Adventures!

So I was walking back from class one evening with a friend who shall remain anonymous--okay, it was Jon--and he mentioned his uneasiness at the state of the half-moon as of late.

J: It's tilted.
Me: Yeah?
J: It's TILTED.
Me: I know.
J: It's supposed to be 12 to 6, like the hands of a clock.
Me: No...
J:Global warming. We're totally screwed.
Me: No, Jon, I think it just does that...

And right about then, I heard a rustling to my right. We paused. Black, white, fluffy. Undulating along the line of bushes that borders the library.

Me: Move away, very, very, slowly.
Jon: (silence)

And that is how we didn't get sprayed by a skunk on Sunday night.

Yes, I have class on Sunday.

Tea Tree Australian Chewing Sticks

With one hundred sticks, I figured I wouldn't need to buy another pack for at least a year.

They're a lot cheaper than cigarettes, you know.

Try giving free handouts. My film class is now addicted, and the Australian Tea Tree Chewing Stick is the preferred drug of filmmakers and critics in the Lehigh Valley.

Or, as a friend of mine said, "It tastes like Meth. But I've been wrong before."

Ummmm....right. So what are these sticks, exactly?

A few things they are not:

1. Chopsticks

Yeah. No.

2. Toothpicks

They kind of are, actually. Really.

3. Dietary replacements for starving nations.

4. Large Hadron Particle Collider


No. This is what they are: Tea Tree(oil of melaleuca alternifolia) Australian Chewing Sticks, aka Birchwood impregnated with Tea Tree Oil and other natural extracts.

That is a direct quote from the package. I would never make an analogy between asexual derivatives of flora and products of sexual intercourse, now would I?

Didn't think so.

Anyway, we spent my latest Women Filmmakers class masticating.

Even my professor joined in, but not before complaining that it hindered her ability to teach with focus and concentration.

The flavor is...ohhhh Godddd....explosive. In your mouth.

And now I only have fifty left.

Love Song

If anyone knows the German word that is used to describe the anxious feeling you get by looking at open cabinets, let me know.

That's probably not a very semantically correct description, but it's the best I can do.

I have intended for some time now to write about my favorite love songs of the moment, so....

1) "Suzanne", by Judy Collins

This is weird in the same way that my cat liking plastic bags is weird. It's about crazy people "touching your perfect body with their minds". Yeah. Good song.

2) "Warning Sign", by Coldplay

Story of my life. Not really, I just like saying that. But it's what I play after I've suffered a breakup, or some shit like that.

3) "Mrs. Darcy", by whoever wrote the Pride and Prejudice soundtrack (I'm referring to the Focus Features film)

Or really the entire soundtrack. It's all a love song. I like to play it on the way to class, especially if I'm wearing pants tucked into leather riding boots.

4) "Let Me Take You Home Tonight", by Boston

Ok, not really a love song, per say. More like the "...in my pants" game we played when we were young teens. And still play, unabashedly, today.

5) Any of McCain's speeches








...







ummmm except not k I'm done now

Technology and Me

Realatively recently, I discovered the shuffle feature hidden away in my ipod mini. Learning to use it took some smarts, as I was stuck on shuffle for about a week's time, wrenched away from the peaceful-yet-devilishly clever lyrics of "A Very Cellular Song", by The Incredible String Band, and forced into cohabitation with the jubilant white noise of Boston's "Smokin'". Anthony taught me how to turn it on and off. That was very kind of him.

There are many things I don't understand concerning the practical functions of this world.

So this shuffle device, or whatever, has become what I like to call my co-conspirator in Getting Important Things Done. Or that's what I use as justification. Anyway, it saves me from myself, in that I don't need to take twenty minutes trying to match my music to my mood. It also releases me, in effect, from a self-induced ipod samsara* so that I don't spend valuable time singing the next song before it's even begun.

Then again, are my fellow shufflers and I reducing ourselves to being controlled by a machine? I mean, we can't pick our own music. Random properties controlled via machinery picks it for us. What next, automatic career selection? Mate selection?

It frightens me sometimes, thinking about how carelessly we let our autonomy slip free of our high human grasp.

*Samsara: Sanskrit for the ties that bind a soul to the earth, exemplefied by temptations such as finery, lust, and women (yeah, patriarchy still holds sway in Goddess-worshipping societies, too). In this case, I use it to refer to an unusual depth of ipod attachment.

Sedmikrasky

This image is from Vera Chytilova's brilliant 1966 film
Daisies (Sedmikrasky). Watch it, if only for the wonderful line "we're on fire!" and the subsequent banana castrations.

Watch it, and get back to me, and tell me whether I shouldn't be one of those two chicks for Halloween.

So I've been using these wax earplugs while sleeping because my suitemates cause daily avalanches with their vocal volume. I did laundry two days ago, and I found one of them in the dryer, blubbering all over my clothes. It was was just hot wax by that point. I contemplated using it as my personal seal. Anyone want it?

scholarly update

My return to school has encompassed impromptu Super Smash Brawl parties (more on that later), waking up earlier than one, and living with five men.

Trust me. It's not as raunchy as it sounds. Since I've arrived, I've managed to turn my favorite bead-bedecked camisole blue. I use this lemon and poppy seed cleanser each morning, so I feel like I'm slathering myself with a bagel every time I wash my face. I've linked onto other people's wireless systems, both with and without their knowledge (okay, mostly without), and one of the only times I truly feel needed is in my film classes, where I seem to have become resident expert on fetishization, penis envy, and fears related to castration.

There is a happy picture on my door that most usefully reveals my name to all who are ignorant of those blessed words; this picture also features a photograph of a rock formation and a sign adjacent to said formation which informs us that it is a "bottomless pit. 65 feet deep". The background of the photo has been crudely juxtaposed with the word fail.

It took me a while to get that.

Another thing I didn't get at first and still don't really understand is the fact that a recent photo I took of a bunch of, um, photos turned out backwards. Is it telling that I noticed this first because my cat's patch appeared on the wrong eye and only later realized that the writing on my French film flyer was backwards too? Lauren tells me that the cause of this inversion is the position of the camera. Yeah, whatever, Lauren.

I think the reason I don't understand that is the same reason that I can't pack suitcases or play tetrus or not just suck at life.