the advantage of being a student vs. a state employee:
none of this is real, so it doesn't matter.
the disadvantage of being a student vs. a state employee:
none of this is real, so it's hard to care.
trying to force myself to pretend to be a consultant writing a memo regarding a hypothesized result of a simulated meeting to a fictional COO of an imaginary company. but if i screw it up, it really doesn't matter.
ALSO: as people get older they get better and better at pretending and also at denying their impulses. i am mostly a failure at both of these things. thus the ever-increasing complication of polite social interaction with other human beings finds me mystified, yet irritated. i really think it would be better if (a) people knew what they really thought and (b) said it. also if when (a) is not true, they would shut up. not that i'm any good at that either...... eh. i think i'll go vacuum in avoidance of the aforementioned memo-writing.
posted by renee 12:48 PM
so the question is: did NPR do this as a matter of principle? or was it a weakly disguised move to avoid a presidential interview with a conservative correspondant who might make him look good, which could alienate their mostly liberal audience...
apparently rich people only like beige. i just think that if i spent $2 mil on a house, i'd want color pictures of it not to look like they're sepia-tone.
also: i have started doodling in the margins of my notes again. apparently i have not grown up.
...endless repetition forces time into irrelevance. thus regret disappears - sunk costs are really sunk when you're in the perpetual motionless present...
thought: she wanted to be written all over, painted on, like a huge expanse of blank canvas, aching for content, for something to say, but unable to produce a message on her own. he was up to the test, full of ideas, needing a place to try them out, to hang them up to be looked at and discussed. they were a perfect match of infinity and nothing at all, of uncontained ideas and a defined empty space.
posted by renee 1:50 PM
Saturday, September 22, 2007
HMMMM
1.) when you set up a profile on facebook, you are prompted to provide information about your political beliefs and also about your religious identification. for political beliefs, you get a drop down menu. for religious identification you must write in your answer. i actually think my political beliefs are more complicated than my religious ones, so i answered neither question.
2.) when you are printing double sided (which requires printing the odd pages and then putting the paper back through to print the even ones) from my new printer, you given three options: automatic, normal, or reverse.
and i cannot, for the life of me, understand why you'd want to automatically do something in an abnormal manner.
hence my pages are numbered 128, 129, 147, 130, 131, 146, 145, 132......
sigh. more coffee? it's beautiful outside right now.
posted by renee 1:11 PM
to fill a gap insert the thing that caused it - block it up with other - and 'twill yawn the more - you cannot solder an abyss with air
e dickenson
i feel very exactly that this is good advice which i am not currently following.
posted by renee 12:44 AM
Friday, September 21, 2007
this may not be the best time to say it, but really
and i wish there was a constructive way to feel as human and honest with myself as i am capable of doing at rock and roll shows.
i feel like a broken record.
but me and matt berninger and all the other people at the fine line understood each other tonight and we all felt better about things. i wish i could figure out a way to go to concerts for a living.
...with graham last thursday, while he was still stuck with a bunch of IVs - now he's pretty much tube free!
posted by renee 1:53 PM
Monday, September 17, 2007
i just can't put my finger on what it is about shows at first ave that feels so much like home. tonight i transported myself through time back to karen o and the yeah yeah yeahs. back to old school death cab. back to the faint.
so many beautiful hours spent bobbing my head to the beat of the kick drum, the beat of the hand claps.
i'm starting to get too old for it, but i will fight for awhile yet. if for nothing else, then for the sake of nostalgia and rootedness in my city and the scene.
part of me still wishes i'd "made it." part of me wonders if i still could and then instantly dismisses the thought for all the excuses i'd have to come up with to justify my irresponsibility if i were to try. i'm pretty sure i'm ultimately okay with failing to ever be behind an instrument facing the opposite direction in that big black painted room downtown. i'm pretty sure i'm mostly over it.
.... every once in awhile, though, i dream of the green room....
posted by renee 1:10 AM
Saturday, September 15, 2007
do you ever get the feeling that you might have just screwed up something that could have been really great? sometimes the minutia of the code of social interaction is too much to understand. my brain doesn't absorb and process all the signals fast enough to stop my mouth from giving the wrong answer...
that broken bridge is sure something to look at talk about at lunch time i walk over the footpath they built on the next bridge over the rude september wind plastering my hair across my face obscuring the view sending dust clouds flying at a hundred eyeballs so i blindly listen to our collective will demanding that all things solid remain so this mystery of twisted metal of concrete smashed and broken must have a solution which will reinvent perfect safety the ones who fell with it are not what we are really mourning flowers stuck through holes in chain link fence echo grief over the old impossibility that a road strung in midair could ever crash down into the water that two giant monuments to capitalism could ever crash down onto new york that a two hundred year old city could ever find itself drowning that a whole country of educated people could ever get talked into crushing their neighbors for their divergent ancestry but it turns out bridges fall down hate razes skyscrapers people die in houses filled with water human bones are made into shirt buttons progress and permanence are illusions and we are not as safe as we'd like to think
posted by renee 1:13 PM
Monday, September 10, 2007
pray for this baby:
www.caringbridge.org/visit/grahamjosephbrost
posted by renee 12:30 PM
Sunday, September 09, 2007
they couldn't honestly expect me to read ALL of this, could they?
posted by renee 10:09 PM
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
my first day of grad school the ipod chose prince "take me with you" as the opening tune
today
i listened to the thrills walked right through the picket line (i am not a union girl, i don't think) and was intellectually stimulated in my economics class
and thoughts of phds roll around in my head, but i think that my motivation is that i still feel like i have something to prove. i want to know everything about cities and housing and the money that talks about and to those two things and the dismal science is probably the best chance i've got at continuing to approach being an EXPERT about it. i just have to get over this silly idea that the world is a romantic place to live and get used to hard facts and numbers.
except that the world IS a romantic place to live, and maybe that could ultimately be my contribution....
i will paint pictures of histograms and supply curves. i will be the consumate artist-scientist. it is inevitable one way or another. just a matter of the distribution of weight.
also: sometimes you are offended by something someone says that ends up being the right thing after all. that's okay.
posted by renee 12:51 PM
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
i LOVE being a student!
you LEARN things! you go do one thing for an hour and a half and then go do something else for an hour and a half and then you can sit in a coffee shop and read for awhile and meet your tall skinny blonde businessman friend to make a cookie delivery and then run errands!
i cannot believe i survived those 27 months in a grey fabric covered box. i cannot believe it. i have not gotten yelled at ALL DAY!
err... but ask me in december when 60% of my GPA will rest on the ability to not sleep and i may be able to recall some of the good things about professional life...
but until then... WHEEEEE!
posted by renee 3:57 PM
Saturday, September 01, 2007
Lessons from Book #7
1. "Do not pity the dead, Hary. Pity the living, and, above all, those who live without love."
2. "Tell me one thing," said Harry. "Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?" "Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"
3. Do NOT read late at night when you've taken a larger than normal dose of Claritin. It might give you nightmares
But it's over. In time for school to start on Tuesday. I'm kind of disappointed and kind of relieved and not at all ready to begin reading textbooks instead of children's books. Boo.
Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, right, Ybba?
posted by renee 11:02 PM
...with graham last thursday, while he was still stuck with a bunch of IVs - now he's pretty much tube free!
