visual aid

2005-01-15 / 11:23 p.m.

If something, �goes without saying,� why the hell would you ever say it?

No one has yet provided me with the answer: what in the hell is with emo kids being obsessed with pirates? �or is this something only I notice, and/or perhaps an erroneous linkage? I casually did a google search of �emo and pirate,� which evolved into something way more time consuming than it should have ever been; before I knew it, I was reading cached results for the search, � �emo kid� pirate obsession �Caribbean.� No conclusion was reached.

Last week, mom and I made a voyage to the mall. While picking through clearance sales, she found a very pretty sterling necklace marked down criminally low, and she bought it for me. I thought it was sharp looking, and wore it around a lot over the break. Roger said it looked like a prostate, and a lot of its charm wore off.

the necklace in question

I�ve been at home tooooo long. One can easily discern this by how many entries I�ve written as of late, and how little they say.

From everything I�ve heard from Jimmy Eat World, I can conclude that the more upbeat they are, the better they are. They�re ballad-y, sentimental stuff just doesn�t click with me. Someone should piss this band off a lot, or keep them on a steady diet of cola and speed.

Saw "Kill Bill" Thursday and was quite impressed. It was better than I expected.

My estimation is that when my entries run as long as the past few have, people read the first third and then decide the rest isn�t worth it. I wonder if pictures make people more likely to read to the end

�.Did it work?

That isn't really much of a conclusion....

2005-01-15 / 4:19 p.m.

All you livejournal freaks are out there are probably fidgeting and in cold sweats from withdrawal. It�s been down for, what, like 24 hours now? My heart goes out to you, as I leisurely befoul the internet with my idle rambling. Ha ha.

Two links via Roger:
go here
And probably here too

In other news, my schedule has become quite a problem; introductory economics is causing the encumbrance, as they refuse to add it to my schedule despite the fact that it�s wide open. When I tried to figure out why, I remembered that this actually happened a couple of semesters ago. I�m not allowed to take it again because I already got credit for the class from AP Econ. Thus, they treat it like I�ve already taken the class and won�t let me register for it again. I could probably persuade the professor to let me audit it, but I don�t think I will. I need at least one more academic class on my schedule, and economics conflicts with about a zillion things.

So I�m looking for alternatives, and things are looking bleak. First of all, most of the new and interesting things I�d like to study have pre-reqs. �a lot of them things only offered in the fall. That means starting a new language is pretty much out, so are most of the 2 part writing workshops. Secondly, I want something that will be enjoyable, but not so hard that I�ll risk serious damage to the GPA (ideally, I�d like something that I know I could get a solid A in, but I�m willing to sacrifice that for something more interesting). Third, since it�s after pre-registration, a lot of the popular classes are already full, and I�d be waitlisted. Lastly, a lot of the things I was interested in taking happen at the same time as the things I�m already registered for, just several unfortunate coincidences. I suppose that�s one of the disadvantages to attending a small college�by the end of your time there, you�ve taken a good bit of the stuff you were interested in taking.

Anyway, here�s how it stands now: I�m definitely registered for my senior seminar and �History of Latin America since 1800.� I�m course tutoring �From the Holy Land to Graceland,� which I think I�ll enjoy. Seeing that I�m not really fired up about anything else, I�ll probably only add one more class to my schedule, and dedicate a lot of time to my senior seminar stuff.

Here are my options for #3:
--in the event that I don�t get into economics, I could take another Spanish class, which probably won�t be too terribly difficult and I�m already registered for it (it was a backup to econ on my pre-registration sheet). Also in that time block, I�m waitlisted for an intro political science class with Dr. Scott. It�s comparative politics, and might be interesting.
--Two classes that fit well schedule-wise are Intro to Women�s studies and Women in Latin America, but I�m not terribly fired up about either of these. Women�s studies was only a consideration because I�ve heard the professor was interesting, and it seems like one of those things I should take before I leave girlschool. Women in Latin America is the preferred choice, but it�s full and I�d have to sit on the waitlist. It holds the allure of being part of my major (political science based, it�s not a women�s studies class), and being taught by a professor I know and like.
--My other option is a complete wildcard. Last night, Roger suggested that I take an intro philosophy class. �Law Morality and The State� would have been perfect, but it�s only offered in the fall (�double dammit!�). There are three superbasic phi. classes, and I have schedule conflicts with two of them. The remaining one is called �Mind, Self, and Personal Identity� and is taught by a professor who is infamous for being both an excellent professor and also a superduper hardass. The idea of taking something new and different is intriguing, plus it isn�t full. Additionally, depending on what I end up taking, I might toss in Fencing II or try to audit or take a studio art class�we�ll see.

In closing, today I went to Old Time Pottery and bought a discounted rug to replace the carpet sample currently covering my dormroom floor, as well as a milk frother.

Reverse chronology.

2005-01-12 / 9:40 p.m.

I want to go to bed early tonight, and get up early, and start sticking to my usual schedule. This newfound love for sleeping isn�t going to work once I�m back at school. It has been a nice vacation though, really. I think the only thing that I haven�t done and wanted to do was to go ice skating. Not bad. Gotten some good reading done, in fact, I bought the McSweeney�s humorous essay collection with a giftcard I got for Christmas. Unlike novels, which I�m usually forced to abandon once school starts up, I can keep reading this one, because it�s easy to pick up and put down at your leisure, or, my leisure, if you will.

Tonight I watched �Super Size Me� with my cat and a box of Publix sushi. I was definitely entertained by the documentary�it was very well made�but it wasn�t quite as informative as I thought it would be. It�s like Schlosser�s Fast Food Nation with 90% more masochism and 67% less actual data. The gross-out factor was probably there, and if I hadn�t already stopped eating fast food, this probably would have turned me off of it, at least for a few weeks. I almost rented �Before Sunrise,� as recommended by Andrea, but it was out.

Earlier this evening, when I went to blockbuster to rent a movie, I asked them whether they carried the Space Ghost vol. 2 DVD or the newer Aqua Teen DVDs. Apparently, the Sprayberry Blockbuster has space ghost, but it was out. I�m definitely renting that when I get back to school.

I went to the used game store, and they had N64 controllers in the 50% off bin. I bought one, and just for good measure bought Super Smash Brothers so I have something to play should I be able to coax anyone into playing with me.

This afternoon, Michelle talked me into accompanying her to our alma mater. I was not all that interested, but she wanted company, and it didn�t sound like a bad idea�after all, I wanted to know if anyone changed genders or got fired or whatever, and it�s not like there are students there to remember us �so I went along with her. It wasn�t that interesting. The highlight was seeing her old boyfriend (and our old friend) who is now a math teacher and helps coach the academic bowl team. The rest of the visit was okay, everyone we ran into was thrilled to see Michelle, and a couple even remembered my name�the trend was pretty much, �Oh! It�s Michelle! Oh wow! Our prized student. ::swoon:: ..Oh, you�re applying to Cornell! and Princeton!! How wonderful! �.No, I�m sure you�ll get in. ::gush gush:: �..And how�s Hillary?! And Brian?! � ::gush::great successes, I�m sure! �.and you brought that girl that used to hang out with all of you super-impressive-wonderchildren. Well, um, hi. What was your name again?...oh, yeah, right. Emily.� Nothing reminds you of your own mediocrity like being remembered only for your overachieving friends.

Oh man. I was bidding on 100 buttons parts on e-bay for $7.50 and lost it in the last two hours. Totally lame. Once I get paid, I�m going to hunt down a copy of Super Mario All Stars for the Super�.I miss vintage Mario, and this is about the only way I can re-live that childhood delight.

I slept stupidly late this morning. Felt gross and lethargic all day. Should have gone to the gym�didn�t. Should have taken the other car in for an oil change, didn�t do that either. Should have dyed my hair, didn�t. Lame, lame, lame.

Last night, I was in one of those moods where I didn�t want to sleep. I stayed up and wrote the beginnings to two nonfiction essays for a little bit. Neither was very good, but I guess they have the potential to be with some work. Then I didn�t feel like working on them anymore, and the whole activity started feeling depressing and fruitless.

And then I found ten dollars.

TV dinner

2005-01-12 / 9:02 p.m.

Today, we have reached

10.000 hits on the diaryland site!!! .
I forget how many I had when I was running my site through tripod. Oh well, yay for me. Had a lovely time last night hosting a get together with chicks from TheCollege. It was the first time I had attended an all-female gathering (much less hosted one) in many moons. Among guests were Kristen, Michelle, Katy, Andrea, Myself, and Lucy*. We talked about our feelings, summoned nature goddesses, shared makeup tips, played �light as a feather, stiff as a board,� and dished about boys. No, actually, that�s all a lie. We played Apples to Apples and chatted over hors d'oeuvres dinner....

Finally on the home stretch of living at home. This time next week, I�ll be back at the college. Tuesday the 17th cannot come soon enough. Living with my mother is the opposite of fun. You�d think that this week would be heavenly with her being gone and all, but it�s really just turned into a week choc full o� hassle�
First of all, I can�t get the geriatricat to eat. She was eating in the evenings, but she didn�t eat anything tonight. In the morning when it�s cat meds time, she will have none of it. I can�t stand having to coax the little bag of bones with nine types of food and still failing. It would be different if I liked the cat or something, but my main interest in keeping it in good health is to not incur the wrath of my mother should the cat fall ill.
Secondly, things keep breaking�.or else their brokenness become apparent on my watch. I took the car in to have its oil changed�I waited about an hour and a half at the wal mart for them to tell me that they didn�t do anything to the car because there was something already wrong with the oil system, and it would be a liability. I broke eight dishes. I spilled a diet root beer on my laptop, rendering the touchpad doubleplus retarded. I fell down the stairs vacuuming�.nothing was broken, but, well, it hurt and so I can whine about it.

I�m bored and feel slothful and I�m ready for classes to start. I always get fatter when I�m at home too, both from the inactivity and the availability of tasty things I suppose. So I�m hoping my crusade against my thighs will become more successful once I�m out of this den of junkfood. Anyone who goes to school with me knows that I walk from place to place at a bitchy sixty mile an hour gait, perhaps returning to my anal-retentive-nerdy-bitch walking will be just the cure. My brain is lazy too. I�ve been reading and playing and stuff, but I�ve also been watching a lot of television and sleeping late into the afternoon. I�m on a steady diet of Buffy at the gym, Mash over lunch, and The Simpsons and Win Ben Stein�s Money in the early evening, with scattered viewings of Made and Dr. 90210 as well.



* feline

I'm no Jared Fogle, but...

2005-01-09 / 1:48 a.m.

I fucked up something pretty badly today. To tell you the truth, I�m kind of tired of screwing things up. I�m ready to do something right for a change, possibly something that I can be proud of. I�d also like to be more reliable, and not a big ole� mediocre lump of flesh. I could write about it, but it�s really not that important and I�ve probably already told you about it. What�s important is that I feel like a spaz and wish I didn�t feel this way so often. Psh, stupid fallibility. On to the escapism!

Most of my amigos had plans for tonight, so I structured my evening around talking on the telephone with Hillary and watching Venture Brothers. The phone call went swimmingly, though Venture Brothers was a rerun. (The Goliath Serum Ep.). Telephone conversation eventually developed into AIM discussion, and later into a rollicking game of literati (which Hillary, of course, won).

The button maker I got for Christmas? Three words, Honey: fab-u-lous! I�ve already gone through five of the meager ten button components included, but thankfully, refills are fairly inexpensive. For $12.95 (with free shipping, frickin� sweet!), I will be the proud owner of the means to produce fifty buttons! The ones I already made came out looking really sharp. I printed the images on the HP color in the Writing Center and buttonized them yesterday night and earlier this evening. I could tell you what I emblazoned them with, but I�d rather unveil them in person.

The College recently switched to a system to where the plusses and minuses change the value of a letter grade. Thus, A- is worth less than an A, C+ more than a C, etc. This sucks for me, being a habitual A- student. Had this change not been made, my semester GPA would have been a 4.0, rather than a 3.80. But yeah, that is way way better than I anticipated. Once again, my professors had some sort of surge of love for me and bumped my almost certain B+ to an A-. I suspect my foreign policy prof. might have realized that grades were generally low, and made an effort of being gentle with the final calculations of the exam and participation to raise the curve. As for Spanish, your guess is as good as mine�it might have been the inclusion of lesbian overtones in my final paper, but there�s no sure way to know. Bitching about the GPA calculation aside, I�m pleased with this semester�s results. Go me. I�m up to a cumulative good enough to be a magna cum laude or whatever come graduation day, provided I don�t fuck anything up too badly next semester.

I think I could be a pretty good writer if I were creative enough to think of things to write about. Unfortunately, I�m not. (note: If you don�t know me in real life, please note that I am capable of writing better than I do in my journal. This is mindtrash that gets published without editing or revising, or even a lot of thought. I�m a decent writer when I try though.) Thus, I will probably never be a successful writer. This hasn�t hampered my plans to write a smutty romance novel and try to publish it in my spare time this summer. I�m wondering if I have any hidden potential for greatness; I doubt it. Roger says I�m �good at people� and also good at making sandwiches: I think this makes me a excellent candidate to work at Subway. Anyway, good thing I work hard enough to make up for a lack of any innate talents or gifts. I�ll go get my MPA, and probably get a pretty good job and be happy. This isn�t a bad fate by any means. I could always go the Subway route and be totally stellar, but I think I�ll opt for the higher wages that a graduate degree should bring. I don�t really know where I�m going with this�.I guess I just that it�s amusing that I�m listing sandwich making as a talent. I should put that on my resume.

She sucks on the flute.

2005-01-07 / 10:14 a.m.

Okay. Maybe this will be the update of random bits and pieces I envisioned yesterday that never came to fruition.

While my tendency to adhere to my sleep-early-exercise-routine is strong, having Roger living nearby has totally kicked it in the face and called it ugly. It�s been really nice having him in close proximity, and never really having to get up in the morning�almost like a holiday break. While idyllic, it isn�t good for my whole (incessant) pursuit to lose weight. Reasons number 547 and 548 it�ll be nice to get back to school�the routine and the availability to vegetables. This will be the semester of the salad. God, that doesn�t sound very promising�.um, how about the Semester of Great Success and Copious Quantities of Salad. Yeah, you�re right: the capital letters do make it look more important, more�I dunno, epic. The goal is to shrink back to normal size within a month of returning to school.

I really have had a lot of fun this break though--it's been one of the better ones I've had. I've seen lots of movies: Mean Girls, Saved, Napoleon Dynamite, The Incredibles, All three extended Lord of the Rings movies, Life Aquatic--and all of them were pretty good. I got to see Hillary, and play at her house and covet her mother. I hung out with Michelle. I spent tons of time with Roger, which was awesome. We did a lot of fun stuff, like celebrating NYE, and hanging out with Kyle and Kristen; but we also spent time just existing and doing average, everyday stuff, which was also very nice. I know things are going well when driving to Athens in the middle of the night proves to be enjoyable.

Saturday is the wedding, the one I�m playing the flute at. The other two members of my trio don�t really know the bride or have anything at stake, but I know her and want us to do well�the fact that I suck at flute makes me nervous. (I said �at flute,� Roger. Besides, that joke is tired).

Here�s the part where I ask some questions that I don�t know the answers to, and hopefully those of you who are smarter than me (read: damn near everyone) will help me out.
1. My real computer remains in its unusable condition, continuing to pretend its sleeping. If no one knows some smooth trick to wake it up, I�m going to have to take it to someone who gets paid to know. Does anyone have any suggestions as to where I can take it that they wont totally try and rip me off?
2. I�ve been having problems with my feet as of late. My feet feel like I�ve been jumping up and down barefoot on concrete at the end of the day. Anyway, my question is, are there any of those shoe inserts that are worth buying? Do they do any good, or just stink up your tennis shoes?
3. Does anyone know of any decent free image manipulation software I could download? I just need something for resizing and basic image editing�nothing super complicated. Michael ( I believe) recommended one not long ago, but it ended up being terribly complicated to set up, and I gave up.
4. Any of you kids use DreamWeaver? I�m going into work next week to (hopefully) make our webpage more awesome, but this will be the first time I�ve tried to do anything major with the software. Rather than finish reading the tutorials and book, I�m going to try the easy way out and see if anyone is some sort of dreamweaver expert.

Okay, it�s flutepractice time, followed by gymtime, and then go-to-see-the-church-and-run-through-music-for-wedding time. To those of you who do not have a STUPIDLY LONG CHRISTMAS BREAK, good luck on your upcoming semester. Chau.