Fighting and Making it through, faking it if I have to.

I have a degree in political science so I am definitely allowed to do this every single election:

NJ Governor: Corazine- New Jersey always flirts with electing Republicans and never does. Corazine is very unpopular, but Christie doesn't offer a compelling alternative. Unless the independent manages to strip away more votes from Corazine, this one is staying put. Corazine-49 Christie-47 Daggett-4
VA Governor: McConnell will make this a takeover for the Republicans. Deeds is facing a serious scandal. Virginia is still more conservative than average despite November's election results. McConnell-58 Deeds-41
NY 23: Hoffman probably takes this district. It's a large rural district with a lot of conservatives; Owens hasn't polled above 40%, so unless a lot more people vote for the official Republican candidate, Scozzafava, than claim, Owens isn't going to break the Republican stranglehold on this district of over 100 years. H-54 O-42 S-4
WA 71: Referendum 71 will be approved. It's polling 10 points up and momentum is in its favor. 53-47
ME Q1: Maine votes down gay marriage in a close vote. Old people vote more in off year elections. 52-48.

I wasn't going to post this, but every time I watch it I fall a little more in love with it. It specifically reminds me of going to a concert up in Sandpoint that a few of you should remember.

One of the best lines of that night for me was a dedication: "Do you ever think about doors, and how doors get you from the inside to the outside even thought they are made from stuff that comes from the outside. THIS SONG GOES OUT TO DOORS!"

1. When you go to Target, what one thing do you get every single time, besides a funky-wheeled squeaking cart full of frustration?
--Balance Bars, specifically the chocolate covered peanut butter ones. I really think about food that much.

2. What is something that people are currently “into” that you just don’t get or appreciate?
--While I love the craft beer answer, I'm going to have to go with The Revival of the Plot in the American Novel. While there is something to be said against writing novels that are nearly impenetrable to read and also that our current situation isn't the same as that of the modernists which caused them to revolt against plot, this doesn't seem to be anything other than an ingenuous way to increase sales, and not because the lack of plot has gotten in the way of authors saying something Important. Sure there's nothing wrong with Pynchon writing hard-boiled detective fiction to make a buck, but don't tell me that it's better just because of that.

3. What is something that really hoists your sail that other people might feel “ho-hum” about?
--Hmmm...right now. The works of Fernando Pessoa. He was a poet who basically came up with all of these characters who wrote in distinct styles and had philosophical arguments with each other. He literally singlehandedly created an entire generation of Portuguese poetry.

4. Favorite song to sing in the shower or car?
--"Come Pick Me Up" by Ryan Adams, obviously. Or possibly something else by Ryan.

5. A really great salad must have this ingredient:
--Probably something I shouldn't eat like Blue Cheese. Yum...blue cheese.

6. Tell us a bit about your best friend.
-- Immoral support.....Ok, as if more were needed there are only a few people with whom it is possible to actually joke about having chronic pain with and still have it be funny.

7. What was the alternate name that your parents almost named you?
--My parents did not have any other names picked out for me at all not even a girl's name, and they purposely asked the doctors not to tell them my gender (maybe this is what made me gay). My parents continued to do this with each of their kids always having only a named picked out for the gender the child was. It really is sort of uncanny.

8. Relationship?
--No thank you.

9. You get a package in the mail. What is it, and who is it from?
--Wow, I'm feeling shitty today and I didn't order this? What the hell? OMG, and Shel Silverstein coloring book from Ann!!!

10. Today–what song represents you?
--Since I have no songs called "I hate pharmacies", I suppose "Portions for Foxes" by Rilo Kiley.

11. What is one thing that writing has taught you about yourself?
--Well, I don't much write, but I find that even thinking about it turns me into a leering glutton for detail. I will find myself staring at people or things dissecting them in ways I don't even know how to explain, until I start to feel just a little too creepy.

12. How are you going to (or how did you) choose the clothes you’re wearing today?
--I looked for clothes that were relatively clean and that were either not too wrinkled or that would de-wrinkle quickly upon wear. Oh and for green.

How's your relationship with your latest ex?
Ummm...nonexistent.

Do you hate anyone?
Only myself and some prominent Republicans.

The person you fell hardest for died today, how would you feel?:
Terrible, clearly provided that I heard about it.

What are your plans for this weekend?:
Avoid social activities to the maximum possible extent without becoming a hermit.

Ever hooked up with someone that had a tattoo?:
Perversely, I never have.

Have you taken a shower in the last 24 hours?:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. No. I even got judged in Safeway for it.

Is there someone you want to see right now?:
No.

Are you in a good mood right now?
I'm stealing this from Mary: -ish, -ish


Are you taller than 5 foot 7 inches?:
Northern European blood, so clearly.

Where did you get your last bruise from?:
I currently have 3 bruises that all appeared by magic as far as I can tell.

What is something you disliked about your day?
The Constant nagging headache, but that could be extrapolated back another 45 days.

Do you find piercings and tattoos attractive?
Like long hair, I only find tattoos and piercings very very attractive or not at all.

Who was the last person you drove in a car with?:
My sister and her bf. I discovered that George Carlin is definitely not funny.

If you could go back in time and change things, would you?:
Yes.

Are you afraid of losing the last person you talked to?:
My mom? No, she's like herpes--can't get rid of even if you wanted to, and she's really healthy so she'll probably outlive me.

Do you have a favorite phrase?:
Well, since I apparently invent them I'll narrow down to just two: "Oops, accident(--on purpose)" which was used on a different continent without my presence and the ever useful "barf in my mouth".

What was your last thought before you went to bed last night?:
Sonic makes everything better.

Is there anyone in the room with you?
Beau.

Who was the last person you had a conversation with on the phone?:
My mother.

Does anyone call you babe?:
No because if they did I would never speak to them again.

Would you ever get a tattoo?:
Of course.

Remember the first time you kissed the last person you kissed?:
Drunk on the street in downtown Portland.

What were you doing at 7:00 am?:
Sleeping!

Think back to the last person you kissed, how many times have you cried in front of them?:
Umm...I don't cry in front of you unless you are being paid hundreds of dollars to listen to me complain about my problems.

Do you like to cuddle?:
Unfortunately yes. This does not work well with body issues.

Are you happy with the choices you've made?:
Not particularly.

Would you be able to date someone who doesn't make you laugh?:
I have a hard time conceiving of a person who wouldn't make me laugh if we were sleeping together. Obviously, they may not appreciate it, so maybe I need someone who doesn't mind being laughed at.

Would you say that you are emotionally strong?:
Clearly not.

What was the reason for you throwing up last time?:
Constant headache. It's actually pretty useful, because I have to throw up to feel better. I'm actually getting pretty proficient at throwing up just by thinking about it.

Insomnia has to be one of the weirdest things. Normally I have the standard sort of insomnia that everyone bitches about, but right now I'm in one of those crazy bouts of insomnia where I cannot sleep at all; it's like what people call migraine headaches most of the time an actual migraine. I last slept on Tuesday morning so I'm quickly coming up on 48 hours. (I did try to take a nap and dozed for 20 minutes). The funny thing is that it's really not so bad because I don't feel unbearably sleepy, which I think is the worst feeling; I just feel really spacey and time seems to pass way too quickly. I think the longest I've ever involuntarily gone without sleep is about 48 hours, so I think I'm going to break that today. I guess if I don't get some sleep today, I'll get to start the privilege of hallucinating. Stay tuned for bizzarro hallucination stories.

I just had the rather interesting experience of witnessing someone getting arrested in a Starbucks. This young guy who looked either like a hippie or a transient apparently attempted to steal all of the bills out of the Starbucks tip partial cube. The baristas started yelling at the guy and suddenly three very large fellows blocked him and pushed him directly into the table at which I was sitting. He started arguing saying that he didn't take any money, but then gave over a dollar. At this point the police had been called, but he was asking to be released. The self appointed guards said "No" because they knew he'd taken more and had stuffed it into his underwear. At this point he goes to the back of the store (there's only one exit up front) and kind of takes his pants down and removes some more money. People are still in line and ordering coffee while this is all going on. The thief tries to say that he's given it all back, but the police are coming in and they are putting on RUBBER GLOVES. The barista takes back the money they've recovered and DOES NOT wash his hands. Then there was some arrest-y stuff and they take the guy away. All this time, I'm absolutely paralyzed at my table. There is no way I will be able to brave a Starbucks for weeks at the least!

It's so hot that my refrigerator and freezer are taking considerably longer to cool things down than they normally do, and they aren't getting as cold. This is ridiculous.

I went to the doctor, and apparently my cholesterol is too low, and I've been ordered to eat more fat. I didn't know this was possible. I haven't been intending to eat low fat before this.

I just discovered the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. "The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels." (There's a longer description in the link). I propose to have my own little contest here, because I am so entertained by it. Also, does anyone else notice how they all sound like the opening lines to a novel that a hipster would write?

If you are too lazy to follow the link, here's the 2008 winner: "Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped 'Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.'"


Here's my (first) entry:

Angela sighed at the somewhat meretricious china pattern her mother-in-law-to-be selected--chevron or paisley, she never these codes and now felt trapped behind these symbols like being wallpapered into a lavish prison, so she remembered the dark, handsome, roguish lovers that now replaced by a tepid mouse ironically exclaiming "The blue fits" thinking lugubriously on her future life.

So, watching various Spanish films has made me really nostalgic for Madrid. It has also given me an intense craving for Tortilla Espanola. I wonder if I can finagle anyone into going to Toro Bravo or Colosso with me.

It would seem that talking about Marxist Literary Criticism would be really engaging and interesting, because there is so much written about it, but in a classroom setting that just doesn't turn out to be true. For some reasons these discussions always degenerate into the most petty criticisms of Marxist theory and never end up being applicable to literature. First, if you've made it this far, you should have some basic idea of the outline of Marxist theory. Wasting an hour defining not only "Commodity Fetish" and "Alienation" but also "the Bourgeoisie" and "the Proletariat" is annoying and pointless. Second, nearly all of us here are not Marxists communists, so we really don't need to hear your annoying political screed about Ayn Rand. Third, making assertions against Marxist theory that we've already talked about only reveals that you didn't do the reading last time. Your poor rehash of the Wittig's pointing out that Marx may have been blind to sexism is not interesting like it was when we discussed it last week. Fourth, in conjunction with the second point, in this class it's a lot more interesting if you actually apply these ideas to literature, since it's a very influential current of contemporary literary criticism instead of talking about only politics.

Also, Sophocles, Plato, Trotsky, triumvirate, bourgeoisie and aesthetic are probably words whose pronunciations you should look up before you start giving a presentation.

I realize I may be way behind the times on this.

What Would You Do -- This show has me mesmerized. I literally cannot stop watching it. The most fascinating ones are the ones that deal with racism. I think I'm going to have to start showing these to everyone who thinks that racism doesn't exist in this country.

I don't really want to summarize them, because it just won't do it justice. I highly recommend the "Would You Have Called the Police?" and "Real Estate Racism". It is scary how few people will speak out against blatant racism, or how easy it is to harbor racist sentiments even if you think that you don't.


I now realize that I could never be an actor. Please watch, this is amazing.

The only thing that listening to Girl Talk does for me, is make me want to listen to songs that I'd forgotten about for a long time, like Aaliyah's "Are You That Somebody". I'm utterly unimpressed by Gregg Gillis's mashups. They are way too intent on being impressive, and really don't bring anything new, besides maybe a sense of smugness for being able to recognize all the different samples.

I guess even something like "Bittersweet Symphony" by the Verve which didn't alter the source material much, still made the song their own in a way that Girl talk just doesn't.

Because I was raised backwoods style, meaning without TV for the most part, I never got to see a lot of the crazy fucked up stuff everyone else did growing up. One of of my communities some posted a video from an experimental mime troop, and I was Horrified. Not only are these things terrifying, but the act is unbelievably sexist. I can't believe this was on a kids show.

( Video under the cut )

Some time ago, a conservative publication (that my father happens to subscribe to) put forth a list of the 10 Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries. While I don't think that I would describe books as harmful, I am interested in the sort of reaction that we have to ideas. I'm uncomfortable with calling a book harmful, because that seems to at least imply that censorship would be in order, and I think that perhaps bad ideas are better served by being made public and vigorously debated.

Of course, this got me thinking, so instead of thinking of "harmful books", per se, I thought that I would compose a list of the 10 books that I've actually read, which have been of some consequence, whose philosophical ideas I find at least fairly obnoxious. Disagree with me or propose your own as you might see fit. (PS I know I don't format according to the American style with quotation marks and periods; I find that way nonsensical. This isn't an academic paper, so I'll do as I like).

( Cut because Sam goes on some extended philosophical wanking about books that he hates )

I'm having serious nostalgia for going back to Norway. This is where my family lives.

( Cut for pictures )

So, I've never really read any Roethke, except for "My Papa's Waltz", but today the lines from "The Swan" really just floored me for some reason; maybe it was caused by an unfettered love for the named poet, but I still think Roethke gets credit for these savage lines:

"I am my father's son, I am John Donne
Whenever I see her with nothing on"



Obviously, someone with the best of judgment has suggested Simon Armitage. Is there anyone else whose poetry I should read?

"Appropriately the first English citation of the word Hamburger meaning a BBQ item comes from an American publication out of Walla Walla Washington; the Walla Walla Union of January 5th 1889"

Also cited on Dictionary.com's etymology.

That's right! None of that sissified Diet Coke for me!

I just finished reading Norwegian Wood, which seems to be the most popular of Murakami's novels, but I really didn't like it all that much. I'm not sure exactly what it was. The style is markedly different from the other novels of his that I've read since it has a linear narrative and eschews magical realism. Perhaps, that's the style of come to expect from him, but for some reason, the sense of lonliness and alienation didn't resonate for me like it did in my two favorite books of his Sputnik Sweetheart and Khafka on the Shore. His dry meandering prose started to grate on me by the end, and some of the events just did not work for me inside the narrative style (specifically with Keiko at the end); it's like he wanted to write a realist novel, but his narrative voice had whiskey dick. In the end, I found that it had no coherent resolution, which kind of annoyed me, because I think the story was one of his better crafted ones.

Am I crazy? Does anyone else not find this to be his best novel? I'm probably crazy.

This is the ad that is now coming up on livejournal for me. Way too much awesomeness.




Here's the link if you want to buy it for me.

Apparently, Wayne State University has started a program called "Word Warriors", which entails compiling a list of "neglected but eminently useful words" that they would like to see brought back into fashion. I was excited when I heard about it, thinking "finally, someone has decided to compile a list of inkhorn terms and maybe even use some of those great forgotten words like "deuteroscopy" and "temulent". Obviously, this enthusiasm was misplaced.

In my opinion, at least 2/3 of those words have never fallen out of everyday use: acrid, alacrity, bamboozle, behoove, convivial. I had to stop. It was making me crazy.

Now, by way of apology to any who suffered through that vapid and vacuous list, I give you The Phrontistery, which as the name suggests gives a lot to think about and also houses a compendium of lost words. I would give examples, but you should go peruse for yourself.

So this is my first post in forever, but I've been thinking a lot lately about literature. It seems to me that there are two types of readers (of course not mutually exclusive). The first prefers stories primarily because of a well constructed and engaging plot, and the second are primarily interested in the communication of ideas. I concede that all books try to communicate some kind of idea (well except something like My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist that does not do either of these things and instead serves as a short of hipster masturbatory conspectus), but some of my favorite books do not often concern themselves with any plot: Infinite Jest, The God of Small Things, The Bone People and many sci-fi books. In fact, lots of sci-fi seems to be in place primarily to discuss ideas. On the other hand, sci-fi also exhibits the other extreme with stories that have no ideas and are just an extreme form of escapism (think LeGuin vs. the Star Trek novels). Escapism/plot driven books probably also include romance novels, detective fiction, and some authors; Jodi Picoult comes to mind.

I suppose lots of writers bridge the gap like Chabon, and some I'm not sure where to place like Murakami. Perhaps my distinction is too narrow. However, I've been finding that I have less patience with writers that don't seem to engage seriously in some sort of idea, and I was talking about this with a friend who said that she really only liked to read novels with plots. She flatly refused to read any science-fiction at all.

So I'm wondering why everyone reads- to what purpose. I know that everyone has a mix of motivations, but tell me what your most salient one is and why. Or, just argue with me.

I've puked 8 times since I woke up this morning, and now I can't sleep because my stomach hurts so badly. I am officially allergic to the holidays.

In my family somebody always makes red jello with fruit and marshmallows. Usually in some sort of bizarrely decorative dish which resembles something from an Inquisition oubliette more than an overpriced mold from Sur le table. Regardless of the disturbing pan, I have always found this combination of food tremendously disgusting. Even more so with whipped cream on top. Biting through the semi-firm jello into the more fibrous fruit is mildly unpleasant, but then that awful flavor. It takes three things that ordinarily should have been delicious and turns them into something that tastes Holiday Healthy: the fruit is there to mollify everyone's guilt about overeating, but the overall taste is processed in a shoe. The whipped cream on top only makes it worse, because you had the initial hint of fatty-sugary sin, only to have it quashed by the Great-Aunt medicinal taste of the jello.

I guess one good thing is that when that was on my plate and I had to eat everything to get seconds, I was never at risk for overeating. Maybe I'll take a slice this year.

Stolen from theysaid

When I haven't been kissed in a long time,
I walk behind well-dressed women

on cold, December mornings and shovel
the steamy exhalations pluming from their lips

down my throat with both hands, hoping
a single molecule will cling to my lungs.

When I haven't been kissed in a long time,
I sneak into the ladies room of a fancy restaurant,

dig into the trashcan for a napkin
where a woman checked her lipstick,

then go home, light candles, put on Barry White,
and press the napkin all over my body.

When I haven't been kissed in a long time,
I start thinking leeches are the most romantic

creatures, cause all they want to do is kiss.
If only someone invented a kinder, gentler leech,

I'd paint it bright pink and pretend
Winona Ryder's lips crawled off her face,

up my thigh, and were sucking on my swollen
bicep. When I haven't been kissed

in a long time, I create civil disturbances,
then insult the cops who show up,

till one of them grabs me by the collar
and hurls me up against the squad car,

so I can remember, at least for a moment,
what it's like to be touched.

I wonder if there is a world record for November vomiting. I know I have got to be getting into the rankings. The worst thing about anti-emetics is that you have to not emit them for them to actually work.

Yes, in fact, I am that stupid.

That or Help, I'm DYING! Oh wait that was just a panic attack.

On November 15th there are going to be nationwide protests against Prop 8. I'm feeling kind of guilty because I just don't care. I don't mean to imply that I don't respect what they are doing, but I feel that after the emotional investment I made in this last election, I'm just not ready for that yet.

I guess I feel like at this point what's done is done, and I'm already tired of the post-election histrionics. I would feel better if I thought that it would make a difference, or even that this would build into a real movement. I suspect that it will be nothing more than a temporary expression of anger, which is just something I don't care about.