saturday, july 8

•••    my best friend was here today and we spent a few hours poking around in the basement looking at boxed-up stuff. we found a book that I didn't know existed - essentially a glossary to valley girl life and vocabulary. it was hysterical. quiche is a stupid cheese pie. jel is short for jell-o head. krill is lower than plankton. I never figured out its exact meaning, but I just love the way aqua velva geek sounds.

watch out, soon I will start to sound like this!
6:18 PM +

•••    so, I have the whole house to myself, and what do I do? why, clean the bathroom of course! scrub scrub scrub - top to bottom, front to back, head to toe, stem to stern.

and let me tell you, evil gooky soap scum didn't stand a chance against elbow grease girl and her arsenal of biodegradable environmentally safe cleansers! hahahaha!
11:50 AM +

•••    nike's latest publicity stunt it making me want to go stick my head under a pillow. the new presto sneaker line is the dumbest thing ever (what happened to shoe sizes?), except for the presto contest. why does anyone need thirteen pairs of shoes with weird names? why why why? does anyone ever wake up and say, "hmm, I think today is a rabid panda day" and then the next day, "hmm, today feels like a jack mackerel day?"

granted, I have issues with nike in general. ;) and its infiltration of the world makes me mad. maybe I am just senselessly lashing out. yes, feel my wrath. :P

I think I got up too early today. ;)
9:47 AM +

•••    happy harry potter day! let the madness commence.
8:35 AM +

•••    is it me, or is it incredibly weird that nbc is using music from rent in its tennis video montages? aids . . . tennis. yeah.
12:14 AM +

friday, july 7

•••    the sky is amazing tonight. it's still blue, palest pink at the edges like the inside of a rabbit's ear. there are huge cumulus clouds everywhere that never quite figured out they were supposed to be a storm, shadow on top and glowing orange on bottom, hanging so low you can see every fold and tuck and ripple in perfect chiseled clarity. it looks like someone dropped a hydrogen bomb and just froze the mushroom cloud so that it could be hung in the sky like an awesome and terrible tapestry.
8:40 PM +

•••    I am lacking something today - motivation? willpower? energy? I don't know.
I'm going to go run until I find it, or maybe just until I get bored.
5:46 PM +

•••    life. it wants to exist, even in the radioactive dark.

if there is no other planet in the universe that harbors life, I will eat my hat. honest. literally. I promise. I'll eat it on my deathbed if I have to.
1:25 PM +

•••    today I got paid a dollar a minute for my dog walking job.
it wasn't my fault; it was just the way things worked out. but I'm really embarassed about it anyway. a dollar a minute? what kind of extortion is that?
1:01 PM +

thursday, july 6

•••    I promise I've always been like this...
11:47 PM +

•••    (it's my blog. obscure as I wanna be. ha!)
11:35 PM +

•••    I'm the center of attention
in the walls inside my head
and no one will ever know it
if I keep my mouth shut tight

so many very different memories and emotions attached to one little cd. it's like time travelling and ending up in too many places at once, only partly by accident. indecision of the subconscious. sometimes I wonder if we will all just fly apart.
11:19 PM +

•••    aha . . . I told mollie that people would read her (semi)blog, and now that she's linkslut number three hundred, they definitely will. woo. :)

by the way, wockerjabby's chance for survival is hovering around 50%, I think (hint for the future).
10:44 PM +

•••    public access tv cracks me up. I happened upon a show today that was done entirely using barbie and ken dolls with interchangable heads. and computer graphics. not cgi as you know it, though - I'm talking camcorder shots of a computer screen. I didn't stick around to see if the dolls would start talking.
10:30 PM +

•••    half the fun of taping songs off the radio is wondering where the tape will run out. by my best guess, my current tape is about six minutes from the end of side a. it's like musical chairs, only it's really musical spot on the little plastic strip.
2:13 PM +

•••    come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me... to the stars of course. :)
8:08 AM +

wednesday, july 5

•••    I like japanese snack food. today I ate something that said "have fun with this strawberry jellie!" on its wrapper.
6:57 PM +

•••    even more spectacular than fireworks: outer space. too bad it's so far away.
3:06 PM +

•••    fireworks!

I had the best view ever. boston's fireworks are set off from a barge in the middle of the charles river; from my cambridgeside spot on the bridge I had an unobstructed view of the entire barge and the sky above. it was very sweet.

someone near me apparently decided that we were all going to listen to the pyromusical whether we wanted to or not. she had her radio turned up so that it was audible above the explosions. in the past I've always preferred to let the fireworks speak for themselves, but there were some cute moments in the pyromusical - peace signs and smiley faces during "good vibrations" being the high point. on the other hand, I don't know who decided a hyped-up version of appalaichan spring would sound good in any context, but I am in complete disagreement with whoever it was. (I put my headphones on until it was over.)

enough negativity. it was beautiful. I can't pick favorites, but I can pick highlights:

the first really big explosion that makes the river reflect white, makes the crowd gasp, makes the skyscrapers look about two inches tall, that just sort of swallows up everything that came before in one majestic gulp.
smiley faces that turn the wrong way, so that all you can see is a horizontal line, and you know the fireworks are smiling up at the sky.
gold-dripping spirals that squirm across the dark in all directions, screaming like little animals that have just been set free.
upside-down peace signs that elicit a collective giggle from everyone, two year olds and ninety year olds alike.
glittery pink fireworks that explode and then hang in the air, sparkling like sequins in a nightclub, before they start slowly drifting down to kiss and kill their reflections in the water.
flashing cameras all along the river banks, across the bridges, from yacht decks and dinghy floors, applauding and echoing the fireworks with their own little spots of brightness.
the grand finale - twelve hundred fireworks in three minutes. you lose your heartbeat. you stop blinking. you forget to breathe. you just stand there with your eyes and mouth gaping and watch the sky on fire until all that's left is a huge cloud of smoke. that first moment is perfectly silent. then the cloud begins to slink away across the river, everyone starts to clap, and you just smile.

after the fireworks were over I wandered into boston, walking with the crowd against traffic. I watched the shriners playing bagpipes downtown and watched little kids chase each other with sparklers. as I made my way home after midnight, I saw a group of intoxicated sailors performing a clumsy striptease for a group of giggling back bay residents crowded on their balcony. one of the sailors saw me and waved, yelling, "happy independence day!"

I saluted.
12:21 PM +

tuesday, july 4

•••    new name, new look. I like.
5:55 PM +

•••    <deadpan>
hyperbole is my life.
</deadpan>

::falls over laughing::
sorry, sorry. ;)
5:19 PM +

•••    anyone who memorizes jabberwocky is most definitely cool. :)

on that note, I watched the disney version of alice in wonderland a few days ago. I hadn't seen it since I was about two, which was before I ever read any of the books. it was weird how much it clashed with my current ideas about wonderland, particularly the asides like the story of the walrus and the carpenter and of course jabberwocky. in the movie, the cheshire cat never actually gets beyond "wabe" - he just sing-songs the first two lines of the poem over and over again. it's all so much less poetic. the walrus has a cigar. :P

still, even disney-ized, the doormouse is pretty awesome with that whole twinkle twinkle little bat thing.
3:30 PM +

•••    rain down, rain down... come on rain deuterium? down on me...
3:13 PM +

•••    I know, I've been repeating myself all afternoon. but really - they're fireworks. I'm a pyromaniac. seriously. what do you expect?
2:04 PM +

•••    I'm not totally sure why boston gets july4th.org all to itself, although I must admit none of the other places I've lived have been so psycho about this holiday. not even new york city. people start camping out two days early to get good spots on the esplanade lawn for the pops. keith lockhart is cute and the cannons are impressive, but I think this is insanity. yes, my fellow bostonians (not that I really am one), you are all nuts.

the fireworks, however, are very very cool. I can't say enough good things about the fireworks here. eight hours and very eagerly counting! maybe I'm nuts too.
1:49 PM +

•••    happy fourth! :) fireworks are one of my favorite things - and one of the few things in the world that will get to me stay absolutely still for more than five minutes. boston has glorious fireworks.
12:49 PM +

•••    hey!
is it the witching hour yet?
2:48 AM +

monday, july 3

•••    this computer (it's not mine; I'm babysitting) has its monitor set to some obscenely large resolution - 1152 x 864, looks like - and 256 colors. I have no idea why. anyway, I can adjust to the weirdo colors, but I feel like I'm mousing across the freaking sahara desert.
11:01 PM +

•••    I've decided that my favorite new children's author is gail carson levine. tonight I read "dave at night." check it out, everyone. psa from a person who mostly reads science nonfiction and literature periodicals, but has yet to outgrow books with illustrated chapter heads and sixteen-point text.
10:53 PM +

•••    three cheers for public confidence in science - but I don't understand how fifty percent of any survey population could be unclear on how long it takes the earth to go around the sun. where do they think years come from? unless the survey wanted the actual sidereal year time (6 hours, 9 minutes, 9.5 seconds longer than a calendar year). that seems unlikely.

anyway, I'm glad people think public funding for science is worthwhile. without it, I have no hope of eventually getting a job. ;)
4:56 PM +

•••    it's pretty, but I think it looks more like a duck than a pelican. maybe a puffin whose neck got reeeeeally stretched out.
4:25 PM +

•••    I have been moving nonstop since eight o'clock this morning. fifteen minute break and then I'm going (lap) swimming. sighsighsigh.
2:01 PM +

sunday, july 2

•••    ummmmm. flavored and colored condoms are one thing. but cute condoms are just disturbing.
11:12 PM +

•••    I was a good vegan tonight. :) for the first time ever, my father was actually enthusiastic about a meal I made that was not only free of animal products but also contained tofu. (like most of my cooking, it was a complete improvisation. this one involved peanut butter, sesame oil, brown sugar, soy sauce, scallions, green peppers, spaghetti, and of course organic extra-firm tofu.) both my parents wanted more even after it was all gone. usually when I make dinner, my mom is agreeable, my siblings don't want to eat it, and my dad says things like, "this would be really good with some kielbasa." so this was a pleasant change.

then, my mother was apparently so inspired by my creative vegan cooking, she helped me make chocolate pudding (silken tofu, vegan margarine, sugar, vanilla, and lots of cocoa). it's almost as good as the way I remember chocolate cheesecake tasting, creamy and rich and very chocolatey. we ate it with tj's cat cookies. I am very full. :)
10:15 PM +

•••    hehehe. I like "blogging with scissors."
4:45 PM +

•••    the xfiles repeat schedule on fox is driving me nuts. I'm missing less than ten minutes of one episode from my tape archive of this season, but they're doing everything all out of order and I don't even know if it will rerun while I'm here, let alone when. why would anyone want to watch the seventh season in the wrong order?
4:14 PM +

•••    in the new york times magazine this week there's an article about why volunteerism doesn't work. it's making me angry. if people go around complaining about how the little bit they are doing still leaves a huge amount left to be done, or how if they only work with six kids that leaves fifteen hundred kids unattended to . . . who on earth is going to have the motivation to do anything at all?

it's easy to disguise apathy behind fatalism or pessimism. don't. I am usually very much a live-and-let-live person; hell, I'm an anarchist on an idealistic level. but I believe that every little bit counts, and just about everyone can be doing more than they already are. (that does include me.) no, you can't solve all the world's problems. you can't even solve all of one person's problems, not even your own. still, you come a lot closer by rolling up your sleeves and donating whatever you can - time, compassion, thoughtfulness, money, whatever - than you do by whining about how it's not enough.

I'm not a government agency. I'm not an after-school program. I'm not a non-profit organization. I'm an eighteen-year-old activist and a volunteer, for kids and animals and planets and neighborhoods. I've chosen my battles, and I will not let anyone tell me what I'm doing doesn't work. little bits add up to a lot.
1:44 PM +

•••    it's funny how the little things in your life change so quietly. I was inspired by a conversation I had tonight to re-read some of the papers I wrote for my psychobiology class last year. they surprised me.

in one paper I wrote about drugs and morphine I talked about my "three-drug cocktail." three drugs! three!! and this was only eighteen months ago! I have more than twice that many now. I'm healthier, too. my doctors know what they're doing.

in my final paper I used biofeedback as an example of conscious behavior causing physiological changes in the brain. now I am a biofeedback patient. I have the micropore tape, the portable thermistors, the temperature chart, and the session cassettes to prove it. when I wrote that paper I wasn't taking biofeedback seriously on some subconscious level. sometimes I still feel like everyone - my parents, my doctors, even the insurance company - is taking it seriously except me. but anyway, it's strange to see it as part of my detached, trot-out-the-examples paper. life imitates. . . academia. oh jeez.
1:54 AM +

•••    orange orgasms is amusing. I like to hear myself write too. ;)
12:26 AM +