Nothing

if you really wanted to know the difference between west and east coast schools:

 [13:48] S: it was... so windy
 
[13:48] S: and cold
 
[13:52] V: mmm santa cruz
 
[13:52] V: warm sunny santa cruz
 
[13:53] S: I need to defrost my fingers
 
[13:54] V: i need to turn on my fan
 
[13:57] S: I think I'll make some hot chocolate and just hold the mug...
 
[14:01] Vi: i think ill get some ice cream out of my fridge
 
[14:02] S: I can't write my physics pset
 
[14:02] S: this is terrible
 
[14:02] V: i dont want to type my essay
 
[14:03] V: this is ....not that ad
 
[14:03] V: bad*
 
[14:09] S: I think i might have to stop wearing sandals too ='(
 
[14:12] V: i think ill start wearing shorts again

today was I had the pleasure of folding warm laundry using the magical japanese technique.
If only socks were as obliging then the day would truly have been beautiful.

After spending a long time doing nothing (and I'm awfully good at this- no surprise.) I'm finally entereing what will most likely end up being one hellishly long and arduous month (that is if I conjure up one call). The work [10 hrs/day, 6 days/week- minimal pay and i get to bump around the bay area in the van (smells of compost and rotten cheese)] will be difficult-
task: attain low wage worker's address in ten seconds.
the hard part is that I don't get any sort of blunt instrument to help. all in all, this should be a very good experience for me since i'll have to overcome several innate fears of mine - talking to strangers and stalkers. atleast i get to be the stalker.
it'll be fun to fight the good fight. hey, we might actually win.

(I hope my dog time [aren't nested parantheses fun?] isn't diminshed too badly.)

the hat!

the english room and it's annual trashing with college papers- we went a little bit overboard in this case.

the street of the lifted lorax/truffula trees. you could really smell it from here.

what are those turtles doing?

heh. this doesn't even touch the turtle head. or much. really. i swear.

common place books. topoi.

"-but here, the houses falling away on both sides, they came out on the quay, and the whole bay spread before them and Mrs. Ramsay could not help exclaiming, "Oh, how beautiful!" For the great plateful of blue water was before her; the hoary Lighthouse, distant, austere, in the midst; and on the right, as far as the eye could see, fading and falling, in soft low pleats, the green sand dunes with the wild flowing grasses on them, which always seemed to be running away into some moon country, uninhabited of men."
-Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

ah.
what a strangely beautiful book. everything and yet nothing. gladly there was a lot of choice on the final and i could avoid having to (try to) make sense of it all. so the loveliness remains.

A Mexican newspaper reports that bored Royal Air Force pilots stationed on the Falkland Islands have devised what they consider a marvellous new game. Noting that the local penguins are fascinated by airplanes, the pilots search out a beach where the birds are gathered and fly slowly along it at the water's edge. Perhaps ten thousand penguins turn their heads in unison watching the planes go by, and when the pilots turn around and fly back, the birds turn their heads in the opposite direction, like spectators at a slow-motion tennis match. Then, the paper reports, "The pilots fly out to sea and directly to the penguin colony and overfly it. Heads go up, up, up, and ten thousand penguins fall over gently onto their backs.

— Audobon Society Magazine

I was once told a wonderful story about penguins in Antarctica. I worked for a while at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and there were several researchers who had spent time down there. One claimed that penguins are very imitative. They used to watch the researchers play football on the landing field in front of the quonset huts that made up the station. One day the scientists came out to discover that the penguins had taken the field. They would line up in two rough groups, and then start squawking and running around bumping into each other. After a bit of this, they would pick themselves up, and start the process all over again. They hadn't quite got the idea that a ball was important to the process, but they kept at it for some time. The sight was so ridiculous, that everyone was ROTIL (rolling on the ice, laughing). No one at the station could get a football game together after that, because everyone felt too silly after seeing what the penguins looked like. The fellow who relayed this story claims that he can't watch football on the tube to this day. Every time they have a wide shot of the teams going at it, all he can see is those penguins squawking and knocking each other down. After hearing this story, I have the same problem.

-- Doug White

I don't understand.

hmm
haven't got much to say. atleast nothing that i particularly want to hear.
how about a poem?

I Imagine the Gods

I imagine the gods saying, We will
make it up to you. We will give you
three wishes, they say. Let me see
the squirrels again, I tell them.
Let me eat some of the great hog
stuffed and roasted on its giant spit
and put out, steaming, into the winter
of my neighborhood when I was usually
too broke to afford even the hundred grams
I ate so happily walking up the cobbles,
past the Street of the Moon
and the Street of the Birdcage-Makers,
the Street of Silence and the Street
of the Little Pissing. We can give you
wisdom, they say in their rich voices.
Let me go at last to Hugette, I say,
the Algerian student with her huge eyes
who timidly invited me to her room
when I was too young and bewildered
that first year in Paris.
Let me at least fail at my life.
Think, they say patiently, we could
make you famous again. Let me fall
in love one last time, I beg them.
teach me mortality, frighten me
into the present. Help me to find
the heft of these days. That the nights
will be full enough and my heart feral.

-Jack Gilbert

I went to my old team's soccer game today. Big mistake. It isn't that seeing the people was a problem, but while I was sitting there (bored as hell) I kept on remembering what it felt like. What it feels like to play soccer, to be as thoreau so aptly says, on the nick of time. I should dispense with the flowery phrases. Anyway, it was pretty upsetting in any case. Then the coach just had to offer me a spot for the tournament in a month. Gah. I don't really want to articulate the dilemma or the story. Takes far much more time than my patience can endure. Then I had to open my camera without rewinding the film. Idiot. Idiot. Idiot.
I saw Good Night, and Good Luck. First movie since lord of the rings that my mother actually liked. Strange.

the a's are out. sadness. so it goes.
i had a very strange experience today: our math teacher didn't give us a quizlet and i cried. these were tears of... um... well... amusement? i have never been so upset not to have a quizlet before. my dog is being cute.
http://images.villagevoice.com/issues/0538/tmw-big.jpg
my play be play via im:
[18:28] ThriveonDelirium: so doc munro says that we are going to hav ea quizlet
[18:28] ThriveonDelirium: i don't feel too worried
[18:28] ThriveonDelirium: 'cause we really haven't done all that much
[18:28] ThriveonDelirium: so i feel good
[18:28] ThriveonDelirium: but as the class progresses i start
[18:28] ThriveonDelirium: to feel worse
[18:28] ThriveonDelirium: and worse
[18:29] ThriveonDelirium: as the clock slowly ticks towards the end of the period
[18:29] ThriveonDelirium: someone asks dr. munro whether it is time to take the quizlet
[18:29] ThriveonDelirium: and she goes:
[18:29] ThriveonDelirium: "oh, we have plenty of time for a page long quizlet"
[18:29] ThriveonDelirium: so we keep going over what
[18:29] ThriveonDelirium: basically amounts to nothing
[18:29] ThriveonDelirium: i am sitting in the back of the class
[18:30] ThriveonDelirium: and i notice as people start getting really
[18:30] ThriveonDelirium: antsy
[18:30] ThriveonDelirium: 15 minutes to go:
[18:30] ThriveonDelirium: people looking up at the clock repeatedly
[18:30] ThriveonDelirium: looking at dr. munro
[18:30] ThriveonDelirium: looking back at the clock
[18:30] ThriveonDelirium: 10 minutes to go:
[18:30] ThriveonDelirium: people start twitching
[18:30] ThriveonDelirium: and i mean twitching
[18:30] ThriveonDelirium: getting really nervous
[18:30] ThriveonDelirium: playing madly with whatever is at hand
[18:31] ThriveonDelirium: staring at the clock
[18:31] ThriveonDelirium: and then at the schedule
[18:31] ThriveonDelirium: trying to figure otu what is going on
[18:31] ThriveonDelirium: 7 minutes
[18:31] ThriveonDelirium: i start to cry
[18:31] ThriveonDelirium: 'cause it is just so damned funny
[18:31] ThriveonDelirium: to watch everyone in the class
[18:31] ThriveonDelirium: not pay the least amount of attention
[18:31] ThriveonDelirium: to what munro is saying
[18:31] ThriveonDelirium: repeatedly closing their binders
[18:31] ThriveonDelirium: glancing at the clock
[18:31] ThriveonDelirium: glancing at each other
[18:32] ThriveonDelirium: with really scared looks on their faces
[18:32] ThriveonDelirium:
[18:32] ThriveonDelirium: it was funny
[18:32] mircat66: it sounds funny
[18:32] mircat66: all those tortured kids
[18:32] ThriveonDelirium: it was more unpleasnt than actually having to take one
[18:33] mircat66: :-P
[18:33] mircat66: so there was no quiz?
[18:33] ThriveonDelirium: right
[18:33] ThriveonDelirium: no quiz
[18:33] ThriveonDelirium: just many ulcers
[18:33] mircat66: lol!
[18:33] ThriveonDelirium: you have no idea what that experience did to my stomach

if you ever, ever, ever wanted a best friend who will never talk dirt behind your back, now is the time. if only my dog didn't show the inclination to rip everything with a snout into tiny shreds...

well... today we watched the yellow submarine (on the big screen in teh auditorium with our yummy surround sound system). i couldn't understand a single word anyone said but jeremy (a.k.a. pink bunny tufted tail creature) is definitely my favourite. in any case, from the beginning i sensed a problem: the yellow submarine has no plot, it is just a bunch of beatles songs on an acid trip. ok, it's a classic right? afterwards, our tech wizard tells us that we DON'T HAVE ACCESS TO ANY OF THE BEATLES SONGS. the yellow submarine without the beatles? meh. anyways, the technical possibilites are really cause for salivation (we have already had suggestions for having cannons off stage to shoot actors around, much to-do with flying rigs, tracks, pulleys and what not, green-fire, lotsa video -light goddess is not very well chuffed about this-, kites that are immediately killed ala charlie brown style, a powerful vacuum to suck up offending audience members, blah blah blah). gah. whimper.

Addendum 9/15: okay, so i was wrong. we don't have access to the music written specifically for the movie, just the songs. it hardly makes any difference since i wonder whether the songs will even be recognizable as music once tghey have gone through.... well, perhaps i ought to stop right there and be mercy full.

"And I, a fifteen-year-old boy, defiled myself and took part in defiling a woman, without at all understanding what I was doing. I had never heard from any of my elders that what I was doing was wrong, you know. And indeed no one hears it now. It is true it is in the Commandments, but then the Commandments are only needed to answer the priest at Scripture examination, and even then they are not very necessary, not nearly as necessary as the commandment abou tthe use of ut in conditional sentences in Latin."
 -The Kreutzer Sonata, Lo Tolstoy
Driving home this afternoon I was stopped behind a policeman at a red light. Just as the light turned green another car whizzed by running the red. As you might expect, my friend the police person started flashing his lights, did a quick turn to follow the offending car as it revved up its engine and started speeding away. the amusing thing was that this car was also a police car. I wonder whether he got a ticket. (perhaps they were policemen from rival neighborhoods).

http://www.milkandcookies.com/links/23894/

the faculty announced our spring musical:

right. the yellow submarine. gurgle.

looky!!! my doggie! and my sister.

Aaaah. The onion, better when grilled.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39512

I thought that I should post a picture of my dog dog so here it is:

Just add about 70 pounds, really big teeth, lots of black fur, perk those ears up and shrink the shoe by a factor greater than 10. cute, isn't she?

for those poor souls:

First Day at School

A millionbillionwillion miles from home
Waiting for the bell to go. (To go where?)
Why are they all so big, other children?
So noisy? So much at home they
Must have been born in uniform
Lived all their lives in playgrounds
Spent the years inventing games
That don't let me in. Games
That are rough, that swallow you up.

And the railings.
All around, the railings.
Are they to keep out wolves and monsters?
Things that carry off and eat children?
Things you don't take sweets from?
Perhaps they're to stop us getting out
Running away from the lessins. Lessin.
What does a lessin look like?
Sounds small and slimy.
They keep them in the glassrooms.
Whole rooms made out of glass. Imagine.

I wish I could remember my name
Mummy said it would come in useful.
Like wellies. When there's puddles.
Yellowwellies. I wish she was here.
I think my name is sewn on somewhere
Perhaps the teacher will read it for me.
Tea-cher. The one who makes the tea.


Roger McGough

Summer... almost gone.
Tea and honey is quite lovely.
Damn my sister and her devious ways.
I am consumed.

I finally made it to an A's game this afternoon with a large group of my sister's associated friends and random other peoples. My sister doesn't like baseball (not at all) so she, her friend, and I sat three rows from the top of the colisuem and I listened (and consoled) their wailing and moaning. Unfortunately we lost ( a bad habit we have gotten into this past week) in extra-innings ("superfluous outs" my sister's friend complained) but this only means that I'll just have to go again (-------). In any case, atleast there is amusement in the ticket stub:

IMPORTANT
The holder is admitted on condition, and by use of this ticket agrees:
a) He or she shall not transmit or aid in transmitting any information about the game to whish it grants admission, including, but not limited to, any account description, picture, video, audio, reproduction or other information concerning the game.