Well, my first reflection is that it flew by fast. I feel old. I'm not really, just approaching 28, but it feels old in a way. I remember having a discussion with friends about how people go through a major change around that age. Saturn return and all that. Oh, it's coming for sure. My other thought is that I think this past year was sort of boring in comparison to the one before. Last time I filled out one of these things I felt present and sparky, this year felt a little blah.
So anyway, here's my answers to the end of year survey, same one I did last year.
1. What did you do in 2008 that you'd never done before? Went to Hawaii, and with that flew over the ocean, used a composting toilet, tried Brazilian food, drank out of a coconut, ate fresh coconut, papaya, guava fruit and other new foods. Got published, once in print, once online. Went to an artist residency, which was awesome in soooo many ways. Ate Ethiopian food (thanks Eileen), had parties at my apartment with friends from work, got set up on a blind date (which I didn't actually go on), got a lot of really bizarre dating approaches - getting approached at all was pretty new - (let's see, one of my ex's friends, who's probably 20 years older than me at least asked me out and months later when I was out with friends, he kept trying to grab me and hug me as I walked by; I got hit on by a much older woman one night; had a gay man telling me he loved me and flirting with me; then there was the blind date guy who was also quite a bit older, who lied to me in our first conversation (yeah, it went from him telling me he doesn't do any drugs to him telling me about this one time he did crack) and who, after our first conversation on the phone, asked if he could call me every day; and there were others I won't go into, some truly bizarre). Usually I get no approaches, so this year was, uh, flattering I suppose, nice to be noticed, but yeah, a little overdosed on strange.
Let's see, what else? It's the first year since I was seventeen that I didn't see any live music at all. That one's unforgivable and I must make amends for the coming year. I had friends visit from the east coast who never had before. I had a solo visit with Leo. And oh yeah, I visited western Canada (Victoria) with her which was years overdue and which also meant I took an international ferry, got my first stamp on my passport. I rode a horse - traded with the horseback riding instructor at camp, tarot for horse riding. It was great, we rode through all these trails, and then went to the arena and had the horse cantor. It was fun. My legs hurt for days after that! I added lots of guilty pleasure songs to my music collection (oh some of it is downright embarrassing). There are other things I'm too embarrassed to admit, at least here anyway.
I gained almost 30 pounds, which was definitely a first. I was at the same weight since eighth grade or so, steady for over a decade, then I suddenly lost weight a few years ago, no idea why (but it was really lovely when a doctor asked me if I had an eating disorder or if I was using heroin). So last year at this time I was at an all time low in body size, and this year I made up for it and then some. Funny thing is, I feel much happier at my current size than I used to at my old standard eighth grade size, even though my old size was more culturally desirable (a friend very tactfully said that I actually look like a real person now). When I think of my old size, it's like a breeze could've blown me over and I don't want to go back to it. I feel fuller now, substantial and stronger, more womanly and voluptuous, and surprisingly, I feel a lot sexier.
2. Did you keep your New Year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don't think I ever did get around to making any last year and if I did I most certainly didn't keep them. I don't know if I'll make any this year, though I like to think I might. A friend and I always make three wishes for the year to come, and I remember two fo mine from last year, and neither happened. Hmmm.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth? No.
4. Did anyone close to you die? No, and it's starting to freak me out, expecially in the last few months. I mean, knock on freakin' wood, I haven't had to deal with that much death of anyone directly close to me. Whenever I read or hear things (or watch medical shows where people die), I start thinking about that and it's like, life can't and won't stay that way. I don't know, I suddenly feel very aware that every person I'm close to is someone who will one day die, and I also start worrying what if I haven't experienced that much death because I'm going to die young? I've been really worried about death lately. More than usual.
5. What countries did you visit? Hawaii, Canada, America.
6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?Dating approaches and flirtation from guys who are at least mildly appropriate. Romance, dates, hot sex. College acceptance letters, scholarships, an incredibly awesome financial aid package. Financial success for my writing (in 2008, I had some successes and none of them included that). A fling with Maynard from Tool (kidding). A girl can dream, can't she?
7. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
This is where I feel that 2008 was a little blah - nothing stands out with searing joy or sorrow, like it did last time I filled this out, it's hard for me to remember specific dates (and I have a mind for numbers, so this is unusual for me). Feb 20-25 - Hawaii, March 7-14 artist residency, Oct 18 (last day of work, party), June 15-20 Leo's visit, Jan 19 found out I got published in The Sun and saw my name in print for the first time, Feb 26 found out I got a piece in Shark Reef, July 19, Oct 31, and I'm sure there's more
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Pulling together this India trip, for sure. Months in the making.
9. What was your biggest failure? I'd say the fact that I'm still on Orcas feels kinda failure-y, like I should be doing more with my life, but then again if I had left earlier, I probably wouldn't be going to India next month, so. It definitely wasn't a successful year for love. Or for doing actual writing, probably the year I've written the least in a loooong time.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Knock on wood, no.
11. What was the best thing you bought? A bed, that I love, that I will miss in India and that I will relish when I get back, it's freakin' awesome.
12. Whose behavior merited celebration? Everyone cool, I don't know? Nothing jumps to mind. In fact, with most of these, I have to really think, no pressing answers, again the blah.
13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? Chris Cornell. My own.
14. Where did most of your money go? Rent, bills, savings, the aforementioned bed, clothes, the deposit for the India program.
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? India. But also really, really, really terrified.
16. What song will always remind you of 2008? ELECTRIC FEEL by MGMT, hands down.
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? Depends on the day, I don't have an overall answer.
b) thinner or fatter? Fatter.
c) richer or poorer? Richer.
18. What do you with you'd done more of? Writing. Smiling. Reading. Being more authentic and saying what I feel. Making out.
19. What do you wish you'd done less of? Being a pushover. Being scared.
20. How will you be spending Christmas? (Or did.) You don't want to ask me that, because you really don't want to know.
21. What was your favorite TV program? Ohhhh can I have more than 1 vote? I want to say House for the medical mysteries and intellectual stimulation and the back and forth banter and witty sarcasm (and I like that House and Cuddy made out, and how screwed up they got over it afterwards). I want to pick The Office because of how hilarious it is, and how intricately woven the plot can be. I do have to say though, I think this season is a little lacking. It's like they keep dropping story lines (Holly arrives and a few episodes has to leave and nothing more w/her, Ryan leaves after a few episodes, Jan has baby and you never hear anything about it again, sort of nothing happened w/Pam in art school, just feels like they are sprinkling things in, then doing nothing with it, and it's bugging me, though the episodes are still great). I think though, that if I was forced to pick, I'd pick Grey's Anatomy. I just love it, love the characters, love the stories, love how it's funny and dramatic and sexy and medical and rich emotionally, and if we're going with current, I love Alex and he had some great storylines this year. Especially with everything that happened with Rebecca/Ava. I always rooted for him with Izzie and man did they have some scenes (the one where he tries, pretty idiotically, to tell her he wants to "go steady" with her, and then when he says he loves her before the solo surgery) that I've watched over and over. So, all in all, Grey's.
22. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year? I don't think I hated anyone either time.
23. What was the best book you read? The Kite Runner. The best book I re-read was The God of Small Things.
24. What was your greatest musical discovery? Damien Rice's 9 Crimes - never listened to it really before this year, and god I love it so much, even though I've played it to death. A few of his more rare songs too. I discovered (and in some cases re-discovered) some rare Jeff Buckley tracks. The one I'm stuck on now is "Alive" and also played the shit out of "Forget Her" earlier in the year. Also got pretty obsessed with Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car" which I think is expertly written. And a bunch of songs from my favorite shows. Can't forget "Colors" by Amos Lee, love that song!
25. What did you want and get? A better social life. Some writing glory. Fun. A much better financial situation. Inner strength. Better credit.
26. What did you want and not get? Asked out/hit on by someone remotely appropriate - I swear if I wanted to go out with fifty year olds (or older), older women, gay men, married or otherwise unavailable, or guys who want to tell me about doing crack, and how it made them 50-60 times more turned on than usual, I'd be rolling in dates, but apparently single, male, into girls and remotely near my age is a lot too much to ask.
27. What was your favorite film of this year? The Secret Life of Bees.
28. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? 27, and if I remember, it was really, really low-key. A few people came over, we hung out, then went to the bar, and no one was there. Monday night on an island in the dead of winter isn't exactly the recipe for partying hard.
29. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? Romance, love, sex, or anything remotely resembling any of the above.
30. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008? Out with the old, in with the good and sexy. I also ascribed to the "try on/buy/wear what you're most instinctually, irresistably attracted to" philosophy. Actually the only thing that does bother me about my recent weight gain is that I have to buy all new clothes, and I like getting hot new clothes as much as the next girl, what bugs me is that I bought a bunch of clothes last year, and I always buy clothes thinking I'll have them for years (I've seriously had some things for over ten years), so last year when I replaced soome old stuff and got some great clothes, I expected they'd last, and now they really don't fit, at all.
31. What kept you sane? Insanity.
32. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? Alex from Grey's - and I don't mean Justin Chambers the actor, though shit he's hot, I mean the fictional Alex. I've never, ever been so into an on-screen person, to the point where I rewind and watch all his hot scenes over and over (and he has a lot of hot scenes, omg) and feel like I'm melting inside. Yes, I'm ridiculous, but in the absence of anything else, it's cool. I'm fascinated by his dichotomies, and I'm drawn in. I like to analyze the males on that show, they're all really interesting, and Alex, to me, is the most complex by far, the most emotionally rich of the male characters in a lot of ways.
33. What political issue stirred you the most? The thought of Sarah Palin as VP was a little too much to stomach, but what really got me stirred is hard to name, I got very interested in international relief, refugee situations, esp in the middle east.
34. Who did you miss? Everyone.
35. Who was the best new person you met? I can't pick just one, I met sooooo many cool people this past season working at camp and they are all so awesome. Jenny, Heather, Tami, Shane, Travis and many, many more! What also springs to mind the most are two people I met in 07 and got to know a little bit but who I got to know better this past year - Maryam and Forest.
36. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008. I think this year I was too exhausted by all the enormous life lessons of previous years
37. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
Anything else would just not cut it:
All along the western front
People line up to receive.
She got the power in her hand
To shock you like you won't believe.
Saw her in the amazon
With the voltage running through her skin
Standing there with nothing on
She gonna teach me how to swim
I said ooh girl
Shock me like an electric eel
Baby girl
Turn me on with your electric feel
I said ooh girl
Shock me like an electric eel
Baby girl
Turn me on with your electric feel
All along the eastern shore
Put your circuits in the sea
This is what the world is for
Making electricity
You can feel it in your mind
Oh you can do it all the time
Plug it in and change the world
You are my electric girl.
I said ooh girl
Shock me like an electric eel
Baby girl
Turn me on with your electric feel
I said ooh girl
Shock me like an electric eel
Baby girl
Turn me on with your electric feel
Do what you feel now
Electric feel now
Do what you feel now
Electric feel now
Do what you feel now
Electric feel now
Do what you feel now
Electric feel now
Do what you feel now
Electric feel now
Friday, December 26, 2008
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
I Am Going a Little Crazy
Slowly, but surely.
So, it's Christmas Eve and I'm awake and wired and have absolutely nothing to do.
It's been snowing like crazy for the last week and a half. When it started I was in Seattle at a Christmas party with friends, and the next morning we couldn't get through the road. The next day I came back to Orcas and had a semi (but not terribly exciting)-adventure returning. And then it snowed and snowed and snowed some more. It's the most snow I've seen in the northwest, and it's my sixth winter here. It's wild, and awesome.
I'm loving it. It makes me want to go make snow angels and snowmen and build forts and have wild snowball fights. The roads are a mess, I mean solid ice covered in inches of snow. Walking anywhere that's not a trodden path or shoveled walkway is deliriously fun, I sink in halfway up to my knees. I saw a drift the other day that's practically as tall as me. On a street corner, a bunch of kids made this snowman that is taller than me, with an orange traffic cone for a hat (though the snowman itself was taller than me, even w/o the hat). I wish I had a camera because I'd take zillions of pictures to immortalize this winter weather. Last year we got almost none and I was let down by that fact. So yeah, I'm loving it. It's been massively windy too, so sometimes I just stare out the sliding glass door to my little back porch and watched the snow blow around in these huge gusts. The shocking thing is that unlike other years, I haven't lost power, though I know those that have. I wouldn't mind it, briefly. I love storms, love them.
The only downside is, I have cabin fever like you wouldn't believe. Town seems pretty shut down, and the winter weather keeps on coming, which again, I'm all for, but I'm also a little bored. More than a little. I think I now know how my dog felt. The last few months I had her, the weather was awful and I was working a lot so I wasn't taking her out as much, and I could sense this feeling of frustration from her, like she wanted to go run eighteen thousand miles and instead she was cooped up in my apartment while I worked. Now I sort of feel the same way, a little shut in with all this delirious winter happy energy and nothing to do with it. Town seems totally dead. A lot of my friends have left the island over the last few months, and my friend Becky, who was the one person I was hanging out with during all these snowstorms, just left yesterday morning to visit family for the holidays. And my friend Elynn who I spent a lot of last winter hanging out with is living on the other side of the island now, and like I said, the roads are total shit. I won't be able to get to the Christmas concert that is a tradition on Orcas, given by Susan Osborn, who is such an amazing singer. It was a magical experience last year, but it is on the other side of the island as well. My phone keeps dying because I'm spending so much time talking, to connect, to kill time. I hope my ears don't fall off, lol. Even the mail is getting fucked up and delayed. I'm going a little crazy. I check my mail (which is by PO box, so I actually have to walk to the PO) twice a day, just for something to do, and an excuse to get budndled up and tromp through the drifts.
I finished watching Grey's and I'm resisting starting to watch it again from the beginning, because I ordered the DVDs and I don't want any chance of being sick of it by the time they arrive. Although there are some scenes I must've replayed a million times. Which is odd for me, I never even did that with House, not even the House/Cuddy makeout scene. I found a Grey's board game online, and I'm such a dork that I actually really want it, even though I don't know who I'd play it with, oh and I'm leaving for a third world country in less than two months, but still.
And I'm too hyper and stir crazy to read or write, I just can't sit still like that. It's been a difficult holiday season for reasons I will not go into in a public blog, but shit, it's been a tough one. Which surprised me, because last year was such a great holiday season for me, I was so into it, baking cookies, even listening to Xmas music and all that crap. I'm pretty sure I posted about that. It rocked. This year, I might as well be a female scrooge. It's not really that bad, but it is bad. At least I do have somewhere to go tomorrow, so the loneliness won't eat me alive or I won't kill myself out of boredom. But yeah, I can't seem to sit still. I haven't even sat still while writing this blog.
And the worst part is, now it's raining. It was snowing earlier, and I say, bring it on, but now it's raining, and I'm going to have to have a word with mother nature if all the snow melts so soon. Because that's at least giving me something to smile about. It complicates things, as bitched about above, but it also so rare here, and I don't want it to fade too quickly, even if it's making me stir crazy. I am a complicated woman.
Unfortunately I don't have a camera, but my computer does, so here is the view out my door:
Well, I think I'll go kill time by cleaning my kitchen, which is exactly every single girl in their late twenties dreams of spending Christmas Eve, lol.
Currently Listening:
"Criminal" - Fiona Apple - I've been on yet another Fiona Apple kick lately. In fact I just recently found these two songs that are "supposedly" by her, "Ugly Girl" and "If We Kissed." The lyric sites I've looked do attribute both to Miss Apple, but they just don't sound like her, especially "Ugly Girl" which I must say, I don't really like at all. Still trying to find out for sure if they are her. Anyway, Criminal, great song, I always sing this at Karaoke when I get the balls to sing, which hasn't happened in quite some time. I would love to sing Never Is a Promise instead, which they have at the local karaoke deal, but I don't think I could pull it off, so Criminal it is. It's deliciously fun to get up there and sing that first line, "I've been a bad, bad girl," LOL. And I totally relate to, "I know tomorrow brings the consequence at hand, but I keep living this day like the next will never come." And I love, "What would an angel say, the devil wants to know..." I will leave you all with that thought.
So, it's Christmas Eve and I'm awake and wired and have absolutely nothing to do.
It's been snowing like crazy for the last week and a half. When it started I was in Seattle at a Christmas party with friends, and the next morning we couldn't get through the road. The next day I came back to Orcas and had a semi (but not terribly exciting)-adventure returning. And then it snowed and snowed and snowed some more. It's the most snow I've seen in the northwest, and it's my sixth winter here. It's wild, and awesome.
I'm loving it. It makes me want to go make snow angels and snowmen and build forts and have wild snowball fights. The roads are a mess, I mean solid ice covered in inches of snow. Walking anywhere that's not a trodden path or shoveled walkway is deliriously fun, I sink in halfway up to my knees. I saw a drift the other day that's practically as tall as me. On a street corner, a bunch of kids made this snowman that is taller than me, with an orange traffic cone for a hat (though the snowman itself was taller than me, even w/o the hat). I wish I had a camera because I'd take zillions of pictures to immortalize this winter weather. Last year we got almost none and I was let down by that fact. So yeah, I'm loving it. It's been massively windy too, so sometimes I just stare out the sliding glass door to my little back porch and watched the snow blow around in these huge gusts. The shocking thing is that unlike other years, I haven't lost power, though I know those that have. I wouldn't mind it, briefly. I love storms, love them.
The only downside is, I have cabin fever like you wouldn't believe. Town seems pretty shut down, and the winter weather keeps on coming, which again, I'm all for, but I'm also a little bored. More than a little. I think I now know how my dog felt. The last few months I had her, the weather was awful and I was working a lot so I wasn't taking her out as much, and I could sense this feeling of frustration from her, like she wanted to go run eighteen thousand miles and instead she was cooped up in my apartment while I worked. Now I sort of feel the same way, a little shut in with all this delirious winter happy energy and nothing to do with it. Town seems totally dead. A lot of my friends have left the island over the last few months, and my friend Becky, who was the one person I was hanging out with during all these snowstorms, just left yesterday morning to visit family for the holidays. And my friend Elynn who I spent a lot of last winter hanging out with is living on the other side of the island now, and like I said, the roads are total shit. I won't be able to get to the Christmas concert that is a tradition on Orcas, given by Susan Osborn, who is such an amazing singer. It was a magical experience last year, but it is on the other side of the island as well. My phone keeps dying because I'm spending so much time talking, to connect, to kill time. I hope my ears don't fall off, lol. Even the mail is getting fucked up and delayed. I'm going a little crazy. I check my mail (which is by PO box, so I actually have to walk to the PO) twice a day, just for something to do, and an excuse to get budndled up and tromp through the drifts.
I finished watching Grey's and I'm resisting starting to watch it again from the beginning, because I ordered the DVDs and I don't want any chance of being sick of it by the time they arrive. Although there are some scenes I must've replayed a million times. Which is odd for me, I never even did that with House, not even the House/Cuddy makeout scene. I found a Grey's board game online, and I'm such a dork that I actually really want it, even though I don't know who I'd play it with, oh and I'm leaving for a third world country in less than two months, but still.
And I'm too hyper and stir crazy to read or write, I just can't sit still like that. It's been a difficult holiday season for reasons I will not go into in a public blog, but shit, it's been a tough one. Which surprised me, because last year was such a great holiday season for me, I was so into it, baking cookies, even listening to Xmas music and all that crap. I'm pretty sure I posted about that. It rocked. This year, I might as well be a female scrooge. It's not really that bad, but it is bad. At least I do have somewhere to go tomorrow, so the loneliness won't eat me alive or I won't kill myself out of boredom. But yeah, I can't seem to sit still. I haven't even sat still while writing this blog.
And the worst part is, now it's raining. It was snowing earlier, and I say, bring it on, but now it's raining, and I'm going to have to have a word with mother nature if all the snow melts so soon. Because that's at least giving me something to smile about. It complicates things, as bitched about above, but it also so rare here, and I don't want it to fade too quickly, even if it's making me stir crazy. I am a complicated woman.
Unfortunately I don't have a camera, but my computer does, so here is the view out my door:
Well, I think I'll go kill time by cleaning my kitchen, which is exactly every single girl in their late twenties dreams of spending Christmas Eve, lol.
Currently Listening:
"Criminal" - Fiona Apple - I've been on yet another Fiona Apple kick lately. In fact I just recently found these two songs that are "supposedly" by her, "Ugly Girl" and "If We Kissed." The lyric sites I've looked do attribute both to Miss Apple, but they just don't sound like her, especially "Ugly Girl" which I must say, I don't really like at all. Still trying to find out for sure if they are her. Anyway, Criminal, great song, I always sing this at Karaoke when I get the balls to sing, which hasn't happened in quite some time. I would love to sing Never Is a Promise instead, which they have at the local karaoke deal, but I don't think I could pull it off, so Criminal it is. It's deliciously fun to get up there and sing that first line, "I've been a bad, bad girl," LOL. And I totally relate to, "I know tomorrow brings the consequence at hand, but I keep living this day like the next will never come." And I love, "What would an angel say, the devil wants to know..." I will leave you all with that thought.
Monday, December 22, 2008
House, Music and Coincidence
Three things I love very much.
So, I wouldn't exactly say that I believe in magical musical synchronicity, because t he skeptic in me doesn't believe in much of anything, but I sort of do. Sometimes I go through phases where I can predict what song will come on next, among tons of possibilities. Sometimes the perfect song comes on, for example, if I'm writing to someone or about to call them, and then somehow the one song that really makes me think of them comes up, (and just for a reference point, I have over 11,000 songs on iTunes). Or sometimes I'll be thinking about a song and it comes on. Or a song that just magically fits the situation. What I'm saying is, I don't know how it happens, maybe it's some sort of mind over matter thing, maybe it's completely random and I assign it meaning, but I do sort of believe in something there.
But I'm getting a little off track (though I must say that one of the songs I'm planning to write about in this post just came on), what I wanted to write about was music, House and coincidence intersecting. Oh and dreams, I've been dreaming partly in songs this past week.
I think I've clearly established the fact in this blog that I've seen every episode of House several times. So it shouldn't have come to a big surprise when last March, when I was at the writing residency (which just totally rocked my world), I came downstairs and a song was playing that I knew I knew, but couldn't place. As it played on, I suddenly realized, "Oh, that song's on an episode of House!" It was that song "Colors" that I included in my last post, by Amos Lee. That was the first time I ever heard a song from the show in the real world. It was pretty cool. I really love that song.
About two months after that, I was working at camp on Mother's Day Weekend, and who shows up as a guest at Camp but Dave Matthews and his family. I never met him (and honestly, didn't particularly care to). I'm not a big fan, but I do really love this one Dave Matthews song at the end of the House episode "Love Hurts." The song is called "Some Devil," and has this great line, "You said always and forever is such a long and lonely time." I don't know what it says about me that I'm drawn to that, but whatevs, I dig it. Anyway, so that whole weekend I couldn't get that song out of my head. Then one of my co-workers said that DM was in an episode of House. I'm not good at celebrity recognition (and really didn't even know what DM looked like), so I wasn't aware, and my friend went to go look it up, and came back and said, "His name on the show was Patrick--" I interrupted b/c I instantly knew what episode he was talking about, "Half-Wit," where the patient Patrick, is a guy who got in a bus accident at an early age, and was left mentally retarded but a musical savant. So then we joked around (we'd all been joking around about our celebrity guest all weekend), about going up to him and being like, "Hey, aren't you the guy who played a retarded guy on that show House?" and then these guys I work with were joking that they'd follow that up with, "Oh and weren't you in that band, Hootie and the Blowfish or something?" because we always used to listen to this 90s rock station on satellite radio and they'd always ask with any pop-ish song that came on (including DMB and other bands) if it was Hootie. We were sort of joiking about that, about pretending not to know who he was because DM was all anyone on staff was talking about all weekend. There was a lot of gushing, and we were too cool for that, of course, lol.
So, fast forward a few months to this past summer. I always listened to Democracy Now! on my iPod on my long walk to work, and I always paid attention to the music played during the breaks, because I always pat attention to music. A few times I heard songs by Rage Against the Machine, one time I heard Soundgarden's Hands All Over during a broadcast on global warming. One day I heard a song that I ikmmediately recognized as being from House, from the episode "Family," which I later looked up to find the name and artist, Brett Dennen's "Ain't No Reason." It totally excited me to have House and Democracy Now! coinciding somehow. For whatever reason that song, and a few others from the last half of Season 3 (like Josh Ritter's "Good Man") have always really stood out for me.
The next day or so, turning the corner from my road to head to work, again listening to Democracy Now! I heard a song I recognized, but couldn't tell from where. I just knew I'd heard it before, but when the break was over, Amy Goodman only announced the name of the song, "Time to Pretend," and never the artist. I didn't think much of it. Then the next day, still crazed over the song "Electric Feel" by MGMT, I decided to listen to the rest of the album. I put it on and went to the other room to straighten up my apartment, and as the first song played, I was like, "OMG, that's the song!" and I went and looked at my iTunes screen and it was indeed "Time to Pretend." I was just like, whoa. It's funny when the same songs keep cropping up. And I can't go anywhere or do anything without paying attention to what music is playing, whether I want to or not.
Then, a little over a month ago, some friends visited from NJ, and we went out to this pretty nice restaurant on the island during their last night here. Music was playing quietly in the background, to the point where I had to almost strain to hear it, but even in those cases, my attention is always drawn. A song came on that again I vaguely recognized but couldn't place. I was sort of singing along, I knew the words, I just couldn't place it. And then it hit me that this song, too, was from House. After coming home and doing some research I found it was "In the Waiting Line" by Zero 7. The wildest part was, I already had the song on my computer and didn't notice it. A friend gave me his whole music collection and it's so massive that months later, I still haven't listened to all of it, so that was a nice surprise.
By this point, I could pretty much sing along to any song from any episode, b/c I'd seen them all so many times, and I was starting to feel a real fondness for the music on the show.
After that was when I gave in to the obsession and started collecting the soundtracks from the various seasons of House. I found that the Zero 7 song wasn't the only one I already had. I also had a song by Gomez, and "Feel Good Inc" by Gorillaz, which plays during one of the very few scenes where House is running.
Just when my TV watching habit couldn't get any worse, I suddenly got into watching Grey's Anatomy. I had a lot of resistance to that show. A girl's not exactly apt to love a show that the guy she once lived with used to drool over and referred to as his "slutty hospital show." But because he had liked it so much, I had seen a lot of episodes (albeit oozing with jealousy all the while) and then last winter, some of my girl friends would come over and we'd watch it on Thursdays, but not enough to really keep up with the storylines fully.
So for whatever reason, I started watching all the old episodes on my computer. I think it's partly that I've exhausted House and I needed something medical to watch. When I had TV, I used to watch all these mystery diagnosis shows on the Discovery Health Channel, which were great. Sometimes, because of my prolific House-watching, I could solve the mysteries before the answer was revealed, or knew what specific diseases and their treatments were before it was discussed. So I had to fill that void, and started watching Grey's Anatomy, and LOVING IT way more than I thought I would. I'm a little obsessed. It's different than other shows I follow, namely House and The Office, because they're so witty and super intelligently clever, whereas Grey's is more emotional, but OMG I love it so much. And especially Dr. Alex Karev.
And the point is, of course I pay attention to the music there too. I've noticed some cross pollination between Grey's and House (and have recognized at least two people who appear in both shows - there's a woman who plays a freaked-out mom in an early episode of House who plays a woman who's dying of cancer who won't stop eating cake on Grey's, and a patient in the House episode "Fools for Love" plays Meredith and Derek's last clinical trial patient on Grey's. Damien Rice is in both show, twice in each. And Brett Dennen has songs in a few Grey's episodes. I also noticed in Grey's that during the first season, the makers of that sh ow must've been obsessed with Tegan & Sara - practically every song from So Jealous is on that first season, including my two favorites, "Fix You Up" and "Where Does the Good Go" and even in the first episode of Season 3, "Time Has Come Today," the one where Izzie is laying on the bathroom floor, there's a bunch of flashbacks, and a few of the flashbakcs are to a "mixer" that happened just before the first episode, and Tegan & Sara is playing in those flashbacks too! Weird.
But what really blew my mind was in the last episode I watched. I didn't watch the seasons in order, and actually got to season 2 last (a lot of which I had already seen, but it's amazing how much I didn't remember), and in the last episode of that season, what song comes on but "Colors" by Amos Lee! It came on during a "prom" they have at the hospital. It gave me chills. That's the only song that has actually been on both shows. It was a great way to end the viewing marathon with, it just seemed so synchronous, and so funny since that is the song I've been all hung up on, and included in my last post. It gave me chills when it came on.
So this is all obscure and kinda useless to anyone else, but it makes me happy, so I'm writing about it..
And here comes the dream part. A few nights ago, I had a dream that was very strange. It reminded me of the Orcas Island Writers Festival, there were all these tents set up with different workshops going on inside, and somehow Alex from Grey's was in this dream (and just for the record, I don't usually dream about fictional characters, but this time I did, and we were dating, and he had a baby daughter...???), and in one of the tents, the song "Hit the Ground" by Lizz Wright (which is a House song) was playing. What struck me was how clearly I heard the song in the dream, every word. That's unusual. It was really, really striking. Then last night I dreamt about Damien Rice's "Sleep, Don't Weep" which is not one of my favorite songs off of 9 Crimes, but is in an episode of Grey's Anatomy, in a three-parter that has to do with a ferry crash (I must say one of the things that draws me to the show is that it takes place in Seattle, and that they're always showing ferries, but I do NOT like the idea of them crashing being put into my head). Again, the song was very vividly in my dream. The rest of the dream was much stranger though, I mean just beyond bizarre, trying to escape some sort of haunted, evil house with a brother of some sort that seemed and looking nothing like my brother. Weird shit, I tell ya.
Again, this may be my strangest blog post. I realize no one is really oging to care about the intricacies of my favorite TV shows, but I don't care, it's all been in my head, some of it for months, and I need to get it out. So there.
Oh and I must say, about two weeks ago, I went to Seattle and saw my friend Eileen (also known as BlueShine), who's recently returned from Iraq, and we were just talking, shooting the shit, and she was telling me that there was one point when they couldn't really go anywhere, and she watched House for twelve hours. Oh, it warmed my heart and got me all excited to know she was into House too.
Anyway, I'm shutting up now.
Currently Listening:
"Hope for the Hopeless" - A Fine Frenzy - of course, a song from House, one I've been listening to a lot lately and lovin' it. I love this woman's voice. Here's the words:
Stitch, in your knitted brow
And you don't know how
You're going to get it out
Crushed, under heavy chest
Trying to catch your breath
But it always beats you by a step
All right now
Makin' the best of it
Playin' the hand you get
You're not alone in this
There's hope for the hopeless
There's hope for the hopeless
There's hope
Cold, in the summer breeze
Yet you're shivering
On your bended knee
Still, when your heart is sore
And the heavens pour
Like a willow bending with the storm
You'll make it
Runnin' against the wind
Playin' the cards you get
Something is bound to give
There's hope for the hopeless
There's hope for the hopeless
There's hope
There's hope
There's hope
There's hope
So, I wouldn't exactly say that I believe in magical musical synchronicity, because t he skeptic in me doesn't believe in much of anything, but I sort of do. Sometimes I go through phases where I can predict what song will come on next, among tons of possibilities. Sometimes the perfect song comes on, for example, if I'm writing to someone or about to call them, and then somehow the one song that really makes me think of them comes up, (and just for a reference point, I have over 11,000 songs on iTunes). Or sometimes I'll be thinking about a song and it comes on. Or a song that just magically fits the situation. What I'm saying is, I don't know how it happens, maybe it's some sort of mind over matter thing, maybe it's completely random and I assign it meaning, but I do sort of believe in something there.
But I'm getting a little off track (though I must say that one of the songs I'm planning to write about in this post just came on), what I wanted to write about was music, House and coincidence intersecting. Oh and dreams, I've been dreaming partly in songs this past week.
I think I've clearly established the fact in this blog that I've seen every episode of House several times. So it shouldn't have come to a big surprise when last March, when I was at the writing residency (which just totally rocked my world), I came downstairs and a song was playing that I knew I knew, but couldn't place. As it played on, I suddenly realized, "Oh, that song's on an episode of House!" It was that song "Colors" that I included in my last post, by Amos Lee. That was the first time I ever heard a song from the show in the real world. It was pretty cool. I really love that song.
About two months after that, I was working at camp on Mother's Day Weekend, and who shows up as a guest at Camp but Dave Matthews and his family. I never met him (and honestly, didn't particularly care to). I'm not a big fan, but I do really love this one Dave Matthews song at the end of the House episode "Love Hurts." The song is called "Some Devil," and has this great line, "You said always and forever is such a long and lonely time." I don't know what it says about me that I'm drawn to that, but whatevs, I dig it. Anyway, so that whole weekend I couldn't get that song out of my head. Then one of my co-workers said that DM was in an episode of House. I'm not good at celebrity recognition (and really didn't even know what DM looked like), so I wasn't aware, and my friend went to go look it up, and came back and said, "His name on the show was Patrick--" I interrupted b/c I instantly knew what episode he was talking about, "Half-Wit," where the patient Patrick, is a guy who got in a bus accident at an early age, and was left mentally retarded but a musical savant. So then we joked around (we'd all been joking around about our celebrity guest all weekend), about going up to him and being like, "Hey, aren't you the guy who played a retarded guy on that show House?" and then these guys I work with were joking that they'd follow that up with, "Oh and weren't you in that band, Hootie and the Blowfish or something?" because we always used to listen to this 90s rock station on satellite radio and they'd always ask with any pop-ish song that came on (including DMB and other bands) if it was Hootie. We were sort of joiking about that, about pretending not to know who he was because DM was all anyone on staff was talking about all weekend. There was a lot of gushing, and we were too cool for that, of course, lol.
So, fast forward a few months to this past summer. I always listened to Democracy Now! on my iPod on my long walk to work, and I always paid attention to the music played during the breaks, because I always pat attention to music. A few times I heard songs by Rage Against the Machine, one time I heard Soundgarden's Hands All Over during a broadcast on global warming. One day I heard a song that I ikmmediately recognized as being from House, from the episode "Family," which I later looked up to find the name and artist, Brett Dennen's "Ain't No Reason." It totally excited me to have House and Democracy Now! coinciding somehow. For whatever reason that song, and a few others from the last half of Season 3 (like Josh Ritter's "Good Man") have always really stood out for me.
The next day or so, turning the corner from my road to head to work, again listening to Democracy Now! I heard a song I recognized, but couldn't tell from where. I just knew I'd heard it before, but when the break was over, Amy Goodman only announced the name of the song, "Time to Pretend," and never the artist. I didn't think much of it. Then the next day, still crazed over the song "Electric Feel" by MGMT, I decided to listen to the rest of the album. I put it on and went to the other room to straighten up my apartment, and as the first song played, I was like, "OMG, that's the song!" and I went and looked at my iTunes screen and it was indeed "Time to Pretend." I was just like, whoa. It's funny when the same songs keep cropping up. And I can't go anywhere or do anything without paying attention to what music is playing, whether I want to or not.
Then, a little over a month ago, some friends visited from NJ, and we went out to this pretty nice restaurant on the island during their last night here. Music was playing quietly in the background, to the point where I had to almost strain to hear it, but even in those cases, my attention is always drawn. A song came on that again I vaguely recognized but couldn't place. I was sort of singing along, I knew the words, I just couldn't place it. And then it hit me that this song, too, was from House. After coming home and doing some research I found it was "In the Waiting Line" by Zero 7. The wildest part was, I already had the song on my computer and didn't notice it. A friend gave me his whole music collection and it's so massive that months later, I still haven't listened to all of it, so that was a nice surprise.
By this point, I could pretty much sing along to any song from any episode, b/c I'd seen them all so many times, and I was starting to feel a real fondness for the music on the show.
After that was when I gave in to the obsession and started collecting the soundtracks from the various seasons of House. I found that the Zero 7 song wasn't the only one I already had. I also had a song by Gomez, and "Feel Good Inc" by Gorillaz, which plays during one of the very few scenes where House is running.
Just when my TV watching habit couldn't get any worse, I suddenly got into watching Grey's Anatomy. I had a lot of resistance to that show. A girl's not exactly apt to love a show that the guy she once lived with used to drool over and referred to as his "slutty hospital show." But because he had liked it so much, I had seen a lot of episodes (albeit oozing with jealousy all the while) and then last winter, some of my girl friends would come over and we'd watch it on Thursdays, but not enough to really keep up with the storylines fully.
So for whatever reason, I started watching all the old episodes on my computer. I think it's partly that I've exhausted House and I needed something medical to watch. When I had TV, I used to watch all these mystery diagnosis shows on the Discovery Health Channel, which were great. Sometimes, because of my prolific House-watching, I could solve the mysteries before the answer was revealed, or knew what specific diseases and their treatments were before it was discussed. So I had to fill that void, and started watching Grey's Anatomy, and LOVING IT way more than I thought I would. I'm a little obsessed. It's different than other shows I follow, namely House and The Office, because they're so witty and super intelligently clever, whereas Grey's is more emotional, but OMG I love it so much. And especially Dr. Alex Karev.
And the point is, of course I pay attention to the music there too. I've noticed some cross pollination between Grey's and House (and have recognized at least two people who appear in both shows - there's a woman who plays a freaked-out mom in an early episode of House who plays a woman who's dying of cancer who won't stop eating cake on Grey's, and a patient in the House episode "Fools for Love" plays Meredith and Derek's last clinical trial patient on Grey's. Damien Rice is in both show, twice in each. And Brett Dennen has songs in a few Grey's episodes. I also noticed in Grey's that during the first season, the makers of that sh ow must've been obsessed with Tegan & Sara - practically every song from So Jealous is on that first season, including my two favorites, "Fix You Up" and "Where Does the Good Go" and even in the first episode of Season 3, "Time Has Come Today," the one where Izzie is laying on the bathroom floor, there's a bunch of flashbacks, and a few of the flashbakcs are to a "mixer" that happened just before the first episode, and Tegan & Sara is playing in those flashbacks too! Weird.
But what really blew my mind was in the last episode I watched. I didn't watch the seasons in order, and actually got to season 2 last (a lot of which I had already seen, but it's amazing how much I didn't remember), and in the last episode of that season, what song comes on but "Colors" by Amos Lee! It came on during a "prom" they have at the hospital. It gave me chills. That's the only song that has actually been on both shows. It was a great way to end the viewing marathon with, it just seemed so synchronous, and so funny since that is the song I've been all hung up on, and included in my last post. It gave me chills when it came on.
So this is all obscure and kinda useless to anyone else, but it makes me happy, so I'm writing about it..
And here comes the dream part. A few nights ago, I had a dream that was very strange. It reminded me of the Orcas Island Writers Festival, there were all these tents set up with different workshops going on inside, and somehow Alex from Grey's was in this dream (and just for the record, I don't usually dream about fictional characters, but this time I did, and we were dating, and he had a baby daughter...???), and in one of the tents, the song "Hit the Ground" by Lizz Wright (which is a House song) was playing. What struck me was how clearly I heard the song in the dream, every word. That's unusual. It was really, really striking. Then last night I dreamt about Damien Rice's "Sleep, Don't Weep" which is not one of my favorite songs off of 9 Crimes, but is in an episode of Grey's Anatomy, in a three-parter that has to do with a ferry crash (I must say one of the things that draws me to the show is that it takes place in Seattle, and that they're always showing ferries, but I do NOT like the idea of them crashing being put into my head). Again, the song was very vividly in my dream. The rest of the dream was much stranger though, I mean just beyond bizarre, trying to escape some sort of haunted, evil house with a brother of some sort that seemed and looking nothing like my brother. Weird shit, I tell ya.
Again, this may be my strangest blog post. I realize no one is really oging to care about the intricacies of my favorite TV shows, but I don't care, it's all been in my head, some of it for months, and I need to get it out. So there.
Oh and I must say, about two weeks ago, I went to Seattle and saw my friend Eileen (also known as BlueShine), who's recently returned from Iraq, and we were just talking, shooting the shit, and she was telling me that there was one point when they couldn't really go anywhere, and she watched House for twelve hours. Oh, it warmed my heart and got me all excited to know she was into House too.
Anyway, I'm shutting up now.
Currently Listening:
"Hope for the Hopeless" - A Fine Frenzy - of course, a song from House, one I've been listening to a lot lately and lovin' it. I love this woman's voice. Here's the words:
Stitch, in your knitted brow
And you don't know how
You're going to get it out
Crushed, under heavy chest
Trying to catch your breath
But it always beats you by a step
All right now
Makin' the best of it
Playin' the hand you get
You're not alone in this
There's hope for the hopeless
There's hope for the hopeless
There's hope
Cold, in the summer breeze
Yet you're shivering
On your bended knee
Still, when your heart is sore
And the heavens pour
Like a willow bending with the storm
You'll make it
Runnin' against the wind
Playin' the cards you get
Something is bound to give
There's hope for the hopeless
There's hope for the hopeless
There's hope
There's hope
There's hope
There's hope
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Long Time, No Post
Yeah, I know, it's been like, two and a half months.
There's lots of news to report, I suppose. It's been an interesting few months. I lost internet connection for awhile, which drove me nuts. I don't have TV so I rely on the internet for my fix. It drove me crazy to miss House and The Office, but what drove me even crazier was not being able to be really connected around election time. I like to keep up on those things, and it was like being totally disconnected from the world. And that's not to mention all the people I fell out of touch with. It sucked. I spent hours and hours on the phone with CenturyTel, trying to figure out what was wrong. They were telling me I'd have to take my computer to an Apple store (not easy to do, since I live on an island). Then my friend Rachel visited, and fixed it in about two seconds. Now I'm trying to catch up.
In other news, I quit my job. It was a pretty big deal. There were some major management changes in the department I worked in, and my new boss was pretty downright weird about my visual impairment and it made me really uncomfortable working there. It was a difficult month, from mid-September to mid-October. After working the same job, this came out of the blue. I was already a little unhappy there, but for other reasons, I wanted to do something that was more mentally engaging and less physically demanding, my body was exhausted, and with the commute (I walked about 45 minutes each way), it took up a lot of time and I just hadn't found the space to write. But this was totally unexpected and I just couldn't stay under the circumstances. So I gave my notice, and worked another two and a half weeks.
The last day was, ummm, classic. My co-worker who usually leads the shift called in sick and there were three of us, and 450 guests. We had to work late. Just a classic last day. After though, wow was that a night to remember...except I don't remember most of it. I went to the bar to celebrate and everyone came out that night. It really blew my mind, that was the most people I'd seen from work (and all different departments of work) come out in one night. It was wildly fun. I was very lovey. I remember hugging lots of people and telling them I loved them. It was all true, what a great group of people. I was probably the drunkest I've ever been, which was not fun the next day. I haven't been able to drink cranberry & vodka since. I continued to hang out with the fall staff for the next few weeks (which was even more fun after I wasn't working there). And in the next few weeks, said goodbye to a lot of awesome people. It was a season to remember in many respects.
Before all that leaving, I went to Bellingham with some camp friends, and checked out Fairhaven College, part of Western Washington University. I've written about it before on here somewhere. I really liked it, though I will have more to elaborate on that later. We came back on the 4th, and upon getting off the ferry, a freind got a call that Obama won Pennsylvania and Ohio, so we knew we were in for a good night. We drove to the bar and watched the results, definitely the quickest since I've been eligible to vote. I have more to say on that too.
Though I was no longer a kitchen employee, I did work a Women's Wellness Weekend at camp reading tarot cards, always my biggest event, $-wise, of the year. I made more in that weekend than I did in some two-week paychecks.
My friends from New Jersey, Rachel and Vito, came to visit. It was their first time out this way. I think it was a bit of culture shock. Another friend, Tara, is coming for a visit in December.
I'm planning to go to India for three months, starting in February. I wrote about all those plans in the "Adventures, Quests and Foreign Sands" post, and narrowed it down a few months ago, to the Latitudes program, which would consist of the India semester, and then a solo internship (also international), to be determined before departure for India. I've been working full-force on that. Had my interviews and got into the program and paid my deposit (which was pretty scary). Applied for scholarships and financial aid all over the place. Now I'm just waiting to find out about all that.
I've been reading a lot. I think the last time I posted about books, I was reading Dave Eggers' What is the What? which is basically the true-life story of a Sudanese refugee. Very good. I highly recommend it. After that, I went back and read Reading Lolita in Tehran, also excellent. It made me actually want to go back and reread a lot of the books I was assigned but never read in high school (there were lots of those), because Azar Nafisi's class discussions on those classics were so engaging. And I am sure that at least one of my friends (Leo, this means you), will be proud to know I actually, finally, convinced by so many people, picked up a copy of Wuthering Heights, which I found totally boring in high school (but that might be somewhat affected by the fact that I skimmed and skipped and generally didn't really read), but am willing to give another try as an adult. I also read the book recommended by Silver Lining in my last blog post, Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose - another great read. It invigorated my writing, for sure, and give me a whole host of other books and stories I want to read. Now, partly because of a discussion with Kali Durga, I picked up A Natural History of the Senses, which I started earlier this year and then abandoned. I'm loving it.
I've been loving this fifth season of House. I realized I wanted to post more about my reactions to that show (if I don't, I'll be in danger of falling into another online forum, and I don't need that, but I do need an outlet). So, maybe no one cares or wants to read that (except Mr. Luke Chastain, of course), but I don't care.
I've been listening to a lot of the music from House lately. It's really different than the music I usually gravitate towards, but I'm liking it. Some of the songs from the show that top my playlists are "Colors" by Amos Lee, In the Waiting Line by Zero 7, In the Deep by Bird York, On Saturday Afternoon in 1963 by Ricky Lee Jones, Baba O'Reily by The Who (who I love), and lots more. I'm trying to find the unofficial soundtrack for season 4, so if anyone's got any tips on how a girl could find such a thing, I'm all ears. Other music currently topping my charts include "Electric Feel" by MGMT (for sure THE song of this past summer), "Forget Her" by Jeff Buckley, everything Damien Rice - I'm still obsessing on him, "Beast of Burden" by the Stones (this song always reminds me Emily C, Forest and Gigi), "Fast Car" by Tracy Chapman and again, many more.
Speaking of music, I don't even really want to talk about the new Chris Cornell stuff, too disappointing to stomach. In fact I started a whole post about it well over a month ago, but it was too depressing to finish.
And the great news is, I've been writing! I'm taking some classes and that's been helping me stay on track. I've been setting aside about three hours a day. It's been soul-satisfying and heart-wrenching at the same time, and it's good. Real good. Feels good to be back into it again. I want to get tons more done before I go to India. I've been digging into some tough stuff though!
Well, that's all for now. I've got to go bake pumpkin bread!
Currently Listening:
"Colors" - Amos Lee - I am really obsessed with this song, can't stop playing it over and over. For any other House fanatics, this song can be found in Season 2, episode 7 "Hunting" (what a GREAT title, on at least three different levels, for that episode), at the end, when Stacey turns House away after realizing that he stole and read her therapist's files on her. Here's the words:
Yesterday I got lost in the circus
Felling like such a mess
Now I'm down I'm just hanging on the corner
I can't help but reminisce
When you're gone, all the colors fade
When you're gone, no New Year's Day parade
You're gone
Colors seem to fade
Your mama called she said that you're downstairs crying
Feeling like such a mess
Yeah I hear you you're in the background bawling
What happened to your sweet summertime dress
I know we all, we all got our faults
We get locked in our vaults and we stay
But when you're gone, all the colors fade
When you're gone, no New Year's Day parade
You're gone
Colors seem to fade
Colors seem to fade
Yeah
There's lots of news to report, I suppose. It's been an interesting few months. I lost internet connection for awhile, which drove me nuts. I don't have TV so I rely on the internet for my fix. It drove me crazy to miss House and The Office, but what drove me even crazier was not being able to be really connected around election time. I like to keep up on those things, and it was like being totally disconnected from the world. And that's not to mention all the people I fell out of touch with. It sucked. I spent hours and hours on the phone with CenturyTel, trying to figure out what was wrong. They were telling me I'd have to take my computer to an Apple store (not easy to do, since I live on an island). Then my friend Rachel visited, and fixed it in about two seconds. Now I'm trying to catch up.
In other news, I quit my job. It was a pretty big deal. There were some major management changes in the department I worked in, and my new boss was pretty downright weird about my visual impairment and it made me really uncomfortable working there. It was a difficult month, from mid-September to mid-October. After working the same job, this came out of the blue. I was already a little unhappy there, but for other reasons, I wanted to do something that was more mentally engaging and less physically demanding, my body was exhausted, and with the commute (I walked about 45 minutes each way), it took up a lot of time and I just hadn't found the space to write. But this was totally unexpected and I just couldn't stay under the circumstances. So I gave my notice, and worked another two and a half weeks.
The last day was, ummm, classic. My co-worker who usually leads the shift called in sick and there were three of us, and 450 guests. We had to work late. Just a classic last day. After though, wow was that a night to remember...except I don't remember most of it. I went to the bar to celebrate and everyone came out that night. It really blew my mind, that was the most people I'd seen from work (and all different departments of work) come out in one night. It was wildly fun. I was very lovey. I remember hugging lots of people and telling them I loved them. It was all true, what a great group of people. I was probably the drunkest I've ever been, which was not fun the next day. I haven't been able to drink cranberry & vodka since. I continued to hang out with the fall staff for the next few weeks (which was even more fun after I wasn't working there). And in the next few weeks, said goodbye to a lot of awesome people. It was a season to remember in many respects.
Before all that leaving, I went to Bellingham with some camp friends, and checked out Fairhaven College, part of Western Washington University. I've written about it before on here somewhere. I really liked it, though I will have more to elaborate on that later. We came back on the 4th, and upon getting off the ferry, a freind got a call that Obama won Pennsylvania and Ohio, so we knew we were in for a good night. We drove to the bar and watched the results, definitely the quickest since I've been eligible to vote. I have more to say on that too.
Though I was no longer a kitchen employee, I did work a Women's Wellness Weekend at camp reading tarot cards, always my biggest event, $-wise, of the year. I made more in that weekend than I did in some two-week paychecks.
My friends from New Jersey, Rachel and Vito, came to visit. It was their first time out this way. I think it was a bit of culture shock. Another friend, Tara, is coming for a visit in December.
I'm planning to go to India for three months, starting in February. I wrote about all those plans in the "Adventures, Quests and Foreign Sands" post, and narrowed it down a few months ago, to the Latitudes program, which would consist of the India semester, and then a solo internship (also international), to be determined before departure for India. I've been working full-force on that. Had my interviews and got into the program and paid my deposit (which was pretty scary). Applied for scholarships and financial aid all over the place. Now I'm just waiting to find out about all that.
I've been reading a lot. I think the last time I posted about books, I was reading Dave Eggers' What is the What? which is basically the true-life story of a Sudanese refugee. Very good. I highly recommend it. After that, I went back and read Reading Lolita in Tehran, also excellent. It made me actually want to go back and reread a lot of the books I was assigned but never read in high school (there were lots of those), because Azar Nafisi's class discussions on those classics were so engaging. And I am sure that at least one of my friends (Leo, this means you), will be proud to know I actually, finally, convinced by so many people, picked up a copy of Wuthering Heights, which I found totally boring in high school (but that might be somewhat affected by the fact that I skimmed and skipped and generally didn't really read), but am willing to give another try as an adult. I also read the book recommended by Silver Lining in my last blog post, Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose - another great read. It invigorated my writing, for sure, and give me a whole host of other books and stories I want to read. Now, partly because of a discussion with Kali Durga, I picked up A Natural History of the Senses, which I started earlier this year and then abandoned. I'm loving it.
I've been loving this fifth season of House. I realized I wanted to post more about my reactions to that show (if I don't, I'll be in danger of falling into another online forum, and I don't need that, but I do need an outlet). So, maybe no one cares or wants to read that (except Mr. Luke Chastain, of course), but I don't care.
I've been listening to a lot of the music from House lately. It's really different than the music I usually gravitate towards, but I'm liking it. Some of the songs from the show that top my playlists are "Colors" by Amos Lee, In the Waiting Line by Zero 7, In the Deep by Bird York, On Saturday Afternoon in 1963 by Ricky Lee Jones, Baba O'Reily by The Who (who I love), and lots more. I'm trying to find the unofficial soundtrack for season 4, so if anyone's got any tips on how a girl could find such a thing, I'm all ears. Other music currently topping my charts include "Electric Feel" by MGMT (for sure THE song of this past summer), "Forget Her" by Jeff Buckley, everything Damien Rice - I'm still obsessing on him, "Beast of Burden" by the Stones (this song always reminds me Emily C, Forest and Gigi), "Fast Car" by Tracy Chapman and again, many more.
Speaking of music, I don't even really want to talk about the new Chris Cornell stuff, too disappointing to stomach. In fact I started a whole post about it well over a month ago, but it was too depressing to finish.
And the great news is, I've been writing! I'm taking some classes and that's been helping me stay on track. I've been setting aside about three hours a day. It's been soul-satisfying and heart-wrenching at the same time, and it's good. Real good. Feels good to be back into it again. I want to get tons more done before I go to India. I've been digging into some tough stuff though!
Well, that's all for now. I've got to go bake pumpkin bread!
Currently Listening:
"Colors" - Amos Lee - I am really obsessed with this song, can't stop playing it over and over. For any other House fanatics, this song can be found in Season 2, episode 7 "Hunting" (what a GREAT title, on at least three different levels, for that episode), at the end, when Stacey turns House away after realizing that he stole and read her therapist's files on her. Here's the words:
Yesterday I got lost in the circus
Felling like such a mess
Now I'm down I'm just hanging on the corner
I can't help but reminisce
When you're gone, all the colors fade
When you're gone, no New Year's Day parade
You're gone
Colors seem to fade
Your mama called she said that you're downstairs crying
Feeling like such a mess
Yeah I hear you you're in the background bawling
What happened to your sweet summertime dress
I know we all, we all got our faults
We get locked in our vaults and we stay
But when you're gone, all the colors fade
When you're gone, no New Year's Day parade
You're gone
Colors seem to fade
Colors seem to fade
Yeah
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Things Don't Go Back to the Way They Were
It's definitely one of the hardest lessons, one I never seem to quite grasp fully, and it's been on my mind lately, as there have been a lot of changes at work in the last few weeks.
But today it home even harder. I was sitting at my computer, working on a scholarship essay, fiddling with iTunes and the new "genius" part of it (which for whatever reason, could make me playlists yesterday but can't today), and I clicked on an old favorite song by Chris Cornell. Then on this sidebar thing, it listed all these similar songs (of course in hopes I'd buy them), and I realized that he has some new music out.
I listened to it, barely. Wow, was it ever terrible. I mean just beyond my worst expectations (which were pretty low after Carry On). If I'd ever heard that crap on the radio, I would've changed the station in a second. I got all the way through one song (Long Gone), or should I say, it was the first one I played so I forced myself to sit through it. It was a very, very long five and a half minutes.
It's just incomprehensible to me. It was bad enough with Carry On (and the last two Audioslave albums, and to some extent, the first). I just couldn't reconcile that sort of fluffy, insubstantial music with no depth or soul with the Chris Cornell in the days of Soundgarden, Temple of the Dog and Euphoria Morning. Hearing this newest incarnation of the man is just too much. I felt sick to my stomach.
Chris Cornell, probably more than any other musical artist (except maybe Maynard and Tori), has touched my life with his music. It's hard to put it in words that don't come off as tired cliches, but Chris' music reached me at a difficult time and accompanied me through so many years. I owe a lot of my most treasured friendships to that man - because of an online forum I started going to in early 2000, based on talking about his music. There was so much raw emotion in his words, so much fucking poetry in the way that man wrote lyrics. His songs were so rich and meaningful and unique and gorgeous and deep.
Some of my very favorite snippets as examples:
"You say that midnight opens its arms to me"
from "When I'm Down," Euphoria Morning
But today it home even harder. I was sitting at my computer, working on a scholarship essay, fiddling with iTunes and the new "genius" part of it (which for whatever reason, could make me playlists yesterday but can't today), and I clicked on an old favorite song by Chris Cornell. Then on this sidebar thing, it listed all these similar songs (of course in hopes I'd buy them), and I realized that he has some new music out.
I listened to it, barely. Wow, was it ever terrible. I mean just beyond my worst expectations (which were pretty low after Carry On). If I'd ever heard that crap on the radio, I would've changed the station in a second. I got all the way through one song (Long Gone), or should I say, it was the first one I played so I forced myself to sit through it. It was a very, very long five and a half minutes.
It's just incomprehensible to me. It was bad enough with Carry On (and the last two Audioslave albums, and to some extent, the first). I just couldn't reconcile that sort of fluffy, insubstantial music with no depth or soul with the Chris Cornell in the days of Soundgarden, Temple of the Dog and Euphoria Morning. Hearing this newest incarnation of the man is just too much. I felt sick to my stomach.
Chris Cornell, probably more than any other musical artist (except maybe Maynard and Tori), has touched my life with his music. It's hard to put it in words that don't come off as tired cliches, but Chris' music reached me at a difficult time and accompanied me through so many years. I owe a lot of my most treasured friendships to that man - because of an online forum I started going to in early 2000, based on talking about his music. There was so much raw emotion in his words, so much fucking poetry in the way that man wrote lyrics. His songs were so rich and meaningful and unique and gorgeous and deep.
Some of my very favorite snippets as examples:
"You say that midnight opens its arms to me"
from "When I'm Down," Euphoria Morning
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Orcas Island Writers Festival
The first annual Orcas Island Writers Festival ended a few days ago. It was awesome. I'm already looking forward to the next one.
I'm so glad I went, too. I almost didn't. I haven't really written much in awhile, and have felt like work takes over my life. But I had put in for the time off back in April or something, so I said what the hell and signed up. I thought if nothing else, at least I'd have a few days away. The festival was held at Moran State Park which is a good drive from my place, so I stayed overnight in one of the cabins during the festival.
The festival blew my expectations out of the water! The instructors were EXCELLENT! A lot of them teach at Vermont College of Fine Arts which has a low-residency MFA writing program. In the mornings, we had small workshop groups. I chose the non-fiction track, and so each morning, our small group gathered to very thoroughly discuss our work. Each of us had to submit a ten-page sample of our writing before the festival, so we spent considerable time each morning, working with a few people's work each day. It was great. I forgot how great it is, not only to get feedback on your own work, but to work as a group on others' stories. You learn so much. I felt so engaged, like my inner artist was engaged in a way it hasn't been in so long. I was exercising my writing muscles. It was great even to go over some of the basics of story arc and point of view. I didn't realize I was so hungry for this sort of thing. But oh was I ever! It fed my soul, and my soul has been a bit starving as of late.
So our group looked at my piece on the last workshop day. I submitted the first chapter of my book, which I've worked on extensively. I have to say (and I think I've said before), that for the last, well, year or so, I've felt kinda flat, numb, disinterested feelings about my manuscript. It doesn't really excite me anymore. So I thought, what the hell? I also picked the non-fiction track (as opposed to another workshop which was for memoir/fiction), partly because the instructor and some of the people in the group were male (in the mem/fiction group, it was all females). It may seem silly or even arbitrary, but almost all of the places where I've shared my work - other writing circles, friends, classes I've been in - have been all women. I feel like I have a pretty diverse sampling of female responses to this particular piece of work, and I wanted to see a more mixed-gender reaction. I'm glad I did. I left feeling more confident that my story could have a more universal appeal, which was good. I also got great feedback on what worked in my piece, what was effective.
And I got some great ideas for how to change it. I've actually been thinking recently of reshaping and re-visioning the whole project in a major, major way, and this workshop pretty much confirmed that for me. I felt like I got a real sense of where the real juice of the story is, what needs to come in and be included and what I can draw out and yeah, I would just sit there at different points during the weekend with all these thoughts, ideas and inspirations coursing through me.
I also got to rethink another book idea I had in mind. I realized the starting point was a totally different place, and really saw how perfectly that would work. It was like reframing the whole thing. And because of that, I had passages just swirling in me throughout the whole time.
I thought a lot about story structure. In our workshop group we talked about the typical pyramid of a story - the introduction, rising action, climax, denouement, ending. I kept thinking of The Kite Runner, because it's such a perfect book in that way, it has all those elements so clearly. And because I just love thinking about that book anyway. With my other favorite, The God of Small Things, it's so much more murky (and that story weaves in out of time, so if I think about, in chronological order the events of the book probably do follow that arc, but the telling doesn't, not really).
Then in one of the afternoon sessions (these were lectures and mini-classes), Karen Fisher, author of A Sudden Country, said she thinks of story structure in another way. She thinks of it as the story starting out in stability, you enter the world of the story, then there's a destabilizing event, either by ambition, wanting something, or by some sort of loss. Then follows a period of resistance - either a character is resisting something, or the world is resisting them. Then they face the inevitable, or the bottom, etc (analogous to the climax in the other structure system), and then a period of acceptance. Well this description of story structure also perfectly fit The Kite Runner. I just got such a clear picture of it, using that book as a tangible example. And from there could clearly extrapolate to a book I want to write. It just makes a lot of sense.
Another thing we talked about a lot in workshops and afternoon sessions was about reading like a writer, which is something I think I sort of do, but have never been taught to do, looking at good writing and really looking at it, getting into what makes it so good, what the author did to make it so effective. I think I do some of that just by nature of being a writer and reading a lot. I mean, my LENGTHY post on here about The Kite Runner isn't really a review, not really, it's more a writer's appreciation and noticings. I want to go back to the passages from that book that I quoted in my post (there were several), or to the passages I've makred in White Oleander. I want to re-read The God of Small Things again, even though I just reread it a few months ago when I was in Hawaii, because it's just so good. The writing is so fucking good it's unbelievable. And there are so many just mindblowing things about the story structure. Oh God, I'm getting all jazzed up just thinking about it I'm getting up, walking around, thinking about it. That book is SO FREAKIN' GOOD I can hardly stand it. Some of the most gorgeous prose ever. All these great little things that Arundhati Roy does with the writing. And the end, oh the end. Yes, I want to reread it, specifically to read it like a writer, really dig into it and analyze what makes it so good, learn from it.
I'm still DYING to post about that book. I especially want to discuss the end, the choices she made in writing it that way, in the name of the last chapter (which still, years after my first reading of the book, gives me full body shivers), and on what note she chooses to end it and all the implications. I lent it to a friend actually, who was leaving to work on a six month cruise and needed some reading material. I wish I hadn't. I love my friend Holly, and I'm glad someone else will read the book, but I realize I wish I hadn't parted with it. And it hasn't even been two months yet! So, someday, I will post about it. I just feel I couldn't really do it justice without the book here. Anyway I am anxious to dig into that book again and read it in a slightly different way.
I've gotten a bit off-track, as usual. I'm taking a screenwriting class starting in a week or two. I'm going to base it on a short story I wrote a bit ago, which was based on a dream I had about writing this story (now that I think about it, the dream might have also involved it being for a screenwriting class, I just put that together, weird). I'm a little nervous about the fact that my two main characters are on acid during part of the story, since I don't know how that'll fly in some of the writing circles of the island, but after one of the readings at the festival (each night a handful of authors/instructors read their work), I'm inspired to NEVER hold back. So that should be an interesting class. On an un-writing note, I'm also taking an anthropology class this fall, on comparative Islamic cultures. I'm really looking forward to that too. My mind is just craving something like that.
Currently Reading:
Dave Eggers' What is the What? - I'm only a few chapters in. It's very good, harrowing in many places, immediately draws me in.
Currently Listening:
"Fast Car" - Tracy Chapman - this is not a random iTunes pick like usual in this section. I am sort of obsessed with this song. In some other post, I totally want to write about this song the way I want to write about books. There are so many great lyrical things she does in this song. It's also heartbreaking.
I'm so glad I went, too. I almost didn't. I haven't really written much in awhile, and have felt like work takes over my life. But I had put in for the time off back in April or something, so I said what the hell and signed up. I thought if nothing else, at least I'd have a few days away. The festival was held at Moran State Park which is a good drive from my place, so I stayed overnight in one of the cabins during the festival.
The festival blew my expectations out of the water! The instructors were EXCELLENT! A lot of them teach at Vermont College of Fine Arts which has a low-residency MFA writing program. In the mornings, we had small workshop groups. I chose the non-fiction track, and so each morning, our small group gathered to very thoroughly discuss our work. Each of us had to submit a ten-page sample of our writing before the festival, so we spent considerable time each morning, working with a few people's work each day. It was great. I forgot how great it is, not only to get feedback on your own work, but to work as a group on others' stories. You learn so much. I felt so engaged, like my inner artist was engaged in a way it hasn't been in so long. I was exercising my writing muscles. It was great even to go over some of the basics of story arc and point of view. I didn't realize I was so hungry for this sort of thing. But oh was I ever! It fed my soul, and my soul has been a bit starving as of late.
So our group looked at my piece on the last workshop day. I submitted the first chapter of my book, which I've worked on extensively. I have to say (and I think I've said before), that for the last, well, year or so, I've felt kinda flat, numb, disinterested feelings about my manuscript. It doesn't really excite me anymore. So I thought, what the hell? I also picked the non-fiction track (as opposed to another workshop which was for memoir/fiction), partly because the instructor and some of the people in the group were male (in the mem/fiction group, it was all females). It may seem silly or even arbitrary, but almost all of the places where I've shared my work - other writing circles, friends, classes I've been in - have been all women. I feel like I have a pretty diverse sampling of female responses to this particular piece of work, and I wanted to see a more mixed-gender reaction. I'm glad I did. I left feeling more confident that my story could have a more universal appeal, which was good. I also got great feedback on what worked in my piece, what was effective.
And I got some great ideas for how to change it. I've actually been thinking recently of reshaping and re-visioning the whole project in a major, major way, and this workshop pretty much confirmed that for me. I felt like I got a real sense of where the real juice of the story is, what needs to come in and be included and what I can draw out and yeah, I would just sit there at different points during the weekend with all these thoughts, ideas and inspirations coursing through me.
I also got to rethink another book idea I had in mind. I realized the starting point was a totally different place, and really saw how perfectly that would work. It was like reframing the whole thing. And because of that, I had passages just swirling in me throughout the whole time.
I thought a lot about story structure. In our workshop group we talked about the typical pyramid of a story - the introduction, rising action, climax, denouement, ending. I kept thinking of The Kite Runner, because it's such a perfect book in that way, it has all those elements so clearly. And because I just love thinking about that book anyway. With my other favorite, The God of Small Things, it's so much more murky (and that story weaves in out of time, so if I think about, in chronological order the events of the book probably do follow that arc, but the telling doesn't, not really).
Then in one of the afternoon sessions (these were lectures and mini-classes), Karen Fisher, author of A Sudden Country, said she thinks of story structure in another way. She thinks of it as the story starting out in stability, you enter the world of the story, then there's a destabilizing event, either by ambition, wanting something, or by some sort of loss. Then follows a period of resistance - either a character is resisting something, or the world is resisting them. Then they face the inevitable, or the bottom, etc (analogous to the climax in the other structure system), and then a period of acceptance. Well this description of story structure also perfectly fit The Kite Runner. I just got such a clear picture of it, using that book as a tangible example. And from there could clearly extrapolate to a book I want to write. It just makes a lot of sense.
Another thing we talked about a lot in workshops and afternoon sessions was about reading like a writer, which is something I think I sort of do, but have never been taught to do, looking at good writing and really looking at it, getting into what makes it so good, what the author did to make it so effective. I think I do some of that just by nature of being a writer and reading a lot. I mean, my LENGTHY post on here about The Kite Runner isn't really a review, not really, it's more a writer's appreciation and noticings. I want to go back to the passages from that book that I quoted in my post (there were several), or to the passages I've makred in White Oleander. I want to re-read The God of Small Things again, even though I just reread it a few months ago when I was in Hawaii, because it's just so good. The writing is so fucking good it's unbelievable. And there are so many just mindblowing things about the story structure. Oh God, I'm getting all jazzed up just thinking about it I'm getting up, walking around, thinking about it. That book is SO FREAKIN' GOOD I can hardly stand it. Some of the most gorgeous prose ever. All these great little things that Arundhati Roy does with the writing. And the end, oh the end. Yes, I want to reread it, specifically to read it like a writer, really dig into it and analyze what makes it so good, learn from it.
I'm still DYING to post about that book. I especially want to discuss the end, the choices she made in writing it that way, in the name of the last chapter (which still, years after my first reading of the book, gives me full body shivers), and on what note she chooses to end it and all the implications. I lent it to a friend actually, who was leaving to work on a six month cruise and needed some reading material. I wish I hadn't. I love my friend Holly, and I'm glad someone else will read the book, but I realize I wish I hadn't parted with it. And it hasn't even been two months yet! So, someday, I will post about it. I just feel I couldn't really do it justice without the book here. Anyway I am anxious to dig into that book again and read it in a slightly different way.
I've gotten a bit off-track, as usual. I'm taking a screenwriting class starting in a week or two. I'm going to base it on a short story I wrote a bit ago, which was based on a dream I had about writing this story (now that I think about it, the dream might have also involved it being for a screenwriting class, I just put that together, weird). I'm a little nervous about the fact that my two main characters are on acid during part of the story, since I don't know how that'll fly in some of the writing circles of the island, but after one of the readings at the festival (each night a handful of authors/instructors read their work), I'm inspired to NEVER hold back. So that should be an interesting class. On an un-writing note, I'm also taking an anthropology class this fall, on comparative Islamic cultures. I'm really looking forward to that too. My mind is just craving something like that.
Currently Reading:
Dave Eggers' What is the What? - I'm only a few chapters in. It's very good, harrowing in many places, immediately draws me in.
Currently Listening:
"Fast Car" - Tracy Chapman - this is not a random iTunes pick like usual in this section. I am sort of obsessed with this song. In some other post, I totally want to write about this song the way I want to write about books. There are so many great lyrical things she does in this song. It's also heartbreaking.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Our World is a Sad, Sad Circus
Sometimes it's just hard to really fathom that things that are going on in the world are actually real and not some twisted circus. I'm going to get political here, which I've tried in some ways to abstain from because I hate conflict, but fuck, I just can't help myself.
First off, I have wanted to say something about impeachment for awhile now. I know Congressman Dennis Kucinich is introducing articles of impeachment every month, and I support that. I don't understand why so many leading democrats are against it, but they are. I've heard Obama, Nancy Pelosi and others speak out against impeachment, and the reason I seem to hear the most is that they don't want to engage in a payback sort of game (presumably for Clinton's deal), and that they want to focus on getting Obama elected and faring well in all the coming elections.
Fair enough, I suppose, on the last account, but it all basically boils down to, they're afraid of how it will make them look. It's such ridiculous, near-sighted and faulty reasoning to me. I mean, Bush and his administration are committing war crimes. Innocent people are dying. Just today I heard about NATO troops accidentally killing children in Kabul. This comes only weeks after the biggest civilian killing in Afghanistan since the war began. And then there's the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who've died, who are living as refugees, or who've had their homes and families destroyed. And the American soldiers dying unnecessarily, for a war that was never warranted in the first place. Oh and then there's the interrogation torture, the suspension of the bill of rights for prisoners who are mostly probably innocent. The outing of Valerie Plame's identity. The forged Habbush letter. The litany of lies and deception that led us into this occupation of a sovereign nation. The Iraq veterans and conscientious objectors saying they were forced repeatedly to violate the Geneva convention. The lies, corruption and crime are rampant. People are DYING because of this administration. LOTS of people. There are clear crimes. If this doesn't warrant impeachment, what the fuck does? These crooks are running amok and obviously feel accountable to no one, definitely not to Congress or to the public, and I think it's the job and the duty of Congress to press a lot harder for more serious investigations, and to take action. It makes me as a citizen feel (again) like the Congress is failing their duty.
And on account of wanting to look good, secure elections? That's bullshit. How can this shit, which is pretty superficial, outweigh the lives lost and the crimes committed? How could anyone (but a politician of course) think it's more important? It's beyond my realm of understanding, and I'm glad, because I'm pretty sure it means I'm still human. As far as looking or feeling bad, I think the idiots who thought it was worthwhile to try to impeach someone over lying about a blow job should feel like petty, vindictive idiots, because it's so, so immaterial compared to the real tragedies that are going on now.
And the circus continues.
Now, another thing that's gotten me riled up is Mr. McCain's VP choice. It's funny, I was walking home from work the day he was supposed to announce his choice, and I kept thinking that he would probably pick a black man (to compete with everything historic that's happening with Obama, perhaps), and instead he picked a woman, maybe trying to get some of the Hillary supporters. I already think she's a nutjob, just as full of circus-like contradictions as much as anyone. She calls herself a pro-life feminist for one thing, and if that's not oxymoronic, what is? Also, I have to ask this: How can someone be so pro-life, and believe in the sacredness of all life, be so anti-life at the same time? She has fought to keep polar bears off the endangered species list, and supports drilling in ANWR - aren't the polar bears' lives sacred? And the caribou? And all the ecosystems in ANWR? I just don't understand how someone could be so blatantly contradictory.
I suppose it comes from a feeling of human life being supremely superior to all other life, which is just self-centered and short-sighted anyway. I mean, even if I was going to be completely human-centered here, thinking our existence is so much more warranted and important than all of the lives of all the organisms that came before us, human life, even from that perspective, take it down the line a century or two - we can't sustain human life if we destroy our landbases, the food, ecosystems, water, etc we depend on to survive. Even from a "humans only matter" viewpoint, it's better, for our species, in the long run, to conserve and protect our environment and to live sustainably. It's also better to not over-populate the planet as massive rates like we are, a problem that is not helped by people who oppose abortion and also oppose sex education.
Are there no politicians out there who think beyond their next election? Who actually look at the bigger picture and into the future?
The third completely contradictory and crazy thing that's got me just dumbfounded is the crazy police shit going on in MN for the RNC. Of course, I wouldn't really expect anything different, but still, it's disgusting. There are all these raids on peace groups, planning peaceful activities (including one group doing a peace picnic, wow, that really sounds like terrorist activities to me). It's crazy that some of the people targeted are police watch groups (which given the state of things these days, and the fact that a handcuffed and restrained man was tasered to death not too long ago, are pretty necessary). So the people documenting and watching out for police brutality are getting brutalized by police. Oh, and journalists. Several journalists have been arrested and detained. I was listening to Democracy Now! this morning, and two of their producers and their host, Amy Goodman, had been arrested. One of the producers, Nicole Salizar, had a camera on while she was being arrested. I was listening to the audio broadcast and couldn't see it, but hearing it was enough to rattle me. It sounded brutal, there was some serious screaming. Why are the police targeting journalists?
Our country is out of control. It's like some circus gone so horribly wrong that no one seems able to stop. And the ones who actually could possibly do something about it, continually fail to do anything meaningful. Sometimes it's just hard to believe this is really reality, but it is. Sometimes I just can't wait to visit other countries and experience something different, just see what it's like somewhere else, get out of the bubble and really connect with other cultures.
I'm reading Dave Eggers' What is the What? which only fuels this feeling.
Currently listening:
The only song really appropriate for this post is probably Tool's "Aenema"
First off, I have wanted to say something about impeachment for awhile now. I know Congressman Dennis Kucinich is introducing articles of impeachment every month, and I support that. I don't understand why so many leading democrats are against it, but they are. I've heard Obama, Nancy Pelosi and others speak out against impeachment, and the reason I seem to hear the most is that they don't want to engage in a payback sort of game (presumably for Clinton's deal), and that they want to focus on getting Obama elected and faring well in all the coming elections.
Fair enough, I suppose, on the last account, but it all basically boils down to, they're afraid of how it will make them look. It's such ridiculous, near-sighted and faulty reasoning to me. I mean, Bush and his administration are committing war crimes. Innocent people are dying. Just today I heard about NATO troops accidentally killing children in Kabul. This comes only weeks after the biggest civilian killing in Afghanistan since the war began. And then there's the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who've died, who are living as refugees, or who've had their homes and families destroyed. And the American soldiers dying unnecessarily, for a war that was never warranted in the first place. Oh and then there's the interrogation torture, the suspension of the bill of rights for prisoners who are mostly probably innocent. The outing of Valerie Plame's identity. The forged Habbush letter. The litany of lies and deception that led us into this occupation of a sovereign nation. The Iraq veterans and conscientious objectors saying they were forced repeatedly to violate the Geneva convention. The lies, corruption and crime are rampant. People are DYING because of this administration. LOTS of people. There are clear crimes. If this doesn't warrant impeachment, what the fuck does? These crooks are running amok and obviously feel accountable to no one, definitely not to Congress or to the public, and I think it's the job and the duty of Congress to press a lot harder for more serious investigations, and to take action. It makes me as a citizen feel (again) like the Congress is failing their duty.
And on account of wanting to look good, secure elections? That's bullshit. How can this shit, which is pretty superficial, outweigh the lives lost and the crimes committed? How could anyone (but a politician of course) think it's more important? It's beyond my realm of understanding, and I'm glad, because I'm pretty sure it means I'm still human. As far as looking or feeling bad, I think the idiots who thought it was worthwhile to try to impeach someone over lying about a blow job should feel like petty, vindictive idiots, because it's so, so immaterial compared to the real tragedies that are going on now.
And the circus continues.
Now, another thing that's gotten me riled up is Mr. McCain's VP choice. It's funny, I was walking home from work the day he was supposed to announce his choice, and I kept thinking that he would probably pick a black man (to compete with everything historic that's happening with Obama, perhaps), and instead he picked a woman, maybe trying to get some of the Hillary supporters. I already think she's a nutjob, just as full of circus-like contradictions as much as anyone. She calls herself a pro-life feminist for one thing, and if that's not oxymoronic, what is? Also, I have to ask this: How can someone be so pro-life, and believe in the sacredness of all life, be so anti-life at the same time? She has fought to keep polar bears off the endangered species list, and supports drilling in ANWR - aren't the polar bears' lives sacred? And the caribou? And all the ecosystems in ANWR? I just don't understand how someone could be so blatantly contradictory.
I suppose it comes from a feeling of human life being supremely superior to all other life, which is just self-centered and short-sighted anyway. I mean, even if I was going to be completely human-centered here, thinking our existence is so much more warranted and important than all of the lives of all the organisms that came before us, human life, even from that perspective, take it down the line a century or two - we can't sustain human life if we destroy our landbases, the food, ecosystems, water, etc we depend on to survive. Even from a "humans only matter" viewpoint, it's better, for our species, in the long run, to conserve and protect our environment and to live sustainably. It's also better to not over-populate the planet as massive rates like we are, a problem that is not helped by people who oppose abortion and also oppose sex education.
Are there no politicians out there who think beyond their next election? Who actually look at the bigger picture and into the future?
The third completely contradictory and crazy thing that's got me just dumbfounded is the crazy police shit going on in MN for the RNC. Of course, I wouldn't really expect anything different, but still, it's disgusting. There are all these raids on peace groups, planning peaceful activities (including one group doing a peace picnic, wow, that really sounds like terrorist activities to me). It's crazy that some of the people targeted are police watch groups (which given the state of things these days, and the fact that a handcuffed and restrained man was tasered to death not too long ago, are pretty necessary). So the people documenting and watching out for police brutality are getting brutalized by police. Oh, and journalists. Several journalists have been arrested and detained. I was listening to Democracy Now! this morning, and two of their producers and their host, Amy Goodman, had been arrested. One of the producers, Nicole Salizar, had a camera on while she was being arrested. I was listening to the audio broadcast and couldn't see it, but hearing it was enough to rattle me. It sounded brutal, there was some serious screaming. Why are the police targeting journalists?
Our country is out of control. It's like some circus gone so horribly wrong that no one seems able to stop. And the ones who actually could possibly do something about it, continually fail to do anything meaningful. Sometimes it's just hard to believe this is really reality, but it is. Sometimes I just can't wait to visit other countries and experience something different, just see what it's like somewhere else, get out of the bubble and really connect with other cultures.
I'm reading Dave Eggers' What is the What? which only fuels this feeling.
Currently listening:
The only song really appropriate for this post is probably Tool's "Aenema"
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