mind of a monkey

What Chris, Matt, Katie or John go through daily

2005-10-14T02:51:00.000-05:00

If I were an android. With a team of dedicated tinkerers.

Confidential to the real world: no, you've got it all wrong. Don't you remember? I broke up with you.

a little emotional

2005-10-12T00:22:00.000-05:00

This is the dumbest fucking thing ever. Where's the perpetually-up-in-arms MoveOn crowd over this shit? I mean, I want to see Tom DeLay go down as much as the next progressive gal, but that will not stop tax and employee benefit breaks for developers in New Orleans, nor will it magically grant Dems the balls to refuse to pass Harriet Miers. And it certainly doesn't do anything for that forgotten corner we occasionally remember to call the rest of the world. Despite its sterling reputation, I think I'm a little frustrated with the insularity of Berkeley; yeah, we're all registered to vote, and we all study at the Free Speech Movement Café, but we aren't doing shit. (Stop me before I do my I'm-dropping-out-of-school rant.)

On the other side of my day, gin contrived to have an original piece (calling an 8.5x11 pen drawing a "piece" is a little like calling one of my a cappella arrangements a "work," except unlike that example, the art in question really, really doesn't suck) sent to my door from the author of this website(also on the sidebar). The last thing I expected today, or any day. It's simply wonderful. I don't know what else to say.

So...if I'm going to keep doing this, maybe I should make it reasonably engrossing. I'll see what I can do.

snapshots

2005-10-03T16:17:00.000-05:00

Today has been one of those days when I just shouldn't have gotten out of bed at all. Luckily, I realized this rather quickly and have retreated into my cocoon-like apartment to sulk, avoid my homework, and listen to melancholy folk music. I don't know why I'm compelled to write a first post in seven months just now, but let's take what we can get, shall we?

Some thoughts on the first six or so weeks of living in Berkeley:

I. This isn't about Berkeley (ha! fooled you!). A friend of mine from Chicago has lost his mom this past week. He won't read this, because he doesn't know it exists, but much love, hugs, and whiskey go out to him and his family.

II. (A) word to the wise: if your parent ever assures you that it will be foolproof to send $300 or so worth of books to you through US Mail, citing the recent safe arrival of your computer speakers as evidence, tell her one successful shipment does not influence another. Tell her also that the process of filing a claim for your lost books is arduous and replete with bureaucratic road blocks; that there is one claim office in all of Berkeley, and you must stand in line with your half-filled broken-down box there, regardless of which zip code you are in or where your mail actually comes from; that you will find this out only by trial and error, since the post officers who deign to answer the phone will not inform you; that by choosing this method with all good intentions, she is, in effect, consigning you to a bitter existence wandering the streets with an ever-heavier random selection of your earthly goods, and that she will see the specter you have become in her dreams.

III. Whenever I'm really sorry for myself (ahem) or really tired, it always helps to read the bumper stickers of cars I pass as I walk home. I'm pretty sure Berkeley is the only place on the planet in which MoveOn PAC is a legitimate political affiliation, instead of a guilty email pleasure lib dems don't admit to until they've had a few beers. A quick perusal of my block reveals such hits as "Four More Wars!", "Keep The Faith...Kerry On", and "Cook Rice, Not Ice"--often on the same vehicle. Pretty good news.

I'm only poking gentle fun, though; I love it here so far. My boyfriend (who shall hereafter be known as gin) was pleasantly surprised last weekend at the unprecendented number of used bookstores and espresso joints per capita. Thai restaurants are a close second. North Berkeley, where I live, can sometimes feel like Naperville with hills and crazy flora, but if anywhere can prove to me that all families who buy $800,000 starter homes aren't alike, this is it.

IV. Part of my assignment for my History of Ethnomusicology seminar this week has been to watch a home movie of a conference held here at Berkeley, in the Music Dept., in 1977. In honor of the composer, teacher and musicologist Charles Seeger's 90th birthday, a sort of multi-day round table was held, at which lots of the most influential music scholars answered Seeger's impossibly broad questions and listened respectfully as he went off on impossibly far-ranging tangents. (Seeger was probably a genius; he's impressively lucid at 90. Sharp as a tack and cranky.) Just the mustaches and the video quality were fascinating, to say nothing of the statements made. Some of the best quotes I wrote down last night, with brief context, are below. If you're not a musicologist/geek, or really tolerant of me, you won't care.

Seeger opens with admonishments to his assembled colleagues: basically, yesterday's sessions sucked. Not enough attention was paid to one of Seeger's lifelong prime concerns, what he calls the "linguocentric predicament." Quote: "Nothing is more concrete than an abstract concept." [Glares a bit as onscreen listeners visibly giggle. Emphatically:] "It's a speech construct." [Musicologists exchange glances and quiet down.]

John Blacking, who wrote among other things How Musical Is Man?, is awesome. At some point he informs the table that "culture, though necessary for our civilization, is destructive of the self...culture is only a crutch." If I hadn't already read his book and one of his studies of the Venda, those words from that clipped British accent would not have sat well. (Good thing the Empire has been out there imposing themselves on culture! How generous of them...chin up, then, it's for your own good!) A heated discussion of the various connotations of "crutch" ensues. Blacking also points out that the discussion uses "society" and "culture" indiscriminately--to illustrate this, and the difference between dividing up life in academic speech and in experience, he says, "I think that 'culture' was created by anthropologists." Seeger, affronted, buys it hook, line and sinker. It's great.

You'd have to see and hear Seeger to find this interesting--a shaggy, snow-white beard, owlish round glasses, the craggy angular face of an elderly patriarch, with a sharply aquiline nose and anglo-american speech to match. All his life he has sought comprehensive theories for problems which contemporaries have barely acknowledged as issues, or perhaps shied from attacking as simply too huge. He knows he comes off as eccentric, and he doesn't cut anybody any slack. (At some point he turns to the moderator, my professor Bonnie Wade in her first year teaching at Berkeley, and says, "Are you a chairperson, or just a chair?")

Near the end of the second hour of the video (yes, I watched the whole thing; my head hurt from all the tape hiss), Seeger's son Pete challenges him: "You've said music cannot lie. Can music mislead?" Seeger Sr. hotly denies the possibility, and they go back and forth for an embarrassingly long time without ever using the word "context," as if by unspoken rule. From a staunch leftist who, by this time, has written "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" and "If I Had a Hammer," and been blacklisted by HUAC, I'm inclined to cede Pete's position some experiential weight, but Charles Sr. is not. He puts his foot down with "the music has no effect on the use, and the use has no effect on the music." Readers, would you agree?

Anthony Seeger, now a UCLA ethno professor, postulates that culture is a "skateboard" which individuals customize and travel upon. Given the year and the looks from some at the table, I'm not sure everyone knows what a skateboard is. Mantle Hood, the founder of the program at UCLA and a very eminent ethnomusicologist, is asked for his opinion with an unspoken appeal to be a tiebreaker--and he says, "I'm overwhelmed by skateboards, tools and crutches." If only the video had just ended there.

V. Last thing. My friend Molly plays in a Balinese gamelan, and I went to see a performance in SF in which the gamelan accompanied dancers--dancers with bright, elaborate, glittery costumes, masks or heavily painted faces, and unwieldly gilded headgear. I've never had so much fun watching little kids scared out of their wits! During one dance, depicting a warrior before battle, the dancer depends on sudden movements and menacing eyebrows--he reminded me of a pitcher hoping to catch a base-stealer off guard--and patches of toddlers (they seemed to come in packs) all over the lawn would squeal and bunch behind their adults when ever he whirled toward them. Remember when you were so safe that it was the most fun to be scared?

light housekeeping, heavy-handed titles

2005-03-01T21:21:00.000-06:00

I'm sorry, it just had to be done.

In response to a gentle reminder from our haunting rabbinical friend, I've moved around and added a few links on the sidebar. Please note that today the Progressive Principles Project unveils their voted-upon Declaration of Progressive Principles. Even if you haven't contributed to the discussion so far, please take a second to visit the site, read the statement, and post on everything from the Principles themselves to the future of the project to the structure of the current website/debate forum. (It can get very meta and very pissy, but such enthusiasm.) Despite my usual commitment to consensus-led actions, I think the diction of the Declaration is far too vague, and easily available for "reframing" by anyone on the right, however well-meaning, who may feel s/he agrees with the spirit of the assertions (for who doesn't?) but disagrees with the methods the label "progressive" might imply. But you go see what you think.

Americorps has been added to the sidebar, though the website is weak on general content. For those who might not know, my job (at a specifically nameless non-profit) is sponsored by Americorps VISTA.

Otherwise, dear readers, I'm worried.

Many of you already know that I've been accepted to Berkeley and UCLA for graduate study in Ethnomusicology. I've also been wait-listed to Harvard, but assured that the list rarely, if ever, moves. So I spent my mid-tax-season break, this past weekend, visiting Berkeley. The campus, the town, and the weather were so beautiful it hurt. Berkeley's infamous hills blazed green--the bright snappy yellow-green of spring shoots--and I strolled the winding campus paths and downtown sidewalks in a tshirt, beaming at everyone. If I hadn't left my camera in my desk drawer at work, I'd be posting pictures of succulents as tall as my shoulder, my grad student host's cats, and the spectacle of twenty-odd daffy middle-aged ethnomusicologists learning Panamanian dance steps, all with the sunniest backdrop this Chicagoan has seen in months. I was so deflated on the flight home.

Since I had a great weekend and my future seems rather bright, I, of course, have some kind of problem with the situation. It's not becoming a (very) full-time student again, it's not teaching, it's not moving to a new city--it's moving at this moment. I've been complaining for a while now that I feel transient, that I haven't put down roots since I left my college dorm. I want to be a resident of somewhere--to call myself a Chicagoan, and feel justified--and feel a sense of place, with favorite haunts, and comfort, and routine, in addition to the lovely certainty that new discoveries await somewhere in the city.

On the other hand, I could just go hasten my assimilation into the Bay Area, where it would be quite easy to put down roots, since I identify so well with the politics and the interests of most of the population. And why spend another year here, not saving any money, to be with my friends, when many would like to and might well move away? (I will certainly miss you all, but most of you have been insisting that I take this opportunity.) Especially when there's no procedure for deferment, and I would have to take my chances again next fall?

My host from this past weekend is 29 and a third year grad student, studying Afro-Cuban music. She spent a few years in Italy and Spain after college and before she returned to her native San Francisco, knowing, at that point, exactly what she wanted to do. She assured me, "You don't have to be ready just because you applied," but she also said "I think I'm looking forward to thirty, actually...my twenties were pretty rocky." My twenties already feel a little ridiculous, but I don't want to ignore them. And I know what I want to do. I just don't feel quite ready to do it yet.

Will I get used to this idea between now and August? Probably. Will I wake up the day after my birthday and feel that 24 is a few steps from the resignation of middle age, and that I'd better start my damn career already? Perhaps. More likely, being myself, I'll vacillate until I board the plane, consider hijacking my flight in order to turn around, and then--I'll land at SFO, and I'll step into the sun. I'll take the BART all the way to Berkeley, staring at my reflection in the black walls of the tunnel as we fly beneath the Bay. I'll ride the escalator out of the station into the heart of downtown. I'll point myself towards the campus--perhaps more than once until I get it right--and I won't look back.

In honor of a dear friend's birthday, I'm posting this, inspired (though all resemblance to anyone living or dead is purely coincidental) by a stupendous quote from said friend. See if you can tell which it is. Happy birthday again, sweetie.

lookit!

2005-02-11T20:41:00.000-06:00

PSA: Aaron has just published a new blog: ventilatorblues. Also Becky, at Becky and Kona. Go see.

Week included Americorps training, drinking with DNC friends, more Americorps training--and when I say "training," I mean trust-falls-and-icebreakers training, complete with interactive gettoknowyous where you tell 11.5 things about yourself. I'll write more about that experience later. Meanwhile, off to the Mill, to say goodbye to a fabulous coworker who loves jazz guitar.

lines 36, 49, and 65a.

2005-02-02T01:03:00.000-06:00

Okay, I'm not positive that those are the lines for Adjusted Gross Income, Child Tax Credit, and Earned Income Tax Credit, but it sounds relatively authentic (can something be "'relatively' authentic"?). If you need an explanation of what these are, how they can be used, and how they benefit low-income taxpayers--or, as my CEO would annotate on my draft of whatever, "Chicago's hardest working families"--please, by all means, call me at work. I implore you.

I didn't expect to blog today, and certainly not about my job; I already feel as if it's all that I do, and I'm working hard to ensure that it's not all that I can talk about. Longtime friends probably think I've developed an obsessive personality. Throughout the summer, I could reasonably discuss nothing but electoral politics, and now the only thing I can muster any interesting conversation over is a) post-traumatic, 2005 politics and b) Federal tax regulations. Why am I the one doing this, guys? Where are all those poli sci majors? (I don't really mean that. Stay in school.) The point here: I'm struggling for balance. But then, I have been for literally years, so maybe struggling=doing just fine.

I started this post so I could tell you why I love my new job, the job at which I work easily 60 hours a week, the job at which I spend no less than 10 hours nearly every weekday. I started this post because I just went to the Jewel down the street.

Usually I enjoy grocery shopping near midnight by myself; it's contemplative, relaxing, to debate the merits of one brand of orange juice over another while no one else is around. Tonight a young mother, obviously exhausted, was trying to finish her shopping list while marshalling three overstimulated children. London in particular kept wandering away and finding new things to hold mutely up to the shopping cart. He was so good at sidling out of his mother's view that sharp raspy cries of "LUN-dun! I'm gonna slap the shit--London, get over here--get OVER here!" kept me turning corners, jittery, as we followed each other through the cramped store.

We must have started shopping at nearly the same time, because the young mother ended up right behind me in the only open checkout aisle. I couldn't tell who I felt more sorry for: the matronly woman in front of me who was holding up the line while the checkout guy called for a price on her Monistat 7, or the mom behind me, who was dropping f-bombs all over the place while she tried to keep her kids still as we all waited. "This is some bullshit," she commented, not calmly, after a few minutes. "I been to school, all sorts of shit today. London! You were gonna open that, weren't you? And did you pay for that? Did you?" The young mother accented her rebuke with slaps of her rolled-up copy of the Star against something--it couldn't be London, I thought, it sounds much too plastic--never mind that they're all crying--I stared straight ahead. The salt-and-peppered matron in front of me stared back. I think we preferred awkward eye contact to visibly restraining ourselves from watching three teary children being disciplined. The wails escalated, enduring as a siren, as I paid for my groceries and left.

I honestly believe making sure someone gets the entirely of the refund she's entitled to, in a setting where she's encouraged by a crowd of ridiculously earnest people to continue or establish sensible fiscal habits, might help that person pay the rent, fix her car, buy school clothes--not just this month but this year, next year, from now on. I wasn't thinking of that, though, as I piled my groceries into backseat of the car, slumped into the driver's seat, popped on the radio, and lolled my head back against the headrest. I was thinking that the only thing that stood between my life and the young mother's is education. Education promoted through culture; education about my choices. Because really--who doesn't occasionally have sex when she's missed a pill, knowing she's still 98.5% safe, and relying on sheer incredulity to protect her? Who hasn't nearly flunked a class because she felt sure she'd make it up on the last two tests, the last quiz, the extra credit, the final? Who hasn't lost someone she thought unloseable from one too many drunken insults or unreturned calls? We abuse our safety nets until we unravel them. Maybe the right knots stay tied when enough people insist you get your shit together.

I'm tired. I don't think I'm making sense. I'm definitely not making some novel altruistic point. I guess I'm saying I love my job because it's action and education all at once, all the time. And maybe meeting and helping strangers makes up for being lonely the rest of the time I'm awake.

golden slumbers

2005-01-19T23:39:00.000-06:00

Anyone who doesn't immediately hum a few bars of the Beatles' famous B-side medley after reading either the tag above or the title of this post probably hasn't been on a road trip with me. Consider yourself warned.

The week has passed quickly, in a physical haze of snow and cruel bluster, an occupational haze of appointments, deadlines and office politics, and an emotional haze of bemused nostalgia. Today I drove through Hyde Park in my plastic (read: red Neon) rental car, and wondered all over again why the heck I didn't spend my undergraduate there. I immediately recalled wonderful friends and memories from U of I, of course, but then one gets into the scrolling-through-the-cell-phone, calling-just-to-say-hello phase, and everything gets a little maudlin and embarrassing.

Add to this the completed recommendation form I could no longer deny myself the catharsis of reading--"I can't take it! It's been sitting on my mantle for a month and I will never need it! He'll never know if I read it, no one has to know!"--which stressed not only how eminently suited I am for graduate study in ethnomusicology, but how much both parties would benefit from my presence at U of C, and I begin to feel really torn. See, I fully intended to apply to their graduate program in ethno, but then I realized it was silly to spend the application fee when a) I will almost certainly defer anyhow and b) it's my last choice, picked for unrealized nostalgia and location, not the program. So whatever enrollment I defer come March (cross your fingers there will be one to defer!), it wouldn't have been U of C. Thus the recommendation was useless, and therefore totally readable. My recommender's comments absolutely made my day--made my winter--but also make me want to rewind to early December so I can muddle about in my quandary all over again.

That's bemusement #1.

The bemusements of my thoroughly modern romantic experiences ought not to be depicted here in too much detail, because some of the folks I would refer to don't know this blog exists, and even abstracting them seems unethical. Just this, then: I've tried to be as honest with myself as possible, and I've learned that for the first time in a long time--like two years or more--I want to be with someone I'm allowed to fall in love with. I don't have any big requirements for what happens after that; in fact, I seem to have less stringent requirements than the aforementioned folks. But all of us seem to be operating in this post-emotional place where the structure of the relationship and the expectations placed on either party become paramount, and usually, debilitating.

Don't get me wrong--I'm very good at making issues out of non-issues, and rationalizing emotions out of and problems into existence. Pro. Old hat. Really. But for some reason, in spite of all the radical changes and the ridiculous pace of the past few months, I finally feel resilient enough for an honest, full-time, working relationship again. I'm totally open to questions of structure so long as I feel secure. It's part of the challenges inherent in the way two strong, awake people interact, and I feel like a challenge.

I don't know where this came from, and some days I wish it wasn't there. But that's where I'm at. And I suppose, like everything else, this is ultimately about getting older and learning to embrace that process, too--which is endlessly bemusing, all by itself.

You are here.

2005-01-10T01:07:00.000-06:00

I might not be. Who can say.

As a way of recapping the months I've spent not blogging (not that I explicitly blog about my personal life, as a rule), I'm going to reprint here my 'personal statement' from my graduate applications. Please, comment. I welcome your opinions, because I still don't know if I could have handled the same concepts much better, stylistically speaking. Is it hopelessly sentimental? Does it come off as naive and therefore intrinsically insincere? If you're out there--and according to a recent sidewalk conversation, you are (thanks, guys!)--then let me know what you think.

There is so much to write about, and nothing to write about. I can hardly marshal my thoughts into grammatical form.

We'll see how this round of blogging goes. Thank you for sticking with me.

------------

I grew up in a small town in Illinois, close enough to Chicago to be a "western suburb," but far enough for an adolescent to feel remote and isolated. After graduating in the top 10% of my high school class, I spent five years switching majors and traveling with performance ensembles at U of I. Now, I have two Bachelors' degrees--one in Music History, and one in
Rhetoric, or creative writing--and I live and work in Chicago. I include this in order to show exactly how lucky I am, in so many ways. The process of realizing this continues, but today, at nearly 24 years old, I can accept that my boring, homogeneous hometown was a stable place with a relatively strong public school system; that my undergraduate university, while my last choice for college, was a supportive environment filled with teachers who loved to teach and plenty of clearly articulated options for success; and that after receiving two degrees with no immediate practical application, it's a gift to be able to live where I choose, instead of with my parents.
I'm also thankful to have learned, conclusively and firsthand, that no one ought to be expected to survive, much less provide for others, on $5.15 per hour. For the first few months of my life in Chicago, I spent most of my time volunteering as the Illinois state captain for DrivingVotes.org, an organization which mobilized volunteers to register Democratic and underrepresented voters in swing states in preparation for the Presidential election. I made very little at my paid job, and was able to continue volunteering 20-40 hours per week because I lived with a few friends in a very inexpensive apartment. We weren't able to do much for fun, and most of our possessions were scavenged from neighbors and neighborhood dumpsters--but we enjoyed the time nonetheless, because each of us were in transition and knew we had opportunities to live comfortably in the future. Most of the families in my historically Latino community envisioned no such possibilities, and sometimes I felt as if I should strive more conventionally to live up to my white, college-educated potential and stop taking up affordable housing space in Logan Square.
I live a world away now, in a neighborhood only a mile to the east of my first apartment. Post-election and election-induced despondency, my life is once again full of privilege: I live with my brother, with whom I'm lucky to have a close relationship, and my Republican parents and I are slowly reconciling after many bitter arguments based as much on my worldview as on my immediate choices. I'm still an active member of DrivingVotes.org, and I am especially thankful to have met a nationwide network of passionate progressives who will continue to work for change and value my contributions to that work.
Because of all this, I don't feel comfortable concentrating this statement on my financial need, although it certainly exists. Each of the major volunteer opportunities in my life--from learning the operations of a Minnesota food bank to refurbishing buildings on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation to talking with and registering low-income people from Missouri, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Florida--has taught me again how rich I am in the richest country in
the world.
They have also convinced me that Ethnomusicology has valuable applications in the public sector. I hope the research I complete can provide new avenues of communication and interaction for the communities studied, in an intercultural sense, by expanding the field's wealth of knowledge and by adding context to the communities' musical practices. I want to extend an ethnomusicologist's belief in the equality of all cultural and musical values to the cultures and musics that we study by my presence within those cultures. While this transmission might not be overt, I believe that a more thorough and universal understanding of the world's musics, first researched by ethnomusicologists and later expressed to the non-academic public, will eventually contribute to greater understanding and acceptance of non-Western and developing cultures by the society of the developed world. I believe striving for this increased understanding is both a privilege of successful academic research and an obligation.
These experiences, as well as my continuing urban education, make me more committed to graduate study than ever. The more experience I gain, the more I accept that my place is in an academic setting--not because I feel safer or more successful there, but because it is the place I am best suited to do good in the world.

the El word

2004-08-15T03:11:00.000-05:00

After two months or so, I'm still starry-eyed and euphemistic about Chicago. True, I haven't spent that much time exploring the city--I've spent most of it fundraising for the DNC in the suburbs, or getting drunk with DNC friends in a few specific places--but I love what I've come to know, and what I know I'll remember about this summer. I love the green line train to Clinton wobbling as it trundles over the river. I love summer lightning reflected in the mirror-faceted buildings late at night in the Loop. I love my anonymity and the endless variations on the human theme it allows me to observe--no, to stare at, bewitched; to absorb.

I love two- and three-flats, especially ones with names carved in stone lintels. (Especially names with a nineteenth-century period at the end for no good reason.) I love the concrete roses, eye-level, at the top floor of that building next to the Damen blue line stop. I love bricked-up windows whose outline remains, street corners maximized by triangular floor plans, the odd house on a monolithic block with vegetables planted in its rare front yard. The bakery up the street from my apartment where everything is thirty cents, the hammock in my back yard, the sinuous concrete bench, successively painted, on the beach in Rogers Park--it's all beautiful. My life is crazy, but every time I walk down the street and get on the El, I'm smitten all over again.

I'm happy, but it's not from complacency that I've stopped posting for so long. My last day--at least for awhile--as a canvasser for the DNC was Friday, and now that I've rearranged my life in order to spend more time on Driving Votes, I'm excited to blog again and record some of the impressions flooding my senses each day. Nothing like being in a new place to wake you from a creative stupor and spur you to challenge your own capabilities.

In the meantime, though, in case any of you find this--I miss my colleagues already. You've taught me that young, naïve liberal idealists can indeed make a difference, simply by going out and doing it, every single day, rain or shine (literally). I can't thank each of you enough for renewing my sense of purpose and my faith in us to fulfill that purpose. That's why I'm doing even more with Driving Votes--there are people so revved up about regaining control of the democratic process that they are willing to do what we talk about every day without even our nominal paychecks. I'm honored to help them live up to that potential, and to excite people, especially other young people, about activism and its rewards once again.

I could continue to wax rhapsodic, but it's 4 am, I have a lot to get done today, and I'm going to enjoy doing it.

Love to you all.

*

2004-06-29T01:47:00.000-05:00

I feel I should apologize for using "unmoored" in two consecutive posts. Then again, they're nearly a month apart. What does this tell me?

I think I need to evaluate where the floating sensation stems from other than a new-temporary residence, new-temporary job, fallout from graduation, and recalibration of most relationships. (yes, other.) Is the floating sensation permanent, so to speak? Do I observe it as a manifestation of external forces, or do I recreate it constantly with certain beliefs, or perhaps non-beliefs? Non- is not the same as lack; some people might think it worse; but what do y'all think? Does one need a moral compass to feel grounded? Does my accepting, relativist attitude toward other people's decisions mean less solid footing for my own?

This has been awfully indistinct, I apologize. I am so sleepy.

fuzzy

2004-06-27T23:45:00.000-05:00

It just floors me that, 21 days after my last post, unknown folks still manage to find, read and comment upon my blog. Thank you all. I probably wouldn't be posting right now if I wasn't so surprised and impressed.

What, though, will I say?

It's not from lack of incident that I haven't continued to publish--it's lack of insight. Life swirls about me, and while I'm ecstatic to be at a center of me-related events (aren't we all?), they're all quite new and occasionally foreboding.

Well, I take that back. Not all--quite--new: patterns I recognize have definitely begun to unfold in my personal life. I'm not sure how to respond to them yet, but I know I can't react as I have in the past; I'm not prepared for that kind of disaster, and I'm no longer that person anyhow. Sorry to be so maddeningly vague, I know y'all come here for the juicy details, but one has to protect the parties involved. Suffice it to say that I'm reminding myself of sad and conflicting observations from the past couple years, like that sometimes we find it easier not to know what we want, and that sometimes we are verbally honest and emotionally disingenuous all at once.

Yeah, I broaden those statements intentionally, because I can't excuse myself from them anymore than I can excuse him. Except somehow I excuse him wholeheartedly. I could spend a post or two contemplating the dangers of the situation, (live-)journal-style, but I already know that if anyone's tying me to the proverbial rail, it's me.

*edit*

Alright. This post wasn't intended to be entirely about one situation (even though it must read as if it's about barely anything), but then I was interrupted by a phone call, and of course it left me somewhat unmoored, because I have a very bad habit of analyzing where there is nothing to be found, by accident or design. Blogging about the circles, the indecision, the self-admonishment is even more indulgent.

What I really want to ask all you readers, random and otherwise, is this: does life ever get more distinct, again? Do situations and paths ever crystallize again, or do they inspire the response of my friend D to questions about an upcoming life decision: "A bit of all three, and a bit of the opposite of each"? David calls children who graduate from college and return to the nest "incompletely launched." Whether he originated the phrase or not, I love it; I keep picturing downy baby birds, windmilling feverishly at the edge all while fiercely gripping the twigs at their feet. I've jumped, and fortunately, haven't yet hit the ground and disconsolately hobbled away form the scene. Hence: life is fuzzy. Maybe right now, maybe always.

Bleh.

2004-06-01T03:23:00.000-05:00

it's definitely over with M.

Insert Pink Floyd reference here.

I really wish I could be upset--he's absolutely great, and I care for him very much, but neither of us had the emotional investment required. I'm most upset that I feel fooled, somehow. We were both convinced we had such potential. At least this isn't the last landmark breakup, where the depth of attachment coupled with our total inability to cope left us deeply divided, yet connected, and in a sort of lurking pain that occasionally flared up into lung-searing displays of inevitability. Clearly I should stop right there.

As I've said to more than one wonderfully supportive, listening friend the past couple days, this represents the last part of my life at school falling away. I don't know where to go now; but I should consider myself incredibly lucky even to have the luxury of indecision. Perhaps when the sun comes up again.

For now, maybe I should pause and savor the moment of loss and unmoored-ness, looking for what it'll teach me. Or maybe I should assume that's carefully disguised self-indulgence talking and go straight to bed. (Then again, if I truly pruned my self-indulgences, I wouldn't blog, would I?)

I do believe there is much to look forward to in adulthood, and that, as long as I try, I'll never have to look back and say anything was the "greatest" part of my life. I'm not going to freeze here. I am going to challenge myself. I am going to love my life--once I feel like I'm living it again.

I am scared.

everyone has a reason

2004-05-20T21:52:00.000-05:00

to want Bush out of office in November. I have a wonderful opportunity for each of you. Please visit Driving Votes, the website of a national organization dedicated to mobilizing citizens to road trip to swing states and register voters. It's a marvelously simple and attractive proposition: take a great all-American road trip with friends, even with a caravan of like-minded people, tap into the huge numbers of dissatisfied potential voters, and have a great time doing it.

DeclareYourself.com notes that "According to the Federal Election Commission, only 36 percent of eligible young people voted in the 2000 Presidential Election." Literally millions of Americans are disgruntled, disappointed--and feeling defeated about the system. If we can inspire just a fraction of them to vote their convictions instead of simply complain, Kerry's close race will become a landslide.

I've just become the state captain for Illinois. It's terribly exciting and terribly scary--I've never organized on this scale before, and Illinois is quite important, since it's within a day's drive of seven swing states. Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Tennessee...even Missouri is a swing state. Illinois can be a hub for this movement, but first, we need to get the word out.

I need creative, dedicated people--especially in the Chicago area--who want to win this election. You have a personal reason to oust Bush. You have skills. Can you reach newspapers, excite the hipster crowd, create a gorgeous flyer? I need you!

Visit the site. Pick a state and a date--and embark on an election adventure!

the hormones are eating my brain

2004-05-13T23:35:00.000-05:00

and nostalgia is corrupting my innards. Well, that might be the caffeine, actually, but right now even the coffee tastes like the Last Fucking Supper. I am so angry with myself for caring. Where's my copy of Being and Nothingness?

2004-05-11T03:41:00.000-05:00

What there is to say

I finished a paper I've been working on since mid-March around 7 yesterday evening, and titled it the same as above. Right now I'm not sure what to write about it here; I just know I have to, eventually.

After being awake for 21 hours--and experiencing breakfast at Steak n Shake (M, what were you thinking?)--I took a short nap, woke up around noon yesterday, took a stumbling, shambling walk through the verdant fecundity of residential Urbana to clear my head, polished said paper, and wrote another for the same course. Around 7:30 pm I triumphantly showered and fell into bed. Woke up at precisely 1 am and made pancakes.

It's raining here. The pavement beyond my front porch swing glistens in the hovering streetlight, laquered with soft May drops. I stand at the bay window, wrapping my fuzzy robe around myself, and watch the tiny impacts fade, second by second. Over the soothing whirr of the electric fan my brain layers lyrics from Les Nubians' "Amour á mort": "On cherche l'amour sans trève/ C'est qu'sans amour, on crève..."

Do we kill always for love of an idea? Is there something endemically, fundamentally wrong with the Western mode when service to an idea is our highest goal, yet individuals cannot judge which ideas are worth the sacrifice?

By the time I finish this post, international news outlets may have today's new articles up. Time for another round of reading. I'm rapidly descending into junkiehood during my last week in the undergraduate bubble. And for those of you wondering, check out the International Committee of the Red Cross' link to the text of the Geneva Conventions.

what we talk about when we talk about procrastination

2004-05-10T02:31:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the blog redesign, courtesy of Blogger, who have provided a new set of templates alongside their general overhaul. I can't quite figure out why some links on the sidebars are blue and some aren't, but other than that, I may have conquered the very basics of html. Comments will return as soon as I do a bit more tinkering.

Thanks for sticking.

2004-05-08T20:00:00.000-05:00

Yay links! This is so fun, I'm going to do it all the time. How about this?

2004-05-06T03:53:00.000-05:00

Alright, I've finally had the crucial points explained to me...let's see if this works. (Hint: it's the new link on the left.)

2004-05-04T03:47:00.000-05:00

If I had figured out yet how to link with text inside this post, I'd point you to the letter to Bush signed by around 50 former US diplomats as reprinted at the BBC website. But I guess I just did, in my own prevaricating way.

2004-05-03T19:30:00.000-05:00

Yay comments! I have quite a bit to respond to and to add. I think I need to be careful about what parts of what posts are addressed to where. (I make so much sense.) In the meantime:

MonkeyKendra: W. off topic again--this is the weirdest thing:
I have a blister on the roof of my mouth.
just behind the dental ridge. it's so strange.
but of course I'm fascinated and I keep poking it with my tongue.

W: Well, soon you'll get used to it
and poking it won't seem so interesting anymore.
So you'll poke it halfheartedly
maybe twice a week
but it won't be as meaningful as your previous pokings
until, like all bubbles, it bursts and you die alone.

IM poetry...the expression of a generation.

2004-05-03T01:30:00.000-05:00

First conversation with M in a few days; first lengthy conversation with M in at least a week; first conversation where we covered more than what might have happened to us in the intervening days in who knows how long. (Probably not as long as I think.) Or, at least, the first conversation including such where I didn't feel like I was dragging him along...the entire time. Progress, if I'm willing to apply that concept.

I don't want to complain here about how difficult it is to engage him in enjoyable intellectual dialogue--something other than me blabbing on, or feeling like I'm doing so, and him throwing in the occasional "yeah" and "really?" while I make some conclusion. I don't want to complain here about how thoroughly strange and geeky (in a bad sense) I feel when I find certain questions or explorations interesting and he, and most people for that matter, would rather discuss Adult Swim. (I love Adult Swim. But we don't deal with its social ramifications or anything.) I really want to ask: do you routinely find that conversations with your significant other, especially when s/he's far away, leave you wondering whether anyone will ever really understand and feel understood by anyone else? And is this only the emptiness of saying goodbye to that person for the immediate future, or is it an illustration of our more fundamental inability to connect, to break from our isolation?

We all know people, especially people who profess to know each other well, don't "run out of things to talk about." You just get lazy about thinking of new ones, or allowing the conversation to take unexpected or unfamiliar turns. Perhaps there are certain topics you avoid through mutual agreement, because you always disagree. Regardless, there will always be something else to think critically about. But I just can't find people who find critical thinking--an aggressive, aware, exploratory approach to any given topic--entertaining. Sure they bring these skills to certain types of information. But no one I spend a lot of time with uses it as a broad-based conceptual tool. And sadly enough, based on my experiences here and elsewhere, I suspect even those people I hold up as models of sharp observational thinking--who are enviably great conversationalists--probably disintegrate into undifferentiated hum's and haw's when on the phone with the one person they feel comfortable being boring around.

I don't know about you, but I think that's bullshit. Aren't we supposed to be at our best with our loved ones? Aren't they supposed to make us feel the most at home and the happiest, and so allow us the most space to be the best of ourselves? And doesn't "the best of ourselves" include our brightest thoughts and our most directed energies--at least if we only get two-four hours a week of interaction? I want that from M, and I want to foster that for him. I went on a long rant today on the phone about unconditional attachment--okay, I used the word "love"--to point out that he's not an asshole for not noticing my dissatisfaction with our conversations; he's simply not used to being held to this standard. I might be contradicting myself to say that I want more from him while trying (for my own sake) to love him unconditionally, but I don't think so. I tried to make it clear that he has space to relax and be "off" around me; I won't love him less if he can't think of anything to say; but that I save up my energy and very limited time in order to be "on" around him. That's what I want out of myself. And I'd prefer that from him too, but--of course--only if I know he believes in it. If he's doing it to make me happy, he's not really doing it at all.

I think I got all that out. I fucking hope so.

Is this a classically emotion-driven, "feminine" perspective? Have any of my male readers (I know you're all male) laughed out loud or just shaken their heads in bemusement? Am I missing a major hypocrisy or two in my own thoughts? I'd love to know.

Really.

2004-04-30T02:10:00.000-05:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3672117.stm

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=516637

I wonder if I can find a listing of required subjects taught during training of military personnel. Think the Geneva Convention might be one of them?

Also, http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0404290258apr29,1,605881.story

This seems to be the only article about this I could find on the site, although I didn't look terribly thoroughly. It lacks the same details as the other two, though, suggesting it's more of a follow-up. Perhaps I missed news of this back in January?

2004-04-19T10:01:00.000-05:00

I sit at a coffeeshop a few blocks south of my apartment often. Sometimes it feels as if I can't get work done anywhere else, including in my bedroom--so I pack my trusty iBook and head out. I'm here this morning, trying to disentangle my thoughts on DeLillo's White Noise, its representation of the 1980s as a threshold of media saturation and perceptive instability, and representation in general (don't laugh, I know it's fundamentally hopeless on our current discursive terms, that's why cultural studies will sustain themselves indefinitely--not that they don't merit sustaining, just that they have their own survival in view). Something about the unbalanced tables, aged mosaic floors, student art on the walls, and my budget lattes--Intelligensia coffee with spoonfuls of cream and honey--soothes me, makes me feel free to people watch in the interactive we're-not-looking-at-each-other-ha-ha way the carefully crunchy people around here do. I like to believe we all think of each other as part of the scenery and laugh at ourselves when we attempt to be more than that.

The point, though, of describing "my" coffeeshop is to set the scene. My good friend G, who's here more often than I am, plunked herself down at my table and told me that a mutual friend had a severe episode Saturday night. Evidently she decided to commit suicide, but due to medication--anti-psychotic medication--she was in such an acute and compulsively detailed frame of mind that she changed her mind in the midst of her quite extended preparations. (Thank you, unknown principle we call divine.) I'm hearing all this second-hand, but I can see her, with her cropped black hair, her naked eyes and bright bee-stung mouth, sitting in her tiny cluttered room at the top of rickety stairs, looking around at the possessions she'd covered with towels, the mirror turned to the wall, the posters rolled up in the corner, wondering at herself. Yes, she'd rather be dead than permanently crazy--but how could someone who had just prepared so well for death be insane?

So she took more anti-psychotics, washed 'em down with some vodka, and called a suicide hotline. When the ambulance came she was very much alive and very, very high. Now she's in the mental ward at a local hospital. I feel helpless and angry--my friend G is barely keeping it together, they're so close--and the worst of it is that we don't know when they'll let her go home. She's relinquished control, at least for the time being.

This reality disturbs me so much I almost forget to be pissed. I don't know this girl that well, but as someone who agrees with her that recklessness and an impulsive, improvisational approach are necessary to a lived reconciliation with existentialism and the vagaries of unmediated representation--as someone who also wants to think with my heart and feel with my head--I'm scared for not only her, but all of us, when some folks with med degrees can tell a very intelligent, stressed-out girl that she needs to stop thinking and start drugging herself. Her medication was way too heavy-handed, but will that be seen as the reasonable cause and culprit of her behavior? Or will she be straitjacketed with another pill? I don't know.

I guess I can't draw any conclusions or come to a restful temporary perspective until I visit her this evening. In the meantime, Davy (er, I mean David) called me just now to inform me that he ranted at some gay pride activists on the Quad. Don't think I say that disapprovingly--regardless of whether I agree with their action, or whether I agree with Davy disagreeing, I'm just proud of him for choosing to participate politically. It sounds like they had a productive discussion and everyone left happy. Makes me feel much better that I can end this post this way. (So thanks, sweetie.)

Is anyone still reading? I'd love comments if you have some, just so I know you're there. This ties into my ongoing quandary over whether I actually like blogging or not--but that's another post. Thanks for reading this far.

2004-04-16T00:42:00.000-05:00

Thanks for checking, but I'd prefer you read this.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/04/20040413-20.html

2004-04-14T20:01:00.000-05:00

Wah. Lookee what I just found. (To your left.)

Heartless Bitches International seems to have been around for awhile. I've just rifled through a few pages, but I'm well and truly gratified. And while the term "clue-by-four" makes me want to poke the author's eye out with some kind of kitchen implement (so she can mention the irony when she recovers), I noted their endorsement of the words "satire," "parody," yes, "irony," and above all, the dictionary with a savage satisfaction.

Hmm. Reactionist K might need a nap.

2004-04-14T19:25:00.000-05:00

I won't be posting for real until I finish this damn story...and get through the rest of this week to Tuesday, which includes another test, a poem, a short(er) story, and a paper, not to mention conference lectures I'd like to attend and working Sat. and Sun. Think happy for me, kids.

Meme:

Pick up the nearest book.
Open it to page 23.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

"The response of the world energy economy to high oil prices was to reduce energy consumption, use energy more efficiently, and develop alternative energy resources."

It was? In what fanciful long ago was this? Oh, I forget; it's all relative. That was from Energy: Its Use and the Environment, a textbook for my gen ed on the same, talking about what the US refers to as the oil shortage of the late seventies.

Bleh. Check out Ginandtacos's latest posts for a wittier, wiser commentary on the connections I immediately want to make.

Peace.

2004-04-09T00:39:00.000-05:00

I dreamt that my English teacher held a dialogue during class in which he passed out a photocopy of a fortune-telling game that junior high girls play, telling us that his daughter created it for him so he could decide which one of us to hit on. We dutifully filled it out. I wish I could remember how it worked in the dream and reproduce it; I think there were headings titled with major personal aspects, and adjectives to circle under those. What were they? "Pseudo-intellectual"? "Sex Kitten"? "Type A Masochist"?

I woke up highly amused--literally chuckling to myself at 8:30 am--and also a little guilty. He's a very dedicated instructor who does have a daughter (I know because class was canceled Wed. due to her illness), and also a wife, presumably. I felt bad that I dreamt about him being lecherous. Then again, why can't teachers have sex lives, too? Really, I hate when real life translates into dreams you'd never even wish to create in your waking hours...I'm just not used to teachers who strive to make eye contact with their students in every lecture. I get just the tiniest bit weirded out when he stares unblinkingly at me as I speak. But yes, I say as that "don't be ridiculous" look creeps over your readerly face, he does that to everyone. And yes, we're reading White Noise, and talking at the same time in completely serious tones about "DeLillo Studies." (Like ya do.) So ultimately everything is surreal.

This morning in poetry class we workshopped a piece by one of my favorite poets of the group. She writes character-driven narratives in first person, mostly, and this latest was about a girl who woke disturbed from a dream-orgy involving trusted childhood cartoon characters...and Donald Trump. Excellent. I giggled like a fifteen year old. Ah, morning coffee. Plus, I was happy to know someone else superimposed the conventions of desire on supposedly asexual players in her life's sitcom without knowing why.

What conclusions ought one to draw about dream life, or how dreams function for goofy poets already too enamored with their own inner dialogues? Probably that said poets need to stop fiddling with the snooze button.

(Was this a "real" post? Meh. You be the judge.)

2004-04-08T03:25:00.000-05:00

The new tagline is taken from a paper on creative thinking patterns by some CS person. It's neato, but I doubt I'd be allowed to reproduce any other part of it here. Just wanted to give credit somewhere other than where it's definitely not due.

There will be a real post soon, I promise. Check back. :-)

2004-04-05T00:12:00.000-05:00

Sunday night. Felt as if I should write something. Funny how, although I know no one is drooling over the prospect of my next post, I have this sense of responsibility. It's pleasant, though.

It's also because I'm partially blogging for David's research project. :-)

I feel much more on top of things this week than last. Oh hell yeah, there's a shitload to do; there always is. The only thing I'm worried about is my short story, perhaps simply because all my neuroses pour out into my fiction lately--which is not to say that I write about neuroses, but that my writing becomes victim to them. There are so many in mind (plots, not neuroses) that it's difficult to settle down and chase one long enough to know it's the one I'm telling this time around. I have vaguely formed characters in mind that I haven't the time to get to know. And I like my prof too much to turn in crap. He's a crotchety old Jewish guy from Brooklyn who muddled through his undergraduate career on a frathouse bender somewhere in Florida, spends most of classtime calling his students by disparaging nicknames and rehashing last night's basketball games on the chalkboard, makes gleefully inappropriate comments about Viagra, and has a heart of absolute gold. He's a big nougat-y teddy bear on the inside. Every once in awhile he teaches us something, and it's marvelous to behold.

Edit: I respect my prof too much to turn in crap. But we'll see what the fuck I manage to turn in.

Um, anyhow. Week of pretending-I-still-feel-like-a-student begins. Here we go, folks: it's officially homestretch time.

There are Important concepts to muddle through from the weekend, but they may require more subconscious calculations. (Read: sleep.)

2004-04-02T01:35:00.000-06:00

My friend E has just broken up with her boyfriend, or rather, they've broken up with each other, as we claim to do with these things once we're a certain age. I stood in her living room as she cried today, and we both knew there was nothing to do about it. She'll dwell, and she'll revive, and she'll collapse again; she'll watch the ramifications unfold for twice as long as the relationship lasted; she'll be okay. Classically twenty-something realization.

It's been a week of making unnecessarily cosmic connections (see fortune cookie episode), but I thought of myself a year or so ago, and how just last night I read through old journal entries from 2001 seeking short story fodder. In both instances I was upset over B; fundamentally, I was unmoored by how completely altered I felt by his presence in my life--how helpless I felt facing the truth of my devotion. Past experiences had taught me that "love" could be maintained and repressed in oneself through simple deception; tell yourself something long enough, and it'll become as true as anything gets. For the first time, I felt operated upon, seized by something immovable--for real, not just because I was fifteen, and it was the historical-romance thing to feel. And as much as I loved him, I never really liked it. Was I simply in love with the idea of losing control and wallowing in my torment? Are all theories equally useless? I still don't know.

Perhaps I felt most bonded to B through our equally underdeveloped ways of looking at the world. We have a hard time really accepting cynicism as a personal worldview. (We've both gotten a lot better at that in the past year or so.) I felt he replicated something I don't really understand about myself--that while most people, regardless of how they feel about the present, seek to prepare for and take control of their futures, I'm growing up by default. M, for example, is terribly excited and yet calm. I admire that so much. It's fascinating--his moments of uncertainty are all the more galvanizing. Yes, he needs supporting, everybody does, but that sense of purpose is intrinsically...glorious.

I haven't changed that much. I don't have many new insights. I'm still inexplicably wary and melodramatic. I still hate to sit myself down and have a talk. I spend a lot of time interfacing with the various narratives in my head--the writer, the little girl, the siren--and much less with the voice behind all of them, the one who makes the gently sardonic comments that save the day. In fact, it occurs to me that I don't think of myself as a unity. In a society with such stress on organization, specialization, and comparmentalization, I'm not sure I could if I tried. Isn't everybody trapped in their own private dialectic?

That's not rhetorical. Say yes.

2004-04-01T01:18:00.000-06:00

I've made several tiny changes in succession in the past couple days, and I should probably introduce a few.

First, the color scheme is almost under control--thanks, jt, for the whole revelation of color codes. (Yes, I know more than one person has attempted to explain the hex system to me since Sunday...but no one else went, "Oh, go here.")

Second, go see A Thought, etc. and Gin and Tacos for all your thought- and gin-and-taco-related needs.

Third, the "Jungle Kingdom" header is designed for those blogs that I like, but whose authors I don't personally know...it'll expand soon as I get less lazy and start collecting and including URLs.

Fourth, a poll: would anyone read poetry/other writing if I made a place for it onsite? I need votes, my adoring public!

(Thank you, and good night.)

2004-03-31T20:20:00.000-06:00

Strange day. Woke up this morning already knocked out by the one-two punch of my sloshy sinuses and dry, rattling cough. Took some Benadryl, and fought to stay awake through my five classes. I drank caffeine, took a quick hit of sugar, but by 4 pm I felt like a hungover death goddess on Vicodin --everything was kind of glazy, tilted. I floated. Stopped in to choir and left before it began. I think it's only the second time I've missed this year.

Had a couple important things I wanted to bring up here, so that my devoted two-person readership could discuss them. But I keep looking around and remembering with a dull-edged surprise where I am and why.

2004-03-29T22:21:00.000-06:00

Had a strangely memorable dream in which many people appeared, but especially B, a couple days ago. Had dinner with B this evening, Chinese take-out. Had the ubiquitous fortune cookie on the way home. Had a laugh out loud in the street when I read my fortune--"Do not mistake temptation for opportunity."

I think that's a little heavy-handed, don't you? Silly.

2004-03-29T11:50:00.000-06:00

Lesson #1: do not post at three in the morning. In fact, don't think at three in the morning. Three in the morning is bad.

2004-03-29T02:48:00.000-06:00

It really bothers me that I feel that I care more about our conversations than he does. I'm the one who hates getting off the phone; he's the one who's already focused on what he's doing next before he hangs up. Or, at least, I get that impression--perhaps I'm making it up. But I don't know how to express this to him without being insulting. Overall, he's dealing with the separation, and the realization that it will be prolonged, much better than I am. I get scared that he deals better because it matters less. I need him to tell me why he reacts the way he does as opposed to the way I do. And I need it to contain a response to the unspoken question: "Am I more attached?"

No, let's be even more blunt. Am I more in love? Can you even be "more" or "less" in love with someone? I'm not even supposed to believe in this crap. Goddamn, I'm neurotic.

And all this is running around inside my head already. Just when I thought I'd learned my lesson.

Poor M. You don't deserve this from me.

uh...does anyone know HTML?

2004-03-28T00:33:00.000-06:00

I apologize for the clearly unfinished (read: puky) color scheme and templating of the site at present. Once I do a bit more sleuthing--a bit more successfully--it'll perk right up.

2004-03-27T23:29:00.000-06:00

Hi, and welcome to my new blog.

mind of a monkey has been simmering for awhile, but incarnates now because of my wonderful friend David, who is using my experience blathering on to a captive audience for a research project. I am, however, quite excited of my own accord to get started. I imagine this space as a forum for my occasionally witty but always overzealous analysis of, well, everything--and hopefully for yours, too.

So check back. :-)