friday, feb. 13, 2009.

best day EVER

i wish ben gibbard lots of luck

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: Very long movie. It was okay. I cried a bit in the beginning but the movie began to deteriorate towards the end. My friend Amanda and I agreed that the characters were underdeveloped and the ending was definitely rushed. It tried to meet a set of great expectations but it fell short. I will give it 3- stars. That's right. I'm a movie critic.

What was cool: The fact that I got to see Brad Pitt age from old to young. That Benjamin had a black mother. Their relationship was the most poignant one in the movie. That this was the first movie to make me cry this year. That the beginning of the movie was hands down the best part.

What was really not cool: That Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt turned into an Abercrombie & Fitch ad in the middle of the movie. That Cate's character was totally retarded. That the entire movie felt like a really bad version of Forrest Gump (but at least the characters were developed in that movie, Amanda adds). That I was promised Arcade Fire in the trailer but there was none in the film. Booo.

I'm leeching off of Joe's Netflix subscription online, and today I watched:

1. Mean Girls, really funny, highly rec'd from Joe. Not amazing, though.

2. Enchanted, cute, also highly rec'd from Joe, but the ending pissed me off.

3. Past few episodes of this season's 30 Rock. I've got a crush on Tina Fey.

About to watch:

1. Lolita, 1997 adaptation (not the Kubrick version)

2. Thank You for Smoking

I can't do this for much longer. It's a little late, but I'm going to start saving up for my exit strategy.

It's pretty hard for me to write when most of my days are infused with the looming dread of reading for four classes. Rarely do I ever fulfill the requirement for each class.

Sometimes some telling things happen at Admin. At work Monday morning, a wide woman with a Russian accent approached the Student Accounts desk asking me for information on her son.

"I want to see how my son is learning," she said. She did not know where he lived, did not have his phone number. Her soft brown eyes looked bright bathed in the fake florescent light at the desk, and she spoke to me with a smile on her face, and her mouth half-open. I immediately felt threatened. Parents aren't allowed to know student records from us. It's this law thing.

We couldn't tell her where her son was. I told her that. I called over Mary, one of the billing specialists, and the Russian lady explained her case  to Mary.

"I want to see how my son is learning, " she said. "I made him some cookies."

We took the case to Kathleen, the manager of the office, and Kathy told me to walk her up to Student Affairs. There wasn't anything we could do for her. She looked like she walked from Brooklyn to Stony Brook--totally wiped out. I began to feel bad for her, despite my initial impression. The word Mary and Kathy tossed around in the office was "estranged." Maybe she was "estranged" from her son. Mary's usually a hard-ass. It was clear she felt bad for her.

I walked her upstairs to Student Affairs. By that point, I couldn't stop feeling bad--bad that I had initially snubbed her, bad that I was sending her to a place that wouldn't really help her and I knew it.

She probably didn't find her son. I seriously doubt cookies would've made it better, anyway.

Finally, a day that feels like a day. My first at Stony Brook so far this semester.

I went to I-HOP with Joe. Then I went back to my place and did some reporting and watched MSNBC all day. I took a nap somewhere in the middle, falling asleep to McCain's Obama-socialist comments and waking up to Obama's McCain-Bush comparisons. I think they just replayed the same speeches over and over again but I was so out of it in a delightful way that it didn't really feel annoying. Hours went by. I did laundry. I online-window shopped at Forever21 and Urban Outfitters. I e-mailed some more people. Will visited, and we got coffee with Brendan. I started to dig through the underreported crimes audit report. Rachel came back. She confronted me and we talked and things are better. I nursed my cramps with six tylenol tablets today.

I will sleep now, with the weight of a full day at Stony Brook. The days here slip through my fingers because I'm too busy typing to notice.

you'd never expect drab old me to have an eye for photography, would you?

my limbs aren't writhing anymore.

Friend is a six-letter word.

End is a three-letter word.

Sometimes those extra three letters weigh too much.

i love waking up on wednesdays because i can sleep in late

My suitemate's alarm is weird. It kind of sounds like fairies.- 7:54 AM

We talk about Great Writers a lot but we forget about Great Readers. The Great Readers are the professors that, when reading aloud, they often verbally edit; adding an "and" a "the," skipping over a word, and at times inventing a word out of nowhere. I assume this comes from years reading dense texts, and years of filtering out the bullshit in crappy term papers.

I always volunteered to read out loud in junior high school and the teachers would tell me to slow down because I read too fast for their eyes to adjust. I took it as a compliment, and really, I rarely stumbled, but now I'm thinking that if I had stumbled and added words, it wouldn't have been too bad. Maybe my teachers would have complimented my editing rather than my speedy copycatting.

You should never get attached to your lighters. They always disappear. My newest one cost 86 cents.

 Angling a cigarette against the wind is important. Angling properly will allow you to smoke without getting it in your hair. 

Angle to the side and the smoke passes by. You may even wave goodbye to it. 

Angle up and the smoke turns into a mini-cloud, earth-level. 

Angling down will never get you anywhere.

I angle to the side. You angle to the side. We all angle over ourselves. 

"I rolled over him. We rolled over me. They rolled over him. We rolled over us." - Lolita

birthday week was fantastic. thanks for all the alcohol. i don't feel like showering today. maybe ill have a glass of wine and read joan didion's the white album. it's kind of annoying compared to the rest of the books for EGL 226.

will, fahema: thanks. thanks for letting me have a party at your place. it was a lot of fun and i got mad wrecked.

everyone who showed up: i fuckin love you guys.

everyone who bought me a bottle of vodka: thanks for investing in my future alcoholism.

most of all, thank you joe. couldn't have had fun without all your help. i loved the clothes, i loved the cake, and i absolutely love the necklace :)
 (even though i broke it two days later but it's still okay because you got the lifetime warranty)

 They finally let me take the car out by myself. My day is complete. 

Twenty-one ain't so bad. When I get back to Stony today, I'm going to drown myself in beer. 

i guess im beginning to realize it's just another day. why should i expect it to be any different? no expectations. that's a good way to roll.

im turning 21 in 1.5 hours

I remember when I was ten or so we went on vacation to Orlando. All the kids were afraid of the mascot-sized Goofy and Mickey and various Disney creatures--especially me. So Maha was a little baby in a stroller, unashamed of crying whenever these overgrown things approached us,  but I took a big gulp and shook their hands. It was important to appear brave.

In kindergarten, the boys would bully me, and they were very unoriginal about it, mostly picking at my thick glasses and overall dorkiness. This bullying followed me to junior high school. It's hard to imagine a year that a boy didn't harass me. I remember cursing them all out eventually though, in front of everyone, dodging 'yo mamma' jokes and throwing tons of dirty words at them. My comebacks were never original but at least I fought.

I remember the first boy I ever liked. I bribed him with gummie bears so he would hold my hand.

getting out of the habit of writing is terrible. can't pick it up quite as easily as smoking.

i was sick this entire week, and i think i spread the disease to will (sorry sorry) and maybe ashley (so sorry!) because i heard she was sick. and maybe even emma. btw, emma is my new girlfriend, says the facebook.

things are going well. i have a lot of reading to catch up on from this past week--existentialist bullshit and such.  that has got to be the most pretentious class ever. test in english literature. magazine journalism hw. my classes are retarded this semester.

sometimes i write shit in my phone before im about to pass out.  went through it recently and laughed and cringed

fri, aug 22 1:18 am

the best kind of writing is the type that plays a little hard to get, but too much will land you in a diffderent genre. too little and there's nothing to strive for.

wed, aug 20 4:23 AM

4:17 listening to a blue song but not sad at all.
one of those nights when im exhaused and can't sleep bc there's something on my mind that needs to get out.
with access to many sets of ears and eyes, it shouldn't be a problem to vent.
venting is not enough--i need guidance.