Unplugged.

Today I'm having one of those days where the brain is unplugged. That is not to say that it has suddenly betrayed its punk rock roots and turned acoustic, but more like it has lost connection to possibly all sane tendencies. This usually wouldn't be so bad, all I need to do is shut my mouth, right? Well, I'm also feeling very hormonal right now and seem to be obsessed with foxes of all species and varieties and can't seem to stop talking about them. Ahh! I've said many stupid things today. This is really what got me into trouble last year with the unwanted lover. It turned out really badly because later on I realized my extremely scary mistake but he still thought I was into him so I had to endure his passionate stares and constant need to talk with me. Plus he's a goddamn sexist, and I am a eco-feminist. Ok I totally have to tell some stories about him in the next blog. His [changed] name will be Eminem, but all my friends call him PHM or MPBM (those are acryonyms for somewhat insulting nicknames). Anyways, I digress. But what I was trying to say is that there are no foxes at my school what so ever.

The un-foxes at my school actually sort of remind me of the early American Colonists, such as John Smith and John Winthrop. Take John Smith for example. He seemed to be a pretty hot guy from his journals. I mean, not only did he survived the Indians, the many diseases, and a huge fire that hit the Chesapeake colonies, but on top of all that, he got the hot Cheiftan daughter! (so he says). His True Relation of the Settling of VA seems heroic. It seems incredible. But according to his journals, it happened to him over three times. All with him getting the girl at the end. So it turns out that he is a cocky bastard, not actually so hot as he says, not actually as brave as he says, and ethnocentric to boot. And these are the types of guys that I have to choose from at my school.

Recently I went to a play, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, with one of my favorite local punk bands playing the Angry Inch. These guys were pretty cute, albeit too old me, and they smeared eye make up, had dirty looking hair, and they were ripping up the guitars/bass/drums/piano. And it was hot! This is a scientific fact: grunge is hot, but only when combined with outstanding musical skill plus good lyrics and a bit of androgyny (but still with distinct masculinity).

The Otherside

My cheeks are wet,
My mind released
Like the humid air
When a rainstorm has
Hammered its falling
Drops onto the shiny leaves and
Glass pane windows.
I’ve watched this happen from behind
The glass before.
My soul is reflecting
The sunset sky, pale blue with
Sprinkled yellow clouds.
It makes me laugh how quickly
The sky changes.
The wind just blows pain away.
And sleepy silhouettes dance in the
Falling damp darkness while
Wind whispers through the trees

Gardening Class

Why don't you dig a place in the dirt
dig it big and perfect and round
then place your world into it
and bury it deep

when your done you may
plant one flower on top
and say goodbye

Hedwig and her Angry Inch.

Have you ever had one of those beautiful weekends, where everything seems to go right and you get this lovely feeling thats sort of like waking up slowly to birds chirping and light rain tapping on a tin roof mixed with the feeling you get when you take a big gulp of hot berry tea?

I had one of those this weekend.

On friday I had a newspaper meeting with J and A and all the other editors. I felt like I was a part of a team, and I liked that. Then J, A, and myself went to a movie at the movie museum (a place that shows old movie and you get to sit in nice leather recliners). We watched this melancholic movie about East Berlin in the eighties. It was sad and happy and ironic all at the same time. It made me cry, but in a good way. Afterwards we went to a ramen place and I had a miso soup, shared with good friends.

On saturday, my mom and I were coerced into going to my little cousin's fourth birthday part on the other side of the island. We went with my other aunt, and we all had matching grimaces as we hung around the hot, busy park. When the party was over, it was outlet shopping for us, and we had a semi-shopping spree at Office Depot and Old Navy.

The evening was the best part of the day though. I had bought two tickets to the play Hedwig and the Angry Inch, at the Academy of Arts Theatre. I went with my friend M. She's fun to go out with. The play was fantastic and I loved it to death. Like the movie I saw on Friday, it was about East Berlin. But unlike the movie, the protagonist was a transvestite musical artist. The highlight was one of the guitarists, though. I must admit that he is beautiful. Me and M stayed in front waiting for our ride, and saw him come out. I was too nervous to talk to him, but thankfully M hissed, "Go. Now. Ask him when his next show is!" And I did it!!! He was so nice. Then we saw the star of the show (Hedwig) come out, and he was cool, too. It was a great night.

I might have to develop some club crashing techniques so I can become a band aid. That was an Almost Famous reference, for your information. Keep up, why don't you! :)

First day of school

This is nothing big.
No biggie. Whatever.
But yesterday was my
first day of junior year.
Second to last one. Whoa.
And it went ok. But I have
to learn about
sucking it up. Waking up
early has never ever ever
ever ever ever been my thing.
I am a night owl, free flyer.
But now I have seven thirty
classes two thirds of the time.
But other than the obvious,
the day was relaxing and fun,
and I enjoyed myself.

7:30-Art of Video:

Huff huff, puff puff
I am late for my first class
and trafic was horrrendus.
Finally I'm hear, I run up the
three flights of stairs to my class.
Run run jump jump.
There it is. What is this?
"AoV, 7:30 cancelled"
What? Adrenaline pumping
with out use, like a car running
in the parking garage.
I go and hang with friends.

8:30-9:30-math:
"I don't care what grade you get. I don't care
if you try your hardest and get an A. I don't
care if you try your hardest and get a C. I. Don't. Care."
We started off with a lecture. He told us as
long as we tried our hardest, focused on homework,
we would do fine. And then we worked on counting.
And then I saw the calculater (it was HUGE).
And then I did the homework.
In the end, a small freak out was in order.
Soon I will be alright.

9:30-10:30-assembly (all high school):
It was cool, sitting in the shade of the monkey tree,
next to friends and some other people who I shall not name.
Those people (that person) is in front of me now in the
computer lab. Damn.
I digress. Assembly was...
long
boring
but I had my phone
and text messages.
And some thoughts to make me laugh
some new developments over summer
that I had yet to see.

10:30-11:30 Art of Video, long:
This is usually two hours.
But today it was one.
We talked about projects, and
our teacher's life. What he has done.
What he thinks about videos.
I agree with it.
To be honest, I used to think he was
scary, I don't know why.
He is much different from how I thought.
He is very nice. nice. nice. yuk I hate that word.
He is funny.
I guess you can never judge a movie by it's preview.

and then I had french.
Pure french. No english to be spoken in class.
I printed out the text book, and I checked out a french novel
that I have to read even though I don't understand it.
I feel like a preschooler scanning the words I don't know
how to read in a big fat novel. she said it would "click"

and then I was done early.
Let's hope junior year "clicks" soon.

Dylan

A couple days before school, my friend and I decided to go out on the town and get our last kicks out before we officially were students again. We went out onto sort of the main touristy street (on a tuesday night) and tried to get into whatever trouble there was to be had. We ended up just walking around looking at the street preformers. We passed the "tin" and "gold" men, pretending to be statues. "hey hows it going, hows your night?" we would saycat call and whistle from the silver robot. We put a handful of coins into one robots box, and all he did was mime us putting a dollar in his box. Damn that robot guy, I thought. Greedy little man. But then we saw the jewel of street preformers. He was a young(ish) man with a persian rug flopped onto the side of the street, with a sign saying "henna". For all of you who don't know, henna is a type of skin dye used for making tattoos. It's been around for thousands of years. We found out that he was this guy with out a home, living on the beach and in the streets. Here are some snippets of our conversation.

"How much do you charge?" I asked.
"Nothing, I work off tips." Dylan answered.
"Ok. We're in."
"Where are you from?" we ask him.
"wisconsin."
"what'd you do there?"
"I was a cook, a baker, a gas station manager, a store clerk, a waiter, a garbage man, a delivery man, and a book keeper."
"wow you were busy."
"I just kept getting fired from jobs. I'm a good person, you know? it's just that I didn't want to do the bad things that my bosses wanted me to do."
"ahh I see."
"I quit drinking now, so I think I'm going to get rich."

Our talks continued in this manner until a homeless woman came up and addressed him.

"hey, I saw you in mcdonnalds, how are you man?" she slurs
"good, good. ya I sometimes go to mcdonnalds" he replies looking slightly aback, barely noticable to the woman
"have you seen rob recently?"
"oh ya, he's doing the silver man tonight."
"how about you, what are you up to?"
he looks around at us, as if to imply that this is what he's been doing.
"uhh not sleeping much. I used to sleep all the time, but it's like, I don't sleep anymore. the fucking feds kicked me off the beach."


After we finished our henna (which was really pretty), we walked away laughing to ourselves. We were so lucky to have met our new favorite street person, dylan.

And it's over.

I woke up at six in the morn. I woke up and took the bus without coffee, and then proceeded to stand in line for three hours to get my books for school. The cameras took me by surprise when they snapped and I looked like a wolf baring her teeth. Filling my bags with uniforms, books, and everything else, I discussed my schedule with my dean who said that 7:30 classes everyday is the way it's gonna be. Then I got to retreat into the delightfully cool bed of a pickup truck and speed off to the movies, where I sat in the deep, sleepy darkness of the movie theatre watching Stardust. Which wasn't bad, by the way.

Now it's the second to last day of summer and I'm happily resigned to the fact that in 48 hours or so, I'll be back in the rat race. It's not such a bad idea, come to think of it, to have summer, and then school again. At first it seemed like a cruel joke, but after years and years it's more like a friendly back street dirt road after driving on concrete mapped out roads for too long.

When you have a summer that has not been some built up idea of inspired greatness, but has subtly passed like dust in the sun, it gives you a incredibly good perspective of life and just the fact that you have one, and a great one at that.

But I'm excited for school to come. I love to learn, and I love school. I'm fortunate enough to go to one of the greatest schools in the country, and I value it.

Maui soon, I hope

My favorite tampon advert is the one in those teen magazines where there is a woman scuba diving in crystalline waters about twenty feet down. She seems to be enjoying herself, and if it weren't for the fifteen foot tiger shark swimming around her, I would want to be in her shoes. Underneath the picture, in big white letters, it says, "Bad time for a leak. That's why you should use Tampax Pearls, extra triple leak protection guaranteed!"

If all things go well, I should be in her shoes in about fourteen hours. I'm going to Maui to stay with my uncle and his kids for the weekend, and I'm stoked. It's been so long since I've been diving and I hope that I won't be killed by nitrogen fixation, or by a huge tiger shark ripping apart my tender flesh with its quintessential pearly whites.

Wish me luck!

P.S. these are basically the coolest people you will ever meet

My Trip (the abridged version)

I just got back from my trip, and so I’m jet lagged, but because I like to sleep in, it’s perfect and I’m normal now. I’m usually an incredible night owl, easily staying up till the crack of dawn, but now I’m a sensible young person who goes to bed at 8:00 and wakes up at 7:30. I’m so boring. But since school starts in a couple of days I count my blessings because now I’ll finally get a good nights rest for the first day of school instead of freaking out and reading all of my text books.

I’m so happy to be home. I thought that I wouldn’t miss it that much but I actually did quite a bit. I ended up missing the little imperfections and idiosyncrasies. I realized also that when your somewhere similar to your home, you end up really liking that place. Take the Jersy shore for example. I loved Ocean City, which is basically like my home town except with a board walk (imagine a line of shops and rides next to the ocean, hundreds of foxes swarming). I fell in love with it! Philadelphia was wonderful also, but I’m not sure if I would like to live there alone. It's busy and bustling, with countless things to do (i.e. Blonde Redhead and Wicked to see, yay!), but it's dangerrrrous. Seven people murdered in a weekend. This is normal. Where I live we have about 30 people murdered. In a year. I have a lot of respect for my grandmother who lives there. She lives by herself in the city, and she thrives. It’s wonderful to watch.

I also visited Princeton, which was great. Daniel Radcliffe land!!! He’s going there in the fall. By some weird twist of fate, it looks exactly like Hogwarts, so I’m sure he’ll feel right at home. What I love most about Princeton is the art museum. It’s really quite amazing, with paintings from the 1400’s next to Andy Warhols and Picasso’s. I thought that was fabulous. Plus I liked the fact that they don’t have fraternities or sororities, but instead have “Food Clubs” which are basically these huge mansions filled with chefs to make whatever your heart desires. Blissful, isn’t it? That 500 pound person inside of me is smiling giddily with the application in hand.

I'm in Phili!!!

yes, the city of brotherly love. I can't talk long, but just giving a little update. the Jersy Shore calls.