obfuscated girl

i have learned never to discuss religion, politics, or the great pumpkin

Some things:
October went by way too quickly. Possible rhetorical question: has anyone ever had a year that they looked back on and went "gee, that was evenly paced?"
I want some sort of indictment or SOMETHING to happen so badly that I can hardly sit still. Daily Kos has been the only thing saving me so far today.
I never knew that people still thought that Harry Potter was the work of the devil, but the radio station my coworkers listen to has been offering DVDs for sale that allegedly teach you how to fight the books' eeviyil. All my coworkers discuss is what God told them to do last night. I have no idea why they haven't tried to convert me yet--maybe cause I wear too much black?
I am, and have been for weeks now, off team Lost and on team Veronica Mars. Sorry, Hurley.
This is the best book I've read in a while, and this is the best thing I have seen all week (via Cat and Girl:

"I...LOVE...BEING...ANGRY."

Today I was reminded that being angry and dissatisfied in general and just being in a bad mood aren't necessarily awful things. It's just that you have to somewhat carefully monitor the line between recognizing your mood and wallowing in it. In light of that fact and also in light of the fact that I am being evasive and short and not really writing anything lengthy (which, um, also means "short") beyond this sentence, which is one helluva runon sentence, I must say, and I'm normally very good at writing those but this is exceptional and above and beyond like:
here is a poem, by Rainer Maria Rilke.
To Music
Music: breathing of statues. Perhaps:
silence of paintings. You language where all language
ends. You time
standing vertically on the motion of motal hearts.

Feelings for whom? O you the transformation
of feelings into what? -: into audible landscape.
You stranger: music. You heart-space
grown out of us. The deepest space in us,
which, rising above us, forces its way out,--
holy departure:
when the innermost point in us stands
outside, as the most practiced distance, as the other
side of the air:
pure,
boundless,
no longer habitable.

how much do I love this picture?

SO MUCH.
The only thing that is getting me through today is Robitussin. And the fact that I will actually be able to sleep in tomorrow. Also, the soundtrack to Elizabethtown and the glee that I am feeling at having no plans to see the movie. Take THAT, Kirsten Dunst and your insufferable baby teeth and lack of acting skills.

best thing ever said ever ever (the sequel)

(it's inevitable that I find this mere hours after making a divisive, hyperbolic and declarative statement.)
I wish I could say that I wrote this, but it comes from here. So much love.
MY POLITICAL GUT
HANGS OUT OF MY PANTS
BUT THAT IS OKAY BECAUSE
I AM MAKING A STATEMENT ABOUT FEMINISM.
ACTUALLY, IT IS JUST VERY HARD
TO FIND PANTS THAT ARE NOT CUT THAT LOW.
BUT I AM AT LEAST SORT OF FASHIONABLE
AND THAT IS VERY IMPORTANT IN THIS WORKADAY WORLD.

MY CHUBBY ARMS
ARE SO COMFORTABLE
THAT PEOPLE FALL ASLEEP ON THEM.
LET’S SEE YOU DO THAT,
ANGELINA JOLIE.
THAT’S RIGHT, I’M CALLING YOU OUT.
TAKE OFF THAT BABY BACKPACK
AND TRY TO BOUNCE THAT LITTLE AFRICAN KID
ON YOUR BONYASS KNEE.
WAIT, I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE TALKING ABOUT ARMS.

MY PSEUDO-HIP SHORT HAIRCUT
DOES NOT MEAN I AM A LESBIAN.
THANK YOU,
THAT IS ALL.

MY ENORMOUS FEET
GIVE ME EXCELLENT BALANCE
AND MEAN THAT I CAN SORT OF
PICK THINGS UP WITH THEM.
SO WHEN MY VIBRATOR FALLS OUT OF MY BED
I DON’T HAVE TO SIT UP TO GET IT.
THIS IS MORE IMPORTANT TO ME
THAN YOU COULD POSSIBLY IMAGINE.

best thing ever said, ever

(source: somewhere on the internerd)
"Sometimes indie rock kids remind me of Gollum."
the end

five easy pieces

I spent this weekend in Madison getting lost in a cornfield with my family. And taking pictures of chickens and goats and siblings. And secretly thinking that Wisconsin is kind of the greatest state ever sometimes. And getting this year's model of the cold that turns into a chest thing that follows me around for six months and renders me a consumptive Jane Austen-style wreck. And subsequently napping. And wishing I could drive. And being towed to every department store ever made. And eating squash. And discussing bird flu. And wishing that more people sent me email. And narrowly missing being able to hang out with my friends. And watching the pilot of "Firefly" for approximately the thirty millionth time. And realizing that things really aren't that bad.

part two: cryptic random livejournalesque lyric posting electric boogaloo

Because there are some songs you should never listen to when you have had four hours of sleep and are kind of sad.
Dear Chicago,You'll never guess/You know the girl you said I'd meet someday?Well, I've got something to confess/She picked me up on Friday/Asked me if she reminded me of you./I just laughed and lit a cigarette,/Said "that's impossible to do."/My life's gotten simple since,/And it fluctuates so much.
Happy and sad and back again/I'm not crying now, too much./Think about you all the time./It's strange and hard to deal/Think about you lying there/And those blankets lie so still/Nothing breathes here in the cold/Nothing moves or even smiles./I've been thinking some of suicide./But there's bars out here for miles./Sorry about the every kiss/Every kiss you wasted bad/I think the thing you said was true,/I'm going to die alone and sad/The wind's feeling real these days/Yeah, baby, it hurts me some/Never thought I'd feel so blue/New York City, you're almost gone/I think that I've fallen out of love,/I think I've fallen out of love/With you
(Ryan Adams, "Dear Chicago")

stand in the light, stand in the light, stand in the light

I had a conversation with a friend last night wherein we decided that the only reason we get all quasi-obsessive over boys and the concept of Being With Someone is because it's basically hardwired into our system. Subconsciously we want to have babies and mate and perpetuate the human race.
But does that mean once you recognize it as something beyond your control you can reject it? Should you?

we stole the twinkling stars and the black night

Things are incredibly confusing right now, but I must say that friends are making it better. If I were the sappy sort I would compose some sort of paean to my friends (none of whom actually read this because hell truly NO ONE reads this) but I am trying to be LESS sentimental these days, which will come in handy when I am 60 and dead in an apartment the size of a shoebox and my body is eaten for a week by my 73 cats, which I will have even though I am allergic to them.
The other thing that's making today better?

hopeful little hallucination

Allen Ginsberg read Howl for the first time in public fifty years ago today.
...to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head,/ the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after death,/and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America's naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio/with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.
read it

if i could get onto the fucking ftp,

I would have put a link to this website up.
And furthermore, I would have directly linked to this.
Sayin.

this. must. stop.

You scored as Inara Serra. The Courtesan. You have a job that brings comfort to people and eases their burdens. It took years of training and dedication to perfect. So why do people keep calling you a whore? You tried to get away from those people, but something keeps bringing you back.Which Serenity character are you?created with QuizFarm.com

and if you don't love me, let me go

I think that I'm able to pinpoint the source of my distress lately now. Beings that I am not creative enough anymore to work through it in some sort of fictional medium and even if I were to try I feel so drained most of the time that the result would be disappointing for all parties involved, and it doesn't help that my friends call me at 9:00 on weeknights and go "Can we watch Firefly again pleeeeeeeeeeze?" and I am a pushover so I let them come watch it, and besides which fictional boyfriends are much easier to maintain than real ones. So.
I have a friend with whom I have a very complicated past. He did and said some horrible, hurtful things to me in said past, and by "some" I mean "one giant elephant in the room of the current friendship thing," but I decided for whatever reason that it was important to remain friends with him, a decision which was made much easier by his decision to move away because I didn't actually have to SEE him. Lately he's been increasingly difficult to reach, for multiple reasons, but I think the biggest reason is that he has a new ladyfriend. I don't begrudge him anything and hope he's doing well and happy, and etc. For a long time I felt like I was the one calling and maintaining the friendship most, even if it was me calling when I'd been drinking and being like WOO HI, and the marked drop in communication on his end with the advent of the ladyfriend made me feel used. I have no idea how accurate that assessment is, and the fact that I've probably already alienated him through a series of emails that were sent earlier in the week--emails that were sent because I was pissed in general but which were pretty much true--could mean that I'll never know if I'm right, and I'm trying really hard not to care about that. I've been realizing that just because you share a past with someone doesn't mean that you have to keep them in your life, nor should you necessarily hope for a future with them, because things/elephants in the past probably happened for a reason.
I think that a huge reason for me feeling it's necessary to reassess my entire history with this person is because I've been feeling lonely in a more acute way than I have in a very long time. I don't know where it came from or why it's happening now, but I've realized that this friend has been making me feel lonely even if I'm on the phone with him. I don't want to repeatedly face that.
I wish that this didn't feel like a eulogy. I wish that it didn't feel like I'm grasping at straws figuring this out and I wish I could just let it go. I wish that the adage about the only way you can completely forget someone is by finding someone else were not, in fact, true. I almost wish that my friend comes out of nowhere and contradicts me and goes YUO ARE WRONG THIS IS WHY!!!!111!!!111 I don't think he will--I think he's moved on. and I need to stop feeling stuck.

if you needed a reason/another reason to see serenity

...and no, I am not getting paid for this, and no, I don't have anything constructive to say, and yes, my moodswings are so erratic lately that I recommend that you and everyone else pretty much stay the fuck away, but then there's this, which is apparently ubiquitous as a means of advertising in the London Underground:

BOOBIES.