I WAIT I WAIT I WAIT I WAIT

I hate to cede so much authority to horoscopes, but my horoscope for this week says something about how I've not only lost the plot, but also the script, the popcorn, and the exit sign (a quote, I think, from a Nick Hornby novel about emotionally catatonic 30-somethings). Yesterday in class, I thought about dropping out of school. Wait, wait, what? Even the extremely abridged version of my life story would include a blurb about how the girl, finding social interaction difficult, turned to books and school for an arena in which to succeed. Two years ago, I would have told anybody that my life plans involved an immediate infusion of gradschool education, either in the form of a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies or an M.F.A. in Poetry. I was mulling over the differences between Iowa and Johns Hopkins when I was 19, and when I attended the Associated Writing Programs conference for the first time, I was too dazzled by the gauntlet of academic poetry to critique its insularity, its designer eyeglasses.

I can't say why I am suddenly so capable of critiquing the above, or why I want to trade in my Theoryhead membership card for a pair of walking shoes, a getaway vehicle, or a tent in the woods. I would do any of them now.

I want to stress that I'm not taking an anti-intellectual stance here, just an anti-academic stance. Does that make sense? I think I've had the experience of discovering that the system of thought I had previously thought encompassed the entire landscape (and I'm talking about theoretical thought here, specifically cultural criticism stuff) is only a line on the map, only a little lake on the periphery. This may be the effect of CMU's English curriculum: it's taught me that I want to reject it. If I hadn't been able to parse out the dynamics of power structures and knowledge, I wouldn't know what else I might want to do with my life. I could have sleepwalked through eight years of graduate education and ended up someplace I didn't understand.

Today I'm going to look at the application process for Library Science programs. The choice has been made. I am going to be a librarian.

MARILU

There is a certain feeling of peace that you can only get in mid-September, walking to work through the park in big sunglasses, a big cowel neck sweater, and a pair of cuffed jeans, listening to Serge Gainsbourg and smoking a cigarette. It's all very Hepburn, even if only in my head.

This is the official one week countdown to my birthday. By this time next week I will be 21 (and I'll probably have a hangover). This is the last birthday that has a concrete cultural meaning (16 and 18 already having passed). Unless I want to run for president, of course, in which case I'll have to wait 14 more years.

HOORAY THE BLUES OF EVERYONE

Friendster exists only to entertain those of us lucky enough to have jobs whose primary task involves sitting in the basement of a library and making sure that the two or three students watching movies for their classes don't disband from reality and go berserk. I have conclusive proof of this.

Sometimes Friendster really bugs me because of the smarmy self-awareness that drives all of the profiles people write for themselves. If somebody would write a more objective profile for me, it would probably say something so raw that not even the 38-year-old computer dorks would hit on me.

I've been up since six, and won't leave work for another forty minutes. Ben kept me company for a good long while tonight, and I really appreciated it. Five hours in a basement is a little rough, but it does get the homework done, by damn.

I WANTED TO BE AN ARCHITECT

Six-thirty is a very early time to wake up. I realized right before going to bed that I had to listen to a radio program online for today's 9 AM class, but our internet connection is still kind of wack. So, here I am in the Cyert cluster at 8:12 with a sniffly cold nose and a page and a half of notes. My god, what we do for classes. I'm going to get some green tea and sit in the sun, for goodness sake.

SO THIS IS THE STONE AGE

Forgive me for yesterday's outburst. It's usually a bad idea to blurt out anger like that, but damn, blogger makes it so easy! I bear no ill will toward the professor in question, but he was unduly rude. It's in the past.

My schedule is getting more and more complicated right now, and I'm not really sure how I feel about that. I was doing such a good job of limiting my obligations and managing my time, but this is starting to feel more like every other semester. That is to say, it's always something, isn't it? And it doesn't help that there's a certain boy whose invitations to watch a movie (any movie) will never be turned down. Even on school nights!

This weekend was very action packed & fun filled. On Friday night, Rachel, Andrew, and I went to see Les Savy Fav at the Rex, complete with dancing, antics, and the singer spitting water on us. (If you've ever seen the Fav live, you might know that this is a cherished occurance rather than a disgusting one. Post-punk lives and spits!) Afterwards we went to a party in Squirrel Hill but left early because the beer ran out and the cops came. On Saturday, we went to the Pirates game (SKYBOX!) and stuffed ourselves with hot sausage and beer. This should have turned into naptime, but instead we watched Curb Your Enthusiasm, endured an unwanted visit from an ex-boyfriend (cut short by yours truly, otherwise known as Ms. Give 'em What They Deserve), and Irish coffees. After some more drama with aforementioned ex-boyfriend's second unwanted visit to the house, Rachel, Ryan, and I listened to the Violent Femmes and then hit up a birthday party on Wightman. It ruled, by the way. How, you ask, did I get any work done this weekend? Well, I didn't because I watched football with Ryan and Andrew the next day, then went to work, got dinner with Rachel, and watched another movie at Andrew's. So. It's Monday. Ow.

PIGS THEY TEND TO WIGGLE WHEN THEY WALK

Just in case you wanted to know, here's how to be a really annoying Video Library patron:
1) Be a professor. Extra points if you're old, crotchety, and seem to think that girls aren't very smart.
2) Take up half an hour of my time asking me to look up The Power of Myth in the catalogue, and then telling me that I've found the wrong thing when in fact I was right all along.
3) Explain everything to me as if I were a small child or a dog.
4) Give me venemous looks when I pause our fruitless search to check in a student's video.
5) Smile patronizingly at me.
6) Make me do YOUR research for you.
7) Keep everything vague: why ask for the exact Joseph Campbell video you want when you can say things like, "Why don't you have a filmography for mythology studies?" Dude, I don't know. I didn't make the filmography list. I'm just here to deal with your bullshit.