09.17.01

Now playing: Two Step, Low

"Well, the bells out in the church tower chime,
burning clues into this heart of mine.
Thinking so hard on her soft eyes, and the memories
offer signs that it's over..."
- Last Goodbye, Jeff Buckley
11:27 PM | No Comments

Now playing: Trunk Fulla Amps, Self

Psst -- have you visited Rina lately? Her new home, Mayonaise.net, is so rad.
10:07 PM | No Comments

Now playing: Thinking of You, A Perfect Circle

Meh.

Can't wait till my chicken comes home.

Can't wait, can't wait, can't wait.
09:06 PM | No Comments

I really, really, wish people wouldn't bathe in their perfume, especially when they're coming in for an interview. Yes, perfume is nice, and yes, I'm sure it makes you smell really really good, but my God! When I think I'm going to have to open up the front doors of the office to air out the place you are wearing too much.

Meh. I have a headache.
04:14 PM | No Comments

09.16.01

Now Playing: My Favorite Game, The Cardigans

Oh. My. God.

If my head does not stop hurting, I am going to -- to -- cry. A lot.

I woke up about 10:30. I've loaded the dishwasher, had a shower, taken a trip to Big Lots (for Powerpuff Girl wrapping paper) and Wal-Mart (for much needed groceries), put air in my tires, straightened up my room, downloaded a bitchass load of pictures my mom took at a wedding last weekend from my camera's memory card, and washed a load of clothes with this migraine. I've taken somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 - 18 ibuprofen pills.

I am going to die. Seriously.
11:26 PM | No Comments

Now playing: Mississippi, Sheryl Crow

One of the best things about the afore-mentioned "Inside the Actors Studio" is that the host, James Lipton, asks everyone this standard set of questions, the "Bernard Pivot Questionnaire" (you can find the entire questionnaire and the various answers on Bravo's website). It asks everything from "What sound do you love?" to "What profession would you not like to participate in?" My favorite, though, is "What is your favorite curse word?" A ton of people said "fuck", with a few "balls" (Gwyneth Paltrow) and "rat-bastard"s (Kevin Spacey) thrown in for good measure. I once started a thread over at the Silver Ingrid message boards, asking that very same question, and now I extend it to you: what's your favorite curse word or phrase?

(F.Y.I., my favorite curse word is "suck-ass bastard". Hee.)
10:57 PM | 3 comments

Now playing: Take My Hand, Dido

Now, I hate most television -- with a few notable exceptions. I love, though, Bravo's "Inside the Actors Studio", and I wish I'd taped it tonight -- Kevin Spacey was phenomenal.
10:38 PM | 1 Comment

Now playing: Isobel, Dido

Phillip felt the need to write me a sweet little note so he could tell me that it's "interesting that you're 22...you look like you're 10."

Um, gee Phillip -- thanks.
10:04 PM | No Comments

Now playing: My Darling, Wilco

One of the good, if strange, side effects of my medicine: it makes chocolate, like milk chocolate, unbearable. I absolutely cannot stand it. It's something about how the texture works in conjunction with the sweetness; it literally makes me gag.

This medicine has had a similar effect on ice cream and sometimes even Dr. Pepper (!). I'm drinking a lot of Fruit Punch Gatorade and Yoohoo.

Sick, isn't it?
09:51 PM | No Comments

I dropped my book off the bedside and waited for sleep to come. A song came instead; the first four notes of an annoyingly familiar song. And I couldn't let it go, couldn't quiet it, couldn't forget it. I knew for certain that it was Ben Lee; I recognized that much. I couldn't remember, though, how to continue it beyond those first few notes.

So tonight, as I'm washing clothes and cleaning up my room, I've pulled out my Case Logic and set Breathing Tornados spinning in the cdrom.

It was Birthday Song, of course. Mmm -- so much do I love that song. Do yourself a favor and download it.
09:02 PM | No Comments

09.13.01

I'm going home.

Tomorrow afternoon, after work, I'll pack my things and load them into my car. I'll carry the few boxes I've stacked by the door down the stairs and pile them into my trunk.

I love my city, however small, faulted, and limiting it may be. At night, I close my eyes and I can see the skyline rising into the ten o'clock night. Yellow office windows, bright white marching marquee, freeways spaghettied out and between.

What do you do, though, when your house isn't your home? When you're only visiting, just there for a getaway weekend?

My room, my old room -- all purple walls, lime green trim, and glow in the dark stars -- now belongs to my sister. And I'm glad; it suits her. I sets me adrift, though, and I wander aimlessly through the house, restless and bored. Even the computer, my old haven for so many years, is blank and limited without an internet connection. I listen to mp3s and html listlessly.

The phone rings, and it's not for me.

So, I'm spending another weekend unplugged. Sometimes, most times, I don't miss it.

On days like today, though, in a week like this one, I am reluctant to let go, give up control, and spend a weekend without that connection, that vital line into the heart of now.
11:20 PM | 3 comments

"Show me the way to forgive you, allow me to let it go.
Allow me to be forgiven, and show me the way to let go."
- Thomas, A Perfect Circle
11:00 PM | No Comments

What do you remember?

(My memories are fading.)
10:47 PM | 2 comments

What do you do when you feel like you just might belong everywhere you aren't?
10:44 PM | No Comments

I absolutely adore how you prove me wrong.

Time and time and time again, my negative impressions are wrong and reversed.

For that, I am truly thankful.
09:50 PM | No Comments

Although I am incredibly grateful to Kelli for the loan of her invaluable laptop, I am growing tired of this stiff keyboard (it has taken me twenty minutes to write a paragraph-sized email), small screen, and being constantly uncomfortable while online.

Meh -- I miss my computer.
09:44 PM | No Comments

I know I'm not going to make any friends by posting this, but...

It seems like every link I click today, I find yet another blogger who is content to bitch about other bloggers and their apparently lack of concern and respect for what has happened.

Stop it. Just fucking stop it.

You are no better than they are; in fact, you are worse -- you are hypocritical as hell.

What you are bitching about is unimportant. It is mundane. It is boring, it is petty, and it is catty.

Shut. Up.
01:46 PM | 2 comments

I can't exactly explain why, but articles like CNN's "World Shares U.S. Grief" completely tear me apart.
12:50 PM | No Comments

Gah!

"It turns out that this article was originally written and broadcast by Gordon Sinclair on CFRB, Toronto, Ontario, on JUNE 5, 1973!"
- Baron Earl
09:05 AM | No Comments

What if ...

What if I told you that I wanted you to call me, just so I could yell at you?

Would you?

Will you?
12:29 AM | No Comments

09.12.01

Yesterday morning, after listening in shock to the radio, I hurried into my office to boot up my computer. After hastily shoving my things away, I opened IE and started searching my photo directory for pictures from my New York trip I took a couple of years ago with Heather.

I think, rather understandably, I stopped, speechless, on the picture we took as we floated across the river towards the Statue of Liberty.
11:14 PM | 5 comments

"In the City of God there will be a great thunder, two brothers torn apart by chaos, while the fortress endures, the great leader will succumb"; "The third big war will begin when the big city is burning."
- Nostradamus, 1654

"The French physician and astrologer Nostradamus (1503-1566) penned numerous quatrains populated by obscure imagery that the credulous have ever after attempted to fit to the events of their times. These predictions can often ring somewhat true in that the images employed are so general they can be found in almost every event of import, but by the same token, the prophesies are never a dead-on fit because the wordings are far too general. Not that this stops anyone from believing in them; our society's need for mysticism runs far too deep to ever allow for that.

"Nostradamus did not write the quatrain now being attributed to him. (One wonders how a guy who died in 1566 could have written an item identified as being penned in 1654 anyway.) It originated with a student at Brock University in Canada in the 1990s, appearing on a web page essay on Nostradamus. That particular quatrain was offered by the page's author, Neil Marshall, as a fabricated example to illustrate how easily an important-sounding prophecy can be crafted through the use of abstract imagery. He pointed out how the terms he used were so deliberately vague they could be interpreted to fit any number of cataclysmic events.

"It appears someone mistook Marshall's illustrative example for an actual Nostradamus prophecy and, not content to let well enough alone, added "The third big war will begin when the big city is burning." A fabrication was thus further fabricated."

- Taken from the Urban Legends Reference Pages, with love to Rina for the "original" Nostradamus quote and to Jenn for the Urban Legends link.
09:12 PM | 1 Comment

America: The Good Neighbor.
06:25 PM | No Comments

That's pretty neat: you can donate money to the National Disaster Relief Fund of the American Red Cross using Paypal.
05:14 PM | No Comments

Also: there's a seven hour wait to give blood, and that's just here in Huntsville! That's crazy!

I think I'll take the advice of a friend of mine, a former EMT, and wait; as he explained it, they'll most certainly plow through what they have now and will inevitably come up short next week, and all the people who donated yesterday and today and tomorrow won't be able to give. So I think I'll wait a week or so.
03:11 PM | No Comments

Huntsville is a pretty vulnerable area. I live less than 5 miles from an arsenal -- an actual military arsenal, Redstone Arsenal, however outdated it may be -- and less than 5 miles from The Marshall Space and Flight Center. Their presence makes Huntsville a pretty feasible, conceivable target for some kind of terrorist activity.

I'm not afraid, though. I am not afraid, I am not scared, I am not frightened.

A lot of people are freaking out, and a lot of people have gone into Wal-Mart, sporting goods stores, and various outdoor shops, buying guns and ammunition. That's ridiculous. I am not so egocentric as to think that if, God forbid, other attacks occur like the ones we experienced yesterday, they will happen here. We might be a good target, but we're also small potatos. There is little to be gained by targeting Huntsville.

We are small time, and they have bigger fish to fry.
02:52 PM | No Comments

This is completely unimportant in the grand scheme of everything, but I absolutely hate and loathe how they've assigned some kind of sick title to all this mess: "America Under Seige", "America Under Attack". That's just crap, complete and utter crap.

I wonder if the U.S. is the only country who feels the need to give their disasters and incidents cute little titles and meaningful subtitles.
02:06 PM | 1 Comment

09.11.01

While some of the books on the Top 100 most frequently challenged books are almost understandable, I cannot fathom why books like To Kill a Mockingbird, A Wrinkle in Time, and A Light in the Attic are on this ridiculously stupid list. The Catcher in the Rye is always on the list, and while that infuriates me to no end, I hope it fuels some little english geek's fire and they read it just for spite. Feh.

I hate censorship, especially in print. Probably because I spent so much time being made aware of and fighting against it in high school, the literary magazine nerd editor I was.

At sixteen, my honors english teacher passed out a long list of books, telling us to pick one as our research paper subject. I was immediately drawn to Catcher, and so after I turned in my selection, she kept me after class.

"You might want to rethink your research paper subject," she told me.

"What? Why?"

"Catcher is a pretty progressive book. It's pretty controversial. Some people object to its offensive language and compromising situations."

Baffled, I could only laugh. I wondered just who she thought I was. "That's -- ok. I think I'll be alright."

This is also, of course, the honors english teacher who accused me not once but twice of plagiarism, going so far as to ask my former honors english teacher and literary magazine advisor about my writing. So, needless to say, I didn't really take any of her suggestions too seriously.
11:41 PM | 2 comments

I love repairing parts of myself with music.

Kelli loaned me a cd full of mp3s, as I was bitching last night because I couldn't remember which APC song I'd been meaning to download. So Winamp is shuffling between Mer de Noms, Return of Saturn, Songs from an American Movie, Volume One, and a couple of Sheryl Crow cds: Sheryl Crow and The Globe Sessions.

It's been a while since I've listened to the Everclear cd; for someone with an Art Alexakis fixation, I've been neglecting them lately. I've remembered just how much I love Now That It's Over, Unemployed Boyfriend, and Thrift Store Chair. And I listened to Sheryl Crow all through high school, but now, I can't even begin to guess where my cds are. I have to say, though, that I do love Anything but Down and The Difficult Kind is officially my current favorite song.

Music just mends all my torn edges.
10:58 PM | 1 Comment

I have been unable to tear myself away from the stupid, soul-sucking television; sprawled on the couch under my powerpuff girls blanket and staring numbly, dumbly. My eyes are tired, my heart is heavy, and my thoughts are scattered.

I love, though, that TLC is stepping outside of the traditional American news presentations by showing the BBC. It's always interesting, the interpretations of others; people who are not so personally involved, without such an ingrained, automatic response.
10:44 PM | No Comments

I've been struggling to keep up. We aren't allowed to have radios here at work, so we're trying to puzzle piece all the bits of information we can glean from the internet, phone calls, and emails.

CNN has completely ceased regular operations; there's only an introductory splash page which leads you to a second index and an article, which is actually more of an outline of events. I can't even begin to load ABC, or CBS. NPR is loading, but its very slow going.

Surprisingly, I've had better luck with The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Since 9AM, I've downloaded eleven "CNN Breaking News" emails into my inbox.

Columbine, Oklahoma City, I remember this feeling: unreal, weird, threatened.

Now, my beloved.
11:35 AM | No Comments