Sunday, December 30, 2007

Fail on!

I'm one of those people who needs to have a narrative version of their life, and the act of writing it is as cathartic as it is compelling for me. I feel as though I haven't truly experienced something nor accepted the full weight of an experience unless I take the time to sit and hash it out. There is something to be said for just living and not stopping to reflect, but I'm neurotic and unless I force myself to think about things I'm afraid my life will just go by without meaning, or worse, I'll forget what happened because I have the memory of a goldfish.

And so, before I resolve, I've decided I need to recap my 2007, something I've never actually done. Well, of course I've never recapped 2007 as it's never been the end of this particular year before, but you know what I mean. I've never looked back to see what I've accomplished (or, more likely, failed to accomplish). So, here goes.

Jan-May: School (nothing really astounding happened here)
May-August: Got an internship and worked in NYC. Check.
August-December: School (again, all I recall is frustration, stress, and some fatalism)
Let's see, what else did I do that is of note... ah yes, :
  • Learned the Soulja Boy dance
  • Moved an entire house full of furniture with just myself and one roommate in 6 hours (I've never been so tired)
  • Successfully played my oboe at a wedding, proving by golly, I've still got it
  • Traveled to NY, Pittsburgh, Tallahassee, Tennessee, & Washington D.C. (3 times)
  • Saw Ani DiFranco in concert for the 3rd time, in Prospect Park, after which, surrounded by 100s of mostly lesbian couples, I felt more lonely yet paradoxically happy than I ever have in my life. (That was a lot of parenthetical phrases). I'll never forget that feeling. E.B. White was right.
  • Dated a sociopath.
  • Ate a hotdog at the authentic Coney Island, before they Vegas-ize it.
  • Ran over the Manhattan & Brooklyn bridges, breathing in vaporized steel from the trains that probably took years off of my life
  • Lived with a 23 lb. cat named Mama (and an awesome roommate named Mia. Mama Mia!)
  • Met real-life cowboys at a Honky-Tonk in Nashville
  • Introduced two more people on this earth to the charms of Charleston
  • Raised a buttload of money for cancer research as a Relay for Life team captain
  • Dated another possible sociopath. (More on that here)
Ok enough of that. So here are my resolutions:
  1. Don't date sociopaths
  2. Break 24:00 in a 5k
  3. Be nicer to my parents
  4. Finish my thesis and graduate
  5. Get a job? (these are getting more and more unfeasible)
  6. Read more, shop less
Ok, that's easy enough, right? Shitbucket....

Anyway, that's not very inspiring for the new year, so I'll end with this:

Robert Louis Stevenson once said, "Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits."

Friday, December 28, 2007

Riddle me this:

How come when I try to do my hair like this:
it ends up looking like this?:

(complete with gray hair). sigh...
I guess it could be worse:

Sunday, December 23, 2007

I never sausage a thing!

A good pun makes my day. That one comes from a sign Sarah saw near South of the Border (b/t NC & SC...that border) on her way home.

It's Christmas Eve. Let me introduce you to the Curry Family Christmas:

"The tasteful Christmas: What is the purpose of it? You can be tasteful any time of year, why choose Christmas?" -Garrison Keillor, the Christmas edition of A Prairie Home Companion

Instead of It's a Wonderful Life, my family watches National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.
We don't have stockings, but we have a 25-year old tree skirt that smells like cat piss. We may not have a real Christmas tree, but we have a hand-made stuffed one with a drooping star (even with the pencil stuck up it). We might not open presents until late afternoon on Christmas because a certain brother can't get his arse out of bed; the exterior illumination might look like it was assembled whilst intoxicated; the extent of our holiday decor may involve brittle plastic ribbons and garland warped from the heat of the attic; heck, we may not have "traditions" at all in the...traditional sense, but I think bickering, drinking, and laughing at ourselves just may count.

Xmas '05, looking like we're about to get executed?:
ah, that's more like it:

Merry Christmas, and "Hallelujah, HOLY SHIT!"

Saturday, December 22, 2007

that's why they call them business socks

Because of course my brother overslept and instead of arriving at my house to pick me up at 10am he has just now woken up upon me calling him, I am forced to fart around for a couple hours. Which is fine because I could watch Jemaine Clement all day.

We're driving home today. Along with everyone else in the world. I'm excited to see my parents and old friends, but it always feels funny going home, which is probably good because it means I'm finally seeing Atlanta as my "home." I often slip up and refer to it as such sometimes, which is strange for a girl who spent her entire childhood in one city and will always think of it as home.

Anywho, after 2 glasses of Indiana church wine, some chardonnay, and a rum-and-flat-coke last night, I should sleep pretty soundly in the back of my bro's cramped Civic, all the while dreaming of Catch Phrase coming at my face in slow motion.

Thursday, December 20, 2007

On my eponymous blogger name...

Ok so, I'm not exactly sure about the copyright rules here, but I am citing the author so I assume this is legal. Anyway, a break from school seems to pose the perfect opportunity to post (alliteration!) this, one of my favorites. (And also because I have nothing to say today, b/c I'm depressed after watching Hotel Rwanda, and b/c Olivia left, and b/c we had a terrible dinner at Ted Montana's at which the waiter made me extremely uncomfortable just by being awkwardly and overly fake-friendly and additionally gave Beth sweet tea with sludge in it and me a merlot in a dirty glass with food particles encrusted all over it and b/c I saw that movie about Bob Dylan today which was really good but I didn't really understand it b/c I don't know Dylan that well and so now I have a lot of listening and reading to do and I don't know when I'm going home b/c my brother seems to think that he can call me at the last minute and say "ok I'm ready to leave now!" and I haven't played my oboe since the wedding in October unless you count the time at my party a few nights ago where I drunkenly made my oboe sound like a french siren (I had never drunk-oboed before that night) and I'm supposed to play at home at Xmas and....whoa. How's that for stream of consciousness? I'm going to bed now. Just read the poem.)


Beside the Point

by Stephen Cushman

The sky has never won a prize.
The clouds have no careers.
The rainbow doesn't say my work,
thank goodness.

The rock in the creek's not so productive.
The mud on the bank's not too pragmatic.
There's nothing useful in the noise
the wind makes in the leaves.

Buck up now, my fellow superfluity,
and let's both be of that worthless ilk,
self-indulgent as shooting stars,
self-absorbed as sunsets.

Who cares if we're inconsequential?
At least we can revel, two good-for-nothings,
in our irrelevance; at least come and make
no difference with me.

Hotel Rwanda is not an uplifting holiday romp...

In fact, it is an utterly depressing thing to watch by yourself the day after the triumphant conclusion of your semester. So, not recommended. I was inspired to add it to my Netflix after seeing a panel discussion on genocide recently at Emory, at which one of the survivors from the hotel was in attendance. He started his speech by putting up a picture of a bride and groom on their wedding day surrounded by what must have been 20 or more family, friends, and members of the wedding party. He then went on to say that everyone in the picture but him and his wife were murdered in the genocide.

It is unreal that what happened in Rwanda did not serve as a tocsin for the world, and that the same thing is happening today in Sudan and the Congo.

http://www.savedarfur.org/blog

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Guess I'll start a blog.

I always thought blogs were self-indulgent and only endorsed already rampant solipsism, but I've changed my mind. It's not that I think I'm terribly important or interesting or that anyone cares to read about my inane musings and unexciting life; it's more like I've found a new outlet for procrastination. Which I am queen of.

Also Blogger makes me feel really important and interesting by simply allowing me to "publish," no questions (or edits) asked. Which is really, really cool. Ahh technology.

Thanks for reading.

Headline: Someone strikes match near Cheney's fart tube, starts blaze.

Just Outside the Executive Office Building, Washington, DC: This tube goes directly from Cheney's ass through a series of underground tunnels, and emerges here:


you know, to release his farts.

A problem has occurred recently with this system, however:


Woops. HATE it when that happens. Thank you to Sissy for alerting me to this malfunction.