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.