the three extra-fine pilot v-ball pens that i purchased in green, black, and blue at the beginning of the quarter--not even a month ago now--are already starting to die. either i take a shit-ton of notes (well, i do) or those suckers just leak ink like crazy, because they've gone down to at least 2/3 the amount of ink they started with in the visible part of the body. they're smooth pens, though. much smoother than my usual papermate black ballpoints.

taking notes is going to kill my right hand. i swear, i need a way to level out the workload between hands. my right hand is responsible for writing, mousing, guitar-strumming, and, um... gratification. my left hand takes care of guitar fingering and the usual half of the workload shared between hands. right forearm is fucking buff. left... not so much! right wrist... hurts sometimes. left not so much! you see? trouble. imbalance. very bad things.

i wish i didn't always wake up by 7am. i usually can't get back to sleep. i wish life didn't start in the mornings every day of the week but sunday.

right now, though, i just want to go home and have lunch. 20 minutes to go...

the songs presently stuck in my head--obviously can't listen to them at work, god forbid--go together, and yet they fail to express my present mood in the slightest. i don't know why they're stuck in my head. they're not even bad songs. they're just...there...for no apparent reason.

work is, however, a good excuse to suck down vats of green tea. mm.

ok, so maybe i don't drink *vats* of tea. it's more like 12-16 oz. a shift. but let me tell you, it's enough to require a trip to the restroom afterwards. i just like the word "vats."

i wonder if i can convince anyone to join me for the 4:10 showing of in the bedroom. i do so enjoy seeing movies alone, though.

i have nothing deep to say at this hour of the day. how troubling. i should finally start listening to that gut instinct that plagues me at night with inspiration and write shit down when it comes, instead of pretending to try to sleep when i know the goddamn inspiration will keep me awake. sorry, y'all. a computer lab lit with fluorescent lighting is not conducive to brilliant prose without a lot of work.

stuck in my head: aimee mann - fall of the world's own optimist / radiohead - sulk

wow, hey, hello. i predicted pretty fucking well this morning, i must say: just got back from psych lecture, checked my mail, and, lo and behold, therein sat a small envelope containing my letter of admission to the psych department. i have a major! rock on!

my mom just said she's going to get me some "shrinky-dinks" for valentine's day. my mom is weird.

walking home from class, two guys behind me were discussing a class loudly. i quickly gathered they were comp sci majors. one of them was bragging that he had skipped 142 by getting a 5 on his AP test, as if this made him super-intelligent because he knew how to program in C in high school. then they two of them agreed on C++'s superiority due to the visual "orientating." i swear to fucking god they used the non-word "orientating" in there somewhere, anyway. i just wanted to turn around and say something to them about how engineering majors might want to get their heads out of their asses long enough to learn some fucking language skills, but decided that was far too outside anything i would ever say to a stranger without proper provocation and just fumed silently.

"orientated." jesus fuck. ONE SYLLABLE TOO MANY.

listening: nick drake - harvest breed

oh, test so over! and i maybe didn't completely fuck it up! yay for essay tests and babbling about stuff.

i've had david holmes' "rodney yates" stuck in my head for the past hour. it's sexy. a nice, strolling pace, perfect song to walk to when you're meandering on home on a sunny winter day.

actually, the day is shaping up to be pretty pleasant. i found my massive attack t-shirt that i thought i'd lost, i'm wearing my nifty red jacket (goodwill score!), i skipped my stupid 8:30 lecture (in hopes that i might sleep or study more, which i didn't, really, but i'm sure i can copy greg's notes tomorrow), my test wasn't evil, and it's lovely weather outside. maybe i'll also get mail (!!!!! (sorry, just had to add another parenthetical for the sake of annoyance)) saying i'm admitted to the psych department. that would be rockin'.

i definitely should have gone out with the karate club last night. next time they go for pizza--and it sounds like it's something they do often, having mentioned a "karate tab" at the local round table pizza--i will. even if i have a midterm the next day. because i'm a winner like that. not like i would actually be studying, anyway!

i want to sit at home and watch videos all weekend. that's just what i feel like doing. i think i might, except for work and maybe going to queen anne for the 4:10 cheap showing of in the bedroom. stupid metro only having one cheap show that i can't go to, ever. stupid, stupid.

now i need lunch. maybe i'll come back and write something actually interesting and prose-y later. maybe not. as meesh would say, STAY TUNED!

fuck. an hour later, and i haven't even -started- studying. i am so fucked.

all i've done is make myself a smoothie, listened to music, and irked. goddamn.

listening: kinski - one ear in the sun

my musical education will never be complete. it greatly excites me that, no matter how long i listen to music and how much i seek that which i have not heard, there will always be something new to discover--or old, really. there is much more old, isn't there? i guess it isn't all so well-preserved.

it thrills me to sweat sometimes. i never would have thought so when i was younger and hated anything physical. i have since learned to walk and enjoy it, to dance as an expression of joy and emotion, and to move as a way of finding new limits and breaking them. though i skipped tuesday, i am completely loving my karate class. it's actually a whole fucking lot like the first martial arts class i took; the forms are very much the same as i remember them. when i finished that class, i knew i wanted to take more martial arts, but i thought i wanted to move away from the real fighting aspect of it. the farther away from that i got, the more i wanted it again. i know it's something i'm very bad at, and it's something i should work to improve. it's frustrating because my mind and body don't communicate too well; i can cognitively understand what i am supposed to do and still fail to carry it out, but someday i will get better. i am getting better. and that's good.

at the same time, i know there are places my mind has yet to explore, and those intrigue me. i don't know where i'm going, but i'm going to have fun getting there. or at least see some pretty clouds on the way.

and now, i must go back to "spreading my mind" like peanut butter on wonder bread to further understand and memorize aspects of the american political system so i might pass my midterm tomorrow.

listening: built to spill - cortez the killer (neil young cover; thanks, kevin!)

i wish now to express the inexpressible joy of reading friend bear comics. i cannot even fathom how they manage to write/draw this stuff. it seems so carefully designed to look terrible and make little sense. it is deeply funny. it makes obscure references that i can sometimes get! i love it dearly.

i love library patrons. one guys just came to the desk and whispered, "caniborrowthispencil,i'llbringitbackipromise," referring to the mug full of misfit writing implements. as if we covet each and every writing implement contained therein. these are the pens, pencils, and highlighters left behind by other patrons, not ones we have personally spent money to contribute to the greater well-being of everyone's writing health.

and yet, people who need dry-erase markers and erasers, which *are* purchased by the library, seem to conveniently "forget" to return them to the desk when finished. so often has this happened, in fact, that we no longer lend them out without requesting something valuable as collateral--a shoe. not two, just one. so we can watch them try to run all unevenly if they forget. $50 bills are not an acceptable substitute. neither are husky cards. just...a shoe.

i skipped karate last night. i am a bad karateka. i didn't want to walk in the weather. it was too icky. and now people are going out for pizza after class on thursday, courtesy of our sensei. i am a bad karateka. *prostrates self*

lately i've been feeling as though i don't have nearly enough personal friends. i don't have many friends that i just call to hang out with or whatever. my friends are the ones who are there. maybe i'm just not exploiting existing relationships well enough, but it still feels kind of lame of me. ah well.

i really want to write a letter to my old english teacher. she is so freaking cool. she knows cool stuff, and things, and yeah.

i should stop zoning out/blogging about random crap and study for poli sci now. mike says i should spice up my studies by injecting aliens into the plot, which is appealing, but wrong. ah well.

ok, stopping now.

i have just filed my first income tax returns. isn't that just the most exciting thing ever?

...

when i woke up this morning, i was having a strange dream. not so much the content that was strange, but the people in it. i don't think i've ever recalled dreams with these people in it. i dreamed that i was in some neighborhood--it didn't look like tempe, but it must've been--waiting for ryan, mike, and winnie, because i was down to see them all now that winnie was there. they arrived in an suv, very yuppy in style, color, and quality, with mike and winnie in the back seat and ryan up front. i approached the front passenger door to get in and realized that ryan was sitting in that seat. no one was driving. we all hesitated a moment, then ryan got out of the car and took winnie's seat, and winnie got in the driver's seat. i said something like, "i get to sit next to winnie?! winnie, are you sure you're cool with driving?" she drove around these annoying suburban streets, full of roundabouts and the like, until reaching an intersection surrounded by construction fence. on the other side of the fence, there was a major five-lane road onto which she wanted to turn left, and to the right, the same road became a dirt road leading into some low-rent apartments. there were so many oncoming vehicles that i wondered how winnie was going to make this turn. also, she ketp hesitating, for which i couldn't blame her.

and then the alarm woke me up.

now that my shower has woken -me- up, i must go to deal with reality.

this page desperately needs a redesign. when did i lose my design skills? all lost in the shuffle, slipping through cracks.

sometimes there is this sad desperation in the pit of my stomach, a sensation that is at once unpleasant and empowering, that makes me want to cry. but i never do. i can't just cry on cue. [rhyme unintended.] sometimes i have to wonder where it comes from, why it's there, but more importantly, what i can do about it. cry. they say crying is healthy; it releases toxins and emotions and makes you feel better, as if you have been emptied of this great weight of reality you carry so vainly in your chest. i don't disagree. the obvious solution, yes, is to cry, but i can't.

i dunno. i need sleep.

wow, some sick bastard found my website today with the google search "roy" "gilmore girls" "porn". i can only assume the "roy" term was a typo of rory, in which case... jesus, she's the 17-year-old main character. NO PORN FOR YOU.

on the upside, i got another "fuck Tim Eyman" hit. i love you!

i could probably keep a blog about my referrer log some days. that's just sad.

on another boring note, you should be reading the harem religiously. now with updating!!

one look outside at that mess of sleet and windchill, and i took off my shoes as if to say, "fuck it."

sometimes i look at the things other people have done and think, "i could do that... but they already did." what can i now contribute? how unique could my perspective be? i'm trapped between a false uniqueness and a false consensus effect. i want to create, not recreate. but words are borrowed from elsewhere; at the very least a dictionary... was anything ever truly original, or is it all a slow, gradual process of change and we arbitrarily assign the title 'first' to some and not others, so we may say that, as a society, we have bookmarkers of achievement? i can only hope we're moving forward, and not just 'round and 'round again...

i woke up this morning, and the first word i heard was "suicide." thanks, npr!

now i'm sitting at home, eating caramel corn and listening to 1000 diving robots in the interim between classes.

in zoology, we're studying the eye. this frustrates me immensely because it was so much cooler when we studyied it in psych 333 with roger knight. the prof says things like, "what is the difference between rods and cones? discuss with your neighbor," and i'm just screaming from the inside about dark adaptation times and orientations and HOW FREAKING COOL EYES ARE and stuff. she just says, "right, rods see black and white and cones see color!" as reid keeps reminding me, yes, it is an introductory-level class, so i shouldn't be so frustrated, but it still makes me sad. i like it when i learn new things.

so much of good writing is not in what's explicit, but in what's implied and how it is implied. i've been finding this fascinating lately, though not on a truly literary level. mere conversation--in addition to this particular medium, the blog--employs these literary devices of sorts in ways i find strange and fascinating... the way real life is spilled out and reinterpreted in characters blazing across a constantly changing computer display, and knowing when saying nothing at all changes the tone of what's said at all.

it's not what you think, it's not who you are.
it's got nothing to do with you. i took this too far.
i wished on a star and kept the receipt...

i think literary devices are common and studied because they're so natural. people make comparisons unconsciously... why not make an art of it, right?

what's really weird is when we start doing things to makes our lives somehow employ a literary device. i've seen people, i suspect, do this, or at least that's how i interpret it, and it's very interesting. i might talk about it more later; it seems maybe too creepy to do. like psychoanalyzing from afar, but based solely on the literature they present.

goddamn literary analysis of actual books for being so boring; i'd be such an awesome english major.

ok, this is -totally- stupid and self-centered, but hey, everyone else is doing it.

How many random, superficial facts do you know about Emily?

[meeshyweeshy] food network meets the piano.
[meeshyweeshy] that's my definition of emully.

meesh is weird, and i love her.

someone across the courtyard from me, someone on the fifth floor, as a light on in their room. it's bright and focused, so not the unit-provided fluorescent lighting, and it shines through the drapes, blinding me a little more every time i look up.

i don't know why i'm looking up, or why my drapes stay open. i only kept them closed while mike was here. that was the only time i regularly kept my bedroom door closed, too.

it's too dark now to see any change in precipitation. the snow this weekend has been crazy, but it didn't accumulate in seattle. it accumulated outside of seattle, but never in. we have only the bitch of a windchill making things feel much colder than they actually were, and snow swirling in the sky with relatively invisible raindrops, all for the mockery of this season we hesitantly call winter.

last night was spent with my parents and some old family friends. it was actually very weird, because i haven't seen these people for years--since i was in grade school, at least--and though i remember them well, i don't remember their personalities or many particular events attached to my childhood involving them. i remember snapshots. eventually, i'll get to studying memory and memory development in psych, i'm sure, and i will better understand why my picture of the relationship is so incomplete. but it was still nice to see them again... james should hang out more often, since we go to school together and he's friends with another of my roommates and all. small world, y'know.

later that night, someone--we don't know who, though we have our suspicions--left a dead christmas tree, complete with leftover tinsel, on our doorstep. the boys downstairs wouldn't own up to it, but we have no other reasonable suspects. where would they get a tree? why would they leave it here a whole month after christmas? and why would they haul it up two flights of stairs as a prank? at any rate, christine and anna already dumped it.

i'm a pattern person, always wanting to veer out of the lines, but always feeling too guilty to try... someday, i will break the mold.