i run a tidy bakery.

30 Rock can be compared to a Thomas Pynchon novel? What?

Why are you so wonderful, New York Times?

Anyway, that's an article about the nuanced narrative techniques in today's sitcom. I'm English major nerding out right now. You can't blame me.

they asked me.

Family: My uncle passed away last week. Still thinking how it will never ever seem real to me. Missing my family terribly.

School: My lack of effort is depressing, even to me.

Boys: Another appointment, another set of wasted words, another hopeless smile. Maybe this time it will go better. I want to be nothing but myself.

Girls: I want to move out of my apartment. So I think I will.

Future: So many plans, so desperately little time. Do I go to grad school? Can I even get good recommendation letters? Maybe if I figured out the school section of my life, I could also figure out this section as well. I just know I want to get out of America and meet new people. This is a pre-requisite to living for me.

Money: nonexistent.

how many.

I'm about the biggest idiot around sometimes, but every so often I don't know what to say, so I just let him walk away, see you on Thursday, oh my god I'll think of you until then. So sometimes, between thinking of Greece, Germany, Ireland, I settle on London. And I know I'm stupid, and I know it has everything to do with his voice and his way of expressing the inexpressible while speaking of old stories once serialized. So I say nothing, wait for his gesture, leave, my ears ringing, my heart beat pounding against my chest so fragile I feel I might break.

And things in my life are so varied, so abstract, so hectic right now all I can do to express them is write incoherently. It's my formal manifestation of my inner insanity.

among pages of books, among thoughts, among intellectual garbage.

And in the blankets and
so deep down in the smoke
and
traveled far for ten days
you.
There are quiet spaces
they whisper and
they scream
and you wake up
in darkness.
Lights out and eyes closed
for you
Lost and feeling
and emptying to the physical
Thoughts and floating
clouds and red sunsets
dry heat sticks to your
fingers where I told
you let me go
screams and then
QUIET!
laugh and smile and hold onto
it all
mistakes and it all goes.
Today, well, today
I thought that you
it's not anyone
at all.
That if I made those
choices so far beyond
so deep the red it bleeds into the
clouds and heats the sky
and dries hands
and lips.
That if I made those
decisions
it is far too late for me.
I have already decided my fate
is to be this
to never be defined
by dry hands cracked lips
one day
well, one day
I may repent.

right here.

In limbo:

My thesis has sat untouched for over two weeks. I e-mailed my adviser to tell him I am "working hard," but I suppose that was actually an excuse for my procrastination. Not a lie, though, I swear.

I found out that Wiley has several offices throughout the UK - even in Edinborough. So I plan on contacting my former colleagues from there and begging for some contacts abroad. If that fails (which, knowing me, it will), I will be signing up for this other internship thing I found out about. Costs money though, which sucks.

I saw Brian last week. It was really really nice, and also really really refreshing to remember that no matter what happens between us, we can always go back to the way we were. That kind of consistency is amazing, and also much-needed in my life right now.

I need a job. I've been unemployed too long, and my money somehow seems to be disappearing. I wonder how that's happening?

And, finally, my parents came and visited last weekend for Veteran's Day (my dad is a Vietnam vet), and we went to the Getty and the Getty Villa and we had designated family nap times at 3 pm. I miss my parents so so so much. Makes me want to go to grad school at Berkeley or Stanford and never leave home again (you know, after the year abroad).

small birdie at the getty.

my own margaret bourke-white photograph.

the getty villa in the morning.

oh my god i love this little guy. he looks like he's riding a turkey, which is all right with me.

my mom and dad at the villa.

ch-ch-ch-changes.

My internet was broken, but now it works again, so I'll update later. A little too much going on to do summary, so we'll see what happens.

you'll just have to wait.

Oh, I am so excited to watch the election coverage tonight, and I voted next to Christopher Walken, and as I walked out, I saw John Voight laughing while he was waiting in line to cast his ballot, and it was just so Los Angeles I could have burst out laughing, but I didn't because I'm not totally insane.

Tonight, before watching a show at UCB and reading Great Expectations, I read one of the most inspiring pieces of feminist non-fiction I have come across in a while.

It's called "To a White Male Radical" and it's from 1970. I feel depressed at how so little has changed in 38 years, but also empowered by the same words. Somehow, the word "feminism" has been contorted to carry with it a terrible stigma. The stigma itself only represents how inherently sexist American culture is. But as I read this piece, I realized it runs even deeper than that, and it may be the reason (not surprisingly) why I have always felt I was meant to live alone. And that is because the men I have loved refuse to give up their positions of power to women, they cling to them, they assume hyper-masculine identities to compensate for the threat to their power. And, in effect, women are left confused, broken, weakened, subordinated. We play this game without even realizing its underlying message of Powerful and Powerless.

"You probably do not even know how you oppress me, or other women. Buy you do. Each time we meet you spell out the business of your schedule while I am supposed to marvel at this important male world to which you belong? I sometimes see very little difference between a conventional bourgeois chauvinist who thinks that his work is his whole life and a radical activist who also escapes the risk of being known by another through his intensive avoidance of free time. ...

Why am I writing this? Because you don't understand yet what it means not to oppress a woman. ... I could love you someday if I stayed near you long enough. But then I would hate you as much. I would rather stay away and let others take your shit. You are the embodiment of male chauvinism and what is so sick about it is that you self-importantly deny it."

halloween and stuff.

Halloween was amazing this year. I spent the night with just Leslie, but, oh, did we meet some characters along the way.

The night began with carving pumpkins and handing out candy at Leslie's house and ended with me yelling at some guy while standing in the drive-thru line at McDonald's, telling him that he would never be happy in life because he was a business economics major and a frat guy in college and couldn't define success outside of economic terms. Sad. But I showed him... Right. In order to get to that stage, a concert, several different parties, and a bar stood in the way. So that explains my random yelling. I get very argumentative sometimes. It's all the bitchy, snarky things I want to say that just come out all at once.

I would post photos, but I didn't take any because my costume consisted of a vintage Bill Blass dress and cat ears. So yeah.

Also got to utter the (in)famous phrase: "You didn't even buy me a drink, why would I go home with you?"

Tonight may be clubs or it may be roommate sesh.

Hopefully my next update will be more interesting.