Dear Valeria,
Gisela says hi :-)

Cheers
Maynard Mcmillan


I couldn't balance three names more, if I tried to...

Let me tell you, I am so very, very amazingly bored just now. I refuse, though, to go exploring right now.

Firstly, because I have a full day tomorrow with unwelcome obligations and (gasp) social shindigs.

Secondly, because it would feel wrong to go out all on my own, the very day that imasisara left -- not morally wrong, it would just feel wrong. Like...walking with a leg missing. Or, perhaps, the morning after the surgery at which your extra sixth finger got removed.

And lastly, but not leastly, because - and let's face it - I'm too chicken to get on the bus randomly to wherenotwhatnot all on my (sniff) own.

Maybe tomorrow I'll be brave? Tonight, I'll just walk the 6 blocks or so to Starbucks with a book.

In the meantime: Feel like leaving some graffiti on my journal? Right over here, next to the cobwebs, yeah?

As flattering (and blush-inducing) as it is to be told you are the epitome of hot and cool, while smoking, there is one question begging for an answer.

Is it possible to be epitomously hot and cool, even while (bravely) refraining from smoking?

Dying, dear LJ, and there is nothing I can do to help. My fingers are not typing as they should, which could be due to recent lack of usage or longterm insane alcohol intake.
Probably both, huh?

Let's do an ice breaker activity then, like they have them at all those horrendous team-work building sessions.
It's a little quiz: 2 lines from 2 songs. Guess?

1) "Hello, Kitten"
2) "Neon when you come and go"


In other news:

Dear Vancouver, can your proportion of roomsize&quality : monthlyrent seriously suck any more ass? I didn't think so.

Dear elite women's college of pseudo-Ivy-League-fame (to itself), why is there no alumnae club with a website in Vancouver? This is what they were talking about, when they were lecturing us on "networking" for 4 years, isn't it?

Dear Friends, wanna go to Canada and share an appartment with me?

Dear perverted middle-aged Japanese men, keep watching my ebay accounts, babe. HOT SPECIAL USED PANTIES coming up SOON. Help a girl finance school! Get good KARMA points! And SPECIAL HOT PANTIES!
YOU NO LONGER NEED VIAGRA, PROMISE.





P.S.: I do remember I still have a meme to finish, no worries.

After spending the day sitting lotus on a dirty bench with a laptop balanced on her - what else? - lap, breathing in copious dust storms from the construction work ten feet away, and bravely not looking at big crows staring at her, five feet away, the anti-hero slowly packs up:

laptop into her bag,
cigarette butts into the ash tray,
scattered brain cells into her pants' pockets,
but! they'll get lint all over them!
Oh well, they haven't been used for a while anyways.

Then she rips off a piece of paper, scribbles a note on it and deposits it into a green glass bottle. Softly, it rolls across metaphorical oceans and landmasses in the blink of an eye. Little invisible waves lap at your feet, when suddenly a green glass bottle taps against your ankle. You smash it on a stone, and unroll the piece of paper you find inside.

It says:

Babe,

I've been bouncing with manic energy in the subway stations, feeling like I am the punkiest of all punks, the toughest of all toughs, while everywhere but in subway stations I just wanted to sleep. So this week, I'll go buy myself some shitkickers. Don't worry, though, they'll only be there so I can learn to kick my ass. I might have to go do some yoga for a couple of years, what with the stretchiness that will require, but it might pay off, hey? I'll call you as soon as I stop mumbling misquoted lines from Hamlet underneath my breath, all right?

Love, san (anti-hero? anti-christ? anti-work, more like)

I played soccer (Football. Soccer. Whatever we call it these days.) today with a future soccer superstar. He reached to my knees, and could kick his little plastic ball straight across half the courtyard. I'm pretty sure Mr. Beckham would love to have had this kind of massive talent at the tender age of two, but, sorry, Mr. Beckham, you're getting old, and I played for 15 minutes with the second Pele today.

Afterwards, we switched to basketball, and I showed him how to dribble. He might still have to work on that a little, but if I ever see him hanging out on campus again, I'll be sure to work on his technique with him.

This is a story about my friend, kebabguru, but also a story about me, about lifestyle in the land of walking ashtrays and inertia.

Tonight, I was sitting on kebabguru's couch, grumbling at myself, him, and the fact that we had missed our time window to go and check out a blues gig. It's not that we don't have enough blues on our hands, but that it always feels a little comforting to hear somebody sing beautifully about problems you wish you had, problems far more glamorous than your own mundane litany of I have no control, and can never finish a to-do list.

Meanwhile, Kebab was agonizing over deciding whether to leave on a late train to his parents' place, located in some pretty, green boondocks, for the weekend or whether he should go out drinking and dancing with our mutual friend, the Holy Girl of Eternal Clubbing. It was a difficult decision for him, because he neither wanted to go visit his parents nor did he really feel up to going out (this is the kind of blues we have). It took him the better part of half an hour (this is why professional blues is more entertaining), but eventually he looked up and asked,

"Do you have a coin?"
I nearly snorted out my red wine, Do you really want to make this dependent on a coin?

When I didn't react fast enough, he picked up his pack of cigarettes and turned it around and around, looking at the big black and white warnings of doom and death on either side.

"Well, ok. 'Clogged arteries and heart attack' means I'll go out. 'Impending death,' I'll catch the train tonight."

The cigarette pack spun around only once before it landed on the floor.
It was clogged arteries and heart attack. However, when he called our Holy Girl of Eternal Clubbing, she still had two hours left to work, and was already tired.

I should write a good conclusion (optional moral), a subtle beginning, and perhaps weave some more words together, but I'm contemplating the beauty of sleep, and it surpasses cigarette packs and clubbing by far. This is a thought, however, I won't admit I've had come morning, when I will have my first cup of coffee in twenty-four hours.
Going a day without coffee may mean nothing to you, but I'm taking my funny blues where I can get it tonight.

If a smelly guy sits himself across the table?
And all you can think of is Go away, go away, please, go away.?
And your stomach starts feeling queasy?
That's when you know you're lacking graciousness.

On the plus side, I've neither hid underneath my turtle neck, nor moved my stuff away, yet.
On the negative side, I'm obsessively not trying to stare while he picks dandruff out of his hair and also I'm leaning away.

The motto of the day is: Everyone's a human being and deserves to be treated with respect.
This really shouldn't be so difficult.

Edit: Nevermind, I left for the courtyard. So that's that.

Therefore, I can only tell you briefly that I've had an amazing weekend, pagan pyromania included.
Also, I have entangled myself in possibly the most stupid bet I have ever made, which should serve nicely to rid myself of carcinogenic habits completely.

(Because, I cannot run around with a buzz cut. This is not vanity speaking, but love of myself and love of my surroundings, equally.)

As to the how?
I have no idea, yet.

Under the duress of constant fights with family members, I have decided to beat it to some rural buttfuck, where there is no family, in order to see whether I can get a glimpse of pagan easter fires and internal peace.
Orthodox easter will be next week, incidentally.

Edit: And off I go. Shall I bring you stories that are filled with silences and quiet smiles? ;)

P.S.: Maybe I'll try calling again this weekend.

I should take my rejections and post them somewhere.

Somtimes, at night, I think that tomorrow morning, I'll pack up some old books and bring them over to the geek store. It would be easy. Nothing difficult. I wouldn't even try to get rid of the books from my childhood, I'd just go and grab all the various Star Wars and Terry Pratchett books.

Sometimes, it's morning, and I've randomly gotten 10 books or so together, and I look at them, and don't want to give them away. I get vivid visuals of sinking my fingers into them, pressing them to my chest and running away. Then I would huddle into a corner, and hiss Mine and Prrrreccciousss at anyone who came near.

Then I blink, and it's still that same old pile of Terry Pratchetts and Star Wars books, and I know, I do know that the chances of reading them again are slim. That I might at least get a couple of Euros for them. That, really, I can buy them anywhere, anytime, and especially in airports. So that's all right, seriously, and we've inherited 5 boxes of books from the previous house owners, so really, it's not blasphemy to sell a couple of your books.

Ah, but they do smell like longlong hours of memory, wonder and laughter.
Well.
I'll be on my way to the geek store, blaspheming.

In between yelling that I did not have her blessing, and shaking her head in disbelief, when I told her I'm going to accept the offer for Vancouver (I will, tomorrow, by email), my female progenitor threw the best that her semitic, fundamental christian and oriental heritage could give her at me: guilt.

It looks (and felt) somewhat like this on the receiving end:

God did not create you a nomad!! What is this? Why can't you go to the UK and stay close to your family! What are you? It's as if you stole something and now you're running from country to country, hiding! No, don't repeat my own words at me. Don't tell me that God created you a nomad! That's not funny, that's disrespectful!

Mhmm, nailed it in one, didn't she? Sadly, my beloved Egyptology uncle agrees with her. Nobody's getting any younger here. But then, neither am I, baby.

P.S. Speaking of God, I had an orgasm when I saw the reconstruction of the Gospel of Judah on TV.

I got off the phone with imasisara, with whom I was talking about grad school hi-jinx, and was cracking up.
I feel slightly more validated in the knowledge that I would have gotten more acceptances (though I shouldn't complain, because there are solid options), if I hadn't done the shoddiest job you could possibly imagine on my applications.
I also feel slightly bad about this inherent flaw that makes me the one person in your circle of friends that has more procrastination in her little finger than anyone in their entire body.

The conversation started with "The first step to recovery is admitting to yourself that something is wrong," and continued with googling AA's 12 step program.

If you take out the 6 steps or so that invoke god, we found we had a good starting point. You can probably leave those 6 in there, if you replace the word god with Murphy.

We then decided to follow up on some of the steps and start our recovery program by compiling what the AA dubs an honest moral inventory until next week.

I find that I can face up to tentacle sex easier than I can to the depths of my procrastination.

In that vein, this.

And four. (ouch.)

Tonight, I hung out in a basement practice room, listening to a punk band jam half-assedly, and helped them brainstorm lyrics for their new song, advocating the placement of "merry-go-round" therein strongly. She told me they did something in between deathpunk, deathrock, and general postpunk. I thought there were two too many deaths in there, but nobody died or anything.

Three.

(Not really, but kind of)

Just LOOK.

Dear GOD, they are the woobiest of all wooby things. They make me use words like WOOBY, which are certainly not so much with the existing in English any language.

ok, back to getting some coffee, so I can get something done.

Campus is what they call a complex of buildings linked by many courtyards and when the sun shines, they all come out to sit on the pavement and play. Sometimes a pretty boy will skateboard past with only his little shorts on, and then at least I gain something from this entire scam.
I was good today: I sat down, and ate my entire sandwich. It tasted like paper, but my body said more! more! and also Where's the meat??. I gave it more and ignored the pleas for meat.

He was bald and big and had a beard. Hoodie and mucked up work boots. Very clear, blue eyes, but a mask nailed to his face. He came and lingered around my feet, and then sat down next to me. So you study med?, he said. I looked from him to the open book in my lap. There wasn't anything medical on there, just a chart of Linear B characters. Oh wait, I thought, and then shook my head.
Japanologie.
Japa - what?
Well, you know, Japanese. The language, the culture...

I thought he was trying to pick me up. But then I thought maybe he wasn't, because he didn't say much. Our words were flowing like molasses, and I thought I heard the clocks grinding to a stop.
He said something about Austria's right-wing party being stopped.
Through demonstrations.
(Wait, I thought,those were 5 years ago. And the party ended up winning major votes.)
About just hanging out.
Not doing anything.
About Vodka breakfasts.
Hiking and smoking up.
People watching.
Watching students.
They're funny.

This is how he said things, using two words at a time, mumbled out through the corner of his mouth. Hey, I started, thinking I should tell him stories, and talked some inanities his way, thinking Maybe he needs entertainment. Ten minutes earlier he had grunted something about people being sweet. After I offered him a cigarette, and he declined, saying he didn't smoke...cigarettes, he asked me whether I wanted to go hiking this weekend to a nearby hill (which I hear second-hand is the place for outdoor fucking), but I said No, thank you.

I don't know whether he was drunk or not. Whether he expected me to ignore him and be a priss about strangers talking to me. Whether he thought I would stand up and go away, and he could have been amused and laughed. Whether he wanted me to tell him yes, when he asked whether I always went places alleine (which means "by yourself" and "alone", and sometimes "lonesome").
Strangely, I didn't feel the need to babble and be entertaining, but ended up stretching out my legs, and smiling up at the sky silently. When I left, he asked again whether I wanted to go hiking this weekend. For one second crazyness nearly took over my mouth, but I reigned myself in and declined yet again.

I think you've saved my day, I told him, while packing up my stuff. He shrugged with one shoulder, and said Nah forcefully.
Yes, you have. I was feeling blue, and now I have this smile. I showed it to him, and, standing up, put out my hand.
Thank you.
Thank _you_, he said and shook it.

His eyes were radiant blue and clearer than the nonsensical words that his mask forced through his mouth.
Than the sky today, actually.