nonsense

um, hi?

2011-01-11T01:52:00.001-05:00

playing around with the idea of restarting this ol' blog. we shall see. do people still blog even?

tales from the city, new york- part three: "searching for serendipity"

2006-09-07T15:58:00.000-04:00

living in one of the largest cities in the world is a lesson in loneliness; in isolation. although that may at first seem a bit contradictory, it isn't.

the experience of being constantly surrounded by an incomprehensible number of people does a really bang up job of enforcing the singular aloneness of each and every individual for- if you can't immerse yourself in the masses of humanity within an arms length, amidst this onslaught of commonplace living-well then, what hope have you (one of billions) that it will ever be other than this (one in a billion, now and forever).

rather than attempting to bridge this gap (infinite in scope) the city dwellers, the subway riders, the Individuals (identical in their isolation) withdraw farther within. they close themselves off. to do otherwise is nothing if not impossible for how can you choose among the multitude of faces and personalities surrounding you which to identify with; who to reach out to? how do you pick which one of the endless array of beggars, all needy in comparison with you, to help out? you can't and so you don't. you are overwhelmed by the overwhelming.

nowhere brings this feeling home more poignantly than the new york city subway; a place where everyone is touching and everyone is alone.

riding the subway home from work one morning i watch the commuters on their way to work. i've just finished a 12 hour overnight shift at the bar and look no less worn out and delirious than i feel. settling back into the hard plastic of my seat, hand on the grimy steel pole beside me i look around.

at first i try to be somewhat discreet about it because it seems invasive- this watching when those being watched are so withdrawn; staring, eyes glazed, at some inner thought.

i cast safe, sidelong glances around the train car.
i look outside at the people dejectedly waiting to board.
i watch the reflections in the windows of the passengers i can't actually see from my own vantage point.

i'm on my way home from work. most of them are headed to work from home. the funny thing is- we are indistinguishable in our listless fatigue. we are all the same.

so i watch the commuters, undisturbed in my intrusions. i watch these people that are just like me but are really nothing like me at all and i am alone, just as they are. in this state of abject sleepiness i pass the time and no one meets my eyes and i am glad. and then my own sphere of self closes and i, too shut off.

somewhere along the way, under the labyrinth of streets and tunnels, a girl entered the train and sat down opposite of me. at first i didn't notice her and then i did. and once i noticed it was impossible to take it back. and she was nothing to me but for the span of five minutes she became everything. for those five minutes she was it.

my five minute obsession.

i could describe her to you in detail. what she looked like. what she was wearing. how she moved. her own manner of not looking. i could describe all of this to you but i won't because it wouldn't explain a thing and none of it matters. you wouldn't get it because the girl could have been anyone; was, in fact, anyone. it just so happened that, in this particular moment, that anyone was her.

she became the humanity that i had lost. she became everything (my link) but, the thing is, i chose her for the role. i chose the person just as i chose the role for her to play. the girl herself had nothing to do with any of it. all she had to do was be there on the train sitting across from me.

even so, this girl gave something back to me in my state of skewed delirium. she gave me exactly what i wanted and needed right then in those few minutes. in those few minutes i created her.

moments later she got up from her seat, adjusted her skirt and headphones and, without once looking directly at me, left the train.

less than a minute after that, lost again in my own sleep-deprived thoughts and foregoing further observational attempts, the girl was forgotten. she was gone.

a few weeks later, working at the bar, i handed a man the beer and shot of whiskey that he'd just ordered. opening his wallet, he removed a handful of bills and counted the ones. thirteen ones. he owed me eleven dollars for the drinks plus the standard dollar tip for each drink. thirteen dollars.

smiling, he handed me the money and said, "now if that isn't the definition of serendipity, i don't know what is."

turning away with the money in my hand i thought to myself, "if that man is right, then i want no part of this."

at this moment i felt as far from this man as any two people could be- joined only by our common misunderstanding and isolation.

turning back around to face the bar i was relieved to see that the man had gone. the man left and in his place, i thought of the girl. i thought of her for a moment and then she, too, disappeared.

tales from the city part two: new york- "lessons in stoop sitting"

2006-04-19T15:25:00.000-04:00

as many of you know, i'll be leaving the lovely town of athens in approximately 1.5 months for the jungle known as new york city. having lived in both dublin and chicago, i am familiar with the ways of city life. even so, new york is a different beast entirely. or so i'm told.

luckily, the city already comes equipped with a number of my jaded, new york-wizened friends in varying stages of familiarity (and, consequently, degrees of love/hate) with the fair metropolis. these friends from my past have, in turn, introduced me to new friends who have their own unique histories and perspectives on functioning in the city. one of these new friends is a guy named fletcher. now, as i really like fletcher, and he insists that i mention his name as often as possible as it is his mission to build fame and notoriety for himself, i will do what i can to comply.

in any case, i met fletcher back in february when he came to visit athens and had the pleasure of hanging out with fletcher again on a recent trip to new york. i can't say that i know him (fletcher that is) well yet, especially as he seems to be constantly reinventing and cultivating his fletcher persona, but i am thus far intrigued. to give you a little background on the man behind the name, fletcher is in a few bands (and listens exclusively to music written by himself) and he works at a trendy clothing store (and has a policy on fashion summarized by this idea: find one thing that you really like and wear it until it falls off. then replace it with something else that you like and repeat the process ad infinitum. in his own words- "i only care about first impressions. if i meet a chick and she doesn't want to make out with me the first time, she probably isn't going to change her mind later on."). he is also a writer (nothing to add here as of yet except that fletcher and i are planning to start a new writing revolution in brooklyn sans coffee and whiskey as he doesn't drink either. i'm sure i, however, can manage to drink enough of both for the both of us). despite having his finger in so many pies, fletcher frequently (perhaps daily?) makes time for his true occupation: stoop sitting.

i'll admit, when i first met fletcher i was a little leery of this "stoop sitting" business. i pictured a fancy sex in the city manhattan stoop with wide stairs and a cold, austere feel to it. here fletcher would sit, lonely and ignored by the busy new yorkers on their way to wherever it is that new yorkers go. alternatively, i imagined a dirty, littered stoop where passersby glanced into the shadows to see a motionless figure huddled in the corner. not really knowing what to think about his dedication to stoop sitting, i asked fletcher if people ever thought he was homeless and tried to give him money or food. fletcher though about it and admitted that once someone threw a quarter into his cup of coffee and he was irritated because he wasn't done drinking it yet. "that's too bad", i replied, still confused by the situation.

in reality, fletcher's stoop isn't like either one of my imagined scenarios. it's a normal stoop- small, with broken concrete stairs, situated in a busy, trendy brooklyn neighborhood in front of an insurance company or something. i know because i have now been there. i've seen it and done a little stoop sitting of my own...

after meeting up with fletcher for lunch one afternoon, we headed to his usual spot- "fletcher's stoop". i had seen it earlier that day when a friend pointed it out to me, but this was to be my inaugural stoop sitting experience. fletcher settled into his groove, back up against the railing at what he claimed was the most comfortable angle. an angle that i was unfortunately unable to duplicate as the railing kept digging uncomfortably into my back the entire time. stoop sitting apparently takes some practice and dedication to master. more on that later.

so we sat in our varying degrees of comfort and watched people. and judged them. according to fletcher, that's part of the stoop sitting process- judging passerby. i'm still confused on what exactly fletcher was judging because i know what i was judging, and it was people's fashion sense (or lack thereof). as we've already discussed fletcher's fashion policy, i believe that it's safe to conclude that fashion wasn't what he was judging. well, whatever his judgments entailed, we sat and watched and judged and discussed the art of stoop sitting, among other things of course (like fashion and writing).

looking to my right, i saw another stoop that looked cleaner, more comfortable, and all around more inviting than fletcher's stoop. when i asked him why he chose the particular stoop we were on instead of the one right next to us he replied that the stoop to our right was traditionally occupied by "hush hush", a homeless man who stoop sits and begs for money in a voice so low that no one ever hears him. a quiet voice is an unfortunate handicap if one's occupation is panhandling and, according to fletcher, hush hush's enterprise doesn't usually seem to be a very lucrative one.

it was at about this time that i was truly initiated into stoop sitting. i mean, if stoop sitters had a fraternity, their hazing rituals would most definitely involve this: getting shat on by a pigeon. yes sir. there we were- minding our own business, enjoying the day and stoop sitting to our hearts' content when the magic of the experience was interrupted by a warm splash on the back of my neck. one. then another.

i froze, knowing instantly what it was. moving very slowly so as to avoid any further soiling caused by the mess running down my shirt, i eased my gaze upwards to see a pigeon butt slyly peeking over the edge of the roof about 40 feet above my head. yup. pigeon shit.

eyes wide, i told fletcher the sad news. he shook his head in denial and suggested hopefully that it was just rain or condensation from an air conditioner. no dice. i gestured towards the offending pigeon butt still visible roosting on the roof's edge and he accepted the truth of the situation. i had pigeon shit on me. here is where our new friendship was put to the test. i needed a paper towel, and quick. i, however, was loath to move lest the shit create an even bigger mess. the closest place to get help was at thai thai, a thai restaurant across the street where, according to fletcher, all of the employees hate him because of his habit of getting take-out from them and then proceeding to eat it across the street on his stoop. the judger has been judged in this situation in that they all believe that fletcher would really prefer to eat the food in the restaurant but is just too cheap to tip. obviously unaware of fletcher's stoop sitting duty, they judge him in error. nonetheless, fletcher clearly isn't keen on the idea of running across the street and asking the waiters at thai thai for some paper towels. even so, he senses the urgency in my wide-eyed stare and after a moment's hesitation, dashes to thai thai to return momentarily with the goods.

good guy that fletcher.

that pretty much ended my first stoop sitting experience. i actually found it all to be pretty appropriate and hilarious. lesson one in stoop sitting (not to be taken lightly): do not, repeat, DO NOT stoop sit under any sort of overhang or you will end up with shit on you. lesson learned the hard way thank you very much. i think fletcher may have felt a little bad about it, but the way i see it, my stoop sitting experiences can only go up from there. i hope. afterwards, i did notice that fletcher's chosen side of the stoop was free of any overhanging objects that might be attractive to pigeons. so there is more to choosing your stoop position than mere happenstance.
smart guy that fletcher.

later on in the week, i decided to give it another go. i was by myself and it was nighttime so i figured i would be safe from pigeons and humiliation, if it came in another form, would be witnessed by none besides myself. leaning against the railing on fletcher's side of the stoop (better to be safe in some cases...), i imagined myself in this same spot in less than two months, a legitimate resident of this strange city. homeless still, maybe. poor, definitely. but ready for this anonymity and solitude. for this change. for this. all of it.

the last moa (by request)

2006-02-28T13:59:00.000-05:00

the moa (pronounced "mower") were a group of about ten related bird species from new zealand that became extinct after the arrival of homo sapiens (and dogs and rats) between 1100 and 1700ad. large and flightless, the moa varied in size but the largest weighed upwards of 500 pounds. before the arrival of humans, their main predator was a giant eagle. (how awesome is it that there was once an eagle that could take out a five hundred pound bird?) that predator, the harpagornis is, of course, also extinct.

moa belong to a genetically related group of flightless birds known as ratites. living members of this group include emus, ostriches, and kiwi, among others. interestingly, the moa are the only birds that have lost any physical trace that they once had wings and flew. (shit, even whales still have pelvic remnants. but the moa? no skeletal indications of an upper limb at all.)

ratites are an interesting group of animals in that they exhibit reverse sexual dimorphism, meaning that the females are larger (sometimes even twice as big) as their male partners and that the male birds raise the young while the females gallivant about in the forest, eating large quantities of leaves and shrubs to keep up their massive size so that they can compete with each other for the choicest of the little male birds. there is actually an article on the moa entitled:

"Female Moa Bird Liked the Little Guys, Studies Suggest"

the article settled the issue of how the large female moa got it on with the tiny males by explaining that "In ostrich, following prolonged courtship, the female sits before the male jumps on. Presumably, with some maneuvering, such a system may have also functioned in Dinornis."

(hmm. that ridiculous image is possibly why i've never been able to date anyone more than a few inches shorter that me. i guess if i were a moa or an ostrich i might feel differently.)

(ostrich mating dance. the little one is the male. the tall, bitchy one is the female)

there you have it. the moa, in summary.

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a bird-obsessed friend of mine told me about the moa and said i should look them up. so i did. and then i got to thinking. not about the moa per se, but about extinct animals in general. about what it might be like to be that last one of your kind. what would you do? would the last of the moa have been lonely? would it have known that there were no others left? that it and all of its ancestors amounted to a great big genetic zero? that it was at the end of its line and had nothing to show for it? would the last (had she been female) giant moa have kept searching until the end of her days for her tiny romeo or would she have eventually given up? would her drive to pass on her genetic information to another generation have consumed her being or would she have just been like "fuck it, what's the point?" and gotten it on with some other little male bird? an emu maybe? just for fun? ducks do that interspecies breeding thing. why not the last moa?

i guess i'm projecting too many human qualities onto the moa, but still...

what if you were it? the last representation of a lineage millions of years old. when you died your life would have meant nothing. would have been irrelevant and pointless.

i think that every person i know feels that way about themselves in some sense. maybe that explains why so many people have such a fear of death. why people need religion. need a meaning beyond simply living. we've forgotten that we are part of such a long-spanning and interconnected history and see ourselves as individual and unique species in our own right. individuals whose death will blot out for ever our lives that will have essentially meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. we'll become another big zero, just like the moa and all of the moa that came before. just another nothing in a history of 99.9% zeros. just another ending in this ongoing continuum of genetics and time.

continuum.
continuing.
a true end really makes no sense when we're talking time and genetics.
meaninglessness negates itself in such a perspective.
even for such as the moa (genetic zeros though they are).
and humans (self-absorbed fools that we are).

cultivated isolationism

2006-02-22T21:00:00.000-05:00

i left the house the other day in a mood. in a zone.

i put my sunglasses on even before i stepped out of the front door. wanting that extra bit of isolationism offered by the dark lenses that might keep my expression hidden.

i wanted to cultivate my own bit of separation, drag out my sense of being alone. to masochistically enjoy my depression and protect its fragility. from people. from light. from my own emotional flagellations.

in the car i put on my favorite depressive music, guaranteed to further draw out any feelings of sadness that threatened to dissipate or, at the very least, lessen in severity.

there, caught up in an environment of my own creation, i set out on a drive.

egotistically absorbed in my own self, i looked up to see two birds flying high above the highway. two birds flying in perfect synchronization. for one second. maybe two. then their beats became once again unique but for an instant i was witness to perfection in coincidence. to something meaningless acquiring a meaning beyond the simple happenstance, the accidental beauty of the event.

i removed my sunglasses only to realize that the day was completely overcast. gray and sunless.

watching the birds (no longer representations of something larger. now only birds), i put my sunglasses back on.

indecisively removing them once again, i squinted at the sky but then gave up and wore the unnecessary glasses.

it was only later when i noticed that the passing cars had their headlights on that i decided to finally put them away.

even so, in the protective darkness of nighttime i kept looking to the sky.

hating the "HEY!": rip the "hey" man

2005-12-05T22:05:00.000-05:00

now, i don't have any confirmation that my one-time neighbor (known to me as the "hey" man) is actually deceased, but once i explain the meaning of his name, you will likely agree with my thought that no one in their right mind would allow the "hey" man to survive as their neighbor for very long. therefore, i am sorry to say that they "hey" man has probably become the unfortunate victim of a violent crime and is no longer with us.

rip the "hey" man.

i mentioned that no one would allow the "hey" man to be their neighbor for very long and yet i then referred to him as my one-time neighbor. confusing? yes, but let me explain. the "hey" man lived at the prince rondaval apartment complex. the only place on the face of the earth that could possibly put up with his idiosyncrasies. and then just barely (i heard quite a few angry words directed towards him but suprisingly never saw any actual violence).

the prince rondaval apartments themselves were unique to say the least. almost as unique as their one-time resident, the "hey" man. almost, but not quite. the origin of this structure remains unknown to me but it looked to be a one-time motel that was built in the late 60's or early 70's and later converted into apartments. very odd apartments. in fact, i don't think the majority of people on the athens board were very fond of them and most quite possibly considered them to be an eyesore. hence it's recent demolition.

rip the prince rondaval apartment complex.

i didn't actually live in the rondavals, but my house was right next door. right next door. so i had the "luck" to be within hearing distance of what went on outside the complex. you know- on the porches and in the parking lot, and, let me tell you, many interesting things went down outside that quirky little apartment building. but none so interesting as the "hey" man who became both the bane of my existence and the humor in it for the 6 months that i lived next to him.

my first introduction to the "hey" man occurred shortly after my move in. i believe that i was unpacking my kitchen supplies and i had the kitchen windows open as it was early summer and a beautiful day. i was listening to music and going about my business and then i heard someone singing opera. or at least trying to approximate operatic singing. i turned my music down to hear better and was greeted with some figaro-type singing that then descended into a tarzan yell and eventually ended with some canine howling. this went on for some time. at first i was amused. that was before i heard his signature "HEY!".

now, i'm going to try hard not to make fun of mr."hey" man because i'm certain that he must have some sort of mental condition (or five, or ten) that was complicated by his unchanging habit of sitting on his front porch, drinking something from a red dixie cup, and yelling at no one and everyone. seriously though, that man came close to driving me insane with his fucking "HEY!". the singing and even the howling i could handle, but there was something so unpredictable and jarring about every one of the thousands of HEY's i had to put up with that i had daydreams and regular dreams and constant fantasies of buying a gun, taking aim from my bedroom window, and... well you know. they were highly illegal fantasies to say the least.

for those of you who never experienced the "hey" man's "HEY!" i probably sound like the crazy one but i swear to you that if i ever go to hell, the worst punishment i could possibly imagine is hearing the "hey" man for all eternity. it would go something like this:

"HEY!...................HEY!..HEY!......HEY!.....HEY!....HEY!

HEY!..............................................HEY!....................HEY!....

................HEY!..................................................................................

.................................................................HEY!HEY..HEY!.............HEY!.....etc..."

as you can see, there is no pattern to the HEY's. no way to predict when the next one would happen, so once he began, i was constantly on edge. waiting for the next "HEY!" but never knowing when it would occur. and even when the "hey" man was blessedly silent i was still on edge because there was also no temporal scheme to his outbursts. no way to prepare for, say, his weekly sunday night "HEY!" session or whatever. sometimes he would "HEY!" on the weekends at 4 in the morning. other times it would be the middle of the day on tuesday. one particular time he started early thursday evening, was still going strong when i got home at 2 am, kept me up until 4, was presumably still going at it as i fitfully slept, and then woke me up again at 7am.

gotta love the "hey" man. his vocal stamina is equal to or greater than that of any barking dog, crying baby, hysterical woman, or ambulance siren i have ever heard. however, as much as i learned to despise the "hey" man, i did worry about his mental health. i mean, when i wasn't wishing an untimely death upon him.

you see, in most ways the "hey" man's outbursts were unpredictable, but he did have certain unchanging habits. like the fact that every time i saw him he would be sitting on his front porch, red cup in hand, wearing nothing but some old jeans and a ratty, tattered, straw cowboy hat. no shirt and no shoes (apparently he wasn't expecting any service). and when i say every time i saw him he was thus attired, i really mean every time. even in the middle of january during an ice storm. seriously. wandering around the parking lot with his trusty red cup, just a'HEYing to his little heart's content. i guess whatever he drank out of that cup must have done something to keep him warm. that and the insanity.

in any case, the "hey" man really added something intangible (and hopefully unrepeatable) to my life in athens that i will likely never forget. even so, i had sort of put him out of my mind until recently when i noticed that the prince rondaval apartment complex was suddenly gone. completely plowed over and erased within the span of a week. sadly, with the loss of the apartments came the loss of the "hey" man. granted, i no longer lived next door to him and i hated his guts (and most especially his vocal cords), but i'm feeling a bit nostalgic about athens as my time here nears its close. for the second time.

so anyway, this is my tribute to the "hey" man even though i really fucking hated that guy. may he rest in peace, or if he is still with us, may god help his poor neighbors.

possums in the attic

2005-11-28T21:20:00.000-05:00

the house i currently live in is a cute, wwII-era manufactured home in the normaltown district of athens. despite the fact that it is frigidly cold at the moment and i am writing in the guise of an old woman cowering beneath a multitude of blankets, i enjoy living here.

even so, this house has its quirks. like the mysteriously flickering lights that eventually resulted in freaky power surges that made me think the entire house was either going to burn down or mimic a scene from poltergeist. we were without power for a few days until our landlords finally responded to our many emergency calls and sent someone to check it out. this was especially pleasant as it was the middle of summer. the culprit turned out to be neither a ghost nor faulty wiring but a pesky squirrel that likes to knaw on power lines.

then there was the mysterious odor that presented itself to us as an unpleasant whiff here and there and that gradually grew to an unbearable, odiferous stench. we had, of course, notified our landlords before it got to this point. they sent someone out a week and a half later. the men thought i was crazy since by that time whatever unfortunate animal had made its last dying refuge in the crawl space beneath my home had decomposed to the point where there was no longer a smell of any sort. the heat of an athens summer and the industrious work of our decomposer friends helped out a bit with that one.

maybe you're catching onto a pattern here? my house issues seem to mostly involve interactions with the resident wildlife. and i haven't even mentioned the interesting array of insect species that were drawn to my bathroom light all summer long. i considered starting an insect collection. seriously. i've lived in athens for a while and never seen anything to equal this varietal display of arthropod species. at least not inside.

perhaps my house is a sort of dr.doolittle of buildings. drawing in wildlife and offering them some sort of refuge. or death as the case may be. i can't say that many of those insects ever escaped. although i tried to free the more interesting ones but gave up at some point because there were just too many and they kept coming back. as for the squirrel... well, i can't imagine that chewing on live power lines is a very safe habit to have. which brings me to my new housemate. the opossum.

the suicidal possum i've decided. what wild animal in its right mind decides to take up residence in a home occupied by three people, two large cats, and a 45 pound dog that barks at it?

this possum is crazy i tell you. crazy.

(the following information is courtesy of the peterson field guide to mammals)
didelphis marsupialis: the only north american marsupial. prehensile tail. often seen in beam of auto headlights or dead along highways (or in jenna's house). farming habitats preferred but also found in woodlands or along streams (or in jenna's house). sometimes hunted for sport, especially in the south (hmmm...). occasionally raids poultry yards (often raids jenna's house). the only wildlife species that is considered to be clinically insane (ok, i made that part up).

you get the point.

when first i made the surprised acquaintance of my new roommate, he was just a cute little thing. probably not too many days gone from hanging out on his mom's back with his 13 or so other siblings. our first two encounters went something life this:

5:30 am. scuffling noises in my bedroom. must be one of the cats. shut up cat. back to sleep.
6:15 am. still dark. more noises but no meowing. my cats are loud. this is unusual. whatever, it's 6:15 in the morning. shut up cat. back to sleep.
6:30 am. what the fuck? turn the light on. silence. kitty? nothing. hmm. fall asleep with the light on.
7:00 am. i'm going to kill that damn cat. where the fuck are you? noises coming from the bookcase next to my bed. well, hello little thing. you're not a cat.
not a cat indeed. more like a tiny, 2 pound baby possum hanging out on my bookshelf. trying to catch up on some reading perhaps. i'm sure "the unifying neutral theory of biogeography" is riveting to this possum. it does deal with relevant wildlife issues but... ok, anyway.
so i grab a shirt and pick up the little guy to take it outside. it seems pretty chill about it all. nothing more aggressive than a tiny little hiss and then it just hangs out and looks at me. cute little thing.
so i take it outside and put it on a tree branch. possums live in trees don't they? it flops over and looks dead. i scrutinize it and worry that i somehow hurt it. it is really little after all. and then i realize. it's doing what possums do. playing possum. oh, that little rascal.
7:15 am. finally back to bed.
i tell my roommate the story and she freaks out and thanks the good lord that it was in my room and not hers. i try to tell her how small and babyish and cute it was but she looks at me like i'm crazy.

2 days later:
5:30 am. scuffle. scuffle. no way. can't be. that idiot possum. i'll pretend it's the cats and go back to sleep.
6:00 am. i hate you possum. what kind of fool animal comes back to a house where there are three animals that want to eat it? light on. nothing.
6:30 am. time to get up for work. i know you're in here stupid. stop hiding. no luck. my coercing doesn't convince the possum to come out. i see neither hide nor tail of it and think (hope) i'm just being paranoid but i close the door to my room to trap him there just in case.
5:00 pm. i open my door. my roommate is home and is proceeding to freak out when i tell her that our little friend has come back. she hopes i'm wrong but what's this on my bed? tiny shit. no joke. a present from our guest. on my pillow. kind of like those nice hotel chocolates but not anything like that at all. thanks little buddy. so where is he? curled up in my suitcase among my clothes.

damn he's cute. i tell my roommate and she once again thinks i'm crazy but she comes to look and immediately exclaims over his cuteness and approximation of domesticity. she wants to keep him. sort of. then she worries about his home life. maybe he's an abandoned orphan and is going to die? maybe he's lonely and wants to make friends? i look at her like she's crazy and put him outside.

this all happened in the summer. after those two incidents we made sure to keep our attic door closed and this seems to have done the trick. no more possum in the house. almost. now he lives in the walls.

we weren't sure that it was him until recent evidence confirmed our suspicions:

prior to visual confirmation, we thought that it was perhaps a raccoon, or a large bobcat, or possibly even a bear owing to the loud and disturbing racket that it makes when going about its evening business within our walls.

since we cut off his access to the inside of our house we've come to accept his presence. even the animals are accustomed to his nightly forays although they do get a little bit antsy when he's hanging out in the vent and watching what's going on in the living room. his eyes glow. it can be a little creepy. otherwise we're all just one big happy family. until we get our heat turned on and the vents possibly become a little too hot for comfort. my roommate is very concerned about that. in fact, i have a sneaking suspicion that that is why we don't have our heat turned on even though it is really fucking cold. i guess that's what space heaters are for...

americana- part one: walmart and goth don't mix

2005-08-25T13:57:00.000-04:00

oh walmart. embraced by america. hated by america. representative of all that is american and all that is wrong with america.

on a recent trip to visit my family in the wonderful land of suburbia i was sent on a mission to acquire curtain rods from walmart. they were for my grandmother so if you are the judging, walmart-despising type you can just hold your tongue because she lived through the depression and is "thrifty" and now we'll just move along with the story.

a few years ago my parents moved farther away from the city of atlanta because roswell, the idyllic, upper middle-class, republican, mind-numbing home of my youth had gotten overrun with strip malls and suv's and soccer moms to the point that even my own parents couldn't take it any more. so they moved. to (ahem) forsyth county. from what i can tell, forsyth is much like north fulton except that the suv's all have four wheel drive and trailer hitches and the strip malls don't necessarily have a starbucks on the corner. not yet anyway. oh, and there are more white people.

in essence, forsyth is like roswell only a little more redneck. more georgia if you will. if you're not from atlanta then you may not realize that atlanta is (for the most part) nothing like the rest of georgia. imagine then what a walmart (not known for it's upscale clientele in even the richest of suburbs) in cumming, georgia (pronounced coming or cuming depending upon how dirty your mind is) might be like. let's just say that a barefoot, pregnant brittney spears would fit right in. on the other hand, goth, a style popularized in the eighties and made mainstream by the likes of robert smith and marilyn manson, does not fit in quite as well. does not fit in at all actually. in fact, even though goth has been around for at least two decades it has never really caught on in forsyth county. or so i gathered form the following interaction i witnessed at the walmart in cumming, ga:

a pale young man with long, dyed black hair and wearing a black trench coat, black shorts, and black combat boots exits walmart accompanied by his pregnant girlfriend? wife? sister? mom? who is similarly attired. (note to reader: in any slightly urban, cultured environment this couple would walk by unnoticed. we can therefore conclude that cumming, ga is completely uncultured. yes, that is a scientifically sound deduction.)

a woman in her mid 40's- mid 50's is walking towards the entrance to walmart with her gangly-limbed teenage son walking a few steps behind and pretending that he isn't with her.

the goth couple and the woman pass by one another.

minsicule pause.

woman to her son with a loud voice as stereotypically redneck as you could hope for: "did ewe say thayt!? thayt mayn had grain nail polish awn. nhat just ahny grain ayther. baybah shit grain!!!" (translation: "did you see that? that man had green nail polish on. not just any green either. baby shit green!!!")

um, ok. personally i find a woman yelling about baby shit to her teenage son in a public setting to be vastly more offensive that some dude with green nail polish. i guess that's just me.

so here's the point and i'm going to try not to sound classist and and offensive myself but fuck it really i'm so goddamn sick of america and its bullshit ideals and the idea that we should and do rule the world with the almighty's blessing that i could scream and rip my passport in two except that would mean that i would have to pay to get another passport made so that i can actually leave this damn country-my home- at some point in the future once i finally give up on the idea that we americans can redeem ourselves.

whew. glad i got that out. anyway, i've always known that there aren't really enough rich, narrow-minded republicans to put george w. in the white house. what i had forgotten is that he appeals to the ignorant, narrow-minded masses of americans also. and while it's not my place to blame anyone that may not have had the educational opportunities that i had, i'm tired of the willful ignorance that plagues this country. the lack of perspective possessed by most americans is appalling and i don't know how to change it. how can you force a world view on someone who has never seen the world- whose world consists of a bunch of people just like them and a walmart?

yes, all that stemmed from a chance encounter at the local walmart. what can i say? i have a tendency to overthink things.

god bless the u. s. of a.!

down-home fascists

2005-08-11T14:45:00.000-04:00

maybe i'm just a traitor to my smoking friends, but i'm really happy about this new total smoking ban in athens. for completely selfish reasons of course- i hate the smell of cigarettes. sure, i'm all for personal liberties (some might consider me a libertarian on that issue), but no one is saying that you smokers can't smoke. you just can't do it in public. you can't pee or shit in public either but i haven't heard any complaints about that recently. what's that you say? that's because public defecation is a health issue? exactly. i mean, just because i willingly endanger my liver and up my chances for cirrhosis most nights of the week doesn't mean that i want lung cancer, too. one self-induced mortal illness is enough for me, thanks.

as for the drop in buisness expected by downtown buisness owners, i'll readily admit that i can see a difference in the number of persons patronizing the local bars right now. in fact, i was at the manhattan the other night and there were about 10 people crammed into the tiny outdoor bar space and only two of us inside (well, four if you count the bartenders). room 13 had a similarly low turnout (concentrated outside under a haze of smoke of course). i liked it. sure, the ban might initially be bad for business but, call me crazy, i imagine that most bar flies aren't going to opt to stay home and drink beer all by their lonesomes just so they can wash down each sip with a refreshing puff of tar and nicotine. give it a few weeks and i bet everything will be back to normal at the bars. only less smelly.

of course, in the grand scheme of things, this new resolution isn't really all that important. sure i'm personally happy to wake up after a night out on the town without smelling like a rancid, beer-soaked carton of cigarettes, but that's small change when you think about the state of the world today and where we young, inspired, politically-minded americans should be focusing our energy and anger.

or am i wrong? is this issue what really gets us up in arms? give me a fucking break. and yet the following letter can be found in this week's flagpole magazine:

"I have been an avid smoker for 27 years now, and I am infuriated by the new smoking ban. I agree with the guy who said that this smacks of fascism. I would like to invite all of the smokers out there to engage in a sweeping act of solidarity and commit an act of civil disobedience and meet us in front of the Georgia Theatre on Aug. 13 at 7 p.m. We will meet in front and light up and then form a procession that will march all the way around downtown, stopping off at restaurants and bars along the way, ending up at the courthouse in grand fashion. Feel free to bring your own signs and/ or sandwich boards. Fight for your free choice, Athens!

Edward Holand Athens"

fascism? what? fury? huh? i'm confused. i sincerely hope that this letter is a joke but in case it isn't i would like to say the following:

edward, i understand your desire to express your freedom of choice, but to get all riled up about smoking seems like a waste of breath (cough, cough) and anger. i'm all for civil disobedience as a way to express dissatisfaction with the rule-makers of the world. hell, we could certainly have used some more motivated individuals like yourself prior to the "war on terror". demonstrations and the like can be powerful tools to effect public change but not when that tool is trivialized. i mean, smoking? dude, i don't give a rat's ass if you smoke 2 packs a day for the rest of your shortened lifetime. go for it. it just makes me sad that such a petty issue is what inspires you to take action. think about it. aren't there at least a million other things that your time would be better spent fighting for?

fuck it. now i'm depressed. anyone got a light?

car notes- part one: mistaken identity

2005-08-08T15:38:00.000-04:00

i borrowed my dad's car this past week and after going out one night received this note on my windshield:

it freaked me out. until i realized that i'm not dating (much less living with) anyone, that my father is still alive, and that i'm not fucking anyone named mark ("the piece of shit"). then i decided that it was kind of funny that i received this scathing, psychotic note on my car. that someone could flip out over something as simple as seeing a generic vehicle parked downtown and could leave such a ridiculous note without even checking to see if it was even the correct car.

first reaction: freaked out
second reaction: amusement
third reaction: scared as shit for the poor girl this note was intended for. who knows, maybe she is two-timing "j" and he's had enough of it but his instinctive, out of control reaction to seeing a car downtown makes me think that he is possibly a little off his rocker and that he might have a tendency to overreact. greatly overreact. at least he said that he would only "CALL THE POLICE" if she came home and not beat the shit out of her. i'm not trying to be flippant- that stuff happens more than most of us realize. in any case, i hope he cooled down after writing the note and that if he happens across this blog that he feels foolish and doesn't decide to find me and kill me or something.

my advice to "j": take your meds and, if this girl really is so horrible, just leave her and get on with your life. oh, and have a pleasant day.

mountain wildlife

2005-07-25T17:49:00.000-04:00

i spent last thursday and friday up at coweeta attempting to do my fieldwork even though i've already quit and am having a difficult time motivating myself. each day the was pretty miserable except for my wildlife encounters.

day one i saw this guy:

hello mr. copperhead. he was very polite and let me come close enough to take his picture. he didn't move a muscle until i rudely poked him with my tripod 3 or 4 times to get him out of the road. then he made his way into the underbrush and i realized that i had directed him into one of my sampling sites. oops. hopefully we won't have any unpleasant confrontations in the future.

on day two i ran into this wild beast:

she was not as well behaved as mr. snake. ms. kitty ran yowling from the woods and scrambled up my jeans and shirt and then perched herself on my shoulder and made it pretty clear that she was not a wild forest kitty and that she would appreciate it if i remedied the situation as soon as possible. so i took her home (my two cats are most displeased), gave her a name (adel- short for adelgis tsugae, the insect species i was/am still somehow suckered into studying for the next month or two), and found her a home (eli will be the best cat owner ever).

so there you have it. i wonder if anyone would have adopted the copperhead if i brought it home? anyone? come on now you guys. he doesn't have enough venom to actually kill you. unless he bites your face or neck or something.

regret and mediocrity

2005-07-18T15:50:00.000-04:00

decisions are difficult to make because once you've chosen one option you've automatically rejected at least one other. and what if that other was the "correct" one? how can you know? so you vacillate back and forth and finally settle on something. not because you want to but because you have to.

if you're lucky, you're one of the few individuals with faith in their ability to make the right decision. with the type of personality that doesn't look back and wonder "what if" after the fact. what if you had gone with the other option? would that one have been better? would you not feel that sense of regret?

when i was younger and slightly more optimistic i vowed to make every life decision with the idea that i would never have any regrets. whatever i chose to do, i would chose based upon my innate ability to decipher right from wrong. as if my life were laid out before me in black and white- a single line with the occasional branching point stretched out before me. the correct branch would, of course, be obvious once i reached it and i would follow it unerringly and look back in my old age to a life correctly lived. my own yellow brick road leading me toward fulfillment and away from regret.

now that i'm a bit more mature and less of the idealistic stranger to myself that i was a few years back, i recognize that there is never a correct path. that no matter what decisions you make in your lifetime, you will automatically have to exclude some options that may have been, in a sense, right for you. and you will have regrets. there is no way around it.

regret almost feels like nostalgia to me. bittersweet. it's like looking back at something fondly remembered except that it never actually happened. i think the quality of regret that lends it to nostalgia is that it's very inexistence allows you to idealize what could have been and what will never be- to create a possible reality for your life that never would have existed anyway. but oh if it had! what my life could have been! to think of all of the possible lives i could have lived... nostalgia times fifty. nostalgia times one thousand. infinite nostalgia...

i know i'm not really very old, but sometimes i feel like i am. is my life winding down or just beginning? i can no longer tell. sometimes it seems to me that life is full of mediocrity and failure and that i don't want any part of it because i embody that mediocrity. that meaninglessness. at other times i feel like i will never get enough of the experiences life has to offer. at these times an overwhelming feeling of disappointment (and excitement) that i will never live long enough to experience it all weighs on me and pushes me back out of my everydayness and into the world. i feel frantic and seek change. constant change. constant stimulation. are there other unfound remedies for this restlessness? i certainly hope so.

i can live with regret because i have to. what i can't live with is mediocrity. so i'm still looking for a cure for the commonplace even though i don't really believe that one exists. does this mean that i will have to learn to accept mediocrity in my life just as i now accept regret? hmm, check back with me in five years.

tales from the city part one: new york- "there's a god-wind a-blowin"

2005-07-09T13:10:00.000-04:00

immediately after my arrival at the new york, laguardia airport i am struck by the strangeness of people. sure people in athens are pretty strange, but i'm used to all of them. and once you're accustomed to something (or someone) it's no longer strange, now is it?

so new york people- visitors and residents alike- man they're odd. take "david" for example. my friend leslie and i met him on the bus from the airport to the train. the bus was packed with people and most of them had gigantic suitcases with them. suitcases stategically placed to block the aisles and prevent anyone from getting on or off the bus and, in the process, incur the wrath of the bus driver who refused to budge until the aisles were cleared. needless to say we were there a while.

as leslie and i caught up with the happenings in eachother's lives i could see david watching us. waiting for his in. he struck me as strange right off the bat. there was just something a little off, a little contrived, about his carefully cultivated rocker style. he was an attractive guy but his hair was a little too bleached (sun-in maybe?) and carefully messed up. his clothes were a little too urban outfitter-esque to be an expression of his own unique style. his guitar case looked too clean to have put in much time on the road. and his not so subtle, trying-to catch-our eyes coyness was a bit too determined. he appeared to have an agenda. so we ignored him.

unfortunately the bus remained immobile for quite some time and as leslie and i launched into my failed graduate school plans at uga and what i was going to do instead, i made the fatal mistake of mentioning the possibility that i would go to austin. to the university of texas where there is a great ecology program.

oops. texas was the in. how was i to know that? too late to take it back.

"TEXAS?" frown. "texas is a terrible place."

of course it is. bush country. rich right-wing republican haven. blah. blah. but nope, that's not what david meant at all. david is from oklahoma and, according to him, there is deep, long-standing hatred between oklahomians ("oklahomians"? did i just make that up?) and texans due, not to political differences, but to a college football rivalry. his fellow travelers nod enthusiastically in heartfelt, heartland solidarity. fascinating. football, my favorite topic.

but david didn't really want to talk football, gosh darn it. he wanted to talk GOD. of course. a christian rocker. how did i not spot it immediately? he was in town from oklahoma with the aisle blockers to "hang out at the park and play some music and talk to people" (read- to "save heathen souls such as mine and leslie's and show them the ways of our lord and savior jesus christ and maybe get laid in the process if that was god's will, amen.")

really, i shouldn't make fun of him too much because he was a nice guy despite his agenda. he wasn't a pusher. he just talked a little bit about what he was doing and asked us about ourselves and just casually mentioned that he was going to be in washington square park on friday night if we wanted to stop by. well, we didn't want to stop by but we acted our part and said that we might just do that (when hell freezes over).

but then fate or coincidence (or GOD?) had a different plan for us and we found ourselves meeting a couple of people at that same park on that same night.

while sitting by the fountain with our friends joseph and ian, leslie and i looked around for david. there was a large gang of "folks" gathered around a few guitar players but our david wasn't with the other rabble-rousers from oklahoma. now, you can blame it on the frame of mind created by the companionable passing of a flask of whiskey among friends, but leslie and i were disappointed. we actually wanted to see good old david. maybe we felt the pull of salvation or maybe we just felt a bit drunk and silly. at any rate, we kept checking back with the christians to see if he would show up.

and then, finally, there he was. david. so we got all excited and pointed him out to joseph and ian who didn't really give a shit. except that when ian saw who we were pointing at he got a funny look on his face. a look that appeared to be a definite mixture of disgust and humor.

i:"that's the guy?"
l and me: "yup."
i: funny facial expression continues.
me: "why? what the hell? do you know him?"
i: "um....no but we were just in the bathroom together and....never mind."
me: "what? just spit it out."
i: "well..." makes a weak, wheezy, singsong farting noise.
me: "what the fuck was that? he farted? if so, that was the most pathetic farting noise ever."
l: "he either farted or sang a really weird song in the bathroom."
i: getting more enthusiastic "dude, he didn't just fart. he let it rip like no one i've ever heard before. it was like he just didn't care who heard him."
me: "that's because god will love him anyway."
j: snorts
me: "did it smell bad?"
i: his expression says it all. i think it's safe to say that it didn't smell like roses.
l: "gross" drinks some whiskey, hands me the flask.
i: "i think i'm ready for a hit off of that flask now." drinks. grimaces.
me: "christians fart, too? it's too bad god can't cure that. if he could i bet a lot of people might suddenly convert to christianity." tilts it back again.
j: "who wants to go see billy graham with me on sunday?"
me: "are you hoping god will cure your farts if you convert?"
j: "i'm already christian."
me: "oh, yeah. i guess it's official then. christianity is not a cure for gas."
j: mean look directed at me

then, as we got up to leave, leslie and i got another surge of desire to converse with david and his crew. as we drew closer to the crowd we hesitated. stopped. and then veered away from them completely. i guess we just weren't feeling god that night. or maybe we were just afraid that we might get caught downwind from david and his pals.

if it was god that tried to bring us together, it must have been a powerful wind indeed that blew us apart.

premature goodbye

2005-07-01T17:54:00.000-04:00

new york city. what can i say? i've lived in chicago. i've lived in dublin. i've been to cities all over the u.s. and europe but so far no other place has screamed CITY, has represented what i always imagined a city should be, would be, like new york has. the first time i went to new york i was 21 or 22. since then i've been there 4 or 5 more times and it never changes. that feeling that i am in the one place that defines the word city.

i've never though of myself as a city person. for a time i even thought that i wanted to forsake all society and live in the middle of nowhere away from all people. seriously. but now... i don't know, maybe 3 years in chicago changed me. now it seems that i miss the stimulation of city life. the people-watching alone keeps me endlessly entertained. the culture. the museums. the variety in everything. all things you can't find in athens.

not that i don't love athens. it has it's own charm. it's own draw. living in athens is like living in a comfortable, predictable bubble of like-minded people. easy. simple. but i'm back to the point where easy and simple bore me. i need a challenge. that's not to say that my past two years in athens haven't been difficult. they have and i've learned a lot about myself. i've changed a lot, too. for the better? who knows? i do know that i am a different person than i was when i came back two years ago. essentially the same, but still different somehow.

in any case, sometimes you just know when your time somewhere has been used up. when a place, even one that you love, has nothing left to offer you. or what it does have to offer is no longer enough to make you stick around.

the conundrum that is athens- you feel forced to leave because life here is so easy. too easy. so you must go for the sake of your own self-preservation and in order to salvage what is left of the productivity that you set aside during your athens interlude. at the same time, if you leave you're always trying to resist it's pull- that call back to your comfort zone. somehow athens has become the closest thing to home that you know.

i'll miss athens. especially all of the amazing people that i've met and even what it's taught me about who i am and who i want to be. it has been a necessary stop in my life but it's getting close to time for me to move on. so this is my premature goodbye to athens.

i'm not going to michigan but neither am i staying here. blame it on new york city if you want but it was really only the necessary catalyst that kicked my ass into gear. so i'm going... where? somewhere new. a city? new york? austin? tuscon? san francisco? i don't know just yet but my deadline is january 1st. maybe january will come around and i'll still be in athens and i'll have to eat my words but the way i'm feeling right now i don't think that will be the case. in the meantime i'm going to get my act together and get some shit done. finally. hopefully.

iPod blues

2005-06-21T16:39:00.000-04:00

(this is actually bob II's japanese cousin, but the family resemblance is striking and i don't actually have a picture of bob II himself. )

my ipod, bob II (named after my first ipod, bob I) has decided to pull a bob I on me and stop working. damn those wonderful, life-changing gadgets. i have the worst luck with anything electronic. maybe i have some electric force field thing around me that short circuits anything with a microchip or a motor. who knows?

in any case, apple was kind enough to send me a shipping box and now bob II is on his way to get repaired. halleluja and praise the lord!! but what, oh what am i to do in the intervening weeks? if you don't have an ipod then you will not understand , but i have become very codependant on bob II. i now live most moments of my life to a sountrack played through cute, little white headphones and i feel lost without my dear companion! so lost that (confession time) i "borrowed" my roommate's ipod today without asking. i couldn't help it. even though her music is different i needed something to listen to. it's not my fault! ok, maybe it is, but still...

anywho. i'm hungover and my brain isn't feeling up to par so i would like to apologize for the lack of literary merit contained within this post. the main purpose of writing anything is to let you all know that i'm about to blow this town and head up to the big apple. i'll only be gone for a few days but blog fans have a tendancy to be fair-weather about their devotion and i figured that if i didn't squeeze in at least one post before i left that many of you might wander off and forget about me. so i tricked all of you into sticking around with this shitty-ass post. i'm sneaky like that. (eyes shift to the right. then to the left).

well, i'll be back soon. hopefully with some new york-inspired stories. man, that place is nuts.

chow.

michigan?

2005-06-13T15:12:00.000-04:00

well, this post is once again just me taking a moment to FREAK OUT! um, ok. i have two weeks to decide if i want to move to ann arbor, michigan in january with my major advisor and continue grad school there. two fucking weeks. here are my four choices:

1: stay in athens for graduate school, find a new advisor, and continue on the project i have already started. unfortunately my current research is very dull. but i am almost guaranteed to finish it within two years.

2: stay in athens but look for a new advisor and a new project to work on. this option is tempting but it might be hard to find someone with funding to support me and it would take me longer to finish school. on the other hand, i could end up working on a project that really interests me (evolution) as opposed to one that doesn't (soil nitrogen dynamics).

3: move to michigan, keep my major advisor (who rules, by the way), and go to grad school up there. this would, of course, require me to uproot my life, start an entirely new research project, make new friends, etc. on the other hand, it gives me a chance to move to a new city and have a guaranteed job (i can feel that driving urge to move on, to keep looking for something new waking up again. i try to ignore it, but i've never been able to do more than temporarily still that restlessness).

4: forget school, leave athens, go somewhere fun, get a useless job, hang out for a year and then go to grad school in the fall of 2006. in ann arbor maybe?

help! two weeks!!!!

outsmarted by a crawdad

2005-06-07T16:39:00.000-04:00

so, back before athens had that nice greenway and the current greenway entrance on oconee street was a just crappy old salvation army store, there was a small tributary of the oconee river across the street. it was there that i found my pet crayfish, little guy.

ah, little guy. we had such good times together.

when first i rescued you from your beautiful, free home and forced you to live in a small fishbowl with two dirty old goldfish you were indeed little. but how you grew. catching all of those fish flakes in your claws and biding your time. you had a plan all along to regain your freedom and i had no idea. sneaky little guy.

i didn't think that crayfish were intelligent enough to plan, but i should have realized that something was up when you started stalking the goldfish. waiting on your rock for them to swim by so that you could jump on them and hang onto their tail fins. is that how you did it? it is just a small leap from the back of a fish to the top of the bowl. i wonder...

and still you grew. and plotted your escape. and still i had no clue. feeding you more and more fish food and remarking on how cute you were and how you were getting so much bigger.

then one day, the inevitable- little guy was gone. he disappeared. i still don't know how. i looked everywhere but to no avail. finally, i was forced to come to the sad conclusion that simon the cat had eaten him. poor little guy.

later that night i went out to the manhattan and ran into my friend ben who said that he saw the strangest thing earlier that evening. what did he see? well, he was out walking his dog on milledge avenue and saw a crayfish walking down the street. casually making his way along the gutters of milledge. now i know that it's improbable that the crayfish he saw was actually little guy. milledge avenue is quite a ways from carr street but still... perhaps it was more than just a simple coincidence. perhaps little guy made his break for freedom and headed off to sorority row for some good times before making his way back to the banks of the muddy creek where we first made our acquaintance. i'll never know for sure but i certainly like that version of the story better than the idea of him in simon's stomach.

little guy. the coolest crayfish i've ever known. perhaps because he's the only crayfish i've ever known but anyway, i like to imagine him dropping into the rain gutters of milledge avenue at sunset and spending the rest of his crustaceous life listening to the sounds of bad country music blaring from the frat houses and looking up the skirts of sorority girls as they pass by chatting on their cell phones. hell, i guess it beats living in a damn fish bowl.

*addendum: eli would like me to note that little guy was also his pet. this fact was omitted from the story for the sake of simplicity. i was in no way implying that eli was a bad crayfish owner or that he was not equally invested in the welfare of little guy (rip).

who? what? nitrogen? good lord, i need a beer.

2005-06-06T17:07:00.000-04:00

i'm currently up to my eyeballs in papers about hemlocks, nitrogen, invasive species, earthworms, and fatty acids, among other fascinating things. too much to do. too many papers to write, no time for blogging fun. don't give up on me though. soon enough i will post something good. or maybe my brain will be so fried that i will just post the only thing i've written lately. my thesis proposal. let me tell you, it is a page turner. pray that it doesn't come to that.

athens in a nutshell

2005-05-18T15:14:00.000-04:00

my fabulous friend leslie m. sent this cartoon to me and i just had to (illegally? i would give the artist credit if i knew who the talented soul was) repost it here. she called this new and apparently popular pasttime "hipster heckling". as those of you who read my blog know, i have been an unfortunate victim of this disturbing hate crime (see previous post entitled "hipster cat fight" from january for many more details than you really need or want).
today, life is cracking me up and i don't know why so i'm just going to go with it.

how to impress a lady...

2005-05-15T20:12:00.000-04:00

...with your supreme idiocy and repulsiveness

when approaching the woman you are interested in conversing with make sure that you are so completely trashed that you get her attention by drunkenly bumping into her and making her spill her drink.
fail to notice your clumsiness because you are so obliterated and interrupt the conversation she is currently engaged in by butting in rudely.
when speaking, make sure that every word you say is so slurred as to be completely incomprehensible.
have the pleasant combination of stale beer and vomit on your breath.
stand as close as possible to the lucky lady and try to grab her arm but miss and hit her instead.
have an unidentifiable brown crusty substance (vomit, dried blood, tobacco juice?- all of the options are equally scrumptious) caked on your lips.
when she turns her back on you stand behind her and wait for her to suddenly realize that you are indeed the man of her dreams or at least the man she wants to go home with. keep standing there until she walks away.
repeat steps 1-7 with every woman at the bar so that each one knows that she has a special place in your heart.
when steps 1-8 have been completed roll out the door (strangely alone), jump on your souped-up hog and speed away at a recklessly fast pace kicking up a huge cloud of dirt in the process and causing every bar patron that is standing outside to choke on your dust. very classy. by doing this you have certainly shown all of us ladies what we missed out on.

usually, being a woman rules. occasionally it doesn't.

comments

2005-05-15T20:03:00.000-04:00

sorry kids, i had to disable all anonymous comments as i've been getting some pretty nasty sexual comments lately. i don't know if it's just spam or if it's some loser with nothing better to do. unfortunalety i believe it to be the latter. in any case, if you want to comment you'll have to register on blogger so that i can trace where the comments are coming from. sorry!

family pee stories: part three

2005-04-21T16:31:00.000-04:00

the adult diaper

have you ever noticed how when people got to visit friends and relatives in the hospital that they feel obliged to relate every tale of their own previous hospital stays? well, i have. probably because it pisses me off since i have no broken bone-mysterious illness-crazy doctor-experiences of my own. luckily the women in my family are extremely clumsy and tend to fall often. as a female member of my family i, too, tend to fall whenever i get the opportunity and, as it so happens, opportunity lies just around the corner for me. every corner. i have the bruises to prove it. however, since i am still young(ish) and drink lots of milk so my falls have yet to land me in the hospital. not so for my mother or grandmother.

just the other week my mother fell and found herself in the hospital with a fractured cranium (not to worry, she is recovering quite well) which reminded my grandmother of one of the many times that she fell and was herself in the hospital. (remember, this is not a sad story about injury and hospitals. it is about peeing. specifically peeing in your pants as it is the third installment in my "family pee stories" series.) so, this last time that my grandmother fell and was hospitalized she had to deal with the dreaded bedpan because she wasn't well enough to get up to use the bathroom.

it seems that bedpans are a pain in the ass not just because they are annoying to use but also because, according to my grandmother, the nurses take their sweet time getting the bedpan to you. she claims that she had to threaten to wet the bed before they would bring it and then once they did they liked to let her sit on it for an extended period of time. so not only would they not let her get up to pee, she had to suffer the added insult of sitting on her own excrement for longer than was strictly enjoyable.

one evening while my grandmother repeatedly pushed the call button, she enviously observed her bedridden and be-diapered roommate not having to deal with such discomfort and humiliation. sure, the lady was wearing a diaper but, at this point, a diaper sounded like heaven to my precariously perched grandmother. unfortunately she was considered too fit to be diaper-eligible.

so she suffered, relying on the whim of the busy nurse staff for permission to relieve herself. little did she know that the fact that the nurses were overworked would play to her advantage later that same day.

later that same day...

time to change the diapers! the roommate gets her fresh, new diaper in preparation for the evening. sighing, my grandmother prepares herself for an uncomfortable night (she pees a lot). but lo! what is this? the tired nurse is heading my grandmother's way with a diaper in hand. she seems to have overlooked the fact that my grandmother isn't supposed to get one. my grandmother starts to speak up. then she pauses. and smiles. and thanks the nurse for the diaper.

she said that it made her feel free and that it was like being a kid again. the simplicity of it was so refreshing. none of this getting up half asleep to go to the bathroom and pee or calling for tired nurses that refuse to come. if you need to go, you go. you can just pee in your pants. right there and it's considered to be ok. in fact, if you're wearing a diaper you are expected to pee in your pants. astounding! she made it sound so great that for a moment i was like, "dude, i want some diapers. they sound awesome!"

the next day my grandmother made the unfortunate mistake of telling my mother that she was wearing a diaper. my mother did not like this one bit and marched off to the nurse's station to let them know that her mother does not wear diapers!

that night, no diaper. just the familiar and dreaded bedpan. sighing, my grandmother prepared to ring the call button for the umpteenth time and vowed that if she is ever lucky enough to receive another diaper that she will never, ever mention it to my mother.

ah, the freedom of diapers. at least we have something to look forward to in our old age...

they said that california is the place you wanna be...

2005-04-15T14:25:00.000-04:00

well, i'm not packing up just yet as the hemlocks are relying on me, but maybe one day.
hmm, i think i need a vacation. california anyone?

p.s. thanks to carrieoke (you rule) for making my blog look so pretty and not boring with my lovely new banner!

working hard...

2005-04-12T15:26:00.000-04:00

i did not personally write this, but i did contribute an idea or two to my labmates brainstorming (procrastination) session. this little number is inspired by those oh so oddly worded and indecipherable band descriptions in the flagpole and describes my labmates and myself perfectly. in other words, it makes no sense at all:
(side note- actual quote from this weeks flagpole: "HO-AG (Caledonia) -Pray for the Worms is the new album from this interesting Massachusetts five-piece, whose music is best described as "horror folk." Maybe "cave core." right.)

The Flagpole
A @ B on C

Jen-na-na and the Coweeta Quicksteppers
Hook-filled transhypnotica often dabbling in the realm of alt-Baroque
Bus Behind Little Kings, 8pm, $.55 cover

I am the world tractor center, featuring Breana Simmons
Beatnik Europop with a sharper edge comparable to Dan from I am the World Trade Center
Athens Feed & Seed, 10pm, free with any Round-Up purchase

Slang to Bang Time, featuring Becky Ball
Ecclectic afropop with Lynyrd Skynyrd-esque southern charm and a side of Tin Pan Alley
Classic Center Parking Deck, 9pm, K-Bob cover

DJ Astiggity Kyliggity
White Snake-style Math rock that grinds the sleeve of your sweater into the floor
Boneshakers, 11pm, $73 cover- transvestites get in free

Sofia Oat Patrol and the Fantasmoids
Hair metal dipped in Indian dance hall vibes sprinkled with warehouse grind core
J.R.’s Baitshack, 10pm, 7 rupee cover

keep in mind that most of us are studying soil and/or agroecosystems (except for me) and that all of us are crazy. crazy cool that is. let me know if you want to book my band for a show sometime. i'll try to learn a chord or two by show time. maybe.

wakeful interlude (restlessness)

2005-04-08T15:41:00.000-04:00

if you've seen me out on the town more often recently, there's a reason. unfortunately i don't know what that reason is but i think it's something that has infected us all. by "us all" i mean all of you kids that i see out every night frequenting the bars alongside me. there's a force driving us out looking for something. making us stay out until 2 or later even when we're bored and the fun is nowhere to be found.

what is it that we're looking for while we're pretending (and maybe even believing) that we are thoroughly entertained and occupied by those at hand? what is driving us out into the night is not content or a simple desire to have fun. we are not content with our friends, with our chosen company, or, perhaps more tellingly, with ourselves. we're all searching.

the problem with this search is that we don't know what we're looking for so we continue on blindly and remain commonly isolated by our singular loneliness and discontent.

my fear is that this feature (or fixture?) of discontent in my life will never have that revelation (!)- will never recognize that missing element that i'm looking for. so i'll continue on searching for some unknowable thing that might not even exist. or if it does might pass me by in my ignorance.

on a side note, this is what i looke like after spending countless hours battling underbrush and wildlife while crawling up steep mountainous terrain. my reward was finding the largest hemlock tree i have ever seen. why is this very old hemlock still standing in a forest when it should have been logged 100 years ago with the rest of them? because no fool was willing to risk their lives to get it. ah, my job. i don't remember "risking your life for science" being in the description when i signed on.

2005-03-22T17:42:00.000-05:00

dreams

dreams: part two (myth buster)

2005-03-21T21:44:00.001-05:00

so you know that story about how if you die in a dream that you die in real life? well, i hate to break it to you folks but that myth is completely untrue.

yes, you heard it here first, from the dream expert (at bullshitting) jenna.

how can i make such a preposterous claim you might wonder?

because i have been there. i have seen death in my dreams. i have faced it. i have felt my life ebbing away. i have (you guessed it) died in a dream. really died. and look- i'm still here to tell the tale. take that jason or freddy krueger or whatever scary movie monster used to kill people in their sleep. it just doesn't work and that's all there is to it.

so that's the good news. the cooler news is that i have felt what it's like to die and yet i'm still alive. sure it was a dream, but my dreams are quite vivid and intense. i mean, i really feel every physical sensation, good and bad, that occur in my dreams. the dreams i like best are the ones where i encounter sensations that i've never felt in real life. like the time i was a man (stay tuned for an upcoming entry) or like the dream where i died. in both cases, i'm glad that the physical implications didn't carry over into my real life, but they are still quite interesting to look back on. not that i can say for sure that the sensations i feel while asleep are legitimate, but i can say that i have experienced things while dreaming that i have never felt while awake which is cool enough for me.

anyway, i can't remember how i died anymore but i think i was shot. what i can remember is lying on the ground and feeling a unique sensation that i recognized at once as death as it progressed and my body shut down. i can't explain it very well, but let's just say that everything was fading. i was fading. it wasn't pleasant but it wasn't awful. i was more curious than frightened because it seemed stupid to fear the inevitable. so instead of fearing death, i felt it. the sensation of death, that dreaded but unavoidable accompaniment of life. i knew that i couldn't escape so i just lay there as it took over and i became less and less me and more and more a part of some great nothing and then there was nothing and that was it. i was nothing. i was dead.

some time later i woke up and thought, "damn, i just died. that was pretty fucking crazy." then i went back to sleep.

dreams: part one (mirror, mirror)

2005-03-14T17:26:00.000-05:00

i have this one recurring dream. actually, it's just a recurring theme really as the dream usually starts out differently every time.

eventually, however, it comes to this: i find myself in front of or passing by a mirror and i see my reflection. something seems a little off and i start to feel nervous but i stop for a better look in the mirror anyway. i move my head a little. my reflection moves with me. i make another small movement and my reflection follows suit but something is still wrong and i'm scared at this point. something about my eyes in the mirror or maybe it's that my reflection seems to somehow be smirking at me in a very mocking and sinister way. i can't figure it out and i'm really frightened by now but i can't bring myself to look away from the damn mirror.

i make another movement and this time the strangeness is more apparent. the movement of my reflection is a little out of synch and there's still that odd malicious glint in my eyes when i look at them. but maybe it's only in my head? i make a move to turn away and can't because it's not in my head. my reflection has decided to give up all pretenses of simply being a reflection and is now mocking my movements.

it sees how freaked out i am and smiles. now it's not even bothering to mock me- all of it's motions are completely it's own. i really want to get the hell out of there by this point because it is very obvious to me that jenna-the-reflection has something not very nice planned for me that she thinks is pretty fucking amusing and i am not interested in finding out what it is. but i can't leave. part of me is too terrified to turn my back on her and part of me is curious to see what she/i will do next.

unless i wake up first, the next part of the dream involves my reflection somehow getting me to approach the mirror either by beckoning me closer or by breaking free from the mirror plane and physically pulling me towards her. it seems that she wants to pull me into the land of reflections and i am panicking by this point because, from what i can tell, that place is seriously evil.

i can't remember if i've ever actually made it through to the other side of the mirror, but i don't think i have. i must either wake up or manage to escape before that happens. in any case, i have a complaint to make about this dream. why the fuck can't i have a recurring dream about drinking margaritas on the beach or some shit? what's this crap about evil reflections!?

don't worry, i don't need you to analyze it's meaning for me. that much is obvious enough. what i do want to figure out is how to turn my dream around so that i can beat the crap out of that evil refection bitch when she tries to pull that "ha,ha, you can't even control your own refection shit". now that would be cool. i'd teach her a lesson in how a reflection should properly behave and afterwards i could wander down to the beach and drink some margaritas and reflect on how cool and in control i am. which, of course, i am in real life. totally in control. right.

the oddities of odd street

2005-03-09T15:20:00.000-05:00

i didn't even know that a place known as "odd street" existed in athens but, i can now assure you, it does and it seems to be appropriately named. it is very odd indeed.

so, how does one end up in the vicinity of odd street? with a little help from your (drunk) friends of course.

it all started out as a regular saturday night out on the town involving such athens staples as large quantities of pbr, shots of whiskey, and some bad music thrown in for good measure. actually, i think the bad music was the night before and i missed the good music on saturday because i was too busy getting drunk. anyway, the entire weekend seems to blur together at this point which is not important and is really not the point of this story. refer to my previous entry "binge drinking in your late twenties" if you are in the mood for a story centered around my exploits with alcoholic beverages.

as is the case on most weekend nights, you can always find a few adventurous (i.e. too drunk to know better) souls willing to continue the party past the requisite 2 a.m. closing time. yes, i was one of them on this evening. nothing unusual there. what was unusual was the arrival of a strange woman with a wooden flute. at first i didn't know who the fuck she was until i recalled her from earlier in the night when i had seen her wandering around the caledonia and playing her weird flute thing. i vaguely remember noting the oddity of such a thing at the caledonia where, in general, the weirdoes usually still manage to fall into the hipster category. clearly, this woman leaned more towards the hippie side. in fact, i think she might not be aware that 1965 is 40 years in the past.

in any case, this woman showing up at a small, after-hours get together was quite unexpected. i'm still not sure who to blame but i have my suspicions. she was nice but i couldn't understand what she said. i mean, i could understand it, but i had no idea what the hell she meant. she was far out, dude. in the stratosphere somewhere. eventually i think we all gave up trying to include her in the conversation which was just as well because the next time i checked she had fallen asleep.

i'll skip through the rest of the evening as it was long and involved many prank calls, some beer and cigarettes, and drinking from an open bottle of wine (i gave up on the wine glass by 5 a.m.). the important thing to note is that the woman drifted from my consciousness. i simply forgot she was there.

now i might have left well before 6 a.m. if i hadn't (wisely) chosen to leave my car downtown. since i couldn't leave and i was tired and getting a little bored with all of the prank calling i busied myself with consuming as much alcohol as i could and even managed to thrown in a few drags on a cigarette for good measure. hence, due to my inebriated and annoying state, i was completely unprepared when flute lady roused herself and started requesting rides home. i can't say for certain but i'm pretty sure that's when all of the caledonia boys high-tailed it out of there in quick succession. thanks a lot kiddos. since the only people left that weren't staying the night were myself (carless), my ride home, and flute lady it seems that we were to be stuck with the wooden flute. and the lady that went along with it.

fine, ok. it's 6 in the morning. at this point time has become surreal and i can stay up long enough to get this woman to her residence before i pass out cold. besides, since i wasn't driving i didn't really have much say in the matter. after all, taking someone home shouldn't take too long unless, of course, they have no idea where the hell they live and they live in some never-never sub-world in athens whose only directions include a hand drawn map and instructions to go to the trestle bridge and look for odd avenue. she had to be kidding right? odd avenue? and a trestle bridge? i've never heard of odd avenue and the name struck me as a little too apt to be coincidence. as for the "trestle bridge", what the hell is a trestle bridge anyway and why would that be the only directional information that this woman is capable of producing!? wtf!!!??

somehow i managed to hold my temper with this vague-talking 1960's throwback, but just barely. who was this odd woman with her wooden flute and crazy speak involving troll bridges and odd streets and maps drawn on little pieces of cardboard with red pen marking her house that, by the way, has a yard full of shrines? yes, shrines. or so she said although when i pressed her for information on what was being worshipped at the shrines she became more vague and looked confused. i told her that for something to be considered a shrine that it had to be built in honor of something or someone. she looked more confused and just kept repeating that they were built by her landlord and that they were his shrines. ok, whatever.

all the while i'm trying to direct j. to odd street which i think neither one of us really believed was real. real in flute lady's imagination perhaps, but not real in the real world.

then we saw it. the little green rectangular sign with the magical words "odd avenue" written on it. i almost cried with joy at the sight. ok, not really, but i was very, very happy. still not sure if it was for real but happy nonetheless. so we turned onto odd avenue, found the house with the enshrined yard (which, in the light of early morning, seemed to involve a red volkswagon camper, some giant flowers, and some metal stuff), and dropped the lady and her flute off at home. finally.

i still can't say for sure where the fuck we were or how exactly we got there, but odd avenue seemed real (or surreal) enough. i think. keep in mind that i was drunk and had been up for close to 24 hours. but whatever, the flute lady had been correct about a number of questionable points. my only remaining point of contention is that i never got to see the famous trestle bridge. looks as though i'll have to save that for another night.

an update on my "progress" as a scientist:

2005-02-16T16:28:00.000-05:00

in a single day last week i managed to-

get stuck in the mud while trying to off-road in my uga van. let me tell you, vans ain't got no traction. do not attempt to go muddin' in one. this occurred within ten minutes of my arrival at coweeta.
get lost in the woods. i couldn't find the path back to my aforementioned vehicle and what dubiously passes for a road at the hydrologic laboratory. so i wandered around for a while. and i wandered around some more. then it started to get dark and i realized that, as all of the employees at coweeta leave by 4:00, i was probably the only one around for miles. this thought did not comfort me. with visions of crazy, drunken deer hunters in my head (i move!), i decided to create my own path back to the van. unfortunately my "path" forced me to cross the widest part of the creek that separated me from my vehicular destination. i tried to rock hop across which leads me to number three on the list:
fall into a very cold creek. suffice it to say that this was not the most pleasant experience.

yes, i achieved all of this in one day. i think that is quite an accomplishment although i was disappointed to learn that one of my coworkers once drove one of the vans off of the side of a mountain. i bet it took more than a rope to get that one unstuck. in any case, i'm still hopeful that i will one day be able to top even that catastrophe. after all, i have only just begun. stay tuned for further mishaps courtesy of jenna, the untrained field ecologist...

on the bright side, i have been to at least four beer-related ecology social events in the past two weeks. as i have said before, scientists like beer. since i like beer i think that makes me a scientist despite my failure in all other things scientific. i am sure that you can see the logic in that statement. ah logic, the cornerstone of scientific theory. i shall use you and abuse you for my own misguided purposes.

for your viewing pleasure i present to you an accurate and unchauvanistic image of how female scientists dress when out in the field. i personally love how sexy my rubber waders look and how they perfectly complement my string bikini. remember kids- science is, above all else, a sexy occupation!

i'm not really a scientist. i just play one on tv.

2005-02-01T18:46:00.000-05:00

ok, so i'm not actually on tv nor am i actually a scientist, but i have spent the past two weeks getting a real life crash course in how to become a scientist- specifically an ecologist. i have learned the following so far:

• the main danger i will face when wandering around by myself in the woods is not the bears or rattlesnakes or vicious hornets that call the appalachians home. nor is getting hopelessly lost in the miles of uninhabited forest with only an old-school radio that might or might not work what i should fear most. nope. what i really need to watch out for are the hunters. especially the deer hunters that, according to my sources in the forest service, “shoot at anything that moves.” hello. i move. my only hope of surviving these beastly, drunken predators is to purchase a bright orange vest and hat (i think it's called "blaze orange"). you know the kind. even so there is no guarantee. i could just be a new, bright orange species of deer. after all, i move and that makes me fair game. awesome.

• most scientists see the sunrise every day. however, unlike myself who has until recently only seen the sunrise because i am up until dawn, they have slept all night and have to get up before six o’clock to get to work on time. yikes. that scares me more than the deer hunters. even my bright orange vest will be rendered useless in counteracting this reprehensible situation.

• it is fucking cold at 7am in the mountains in february. seriously. fucking. cold. seriously.

• perhaps you remember the phrase “form equals function” from your introductory biology course? i would like to present to you my new theory on what scientists equate with fashion. i call it “jenna’s universal theory of scientific fashion equals function.” sounds impressive doesn't it? the basic hypothesis of this theory is that the more functional an item of clothing is, the more desirable and “fashionable” it becomes. for example, a vest is very “fashionable” among the scientific community. especially if it has lots of pockets to put stuff in. the more pockets you have, the more stuff you can carry and the more functional and, hence, fashionable the vest is considered to be. the same pocket trend holds true for pants and jackets and backpacks and pretty much anything else. pockets are perhaps the height of haute couture among scientific trendsetters. another giant among the functionally fashionable are waterproof materials. gore tex, polyurethane- you name it, if its waterproof, its a “must have” for any season. as you can imagine, with my meager outdoor experience, i am an obvious fashion no, no among my new colleagues. “what, they make waterproof pants?” (of course) and “what are waders?” (rubber overalls with attached rubber boots that make you feel like you have a giant rubber band around your legs because the crotch of the pants is inexplicably at knee level. this feature seriously impedes walking while making your body appear about three times as long as your legs because of the questionable placement of the crotch area. but hey, they are waterproof. ‘nuff said.). finally, as i mentioned earlier, to avoid becoming a hunting statistic (function) blaze orange is considered the “new black” out in the field (fashion).

• lastly, i have learned that i need to get my lazy self into shape quick. otherwise even if the bears or snakes or hunters don’t get me a heart attack will.

until next time this has been a report from coweeta hydrologic laboratory in otto, north carolina and this is jenna signing off so i can get to bed and wake up to see the sunrise. wish me luck as i do not yet have anything either waterproof or orange or pocket-laden to protect me out in yonder wild wilderness. i’ll be back in athens on thursday. if i survive until then i would not be opposed to enjoying some company and a beer or two (dozen) upon my return. scientists like beer. thank god- there is hope for me yet!

"what is a hipster?"

2005-01-16T18:23:00.000-05:00

on saturday night i was in atlanta regaling my friend christy (my best friend from middle and high school) with my story about being bitchslapped (see "hipster cat fight") but when i got to the part about the dumb hipster insulting me by calling me a hipster christy looked confused. in fact, everyone at the table looked confused. none of them had ever heard the word hipster before. in fact, they imagined a hipster to be some sort of hippie complete with bell bottoms, dreadlocks and hemp necklaces and listening to the now defunct phish. now that's pretty damn funny.

for the sake of review here are some hippies:

(note the unrestrained excitement and partial state of undress- not very hipster)

and some hipsters:

(cool and detached and usually fully clothed, unlike hippies. also, hipsters are way hotter than hippies*. check out the cutie in the middle. no, not the one in the red shirt, the other one. hellloo mr. hipster hottie.*)

*disclaimer #1- just kidding, hippies rule!

*disclaimer #2- but totally not as hot as eli. hi honey.

even our waiter had never heard the word hipster before. i was shocked and thought to myself "where have these people been?" then i got to thinking that maybe the word hipster is prevalent only among hipsters themselves or their peripheral hipster consorts. maybe the word and the image it invokes of the perpetually detached, cool, scruffy music lover isn't as universal as i though.

hipsters be proud, you have not yet followed in the footsteps of your predecessors (the flappers, beatniks, hippies, punks, and grunge kids of the past) and become totally mainstream and recognizable. yet. but yet is the key word. i can see it coming and hiding behind your guitars and designer jeans and "unwashed"-clean hair is not an option, my friends. its too late for that. its already hip to be hipster (as long as you refuse to admit it)- people are catching on quick and even i have taken it upon myself to enlighten a few more among the dwindling ranks of the hipster-ignorant. perhaps that makes me a traitor but when it comes down to it, it was pretty funny trying to fit almost everyone i know (including possibly myself) into a neat little stereotypical description of a hipster.

i'm not sure that my description totally clarified things for my friends, but they were definitely catching on by the end of the night. i'm not going to bother going into a long description of what i think a hipster is for you here. if you're really unsure and interested in finding out more about hipsters try a google search- there's enough funny shit out there to keep you entertained without me trying to rehash it all here. or just go to your local hipster hangouts. all cities have them, trust me. well, the hip ones do anyway. but remember to take it all with a grain of salt. certainly hipsters are a diverse group of people that cannot really be categorized by simple stereotypes. *

*disclaimer #3- i think all of my friends are awesome and unique and i would never try to assign any of them to a narrow-minded category. not even the hipsters. or the hippies. oops.

now that i have covered my ass with that little disclaimer, i would like to post this image in honor of christy who has officially declared herself to be a non-hipster now that she knows what a hipster is:

a little out-of-date but still fairly accurate. i would personally get rid of cabbie hat and purse with skull (that is so, like, two years ago at least) and replace them with, say, a scarf and some designer jeans. plus, the white-boy afro is so out and unwashed hair is so in. and about that ski jacket...ok, i'm going to stop now before i give myself away.

dear diary,

2005-01-14T19:26:00.000-05:00

here's some funny shit from a diary i had back in 1991.* let's see, that would make me 13 years old, give or take.

*the author would like to note that these are real entries from when she was a self-conscious, boy-obsessed, braces-wearing teenager. she would also like to note that she has allowed herself some creative editing and splicing and a little add-libbing here and there for your reading pleasure.

from l to r: scrawny adolescent girl that looks like a boy (me), the source of my jealousy (boobie girl), scary brutish girl with big neck (my sister)

6-15-91
"I hate being jealous. It makes me feel so rotten. oooh, hush your filthy mouth My sister's best friend and one of my friends, is one person I am jealous of... All of a sudden, after she turned 16 everyone seems to think she is so pretty. I guess the main thing that has made me jealous of her is that she has boobs and i don't. yes, i was being completely serious. i don't think my since of humor developed until later, along with my breasts I guess that is the one thing I would change about myself. I would have bigger boobs. i weep for you young, superficial jenna; influenced in your naviete by ridiculous media sterotypes I hate that word still do but what should I call them then? breasts, tits, melons, gazoongas- whever the fuck you want other than "boobs" I guess I'll just say that I wish I had a better figure."so that every short, pimply adolescent boy i knew would fall hopelessly in love with me and want to make out with me all the time ...

6-16-91
"I was thinking, the only reason we are here (and all other creatures, too creatures? what a dork. oops, that's me i'm talking about) is to reproduce which means that at the time i considered myself a waste because i hadn't fullfilled my obligation to the human species. hadn't even come close. That makes no sense. What good are we doing? good? who ever said anything about people doing good stupid-head? Oh, well. I don't understand it at all." and likely never will

and for the grand finale... some bad peotry written by an overly romantic 13 year-old. me! (seriously, i'm almost too embarassed to put this in, even now, 14 years later but it's just so bad and so funny. how can i resist?)

6-20-91
"Would you like to hear two lines of my unfinished poem? no, please spare us
While moonbeams dance along the darkened shore
I dream my dreams but wish for more retch, vomit
I'm not too sure about the second line or the first line for that matter, I understand it but will anyone else? trust me, its not rocket science It's suppossed to mean that dreaming is not always enough how deep... well anyway, it makes sense to me." and to anyone else with half a brain you fool

well, that's about all i can handle of myself in 1991. something about confronting your younger self is discomforting even when its also funny. i guess its because, as much as i'd like to pretend otherwise, that girl was/is me. now that's some deep shit dude.

hairy underpants

2005-01-10T22:45:00.000-05:00

no, that is not a sexually suggestive title. it is the name of a haiku penned by my friend francis "o'poole". a few years back when he and eli and i were on our way from chicago to new york to celebrate the new year. the ride was long and quite snowy and the two boys were whining the whole time about the necessity of turning back before we ran off the road and got killed. however, my sheer willpower and annoying way of pouting when i want to do something eventually won them over and we made it to a surreal and peaceful snow-covered new york city about 15 (or 16, or 17)hours later.

on the way to n.y.c. - eli and frank

the ride there may have been not so fun, but we made the best of it and frank entertained us by writing some trip-inspired haikus that i would like to share with you now:

Haiku #1
Holy Toledo
I hope I see some Quakers
Before the snow falls

Haiku #2
Hairy Underpants
Warm on a cold winter day
Hairy underpants

Haiku #3
Out of the city
Onto the turnpike of time
Kaleidescope time

Haiku #4
Flying buttresses
Wanting to fly but standing
Hairy underpants

i think we can all agree that frank is quite talented. thanks frank.
(good times, good times)

testing...

2005-01-07T21:18:00.000-05:00

so, if you made it through that last entry i would like to congratulate you for your stamina. that was the marathon of blog entries and yet you trained, you fought for it, and you made it through. so congratulations. even i got bored by the end of that one. you are a truly dedicated blog reader my friend. perhaps you (and i) should get a life. no, no. i didn't mean that. i need you. don't leave me. i take it back. i'll change, i swear. from now on, none of my entries will be more than five paragraphs. you'll see. i'm different now.

xoxo,
jenna

hipster cat fight

2005-01-07T19:04:00.000-05:00

the following is a lengthy and true (although somewhat drunkenly remembered) account of the almost-fight i got into last night at the go bar. seriously, i'm not kidding. the go bar. not classic city saloon. the go bar. you know the one (if you live in athens you do anyway). while a fight at the go bar seems ludicrous enough, the fact that i was the one that almost got in a fight makes it even more ridiculous.

so, obviously, i went to the go bar last night. i went with a couple of friends after stopping by boneshakers for a quick shake or two. as we were walking in we passed by a girl standing by herself outside of the bar. we said hello although none of us knew her. just to be polite, you know. it seems rude to me to pass within a foot of someone who is looking at you and not to acknowledge them. as i later found out, that is because of my poor, stereotypical southern upbringing. little did my two nemeses from last night realize that along with politeness, a true southern upbringing also equips one with sass. and by sass i mean a "don't fuck with me- i'm polite because i want to be not because i have to be and i will kick your ass if you force me to" attitude.

after passing by nemesis #1, who shall henceforth be called by the name "bottle-thrower" and approaching the door to go in we were all startled by the sound of an exploding beer bottle right next to our feet. for some strange reason bottle-thrower (now you hopefully understand the significance of her given name) had thrown her beer right at us. ok. so we went inside.

one delayed reaction later, i was like "did that girl just throw her beer at us?"
and my friends were like "yes."
and i was like "aw, hell no she didn't. what the fuck is wrong with her?"
and they were all like "i don't know, let's get a drink."

and i was like, by that time, already out the door and confronting bottle-thrower.

at this point i wasn't really mad. i was just curious as to why this girl that none of us had ever seen before had thrown a beer at us. so i asked her. she looked slightly contrite and replied that she had thrown the beer because she was moving to l.a. tomorrow and thought what the hell, it would be funny. i told her that i thought that was very weird. why would throwing a bottle and potentially injuring someone seem like a funny thing to do? she wasn't sure but stuck by her story. she seemed pretty nice but that is probably only because i was slightly intoxicated and not really the best judge of character under the circumstances. i said ok, whatever and turned to go back inside when suddenly she said with a smirk, besides, if i had wanted to hurt you i would have aimed for your head. that's when i saw the malicious part of her nature that had prompted her to chuck a glass bottle at us in the first place. i also saw something else. this girl really had wanted to throw the bottle at our heads, but had stopped herself, not because she felt bad about it, but because she was afraid to do it. she was, in fact, just a cowardly bitch. i went inside and promptly forgot about her.

until i came face to face with nemesis #2, who i shall dub "jerry-springer-guest-wannabe". she got in my face and sneered that my boyfriend was telling on her friend. ok, first of all my boyfriend lives in virginia so her claim was pretty unlikely and second of all, her friend threw a fucking bottle at us! am i really supposed to feel bad that my friend chose to inform the bartender of this? clearly my two nemeses had already had a bit much to drink and should probably get their annoying little asses home. then jerry-springer-guest-wannabe turns in a huff and goes to sing her terrible rendition of some indie-rock song, as it was indie-rock karaoke night after all (oh-my-god, does life get any more hipster than indie-rock karaoke?).

*intermission*

(snacks available in the concession area)

i had had enough by this point so i headed to the bathroom to take a quick sip from my flask. when i came out feeling refreshed my friend c was clearly ready to go as was i. i mean, besides me and c and j and bt and jsgw there were only about five other people there. lame. so c and i head out only to run into our friend j in a heated conversation with bt and jsgw. we came in in the middle, but here is what i gathered: bt had thrown the bottle not at all of us but specifically at j because he was too friendly for her taste. it made her angry and reminded her of why she was moving back to l.a. the reason? because she came to athens to get away from pretentious hipster snobs and was met with the exact people she was trying to escape when she arrived in our lovely town. apparently, in her mind, j seemed too incorrigibly hipster and deserved having a bottle thrown at him especially because he "pretended" to be friendly in that annoying southern way. that's when it came out that j isn't even from the south at all. he's from new york or something. well, that threw bt for a loop, but jsgw kindly explained to her that many transplanted hipsters go through a "southern phase" where they try to become more genteel or some shit.

i think that's when i actually got mad. or maybe it was when jsgw started pointing at each of us in turn and chanting "hipster" in a really grating way. i mean, i'm not going to either claim or deny hipster status. i'm sure that is up to each individual i meet to judge if they choose to care about something so superficial and stupid, but i am certainly not going to stand there and be made fun of by some dumb girl who is about as stereotypically hipster as you could hope to find. and seriously, what were they doing at the go bar of all places if they hated hipsters so much? at indie-rock karaoke night? please, even flicker and manhattan, two townie hipster meccas, have got nothing on the go bar. so basically the two chicks are total hypocrites. they are easily the most judgmental, snobby, pretentious hipsters i have yet to meet but they choose to ignore this fact. it's sad really, because it means that they hate themselves more than they hate anyone else (and they really seem to have lots of hatred to go around) since they are the epitome of what they claim to detest.

so i got mad and said something along the lines of "shut the fuck up you dumb bitch. take a look in the goddamn mirror if you want to make fun of hipsters because you're making fun of yourself, too you fucking pretentious hipster."

i think she started yelling something but c was like, ok time to go so we left and got in the car.

but it wasn't over yet. bt ran up to the car and actually said "where are you going? take me with you. jsgw is mad at me because i started all of this and i don't want to go with her. i'm sorry, don't be mad." looking back, i see this for the cowardly cop out that it is. bt actually turned on her friend when push came to shove. sadly, that poor girl cannot even claim loyalty as a virtue. at the time, however, i thought that she really seemed sorry and was maybe an ok person after all and that her evil friend was the one causing all of the problems. i think i had temporarily forgotten who actually threw the bottle at us.

inevitably, jsgw came over to the car to get bt. i don't remember how we started arguing again, but i think j and jsgw were going at it verbally when i chimed in with a "shut up, you're just a bitch and your friend is nicer than you." for some reason the fact that i thought bt was nicer than her made her furious. she claimed that she had been trying to take up for us but i must have missed that part because all i remember is her either making fun of me or getting in my face or yelling. in any case, she got so mad that it was actually comical and maybe my sadistic side came out a little bit too because i seem to remember noticing how mad it made her and deciding to repeat it a few more times for effect. "your friend is nicer than you are. your friend is nicer than you are. etc."

now, i have a very limited experience with physical violence, most of it learned from defending myself against my sister when we were kids so, although this may come as a surprise, i was rather shocked when jsgw reached into the car and backhanded me across the face. my first reaction was to jump out of the car and beat the shit out of her. fortunately (or unfortunately depending upon your point of view) i couldn't get the door open so i had to resort to yelling some more obscenities at her from inside the car. things such as: "what do you think this is, the jerry springer show?" and "do you really expect me to get in a fight with you right here in the parking lot? that is so trashy." to which she responded, "call me trashy then. let's go!" to which i responded by calling her white trash followed by a few unsavory words. truth be told, the door wasn't really what stopped me from paying her back the backhand plus some, it was the ridiculous image of the two of us slapping at one another and pulling each other's hair and rolling around in the parking lot that stilled my hand. now, maybe that image sounds arousing to some of you male readers but, trust me, your imagination has seriously misled you. the reality of it would have been nothing but pure silliness. so we drove away with me laughing at the stupidity of the situation.

my last image of my two nemeses as we left was of bt cowering on the sidewalk because she was afraid we would run over her and of jsgw giving me the evil eye as i laughed in her face. of the two of them i think i prefer jsgw. she, at least, showed some loyalty to her friend and some spunk. it's just too bad that she's so damn angry with life. fucking hipster.

two is not better than one

2005-01-03T19:52:00.000-05:00

if i really wanted to grow up i would certainly have made some sort of real effort by now. not these indecisive half-attempts that have characterized the past six years of my life. the problem is that i want two things. maybe that doesn't sound so bad. after all, two is a relatively low number. i've always been a fan of even numbers. of pairs. so two is my number. unfortunately it doesn't work in this situation because what i want two of doesn't come in pairs. i want two lives and that just can't happen, can it?

my one life would be responsible and predictable and comfortable. i would have a satisfying career, a house, i'd probably get married and maybe have a child or two. i wouldn't be rich but i wouldn't have to eat only bananas and beans for a month either. i couldn't devote too much time to artistic endeavors, but i could certainly have a hobby. i never thought i would actually want such a traditional life but i do, in a way. i'm worn out and tired of wanting some unnamed thing and not knowing what my next move will be until i'm already halfway through it.

then again, i've got this image of another life in the back of my head. one that's spontaneous and artistic and wild and passionate. one where i say screw grad school and careers and head out for the great unknown. screw houses and steady jobs and car notes and marriage and just let me be without any of those bonds. just let me enjoy life. if i've only got the one it seems silly to be bored by it. but that life offers no hope of ever relaxing. of ever being content. it offers allure and excitement but if i never know what i'm looking for then it also offers no hope of ever being satisfied.

so i got back and forth. i want one thing and then the other. the constant warring in my head keeps me from committing to anything at all and so i stagnate until a choice if forced upon me by something outside of my control. i'm letting life happen to me and i know that this is not the right way to be. it is not the way i want to be but it is the way i am.

so i'm writing it out here so i can't change my mind. i have finally (drumroll) made a decision. i'm staying in athens for a few more years to go to graduate school. i may be still be inwardly fighting it, this narrowing down of my options, but i will let that other life go for now and try working towards a real goal. of course, i can't say whether the outcome of these next few years will lead me into career-mode or flight-mode but i'm at least buying myself a little time (and hopefully a little maturity) in the process.

(ok, now that i wrote that i'm feeling sick and i want to delete that last paragraph but i'm not going to. well, i might. ok, no. it stays. for now. but really, i'm staying in athens? fuck. ok. i guess i'm staying. but i want to go to spain or ireland instead. no, i said athens so athens it is. athens greece? sounds cool. i could lay on the beach all day and write bad poetry or something. no, not athens greece. athens georgia. right. well, i could do some experiments and get a graduate degree. that sounds...fun? no, i mean- that sounds like the responsible thing to do. yes, exactly.)

the art of manipulation

2004-12-22T16:00:00.000-05:00

my mother- my mother is a complex woman as i have come to suspect most women are. she is both the strongest and most helpless woman i know. she has been the breadwinner, the ruler of the household, and the one to count on for as long as i can remember. she is also the most emotional and irrational person i have ever had to deal with. that is my mother. the rock of our family that cannot so much as pump her own gasoline. well, will not pump her own gasoline anyway.

my mother has perfected the art of manipulation. she perfected it long before i was born. she has always been able to get my dad to do anything she wants even though he may be grumbling the entire time. other people too, but especially men. i remember being a little girl and going to my mother whenever i wanted something. not that she would actually do it for me, but she would go to my dad and get him to do it. and he did every time. at some point she began to train us girls in the sacred art of feminine manipulation. "feminine wiles" as my boyfriend refers to it now.

she began to make us go to our dad first and try to get him to do whatever it was that we wanted. it never worked. eventually we would have to go back to her as always and get her to talk my dad into it. she, of course, never failed.

at some point i gave up in my ability to manipulate. i just could not, for all of my mother's efforts, get others to do what i wanted. and then, later on in my teen years, i began to get angry at my mom for not doing things for herself and at my dad for not standing up to her. i didn't respect or understand the necessity of this interaction in their relationship. also, i failed miserably in my many attempts to manipulate and i've always hated everything that i'm not good at. sports for instance.

my disdain made me believe that i had escaped the fate of so many women. all of those women that flutter their eyelashes just so, pitch their voices into a sweeter cadence, act helpless and weak. as a feminist that disgusted me anyway and i wanted nothing to do with it.

but a woman cannot really hope to escape her fate or her childhood training. my feminine wiles have somehow snuck their way into my interactions and manage to manifest themselves without my conscious awareness. just ask my boyfriend. but now, instead of denying my heritage i go with it. i have no choice really. i was born and raised for this it seems. i have even been told that somehow, i also have a southern accent whenever i am asking ever so sweetly for a favor. now, i don't normally have a southern accent but my mother does. i think, if i were to tell her, she would be so proud.

now you know why i called it "nonsense"

2004-12-17T20:40:00.000-05:00

i was on the phone with eli the other night. i told him that i thought i might be the kind of person that will never be happy. he agreed with me. i wanted to be surprised but really i wasn't.
we got off of the phone and i thought about it some more.

a few months ago i had a conversation with a friend and we agreed that people never really change. at first i tried to argue against the idea but i knew i was wrong.
i thought about that some more, too.

and here i am now.
still thinking.

family pee stories- part two

2004-12-15T18:23:00.000-05:00

how i almost made my sister pee in her pants

picture, if you will, me at sixteen years of age. i was not only a late bloomer; i was also a slow bloomer. meaning that my "awkward phase" had already lasted for over a quarter of my life and was showing no signs of letting up in the near future. maybe it had something to do with my coinciding "braces phase" that lasted just as long, but i had, by the age of sixteen, cultivated an attitude that i, and only i, considered mysterious and interesting. the attitude i'm referring to involved talking very little and smiling even less in the hopes that my graceless braces would be overlooked in light of the intrigue i cultivated around me wherever i went. it also involved sitting down a lot to mask my gangly and ever-growing limbs and staring off into space so others could imagine the many fascinating thoughts running through my head at all times. needless to say, all of that staring off into space and not talking led to a rather slow social agenda and so at some point i no longer had to pretend to spend most of my time daydreaming.

not that i was an airhead or even antisocial. i was just, at any given moment, somewhere far away in jenna-land where everything was always exciting and suburban life was not part of my experience.

now that i have set the stage- picture, if you will, my sister dropping me off to pick up something at the drugstore after school one day. she stopped the car in the emergency fire lane while i ran inside to get whatever it is teenage girls get at the drugstore. the new sassy magazine perhaps? hot off the press. anyway i bought my magazine or lip-gloss or wax for my braces or whatever it was and wandered back out to the car that was supposed to be parked in the fire lane right outside of the entrance exactly where it was when i went in. i was, as usual, lost in my own thoughts about how much roswell sucks and how cool my life was going to be once i got away and everyone discovered how amazing and interesting i really was beneath my boring suburban facade.

i went up to the car that was parked in the exact same spot, opened the door and got in. that was when things got a little weird. i swear to you, time slowed down. as i shut the door of the car, disturbing details began to seep into my consciousness. for one thing, my sister was driving a two-door thunderbird (can i get a "hell yeah!"?) and to properly shut such heavy doors you have to really slam them. so i got in the car and slammed the door in one unthinking motion, still lost in my teenage angst. oddly, the door was much lighter than usual and it really made some noise when i shut it. quite unusual. looking at the door wait a minute, why is there an ugly green umbrella in the side pocket of the door? i don't own an ugly green umbrella. scanning the dashboard in front of me why is the dashboard maroon? i thought it was grey. looking farther to my left why is there a cross hanging from the rearview mirror? my sister isn't religious. looking at my sister why is my sister a middle-aged, matronly african american woman looking at me like i have completely lost my mind!? oh shit.

yes, that's right. wrong car. my eyes got approximately as wide as the woman's eyes i now confronted. my mouth dropped open in solidarity with her own extreme surprise and confusion. i mumbled some incoherent apology and got out fast. the whole incident may have lasted five seconds, but it felt more like well, at least thirty seconds. maybe forty.

here's what happened- while i was inside the store my sister had pulled the car ahead about twenty feet and this poor, unsuspecting woman had taken her previous spot and i had gotten in her car and shut the door. i have no idea what she must have thought. at least i wasn't very intimidating. all gawky, brace-faced 100 pounds of me. she could have totally taken me and we both knew it.

by the time i high-tailed it to the thunderbird i had decided never to tell another soul about this mortifying incident. unfortunately my dear sister had other plans. she had seen the whole thing and was laughing so hard when i got back to the correct car that she was crying and couldn't see to make the quick getaway that i had hoped for. we sat there for ages while she laughed and cried and threw in a few heartfelt snorts here and there but she did not lose control of her bladder. damn her. she was close. i think she even said "i'm gonna pee in my pants" a few times but to no avail. if she had things may have turned out very differently. this story would not be fondly recounted at my expense whenever she gets the opportunity because she would have to pay the price of retribution. as it is i have no retribution for this story. well, actually, i do, but most of the stories concerning her exploits are x-rated or at least r-rated and i certainly can't tell them in front of my parents and grandmother... or can i?

family pee stories- part one

2004-12-05T18:40:00.000-05:00

how i made my grandmother pee in her pants:

when i was about five i went on a trip with my family to the mountains to see some "indian mounds" as they were (and maybe still are?) referred to. it is possibly at this point in my life that my fascination with all things native american began. that i can't remember, but i do remember this trip vividly for other reasons as you shall see.

at the age of five i was a very willful and spirited child. (actually, according to my parents i was very willful and spirited from the moment of my birth which i think is their way of implying that i was basically a holy terror from infancy on. hard to imagine, i know. my sister, on the other hand, was the golden child before she was infected by that demon known as "puberty". always right at my mom's heels. very demure and well behaved. my how things have changed.) so, while my parents and grandmother strolled slowly along absorbing the history of the place with my sister at their side, i was on a fast track to the end of that endless serpentine mound. i couldn't see it, but i knew it had to be there and i was going to get there first and win, you know? i took off running and could hear my grandmother yelling at me. my mom, too. they were convinced that i was going to fall and roll off the edge of the mound. i ignored them as usual. i had confidence both in my ability to stay upright while running at full speed and in their ability to be overprotective. so i kept running and, wouldn't you know it, fell and rolled right down the very steep side of that indian mound.

the next thing i remember is being at the very bottom and looking up and seeing my dad peering down at me from what seemed like a million feet away. he was telling me that i had to climb back up because the sides were too steep for him to come down and get me. i thought he looked appropriately worried about my predicament.

by this time i was no longer feeling so confident about my athletic abilities and thought there was no way in hell that i could climb back up. i think i really though "there is no way in hell" because i cursed like a sailor when i was a kid. even as i thought this it was apparent to me that i really had no choice but to attempt the climb, so i bucked up and grabbed onto the ivy growing up the side of the burial mound. at heart i was a survivor.

i made several failed attempts and kept ending up unceremoniously back at the bottom. on my bottom. each time i grabbed back onto that damn ivy and tried it again. i think i was pretty close to tears by this point, but just when all seemed hopeless and i though my family would abandon me to the wilderness, i made one last desperate grab for my dad's outstretched hand and felt myself hauled up and deposited back on the top.

the reaction i expected (my mother and grandmother in tears, swooping down to comfort me and make me feel better) was certainly not what greeted me upon my return to the beaten path. my mother was trying to look stern and worried at the same time but was failing miserably because she was too preoccupied with trying not to laugh. my dear, sweet grandmother, on the other hand, was not even attempting such pretenses. she was laughing so hard that she was on the ground, had tears streaming down her face, and, get this, had peed in her pants.

she tried to stop and to apologize and act like she was all worried and shit but i knew better. i had seen the truth and it was not pretty. it involved my family laughing at my expense and my grandmother wetting her pants. i mean, seriously. she was way older than me and even i never wet my pants. my pride was injured and my dignity was offended (yes, even at five i could be pretentious). i vowed to remember this day always and, as you can see, i did.

the threat of this story comes in handy at family gatherings when my grandmother likes to tell the same embarrassing stories about me over and over. and over. like the ones where she compares me to my mysterious great uncle richard that i never had the pleasure of meeting. he was known as the "peculiar one" and i am, according to her, "just like him". she knows that she can't take this type of storytelling too far however or i might just smile and say "remember that time you..." and she would have to start telling the other stories that i like better. the ones where i was a prodigy child and everything i did was golden.

don't let the familial stance fool you. these people laughed at me. and look at me- i'm so small and innocent.

freak out!

2004-12-01T22:43:00.000-05:00

it's been a while, has it not? some of you may be wondering, "where the hell has jenna been? she's gotten me all used to her charming, witty, etc., etc. posts on her blog and now she's left me high and dry. what a bitch."
well maybe not, but i like to at least pretend that someone, somewhere might be thinking that. actually, i'm pretty sure that a few someones might be thinking that last part anyway. even if they don't read my blog.
so here's the deal. i'm freaking out. completely freaking out right now so you'll have to forgive the sporadic nature of my entries for the next few weeks. i'm trying to hold onto my sanity at the moment and that is taking up quite a bit more of my time than it usually does.

why?

(perhaps you've already begun to notice my fondness for lists which i never realized until i read my own blog. funny that. so here's another list for you.)

a list of the reasons jenna is currently freaking out and wishing she had some valium and that if she did that she would not be afraid to take it because she is weird like that:

1) i am currently in the process of applying to graduate school. by "currently in the process of" i of course mean "currently freaking out about". here is why- the word "applying" as it is used in conjunction with programs of graduate level education is ridiculously misleading in its simplicity. it does not mean to simply fill out some little form and send it in as i had hoped. oh no. it is quite a process that many people spend months, perhaps a couple of years looking into, making contacts, convincing complete strangers that happen to be experts in their field that you aren't an idiot in spite of limited experience and some dubious grades from your freshman year when studying and even going to class was unheard of that they would indeed love to take you on as a student in their lab and invest in your education, bugging professors that you hope remember you to write recommendation letters, actually applying. luckily i have given myself a full two weeks in which to do all of this. to apply myself to the task of applying. as if that weren't enough let me relate what else i must do in these two wonderful weeks that lie ahead.

2)some of these stupid schools aren't satisfied with just the general version of the gre. nope. they want the biology subject test also. another standardized means of judgment i suppose. didn't seem too awful until i talked to my friends that studied for six months for the damn thing and still failed. six months!? who thinks that far ahead anyway? luckily i have those same fabulous two weeks to learn about biochemistry, microbiology, genetics, plant physiology, animal physiology, ecology, evolution, and some other biology related crap that i can't even remember the names for because i haven't studied yet!!

3)um, i think i might happen to have a final that same week but i can't say for sure when because i haven't been to class in recent memory. actually, i know i have a final but i have chosen to ignore it for now.

(i bet you're hoping this whine-fest is going to end soon aren't you? not such luck buddy. after all, i'm not forcing you to read further. stop now before you realize how pathetic i have allowed my life to become. now you're interest has been renewed hasn't it you sick fuck? ok then.)

4)i have to move out of my apartment sometime this month because my vampirous car has finally sucked my finances completely dry despite the fact that it still needs a new starter, a transmission flush, and a couple of new door handles. since i don't have anything holding me to athens at the moment i thought this might be a grand opportunity to go somewhere new and improved for a while. of course, i have no idea where to go and even if i did i have no money and a broken car to (not) take me there. hmm. life's looking good. do you know anyone who needs a place to live or wants to buy a fabulous '91 buick skylark or a money-pit '88 jetta?

ah, venting feels good. good for me. maybe bad for you? now you know more about my life than you had ever hoped or feared. at least now you can see why i am a basket case and not posting much online. busy, busy, busy. to make you feel better, i will tell you about the bright side of this situation. on the bright side, once this month is over things will seem way better than they actually are because i won't have quite so much to freak out about. i should know where i'm going to school, where i'll be living for the next six months and, after that, the next five years. once i sell one car, i should be able to fix the other piece of crap and hopefully buy some groceries and maybe some beer. all of my shit will be in storage so i will be free. free! for the next few months anyway. san fran? new mexico? who knows which way the wind will take me. don't miss me too much athens. i may be back come august.

(ok, it's time for me to sign off until next time. i've got a 40 of icehouse and 1000 pages of biology to get through before i declare this evening to be over.)

p.s. just so you don't feel too bad for me, i spent my thanksgiving break in new york. here are some photos from the trip for you to enjoy. don't worry, be happy.
p. diddly!
somewheres in nyc
aw(e), ain't it purty?

tiny elvis says: "look at that van boys. that van is huuge!"

spying on others at the moma. sans flash of course

kgb intrigue

self (satisfied) portrait

"stop taking my fucking picture"

heading out of the city on sunday...

binge drinking: still cool in your late twenties?

2004-11-21T21:24:00.000-05:00

the following are just a few poignant examples of why you will no longer find me a)drinking before 10 (that's pm), b) allowing myself more than four drinks when i go out (there seems to be a line that i cross after four where i forget what the word moderation means and why it applies to the consumption of alcoholic beverages) and c) shots are a definite no no (especially tequila. especially well tequila).

1. i get really talkative and annoying when i am drunk. it's very unseemly for a woman my age. i try to make up for it by alternating being really talkative and annoying with being belligerent and mean. that way people never know what to expect and i seem more interesting.

2. i'm pretty sure i got thrown out of the forty watt last night. not for being too drunk exactly, but my drunkenness was a direct cause of the incident. here's what happened: my friend and i were just scoping out the show so we left our id's at the front door planning to go in and come right back out to tell our friends if we should all go. somehow a beer got handed to me on the way in, i saw a few friends and forgot that i hadn't paid and wasn't supposed to be there. seriously. i got caught with a beer in my hand by the angry door guy and he dragged me out by the collar and threw me on the ground. then he spit on me and told me never to come back. ok, not really, but he did think i was trying to scam my way in for a free show which is just as bad. i mean that is so, you know, uncool. of course i was then too embarrassed to go back in even though, by that point, we wanted to see the show.

3. i am having trouble thinking and writing anything that makes sense. right this very moment. a good 16 hours after my last drink was drunk. that is sad. if this entry happens to be especially not funny and/or terrible just know it is merely a reflection of how i feel. i feel like a very bad hangover. is that possible?.

4. i woke up this morning and hit myself on the forehead (which did nothing to ease my headache and was a very dumb thing to do) because i could remember how annoying i was last night. there are two possible remedies for this embarrassed morning after scenario. i could either make sure that i drink so much next time that i don't remember anything or i can do the responsible thing and drink less. the odds that i will embarrass myself while sober are still good, but i will at least have a fighting chance to maintain my composure.

5. i like to whisper (yell) stories about people to my friends and stare right at the person i am talking about while doing so. they, of course, know instantly that i am talking about them and hate me. i, on the other hand, am secure in the knowledge that i am not being completely obvious and keep right on blabbing while they shoot me eat-shit-and-die-you-gossipy-bitch looks that i fail to notice.

6. did i mention that i get very annoying when i'm drunk? right.

7. and finally...drinking too much is sinful and god condemns sinners. ha, ha. just kidding.

now i'm sure you're wondering, is jenna really going to stick to her rules as listed in a, b, and c? what, are you asking me? how the hell should i know?
ok, i think i can safely answer that question now. the answer is a resounding NO!

back in my day

2004-11-18T01:48:00.000-05:00

what is up with athens, ga? supposed home of more pretentious townie music junkies than any other college town in the nation, but i no longer have faith in that statistic. music fans my ass. i am feeling old and out of touch which, in turn, makes me feel bitter. and old.

just the other week john cale played here. you know, the john cale. guess what? the show didn't sell out. not even close as far as i could tell. now this week, the killers are playing and it sold out well before show time. like a week before. not that i don't like the killers. "somebody told me that you have a boyfriend..." and all that. fun stuff (although it gets stuck in my head and refuses to leave until i force it out with the other song that gets repeatedly stuck in my head. that would be "static on the radio" by jim white. the two are on rotation in my brain). my point is just that, while the killers are fun, they are certainly not on par with john cale as far as innovation and staying power go. i bet no one will even know who they are in a few years. the strokes who?

of course, what it really comes down to is this- most of the music fans in athens may just be "fans" because it's cool. they might not even, heaven forbid, really give a shit about the music at all. it's more about the scene. if you've ever been to a show here then you know what i'm talking about. there is so much socializing that you're lucky if you can even hear the music, much less appreciate it. a symptom or a cause? well, none of this is new to anyone living here and i'm certainly not trying to imply that there aren't any true music fans in athens. far from it. so i'll stop being pretentious(!) and get to my point.

my point is that i feel old. soon i'm going to start conversations with "back in my day".

in fact, i think i'll give it a go. here. right now. ok, back in my day i think things were unfortunately pretty much the same as they are now. back in my day we were obnoxious and loud and disrespectful to the musicians that we paid good money to see. back in my day we drank so much that we completely forgot every moment of the concert we had been waiting months, maybe even years, to go to. back in my day people were pretty much pretentious posers.

hell yeah, i guess i'm not that old after all! my day is still running strong. at least here in athens. aka "never-never land". here's to being an adolescent forever...

back in my day- drunk in 1995

very, very recently. some things stay the same.

p.s. speaking of jim white, my new test of friendship worthiness is this: what do you think of the song "if jesus drove a motorhome"? yes, i will judge you based on your answer. that is the point of a test after all.

ring of fire

2004-11-11T01:01:00.000-05:00

tonight i was walking through campus. everything was quiet and peaceful and a little bit sinister. just me and the trees and the empty brick buildings. i liked it. then through the trees i heard a man downtown singing "ring of fire" by johnny cash. i could hear his voice but not his guitar. an accidental acappella version created by the acoustics of the trees and the quiet night. the singing was oddly amplified and it overpowered everything else in the almost-silence of nighttime north campus. it was the only thing i heard as i walked. i kept walking and the song kept fading behind me until i could no longer hear the man singing it and i was left alone in my silence.

later on i went to fox's to relieve some stress with a few friends and a few beers. at some point a man sang his own rather grating rendition of "ring of fire". i was reminded of my experience from earlier in the evening and wondered if the song had some significance for me this night. i decided that it did not and i went home.

defeatist optimism

2004-11-05T01:56:00.000-05:00

i can't. i can't even think about it right now. so it looks as though i'll write about it instead. about how bitterly disappointed i am to live in a country that is so egotistical, so globally isolated, so closed-minded, so stupid as to have reelected bush as president. this election, on top of everything else, has made me feel so utterly hopeless. like i want to give in and either move away to a saner, more logical country that doesn't believe in and incorporate every thought and skewed ideal spoon fed to them by the media like a bunch of mindless fools or maybe i'll just forget it all and stay in bed for a long, long time.

its strange to live your entire life feeling proud to be american. proud of your country and what it stands for. then to one day finally grow up. to think for yourself and see that what you'd always believed in is nothing more than a bunch of horseshit. horseshit that the majority of americans seem to prefer to wallow in rather than thinking beyond what they can hear and touch and see in their limited experience. so here we are, caught in our own self-made, self-righteous bubble of ignorance and i'm stuck outside. happy to be out but feeling lost just the same. feeling like i'm out of touch with the pulse of my country and not knowing how or when it happened. realizing that i've lived in my own self-created bubble of another sort. and now i want to just give up and leave this nation to progress (or maybe its regress) towards the bleak future it seems to want.

then again, even though i'm feeling alone and hopeless, it turns out that almost one half of this country is feeling exactly the same way. i've gotten e-mails form moveon.org, greenpeace, and even john kerry himself in the past couple of days. form letters sent out to thousands, maybe millions of people. nothing meant especially for me. even so, a specific part of the greenpeace letter really got to the heart of how i feel right now and knowing that it was just a mass e-mail didn't take away from its power to bring me back from that hopelessness. in fact, it was that characteristic alone that made me feel better. to feel like maybe i'm not as out of touch with reality as i thought. if that form letter seemed to speak out to the core of my disillusionment so precisely it meant that that disillusionment is something i share with the millions of others who received the same e-mail. glory be and hallelujah! check it out, i'm not alone in my misery after all. i've got half the country right there with me. what a beautiful thing. not that i want you all to feel as miserable as i do, but its just the place we're all starting from, not necessarily where we'll end up.

"When you listen to President Bush and feel disenfranchised, when you feel like your government doesn't represent you, when you feel like it is no longer your country, savor that feeling. Before Gandhi, King, Lewis, Parks, Muir and Thoreau went on to do great things, they all felt that way. They felt it, it made them angry, and then it motivated them. Now it's our turn. Feel pissed off. Then together we will turn it into something...We all need to spend some time being pissed off. Feeling shock. Mourning. Then we have to act. Our cause is just. We can not afford to be defeated, or to be defeatist."
John Passacantando,Executive Director, Greenpeace

for some added perspective on the division of this country:
http://www.boingboing.net/images/Purple-USA.jpg

yes sir

2004-11-02T02:54:00.000-05:00

so here i am, transferring my myspace blog to the world of real blogs. i'm new at this so wish me luck. all of my archives were originally on myspace but i will try to spruce them up a little for you my dear readers. myspace, if you are one of the uninitiated, is very silly, very addictive, and a fabulous way to waste time and gawk at wierd people from a safe cyber-distance. if you feel intrigued and inclined to join, just don't blame me- as you can see, i am moving on. or maybe just adding to my internet addictions.

car repairs and reconciliation

2004-10-30T01:40:00.000-04:00

me and my jetta. together again. (in the background is my soon-to-be former home)

what follows is a car story of horror and possible eviction. read on. try not to enjoy it too much.

"fixing" your 1988 volkswagon jetta at athens automotive: 225$

replacing the catalytic converter on said car: 280$

fixing what was originally wrong with the car and replacing the parts of the engine that got burned up by the original "repair job": 280$

having a piece of shit car that you love for some stupid reason and can now drive again (once you pay to get an updated tag for it): no, not priceless. that shit has cost me over 750 dollars already and i still have to climb in from the passenger's side (75$ to fix door handle but, alas, i am finally out of money).

getting evicted from your apartment because you spent all of your money fixing your car: free (unless your landlord decides to sue you)

about me, personally.

2004-10-27T23:19:00.000-04:00

so, i've gotten some nutty requests to make my blog more personal. to let myself open up and expose the dirt in my soul. the passions in my heart. right. if you know me at all, you know that is not very likely to happen. my blog, just as i am, is subtle in its emotional expression. its about me, sure, but you have to read between the lines to reach me. if you can't do that then you're just shit out of luck as my mama used to say.

in any case, since i cannot as yet be satisfyingly forthcoming with my internet friends i looked my name up on googlism.com to see what insights the internet has into my psyche. here are the ones i picked from the long list it supplied. that should give you a start at least.

this is me

"jenna is" (take one):

"jenna is not quite sure how it's all done but jenna is ecstatic jenna is insisting it is her decision alone jenna is feeling sick jenna is crazy about rod but wonders exactly where jenna is jenna is to imagine a television that has lost its reception jenna is torn about her future jenna is a really nice girl and really smart jenna is a slave jenna is more than a woman jenna is a chameleon jenna is all business on the wrestling mat jenna is going to be going on hiatus jenna is a cheerful and sociable girl with a strong independent streak jenna is insane to the point of absurdity jenna is soon displaced jenna is now dead jenna is in love with art jenna is no dumbass jenna is able to see visitors jenna is also befrinded by the novel's smartest character jenna is a wonderful shoesalesperson jenna is still with her rescuer but is searching for a forever home
jenna is waiting
jenna is like that also in real life"

what's the big deal? lake michigan is always full of shit.

2004-10-08T23:19:00.000-04:00

granted, it's a bit unusual for it to get dumped onto the heads of unsuspecting tourists but is that really so out of character for chicago? don't get me wrong, i love chicago but it is the city renowned for the cow with arsenist tendencies, for roads full of gangstas bootlegging when they weren't too busy shooting eachother full of bullets, for the infamously disgusting meat packing industry which served as inspiration for animal farm, and now for dumping shit on its visitors. why not?

seriously though, lake michigan, while it may be beautiful, is a teeming cesspool of human excrement and garbage.

have you ever seen children frolicking among broken bottles, used condoms, half-eaten hamburgers, and the occassional half-buried hypodermic needle? yes folks, that's right. it's just another day at north avenue beach. bring the entire family. and don't forget to tell your kids to shit in the water. it's so much easier than taking bathroom breaks after all.

ok, i may be exaggerating, but only slightly. very slightly.

i actually went swimming in the lake once. it was amazing. it was dusk, the sun was going down and my friends and i had ridden out to the waterfront on our bikes. at the time we were fueled by more than a little alcohol and youthful exuberance. hey let's jump in the water! fully clothed of course. sounds awesome doesn't it? and it was. swimming in the dark with the chicago skyline lit up behind us. it was pretty amazing. until the next day that is.

the next day i was again riding my bike along the shoreline and i noticed all of these little silver things floating in the water. i could see them from the corner of my eye for the entire ride from where i lived a few miles north of downtown until i reached the spot where i had gone swimming the night before. "what the hell were they?" you might be inclined to ask. well, you guessed it. hundreds and hundreds of dead fish. gross.

hi, i'm a dead fish

ok, these are the actual dead fish from that day. not as pretty as the first picture, huh? reality. who needs it. moving on...

unfortunately these fish did not appear to be recently deceased either. they were so dead that even the gulls were leaving them alone. if you are as familiar with the gulls of lake michigan as i am you will realize the significance of their refusal to partake of such an easy meal. shit, even the fish that like to peck out the eyeballs of their dead cousins weren't having any of it. not a single eyeball missing from any one of those hundreds of unfortunate little guys.

the normally voracious residents of lake michigan

now, i never found out what caused the mass extinction of the fish but it was not long after that the entire lake was closed down. i'm not really sure how you close down a lake as large as lake michigan, but the city of chicago did it. or tried to at least. the reason: an accidental overflow from the sewage treatment plant. i no longer remember the exact number of gallons that spewed forth into the lake, but it was an impressively large amount. large enough to close down the lake in the middle of the summer (also known as "lake season" in chicago).

the two incidents may or may not be related but i can tell you this with certainty- i was not one of the many recreation seekers who took to the water three days later when the lake "reopened" to the public. no sir. not me.

the dead guy in my front yard

2004-10-03T23:18:00.000-04:00

fact: there is a legitimate headstone underneath the magnolia tree in my front yard. it appears to be granite and reads as follows-

William Henry Parker
Sgt U.S. Army
Korea
Sept. 21, 1928
July 14, 1995

strange coincidence: my next door neighbor who has lived in his house for only three years just happens to have the name Henry Parker. he claims to know nothing of the grave and appears to be undisturbed by the fact that there is a headstone bearing his name in my yard. i find this odd.

theories as to why there is a headstone in my front yard (put forth by myself and friends with varying degrees of seriousness):

theroy 1) there is an actual dead person who was formerly known as William Henry Parker and served in the u.s. armed forces during the korean war buried in my front yard. under the magnolia tree.
why theory 1 (although my favorite) is unlikely to be true: i seriously doubt that it was legal a mere nine years ago to bury someone in a residential area. too bad.

theory 2) it is not an actual gravesite, but is still the final resting site for Mr. Parker's remains. it is possible that he was cremated and had his ashes scattered underneath his favorite magnolia tree which just happens to be in my front yard. his survivors (i like to imagine a kindly old widow) then had the headstone placed there in fond rememberance.
why theory 2 is unlikely: my house is currently owned by the former owner of big city bread who does not bear the surname Parker. she is also a fairly young woman who most likely lived in the house in 1995 when the ash scattering would have occured. i don't think she would have appreciated this very much.

theory 3) some punk kids that used to live in my house stole the headstone from a graveyard and put it under the tree because they thought it was funny. alcohol and extreme immaturity were likely to be involved in this scenario.
why theory 3 is likely: the headstone is not the only thing underneath the magnolia tree. there is also a broken decorative column, a plaster finial of some sort, and a couple of unfinished, polished slabs of marble. punk kids can be destructive and disrespectful of property. even the property of the dead.
why theory 3 is unlikely: punk kids would be too lazy to steal and carry all of that heavy stone unless it was perhaps part of a fraternity hazing ritual. there is, in fact, a large fraternity house across the street from me but that would still not explain why they put everything under my tree so we will move on.

theory 4) a stonecutter used to live in my house or in its vicinity sometime around 1995. William Henry Parker's widow was dissatisfied by the quality of the headstone she ordered to commemorate the death of her husband and refused to buy it. the stonecutter didn't really know what to do with it so he put it under the magnolia tree with the rest of his gravestone-making refuse. the limbs of the magnolia tree hid everything pretty well.
why theory 4 is both likely and unlikely: it's weird.

a final theory about who Mr. William Henry Parker was and what he did after retiring from the u.s. army: Henry was known to his friends as "Prince Rondaval" (for unknown reasons) and he went on to build that unique complex known as the "Prince Rondaval Apartments" which is located a few hundred feet from my house and the aforementioned magnolia tree. he wished to be buried under his favorite tree, close to the ultimate expression of his artistic and utilitarian vision.

one final word: if Henry (i think i can be on a first name basis with the dead guy in my yard) is actually buried under that tree, i hope that he isn't as disturbed as i am by the male resident of the prince rondaval apartment complex that yells incessantly every friday night. that yell could wake the dead and i'm not sure that is something that either Henry or i would want.

R.I.P. William Henry Parker

under the magnolia there lies a suprise...

words of enlightenment from our esteemed president, george w.

2004-10-02T23:17:00.000-04:00

yeah, i know. you've already seen these. but they're so damn funny. in a horribly non-funny way.

"I am not part of the problem. I am a Republican"

"A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls."

"For NASA, space is still a high priority."

"It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it."

the inspiring george w. ( our soon to be EX-president).

i'm a liar

2004-10-01T23:16:00.000-04:00

all of these years i've been telling people that i'm six feet tall even though i know that i'm not. here's the thing, i forgot that i'm really only 5'11 and 1/2. really. i've been lying to people for so long that i forgot the truth. i was convinced that i'm really six feet tall until i was measured the other day at the doctor's office. and then i remembered.

so now you know, i'm a liar. however, i refuse to take full responsibility for my lapse in character. you see, before i was a liar, when i used to tell people exactly how tall i am, no one ever believed me. i guess i just look that half inch taller. or maybe i'm supposed to round off. you know, like all men do- "yes, i'm 6 feet tall" (meaning really that he is about 5'10" with shoes on. shoes that have very thick soles). shit, does that mean i have to start telling people i'm 6'2"?

then i get the "there's no way you're only (only!?) six feet tall. that's how tall i am and you're taller than me." yeah, that's how tall you are in that little liar's head of yours that's now convinced itself that it the top of it truly does reach that 72 inch mark on the wall. keep dreaming buddy.

but i understand, really i do. remembering the truth just isn't that easy when your head is filled with so many better "truths".

maybe i should start telling people i'm 5'10". that's always seemed like such a nice height. if i say it enough times maybe i really will be 5'10". if i can convince myself then maybe i can convince my jeans and they will miraculously become long enough and i could live happily ever after with my long, legitimately frayed-on-the-bottom jeans. oh, to be so lucky. plus it would be fun to fuck with those guys that like to think they're taller than they are. if i'm only 5'10" that would make them about 5'7". ha. you know boys, i hear artfully placed trucker hats can add a couple of inches. plus thay cover that receding hairline perfectly.

thanks willie!

2004-08-20T23:14:00.000-04:00

it's no secret that i'm not a fan of the current administration in the white house. in fact, i've gone so far as to admit that i am now ashamed of being an american to some sympathetic, yet slightly confused canadians. they wanted to know if my daily life had really changed that much since bush was "elected". i admitted that wasn't the case. it's more subtle than that- the pride i felt in being an american has been strongly challenged (or more truthfully, completely annihilated) in these past few years.

the pro-american bumper stickers and the like really get me going. being patriotic has become something unsavory and REPUBLICAN. yuck. although truthfully, i don't consider myself to be a true democrat, just not a george w. bush right wing, conservative, anti-choice, pre-emptive strike republican.

that's why i'd like to thank willie nelson for reminding me that there is nothing wrong with being patriotic. sounds a little silly doesn't it? but i'll give credit where it's due. patriotism doesn't equate with being a scared, mindless follower of government policy. willie nelson is a truly proud american, in the traditional manner of historic american patriotism- he loves his country but recognizes its issues and speaks out about them when he can. maybe i'm wrong, but i'd bet that he's no george w. fan either.

i saw willie in concert the other day and cringed when a giant american flag unfurled behind him to the cheers of the crowd. then i realized that i'm letting my frustration with one administration color my experience of being a young, politically-minded american. shit, i'm too young to be bitter. i don't need to give up on my country just yet. i can wait until the outcome of the election at least. (that's almost sarcasm.)