Lucille Ball's secret, as told to me by a centipede.

It smelled today on campus like hot mud. That smell of mud that has been allowed to sit too long without nature's equivalent of refrigeration. That smell always reminds me of bees for some reason. Actually, not "some" reason, really two reasons.

Reason one is that when I was a sloppy barefooted youngster running amok (a-mud?) in my parent's orchard after a bout of irrigation, it always seemed that there were bees hovering near these particularly smelly, clear and shallow puddles. My solution to this was of course to stomp with great deliberation in the cool, clean mud in order to create a sole of mud on my foot to deter the bees from getting any ideas about stinging my under-foot. Hence hot mud smell = bees.

The second reason is a lot less down-homey. I recollect reading somewhere in my literary travels through the midwest that the solution to a painful bee sting is to slather it in clay. And since I got a flat B in geology way back in freshman year, clay is mud to me.

My day was relatively uneventful and glum, so I guess I will talk about what happened to me at school today. I suppose that I should have mentioned when undertaking my great blog revolution that I am absolutely shit at transitions, and so am likely to bellow on about school more than usual as good old card-board-hat-day approaches.

Today in my sociology class we were supposed to be talking about doing queer readings of straight texts, which mostly boils to reasoning out exactly why people were sure that Xena wanted to get with her sidekick, that chick who fought with a staff [non-phallic-ly]. What we actually did amounted to watching a centipede chase the professor around the room at a very slow clip. This devious centipede was prowling about the front space of the room, causing the professor to often stop her rant on why Lucy was in love with Ethel in order to shift slightly and place the podium between herself and those 100 legs of evil. This happened repeatedly throughout the hour and a half lecture until both the professor and the centipede had made several circuits of the podium. Noticeably no one offered to remove the offending bug. I certainly would have, if gloves and extra credit had been offered.

After some more education I tottered off to my internship where I amused myself for a long time color-coding my databases and pretending that the office was mine. I sometimes try to think of what my own office would be like. Would I go totally Spartan or would I display pictures of family and pals? Would I paste up comics torn from the newspaper and copied/enlarged? Or maybe particularly lol-ish forwarded emails where the punchline involves Hilary Clinton being somewhat harsh towards Bill Clinton in their domestic life?

These issues require greater consideration than I can now afford, since I should be reading a book about "Colonists, Christianity, and Community." The one thing that I know for sure is that when I have an office I will be 103% behind comedy mugs full of pens.

An exercise in brevity.

I simply can't abide those army surplus style backpacks.

Furthermore I am madly procrastinating against writing an essay on amoral overly sexualized male characters in 18th century operas.

What I would very much like to do is watch some more Buffy the Vampire Slayer (specifically from the pre-UPN 3rd season) because I am undergoing a hearty revival of appreciation for sappy teen drama with a smidgen of sci fi.

I am eating peaches from the can with a fork and feeling mildly ashamed.

A series of unfortunate facts.

A. Safeway is no longer serving its generic Safeway Select brand of soda in flats.

I have never bought a flat of soda, but I appreciate the concept. If you wanted to mix and match 6-packs of blackberry, "cola," and grapefruit flavors, the flat was the only unit of purchase where you could do so with relative ease. The cardboard rim encompassed an infinite realm of sugartastic possibilities. Now the sodas are only available in dreary uniform 12 packs adorned with the new "arty" flavor differentiations [a picture of the fruit surrounded by parenthesis]. I'm going to think twice before I go on my next grapefruit soda run, because although I'm okay with the cashier knowing that I'm the sort of person who drinks a 6 pack of grapefruit soda while reading a novel with the word "mage" in the title, I don't know if I can handle the stigma of being the sort of person who drinks a 12 pack of grapefruit soda while pursuing the same activity.

B. 1652 is the estimated date of the first coffee house opening in England.

Gee, thanks 1652.

C. My school steals my money to buy water-wings for drunk chicks.

It has so happened lately, with graduation swiftly swooping down upon me, that the value/meaning of a college education has been under discussion at many gatherings. In these debates I usually take a very moderate stance: college is good for some people, but for others (America Studies?) it is simply a method of prolonging the inevitable job-having lifestyle. But in general I have defended the University system, pounding my UC Davis nalgene like a gavel against the table-top. How wrong I have been.

This morning I was reading the newspaper and on the front page there was this article about the tradition of Davis students taking houseboats out on Shasta Lake for Memorial Day weekend. This is no surprise to me, as I'm well aware of this floating keg-fest having had several friends attend in the past and with my own roommate preparing to leave tomorrow. What did surprise me was to learn that the student government (ASUCD) this year sanctioned 3,500 dollars to ensure that there will be a Safeboat with a host of medical supplies and personnel and 2,000 condoms available to the students at this recreational event unaffiliated with the school. This after the school called and solicited me for 20.08 (get it?) dollars in donations to commemorate my graduation. Pssh, I'm not going to donate money so that some damn kids can make a raft out of inflated free condoms held together by free Scooby Doo bandaids so they can row after a can of Keystone Light that floated away down the river.

On a re-read it would appear that I am stalwartly anti-fun. This is usually not the case.

Ode to biking; Short tirade on bikers.

Today when I was biking in the wind beside a field of threshed hay, I was trying to have "amber waves of grain" type thoughts. I was trying to direct my imagination at the world before the hay bale and to consider narratives about little prairie runts sliding down hay stacks like they were pre-industrial Six Flags (but without the weird Looney Tunes affiliation). Perhaps I could even have been contented with some Willa Cather-ish notions with plows [read: hard working men] silhouetted against the setting sun [read: death of the Mid-Western farming community] or the young widows of Civil War veterans selling their beauteous meadows to support their frivolous life style [read: oh, Willa Cather]. But try as I might, I just kept thinking: That is some ugly burnt grass, and biking in the wind is unfathomably annoying.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love riding my bike. I consider the rediscovery of the bike as one of the most valuable lessons I've learned here at my venue of higher education. Being the sort of person who hates driving and fears the bus [I once sat down in the seat kept symbolically vacant for the ghost of Rosa Parks on Rosa Parks Day and got told off by the bus driver] biking is a preferable alternative. I'm currently cruising on a teal-with-purple flecks Huffy road bike with dysfunctional gears but very nice tires and generally have a pleasant time wheeling about...when it is not windy.

As much as I like biking, however, I can't seem to get over my distaste for bikers. You know, the sort of people with more than one helmet (matchy, matchy), a spare tire attached to their backpack and are always yelling things like "On your right!"

What, pray tell, is a normal person supposed to respond to "On your right!"?

Because I am a polite person, I feel that some response is required. Unfortunately, because I am a both a polite and a nervous person, I can't think on the fly. So, I usually end up tentatively saying "okay...thanks" long after the fiercely peddling helmeteer has glided past. As I duck my head and peddle sluggishly on in shame, I console myself that my awkward response probably rolled right off of their sleek spandex torso, unheard.

So today in the wind along the field of hella burnt threshed grass, I thought about how people fall into threshers and get all ground to bits and when some chick in a camouflage sandals gave me the "On your right!" I just gave her a knowing glance.

In which I leave myself a cryptic note.

Upon arriving at work today I was presented with a notebook that I had apparently left out on the main counter on Wednesday, covered in notes and various scribbles. Having identitfied my handwriting my coworkers had spent some time trying to decode it to no avail, and were eager to hear my interpretation.

Surrounded with many sums of a financial nature, the following words were written on a peice of company letterhead:

___________________________________________________

Africa---> from Africa

b/c

--logical for Africans to be brought b/c were wanted

-resonant in naming/lang/ relllll

Believe in the Power of the Chew?

Bachellorette party?

-Cap + Gown

Other??

may 14, 2008

may 14, 2008

may 14, 2008

___________________________________________________

The only insight I could offer was that I was writing a paper on Africa and staring at some older woman in the waiting room whose shirt proudly proclaimed that one should "Believe in the Chew" with a line drawing of what I assumed was an artist's best impression of a plug of tobacco.

Free Stuff...Fair.

I know that it's almost summer, but I feel that this level of sunny, muggy tomfoolery is utterly uncalled for. I am determined to respond to the next person who tells me about the perfect weather of California by pulling out a metal seatbelt clasp (prepared by constant sunning and polishing) and give them a good scalding.

Also, today I was sitting behind this guy in my sociology class and his shirt said "A Global Revolution, ddr_freak.com" and I was entirely contented despite the glaring sun.

I have to dash off very shortly to this exposition of local businesses where my job-people have a booth that I must justly man. I suspect to spend the majority of my time passing out free Blow-Pops with little "Get an X Ray" ribbons tied around the stem...that is when I am not whining about the heat. However, I wanted to note a small thought that I was having today, as I ran out the door with slight deodorant markings on my shirt (more heat = more deodorant, and I'm serious about my deodorant).

Presumably when I graduate from college next month, I will be freed from the oppressive clasp of homework and lowered into the yawning jaws of full-time gainful employment, which I feel yields a good deal more leisure time. This begs the question: what will I be doing with myself when I'm not always cursing at my ugly footnotes and rushing through The Beggar's Opera? I may seem well rounded, but my only hobby is sticking my tongues out at children in the supermarket in hopes that their parents will whack them for being rowdy. I'm not overly motivated, so I'm probably not going to start my own business (learn paper mache, make tons of Sponge Bob pinatas and sell them out of my car?) or go to the gym (my school as a gym megaplex, I have never been inside except for the time I went in to watch a drunken dodge ball game).

Other things that you might suspect that I would want to do as a young professional type, but would be horribly wrong in doing so:
-caring about politics, discussing it at length
-directing middle school musicals in my hometown
-learning to drink wine, discussing it at length, making art with corks
-getting one of those hard-to-maintain haircuts where your side-bangs just barely skirt your glasses
-washing out my nalgene more than once a month

El Fin

Because I should be writing a paper...

Last week in my sociology class (how I abhor you, G.E. left until my last quarter, full of freshman sporting their ID cards in lanyard pouches about their necks) we watched this documentary called Merchants of Cool. The documentary wasn't really shocking, it simply detailed that the entertainment industry is ruled by giant conglomerates who are busy You-Got-Mailing their way into our brain-cases. It also described how these empires employ special baby-faced professionals (Andy Milonakis?!) who seek out "cool" kids and infiltrate their sub-cultures with the intent of popularizing it for evil capitalist gains. Now, I know I'm being trite, but I thought that the concept of cool deserved a little meditation.


My interest in the documentary was focused almost entirely on the choice of wording. The phrase "cool" seems to have become vaguely immortal. It transcends the harsh realities that ground up trends like "savage" and "sweet" (yes, sweet is over). Parental types utter it all the time when figuring out how to play BeJeweled on their Blackberry. Although my personal tastes tend more toward "bitchin," I am not immune to saying cool when confronted with say, someone doing a kickflip on their skateboard in a halfpipe built of boxes behind the Safeway. I looked it up on Urban Dictionary [Long aside: Not a usual reference point for me, but some guy I know IM-ed me yesterday and said that he was "sprung" and then followed up with a link to the word on Urban Dictionary. After clicking around for awhile I learned that the meaning of the phrase "drink champagne on a beer bottle budget" and advice on how to leave your girl if she is acting "klingy"]. Anyway, the entry on Urban Dictionary for "cool" implies that it is relaxed and never goes out of style and (most importantly) no one will ever laugh at you for saying it. Apparently cool is the safest verbal road away from embarrassment.


So, in the spirit of the immortality of the phrase, and because my boyfriend said that my blog needed more lists, what follows is a list of the things that come to my head immediately as being cool.

1) Melodramatic and poorly edited literary magazines full of melodramatic poetry and thinly concealed politics.

2) Professors who write their lecture outlines on the board.

3) Soothing prose about early America. [I never eat pancakes without thinking: "Then sit down he did, as they urged him, and lifting the blanket cake on the untouched pile, he slipped from under it a section of the stack of hot, syrupy pancakes. Royal forked a brown slice of ham from the frying pan...and Alamanzo filled up his coffee cup."]*

4) Zealous internet fan communities.

5) Hour-long teen dramas from the late-nineties.

6) High school newspapers.

7)Boring BBC adaptations of boring British novels.

8)Unpopular eateries.

9) N. Baker's The Mezzanine. [I'm going through a revival phase. After gifting it to someone last week I re-read it, and am re-enamored. People are lucky that I don't block-quote the hell out of that thing all over the interweb.]


*That's The Long Winter; I don't want the internet police knocking on my cyber-door with their virtual mag-lites.

A plea for wood paneling.

I’m just sickly enough to like wood paneling in the professional atmosphere.

I used to work in a very nice ugly building. The ceilings were low and made of the same kind of paneling as high school portables, that disturbingly porous stuff that makes you think of worms and asbestos and if you stabbed your pencil into it, it just might stick. I never tried to stick anything into the ceiling, being too much of a pansy in both the school and work phases of life, but I imagine that a nice mechanical pencil would work nicely. In my old work station the aforementioned wood paneling was decorated with post-it notes and weird folk-y art featuring roosters with santa hats and driving tractors into endless fields of hay. All of this was overseen by the paper machete skeleton hanging from the pencil sharpener (which certainly no one ever used because we were all hanging onto our mechanical pencils with our eyes on the ceiling). Although I can’t vouch for what material the counter tops were made of, I can assure you that it made a very cheerful noise when slammed with a date-stamper.

Very recently my workplace has migrated into a new, shnazzy building. To my estimation it looks exactly like a Nugget market, without any of the cheese wheels that makes Nugget tolerable. [As a side note, I have experimented in calling the Nugget “the nug,” after being influenced in that direction by pals. Although it was more as a sandwich reference than a supermarket, I still find this nickname is poorly received.]

This new building is bright and inviting…and consequently sucks like the south. Because I have an “Okay-please-have-a-seat” kind of job, I am suddenly exposed to a multitude of cranky, confused and generally shrieking individuals, which is a mild rendition of my worst nightmare. Gone are the days when I would slouch over my text books and be so infrequently disturbed that I was often startled by any noise. Now I have to use my text books to slap away the hands of the rabid brats attempting to climb over the counter and soil my beloved date-stamper with their sticky little Reese’s Pieces fingers.

Maybe I’m just feeling extra surly because my new mandatory headset (emblazoned inside: “I Don’t Want Your Lice”) is squeezing my brain a little too tightly.

In which I do the unthinkable and quote a poem

I wish that I could manage to write with music on. It seems like it would be so nice to write while listening to some thematically relevant jams, but whenever I try the words from the music get mixed up with the words that I'm thinking and everything gets all lyrical and muddled. I sometimes can't even think too well with music on, to the point that I have to turn my radio (perpetually set to a loud and jangly classic rock station) while driving my car if I am having serious thoughts. I suppose that it's a dramatic exaggeration to say that I can't write with any music on; as long as the music has no words, or in the case that those words aren't in English or very slow phonetically pronounced Spanish, I'm fine. The trouble is finding thematically relevant jams that meet that standard of inscrutability.

I meant to post yesterday because I was feeling very nervous about certain maladies, and I felt that a good ramble would be a suitable remedy but because I got busy at work I had to postpone this venture. I was planning on talking about people that are totally mega-spazzy on the medieval times, because I had been reading this blog by a medievalist, and it suddenly occurred to me that I have read many (perhaps at least two) blogs by medievalist in my time scamming about on the interweb.

This realization combined with several factors. Firstly, I'm a retired scifi enthusiast, and I have a keen knowledge of "Ren Faire" culture. Secondly I had read several--admittedly early modern--Swift poems that morning and was considering 18th century cleanliness ("When he beheld and smelt the towels/ Begummed, bemattered, and beslimed/ With dirt, and sweat, and earwax grimed"). This sort of vivid imagery clashes with the general corset-heavy medieval conception and created for me a general state of unrest. People: the medieval times were not romantic, they were pretty damn icky.

I know what you think, I saw the Paul Walker classic Timeline too. We'd all like to think that if we were charming archaeologists sucked backward in time that we'd fall in love with a French heiress/revoluntioneer and be awesome at sword fighting and use our "magic" boom boxes to subdue the friendly (if misguided) natives. You, me, and a giant turkey leg in 1344.

However, on further contemplation, I have decided that it might not be quite so pleasant as all that. (And not just because I visited France over the summer and saw a dead homeless guy, though that is a factor). The medieval times were rife with plagues, various household molds, and plenty of people pissing on tapestries. I'm none too sanitary a person myself (currently I'm sporting jeans besmeared with Flaming Hot Cheeto dust and a rip in the crotchal region for the second day in a row), but even I'm baffled by the medieval concept of toiletries, which I assume is a crucifix and a few leeches.

Oh-- consider this my first aborted blog. I've got to go off and eat, so my rant is arrested here.

On the Five of Mayo

I am endeavoring to be somewhat regular in my blogtastic experiment. I have no desire to undertake the awkward "gee, it's been awhile" style of posting, my sentences plagued with the combination of embarassment and guilt and the sinking knowledge that I am making excuses to myself.

I also hope that a charade of regularity will instill in me a habit of having and cataloging the interesting sort of thoughts that I am nearly certain that I must waste daily, but this is rather a long shot. Mostly I just want blog street-cred.

Over the weekend I did several things of note. Firstly and foremostly, I obtained an apartment for post-graduate living with my M.S. (main squeeze, not multiple sclerosis). The apartment shopping experience was marked by rental offices with balloons, guac and unabashed Cinco De Mayo specials, sales boys with a tendency to say "I hear that" and the dreadful realization that there are squalling, dirty babies playing on every dingy "God Bless This Nest" doormat. Despite the apparent spawning masses, we found a nice place with alluring art niches and a faux-wood balcony (that I will inevitably refer to as the veranda) that will allow us a grand view of any awesome domestic desputes taking place in the parking lot.

Other than this, I spent a lot of the weekend reading. Unfortunately most of this reading was statistics about the demographic spread of African and European ethnicities in early America and how their cultures were transplanted. Now, I have been known to slog through some spectacularly boring tomes for class (being secretly a very pretenious slacker), but this book was amazingly dull. I'm not one of those chicks with the Johnny Depp 3-ring binder and the special edition P.O.T.C. mary janes with the skull and crossbones on the toe, but I nearly wept with joy everytime some cheesy pirate narrative gave a small break in the heavy statistics. (It occurs to me that maybe I should discuss my other classes so that I'm not playing such obvious favorites, and perhaps I will some other time when they aren't covering erotic poetry and beauty pageants respectively).

Recreationally I read The Dain Curse over the weekend, and it was drastically inferior to The Maltese Falcon. I'm not saying that The Maltese Falcon is a marvelous peice of literature, but it is so nice and pulpy, and I fondly remember how the main chap is describing as repeatedly slapping people with his "wide, flat hand" or something like that. In The Dain Curse, no one is getting slapped with wide, flat hands, they are all just getting shot by four skilled marksmen simultaneously and dying from three bullets in the chest and one in the forehead. Lame.