gutman, brody, thompson, kelley ...

today was my fourth, and most comprehensive, day in a row of studying for my labor and urban history honors exam. sometime during the 12 hours we spent on the material today, i began to feel like i was on top of it.

with luck, tomorrow you will hear from me: it didn't go perfectly but it went; and now i have to submerge myself once more for my film theory honors exam friday morning.

on the plus side, i dined with my favorite professor and her adorable son last night. the prof & i bonded over oldskool streisand movies like on a clear day you can see forever. two of my favorite underclassmen were also in attendance and they, like a disturbing number of other underclassmen in the past few days, reminded me that i may never seem them again.

it's one of the least helpful things anyone's said lately and suddenly everyone's saying it. "i may never see you again." well, fuck you. come on! you're friends with me, right? then you should recognize that i'm a sensitive soul already overburdened with stress, and i can't deal with your awkward farewells right now. & i'm on a No More Tears streak: 7 days and counting. just pretend, the way i pretend about my honors exams and my future, that it will all be okay.

(and honestly, it will. how could i not come back here? i came into my own here. at random points throughout next year, you'll find me skulking behind the bamboo near sharples trying to overhear swattie conversation, or strolling through the first-floor in mccabe lecturing my invisible companions on the subtleties of postmoderism, or eating popcorn loudly in film society screenings. if you don't see me again, in other words, it will only be because i'll be stalking you.)

can't concentrate. that's what the internet is for!

and the prize for funniest, most popular link that, until now, has been 100 miles off my radar screen: buy my ex-wife's wedding dress on ebay!

a snippet in case the rest of you have missed it too:

A lot of folks were asking me if I wear women's dresses a lot. I can honestly say that this is the first time I have ever donned female attire. It's also the first time I've been inside something feminine that didn't nag me to take out the garbage.

ba dum ching!

feel free to congratulate me ... now

hey! so guess what! not only have i maintained a spring-fresh perspective over the several days since my acupressure appointment, even over the course of one exam and my very first HONORS exam, but i have also

bought a new pair of shoes, a pair of pants, and a tank top with a monkey on it for $6 total;

seen my video production class exhibition go off flawlessly and reaped compliments thereafter;

gotten a good grade on my vpc final project;

and received word that i made the next cut in the interminable process that is getting my entry-level job in The Company. the vice president actually sounded excited to talk to me and we're setting up interview #3 for after my honors exams are over. yay!! plus the honors exam that i had today was totally fine. i'm sure i passed. half of the test was me writing an essay on clueless, for god's sake. if i don't know clueless, i don't know nothing.

an eerie way to spend a morning

i woke up with a start at 8 a.m., as though the morning had burst through my window and begun jumping on my bed and singing showtunes. unable to fall back to sleep (literally fall, since i woke up sitting) i hopped over to the internet and have been reading stories of military abuse ever since.

in case you're interested, i have learned:

• the washington post has new, previously unpublished pictures of the atrocities. its highlighted picture is of what looks like a six-year-old girl holding a leash attached to a naked iraqi man. the "girl" of course is a soldier who has not yet been charged, only transferred to fort bragg, n.c. [because? and?] she's pregnant.
  
• limbaugh declares they're not atrocities at all, more like a fraternity prank. sure, rush. i'll bet he thinks it's about as funny as killing koi in california. {from wonkette and sf gate, respectively};
  
• salon, of course, is dripping with the story;
  
• cnn is oddly brief with it;
  
• usa today is oddly comprehensive;
  
• even the national review deals with it soberly, calling the abuse "familiar," although surrounding the article are flashing advertisements for W04!! and the reagan revolution!!, some horrible article by mark steyn about abortion and a promo for a book about how sex differences are REAL and IMPORTANT

and that, folks, is today's key take-away. sex differences: valid, and important.

hey, i didn't know he was jewish!

jon stewart, that is. i mean, did you? then why did you hide it from me?

(courtesy of jewsweek)

by the way, not to make a big deal out of it or anything, but if you happen to be in the swarthmore area tomorrow -- and the vast majority of you 50 readers are, don't think i don't know -- my video production class is screening our short films at 4 pm. meet the broad-shouldered boys! make eyes at the cute bryn mawr chick in my group (although hands off, boys; she's taken)! and treat yourself to some seriously amateur cinema while *bonus!* making little ester happy.

lpac. 4 pm. wednesday may 5.

"touching your shoulder's like putting my hand on a wall"

i'm growing a respect for a-traditional medicine. first, in the fall, the chiropractor, who looked like a boyband frontman, fixed my poor wrenched neck for only $5. then, this morning, the acupressurist here at swat made my whole body feel fuzzy in a good way for no money at all!

i had been a little irked when i recalled i had the appointment with her this morning. i had been up til the wee hours last night, just as i'd been to the wee hours the night before that, in both cases to work on eliz's and my video project. we finally finished! whee! and danced around and went back to our rooms to get some much-needed sleep. so the prospect of rising at 9-something (too wee! i wanted something much less wee) was not a friendly one.

the acupressurist herself was very friendly though and for the hour that she treated me i either slept or hallucinated. or maybe i saw visions of the future. not my future, but someone's, whoever's involves a whole world gone gray except for a bright red flag flown at the top of an official-looking building. hmm. now that i think about it, that's a pretty communist vision, init? well, i can't be held accountable; i was being pressure-pointed at the time.

afterwards, to handle my wooziness, she advised me to lie down and drink lots and lots of water. i did her one better: i decided, on impulse, to take my woozy but much improved body into the city to see kill bill 2. i met up with an old friend, wandered through the sunshine, ran an errand for my boy, and, on impulse, returned to swat without having seen kb2. but still, a worthy day. now i'm going to see mitch hedberg and commence the scariest 10 days in recent memory.

check check bacon check

stereotype check (courtesy of nyt):

He is taught to take at least an hour to say goodbye at family gatherings; always to complain in restaurants about the seating, the air-conditioning and the menu; and to order salmon with everything. He is also taught to talk to his parents eight or nine times a day on his cellphone and to say "I love you" to them like a child. And he is taught never to admit he is in perfect health.

true for me? i'd say: yes; no; absolutely; of course; and no. i am in perfect health. especially perfect mental health. try asking me about it sometime!

i'll fly away

last day of classes. tomorrow. i've been so busy being busy that i haven't thought about the momentousness. indeed, even as i write these words, they signify nothing. how very postmodern.

three days straight, i found something to cry about. today my store of righteous indignation carried me through rough situations and fuzzyhappy 60's-style love for the sunlight carried me through the rest. that formula works as well as johnson & johnson shampoo to produce No More Tears.
also, i guess, today didn't put itself out to make me feel tiny and worthless the way monday, tuesday, and wednesday did. it did, on other hand, make me want to write poetry, specifically my friend stefanie's lovely reading. i haven't decided whether it's useful to post drafts here but without workshops i'm not sure how else to solicit commentary.

oh, what the fuck. i'm a senior.

my last day at hapkido

one twist
and the world shifts, the mat rises like a wave,
blue like a wave, reminding me of whale watching
where, instead of watching whales, i watched a porthole
as sea and sky squabbled for space
to peer back in at me

see-sick
another twist
and i can feel the sea filling my eyes
to get a glimpse of this man who, with that grin
and that motion, could be removing
the cap from a bottle

i'm recalcitrant. i should be bursting
open with a shout of foam, an amber wave
i should be hitting the floor, content to blink
as sea and sky and others in the class squabble for space
to peer back in at me

but this is not a whale watching trip: i swore
i'd never, never again and this man
as big to me as he would be to a bottle
is supposed to be my peer
He twists again, and then.

so many mornings of schoolbus nausea
i prayed through, kneeling on toilet-white tile, while
the nurse, accustomed to my ministrations, worked
outside i didn't always vomit but
i lost my faith in that unhelpful god.
and that day, in the bathroom, away from that grinning
watching, watching the welts
undulate on my arms, i thought never, never again.

in case you're dying to know

i "aced" the typing and the grammar tests at the Company yesterday, according to the nice lady who administered them. the only thing i got wrong on the grammar test, which turned out to also be a spelling test, was "correspondent." i spelled it with an "a." typing though: i did twice as well as they require you to. so.

however! lest you think that meant yesterday was a victory, heh heh, remember that my Good Luck Fairy is shooting up in a dark alley somewhere, trading jokes with the well-brandied inigo montoya, and that, this spring, i'm in the hairy, sadistic clutches of the Real Life Fairy. the Real Life Fairy squeezed hard when, in the impromptu interview with the director of human resources after my grammar&typing tests, mr. dhr informed me that --
if he likes me he'll pass me to the vice president
if she likes me she'll call me back for another interview (#3)
if she likes that, she'll hand my file to a panel
if the panel likes me, they'll call me back for ANOTHER interview (#4 -- is the NSA this rigorous?)
if they like me, then ... maybe i'll get the job.

i left crushed, demoralized, hearing in the back of my head the cigar-in-mouth guffawing of my Real Life Fairy who, when i concentrate on picturing his florid face, looks remarkably like the evil man who phone-interviewed me for columbia. why is my imagination so short on villians that it produces the same one twice?

let's set a new tone in this country!

did i mention i saw john kerry speak this weekend? that was pretty noteworthy. the crowd -- about 3,000 including my darling mother and ben who gives a lucid description -- wore red and white shirts from planned parenthood and naral and enjoyed his speech. the man is not on fire yet but according to sources within the administration he will only get bigger, and angrier, and more passionate until his takes this country BACK FOR US IN 2004!!!! YAYWHOOOOOOOOO!!!!

i also did a lot of screaming this weekend. "what do we want?" "CHOICE!" "when do we want it?" "now! er, always!" and "bush, bush, go away! racist, sexist, anti-gay!" and some screaming, of which ben didn't approve, at the pro-lifers waving death-sin-holocaust signs at us. it was the holocaust references that got to me; you can't show me night and fog-type pictures in non-night and fog-related contexts and not expect me to become the estHulker. ("the only h in ester stands for HULK")

if kerry had spoken at the rally, i think he mighta swung the momentum a little away from "more bush less george" to "ke-rry! ke-rry!" etc. but as it is, most everyone i saw wore a kerry sticker, aside from the "we're pro-choice republicans!" folks who i didn't understand. that means they don't vote pro-choice ... why are they announcing that?

my favorite sign might have been "roe roe roe your vote." that was pretty cool.

the point is, i'm off to new york for today for a visit with The Company followed by a Gala, & i need a happy face. the sunshine is soothing, like an huge lozenge that's sucking on ME. wow. now, with metaphors like that, how did i get rejected from so many mfa programs, i ask you? they don't know what they're missing.

twenty oz. of perspective! stat!

the good news is, the nyu draper program confirmed that they have received my application (sent two weeks ago). the bad news is, i may not hear from them until early august.

the good news is, i had a lovely weekend home with a women for kerry rally on friday, the march for women's lives on sunday, a lyrically gorgeous day on saturday ending with a party, and lots of time with ben throughout. the bad news is, my suspicions were confirmed in terms of how stressed i need to be in this my last week of classes.

the good news is, i handed in my thesis to the english department last friday. yay! the bad news is, i also have to turn in a copy to the history department this friday and though i gave my advisor a copy a long time ago, she never got it back to me. well, until today. annotated. dripping with purple. her comments, in addition to being lengthy, are (a) tardy, as i now have only four days to revise with everything else i have to do, and (b) tactless, as, over the course of 110 pages, she couldn't write the word "good" once. i would dare the FBI to comb through and find a single scrawl that even resembles a compliment.

n.b. to anyone reading anyone else's creative work: use the word "good" in your reaction, even if only once, even if only in reference to the font choice or the effort. people who produce creative work are notoriously sensitive and are likely crying in front of their computers right now because of you and your stupid purple thoughtlessness.

see? i should have written after i'd taken an a pied tour of bethesda with my b.loved, or after dinner with high skool friends, or after seeing kill bill which i actually liked, or after attending a history-making feminist march with my mother. before i got back to swarthmore and morphed into my more-and-more-frequently grumpy swat self.

problematic man pays me a visit

Problematic Man: ho there, little girl! how are you today?
me: not so great, problematic man. i've had a hard afternoon.
Problematic Man: really? were you made to feel like a hysterical second-wave feminist in your film class? were you alienated by misogynistic student theater? and were you subsequently frustrated by the insidious classism of the O.C.?
me: yes and yes! and yes, Problematic Man! it all began ...

scene one
video production workshop, where the two groups -- one being mine and the other composed of four, white, broad-shouldered sophomore boys -- show segments of our group projects. my group's presentation went fine. then the broad-shouldered boy group showed theirs, a collection of genres: an art film, a cartoon, a sitcom. and THEN ...

[the four females in class suddenly sit up, gape at screen. film finishes.]
broad-shouldered boys: so, what did you think?
one female: why, uh, did you choose to put porn in your film?
broad-shouldered boys: what, do you hate porn?
another female: no, but what's the point? it's not as innocuous as your other genres. some people are offended by porn, you know.
b-s boys: really? they are?

problematic man: wow! they are unaware of any social ramifications or controversy of pornography! indeed, they are amazing. what happened next?

third female: and while we're on the subject, why is the only african-american in your movie the aggressive, sexualized black male in the porn?
b-s boys: is he? uh. we didn't think about that.
fourth female: you know, that's a stereotype.
b-s boys: [silence]
fourth female: a harmful stereotype. STEREOTYPE.
b-s boys: but that wasn't our intention.
females: still, you have a responsibility to consider the images you're presenting.
b-s boys: [silence]
females: you have to think about how the film will be perceived.
b-s boys: [silence]
females: STEREOTYPE!
b-s boys: ... so, you hate porn?

scene two
my good friend's production of sarah kane's Phedre's Love.

phedre: strophe, my daughter, i'm in love with my step-son, your step-brother, even though he is cyncial, egotistical, nihilistic, unhygienic & unkind!
strophe: mother, stop! can't you control yourself?
phedre: no! i'm a woman!

phedre: oh hippolytus, i love you, even though you're my step-son, cyncial, egotistical, nihilistic, unhygienic & unkind!
hippolytus: go away. i hate you. fuck someone else.
phedre: no, i must have you! because i am an irrational woman, governed by my emotions! please, let me fellate you. i will not enjoy it and you will transmit to me your various venereal diseases, and i am your step-mother, but i do not care because i love you!

strophe: hippolytus, my mother killed herself because she is an irrational woman governed by her emotions and she loves you too much.
hippolytus: i told her that you and i are fucking. and that you fucked my father, theseus, her husband. i told her these things because i am cynical, egotistical, nihilistic, unhygienic and unkind!
strophe: you monster! yet i love you anyway, because i am a woman! let us have sex, though you will transmit to me your various veneral diseases!

theseus: here i am, back home again! what transpired in my absence?
hippolytus: i am accused of raping and murdering your wife, my step-mother.
theseus: oh no! i will kiss you, and then kill you, but not before i rape and kill my daughter strophe, for no conceivable reason! then i will kill myself!

scene three
the o.c., an excellent show that sadly trafficks in stereotypes

the o.c.: domestic violence only happens in chino!


problematic man: a troubling afternoon indeed, little girl. are you feeling any better today?
me: yes, problematic man. and this weeked i'm going to march for women's lives: that will make me feel even better.
problematic man: then i've done my job!
me: but you haven't done anything -- can't you talk to those b-s boys? or my friend the director? .... problematic man? problematic man? where'd you go?

the same four notes

i have been happy every day since the sun came out. how primitive of me.

in an attempt to take charge of my life, i went to the bookstore and shelled out for:
mounting squares to hang up posters & make my room less skeletally bleak. yes, this is way overdue.
a new (disposable) fountain pen
three folders
and a free-standing file folder organization type system.

i bought it all, returned to my room, and snapped my fingers. nothing mary poppinsish happened, or sword in the stoneish for that matter, but i figure i'll keep trying every day til my honors exams are over. it'll take persistence and dedication, i know. i'm willing to put in the effort, at least until my snapping fingers get tired.

both of the papers i need to revise for friday have been dealt with -- which is to say, i changed the date at the top to 4/25/04. and the paper i need to write for friday has been written. by thursday afternoon, twill all be done and handed in, right in time for me to disappear from swarthmore for the subsequent few days. score.

a happy list

my SKIN is happy because it is tinged tan from the hours i spent outside in the summerliketime.
my TUMMY is happy because this morning i had brunch. real brunch.
my LEGS are happy because i wore a skirt without tights.
my HAIR is happy because sunshine makes it ruddy.
my SOUL is happy because i read names today for holocaust remembrance day.
my HEART is happy because ben is here, and because he cleaned my refrigerator for me. i'd been afraid to go near it since he informed me, months ago, that some mold had grown. naturally, since i ignored the problem, some spores had become an evergreen forest, but ben fought the forest-fire with fire. afterwards he asked, "does it meet your standards? if you want me to scrub harder, i'll scrub harder."

attorney general ... of fashion!

the front page of the washington post today critiques janet reno's turn before the 9-11 commission. no wait, just kidding. they critique her CLOTHES.

Her jacket hung loosely and the skirt was long -- reaching to the mid-calf as always -- and without any fetching details. Her lapels were two uninterrupted plains, free of American flags or any other conspicuous announcements of patriotism. Notice the neckline of the jacket -- open, unadorned, practically crying out for a scarf, a strand of pearls, some tasteful Redbook kind of accessory. Albright would have tucked something in there, just to finish off the ensemble and give it a little polish. Not Reno. All of that nothingness speaks of refusal. She will not pretty things up with a few beads.

On her jacket, there were no seams to emphasize her waistline or bosom. There was nothing to remind the viewer that there was a body -- a person -- hidden underneath that gold-buttoned cloaking device.

"a body -- a person"? wow. that hadn't been made explicit to me in a long time. and honestly, so reno has no time for "fetching details." so she doesn't care whether you can make out "her waistline or bosom." what is this, 1955? is it really that noteworthy anymore?

even though the author pays reno's "refusal" some necessary respect, the fact that the wp would print a fashion column on the front page makes me spit.

me & mrs. o'leary's cow

the qsa (queer straight alliance) flame war has suddenly stopped. for over 24 hours, innocent freshmen and irate seniors overflowed everyone's inboxes. actually not all the blame can be laid on freshmen: if the senior who was the first to respond my initial email hadn't done so, he wouldn't have touched off the blaze.

maybe that makes me mrs. o'leary and him the cow.

the amazing things is that it was my initial email, the first i ever sent to the list, my poor little email that started this great big war. ben says i shouldn't be naive about this, that in sending the short message about dan savage's latest (and, in my opinion, patently offensive & unfunny) column, i should have known what would likely happen.

in my own defense, i did not. the vehemence of disagreement astounded me and i lay low throughout the war, happy to let others explain how his column was "some phobic shit." now an uneasy silence falls across our inboxes. a gloomy peace this morning with it brings/ the sun for sorrow will not show its head. (except it was gorgeous when i woke up and so bright my first thought was, Did i sleep with my lamp on again?) the war has had its climax but not yet its denouement. perhaps we will be treated to none except a gradual slide of this event into the forgotten past.

but never was there a tale of more wow
than this of me & mrs. o.l.'s cow

two articles, both alike in dignity
in fair charleston where we lay our scene ...

read this article about charleston, va.
then read this one.

same city? uh huh.
same newspaper? yup.
same day? you betcha.

so is charleston the best city in the country despite the racial profiling? or were the black men getting their mouths swabbed just too busy to vote?

it's a trend!

semi- almost- kindof- looksgood- success! what strange half-luck i have. today i heard from The Company. i made their 2nd cut and NOW i have to go up to new york and 1) fill out an application; 2) take a grammar/proofreading test; and 3) take a typing test.

having worked in as many offices as i have, if i manage to fuck up any one of those three things, i will classify myself a moron and go into hiding. ben suggests i should find books on proofreading. perhaps i should, but honestly: proofreading? i proofread for fun. i proofread in my spare time. i once found a typo on a plaque in that big fancy art museum in new york. you know, what's it called.

the point is, i may be in, just like i may be in the NYU program for which i sent in my swiftly-but-not-hastily written essay this morning.
semi- congratulate me!

for a change, a nice surprise

in my evil, dastardly mailbox this morning, i found a thin envelope from nyu. "bastards," i thought. "you're rejecting me twice!" as it turns out, that's not exactly the case. with my permission, they're going to consider me for an inter-disciplinary program. i've never heard of it, but who am i to turn down anything? maybe they'd let me research new york city history and write more movies about it, which would be supercool.

maybe even more supercool than just writing poetry. well, we'll see.

i'm all jazzed up cuz i'm getting drawn into the ASSassins game happening on campus. wisely i decided not to play again -- never to play again, in fact, after it nearly ruined my fall semester junior year. although i made it to the top five and accumulated hilarious stories involving sprained wrists and insidiously-motivated trips to new york city, losing crushed my fragile spirit. over the course of my lengthy recovery period, i realized that i can't take games like these with the right combination of "To The Death!" spirit & cunning with hipster insouciance (& cunning). plus i can't run fast enough.

but it's still fun watching other people get paranoid, and plan, and get frantic, and pull themselves together to plan some more. and grab each others asses.

self-pity will ruin society as we know it

this video is amazing. i feel like i should watch it several times over with a pen in hand. unfortunately i don't have that kind of time. it's chock-full of nuts though, that's for sure. (thus, kosher for passover!)

despite the rain, despite not being able to eat bagels,
despite the fact that my film group is filming tomorrow and we haven't prepped quite as much as i'd like,
despite the fact that there's only one episode of the apprentice left,
despite ben's absence and my future being as uncertain as ever,
despite the fact that the bulk of my reading for class tomorrow is in the one book i didn't buy and which isn't in the library,
i think i'm okay. but. it's been a long semester.

on the subject of cinema:

i had my interview with The Company. it went ... fine, actually. i have no more specific sense of it than that. & i'll hear -- "one way or the other" -- in a couple weeks.

columbia hates me. moving on.

i saw eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. oh. ohhhhhhh. as soon as it was over i wanted to see it again. until i see it again, i'm not sure i'll be able to articulate why i liked it so much except that i so approved of the moral.

columbia hates me. no really. i got my rejection this morning. however, at least now i've heard and i don't have to spend the next month or so waiting & hopingagainsthope.

i'm supposed to be reading film theory about third world cinema. can't bring myself -- too tired. imperialism bad! giving oppressed people a voice good!

no wonder columbia hates me.

garcon

here i am, again. waiting.

when ben got into nyu, my father praised him for being a good waiter.

i'm usually a good waiter. i always bring a book or my notebook with me, so if people are late (people are always late) i can read or write. but i'm too wound up to read.

here i am writing though. that's something.

when i got back to my room on friday, still in the throes of my 4-day emotional future-related meltdown, i found that The Company I Really Want to Work For had called and left me a message requesting an interview.

The Company had called around noon. i had gotten the message around 4:30. i called them back, just in case, and a secretary told me the Woman I Really Want to Work For would call me back right away.
i waited for two hours. (see? i can wait. but i was too wound up to read then either.)
i called this morning. the Woman is in a meeting. (a different) secretary said she'd call me back.

waiting again. i've never had the experience of being on a wait-list. my life has been very Yes or No, and often enough it's been Yes to make me worried that the Nos are choosing this moment to assert themselves.

here are some savage quotes to tide us over:

• it's fun to speak at a college i couldn't get into with a crowbar
  
• nowadays marriage is whatever 2 straight people say it is
  
• it's psychotic of this country to give us a kid and not a marriage license
  
• you can't queer the nuclear family. the nuclear family will straighten you out.
  
• it's hot in here. let's make it a strip lecture! ... instead of picturing the audience naked, i'm picturing me naked. it's not working.
  
• parenting trumps gayness
  
• the measure of a community's health is not the ability of all its members to get laid every 20 minutes
  
• none of my actual brothers ever gave me an STD or a rope burn
  
• a gay health agency is like a unicorn -- i'd love to see one
  
• female sexual reserve exists. it acts as a check on male licentiousness. gay men need to find that check within themselves
  
• straight people should have more sex than they do and gay people should have less sex than they can
  
• i don't hate myself for being gay. i hate dumb gay people for being gay.
  
• the 1948 version of the patriot act was about lesbians
  
• if you're not a gay quadriplegic with a born-again christian mother in your room every day, i have no sympathy for you
  
• i'm going to have my wedding reception in Red Lobster just to see the thunderbolts
  
• lesbians who want to have a kid just need to find a guy who wants to have an orgasm. & that's easy, especially a guy who wants to have an orgasm in a lesbian. gay men need power and privilege to have a child.
  
• when you make a generalization about 5 billion people, there are bound to be 10 million exceptions. and the odds are that the exceptions are at a liberal arts college.
  
• my column will be pried from my cold dead hands the way ann landers' was pried from hers

christopher!

the sopranos this week wasn't quite as anxiety ridden as last week. last week set a new record. last week was one of the tensest hours of my late -- or least the tensest hour of my life i spent in front of a television set. this week was just amazing television. i yelped once or twice, and buried my face in Mendel Katz, the stuffed tiger my dad brought back from the zoo a few months ago.

i CAN yelp because i'm currently watching tv in the privacy of my own house. i'm home, and not because i've cracked up (although i kindof have). wait. no. i know that i have not cracked up because my father and my older brother both started making fun of my "fear of graduating" as soon as they were done hugging me hello. i must be okay.

i feel perfectly sane. right now. but at least once every day for the past four days something has hit me and i've collapsed. it's as though i have no emotional reserves, no bumper. maybe it'll help to be home, even if only til wednesday. at least being home gives me things to look forward to: seeing folks, seeing eternal sunshine of the spotless mind (at LAST), my little brother downloading back episodes of the O.C. for me off the internet. and i can't over-emphasize the healing properties of Mendel Katz.

j.f., part I

being at college has made me somewhat blase about meeting people i admire. other, more responsible people make the decisions and spend the money so that people i admire can come speak within several yards of me. when i stop to think about it, that's incredible.

just one of the many ways i'm lucky. also, this evening, one of my friends, who is effusive about me in the way i associate with younger sisters, thanked me for being her hero. after a long day in a rough semester, that's better than cocoa.

but! jonathan franzen. or, j.f., as i like to call him. aside from not having blonde hair, he is very much like the kind of guy i always expected to marry: witty, deadpan, tall, bespectacled, stubbled, erudite, and cute. i sat in the second row and no one sat in front of me so i had a clear view of him. there he was. saying things like, "don't mess with oprah." things i wrote down and which i will post here, along with my dan savage quotes, as soon as i get a chance. if everything goes as planned, i will see him twice more: this evening, when he gives a for-real lecture (this afternoon was a "conversation") and at the film studies fundraising gala in nyc to which i get to clap squeal and go.

oh, and he's not jewish. as they say in the classic independence day, nobody's perfect.

the paradigm is cupcakes

my film theory seminar, in its various permutations, meets a record four times this week. the first incident, this evening, went rather better than i was scared it might -- kind of like today, which began with my receiving my third rejection (nyfucku). the sun, and ben, and friendly people kept me buoyant, and i apartment-shopped on craigslist for extra kicks.

i'm hoping it's not a sign that, after a near-glorious weekend, it's back to modulated depressiveness for me. after this near-glorious weekend, i've forgotten the roots of my modulated depressiveness; reflecting on it, it seems silly and pointless to me. why fret when you can get shoes, a book, and a t-shirt for under $6? and then, the next day, elsewhere, 2 more pairs of shoes and a kickass pair of "they're not just hot, they're hot topic!" punkish pants for free?

moreover, why fret when you can dress to scandalize at the annual "fuck gender, and me too please!" party? or re-watch one of the few movies that honestly deserves to be called a gem, spellbound? or be entertained by the one and only dan savage?

(this entry may set a new record for the number of times i use the f-word. i hope my parents and their friends and relatives are not upset. however, i am a college student and i won't be one for too much longer so i beg everyone to bear with me, please.)

happiness: morning and evening, or, a warm gun?

this entry is dedicated to you're a good man, charlie brown, the most aggressively Mostly Harmless musical i've ever seen.

so, when ben & i were in north carolina, we came across an immense collection of cheap books in the basement of a PTA thrift store. perusing the fiction, i noticed a paperback called "the milagro beanfield wars." why have i heard of that, i wondered. well, someone must have told me to read it! it only cost a quarter and it was in good condition, er go it is mine.

flash forward to swarthmore. stressed out during the days, i look to the time before bedtime as vital, and in that vital time i often read. i began "the milagro beanfield wars." bells began to ring faintly near the back of my head. i scratched my hair and continued.

by the time i was about a third of the way in, the bells had become insistent, obnoxious, and unignorable. i did the only thing i could: i called my father.

me: dad, i'm reading this book called "the milagro beanfield wars" and --
my father: *laughs for ten minutes*
me: dad! what? what?
him: *still laughing*
me: daaaaaaaaaaddddddd!
him: you don't listen. i've been telling you about that book for 20 years.
me: aha! so you do know it!
him: know it! i'm IN it!
me: wow! are you charley [our last name], the bright-eyed east coast lawyer who moves to the little town in new mexico in the late 60s and helps out the poor oppressed hispanic farmers?
him: actually, i'm the second tier bad guy, rudy noise, the state engineer's lawyer. my part was cut out of the movie.
me: ...
him: sorry, darling. this is america. besides, john nichols was a gringo stalinist and i always thought his book needed to be edited. with a hatchet.

too bad. i think it's amusing. i'm going to keep reading since i haven't even met rudy noise yet. apparently (& i'd forgotten that this is one of my father's favorite stories) (or rather, i remembered the story but didn't know it was about THIS BOOK) he's describe as being slender, intelligent, and well-dressed. a judge with whom my father was lunching quipped, "you should sue! they told three lies about you in one sentence!"

gobbledygook and upside downs

louise gluck was supposed to come speak; she got bogged down by freak snowstorms and a bad flu. johnathan franzen is coming but somehow between the time the "reserve your spot!" email was sent out (10:15 a.m.) and the time i next checked my email (1:10 p.m.) all tickets had been taken. ridiculous! that'll teach me to actually try to be productive in the mornings instead of frittering away all pre-noon hours on the internet.

the plus side of my what-the-hell, may-as-well proactivity was that i had a full rough cut to show my class today. that put me in a good mood. as did the weather, as did a long overdue lunch date. however, no degree of good mood can withstand wednesday afternoons. i skipped into class and several hours later dragged myself out, in sullen teenager fashion, darkly envisioning nooses and pills and dorothy parker poetry.

my mood never rebounded. when i tried to watch junk television in the lounge, the christians kicked me out. and i couldn't go to sleep because i had to read barthes for my attachment meeting tomorrow. i couldn't talk to anyone because to talk would be to whine and i feel unjustified in whining.

because: i have a grad skool option. i have a grad skool option colocated with two of my sig.fig.'s grad skool options. my grad skool option offers cheap health insurance and priceless film industry connections. i have a job offer for the summer that would pay $2100 for 6 weeks -- the most i've ever earned. my hair hasn't started falling out yet. my history professor from LAST YEAR finally returned the paper i handed in LAST YEAR, which i need to revise for honors.

sadly, logic does not speak to malaise. if i could pinpoint my malaise (beyond "what if i don't have talent, i just have a better-than-average ability to bullshit?" which in some fields is talent anyway) i could at least try to rip off its wings ... maybe the key is to resume sleeping late in the mornings. my brother does that and he's mostly happy.

sunshine of terror

again, up too early. i don't understand. i've already wasted an hour and fifteen minutes and just about that amount of time still stands between me and class. i can't work in the mornings. my very being shudders at the thought. nor is any one else up to talk to and if they are up they're doing Good for Them things like practicing for a marathon or excavating babies and nuns out of avalanches.

last night i dreamt my little brother had become a serial killer. i ran downstairs and found that he'd left ben tied up and bleeding to death in the basement. once i managed to save ben, i told my mother firmly that this could not stand: my little brother would have to leave. abjectly, she agreed, and we all stood around the door as he walked out.

why we didn't turn him into the police, i don't understand. he then proceeded to follow us around paris (?) and much running through traffic ensued. i woke up tense, muscles locked in place as though by that new magic sportsbra.

the dream was probably a by-product of yesterday's manic nature. following the emerson serendipity, i had to submit to 2 phone interviews. the first went fine, no better or worse than could be expected; the second, for co-lum-bi-a threw me entirely off-kilter. i had to talk to two people at once. one, a woman, was the good cop. she asked me specific, manageable questions, laughed at my jokes. the other, a skeptical-sounding new yawkish man, who i imagined with hair on his knuckles, made my head whirl: "who wants to see a movie about the 19th century?" "you know, i hate when movies try to teach me things." "i want to laugh. will your movie make me laugh?" "do you have a story that you HAVE to tell that's different from everybody's else's story?"

weirdly, they began the interview by teasing me. i have brothers; i know what teasing is. they were like, "are you SURE you want to come here?" "come on, we're not THAT great." "it's a lot of money ...." it seemed like they were going to offer me a spot! great! then they shined the bright light in my eyes and got down to business.

at least they agreed with me on lars van trier though, since the man even growled his approval, it was hard to decipher at first. once the interview terminated abruptly, i realized they never even told me their names. gee golly gosh! and i still really want to go to their skool!

effervescence

* phone rings *

me: hello?
voice: hi, is this [my name]?
me: yes?
voice: this is the president's office. do you still reside at 264 parrish?
me: yes ... ?
voice: we got some of your mail somehow, and i opened it, and well -- it's good news for you from emerson college ...

heavy lifting

my god, what am i doing up this early? i guess the sun rose before it could be expected to; now it's thrown everything off. at 8 a.m. i am unaccountably hungry and even my cherished 19s cannot help me. it must be a hunger composed of displaced sleep.

and my body is sore. saturday i went around filming with a handheld camera. i hadn't realized quite how heavy a handheld camera is -- dogme may be for dorks, but those dorks must have tremendous upper-body strength -- and i had to stop eventually because my arms had turned to jello.

then, speaking of sugary food, yesterday evening co|motion steeled itself to sell 600 donuts. addie and i launched through parrish, dana, and hallowell, all the dorms i've lived in, and managed to sell 14 dozen. not unimpressive and not unexhausting either, frankly. when we finally disposed of our LAST ONE, we whooped like sports fans and considered tracing our footsteps door to door with a revised pitch, "hi! would you like to donate alcohol for a worthy cause?"

we got some great responses. one guy was half-naked when we knocked on his door. he pleaded for a couple minutes to get dressed. another girl walked up next to us and said "come see me once you're dressed too!" joking, i turned to her and said, "maybe you could just see him now." "oh no," she said. "he's my ex. he'd better be clothed."

a few doors down we ran into the same girl again in a different guy's room (another ex? a current?) would she like a donut? "no thanks," she said. "but the guy who lives her might. hang on." and while we stood there, she rifled through his clothes and the room looking for a dollar. finally she shrugged at us: "sorry, i can't find his money. would you like some of his gum?"

another girl told us she was sorry but she'd given up sweets, cheese and peanut butter for lent. "you must be a saint," said addie politely. "if i were a saint," replied she, "i wouldn't need to give up everything i love to feel god in my heart."

anyway, if you bought a krispy kreme, thank you for lightening our load.

end of week giddiness

for the record, i'm currently working on making three movies. three. the next time i'm working on making three movies at once somebody better be paying me for it.

i have filmed 10 interviews for one of those movies, a video project i have to do for class called "who IS the swattie?" that footage, plus the amount i hope to get saturday at screw (one of swarthmore's annual gleefully painful bacchanals), will go way over an hour. the finished project will be 3 to 5 minutes. so > 1 hour - 3 to 5 minutes = 1 hell of a lot of editing.

i'm actually kind of excited about the editing. that is, perhaps, because i've never edited anything before, certainly nothing of this magnitude. there's so much power! so much potential! if reality television has taught us nothing else, it has surely taught us that.

a new pattern!

i alternate between leaving unpleasant events 2/3 of the way through and having anxiety attacks. the two are not unrelated: whenever i'm in the clutches of something that doesn't engage at least half of my attention, i begin to perspire and palpitate about all the work i will never get done.

the worst part is that there's no day i can look to when it will be over. at graduation you only trade honors/grad skool/job search/future/thesis anxiety for Future anxiety. with a capital Future. at some point, eventually, i imagine, there will a lull, some time when i have a new residence, new occupation, when i can spend thirty full minutes without gnashing my teeth about What's Going to Happen. but without being able to mark that point on a calendar and work to it, i'm in my own personal idea of hell, walking down a corridor towards an EXIT sign that never gets closer.

there is no bright side. bunnies with bow-ties really aren't that hilarious. no, wait, i'll think of one.

okay: my hair hasn't started falling out yet.
i'm in requited love.
i was contacted by columbia for an interview, which seems to mean i made some cut.
i'm seeing eternal sunshine of the spotless mind on friday.
the odds are i will get through this (however indeterminate) period, because i'm healthy and sturdy and, as charlotte reminded us on the last episode of sex and the city, we're jews! we've gotten through worse than this.

dilemma of the day

in order to be best (semi)prepared for my seminar this evening, should i spend the next few hours (a) slogging through more of the incomprehensible theory reading, or (b) trying to track down the movie we were supposed to see which is AWOL at the library?

this supersedes the dilemma of yesterday, wherein i tried to determine how much time i would have to spend on a paper i started to write 8 hours after the due date.

sobering thought: my parents are paying a lot of money for this education.
hilarious thought: bunnies in bow-ties!

hold me closer, tony danza

i had an unexpectedly southern day today, a day of bible and sports, despite the fact that ben and i landed safely back in non-southern territory yesterday afternoon. by this evening, we were in the least southern place on earth, swarthmore pennsylvania, eating vegetarian food and watching almost famous, but for a few brief shining moments i felt those stars and bars.

it began: over an incongruous breakfast of bagels'n'lox and kugel in my very own kitchen, my mother, my brother adam, ben and i argued "the passion" until the only feasible option was for me to disappear into a puff of smoke and reappear with the holy book in hand.

a table near the front of the holy book said was today's selection was deuteronomy 23 - 25 (which includes the creepy/profound quote, "the children shall not be put to death for the sins of the fathers, and neither shall the fathers be put to death for the sins of the children. each man shall be put to death for his own sin.") to warm up, i began to read aloud. then i moved into more relevant territory, that of jesus according to matthew.

we made it through the relevant passages, and some interesting stories, in each of the four. we stopped midway through john, the last, because by that point my brother, sufficiently chagrined at how guilty indeed the gospels made "the jews," had become involved in the umd-duke game.

the umd-duke game ultimately absorbed all of us, cuz it was so darned exciting. i felt somewhat torn, rooting for maryland for being the underdog and the local team, and for duke, a little bit, because i was just there and so, so surprised at how cool chapel hill and carborro were. (seriously! warm, offbeat, leftish, and full of small indy 2nd hand stores and short buildings and cheap gas. two out of the three movie theaters we passed were showing "the passion," it's true, but one was also showing triplets of belleville and that was delightful.)

coming back to college is. well, difficult. there's a lot to be faced and i don't feel quite up to that, to tell you the truth. i am very brave about the potentiality about being rejected by every skool to which i applied. i recognized that risk when i only applied to the top. i am somewhat brave about the fact that i don't have a job or a plan for next year. i am kinda brave about my upcoming film projects, and just brave enough about my honors exams, and that's the sum total of my courage, distributed. if you have any to spare, i'd appreciate it.

don't panic!

nobody worry about me. i'm currently soaking up sun in north carolina with my b.lov'd who swept me up on his way back from europe and whisked me down to durham. his godmother is giving us the royal treatment, making us quiche with fresh cream, buying us 15 different varieties of whole foods cheeses, giving us the run of the place.

at the moment, i'm not worried about anything in particular. aside from consistently turning the wrong direction, we're doing fine.

0 and 2

no university of washington for me. i admire their efficient use of email. and again, it simplifies the potential eventual choice. but. no seattle.

the 5 i have left to hear from are all private skools. somehow i doubt they will be more lenient in their admissions processes. ah well. i can only hope they too turn to email to let me know.

the voice of god

no wonder kevin smith chose this man to play megatron in dogma. the film as it evolved on screen (as opposed to in its original form) may have been disappointing, but alan rickman was not. when is he ever?

this reverie brought to you by robin hood: prince of thieves. i hadn't seen it since, oh, say 1990, and if you haven't either i heartily recommend it, if only for alan rickman's over-the-top self-parodying sheriff of notingham. i would choose him over kevin costner six times out of seven, even with that greasy hair. he's reprising the greasy hair look in the harry potter flicks, as well as his *siiiiigh* smarmy charm.

he steals the movie the same way tim curry steals the three musketeers from chris o'donnell, an exemplary case, to be sure, of taking candy from a baby. the real question is, between tim curry and alan rickman -- the two most spine-tingliest voices in the english speaking world -- WHO do you choose?

epidemiology

this week's vocab word and 3x cooler than 'etiology' or 'ontology.' no, i don't promise that i spelled any of those words right.

two of my wonderful high skool friends just left my house where, by the way, i am. back in dc. eating price club cookies, lox, cheese, and fruit the way you only can in my kitchen at all hours. watching any channel of tv you want. why oh why do i ever leave?

oh wait, i remember. family drama. at least it was novel to have something else waking me up at 7:30 besides my body saying "go check your mail!" but i am very happy to be home. in fact i'm sad i don't get to spend more time with my family this break. one brother is in florida. my dad's about to depart for new mexico, to settle a case he filed 36 years ago. my mom's currently with my other brother en route to rochester, ny.

however, today my mother insisted on buying me an awesome communist jacket. "red china" via ralph lauren.

low-grade flu

of the soul. no iowa for me. no hide and seek in cornfields, no overalls, no chance that i will live in the midwest in the foreseeable future. the letter kindly informed me that out of 368 applicants, they chose 25. i idled away time in my subsequent class trying to do the math: 1/16 or thereabouts? no matter. no funny vowels for me. no blue eyes. no best poetry program in the country, and it's okay.

6 to go.

vs.

at INDIE CONCERTS, people stand. at FOLK CONCERTS, people sit.

at INDIE CONCERTS, the average hair length is two inches or up. at FOLK CONCERTS, the average hair length is two feet and down.

at INDIE CONCERTS, everyone is pale. this is also true of FOLK CONCERTS.

girls who attend INDIE CONCERTS are slightly taller than those who attend FOLK CONCERTS.

people at INDIE CONCERTS wear sneakers. people at FOLK CONCERTS wear birkenstocks.

these are not STEREOTYPES. this is something grander: glib, under-researched TRUTH.

BLARGH!

out of impatience cross-bred with proactivity, i started calling graduate programs today to find out when they sent/are sending their letters. and i had two heart-attacks to learn that answers from two of my skools, both which mean a lot to me, will be making their way to the mail room in the next couple days.

i can't seem to calm down. if this turns into a panic attack, i could take my sedative stuff, but then i'll fall asleep for sure working for the friends library this afternoon. i think the solution is for someone to hit me over the head with an anvil and when i wake up, in several days, tell me briskly how my fate has been decided.

i am still a worthwhile person. i am still a worthwhile person. oh why oh why did i apply to graduate skool in the first place? why am i hyperventilating for the opportunity to write poetry in corn fields, or, as the case may be, cambridge?

LOTR is titanic!

i really liked ROTK; i was even rooting for it to win best picture. but by the time the ceremony meandered to its vanishing point, i had no enthusiasm left for the film. it was a foregone conclusion from the first award and how many more times did we need to see peter jackson's and fran walsh's matted hair?

besides, giving the picture "best adapted screenplay" is a crock. yes, the trilogy was a huge achievement, but come on. best screenplay? someone did bring to my attention that screenplays consist of story as well as dialogue, god knows that's true, but still, come on!, what dialogue there was was excusable at best. the screenplay categories are virtually all that's given to small, deserving flicks like american splendor.

although one of my favorite moments came as francis ford leapt to his feet hollering for his daughter when she won. that, and when the two presenters in a row thanked the wives they've loved since middle school. take note: it's way cuter to have loved since middle skool than since high. esp. if love in middle skool manifested itself by sending your lady live rats.

i wish bill murray had won. i'm glad charlize did. billy crystal was on about 75% of the time and what more can you ask? now: the top five best looking people at the 76 Academy Awards:

5) renee zellwegger who has evolved out of the emaciated chicago look.
4) angelina jolie (adam: what's that smudge on her arm? me: that's a tattoo. adam: that shouldn't be allowed.)
3) catharine zeta-jones
2) johnny depp. involuntary shrieks erupted whene'er the camera looked his way.
1) diane keaton. bless you, woman; you looked stunning.

major props to gorgeous women susan sarandon and jamie lee curtis. the latter was quoted as saying, "i've never felt this beautiful." and to the lovely adrian brody who not only looked smashing but made fun of himself onstage too.

hang tough

i've had a productive day, for a sunday. i printed out a copy of the (completed) 2nd draft of my screenplay and handed it off for the next someone to read. i had brunch w/ addie then played nine men's morris, hex, and go, once she taught me how. and then we saw audrey's breathtaking one woman show. so much talent, so much courage, so much will is required to put on a show like that, i can barely comprehend it. certainly it was one of the best performances i've seen since i've been here and one of the ones i feel most should be taken outside, beyond.

it's hard to shake off. the oscars! yes, and. this is the last week before spring break. i can't quite think about what happens afterwards. instead. here's a poem i wrote, thinking into the future as far as i could.

disorder

there will be a table,
lions inscribed in china, paws up to
three glinting glasses
There will be napkins drawn through
rings as though in magic: each
produces a lap! wine dripping from fingers
like shower-water

there has been a revolution
Now the table has no head
and our bourgeois shame sits heavy
on the pillows, eats leadened bread,
looses wine on the china with real grief
We will stagger through
the story, graceless and spurting, propelled
by the need to pass from one end
of the night to the other
and the next.

it's rough, it hasn't been edited yet (that's what rough means). if you have suggestions, please.

top five time!

list of things i'm most afraid of:

5) my closet. if you saw my closet, you'd understand. beyond my particular closet though lies a more generalized, inexplicable fear of Closets, similar to my fear of Bathrooms. no, i don't believe in psychoanalysis.
4) norman bates [coming out of my closet, dressed as his mother, wielding a knife]. this is horror movie week for my film theory class: lots of watching celluloid women crumple bloody and dead. theory on the subject is actually interesting but it doesn't make up for 3 nights in a row of me sleeping with the light on.
3) honors. people keep giving me inspirational speeches and all i want to hear is "congratulations, it's over."
2) george bush and mel gibson. though i agree with her, i wish maureen dowd would try being wise without being "witty," cuz the "wit" falls flatter than kim novak in vertigo and threatens to obscure her point.
1) thin envelopes in my mailbox. any envelopes in my mailbox. the mail room. being twenty feet from the mail room. living above the mail room. etc.

in case you like links

reviews for il passiono:
new yorker*
washington post
boston globe
nyt
the onion
more ...

and an interesting "guide to the Passion pundits" at tnr. it features our friend kyle's rabbi of choice, danny lapin.

* if you can get your hands on the print copy of the magazine, the cartoon that accompanies david denby's review is priceless.

it's fat tuesday! eat more fries!

in honor of today, which precedes a frightening tomorrow, i am prepared with your permission to ignore politics. here you will find neither rants re: nader nor rhetoric re: bush, regardless of how upset news about them has made me. honestly, what else can you expect from either?

so, right. how about that pop culture? the oscars are coming up! (vote here for the blanches) i saw the dreamers on friday: lyrical, naked, complex, and featuring the kind of blood rarely visible on screen! isn't "the o.c." the best show on television, especially now that sex and the city has floated off the air!

i was fortunate enough to be surrounded by friends during the SATC finale who shrieked and groaned and laughed appropriately. i loved miranda and samantha's storylines. charlotte's was more predictable, although she did have the episode's biggest laugh (harry moans about their adoption troubles and c. replies: "we're jews. we've been through worse than this.") and i was glad at least that carrie came back to new york where she belonged even if mr "his name is JOHN?" big has to shepherd her. she deserves no better.

aw. i'll miss that show. i felt very connected to Women's Culture; i could feel the Power of Sisterhood whizzing through me as i sat on my couch, laughing at yet another dirty double entendre. aw. but really. the good-natured raunch, the good-looking men, the witty dialogue, occasional bursts of feminism. i'll miss it.

dear kyle,

after reading your thoughtful post on jonah's livejournal, i can't say i'm convinced of your position. i mean, i'm sure you're not an evil propoganda-spouting spam robot, but you sure do sound like one! for instance:

Some people, not really representative of Jewish people, but rather self appointed Jewish spokespeople, such as Abraham Foxman from the Anti-Defamation League, seem to have been attempting to denounce this film for months as being anti-Semitic. The news reported that they even stole the script last year! But here's what some Jews say (Jews who don't make it their job to tear apart other people): Protesting Gibson's Passion Lacks Moral Legitimacy by Rabbi Daniel Lapin.

that's silly! i have no desire to "tear apart other people," kyle; i'm just offended by your film.

here are my two reasons: one: passion plays are an old european genre of drama intended to evoke strong emotional response in audiences. overwhelmed with love of jesus and empathy for his suffering, medieval christians wiped their eyes and killed some jews. even if mel gibson doesn't intend his passion play to have this effect, it's astounding to me that he can ignore the history and dismiss legitimate sensitivity concerns.
two: the other day, i saw a movie about nazis. it was a very good movie and very affecting, which meant i walked out thinking "i hate germans." i am a rational, well-educated, tolerant, leftish, western female vegetarian. had a german crossed my path, i would have kicked hir in the knee. or at least glowered.
the passion has been described as a similarly intense emotional experience. in the film, jewish mobs cry for jesus's blood. pontius pilate reluctantly spills it and only agrees to finally crucify jesus when the jews won't stand for anything less. penultimately, the high priest of the jews calls down a curse on his people, declaring them guilty of deicide. i mean, wow! people aren't going to leave that movie with a high opinion of "the jews," are they?

besides all that, kyle, it's hard enough for those of us who are trying very, very hard to have love in our hearts & to ignore the barrage of publicity leading up to the passion's ash wednesday debut without you smearing your chirpy thoughts ("To sum up my impression of The Passion: it's a work of art") on our friends pages. i wasn't even planning on writing this rant until i read your comment. but i hope at least i have shared with you my viewpoint, and maybe you can take it back to mel.

sincerely, &c. &c.

want to cry?

on a sunny saturday, who doesn't?

here is why you should raise your child to be a judge and not a president or a governor. i'm so impressed with new mexico. who expected the barely-blue state to be next? i was thinking maybe miami and indeed it would be fun watching jeb's face contort in impotent gubernatorial rage.

i was talking to a queer friend about all of this, a radical in many respects who is fascinated by queer family and marriage at the moment. she is as excited as i am by the coverage. she also reads it to happy-cry. what an unusual february this is. it's light and dry and history, instead of dozing backstage until black history month surrenders the microphone, is actually being made before our eyes.

i have made two important decisions this february. i am not going to quit honors; i am going to stick it out and scrape by. and i am not going to skip a week of skool in order to join my b.lovd in europe. if you see these as signs of responsibility, fiscal or otherwise, don't get too excited: i still don't do my own taxes.

love is love is love

first, hail mary.

when i got back from my film screening on italian neorealist classic roma, citta aperta, about the resistance in occupied rome, i was so full of hate i had to eat crackers. after two crackers, i could breathe regularly and without snorting. after four, i could realize that a whole different generation of people inhabits germany so hating "germans" is not productive or fair. after several more, i could think rationally that even during wwII, not all germans agreed with nazi policy and other people from other countries were just as vile.

it took a lot of chewing, followed by a lot of reading about glorious san francisco, to return to my resting state of not hating anybody in particular. people really have to stop showing me movies about nazis though. instead of becoming desensitized over time, i've gotten increasingly angry at each i see.

enough about nazis! san francisco, san francisco, bless you.

anni-day, for real

i know it's real, because my anni-day co-celebrant woke me up this morning with a long distance phone call. i stumbled directly from my dream, in which i watched irish women throw white flowers off a balcony, into the fuzzy voice of my darling, who is not shaving while in europe because razors are too expensive.

i felt somewhat like a dorothy parker protagonist, one of the young ladies who receives a ten minute phone call from her sweetheart overseas before he ships off to fight the war some more. in my case, my soldier is fighting against the deflated dollar. in a strained thin voice, he exhorted me, eat grapes for me.

anything for you, my soldier.

it was a charming way to wake up, though the image of those irish women (tearfully? joyously?) throwing white flowers lingers in my mind in a whistling way. last night i made a movie. yes, my first movie ever. yes, two minutes long, but just guess how many hours of preparation went into it. (don't guess. it's depressing.) even for all that prep, it's not perfect, since for this assignment we're not allowed to EDIT. still, i could have walked on water once i finished.

the stop-animation bit is my favorite part. also my first attempt at anything like, it's not as much terribly smooth and convincing as it is fun to watch. we also were forbidden from adding music. when you see the stop-animation dancing, you'll have to imagine the music for yourself.

post v-day

so much sugar yesterday. i was a happy girl. selling all them roses from 12:30 to 5 (and buying and distributing a few) tired me out, as did realizing i'd missed my boy's happy v-day call from across the pond, but chipper k-ross showed up, matching me in crimsonness -- i was arrayed in pink skirt, red t-shirt and red sweatshirt; he in red pants, red polo shirt, and pink jacket -- and offering himself as my date for the evening.

at dinner, we witnessed a graphic reenactment of the valentines day massacre and, as i mentioned, ate so much sugar. if it were a choice between sugar and meat, i'd give up meat in a heartbeat. it helps that i'm vegetarian. but if it were a choice between sugar and film theory, i'd give up film theory! between sugar and beer, i'd give up beer! i'd give up mice, the 29th of february, and the british legal system for the icing off another cupcake. witness my resolve.

a choice between sugar and movies, though, that would be difficult. last night, after an exciting if neverending several hours of poker, i finally watched american splendor, the year's most egregious oscar snub for direction if nothing else. this afternoon, i finally watched witness for the prosecution. both movies have layers; i love layers.

st. cyril and co.

roomie brigid informed me that today is not even st. valentine's day -- it's st. cyril's along with some other guy; the two of them created the cyrillic alphabet. this reminds me of the best response i got while peddling Roses for Valentines Day! for comotion: one girl shook her head, leaned in and whispered, "that's pagan."
(2nd best response: one boy walked by, shook his head, leaned in and whispered, "fuck love.")

all that said, happy valentines day. last year on this day i woke up in a hospital, the only time in my life so far that i've had the pleasure. i plan on dedicating at least an hour today to being grateful for not being sick and whatever else i can think of. for instance, that comotion sold NOT JUST the 500 roses we initially procured, but a whopping 700 !! and made a tidy sum of very necessary cash too. someone even bought me a rose. thanks, someone.

i will almost definitely feel less friendly towards our roses after i spent several hours this afternoon bundling and distributing them. on the other hand, it's not like i have anything better to do today -- or anything at all, actually, for which i am (add it to the list) grateful. i am not accustomed to days where i have to be On On On without a break. i need little breaths of alone-time fresh air. but yesterday i had to a thousand things, including my film theory seminar, a job interview, and attend an opera, one after the other.

oddly, the opera revived me. a student both directed and starred in it -- no mean feat. it wasn't too long, the stars' voices were incredible, and the story was easy to follow if a little silly because, well, it's an opera. anyway, i was very impressed. my spirits were glad to have been buoyed and were such good sports from that point on that i rewarded them by drinking nand laughing and not concentrating on a damn thing til the wee hours of the morning.

mass., here i come!

i am going to marry this woman and have her babies. this is not even a joke. if you want to laugh, though, check her entry on the grammys.

2nd choice: carrie fisher. my heart melts. and she wanted to be dorothy parker too!

mr. a. schlesinger, of kennedy administration fame, speaks here this evening. sorenson would be cooler but, off the top of my head, i'd guess he's been torn apart by alien devil wolves. i suppose this fella will have to do.

all today, i kept furrowing my brow at the calendar, trying to figure out why "february 11" started so many bells ringing between my ears. then of course i realized that four years ago on february 11th was the beginning of my highskool graduation weekend. the 13th was actual-graduation: ugly blue gowns, processions, hebrew songs, corny speeches. i spent 13 years of my life in that skool, yet i have the sense that my upcoming graduation on memorial day might matter even more.

which is to say, in ten years, when someone invites me to go yachting on memorial day, i will smile reflectively, brush away a tear, and sigh, "ah memorial day. the day my kingdom of swarthmore was torn from me ..." then i will proceed to get rollickingly drunk, in memory of my two roommates, "irish" and "lush."

ETA: so schlesinger is actually a groovy old pink-shirt wearing bespectacled dude. he lost a couple points in my book for inadequate audience prep (if you're going to talk about mr. palmer of the palmer raids at swarthmore college, you have to mention that palmer is our most infamous alum). otherwise he impressed me greatly, making a solid historical case for his argument that the bush doctrine is a dangerous deviation from america's foreign policy and that dissent in wartime has always been the norm.

i wish i'd recorded some of the quotes he used from sen. taft, presidents (t) roosevelt, eisenhower, and truman, and many others. my favorite was, and yes i know i've heard it before, "war never prevents anything, except peace." also eisenhower who apparently said that if someone approached him to discuss a policy of preventative war, the president would throw that fool out of his office.

he seemed a little shaky at points (man he's OLD) and i was nervous he wouldn't make it, like the priest who died in the middle of that wedding i went to. his principles carried him through and for that as much as anything swarthmore rewarded him with a resounding standing ovation.

worth the wait

i knew that if i kept checking in periodically -- i.e., every ten minutes -- at dooce, i'd be rewarded by a heartrending, funny, beautiful essay in the style of anne lamott's operating instructions. indeed, i was not disappointed, and you will not be either (assuming you click on that link, you fool).

like operating instructions it certainly doesn't make me want to have a baby. but it reaffirms my belief that witty writers should crank them out, as long as it doesn't interfere with their witty writing, in order that i may gape at them in awe and wonder at them while laughing my ass off.

remedies

i left the library this early-afternoon with my arms full of my 19th century fetish. wuthering heights, in video and novel form; northhanger abbey/persuasion in one volume; and quills, which i've never seen. if anyone's interested in drooling over dresses, brooding men, and/or aberrant sexualities with me, please let me know.

i had gone in looking for a b&w soviet film i need to see for my film theory seminar. but, as the wise men say, life is like a box of chocolates, &c.

besides consuming bronte and austen and way too many saltines, i've been distracting myself from the gaping newness of ben's absence with people. a delightfully bouncy Nields concert friday night, followed by a heavy-on-the-gossip, light-on-the-sleep sleepover. an epic dinner that incorporated several overlapping friend groups and locations. a truckload of inappropriate jokes i'd be embarrassed to repeat here (for example: how do you get a nun pregnant? dress her up as an altar boy! how embarrassing).
then last night the barn party which, if i'd been in the mood or dressed for it, would have been smashing. a melange of high-energy people, ranging from those i don't know to those i'd forgotten to those i only talk to when [they're] drunk. i snuck up to visit my old room at one point and was startled by the familiarity of the lavendar walls. i remember painting them -- indeed, i have pictures -- back when the barn was less intimidating because i lived there.

so here's bullshit

the washington post editorial page piously claims to endorse gay marriage but wags a finger at the "judicial arrogance" that is "forcing gay marriage down people's throats in undemocratic fashion."

first of all, i wonder, how could judges force something down people's throats in DEMOCRATIC fashion? by taking a vote? by taking turns?
that aside.

nothing makes me angrier in this debate than the argument that judges are somehow outside their rights when they make decisions based on precedent and evidence that change some detail about our society. my impression was that is exactly what they're paid and appointed to do. this kind of thing --

Given the moral and religious anxiety many people feel on the subject and the absence of clear constitutional mandates for gay marriage, judges ought to be showing more respect for elected officials trying to make this work through a political process.

-- is preposterous. judges should show respect for elected officials? i thought the legislative body was a separate and distinct entity for a reason.

politicians answer to the people. they can only be as radical as their consciences and purses allow. judges, however, have a responsibility to look forward, beyond the current political climate, and make strong, declarative decisions that pull our society forward. and hurrah for them. if judges in the 50s and 60s had bowed to that kind of pressure and waited to implement civil rights legislation until politicians/the country were "ready" for them, we'd still be living in a segregated country. well, a country even more segregated than the one we live in now.

like with civil rights legislation, of course there will opposition at first. that doesn't mean it's not good or just or, most importantly, the wave of the future.

who wants to celebrate may 18 with me?

i know it's silly to be all giddy and excited, but i am giddy and excited, baby. same-sex marriage legalized in massachusetts! 1/50th of america, at least, has caught up with the most advanced parts of the world.

on the sober side of the issue, i recognize that this means the right will get inflamed and push even harder for an amendment to ban same-sex marriage. the right is in a perpetual state of near-inflamation anyway. bush has so much on his plate right now, it's conceivable he'll continue putting the issue off. for the first time since he came into office, according to cnn, his approval rating has dropped below 50% (to 49%, but still). the people whose minds have changed about him recently and who he needs to woo hardly seem to be the kind of people who would forgive all for a pandering-to-the-xtian-right move like that.

still, congratulations, massachusetts! you are, for the moment, my favorite state.

sweeping the nation

so kerry's kerry-ing a majority of states this evening, but let's be honest about what's still on everyone's minds. now, i didn't watch the superbowl. at 9 pm, friends were forcibly restraining me from leaping in front of the dense pack of boys and changing the channel to sex and the city. but i've read enough about the boob incident to form an opinion and i feel it's one that's supported by the pictures linked to above: janet jackson's breast did not expect to be exposed right then. justin timberlake 100% pure creep. if some soon-to-be-forgotten spotlight-craving jackass twenty years my junior stripped me part-naked in front of millions of people, i'd beat him to death with my microphone.

janet jackson has chosen the more peaceful, feminine apology route. that's her right. vengeance is mine, saith the lord. i will repay.
the least she could have done is pantsed him, though. i mean come ON.

apropos of nothing, my grandmother turns 91 today. let's hear it for my grandmother. i'll bet she doesn't even know who justin timberlake is.

anni-day

no matter how much i steel myself for eating alone, returning from having eaten alone leaves me downcast. these are the times when i feel like maybe it's time to graduate, when i sit in sharples by myself looking on increasing numbers of people i don't know or know just enough that it's faintly embarassing that they're seeing me by myself.

i do need to get used to it since so many of my friends have moved off-campus and since ben, who's been my houseguest for a couple weeks and will be for one more, will be moving off, in his one way, soon. i nearly brought a book today but was waylaid by the fact that surely the only scarier thing than a stony-faced girl eating alone is that same stony-faced girl eating alone while reading dracula.

yesterday we celebrated our anni-day (3 years!), not because it was technically our anni-day but because on our technical anni-day he'll be galavanting around europe. even if manifactured, and come on, what holiday isn't?, the day was lovely. we watched fellini's 8 1/2 which was a visual ballet from start to finish, and surreal and self-referential in that way i can't get enough off. (it reminded me of one of my favorite films, all that jazz, and not coincidentally i'm sure.)

then we went into the city for mod romance: first to tritone, on 15th and south, and then across the street to bob and barbara's. since i expected something flamboyant from the latter, the quiet, quirky scene was initially a little disappointing, but the old-skool blues/jazz band buoyed my spirits. at tritone, all was sublime. candles! music! deep-fried candy bars and pabst! the food was good and warm and cheap -- our several course meal, including appetizers, main dish, side dish, drinks and dessert was less than $20 each. and we got to carve our names into the table. i reccomend it highly for your own mod romance needs.

little neurotic babies!

holy shit: the most annoying comic character ever may be getting hitched. does that mean we need to worry about potential badly-drawn offspring?

i hate it when things that are supposed to be empowering -- i.e., "cathy," the first widely published comic strip to be written by a working woman about a working woman; or, say, maureen dowd -- are actually smug, snide, or irritating.

last night i meant to watch city of god, which was being shown with moderate legality on campus, but after sitting through the entirety of d.w. griffith's intolerance, i simply couldn't handle it. my knees cried, Not three MORE hours of being bent and stationary! my hands cried, Not three MORE hours without doodling! my eyes -- well, they just cried, and yours would too, because intolerance is an epic of epic proportions, and epics are bad enough when they have sound, color, and coherent plots.

certainly, it's better than birth of a nation, the other epic for which griffiths is known. this one doesn't have scheming mulattos and a noble ku klux klan. it does however continue with the theme of very pale victimized childlike women and the terrible tragedies that befall them.
i don't want to sell d.w. short. he creates a pretty amazing replica of ancient babylon and the battle scenes are direct ancestors of those of lotr. heads succeed in rolling rather believably. i'm just not a fan of his moral messages and three hours of anything can be hard to take.

fcuk

pfffff. what does new hampshire know? they didn't pick clinton way-back-when. maybe they have a thing against arkansasians (wow that word looks weird spelled out) that explains their not voting for my boy clark.
all i can say is, i hope the only viable candidate doesn't drop out of this race.

on a different political note, i am shocked, SHOCKED, that cbs would dare to deny airtime to an anti-bush ad while allowing a pro-bush one. cbs should not be deciding what is "too controversial" for the american viewing public during the superbowl. several things have outraged me over the past several years of bush administration secrets and lies, but only the valerie plame leak has gotten to me as much as this.

click on the banner to find out the details and, if you're so inclined, to express your outrage in email form.

honeypie, honeypie

i can't believe i forgot the friggin golden globes this year. and they went exactly how i would have wanted them to! LOTR won best drama, lost in translation won best comedy and best screenplay. bill murray won, as did meryl streep, al pacino, and jeffrey wright for angels in america. and i was CLUELESS.

going away for the weekend, to ben's father's 50th birthday in brighton beach, must have disoriented me. it was indeed a disorienting experience: six hours in a russian restaurant that aspired to be the moulin rouge and succeeded only in being, if possible, more postmodern. i'm not even using jargon for jargon's sake. the floor show was not only the best floor show this side of rocky horror; it was also the most amazing explication of postmodernism i've ever seen. pastiche/high art + low art IS the mix of opera, ballet, and acrobatics with russian rockettes, stripper-like women in cages, and pounding flourescent techno. nothing in the floor show made any sense or correllated in any way with that came before or after, but that seemed to be the point.
it was all surface, fishnet-stockinged high-heeled surface, and the russians ate it up, along with the six thousand steaming plates of lamb that kept arriving to each table.

i was almost too busy goggling at the fishnets and heels to eat even the veggie-friendly salad appetizers. in my wool pants, button-down shirt, and sweater, i felt and looked like a nun.

i am, however, glad i went. it was definitely an experience. i took lots of pictures, though not one of the many clusters of fishnetted, high-heeled girls smoking under the "thank you for not smoking" signs (the restaurant would do marginally better with signs that read, "thank you for not ashing on the carpet") or the last stripper-like woman who danced in the cage, wearing a sparkly shirt and nothing else.

then go to new york

i'm off for the first of my indeterminate number of weekends away from swarthmore. this one is in honor of ben's father's birthday. being as he's russian and everything, a whole rowdy group is descending on an authentic russian restaurant in an authentic russian part of brooklyn. i mean, you think 'russian,' you think 'vodka' -- and you think 'vodka,' you think 'fun,' right?

it's too cold to do anything outside. or maybe it's too cold to do anything that doesn't involve vodka.

first fight. then fiddle.

i have my schedule settled. my potential classes, in order of relative skate-through-able-ness to lip-biting hair-tearing difficulty, are:

contemporary women's poetry
vampires in film, literature, and music
video production workshop
film theory (seminar, but only one credit)

on wednesday, when i had both video production and film theory, my profs each screened three experimental films. the grand total of six experimental films wiped me out.
(i know the word "experimental" is vague; essentially, it means NO DIALOGUE, NO STORY and NO ENDING, LET ALONE A HAPPY ONE.)
however, in the future it seems as though the video production class will focus on teaching us how to use a camera and then trying us by fire, and the film theory class will focus on, well, theory, making this past wednesday's experience a unique one.

the video production class is exciting because i will actually be learning a skill. this is a first for me at swarthmore. i've never even held a mini-dvd camera and by the end of the semester i will have made three short films. not as practical, maybe, as learning to change a tire or file taxes, but one has to start somewhere.

and vampires! who wouldn't be thrilled to learn about vampires! especially from a cute/dorky guy who seems simultaneously animated by the material and determined not to take it, or himself, too seriously.

thanks to everyone who passed on condolences re: gephardt, whether by email, in person, or shouting them across the cafeteria. the party went off well anyway. people rallied: they said "at least it wasn't dean" and poured themselves another glass of wine.
on that note, i have a bet going about whether the nomination will go to kerry or clark. i say clark. feel free to add your opinion and maybe i'll defend mine.

party prep

countdown to the caucus. this is serious business. if you don't believe it, come to our victory party this evening: where there's lamb, there's serious business.

it's always nerve-wracking to me to realize i don't know something that 24 hours from now i will know. even though i couldn't possibly know what i don't yet know, it irritates me that my future-self will know something my present-self doesn't. for instance, will i get into grad skool? i'd really they let me know before they let me know, you know?

speaking of rubbish, someone should buy the rights to my subconscious mind. not only do i come up with ridiculously creative horror scenarios, i dream some crazy shit. last night i dreamt i was carrying a wicker ring. once i dropped it i couldn't find it again until i had the brilliant idea to turn off everything in the world that wasn't wicker.
instantly, i found the ring. i turned the world back to normal again but i'd changed something irrevokably. as the pompous and irritated authority figure informed me, i'd "fucked with impossibility!" now EVERYTHING was possible -- which meant, of course, everything was chaos.

please hope gep pulls through tonite. there are excellent political reasons but more importantly, if he does, it will make my family very happy.

things we said today

anxiety dreams the past few nights. in them, i throw books at people's heads, curl into a ball on the floor and sob. people turn away from me. i wake up sorethroated and thirsty.

it must be related to returning to college. i'm about to return to college for the last time. well, actually, i suppose there's returning from spring break too. perhaps i should instruct my subconscious not to be so melodramatic.

still, over and over again, i find myself telling people it's almost over. cuz it is.

at times like these, i like johnny cash.