The Second Language

In MILANO
So... as it turns out, the world is really big. And I am very small. Somehow I only just now realized this.
Correction, it should be "a Milano"... mi dispiace.
I really wish at this point I had remembered more vocabulary from my Italian class. But I have retained a surprising amount of the language in general. Either I just look natural here or just friendly, but like three people asked me for directions today, while I was lost. But only sort of.
I figured out how to use the subway, woot.
AND, I made it to Il Duomo. Which. Is. Beautiful.
Immediately I was basically assaulted by this dude who gave me a "free" bracelet then asked for a "donation" which he got angry when I didn't give to him.
But I got lots of pictures of puffy birds and statues and the cathedral. Jesus. Literally. I just couldn't even comprehend it.
Then I wandered down the streets around, which were full of lots of very beautiful and expensive things. Maybe someday I'll have enough money just to be able to walk in the door of one of those places. I was relieved to find good old H&M, actually like three of them within five blocks.
And I can tell you a secret, the new thing is these puffy down jackets like everyone already has, but they're of this material that's shiny and almost metallic. And metallic everything is in. Like, even the old ladies are doing it.
Just a heads up.
So, tonight I'm going to go to this club, Gasoline, which looks pretty sweet, and try not to get lost, or really drunk, or abducted, or raped, or die. Wish me luck.

Lonliness and Large Buildings Go Hand in Hand

Visited some large buildings. And one of the many Jewish memorials, which was very powerful and haunting. I don't have the pictures from my sister's camera yet, though. I'm not sure if I can make the trip to the Leibeskind Jewish Museum...there's only so much of thinking about the Holocaust that I want to do when I'm on vacation. But it's so beautifully sad...
My other sister Laura joined us here today and we all went out for dinner where, for practically the first time ever, the waiter guessed the order of our ages.
Then as we were leaving he came over and put my scarf on and buttoned up my jacket for me....strange....
Anyway, I'll be detouring to Milan after Christmas, flying, or training, rather, solo. EXCITING
I'll finally not feel like a damn idiot and be able to sort of speak the language. A data learn the language.
AAAHhhhh I'm soooo fulll.
Now time for The Godfather, Part One.

Not Pimpin' So Hard

Hmmm... many an event hath made its path ere I last posted.
And I've been reading The Fellowship of the Ring too long today. I suppose I didn't come to Berlin to be in Middle Earth. But how that hefty tome sucks me in!
Anyway, let's try to ignore for a little while my overwhelmingly nerdy obsession with elves and the Elder days and come back to the present. I'm trying to snap out of it with an electro-dance playlist. Strange cultureshock.
So first I would like to just say, the clubs here are so fucking boss. Either that, or the ones I've been to in Austin are just real shit. Probably both are true.
For one, here they never close. Jesus. I came home at sixish, and people there were still going strong. You can totally just stay there all day. And I would, if I wasn't sort of a sleep-o-phile.
Another, for lovers of electronic music, this place is Mecca and oooooh god. We heard a few groups play before M.A.N.D.Y. and they were all vvery nice. And the lights in this place. Okay, the place was two stories, the lower having windows that look over this sort of lake or river and over to lit up city buildings, very romantic. Then upstairs, there is a strip of ceiling extending down the walls that is set with LEDs behind a sort of foggy sheet, so that the entire thing can light up. It runs in these patterns, and with the music, it was so damn sexy I pretty much wet myself.
Also, people seem to have much better manners here. Like, for instance, people don't automatically assume it's okay to touch you just because you looked at them. No creepy fat dudes asking you stupid irrelevant questions or following you around, nothing. Awesome. The only strange encounter I had was when I was sitting down near the bar and a guy came up and said something in German, which I didn't understand, and then said something like "I just want a sip" and took a gulp from my drink. Then walked away. Weird....
I wish I could have taken more pictures but the people were a little snotty and didn't want any cameras, so I didn't want to risk being thrown out.
Basically, if I end up stuck in Austin for quite some time with no business plans, I'm definitely starting up a club that maybe doesn't suck balls. And we won't be letting in any creepy men.
It'll be situated conveniently between YouShi and Krazy Burger. Keep an eye out.

The Casualties of Micro Water-Creatures

So news for the past couple days.... apparently I can't drink the tap water here or something.... Or maybe it was just a combination of being jetlagged and hungover but I was pretty sick a couple mornings ago. But everything was okay after I threw up. Hah. Then ate a giant breakfast of cheese and bread which was delicious. Post-vomit vittles.
So anyway, we went around this shopping area with a lot of different stores, most of which were way too expensive. I thought it was very interesting that Diesel and Gas were both located on the same corner. Although, I'm not sure how Gas would fly in the U.S.
We found the American Apparel on the street, which was sort of disappointingly small (though not as small as our store) and relatively unattractively merchandised. I got the feeling the employees thought we were stealing or something because we were wandering around the store and I was touching all the hangers like hmmm so that's how they hang the bandeaus...
There was actually a separate store a little ways down for the California Select vintage stuff, which was much more interesting.
And of course, there was H&M, where everything is so tantalizingly cheap and just barely straddling the line between shit and fashion gold.
There were also a lot of really good vintage stores around, my favorite being this one where everything was organized by color. Soo many fur coats. They're so beautiful I forget about all the PETA stuff and how at one point that used to be something's skin.
We also discovered Monika's bike, which she had lost track of in a sort of crazy night a week ago, locked up just fine in the street. Minus the back tire which had been squished when her coworker sat on it.

Windows See Both In and Out

NEU: What I ate. Feels so good to be full of nice clean food...

No one should probably read this.
Just letting you know. But I felt the need to write it somewhere.
My dream last night was perhaps one of the worst I've ever had. I blame myself, because I get bad dreams whenever I sleep too long. And speaking of sleeping too long, I think I just slept for longer than I ever have in my life....17 hours. Straight. I think this only confirms my theory that I was meant to be a hibernating creature.
Now that I've started I'm not really sure I can still write about it. Yeah, thinking about it, I don't think I'm ready for that kind of honesty about the horrors of my subconscious coming into the light of the world wide web.
I keep seeing double-decker buses drive by as I'm sitting at this cafe (I basically chose it because I could understand what the name of it meant, Milk and Sugar). Wasn't that in some Smiths song, if a double decker bus killed the both of us... Maybe. I just remember because of the Erelend Oye mix on his DJ Kicks cd. I do like it I do.
I feel like I should be posting pictures now, but I forgot to take some this morning. I'll add those a little later when I get back to her place. I can't open the lower door and buzzing up to the neighbors scares me...
Being here and not being able to understand anything makes me feel so small and so young again. I guess it's good once in a while to sort of get a reality check and realize I'm not this sort of social mogul or whatever I thought I was. Social mogul. Ummm.... But it's easy to start feeling stupid or like everyone thinks you're an idiot when you can't understand anything. But, we're probably all going down to Italy together in a week or so, my sisters and I, so at least then I will get my own little power trip at being able to sort of understand and speak the language. Hopefully.
My left eye isn't opening all the way...weird. My body is very confused.

Trainthinks

The train station. Hookahs when you need them. And McDonald's.
auf course.

Some things I was thinking on the train. Which, by the way, seemed to be full of retarded people. Literally. Sorry. But wow. I slept a lot and there were these kids running back and forth yelling in German. So weird.
I felt pretty retarded myself a little. I managed to already get lost when I was trying to get to my train. But it wasn't entirely my fault... Anyway everything ended up okay somehow. But here's what I wrote:

And right off I feel stupid for first of all being mislead at the airport for the trains, and for some reason never quite being able to figure out how everything is organized here, and then for catching myself wondering if "they" think the same things as us. I guess in a certain way that would make sense, how thought can be relative according to where you live, but probably in general not. But who knows really? I guess that's why I wanted to be bilingual. It isn't so much an interest in language as in brains. I feel that's what it always comes down to with me. Brains. Guts. Farts. dick. HA!
My nose is runny. And I would like to put in my contacts. (I did a little while ago and the left one HURTS I think my eye morphed in flight) I don't really feel like I've been traveling for...16 hours. Strange. But it is different.
I can never get a tangible grasp on where things are and how far away they are unless I watch every second of it. Planes are tricky. Maybe that comes because of a childhood full of road trips. Fuck flying. We drove everywhere.
The van has been places. God I wish I could talk to it. But I would hope it's not mad or frustrated.

Two Legs Look So Good Together

My world seems to be an indecipherable mess lately, and though it's not unpleasant, I'm so ready to just say "fuck it" and get on that plane to somewhere else. Lauf. Umm.... bitte? The only german I know is from Run Lola Run.
I recently watched a Peter Greenaway film called A Zed and Two Naughts, which was just as stunning as the other films of his I've seen, and very haunting. The soundtrack in particular gets to you. And this one cutaway that was repeated of this green landscape. Somehow his films always manage to combine image and sound in a way that can only talk directly to your brain. Sometimes words are so frustrating. Or maybe I'm just bad at using them. Sorry. I can't imagine all the mental pain and suffering I've caused words by mishandling and molesting them. I'm such a pervert.
But something that always gets to me is watching animals decompose in time lapse. Somehow I seem to run into this more often that you'd think. It's like a horrible motif in my life. I think the first time I really remember was watching a Nine Inch Nails music video. Giggle. yes. but really, those are fucked up. All of them are nauseating in different, incredible ways. But what I really can't stand is how when animals decompose, especially mammals, the bacteria eating them up and digesting them and making gases make them look like they're breathing in time lapse. But they're dead. I mean, I guess it's sort of an amazing metaphor for the life within death and how things live on by feeding of the death of others but god. Sometimes I can't deal with nature.
Maybe I'm just afraid.

It Was the Dog. I Swear.

Sometimes I feel like certain movies too accurately describe my life. But maybe that's what they're supposed to do. I think that's what I'd like to do with my movies, if I ever get so far as to have enough money to do so.
I guess maybe that my life goal sometimes seems to be to explain myself, and hopefully in doing so, explain other people. But...then what happens? What is there after everything is explained?
Sort of feels like the same question I think about when I think about two people spending their lives together. After so many years of explaining, what is there left? Is there a point where there's nothing left to say? Is that okay? Is it comforting?
I would like to think, and I'm sure a lot of people like to think that everyone is this endless universe of thoughts and ideas and nuances contained in a human shell. But that's probably not true. Once the knots all come out, you're just a ball of yarn. And who cares?

I was going to make a list of pet peeves, but I feel like that only leads to feeling irritated. So I'll list a few just for my own satisfaction and in between each one, put something that makes me laugh. Just so no one gets confused, things that make me laugh are marked with a + while pet peeves are -. Ok, ready?
::
-wet socks
+dumb faces
-people scratching themselves with long fingernails
+pretending to be a zombie
-my forehead getting wet
+fainting goats
-over confidence
+farting
-the word "pickle"
+boston terriers
-instruments that are out of tune
+people doing impressions
-anthropomorphized animals
+Falco
-misuse of apostrophes
+the ski hood dance
-cartoons with unnecessarily large noses
+rabbits eating
-the font "comic sans"


Well, now you're one step closer to knowing me completely, utterly, and exasperatingly well. I give you three weeks.

Come Over and Let's Sleep.

Today has been an eventful week.
My god my brain is in a state of shock. Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever regain my grip on reality. Or did I ever have one.....ooooooohhh.... blah.
To summarize, stress is eating me from the toes up, and is now right about at my navel. I used to think my navel never ended. Like if I dug into it it would just keep going. Weird. Gross. I also slept in a hot tub last night. and was repeatedly molested by sage bushes. And I think my neighbors have decided that our family is officially the strangest thing to ever drop into their neighborhood and probably are secretly happy we're almost all gone. That being said they're very nice very amazing people. But even amazing nice people don't like UFOs landing in their backyards. Needless to say, I'm implanting a copy of my house key into my left ankle so that i can rip it out at the necessary moment and save everyone eight hours of floaty warm sleeplessness.
I watched the movie closer again today. I keep trying to give it a chance ever since the first time I dismissed it. I'd love to think it's making a powerful and profound statement about love and people, but it's sort of hard for me to believe. There are definitely points where I feel like it's right on, but then others they totally lose me.
Winter is a shitty time to be lonely. Or maybe it's that winter makes you feel like you're lonely even when you're not. Both. Anyways I sort of wish I had a twin or something. Or a best friend. Not that I don't. But someone who was my best friend and whose best friend was me. It's all about reciprocity. Or maybe I just need a dog. I'm seriously considering a cat. I appreciate Henry, my stuffed white owl, so much at night it's ridiculous. But I don't know what I'd do without him.
And I need to do laundry. Basically my entire closet is sitting in my laundry basket. And my apartment is messy. I hate that. There's too much stuff and I'm too unmotivated in life to do anything. so I wallow. I'm sorry it's so messy. Really. I swear I'm not normally like this. Please don't think I'm a dirty person. I'm not!
I'm not.

Fetus.

It wasn't really what I wanted to do exactly, or what I expected, but I suppose everything turned out okay.

My baby. Or more like my aborted fetus.
Delicious.

http://vimeo.com/2310940

That picture actually has nothing to do with it.

S-Pong-ee Sponge?

Sometimes it scares me to think about my body in terms of biology. Like how the bones have aged, and how the tendons connect things and muscles stretch and capillaries get smashed when you cross your legs and whatnot. Kind of scary. And jesus. These bones and liver and heart are all like nineteen years old. That's way past the expiration date of most things.
Like who would eat a nineteen year old egg?
I guess maybe a twinkie. But that's only because they're so full of preservatives. And I guess that would be the equivalent of botox or something. Marrow injections? That's sort of like a twinkie. Bone with fluffy marrow filling.
I wish marrow was fluffy. Or at least tasty and gooey. But I think it's not really like that.
I can't remember what Bill Nye told me.
I do seem to remember my mom saying she was in love with the science guy, though.
She said the same thing about C3PO. sort of. Actually I think I remember her first telling me, as I showed her the back of our Star Wars: A New Hope vinyl, pointing at the shiny gold robot asking if he was a bad guy, her saying "No, he's wonderful."
After watching it, I don't think I'd say that so much. Or not in the way I thought it meant in my head. Wonderful like Buddha. Or something.
But how do I know what Buddha is like? I guess maybe more like the Dalai Lama.
I don't know much about him really either, but I've seen videos of him and I can't stop smiling.
I like things like that, the ones that grab you and squeeze some sort of emotion out of you. I like being swept along, not having a choice, you just cry. I don't think that happens to me much. Makes me wonder if I'm cold. But then again, today I almost started crying when I remembered this book I read about a weasel who was tragically in love with a beautiful fish. God.

Little Boots

I can't stop thinking about this one word in Italian but I don't know exactly what it is. Learning languages makes words and phrases run on repeat in my head. Sometimes it happens with English, though, too. It's nice to know where it comes from though. Somehow it's so much better to have a phrase running in circles like an autistic dreidel when you know what obscure lobe of your brain decided to regurgitate it.
Sometimes smells get stuck in my nose too. This sort of hasn't happened for a while now, which makes me a little sad. It used to happen at least every fall and spring. In the spring it was normally this sort of mixture of the smell of those Girl Scout cookies caramel delights and snot. Which was strangely pleasant. I guess the snot part was maybe just my nose. But the combination was sort of nice. Then in the fall it would be something else. Something I really can't explain. One of those things like the hallusions or whatever when you look directly at it, it slinks off to the side of the page, slippery. I don't know what it was. I wish it would come back.
There's this song, aptly named, also making the rounds in my head.
I guess it could be compared to habits. In some ways, it's the same thing. Something happening over and over again. The way to describe it is like water trickling through dirt for the first time. Then there's tiny spidery trails and the rest of the water takes the easy way out and follows. And before you know it, the GRAND CANYON.
And I remember calling them "samskaras," which I liked. I like. I think it makes sense. They're not necessarily good or bad, just habit. Paths carved, that your thoughts go through. Sometimes I imagine thoughts like the silvery stuff in the pensive in Harry Potter. Aaaahh...pop culture.
But it makes it hard when you want to change something. You can't just put up dams.
Blah. I feel like I'm giving a lecture. I hate that. Hate. That.
Oh actually I do have a smell stuck in my nose. Maybe. But I keep smelling this sort of styrofoam and crisco thing. Actually that might have a logical explanation. But that's no fun.
It smells like sort of almost good food, but not quite. Sort of like those edible packing peanuts.
Seriously, who thought of that?
Not everything is meant to be edible.

Works. By me.

I've started a channel on vimeo.com so everyone has access to my spectacular videographic creations.

http://vimeo.com/user797089/videos

All of these are just projects for my classes so far.

Anyways, I'm actually pretty proud of my halloween costume that I made this year. As always, I came up with a crazy idea at the last minute and just made it in a fervent rush. But this was the first year that anyone has stopped me on the street to ask to take a picture with me, so I think it was worth it.






See?












Rawr.

My Italian Teacher

scared the shit out of me.

Old Tomes

Just found some stuff in this spiral I used to love. I wanted it to be that special spiral. But unfortunately I picked one of the normal school ones that only last about four months before they start to rip apart. It's pretty much dying now.
But sometimes coming back to things, it's like seeing them newly. And I forget what I was like. Am I still like that?
Well something that sounded nice:

"listening to the sweet somber blue of the song picking the dust off my stale memories
I want to wrap the cool wind around me like a feather down comforter, I can feel the depth in the ruffling calm and I feel safe to my bones, which stop rattling in the dry brittle air"

My door is open.
...oooohhh it smells like fall.

Walk Through I Walk Do I Walk

Yesterday I took a walk for what felt like the first time in years. It sounds stupid and cliche, but I didn't realize how long it had been. Or more like I had forgotten that I used to take walks, all the time actually. I used to take off my shoes and walk barefoot, up our driveway, across the street (it hurt a little after it was repaved) and down the sidewalk. I remember the part of the sidewalk that was cracked and had some sort of weird sludge dried on it from the drainage leaking out of someone's lawn. And how sometimes I would step on pieces of the asphalt from the street, but it only really hurt when it was on your heel. I remember the place where the sidewalk stops abruptly, at the top of the hill, I guess because there's a fire hydrant or something. And the limestone. Like a tiny cliff. Remembering how this place didn't used to be enormous houses and manicured lawns you can't even roll in because of all the chemicals they use to make them green.

But my point here isn't making some environmental statement.

I took a walk and just let myself think, and I touched some plants, saw a cat and petted it. It's funny how you can just do that, walk up to a cat and pet it, and it just purrs and closes its eyes into little slits. It accepts the love of anyone who comes by, lets them give what they want to give and then lets them go.

I kept walking and ended up at a park, this one specific park I used to go to all the time last year especially when I was upset. I haven't really been there in a while. There were people with their kids running around and playing. Of course, because it's a park. I went on the swings. I love swings. And there's something so comforting about them. Maybe, I think, it's because they remind you of that feeling of rocking, your mom holding you in a rocking chair and holding you tight. How when you're little, and your mom is holding you, everything is still, silent, good, safe.
But I go on the swings a lot. Any time I can. It's strange too, that even though they are comforting, they still have this edge of danger, like when I close my eyes and suddenly feel like I'll never stop falling. It happens sometimes even when my eyes are open, when I look behind me. Maybe I have a general fear of things rushing away from me. The ground, the sky, people.

So I sat on the swings and went back and forth. For a long time. I think it helps thinking. I thought about all the different times I had been to this park, and how this place really didn't mean anything at all. You being there makes it mean something. One of the first times I was in the park was with my sister, just laying in the grass, in the sun. Silent, still, safe. The air was a little cold. When you stand up, you have grass on your back and in your hair.
A lot of times I came there and sat on the swings and thought and cried. I thought my way through my life and my existence and the present and I felt better.

I started thinking about things that had happened. And realized, who's to say these things happened? They're just in my head. there's nothing holding onto them except me. If I forgot, they wouldn't exist. But should I always remember? Is it okay for things to fade? It leaves questions. Holes. Then you have to fill them in later again. I don't want to be just constantly re-realizing. I want to build upon myself and my time, climb and build. Construct. But not plan. Just sketches. I guess for now I can use what I still have to remember. Re-member. To member again. Am I membering now? And then later add re-?

But I wonder. Am I still the same person? Is everyone? If only I could remember.

Voyeurism

I feel like there might be an episode of Gilmore Girls unfolding at the table next to me. Brings back memories.

"I just want to smell you."

Have you ever caught yourself enjoying the smell of something that really, you shouldn't like at all? But for some reason you can't stop smelling it? I've definitely heard some people say that they like the smell of skunks. It's like that. But it can happen with anything. I guess it's different for different people. It's so secret, though. I bet that some people never tell anyone about their secret love for the smell of fresh urine. I bet most people don't even tell themselves that.
Something to think about.
Anyway, it seems that smell has become a prominent subject in my life at present. Strangely enough, smell-related incidents and comments have been flying left and right these past few weeks. Like a monthly catchphrase. But it's a sense.
Smelling is actually very nice. I remember reading in a psychology magazine that smell is the most powerful sense, and can have a very real impact on your psychological state. It sucks that as humans our sense of smell isn't so great. Sometimes I envy blind people, who, they say, have a heightened sense of smell to compensate for the loss of vision.
But just imagine dogs. They must perceive the world so differently. Maybe to the point that instead of "seeing" the world, they smell it. And they use that "smell image" to navigate through space and time. Smell-ship.
I mean, I don't mind vision so much. I love colors. And light. Light can change everything. I think my favorite is yellow light. Natural yellow, though, like the light in the park that comes through the leaves of trees. Yeah, sight is pretty awesome. I remember reading an article that was about people who were blind from birth who got surgery to give them sight. These people couldn't navigate the world, because they couldn't distinguish depth from all the blobs of color they saw.
I wonder what that's like. Deconstructing vision, taking away interpretation, until it's just a flat plane of color and shape. Brains are funny things.

I Really Only Believe What I Have to Say

It always seemed to be a good thing to try and understand other people's perspectives on everything that happens. Like, you're always supposed to think about the other side and consider their opinion along with your own. I guess the intended effect of this is that everyone makes logical decisions while keeping in mind everyone else's thoughts.
But, I can't help feeling lately that even when you do understand someone else's perspective, and take it into account along with your own, what can you do about that? You're probably nine times out of ten not going to change your mind in their favor just because you realized the reasoning behind their choices. Is it just the awareness that counts? If so, who really cares? What good is it to anyone to say "Oh, I considered your opinion, and I understand it but I'm still choosing me every time"?
I guess the most you could hope for is for people to be more sympathetic, and not get angry when an idea opposes their own. Even though they may not turn around and stand behind it, they won't be actively attacking it, I suppose. Tolerance, maybe.
But doesn't that just sound unremarkable and insufficient? The human race, yeah, they tolerate each other. That sort of sucks.
But maybe that's all we can manage.

Ode To the South Mall

I booked a ticket to Germany today.
Oh my.

It's ridiculous how excited I am. I've been tearing up all day today for no reason.

When I was lying on the quad outside between classes, I realized a couple of things. Here I will bestow on you the infinite wisdom of the quad-revelations.
One, when I was thinking about how I really just wanted to leave and fly away and go to Europe and be in all these different cities (I picture myself walking through streets alone, looking vaguely wistful and a bit awed) rather than be here, sitting on a grassy quad in Austin, Texas, where I've been practically my whole life. How my life would basically start again from page one. Or so it would seem in my brain. I started to feel sort of bitter about the whole societal dictate that everyone needs to go to college to be successful when I really thought about it and the fragile networks of friends, familiar places, and emotions that I have set up here. That has been nineteen years in the making. And suddenly I felt like maybe it was a good thing to be in college. I don't think a lot of people at my age could handle their life suddenly being a blank slate, including me. Although I might complain, I still need to use a booster seat (thanks guys) or I won't be able to reach the table. And we all know how scary being under the table is. Everything is alien, all legs and feet and floor. Hmmm...

Two, when I was lying on the ground, I had one of those special nature moments when I was looking at the grass and thinking about the ground underneath it and the shape of the earth. Then I watched the people walking by and wondered how long it had been since they'd looked at the world from ground level. How often do I even lie down and look at things between blades of grass? I sometimes forget that you can do that I guess. Me, who is supposedly all about different perspectives.... But I've never liked self-imposed labels. They're not tasteful. Or classy.

Don't They Know? (It's not Sexual)

Speaking of cake,
mine is very especially thick I think. My cake is something like the layers in a raspberry indulgence cake. That white very thick consistency, rich, for white cake anyway. But it's just the cake layer right now. No raspberry in between. Or that rich creamy icing. Just a slab of thick white cake. Plain. But filling.
People seem to be satisfied with my cake, though. Sometimes I wonder if they know that it's missing the icing. And the raspberry. For christ's sake the cake is named after the raspberry but no one seems to care.
What's that about? It's frustrating, having a cake in progress that people eat anyway, telling you it's good when you know it could be SO much better, it could be complete, a perfect confection.
But if I didn't let people eat the cake until it was finished, well, maybe it won't ever be finished. Maybe it'll be a raspberry indulgence cake in progress until finally someone eats the last slice and the plate is left with a handful of crumbs.
Well, I'll keep working on it and go ahead you can eat it. I guess that's okay.

Of Mice and Men

There is a mouse in my apartment.

I tried to catch it as it snuck out from behind the refrigerator, but it was too fast, and it ran somewhere behind the dishwasher.

I don't want to kill it.

It's funny how much I don't want to kill this mouse, which will probably start eating through my cereal boxes and pooping and having dirty mouse babies in my kitchen, and yet I'm dead set on killing any cockroach that crosses my path.
Where, in my brain, is the line between "okay to kill" and "not okay to kill"? Is it some sort of spectrum? Maybe, since sometimes I don't want to kill a bug but then I have to and don't really feel bad about it.
But maybe it's just certain things. Like how ranchers think it's okay to kill coyotes, and I think it's okay to kill cockroaches.

What sort of chemical is it that makes one person fine with reptiles and another want to scream? It can't all be previous experience or long-buried trauma. Sometimes, our fears or distastes are totally inexplicable.
Like people who don't like broccoli. I'm sure nothing traumatic involving broccoli ever happened to these people, and yet they refuse to eat it. What is that?

It seems like such a strange, subtle distinction. So unnecessary in the natural selection - evolution scheme of things.

Furthermore, what makes certain people like indie rock and others like industrial? Or like Bukowski instead of Murakami?

These things seem like evolutionary after-thoughts. Once human evolution ran its physical course, mostly, the only thing left for it to do was to fantasize and diverge and come up with all these random digressions called personality and thought.

And yet, these afterthoughts are what people seem to value most. Personality: the most important thing. I suppose.

Strange, how nature works. And how humans look so little like their birth-mother.

Could You Point Me in the Direction of the Nearest Difibrilator?

My heart has literally been pounding all day, and I'm really starting to wonder whether hearts can die from exhaustion.
Maybe I drink too much coffee.
Or maybe it's just my extraordinary ability to magnify mental stress and translate it into physical symptoms. It runs in the family.
Either way, I'm a little worried about the old ticker, and I'm considering eating a steak or something tomorrow in an attempt to appease it.

The Food Channel In My Brain

So apparently, I failed to properly "Do It Myself" and now my kitchen table from IKEA is wobbly. It's really driving me crazy.
In other news, I'm figuring out how to make breakfast tacos that are somewhere near half-savory. The potatoes are always the defining factor. (I've decided to start out basic with the classic potato egg and cheese). Somehow the brilliant idea (I'm not sure why this never occurred to me before...) came to me of getting those frozen home fries and then cooking them to put in the tacos. So hopefully that works out.
Also, I've recently discovered that pepperocinis are ridiculously delicious and add flavorful pizazz to any meal. Another good one is garlic salt. Or diced white onions.
Come to think of it, I used to stage cooking shows when I was probably about eight. I would sit on my parents' bed with a bunch of imaginary pots and pans and conjure a full course meal out of thin air. My favorite part was cracking eggs and stirring. And those tiny glass dishes that conveniently have each ingredient already perfectly measured out.
I also used to bake (unfortunately, real) "inventions." They always had some sort of creative name and basically all tasted the same. Most of the time they were muffins. Puffy muffins, fluffy muffins, fushy muffins... and then there were cookies. I distinctly remember the "yum yums" which, true enough to their name, were actually pretty tasty. Those were my only real success since I had this strange affinity for using every flavor of extract we had available (except never lemon). Everything ended up tasting like a strange conglomeration of almond, vanilla, and mint.

Overexposure

There's always something going down at my friendly neighborhood 24hr Wallgreens. I've been in there quite frequently as of late, since I've been trying to figure out the inner workings of my friend's cameras and how exactly they apply to the stupid dark, blurry photos that I keep picking up after the requited one hour.
It's actually sort of embarrassing because there's this one guy who's always there when I drop off or pick up film and he always asks about the camera and generally seems to want to help me, but I'm having a hard time conveying that I'm really just fucking around and don't want to read the manual, and seriously don't worry about my underexposed negatives. But he's just one of those nice guys.
Then there always seems to be one or more older and perhaps senile fat men there, having inappropriately loud conversations. The first time the two were shouting at each other, ten feet apart, about how they had doubts about McCain's vice president being able to run the country in case of his death.
It was sort of interesting watching the two, who seemed more to be yelling into the open air than at each other, with a sort of vacant look in their eyes. I guess you have to be a little bit outside the mainstream consciousness to start a heated political debate in Wallgreens.
On that same occasion, as I was walking through the parking lot to my van, I overheard a girl who was sobbing as she talked to a guy, who I'm assuming was her boyfriend. She was wailing about how some guy cut her off in traffic and was swerving between the lanes and she was so scared and (then her cell phone rang...) And in a perfectly normal voice, she answered, "Hey what's up?"
I can hardly wait to pick up my next roll of foggy, black pictures from there and see what sort of drama Wallgreens has to offer me.

I Love Food and Tubes You Can Dance In

While sitting in Which Wich today, well, just typing that now, may I point out what a horrible name for anything that is? Maybe one person every couple of days reads that restaurant's sign and guffaws, but other than that it's just a really annoying name that's hard to say and frankly is completely verbally unappetizing.
When I say verbally appetizing, I mean like how maybe a name like "Thai Noodle House" or "Dolce Vita" makes you think of deliciousness and furthermore sounds pretty and rolls off the tongue. "Which Wich," on the other hand, sounds to me like having a mouthful of sand, and that doesn't exactly get my mouth watering. Not to say that some really awesome eateries don't have questionable names like "Food Heads" or Dirty's. But their tantalizing meals redeem them from any shame. Something I cannot say for "Which Wich." And yet I ate there today...
Well, my point was, while I was sitting in the aforementioned unfortunately named place of mediocre sandwiches, I was looking at the shape of the building and I suddenly was overcome with a burning desire to refurbish it and turn it into a nightclub.
This thought was almost immediately banished because of the location, which wouldn't be good for night life. But, something about the shape of the interior to me screamed dark light and pounding techno. Good techno, mind you, more like electronica and dance and whatever. It reminded me, I suppose, of a number of designs for bars I've seen that are housed in tubes or those big railroad cargo boxes.
There is something appealing about there being an entire night's worth of dancing, drinking, and general l-i-v-i-n all packed into the confines of a box. A unit, as I am fond of saying. And during the day, this box would close, the garage door would roll down, and maybe the iron grating in front of it would close, and it'd just be part of the daytime facade. Just a fence you walk by, no hints of the mystical fog that its nighttime socialites attribute to it. The club you went to the other day is really just a cement yard with a fence around it. But when you were there, it was your goddamn prom. But probably with a lot more drinking, less clothes, and hopefully a better DJ.
So maybe it's not just people willing an awesome time into existence, I think DJ's definitely have something to do with it. If not everything. Shit. There goes my point. But whatever, I'm really horrible at making points anyhow.
Well, here's what I've learned: get a badass DJ when I open my club (after Which Wich's stock plummets before they can realize the benefits of a delicious name. Or sandwich for that matter).

Mise-en-scene: Let's Talk About It

First of all, I'd like to note that I was very impressed about a month or two ago (I'm maybe not so much now) at the sign outside of Taco Bell on Guadalupe which read "Need a Job? Let's Taco Bout It!"
I got a serious kick out of that one, and was suddenly filled with pride for my country's attempt at recreating Mexican food in bulk across a nation that (in majority) doesn't even know what they're eating half of the time anyway. At least they try to be clever.
And yet, I think it might just be that one, lonely location. Maybe there's a blossoming stand-up act working there part time until they can finally afford that unicycle they need for the pun in their third act. And that sign is their cry for help. Or for creative freedom to rise above the mindless stupor brought on by having to repeatedly try and sell people an extra choco-taco for half the price of the first one they already didn't want.
Getting back to mise-en-scene, I feel like I should probably be lying on my stomach with my laptop on my bed while fervently composing my blog post, if this were a proper sort of teenage girl drama on the WB. Channel 54, baby.
But seriously, I don't think I'd mind selling my life, or the parts of it that I could juice up enough to make digestible for TV's protein enhanced audiences. If it came down to it, I think I would definitely use everything I might have cared about in my life to fuel a wrenching, passionate memoir revealing at last the untold story of a middle class white girl growing up in America.
Everyone would see it.
I personally believe that you can retain your soul but also sell it. Perhaps the more appropriate word would be to lease it. Or sublet it.
Yes. Soul for sublet. One bedroom, one bath. Spacious living room and kitchen. Stone cold floors. Asking price is a flight to New York and three months of promotional tours.
I apologize for not addressing the topic of mise-en-scene in its full glory, the error is noted and will be resolved at a later date.

I Dream Lots of Things

Recently, it's been all about working out emotional wreckage and picking through the rubble. Luckily, that means I don't have to deal with all that in my waking life. Subconscious to the rescue!
But really, I have a lot of very vivid dreams that I think tell a lot about me as a person and my brain as an organ.
Sometimes they give me advice. Sometimes they tell me stories. Sometimes they tell me not to do things, or show me what I really think, seriously. (Your dress is ugly, seriously.)
And here is the point where I should sum up this list with something concretely profound about dreams and life and shit. But no. I'll just leave that hanging. I hate happy endings anyway.
I actually didn't mean that just now about happy endings. I'm a human, as it were, and I like to get my oxytosin or endorphins or dopamine or whatever pumping with a pristine, unmerited christmas present ending where the girl finds a puppy and that dude marries her and they have babies. YES
Cats: so, I wish I had one. But not as much as I want a dog. Scratch that I want to BE a dog. I think I spent a majority of my childhood being a dog, as a matter of fact. You'd think that after practicing for something for such a long time, the day would actually come when you'd put your extensive experience to use. But I have yet to be a dog. Unfortunately.
To sum up:
my goals include learning how to paint, finding ten dollars on the sidewalk (or in the grass is ok too, as long as the grass is not dewy and the ten dollars isn't moist), and using something so hard it breaks.
Love.