| plus de snobbisme |
[20 Dec 2003|02:42pm] |
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mood |
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dorky |
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music |
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fiery furnaces - tropical iceland |
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i rather like making up french words like snobbisme. it's fun to say. as is laughing nasally and then proclaiming "le franch!"
hee
anyhoo, peoples are starting to trickle in back home, not quite defeated from their finals battles but actually rather victoriant (ok i'm just gonna make up words all the time) and ready to part-ay.
so i got an email from the english department saying " *sniff* why don't you love me. you need 3 more classes" and then i hit reply and said "but i do love you. but circumstances prevent our being together. we must settle for the compromise" and then i proceeded to tear my hair and beat my heart.
yeah the troubles of a true english major at heart, hidden under the guise of a bright-eyed, incisive political science nitwit.
my parting gift today, an article from the new yorker about the connection of tolkien and his lord of the rings to howard shore's wagnerian film score and wagner's ring cycle. (and yay for renee fleming singing in elvish in the return of the king. she's my favorite sopranoooo) it's really quite interesting especially for music nerds comme moi and now i feel sorta dumb for missing how clearly the two artists' "Ring" sagas seem to have stuff in common. hey, a viggo mortenson aragorn or orlando bloom legolas at the Met??! don't i wish!! *girlish sigh*
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| she made the house smell like pine |
[16 Dec 2003|04:12pm] |
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mood |
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 pleased |
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i got my first live christmas tree ever! yay for live trees that will... uh... eventually die..a slow. death. kept in limbo with some.. water. anyways, it's still exciting and i try not to let any joy-killers (ie my mom) ruin my dew-y eyed excitement. it smells lovely and i tried to go for a red and gold kind of theme but mostly lots of lights to cover my small ornament collection. keyur helped me get the tree. a big shout outz to himz. hahahahahahaz. except for the lack of fireplace and multiple family members, the real-christmas-tree experience made me feel so... american. if i had a digital camera, i'd take a picture to show you! maybe next year! hee. and momma party pooper has given in and now insists we buy a nice star for the top.
i've been listening to lots of regina spektor which is clearly cause for double-booking mentions of her here and in my no-such-thing-as-archives music section. first saw regina spektor (skeptor to the drunk or dyslexically type-challenged) at a strokes concert in atlanta. i wasn't smitten but really just sort of curiousity piqued. the voice i was smitten. i love her voice. raindrops on roses and warm woolen smittens. anyhoo, now two cds later, i'm wholly smitten. she makes me happy and heartwrenched in that good way and in line to buy her latest cd soviet kitsch . you can listen to clips and such here and at her site she can do jazziness and rockiness and all in between. brings you into these funny little stories or character sketches, all with a lightness, or an edge, or a helpless tear or two.
i've also been really really trying to get down to writing a review for droner.net but am having really amazing writer's block. the kindly droner crew is telling me to just go with my instincts but alls i can come up with is some crap and then: i liked the album. maybe i should work on another album instead. there's a whole line of those too.
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| ruby slippers |
[15 Dec 2003|12:09am] |
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mood |
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 refreshed |
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music |
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regina spektor - braille |
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edison just keeps clawing to fame like an insane beauty queen. first we're officially part of the new york/newark metro area and now this. oak tree road. you mean it's not common knowledge already? puh-lease! get with it! the nytimes on the latest "exciting new fiction!" by "South Asian diaspora". read the praise-y review of Suburban Sahibs , nonfiction about "India-in-Middlesex".
"That Oak Tree Road is the Indian commercial strip in Edison and Iselin is explained a couple of times too often."
hee. one time in my postcolonial lit class, i mentioned i was from edison and there was some joke was made about oak tree road and my very politically correct professor was all like politically correctly fully disturbed. apparently i've tried to hit the "clear writing" button and failed. maybe tomatoes will come out instead.
but hey! i'm home! my last semester at duke is over! i've survived finals! just barely. (like that foundation claims but girl, it's just too cakey with that lighting. here's a tissue.)
yeah. i barely finished my last finals on time. what with crazy hours at the cafe and then burrowing into final papers and exam mode, i didn't have time to make an official, accompanied by heart-wrenching soundtrack, tour of the campus or say bye to the three people i know. well i did get to say good bye to my dear rhythm & blue-bies. heehee bluebies. spent lots of saturday flying (i had to connect in atlanta. met roger for lunch. we had sandwiches. we discussed the fulfillingness of sandwiches. roger is currently in some tropical paradise and hopefully enjoying himself to a sinful extent b/c he deserves it after a crazy semester)
got home. i definitely fell asleep watching 'a charlie brown christmas'. mom woke me up and i stumbled up to bed for a nice sleep of almost 13 hours. *big goofy smile*.
now i'm geared up for this breakful of parties, cleaning, deciding my future, making stuff, going places, and lots of general descriptive things like that. yay home!
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[08 Dec 2003|12:58am] |
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interesting article on art as an effective vehicle for a movement and the necessary "implication for/look into the future" conclusion paragraph When Political Art Mattered
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| three for one dollah |
[07 Dec 2003|02:16am] |
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mood |
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 cranky |
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music |
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fiona apple - i know |
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three entries in one sitting? what the hell is going on? it's as if it were snowing outside. wait. no, it's not.
it's cold enough though.
so today i worked at the cafe for a straight 10 hours. cuz you know how they say money buys you happiness. it was never uber-busy but a nice steady stream of traffic that prevented one from sitting down. my personal favorite is the 'student appreciation week' which wins you, the appreciated student, free small coffee! free small soda! and me, a lifetime of happiness of trying to figure out that lovely basic economics lesson of supply and demand. you see, supply couldn't equal demand. all the kids who think they need caffeine to study during reading period but dont normally like coffee like to come out of the cracks and get a free cup. i dont blame em cuz hey, it's free. but i couldn't keep up with the ensuring of 6 full coffee thingies of holiday blend (who knows?), cinnamon toast (isn't that a cereal?), pumpkin spice (pumpkin coffee??), cafe del something spanish sounding, sumatra decaf, and french roast. people clamored for the 'normal' coffee. i liked how we ran out of filters and then i had to hunt some down. it was fun. like a treasure hunt. except instead of gold and jewels, filters the size of lampshades.
man i'm really sounding more bitter in general than i really feel. i think i'm just tired. 10 hours does a number on your feet. i wanted to go see american analog set tonight but i hadn't previously requested a lending of car and by the end of my epic shift, i just wanted to go to my room and watch tv and eat some kind of unhealthy meal. (chili and chips) (i just typed chipi..)
oh! but craziness! i earned $5 in tips. this is absolutely unheard of. i've gone the past semester maybe earning a total of 50 cents in tips. 1 or 2 of the dollars in the tip jar was from this girl who works at starbucks. she's definitely in my 'cool' book. don't waste time wondering if you're in my 'cool' book. i mean, have you tipped me lately?
i also called my favorite people at dell tech support cuz the fan on my laptop has started to make this crazy sound that you can hear in south carolina. they basically tell me that i have to get it fixed. (uhhh yeah. thanks) the lady who answered the phone, while being very nice, had some trouble with the commands on the weird menus that they make you go to cuz, as she informed me, there aren't that many of my model computers left out there anymore that are working. thanks. that bodes well. thanks for the gift that keeps on giving. i know technology improves by leaps and bounds of amazing wonder. but my laptop is the equivalent of a disease-ridden 103 year old grumpy man. and sounds like a food processor.
endearing.
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| almost lame duck |
[07 Dec 2003|01:51am] |
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music |
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the fiery furnaces - lost dog |
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rhythm & blue had their 2nd to last performance of the semester yesterday. it kinda sucked unfortunately. afterwards i got to go with jeremy to pick out a real christmas tree, get some lights and stuff for it, and set it up all in half an hour before r&b reconvened for musical director election stuff and secret santa. the running around was fun and christmas trees smell so good.
the electioning went pretty smoothly. i personally loved the verbalization of discontent bubbling to the surface so i could think about the past semester with fond memories of never hearing specific personal communication of disgruntlement of matters despite my knowing full well of an overall aura of disappointment. i'm gonna run out of synonyms starting out with dis- soon. ok so that came out a bit more bitter than i intended. i just wish people had come forward with concerns beforehand. it could have been useful. i kinda dont understand this habit of talking about stuff between people but not specifically bringing it up. i'd love to mind-read too but i got a little behind on that while i was writing papers or something.
i know we could have been better. i definitely know rehearsal could have been run better. but honestly i didn't know how to do it. (Hey, potential employees! look! proof of lack of leadership skills!! what are you doing here reading this anyway? this is a 'blog'. how unprofessional.) actually i didn't have it in me i think. to really go ballistic on people and often that's what was needed. really, i got to the point where i was like, well if this is how they're gonna be, then i'm just gonna let them be.
this entry wouldn't be complete without an excuse either. i like to do that. fail to take responsibility for things. it runs in the family. (no really. it does. so does an artistic streak. more strong on my mom's side though. lots of artists in the family. isn't that interesting?) anyways, i kinda feel that on some basic level (although really this is also just i-love-misery-put-on-some-depressing-music-janet speaking) something's really not right with life, with who i am and just a general feeling of gah! i dont know, not-rightness? not necessarily wrongness. but not rightness. i love words. i love how PERFECTLY they express what i want them to feel. fuckers. anyways, i should have not let that 'i'm not in a good-place' interfere as much as i let it did, especially as a responsibility to the group. it's fine if i'm interfering with myself.
also, inertia.
this one was probably kind of hard to understand if you're non-rhythm & blue.
i got some seriously awesome oatmeal raisin and peanut butter cookies and beer (?) from my secret santa. he's a fratboy who has some mean cooking skills. yay breaking stereotypes! my secret santa recipient got a curious george mug. cuz he likes monkeys. and then i just had a lot of rum.
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| paper trails .. of pain |
[07 Dec 2003|01:30am] |
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mood |
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 lethargic |
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music |
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bishop allen - busted heart |
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look how fitting my 'mood' is.
well. sort of emerging out of finishing 37 page paper shell. i'm only saying that to impress. really i only wrote 6 more pages and did some slight editing to the previous pages and added a table of contents just cuz. i also have a feeling i did the last part all wrong. like writing about the sky when you're supposed to write about glue. and then teacher, bewildered, asks "but how can one go so wrong?" and then you respond politely, "it was instinct."
(so quantity doesn't equal quality. janet wholeheartedly agrees. but it just sucks so much more when you get a bad grade for that amount of product) so my longest papers ever have been a 20-pager for my acoustics class freshman year. i wrote about the voice and techniques and stuff. actually kinda interesting. got to use all that handy choral background. and you only thought that you learned all the latin words to catholic masses. chuh! another 20-pager for an international law class last year which i was pretty horrible at. it was about the treatment of rape in internationl law, looking at what happened in rwanda. basically the TA who graded my paper told me to go home and learn how to write or something like that. but my latest effort of 37 was on the clinton administration's response to the genocide in rwanda. depressing and shameful much?
mm did you like all that yummy nonessential information? well, not that any of my information is essential like .. oils. bah. my brain has basically flipped the switch from off to more-off. did quite awhile ago. but the poor exam and 2 papers that i have left really have no chance. they got their legs beat up before the starting gate. i was trying to think of some powerfully clever hit-em pow! analogy and all that sprang to mind was nancy kerrigan and tonya harding. although they really dont have starting gates in figure skating do they? do you see my radiant glow? it's called aura-de-failure.
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| nice knowin ya |
[03 Dec 2003|05:09pm] |
well that's that. just had my last class ever on duke's campus. i'm ready to say byebye, wave prettily to the unlooking people, and make my sleepy way up back to jersey and nyc.
and now the fierce battle with papers.
too bad it isn't paper mache. i hear that stuff is pretty weak.
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