abla

I am having a really shitty day. I have a really bad headache. I have 3 more hours of work. This sucks really bad. Sometimes I feel like me and my body are enemies. It's out to get me, I'm telling you. Today I slept through both my german class and the time when I was supposed to meet with the literature advising office and get my study abroad thing signed. Now I have to get up early tomorrow and walk over to warren to get it done (hopefully) and then walk back to muir for my 10:00 class. Thus is my punishment for oversleeping. Except I don't think i should be punished. I am doing my best, I really am. It's week 10 and I have more important things to do than sleep. But you can't expect your body to understand these things. Soooo selfish. I suppose I will fill the rest of my time at work studying so that I will feel better about myself. But man, does my head hurt.

I can't wait to go to London. I hope I get in to King's. It will be marvelous.

help!

possible scenarios regarding berkeley:

1. I find someone to drive with, my parents let me take the car, everything is fine and good and I have a great time.

2. I am not allowed to take the car and am forced to fly up for 50 bucks. I am not willing to pay a hundred dollars to fly back down so close to christmas and thus would rely on sarah finding us a ride home with somone from berkeley. Risky. Don't really want this to happen.

3. scenario 2 falls through, or, my parents say I must chose between berkeley and portland. in either case the berkeley trip would not happen and that would be incredibly inconvenient for sarah and disappointing for myself and everyone is upset and angry and everything sucks.

Why won't they just make things easy on me? sibdfKDSGJNSDKGJNFGKN.

anyway, here is how you can help: say that you'll drive with me and that you don't mind being left alone for at least one night while sarah and I go see joanna newsom, or else you are willing to pay to go see her with us, and are planning on either spending time with other people up there who you know or spending time with sarah, who you do not know. and also say that you will split the gas money cause there's no way in hell I can afford it all and also christmas presents.

stress!

I remember
learning how to dive
deep end board
I was high
I remember learning how to dive
I just had to go
to the end of the board
and distract myself
and go weeeee
i just had to jump
you just have to jump
and touch the water
with the ends of your fingers

I have devised a new writing style and it's called writing down everything in a random order and not caring whether anyone or myself ever reads it and not caring whether or not it's good. I wonder if anyone can teach me how to write like the people I look up to do. I doubt it. But I am going to find out. I wonder what it's like to get a masters in creative writing. Is it just a means of procrastination? probably. I love to procrastinate. I think I'm gonna do it! It was cold today and I know I've been wanting that for a while but sheesh, I wasn't expecting it and I was wearing sandals and my feet were cold and my hands even got a little numb cause i was sitting outside writing in my notebook between class but yeah anyway, I seriously can't stop listening to that song about diving, like I think I listened to it at least 10 times today and I didn't even leave the apartment till 2. That was only 6 hours ago. I feel dumb because the whole england application process is turning out to be way easier than I expected and I have been whining about it for what seems likea century. I am worried that Kings wont accept me though because my major is not "english" but rather "literature and writing" and they dont have that major and they wont understand cause theyre mean british people. But if they dont want me that is definitely a sign that I shouldnt go there haha cause I mean, that would suck to take classes I dont even wanna take for no reason. I am boring myself. I am bored of my music and I need more. The food at summit sucks a hard nut so you have to go when you are really hungry so that you'll eat anything. I found my keys. but i didnt even tell you I hadlost them, so that was pointless just now. This new writing style actually kind of sucks, I guess thats why I wasnt doing it before, I guess I do care whether or not my writing is good. Well, I'm glad we had this talk.

I remember learning how to dive

The problem with most music reviews is that they never seem to be truly affected by a song. These people are supposed to love music more than the resat of us, right? Isn't that why they devote their lives to listening to it? But I think people in the music scene often lose track of the music itself in their analysis of it. They don't let themselves feel anything about, or if they do, they don't talk about that at all in their reviews, or if they do, they don't do a good job of it. What I'm trying to get at is you would never see a review like the one I am about to give on pitchfrok media:


Animal Collective- Prospect Hummer (EP)

track one: bullshit
track two: pretty good once it finally gets to the wawawawawa part.
track three: noisenoisenoiseyawnnoise
track four: OMGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!dsfkjbvqf!!!!!Iuwebfk1111!!!!!!1 This song makes me want to die, but in a good way. It makes me feel like I'm rididng a bike on a sunny day or holding a tea party with my dolls, or, maybe, learning how to dive?! no seriously though, wow.



as you can see, I am way better at liking music than most people. Aren't I amazing? Please love me.

I am so hungry! I always am in the middle of the night, and it's a real pain in the ass. Also, Anu is not here and I'm lonely. I don't know how you people with single rooms do it. It's fine at home, but for some reason I can't handle it at school. Ich brauche meine mitbewohnerin! einstattsgrüppen! I should go to bed now. Big week ahead.

back to school to prove to my father I'm not a fool

santee: how was the drive?

me: good. whitfield recited poetry, we played monopoly, and had a couple martinis. oh, and carne asada fries.

santee: ...on the drive?

me: yeah

santee: tight. which poems did he read?







douche.




in other news:
I'm worried
I'm always in love

meh

Finally got some new earphones today. The quality seems to be pretty good, but more importnatly, it's so nice to hear both halves of any given song again; I had almost forgotten what a harmony is like.

Saw "The Fountain" tonight. My overall reaction was mehhhh. But I dunno, it was alright. Feling kind of the same way about this Thanksgiving weekend. Will reserve judgement though.

movie review: Waiting

The movie is about people who work in a restaraunt. It is full of very clever observations about what it is like to work in a restaraunt and the various kinds of relationships and dynamics that exist in such a setting. It's the kind of movie where you slap your knee and say "It's so true!." I know this because, like most people, I have had the amazing good fortune to have worked in a restaraunt at some point in my life. It was only for a couple of months, but that was enough for me. And basically my overall reaction to the entire experience was something along the lines of "So this is what the real world is like. Thank goodness I don't actually have to live in it." And that has basically been my opinion on the matter ever since-- there are people out there to whom waiting tables is their life. Tips and undercooked steakes and soda spills and rude customers are real problems to them, because that is how they supposrt their families and pay for school and get through the day and that is their life. I thought to myself that theirs were the real problems, and my problems were somehow more frivolous and selfish in comparisson. My papers and finals and beer pong were a product of my sheltered, priveleged existance. Basically I saw myself as in the bubble, while the whole rest of the world was outside it. But as I watched the movie Waiting, it started to occur to me that maybe everyone has their own bubble. Maybe the world is really more like a bunch of bubbles all squished together, and it is rare that anyone peer through their plastic walls into the others. We college students give ourselves a hard time about it, and we should, but what we shouldn't do it assume that we are the only ones guilty of this sin. Because I think that in the end, a civil war, a ten percent tip, and a midterm all amount to about the same. This may or may not be true.

sneaky sneaky

Yesterday I read the 1850s novella version of that riddle where the kid and his dad get in a car accident and the surgeon says I can't operate this is my son and you're like well gosh i dunno maybe it's his stepdad or something and then later you find out that the kid's mom is the surgeon and are accused in front of the whole dinner table of being a sexist because that possibility simply did not occur to you. It was called Benito Cereno and it's by the same guy who wrote Moby Dick. Basically there's this ship where there has been a slave revolt and the black people are now in charge, but they are pretending like the spanish guys are still in charge, because this american captain has boarded the ship. They go through a lot of elaborate stuff to keep him believing this until the moment is right, and it's all quite brilliant, really. The whole time he's on the ship he knows that something is off and the whole thing is pretty much freaking him out, but he can't for the life of him solve the mystery. Most of the time he is either suspecting the spanish captain of being a pirate or telling himself to not be so silly. Never once does it occur to him, never does it so much as cross his mind, that these silly black people could be running the show. And, as the reader, you are for the most part carried along in this tricky tide of racism and prejudice, and it doesn't occur to you till almost the very end, or at least it didn't for me, that oooooooooh the slaaaaaves are controling the white peoplllllleeeeee. And at the end when the american captain has his moment of epiphany and your shamefully recently concieved suspicions are confirmed and the epic battles ensues, you're left there like damn you, guy who also wrote moby dick, damn you, I am a racist.

Or maybe I just don't read enough mysteries?

Don't take this the wrong way, but

You know that there's something wrong with our educational system when one actually has to go out of one's way to do badly in a class. Who are these people, and why are they so lazy?

falalalala, lalalala

thanks to yasha, we have christmas lights! on our balcony! hoorah!

can't wait for thanksgiving and seeing everyone and stuffing and gravy and decorating the house for christmas!

but first, two midterms and a german essay.

Last night I french braided my hair for the first time ever. I was sitting there on the couch, talking to my friends, and I just did it. It looked like shit basically, but I did it. And then I felt really bad because all my life I've been operating under the assumption that I am not capable of french-braiding. As if it were some special gift granted to only a few lucky girls. It's like this:

"Can you french braid?"
"No, but so and so can, ask her"
"My mom always does it for me, I can't do it"
"I can only do it on myself."
"I wish I knew how"
"Can you french braid?"

When really all you have to do is try. And I think that a lot fo things in life are similar. We assume that just because we haven't been doing them our whole lives, we can't begin to do them now. We act as if, at nineteen, we are so set in our ways that it's hopeless to try new things. It's too late to learn to play an instrument, it's too late to change my major, it's too late to make new friends, too late to learn to surf,too late to start excercising, too late to start going to church, too late, too late, too late. But really we're only nineteen, and all we have to do is try.

update

exploring san diego: FAILURE

in'n'out: DELICIOUS

5 episodes of sex and the city: DEPRESSING

sleeping till 3: " "

only seeing two hours of daylight: " "

pizza: [probably will be] DELICIOUS

more sex and the city: [probably will be even more] DEPRESSING

my state of mind this past week: TOTALLY FUCKED UP

I am having one of those days (weeks?) I sometimes have in which I think that everyone I know has a way cooler, or funner, or just generally better, life than I do. Last night three of my roommates went out to various parties. I got off work at 9, watched TV, did minimal homework, and mostly just sat around with yasha mourning over the caliber of guys we come into contact with on a daily basis as opposed to that of Sufjan Stevens. Needless to say we got really depressed about that, and such was the state of things when anu and sarah got home from their respective parties at around 2:30 AM. I suppose this is not the sort of venue to be revealing other's potential secrets, but suffice it to say that the two of them, and especially sarah, had evenings that were much more exciting than, say, german pronoun endings and [half of] greys anatomy. And do you know what Sarah is doing now?! She's ona flight to LONDON. lerijhertgO48IYT48TYsduhrfughufdshgjkfdgwoeisme.

I went on my lunchbreak just now (finally) and do you know what's going on outside the library? A BEER GARDEN. It's 4 PM, I'm listening to death cab for cutie, and outside there are people getting drunk.

But really this is all very silly, because when I think about my life and how I wish it were, scenes of drunken dancing and beer pong are not what come to mind, no, not at all. What I really want to be doing with myself is maybe driving across country or watching a folk duo perform in a small smoky cafe. More specifically, I would like to explore san diego tonight. But my friends are tired form their busy and interesting weeks, and they rather stay in and watch sex and the city. damn! shot down!

Wow, I am pathetic. I predict that this blog will be deleted within the hour.

My job is easy.

I have realized lately that I often sort of sleepwalk my way through life. I wonder how things would be different for me if I could just get to bed at a decent hour? Better? Worse? It doesn't really matter and I will probably never know anyway, because sleeping at night is so freaking harrrrrrd.

Oh, also, I sleepwalk for real. Like, you know, in my sleep. And talk too, a lot. So I suppose you could say I am rarely fully awake or asleep. INteresting.

"Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

I will try, I will try, I will try.

Music is distracting

me from the rest of my life.

your mother said it's very expensive

I got my Songs For Christmas box set thingy in the mail finally. I have already heard the music, so no big surprise there, but I did spend a good hour or so reading through all the stuff that comes with it. It is all very incredible and great. I am in general a bigger fan of Christmas than Sufjan and this Rick Moody character, due to the fact that my family is dissapointingly functional. However, what they say is so true true true. So, for those of you who don't celebrate Christmas (and I have a relatively large number of friends who do not) or only celebrate the santa half, or wonder why I make such a big deal about it in general, what you should do is read those essays. If you care that much. Which you probably don't. But I do, and so thanks Sufjan and friends for this lovely little paradox of magic and misery wrapped up in metalic green paper and tied with a bow!

Also, I was dissapointed to find that some of my favorite x-mas tunes such as "Once in Royal David's City" and "Bring a Torch, Jeanetter, Isabella," are sung not by Sufjan but by Vito Aiuto of "Vito's Ordination Song"!!!! That makes me feel really weird. But hey, Vito, you're cool! I like your voice. I heard also that you are a pastor, and that is cool too. Keep up the good work.

Also, I have replaced my Bob Dylan-Modern Times poster with my new santa sufjan poster. This means a lot more to me than I would care to explain now, but chances are if you're reading this we have already talked about it. Screw Bob Dylan and the sixties and their ideology! Hooray Sufjan!

Get through this life without killing anyone,
and consider yourself golden.




Does anyone feel like making a music video?

Wow, I am having a really bad day.

crisiscrisiscrisis!!!!!!!!!!

early-life crisis!

many crises!

what?

"the point in a play or story when a crucial conflict takes place, determining the outcome of the plot."

yes, I think so.

flame-proof writ

I wasn't messing around about that whole not enough sleep thing.

Just took a four hour nap. From 5:30 PM till 9:30 PM. Worst time ever to take a nap. I feel like shit. Gotta read a lot of stuff now. Don't really care to.

Joanna Newsom makes me really sad about my talents and also myself as a person. Her lyrics are really really good. It's horrible. The worst part about them is that they are sometimes about her own insecurities and shortcomings as an artist, and yet the very lyrics where she expresses these doubts are some of the most beautiful words I have heard in my entire life. The perfect example is as follows:

...And all at once it came to me,
and i wrote and hunched till four thirty
But that vestal light, it burns out with the night
in spite of all the time that we spent on it
on one bedraggled ghost of a sonnet
While outside, the wild boars root
without bending a bough underfoot
O it breaks my heart; I don't know how they do it
And as for my inflammatory writ?
Well, I wrote it and I was not inflamed one bit.
Advice from the master derailed that disaster
he said "Hand that pen over to me, poetaster!"
While across the great plains, keening lovely & awful,
ululate the last Great American Novels
An unlawful lot, left to stutter and freeze, floodlit
But at least they didn't run, to their undying credit.


I tried to only put a small part but I felt the need put the whole second half of the song. Damn you Joanna, damn you! At least I have learned one thing from this: make up more words! It's so fun.

I was a hero early in the morning but I aint no hero at night.

Sometimes I feel like I don't have enough sleep to face the day. Today is one of those days. Sarah made me a CD of "songs to cry to" and I listened to it on the way back from dropping her off and at the airport. I am not good at crying, but it made me feel all melancholy and peaceful and I am trying to motivate myself to go to class by telling myself that today, if nothing else, I will learn something. And that is good.

closing time

Sarah is here and I am glad about that. Maybe the good thing about missing people is the part where you get to run up to them at an airport and give them a huge hug movie-style. No, I have considered it and decided that there is actually no good part about missing people. But if there had to be one, I suppose that would be it.

I am at work and it is a holiday and thus hardly anyone has come in to watch videos (thank goodness, I would have gotten really depressed if they had). Thus I have finished all my homework for the weekend and can now devote myself completely to mexican food, king's cup, philosophical conversations, music, and friendship for the next 60 hours or so.

I kind of want to go to Coachella again this year. Then again, I kind of want to do a lot of things that I can't afford.


p.s. I forgot to mention that on austin city limits the other day, iron and wine played a sing with calexico! That was a nice surprise. Dude, does that fool like EVER tour? Throw us a freakin bone man.

My new list of possible schools, based on academic reputation as well as whether they are in the middle of a really big city:
Kings College, London
Edinburgh
Leeds
Manchester

good schools which are not in the middle of big cities:
York
Durham
Warwick
Royal Holloway, London
Bristol
Birmingham

school in the middle of a big city but not good:
Queen Mary, London



oh dear, I don't know what to do.

Some thoughts on the recent election, which are most definitely not mine, but belong rather to our good friend Henry David Thoreau.

(normally I would have reworded this and pretended like I had thought of it all on my own, but beside the obvious fact that it would have been immoral and also quite pathetic to do so, I really don't have the time and energy for it right now)

"...All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions, and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority. Its obligation, therefore, never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men..."
(from "Resistance to Civil Government," aka "Civil Disobedience")

True, true. But I am willing to bet that even Ghandi himself skimmed Civil Disobedience.

Good News:

I was on time to German this morning! I seriously feel really good about that. And I finished all my homework last night so all I have to do now is take a shower and make myself look pesentable, which is a rarity these days, really, it is. And tomorrow Sarah is coming!! ucsd will be whole again. And hopefully I will go to see either Bunky or just Rafter for only 5 bucks at the che this weekend. I am pretty much really stoked for life.

edit: also, my work schedule got changed, and now I work monday afternoons instead of tuesday mornings. yippieyahoohooray for sleeping in! and being punctual!

reasons why a roadtrip to portland over winter break would be awesome:

1. gas prices are relatively cheap right now.
2. I have connections in both the bay area and oregon
3. I have never been on a roadtrip with my friends
4. I don't think I have ever been to portland
5. I hear it's pretty cool
6. There would be lots of trees along the way, including but not limited to, redwoods
7. we could listen to sooooo much music.

let's do it!

True story. Minus the innevitable grammatical errors, of course.

German Professor: (hands back essay) Amanda ist perfekt!

me: uhhh danke?

her: Wie lange haben sie Deutsch studiert?

me: nur ein Jahre...

her: (actually seems suprised) Wirklich? Kennen Sie eine andere Sprache?

me: nein, nur Englisch.

her: ah, sie sind ein sprachegenius!

me: hehehhh... danke....(awkwarrrrrrd)


Also, die Moral der Geschichte ist:
ICH LIEBE MEINE DEUTSCHE KLASSE SEHHHHHHR VIEL.

soooo much drama and I'm soooo so so so so so so so sososososo over it.

Can the boy tell time?

Oh Lord, no.

Today was a very momentous day for me. I voted for the first tme ever. It was hard. I chickened out and left a lot of things blank, afraid that I would mess things up even more than they are already. I figure the state doesn't need my help on that. Better luck next year.

I also turned in my form to declare my major. I put down writing. So at least one thing I did today was brave.

I'm not one to admit
I'm not one to fight
maybe I was wrong
or maybe I was right
like when I went to school
drinking coffee at night
and I did what I did
now I do what I like

I can't wait till that is true about me.

I totally had the idea to write this all on my own.

This is a blog about how awesome Chris Santee is.

First of all, he's got this blue thermal shirt slash sweaterish thing, and like, wow, he looks so snazzy in it. The bad news is that he won't share the joy by letting me hug it, I mean him, but I guess I shouldn't have said that because this supposed to be about how he's awesome. Ok so also, he actually seems to like driving people around sometimes which is good because I definitely do not. He is very obedient and will even leave his own house so that you can talk behind his back. Let's not even get into his middle name cause wow, it rocks. And sometimes he says really really funny things. I cannot think of any right now but seriouly they are really funny. Also sometimes he is a big huge jerk, and that is awesome too in it's own way, depending on how you look at it.

To be continued.

There's obviously something wrong with him. He's taken off his shoes and one of his socks and... actually, I think he's crying.

It's Monday. I don't know who to vote for tomorrow, I miss my friends, I have 50 pages of Thoreau to read, and I think I'm in love with Margot.

new paragraph.

So after the movie tonight I said something Josh didn't like and so he pulled the classic "Ok fine you can walk home then!" thing. So I imediately veered off in the direction of my home (a good five miles away, at least) as opposed to that of his car. I walked all the way across to the far corner of the parking lot without once looking back, and even made it to the intersection and pushed the crosswalk button. At this point I figured it would be safe to hazard a glance and looked behind me to find that the only people nearby were two shady characters parked in their car and observing me curiously. I had no other choice at this point than to cross the street. So I did, figuring that by the time I reached the other side, they would be waiting there for me or at least on their way. I cross. I wait. Nobody. I am on a street corner next to a freeway in Ontario. I am next to a gas station full of young men playing loud music. It is foggy, it is cold. Nobody is coming for me. So, I decide to walk back a ways and see what my caring friends are up to. I get close enough to spot them. They are standing casually next to the cars, seeming to be carrying on a perfectly normal conversation. I check my phone, and see that I have a missed call and a voicemail from Josh. Oh good, they must be worried about me. I listen to the voicemail. It says something to the effect of, "we are going to denny's meet us there in 15 minutes." Oh, very funny Josh. Very very funny. I am now determined to wait it out. I sneak along a little further and then turn another corner and sit on a low wall, watching, waiting for any sign of concern or worry. None whatsoever. I sit like this for a good five minutes, contantly looking over my shoulder for purse theifs and/or rapists and/or murderers. I take out my keys and hold them in my right hand just in case. I almost wish something horrible would happen to me, just to teach these bastards a lesson. After an eternity I see Santee's car pull away and drive off in the direction that I had first walked. Finally, I thought, they will begin to panic as soon as they realize I am nowhere to be found. Sure enough, a minute later my phone rings. it's Josh. he asks me what I'm doing. I answer, "Oh not much, just waiting to see how long my friends will let me wander in the cold dark night before they begin to worry about me." He laughs. He refuses to feel any remorse whatsoever. He asks me wher I am. I am tired of this, so I tell him. They drive back. I hide behind a tree for a second and that ends up being pretty fun, but basically I just give in and got in the car. Like I said, no remorse. No concern for my wellbeing whatsoever.

The moral of the story is that my friends don't care about me, and that makes me sad.

good times.

Thieving.

I stole Josh's idea. The one where he listens to a song on repeat and then draws a picture to go with it. Only I wrote pictures instead. Not exactly the highest quality stuff, but it's good practice.

oh how the rain
sounds as loud as a lover's words
and now and again
she's afraid when the sun returns

Dear Splenda,

You don't really taste that much like real sugar. All you do is sit there in your snazzy yellow packet judging me. Frankly, I'm getting sick of it. I may not have zero calories, but at least I don't suck!

sincerely,
Mandy

ich schreibe auf deutsch

Today my german teacher asked me if I was a writing major. I said maybe. She said it shows in my essays, even though they are in German and full of grammatical errors. That pretty much made my day. I can't wait till she reads the one I just turned in about going to see Sufjan Stevens.

I write about Sufjan Stevens waaaaaaay too much in this blog. If he is ever bored one day and googles his name and this comes up, I will be severely ashamed of myself. Sufjan, if you are reading this, I'm sorry, I really am.

But it's too late to turn back now, so I supose I may as well share my thoughts on volume 5 of songs for christmas: I don't really know how I feel about the original songs, and this volume has the highest ratio of them. They are good of course, but kind of rough-draft sounding, like the Avalanche of christmas songs. Also, they don't seem to capture the spirit of Christmas as much as, say, "We're Going to the Country" or "Put the Lights on the Tree." Also he is actually pretty explicit in some of them about like, some relationship that seems to have gone wrong around Christmas time? And this makes me sad because I don't like to think of Sufjan having girlfriends. But it doesn't really matter about those songs, because OH MY GOD, the simple piano solos in between each one are the most beautiful and magnificent things I have heard in a long time, and they make me remember childhood scenes and feelings that I haven't remembered or felt for years. As for his version of "Holy Holy Holy"....I honestly have no words. When I heard it yesterday for the first time I could do nothing but literally curl up in a ball under my blanket and smile to myself while picturing children's christmas pageants and mashed potatos. Sufjan, are you still reading? If so, keep in mind that if you ever run out of ideas for original songs, you could probably make a very good living just recording hymns in your beautiful voice for suckers like me to shed a tear or two over.

Coon Hounds

I just realized there is some structural ambiguity on the previous post and that is SO EXCITING. I don't know if I am being sarcastic or not right now. You decide. It's ambiguous!