old moon my eyes are on new moon

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 07:45:41 GMT

So my, uh, laptop has Vista. And once in a while Vista does stupid shit without asking me.

Like... uninstall my sound drivers so that the laptop is under the impression that it has no speakers nor headphone jack.

Fun times abound, dudes and dudebros.

this is more metacognitive than currently relevant.

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:12:32 GMT

There are two kinds of depression: the hard and the soft kinds. I have plenty experience with both, though never to the degree where I've needed to be treated in any medical way. But I also have a lot of depressed people in my life, and I keep track of theirs almost as closely as I keep track of my own.

The hard kind: for me, I cry and yell things and talk about it and talk about running away. I burst into violent, loud tears with little or no provocation, I overreact to everything, I'm brittle and angry and I am very up-front about hating myself and hating most things around me. I get stubborn and refuse to do things that I know I should, and I take it out on people. I sometimes drink. I write. I chew my lip to bloody in my sleep, and it's always full of restless, scary dreams. I feel a bit paranoid, I get very vocal about politics, I get very angry at people who express anything close to apathy.

The soft kind: ennui, really. A stifling hot blanket of awful wrapped tight around me, preventing me from moving or doing anything. I don't cry in front of people. I don't talk. I suck into myself, try to escape inside me to get away from the world. I don't sleep. I don't write. I eat a lot more, or sometimes a lot less. I'm like a zombie, just sort of drifting and quietly despairing.

So, you know. It's interesting going from one of these to the other. Or coming out of mania/hypermania into one of these. Or vice versa.

I think I should start keeping a chart. Possibly via twitter, because that's something I almost always have access to.

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:43:49 GMT

What is it about people who use "happy-making" as a lexicalized compound gerundive adjective that I find so endearing? I don't use the phrase, but I always kind of want to pinch their little cheeks when someone else does. Like one of my crochet ladies, it's how she describes each individual yarn when she comes in, and it's just. Aw.

why hlo thar weekend

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:30:53 GMT

Lollllllllllllllllllll this weekend. Four out of five parties attended without major mishap; the fifth is likely to be infinitely tamer than any of the others.

First: at my house. Friday night. I did not know about half the people who showed up. I deep-throated beer-bottles a lot and twisted my ankle because I was drunk and in heels. I got lipstick on a lot of people. There was slight peripheral dramacakes but I was not involved, merely got updated later. Also having that many people over was nice 'cause the party was still kinda going when we all woke up Saturday morning and piled into my van for chinese food.

Second: Jamie's. Saturday night. Was there for like fifteen minutes, stole the fuck out of the birthday boy, absconded. Looked like decent fun but also looked a lot like Not My Crowd. I assured Birthday Boy's irate wife as we were leaving that we were just taking him to Burger King and would return him. Stupidly he also believed me, and was ~so confused~ when after BK we continued on to the next party.

Third: Japanese party with a healthy linguistics-department presence. Many of the same people who'd been at mine the night before, actually, and then a lot of Japanese students. Also Grant Motherfucking Golland, somehow. We'd had no plans to end up at the same party last night, but we did get excitingly drunker together and I spent a lot of time steadfastly trying to give him to the Birthday Boy as a gift. I danced (which I never do; I was pretty drunk) with some dude in a velvet red bowler hat and complimented his boyfriend's garter/corset combo. I told Melissa what a crazy bitch she was. At some point (after I spilled my drink on him) Joey and Deeps left for home with the car. So me and Birthday Boy are stuck there, him getting all sorts of phone numbers from hot boys despite the fact that he can't even work his iphone, and me getting steadily more outrageous in propositioning Grant. Eventually, though, we decided to hop. Tried to bring Grant with us, he declined, we promised him rainchecks on blowjobs (I think my exact words were "We'll suck you off later okay?" Not I. Not He. We. I don't even know how that's gonna go down.), then wandered off into the night.

Interim: We got a little lost between parties. We were on foot, thank goodness neither of us were wearing heels this time, and Birthday Boy could barely walk so I had to half-drag him. He wore my coat and looked ridiculous, I was in my teeny dress and glitter and looked like a whore. A whore in purple converse but a whore nonetheless. Eventually we got out his iphone to figure out where the fuck we were, but it took us almost a full hour to stumble down to the next house on the list.

Fourth: It was also Diego's birthday. We got there precisely five minutes after the booze had run out. The house was trashed, and it looked like the party had been massive, but large numbers of people were leaving right as we got there. We were immediately very concerned with finding a bathroom, and sort of accidentally found Diego himself in the process. We asked him where the rest of my housemates were; he had no fucking clue. I called them; they were out trying to buy more alcohol. (Apparently the two-a.m. cutoff pays no heed to daylight savings.) They came back, and immediately Diego was pushing to leave. So after some finagling (and making Birthday Boy chug some water) we-- that is, Diego, Birthday Boy, and myself-- wandered back into the night. Apparently Diego's speech-organ is connected to his feet somehow, because he and I only ever have good talks while ambulatory. We dished a little gossip, and sort of ended up at 7-11 trying not to look stabbable until my housemates came and fetched us. Dropped BB home, then went home ourselves.

Fifth: Later today. It's with a bunch of classicists on a beach with a bonfire. We've been instructed to "bring something to burn and something to eat." I'm wondering how many of the faculty there will be equipped with flasks.

Remix Rectacular!

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 05:51:04 GMT

OMG OMG OMG YOU GUYS. snegurochka_lee remixed one of my favorite stories that I've ever written, and she made it BETTER, and it's this awesome stark Snapetacular bitter-like-good-chocolate kind of treat and and and if you like Snape or the Marauders or well-packed heavy bare-bones prose and character studies, go read:

White Shades, Black Morning (the In-Between Place Remix)

And be sure to drop a line to the author if you like it, yo.

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:41:25 GMT

the sunrise was so beautiful i wept
but my tears froze to my glasses

(you fuckers, you absolute fuckers, how dare you)

Okay so I'm exhibiting some pretty unhealthy behaviors right now, mostly involving reading things and going to pages that I shouldn't. It's odd, objectively, that I should have to police my own reading and viewing habits, but I know how I react to seeing certain names near other names, and I should know better than to click links that will cause me to spend the morning crying and questioning whether or not I am a whole person at all.

The thing is, okay, I'm crushingly depressed and lonely. The depression came on real hard and fast and sudden on Thursday, and it has yet to let up except when I'm intentionally distracting myself. Or chemically altering it. Neither of these are good habits.

I really want to write, but I feel mentally paralyzed. I know I have something to say, something to talk about, but all that comes out is "I'm sad and can't fix it" over and over. I know a large part of this is a basic chemical process that my brain and body go through on a perfectly regular basis, and I'm so desperate for that to just get on with it so I can work through it and be back to being able to have fun without having to make up for it later.

I'm jealous. Of a lot of people. A lot of my friends are hooking up or shacking up and I'm still smarting from rejection and I'm getting paranoid about further rejection but I can't stop setting myself up for it. I know which of my behaviors are the most unattractive, but I cannot break myself of them.

The people to whom I would normally be venting are absent or more depressed than me. My household is cracking from tension that is just barely contained, and there is a lot of money and emotions riding on all of us not doing anything stupid with each other. Which, hi, we are college students, we are overstressed and tired and have problems with substance use, eventually someone's going to do something stupid. And we might not survive it.

The people to whom I would normally vent are absent or out of commission, which means I'm venting to those who would normally not be subjected to it. No one on any side of the situation likes it. It's just a spectrum of who's the most and the least oblivious.

I keep writing, in IMs and deleted tweets and my notebook and my palm, non sic esse necessitat. It doesn't need to be like this. It doesn't need to be like this.

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:36:19 GMT

for once in my life i shall not take that perfect bait, tho my teeth do itch to sink into its swollen flesh; instead i shall shake myself to pieces in the mountain cold

and then go to morphology class like a normal goddamn person

you guys are such fuckers, i would say that you deserve each other except that it's not the full truth. truth is, i apparently still deserve you too.

bitter grad student embues wisdom upon annoying roomie; film at eleven

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:14:04 GMT

So here's something odd.

A couple of my housemates and I were having a henna/midnight-tea party on someone's bedroom floor (as you do) and I was (as I do) bitching about my loneliness and singleness. I am still recovering from a really douchey rejection, and I, knowing the answer, asked my comrades:

"Am I looking in the wrong places?"
The answer of course is a hearty "Yes. Duh."
A few minutes later, I follow with, "Where are the right places to look, then?"

And Joey, whose constant whimsical aggression frequently gets mistaken for blunt wisdom, says something that someone should've been yelling at me for the past two years now:

"Stop looking."

I've known, on an intellectual level, that pursuing relationships usually doesn't result in good relationships. I've hypothesized, again entirely in the abstract, that it might actually be damaging to my psyche to keep setting myself up for failure when success has no real benefits for me right now. But what I really needed to hear, and what I heard unspoken in Joey's sharp, impatient two-word answer (spoken as if it should be fucking obvious), was,

"You're capable of being a complete human being without attaching yourself romantically to anyone. Stop throwing yourself into this shit in search of validation, because that is not what you're going to find and that's not where validation comes from. Live your fucking life, have adventures, have awesome friends, masturbate more, and stop bitching about being alone when you're very obviously not."

So, yes. I'm going to... stop looking. Feels like a huge goddamn weight off my shoulders, too, let me tell you

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:29:40 GMT

tooooooo much coffee this morning, two cups of rocket fuel, pre-latin was pacing pacing twitching stomping clapping growling at maps and intermittently screeching, during-latin was twitch and quiver constant high vibration of all muscle and grammar, post-latin got food went and tried to chill the fuck down in the phono lab, have now managed to stop muttering to myself and making little space-ship noises and stomping my feet

but
all that was previously ellipse is now bang bang bang (all is exclaimed, nothing left incomplete but with firm emphatic closure! telicity in punctuation!!) in my punctuated consciousness

in la bibliotecha now with very sticky keyboard must pound pound pound it to get all the letters through which is very loud typing and cannot go as fast as I might wish and disturbing those around me and paining my painted long nail (for once) and aggravating the carpals but at least the pounding diffuses the need to make loud animal noises at frequent intervals and you know what, fuck everyone else, they are wearing headphones and do not have to listen to me pound

let me tell you internet, if this is kirby on caffeine picture her on amphetamines or coke. (spelled emphatamines at first-- lol yes, aminoids that are emphatic, that is what I do currently)

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:26:46 GMT

Boy howdy I sure do love being driven out of my home by natural disasters

and then going to class

through the

Okay I don't really need to whine about this, Facebook and Twitter are enough. Let it be known, though, that I'm not in a good mood.

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 14:44:43 GMT

We walked about four blocks before he finally managed to ask me, "Are you just asking 'why not?'" Well, yeah, I told him. I told him, there are two options here. Either it's a "No, I don't want that kind of relationship," or it's a "No, I don't want it with you."

It's the latter. I did not ask why not me, because I knew the answer. But he told me anyways, because I had (seriously) told him that honesty is more important than being nice. He said, "I want what all guys want. Plus some other stuff." That 'other stuff' would be the affection, sense of humor, and intelligence.

But he wants "what all guys want." And "what all guys want" is not me.

Glad to have that cleared up.

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 05:32:05 GMT

The book I'm reading, Crust, has a short throw-away paragraph about bipolarity, about the crash after the high.

That's where I am right now. I don't know why, except that apparently my chemicals are volatile.

I hate when TFLN is about something besides drugs and sex.

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 02:13:49 GMT

So, this TFLN is not that remarkable. The comments kind of are, though. I was waitlisted for Sarah Lawrence, eventually got rejected, and now go to a state school. (Such as it is.) And I genuinely had no idea how patronizing and pejorative private university students were towards people like me. I mean, I do view myself as a serious academic-- not someone who's getting educated for the sake of having a great career later on, but someone who's in academia with the express intent of staying there. And I do think Santa Cruz is a good school, despite its obvious problems; this is especially true of the world-class linguistics department. Ours is consistently ranked one of the best in the country, and had I not attended this school I would never have seriously pursued linguistics.

And, um, I'm not sure really where I'm going with this except "Fuck you, you stuck-up bitches, we're just as good as you." (The term "bitches" is here aimed equally at relevant persons of all genders, btw.)

(...See, this is why my half-baked rants get posted here, and not on my "proper" blog, which has my name attached.)

Some things of note

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 01:34:09 GMT

Yesterday I took a nap in a faeriehut in the woods on campus proper, which was in itself very special- those structures are increasingly rare, and especially so as you move further south away from Elfland.

Last night I had my first Irish class. Hard, weird language. But adorable.

This Lambda kerfluffle is weird because I keep getting reflexively embarrassed about being Zomgprivileged. And then I remember, wait, I'm queer. Like a lot.

This Lambda thing is also making me want to write a paper on authorship and its role in the analysis of minority literature. But I'd have to do lots of yicky theoretical reading for that. :|

Meanwhile, school is weirdly lonely. Half my friends, I live with. The other half, I only see fleetingly. I have really long, really weird gaps on a couple days where I'm stuck on campus for hours, and during those times I basically don't talk. Because there's no one to talk to. That's a damn unnatural state for me, and it's something I haven't really done except during periods of relative depression and lameness. So I'm hoping that'll get sorted out soon.

Maybe weekends will be better. Especially when I'm not frantically trying to man a yarn shop for the entirety thereof.

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:09:57 GMT

I'm so, so glad my professors are clearly as angry and scared as my peers about the budget. I'm so fucking relieved not to have to choose between what I think is right and what I think is smart. I hate when it comes down to that, because it means I either have to do something immoral or something stupid, and I have to do it consciously and with full knowledge that I'm acting either mean or dumb. But, when the teacher cancels class for the strike, it means I'm not going to get dropped from the class for attending the strike.

So, good.

guess where I'm up to in season five. (go on, guess.)

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 08:57:56 GMT

And here I thought I was past the days when watching the wrong House episode could send me sobbing and shaking to my bed to make ill-advised (and unsuccessful) phone calls at two in the morning my time.

Luckily, Buttercup knows when to go into Emergency Mode, and is here purring and tolerating a lot of way-too-tight hugging and (for her mainly, but really for all involved) unpleasant incidental moisture.

history is in layers of sediment

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 06:56:45 GMT

Today my mom cut my hair. It's the first time I've had my hair cut since I shaved it down to near-bald in the winter of my freshman year. I now have bangs for the first time since fourth grade. I'm also roughly as blond as I was in fourth grade, but that's because of the bleach after the purple fades, not because I'm actually regressing to age nine.

Might be nice, though.

Today I called a number I only ever call between two and three in the morning (eastern or pacific). It's been about four years since I've called that number expecting anything other than to reach the answering machine, and I was not disappointed this time either. The only difference is, I've mostly stopped leaving messages.

Maybe I'll start again, though.

Today I did some work cleaning the crap out of the purple room, which has had roughly three occupants in the last three years. I found old letters, older photos, memories, forgotties, scandals, small comforts, and a truly weird number of rocks. And two dollars, which are currently in my bra. Sometimes I feel like my whole life, my whole relationship to all my material possessions, what I'm really doing is trying to collect and arrange the artifacts so that the archeologists can get an accurate enough picture of me as I want to be remembered.

What a morbid thought, though.

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 18:28:35 GMT

Things I Could Be Doing Right Now Instead of Crocheting Quietly in an Empty Yarn Store:
~helping my sister move into the dorms
~crocheting loudly with my fiberbuddies
~watching a spinning competition
~writing
~sleeping
~nursing a hangover with copious tea (and company)
~playing my mandolin
~running away to New York

getting things sorted before the start of term

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 07:42:33 GMT

Today I interviewed for Irish class, then malled. Acquired: cupcake earrings, giant rainbow hairclips, shiny minty lipgloss, glittery nail polish. I promise all of these things were absolutely crucial to the procedure.

Tomorrow I shall go in early to work, escape as early as humanly possible, and still be too late to help my youngest sister move into her first college dorm. Then I shall drag my father out to a play.

Then, I shall probably stay at my parents' place for a few days, because it's nice there and I don't have to pay for groceries and they drink better beer than my friends do. Also something about maybe missing my mom, a bit.

(girls are frustrating)

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 08:49:10 GMT

Well, given the choice between maybe-but-I'm-not-letting-you-pay and possibly-but-I-never-call-you-back, I guess... I guess the choice is sort of out of my hands, actually. And here I thought I was being proactive for once.

Halloween Costume Ideas

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 05:37:09 GMT

(This totally doesn't need a whole new post, but whatever, yay spam.)

Mrs. Potts
Mrs. Lovett
Albus Dumbledore

(List shall be updated if/when I think of more. All contents of list so far pretty much assure not getting laid ever again. I find I no longer care.)

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 04:35:22 GMT

Okay, so, quick synopsis of last ten days:

Went to Seattle. It was Adorable. Anna and I squished our skulls together real hard and contemplated launching each other at attractive persons and buskers. Guitars, mandolins, and cellos were played. Cupcakes were eaten. Many miles were walked.

Came back from Seattle. Something about someone's girlfriend not doing her girlfriendly duty. Slept. Went to work. Went directly to party (via salmon), stayed at party, woke up having never left party, when right back to work, injected caffeine into eyeballs to try and counteract party. Survived. Retrieved housemate and groceries, came home, put on fuzzy things, went directly to bed. And, yes, here I am.

Bee tee dubs, why is Seattle full of hot people? Like, everyone there. Between sixteen and thirty-six. That is a heck of a range of hot, let me tell you.

In other news, I'm very slowly writing Sirius's Dirty Lesbian Fantasies. Shall post more on this as it progresses.

why are lists so soothing?

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 05:18:25 GMT

Accomplishments of the day:
1. mostly moved my crap
2. did not drink any coffee
3. finished one knitting project
4. did not buy yarn
5. new friends
6. swiffered
7. free pizza
8. did not tweet

Things to accomplish tomorrow
1. buy yarn
2. finish one crochet project
3. bring Devin his brown sugar
4. moar laundry
5. move rest of my crap
6. vacuum old room
7. finish and post a few five-things fics
8. leave town

what does one even do in this situation

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 04:38:55 GMT

I saw Inglourious Basterds this afternoon. Behind the cut is spoilery.

The part where all the Germans were locked in the theater, burning and getting trampled and shot? Two things.
1. Reminded me strongly of the video I watched of the Whitehall Fire.
2. Triggered a lady in the audience. She was sobbing audibly for a minute or two, and towards the end of the scene she was really screaming and crying and no one dared shush her or anything but her (presumably) husband, and it just went on for a full other minute before he finally ushered her out, and they lingered in the back for a little bit before finally getting out.

So, um. Should Tarantino come with a warning label? I felt really bad for the lady. She was clearly extremely distraught, and from a few snatches of what she was screaming I suspect she had some sort of personal experience with the burning-and-trampling kind of mass death. She may have PTSD, may be suffering through horrific flashbacks for a while after this. I don't resent her for anything she did to change my viewing experience; that would be pretty fucking callous of me. But I do wonder if she knew what she was getting into with this movie. The ratings system isn't really enough to explain the difference between "usual Tarantino cartoonish gore" and "this possibly actually happened to someone in exactly this way gore." Should she have known better than to go to a movie with an early reputation of being really, explicitly gory? Should the movie company have done a better job of warning her as to what she could expect? Would that ruin the movie for everyone?

The event really changed the way Devin and I experienced that scene, too. Had it not been for her reaction, we might not have registered exactly how horrific that was. Are we that desensitized? Are we monsters for not being horrified and crying and shaking through the whole thing like she was? It forced us to acknowledge, at least intellectually, the gruesomeness of the situation that we might have otherwise discounted. It made me cringe at every instance of violence for the rest of the movie. And I really wonder what Tarantino would have thought of this reaction; artists want their works to affect people in deep, visceral ways, right? Would he have been proud or ashamed to know that his work affected someone like this, even just one person out of thousands? And if he was proud, would that make him a monster?

Um, other than that, Devin and I both agreed that the non-violent parts of the movie were basically Linguist Porn.

state of the kirb

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 21:15:27 GMT

Thursday night, Becca and Raquel went on a date so, to avoid sitting around the house feeling sorry for ourselves, Hannah and I went on our own date. We ate sushi and walked on the beach in our fancy clothes and got brownie mix. It was fun.

Friday morning, I coasted down a hill to meet my teacher at a cafe and we talked for two and a half hours before we remembered we had somewhere to be. I staggered back up the hill with my brain throbbing in the skull with the pressure of everything he tried to cram in there. It was fun.

Friday night, my parents came and took me to see Midsummer Night's Dream in the woods. Puck was amazing at throwing himself at the ground, I wanted Oberon's cape desperately, the catfight between Hermia and Helena was brilliantly staged. It was fun.

Today, I wrote nigh a thousand words of this three thousand word essay. It was... not... that fun. But it's gratifying to be this far along.

It's too hot for academia, though, so I'm calling it a day 'til it cools off.