June 2012
1 post
“It took me years and years to realize a very simple thing, which is that when...”
– Ann Beattie
May 2012
24 posts
anchorage
dictionaryofobscuresorrows:
n. the desire to hold on to time as it passes, like trying to keep your grip on a rock in the middle of a river, feeling the weight of the current against your chest while your elders float on downstream, calling over the roar of the rapids, “Just let go—it’s okay—let go.”
This is a post about butchers
It must be strange to be a butcher and have to tell people that you’re a butcher. I mean. Obviously everyone would know what you were talking about, that you prepare/sell meat for a living… But do you know what some of the other definitions of “butcher” are? For the noun, you’ve got, “a person guilty of brutal or indiscriminate slaughter or murder,” and...
Some things to think about: 1. In my room, I have a wall of postcards that I’ve gotten from Postcrossing (which is the loveliest. You should all join. I know that I am very famous so it probably seems like they are paying me to say this, but no! Genuine opinion!) and I was looking at it last night and it suddenly hit me that all the places pictured in the postcards are real places out there...
HEY! Have you ever wished you knew more about Stalin’s cult of personality? Do I know the perfect resource for you! You should read this really informative and well-cited Wikipedia article about it! Wow! Who wrote that? Oh yeah! I did! For my Russian history final!
(I am telling everyone. Because. It was a lot of effort to get this on Wikipedia because Stalin is a semi-protected page...
Finals week, as summarized by two random guys I...
1: Maybe we should just go to bed.
2: Yeah... Yeah, you're right. That would probably be the best thing to do right now.
1: Oh, wait... (pause) It's only 9 o'clock...
2: Oh. (long pause) Well. I guess we probably shouldn't go to bed, then.
Today at work, I had to enter these end-of-the-year choir participant surveys into a spreadsheet. One of the questions was, “What’s your favorite memory from this year?” And these three were my favorites: 1. “Meeting my friend Heather now we are best friends when she sings something right or wrong I do too” 2. “Sinning in a circle” [the number of times...
I’m doing research at work on Eastern Europe (long story) and here’s a fascinating piece of information I discovered on Wikipedia: “Czech literature is the literature written by Czechs.” I truly feel that I’ve learned something today. And people say Wikipedia’s not accurate…
Unrelated thoughts: 1. Yesterday in my English class, my professor was going over what certain words in this one passage meant and finally she was like, “And ‘flaccid.’ Well, you guys know what that means.” And I wanted to say, “What are you implying?” 2. The weather was super bizarre yesterday (wow Kaylee you talk about the weather so much you are fascinating)....
“I have nothing now but praise for my life. I’m not unhappy. I cry a lot because...”
– Maurice Sendak on Fresh Air in 2011
Because I’d like to take a minute to sit on this thinking about Sendak bandwagon with all of you.
My favorite 5 pieces of writing advice from this article, in which the Guardian asked famous authors for their rules of fiction writing: 1. Margaret Atwood: Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the pencil breaks, you can’t sharpen it on the plane, because you can’t take knives with you. Therefore: take two pencils. 2. Roddy Doyle: Do not place a photograph of...
I had to clean out choir folders at work and in one of them I found a flier for a choir retreat. “Oh wow!” I thought. “A retreat! How nice!” And the flier talked about how you should bring a bag lunch and I was all, “Oh, how happy, they probably have a bag lunch picnic! And it’s all sunny and stuff…” And then it said something like, “We have a...
April 2012
21 posts
“During dinner, the toastmaster, A.I. Mikoyan, apparently made 30 toasts!”
– From one of the essays I read about Stalin. Whoa, Mikoyan! Hold your horses! Looks like someone’s taking his responsibilities as toastmaster a little too seriously!
Here are some things that are strange: 1. Researching a topic with a relatively small field of study, so that all your sources start referencing each other and you see the same authors popping up all over the place and it gets to the point where you’re like, “Wow, how did I get so entrenched in the academia of Nazi propaganda/Stalin’s cult of personality/whatever it is...
Pro tip: next time you find yourself over-analyzing minute details and what said details mean about you and what said details mean about other people and what they mean about how other people feel about you and so on and so forth, just pretend like you are in a Virginia Woolf novel. Congrats! You are no longer neurotic and obsessive. Instead, your life is an important and meaningful artistic...
Here are some things about some people who are not me: 1. This morning when I was looking up facts for my radio show, I discovered that Buddy Holly was only successful for a year and a half before he died. And like… he’s considered one of the biggest influences on early rock n’ roll. Which then obviously influenced all the rock n’ roll that came later. That someone could be...
“‘If I Had a Hammer’ must have been written for people without...”
– Ellen Degeneres on Peter, Paul & Mary’s song “If I Had a Hammer”
queasyweasley:
One Ring Zero - Radio Lyrics by...
This morning I noticed that the recent search...
typical accordion price
o [this was a mistake from when I was trying to check my Oberlin e-mail]
popular russian boys names
derogatory names for communists
aladdin’s eatery oberlin
So. That’s pretty much how things are going on this end.
One key reason why my life could not be a TV show/movie is because fictional characters are always dramatically going, “Excuse me, I’ve lost my appetite,” and leaving the table in a huff. But I’m pretty sure that even if I got really upset, I would still finish my meal, or bring it with me at least. How are you ever supposed to feel better if you don’t eat some sort...
“We have come to this town where lives the cream of American art.… But just now I...”
– So apparently when Khrushchev (the leader of Russia after Stalin) came to the United States, he really wanted to go the Disneyland (and also to meet John Wayne). But they told him that he couldn’t go to Disneyland and he got a bit upset.
So Lynda Barry came to talk to our creative writing class and it was the coolest and a half. And one thing she said that I thought was super neat-o! was that when you’re writing, you’re having a mental experience, and the marks that you’re putting on the paper are just the formula for that experience. And then it just sits there as a formula until someone else picks it up and...
If anyone tries to pull any shenanigans in what remains of April Fool’s Day, I’m going to punch them in the face and go, “Haha, you have to go to the hospital now! April Fool’s!”
I kept seeing April Fool’s Day references online and thinking, “These must be old, because we already had April Fool’s Day this year.” But no. We didn’t. I just...
March 2012
23 posts
Making dreams come true
Last night, I was like, “Whoa, I wish I had some toast.” So then I made some toast.
“We’re on P-2. We’ll remember because it’s like Peeta.”
– Look at Madre, being all clever about our parking when we went to see “The Hunger Games”
I find it amusing that the states in the U.S. generally get bigger the farther west you go… I imagine them being super careful about it in the beginning and dividing the east coast up really precisely and then, after a while, being like, “Fuck it. This should probably be, like, thirteen states, but I don’t want to come up with thirteen names and thirteen state flags and thirteen...
Every time I go to the cemetery across the street from my dad’s house, there are a bunch of crows there. “Really, crows?” I say. “You’re not even going to try to fight stereotypes?”