I think liberals should start calling themselves "pro-air"

2005-04-16 / 9:35 a.m.

...after all, "pro-air" means about as much as "pro-life." And what a PR move it would be!Slicing off another piece of environmental protection? Gaaah! Emily smash!!

Also, "Spamalot"? I just don't think Monty Python works with non-English actors. It just doesn't make sense to me.

I don't have time to think of a clever title : (

2005-04-14 / 1:56 p.m.

News in brief:

Yesterday night was the public reading, it went okay I guess. The magazine is out now, so I guess that makes me officially published. I was really impressed with (most) of the other finalists I read. It made me jealous; I wish I had the kind of talent it takes to be a (successful) professional writer. That would be so incredibly fun. The other big WritersFestival news is Edward Albee�s emergency cancellation. I�m okay with that though, because they miraculously got someone really notable to take his place at the last minute: Dr. Oliver Sacks. Not only am I more familiar with his work (I know I read a bit, and I think I liked it, but I don�t remember it well), he�s also writing in a genre that�s closer to my heart. Playwright, schmaywright�personal essays are where it�s at.

That big, important, paper I�ve been working on? Still not a paper. Just a disaster.

Been kinda� depressed lately, but not so much as to have anything interesting to say about it.

Finally have my replaced Dell machine. Other than something on the case softly rattling sometimes (I think I just need to close it better) it seems to work well.

All of my work is due in three weeks and three days. I graduate a few days after that. Woah.

Another year where it appears I haven't recieved an invitation to honors convocation. Oh well. At least next Wednesday's Sparc--that'll be a nice chance to sleep a little, and get some work on this paper done.

According to the blog-y thing on Guster's website, their upcoming album has a song with my name in the title. The fact that the working title was apparently "the glands" kind of worries me, but whatever.

that�s all.

Save the songbirds!

2005-04-14 / 1:16 p.m.

Just when I thought that Florida had the highest idiocy index in the nation, along comes Wisconsin, proposing a law that would allow hunting of domestic cats.

The proposal would allow licensed hunters to kill free-roaming cats, including any domestic cat that isn't under the owner's direct control or any cat without a collar, just like skunks or gophers

here. Reminds me of my eternal confusion about what kind of people enjoy hunting.

I've heard there's attainable oil in the hearts of fuzzy kittens

2005-04-08 / 7:52 a.m.

aww, fuck. I am even more determined to become a frequently-use-bicycle-for-transportation kind of chick.

There was a silver lining at first...when I see headlines like this, I often think to myself, "if people get mad enough, maybe we'll start putting more energy into reducing dependency on petroleum." but then I keep reading, and keep thinking, and I realize that all this will probably do is push Bush's environmentally unfriendly energy bills through, and encourage government/oil industry wankery. This article makes me wonder how our country could elect the party that wants to drill for oil in wildlife refuges. Okay, that was stream of consciousness, and I didn't say anything remotely insightful. It's also probably full of typos that I'm too lazy to fix. Bah. I hate the world sometimes. Okay...no more entries before 8:00.

duck, duck, goose.

2005-04-07 / 9:56 p.m.

I finally rememberd my haloscan password...meaning that I could make my comments link say something clever. Unfortunately, I'm not all that clever and never came up with anything good. I almost had it read, "I # the baby" ("#" being substituted for the number of comments), but that isn't really funny if you never end up with anywhere near 8 comments.

Did that merit an update? No, it did not.

outside glowering in

2005-04-04 / 10:43 a.m.

I�m tired of reading the #FSO thread about the tornado warning prank. For those of you who don�t go to The College, there was a mock game of �The Apprentice� going on last week. Apparently, the last task was to stage an April Fool�s Day prank, and the executor of the best prank won the game. So one chick stages a fight between a coach and a dean, and the other chick posts fliers saying that there was a tornado warning, and everyone who didn�t move their cars to a certain spot would be heavily fined by public safety. The tornado prank won. A couple of people posted to the folder, and were all like, �ha ha, that was a good prank!� Then, and I honestly would have never seen this coming, a small camp of people starts posting to our newsgroup thinger about how that was in such poor taste, and how inclimate weather wasn�t funny, and that those who had suffered through tornadoes were not amused, and so on and so forth. Granted, there were only a few people, but those who posted disagreeing with the Tornado-flier-haters didn�t really present themselves very well. Though I posted back this morning, and I guess that makes me a hypocrite for saying that I�m sick of seeing the continuation of the (stupid) discussion, yet contributing to it. Hot diggity dog.

I started the morning out on the wrong foot being involved in a display of magnificent rudeness on the part of an unknown faculty/staff member. � .. . ��So I�m sitting outside the gym at 6:30 this morning waiting for the student worker to open up the building. Quite a bit of time had passed when this middle aged (pushing old) woman who (presumably) works for The College comes power walking up to me. I�ve seen her around before, but I don�t know who she is exactly. So she�s lightly jogging in place in front of me, and asks, �Is there no one there yet?�
I respond, �no, the student worker hasn�t shown up.�
She shrugs and replies: �Well, I�ll just get _________ (whatever the custodian�s name is) to let me in.
�.It should be known that the custodian is not allowed to do this�no one can use the equipment before the worker opens the gym, that�s just the way. The custodian has seen me waiting outside on way colder mornings, and has sympathetically explained to me that he is not allowed to let anyone in. Fine, the man is doing his job. I�m 100% supportive of his adherence to the rules. I�m sure she knows this, being an employee of the college and all, but she starts knocking on the glass anyway. The custodian reluctantly opens the side door to let her in; she enters and shuts it promptly behind her, leaving me standing outside. Indignant, I knock on the glass and motion for her to let me in too�after all, it was kind of chilly, and I would have preferred to wait for the gym monitor inside rather than outside. She turns, makes direct eye contact with me as I pound on the window, and completely ignores me. She starts using the weight machines. The kindly custodian comes to the door, but he doesn�t let me in. I ask him why, and he gives his usual answer. I ask why he let her in, and he sighs and says that it�s because she works for the college. He reassures me that the worker should be there soon, and apologizes. I stand outside, and shoot evil looks at the woman inside as she goes through her workout. There is little doubt that she sees me glaring at her. The icing: she has the nerve to say �buh-bye� as she passes me (still standing outside) on her way out. I was completely without words; I just looked at her in open mouthed shock at her bitchiness.

little things

2005-04-01 / 5:57 p.m.

As my Spanish decays from lack of use, and without a formal class to keep me pronouncing words according to the ethnicity of the professor (most recently, Puerto Rican), I find that I�ve got more of an Argentine accent than I remembered. Of course, saying �Argentine accent� is very misleading. What I meant was an North American accent where I say spanish words with �y�s in them kinda� funny.

I fell down my loft stairs yesterday. It hurt. A lot. And left me with several souvenir bruises, a cut elbow, and two broken toenails from impact with the contraband refrigerator at the bottom. Fortunately, it was not my fault because�.

I blame Dell. I was on hold for technical support when I fell. Rawr. Dell is the great satan. Fortunately, they�re fixing my completely retarded computer, and I only had to ask NINE TIMES. The tech support dude seemed really surprised when I rated my experience with Dell a 2 out of 9

So I guess Mitch Hedberg is dead. When you read about someone�s death on April Fools� day, it hard to not be skeptical.

Google�s AF day joke is cute. Lame, but cute.

You know what else is cute? Makar from Wind Waker. Roger bought me the game, and it�s quite entertaining. Sometimes though, I think they could have renamed it, �Zelda for girls!� as some of it is just so absurdly adorable. That little jingle bell sound he makes when he waddles around gets me every time.

The Moulin Rouge poster that I�ve hung up since my freshman year of college keeps falling down. The sound of it hitting the floor in the middle of the night woke me up, and I remember thinking that it was terribly symbolic of me bring ready to graduate. Moral: I come up with some dumb shit when I�m half asleep.

on my way to where the air is sweet

2005-03-30 / 9:03 p.m.

It seems like an update is in order, even though things have been pretty much business as usual. Don�t give up on me, my intrepid leadership. Turmoil and drama will come back around soon enough and disrupt this period of relative tranquility and shitty journaling.

The final stretch of school is treating all of us at The College as harshly as it usually does, but the fact that it�s the last giant pileup of work makes me look more fondly upon it.

The weather has been marvelous, no? Weather like this wakes me up, it makes me happy, it reminds me why I want to work for environmental protection�. Of course, it also makes it really hard to want to go to class. Senior seminar was only possible because my back was to the window. Actually, it was pretty fun today: there was argument, loud voices included! Between hurdles to being able to vote, and the crazies forming militias to secure the Mexican border, class was lively for at least the first half. I also said relatively few stupid things, that�s always a plus.

So I�m all set to move into this apartment in Athens. It isn�t the one I looked at, but it�s the same floor plan and in the same building, just a different floor. My only worry is that they�ll replace the carpet�usually this would be good, but the color of the new carpet is a lurid shade of mauve that will look TERRIBLE with the red couch I inherited. I�ll be moving straight from The College to Athens, and have therefore made good on my proclamation that I�ll never move home again.

Oh! Can�t neglect to mention that last weekend was terrific�Hillary and Bruce came to town for Vodka Communion. The party was okay, but I felt kind of awkward and out of place at times�though the Cadbury eggs injected with amaretto assuaged lots of the social discomfort. The real treat was obviously hanging out with Hillary. Our old-school extravaganza� included consumption of delicious food, and shopping in Little five in addition to the party.

Provided I�m a little worker bee the remainder of this week, I should be able to drink and merrymake on Saturday. That�s another part of realization that the end of semester is closing in: in addition to academic deadlines, you realize that you only have four or five more expendable weekends.

Great American Torture Book II

2005-03-21 / 7:22 a.m.

I�m going to go ahead and say it: I don�t like it when otherwise good songs tack several minutes of weird synthesized noise at the end of the track. Maybe that means I don�t know how to appreciate music, I don�t know, fuckit. I�ve always resented that about Deadweight, one of my favorite Beck songs. Now the Wilco CD gets a minus four for having over 10 minutes of grating noise at the end of a really nice song. There we were, my mother and I, cruising along 316 toward Athens when it started. That inventive noise cost me my music picking privileges for the rest of the trip, and resulted in a playlist of some of my mother�s most heinous CDs�Rod Stewart?! Come on, that�s just sadistic. In related news, the obscene amount of time I spent in the car this weekend has caused �Hopes and Fears� to really grow on me. Unfortunately though, Keane is almost as impossible to sing along with as Jeff Buckley; but go ahead and imagine me trying to, it�s funny. Also, am I the only one who notices a small similarity to Freddy Mercury�s voice at times?

As I mentioned above, mom and I went to Athens Saturday to look at apartments. We put down a waitlisted deposit for a fairly large 1 bedroom that had about everything I wanted. It�s a little more than I wanted to pay for rent, but I really really really want to live alone. All this means is that I�ll have to work a good bit over the summer; if I want to work at penney�s, my mom met someone from that store who said she�d hire me. Anyway, I�m excited about my new apartment�which is not guaranteed yet, but I will probably get it. Depends if the guy can hold it a couple of weeks longer than he usually would, I should know by Wednesday. Most of you people have already done the whole apartment living thing, but it should be noted that this is my first time�I�m an apartment virgin. That should explain some of my fantasizing about arrangement of silverware drawers and choice of hanging plants for my porch.

Post Athens, I convinced my mother to play hooky from work. We went and walked around Little Five; played at the cat shelter; and watched re-runs of wedding shows on TLC �on demand�, making fun of the stupid things families sometimes do whilst preparing for weddings. Also, we went shopping Sunday because it was special employee sale day. I loathe clothes shopping these days; regardless, I ended up with a couple of summer tops and a dressy casual dress for various sundry events I have over the spring and summer�all were delightfully inexpensive.

Okay, this is that and that is all. It�s time to read my depressing first-hand account of the misery of Brazilian Favelas, Child of the Dark. What a happy ending to the weekend.

Sorry, it's a bridge in a different Madison County

2005-03-16 / 10:03 p.m.

It�s journalin� time. Now that midterms are over, I�m affording myself an evening to slack around. I think this is going to be two entries, to keep you from getting too terribly bored. In related news, these chips are about the best thing ever, and are fairly good for you! Unfortunately, if you eat half a bag, they can no longer be thought of as the �guiltless� snack that the website touts them as. Anyway...

My last collegiate spring break was fairly uneventful, but not bad by any stretch of the imagination. The highlight of the week was spending Thursday through Saturday with Roger. We played with Roger�s new gamecube, watched movies with Roger�s friends Phil and Lindsey, and went to Watson Mill State park. The park was really close by, and it was lovely to spend some a few hours away from traffic noise and strip malls. We got to the park via highway 72, which took us through the town of Comer Joja, which boasts a population of 1,052. I was amused when the directions to the park passed through Comer�s stop light (please note that I said stop light singular); I spent the drive there adoping a southern accent every time I mentioned Comer. Despite my expectations of extreme redneckyness, Comer was a cute little town and nice enough to drive through�.of course, driving through it only took 4 minutes. But the park was nice�the main attraction is the historic covered bridge, but it also has a nice shallow spread of shallow river that can be traversed by jumping from big rock to big rock. It would be nice to go back in the summer and lay out on a big rock with your toes in the river. Also, the park has what may be the best swings in Georgia. Ohhh ohhhh and pedal boats! Roger named ours the Deus ex Machina�he was closed to most of my suggestions. While we had a successful voyage, Roger is not that great of a navigator, and without my assistance might have been very vulnerable to pirates.

As usual, when I go home with even a tiny bit of money (or my ill-gotten store credit at the used CD/DVD store), I enjoy a windfall of used CDs. This time, I picked up Wilco�s �A Ghost is Born� and Keane�s �Hopes and Fears.� I haven�t listened to �ghost� enough to form a solid opinion, but having it on in the background now is leading me to believe that I probably like it okay, nothing life changing yet though. Hopes and Fears is good, but I don�t really feel passionately about it either. This one has also not been listened to with the attention needed to pass judgment either though.

I'm about to start saving my frivolous purchase money though...I downloaded the trailer for the Gamecube Zelda game that's supoosed to be coming out this year, and it looks totally sweet and awesome. Sadly, I'll probably drop the money to buy it shortly after it comes out, because that's just the kind of lame child I am sometimes. I'm the heiress of Europe though, so I can get away with stuff like this and still be cool. Don't question me.

Okay, time for next entry�you should read it�.it�s got exciting news!

I gotta' wear shades

2005-03-16 / 10:02 p.m.

So I got accepted to the Media and Public Aff. Program George Washington Monday. I was really surprised. Unfortunately, they�re not going to give me any money, and I�m having trouble finding anything I�m eligible to apply for right away. I kinda� knew that this would happen in the unlikely event that I was accepted into the program though : (. As cool as the SMPA School is, it would be a tremendous financial strain for me to go. I�d have to take out a humongoid loan, work seven jobs, and sell a kidney just to afford rent in DC., not to mention tuition. Besides, I�ve been getting increasingly excited about getting an MPA and less excited about Med&PublicAff. I think this means that my acceptance will only serve for something to brag about�.by the way, did I mention that I was accepted to a selective graduate program at George Washington University? That makes me better than you. �seriously though, please know that I�m just kidding.

Now, better news: the same day I got my acceptance to GWU, UGA sent me notification that I had been awarded a research assistantship. It�s the really good one, and it pays even better than I expected. I�m excited about getting an MPA, excited about being able to afford to do it without selling a kidney, and excited about the thought of living in my very own affordable apartment.

Speaking of excitement over MPAs, a lot of you have posed the question, �what the hell is an MPA�? My answers have been, without exception, pretty vague and bad. Fortunately, this site is very informative. It describes the flexibility of the degree better than I can.

Saturday, my mother and I are going to Athens to look at apartments. I�m pretty confident now that I can afford to live on my own, which is a tremendous relief. I�ve found about four of five complexes with really reasonably priced one bedroom and/or studio apartments that seem nice and have some of the amenities that I�m looking for: pool, cardio equipment, washer/dryer hookups, and pets allowed. We�ll see though�they might turn out to suck once I see them in person. Ideally, I�d like to take out a small loan, and go ahead and try to move in May. I�ll get a crap summer job in Athens that I may have the option of continuing when school starts should I desire to. I need to talk to EK, who is apparently also moving to Athens and found a great studio there.

For your amusement, the preceding paragraph will be run through google translator, translated into German, than google translated back into English from German:

Saturday, my nut/mother and I will regard dwellings to Athens. I am quite convinced, now I can afford there, to live on mine which is an enormous discharge. I found really appropriately approximately four determined by five complexes with price for a bedroom and/or a Studiowohnungen, which seem nice and some after the Annehmlichkeiten have, which I search: Pool, cardio equipment, washer /dryerschaltungen and domestic animals granted. We see that... they could turn out, in order to suck, as soon as I see it in the person. Ideally I would like to take a short term loan out and precede and the attempt for inside moving like I receive one crapsommerjob in Athens that I can have the choice of continuing, if school beginnings I to wish. I must speak with EK, which moves apparent also to Athens and a large studio found there