I don't understand.

Why does reading my livejournal friends page make me feel like shit? I don't get this feeling. It's always sort of been there though. Maybe its the combined complain-y energy of the livejournal posts getting to me, or the fact that I always wait long periods of time between reading so I have to catch up with a lot and I feel like I'm missing large portions of my friends' lives. At any rate, it's strange and I don't like it.

In other news, today has begun the ridiculously geeky and startingly obsessive They Might Be Giants marathon in which Dan listens to the entire TMBG discography without putting anything else on in the middle. So any time I'm at my computer or in my room, John and John will be on, and it will be glorious. This may take several days. :)

What's the Buzz?

So, after a rather wacky day, night, and subsequent day I find myself sitting in Vikki's room, listening to Jesus Christ Superstar and singing along with Vikki and Stephen, updating my blog on her old clunky laptop (which, I will note with amusement, may bluescreen if you touch or move the pcmcia wireless card). I will now attempt to explain how it is I came to be here.

No, there is too much. I will sum up.

So, last night, after my first full day back at Hampshire, Vikki came over and we decided to watch some Doctor Who episodes that I had missed out on and drink delicious hot cocoa. We watched The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances, which were both fantastic episodes (the first appearance of Captain Jack!). They also turned out to be surprisingly creepy and during my subsequent discussion time with Vikki I kept getting flashes of images of zombie-like children in gas masks and other such unsavory visuals. After a very excited discussion that ranged from queer issues to open source ideals (two subjects that come up a lot with us), I checked my clock to find that it was 4:30 in the morning. I then decided that I might as well wait until sunrise to assuage my fears and allow me to sleep. So we had some adventures in linux consisting of me procuring a really badass music player called ncmpc that uses the Music Player Daemon, which runs from the command line. It was very exciting, and I was somewhat delirious due to lack of sleep.

When the sun finally rose I collapsed into bed and the last thing I remember is worrying that I wouldn't be able to get to sleep. I woke up at around 11:50, threw on some pajama pants and proceeded to tool around with settings on my shiny new music player which then prompted me to start reorganizing my music folders, which was definitely a good thing. Eventually, after lots of random screwing around (changing my background and generally customizing UI options) I drank some Earl Grey to calm down and actually got some work done, which was undoubtedly a good thing.

I also established a daily They Might Be Giants delivery service with Marie, which consists of me sending her one TMBG song per day until she has the entire discography. I figured this was a good way to get her addicted to Giants. For some reason, TMBG, more than any other band I know, while not appealing to all listeners, does seem to form a ridiculously devoted fanbase of rabid, slobbering geek accolytes examples of which include: myself, my dear friend Vikki, and Emily Fogarty. I'm hoping to welcome Marie into the fold sometime soon. I was also very pleased with the daily delivery service idea because it reminds me of something that TMBG would actually do. It seems to be very much in the vein of dial-a-song, which is sadly no longer in operation.

At any rate, after a couple more hours of listening to music, playing WoW, reading A Clash of Kings, and eating various foodstuffs, I realized that I had not yet been outside my room for any extended period of time and this was around 7:30. So I ate some food and made arrangements to escape. I visited with Alice and looked at her costume designs then came to Vikki's room. Then began the silliness with Jesus Christ Superstar and blogging. And that has been my weekend. I'm excited for Kempy visiting tomorrow. I will now leave you with some quotes from peter in relation to his Elder Scrolls experiences today:


"It's a corrupt world where everyone's got a price--and it's usually around nine gold."
"I've been playing Oblivion all day, I don't have time. I got a house and a horse!"

"Magnetotactic bacteria are a class of bacteria discovered in the 1970s...that build miniature magnets inside themselves and use them to determine their orientation relative to the Earth's magnetic field." (Wikipedia)

This world is a strange and beautiful place.

Iron and Wine...and fires, and kitties, and A Game of Thrones, and a comfy couch.

So it is spring break, and the posse is hunkered down in Buttons' house, waiting to go to P-town! We're having a delightful time. There's been lots of lounging around, eating lots and lots of fruit, and shopping like the little domestic family that we are (I asked Cindy if she wanted to touch my melons during our visit to the produce section). We also watched parts of The Patriot on TV and laughed about Lucius Malfoy being in the British Army.

Also, there are cats. I've been bonding with Barnaby, in particular. I think he just really enjoys the couch (where I slept) but I'd like to think it's me. When I woke up in the night, he was tucked in the crook between my arm and my chest, and then when I woke up in the morning he was lounging on my stomach. He's laying by my knees as I type this on Gabe (Lauren's laptop). And now Lauren is making little kissy faces at him. I really miss having cats around.

Today we're going to head into nearby Salem for a while. We dicscovered that the Peabody Essex Museum is, indeed, open, so I'm very excited. Tomorrow we're leaving for Provincetown, where we will be staying for three days. Then back to Hampshire by Friday. Should be good.

That's all I got.

3.1415926535...

I'd just like to wish everyone a very happy pi day! Go celebrate the circle!

On the solving of mysteries and the pondering of the Medieval...

So...I woke up today and read some of the T'ai Chi classics--the poetic history and Taoist philosophy behind the martial art before practicing a bit of my own. I then settled down to a long bout of customizing my computing experience (which is a delightfully free-form process in Fluxboxx: my GUI of choice). I set the background to a picture of the millenium falcon on front of the classic Star Wars titles (in all their stroked yellow glory). I skinned XMMS (audio player) in a nice brushed metal to fit the theme. I then set the font on my terminal emulator (which is partially transparent) to yellow on black to match the text on the background (believe me, it's sexy.) Then I went through a bunch of firefox skins until I foud one that is suitably aesthetically pleasing and vaguely futuristic. Yum. But all of this is beside the point.

So, the really interesting bits of my day starting happening when Cindy IMed me to ask about this girl that she met at the newly formed vegan society meeting, because she had noticed that said girl was on my facebook friend's list. Now...this girl has been on my friends list since last summer when neither of us were actually at hampshire yet and I had not actually seen her anywhere on campus--or so I thought! So, it turns out that said-unnamed-girl who shall now be codenamed Tycho (I've been reading a lot of penny arcade, okay!) was, in point of fact, the same girl that Buttons and I happened to pass by in Saga one day maybe two weeks back and both agreed was really attractive (something indescribably hot about her attire and hair style). At any rate, now knowing the identity of the mysterious facebook friend, Tycho, filled a small whole in my psyche and lifted my spirits considerably. (I love when mysteries come together.)

So...after all the excitement, I decided that I needed lunch. So I get my coat on and go to Saga my mind sort of wandering, thinking a bit about Tycho and the now-no-longer-mysterious mystery, chat it up with Roberta a bit about the ASL lunch (don't ask me why--does anyone really know why Roberta brings things up?) and I head down the small flight of stairs towards the food (vegan sloppy joes today!) and who do I see standing directly in front of me in line but Tycho! Ah, delicious irony. So that is the story about today's interesting little coincidence, which I promptly related to Cindy at the lunch table right after I got my food. I am currently looking forward to vegan cutlet at dinner (this is a good saga day!) and possibly more coincidences.

The second interesting thing of the day came after my math class when I was sitting in central records waiting for a secretary to return from somewhere so I could ask her about paperwork. I was absentmindedly browsing through Smith's course catalog, checking out my options for French, which I intend to continue next semester, when my eyes alight on the Medieval Studies major and all the required courses therein. I read down the list and they all seemed extremely intriguing, particularly the epic poems and mythology. So that got me thinking about my Div II, which is indeed coming up and what I might be studying. I think now it might be something along the lines of: Blacksmthing and the Sword in Medieval Mythology and History. At least, that sounded really cool when I was working it over in my head walking back to my room. We'll see.

Brilliant.

I just finished watching L'Auberge Espagnole for the second time. This time with the lesbian posse. I forgot how much I really enjoyed that movie. There are so many subtle things that are done so well, and they don't really push anything. It's refreshing.

It's also the kind of movie that reminds me of how exciting the future is, of not knowing what is in store. Even where I am in life, my first year of college, it's easy to get into a routine and feel like this is what life will be forever. That you'll graduate, get a job and a house and settle down and live. That little things will change but the grit and gristle, the day to day, the meat of your life will be pretty much as it is now. This movie reminds me how much I have yet to discover, to do, to experience, to be. That though changes seem to come few and far between, they can sometimes be drastic and sudden--and that's beautiful!

It reminds me that there are so many places, cities--countries--that I haven't set foot in yet, haven't lived in yet, haven't gotten to know it's people or its food or its bizarre quirks and customs. It makes me want to go travel, live in a country, meet people, learn new languages the way the native speakers speak them. And it reminds me that I can still do all this. That these are not ridiculous dreams, they're not out of the question. And that makes me happy.

I feel like the subtle relationships between Xavier and the people that he lives with are portrayed really well. I think that in general the movie sums up the process of moving to a new place and meeting all new people, having new hangouts, basically taking on a wholew new life and then trying to reconcile it with your past experiences. And then not knowing where to begin when people ask about it because you are a totally different person now and you could not even try to explain because you would never do it justice. And then smiling inside because it really doesn't matter. All that matters is that you've had experiences that you will never, now, be able to forget.

I love the ending of the movie. I love that he runs out on his first day of work, even if it's irresponsible and childish. I love that he chooses to be a writer even though he knows that he's choosing a future with no prospects, because that you know he'll be so much happier. I love that in the end, he values the beautiful over the practical--that he refuses to bow to mediocrity because it would be easier, because it would pay more.

In short, I love this movie's values.