OH, ALEXANDER I SEE YOU BENEATH THE ARCHWAY OF AERODYNAMICS
I'm all of four pages from having the zine finished. I could easily finish it tonight, but that doesn't really seem to be the point. This issue has taken its time, and I don't think I'm going to want to have any more one-night zines like my other two. Yeah, the layout was a lot more consistent, but that's because I had very limited resources (one typewriter) and a small layout plan. And there's definitely something good about that kind of project sometimes, but I needed to do something a little bigger. My greatest fear is that all of the disparate parts of the zine, what with having four fonts instead of one, and lots of different directions, are going to pull it apart somehow, make it seem like a shambles. But every time I look at the 57 pages I've already done, I can't think of anything I want to change, so help me. If I wanted to I could pull apart a few pages and rework them so that they match the pages I've been designing this week, but it seems like it would be against the point. I'm going to finish the last four pages before I drive out to Morgantown to visit Scott and Ethan tomorrow, let it sit for the weekend, and proofread it on Monday. And then I take it to the copy shop. And then I start the hellacious process of assembling it. All I have to say is that you had better fucking like it.

Don't let that keep you from an honest critique, though. Hah.

ALLEZ VOUS ENTE
By all accounts, today was productive. I hiked with mom at 7:30, went through my massive box of CMU correspondence, practiced trombone, and made a shirt that says "I AM UN CHIEN ANDALUSIA." Everybody in the supermarket and the library tried to figure it out, but it's in English, French, and Spanish, so good luck.

I was looking for biographies of Egon Scheile and Marcel Duchamp in the library today, but the whole art section is full of books like Negro Art and Its Place in Society. Luckily I found a nice book about Frida Kahlo, some of Virginia Woolf's early diaries, and the same copy of The World According to Garp that I was reading a few weeks ago. Both the Michael Moore and Annie Dillard books that I was returning to the other town library were on reserve for other people. It's so nice to think that somebody else in Waynesburg wants to read an account of how racist and consumerist and fucked-up Our American Way is. I told the librarian to pass along my compliments to the next lucky reader.

My friend Matt had called while I was out; it turns out that he's going to London tomorrow to visit his girlfriend. (!) Being the kinds of rural youth that we are, we went to Eat 'n Park, talked about zines, traveling, locals, and everything else. I showed him the 50 finished pages of my zine to get some feedback. He said that the layout was a little busy, and it remains to be seen whether the whole thing will have a cohesive feeling. I was really grateful for the honesty. Being so close to done, though, it doesn't seem like I'll be turning around and changing very much of it. Hmm. Not very successful, I guess. And then, like all disenchanted rural youth, we went to Walmart to look at the school supplies. I bought fabric to make a cape, some boys' t-shirts, and a package of green dye. And then we drove home. He's worried that his girlfriend will be a little put-off because he's been painting his nails. Oh, young love. Isn't it always so much more complicated than that?

AND I FEEL LIKE SOME BIRD OF PARADISE
So the rest of my summer will be mostly a mad dash to finish all of the projects I've started. The zine is still taking its time, and I won't make any predictions on how much longer it'll take. My aim now is only to have it ready by the time I get back to school. I have a handful of sewing projects that I'd like to do. Aside from the superman skirt mentioned yesterday, I want to make a small half-cape, red with yellow lining. Too pompous? I should hold a vote. I don't actually know how to make it, so it very well might not happen anyway. Well, I might get some fabric tomorrow. It's really anybody's guess right now.

I finally started to like that PJ Harvey album I bought a few years ago. It's the newest one, Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea. She has a nice voice, and her songs are a lot more interesting than I had ever thought. It's such a relief to finally like something that I haven't really cared for, like wearing the converse all-stars I bought in seventh grade or using the MLA citation guide that my mom thought was a waste of money.

LITTLE EIFFEL STANDS IN THE ARCHWAY
Ye gods, it has been a boring day. I played bass for a while, did some chores, did some reading, and watched the first half of that '60s movie they played on ABC a few years ago. I'm thinking that I had better finish my zine as soon as I can so can at least clean up my room. I finally started the Camus book Greg loaned me when I was packing up last semester, and that's about that. Still, though, there's something exciting afoot. I wish I could say what. Off to make a superman skirt.

WHAT I'D LIKE TO DO WITH YOUR VIOLIN (AND ITS BOW)
You could say that I've been awfully errant in the blog posting. I suppose you would be right. There are reasons, of course. The main factors in my lack of blogness would be: 1) I just got back from visiting NYC with my parents, and that took up a few days with packing and driving and yelling at each other on the subway, 2)Sometimes I feel like nobody reads it, so why? but then I realize how good it is for me to write something every day, but by then it's 8:00 and it goes against my personal constitution to do anything past eight that I don't want to do. Um. 3) There has been a tremendous Real World marathon the last week or so, and I am just the pathetic loser who stays in her jammies, reads vegetarian cookbooks, and bitches about how everybody tries to figure out which roommate is gay right off the bat. (I mean, gosh, you can't get to know them as people before you apply whatever prejudices you have? Assholes.) So now we're all present and accounted for.

Yes, so I was visiting the great big city this week on "vacation." Any event, however, which demands that you constantly argue with your parents about which street Cultural Attraction A is on cannot really be a vacation. I don't think I'll get into the complaining so much because there won't be any stop if I do. Still, if you want me to do an impression of my dad in the big city, just ask the next time you see me. We got out okay, and we were kind of friendly on the drive back, so what else can you ask for?

We saw the Trade Center site, and it was a big hole in the ground to me. There are a lot of other places that mean something to me, but I had a hard time getting all worked up about this huge construction site. I thought that the multitudes were a lot more important than a stupid hole in the sky. Afterwards, dad wanted to go to the exact same street in Chinatown we had visited a few years ago when the literary club (well, three of us, anyway) accepted an award at the Columbia Scholastic Press conference. We walked along Canal street at the hottest time of day, and I loved it. Little Italy and Chinatown converge around Mott street or so, and the day was sunny and the cannoli was good. As taxing as it is on our family situation, visitng that particular city is like image hunting for me. I find myself scribbling the whole time just to try to keep some of it in.

On day two we went to the temporary location for the MoMA in Queens, which was pretty small but still awesome. Apparently they had a parade to carry a few of the pieces to be featured in the retrospective, and it was chilling to see whole flocks of people carrying Duchamp's bicycle wheel across the Queens Bridge, among other things. We saw the Whitney after lunching on Park Avenue (which sucked, in my opinion) and went to bed early. Our last full day was full of waiting in line for discount tickets to Urinetown, me shopping at H&M, seeing Urinetown, and then schlepping down to the East Village for one final, grande argument about where to eat. We ended up at Veselka, a Ukranian diner, which my dad was thoroughly prepared to hate. Instead he had some pierogi and some Pilsner Urquell (a Czech beer that is his favorite above all). I looked in the record shops on St. Mark's while they had another beer in a little bar that was playing OK Computer and browsed around Search and Destroy, where I bought my infamous Boy Scouts of America t-shirt. Unfortunately they were playing Atari Teenage Riot and had jacked up their prices to $25 a shirt! While they are well chosen, no self-respecting bargain hunter would take it. Whatever. I found a nice Pirates shirt for cheap, even by my own standards, and walked out happy.

I listened to Trompe Le Monde about five times on the way home and ran into Scott and Ethan in the supermarket. They were just getting back from a week at the beach. On the rest of the way home I closed my eyes and tried to figure out where we were just based on the curves and the hills. It used to be my favorite game.