Recently in dumb stuff Category

Things I'm going to do now that I'm done with college

1. Hang out with friends on weeknights
   
2. Read stuff for fun
   
3. Keep my apartment clean
   
4. Relax on the couch after work
   
5. Time-consuming fitness activities

1. Get dronk every night
   
2. Backpack through Europe
   
3. Teach English in southeast Asia
   
4. Apply for grad school
   
5. Plastics

Top 5 things that are good to melt cheese on:
1. broccoli, corn, and rice
2. english muffins
3. cornbread
4. macaroni and cheese (like, there is cheese sauce in it, but then you melt cheese over the top
5. chili
6. somebody's hair

Now that I am a yuppie sell-out who accepts the shortcomings of the world, I usually refrain from PC policing. But I couldn't help being rubbed the wrong way by this, from August 4th's Portland Picks:

"There was a cute gal behind us that wasn’t bored. She was actually quite happy....in a Zen-like stupor, unfettered by the grueling flight, even as she sat between two swarthy guys that kept dozing, drooling, and snoring in her direction. You see, she was knitting."

Swarthy? Come on!

HBO makes everything look good. On Sex & the City, they are always partying, eating cheap ice cream, being single, being semi-employed, wearing high-heels, being individualistic, and they make it all seem really attractive. But it's just cause it's HBO. The only thing they can't make look good is getting your eyeball pulled out by a greased up bear dude. Try as I might, I can't get into Deadwood. I can't get into Entourage either because it's a scary testosterone fest, but I forgive it because now guys have their own Sex & the City. Dude, Baryshnikov is all up in the last season of Sex & the City as the suave Russian aging player who gets in Carrie's pants by doing stuff like asking her out on stationery. I love how this show is full of writers and artists who are somehow making lots of money and get to live in fabulous apartments, buy ridiculously expensive clothes and hang out drinking Manhattans and reading poetry and crap all the time. I need to figure out how to get syndicated. And how to become a fictional character on HBO, especially one who isn't a hooker. I think Sex & the City and Six Feet Under are the only ones where the women aren't hookers. Not that there's anything wrong with being a hooker, but, you know, I'd rather be an inexplicably wealthy columnist. Oh and BTW: I still have one last DVD left to watch, so nobody be a jerk and spoil anything for me. Thanks.

Good talk at breakfast
Got some work done on projects
Discovered Netflix.

Didn't go running
Or go to Art Media
Or re-pot the plant.

Stuff is making me think of summer for no good reason. I think it's because the dorm is the exact temperature of late nights in summer and I am maniacally studying for finals. Summer is about as far away as it gets, not like that means anything, not like six months is a particularly long time these days. But it is long enough that it makes me really want to be running around in a teeshirt and shorts drinking beer in the sunshine, and long enough that the idea of doing so is positively ridiculous. Instead, it is the time to be lurking in cafés drinking hot wine and discussing the relative merits of obscure academic theories. The hot wine part isn't so bad, but I'm getting really sick of constructing rhetorically correct arguments. I can't wait to start writing about sandwiches again! I have nothing against working - to the contrary, winter is great for that because there is absolutely nothing attractive luring you outside - it's just hard to be serious sometimes when I just want to listen to the Pogues and write odes to white teeshirts and other stuff that belongs in adolescent zines. But the theory is that if I study these articulateurs rhétoriques hard enough, I will later get to write about sandwiches and teeshirts as much as I want, and be able to use fancy terms of restriction and opposition to do it. But is it really necessary for it to be that complicated? Sometimes a sandwich is just a sandwich.

Saw this on the Yahoo front page. Some things never change.

I just remembered that a few months ago I was all jazzed on the idea of doing a bilingual blog. Now it's the last thing I want to do because I have to try to express myself in French all the time and it's frustrating, and when I update my blog I want to relax and not work too hard. Being here, I always have to work in that department - I end up using a dictionary just to write a text message. On the other hand, as soon as I don't speak or write in French for two hours, it becomes even more difficult, to say nothing of what will happen when I return to the States. In any case, now that I'm on vacation the idea of writing in French isn't too horrible so I guess I'll try.

I'm having bank issues so I have no cash to speak of right now (it's getting taken care of, don't worry Mom!), plus it's too freakin' cold to go outside, and anyway all of my friends have either left on vacation or gone back to the States permanently, so I'm basically stuck in my dorm for the time being. The residence is deserted save for a few stragglers, among whom are naturally my noisy, chatty, incestuous, highly irritating neighbors, who are apparently too attached to eachother to be able to bear the thought of parting ways for a couple weeks to see their families. Me, as soon as my money gets worked out, I am out of here on the first train to Paris. Tomorrow I might go on a bike ride with Mathilde if it isn't too cold, and maybe to the Mediathèque with Stergios the Greek to chip away at a mountain of books I was supposed to read before the break but didn't. Sometimes life is just kind of slow like that. Even in France.

Je viens de me souvenir que j'ai voulu écrire un blog bilingue il y a quelques mois. Maintenant cette idée ne m'intéresse pas beaucoup parce que je dois toujours essayer à m'exprimer en français et c'est frustrant, et quand je veux écrire mon blog je veux me décontracter et pas trop travailler. Etre ici, je travaille toujours: je me serve du dictionnaire même pour écrire un texte. Mais de l'autre côté, dès que je n'ai pas écrit ou parlé en français pendant 2 heures, ça devient difficile. De rien dire de ce qui va se passer quand je retournerai aux E-U. En tout cas, maintenant que je suis en vacances l'idée d'écrire en français ne me gêne pas trop donc je me débrouillerai.

J'ai un problème avec la banque donc je n'ai pas du tout d'argent pour le moment, et de plus il fait trop froid pour aller au-dehors, et d'ailleurs tous mes amis sont partis, alors je suis restée dans la résidence toute la journée. Apparemment presque tout Poitiers est parti en vacances sauf mes voisins qui sont bruyants, bavardants et vachement énervants. Génial. Demain je ferai un promenade à vélo avec Mathilde s'il ne fait pas trop froid, et peut-être j'irai à la Médiathèque avec Stergios le grecque pour commencer à rattraper le gros retard. Mince alors, j'ai si beaucoup de lecture à faire.

Parfois la vie c'est comme ça, c'est lente. Même en France.

That is a really good song.

All I want to do is be efficient, productive and healthy. All I seem to be able to do is slack off and eat junk food. I know that the more I am good the easier it will get. The first thing is the hardest.

In other news, a big, juicy spider has camped out in the blinds adjacent to the chair where I eat breakfast and work on the computer every day. Like so close that I would lean on it and squish it if I didn't know. In our house we wait for the spiders to die naturally because as unpleasant as they are, they eat the other bugs. We once watched a little spider fight a fly three times its size and win (the fly was old). It wrapped it up, then later abandoned it on our kitchen counter.

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Je ne veux que d’être sage. Je ne peux que d’être stupide. Je sais que plus on essaye de faire les bonnes décisions, plus c’est facile. C’est la première chose qui est la plus difficile.

Il y a une araignée qui s’est installée hier dans le rideau à coté de ma chaise où je mange du petit déjeuner. Elle est encore là. Dans notre maison, c’est une question d’attendre jusqu’ à les araignées mortent naturellement, parce qu’elles mangent des autres insectes.