getting more and more irritated at anyone who presumes to have enough information to make sweeping proclamations about international politics and/or human nature.
considering what is "knowable." the answer to this question seems to fully inform my decision about graduate school.
becoming more and more interested in "What Actually Happened" and less interested in the fluff people generally talk about instead.
learning more about it from novels than scholarly journals, as usual.
basking in the 4th teasing day of pretend-summer. scowling at the man on the radio predicting snow AGAIN. i simply refuse to believe it. if we collectively refuse, we may just make it impossible.
i would not end a book with the sentence: "Little of what we presented in this book gives us reason to think that their pessimistic outlook was unwarranted." for so many reasons...
i may actually finish this paper before midnight.
p.s. turns out, there were no WMDs in iraq after all.
posted by renee 4:15 PM
Sunday, April 27, 2008
i think i have a third ladder:
the forbidden-relationship-that-i-secretly-want-but-will-never-pursue-ladder
dangerous to get to the top of that one, for sure....
posted by renee 8:48 PM
Friday, April 25, 2008
my expectations of planet earth are clearly far too high.
posted by renee 1:49 AM
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
the song that would not be written
bearing the awful burden of this ungiven, ungiveable most lovely of gifts without the means to shake it off or a place in mind to leave it
the constant gnawing awareness of the instability of the arrangement and the tarnishing, perhaps, of loveliness in the meantime inaction and the troubling doubling of the back doing the bearing
of what, once given, could make weightless the recipient
it is a thousand things, the gift love, music, truebrave humanness in its purest form words don't scrape the surface of it
all the precious receiving along the way sets in stark relief the importance of both means and object in their absence and makes the burden bearing even heavier for the waiting weightless one
posted by renee 11:31 PM
Monday, April 21, 2008
went on a blind date. it was just fine.
i think it's funny how among a certain subset of people it has become social convention to point out how silly social convention is. like you have to say "well, i'll give you a hug now, since, you know, that's what you do." and you both feel better about acknowledging that you're going through the motions, but really, it's just another layer of the same dang thing.
it is hard to remember who all is offended by salman rushdie. apparently expat turks are not among them, which was good.
also good is the fact that two first-born, opinionated extroverts can have a rousing good time together when they don't disagree on much, even if they both probably know this isn't going anywhere.
so huzzah to being brave and new experiences and practicing being interested and interesting.
also: THUNDER!!!!!! YESSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!
posted by renee 10:14 PM
Sunday, April 20, 2008
according to a non-generalizable sample of minnesotans who are american citizens and at one point considered running for the state legislature and utilizing my own perception of the test variable, only roughly 2.5% of people have gender-ambiguous names.
how's that for a fun fact.
also: i'm stuck in the computer lab at school when it's 70 degrees and perfectly sunny outside. this is an appropriate punishment for all the slacking off i have been doing, and it hurts hurts hurts.
posted by renee 3:55 PM
today i got to love my neighborhood and the people in it in this way that makes me downright giddy. i can't explain it. all the familiar people showed up at yoga at the y. there was a woman at the library having a very serious conversation with a mentally handicapped guy i often see on the bus. and nothing in her manner indicated she thought of him as anything but an equal. i drug my roommates to a boy scout fundraiser spaghetti feed at the elementary school across the street and the room was full of funny neighbors, and the firefighters showed up, and my table got bussed by an 8 year old kid wearing an orange tee shirt tucked into khakis and a perfectly businesslike expression. and i (finally) started my record collection. minnesota in the springtime, even on gloomy days, is positively enthralling.
so now, reading rushdie listening to jens lekman on lp and waiting for the paint to dry
posted by renee 12:19 AM
Saturday, April 12, 2008
draped in silk, pearls hanging from necks and lobes ice clinks, the laughter of women twinkles above the drone of conversation we practice for our inevitable someday power when sidelong glances will have terrifying influence chiffon shuffling, heel clicking, rule making all the knowing better we'll be doing
and she asks me here, of all places when we're foot stomping, blind and beautiful how to fill the emptiness
because i am incapable of actually blogging and because this blog was originally inspired by bobby burgess who writes short but positively brilliant little entries but because i am not as brilliant as him and believe that quantity makes up for lack of quality
1. when they sold us tickets for the "Spring Banquet," they should have specified that the it was spring IN MINNESOTA which does not even remotely resemble the images of tulips and flip flops in my mind.
2. i would never ever choose to do time series analysis instead of going to a concert i wanted to see for free on my birthday. maybe that means i should not get a phd after all.
3. there is this girl, and she is my new safe place. no matter what is bothering me, stirring up emphatic diatribes for/against, she can listen, identify, understand, and generally agree. but she is moving away in a month. thus, my hope for the potential of humankind and my relationship with it is bolstered, but tentative still.
4. i hate hate hate hate spending so much time in the car by myself. nothing makes me lonelier.
5. the hold steady is a weird band to have play for a "lend a hand, hear the band" concert to which you gain entry by doing community service. all of their songs are about youthful selfishness and wasting time and causing trouble. autobiographical or not, this becomes grating at a certain point.
6. i wish i was brave enough to start my own band to play my own songs, but i never will be.
7. wallowing in guilt is possibly the most useless way to spend your time. even anger and hate are preferable.
8. kierkegaard is provoking me indeed.
posted by renee 12:31 PM
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
God when it's just you and me all others quieted you do not frighten me your expectations seem clear and fair
i recognize you
the other times filled with voices pushing each other higher decibel by decibel until we are all deaf
this has been about the luckiest week of my life. but luck, i think, breeds overconfidence, which results in making poor choices, which can often result in just a normal amount of luck seeming to be very good.
this, as you can see, has the potential to become a profoundly vicious cycle.
1. wednesday: good boy-related luck. 2. thursday: get internship i wanted. leave wallet on bus. notice wallet is missing minutes before needing to leave to purchase contribution for dinner party. arrive upon the idea of using a check. get VERY crabby at grocery store clerk who appears to be grinning stupidly at me after asking for ID. feel the need to explain why i'd be doing something as bizarre as writing a check for $7 of groceries in the first place and stomp out of the store. 3. friday: pick up wallet which was turned in to metro transit lost and found. use bus pass in wallet. tempt boy-related fate and win. discover that internship is actually going to be paying a meagre-living wage vs. much worse, which were, of course, the only two options. 4. saturday: get phone call offering comp tickets for a show i desperately wanted to see as well as a dinner date with a rock star buddy. fall most in love with the cheapest dress in the store. 5. monday: return to formerly mentioned grocery store, armed with accepted forms of payment and identification. leave said items in cart in parking lot. obliviously dip strawberries in chocolate, pour a glass of BC merlot, and watch a chick flick. get a call that my wallet has been turned in. 6. go pick up my wallet, from the same clerk who grinned at me the first time. needless to say, he was grinning again. and then i just got a call that the last band i was waiting for is going to play my birthday party.
seriously. i could just go throw my passport, phone, credit cards, $1000 cash, hopes, dreams and social security card on random street corners and they'd all come back to find me.
posted by renee 11:13 PM
Thursday, April 03, 2008
mentioning my heartsoulmind friends during a conversation about true selves reminds me how critical these ties .......stretched thin across time zones .......artificial absolute boundaries announcing our separateness have been are will be for me to have a hope of maintaining the courage to be a self or do anything about it
so my heart senses their absence my soul aches for the wholeness that comes only with time and together trials and my mind wanders to new york and kansas except it is time to sleep and i must quiet them all for solitary dreaming
posted by renee 12:25 AM
reasons to not be excited 1. if princeton once earned the third slot for its non-existent law school, which the dean pointed out, how reliable are these guys anyway?
2. when 11 schools share the same score, i suppose they all go run around touting their improvement and claiming to be 14th, but if you actually go down the list in the order it's written, the U of M may TIE with the 14th place school now, but we are still exactly 21st in the order listed.
sigh. at a public affairs program, you'd think there'd be some accountability, eh? or at least the ability to read a table.
posted by renee 10:12 AM
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
i am far more tempted to engage in road ragery when the driver who has offended me has vanity plates.
