Ideas after 2 a.m.

That the first issue of Spin I bought had Ani DiFranco, Thom Yorke, and Missy Elliott on the cover.

That I would like to exactly reverse the celebration of plastic party divas and the disdain for music that women enjoy singing along to together.

That being in school makes me think I'm living in a dorm. The overhead lights don't seem to be my responsibility.

That time is not just tight, it's mechanical.

That the tree outside my window is encased in ice. One image burns up the untrue.

I might as well be a thousand years old.

Trucker hat

Wes Anderson deliberately tries to make cult films. It isn't a surprise that prefabricated cult films have come into existence, but we should still take notice. I doubt that he knew what he was doing when he made "Rushmore" -- which filmed the combined fantasy boyhoods of himself and the Wilson brothers as though they were Godard films. However, with the film's success, he believed he had discovered his style. What he had in fact discovered was his audience. This explains the estranged, polite distance he keeps from his characters in the later films -- he does not explore them; he accessorizes them. It also indicates why each of the most recent three films are organized around collectives -- stand-ins for the audience -- that face casually meaningless trials to awesome pop soundtracks. If post-suburban white kids do anything other than recognize a simplified reflection of themselves in Anderson's protagonists, they are seeing too much, or not enough.

Swan/s

There's an album by Mazzy Star from 1996 called Among My Swan. I like to pretend that I'm the only person who has ever heard this album, or that I'm the only person to whom it remains important, or that I'm the only such person who has no interest in shoe-gazer music.

The second track, "Flowers in December," was playing in Chipotle Grill today. Something about burritos and 90s alternative, a demographic. Is salsa made of tomatoes and cilantro, or a sense of belonging?

So I guess it's been since April. In the intervening months, I fell in love, got work visas for 314 people, switched roommates twice, had five lovely friends get married, became the Board President of a (very small) non-profit organization, saw the Chair of my graduate program replaced by another dude, was ravaged by bedbugs (in Florida!), endured flirtation from men with names such as Chuluunbaatar, Zagd-Ochir, and Zinametyr, attended the Clay Buchholz no-hitter at Fenway, and got a library card. This was mostly really good.

I feel bad for leaving you readers in the lurch for so long. For periods of time I find the prospect of accounting for myself really daunting. But I'm glad that people are running around, wondering how each other are, having birthdays. I mean, you are ALL having birthdays. May they all be happy.

Fall is starting, which means that the air is abruptly delicious, and the sky is clear as a bell. Lots of black squirrels in the park. Didn't it feel like a long summer? Last night we lay in bed and listened to Leadbelly. Paul Chan is down in New Orleans producing Waiting for Godot with the Classical Theatre of Harlem. Worth a trip?

EPluribusUnum, or Women's History Month

I'll tell you all about my messiah complex later on, but for now want to talk about now, and bring to your attention some services that came to my attention this afternoon. This week, Flavorpill, which you should just go-Ogle, is promoting a free party at Webster Hall by two "activity-enabling orgs," MyOpenBar and HeyLetsGo. Were we not in haste to go get some reading done, we would think about the inefficiency of spaces between words. Both of these are social networking services. They collect people by collecting email addresses. They are party-minded objective spirit, which I have been given to understand is a fancy pseudonym for social institutions. Oh wait, we had the thought while we were writing: losing the spaces between the words is a way to draw attention to the objectivity of the service, to articulate what they do. EPluribusUnum, as it were.

Also, there is GoodReads, where you can post what you're reading, what you were reading, what you want to read. Why not? Claire, I imagine, will never forcibly collect those syllabi from the rest of us, anyway.

As these media show no sign of slowing their reciprocal proliferation and consolidation, one can merely hope that the soft, Mac-white anaesthesis that they radiate is not, as the ice-pick Modernists have feared, malignant. As objectivity draws itself together with all the inevitability of a dying star, let us aspire to actually *using* it, to reaching into the instantaneous transference of information and grasping inside that magnificently-organized storm an equally human hand.

By which I mean, nothing more than my class of seven women continuing the conversation about art criticism when my male teacher ran out of the room with a nosebleed, and nothing less than recreating our political system online, if that's what it fucking takes. Speaking of which, ladies, do me a fave and talk about HISTORY with one another. Whatever strand you want -- music, hairdos, marriage, education, weapons, politics, philosophy, philanthropy, philadelphia, the rocky mountains, judaism, elephants -- just talk about it.

From the vaults: men of ancient times

"The understanding of the men of ancient times went a long way. How far did it go? To the point where some of them believed that things have never existed — so far, to the end, where nothing can be added. Those at the next stage thought that things existed but recognized no boundaries among them. Those at the next stage thought there were boundaries but recognized no right and wrong. Because right and wrong appeared, the Way was injured, and because the Way was injured, love became complete. But do such things as completion and injury really exist, or do they not?"

_Chuang Tzu, Discussion on Making All Things Equal

Ceci n'est pas une blague

I was born to have a messiah complex.

Smartest ever

This guy.

I'm not kidding. Check out the full-size pic.

Mistake

When cloven-hoof Prince Turnip in the garden...

Poem, from the vaults

Refrain: I go down to the river, but I don’t get there

Where the guy with the beard plays his radio

We wish our rocking chairs were visible

We don’t have no lovers nor ice cream

The pigeons look like ink brushes

And the sunset their watercolor

I just put it together

It falls apart a little

The cars driving upstream below

Re: my corkwoo

Oh Gigi Bevil, what *is* a corkwoo?

out an elderly type with a white beard and a monocle entered.
Training and programming, dear boy. Before this present assignment I
this planet, some inhabited, but they have no contact with this one.
Ive been meaning to ask. Whats a tachyon?
saints who had accomplished so much good.
from active duty; with talent in such short supply I had had the
Then why wasnt I going to sleep? Instead of lying there tensely
It was waking up that was difficult. Some hours had slipped by female.
was the gentlemen-at some physical cost I must add-who polished off

A few thoughts for the year of the double agent: Regina Spektor's songs beg to be arranged for a capella groups. I'll travel eight hours to look at a lake and not feel lonely. I need to appreciate visual art more like I appreciate music than like I appreciate literature. Eyeballs!!