Funny story (via Atrios and the General). So it seems that a community in Missouri appropriated more than a quarter mil to eradicate "the Goth problem" among teens. But the thing is, they had to return the money, because the community wasn't interested, and the problem disapated. Here's the article. Thought some of y'all, being recovering or retired "goths," would get a kick out of it.

Oh...can Kyle and I get a ride home from the airport, June 11th, at 1:30 in the morning? Anyone? Anyone?

Quixotic posts are as fun as the word quixotic!

Lots of stuff to take care of, if I want my summer to fall into place. The Cult[ural Forum] is riding me like a three-legged mule, so I needs to get crackin' on that. I also bit off waaaaay fucking more than I can chew with my final project in drawing. It will be internet-friendly, though, so's y'all kin see what I've done.

In the meantime, expect light posting (not that there's exactly been a torrent lately...)

But I won't turn down phonecalls and letters...email me if you want numbers or addressy things.

BAH!! These pigeons keep landing on my open window (the window itself -- I can only see their feet and tails), and they're really goddamn startling. Everytime it happens, I jump and yelp. Jelp. Yump. Hee. Yump yump yump.



This ended up not being a very quixotic post at all. Damn.

The last day of the Willamette Valley Folk Festival is here, and not a moment too soon. I volunteered four hours of my Saturday to sell CDs at the merch booth and watch old hippies dance in a fashion that can only be called "expressive." For Anchortowners, this is like the stage from the forest fair (and half the food booths) plunking themselves down on the student union quad for the weekend. For once, the folks tripping around on one substance or another aren't necessarily students. The music has been mostly hit or miss, but entirely local. The Ovulators, a chick glam rock thing, played a good set, and a woman with guitar number -- Laura Kemp -- sold most of her CDs within twenty minutes of her set's finale. She was good too. But the screeching/wailing/moaning has yet to stop wafting through my window, as well as the tantalizing meat-on-stick (and other fair fare) aromas. Funnier than the dancing: shirts with sayings like "FREE TOMMY!" on them, with Mr. Chong's face emblazoned behind bars, and the lemming-ness of the crowd's search for shelter from Eugene's ever-present rain showers.

Me? I'm doing homework. Or rather, I was. Now I gone done distracted mahself.

I copied about a tenth of my CDs to my laptop so I can listen to a nice varietal shuffle whilst I computerize. Thing is, I chose all the CDs that give me those sudden bolts of memory or emotion. Right now, it's "Hey Jude" -- if this song does nothing for you, you must be a robot -- which is a Bailey song. Admittedly, there are a lot of Bailey songs (Scattered and Haushinka by Greenday, anything by Counting Crows or Against Me! or...), but this is one of (if not the) original Bailey song.

There are Bailey songs and Areli songs and Natalie songs and Kyle songs and Katie songs and driving-around-Anchorage-on-a-sunny-day-with-the-window songs, and they're all playing randomly. It's a memory parade. A magical mystery musical montage.

Job status: None, but awaiting call-backs for interviews from a couple places.
Home status: Searching. Lots of leads, but nothing has coalesced.

The way my job search is going, I would say going home is a viable option. But it's not. This Cultural Forum position, which, as I have said before, will NOT pay the rent, starts in July, and I'd rather not completely flake out on them. So I can't go home.

I'm a bit grumpy because I just walked to this apartment we applied for...it's right next to the goddamn athlete dorm. Well then. No wonder it's cheap.

I apologize for the grumbles, and I'll write more eventually. more better. more better later.

I will scan the results of my polaroid transfer class as soon as the pictures are satisfactorily dry -- this will be in a couple days, just to make sure I don't gunk up Kyle's scanner. And, as a super photo-fun bonus, I'll throw in some pictures from my adventure last night and the results of my latest photoshopping. (Wow, how "tune in next time!" was that?)

In the meantime, I still have no job, no place to live for the summer, and no clue about when those things will come into focus. But I do have pictures!

Say Erica, what's with the sparse posting?
Well, you know...homework, friends in the flesh, photography stuff, getting re-addicted to a silly computer game...you know, the usual.
What was that last one?
Getting re-addicted to a silly computer game. There. Happy?
Mm-hmm.

Yep. Yahoo Towers has been eating away at my time and brain-cells for a couple of weeks now. I'm going to have to enter a 12-step program or something. The game is fun (although I'm not especially good at it) -- like Tetris on speed -- but, you know, that whole life thing.

I just walked over to Kyle to make sure she was still breathing. She fell asleep with my overly-floppy pillow on her face and looked a little bit too still. All's well.

Over the course of this term, I have watched more anime than I had ever watched in my entire life. Mostly movies, but some of the bits on weeknight Adult Swim, too. I never really gave the stuff a chance; some of it's pretty good, but I'm not about to become a fanatic. Cowboy Bebop is fun stuff. On the flip side, don't watch "Perfect Blue" unless you're feeling emotionally intact. While I'm on the subject of movies, have any good ones come out in the last 3-6 months? I haven't exactly been connected to a TV, which was my main source of trailers. Now I don't know what's out there, or if anything is worth the money.

Massive second-thoughts about staying here over break, but I don't have the guts to change the plan now. I'm not even attached to the plan, really. The anxiety builds and builds as I get continually turned down in the job department. The fish job is a no-go. The wanted a science major. In any case, and totally unrelated, I have mail to send out, including a mix cd for Katie that I listen to and don't send.

Oh. As if I weren't starting enough projects, I'm taking my free 100MB with the UO web directory. That will hopefully morph into a standing site. That, and I've started posting to PhotoPoints, a photo critique site. I'll post links to the latest stuff ASAP.

Even though my attention span and amount of free time have been all over the map for a while, I've been inspired to learn more about web design. This woman I met at my cousin's wedding in March, a friend of his from their undergrad years, blew me out of the water with her webpage. It's amazingly designed and well-organized, and I'd love to be able to do something similar with my whoozits. Criticism, photos, writing stuff, etc...I'll link to her at left.

More house-hunting, for the summer and for next year, abounds. That's where I'm off to when I finish this post, actually. Thing is, I need a job as well. I interviewed for a job with UO Neuroscience -- to feed their fish. They breed, splice and stir-fry sticklebacks, and they need someone to clean tanks and such over the summer. That went well, but it's only 12-15 hours a week. I wouldn't turn it down though, because it's a job and it's really flexible. Another interview on friday for a cushy part-time office job. Here's hoping. More later.

LATER...
My dad called (!) to chat and give me some relatives' addresses and phone numbers. We ended up talking for more than an hour, and even when we talk about stupid things it makes me feel really comfy. But that's not The News. The News is that my brother will probably come down for a visit in July! We didn't always get along (what with being siblings and all), but all through my senior year and since I've been away, things have been swell rather than swollen. Adam's sort of shy around just about everyone that's not family, but he's got a great sense of humor, which he naturally picked up from his big sister. Anyhow, that will be supercalifragilawesome. (I'd put "(sp?)" next to that, but...)

Crossing my fingers for the fishyjob.

A couple days, some house-hunting, and a massive Blogger change later, she emerges for a quick post. A very quick post.

My thoughts on death have been galvanizing over time; as people who are close to me or my loved ones pass away, my perspective gets a little tweak. I don't know Carrie that well -- at best, we could be called mutual friends. The sorrow I feel now is quite different from the sorrow I felt when Joy Greisen died, which is different from the feelings I had when my distant relative Vera died, and on and on. I have yet to lose a close friend, family member, lover. But gradually, I'm learning what it is about death that makes me cry and clutch my pillow and wish for impossible things. I grieve for the dead -- like we all do -- and wish they were not so, but what makes me equally or more sad is the anguish that friends, family and lovers go through. There aren't any words for the simplicity and sadness. When I read the livejournal circuit, I see Areli, Sophie, Katie hurt and seek refuge from it. I'm crying with you.

Carrie's loved ones, the ones that I love as well, will not be the same. And in a removed, but powerful way, neither will I. Because it will be my turn one day to receive the wound that doesn't close. I've been lucky (I guess that's one way to put it) enough to be eased into the concept of death. But every person dies, and that is part of the greatest tragedy. No one wants to bury their best friend, mother, next door neighbor, but we can't all die first. I dread the day of the accident or the news, though rarely do I dread it actively because for the moment, my inner circle is safe. Everyone is mobile, concerned with all shades of their lives -- from the lightest to the most grave.

I've been thinking a lot about mobility. We all control our limbs, walk and all that. But we control our bigger motions too: moving out of state, moving toward our various goals, moving away from the old. I'm hyper-aware of the ramifications of this mobility and the responsibility it gives. In the small scale, I'm looking for a home to move into. It will be the first time I seek my own housing, and whether or not I end up in a shanty made of sticks and Elmer's depends entirely on me. More broadly, I hold my life between my fingers every day. I've put myself on a path that veers away from Anchorage, and anything that resembles a home. This too makes me cling to the safety of my friends and family, and yet I drive myself away. It's starting to scare me more than a little.

My dorm is adajacent to Straub hall, the Psychology area. When I walk back to my room after classes, I walk past a bird's nest that I can't see. The baby blackbirds' crying and cheeping gives it away, as does the ever-present mom bird with some kind of tidbit in her beak. We had a (very small) thunderstorm tonight; I hope the nest is safe under the eaves.

Funny, there was something here a moment ago...

My oblique muscles aren't happy. They're bitching on about how walking somewhere in the neighborhood of nine miles was a bit too much. My shoulders are whining about sunburn accrued on the same walk -- it was blazing again yesterday. The dogs would be barking, to get colloquial on your collective ass, but they're recovering from blisters too big to decently describe. Nelly and I went for a stroll yesterday, which was a lot of fun because we don't get to talk one on one too much. I also found some stellar graffiti that I need to go shoot.

I started The Unbearable Lightness of Being, mostly because it scared me with its depth. So far, it's great. I haven't picked up a book that I need to seriously digest lately.

Last night was Pizza Friday, and for the past few weeks dorm life has been fun.

Happy May Day! [God, can it be May already?]