My desire to update more and get back in touch with people has unfortunately coincided with a sudden need to move to a new apartment. I'm so stressed and preoccupied with that right now that I can barely think about anything else. More to come once I'm a little more settled again.

I love my friends, and I'm truly sorry that I've fallen so far behind on keeping everyone up to date. I'm going to find some way to work on this, I swear.

I hadn't really planned on posting this, but it has recently come to my attention that a number of my friends read lj without being logged in. Well, my journal has de facto been friends only since the middle of the summer, so if you're on my friends list and you're interested in knowing what's going on with me, make sure you stay logged in!

I'm sitting in Dallas now, in the middle of a 4 hour layover that was supposed to be a six hour layover, so I figured this would be a good time to finally update.

Maybe I should go backwards here. I'm currently in the middle of flying back to Tallahassee for the summer. The plan is to be there for two months. Of course, I won't only be in Tallahassee. The other places I want to visit include Virginia, Gainesville (on numerous occasions), Key West, my grandparents' ranch, Clearwater, Orlando, various Gulf beaches, and also Atlanta, Miami and St. Augustine if I have the time. It will be really nice to see everyone again. I'm especially looking forward to the constant reminders that yes, I really do have family & friends.

Today has been a big pain. I'm using a Delta frequent flyer ticket to fly back to Tallahassee. Unfortunately, Delta has retooled their frequent flyer program so that there are now two levels of frequent flyer tickers, "SkyChoice" and "SkySaver". SkyChoice tickets are basically any kind of normal plane ticket you would ever buy. They also cost 50,000 frequent flyer miles to purchase. SkySaver tickets cost 25,000 miles, just like the old frequent flyer tickets used to, but they only include itineraries that are so staggeringly awful you can't believe it. So my itinerary for today included leaving from San Francisco (which is an hour away) at 6:30am, flying from there to Salt Lake City, flying from there to Dallas, enduring a 6 hour layover there, and then flying from there to Tallahassee, getting there at 10:51 pm. GOD FRIGGING AWFUL. But that was the BEST itinerary availible on SkySaver. God, I hate Delta. So then, we're on the flight to Dallas, and even though I don't have watch on, I notice that based on what I'm doing to occupy my time, it seems like the flight is taking a LOT longer than the two hours they said it would take. Finally, the captain comes on and tells us that the Dallas airport has been SHUT DOWN due to bad weather, and that we have to land in Austin to refuel and wait for the airport to reopen. OK, kind of annoying, but not really that big a deal since I have a 6 hour layover to eat up anyway. Well, what I didn't realize at the time was that this was going to mean sitting on the ground for an hour under the 100-degree Texas sun, with 150 people in a tightly enclosed space and no air conditioning. KILL ME NOW. It was so awful. But I finally got here, and I'm in the air conditioning, and I'm in this nice little lounge where I can get wireless. I'm anticipating at least a minor delay for my flight to Tallahassee, since the airport is pretty much fucked for the day after being shut down for an hour or two, but hopefully this will be the end of the major ordeals.

Backing up a little bit more, I limped across the finish line of my first year of grad school. It really doesn't feel good at all to be finished yet, because I'm so disappointed in myself. I basically ran out of energy at the end of the year, which led to me sabotaging myself somewhat deliberately by booking lots of social stuff for the last couple of weeks of the quarter. I successfully completed all of my TA duties (and I really, really liked doing the TA thing a lot, btw). I also did a pretty good job on my Phonology paper, since that was where I concentrated what energy I had left. But my Syntax paper was a total disaster. It was approximately half of the lower bound of the required/suggested/who knows length, not very good and basically totally pointless. I was planning on having to retake the course, or at least rewrite the paper over the summer. But grades came out yesterday morning, and my professor gave me a passing grade. But at Santa Cruz, they also have these things called "narrative evals" that go beside your grade, which are basically short paragraphs written by the professor that accompany each grade. Those aren't out yet, and I know my one for Syntax is gonna be awful. I just feel so disappointed in myself, because I'm not used to tanking like this.

So yeah, I'm still basically in a haze, but I'm just hoping that Florida can revitalize me a bit after this relatively bad year. I do know that there are a lot of awesome people there that I'm really excited about seeing again, so I can count on that, at least. <3

So apparently Ray Charles just died. Now THAT, I can be sad about.

MADONNA: REINVENTION is the best show I have ever seen in my LIFE.

Here's some song fun, this time taken from quasievil82

Your favorite song with the name of a city in the title
Arrivederci a Capri - Maki Nomiya

A song you've listened to repeatedly when you were depressed at some point in your life.
Nightswimming - R.E.M.

( Read more... )

I didn't think much could shock me anymore, but the image of Trey Parker happily feeding bacon to a pig on the South Park season 2 DVD is one of the most... shocking things I've ever seen.

Adding whipped cream to your drink at Starbucks adds 12g fat, including 8g saturated fat. Never again.

In other news, the following persons are, to my knowledge, MIA:

* Elis
* Phyrian
* Sarah

...I learned from this quarter. Apparently, Arkansas is a vast, endless swamp stretching out in every direction, with a giant, omnipresent brilliant-cut diamond floating in the sky. Cool!

I had the worst coffee break EVER yesterday. I already told a couple of people this, but I thought it was funny.

I have class from 7:30am till 4:30pm on Tuesdays, so they are hellish days. Obviously, it requires a lot of caffeine to get me through them. I have a single class from 2:00-4:30, so because of the length and the time of the day it occurs, that requires extra caffeine. Well, it was a hot day, so I knew, when I left my apartment, that I wanted a soda instead of coffee. I also knew that the only soda machine anywhere near me on campus was one that sold 20oz bottles of Pepsi costing $1.25 each. I further knew that I only had a $1 bill and a $10 bill in my wallet. Yet I still forget to take with me the quarter that was sitting right by the door when I left. Goddammit.

And I left with just barely enough time to get to class, so I didn't have time to get change or anything before class so that I could get my Diet Pepsi. I had to wait till the 5-minute break in the middle of the class. When the break came, I ran up to the coffee shop so that I could buy some cookie or something to break my $10 bill and get the appropriate change needed. Well, they were out of cookies and brownies and everything decent for some reason, so I had to buy some stupid piece of shortbread instead. Well, as I was walking from the coffee shop to the coke machine, I took one bite of it and the stupid shortbreak completely broke apart and the whole thing fell on the ground. Goddammit.

I got to the coke machine and put my $1 bill and a quarter in and pressed the Diet Pepsi button. SOLD OUT. Argh. And drinking soda with sugar in it gives me a massive headache, so I had no choice but to abort my mission and press the money return button. Well, all the sudden, I've hit the jackpot, because it gives me my entire $1.25 back in fucking NICKELS. Goddammit!

So at that point, I look down at my fistful of nickels and decide I would rather have a bag of stupid gummy bears from the vending machine next to the coke machine than 25 nickels, so I buy the damn thing, and have to run back to class before I can even eat any of them. Worst coffee break EVER.

Oh, these little earthquakes... LOL

Has anyone heard of some game called La Pucelle Tactics?

Because of some obnoxious construction, I drove a different way home from class today. This state is so fucking beautiful it's ridiculous.

I listened to Fables of the Reconstruction (ROTF) today and it was almost a religious experience. The nuances of human mood amaze me.

I can't believe it's the weekend again already. It's probably because my syntax class yesterday was cancelled that this week seemed so short.

I had a very mixed weekend last weekend. It was a lot of fun on a personal level, and because of that, it was a disaster on an academic level. I don't remember Saturday at all... I think I just graded papers for a few hours and then vegged out. On Sunday, Hal and I went to this brunch that was a benefit for some local gay community center. It was OK... for a benefit meal, it was actually pretty decent. I guess any brunch event sponsored by gay people can't be too bad. Hal and I had to wear little red stars on shirt, though, that meant we were "in relationship." UGH.

Later that afternoon, I drove up to San Francisco to hang out with january_qc, which was fun. He just moved out to the Bay Area a few weeks ago, and we'd never met in person, but we're active in some of the same places online and we have a great mutual friend, so it was like a friendship blind date or something. Both of us seem to be pretty easygoing people, so there wasn't a lot of awkwardness. We went to this great restaurant in the Castro and had all kinds of yummies, and then we hopped around to a couple of bars I'd never been to, and hence discovered where all the "normal" guys in the Castro hang out. How I hate that term.. but how appropriate it can be sometimes, hahahaha. I had to call it a night early because I still had a lot of papers to grade, but I had a good time hanging out up there. It was fun actually feeling like I had a social life again for an afternoon. =P

On Monday was when the disaster set it. I wanted to finish my grading by noon since I had a ton of reading to do also. I was up by 9:30 (oh yeah, I don't have class or anything on Monday this quarter), and I wanted to start printing out my Phonology reading while I finished the grading. Well, I downloaded the article, and surprise! it was 287 pages. Both the printers in this house refused to print it, and furthermore, they decided they didn't even want to acknowledge that my computer existed anymore. Long story short, I spent all morning fighting with the printers, and by noon I hadn't even started my grading, let alone finished it.

At noon, I went out and met Hal for lunch, because it was his birthday. We went to this awesome all-you-can-eat "sushi and more" buffet restaurant ("Viking style" as I hear they're called in Japan), where you get to eat free if it's your birthday (it's like $18 otherwise). Apparently, no one ever goes there unless it's their birthday, because as he was seating us, our waiter asked us, "Is one of you celebrating his birthday today?" That part of Monday was nice... but by the time I got back, it was 2, and I still hadn't started my grading.

It was around 5:30 when I finished it, and by that time, I was starting to feel really anxious, because it was obvious I wasn't going to finish either of my readings (I also had a 100-or-so page Chomsky piece to read for Syntax), and when I'm feeling anxious, it's really hard for me to work. So I decided to throw a load of laundry in the washing machine in the basement, since I was going to have no clothes to wear for the week otherwise, and watch half a DVD or something to relax before I got into the reading. Well, after I turned the DVD off, it kinda sounded like the washing machine was making a funny noise, so I went down to the basement to check on it, and surprise! the basement was covered in 3 inches of water, with more water pouring out of the back of the washing machine. So I spent the next hour and a half or so bailing out the basement, and when Hal got home, it took us another hour or so to finish. By that time, I was utterly exhausted, physically and mentally, so I just gave up on the reading entirely and got in the hot tub with Hal to relax.

So I went into Tuesday having done NONE of either of the two massive readings I was assigned... and there was amazingly little consequence to that. We ended up not even getting to the Chomsky in Syntax, and Syntax is cancelled until May 4 because the professor was going out of town for something. And the Phonology turned out to be amazingly easy to read, and I got enough of it read on my lunch break that I was OK in class. I can't believe how much I lucked out.

With no Syntax to prepare for this week, I should actually be able to even work ahead some, which is a good thing. I'm enjoying this TA thing. Having a regular schedule and real responsibilities is keeping me amazingly sane (relatively speaking).

I just found out that Call Me was the "Billboard Song of the Year" (the top charting song for the year) in 1980. Fitting, eh?

Does anyone know if Prince has a Best Of, Greatest Hits or any other compilation with Erotic City on it?

If there were going to be future BSOTW's, they would be:

• Dig Up the Conjo (No Exit, 1999)
  
• Pretty Baby (Parallel Lines, 1978)
  
• Walk Like Me (Autoamerican, 1980)
  
• Will Anything Happen? (Parallel Lines, 1978)
  

There were a few other random things I was thinking of on my drive home from class, but now I can't remember any more of them. =(

EDIT: Oh yeah! Does anyone know what that song is they play in the background of those Trimspa commercials?? hahahaha!

My friends list just underwent a dramatic, cool and unexpected expansion. Hi Christine, May and Anitha!

It's been a while since I've talked to a couple of you, and I'm glad Christine & the wonders of lj have brought us together! May, I think, probably has a vague inkling of what I've been up to, but Anitha probably has no idea, so I thought I'd give a quick update.

* I graduated UF in spring 2003, and moved out of California at the end of June. It was an awesome 5-day drive.

* I started in the graduate program in Linguistics at the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) in Sept 2003. The program here is a top 10 linguistics program, and it focuses in Theoretical Linguistics (syntax, phonology and semantics). I suck at semantics, but fortunately, I've survived so far.

* I've been with my bf Hal for close to 2 years now. We've had some ups and downs very recently, but those have correlated pretty closely to my general level of school-induced stress and anxiety, so I've tried not to read too much into it.

* I've developed an unnatural obsession with Blondie over the last year.

* I miss you guys!

Wow, I just saw the worse movie I have ever seen in my life.

Thoroughly Modern Millie.

Yeah.

They probably are!

( Tour dates )

See blondie.net for details!

Song: Shakedown (click to download!)
Album: The Curse of Blondie (2004)
Sounds like: RAPTURE

THE CURSE OF BLONDIE is in stores today, and I couldn't be more excited! I'm so happy to finally own my own copy--and so happy to throw away that crappy CD-R I've been listening to for 6 months now! I've never worn out a CD-R so quickly before.

To celebrate both the end of the BSOTW and the arrival of The Curse, I've chosen the first track from the new album as our final song. Shakedown is Blondie's throwback to their #1 hit Rapture, the first #1 rap single in the history of music. Shakedown in both a raucous tribute to New Jersey (Debbie's home state) and a raunchy kiss-off to loser men. It's a fantastic kickoff to a brilliant album!

I've really enjoyed doing the BSOTW, and I'll miss it. Over the course of the past few months, Blondie has gone from "a band I love" to "one of my very favorite bands." I'm glad so many of you took the time to download a song or two or more. If I made you realize that you like Blondie even a little bit more than you thought you did, then I accomplished what I set out to do.

So now, with my blessing, enjoy THE CURSE!



THE CURSE OF BLONDIE

1. Shakedown (BSOTW #15)
2. Good Boys (BSOTW #1)
3. Undone (BSOTW #9)
4. Golden Rod (BSOTW #2)
5. Rules For Living (BSOTW #3)
6. Background Melody (a fantastic song about your parents listening to Blondie while you were being conceived)
7. Magic (Asadoya Yunta) (a song you'll love if you like Rules For Living)
8. End To End
9. Hello Joe (a mysterious and upbeat tribute to Joey Ramone)
10. The Tingler
11. Last One in the World (a full-throttle rocker, the most quintessential Blondie song on the album)
12. Diamond Bridge (BSOTW #12)
13. Desire Brings Me Back (Blondie marries atonal jazz and rock with stunning results)
14. Songs of Love

P.S. Check out my new Curse layout!

Wow.. just finished watching it, and it was about a hundred times more intense than I was expecting. Who knows how blown out of proportion the details behind it were, but the principle stands; call it reason number a gazillion why I hate religion.

It actually reminded me of a play I once wrote, heh. =P I was a senior in high school, and I had this sanctimonious Bible-thumping Cuban Spanish teacher. He decided that our first unit would be "morality versus immorality," and you can guess pretty easily what "morality" was in his eyes. For our project for that unit, we had to write a play based on "morality versus immorality" and act it out in class. I was so fired up by that point that I gladly took on writing the whole play. I really don't know how I got the other people in my group to go along with it, considering they were all pretty much devout Christians... I guess I was charismatic. =P

In the play, I played a Catholic priest. The play opened with me doing confessional with someone (what's the proper Catholic term for that?), then after that, a girl came into the confessional. She did the whole "forgive me father, for I have sinned" thing in a slightly sultry voice, and I recognized her as "Maria". Yeah, fucking obvious, but I only had 15 minutes! haha. I asked her when we could meet again... she told me she wouldn't be meeting me again, because she was pregnant. With my child. And that I was going to have to pay her to keep her quiet. I explained to her that we were a poor parrish, that I hardly had any money to call my own. She said that that was my problem.

The next scene showed Maria with her mother, her mother pressuring her to extort me for as much as she could. Maria said that she felt bad about the whole thing, that she still cared for me somewhat, that she didn't think it was right. In the end, the mother got her way, and sent Maria out to collect the money. Somewhere on the street, though, she started experiencing cramps, which got worse and worse, until she collapsed on the street, screaming. In the hospital, she learned she had miscarried. Her mother, though, forced her to continue the extortion, saying I would never know she had lost the baby.

When Maria showed up at the church, I devastedly handed over the money from her. I pleaded with her that I had basically had to rob the parrishioners, that I had had to deplete not only the coffers but the church's reserves to give her the sum she had demanded. She would have none of that, though, and took the money. After she left, I launched into a passionate soliloquy, growing insaner by the second. After a life of service, I had been destroyed by one small sin, that God had destroyed me, that religion was a lie. Throughout the play, a large (3 foot or so) wooden cross (made out of trellis or something) had hung on the back wall.. I ripped the cross off the wall, broke it in half over my knee, and plunged the broken end into my heart.

I was pleased with myself for that one.