happy christmas, you eggnog sucking patsies...

i was attacked today. not by anyone but by something - something being the 7 1/2 foot christmas tree that i purchased and attempted to peacefully assemble this morning. 'easy assembly,' my ass. the thing weighed at least 100 pounds, was in a ginormous box that i somehow squeezed into my jeep and then had to get out by myself... ho ho freaking ho. i look like i have been in a fight with a very large cat... all clawed up and whatnot. not. cool. at. all.

the tree is also 'prelit' - meaning that yes, it has lights on it, but noooooo, you can't access the bleeding cord you're supposed to plug into the wall because it's three inches long and located half-way up the bloody 'spine' of the tree. argh. i loathe going to wal-mart and now i have to go back, yet again, fight my way through all of the last-minute christmas havoc and get a bloody extension cord. oh, and after i get the extension cord, i have to fight with the tree again to see if i can find the bleeding thing i'm supposed to plug it into. ah. bah humbug and stuff.

on the merrier side of the christmas season, got the mri and found out that my brain isn't going to explode. it's like the best present ever... and no one even had to wrap it.

happy holidays... may they be truly merry and bright.

wiggles

apparently sedatives/tranquilizers/what-have-you have no effect on me, even when sleep-deprived and all that nonsense. i had an mri today... and i get to have another one on monday, at no additional charge, because i apparently can't sit/lay/be still, even when strapped to a table, under the influence of tranquilizers for anxiety and whatnot, and running on about two hours of restless sleep. i should have been a freaking corpse for an hour but no, i'm little-miss-wiggles. what joy is mine.

i do have to say that i am most pleased that the kind people at the mri place decided to give me an afternoon appointment, given that i'm not a particularly pleasant person at the ass-crack of dawn, much less at the ass-crack of dawn on what is supposed to be my winter vacation.

i actually read the pamphlet they give you in the waiting room while i was - umm, yeah - waiting... i found out that i could have a 'friend or loved one' accompany me in the room while i'm put in a tube. this sounds all swell and dandy, but i know my friends - and love them, mind you, with all my black little heart - and my friends would taunt me, make fun of me, tickle my feet, take strange pictures [i don't even know if that's allowed, but you get my drift anyway]... basically torture me in any way possible for an hour. might make things more interesting, but seeing as i have a case of ants-in-my-pants as is... i think i'll forgo that privilege for the present.

i'll be waiting... with a gun and a pack of sandwiches.

voi la. some of my work from this semester... merry christmas or something.

death by chocolate

I am Chocolate Flavoured. I am sweet and a little bit naughty. I am one of the few clinically proven aphrodisiacs. Sometimes I can seem a little hard, but show warmth and I soon melt. What Flavour Are You?

sweet, holy jesus, no...

so this is apparently a terrible year for music in fayetteville. first they take away jr's... now clunk records - the only place i will buy music from in this stinking town - is closing. damn the man, save the clunk.

i kinda wanna cry.

i don't know what i can save you from

current activity: drawing something that will hopefully resemble a building in the next few hours. listening to rjd2's 'dead ringer' and frankly loving the hell out of it [not surprised, really, considering that he is on def jux...].

planned activities: being as anti-social as humanly possible until 12pm on tuesday, december 06, 2005, when i will be done with critiques and will proceed to polish off an entire bottle of champagne all by myself and then sleep for a week solid. yes. oh yes. it will be a glorious day. i might even do a little dance. who knows? champagne and lack of sleep can make a girl do some crazy stuff...

pressed against the sky... eyes wide open.

1] why is it that i think and think and think about things and delay them for ages and then suddenly decide to act on what would seem like a whim? prepare yourself for stupid, silly story: i have wanted to get my nose pierced since i was about fourteen... never did it... always thought too much about it. friday night rolls around and i get my nose pierced. talk about being bloody impulsive. i must say that i am most pleased with said piercing... looks kinda neat and whatnot... and saved for the very minimal weird pang of you-just-punched-a-hole-in-yourself-type pain, it has been relatively painless. what joy is mine.

2] talked to my parental units yesterday afternoon... apparently my mother has broken her wrist. apparently, this is no big deal to her at all. apparently, she is not in a cast yet, nor is she on any sort of pain-killer... and apparently this doesn't bother her either. my mother is superwoman. um hmm. she is.

3] been thinking about this whole 'fate' business... while i like to think i'm at least somewhat in control of my own existence, i do find it rather amusing to think about three witchy women around a looking glass, pulling my strings this way and that; placing things in my way; showing me signs and such... i mean, it's kind of comforting to think that there is some sort of plan that - while malleable - is leading me through this strange, soupy life i am living...

4] 377.5 hours and counting... holy mother of god, i have a shit-tonne of work to do...

what in tarnation?

i'm officially freaking the eff-word out... i have 491 hours and five minutes left until i have my final critique...


fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

these are the days of miracle and wonder...

top fifteen albums that defined my childhood [in no particular order]:

1] paul simon - graceland
2] tom petty and the heartbreakers - greatest hits
3] abba - gold
4] elvis presley - aloha from hawaii
5] elvis presely - blue hawaii soundtrack
6] fleetwood mac - greatest hits
7] neil diamond - reverend bluejeans
8] everly brothers - the very best of the everly brothers
9] miles davis - kind of blue
10] johnny cash - the sun years
11] roy orbison - oldies
12] andy williams - moon river
13] frank sinatra - the sinatra christmas album
14] emmilou harris - duets
15] the carpenters - singles 1969 - 1981

i can't really explain why i've been thinking about these albums so much lately... i guess it's just the music that flows through my mind most of the time - the kind of benevolent ghost that will follow me for the rest of my life. i know now how fortunate i am to have parents with exquisite taste in music [thanks, mom and dad] ... i had an appreciation for great music instilled in me at a very young age... my dad once told me that you remember your life through music - it has the power to conjure up memories, feelings and people long since forgotten. i whole-heartedly agree... music is my world... i guess i'm lucky i have a solid foundation...

whatever tickles your fancy... just keep your fancy away from me.

what a busy little bee i am. in the last few days, i have completely re-designed my studio project with three weeks left in the semester [slightly frightening but nonetheless invigorating...], learned to knit on thursday and am in the process of making a beautiful and beautifully soft scarf-like-thing, went bowling on wednesday for just a bit and learned that beer makes me a much better bowler [i improved my average 30 points over the course of 4 games... for a whopping total of 164. giggidy giggidy, all right.], learned a new juicy piece of software yesterday that looks as though it may end up making my life a whole lot easier, actually did laundry [impressive, i know... until you find out that the newly-cleaned clothes made it so far as an open spot on my floor... who needs wrinkle-free clothing in the first place? not i...], and am currently at work. and amidst all of this pseudo productivity, i am also fighting off what seems to be another bleeding cold... again... what joy is mine.

... must be productive... have a shit-tonne of drawings and model-things to do before monday morning. i have also reaffirmed that the concept of the 'weekend' is non-existent in architecture school... kind of sad, really, because i do so love to have the option of doing absolutely nothing for a couple of days in each week... c'est la vie... i only have three more weeks of studio... EVER.

that's the way we get by... the way we get by... oh yeah.

chucky cheese's is one creepy place... and kids actually want to go there. chucky cheese and all his little robot minions look evil - what with all the clicky eyes, matted down synthetic fur and the creepy music videos... wow. i mean, don't get me wrong - i loved chucky cheese's when i was a child, and it really doesn't get any better than playing ski-ball [rather poorly, i might add] until you win a shit-tonne of tickets so that you can, in turn, exchange them for a useless but nonetheless cool toy at the toy counter, but good god... in hindsight, i should have been utterly terrified. on top of the strange characters in robot form, you've got all of the slightly awkward employees who stand around and stare, somewhat mindlessly [don't blame them, really... given that a job such as that would probably bore one to tears], and all of the 'older' crowd that seems to find itself in places like chucky cheese's [where a kid can be a kid] and should probably require some sort of police escort or some such nonsense. [wow, was that one hell of a run-on sentence or what? i'm on fire, people... oh yeah.]

i did find it interesting to realize how small everything seems inside chucky cheese's now... when i was a kid, everything seemed simply gigantic and flashy and overwhelming. now, it just seems slightly run-down and full of really tiny little games. even the ski-ball contraptions seemed to be on a miniature scale. this is rather significant to me, given that i am somewhat vertically challenged [commonly called a 'midget' even though i stand at the rather average height (for a girl) of 5'-4"] and most things and people tower over me... all this has led me to believe that the world is slowly shrinking [probably another side-effect of global warming and such] and that chucky cheese's is the first place where the results of said shrinking are beginning to register. you'll see - by march, the eiffel tower will stand no higher than my waist. just wait... it'll happen.

rewind... reload.

i just realized that i haven't updated my 'things in print' or 'things to listen to' sidebars since i was in rome. needless to say, i've read a lot since then [i've only put up the stuff i've read since august] and i'm listening to different stuff [still have the old stuff, of course... but i'm just in a different mood and whatnot]... so if you're interested, it's over there [look to the right and scroll down]... and if you're not, oh well... because it's still over there.

cheers.

... but they never ask why.

i can't stand liars - mind you, not fibbers, as some fibs can be funny or at least not mean-spirited. it's the balls-to-the-wall, i-obviously-have-no-respect-for-you-as-a-friend-or-at-all-type of liar i am speaking of here. it's the i-have-the-audacity-to-blatantly-lie-straight-to-your-face-without-any-regard-for-you-at-all-type... just so i'm clear. i guess that it's probably because i am a trusting person, particularly with the people i consider friends. i believe what people tell me because i shouldn't have any reason to distrust them. is that so wrong? that i would [once again] believe that people are inherently good and that they aren't all scum-bags and bastards and - well, you get my point. apparently so, because i somehow end up getting the short end of the stick in a lot of i-could-be-honest-with-you-but-i-can't-seem-to-make-myself-care situations. [note: i do sincerely apologize for the excessive use of hyphenation here, but i'm slightly pissed - no, i'm really pissed - and they seem to be working for me.]

that's the other thing: i actually felt bad for being angry... and i have every bleeding right to be angry that someone i consider a fairly good friend would flat-out lie to me. not once, mind you. many, many times. i think, most of all, i feel disrespected... maybe even slightly humiliated... i suppose that i just have to accept that people can be bastards and then move on... because i'm done being a fucking doormat. done.

gravity always wins

there's the saying, 'work smarter, not harder.' imbedded in this philosophy is a flaw. the only problem with the whole working-smarter-thing is that one must normally work much dumber first in order to figure out how to work smarter. learning from your mistakes takes time... i don't have time, damnit... i need a shortcut [hint: donations in the form of suggestions are most welcome].

i have this new personal theory that the upstairs computer lab in vol walker hall is an energy-sucking-vortex and that autocad [aka satan reincarnate] is working in league with this vortex to make sure that i have absolutely no inspiration or motivation or drive, etc. it's a bloody conspiracy, i tell you. someone must put an end to it... i'd be that person - it would probably be best if i was that person, considering that it's my problem and whatnot - but i haven't the time [notice a theme here? lack of time, maybe? ...could be]... anyone up for the job? i pay in the form of substantial amounts of alcoholic beverages and home-cooked meals... tempting? damn right, it's tempting.

you know you want to... all the cool kids are doing it. [how's that for peer pressure?]

effing right!

sox win! sox win! three cheers for the freaking white sox: hip hip hooray! hip hip hooray! hip hip hooray! i love my sox! my boys are all off and winning world series games and stuff... almost brings a joyful tear to my little eye...

and now... holding my breath until tomorrow night and back to CAD.

i don't know why i feel so tongue tied...

all work and no sleep makes natalie a very delirious girl... and what's more? it's sleeping weather [cold, cloudy... the kind that makes it even more difficult to peel myself out of my bed in the morning, yeah. that kind] - it's like it's taunting me... ha ha ha. you can't sleep. you want to so badly... but no. none for you. autoCAD for you. ha. ha. ha.

on another note - i honestly believe that some people just shouldn't be allowed to get tattoos. these people fit into one of the following categories: 1] the ones that walk into ye olde tattoo shoppe and walk directly to the wall covered in ye olde standard dumb-fuck tattoos and/or catalogue and pick out some random image that holds no personal meaning and often fits into the realm of the retarded and cheesy. 2] the ones that walk into said tattoo shoppe [yes, the extra 'p' and the 'e' are intentional... i do know how to spell shop... thank. you. very. much.] and proceed to be drunk and bitchy to the artist behind the counter while aforementioned artist is currently working on someone else's body art. gaffaw. 3] the ones that walk in and ask for 'a four-leaf clover that's unique' or some other analogous nonsense and then proceed to scurry over to the 'wall'. yeah, sweetheart. real unique. 4] the ones that walk into the 'shoppe' ten minutes before closing time and demand a tattoo.

hint: don't mess with and/or be rude, inconsiderate, condescending, patronizing, etc. to the people who do the following: a] serve you food. - spit and other things can be easily disguised as 'special' little additions to your favorite dish. yep. uh huh. they can. b] keep you from dying [doctors and such]. - there are some pretty scary diseases out there and if you get one, you'll want to have the knowledge that you haven't done anything to make said doctor-person wish you ill will. c] people who will be prodding your body with needles repeatedly to leave a very permanent image or hole. - you never want to hear 'oops,' 'aw shit,' 'well, maybe no one will notice' kind of things or sniggers from people in the tattoo shoppe. it normally doesn't forebode well...

it's just common sense... the people with the power and potential to punish you for not being descent, compassionate, considerate human beings should not be screwed with...

it's a new dawn. it's a new day... and i'm feeling good.

the world is about to go to sleep. the cold, crisp air blew in my bedroom window this morning and all i could do was sigh. i love winter... it seems as if all the world's potential is recollected and in waiting for the whole season. the air is cleaner, the light changes - surrounding everything in a cool, soft glow; all is more fresh. the ever-racing pace of the everyday seems to slow down for a breath - a deep, cleansing, satisfying breath. the sky seems more clear, even when it's cloudy outside... the night sky radiates a deep, velvetine indigo - a cold, quiet fiery blanket - and the world sleeps for a while... if the season could have a soundtrack, it should be filled with jazz... filling every space with sultry sounds of a rich and raspy voice, laced with hand-strummed guitar and an intoxicating, brushed beat. at rest and drinking it in...

i can't think for you anymore

my life has been a collection of busy nothings of late. my ipod is dead... woe is me. i think i got food poisoning from a really sketchy serving of buffalo wings on monday. had a critique on friday. slept all freaking day on saturday and then ate bbq and drank beer [as we actually had a weekend off for the first and last time all semester]... yeah. i'm really boring. i go to school in the morning, stay at school all day 'doing work' [i say 'doing work' because most of the time i'm so tired and/or frustrated that i just end up staring at my desk and 'doing nothing'], go home to eat dinner, work on the cnc mill and/or laser cutter, stay up all night 'doing work,' and repeat the whole miserable excuse for an existence ad nauseum. ok, i'm through whining, i promise...

ok, i'm going to 'do work' now... or something. over and out.

screw jimminy... my conscience needs a rest.

tired. really behind. been meaning to post. been lazy and haven't posted. would be sorry save for the whole lazy-thing. will post something of substance later tonight. have stories. must share. peace out. homie.

pain in my heart... just won't let me sleep

as i sit here, staring blankly at this computer screen, built to spill are probably playing their set at the dickson street theater... i should be there. i however, have the worst luck on the freaking planet [ok, maybe not the worst, but you get my drift.]. the bloody show sold out three people in front of me. i'm upset. truly, deeply upset. i know it's just a stupid show and whatnot, but they're one of my favorite bands... they play my favorite song... and i don't get to be there when they play it.

one could have bought tickets beforehand, but i'm poor and i didn't have the money to do so until it was too late. and then i get to the show more than an hour early and they sell out... and now i get to sit here and think about how i could be there... and it makes me sad... stupid, yes, i know... but sad nonetheless.

i thought my alarm clock made food...

so, at the moment, i am cursing myself for taking the job of being 'cnc and laser cutter operator' at the u of a, because i've spent the whole bloody weekend helping every other bleeding person in my freaking studio do their work and i've had no time to do my own. growl. yeah, punk, that's right, i said growl. do somethin'...

i got a new tattoo on friday night, 'small but tasteful' ... like my friend said, it's so much better than therapy... and so much cheaper than a shrink. i felt kind of bad, because it only took five minutes to actually do the tattoo and it took robbie more time to clean up afterwards... c'est la vie, i suppose.

as is to be expected, my life is otherwise sickeningly boring, because i am constantly at school or [less often] sleeping... but on tuesday, one of my favoritest bands ever - built to spill - is coming here... oh yes... and i will be up there for the concert, even if i have to sacrifice eating time on tuesday for it [because we have a crit with a guest critic on wednesday...].

advice to close - if you have to be up all night drawing or something of the sort - if you value your sanity and don't wish to have freakish scary nightmares - don't listen to pink floyd's the wall on repeat. just don't. the results aren't pretty... just trust me on this one.

'you put the art in retarded'

i saw a brief segment of a 'the bravery' concert this evening... courtesy of university programs and such - basically, just a break from my brain [much needed]. i was greatly amused... with some of the most 'creative' lyrics i think i've ever heard [see above title... pretty creative, huh?]. the music was actually not that bad and the performance was interesting, but 'you put the art in retarded' was just more than i could handle...

this is why i will be leaving... and this is why i can't see you no more.

peaks and valleys, right? i seem to find myself in an ever-expanding valley of late. perhaps it's lack of sleep, perhaps i'm stir-crazy at the moment, perhaps i'm just sad. not really sure, don't really care. i do know that watching my close friends and my best friend battle the post-hurricane shit storm is breaking my heart just a little more each day... i don't know if it's possible to empathize oneself into a broken heart but the fact that i can't do anything to take the pain and the loss away, or even to ease it in the least kills me. like the my-heart-hurts-so-much-i-feel-like-i'm-going-to-die kind of 'it's killing me.' having to just sit idly by and watch the people i care about fall to pieces is a little too much to bear. the knowing that i am completely powerless to help other than to lend a shoulder to cry on, an ear to vent to... that's the part that's too much to bear.

tiny suns infused with sour

cold has turned to cough has turned into some sort of nasty bronchial infection. what joy is mine. what joy is mine is that i get really good medicine to play with... no, rewind. i get really good medicine to take and x-acto blades to play with. i know, i know... don't take 'narcotic' cough syrup and play with potentially lethal objects, but my friends, common sense left this particular equation long, long ago.

so, just back from a quick site visit to marfa, texas. lovely little town in the middle of nowhere, texas. home of the chinati foundation - the large compound of permanent art installations started by donald judd... really wonderful stuff. saw the marfa lights... and accidentally ended up watching an absolutely beautiful lunar eclipse. went to ojinaga, mexico for dinner and tequila. went to the mcdonald's observatory to look at billions upon billions of stars and clusters and nebulae and the moon through gigantic telescopes... [but i'm a geek, so this kind of stuff is incredibly exciting to me]. went to big bend to draw in the blistering sun... got to see an amazing thunderstorm in the big bend basin... an enormous peek amid a very large valley; very dramatic, very beautiful. listened to ridiculous amounts of funk [as if there is such a thing] on the many drives through the desert...

we got to drive from fayetteville, ar to tulsa, ok at 3:30 in the morning in order to catch a 6 am flight. suck. yes, i'm a night owl... no, 3:30 isn't an incredibly strange time for me on a normal basis. however, 3:30am after two days of no sleep whatsoever... not cool. not cool at all. particularly when you plan to catch up on sleep on the short flights and people keep talking to you. again, not cool.

anywho... i have lots of photos and as soon as i can figure out how in the bloody hell to operate this stinking contraption that will let me share my pretty pictures with you, i will have some of them posted... for the time being, back to playing with sharp objects under the influence of something i can't remember the name of. cheers.

can we really see? we can look. but can we really see?

funny... the things that come into your head when you're supposed to be concentrating on something else.

my friend asked me how long i thought it would be before everyone simply forgot about everything that's happened and is happening on the gulf coast. how long it would be before people put the atrocities and misery and pain and destruction out of their minds. it's really very simple - people will remember until something bigger, more terrible and more 'press-worthy' comes along. because we have no foreign enemy, and nothing but our own ineptitude as a national body to blame, it won't be long before our attentions are diverted elsewhere. until those in power are directly effected, until their homes are fifteen feet under a stinking, infectious, toxic stew; until their parents, children, husbands and wives, friends and loved ones are missing without a trace; until they are trapped amongst rapists and murderers with no possible escape; until they have lost absolutely everything - any semblance of a normal life... until that happens, our attentions will be diverted elsewhere... to things less grim and - frankly - embarrassing.

yes. it is absolutely shameful that our organizing bodies - the people who actually have the power to do something, the people who have the bloody responsibility to do something - let tens of thousands of people sit, stranded in a post-apocalyptic nightmare. i read a new york times article entitled 'united states of shame' today... i thought it was a most appropriate title. it's simply ricoculous that we, as a country, didn't mobilize sooner to save our own people. we seem to have no problem mobilizing if it means that we get to destroy something. if we get to kill some other country's people. yet we trip over our feet and fall flat on our faces when it comes to helping our own people... yes, most of them are poor. yes, some of them are criminals. but it does not mean that they are sub-human and that it is somehow alright to just wait five days to do anything at all. five. days. five horrible, terrifying days.

mr. president - how can you stand in front of our nation and call yourself our leader, our commander in chief, when you didn't do anything. yes, i blame your government, our government, my government - not for hurricane katrina. not for the flooding and the destruction - a much mightier force than you did that [no, not god. NATURE: that force that you seem to so easily push to the back-burner of your mind when you make policies that blatantly disregard the environment, discontinue policies that would attempt to protect the environment, etc.]. i blame your government for letting so many die needlessly - for letting them sit and starve and whither away until every shred of that so-called 'civilized' nature was stripped from them. at the push of a button, the whisper of an order, thousands of people could have been mobilized immediately to start to do some good. but that button wasn't ever pushed, that order never given - at least not when it should have been. do you understand that possibly 10,000 or more could be dead? can you even begin to comprehend a number like that? not nameless, faceless people. your citizens. the people you and your cronies are supposed to protect. isn't that what you promised to do when our blinded nation put you in office? to protect the people. well, nicely done. swell job.

your local coffee shop... or the gay-dar bermuda triangle

mother of god... i couldn't get sick the week before class started. noooooooo. i have to get sick in the middle of a bloody assignment. and it's not that here-today-gone-tomorrow kind of crap. noooooooo. it's the i'm-a-cold-and-i'm-going-to-make-you-miserable-for-ages kind of crap. and on top of feeling like your head weighs eighty thousand pounds and feeling like you're floating in some kind of soupy stuff, you have to dope yourself up to keep yourself from drowning in your own snot, then you have to deal with the aftereffects of the doping... i'm seeing little green spots everywhere. this is unacceptable. i am supposed to be doing a meticulously-accurate color rendering of a yucca seed pod. this is quite difficult when i feel like crap but now i have to deal with little green spots everywhere. unacceptable, i say. bah humbug.

i know i'm supposed to hydrate myself and whatnot, but i am also an architecture student. this, of course, means that i must consume ridiculous amounts of caffeine in order to function properly... this also means that i am now having to drink an absurd amount of water... grrr. but i digress - so, my friends and i went down to the common grounds today to have coffee, as the stuff they like to call 'coffee' at the campus coffee shop isn't and if you want anything with espresso in it, good luck. but i digress, yet again - while having coffee, my friends and i were treated to a wonderful display of employee art. neat stuff, i tell you. so, if you're in need of a caffeinated beverage of sorts and/or yummy edible stuff and/or alcohol in large quantities, you should head on down to the common grounds [this, of course, requires that you be in fayetteville, as that is where the common grounds is located] and check it out. yeah.

as i write this, i realize how incoherent it is... i apologize, but i lack the ability to be articulate at the moment. if you read my babble often, you realize that this is a normal occurrence - i simply have an excuse to be rambling, as i am under the influence of some weird purple cold/cough pills. if you are new to idontliketowearshoes, please pardon my current idiocy. i'm hoping it will wear off... but i'm not holding my breath. them purple pills have done me in. i am completely useless at the moment... and i'm loving it.

as i tried to blink my nightmare away, i discovered, to my horror, that i had not been dreaming at all. my nightmare had come to life.

been listening to npr and reading cnn online today. i don't think i've ever been so disheartened in my life... as i listen to the reports from new orleans and the gulf coast, i can't help but have to remind myself that katrina really happened and that the terrors that are flowing in over the radiowaves are acually real. that they are not some work of fiction. that this isn't another broadcast of some demented new chapter of 'war of the worlds' newly sprung from the mind of a twisted story teller.

i can't help but simply, dumbly stare at the newspaper, at the images of utter devastation that glare back at me from the ink-covered pages i hold in my hands... blink in horror at the pictures of dead bodies floating amongst the debris flashing in front of me on the computer screen... much like i felt when i watched the images of the countries and people in shambles after the tsunami last year, i feel terribly powerless and small. what i wouldn't give to just have the power to help... to have resources at my fingertips to be able to do some good.

this time, everything is different.

my best friend lives [lived] in new orleans. her apartment and everything that she owns [owned] is now submerged in the toxic stew that has washed over the city. her friends are missing. my friends are missing. people i know - not just people on a tv screen, but people who mean something to me, people i've spent time with, gotten to know, talked with, drank with, care for are missing, displaced... maybe even gone forever... and my heart simply aches, for it can do nothing else.

i've never felt like less of a friend than when my best friend told me that she'd lost everything and all i could do was say 'i'm sorry.' how does one even begin to convey the regret, the desire to do anything one can to help in any way when someone tells you something like '... gone. everything is gone.'?

the hurting is so painless

if i have been a blogging-slacker, it is only because i have now entered the seventh circle of hell in architecture school, better known as 'comp studio' - which isn't so much like hell, as i'm actually enjoying myself quite profusely... it's just the whole i-have-more-work-to-do-than-time aspect of things that is the downer. i have come to grips with the likelihood that i will not have anything that could even be mistaken for a social life for quite some time - and the scary thing is that i'm strangely comfortable with this... considering that being constantly occupied by things-that-must-be-done keeps me from dwelling on other inconsequential nothings. insert sigh of relief here.

inconsequential nothings i now have an 'excuse' to be distracted from:
1] the ever-present pile of cardboard boxes full of my stuff that i still haven't unpacked after two months - that i really should unpack - that are taking up most of the floor space in my tiny little bedroom.
2] the stack of bills i have yet to pay for lack of funding.
3] the growing disorder that has taken over the aforementioned miniscule 'sleeping' quarters [i say 'sleeping' because i probably won't be doing very much of that until december... what joy is mine].
4] laundry... new philosophy - if it doesn't smell too terribly and if there are no obvious spots, the item in question is alright to wear... again.
5] hanging up the perfectly clean clothes that are scattered about my limited floorspace - i loathe folding and hanging things up... stupid, i know, but i can't help it.
6] grad school applications [not at all inconsequential, but they stress me out, so i shall allow myself to be temporarily 'distracted'].
7] all extra-curricular employment - the money would be nice, and is desperately needed, but the added strain would most likely bring on a very early heart attack and/or aneurysm... neither of which sound exactly pleasant to me.

currently, i am working on 'color studies' for a meticulous rendering of a yucca seed pod... which basically equates to a migraine from focusing my eyes for far too long on something that is entirely too small and entirely too intricate; getting to form caluses on my right forefinger and thumb from having to sharpen a prisma pencil about every two minutes; being positively terrified of fucking up a drawing after having spent 50 hours on it, having to begin again and finish before the original deadline [this will come in a few days, as i have just started said drawing... again, what joy is mine]; going through four books-on-tape in two days; and wanting to vomit every time i see a yucca seed pod. one more semester. one more semester. one more semester... and then i get to write a thesis. what can i say? i guess i'm just a glutton for punishment or something of the like.

ciao ciao kiddies.

goodbye my sweet.

jr's -

i know that this is a day late, but i felt i needed to say goodbye and to say thank you. thank you for the music. thank you for shows that were so good that i wished they could go on forever. thank you for my first legal beer and for all of the sass behind the bar. thank you for making it ok to dance like an idiot in front of strangers because i couldn't keep standing still. thank you for introducing me to indie music - it changed my life.

so cheers to jr's. cheers to actually wanting to hang out in a smelly basement because there wasn't any place i'd rather be. cheers to having just one more beer after the 'ugly lights' have come on. cheers to playing up until the last minute and rocking out for every second of it. cheers to being swallowed by the music, closing your eyes and letting it envelope you. cheers to jr's for hosting the two greatest shows i've ever seen in my life. cheers to the music, the people and the place.

thank you jr's.
thank you for the music.
thank you for the memories.

ice-cream-flavored insanity, served with home-made chocolate cake... mmm, yummy.

i have just witnessed some of the freakiest nonsense i have ever seen in my lifetime... so, i was at the fayetteville historical society's ice cream social and it was great... i had a death-by-chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream and got to meet a beautiful little boy with bright blonde hair, the most fantastically clear blue eyes i've ever seen, and muscular dystrophy and listen to barbershop quartets and all that wonderful stuff. the freaky bit begins here... so, earlier on in the evening, i had noticed a few young men and women dressed in 'period attire' and thought nothing of it... it's an historical society function and there are bound to be people who will think that it's fun to dress up and whatnot, right? perfectly normal... no, not normal at all. h-e-l-l-o! it is 2005. we have left the antebellum era far behind us.

i noticed a wonderfully flamboyant woman in a green and white pinstriped dress with a positively enormous white hat with magenta flowers around the brim walking around with her i'm-mad-at-the-world-and-only-own-black-clothing goth kid son trailing along behind her. the woman was actually strutting, if it is at all possible to strut in 19th century women's attire. the best part was that as she walked past me she looked down her nose at me, as if to say, 'i see someone apparently doesn't own a hoop-skirt... how sad.'

i'm sorry, but i really do enjoy living in the 21st century. i like living with air-conditioning, electricity, motor vehicles, etc. i also like dressing in contemporary clothing that doesn't wreak of moth balls and that allows me to breathe and move properly. i love jeans and t-shirts and... hmm, let's see... oh, i remember: not wearing a corset. pardon me for not actively trying to contort my internal organs... i like them just exactly as they are, thank you very much.

there were all of these people who took this whole pre civil war reenactment thing just a little too seriously. saluting the union flag and such... to each his own, i suppose, but it just creeps me out just a little bit. having a school dedicated to teaching young women how to properly courtesy, dress with a hoop-skirt, fix their hair in a manner that facilitates wearing a bonnet, churn butter, darn things, etc. is all a little bit off. i think that it's wonderful to have 'living history' and to know that there are people out there who truly believe we have a heritage worth preserving... but it's still just a teensie bit strange.

i thought that just plain crazy people were fun, but you should try the historical crazies... they're positively fantastic.

so it goes...

the last thing you want comes in first. the first thing you want comes in last.

he's the kind of person that makes you feel good about yourself... because you're not him.

the clouds of impending doom approacheth. it seems like no matter what i do to distract myself lately, all i can think about is starting comp studio... my last chance to prove myself in architecture school, as it were. monday, my descent into the inner circle of hell will begin and, try as i might to make myself confident, i am filled with a pseudo-despair. i will most likely not sleep regularly [or at all], not eat regularly [which isn't much of a change from my current situation, to be quite honest], or have a firm grasp on what little sanity i have left until december. woe is me.

at least i can take comfort in the fact that sleep-deprivation-induced hallucinations are fun. and i guess there is the little silver lining on the aforementioned clouds... being that i will [hopefully] graduate in may. thank. you. dear. sweet. jesus. whatever drug-induced logic allowed me to voluntarily sign up for a five year undergraduate program should be abolished. i have had a ridiculous amount of fun, mind you... that whole work-hard-play-harder thing. thanks to architecture school, i have mastered the art of dividing my time between work and party... and, more importantly, mastered the art of party. cheers to me.

i am rambling again... my deepest apologies go out to whoever has actually read this babble.
beddie-by time... i have an early appointment with heavy machinery and i have no desire to lose appendages...

comfortably numb

my apartment looks like a bomb went off inside it... from the front door to my bedroom, it is utter chaos [saved for my roommate's room, which looks spectacularly orderly in comparison]. maybe it's due to me not having any time to actually take time to reorganize all of the crap that is just kind of hap-hazardly strewn about... but it's more likely due to the fact that i really don't give a shit [gasp... she said shit. is she allowed to do that?]. the only thing about this situation that puts me ill at ease in the slightest is that i know deep down in my whatever that there are eight-legged things everywhere... and now they have lots of places to hide... particularly the ones that like to hunt at night... i just found three in my bedroom and needless to say, i don't feel much like crawling into bed at the moment. i'd much rather hang out in my disorderly living room, complete with television [only for movie watching - the whole i'm-too-poor-to-have-cable-thing rears its ugly head yet again] and other things to distract me [i.e. the wine bottle sitting on my kitchen counter].

i'm currently hanging out on my front porch, listening with great intensity to the wonderfully ridiculous conversation of two women 'under the influence' talking across the way. the most amusing parts are when the lady in the red shirt stops, mid-conversation, to speak in the most absurd little voice to her dog 'petunia.' i wish that i could somehow have the power to find out what that poor little dog thinks everytime red-shirt-lady speaks to her like that... probably thoughts like, 'if i only had thumbs, i'd cause you tremendous bodily harm' or 'i wish they made ear-plugs for dogs.' i know, i'm terrible and i'm probably going straight to hell, but i simply can't resist... some people make it far too easy to make them the object of some overly-sarcastic diatribe... the best part of this whole ordeal is that these two women apparently live right next door to one another, yet, insist on having this abnormally loud, incoherent conversation on the balcony in front of their apartment, where the acoustics in the quad [as all of the buildings face inwards toward a grassy quad-thingy with trees in it... wow, that was eloquent] cause their voices to bounce all over the place. 'hey, everyone, listen to me... i'm saying something important... so, when i was drunk that one time a that one bar and i blah blah blah...'

yeah, straight to hell.

gelatin goodies... and whatnot

how is it that every time i attend a party that is anywhere in the vicinity of water, i end up looking like i've been beaten for a week afterwards? currently, i have severe bruising on my forearms, biceps, thighs, back, knees, jaw, etc. ... i can't kneel, chew, or pick things up... lovely, really, considering that i work in a restaurant and have to eat, therefore, i have to do these things often. most painful. yeah.

i'm sleepy again, so pardon the jumping around... introducing people to new music, movies and books is positively wonderful... again, i'm a nerd, so i enjoy these things more than most. i went to brewski's tonight to hang out with some of my colleagues from work and the conversation drifted toward - randomly - the dandy warhols and wes anderson... partly due to the fact that the wonderful people at brewski's were playing the dandy warhols' album 'thirteen tales from urban bohemia' and it reminded me of wes anderson's films somehow... nevertheless, i ended up telling my friend, sam, about all sorts of bands she'd never heard of... now i get to make a mix-tape. while playing tee-ball and sliding on a slip-and-slide might be some people's idea of a good time, making mix-tapes has been one of my favorite past-times since i have been able to operate a stereo with any sort of recording capabilities. needless to say, i'm a bit excited...

this whole operating-a-keyboard-while-dreadfully-tired thing is killing me, so i shall leave you with this: lime jell-o gives off the same brain waves as adult males.

ciao ciao kiddies. on the morrow.

where does a bee put his stinger at night? ...

i have very small, greenish-transparent-looking spiders crawling all over me. not cool. apparently i chose the wrong place to sit. oh well... nothing i can do about it now, as i refuse to freak out over teeny tiny little crawly things... even though i feel like i'm about to crawl out of my skin... can you tell i have nothing of any use or significance to write about today? i thought that maybe if i started typing, something witty would happen... no such luck.

i have decided that i strongly dislike waiting tables. it's not that the job itself is shit, because it can be most entertaining at times and the people i work with are amazing. it's just that people... well... aren't so great or nice or even civil to people who work in the food service industry. it would seem that i didn't get the memo that stated that i am a lower class of human being because i don't work in an office. this is new information for me... and i have to say that i think that is utterly ridiculous. i think that instead of mandatory military service and whatnot, people should be required to work in a restaurant for at least a year. let people learn to understand that, no, servers do not make minimum wage... we make $2.13 an hour. and then even that is taxed. so yes, we do rely on your tips... otherwise, i would be making an average of $30 a week... how's that for bread money? let people learn to understand that people bust their asses so that you can have 'a night out.' let people learn to understand to treat people, no matter what their current state of employ, like human beings...

'i've been to stans you ain't even heard of...'

just back from fort leonard wood, missouri... my little brother just graduated from basic training... and i couldn't be more proud of anyone if i tried. not only did he complete basic training, but he was awarded for his exemplary dedication to his duty. it's just so incredible to see anyone, much less someone you care about, transform so completely in a matter of months... in january, he was angry and confused... frustrated with his 'lack of direction'... seemingly spinning his wheels and getting nowhere. now. now he stands with pride... he exudes self-confidence as well as a sense of humility. when i saw him in his uniform, i almost cried [mind you, i'm not much for ceremonies or crying in public... but sometimes this is simply unavoidable]... i know that my eyes welled up a bit at least. i've just never been so proud in my whole life.

it's not even so much that he's a soldier or that he's doing something that takes tremendous courage, strength and honor... it's just that he's happy. and proud. it's been so long since i've seen matt smile - i mean truly smile, and he really smiled this time. it was just a bit overwhelming... in a really good way.

smoke and peppermint chapstick

22. as of last thursday, yours truly is 22... i don't feel any older, nor has anything significantly, dramatically, or blissfully changed in my life overnight, much to my dismay. 'chronologically, you're... but physically, you're still...' as un-magical as birthdays can be for me [they're not normally very good days, as luck/fate/what-have-you would have it], this one was rather lovely... unlike my big 2-1, people actually remembered my birthday this year... my friends called, people bought me a few beverages, and - even though i had to wait tables that day - it was one of those fall-asleep-with-a-smile-on-your-face kind of days... i got a 12:01 am 'happy birthday,' my roommate and her boyfriend made me breakfast, complete with a candle-covered crumb cake [as birthday cake would have tasted kind of strange alongside eggs and such], my friends took me out to lunch [can you tell that my life seems to organize itself around food?], and i got to walk around for most of the positively gorgeous day with a balloon tied to my belt loop... silly really, but nonetheless wonderful.

maybe it's the late night or the fresh air [writing on the front porch], but i have an urge to write something... humor me, if you will: the kindness of people can be a bit overwhelming sometimes... people who understand when you just need a hug and give you one... no special requests or circumstances needed, simply an understanding of someone else's desire to feel physically tied to someone, if only for a brief moment. i'm blessed enough to be surrounded by people like that... call it luck, call it what you will, but i have some pretty damn wonderful friends. it never fails that when i'm feeling a little detached - a little alone - i get a phone call, a knock on the door, or something of the like... i'm rescued by the kindness of my true friends on a regular basis... someone once told me that i should strive to surround myself with people who make me smile, people who enrich my life... i think i've succeeded. though i may not make enough of a contribution to them, my friends are the greatest gift i have and i am forever grateful.

then i saw in a blue haze all the world poured flat and pale between the mountains...

driving back to fayetteville from norfork today, i saw the most serene, purely beautiful sunset i've ever seen. so beautiful that it made my heart hurt just to realize that it was such a transient moment. rays of white light stretching across an amber sky... yellow-gray-white-blue clouds flecked with dazzling light, lined with the darkest shades of red and purple... an orange-red sun sinking quickly behind greenly wooded hills. i actually had to stop my car and just watch it... i had no choice in the matter whatsoever... that moment - fleeting, though it was - is the reason i can see...

it's not all bad... just an alarming percentage of it.

this whole working-three-jobs-going-to-class thing is kicking my ass. no sugar coating here... it's almost midnight, i just got off of work, i have 200+ pages of reading to do, a paper to outline and i have to be up at 7am. this is summer?

... i did get to take a brief break this weekend... got to visit the parental units and see some old friends... got to hang out on the farm and meet a pro fly fisherman who has generously offered to take me under his wing and 'show me the ropes,' so to speak... there was apparently a meteor shower of sorts on saturday night and i decided that i would lay down in the grass to watch it... i woke up some time later [it was a while, as i had grass prints on my face... lovely], covered in chigger bites and itching like hell. all in all, it was really great sleep, though... and while it was brief, the meteor shower was quite beautiful.

oh [i apologize for skipping around a lot, i'm slightly sleep deprived and i ramble when i'm sleepy... why i'm typing right now is quite a mystery for me, but c'est la vie, i suppose] - the club that has been contributing to my lack of sleep vis a vis the room-vibrating bass at 2am burned down on saturday morning. i was out of town during this club-burning-down-business and it was very strange to see what used to be a club across the street suddenly transformed into a smoldering pile of rubble and random awning parts. it would seem that studio seven sixteen is no more... sad, really, because they had a really kickin' drag show on saturday nights. endless hours of entertainment. yes, i do love me a good drag show... there's something so gratifying about seeing men dress up as women, act like women and do it well...

there are the really bad drag queens - thought they don't even deserve to be called drag queens - who think that by putting on a dress of sorts and some really poorly applied make-up, they will be morphed into some sort of goddess. wrong, darling... so terribly wrong and sad. much like anything one does in life... to be good at something, even being a girl for a night, takes a little bit of effort.

... exercising my right to be bendy... it's in the constitution. except in texas...

i'm an addict. that's right, i said it. i am a book addict... call me a nerd. call me what you will... but i simply cannot walk into a bookstore without having a deer-in-the-headlights-type moment and/or without buying something. hey, at least i'm not spending my limited cash supply on crack or whatever those crazy kids are smoking these days... i realized that i had this problem a while ago, but i was broke and would much rather do things like buy food and such [i.e. things that keep one alive] and books just didn't seem to be an option. my friend, nine, decided that tonight would be a good night for a bookstore trip... bad for my health. bad for my anorexic wallet... good for my brain, i guess [one needs to look on the bright side of these things... particularly when one's cash flow is on the point of drought].

speaking of brain... my roommate, camille, receives the newspaper everyday... and i read it. oh yeah... there's some pretty messed up shit happenin' in this here bible belt... pretty twisted and pretty entertaining. what more could one possibly ask for in a paper product? not much, that's what. for instance, i found out that one of my co-workers was arrested for possession with intent to sell on the 8th of july in benton county arkansas by the sheriff's department. now where else could i learn such valuable information? nowhere... well, unless i had connections in the sheriff's department and i don't... so, thank you newspaper. thank you from the bottom of my little heart.

did you know that here in the baptist capital of the world, if one so much as breathes out of the wrong nostril, it gets printed in the newspaper? if one commits a social faux pas... it gets printed in the newspaper. if one were to - say - go to dickson street [the bar-hopping zone of fair fayetteville], trip on the sidewalk and fall on one's face, it would probably be printed in the newspaper, along with pictures of said event - just so that the humiliation can be all the more semi-permanent.

is it really front page news that jane doe runs a sewing club from her lakefront cottage in northwest arkansas? do i really need to read about that stuff when i am eating my cereal, drinking my coffee and trying to feed my brain with today's current world events in the morning... no? no. while it's grand and all... i don't need to know. why - you ask - don't i just turn on the tv and watch the bbc or some other comparable network? because i'm poor and can't afford cable. that's why... [thought that i'd drop the hint that i'm seeking funding and donations are welcome once more before i finish this post... hint hint wink wink nudge nudge...]

i'm spent... on the morrow, then, kiddies?

listen to the music. everything else is just... silence.

new chapter and whatnot... i've just finished moving into my new apartment in fayetteville... i have to admit that two years of living in a house has spoiled me just a bit - what with all the extra space, front yard and not having noisy neighbors and such. complete with my new apartment package, i also have the added privilege of living directly across the street from fayetteville's seemingly most happenin' club - studio 716 - with the bonus of thumping beats to keep me awake at night... sleep's overrated, right? yeah, that's what i thought...

having not posted in an exorbitant amount of time, i've been pressuring myself to write something brilliant - something i rarely do, much less under the added self-pressure. so this is basically it - i'm here... barely... working three jobs and attending a class at the university on 'russia since 1861', reading a lot and living out of cardboard boxes [hopefully i will remedy that situation shortly]... trying desperately to 'get my shit back in order' [to put it as ineloquently as possible].

i've spent a lot of time alone lately... and i find it strangely comforting to rely on myself for company. i guess i can deem it giving my self a 'social vacation' and all that nonsense... but being around constant gossip is just not fun.. particularly when said gossip is aimed directly at yours truly... no, no fun at all when you really think about it. i'd rather be locked in a room infested with spiders [and coming from an arachnophobic person, that's saying quite a bit]... i am not perfect, nor have i ever claimed to be. i make more mistakes than one could possibly imagine, but this is who i am and if i change, it won't be motivated by someone else's critique of me... i'm satisfied with knowing that i am a work in progress. basta. soapbox nonsense over.

who needs a knight in shining armor when you have a dude with a rolling couch?

i finally did it. i finally fell down the stairs in vol walker hall on friday. i suppose that i was probably aided in my feat by the fact that i am one of the least graceful people i know... then again, it might have also been helped along by the rather large puddle on the landing of said [marble] stairs. i am most thankful for the fact that no one was around to see my marvelous fall, my crumpled body at the bottom of the stairs, or my limp back into the studio... as i embarrass easily and i don't enjoy being pointed and laughed at for my idiocy... at least not to my face...

mind you, my body still hates me quite profoundly for letting it fall down a flight of stairs but it probably hates me even more for going to david's house on saturday night. too much beer. too much fun [well, not really... there's no such thing as too much fun, but go with me on this one... willing suspension of disbelief and all that jazz]. so midway through the evening i finally find a chair to sit in that doesn't hurt me [i think i gave my tail bone quite the thrashing on the stairs] and low and behold, my friend david decides that it would be a great idea to make my chair flip over... with him squarely on top of me... yeah, body not so happy about that one...

so i spent most of yesterday being as lazy as possible... we'll deem it recuperating for the time being. i watched the third harry potter movie twice, took a bath, read a book... did as little moving as possible... and it would seem that my body hates me just a little less today than it did yesterday. all in all, i'd call that progress.

i'm not making kissee faces...

i'm not really one for going to weddings, watching wedding videos, or anything of the like... maybe it's just that the thought of marriage freaks the living crap out of me [well, at least for now], maybe it's something totally unrelated, but i don't really enjoy most weddings - receptions, yes. weddings, no. a lot of times, i find myself getting angry with some of the phrases in the ceremony - 'the wife's duty is to serve her husband'... where's the part about it being an equal partnership? it seems to me that if two people - whoever they are - get married, they should 'serve' each other... maybe i'm idealistic, but that would seem like the key ingredient to any successful marriage - well, that and actually loving each other, making each other stupidly happy and being loyal [i.e. not diddling the maid and whatnot].

having written all of this, i did have the chance to watch my friend's brother's wedding video this weekend, and it was really quite wonderful. none of this 'who serves who' business and the like. the whole thing was so full of love and joy that it kind of made me want to cry - in a really good kind of way [i thought i'd add this little tid-bit for those of you who don't know me very well: i'm not a wedding crier... nor do i really cry during movies, ceremonies, etc. ... maybe i'm just a heartless freak, but i've just never been that moved to weep during a ceremony...]. it was wonderfully romantic - on a beach in costa rica at sunset during the spring... all that stuff you read about but no one actually does.

i guess it was kind of reassuring to know that people are still romantic... that people can love each other enough to not be afraid to be goofy in their pursuit of romance...

a collection of silly nothings...

now that i've succeeded in alienating everyone who has ever read my blog, i thought that i'd go ahead and update this thing... i just got back from a ridiculous trip to new mexico... ridiculous in a really good way - in the i-didn't-want-to-come-home-kind-of-way. i'm a desert person and for some reason, i feel more at peace there than anywhere else. maybe it's the 'big sky' or maybe it's that at night [practically everywhere], it looks like someone's taken a satchel full of diamonds and thrown it into the sky so it looks 'like a backlit canopy with holes punched in it.'

being on this trip reminded me of how much i used to enjoy being outside as much as possible... being active as much as possible... it seems as though i'd forgotten that since i moved to fayetteville - surprisingly. i love coming home after a full day of traipsing around some unfamiliar place, feeling as though if i move just once more i will involuntarily collapse [not from lack of sleep... which has unfortunately been my trend as of the last four years]. i also love solitude [in doses] - being able to disappear for a while; to sit in complete solitude with the world swirling past you in easy waves whilst you sit in awe of what surrounds you. that is a great moment.

i just met jesus and he gave me a part-time job

there are few things that i can think of that are worse than being covered with sawdust... it's not necessarily the sawdust part that's so awful - it's the damn itching. that crap embeds itself into every goddamn fiber of every shred of anything in contact with your skin and it doesn't let go, accept bribes or give a shit whether or not you want to crawl out of your skin because of the discomfort.

i spent the majority of my day today in the woodshop in the basement of vol walker... why is it that everything you think will take 20 minutes takes you all goddamn day? argh. that's what i have to say about that: argh. i've learned - among other things - 2 very important things these past few months: 1] respect those who have the patience, talent and upper body strength to work with concrete - if you don't, they have the power to possibly beat you down with an 80 lb. bag of concrete or two... 2] don't wear fleece, sweatshirts or anything black in a woodshop because, a] sawdust never really comes out of your clothes, no matter how many times or how thoroughly you wash them, and b] you end up with sawdust in very peculiar and potentially embarrassing places which fuzzy or dark clothing tend to accentuate... don't ask.

i had a dream that you grew a garden on a trampoline and i was so happy that i'd invented peanut butter...

i have been so very neglecting of my dear blog. i am sorry to keep those of you who actually read my pathetic babble waiting, and i do appreciate that you've been waiting. these last couple of weeks have been somewhat rough [to put it lightly]. i've been quite a lot of different things of late... i was the terrible girlfriend who had a final the day after my boyfriend's birthday and was unable to do something wonderful for him on his day; i've been the nervous wreck that people dread having to interact with; i've been a zombie from lack of sleep; i've been... well, lets just say that it's the end of the semester and i've been dealing with that in my own retarded way.

i did get to go to the movie theater on friday [courtesy of a lovely woman i am privileged to call my best friend - absa] for the first time this semester. we went to see kingdom of heaven... damn. amazing. movie. i wasn't expecting anything quite that good, and needless to say, i was more than pleasantly surprised. having taken military history and being a history geek/nerd/what have you, i really appreciated the movie for not being one of those overly-biased-i-haven't-ever-picked-up-a-history-book-in-my-whole-god-
forsaken-life-but-i-felt-like-making-an-historical-movie kind of movies... i also appreciated the lack of preacheri-ness in the movie. as someone who grew up in the middle east and as someone who detests the current trend of condemning islamic people because of their faith [or anyone for that matter], i was most touched by the respectful portrayal of both christians and muslims... of people in the movie.

this was, however, brutally interrupted by the disgusting woman behind me [who, mind you, should be slapped for being such a bigot], got up after that wonderful film and stated, [imagine the most ignorant accent you can muster] 'i just can't believe that they'd actually make those muslims look good in that movie.' i wanted to get up and say, in the most serious tone i could possibly conjure, 'you. damn. fool. i pity you for being so ignorant and hateful.' i will go to my grave still wondering how people who claim to be 'godly' can be so full of warrantless hate. surely, 'god's people' should be good people, tolerant people, people who respect others and 'do unto others as they would have done unto them.' but, such is life, i suppose. i personally think that it's some sort of cruel twist of fate that would have people spending their lives filling their stony hearts full of more blackness...

this is one of those times that i have to remind myself of one of those things everyone should just trust is true: that all people are inherently good, no matter the apparent darkness of their actions, no person is entirely evil... and then i turn on the news and see pure, unadulterated evil staring right back at me with his stupid camel face and it makes me want to believe it all the more... people are inherently good. people are inherently good. good. good. good.

there is madness in this silence

i thought that staring at my screen/keyboard for a few minutes would trigger some stroke of genius, however, no such stroke has manifested yet. i felt guilty, not having posted in quite some time, but with it being crunchy time [the week before my final critiques and whatnot], my life is full of busy nothings - more busy than nothing, really.

some might find it interesting/amusing to know that i have already cut myself twice while trying to build models for said critique... some might also find it interesting that i have also bruised both of my hands in a futile attempt to 'nip' stone to make a mosaic... but most people would find this mind-numbingly dull, so i'll save you the excruciating boredom of having to read about it.

yup, my life will be boring for a while... at least for the next ten days - unless there is some juicy studio drama that unfolds that i can share with you here at idontliketowearshoes [i.e. someone losing a digit to the dreaded x-acto blade, nervous breakdowns, drunken mishaps in the studio - you know, your basic pre-critique nonsense]. however, i'm not holding my breath - lack of oxygen tends to make it rather difficult to work...

worry not, there is plenty of pain left to last you...

i have succeeded in digging myself into a gigantic hole - a pit, chasm, canyon, if you will - using, not a shovel, but a back hoe. it seems that i have landed in quite the predicament... being that i most likely will not catch up with all of the tasks that i am supposed to complete prior to the completion of this lovely semester [you're swimming in sarcasm, once again], should i just give up now and bask in my utter failure? or should i continue to try my damnedest to whittle away at what is left of my sanity [i'm running rather dry on my share of sanity at the moment]?

i say, 'ha. i defy you, sanity. i can do without you... i will most likely have more fun without you... who needs sanity anyway - i can now have a wonderfully viable excuse to make a complete ass out of myself on a regular basis ['you see, she's just crazy... pay no attention to her'].'

it ain't headin' up no more...

maybe it's that i haven't lived in the south for very long, maybe i need to loosen up or some such nonsense, but 'southern speak' is so very strange to me... it always amazes me how most incredibly intelligent people can sound so very ignorant when speaking 'southern.' one of my very close friends, probably the most intelligent person i have ever encountered in my lifetime - during a very theoretical conversation - said that he 'didn't reckon that [something] was true'... it just really baffled me how i had never ever expected that phrase to come from his mouth... reckon...

mind you, i am from the south - born in texas and whatnot - but the only real southern expressions i use are mam, sir, and [on occasion] y'all. ain't, double negatives, reckon, 'figur' [figure], j'eet yet? [have you eaten yet?], 'moungry' [i'm hungry], 'fixin' tuh' [about to], etc. haven't really found their way into my vocabulary as of the present moment and will hopefully take the subtle hint that they are not invited into my vocabulary any time soon...

i have no qualms with people who speak 'southern' - as a matter of fact, most of my very closest friends and family are so southern that it could be said that they speak an entirely different language - i just find that 'southern' doesn't really facilitate my manner of expression very well...

i have no idea where i was going with this at all... but i've spent the last hour or so contemplating the oddity of 'southern speak' and how it tends to just pop up out of nowhere, like daisies in the snow... at least 'southern' isn't irritating... just ever so wonderfully amusing - like mullets [another southern phenomenon]... they never fail to bring a smile to my face.

i ranched up all over my pants...

tuna fish sandwiches and guacamole... the dinner of champions who like to puke all over themselves... actually, i didn't puke; i just wanted to after i realized what i had just eaten for dinner. this has to be one of the strangest food combinations that i have consumed in a really long time.

it actually reminds me of the milk chug that i was idiotic enough to participate in during my first year of architecture school... dear god, have i come a long way [at least i would like to think that my having developed the sense to not try to make myself vomit on purpose is 'a long way']. what is a milk chug? one could ask. let me lay it all out there for ya'...

during a milk chug, one is required to down an entire gallon of milk in an hour or less... now, this really is much more difficult than one would imagine... given that after you finish about half of a gallon, your body kind of decides to hate you, your stomach deciding that it would much rather act like a tiny lil' version of mount saint helens on a bad day than just cooperate with you in your stupid stunt...

the 3 most important milk chug ground rules:
1. absolutely no skim milk... 2% milk can be acceptable, as long as you are willing to live with the fact that you're a wuss...
2. you may not - at any time during the given hour of the milk chug - vomit on any of the other idiots chugging milk with you. it happens, but it's just not good practice to throw up on people that you are a] friends with, b] working with or, c] stuck in a studio with for the next 5 years of your life. people tend to dislike 'involuntary protein spill' all over them...
3. someone must videotape/record the moronic event so that the participants can look back and enjoy how stupid they once were/still are... recordings can also be used as a valuable blackmail tool later in life...

got milk?

you smell like a cupcake...

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how am i not myself?

ok, so when i say 'i'll post something tomorrow,' i really mean 'i'll post something whenever i can get to a computer and actually remember to post something.' ...

today is an absolutely gorgeous day. this - of course - means that i am stuck in the basement of vol walker hall - again - breathing in noxious fumes, trying to figure out why all computers/machines hate me with such a fiery passion and missing out on yet another park-worthy day/baseball game. my consolation prize can be that i did get to go to the game last night and watch the razorbacks beat 'vandie' [vanderbilt] 6-5... and a lovely evening it was.

i went to a lecture the other night, during which the speaker stated that he has observed a rise in psychological unbalance in society - low-grade cases of schizophrenia popping up everywhere. take - as per his example - road rage. why is it that perfectly balanced people go bat-shit-crazy in their cars? i mean, people absolutely lose their shit behind the wheel over the dumbest junk... granted, i'm not saying that i'm any sort of saint in this matter: people who drive 10mph under the speed limit because they feel like it really piss me off... people who apparently received their driver's license as a cracker jack prize also ruffle my feathers... people who drive their humvies and suburbans like they're driving a miata - you know, the people who can't decide if if would be easier to try and sqeeze into the left lane or the right lane, so they just straddle both? - should be forbidden from getting behind the wheel [this also applies to parking: if your fat ass vehicle can't fit into a parking spot, maybe you should reconsider your method of automotive transport]...

lately, i've just been laughing hysterically at just how poorly people drive - which probably makes me look even more insane than just flipping out in my car, arms flailing everywhere and getting all red-faced and frustrated and whatnot...

'yeah, so there's this girl behind me that is just laughing her ass off for no apparent reason whatsoever... what a crazy___ ['fill in the blank with a good thing to fill in'].'

chocolate-shaped hippos

miss me? i've been in the middle of nowhere for the past week... [i.e. no internet access]. i thought that i'd post a little 'whatnot' to say, 'yes, i am still alive [although i highly doubt that this has been questioned within the past week...]. yes - for all of you interactive-post-fans - this post will be interactive. yes, i will post something tomorrow. yes, i will try my very best to make is somewhat clever/witty... i can't make any guarantees though. and yes, i am going to sleep now. why? because i'm a wimp and i like to sleep.'

three cheers for sleeping in your own bed! [hint: this is the interactive part...] hip hip hooray! hip hip hooray! hip hip hooray!

that's enough cheering for one night. now go to sleep, you hooligans.

monastic-like chanting is fun!!!

let me start by stating that i want to live in vermont... well, i guess that all hangs on me actually not being poor [which, by the way, would be a welcome change from my present state] and actually having employment [see the above not on welcome changes]. since this question has been presented to me by almost everyone since my return, i thought i'd throw this lil' note in: my schedule didn't facilitate time for snowboarding - much to my dismay - but my take on it is that it just gives me an excuse for going back, as it has been much too long since i last snowboarded and i miss it terribly.

the visit went well and my readers will be happy to know that i kept my idiotic behavior to an absolute minimum - this includes, but is not limited to: 1] cursing in inappropriate places/situations, 2] falling down/up stairs, 3] tripping over absolutely nothing and landing squarely on my ass or face, 4] making silly faces at people for no apparent reason, 5] belching as loudly as possible for no apparent reason whatsoever, 6] i could go on like this forever, but i hope that you get my point.

i was actually dressed like a normal person for the majority of the trip [i.e. not in clothes that i 1] got for free at some jr's-related event, 2] picked up at cheap thrills, 3] poured concrete in, etc.] - thank you banana republic for making decent-looking clothes that actually fit me. on my last day, however, i participated in several presentations where i was - again - dressed like a normal person [i guess that this really equates to a business-type attire and high heels, since i am vertically challenged... therefore, utter discomfort for yours truly], but after my final presentation, i quickly changed into jeans and a t-shirt... i was highly amused when, while asking for the whereabouts of the person who was to drive me to the airport, the department secretary didn't recognize me. this happened again, jokingly, when i went to have lunch before departing... i really don't think that i looked that different, but i guess that it was a fairly abrupt change.

after some anxiety that i wouldn't be able to get back to fayetteville due to snow, i finally got home... just in time for this weekend's baseball series against mississippi state... put it this way: the hogs have not had the best of weekends. this is surprising, considering their record for this season... you win some, you lose some, i guess. i just hope that we pound the living daylights out of the 'bulldogs' this afternoon... not so much to 'salvage what's left of the series,' as to shut the mississippi state fans up. i have never, in all my life, had the displeasure of being in the company of such rude and annoying fans. example: during friday night's game, chris and i ended up directly in front of this really weird mississippi state fan. he grunted a lot, paced back and forth while grunting a lot, kept announcing either a strike or a ball at the top of his lungs every time the pitch result was posted on the scoreboard, kept mumbling under his breath [which was very creepy, i might add], and would throw hissy fits every time the razorbacks either got a hit or a run... or a walk [since we did earn a lot of those on friday] - he sounded a lot like the people on the 'goobacks' episode of south park... 'they took our jobs' ... 'dur dur dur'.

on saturday, chris and i had the pleasure of sitting in front of one of the largest people i have ever laid eyes on... a mississippi state fan that insisted on chanting some ridiculous nonsense about getting a basehit in this weird rhythmic chanting style... EVERY SINGLE TIME A PLAYER FROM MISSISSIPPI STATE WAS UP TO BAT. oh, and that's not all... said fan also chanted in the same style during OUR at bats... something about holding us at bay or some such nonsense... anyway, you get my drift, i hope...

tah tah for now... go hogs

peanuts are neither peas nor nuts... discuss.

i am becoming increasingly nervous... tomorrow, i will be on my way to vermont to do my first naab accreditation visit at norwich university... i am nervous because i will 1] be the only student on this accreditation team [yes, they do it in teams of four... with one student member representing the aias on each team] and 2] i will be the only person on the team who hasn't done an accreditation visit before. not to even mention that the other members of the team are - you know - heads of departments of architecture or deans of architecture schools at major universities... yeah, no pressure whatsoever. none. i guess i just have to hope that i can keep myself from looking like an idiot for six days - mind you, this will be a very challenging task for me, as i make a very good habit of making myself look like a moron on a daily basis. blah blah blah.

tah tah for now kiddies... this one must get her ass out of bed at 5am tomorrow in order to make her flight[s]...

this one's for the gentleman in the... um... beer.

it's story time here at idontliketowearshoes. this one's called 'eager little booger'... you know? booger from 'revenge of the nerds?' yeah, so... at the french kicks and calla show last night at jr's, there was this really enthusiastic little version of booger from 'revenge of the nerds' standing right in front of the stage, just staring, bug-eyed, at the band while he over-zealously rocked out to the music... i had the fortune of getting a clear view [a rarity, due to my vertically-challenged stature] from the side of the stage to our dear little booger.

have you ever been to an event - specifically a concert - that you just didn't want to end? where the music touches some nerve deep down inside of you that causes sincere delight? but once you think about the fact that it will eventually end, you can't get the thought of said conclusion of delightful event out of your mind, so you try and try and try to enjoy the show as much as is humanly possible? that was what little booger was like. smoking his cigarette in quick, intense little drags. shaking his head back and forth to the beat of the drums. shuffling from side to side on his heals like a little hipster from the inability to stand still during such a rhythmic explosion. once in a while, checking to make sure that his hair was still carefully disheveled.

i couldn't help but smile when i thought about what was probably going through his mind... it just makes me happy to see other people so overwhelmingly content [unless, that is, they are vindictive, evil people... then i glare very intimidatingly at them if they show signs of happiness... because their happiness normally means utter misery for some other [normally] innocent party]. if everyone could enjoy music/be passionate about music the way that little booger was about the french kicks and calla, the world would probably be a much better place...

bwautle 'em

this evening/morning/night/whatever, i am an insomniac by choice... well, no - not by choice at all... chrunch time for critiques has bled over into what should be my 'me time' [which is normally consumed with sleep... oh that bless'ed sleep]. i've realized that it's one thing to just stay up... it can actually be fun when you chose to stay up late/not sleep at all. it is, however, a completely different thing if you're staying up because you have shit to do - this is when your body decides that it hates you with a fiery passion and hides all of its energy so you feel like a zombie and it makes your eyelids very very heavy... all of this just to punish you for staying up late to get your crap finished.

on this subject of getting crap done: why is it that the weather is shit until you are required to remain inside in a room without windows to get work done? ... actually, i guess it would be worse to have to stare straight into paradisical weather while trapped inside your task box... i only say this because - once again - i was relegated to the basement of jolly old vol walker hall in a room without windows [well, there are actually two windows, but they afford no view or any real access to the 'outside world'] on a sunny, eighty-degree, cloudless day... damnit. i guess i'll just have to hope that by some providence, tuesday will be lovely... i might actually have a rare moment of free time to go lie around in the grass or some such silly nonsense... i can't bloody wait. this anticipation is made even more prevalent because tomorrow - all day tomorrow - will be filled with reviews [from 9am until 11pm with two very small breaks for sustenance... la dee friggin' dah]... but i guess that one should expect to have an anxious wait for anything that is worthwhile.

... at least i'll just keep telling myself that.

think spatially and stuff...

there was a comment made in my class yesterday evening that i found somewhat perplexing: some people just don't think spatially. is that kind of like colorblindness? i mean, i'm not talking about lack of depth perception, because i know that that is an actual medical condition... but do some people actually not understand space? see spatial qualities in, say, a rothko painting? maybe i'm being stupid/naive/daft, but i just can't imagine not perceiving space in two-dimensional media and the like...

please, whatever you do, do NOT super size me.

i never want to eat fast food ever ever ever again. i had the distinct pleasure of watching super size me last night... i guess the part that was most disturbing was the orthoscopic view inside the torso of an obese man during stomach stapling surgery. i had the added pleasure during that particular 'skit' to have chris leaning over and pointing at the screen, saying, 'did you see all of that fat? no, the yellow globules... yeah... look at all of the fat.' mind you, this was in the middle of dinner. well, it was in the middle of what was supposed to be dinner - i had lost my appetite so thoroughly that i couldn't even finish my beer... yes, it's true... i left a 'wounded soldier' behind [insert fake tear and move on...]

so, in the theme of super size me, here's a tasty nugget for everyone [being the five people who actually read my babble...] to chew on: you would have to walk for seven hours straight to burn off a super sized coke, fry and big mac.

to my dearest monday -

monday -

i wake up every week with such hopes for a wonderful start and you dash those hopes - nearly without fail - every week. why do you have to be so horrible to so many people? is there some sort of bribe/fee/donation that people at large are supposed to be paying you to ensure an absence of black mondays? or do you simply prefer human sacrifice? would that cure your bloodlust and maybe make you more tolerable? or are you really female and in a permanent state of horribly venomous pms? this, i could at least sympathize with - considering that i am a woman as well - because i can feel your pain...

if there is, however, some other reason - some vindictive plot to ruin the start of everyone's week just for your own sick pleasure, i will just continue to hate you... you will leave me no choice but to do so.

i've been relegated to the basement on another beautiful day...

why is it that, in a bar stock full of pacifists, people find the need to be hostile and aggressive? all of this pent-up aggression... what happened to doing things like jogging [or yogging... i'm not sure if the 'j' is soft or not...], meditating, boxing, what-have-you to get all of that bottled up hostility out? and it's even more offensive when said aggression-venter has an accent like boonhower on king of the hill and a mullet...

but i digress...

the aforementioned pacifists were extraordinarily entertaining at jr's last night... belting out-of-tune and off-time renditions of 'we're all members of a fucked up world' [by the killers, i think] at the tops of their lungs and shakin' some booty to the wonderful tunes from the jukebox... and lighting things on fire in ashtrays... ahhhh... ain't life just grand, though, when you can bear witness to twenty- and thirty-somethings acting like really happy children?

this is the big one, people...

woo. 5000 hits on my dinky little blog. it's no big deal compared to most people, but it's fan-bloody-tastic to me. woo. thank you for stopping by... y'all come back now. ya hear?

ladies and gentlemen. i present de-motivation at its finest

no, really, it's not that i don't want to do all of the crap that i have to do; it's just that there's so much of it. where in hell is a girl supposed to start? first, there's the organizing that has to happen sometime [yes, i am a bit of a slob... but only because i have no actual time to put stuff back where it goes... blah blah blah]. then there's the finding funding bit. being broke is absolutely no fun... i can't even say that it's because i'm a starving artist or any of that romantic crap... i'm just in college. la dee freaking dah. then there's the whole catching-up-from-when-i-was-sick-bit... yeah... still am not caught up on all of the school crap that i have to do/was supposed to do. then there's the whole exercising bit. fat freaking chance i'll have time to do that. bah. i laugh at you, exercise. ha ha ha. then, there's the whole find-my-sanity-because-its-gone-missing-bit... hopefully, no explanation is needed for that one, it should be pretty straight forward. then there's the whole do laundry, finish a painting that i have no idea what to do with, come up with something brilliant to say during my discussion group this evening, read the 200 page book that i'm supposed to finish before this weekend, design a website, finish a project on the laser cutter, [can we tell that i'm over-loading myself here?... just checking...]. but i will find time to make myself that phish food milkshake, damnit... if it's the last thing i do.

milkshake.

ice cream has this amazing power of being totally addictive. it's like chocolate in that respect... only softer and colder. to confirm that you are hopelessly addicted to the stuff, you must crave it... i'm not talking about just wanting the ice cream. one must have insatiable cravings for it. any form of ice cream will do - milkshakes, malts, floats, concretes, sundaes, ice cream sandwiches, ice cream cones, ice cream cake [a personal favorite - though completely sinful], gelato [though not technically ice cream, you get my drift], just plain ice cream...

why is it though that i only seem to really crave the stuff when it's bloody freezing outside? it's like my habit of chewing ice... the colder i/it gets, the more i do it. i've been sitting in studio all day, it's 40 degrees outside with a biting wind and i can think of nothing but ice cream. i want a ben & jerry's phish food milkshake... as of now, i've never had a ben & jerry's phish food milkshake, but i love ben & jerry's phish food and i love milkshakes... so why the hell not? [and no, this isn't like the whole 'i love pickles and i love peanut butter so why shouldn't i combine them' thing... phish food and milkshake are quite compatible...]

face lift.

i thought that with the addition of my lovely new banner [thank you, chris], i should post something. i have to admit that i've been a bit side-tracked this past week...

i returned home yesterday after taking a short trip to memphis, tn to see a couple of projects by my studio professor's firm - building studio - and to see the exhibit of the quilts of gee's bend at the brooks museum. coleman's projects were amazing - this was the first time that i've been able to visit a site with the architect... it was marvelous to be able to experience a new place with the person who designed it... particularly the bridges center in memphis [this is a hint to either a) go to memphis and check the bridges center out; and/or b) go to the building studio website and check it out for yourself... i promise that it will be well worth the visit]. when discussing the beauty of the site and the structure, my friend austin said, 'i think that the program of the building is responsible for most of [the building's] beauty.' i concur.

the quilts of gee's bend exhibit was also fabulous. i spent about an hour and a half looking around the exhibition space in a state of absolute wonder. i found it interesting that we [i'm speaking in generalities here] place all of this focus on the 'superiority of european art' and the importance of an expensive and elitist artistic training and yet somehow, people from one of the poorest towns in the united states, without exposure to or education about [modern] art have produced some of the most flabbergastingly beautiful artifacts that i've ever had the pleasure of experiencing.

on a completely unrelated topic: i had the pleasure of attending my first razorback baseball game of this season today... it was cold as hell and it rained the whole damn time [i was wet to the core by the time the game was over]... but it was totally worth every shivering minute of it; the hogs swept minnesota in this weekend's series... woo. i just hope that maybe the sec will raise the bar on its standards for game officials... even with umpires who apparently haven't read baseball's rule book, the hogs still dominated!

do you remember that time when jesus christ puked all over the bar?

so, to take a break from my endless piles of reading and work and such, i decided to join chris and eric and some friends visiting from out of town at brewski's for a beer. not in my whole life would i have expected to see my very christ-like-looking roommate drunk out of his mind at the table... immobile even. might i remind you that i haven't ever seen my roommate drunk... tipsy, yes, but never drunk.

since i was the last to arrive at the bar and oh so very behind on my intake of alcohol, i guess that one could have called me the 'designated driver by default.' while pseudo-carrying jesus to my car, i realized just how short i really am: having to be the human walking stick for a nearly-seven-foot-tall man while i measure up at a measly 5'-3" was quite an eye-opening experience... though i will think of this as not that i am a midget but that jesus is just too damn tall.

[side note: i honestly don't understand what the big deal is about driving someone home when they aren't capable or just shouldn't do it themselves. no big deal... i mean, come on... dui's/car accidents aren't any fun for anyone involved... and in all seriousness, anyone who would just leave friends or even aquaintences in a drunken stupor to drive themselves home are, without a doubt, the lowest of the scum of the earth.]

i know that i have been most grateful when i have been the driven and not the driver, so i was happy to assist jesus on his journey home... my only question is, does this mean that i get to go to heaven? i mean, i did help jesus in a time of need and all...

if i could be a superhero, i'd be awesome man...

the 'laser room' in the basement of jolly old vol walker hall smells of melted plexi glass... so much so that my nostrils [yes, boys and girls, both of my nostrils] are burning and my eyes are starting to glaze over - probably because of all of the toxic crap that i'm inhaling, but who really cares about the consequences of inhaling toxic crap anyway?

i get the marvelously entertaining 'job' of getting to play with the laser cutter this dreary afternoon... i'm printing stuff on paper with a laser... duuuuude, this is so freakin' sweet, man. totally groovy and stuff. i wish that my printer - if i actually had one of my very own - did its job via laser. i'd be the coolest girl on the block. i could be LASER GIRL [of course, this most recent part is said with the movie-fone guy voice], complete with my own utility belt with lots of gadgety stuff and the absolutely necessary accessory to any superhero's ensemble: the goofy-looking, skin-tight, incredibly cliche costume... cape and all.

... but for now, i guess that playing with someone else's laser will have to suffice.

happy friggin valentine's day to you, world.

so, i'm really not that into all that gushy crap, but i thought that dropping a very sincere 'happy valentine's day' to anyone who happens to read this would be a fun thing to do - you know, since it is valentine's day and all.

beer and a night full of glue sticks

the cold and slightly empty fat tire to my left looks lonely. is that a second beer you're hinting at? why, yes... i believe it is. now, this whole drinking-while-cutting-things-with-xacto-blades-junk is exactly what i was taught not to do all of three years ago: 'friends don't let friends cut drunk' was the slogan on the t-shirt, i think. however, i must insist on the drinking-beer-while-using-xacto-blade-stuff, as it is saturday night, after all, and i am stuck in my house making 'pretty things' while everyone in their right mind in jolly old fayettenam is at jr's or one of the many drinking establishments here, enjoying their beer and lack of obligation to said 'pretty things'.

911 is on speed dial and i am trained in dealing with lacerations - so don't worry your pretty little head... cheers.