Ida-ream of Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair

We had a funny concert today. Between the first and second movements of the Knock Knock Cantata, a woman in the audience shouted "I THINK LOUISE JUST HAD A HEART ATTACK."

I really really hope she meant it in a good way. Anything is possible in this world, you know? The audience was decidedly over the average age of sixty five... I think we'd all feel pretty bad if we literally killed someone with our cheesy jokes. We just kept singing.

The Aberdeen Bestiary

Oh man, if only I didn't have so many papers to write...

So I'll sleep out in the gutter, you can sleep here on the floor.

I've been listening to Neutral Milk Hotel a LOT lately. Maybe too much. Andrew, did you play them for me, like, a gazillion (3) years ago? They sound so familiar and perfect right now. What the crack, WHY did they only put out two albums?

Oh, oh, speaking of sounding perfect, I love live jazz! I forgot! I love Ellis magical piano jazz. I even love the old, white, bald, laughs-at-our-own-horribly-bad-jokes Wisconsin man jazz. I ran into Mister Marsalis himself as I was leaving to take the cash back to the box office. I could have sworn he was still on stage playing with the rest of the band, but there he was in the lobby of the chapel, wandering around and seeming slightly confused. I was shy and giggley and felt like a starstruck little kid. I guess that's what I am around people like him. I scampered away as fast as possible with out being rude. I think he might have been looking for the bathroom, but I will never ever ever know.

I went to Madison with my friend Dan today. He is a funny character. I always go out of my way to say hi to him when I see him around campus, and for a long time I was convinced that he hated me. He always just glares back at me! Finally, one day I asked him why he never says hi back, and he was kind of offended and protested, "Yes I do! I always say hi!" He is the opposite of chivalrous. Our busdriver on the way there was a real jerk to this Indian-looking guy, and when we got off the bus I said to Dan, "Wow, that bus driver was the biggest jerk!" and Dan said, "If I was a bus driver, I would be grumpy too." And then I said "You're already grumpy." And it was true. He could be a wonderfully grumpy bus driver if he wanted to. Other possible career choices for Dan (going along with yesterday's blog entry) include embittered mailman, jaded politician, or Zamboni driver.

When we got inside, Dan asked, "When do you want to meet?" And then he immediately walked away from me before I had a chance to answer. I went ahead into the stacks. I was reeeeally lost for a minute until I realized that the library has more than two floors for books, and that's why the reference section was where the comparative medical studies should have been. I spent a while on the third and a half floor (yeah, between three and four!!) playing with the crazy moving robot shelves. I'm not gonna lie, I found them really frightening at first. I had heard stories, but I don't think I was quite prepared. It's a really cool idea, but it works horribly if there are three people trying to look in three different rows in the same general vicinity. I went up a few more flights of stairs and found that the building is like a giant frankenstein. Each room looks different and like it was designed by a sinister archivist. In the North Stacks on the sixth floor, there are little cages people lock themselves in for studying! I didn't want to go into one because they are seriously the size of a phone booth and I don't know if they lock from the outside or what.

I didn't find a whole lot (in English) on the topic I want to research for my paper, but it's more than we have here at the Beloit Library (i.e. nothing at all). Eventually I found my traveling companion - pure luck, really, in that huge place. On the ride home, we shared an eggroll I bought from an amazingly slow street vendor, and fried rice and wontons.

I can't do my work!

It's not that it's hard. I somehow can't convince myself that it will make me happier than looking at ugly pictures of myself on the Facebook for ten hours a day. My right eye has been twitching a lot. Probably stress related. The thought crossed my mind today that I should just stop with this college stuff all together. I'm making a running list of all the things I could do instead that don't require lots of certifications and artifacts and portfolios and more standardized tests (I have to take the PRAXIS this summer, whatever the heck that entails). Spying, of course, is at the top, followed by various artisan jobs, working at an antique store, giving massages to fabulously wealthy and attractive people (would get really obnoxous really fast), or maybe gardening downtown. Flight attendant, but not really because flying a lot secretly makes me nervous. I once talked to a woman who works at Midway Airport and has never flown on an airplane. She said she was scared if it, anyway. It seemed odd to me, but I guess if you like Chicago that much it's not such a big deal.

I got my tape back from Will so I can start packing. His hands are lethal weapons, he says, but chances are unlikely that he'll find himself in a position where he will need to kill me with them, which is definitely a relief. Boys...

I have a bus ticket for Madison. I will use it tomorrow to go there, and when I am there I will hang out in the library doing research and pretending that I am a city cat. I will not to waste too much time looking for sushi or trying on cool clothes in the stores on State Street or watching the sailboats on the lake or making eyes at strangers. I tell myself these things and hope they are true, because if I am unproductive or miss the bus home I will be completely fucked and also miss the Ellis Marsalis concert and money making.

Newspapers are all lies and/or politics.

Some kind and mysterious person sent me a photo copied article from the Beloit Daily News today. It makes reference to the symposium I did with Shannon and Jordana. As with most newspaper articles that have quoted me, it makes me sound kind of dumb. I definitely said something smarter than, "People like talking about ghosts." Oh well. I guess it's nice to be recognized! I feel like I should mail it to my mom.

Other strange things with the college newspaper and stuff about ownership, censorship, and all that: These kids think they're leaving a legacy by attacking the publication in general and the editor in particular, but it really came across as a dick thing to do. No one got teo see the paper anyway because it was pulled by somebody (Joe thinks the administration, could be) from all the places it was circulated around campus.

Sometimes a cowboy is just a man in a cowboy suit.

I set my alarm for 6:06 so I could get up extra early and finish my Power Point presentation. I woke up at 9:30. I remember that as I was sleeping through both working on my presentation and presenting it to my 9:00 class, I dreamed that Aaron and Jess got married, and that he was still calling me and asking me to come over to his swank hotel room for some "canoodling." Seriously, that's what he said! I need to use that word more. Among other things.

Ego-Tripping and Oakland Unified School District

Today was a good day. I felt happy, more like myself. I blushingly received compliments. Today I could smile without regretting my time and place and discuss the real or abstract, and daydream for hours about being a spy when I grow up and also tending a little garden in matrimonial bliss with a person I just met. I even rambled into B's answering machine for a while, an activity I have dearly missed of late.

I finally won my advisor's good opinion when Bill attested to my high level of "responsibility." She was especially impressed, though, when she learned of my plans for the summer. For those of you who don't know, these plans involve vegetating at home for a few weeks, maybe hiking through the wilderness if I can round up some compatriots, teaching about Final Cut at Tech Camp for a few more weeks, and then being home some more for a little while in August. And at some point(s!) singing Gem Your Igloo and Feast of Lanterns at The Grind with Andrew. It's Christmas in Alaska, you know!? I'd like to say that my advisor was impressed by the singing part, but it was really the digital video bit that swayed her.

...

Redacted.

News is slow to reach these dark corners of the Midwest.

It was snowing when I woke up this morning, but it's okay. I have cultivated a new super power: I can walk around looking so pathetically yet endearingly disheveled that people can't resist their urge to hug me. Ha! Take that, bitter, barren winterland.

...

Troy's porno flick theater Cinema Art is defunct. Now where are creepy old men going to hang out to grunt and leer at me as I drive by late at night? I lovehate the fact that every time I return to that sad city it won't be the same as it was when I left it.

A snack-time update.

So, yeah, the goal is to have my methods project done by the time I go to bed. However, I just SCARFED a candy bar and half a bottle of pomegranate juice, which was a bad bad idea. My hands are shakey and my head is cloudy and I don't know how long this thing is supposed to be but I'm going to assume five pages is probably sufficient.

There is a boy who sleeps in the library every night from around eight until closing. I assume that as they're locking up, Security finds him and kicks him out. He arrives with no pretensions of trying to study or anything. He just sits in his chair, always the same chair, and slouches down and immediately falls asleep. In the past, I'd see him sleeping in unusual places: study rooms, the Java Joint, and so on. I used to think he had some kind of narcolepsy, but the regularity of this new routine leads me to believe otherwise. It is entirely intentional, though mysterious none-the-less. Occasionally I hear him sigh and I look over and he is smiling in his sleep or nodding his head, or opening heavy eyelids and closing them again. In these moments, I know him more intimately than I know most people here.

And now, back to work? Someone, please come put your feet on my back and maybe hum. These nights are long and lonely!

Freak out!

First hit under Google image search for "freak out":



I wish my freak out looked more like that and less like an early grave.

Begin with a dream.

Last night I dreamed that I found Patrick's handcuffs in my home in Troy. I decided I should walk to his house (which apparently was in the neighborhood) to return them. As I was walking up the street, I found and collected more and more little metal fragments. I thought about putting them on my wrists, but decided, no, to put them in my inside coat pocket instead. I saw two men walking down the hill toward me, also in the middle of the road. I was nervous and reacted how I would in real life: I tried not to look and didn't say anything. They were bright, and when they walked by they made me squint so I couldn't see, and I knew they thought I was rude. When I got to the top of the hill, past what I had mistaken for P's house, there was a group of people milling around. Three of them approached me. I noticed one of them was the man I had just passed. He asked me why I ignored them. Did I hate them? I was kind and touched his arm, but I responded that I felt indifferent. "There are so many people in the world who I will never see again, so why should I even bother?"

Ha ha, it's weird how stuff like that happens when we're asleep. When I'm awake, my room is a mess, and I haven't gone for a walk outside in ages, and also my inside coat pocket doesn't exist any more because I stupidly donated that coat to the Salvation Army a year ago.

I'm finding people who take themselves a bit too seriously for my taste. I'm talking about me, some of the time. I'm talking about the girl down the hall: The sex can't be that good. I'm talking about whoever wants to charge patrons twenty five dollars for a seventy-two minute German requiem, the sixth movement of which the choir doesn't even really know. I do not love Brahms, or making classical music even less accessible to the general population than it already is. I will pretend to love it, though, when I am singing, sweaty in all black in the rafters of The Chapel, and trying not to think about my feelings of ambivalence toward elitism.

You've made it this far. Read about the pains and passions of my former life here.