Monthly Archives: April 2003

Showing 11–20 of 25


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Tired. Legs hurt. Bouncing.

Yesterday we got caught with the backlash of the campus-wide virus warning–I did more scrambling between computers, but all five of the calls I answered (from frosh girls: predictable but disappointing) were false alarms. I think they just wanted to be part of something exciting. I think that’s nice. I suggest rock diving.

Whenever I wasn’t doing that, I was standing over grad schools with a bat. First, I tried to get this… woman at U of L to walk ten feet and pick up the last piece of my application. She says it only takes about a day to decide once the application is complete, and the transcript is definitely the last piece, and I have yet to hear anything either way. Why? Because “the fax machine is acting funny.”

Second, I finally called UK to inform them that yes, my GRE scores were forwarded in January, as I told them in February, and would they mind taking a look? Oh, says Mister Admissions, the “electronic version didn’t upload right,” but now that I’ve informed them the scores are there, they should be fine. Meanwhile, since it’s April, there are no assistantships left. I’m pondering litigation, or (more satisfying, less expensive) actual use of the hypothetical bat. (You know. Like hitting them with it.)

One of my drafted-but-unused journal entries was about my bemusement at the sheer rarity of competency on this campus, and the apparently unusual fact that all of my friends are competent, useful human beings–in fact, that most of them are experts in some way. I was going to wonder if such a disparity existed outside the Centre bubble. If the people I’ve dealt with this week are any indication, I feel no need to wonder anymore.

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I find it very easy to like Mary Chapin Carpenter today. And to feel like my roommate.

Email bomb on campus this weekend, and a rapid proliferation of viruses as soon as the Exchange server’s scanner was down. I find it difficult to comprehend the modern mind that has a computer and yet hasn’t figured out by now that you don’t open attachments that say things like “this is a pathc,it is for viruss I hope you would like it.” The sheer willpower it must take to ignore the world of media that completely is really almost admirable.

So I spent the afternoon scrambling between rooms, trying to run the Klez tool on five computers at once. It has occurred to me that I put a lot of effort into fixing things today, and sharp contrast in which that stands to yesterday. Some people would tell you that’s irony. You would, hopefully, tell them to buy a dictionary.

Today, for the first time, I fell down while running.

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There’s a way to be roundabout and poetic about this, and I often am, but honestly, fuck that. I broke up with Audrey today. It hurts.

I did it because I was part of something beautiful that was torn apart by time and distance, once, and I won’t be again. Because I’m going away in the fall. Because I have to do the right thing this time. Because I have to believe.

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Now it can be segued: speaking of the hat, I asked Audrey what I should name the little embroidered horse on the front. She replied with the following:

Audrey’s List of Name Candidates for the Horse on Your Shiny New Red Hat:

  • Hi-Ho Horsey-O

  • Razzle B-Dazzle
  • Horsey O’Badkins
  • Satan
  • Buckaroodo Bill
  • Buckingham
  • Nipple Eater
  • Road Apples
  • Lucifer
  • Tater Sack
  • Uvula

    AND…

  • The Devil

The horse remains nameless, but the hat in its entirety is now rechristened The Devil. (Although I have to wonder how that would even work.)

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For the second time in my life, I got a Bad Haircut (camways). This is the shortest it’s ever been. It makes my head look like a pincushion.

I went in (to a new barbershop, stupidly) and asked the nice lady to clean up the back and sides and leave the length, and I came out like this. Does this happen to everybody, or do I just look like a pushover? Well, I know I don’t anymore, as people will assume I’m a Marine.

(No they won’t.)

Gah. Oh well. At least it’s a lot cooler on my head now. And at least I’ve still got my hat. Compared to the statement that thing makes, my hair is rice pudding.

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Luminary days: my school has been a stop for some really amazing people recently. Tuesday, next year’s writer in residence, Herman Farrell, hung out in senior seminar with the drama kids. Talk turned (it always does) to the war and its roots, and, to my shock, I found a fellow mind who was more interested in thinking about them than in screaming for a side. It was to my deeper shock, later, that I realized how thirsty I’ve been for that, and how utterly parched this campus is. Shouldn’t academia be more about discussion than denouncement? (Cynically: has it ever actually been?)

Last night was Wynton Marsalis, of course, and then tonight was Heather McHugh. Confronted by a grinning poet, I found myself speechless. This is a theme recently. She was wonderful, and very funny, and I wanted to tell her “thank you” for the reading and failed utterly. I think she got the idea from my face, though.

Also, as Lisa relates, this has been Dante Marioni week. Centre is a house party!

I can’t segue well into this, but I didn’t get into IU, which is a little strange–they really seemed to like me when I visited campus. It makes me wonder whether Carnegie Mellon was a fluke. Thanks to my standing over them with a bat, Louisville is supposed to tell me yes or no on Monday. Time grows short. The plot, as Ian would say, thins.

Also, while looking up the usage of “denunciation,” I found the single weirdest text ad I’ve ever seen:

Single? Catholic? Ave Maria Singles

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Entry 255! I have almost a whole byte’s worth of journal!

Every time I start to get uppity about something I’m doing at school, dramatic irony thwops me on the forehead. Like, for example, the past couple of weeks have been the beginning of music rehearsals for the spring production of Chalk Circle. That means, thanks to the grand tradition of Brendan’s Roommates Letting Him Pretend He’s A Musician, I’ve been actually reading things on sheets of music and playing them on congas with a band of real musicians. This honestly gives me the shivers.

Then, just as I’m starting to believe something like “hey! this stuff can be learned,” along comes Wynton Marsalis.

I only got to watch the first third of the show (two hours), but everything I saw was… well, pretty much what you’d expect from Wynton Marsalis’s band, assuming you know who Wynton Marsalis is. I don’t even think I enjoyed it as much as some of the other people watching it up on the catwalk with me, because I honestly don’t have a developed taste for jazz. I was still in awe. The talent and skill those guys put on display was ineffable.

That said, today was the first day I ran my whole route–what I guess now is around three miles–without stopping to walk. I haven’t done that since high school, and I did both on rainy days, and there’s really no dramatic irony possible there. No matter how many people run better than me, the fact is that right now I can run as fast as I ever have in my life.

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Weekend like burning! I went with Jon, Amanda, Amanda’s sister Kelly and the one and only Artdrey to a Legends game on Friday, then to see Spirited Away on Sunday, and in between…

There are apparently a lot of Beaux Arts Balls thrown by architecture departments all over the country, but the one in Lexington is the biggest, or so they tell me. People put on costumes and go underground and get physically rearranged by the music, and then there’s girls in fashion… things, and after that there are guys who are pretending to be girls.

I’d never been to a drag show before (although I have watched To Wong Foo several times), but I wasn’t really surprised. There were a couple of ladies who were definitely men, and then there was one who was fairly androgynous, and then… there was Jenna.

Jenna was beautiful.

Jenna is my soulmate.

Jenna, if you’re out there, know that I’m out here too, and no, I’m not single, but dammit I could be.

Next topic! I should emphasize more that this was a costume party, as in Halloween costumes, only in April, so with more skin. There were some intricate and pretty ones there, and then the size-over-intricacy ones (meet Mister Pez Dispenser!) and then there were just people out to make their fetishes public.

I came to the conclusion, that night, that costume parties exist to let people show off the way they really want other people to see them. The dude with the tux and the wolf mask wants to sweep you away; the girl with the angel wings and garter belt wants to be touched and untouchable; the guy with that much metal in his face… he’s just doin’ his thing, man.

So if this is the case, I find it terribly appropriate that Audrey and I wore brightly colored rayon old-person jogging suits. They were worth more than a few compliments from other partygoers, and they were the most comfortable things I’ve ever had the eye-grinding displeasure of wearing–the Secret of the Mallwalkers! They were also two terribly comfortable outfits on two terribly comfortable personalities. Even if, um, they did hurt to look at. The analogy breaks down there, I guess.

Part of me wanted to come back in jewelry and a big hat and my soon-to-be patchy pants, sure, but mostly I just had a great time in an elastic waistband, hovering next to my girl and being lifted bodily by the bass. Times that great in pants that swishy are few and far between.

(I’d like to cap off this entry by talking about Spirited Away, but really, can I say anything that hasn’t been said?)

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As seen camways, I don’t yet run Red Hat, but I do own one! Whoo! I feel just like Dirk Gently.

In honor of my new hat ownership, I’m putting together yet another mix CD, which reminds me: longtime NFD readers (both of you) may recall this entry, where I talked about my problems trying to decorate a mix CD with reversed-out lettering. I finally figured out a way to do it! You just color the patch you want with the permanent marker, then wait for it to dry and write the words you want with a dry-erase marker! Erase the second marker and it will take up the first marker too. It’s not perfect–CD surfaces aren’t perfect for erasing–but it does work, as demonstrated on my new Red Hat Mix.

I should also mention that the idea of erasing permanent marker with dry-erase marker comes from my brother, who is a genius, and could use your help if you know of any good cowboy songs.

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You know, violets aren’t blue. They’re violet. It’s every bit as much a part of the rainbow as blue; why can’t we just call it what it is? Rhyme, that’s why. You see what happens when truth is destroyed in the name of poetry?

Next time, think of the violets. Think of your children. And don’t let rhyme happen to you!

(Brought to you by the National Rhyme Prevention Council.)