Meh.

I saw someone wearing jellies today. Fantastic.



And in other news...my panties are in a knot. Hmph. What exactly am I supposed to say in response to shiznit like that??






"Who put me in command here?"
-Chloe's thought while practically hallucinating from lack of sleep while reading geopolitics HW.

Ughh...PSYCH! Put your pants back on. Put your pants back on.

The indian one doesn't believe that Chloe and I are being good students. Whatev. The truth is that doing homework at 4 in the morning is as good as it's going to get. The only alternative would be sleeping (or possibly just hanging out) at 4 am, having not started any work at all. Clearly, we are at least attempting to act like good students.

I don't actually know what is going on in my life. What I do know is that people who are so wholly unattached to me should probably stay out of my biz-nass. I don't stalk you and then randomly spout dumb shit about you in front of other people. Number one, because I don't give a shit about your private life. Number two, if something is obvious to you from what you observe when you STALK ME then I have probably already considered it myself and don't need you to point it out for me, thus creating an extremely awkward social situation.

Aaaand, this is for YOU Samantha and Chloe (anyone else, avert your eyes because you will not be amused): What is this shit about wiping the wrong way? Whoever says that you must wipe front to back is high. It is not anatomically sound. Think about it. Plus, I have to say this too...if men were the ones who used tampons I am positive that they would have flushable ones by now. Whoever thinks it's reasonable to put used tampons in the trash and not flush them has obviously never had a period in their life. Seriously. Are you kidding me? You can't even get it to the trash without making a huge mess. People are so high sometimes that I can't even comprehend their ridiculousness.

Don't worry. I only did the reading for one of my three classes. I would rather sit in the sun, bitches.



"I HATE Borat. He is a fucker."
-DG after searching for the Borat dvd for an hour so that she could return it at blockbuster, and finallly realizing that the burned copy with of Borat sitting on the tv, was in fact the actual dvd made to look like it was burned and had the title written with a sharpie.

"Insufferable Man"

I've watched Pride and Prejudice so many times now that when I read the book I can't help but hear the actors' dialogue in my head. The same voices and intonation and everything. It's not really a problem, I don't think I could've done better with just my own imagination while reading, but I've never experienced anything quite like it. More than anything, I think it's a testament to the accuracy of the movie and its loyalty to the text.

And the story is so perfect. I honestly don't think I've ever seen/heard/read anything with better plot, character development, wit and tension.

I had an incredibly disturbing-sounding dream this morning right before my dad woke me up at the crack of dawn (in Seattle time) for church. It involved me fighting with my med school roommate because he made some unsupported generalizing comment about Democrats and how we all support people like Al Sharpton. It was pretty realistic, because my med school roommate tends to make slightly patronizing generalizations all the time, and I can imagine one randomly sending me over the edge in the near future. But then, the dream took a typical veer away from reality (I hope) when he slowly and purposefully cut me on my palm with the knife he was chopping food with...twice. And the third time I did it myself, and then started crying and was hugged by the one I have history with.

Then, I was woken up and got into the shower and promptly cut myself quite deeply with a razor--by accident, of course--just above each ankle. It still hurts.

What it made me think about, though, was how one day he (not the med school one, the other) is going to wake up and be completely alone and without friends and wonder how it happened. It happened when you were unceasingly unconcientious, and always took without giving back. We all put up with you, and those of us who have considered you an friend for awhile now don't want to lose you, because we're loyal and we care about you and can remember having fun with you on several occasions. However, the complete indifference you show to most of us on a regular basis will drive us away eventually. And, like I told you already, if you die of cancer I will not attend your funeral. You think I'm joking, but I'm not. It would just be another case of you disappointing me as a friend. And I know that if you heard all this right now you would just write it and me off and say that you don't care and don't consider me a friend anyway. Sadly, I know that that is not true. You do not have that many friends or even acquaintences, and I know who you depend on for emotional support when things get tough. I am your friend, because I have been there for you more than you EVER were for me....even when my best friend died. I am not saying that I want you to end up old and alone, but inevitably one day, the way you take your friends for granted will bite you in the ass. And I would be very curious to know how you will react when that day comes. I would say, "don't come crying to me when it happens," but that's a lie. I'm the kind of doormat friend who will always be there for them no matter how horribly someone treats me (friends, not boyfriends...simportant distinction) because I get overly attached and can't bear to see anyone unhappy. But, because you're so proud, I doubt very much that you will come crying to me. You will probablly find an unsuspecting girl to attach yourself to, and hopefully you'll be able to hang onto her without smothering her (you treat girlfriends quite the opposite of the way you treat your friends). If you do lose her, just don't commit suicide, because that level of emo-ness is beyond even you, dear.

*Here when I refer to suicide as emo, I am not making commentary on all suicides, just those that are inspired by depression of being dumped.






"An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. --Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do."
-Volume 1, Chapter 20, pg. 78

UCLA in the Final Four

I just saw Shooter. The one with Marky Mark of the Funky Bunch. It was ace actually....chock full of liberal commentary, so I naturally ate it up. I particularly liked how in one of the first scenes of the movie, they enter into a CIA office to have an incredibly corrupt discussion and the picture that is in the background as they enter the room is the Gipper himself. Any movie that rightly aligns Ronald Reagan with a murderous, renegade CIA is fine by me.

My father's criticism of the movie was that with the current political climate it is just too easy to make it believable that a politician of that level could wield so much under-the-table influence. I don't quite understand what he was getting at, but it sounds to me more like a criticism of the current political climate. My only question about the movie was whether it is worth it to kill that many people in self defense. Believe me, even though I say I am a pacifist, I am all for the use of extreme violence if someone is trying to kill you. But at what point is it okay to shoot, stab, and blow up tens and tens of officers who are coming to kill you? At that point is seems like you are making a statement that your life is worth more than all the lives you are taking. I'm not saying that he should have just laid down his life to avoid conflict, especially when most of the people trying to kill him were completely corrupt, it just seems a little destructive.

What is also destructive is cancer. I know this probably sounds incredibly trite and not worth mentioning at all, but it is truly shocking how many people are affected by cancer. I bet every single person I know has known someone who had it, has it, or died from it. It's odd because, I think most people are like I was when I thought about cancer before this year. Yes, it's scary and everything, but it doesn't seem that terrifying because you always hear about radiation treatment and cancer survivors and doctors being able to fix everything. But they can't. And with cancer, nobody knows what the fuck to do. People are literally dropping like flies and we have no cure. Elizabeth Edwards, Olive, Tiger Woods' dad, my little sister's best friend and her twin, the women's college basteball coach who just died, my dad's best friend, the Jewish one's dad, Chloe's aunt. I know this doesn't really make a point, because it's just random people that I've heard of or have known, but it astonishes me, because I never considered it such a deadly problem for so many people. But it is. And we have Ronald Reagan to thank for preventing us getting a jump start on necessary stem cell research into a cure for cancer. Biatch.






Me: "My pet peeve is when basketball players can't make their free throws."
My dad: "I know. If they can't make their free throws, they shouldn't be allowed to have tattoos."
My mom: "Or facial hair....or underwear."
Me: "Are they allowed to wear thongs still, then?"
My mom: "Only on the outside of their clothing."

ACC, get out my grill

Pac-10 3
Big 10 1
ACC 1

That’s right. Maybe if people in the East Coast (including all the commentators in the US) actually stayed up one night late enough to watch a Pac-10 game, they would see that West Coast is where it’s at for basketball talent, especially this year. Instead, they fawn so much over the “power conference” teams that I would expect their courts to be covered in roses. My dad scrawled the Pac-10 vs Big 10 and ACC tally in the dust on our car, but my mom made him wipe it off because we thought we might get shot at now that we’re in NRA country. Every other car either has a bible verse, a NRA sticker, or a Bush 04 sticker, so you know these people are dangerous. We actually passed a few cars with gun racks too. That was when we knew we had to hold my dad back even more. Like when he was upset when a car cut him off and was going to go know on their window and have a go at them when we all were stopped at a stop light. It wasn't a pick-up or anything, but better censored than lynched, right?

Seriously though. I like the South apart from the raging lunacy that is displayed by the conservative bumper stickers. Every single person you pass on the street smiles and says hi, which actually makes for very warm and fuzzy feelings all around. It is a step up from the indifference you encounter in Seattle and ten steps up from Baltimore’s pure hostility. These people don’t want to enslave me, they just want to be my friend! No, I know that’s not true. But I could totally live in a place like Savannah (which in addition to rhyming with my name, is GORGEOUS and warm), and just not interact with the crazies. I can find a liberal enclave, I am sure. I saw people biking, which combined with their Timbuktu messenger bags, screams liberal.

Besides, John Grisham is from the South. And I like him.

USC lost their Sweet 16 game an hour ago which was a dagger through my heart. But I will survive as long UCLA or Oregon makes it to the Final Four. I’m counting on UCLA. I am even at this exact moment in time wearing my Nate Robinson underwear as a Pac-10 good luck charm for tomorrow’s game against Kansas.

Spring Break '07

Let’s be honest. This Spring Break trip theme is not so much “plantation-hopping” as it is “Phoebe eats ribs across America”. Yum.

It turns out that plantations are not exactly the spice of life. They’re gorgeous, yes. But you would think that when touring a former plantation, the focus would be on the legacy of slavery that the place depended on, right? Wrong. We went to a plantation called Middleton Place yesterday and I swear to God, the only mention of slaves we heard was one sentence during the house tour where the guide was explaining that slaves could carry a slave tag when traveling to work on other plantations for a day where they could earn money to buy their freedom. Well, hot dog! Exploitation? Who said anything about exploitation?

As for the Union soldiers, those demons from hell burnt down the Middleton’s main house. You can tell that most of the Middleton Place Foundation volunteers think that the Union soldiers should be tarred and feathered for their crimes against humanity. Gosh darn it, the Middletons worked so hard on their acres and acres of beautiful gardens, for it all to be ruined in the name of war. Of course, here, they all seem to be forgetting that the point of the war (for some) was to end the free labor that the Middleton’s gardens and rice fields depended on. The Middletons, you can tell, are a fucking bright bunch too. They owned over 20 plantations and couldn’t even think of something to grow on this plantation until they got some slaves there and watched the slaves grow rice for themselves. So they decided, meh, let’s make that into a cash crop.

Plantation touring is overall a weird experience. If you are into learning about slave-owner family legacies I would highly recommend it, but if you’re looking for something more legit-feeling you might not be super pleased. Although, the baby animals (lambs, bunnies, ducklings, turtles, 6-foot long alligators, etc.) were adorable and made the experience pretty enjoyable by themselves. My dad was upset to hear that we didn’t take a turtle home from the plantation with us. He has this idea that we will get a turtle and then the zany one of our cats, Roo, can ride it about the house.

The ribs are wonderful. I love ribs. I haven’t eaten them for about a year, just because I never have the occasion, but I am making up for lost time this Spring Break. It is a tiny bit awkward when we go around the table and my mom orders shrimp, my sister orders soup, my dad orders salad and I go for the half-rack of babyback ribs, but worth it in the end. At the last place, even the cute southern waiter kid was laughing at me. He had the thickest drawling accent and my mom whispered conspiratorially “I think he’s from around here”. My sister, ever the princess of sarcasm, retorted “No mom, he actually bikes all the way to South Carolina everyday to wait on people.” We called her Stormy when she was a toddler. Just wait until she hits high school.

She’s kind of funny sometimes. I appreciate it, when she isn’t giving me a 30-minute backseat telethon on the joys of press-and-seal wrap in the car. I got that today, between Charleston and Lynchburg, and now I know how to make the pillow, the seat cover, and the noises.









“What does ‘dora’ mean? It’s at the end of so many girl’s names that it must mean something. You know, like *******…Nymphadora…”
-My sister. She was irate when we called her Turtledora for the rest of the day.

D-E-N-I-A-L

T minus 41 days

Candy Apple Red Nail Polish
15 lbs.
An aversion to serious music…or at least a lack of real connection to it.

These are things that have changed about me since Olive died. Not much. But the bigger things that have changed are too difficult to articulate, not because they’re too difficult for me to talk about but because the change was too gradual and too difficult to pinpoint.

Sometimes I wonder why nobody ever talks to me about her. Does nobody know? My other half disappeared from the earth almost a year ago. Does it seem like I’m perfectly all right? And even more than that, is no one at all curious what it’s like to lose the person you are closest to in the whole world?

I wish someone would ask. Because it’s odd. It’s not as sad or as lonely as I thought it would be. It is literally like she just vanished, and now I use memories to remind myself that she once existed. This girl who I spent all my time with. Whose name became synonymous with mine to the ears of nearly everybody we knew. We had the same tendencies and reactions. We were both shy, but exuberant. We liked Savage Garden and being introspective. We liked acting. We were extremely silly. We hated being taken for granted. We always felt the same things at the same time. We never ever liked the same boys. We were both warm people, but whenever we hugged each other it was sort of awkward. The kind of awkward hug where both the people are really skinny, instead of one of the people being relatively cuddly. It’s hard to explain, but though we never talked about it, I am sure she would have known exactly what I mean, and we would have laughed at the fact that we both recognized it separately and someone finally brought it up.

We were also different. She was flexible. I was most definitely not. Physically, that is. She also had a more flexible demeanor and was more conscientious. Whenever there was any tension between us—and mind you, this would always be unspoken, and never developed into an actual fight…there were NEVER any fights between us, which I have never experienced with any other friend—she would attempt to resolve it and could not rest until everything was perfect again, and she had restored our emotional chi.

How odd it is, that the person my life was based solidly around for years, is gone and I am still emotionally intact. I don’t feel sad on a day-to-day basis. And I don’t constantly think of her. What should I do, though? How are you supposed to act? You move on. Because you can’t go back. Not to be all metaphorical, but it is literally like that chapter of my life is closed for good. And so I am living in a completely new book. Maybe when more time passes I’ll be able to look back at the Life With Olive book, and slip into memories without apprehension. But for now, the extent of my reminiscing about that time is restricted to what I write in here.