Strange

I like to rest my head on my cat's belly while he's sleeping and listen to him breathe and listen to his tummy gurgle. I also like the snuffly noises he makes when I pick him up. For some reason, knowing that he's a real-live animal with real-live bodily functions is very comforting. If that weren't odd enough, I just remembered that when I was very small, I used to do the same thing when my mother held me--listen to her stomach noises. If I ever have a significant other of any sort, I'll probably listen to their stomach, too.

Sorry, TMI.

Rewriting the Past

Uhh, I don't really hate my life, so I toned down the concluding paragraph of my last post. I still contend I look like shit in that picture though.

I dreamt last night that I got in a fistfight with my sister and with Burcu. Also, I drove a big truck. That part was AWESOME.

Page 23

There's a picture of me and my friend Burcu in the latest issue of the University of Chicago magazine, all Howard Dean-ed out at the Sleepless Summer Rally last August. Burcu loves it and taped it up on her wall. I hate it. I won't even begin to ennumerate the ways in which I look like shit in that picture. Oh hell, yes I will.

• I look like I have a punk-rock lesbian haircut. I'd just dyed my hair bright red (don't ask) and there's a shadow that makes it look very short with two long tufts in the front, just like a 1998 homie.
  
• My bra is more visible than my tank top.
  
• My bra is splattered with purple paint.
  
• My face is all crumpled and my features look enormous.
  
• I look really embarrassed, because I was.
  
• I have that post-emergency-room, brain-disease-victim glow.

It's good to know I did my part to keep the University of Chicago female attractiveness reputation alive.

You know what?

Mount Everest is a really cool name for the world's tallest mountain.

Emergency!

My parents are in Oxnard, California, and they say it's apocalyptic over there. The cars and houses are blanketed in ash. The sun is red. My mom saw a guy walk out of Smart & Final holding a rag to his nose and mouth. My dad can't leave the house because he has asthma and emphysema.

My sister is in San Diego. She put her most important possessions near her front door in case she has to evacuate. She woke up at eleven a.m. on Sunday and the air was so clogged and dark that it felt like three a.m. The sky is neon orange. Classes were cancelled at all San Diego schools, including UCSD, yesterday and today, and the mayor implored all employers to please, please, please let their workers stay home. My sister had to go to work anyway, though, because even in times of crisis, people need their fondue.

There are fires every year at this time in California, spread by the Santa Anas, warm dry winds that I always loved and that blow against your eyes and make them water. Once, my sister went to a Halloween festival in Ventura, one town over, and she said that she could see flames jumping around behind the hills. It freaked me out. But compared to this, it was nothing.

In other news, classes at the University of Chicago were delayed this afternoon when all the lights went out in Cobb.

You Want Random? I'll Give You Random.

Back in the old dayz, you know, the 'hood, I hung out with a girl named Loreal. We used to show up at each other's places unannounced. I started it by walking my dog to her house one day before we were good enough friends for that to be acceptable. Then she had to drive me home because my dog (uhh..yeah. my dog.) was too tired to walk all the way back. That was pretty embarrassing.

Anyway, after that, I'd sometimes show up at her house right after she'd taken a shower. Then she'd slick the top of her hair back so that it looked like a greasy mullet and we'd laugh and laugh.

I just took a shower and my hair looks like a mullet.

Nostalgia!!

Two Movies

First: I left A Mighty Wind in spirits more melancholy than they should have been, due to personal issues that I can only refer to in passing. Sorry, I know that's totally annoying. But besides that, it was a really cute movie, and reaffirmed my secret conviction that Jennifer Coolidge is a goddess incarnate, as she stole the movie in only two scenes.

Second: I walked out of Capturing the Friedmans in a mind-fog. Afterward, Burcu and I sat in her apartment and made a chart, outlining what was definitely true and what was definitely false. We argued and argued and covered an entire sheet of paper with green ink and didn't reach any conclusions.

About six months ago, I woke in the middle of the night from a dream--I can't remember about what--and I stumbled to the bathroom and sat down on the floor with my head in my hands, overwhelmed with this intense grief, unlike anything I've felt before. It was so strange. I must have been half-asleep, because there was something dreamlike about the strength of that feeling, and it's one of those memories that snag in your thoughts, that you puzzle and puzzle over.

But despite that one experience, I cannot, and hopefully will never be able to, comprehend the terrible desperate sadness on the face of Arnold Friedman. No, not desperate. Resigned, beaten down, empty. Now his face, too, has snagged on my memory. Please see this movie--there's no way it could have captured this sadness more beautifully and poignantly.

Question

I have a question. About blogging. Generally, I put off writing posts until I have something interesting to say and the wherewithall to get my shit together, sit down, and write it well. However, this blogging style lends itself to long droughts when my life is uninteresting and my head is a block of fuzz so I can't even make the interesting bits actually sound interesting.

So, what should I do? Let posts percolate in my mind for days so that they debut only twice a week or so (and, let's face it, it's not like my recent ones lend any credibility to the theory that fewer posts equal higher quality), or just post random tidbits about the mundanities of my everyday life, such as how I'm so freakin' stoked that I did my dishes and made chicken fried rice and turkish meatballs tonight, and how my sleep schedule is fucked up beyond belief, and how I have no boots and no money and I can't wear my coat with dirty sneakers, ew, so I have to walk around freezing in a hoodie all day?

Mundanities: My back hurts. My cat is bipolar. I miss my sister. I miss California. I adore my concentration advisor-slash-Confessions professor. I had a fight with a friend this summer and it's haunting me--I can't tell you how much it hurts. I need to get another job. I finally took out the trash. My cordless phone's battery sucks so Burcu lent me her crappy black old-school phone. I've been listening to the Smiths a lot. Tomorrow I'm going to my nonfiction professor's office hours and I'm scared. I accidentally burned my blender cord on the stove and now I'm afraid to use it. I'm so tired, but my mind won't stop going.

Is this better than no posts at all? I don't know.

FYI to all you guys out there

Skinny girls have stretch marks! And cellulite. Surprised?

I send this out into space as a public service announcement so that when you get a skinny girl in the sack, you don't act stunned that real people aren't Photoshopped.

And by the way, there's nothing that will hurt a girl more than a flippant remark made about her weight or another bodily imperfection. A close second is a calling stupid, annoying, and ridiculous the fact that this hurts her. Give it a couple of seconds thought, first, genius.

Myself being about a stone or so from thinness, I have a pervading fear that guys don't find exaggerated-hourglass girls like me attractive. No, I know it's more complicated than that. But I'm not talking about me. At least no one expects me to be perfect. But advice to guys: if you're fortunate enough to see a skinny girl naked, and you notice some pale streaks on her upper thigh, don't be shocked. Don't even mention it. Just tell her that you think she's beautiful and you can't believe how lucky you are to be with a girl like her, which should be absolutely true. And if it isn't, then go buy some porn and wank to the fembots over your sink, because you don't deserve a real woman, asshole.

Bleat!

Just when I start to really get into baseball, I am violently rousted by the sheer suck factor of the Chicago Cubs. You suck, Cubs! (insert crass goat joke here)

Also, I was gonna write a humorous post about my Art of Narrative Nonfiction class, and how fifty percent of the examples my professor cited as big done-wrongs in our recent essays came from mine, and so forth, because it was sorta funny, at first, until it just kept going, and going, and finally my plans for said post were clobbered and smashed to smithereens, along with my hopes for ever, ever being a writer.

I'm totally depressed. I'm blowing off homework and making it a crossword puzzle night.

How Burcu and I Killed The University of Chicago Coming Out Ball

Gather around for a tale of good intentions gone horribly and humiliatingly awry. Tonight, Burcu and I got all decked out for the Coming Out Ball, sponsored by the University Queers & Associates in honor of National Coming Out Day. Burcu was the butch to my femme, with me in a cleavage shirt, dangly earrings and meticulously applied eye makeup, and her in a wife beater with trousers and heavy eyeliner. She even had a freaking wrench tucked into her underwear and sticking out of the back of her pants because we had to fix my bike before we left. Fuckin' hot. Plus, it was raining, so we got all drippy-wet and rugged-looking.

The Coming Out Ball was an interesting experience, because it was disconcerting to see casual acquaintances and not know whether they were actually gay or just aspiring fag hags like me. It was a typical U of C deal, with more people clutching beverages and standing around woodenly than dancing. Those who were dancing, of course, were either bobbing their heads awkwardly or imitating a grand mal seizure. I don't exclude myself from this. I can bob with the best of them. There was also some scandalous gay-boy dancing, including a four-pack of squirming hand-roaming testosterone that I COULD NOT STOP STARING AT. Then the drag queens came and put us all to shame.

So, how did Burcu and I pull off the amazing feat of killing--yes, killing--such a jumbalaya of social bliss? Well, it all started when I suggested that we request the song "The Seed," which I love for its horrible lyrics and campy dance value. But no, Burcu didn't want to request "The Seed." So we compromised. We decided on the only artist who could elevate the Coming Out Ball to the status of Legendary Party Status. The only artist who is so dance-irific that popping one of his songs in my discman and turning up the volume can turn a rat bio lab into a disco inferno. That's right: we decided to request a song by Prince.

So Burcu jumped up onto the stage where the DJ was spinnin', and asked him if he had "Pussy Control." The DJ (subsequent googling has reported his name as "DJ Boywonder") gave her this big dimpled grin and said, Sorry, I don't have "Pussy Control," but I'll see what I can do. We were totally stoked! We requested a song, just like all the cool, enterprising kids at dances do, and thanks to us, the party was going to get START-ED, and everyone would be dancing to some REAL MUSIC instead of this Jenny From The Block crap. Yeah!

Then, a couple of songs later, we were getting water when we heard that old familiar screech, because DJ Boywonder was playing "Gett Off" by Prince! Possibly the second-greatest dancin' Prince song behind "Pussy Control!" So we ran out on the dance floor, all smiles, because finally we were getting some great dance music. We were all groovin', like, "Hell, yeah! Prince!", when we looked around, and realized....

we were the only ones still dancing.

everyone who had previously been dancing was just now standing there in clusters, looking mystified.

even the drag queens had sat down.

we had killed the Coming Out Ball.

We were soooo embarrassed, but what could we do? We had to keep dancing because we had requested the song, so we kept dancing just to be polite, and the DJ kept playing the song just to be polite, except it wasn't the "Gett Off" on my KaZaA playlist, it was the ultra-long ten-minute version and it just kept going and going and going...

Prince: If you want to baby, here I am. HERE I AM.
Me: Okay, I think this is the end.
Prince: [plays flute]
Me: I'm sure this is the end.
(We continue force-dancing)
Prince: GETT OFF! Twenty-three positions in a one-night stand.
Me: Uhh...okay, this must be the last verse.
Prince: [plays flute]. [plays flute] [plays flute]
Us: HOW LONG CAN ONE MAN PLAY THE FLUTE?!?!
(We look over and see drag queen jumping on stage to speak in hushed tones to the DJ)
Us: FUCK!!!!

Finally, it ended. I said we should go up to DJ Boywonder afterwards and say, "Thank you, thank you, and WE ARE SO SORRY," but we didn't, partly because I was too mortified to even look at him. Then he started playing Lil' Kim and everyone got up and started dancing again. Burcu gave him sort of a wave of acknowledgment and we got the hell out of there.

Sorry, Coming Out Ball. We are definitely, definitely not cool enough to ever be gay.

Ugh

You know those moments when all you want to do is make a good impression, but instead your every word just drags you deeper and deeper into the bowels of complete social ineptitude?

I Live a Sad and Lonely Life

Yesterday I asked my pal Burcu, in all seriousness, "So, would you rather have a boyfriend, or a cat?"

The Roundup

The quarter is fully swingin', and so am I. I only have classes on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from 1:30 to 4:20, which means--schwingin' yeehaw!--every weekend is a four-day weekend...if you don't count my two jobs, one of which is my aforementioned twice-weekly rat-poking commitment, and the other of which (hopefully) will be working with kids at a magnet school on 50th street.

These are my classes:

Augustine's Confessions: Taught by my concentration advisor, Wendy Olmsted. She is the nicest lady on the planet. Every time I'm around her I want to ask her if she'll be my surrogate grandma. She's like the wise elderly woman who knows everything about everything, and will tell it to you while serving you homemade cookies and fresh vegetables from her garden. Anyway, I'm taking this class so I can learn about how Augie's big-time sex drive, and his subsequent freedom from such, relates to spirituality and the nature of the will in general. I'm such an academic.

Mass Media & Society: Taught by a grad student named Gretchen Soderlund. I'm the type of person who will obsessively research professors and classes before I'll sign up for them, and her course evaluations are so incredible it's like she paid her old students before they filled them out. In class yesterday, some nerd asked if Marshall McLuhan's theory of media was related to dialectical synthesis, or something (yeah, this is the type of intellectual casanova I get to go to school with. envy me.), and she not only knew exactly what he was talking about but took him seriously and didn't smirk at him or tell him to shut up, which is what I would have done. She gets my respect for that.

Art of Creative Nonfiction: This is the strangest class I've ever taken. I just had it today and I still find it hard to believe it actually happened. It's taught by Edmund Morris, who won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award for his biography of Theodore Roosevelt, and stirred up national lit-geek controversy for his book Dutch, a biography of Ronald Reagan. He's never been on the internet, he never graduated from college, and when someone asked him about a syllabus at the end of class, he said, "Syllabus? ...Well, I have a general idea about what I'm going to talk about for the next ten weeks. Is that what you mean?"
There are about ten people in the class. He lectured for two hours, telling us about his life and talking a bit about the nature of nonfiction and of memory, and I realized, to my fucking depression, that this lecture--probably his first-ever lecture to a college class--was better than anything I will ever write in my entire life. Fuck. Then we all had to talk about epiphanies we'd had as children, and he commented on them with his wise-sounding Kenyan accent. I have a feeling this is a class to take seriously.

Also, I'm the Features editor for the Chicago Maroon, which is a brand-new section, just started last spring by my copy-editing compatriot Margaret. Write for Features! Aw, c'mon.