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I've moved on.

It's just so much sexier, easier, hypermediated-er.

And so ADIEU.

"Some balls are better than others..."

I have mentioned this weekend on every single online network of which I'm a part, and I swear this is my last iteration, but I'm just so obsessed with this place now. I can't wait to get my car up here (hopefully) next semester so I can take better advantage of what's SO NEAR TO ME.

So, in chronological order, here are some iPhone pics from the weekend. I think they turned out pretty well having come from a phone, but I guess I'm just used to shitty phone cameras and not used to pretty ok iPhone cameras.

Beach House 10/09

Grizzly Bear 10/09

The Vassar chapel 10/10

Pete Seeger in front of the chapel 10/10

En route to the city with Madeleine and Chris (10/10)

Lacrosse tournament at WCSU 10/10

The Hudson from the Vanderbilt Mansion 10/11

The Staatsburgh Mansion 10/11

Woodstock: A Mountain 10/11

Woodstock: Some Hippies 10/11

Woodstock: A House With A Hanging Star Thing 10/11

Nosferatu

It's been a while, I guess I haven't had much to say lately. In the midst of returning to school, to work, to spoooooorts, and to my preferred life, I guess I've forgotten to think about much else besides myself. I've been riding my bike a lot lately, which is cool, but I've still managed to exist within the same five-mile radius since I got here a month ago.

THEREFORE, I think I'm going to Connecticut this weekend. It's starting to get cold out and I want to go there before all of the trees turn colors. I know this is a bit of a pipe dream but maybe I'll go sit out by the pool and read or sleep or drink various boxed wines with the ol' grammy, and if I have to wear three sweaters and a Northface to keep it hawt, so be it.

Anyway, watched a little bit of the German expressionist version of Dracula in film class today, which was kind of terrifying, and we're watching the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari tomorrow. It's difficult to watch silent films in this day and age and try to appreciate them for what they were and not what they are. I wonder whether filmmakers around the time of F.W. Murnau, if they had the same capabilities we have today, would have still made their films the same way. I love how jilted and bizarre everything sort of turns out just due to the shoddy (in our standards) equipment they had to work with, the more primitive framing ideals, etc etc etc. I don't know much about film but I think I'm starting to love it.

Speaking of film, please please please watch whatever clips you can find of The Room by Tommy Wiseau.

DRUDGERY

"Max Fischer"

"Sharp little guy."

"He's one of the worst students we've got."

In attempts to keep myself from going nuts with uncertainty/anxiety about my post-graduate future, I've been watching movies. Like the same three over and over.

I think I'm going to name my second dog Voltaire. This is going to happen at the point in time when I have an in-house (in-brownstone) library and eat four course dinners every night...make that five.

Maybe by then I'll be more into having a son by that name. Or a daughter! Oh the possibilities!

Vive la Gwyneth, GOOP (side note: what the fuck?), or any other part of the whacked/strung out state of being known today as "Hollywood".

This is how I feel today:

I'm supposed to paint my dad's dining room in a few minutes...not based on any sort of schedule besides the fact that I've been awake for about an hour now and being idle for any amount of time longer than that makes me feel like my ass must definitely be growing.

I've been following the Sotomayor hearings (not that closely, but closely enough) and after I had finished reading a few articles on her, I read one about Sarah Palin.

I'll just say that I am so glad she's out of the picture for now.

The story I read detailed her current life--how she can't get bills through Alaska's legislature because her democrats now hate her, how her teenage daughter has a kid, how her hair is thinning and she needed an emergency repair from her stylist. OMGGGGGGFML.

Sweetheart, get the fuck over it. Understandably, you're exhausted and stressed, you tried to VeeP the land of the free, and it didn't work out. Resigning probably was the best way to go, that makes sense, I'll support that, but I really wish that she could've done it with some dignity.

I'm aware that her entire political presence over the last year or so has been lacking in that department, but the way to go out isn't to let the Times reporters know that you're a little bit skinny and your hair's falling out. Sure, tell them about the fact that your state no longer respects you, tell them you've got 9000 kids and they're your priority, but don't talk about how you're stressed out and can't handle it.

I've never been a politician, but I imagine stress comes with the territory. She's been up there governing for a few years now, she should've known that A)running for any type of national office is going to be difficult, B)wimping out a few months after your party lost the Presidential election is not the way to cement any type of future in politics.

Imagine if McCain had won. Is her behavior now a result of the failure? Or is it just because she was a time bomb and would've done this regardless?

BUT, comparing her to Sotomayor, or really any other woman in politics that I've come across in the years past, I think overall she's unprofessional and...girly. Not that professionalism is synonymous with masculinity, but even Michelle Obama is stronger and more poised than Sarah Palin and her only job is to be the first wife, raise some kids, and support charity or something.

Also, Hillary Clinton may wear hideous suits and has a helmet for hair, but at least she maintained her professionalism post-loss and is continuing to do what she do (and you do what you can do about it). I didn't like her that much, though.

Here's that article.

ALORS, gonna go paint. FUCK, ALSO MISSING ALEXA CHUNG RIGHT NOW.

Dolores Haze/ Seymour Glass

If ever there were a time when pedophilia could be described as beautiful, it would be because of Lolita, and for that I feel like there's something wrong with me.

So far, there exist two books that I've liked enough to actually read more than once: Lolita and The Bell Jar, and they're both pretty disturbing. I can't relate at all to either of them because I neither fetishize children nor have I ever tried to kill myself.

They're like Montel Williams for the generations before us that were still interested in reading n'shit. People have always gotten off to the unfortunate, to the ridiculous, bizarre, outlandish, inhumane, gross, bloody, disgusting, and and and and....

And so, I guess, do I.

I'd read Catcher in the Rye again, but I'm pretty sure that's not much better. A Separate Peace?

I remember reading J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories for English class my junior year in high school. Everyone thought the bananafish was some sort of innuendo (OF THE SEXUAL VARIETY) and I remember not even having caught that at all. 

But that was my favorite story of the nine, and although there's nothing sexual or bizarre about his interactions with the little girl at the beach, the guy shoots himself in the head at the end. PTSD, mes amis (JOHN HOLDUN IT RHYMES).

What's wrong with me? Or everyone--these are classics, right?

SART

So, today I've done a lot of nothing; actually that's not true at all. I woke up, did some makeshift yoga, went to the eye doctor and had a job interview (finally), and now I'm sitting at my desk in the ever-lovely West Chester, Ohio waiting on my mom to get home and make me dinner (ohhhhh, the perks of being home). I think the fact that I'm wearing sweatpants is the reason I feel like I've been largely unproductive today.

I wish that always worked--I could just throw on a Snuggie and feel like the maelstrom that is life is somehow nonexistent or distant, at least.

ANYWAY, the reason I decided to write today (after so, so long) is because of the most recent Sartorialist post, a style profile on stylist and contributing Teen Vogue fashion editor Aya T. Kanai. I had never heard of her before, really, but I think her style is incredible and what she has to say about it is even better. I'm a fan of throwing crazy, edgy, trendy, colorful, ridiculous, etc. things in with classics, and I think she does it particularly well, specifically with the floral combat boots (which I've been trying to find for ages now--turns out they don't make them for cheap assholes like myself) and the metallic dress.

But don't take my word for it, look for yourself: Aya, June 3, 2009. You'll have to scroll, I think. 

Also, I think I'm going to start writing more often. I neeeeeed it, I feel like any style I used to have is slowly going out the window and, because this is something I actually might want to do with my life, I should try to make amends with it before it ditches me completely.

BISES (this one's staying.)

Garance

One of my favorite blogs is Garance Doré. I'm not entirely sure what exactly she does for society besides take pictures, but I love her style (writing and otherwise). This is from her post today, followed by the English translation, which I don't think quite retains the soul (the soul) of the original but I think the translator does a pretty good job trying. 

"Tous ceux qui vivent à New York City disent la même chose. C’est une ville dure, qui t’attrappe, te jette, t’étreins et t’épuise. Beaucoup y ont passé leurs premières années à pleurer.

Mais la plupart ne pourraient plus en partir. L’énergie y est trop entêtante, les fêtes trop folles, le travail trop dur. Et les rêves n’y ont aucune mesure.

Je me demande si un jour la ville m’adoptera. J’essaie de faire avec elle comme avec un enfant. Je ne lui demande pas de m’aimer, je ne lui demande pas de m’accueillir, je ne lui demande pas d’être belle, je ne lui demande pas d’être douce. J’essaie de ne rien lui demander. Quand ça lui chantera, elle viendra jouer avec moi."

"Everyone who lives in New York City says the same thing.  It’s a harsh city, a city that can grab you, a city that’ll spit you out, a city that grips you, a city that’ll wear you down.  Lots of people spent their first years here in tears.

But most of them just couldn’t leave.  The energy is too insistent, the parties too crazy, the work too hard.  And the dreams have no measure. 

I wonder if the city will ever adopt me.  I try to go about the city like you would with a child.  I don’t ask her to love me.  I don’t ask her to welcome me.  I don’t ask her to be beautiful or to be soft.  I try not to ask her anything at all.  And when if and when the day comes, and the melody is right, she’ll come play with me."

I think her view of New York is pretty accurate, and while I could go into a million reasons why I agree with her, I am going to just strongly suggest you visit/live there yourself. My media studies class has taught me way too much about the misconstruction of the written (spoken, drawn, sung) word to try to explain something as thriving, driving, populated, overmediated, underslept, overcaffeinated, over/under dressed, nicotinated (word?), rushed, and beautiful as New York City. 

SIDE NOTE:

I care very, very little about Philip K. Dick and/or androids.

Names I Like:

I'm going to name my first dog Lunch.

I'm currently in my Intro to Film class, we're talking about the Western and cross-fertilization and spaghetti and conquering and not conquering...all the while Vicente (read: Bithente) Rodriguez Ortega (professor, mind you) is wearing a silly Ghostbusters tee shirt and either blue or purple chinos (I can't tell, it's definitely somewhere in between.) And gray Tims. If I could figure out how to take a photo, I would, but he's already paying too much attention to me as it is.

The weather's getting warmer, and so that means I can recommence my aversion to pants. I might invest in ilke 9000 pairs of Harem pants because they feel at least a little bit like dresses, except I can play sports or climb shit in them. If you know ANYTHING about me, you know I'm so into sports and climbing shit.

So this is a complete throw away post. There was approximately one thing I actually went into this hoping to say, and I'm...just going to leave you dear readers with that. And by "readers" I mean a total of three people that I won't name so it appears as though my readership is a little more vast.

Florida: The Concept

I just got back from a week in West Palm Beach, Florida. I played lacrosse almost the entire time but I managed to get a tan and all of the cool things that come with tans (i.e. burnt lips, older [read: old] men).

SOME THOUGHTS ON FLORIDA (I wrote these thoughts on the plane home, just for your contextual understandingzz):

Friday the 13th, second month in a row...saw a black cat earlier, now I'm on a plane. Good thing superstition is for hypochondriacs, paranoids, and grandparents, and I am not any of those.

Florida? Pretty tacky, pretty gaudy. Pink stucco galore. Big boobs, tans, ski slope noses--all of which with unclear amounts of authenticity. But, for all of its tack and gaud, it is what it is.   Like, this isn't really a place I'd particularly feel like I want to go again, but it's got a pretty interesting culture to it. We stopped by a Panera and I watched a Cuban or Floridian or whatever smoke a cigar out front of a Starbucks with an iced coffee and palm trees around. I can't tell where people are from...I'm used to Guido-filled shores, boulevards lined with mom and pop Italian places and more bagel places than possibly imaginable. Here, there are car dealerships and run-down shells of places followed by the most beautiful palm-lined rues with villa-esque mansions overlooking beaches, etc. This place made it big in the 50s I think, the architecture says it. And I think that may be what makes me kind of love it. I mean...the pink buildings. They're like SO ugly, but at the same time, so laid back, so Miami Vice (duh), and in that, so luxurious, so classic in a very different way. This ain't the east coast, that's clear. Unlike the Jersey shore, this tack has class, and I find that admirable in at least a few respects. 

IDK, FLA'S OK.

And so I'm back at Vassar, going off to visit my grandparents in the ever-beautiful (only John Holdun will catch this sarcasm) Trumbull, CT tomorrow morning  and then to the city for the rest of the weekend/Monday. I'm looking forward to some time alone...maybe some museum hopping, computer fixing (keyboard plate thing is chipping omg), thing reading, lost getting, I don't know, Imma do what I want.

It'll be great, "what I want" and I have been pretty distant for a while. We've been on and off for what seems like my entire life now, and I've gotta say, I miss him. This weekend will be a good reminder, but I know we won't be official again until the summer because I'm kind of into this other guy right now named "my future" and he's got me all wrapped up in books. 

May 19th, though. It's so close.

XO

Lookbook, or Adjectives and Modifiers: A 21st Century Perspective, or How to Make Your Titles Longer Than The Posts Themselves

www.lookbook.nu

I just wasted three minutes on this website. It's little more than  a curious mix of the Sart and the Hype Machine dominated by a buch of self-obsessed, anorexic teenagers (or middle-aged androgynes), inspired solely by the most recent UO catalog and their subscription to Nylon from what I can tell. 

It's all been done before, kids. 

I don't have time for lyrics, go listen to Like A Prayer and think of me.

la Saint-Valentin

I just ate a Dove chocolate that told me to exercise my heart today.

What?

Tell me are you single yet

my heart's as big as Texas

Nostalgia

I completely forgot about this:

(Un)smoking

Ok I changed my mind, I'm quitting. Went to the city this weekend and paid $9.25 for a pack, plus an extra dollar for a mini Bic. New York's great for making me feel really, really broke. Keeping it real, I guess. In Ohio I'd pay around $6 for both. I have one cigarette left, it'll be my last.

Also, I ate like 9,000 Starbursts over the course of the last week. I think I should quit those too, but I still have a pound and a half of them left. After that.

In trying to be healthy/do all the lacrosse conditioning I skipped over the last month, I worked out today and went to the cafeteria with a salad in mind. Those are usually pretty quick and easy because most stressed out Vassar kids need things like protein and carbs, not lettuce, so there's never a line. 

Today, though, there was no salad at the salad bar. And what's more, I left my Nalgene in the cafeteria so I'll have to drink out of cups until the next time I can get to the mall. I need to quit taking things like salad and water for granted, I guess I've learned.

It's probably because it's a new semester, everyone spent the break growing their asses, classes aren't hard enough yet to forget dieting, spring break's coming up, et cetera. Salad's good for making you feel better about yourself, even if you do follow it up with a Coke.

I eventually tracked down some spinach and croutons, which was just ok. I felt pretty good about myself until I just ate half of a cake and some of the yellow Starbursts left over from a weekend of pink/red/orange lovers. Which is everyone.

So now I'll just drink some water out of my cup and work on the paper I already have due tomorrow. Coincidentally, it's about blogs "as a socially embedded site for the ongoing negotiation of meaning". Whatever that means...

Luv yall,

MLN

He's a what? He's a what?

He's a newspaper man

and he gets his best ideas

from a newspaper stand;

from his boots to his pants

to his comments to his rants

he knows that any little article will do!

Smoking

Smoking will always be cool. 

1. Parisians
2. Breakfast at Tiffany's
3. James Dean
4. Bands
5. Socialites

I smoke...occasionally. Cigarettes  temporarily numb things, keep me from freaking out, to allow me to, ironically, take a breath and realize, depending on my optimism, that a)things don't suck as much as I think, or b)things could be a lot worse.

And so I don't think I'm gonna stop.

What it feels like to have no feelings:

Looking through my Facebook, it turns out I have a handful of friends that are getting married soon. Sure, I'm happy for them, but I just can't imagine why in the Hell anyone would ever want to get married.

It's been like three or four months since I first realized that love isn't really that much fun; it's probably one of the most difficult and ridiculous things I've ever been through. Yesterday I had an interesting conversation with the person who helped me along with that epiphany and I got to thinking--am I just the ridiculous one?

I feel like I'm lagging in the recovery process even though I've been working out and taking my vitamins, going to school, pursuing new interests, et cetera, et cetera. So what am I doing wrong?  If my life was a computer, I'd trash the three years leading up to 2009 and then maybe search around online for a new 2005-2008 download that involves a little more traveling, a little more maturity, some time spent getting well-read, and some good, honest advice on this whole love/relationship thing. 

I want to just know everything without doing the work for it, especially when it comes to all of this emotional bullshit I've been going through lately. Just tell me what the sentiments should be and I'll go through the motions, but I'm not very interested in acutally knowing what they feel like.

But I am still alive and loved

and wide-eyed in my time

not a mummy stinking in its cloths

your cat clawed out my eyes

while I was distracted by your smile

and now my sockets sit like empty catchers' mits waiting

and you ask me is there anybody else that I'm dating.

Love, srsly?

I made this public because I want nothing to do with it on a strictly personal level anymore. This is me letting it go...in some ways. But I'll have you know that this is sappy as Hell, and I realize that. But really I never step back and let myself feel things, and I guess this is my attempt to do so.

Relationships are difficult, they require a lot of time and effort. When things fell apart, not only did it feel like a personal failure, but it also made me question my former beliefs about the person I loved. It made me feel stupid and embarrassed that I couldn’t spot those qualities before I threw my heart into it. And now I'm left with a huge chunk ripped out that is just dead but still attached to his somehow because I worked so hard to make that connection.

My first Vassar fall was beautiful; I had never seen leaves turn so red nor felt air so clean. Things were looking up—I had October vacation to look forward to, which meant time with friends, a little break from school, and beautiful weather to go with it.

Of course, this couldn’t be the case; really, are things ever truly “looking up?” I’m sure they try sometimes, just to break up the drear of this ridiculous life of constant misses and failures, but it’s never permanent. The only thing permanent in this life is the ever-present lack of control.

And so now I'm back at school. The leaves are all on the ground now, and instead of crunching up and disintegrating, they’ve been rained on and are now rotting all over the sidewalks. Believe me, the smell is fantastic.

I guess I could compare this to the death of my last relationship. I was under the impression that it would just turn a brilliant red in a last attempt to assert its dying beauty, and then disappear, never to be worried about again.

But instead, things turned sour. It was rained on, stepped all over, and now lies stuck to the concrete, leaving a last, desperate, stinking impression on everyone that happens to notice it in passing.

I guess I should've expected that, though; he wasn't much of a Romantic.

"Suddenly, all your history's ablaze 

Try to breathe, as the world disintegrates

Just like autumn leaves, we're in for change 

Holding tenderly to what remains"

The Election

Actually, I have nothing to say about the election.

Vanity Fair

I was getting ready for work today after a thoroughly annoying ballet class and a long psych lecture, and I realized that I spend way too much time caring about how I look.

I buy my clothes because I like them, so why can't every outfit just...work? Because I'm vain and hormonal. Today, for instance, I feel huge. Chances are that if I weighed myself, I'd be a disgusting two or three pounds heavier than I was yesterday, so obviously that means I can't look good in the same pants I loved last week.

Well, I'm wearing them anyway. 

And so here I sit in a random little Po-town cafe, drinking a (not so good) cappuccino, attempting to catch up on the three months of Vanity Fair I've skipped. I don't know why this seems necessary considering I haven't yet started my paper due tomorrow , but that doesn't really bother me too much. I've found that forcing my own motivation makes me even more reluctant to start my work.

"Your eminence, you're lookin' good!," Bush bellowed when he met Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican in June. A few weeks later at the G-8 Summit in Japan to discuss climate change, he exited with an air punch and a cheery "Good-bye from the world's biggest polluter!" The remark was met with stony silence by the other attendees, who didn't seem to appreciate this attempt at hilarity from a man whose nation consumes a quarter of the world's oil. -Graydon Carter, editor-in-chief Vanity Fair

I voted already, and if you know me at all, you know who I voted for. Really, I welcome any change in the White House, and that's not an Obama reference. I use "change" to mean, you know, something/someone different. And with either one of the current candidates, something monumental is guaranteed to happen. Either a woman or a black guy will lead our country, and that's pretty cool. Unfortunately, neither of these two people has any sort of foreign policy experience, and one of them can't even name a single news source she reads on a daily basis, so things are looking dim. Whatever, it always goes that way doesn't it?

Apparently, Palin was given around $150,000 to revamp her wardrobe for the campaign. Sure, that's pocket change in comparison to the hundreds of millions spent on the overall campaign, but that's still ridiculous. I guess the GOP's starting to realize they need to separate her as much as possible from Clinton and her shocking yellow suits, so she blows it all on some red ones and some very interesting bang highlights. 

Giving style a masculine edge in order to give the impression of professionalism hardly seems to make sense when the entire reason Palin is so popular is because of her femininity and hockey-mom appeal. Clearly her verbal tactics can't get her anywhere, so she might as well just hit up Diane von Furstenberg and get something with an actual neck line. 

If she could only follow in Michelle Obama's footsteps with her Narciso Rodriguez dresses (gasp, a dress?), maybe she could, at the very least, gain some sort of positive media. Sure, Palin wants Amerians to focus on her political views, but clearly the party was trying to say something when they gave her such a huge sum of money simply for clothing. Style does matter, I guess that goes to say.

Anyway, it's a little too late now. Tomorrow's the election, and I'm sure she already has some sort of structured, neutral or red military-type jacket picked out for the after-party.

So, go vote tomorrow. Or at least have a reason not to.

"Andy Bernard doesn't lose contests, he wins them. Or he quits them because they're unfair."

Savings

It's barely November and some of the things outside are frozen. Some of my things inside are frozen, but for a very different reason. 

Thanks to daylight savings time, I had an extra hour today to get some thinking done. I spent it watching House and cleaning my room. Thought wasn't a part of the equation, but I've found that my mind works so much better when my rug is clean. 

Or when I've had some form of caffeine and a cigarette.

But really, what did I save? Certainly not my sanity, that's been gone for a few weeks now. 

I didn't save any money. In fact, I spent way too much on some stuffed French toast and a (very good) cappuccino.

I did nothing to save my grades; I couldn't concentrate enough to do any homework.

My lungs? Those will have to wait until lacrosse starts again.

In essence, my extra hour was spent wasting it. And really, it felt good. Relaxation has never been my forte, and I realize that maybe saving myself is what today was all about.

But really, that isn't something I'm capable of doing.

As for now, I should really be working on an international politics paper. Talk about saving...

"...we prayed it never be fixed or be found"