all’s well that ends well November 22, 2004
So my friends won first prize in the drag show Saturday night! Which, if you ask me, is only logical; of course the official campus feminists would be kick-ass drag kings. And I really wish I could have been there to see it. But, it’s just as well I wasn’t in the act, ’cause guess who was one of the judges?
That’s right. TeacherCrush.
And I had a meeting with her this morning to discuss my term paper, which I survived fairly well, but there is no way in hell I would have come out of it alive if I had spent Saturday night prancing around in front of her with tube socks stuffed in my crotch.
god, I didn’t know it was possible to die of theoretical embarrasment, but just the thought of it makes me want to crawl in a hole and end it all.
Anyway, I saw the pictures, and they all looked fantastic. I’ll send you some L., as soon as I get copies; just wait till you see J. in her mullet wig. She looked exactly, in her words, “like a Mexican gangster.” I mean they were seriously butch. It’s awesome.
Speaking of butch, I got my CDs from Amazon this morning (about damn time):
The Butchies, Make Yr Life: 3 (fucking gorgeous) butch dykes, 1 bad-ass punk band. I know crap about pop music so I’ll just leave it to them:
The Butchies’ fourth record is like alpenglow (a reddish glow seen near sunset or sunrise of the summits of mountains) absorbing into your pores – it simply commands a high-energy, emotionally-stuffed response. Make Yr Life is a colossal, intimate connection between the unrivalled punk-rock trio and their audience. It’s like waking from a coma, or like having your dog lick away your tears, or like the first kiss with that sexy girl with moonlight splashed on her face. But it’s also true that Kaia, Melissa and Alison’s intent with this record is simple: World Domination. If after listening to this 10-track cream dream you don’t feel like you just had one of the biggest epiphanies of your life, you clearly voted for Bush, and are immune to evolution. Make Yr Life is undoubtedly the record that will facilely evolve the music world as we know it (Mothership not included.)
and, I can’t believe it took me this long to get this one, Tete’s A la faveur de l’automne. (How the fuck do you do accents on this thing???) (Le site est tout en francais, but if you click on the “M” circle you can figure out how to navigate around) L. turned me on to Tete and I’ve been profoundly grateful ever since. There’s a lot of Quebecois slang and dialect, so I really have no idea what the heck he’s saying, but I adore him anyway. Of course it reminds me of my month in France, but wierdly enough it brings up lots of food memories. Freshly baked batardes, and tartes aux fraises (oh sacred heart of jesus those are wonderful. L., do me a favor, run out and eat one of these for me–they have them in Austria I guess–so I can at least enjoy it vicariously), orangina, proper quiches, Swiss chocolate, drinking expressos at Le Cafe d’horloge, mmm…
I can’t figure out if all this food nostalgia is in anticipation of Thanksgiving, or a result of the fact that my meal plan ran out and I’ve been living off pop-tarts and oatmeal for the last week or so.
Anyway, yeah, so I have one more paper to write for tomorrow, and then it’s off to Suburban Wasteland for a few days decent food and subconcious family tensions. Hope you have a good Thanksgiving L.! Pig out on some good European food and Austrian beer. I’ll probably write you while I’m home.
please excuse the stress-and-hormone-induced ravings November 20, 2004
WHY DIDN’T ANYONE TELL ME JENA MALONE IS IN THE NEXT PRIDE AND PREJUDICE ADAPTATION?!?!?!???
::jumps up and down screeching like a school-girl::
And she’s playing Lydia! Like, omigod!!
And you straight girls go on about your Mr. Darcy and Colin Firth and wet shirts. Pshaw, I say. I’ve got Lizzy and Keira Knightley* and Jena Malone! In Regency dresses! omigawd!
*yes, I’m still in a torrid love/hate relationship with Keira; right now lust is winning out.
**edited to add: butch Jena!! completely dazed indeed
***oh god, it gets worse. They’ve got Rosamund Pike as Jane! There’s no way I’m going to survive this movie. I’ll just dissolve into a jibbering mess half-way through, in a puddle of MovieStarLust.
just because I’m crazy busy.. November 20, 2004
…doesn’t mean I don’t have time for a quiz. One always has time for quizzes.
updates November 20, 2004
C. is okay. She wasn’t feeling well last night but she had some new medication that seemed to work. So, I think everything’s okay now.
I am not, unfortunately, going to be in the annual drag show tonight. Too much shit has hit the fan and I will be spending the evening in the library researching a term paper so I don’t make an ass out of myself when I meet with TeacherCrush to discuss it on Monday.
Okay. Back to work.
A word of advice November 18, 2004
To all the straight and bi chicks out there who might be reading this:
1. Use condoms. ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS. I know you’ve heard it before but I’m going lecture you again. I don’t care if it “feels better” without condoms. Too bad. DO NOT USE BIRTH CONTROL IN LIEU OF CONDOMS. That is a really fucking stupid idea. You will still get a sexually transmitted infection.
2. If you’re using birth control, get it from your doctor. Get a prescription (of course, you’ll have to find a pharmicist willing to fill the damn thing, but that’s another rant). DO NOT BORROW BIRTH CONTROL FROM A FRIEND. I know it’s hard to get an appointment with Planned Parenthood, I know that maybe your health insurance doesn’t cover it, I know you sometimes find yourself in situations where it’s difficult to obtain, but please, these are serious drugs you are messing with and it will fuck up your body if you don’t use it correctly. READ THE GODDAMN INFO BOOKLET. It’s there for a reason. Make sure you understand the consequences of putting strong chemicals into your body.
I’m telling you this because I just spent the entire day at the hospital, watching one of my closest friends (and my roommate), C., puking her guts out till she had no more guts to puke. And it wasn’t until an hour ago that I learned she had borrowed a pack of birth control from a friend of ours–she has a hot date this weekend. I read the info packet. You’re not supposed to take it if you have a history of migraines. C. has a history of migraines. All the side-effects it listed are exactly the symptoms she has. C. didn’t tell the doctor in the ER that she had started on birth control two days ago, probably because she was too busy vomiting and blacking out. I didn’t tell him because I didn’t know about it. I called up the hospital and informed the nurse, but they’ve been giving her drugs all day long without realizing she was on medication.
Jesus fucking christ almighty people!
Look. I’m a lesbian. My sex life currently is on par with that of a cloistered nun. My straight friends (read: all my friends) are fucking like goddamned bunnies and I know more about their health and safety risks than they do. This is a really fucked up scenario. I can get away without knowing shit about birth control. You straight girls can’t. Please please please please PLEASE EDUCATE YOURSELF. You can read, can’t you?
So go read:
Planned Parenthood
Birth Control
Safe Sex and Sexually Transmitted Diseases
Angels in America November 17, 2004
ROY:…I see the universe, Joe, as a kind of sandstorm in outer space with winds of mega-hurricane velocity, but instead of grains of sand it’s shards and splinters of glass. You ever feel that way? Ever have one of those days?
–Tony Kushner
Very Like a Whale November 15, 2004
One thing that literature would be greatly the better for
Would be a more restricted employment by the authors of simile and metaphor.
Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons or Celts,
Can’t seem just to say that anything is the thing it is but have to go out of their way to say that it is like something else.
What does it mean when we are told
That that Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold?
In the first place, George Gordon Byron had enough experience
To know that it probably wasn’t just one Assyrian, it was a lot of Assyrians.
However, as too many arguments are apt to induce apoplexy and thus hinder longevity.
We’ll let it pass as one Assyrian for the sake of brevity.
Now then, this particular Assyrian, the one whose cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold,
Just what does the poet mean when he says he came down like a wolf on the fold?
In heaven and earth more than is dreamed of in our philosophy there are great many things.
But I don’t imagine that among them there is a wolf with purple and gold cohorts or purple and gold anythings.
No, no, Lord Byron, before I’ll believe that this Assyrian was actually like a wolf I must have some kind of proof;
Did he run on all fours and did he have a hairy tail and a big red mouth and big white teeth and did he say Woof Woof?
Frankly I think it is very unlikely, and all you were entitled to say, at the very most,
Was that the Assyrian cohorts came down like a lot of Assyrian cohorts about to destroy the Hebrew host.
But that wasn’t fancy enough for Lord Byron, oh dear me no, he had to invent a lot of figures of speech and then interpolate them,
With the result that whenever you mention Old Testament soldiers to people they say Oh yes, they’re the ones that a lot of wolves dressed up in gold and purple ate them.
That’s the kind of thing that’s being done all the time by poets, from Homer to Tennyson;
They’re always comparing ladies to lilies and veal to venison,
And they always say things like that the snow is a white blanket after a winter storm.
Oh it is, is it, all right then, you sleep under a six-inch blanket of snow and I’ll sleep under a half-inch blanket of unpoetical blanket material and we’ll see which one keeps warm,
And after that maybe you’ll begin to comprehend dimly
What I mean by too much metaphor and simile.
– Ogden Nash
Which is pretty much how I’m feeling, in regards to literature, at the moment. Drowning under another deluge of papers this week, so it will be mostly poetry posting, if I post at all.
Also, I seem to have entangled myself in the annual drag show. So if this Saturday night you should see four girls lip-synching to Michael Jackson’s “Beat It,” I’ll be the one with the Flock of Seagulls hair-do. (oh god. what have I got myself into?)
not an itinerant tourist. unfortunately. November 13, 2004
Got L.’s letter yesterday. She’s in Salzburg, and at the moment I’m suffering an attack of the green-eyed monster. I keep thinking of my day in Geneva; C. and I huddled under her umbrella as it drizzled and we wandered between gothic cathedrals and down medieval alleys, searching out every chocolaterie we could find and gorging on Swiss pastries, and my fruitless quest to find a bottle of uncarbonated water (why do Europeans drink fizzy water? why?? It’s just unnatural). And I read in the paper today that one of my favorite French movies, Les Choristes, has finally made it to Nifty Art House Theatre in Suburban Wasteland, and I’m stuck here in Rural Small Town with “Seed of Chucky” and “SpongeBob SquarePants.” I’ve been trying to console myself with the soundtrack I bought over the summer, but it isn’t really working.
All this is just as an excuse to post more Billy Collins.
Consolation
How agreeable it is not to be touring Italy this summer,
wandering her cities and ascending her torrid hilltowns.
How much better to cruise these local, familiar streets,
fully grasping the meaning of every roadsign and billboard
and all the sudden hand gestures of my compatriots.
There are no abbeys here, no crumbling frescoes of famous
domes and there is no need to memorize a succession
of kings or tour the dripping corners of a dungeon.
No need to stand around a sarcophagus, see Napoleon’s
little bed on Elba, or view the bones of a saint under glass.
How much better to command the simple precinct of home
than be dwarfed by pillar, arch, and basilica.
Why hide my head in phrase books and wrinkled maps?
Why feed scenery into a hungry, one-eyed camera
eager to eat the world one monument at a time?
Instead of slouching in a café ignorant of the word for ice,
I will head down to the coffee shop and the waitress
known as Dot. I will slide into the flow of the morning
paper, all language barriers down,
rivers of idiom running freely, eggs over easy on the way.
And after breakfast, I will not have to find someone
willing to photograph me with my arm around the owner.
I will not puzzle over the bill or record in a journal
what I had to eat and how the sun came in the window.
It is enough to climb back into the car
as if it were the great car of English itself
and sounding my loud vernacular horn, speed off
down a road that will never lead to Rome, not even Bologna.
God Says Yes to Me November 11, 2004
I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don’t paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I’m telling you is
Yes Yes Yes
–Kaylin Haught
