scavenging

things...

so i went on the scav hunt last night...there were many illegal things on the list, but we got them all legitimately...yay for little plastic shopping carts!

and then, driving to liza's, we pass guy going really slowly in a red pickup. in his defense, it was illegal...but we didn't cut him off, or flick him or anything. but he leaned on the horn, and started following us more closely.

we didn't think anything of it until we turned onto 7th to go to liza's, when he turned too. So, to see if we were being neurotic and he just happened to be going our way, megan went past liza's place and made a really tight turn, random as anything.

he followed.

so now we're getting nervous, but it's still pretty fun; we hit a speed bump that we didn't see and get a little air and laugh like crazy, but the guy's still following us--bear in mind that we're three teenage girls in a small distinctive car, 10:20 at night, give or take, in a neighborhood with houses that are close together but where everyone's asleep by now, being followed by a man in an old red pickup truck, american flag decal on the back window, and, as far as our imaginations have gone, shotgun on the passenger seat.

we kill the lights, and megan keeps driving like crazy...she knows that neighborhood pretty well, so she was just driving like a fucking maniac...plus her distinctive little car has one hell of an acceleration.

but the guy's still following us, even in the dark.

by this point it has stopped beign funny, and so we get liza's cell phone and call 911. i wasn't on the phone, so i don't know what went on, but the time until megan got through to someone who could help was the longest three minutes of my life. i mean, megan was panicking so badly she couldn't remember what street we were on, shich is bad for megan.

when we got on to main, he stopped following us...we pulled into the all-night grocery and waited a while in the pull-through before we went on with the hunt...but it was the scariest thing ever, I think.

and then the police broke up the hunt, because people were stealing traffic cones and shit, so it was all for waste. although now i've heard a police officer say

"they've got crutches and a goldfish. can they go?"

which is funny as hell.

in other news...school is officially over for me, although i still need to get cap&gown; tomorrow. can't befuckinglieve i'm graduating in a week.

and some weirdass poetry! as usual, please not to steal.

Justification

Today I opted not to go to class
I simply didn’t feel the need, you know?
I knew some other places I could go,
And other, better, ways my time could pass.
In justice, skipping class is not my style:
I actually like to think and write,
In deeply-thought discussion I delight,
And integrals can always make me smile.
But, walking past the Physics room today,
I saw that all was dark and drear inside,
And, having love for words and poesie,
Betook myself upon my merry way.
Now in the depths of Library I hide,
And bask in literate serenity.

…it’s not really skipping class if I get a sonnet out of it, is it? hope not.


[here follows the slam-style poem that I wrote immediately after the incident described above. Which do you prefer?]

i am floorwards outgestretched,
—avoiding the avoidance of an education—
in the library,
poetry in my heart and hands,
warm and drowsing (dowsing),
half-summer sun growing on my legs.
Shoes off, sidewards scattered
feet propped on unfathomed atlases of 70’s Europe.

glowing future melts me,
increasing the sun-dazed obtusity of the angle between my torso and legs.
i sleep,
dreaming beauty and words uncognized,
poets on my breast.

wake to blindness,
sun-singes
(hoo hoo hee hah)
arise and walk my poets home to their untenable tenements
eyes dark-blind, grit teeth and find sensation,
clean the cobwebs of perturbation.

procced.

sonnotation

so today was a reasonably shitty day...i ran around like a madwoman and got abso-fucking-lutely nothing of any merit done. I did, however, listen to several mediocre bands, get orange popsicle on my nice white shirt, NOT see the play that I wanted to, and alienate my entire family.

PMS is merveilleux, n'est-ce pas?

I don't even know if it was menstrually based...if it is, it's way early, but it wouldn't be the first time...and at least this way i wouldn't be on the rag during prom and grad parties and re-meeting igor and such. Thing is, it was just one of those things where you're all over the map, utterly irrational, and (and this is the worst part) YOU KNOW IT, and you try so hard to keep yourself under control, but the next thing you know you're practically drawing blood from your little brother's arm with your fingernails and the entire restaurant is staring at you.

We worked it out, eventually...we were back to talking and joking in a few minutes. still, it makes me worry about camp--how am i going to cope with this there? Although clearly I can, as i've done it in years past. This year it seems worse, though. Probably all the school stress and whatnot, so maybe it'll be better at camp.

speaking of camp, it turns out the reservation (for a plane ticket) that we made ois for the wrong time. more stress, especially given how much my mom was panicking.

yes, you did read that rightly (those of my non-existent readers who were paying attention three paragraphs up)--I'm going to prom. This because student council decided to pay half of everyone's ticket, making tickets for singles only $10. My mother gave me the money and informed me that I was going, and that there was not a damn thing I could do about it. Which I suppose is OK...although I'd still really like to be asked.

my lord, will it never stop raining? We've had ceaseless storms for the past several days...actually, it seems that the one on thursday night was quite impressive...too bad I slept through it entirely. exhaustion works, people.

and I didn't get all my hours in at work this week, because i forgot that we close at six on saturday, instead of at nine, so then i felt stupid over that...i can't wait to get out of here.

the only upside of today was a pair of sonnets i wrote on returning home. They belong to my brain and i, and so please don't steal them, and tell me if you'd like to use them (or even if by some miracle you find your way here and read them)

On nudity:

I ought not wander naked through my home,
my mother tells me, for it’s without class
my flesh to wave across the twilit glass
to any pervert who should chance to roam.
It’s, further, a bad precedent to set,
for I’m to college in a year or less,
and if I act as such, she must confess,
she does not like to think of what I’ll get.
And yet, I figure, is it not my right
to be at ease within my own domain,
where all is as I say it ought to be?
So if you should, some strange and eerie night
come press yourself against my windowpane,
I give you leave to see what you may see.

and

Compu-Sonnet

There is no god within this damned machine—
A devil would be closer to the fact,
Some demonling, whose one and only act
Is to corrupt and make all things unclean:
The screen is filthy, what or how I try,
And things are slow to load and slow to part,
The graphics on this break my weary heart,
And every time it freezes up, I cry,
Oh crap! Oh Hell! Oh, rid me of this thing,
This evil beast in cyberspastic form,
This monster in a plastic shell encased!
Oh, bring me back my sweet word-processing.
Return my poor computer to its norm,
And let my money be not gone to waste.

so that was fun. again, please don't steal these...they only took about a half-hour together, but they're mine, and i have no other skills that are even remotely salable.

off to be a deviant...see you crazy cats later.

"i am"/ iamb

Iambic penta-meter’s out of style—
One never hears that sort of thing at slams.
Farewell as well to rhymes that made me smile:
Now all is dust, ellipsis, and “i am”s.
Free verse is more expressive, this is true;
It’s unconstrain-ed by a measured beat.
If slammers are to be believed, we grew
When we crushed William Shakespeare ‘neath our feet.
But have these people tried to write in verse?
It’s not as easy as they seem to think:
It takes some discipline, takes thought, takes time;
It’s more than just emotion set in ink.
What simple and pretentious fools are these
Who think that sonnets grow around on trees.

[this is my poem. i wrote it. please don't steal it, and ask if you'd like to use it somewhere--i'll probably say yes. word up.]

This is the poem that provoked my bitch rant against anne. The missing line:

"it's not as easy as they seem to think:"

would that have been so hard to keep track of?

but, on consideration, i pitched no fit. after all, it's anne's fault, not the fault of overtones as a whole...and the people who matter already know. plus i'm a big whore for non-confrontation.

wore a naked man apron today...got lots more looks than usual. am somewhat disturbed by what this may reveal about the guys I know. expect a fuller report on this later, when i'm done with my bovary paper.

word out.

RAR!

I hate my printer so very, very, very much.

and at the concert tonight, there was this gospel singer--the award people brought him, i think--and he sang a song about how you'd better devote your life to jesus today, because tomorrow it could be too late.

i got really insanely hacked off about this, because i felt--and still feel--that it is wrongitty wrong wrong to bring religion into school. i mean, education about religion is one thing...and i don't even object too much to the choir singing christian music, because it's pretty and is anyways one of the foundations of western music. so that's ok...but somehow womething that was clearly written within a few years (and is ugly, as far as i'm concerned), is just not ok. And i'm very nearly christian, and if i'm that pissed off...although i tend to take shit like this personally.

after, anne wanted me to go get a banana split with her. only my desire to graduate kept me from going, and then cramming the ice cream down her throat and leaving her to suffocate. the perfect crime...the evidence all melts.

so tomorrow i'll be going to the overtones office to ask that they add in a half sheet with the appropriate version of my poem. because, you know, a sonnet about the superiority of sonnets only works IF IT'S ACTUALLY A SONNET, DAMNIT!

only i hate confrontation, so maybe i won't.

we'll see.

forget what else.

going to fucking kill anne

so i wrote a sonnet, turned it in for english extra credit, and discovered that it was actually pretty good. it's all about how slam poetry gakks my sheepfuckers, and how iambic pentameter is just asskicking. talked to my friend anne, who's on the staff of the school literary magazine, and asked what i'd have to do to submit it. she took it, said she'd take care of everything.

it got in, because it's a kick ass sonnet. and i was excited, and promptly ordered three copies of the magazine. it came in today, and i went up to see it--it looks really cool, as it turns out, much better than it has the last several years. they kinda did this retro thing, went back to the style they used when it first came out in the sixties or whenever...anyways. irrelevant, but it kicks.

but it turns out somebody's poem--not mine--got left out, so they asked me to check if mine was there. which it was...but missing a line. and, given that it's a sonnet, that makes a HUGE FUCKING DIFFERENCE, because, although the thought structure is still comprehensible, it fucks up the rhymes scheme big time. which means that everyone who knows what a sonnet is is going to think that i'm some ditz who thinks she's so hot and is knocking on slam poetry without actually be able to write sonnets.

And I can, which is what's worst--this is one of the things in this world that I am genuinely good at, and it's not a common talent, and so i am so pissed off that they screwed this up for me.

it turns out that when anne was typing it up to put it in their system, she accidentally left out a line. GAH! proofreading, people...how fucking hard would it have been for her to go over what she'd done?

but instead of having the screaming fit i wanted, i very politely said that it was just fine, and no trouble at all, and went my merry way. i sat through two more classes, drove home, and NOW i'm having that fit. unfortunately, because i was so polite before, i now can't really get angry...can't explain that my default in times of crisis is frosty politesse.

didn't go to work. now that i've got this out, think i will go and have a nice cry before i have to go to the evil orchestra concert from hell.

so much sex. so many bricks.

and to-morning (i.e. tomorrow, only actually it's later this morning) is going to be

SO MUCH HELL.

and now i will sleep.

oh my

i am still a fucking spazz, but somehow it seemed wrongitty wrong wrong to title yet another post thusly.

so.

i am a spaz because i'm getting hot and bothered (in a non-sexual way) about the official jkrowling site, which has oodles of useless backstory and unused ideas and suchlike. and 1) this is a kids' book and 2) it's a work of fucking fiction and 3) i'm spending a valuable monday night doing this.

on the upswing, i finished my art paper and got an extension on the devil that is my lit project. AND i only have five days of school left (six if i show on senior skip day, which i likely will, because i am hard core dork in precisely that way).

and i did my scene in acting today...despite our not having rehearsed and not knowing our lines, it was good...except for me telling lewis to wait until i said "vermin! excrement!", and then forgetting to say it, prompting an awkward pause...and the creeping sensation that i'm making a bit of an ass of myself over dan...and a whole mess of other things associated with stress and the muggy narsty weather and such.

over and out, because there was something worth saying in there, but you'll have to dredge for it.

may have to disable comments, because theirabsence is depressing. on the other hand, it's nice to know that those who come here could comment, if they chose, because my friends would choose, and thus they are not reading this and it remins (relatively) sacrosanct, which is good enough for me.

i really, really hope that carl is the other person with my topic for the mme bovary thing...and i reallyy, really, REALLY hope that i do better than he does, if it is him--actually, i hope so anyway, but especially if it's carl.

all

more dorothy parker

"Unfortunate Coincidence"
By the time you swear you're his
Shivering and sighing
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying--
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.

"Comment"
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.

"De Profundis"
Oh, is it, then, Utopian
To hope that I may meet a man
Who'll not relate, in accents suave,
The tales of girls he used to have?

"Resume"
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

the urge to send that last one to emily is strong, my nonfriends.

in other news, lewis has a date. he has no girlfriend, but at this point in the year, i'm not interested in auditioning...the run wouldn't be long enough to make the rehearsals worth my while.

over and over and over and out.

There's little in taking or giving,
There's little in water or wine;
This living, this living, this living
Was never a project of mine.
Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is
The gain of the one at the top,
For art is a form of catharsis,
And love is a permanent flop,
And work is the province of cattle,
And rest's for a clam in a shell,
So I'm thinking of throwing the battle-
Would you kindly direct me to hell?

Dorothy Parker, "Coda"

I don't know why I love this poem so much...Partly, I think, because it's beautiful and expressive and sad, and it's written in METER, none of this slam bullshit, and at the same time the language is modern and not all archaified (un-word). Basically, I love this poem because Dorothy Parker kicks.

bovary stuff

emma bovary:
what does she want?
an easy life.
the romanticism comes because that's what she's exposed to (novels). these all have incredibly wealthy people as the stars (we presume), and so she sees romance and wealth and the easy life as being more or less inextricably intertwined.
she'd invest if she could, if that were presented to her as an option--she clearly has a head for business, for schemes...she only gets distracted in her pursuits because they aren't actually what she wants. fine things and culture are only symtomatic of wealth and stability. she maybe thinks she should be romantic, because she's trying to induce wealth.
juxtapose commerce and romance to illustrate what?


just some stuff i was blathering about...perchance useful?

asstastic, part 2

so, where was i...

ah. yes. I was NOT going to go play duets at the wedding, because I didn't have the time or the preparation or the inclination, especially as Anne was being sketchy and somehow mysteriously only finding out about this track shindig the day before...yeah right. So Friday ended and I wasn't going to do it.

Saturday morning, Greta calls at 10, when I'm finally getting around to deciding whether or not I want to get up, and begs me to do it, because she and Anne haven't been able to agree on a replacement, given that Greta doesn't want to play with people she doesn't know, and all of her friends are too busy or unable to read music. Or they're me. So I do some mental math and figure that I can juggle my schedule and help Greta out, only I'll need to work first, and then to find a violin, because mine is at school because I didn't expect this mess. Greta is dispatched to find me a fiddle, and I get dressed and fed and showered and things. I'm almost out the door to go work, and thence to practice at Greta's...

...when she calls back. Apparently her violin teacher has just called back; she can do it, and I am off of the hook. Which is grand...except that I've totally revamped my schedule to be able to do this thing, and the change just gakks the crap out of me.

So I spend a while goofing online, and then go do my art history research at the art museum, and go to the bank, and go to two branches of the library--one to check out books that I can't get at the other branch, the other to earn my salary. And then I came home, typed up an excessively half-assed art paper, ate some vidalia onion pizza (which kicked) and went to the show.

LEND ME A TENOR: our school's current dramatic endeavor. hysterical and ass kicking. I am deeply and passionately in love. By far the most amusing factor was my mental overload at the implication of a sex scene between two people I lust after...it was a mental image utterly unparalelled. Unfortunately, if I want to have a straight face on the morrow, I need to ditch my smutty inner monologue...it will detract from the beauty that is calculus.

So I went to the show, and Laurel and Erin and Liz all came and hung on me because they think I'm cool...I think they're deluded. And I talked to oodles of people, and resisted the urge to jump any of them, and got the brush off from kirsten, and went to the relay. And then I walked, played cards, and sat around from 10pm until 5am, when I fell asleep for an hour, only to be reawoken for a team spirit lap. Which I did. And then I tidied up until they let me leave at 9.30.

Must go write the lit paper from hell...analyzing the image of material goods through Mme Bovary. whee.

I think that when Megan calls i will ask her if lewis has a date to prom. he is the least schizophrenic person I know right now, with the exception of megan, who is straight, and anyways is my best friend, and ananyways already has a date, because she isn't scared of people and they aren't scared of her.

ende.

an asstastic series of events

went to a fucking NHS relay-for-life last night--got all of one hour of sleep. the rest of my time was spent walking around a nasty-ass pond with dan (a man whore), mitchell (a robot), and clara (a very nice person--when she isn't drunk). It was a waste...i mean, for a good cause, yeah, and now i have NHS hours, which is also nice, but still...cold, boring, and i'm still horny as fuck all.

plus i got the brush off from kirsten earlier that evening, which was a little bit ouch...mostly just me being overly sensitive, as per my usual, but that doesn't mean it doesn't bug me. megan, too...she'll call me tonight, so i can help her write her history papers that giles lost, but does she ever call me otherwise? the answer to that question would be a resounding no. and it's mostly my fault, really--i've been so antisocial in the past, making excuses to not have to see people and never going out of my way to initiate social contact, so i suppose i've only myself to blame that nobody seeks me out now.

oh! so about two months ago greta asked me if i'd play duets with her at the wedding of a friend, and i said no (because of the relay, and because i didn't want to anyway). she got anne to do it. then, friday night, anne calls and wants me to do it instead, because she'll get kicked off of the track team if she doesn't show up to something or other. bear in mind that this wedding was yesterday at 3:30, and anne was calling me at 7 on friday night. i said no again, because it still didn't fit too well as far as scheduling goes, because i still didn't want to, and ...

must go pick up der bruder from a boyscout outing. more shortly.

sandra issue

so i have this friend.

her name is sandra.

she is bisexual. she is one of the two female friends who participated in kiss marie day, at the end of last semester, which in turn led to the whole 'marie goes bugfuck crazy and questions her sexuality and hides from other people except from emily, who she can't avoid and who is even screwier than she is' sheebang.

she also had something going last year with naomi, friend two of kiss marie day fame. i think they sort of discovered each other as nascent bisexuals, or maybe naomi had already discovered herself and just gave sandra a hand...whatever. they were involved, and marie had a little bit of a crush on both of them, and then that died a natural death and then any number of things intervened and the upshot of it all is that their relationship dissolved into angst and stress and me being a sudden replacement at a very strange pre-prom dinner last year. all of which is directly attributable to the two of them being fundamentally unsuited to realtionships.

anyhow, they had some sort of 'friends with benefits' dealie going, but i'm reasonably sure that all died on KMD, and anyway naomi was at college (she's finishing year one at present). all was good.

enter paco.

sandra met him at naomi's grad party shindig, and then i don't think they had any contact until a month or so ago, when she met him again. i've no clue how...i had no idea it would matter, and so i didn't pay attention, and then suddenly she's showing up at my place of work, semi-panicked because she made out with him the night before and thinks this makes her a big whore. (how, i don't know. i'm not in her head, thank god--what i get is bad enough.)

i convinced her she was not a whore as long as she wasn't doing as much with more than one person, or for money. which she wasn't. she left much reassured--in retrospect this was a bad thing.

because she's been seeing him regularly since then, and things have gotten really serious really fast. she says it's just friends with benefits, but i don't believe in that sort of shit anyways--i mean, it'd be nice if it worked, but i have trouble believing that there's ever a balanced relationship that has sex without love or commitment.

and if it were just that she'd found a sweet guy and was madly in love--or even in lust--with him, that wouldn't bother me...but this does, somehow. not sure why--

--well, that's actually a filthy lie. i know exactly why this bothers me so much, and i'm going to tell you.

she's going to tell (she's going to tell) she's going to tell (she's going to tell)

last night sandra gives me a call...i'm home, so it's after 9, and mom was still up, so it was before 11. so pretty late, for a school night when we didn't plan to get together for a last-ditch paper revision or something. she calls, and i'm bewildered, and she asks me if i'll provide her with an alibi for 5ish yesterday afternoon.

and i am grieved, shocked (but is it absolutely certain they are not gone to scotland?)

so i tell her, reasonably enough, that i will first need to know who i'm lying to and what i'll be covering for. turns out the alibi is for her parents, and that she was with paco, and 'you don't want to know what happened, seriously.'

--should mention here that, in defiance of my bans on sex info, i've been kept abreast of breaking paco news to this point...the tonsil hockey, the cuddles, the hand and blow jobs...and thus anything that makes sandra think long enough to realize that i don't fucking want to here it is likely to be big--

so i ask if her parents are likely to check this, and 'no, but i just needed to say i was out with someone, and...just tell them if they ask, ok?'

well, fine, sandra, but you need to understand--i don't know your parents. we've been introduced a few times, i've talked to them one the phone before you picked up, but only enough to establish myself as your friend. i couldn't pick them out of a lineup of diminutive asians to save my ass. besides, your parents don't want you going to wellesley because they're worried you'll become a 'girl-lover,' (which, by the way, is mere paranoid conjecture on their part--they don't know about the naomi affair, or KMD, or any of the experimentation sandra's done...they're just terrified she'll grow up and become a lesbian, because that would apparently be bad for their asian parent status or somethin) so wouldn't it be a good thing for them to think you were out with a boy and not with your strange girlfriends? not that they'd approve of all you get up to with paco, but you don't have to tell them everything...just enough to make them believe you're straight.

so yeah...i think this whole dealie is going too far too fast and she's going to get hurt in a big way. i don't like it. naomi agrees, as does emily. this is NOT OK.

...in other news, sandra's torn between wellesley and chicago...i'm praying she'll embrace her inner lesbian...or at least chose a dorm far far away from me.

that's quite enough for now...lord i'm verbose...enjoy the pretty new template! and comments...i'm so glad i finally made that work.

peace and shit like that.

marie