I'm in San Diego now, typing from my sister's computer. Last night, I accompanied her boyfriend and three of his friends to visit her at her new place of work. Comments? Concerns? Criticisms? YOU tell me where else you can make an $80 tip on a $20 bill without getting naked.

I've spent all morning downloading various songs that I'm too embarrassed to admit that I like, and burned two cds. Unfortunately, when I giddily stuck each one in my cd player and pressed play, I realized that I didn't even want to listen to more than half of the songs after all. Don't you hate when that happens?

Publish, blogger, publish! Come on! Chugachugachugachuga....

In my eternal quest to be an one-girl intellect factory, I often find that I consider it a character flaw when I really, really like a song on contemporary pop radio. This really doesn't make much sense when you consider that the contemporary pop radio station is the one I listen to the most and I know the words to like every song that's played. I also....read Baby-Sitter's Club books. Okay, I should shut up about that, it's not that funny and I really don't do it that often.

ANYWAY. All this is to say that I really, really, REALLY love the song "Don't Know Why" by Norah Jones, and I'm in a quandary over whether to download it or not. If I download it, I'll play it over and over until I get tired of it and I won't be able to listen to it again for years. If I don't download it...then I'm at the mercy of Top 40 radio as to whether I ever hear it again. What do I do? What do I do?

My life is in weird topsy-turvy mode right now. I've been boomeranging back and forth from Chicago to California to Chicago to California again. I've been making impulsive decisions and now I have six weeks in California spread out in front of me like blank posterboard that I must fill in however I choose. Today I chose to eat lunch with my mom between her art classes; read Bulgakov's A Heart of a Dog while sitting on the rocks at Marina Park while getting sprayed with ocean water; go to Target and Trader Joe's; and watch a rerun of the Golden Globes while frantically doing pointless word puzzles. The aforementioned Bulgakov novella was good, but I tend to not "get" political satire, instead watching helplessly as it goes *whoosh* over my head.

I assumed I'd write about the weather, which was ridiculously beautiful today. Weather is a good fallback when you don't know what else to say. I really don't know what to say, because I don't know what I'm doing right now. I do know that on Monday I'm calling the Reporter, and on Wednesday I'm leaving for San Diego to visit my sister. Otherwise, time is splayed out all around me and I have to reel it in or I'll just watch as it all recedes, disappears, and the harnessed time that seems so distant now will envelope me and I'll just look back confused....

Why Burcu is Funny, Part 2

So, tomorrow morning I'm boarding a plane to Los Angeles. Like the rest of the world, I'm scared that my plane will get hijacked and we'll crash into...um...some undisclosed midwestern landmark. Earlier this evening, I had a lengthy discussion about terrorism and air travel with my roommate Burcu. This is why she's funny.

Me: You know, I really don't think terrorists will hijack another plane for their next attack. I think they'll do something else, y'know, because everyone expects them to target planes again.
Burcu: I couldn't disagree more. I accidentally carried a knife on a plane a few months ago, no problem.
Me: Um...well, anyway, I don't think they'd target a small, random airline like ATA[the one I'm using tomorrow]. They'd target a major airline.
Burcu: Um, actually, I would think they'd target a minor airline.
Me (growing nervous): Well, think of it this way. Stewardesses, for example, have been riding on airplanes multiple times a day for years and years. I'm getting scared over one stupid flight. It's ridiculous.
Burcu: Hmm. Yeah. Hey, didn't the hijackers kill stewardesses and other people when they were hijacking the plane on September 11th? That's how they got everyone to do what they want, right?
Me (growing hysterical): I don't know!! I guess!!
Burcu: But they lock the cockpit door now, right?

Okay, so that was greatly edited. But our conversation was similar, I swear. Shit, I'm gonna die tomorrow. I want my cat buried with my remains.

I just realized that I had the word "humiliation" misspelled in my byline. How humiliating.

Wednesday Night

My main purpose for posting this is so that all the smart kids who are visiting by means of Ezra's blog aren't introduced to me as someone who makes stupid jokes about wardrobes and still reads Baby-Sitters Club books. Oh, shit, I've still given myself away.

So! Hello! Tonight's story involves me smoking for the first time, sort of. My roommate Leah wanted to take pictures of me smoking cigarettes to represent something that repulses her (the cigarettes, not me) as a project for her photography class. We got some real sexy, smolderingly smoky ones outside on the balcony with me wearing lots of eyeliner and a light, faux-fur-lined jacket in the -11 degree wind chill. Jose and Ezra told me not to inhale, but I tried anyway because I'm a badass. "This isn't so terrible," I thought. "It just tastes kinda like...air."

Needless to say, I'm more of a loser than a badass, because I wasn't doing it right. I discovered this after Jose demonstrated how you're *supposed* to do it, and I followed suit, and practically vomited all over the floor. Leah got some good, slightly less glamorous shots of me puking smoke out of my mouth with tears running out of my eyes. Then Ezra got out the video camera. The best part is, *I wasn't even inhaling*. I was clearly not meant to be a smoker. I shan't argue with Fate.

A Funny Joke

I thought of a funny trick to play on someone. If anyone ever comments to you, "You know, I'd really like a new wardrobe," it would be great if you actually bought them a new wardrobe. Like, a wardrobe. Man, they wouldn't know WHAT to do!

Assuming you want to spent $250 just to have fun with semantic confusion. Also assuming anyone says, "I'd really like a new wardrobe" anymore when referring to clothing, which I'm not sure I've actually heard outside of Baby-Sitters Club books. But keep it in mind!

I'm listening to "This American Life," my one true love. I'm also cleaning my room. And I'm thinking about the death penalty. Yesterday, Illinois governor George Ryan commuted all death sentences. This means that there's no longer a death row in Illinois. The worst sentence anyone is serving is life without parole.

I generally avoid forming opinions on, well, anything important, because one of my worst fears is of being overly obstinate and wrong. But I must admit, I am genuinely glad to hear about Governor Ryan's decision. He's correct: the death penalty in Illinois (and, let's face it, pretty much everywhere else) is broken. There are people on death row who have not murdered anyone. To execute these people would undermine the American government's professed purpose, to protect its citizens.

However, the majority of people on death row did murder someone, and they are now benefitting from the flaws in the capital punishment system (if you regard life in prison as an improvement over death, which I'm not sure I totally do). But should they be put to death anyway? I don't know. Should psychopaths, people with no consciences or remorse, be present on earth at all? I don't know. But until we have insituted a system of perfect justice, in which we can accurately weigh someone's *known* crimes against possible punishments, those punishments should be reversible to account for our many mistakes. In other words, since right now we can't know for sure the perpetrators of each and every crime, and we can't know for sure what happens after death, we shouldn't act as if we do. Otherwise, we may become a machine that values efficiency over justice, and justice is the supposed purpose of the capital punishment system in the first place.

This is the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life. I don't know when I've laughed so hard.

More Proof That I Am Desperately in Need of Some Excitement

My drama class is awesome. We basically spent today's entire class playing acting games, such as theater freeze tag, concentration exercises, etc. The last one we did was called "the numbers game." I think. Anyway, it consisted of two people going to the middle of the circle and having a conversation by counting numbers to each other. For example, the first person could go, "One," and the second person could say, "Two-three?" and the third person would say, "Four-five-six-seven!" And so on. The rest of the class then has to speculate on the subject of the conversation based on the intonation and body language of the speakers.

I giddily participated in the first one with a dude named Mike. It was relatively uneventful. The next one took place between a guy and a girl who each have atrociously unspellable names, so let's just call them George and Sally. George counted with something like chagrin and resignation, while Sally (to me, anyway) counted with something resembling shock. "Ah-ha," I thought. "I know what they're trying to pull." They had counted to about sixty-five when the professor told them to stop. "So," she asked. "What were they talking about?"

I confidently raised my hand, and yelled out, "It looks like he's counting the number of people he's had sex with!!"

The class burst out laughing, and George looked amused and embarrassed. I began to doubt my conclusion. Then I listened as everyone else suggested that he was recounting all his troubles, and Sally was trying to help him, comfort him, y'know. Shit.

I have so much to write about, I don't think I can write about any of it. A lot has happened in the past week and a half. I drove down to San Diego with my sister on the 30th and stayed until the 2nd, and left for Chicago the next day via train. A lot happened. The inevitable urge to digress onto some inane topic only threadishly related (in this case, my eighth-grade teacher's opinion on the phrase "a lot") has descended upon me. Argh. Argh.

Oh, I just remembered something clever I thought up, to use later:

Sometimes my cat is a ball of fury. Other times, he's just a ball of fur.

You better credit me if you want to use it, motherfucker.

Anyway. I had a good time on New Year's Eve as the only non-intoxicated person in about a fifty-mile radius. I got to know Jeff, the aforementioned Getty guy, a bit better, and we hit it off pretty well. He drove me back to Oxnard on the 2nd, which was nice. Unfortunately, I'm not going to see him again until next December, when he returns from studying world lit in South Africa. And Zulu. He's a practical guy, y'know, wants something that'll funnel him directly into the work force.

I don't really feel like writing about the train ride right now, although I will say that U of C students draw to each other like little magnets of geek. I'll elaborate later. Right now, I'm exhausted. I think I'll listen to "Magic Carpet Ride" for like the eleventh time today.