchair with a good book, unless I'm browsing the stacks at the library and a book catches my eye, and I just sit down on the floor between the shelves and read it right there.  There's something about being surrounded by books that comforts me, as though the words form a wall that no man can penetrate.  The smell of the paper and the glue and the mold is always intoxicating, and the dim light only serves to perpetuate the impression that within those covers lies the gateway to a thousand different worlds, all of them in fancy and all of them in flight.  The thought that one can escape one's life simply by looking at marks on a page is a powerful one, indeed. 
     Perhaps that is what is missing from the world today: a sense of wonder.  Science, art, music, mathematics, all of these are but as dust if there is no wonder, no sense of awe, no idea that perhaps it all means something more than what we see, than what it seems.  There is something in the core of every man that cries out to God, and the decision is put before each man to either stifle or succor that something, that divine spark that is the very breath of life and love.  If succored, that spark becomes a flame, and eventually grows to be a mirror image of God Himself.  If the spark is stifled, then no matter what the man may accomplish, no matter how happy and content he may seem, he will only be a hollow shell, empty and devoid of feeling, with only uncertainty and fear to keep him from being completely drained of feeling.  The wonderful thing is that the stifled spark may be revived at any time, if the man responds to the call of something higher than himself and humbles himself before God and cries out, "Oh, Lord, have mercy on me."  For what are we but slaves to His will, His ultimate purpose and plan?  He gave us free will, but it is in the surrender of that will that we are perfected, and made like Him.  He who has ears, let him hear. 
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Wednesday, October 8th, 2003
6:08 p.m.
O dearest roommate, here's a bit of room etiquette for you: if someone else is playing music over their speakers, it's very rude to turn on the tv (especially if they already turned it down when you came in talking on the phone AGAIN--and you're still on the phone when you turn on the tv).  I swear, she has NO FREAKIN' IDEA of how to behave when sharing space with another person. 
     Someone please help me.  I wish she would let me help her. 
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6:00 p.m.
Okay, here's the deal: I know I promised the next S&J today, but you know what?  Some "FUN" stuff has happened to me over the past two weeks (give or take, mostly give), and I'm too exhausted to bang one out right now.  You'll have to wait until next Monday. 
     What happened, you ask?  Well, I'll tell you. 
     On Monday, the 22nd of September, I tripped over the curb and sprained my ankle.  It didn't hurt like a mother like it always does when I sprain it, so I thought nothing of it.  Then I went and overworked it over the next two weeks, and came back from fall break with a nice new pair of crutches.  I'm wiped, so you'll be getting only small doses of free ice cream over the next week or so. 
     At least my limited mobility has gotten me out of class for the rest of the week. 
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Friday, October 3rd, 2003
10:15 a.m.
I know I'm a few days late with this, but you need to get over to Bill Whittle's place and read his latest essay, Power.  It's a good 'un.  My favorite quote:

"But suppose we had listened to Noam Chomsky and Cynthia McKinney and Ramsey Clark and Ted Kennedy -- that bulwark of personal integrity? What of their promises that the vast Arab Street would arrive from the ocean like Godzilla and smash our cities -- Arrgh! Arrrrgh!! -- if we so much as used harsh language during Ramadan? Who now doubts that an American retreat after 9/11 would have reinforced what these Terror masters had been led to believe – that we were a weak and decadent people unwilling to fight to defend ourselves? And if these deep-thinking prophets of disaster were so spectacularly wrong then, why should we listen to them now?"

Bill Whittle has a spectacular gift for writing, and his only failing is his steadfastly secular outlook.  I can only hope and pray for that to change, but in the meantime, I'll keep reading him. 
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9:37 a.m.
I think "The Adventures of Steve and Julie, Intrepid Explorers" is going to be updated every two weeks, instead of every week like I had planned.  Look for the next installment on Monday . . . no, wait, I'll be gone then . . . ummmm . . . how about Wednesday?  Is Wednesday good for you?  Okay, fine.  We'll do it Wednesday. 

     It's not my fault, really.  My parents don't have Netscape. 
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9:33 a.m.
I just realized that one of the things that makes blogging so much fun is that it forces you to keep track of what day it is.  Heh. 
     Okay, okay, this is hilarious.  I'm not sure if it's blasephemy or not, but my gut says not, so I'm going to go with that.  In any case, there is a drink alert in effect (meaning don't try to intake liquids and read this at the same time, because whatever it is you're drinking will come out your nose and onto your monitor).  Also, there is a swear-word warning.  Just so you know. 
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Thursday, October 2nd, 2003
2:54 a.m.
I should have posted yesterday, but I was tired and crampy and I just didn't get around to it.  Sorry.  In the future, I'll try to be more reliable. 
     I still don't have a name for my roommate.  'Veruca' just seems too harsh for her; she's more pathetic than anything.  I guess I need to find another easily-recognized literary character who was spoiled, but not a total itch, and mostly just pathetic.  I know there's one out there, I just can't remember who it was.  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. 
     Right now, my roomie is looking at the Fredrick's website and talking about it on the phone with one of her friends (I thought it was a guy, but now I'm not sure).  Originally she was looking for a Hallowe'en costume, but she 'wandered' onto the lingere (sp?) pages, and now she's discussing disgusting underwear on the phone loud enough for me to hear every single word she says.  A few minutes ago, she was looking at 'sexy sleepwear' and commenting that she couldn't wait to get married.  I thought, "What for?  You're already 'active'.  What's so exciting about legally doing something you've been doing for years, with several different guys?" 
     Keep in mind, she just turned eighteen this past June.  Sometimes I don't know what I feel more for her: pity, or disgust.  Pity usually wins.