oh that professor patrick

in keeping with charle's recording of professor patrick quotes, I have something to add. not quotes, but my own notes from a session of his fourth year english seminar on renaissance lit; mimesis and representation. I found it in a notebook I am using for my career coaching:

holy shit. Nurmeen Lives! that goth girl just made a sad clown face, she looks so sad. why? I suppose I look like that but moreso of a harried, tired look. exasperated, rundown. For no really good reason. This girl is two people. Dr. Patrick. I wonder if he uses that honorific... somehow, I doubt it.
I wish I could videotape this shit. It would be funny to watch later, high, or something.

so much theory in this class, so little meat and potatoes. Holy Shit. active and inactive. HOORAY!!!!
LIFE ON EARTH IS JUST A DEATH SENTENCE!
this is so ridiculous (scratched out stuff) BUZZWORDS
full of sound and fury , but signifying nothing fucking drama students. Nicely done though.

then I tallied how many times patrick used the following three words:
Subjectivity: 7
Division: 6
Representation: 7

Later I find a list of words, presumably used in class, that I find somewhat overused for no purpose. I think I added some of my own to the end:

divisions, doublness, tropes, pastiche, authorship, representation, subjectivity, mimesis, exegisis, tautology, doctrinaire, platitude, ideology, idyllic, prosaic, banality, provincial (with the funny french c thing), gastronomic, dyspeptic, charry, to aver, defenstration, high society, the "good" life, practicing to die, wanting to die, a little bit.

I don't really know what that was, but that is what I did in college, instead of learn. jesus. HAHAHA.

we spies, we slow hands

I almost killed myself the other day. by accident, mind you. I was tasked with getting power to a capstan winch installed on the scaffolding outside. The nearest power source to this was across the building in the basement, since the electricians had killed all of the existing power and replaced it with temporary power stations. umm yeah. so I was working on this, threading an 100 ft. extension cord through the various arches of the undercroft. I had decided to use an old metal conduit rack to help string the extension cord up with, since it was already there and way off the floor. The temporary light strings were also using this rack, and as I was tugging my cord through the whole business, a connection in the temporary line came apart (they plug together with standard male/female connectors). Since it looked like a regular mail end plug, and stupidly assumed that it wasn't live, and as I reached to grab it to replace it in its proper place, the "female slot," it fell and struck the metal conduit. The conduit kinda exploded in my face, there was a big zap crash sound, and a huge hole was burned into the metal. I was kinda stunned, although I hadn't been hit with anything, but the funny part is that at the other end of the conduit, there were two junior electricians fucking around with some temp breakers, and they didn't really know what they were doing, so they were worried the whole time. Then theres this huge spark/explosion/sound thing and the one guy goes "Rossy! SHIT! I knew we shouldn't have fucked with that, you said it wasn't hot man!" "Hey, it wasn't, I'm sure, I don't know what happened" I looked down at them, and sheepishly let them know that, no, they hadn't fucked up, I had. Everything else plugged back in properly, and a few breaker switches later, the capstan winch was running again.

Went to a cool bar downtown the other night called Brewer's Art and then an ethiopean restaurant. The bar was pretty swank, and they had really good beer, called Resurrection Lager, for two bucks a pint, which was a really nice price for beer that was that good. I was in the upstairs, but they have a cool cave like bar below where all the messenger bikers apparently hang out. Will have to check it out at some point. The ethiopean was good, although I'm not sure I really like eating with my hands all that much. As well, I had to sit through about three cliche jokes about ethiopean food, things like "haha look! theres nothing on the plates." yes, that oldie but goodie. Spent all day crusing around with my parents and our older friend from the Annex in Toronto, who is in town for her great nephew's bris or something. We ended up in Hamden, antique shopping, which was fine, and I got cruised by some chainsmoking antique dealer, I think.

I spent all of friday at work hauling really old dusty trash out of the building in a trash bucket, and placing it in a dumpster. really captivating. I need a life [sigh].

oh girl, you have no faith in medicine

funny tidbit about where I live:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/realestate/bal-re.sudbrook02jan02,1,2182539.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

nothing really changes much, except I'm becoming more austere with myself and have tried/decided to make the following changes:

*I've stopped smoking at the job. (this was going well for a week, until today, which sucked, and I broke and bought smokes)
*I'm taking the metro into work everyday. this will save gas for two reasons; one, I won't be driving very far during the week, and two, they parking attendant downtown who has been siphoning my gas daily will no longer be able to do so.
*I take a thermos, and some boring morning snack with me from the house, as well as pack my lunch, so as to save more money. oh yes. While this greatly decreases the excitement and quality of my day, it will save me upwards of 100USD a month, or more.

we'll see if this frees up any more money, because i owe like a bunch of people and places a bazillion dollars and shit, and shit's getting me down, yo.

my mom jokingly bought me a duct tape wallet that is a canadian flag, which of course is so fucking funny, but I thought, it's just so crazy it might work... and I mean it's ridicuolous garishness doesn't hurt. It is also a conversation starter, with a cute arts-student-cashier asking me if I am a canadian , and the gas-siphoning parking attendent wacko thinking that I had a pretty swank british flag on my wallet. I was going to correct him, but then I thought, well they do have the damed queen on their money, and they say things all funny, and there are parking signs in halifax that say by order of her royal highness on them, so fuck it, they can be british too. yay commonwealth!

I've been reading "Under the Banner of Heaven," which is the most recent krakauher book (I know I speel badly, fuck you). It's fantastic. Mormons are so incredibly weird. if you know any, please point and make pod people noises when you see them, as they belong to a fast growing spiritual cancer. oh that was perhaps too harsh, sure there are nice mormons too, and the book is mostly about morman fundamentalists, who take as 'spiritual lives' 13 years old nieces because they think they're cute and 'god sent them a revalation' but as a faith, they believe in some really weird shit. but then again, if you think about it in that way, so does every other religion, they've just crawled out of some ancient darkness, so they trick us into thinking they make more sense. I mean excuse me, why, when I am born, am I bad, sinning person. Fuck that original sin shit.

new bands/albums that have been keeping me alive:
Interpol's newest; Antics. Wilco;Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, A Ghost is Born. Spoon. The New Pornographers. Both Weakerthans albums, though I really like Left and Leaving better. Decemberists. Anything by the Wrens. As always, Alpha. The new Franz Ferdinand, or should I say the only, is good, although I guess I'm way way behind the curve on that one. Death Cab for Cutie is fantastic, as is the splinterfaction Postal Service. Elliot Smith for when I want to feel really miserable. The Get Up Kids keep keeping me smiling (thanks for that one Reta). Starting to get into Nick Drake, not that I wasn't before, but I hadn't really heard his music. Guided by Voices (thanks Brent, and really, Brent's responsible for the Decemberists). trying out a band called British Sea Power, who seem pretty good, but I have to get used to the lead singer, theres kinda an unfortunate nick cave thing going on with him. Dismemberment Plan. My brother hooked me up with a bunch of these bands, so heres to you kid.

thats all for now. the muse has left me.

as my friend alan used to say; sleep tight.

I'm a loner dottie, a rebel.

I went out with some friends from high school and their girlfriends on New Years. It was fine, although I couldn't shake the fifth wheel feeling all night. We went to Outback Steakhouse, which in the suburbs seems to take the place of a real restuarant in people's minds. Since there are no real restaurants, or real places in the suburbs--all has been artificially created within the last ten years to resemble a whitewashed, drywall version of a real place in a nice part of a city somewhere, except with much wider roads to accomadate all of the gigantic cars--people have happily accepted places like The Outback Steakhouse, or The Macaroni Grill, or any one of the fifteen or so other non-fast-food restuarant chains that are ubiquitous here as a 'good' place to go on a special occaision. They charge more than normal, and they are very busy, which gives people the impression that what they supply is necesarrily in high demand, and since it is in high demand, it must, of course, be good. We went there on New Years Eve, so we had to wait, which is no surprise, but what is a surprise, is that after calling an three hours before we wanted dinner, we still had to wait for an hour and a half outside for a table. Once we had a table, the waiter plyed us with his greasy smile and we ordered course upon course of fried foods. I think by the end we had all, the five of us, eaten about half of what we'd ordered. To further enhance the dining experience, we had patrons on either side of us who were dressed in sweatpants and shirts that had things like "I heart Grumpy Men" and "Sean Jean Sweat Shirt Co." When I finally got out of that place, I felt like I had been carefully stuffed with cotton by little cotton-dwarves. The rest of the evening was more or less uneventful--train rides, fireworks, more train rides, and my bed.

also, I watched Gigli the other night, and boy are my wings tired. All I can say is: Turkeytime. what? Gobble Gobble.
truly on of the most terrible movies I've ever seen.