images to choose from

Wrong, But Somehow Right

2007-12-24T14:01:00.001-05:00

So, I have mainly running errands for my grandparents and updating my nerd blog lately. I'm in Kentucky for a while for the holiday season. And the following is the best thing I have ever seen. And I feel like I have total immunity to being offensive, as I did just go to a Tibetan art gallery. Take that, the East.

November?!

2007-11-09T14:53:00.000-05:00

It's been a while! I have a bit of a hard time keeping up with this blog during school, but lately work has been giving me ample time to nerd-around, thus I started http://uncloseted.blogspot.com/
to fulfill my urge to document some of my nerdiest and favorite stuff!
Be warned, this includes but is not limited to: comic books, graphic novels, world of warcraft, lolcats, computer stuff, technology stuff, science stuff, pet ratness, general cuteness and more!
Before too long I'll probably figure out what to keep here and what to write about there, but until then I'll try to update both!

2007-08-11T11:19:00.000-05:00

Rattie To Be

2007-08-10T09:24:00.000-05:00

On the left here with a little black hood is one of my ratties-to-be. Monday is the day I meet them!

Rats on The Brain

2007-07-26T09:33:00.001-05:00

It's been a while...like a long while....since I've posted. I'm full of false promises about this blog, but I do enjoy it when I keep it up. In the past weeks I've finished my Orientation Leader job with NYU, and thus my schedule feels 150% more open, even though I'm now trying to work* 30 some odd hours a week with my job at NYU's Stern School of Business' MBA dept. I am now moved into my amazing new apartment in Manhattan's East Village at 198 Avenue A @ 12th, so that makes for a good deal of excitement.

*endlessly google image search for cute animal pictures

Recently I've been thinking about pets nonstop, and as I really want a million cats and dogs, but should wait until I leave NYC, I've been looking at a lot of alternatives.

1. Ferret: after some investigation, it turns out these are inexplicably illegal in New York City.
2. Rabbit: following some research, it seems that rabbits don't like to be handled that much, but do love destroying your possessions.
3. Sugar gliders, capybaras, bandicoots: illegal, illegal, illegal.
4. Fish: no cuddle value. Mammalian preference.
5. Turtle: same as 4, though considered for longer. Also, following research, much more high maintenance than their cuddle payoff merits.
6. Rat: PERFECT

So, It's official. A day's worth of "work" (research at work) yielded the glorious fact that rattie friends are perfect for what my girlfriend (Erica) and I are looking for. Rat qualities:

a. Social creatures, thus they must be in same sex pairs (great excuse for 2 pets!)
b. very clean, like grooming themselves, can be litter trained
c. playful and active
d. small, but not too small for loving
e. PERFECT
f. smart- they can be trained to come to their name, do tricks, and they exhibit distinct personalities.
g. like being handled! very cuddly!
h. slight kitsch factor as a lot of people don't think of them as pets.
i. sooo cute! such little paws and faces!
j. i still miss my lab rat from a neural science class
k. good karma for a psych student
l. so many diff colors/patterns. my main preference is I don't want an albino or any with red eyes, probably.
m. they need an hour or so out of their cage per day! ratties on the loose, what fun!
n. perfect.

So, rats it is. I want a female pair, hopefully black or brown hooded, or cinnamon colored or something. How exciting!

Ratties! How can anyone resist them!?

So, I have contacted Kim's Ark, a rat rescue place that helps get fancy rats (official term) to new homes all over the NE USA. Now, we wait. And google image search.

Plain Jain

2007-06-06T08:37:00.001-05:00

I leave for my girl in Pennsylvania, which is shaped like this:

for your reference

...around 2 central time. I fly through Atlanta, which will remind me both of living there and of many hours spent in layovers at the Atlanta airport as a child dialing this number:

963-2417

the number of my then best friends, a brother and sister package deal. I don't remember the area code.

I always liked this political cartoon, for really no reason:

I guess that little P. segment stands for Pennsylvania, because it was an image search result.

I downloaded a lot of music yesterday, including Tegan & Sara's new album (thanks for the heads up Rho-been). Haven't listened to much of any of it yet. I am trying to develop my altcountry repertoire right now, and thus yesterday rediscovered My Morning Jacket and downloaded a bunch of other stuff. Like Wilco's new album, which I didn't like all that much when I heard it live on NPR, but I really do like "What Light" on the album...it's too simple and catchy to not like.

I am currently undergoing an ant battle in my bathroom here, which entails me gently shooing them verbally and spraying the stuff that kills them in little patches to create barriers, rather than directly at them and their little speck highways. When a few inched close enough to the stuff to keel over I cringed and apologized. For now I'll let them march on in their abrupt wild little circles.

I wish I subscribed to Jainism because then, maybe I'd get a complimentary tiny broom to sweep them out of my sink with. Also, Jains are really probably the best people on earth and the rest of us are going to Jain hell, which I guess entails being reincarnated as a less enlightened form of life and marching around my bathroom until we learn our lesson and move up the Karmic food chain.

Oh, Anderson Cooper

2007-06-05T15:26:00.000-05:00

You so handsome.

I ebayed in search of a similar CARDBOARD LIFE SIZE CUTOUT
to this one i spotted in the Houston Hobby airport, but so far no luck whatsoever.

DinoWorld

2007-05-25T08:11:00.000-05:00

Saw this gem of a tourist trap on a particularly tacky stretch of highway between Jackson, TN and Elizabethtown, KY. I can't believe these places are still around- who stops there?

Me, Age 10

2007-05-24T23:52:00.000-05:00

This drawing represents actual fact. It was made off of a photo of me, circa 1995 that I encountered today in my rummagings.

Other questions I have about this include:

1. Where is the rest of my hair?
2. Why did anyone let me do this to myself?

Renaissance of Sorts

2007-05-24T23:25:00.000-05:00

I am going to make a conscious effort to advance myself toward some sort of little sketching, drawing, doodling or what have you on a (probably not) daily basis.

Today IT BEGINS. Did you miss it? It was that link right back there.

I'd love to make a graphic novel or something, but I always just wallow in self-pity instead. Little did I realize self-deprecation is the fodder of most of the greats in the genre! I'm well on my way. Now, to hone those other skills. That whole issue of having something vaguely or at least seemingly of interest to say. And that whole "being able to draw" thing. Meh.

2007-05-17T21:41:00.000-05:00

Obviously I haven't done so well on keeping up with this in the past few months. My life has been in crisis mode, but this will be back up and intermittently running again soon!

2007-04-06T09:24:00.000-05:00

This book broke my heart in a quirky, non-gimmicky and really necessary way. Read it.

Got Soul

2007-03-31T14:59:00.000-05:00

I really love this Killer's video. It isn't particularly new, but I really, really like this song and the video. He seems like a really good performer...something about the way he acts when he sings. I think if I were a guy I might want to be Brandon Flowers (the lead singer)...I really like how he dresses/looks. If only I had half as many snazzy little jackets and an ironic moustache like his.

On the far left, that's my ideal male self.

OMG

2007-02-28T21:22:00.000-05:00

Omg, Ellen you are so lucky

Also, I called about 9 of the Oscars because they were predictable and not because I have actually seen the nominees. My main complaint: not enough Portia Di Rossi screen time- wtf?

2007-02-17T11:12:00.000-05:00

OMG- Why aren't the Daniel Radcliffe pics from last night's London Equus premiere up yet?? The world can't wait.

2007-02-16T16:43:00.000-05:00

Ice and snow in the city is only pretty when you live by washington square like freshman year and not when you live in Chinatown like I do now. I think things are melting today.

2007-02-14T21:11:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was my birthday. I'm sort of sick, but getting better je pense. The par-tay is tomorrow night. I have eaten soo much today, including but not limited to:

- a ton of shrimp pad thai
- fried dumplings
- 1 shortbread cookie
- 1 red velvet cupcake
- 1 entire ribeye steak
- a shitload of asparagus
- bread

and I plan to eat
-1 mini cheesecake
- >3 chocolate covered strawberries
within the next hour

I have been ravenous lately!

Not much is up. New schedule is much more relaxed. Erica got me lots of great themed bday presents which I need to post photos of.

Lost is on tonight. I am an addict, and I'm amazed that in the 3rd season the show is more interesting than ever. Thank god for the others. Also, the man that helped me pick my spatlese at the wine store yesterday (which turned out to have a perhaps molded cork and likely tainted wine- my luck, but I'm returning it) looked just like Ben.

Puppy Bowl 2007

2007-02-04T22:13:00.000-05:00

In lieu of watching the superbowl (as here at NYU I lack the testosterone-driven, nacho-oriented friends necessary) I watched a good 2 hours of Animal Planet's Puppy Bowl, which is basically equivalent, there's just a lot less action because the puppies get sleepy a lot. Essentially, they romp all over eachother on a mini football field and occasionally a ref intervenes to fill their water bowls, which they promptly sit in, or to call a penalty when a toobig puppy gently trounces a toolittle puppy. Also, there was a kitty halftime show but the cats all got too high on catnip to be interested in one another. Lame.

Best Films I've Seen Lately So Far

2007-01-31T16:25:00.000-05:00

1. The Departed (favorite)

2. Children of Men
3. Notes on a Scandal

I expect to really like:

Inland Empire
Pan's Labyrinth
Little Miss Sunshine
Volver
Babel
Little Children

So, basically, I need to see a lot more of this season's films.

Mix Tape #3

2007-01-27T10:29:00.000-05:00

TV on the Radio-Return to Cookie Mountain
Islands- Return to the Sea
Favorite songs so far:
1. TV on the Radio- "Wolf Like Me"
2. Islands- "Where There's a Will There's a Whalebone"

2007-01-20T19:42:00.000-05:00

Last night I filled my going out quota for the weekend, so today I rested chez moi. Hier soir, Je suis sortie à trois fêtes. Un était dans BBQ, le meilleur lieu pour les boissons très bon marché et pour voir Ice-T de Law & Order SVU. J'ai eu des bières avec mes amis, et puis, je suis rentrée chez moi pour le champagne. Après ça, je suis sortie encore à deux plus fêtes. Au jour d'hui, je restais dans mon appartment.

2007-01-13T23:45:00.000-05:00

School starts Tuesday. I'm in Pennsylvania. Things feel fuzzy.

Someone Something

2006-12-26T15:20:00.000-05:00

Still in Lex. I'm feeling pretty uncreative, but have had fun devouring graphic novels. I finished Alan Moore's purported groundbreaking, brilliant, capstone-of-the-genre Watchmen, and really, in spite of my reservations, I was pretty damn impressed.

Aside from a few plot points lacking a full explanation, the thing was really, very complex, with a layered construction, meta-stories, fabricated news clippings and excerpts that relate to the main story and a smattering of tiny symbolic intricacies throughout the art. Really, the detective and tradition super-hero aspects didn't interest me as much, but most of the characters were compelling. The character Rorschach was especially clever and interesting, and the fact that his mask shifted shapes between every frame into never repeated Rorschach-esque design was cool, as were the psych tie-ins. Also, the inclusion of incisive quotes at the end of each chapter (there are 12, the thing takes a damned long time to read-it's dense) was great and connected everything from Bob Dylan to Einstein with the plot in a smart, unpretentious way. It's got a lot of complex philosophical stuff going on to muse over, and I have to wonder where Moore got his education, because i'm pretty impressed about that too. I did feel a little out of touch with the cold war paranoia undercurrent that propels a lot of the action, but feeling estranged from that era is understandable. Check it out- it's good for killing a rainy afternoon. Or two.

Battle not with monsters lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. - Friedrich W. Nietzsche

Who makes the world? Perhaps the world is not made. Perhaps nothing is made. Perhaps it simply is, has been, will always be there. A clock without a craftsman.

Who watches the watchmen? - Juvenal, Satires, VI, 347

Mistletoes

2006-12-22T21:02:00.000-05:00

I made it to Kentucky. I wish it'd get colder here. I am sort of jealous of Denver. One of my favorite memories of childhood was the blizzard in Atlanta when I got snowed in at my dad's apartment.

I never realized mistletoe grows in such a weird way, until I saw a ton (see above) during thanksgiving here. My uncle said the only way to get it down is to shoot it.

2006-12-18T20:21:00.000-05:00

Christmas break is soon. I'm still in New York. It's not very cold here, which makes it feel sort of weird. I fly to KY on the 21st and then to AL on the 4th.

2006-12-12T20:03:00.000-05:00

Today on the bus to school I saw Jay from Season 1 Project Runway (who is amazing) outside the Puck building (a super-nice NYU owned-or rented?-building in Soho that I never have any reason to go to). Apparently there was some benefit there today that he designed something characteristicaly weird for. I never see anyone good. Sweet.

Spring 2007

2006-11-15T10:00:00.000-05:00

INTRODUCTION TO DRAWING

THE MEANING OF HOME (waitlist)

INTERMEDIATE FRENCH II

CENTRAL PROBLEMS IN PHILOSOPHY

COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE

Badger Shot

2006-11-11T17:07:00.000-05:00

Do You Remember When the Music

2006-11-06T09:52:00.000-05:00

I am at work, without work, as usual. I was just thinking of the shows I've been to since I've been in New York. I want to get into the habit of going to more...I think it's working.

Northsix- Pretty Girls Make Graves/Night Canopy (This Tuesday!)
Roseland- Death Cab for Cutie/Pretty Girls Make Graves
Irving Plaza- Le Tigre/Gravy Train!!!!
Hammerstein- PJ Harvey
Webster Hall- Sleater-Kinney
Radio City Music Hall- Interpol/Blonde Redhead
Tower Records- Le Tigre
NYU- The Shins/The Fiery Furnaces, Iron and Wine, The Decemberists, Le Tigre,
Frida Hyvonen/The Wrens/The Walkmen, Les Savy (Thursday?)

Right now, I would kill to see Wolf Parade in concert...I missed their NYU show last year because I hadn't started listening to them yet. I should go to all of the NYU shows because they are so damn cheap and usualyl very well chosen. I've gotta hand it to the program board people who book this stuff, they do have good taste.

In Search Of...

2006-11-05T21:44:00.000-05:00

Any information leading to the acquisition of this owl:

Will be handsomely rewarded. It was featured in Lost in Translation. In looking for it online, we've stumbled onto an entire subculture of people seeking it, bidding for its likeness on ebay, and futilly attempting to contact its Japanese manufacturer, who is surely oblivious to its kitsch value.

2006-11-02T14:14:00.000-05:00

I don't want to take a damn French test.

Hilarious Thesis Title

2006-10-26T13:03:00.000-05:00

Julia Steinmetz (Performance Studies)
“Childhood Sexual Abuse and the Etiology of Lesbianism: or, Why is the
Girl in that Le Tigre Video Jumping Up and Down Holding a Copy of The
Courage to Heal?”

This week has been nonstopcrazy.

Je ne le supporte pas

2006-10-13T20:52:00.000-05:00

I just wanted to make my position clear on Houndstooth this season. I am opposed to it, in all of its incarnations, and have occupied such a stance since its appearance as a Windows desktop option, circa early 90's.

I think this stems from my utter loathing of pixelation. Houndstooth feels like a lot of poorly edited images are all simultaneously, blurredly bearing down on me.

2006-10-10T20:01:00.000-05:00

Fuck you Will Smith, if the ubiquitous filming of your new movie has anything to do with the GIANT LIGHT POINTING DIRECTLY INTO MY 15TH FLOOR WINDOW AT 9PM. I feel like it probably does. It's already taken over Broadway and Washington Square, Soho must be next.

Tex Mex

2006-10-08T10:26:00.000-05:00

So, I've never heard of the Minutemen Project, but this is pretty hilarious. Apparently, a riot erupted at Columbia when the College Republicans group hosted the founders of this thing to speak. JD, my uptown friend, wrote a column about it which is really quite funny. Props to NYU's uptown neighbors, I didn't know you guys had it in you.

I guess I knew people down in Texas tried to bust Mexicans crossing the border recreationally, but I didn't know there was an organized militia doing this. The issue of illegal immigration aside, what these guys do is pretty hilarious- I have some family that I can really imagine camping out down there along the border in lawn chairs, ill-fitting fatigues with a few cases of Bud after football's over on Sundays, reliving their uneventful yet obsessed over military service. The self-importance of these people is pretty funny. And Shit, if I was Mexican and not a drug-Lord or otherwise swimming in pesos, I'd want out too.

Heartland

2006-10-07T09:31:00.000-05:00

Today is the official beginning of my lazy, ericaless weekend. Things I will do:

1. Read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
2. Possibly meet up with JD and Katie to try to eat at a cuban restaurant we couldn't get into last time.
3. Meet up with Dana.
4. Eat all the food I ordered on Fresh Direct
5. Go to the comic book store.
6. Cook a ribeye steak.
7. Maybe go to Rubulad (big underground rave-esque Bklyn party) or Nation (queer lady club) or stay home and go to sleep at 10 again.

Yesterday, I got a trial prescription to Zantac because I've been having stomach problems, and the tablets have the coolest shape. It's like little diamonds that I swallow magically battle my potential heartburn.

2006-10-05T17:10:00.000-05:00

BRB

This is so terrible/hilarious.

From Russia with Love

2006-10-01T15:14:00.000-05:00

I just got an email from a potential Russian mail-order bride. Should I go for it? She sounds pretty friendly.

Hello Dear Friend! Do not think that it is dust and do not hasten to press a magic key "DELETE"! The first, that I want to tell that it not dispatch, I have found your address on dating a site and I do not search from first day for any serious relations! Probably I am mistaken, but that I want to find the first, it is friends on the Internet! And if, we shall find any sympathy each other, big than friendship and we shall be compatible, I think more serious relations are quite real also! Yes, yes, yes now it is a little about me..... I NOT the lonely girl, at me was a lot of friends, BUT I do not have friends to men. To me 28 years and I am single woman! My name Natasha! My height 173 cm and my weight 53 kg!

Now my CONDITIONS: - If to you from 30-50 years old If to you also it is lonely as me or it is not lonely, and you search for the girlfriend! THEN YOU SHOULD TO HASTEN WRITE ON MINE E-MAIL

Only do not think that it is the next silly joke.... Probably it is chance!!!! And the everything else, we find out closer each other by the following letter!!! Yours faithfully Natasha

13th and 3rd

2006-09-30T10:05:00.000-05:00

Whoa. Yesterday, after returning downtown from my internship (where I got to watch an MRI and interact with a patient some!), I met Erica at Union Square and we proceeded over on 14th street to 3rd ave, where our delicious Chinese Lunch Special was awaiting us at Yummy House.

With only 10 minutes to spare before we'd be forced into dinner prices, we ran into a huge police blockade for a crazy accident scene where part of a huge crane fell and smashed a cab (wish i'd had my camera for this smashed cab), but amazingly noone was killed. So, the cops blocked off a huge area, like 14th down to 11th all along third ave, because the crane was unstable, having lost a portion of its support system, and also had dangling from it a massive cement cube, and if that thing fell it'd be taking out a few city blocks (or neighboring apartments/NYU dorms) with it. Crazy.

So, Erica and I stood at 11th and watched the firefighters and cops try to figure things out for a while, and then I decided to steer us away because I feel like we were definetely in the kill zone.

SVU Night

2006-09-26T23:15:00.000-05:00

Every Tuesday a number of gals and I have a Law and Order SVU reunion gathering, to prolong the tradition of years (two) past. This hearkens back to a freshman year era of propped open doors, microwave sustinence desperation, and lots of shared Detective Olivia Benson (and Elliot Stabler) fantasies. Perhaps some not so shared.

In fact, right now, to the left of my desk is posted an image from "Oz" of Chris Meloni in the buff. Unfortunately, I tend to think his cheesy character from Bound might be his actual personality, but as many a suitemate would say, he "has throwdown" nonetheless. Throwdown being some ambiguous combination of sexual violence and dead sexiness at a variable ratio.

2 parts sexual violence: 3 parts sexiness (2:3)=

1 parts sexual violence: 2 parts sexiness (1:2)=

9 parts sexual violence: 1 part sexiness (9:1)=*

*Ted Bundy recipe

I Go Backwards

2006-09-20T19:44:00.000-05:00

- I started my internship at Mt. Sinai center for Mood and Anxiety Disorders yesterday. I'll get to do a lot of seemingly big-responsibility patient interaction stuff, like phone mini-diagnoses/screenings of potential research subjects and the like.
- In my last hour at work yesterday, I roleplayed a depressed/anxious patient (potentially with Generalized Anxiety Disorder/Major Depressive Disorder) so the guy I work with could be certified at a rating system called the Hamilton. It was entertaining and I got to interact with an in house psychologist (maybe she's a psychiatrist?) so that was cool. She said I was really good at the roleplaying and asked if I had done it before, but maybe I was just tapping into the way I was feeling last week, though I deliberately tried not to.

- Amusement: Having your new boss on your first day of work ask if you've had trouble having an orgasm in the past week (granted, in a roleplay).

Start Together

2006-09-18T08:27:00.000-05:00

Today will be a good day:

1. My street coffee vendor-who I haven't been getting coffee from for very long- smiled at me in line and a minute later handed me a medium light & sweet without needing to be reminded. The charms of coffee vendors always put me in a good mood.

2. I am at work and doing nothing so far. Monday morning is a smart shift- no one has their work for the week together.

3. Special K bars are wonderful.

4. I listened to my Ipod on the subway commute today (Sleater-Kinney, to be exact) for the first time since possibly freshman year. I need more music in my life.

2006-09-13T18:30:00.000-05:00

In my life, there is a void where coffee used to be.
I don't have morning classes to enjoy a cup in, and I don't have time to leisurely have any before leaving my apartment.

I think I'm depressed.

2006-09-11T08:27:00.000-05:00

It's a really beautiful New York morning.

Consumer Fever

2006-09-09T15:28:00.000-05:00

I knew that a semester's worth of fearing the exchange rate and loathing the pound would drive me into a consumer frenzy when I returned stateside. All of the relocating this summer postponed the event until recently, and now I feel a superficial yet warming glow as I find myself surrounded by newly acquired possessions, piling up around me like a box fort. In fact, I could use the boxes these things ship to me in to construct a box fort and then create an inner layer of new things and nestle myself comfortably inside.

Lately, I've been on a comic book kick, courtesy of Daly (best friend from Home) turning me on to Runaways, a hip, cleverly written comic series about teenagers with supervillian parents. While the premise sounds pretty lame, the dialogue is funny and the drama is believable and engaging. So, I devoured all of that, and unfortunately new issues only come out once a month.

In the meantime, I bought Fun Home, an autobiographical graphic novel about author/artist Alison Bechdel's relationship with her father and their parallel experiences of coming out. I really enjoyed it- it's definetely compelling, if a little too cerebral (Joyce and Proust references abound, the subtleties of which are lost on the reader who hasn't plowed through In Search of Lost Time or Ulysses).

In the beginning of the summer I bought Carnet de Voyage, Craig Thompson's also autobio account of his travels through Europe, particularly France and Morocco. I loved his first graphic novel, Blankets, the story of his upbringing in a conservative Christian household. Carnet is more free-flowing, with little panels of swirling art catalouging snippets of his time abroad- children met on the street, cats sleeping in patches of sunlight, beautiful women and the like.

So, from there, yesterday I bought Y:The last Man, Volume 1. The writer is the same man, Brian Vaughan, who instilled Runaways with cleverness, and both the premise and execution are great, even though the art turned me off at first glance. The series begins with a world where every organism with a Y chromosome suddenly drops dead, except one man and his pet monkey. The story takes off from there, following his journey to figure out what the hell happened while staying alive in a society with a collapsed infrastructure. It's pretty cool...I might buy the 2nd volume today and continue catching up. Also, last Saturday's New York Times ran a full page story on Vaughan and the series, which was neat and unexpected to run across.

Aside from comics/graphic novels I have bought:

1. A weekend subscription to the NY Times, which I think I am going to cancel in favor of my old Time sub.
2. Adrienne Rich's The Dream of a Common Language, a poetry collection. (Today)
3. Slouching Toward Bethlehem by Joan Didion for an essay I love called "On Keeping a Notebook"
4. Assorted apartment stuff, like a coffee maker.
5. Clothes @ Forever 21, the only store where I found anything, after a shopping quest that spanned the entirety of last weekend.
6. A lot of other stuff I can't be bothered to list or think of.

Conclusions:
1. I love the dollar.
2. I need to remove my credit card info from my amazon account, so I won't perpetually be two clicks removed from a purchase.

2006-09-09T13:36:00.000-05:00

A clever and amusing take on the Facebook news feed catastrophe: here, courtesy of friend JD.

Like the Lords of Other Towns

2006-09-05T07:27:00.000-05:00

Classes start today. I'm a little terrified, likely because I was in London last semester in a totally different environment and now I'm back at regular NYU. I'll miss having an Italian professor, a German professor, an American and one stereotypical British prof, but I won't be missing the three hour classes and zero tolerance attendance policy. Or the 20 minute walk to class with no possible route variation. I just want to be back in a routine...probably in a few weeks i'll get there.

My Classes:

1. Lab in Personality/Social Psych (today!)
2. French (Intermediate I)
3. Language Change
4. Sexual Diversity in Society

New Home

2006-09-04T23:12:00.000-05:00

My new orchid, with uptown skyline backdrop. She's from a Chinatown florist that has an orange cat with thumbs, like my old orange cat. The woman claimed it will die soon and rebloom a year later under certain particular cirumstances (which were not audibly articulated) when I accused her of selling dying flowers. Sounds kind of mythological to me. It was only 10 bucks, mysterious reincarnation or no.

My bed/corner area.

My bathroom, with a broken cabinet door, but shiny shiny white tile. Note the separate bath + body soap selections. Mine's the coconut lime verbena, Erica's the country apple. Sometimes I don't know how we work out the differences.

My desk area/Erica and Erica bed/nightview.

In other news...

2006-09-02T11:06:00.000-05:00

Most engaging story of the year.

Erica, I want to offer a sincere thank you for this update.

"Here It Goes Again"- Ok Go

2006-08-31T22:15:00.000-05:00

Brilliant video by Ok Go- brilliant even in the british sense of the word.

Little Boxes, Little Boxes

2006-08-28T21:22:00.000-05:00

I've been terrible about blogging lately. Which is ironic considering how much bitching i've done about my (lazy) friends not updating their livejournals. I resent all of this private living. Cut it out, guys.

As for me, I haven't been leaving much lately. Maybe i'll have something to blog about once Erica buys me this. Maybe i'll have something to blog about once I buy myself a coffee maker.

But for now, coffee doesn't taste right, nor does beer. Not even Blue Moon, my favorite beer, because i'm sick. I actually went to the doctor this morning (uncharacteristically, as I had a good 6 year no doctor run a few years ago) but I left empty handed. There's something almost humiliating about leaving a doctor's office without a little crumpled white paper bag, the physical justification of all of one's whining about congestion and achiness. Viewing prescription medicine as the manifestation of one's ailments seems like a healthy persepctive, particularly coming from a psychologist to be, right? So i've cut down on the whining for now in the hopes that my illness will explode from head cold into full blown sinus infection and my pity status from intermittent 'aw, i'm sorry baby's to forcible bedrest and bulk buys of gatorade.

Serving as a temporary substitute for the blog idea book Erica is buying me "once the check goes through," she emailed me writing prompts created by some guy named Dan Wiencek. Here are some of the ones I really ran with:

1.
Write a scene showing a man and a woman arguing over the man's friendship with a former girlfriend. Do not mention the girlfriend, the man, the woman, or the argument.

2.
A wasp called the tarantula hawk reproduces by paralyzing tarantulas and laying its eggs into their bodies. When the larvae hatch, they devour the still living spider from the inside out. Isn't that fucked up? Write a short story about how fucked up that is.

8.
A husband and wife are meeting in a restaurant to finalize the terms of their impending divorce. Write the scene from the point of view of a busboy snorting cocaine in the restroom.

9.
Think of the most important secret your best friend has ever entrusted you with. Write a story in which you reveal it to everyone. Write it again from the point of view of your friend. Does she want to kill you? How does she imagine doing it? Would she use a gun, or something crueler and more savage, like a baseball bat with nails in it?

11.
Write a short scene in which one character reduces another to uncontrollable sobs without touching him or speaking.

Broken SpamHaiku

2006-08-28T20:53:00.000-05:00

Courtesy of my inbox.

sitting squat on the Palatine, where the
would say, reaching out;
followed her to Mir-but
had at best. But
see belly hair curl past

2006-08-24T21:57:00.000-05:00

I'm back from Texas. Update soon.

Vacation!

2006-08-16T06:46:00.000-05:00

I'll be in TX until the 23rd...

Mad World

2006-08-10T16:14:00.000-05:00

Scary Stuff abounds!

Holy shit, this is absolutely terrifying and horrible! Just flying out of London Heathrow to America also makes it a little closer to home...wow. And I think my friend Robyn might have just flown out of there to get back to America from Croatia like yesterday. It's strange how a sense of invincibility creeps over our lives until something jarring like this happens. The reports say that one of the arrested was a Heathrow airport employee with full security clearance- whoa. 10 international passengers airplanes- that's a lot of really, really scary damage. A lot of lives. Also, when terror plots are usually caught they are often months or years away from their execution- the plan for this one was to have a dry run on FRIDAY and to potentially execute the plot within days. Oh my god!

Also, on a more local terrifying front, someone was alledgedly raped and attacked at Don Hill's on Greenwich St., which is just down the road from the Greenwich St. dorm I just moved out of. The other night Erica and I even talked about going there briefly because there was a MisShapes party and it was so close by. But the weird thing is that this semi-recent, highly publicized rape (and murder) happened a few blocks up the street from Lafayette, my new/old dorm, at a bar called The Falls (on Lafayette St.), that I passed nearly every day. Too close to home.

Tell Me What You Saw

2006-08-10T15:41:00.000-05:00

I'm moved into my year-long permanent address as of 10pm last night! Our apartment (which is technically an NYU dorm but in every way is like an apartment aside from the fact we flash our NYU IDs to inept security guards on the way into the building) is amazing! My suitemates (the other 5 that I know, out of a total 8) and I were dissapointed when we, by proxy from London, did not get the room of our choosing, but it turns out our room is even better than the one I had before in this building. The building is called Lafayette and I lived here 1st semester sophomore year in the largest bedroom i've ever seen in the city with 2 walls of windows, but our new room is much better and more equitable because the bedrooms are all of a good to large size, but the common room is massive and the kitchen is great with tons of counter/cabiner space. It feels like a real apartment and not some eclectically cobbled-together shanty of a frat boy dorm room, which is great! Erica and I share a room that is really long and faces uptown for a view out of two huge windows to the Empire State building, Chrysler building and assorted other midtown skyline features. Something I love about New York is that while on gray days the city can be pretty ugly, every night it turns into a sea of a million spots of twinkling light. It really is a beautiful place.

I'm feeling really good about my new place and I feel like it will change my attitude. I've been sort of listless and discontent with my living space lately, and being settled in such a nice situation is sure to revitalize my life. It feels like a real life now, knowing I'll be somewhere for a year, somewhere I can settle into and really make mine. I can't wait for Priya (3rd to move in) to get here tonight so we all can jump around in our ample living room floor space and stock our newly acquired wine rack with bottles!

2006-08-08T19:07:00.000-05:00

My ethernet is down until some godawful date like August 21 or something, but for now there is stolen wireless! Life feels a little disconnected over here in the sleepy West Village without the internet to even let us see the menus we order take out from.

Back to Sleep to Redream Me

2006-08-05T10:34:00.000-05:00

It's the weekend- Yay! Office job fanfare! Today I intend to do nothing. Nothing of any significance whatsoever, anyway. I plan to eat out, perhaps indulge in Dunkin' Donuts coffee, and set out for a polaroid adventure around NYC. I was the beneficiary of about 10 sets of polaroid film at work a few weeks ago, and though the film was removed from old polaroid cameras, odds are that there are at least an average of 5 photos per film dock thing.

That's a lot of polaroid film, considering how hilariously overpriced it remains for some of the only technology to not update whatsoever in the past 10 years. I guess you pay for the kitsch value or the irony or something. Oh, the irony of it all, parading around Manhattan with a polaroid when Erica and I both have perfectly new and functional digital cameras with delightfully vivid LCD displays of pleasantly large dimensions and innumerable other advantages over their clunky, prehistoric ancestor camera, but bah to that, today. Bah!

Sleater-Kinney @ Webster Hall 8/2/06

2006-08-03T19:36:00.000-05:00

Sleater-Kinney's last pre-hiatus (break up) NYC show was amazing. More details later, but photos for now. Also, they filmed the whole thing with some pretty sophisticated looking cameras, so here's hoping for a DVD of the show.

Road Trip

2006-08-02T10:56:00.000-05:00

Where I've been in the USA:

create your own personalized map of the USA

This is kind of cool. I did it with countries, but mine was just a tiny, rather pitiful red smattering outside the U.S. Also, i've probably driven through the Mississippi abyss in the center of mine, but that's a cop out. Also, I just spelled Mississippi by reciting that little mnemonic device in my head.

Mix Tape #2

2006-07-26T22:28:00.000-05:00

1. "Cheated Hearts"-Yeah Yeah Yeahs
2. "Do the Whirlwind"- Architecture in Helsinky
3. "Heavy Metal"- Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!
4. "Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth"-Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!
5. "Streets of Fire"- The New Pornographers

(Most of these courtesy of a great mix by Julie. I'm addicted.)

The Movement of the Wind

2006-07-26T22:16:00.000-05:00

I'm going to the beach tomorrow! Erica and I are taking the bus to Long Beach Island, where my body will reluctantly meet its first UV rays of the summer. I can't wait to get that healthy sunhigh and to float around in the ocean. Summer in New York just doesn't have that summery quality to it, though the vast majority of last summer in Kentucky didn't either. I think it just has something to do with one's proximity to large water bodies.

Try To Be More Alive

2006-07-23T23:02:00.000-05:00

I can't believe the weekend is over. Didn't make it out to McCarren Park Pool today because the L wasn't running between Manhattan and Brooklyn, so I missed Pretty Girls Make Graves, but I've seen them before and I don't think they've begun their official US tour for the new album, Elan Vital, yet. Good news.

I'm going to the beach Thursday and I.can't.wait.

Arr

2006-07-22T15:15:00.000-05:00

I love pirating! I just got Adobe Photoshop CS2. Yesssss.

Future download wishlist:

- Dreamweaver
- Flash
- Illustrator
- Indesign

In my magical dream life i'd do freelance desktop publishing. I wish I had some reason to teach myself more design stuff. Maybe I can get motivated by making a new webpage or something.

Shadows Keep on Changin'

2006-07-20T22:23:00.001-05:00

Lately...

I have:

- Worked @ Stern, NYU School of Business and shamelessness
- Worried about my ineptitude at shopping for Business Professional clothing.
- Incited a family debate online about Islam when I challenged my argumentative great uncle's overgeneralized and dumb remarks about the faith.
- Moved to Greenwich Hotel in the West Village and into the smallest room i've seen on campus. Bunks beds! It's like camp! We only have to deal with it for 3 weeks though, so no big deal.
- Played with kittens @ Carlyle. Or more like kitten. One is skittish.
- Watched Project Runway and been disspointed with the judging.
- Been needing to read Middlesex and Catch-22.
- Forgotten to go on an adventure with my newly acquired polaroid camera (on loan) and a ton of free polaroid film.
- Had a good visit with close hs friend Sean who was in town on the way to Suny Purchase for his orientation as a transfer.
- Eaten great Mexican with my friend Julie from high school newspaper heyday when she visited NYC from Philly where she goes to UPenn.
- Randomly run into a somewhat long lost friend from middle/hs on University Place who really had no business randomly appearing in New York. He goes to Texas A&M and is visiting for a few days from Boston or something. It was disorienting and really crazy in a good way, made more so by the fact he spontaneously produced a full beard.

This Weekend...

I will:

- Meet for drinks with said bearded friend.
- Attend a play of Katie's (another hs friend in town, but she lives here). It's called Happy Hour and delivers on the title with an open bar before the show. I know nothing aside from that and the fact my friend makes out with a girl in it. She knew how to sell it.
- Want to meet up with Joanna and Amber and go eat @ Bean in Bklyn again. Yum. I want the mole sauce this time.
- Go to the *free* Pretty Girls Make Graves show @ McCarren Park Pool on sunday. They are great live if I remember correctly, and there are definetely some songs on their new album (the last CD I bought actually) that I am excited to see live.
- Rest, hopefully.

Disguised Just a Little Bit

2006-07-11T21:32:00.000-05:00

Celeb sightings so far this summer:

1. Philip Seymour Hoffman (again...3rd time), in Washington Square Park (As in Capote)
2. Janeane Garofolo (3rd time), on 5th Ave.
3. Gael Garcia Bernal in Little Italy (a la Y Tu Mama Tambien)
4. Gary Sinise, filming CSI in WSP (Lt. Dan from Forrest Gump)

Friends have seen Naomi Watts in multiple sightings. I am going to stroll around SoHo in hopes of bumping into her. I love her.

I'm excited about Spiderman 3 now that I know it has Venom in it. I grew up reading comics, and Spiderman usually wasn't dark enough for my tastes (I stuck primarily to Uncanny X-Men and Wolverine), but I loved all sideplots that involved Venom or Carnage, especially Venom because Carnage was just too creepy.

In Spite of All the Damage

2006-07-08T18:03:00.000-05:00

Today was a lazy day in Apt 1012B. I'm going to miss my Washington Square address, as I move out in a week, though I am looking forward to exploring the West Village. This morning I bought Dunkin Donuts coffee and holed up for the day, tinkering with a Flickr account and downloading 400someodd new songs. NYU orientation will be drawing to a close next Saturday and so will my primary summer job- then the office work begins.

I need to plan my trip to TX soon. And read Catch 22. And write. And download Adobe Creative Suite.

This is one of the coolest tattoos i've ever seen:

I've always liked this painting...

Street Chalk

2006-07-03T01:05:00.000-05:00

These little lines pop up all over in SoHo.
It'd be neat to get photos of a bunch of them.

In Brooklyn

2006-07-03T01:03:00.000-05:00

Mp3 Wishlist

2006-07-02T18:17:00.000-05:00

I need to find a new downloading program...this seems to be a lot of new stuff people are buzzing about:

be your own pet
camera obscura
mission of burma
fiery furnaces- bitter tea
frog eyes
walkmen
raconteurs
islands
tokyo police club
sunset rubdown
matmos
neko case

Check Out

2006-06-01T19:43:00.000-05:00

Check out JD's band, Farm to Market, and their new tunes here. They sound great, and I especially like The Joe Song. Great name too- I dunno if it is like this everywhere, but in Houston we have these roads, like FM1960 and FM2920 that are still named the way they were years and years ago, when FM stood for Farm to Market. I'm guessing that's where it's from. I think they can accrue quite a following in New York, because they aren't the kind of music people make in New York- they're the kind people miss. Also, I love male/female harmonizing and I hope their full album has even more on it than The Joe Song. Check them out!

Weirdest Spam to Date

2006-05-30T14:40:00.000-05:00

I don't really understand what this is, yet it arrived at my Inbox, directed to etp@nyu.edu, which is not my email address. It has an attached gif, so maybe that's the point and there's a virus in the attachment somehow. Obviously I won't open it, but the email is hilarious:

He always does. cornell chrome If your sinuses closed up tight and you couldn't breathe through your mouth.

Gently, hardly daring to breathe, he put the ceramic penguin (NOW MY TALE IS TOLD! After all, I'm crazy, aren't I? I sometimes sleep there when it's very hot. Its squeals were thin and terrible. "The good news,�she said, "is that your car is gone. "By the time they come, you should be back in your own room, snug as a bug in a rug. Annie had dismounted the Lawnboy and had been standing frozen, her tented fingers pressed against the peaks of her breasts. benight

WHAT?

Wash the Dirt Off Our Intentions

2006-05-22T10:48:00.000-05:00

I am back in the states. PA is beautiful and relaxing- good thing Erica's such a country girl. We're in the library scouring livejournal entries and browsing DVDs to borrow. I leave for KY on Wed...unfortunately soon to be back on a plane, but i'm ready to get settled somewhere. America doesn't really feel weird. Funny how fast you snap back to old routines after months of new ones.

XXX

2006-05-14T16:19:00.000-05:00

We've got an X-Men (ahem, Wolverine, ahem, Hugh Jackman) obsession going on in our suite right now as of last night, when we watched the X1 movie. Much fanfic and general superhero sex talk has resulted. Now, i'm dying for the 3rd one. And i'm looking forward to pilfering through my old belongings (now relocated to Alabama) to find all of my old Wolverine and Uncanny X-Men comics. Much self-conscious nerd-fun to ensue!

The final stretch

2006-05-14T05:41:00.000-05:00

I'm going home in 6 days. That's less than a week.

Sure, I'll miss Europe, but i'm damn ready to go home.

Barcelona

Amsterdam

Brussels

Mix Tape #1

2006-05-13T09:20:00.000-05:00

1. stars- "your ex-lover is dead"
2. the starlight mints- "black cat"
3. the starlight mints- "pages"
4. the walkmen- "wake up"
5. the walkmen- "the blizzard of '96"

Characters

2006-05-13T07:11:00.000-05:00

Erica Lyn, Ladyfriend Extraordinaire.

2006-05-13T06:19:00.000-05:00

I liked this photo from earlier this semester, thus it is blogged.

This Heart's on Fire

2006-05-12T07:40:00.000-05:00

So, here goes- yet another new blog.
Blogspot seems to be hot right now. I'm in.

One week, one day and counting until I return to a newly glorified US of A.

What I've been up to:

Still addicted to Wolf Parade's newest album. Getting out of a music funk at all is progress, even if it means listening to the same thing over and over. Well, I am also trying to get into the Walkmen's Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone.

Bought Sleater-Kinney tickets for Webster Hall on 8/2. So did Erica. I'm really excited to see them in a small venue. Last time I saw them at a mega-ampitheater thing where they opened for Pearl Jam in Houston.

Now I really want to see the Fiery Furnaces again. Too bad they just played in London like two days ago and NYC really recently too. I can't wait to start going to concerts again this summer. I sort of sat that out last semester. Erica and I decided to live beyond our means once we're back in New York. And that means 1) shopping 2)concerts.

I can't wait to read this summer. I want to reread a lot of young adult stuff I miss. And other stuff. Here's a cross section of my summer/permanent reading list (in no particular order):

1. Harry Potter series. All of em. Unless I feel like picking up where I left off.
2. The Subtle Knife/The Amber Spyglass. These are some of my favorite books ever.
3. Madeline L'Engle books, like A Wind in the Door
4. Blink (Gladwell). The Tipping Point was awesome. Also, it will give me something to talk about with my lame Stern coworkers.
5. Sarah Water's sapphic fiction. They're really into it over here.
6. Cat's Cradle (Vonnegut). This is a favorite I haven't read in a while.
7. Orlando (Woolf).
8. Some Joyce. Whatever I get my paws on first. Propbably Portrait...
9. The DaVinci Code.
10. Middlesex. If I remember I can read this before I leave London.
11.etc.

I'm really procrastinating. But that's okay.

Stuff that is Done:

1. Required politics paper.
2. Metaphysics causation paper.
3. Rough Women and the Novel paper.

Stuff that is Not Done:

1. Ethics papers (2 of 'em). I'll do one today.
2. Studying Ass off for Abnormal Psych.
3. Paper Edits (Ethics/W&tN)

Anyway. I read Michelle Tea's first book yesterday, The Passionate Mistakes and Intricate Corruption of One Girl in America. I tend to think she's pretty funny. And it's always amusing to read about novice prostitutes and their sex & drug addled misadventures. I can't wait to get back to the US to buy Rent Girl.

I want to get into more Graphic Novels. I can't wait to (re)discover my latent materialism.

It's so hot in here- I wish we had air conditioning. Yuck.

I've been trying to find and commit to reading some blogs. So far I've liked Brooklyn Vegan and Ultragrrrl . Been somewhat bored by Suburban Lesbian (Ha Ha, I know) and secretly amused by Trent. My suite is addicted to this blog. I'm looking for anything well-written or at all lyrical, blog-wise, now that my music/New York niches are filled.

Any suggestions?