I'd Rather I Lose My Limbs Than Let You Come To Harm

Hey Guys! Welcome to muppet-face land!

We love to dance here in muppet-face land!

So I wanted to tell you guys that there are still more photos from Ashleigh's wedding posted on the ninnernet for your perusal. Such as these, which are from Keith's camera but mostly I took them.

There are also these, which were jointly taken on my camera by myself and Alex. The battery crapped out before anything cool happened, which is why I appropriated Keith's for the portion of the evening that necessitated artsy photography.


This, I believe, is a dick-measuring contest.



And this is the lovely bride herself.




And this is the face I'll make, standing over you while you sleep, if you don't check out these radtastic photos!

I Would Like To Help You, I Would Like To Wake Up




1. My lecture went pretty great. Not "awesome to the point of everyone's face melting" but now I have a baseline. Now I have a skeemah. Now I have given up my lecture virginity, and I am pretty thrilled about that. Some girls even came up to me after class to say how they liked it and it was interesting, which made me want to hug them like that big cartoon hair monster on looney toons whose name escapes me. The one that hugs characters and says he wants to love them and hug them and call them george? that's what i wanted to do to these ladies.

2. Then i came back to my tower to hold court. People are P-issed about their test grade. Right as I was about to let the throngs in to my office, i happened to look out my window at the street below and I saw a biker get hit by a car. No kidding. The biker, dressed like Lance Armstronguh, flew off the bike and rolled across the hood of the car like they were filiming a movie. I shrieked. Then the pissed off biker got up (thank fuck) and picked his bike up and wheeled it out of the intersection. The car sheepishly (i know cars can't be "sheepish," ok, I am telling a goddamn story) followed him over to a parking lot out of my view, and I can only assume that the biker beat the holy hell out of the driver of the car.

3. Now i'm going home early to study my fucking ass off for this extremely hard exam (yes, really) about physics I have tomorrow first thing. Wish me STILL MORE LUCK.

4. Thanks for being supportive about the lekshur. Lovels.

With All The Poise Of A Cannonball

Saw the Decemberists this Saturday in LA. Probably safe to say I can just go ahead and die now, I don't need to hang around on the off chances that I'll ever love a band as much as I love them, or that I'll ever see a show that trumps theirs. They are really fucking great live.



It's really, really weird for both me and JD to go to these shows. Here specifically, and being ageing indie kids more generally. JD pointed out all the tweener boys strolling around in shirts worn to catch the eye of girls who liked the band and would then sleep with the guys. That or all LA boys are pussies. I won't name band names in case some of you are pussies too.



Anyway. First we went and used a giftcard we had for the Cheesecake Faktorie. Used to be my favorite restaurant, long ago. Not so much veg-friendly food there. Luckily, vodka is a pretty safe bet. That was fun. They played some of my favorite songs, including The Engine Driver, they warmed up the crowd's vocal pipeage, they marched in place, they used vocabulary the likes of which I could only dream of...they were awesome.



If you all haven't heard the new album get it or hit me up for a copy of it. No one sings so eloquently about piracy, murder, and curs'd lovers. Although they had me for life when I heard them sing about a man seeking revenge his whole life who finally finds the guy he's after and they both get swallowed by a whale along with a boatfull of other people but only the two pf them survive so they can have a proper duel. Then they closed with this.


Oh and I heard one of the songs playing on Gilmore Girls last week. RELEVANT! REEEEELLLEVANT!


p.s. wish me luck tomorrow! I am not looking forward to it anymore.

I Really Should Have Gone Out Last Night



You guys know what is motherfucking hard? Writing a lecture. You know what makes it harder? They're going to find out that most of them failed the first exam right before I give it. Excellent, scourge of the earth and whatnot.

I am getting kind of pumped to give it, though. In spite of myself.

My officemate's disertayshun shows that people who tackle a goal with a kick-its-ass rather than a don't-get-kicked-in-ass-by-it mentality do better and have better lives in general. I mean, that's a bastardization of her results, but there's the take-home point: always approach a problem with success in mind rather than the avoidance of failure. you'll be way better off.

so it is with my existence.

on-campiss housing called to cocktease us like a little slut this week. by the time i called back they had already given the apartment to someone "higher" on the waitlist. Bitches.

aaaaaand jd ordered tivo. apparently if you get it from the official website the box is free and it's like a netflix-esque subscription deal. i am ready to have my life changed by it. no more whinging about not going to the gym because tv is on. god that's pathetic. i know. I KNOW, OK

well, i have to go eat some chocolate and then come up with more brilliance about stuff.

i keep thinking about my friend kris-tin's wedding in HI this december, and that combined with mike, jenny, and momsers coming out here is really all that's keeping me plodding through this hellacious quarter. that and my ass-kicking approach orientation.

i am so terrified that i'll like lecturing so much that i decide to want an ak a demmik job. i can be kind of a ham. fuck balls.

I Saw The Sun Come Up Somewhere In Illinois




Wasn't this blog just so much more fun when I was posting photos all the time? Yes, yes it was. Go check out Stacey's Photos From Ashleigh's Wedding if you want to see some hott-to-death-ass people looking hott. I did, and I was filled with joy immediately and all day thereafter.

I need to take a quick break from the self-loathing that is grading essay questions.

Friday JD and I went to see a nice Russian Opera at his work. It was SNOOOZIE. I expected to be really awed by how it was in Russian and crazy ass music and shit. No, boring.

Then Saturday I am working on things that suck and are boring and JD calls me from work to say we are supposed to go to this secret sherril cr oh concert for the incredibly rich richies (the people who donated > $100,000) that night. I was a complete bitch about it. I do not like that performess and I did not want to go back to the same but only slightly next door place for a second night because I was in the boring work zone.

Anyway. we went. at first i was all, "oh i don't have clothing to wear" because normally these donir partees are black tie. grad students don't own anything that counts aside from used bridesmaid dresses. but sherril, she's totally cool. she wanted all the richies to wear dennim and dymonds to her show, because she's crazy cool and laid back, no telling her how to be!

jeeze.

so we wore jeans. and this is the only series of parties (we had to go to the pre and post parties too) I have ever been invited to that involved a red carpet and a pose for the photogs at the end off it. No, I'm not kidding. However, Sherril is cool, right? So the "red" carpet was really denim-colored. And someone had written/decorated it with puff paint.

So the pre-party was lame except there was free alcohol. Like, waiters circulating with endless trays of champers and a vodka bar. So we plowed through a lot of free champagne and martinis before we found the Five thousand dollar piece of cheese. Yes, seriously. No, we did not partake.

I ate a cracker. Then we went into this cutesy little room and dammit if we didn't have better seats than all the people who had actually paid more than my life is worth to get tickets to this thing. Ha.

And Sherrilzzzzzzzzz

She is crazy fucking skinny, I'll say that. Still not a fan of her musik. Two old ladies gossipping on the way out were all, "she's so nice, that lance is really missing out," about her.

Then, THEN. We went to the after-party, at a retardedly fancy steak house across the street that just opened. Free food and alcohol AGAIN. We and the other employees/dates quickly realized that our places were upstairs, by the bar, the band, and the dancefloor. The coverband they hired played a LOT of led zeppelin. So we got (more) trashed and danced literally until the wee hours of the morning with JD's friend Jen from work and her (gay?) date friend who was really funny.

I was really tanked. Haven't done that in awhile, but I kept rationalizing my being at a sherril concert by telling myself I would have paid like $15 per drink at a bar in LA and that's like, eight thousand dollars I made via drinking this weekend.

hahahah.

anyway, it was surprisingly fun and toward the end of the night it was me and jd and his friends and the people the new venue is named after only on the dancefloor, and the woman i think thought i was going to steal her fendi shoes so we left.

and then i woke up hung the fuck over and my real non-fairy tale life of grading, grading, grading whilst also being vultured upon kicked back in. don't get me started.

By Land, By Sea, By Dirigible

Yes Kyle, I love you. Yes, I was born without the normal Bitchiness Sensors that other people seem to have, and yes, at times I can sometimes be...insensitive...to the feelings of others. But that is why I love you. I am usually just as surprised as you are at the shitty things that come out of my mouth. Seriously. It's very nice to just let it all out. Here I am expected to be "professional" and "polite" and shit.

I am glad to have read Raedy's blog and hear that she is also hating her teaching/tee ay-ing life. I have started grading the first round of topic papirs, and I have had to write, "please do not use profanity in formal writing, even in a direct quote" on about 20% of the ones I have graded thus far. Someone please explain to me why, just because a character in a movie used the F-bomb, you would think that specific quote best conveys the point you will be making in your final papir? I think it is an excuse to curse at me.

Show of hands, please, who out there thinks I wouldn't be the world's bitchiest tee ay? That's what I thought. And, you guys are right. Jenny can vouch, she called yesterday while I was crafting a super mean response to this kid who was telling me blatant lies about what the syllabus said. Honestly, WHY lie about something I can fucking check in two seconds? Why not lie about something that would make me a bad person to not believe?

So I do not exactly like this work, but I suppose it is great that I am learning blah blah blah boring. My lecshur in there is still a couple weeks off so I can't bitch about how they all slept through it or refused to answer my rhetorical questions yet. I am working on it this weekend though, so if you had anecdotes about your quest for ah ton Oh mee this is your last chance to hook me up! I am also open to suggestions for funny tv/movie clips...I have spent countless hours searching UToob for family guy clips that I could use, but nothing seems relevant enough. I doubt I will be allowed to show video clips just for the hell of it. the halibut.

ok, so I'm boring. so sue me.

JD is taking me to see the Decemberists for our 4-month anniversary next weekend. Yippee! I have never seen them. I am so excited.

Also, I am full of interesting knowledge about magnetik resonince imogene if you want to dork out about fizziks or magnets with me sometime soon.

We are totally broke this month because I erroneously overlooked the fact that i would not be getting a paycheck during october. so that cleaned out our savings (I am very poor. like, poor beyond comprehension to those of you who now have real-ass jobs that pay you enough to live on. the only reason i am not on the street is jd's real job paychecks, but average those over 2 people and we are collectively totally fucking poor). and that blows. this whole "getting paid AFTER you complete the work" bullshit is uncool. Ahh, whatever. My friend Ed Whin and I are splitting a carpool parking pass so he cut me a fat check for $120 yesterday, which I IMMEDIATELY used to take Jd to lunch, get Ashpee a proper wedding prezzle, and buy 2 bottles of malbec (since comps I have developed a real lust for red wine. like, annoyingly so). it was nice to have more than $13 in my bank account for a few precious moments. Ah well.

Gross, Carnie Wilson is talking about "visualizing sperm swimming up your lady parts" on the View. Someday I will learn not to watch this trainwreck of a show.

Well, I should get back to writing, "it is not necessary to discuss the fact that Lindsay Lohan is in the movie. Please just focus on the characters themselves," on people's papers. And also writing, "grammar-taciously, you suck BALLS. get a fucking tooter, bitch."

Oh and that friend I offended DESPITE my use of smiley faces? we're fine now. but i could have just smacked her in the face. for like ten minutes i wanted to scream and then it dissipated into simmering anger which i then took out on the UGs. Just KEEEEEEEDING

But You Are In The Ground With The Wolves And Weevils, All A'Chew On Your Bones So Dry

Only the best band, the best band in the land could use the word "a'chew" and not make me hateful. Not like a sneezing a'chew, a disastrous bone-chaw a'chew.

Some random things I'd like to share with you:

1. My mom mega-zinged Keith's piano playing last weekend with the following insult:
"too many notes there, mozart."

I have decided that I'll be adopting that as my auto-reply sickass insult comeback no matter what context I actually find myself a part of. (I know, right? zinggy)

2. I have decided that, whereas this quarter may in fact literally kill me dead and both my faux mothers are seemingly losing confidence in my awesomeness, I am going to whip its ass regardless. My maximum stress threshold tipping point has steadily climbed up toward Psycho levels over the past few years, why stop it now? So yeah I won't.

3. If you guys happen to have any funny anecdotes about something you did as a teen when you were trying to assert your independence from your parents, could you please share them with me? I will put them in my lecture along with a doofy looking photo of you. Not really on the photo unless you want. But I need to entertain these vultures for 80 minutes and ideas are welcome.

4. I finally thought of a comeback for my, "you won't be the first doctor D____ in this family" aunt. Tell me what you think about, "yeah but I'll be the first one to have a job!"

I'm also considering, "thanks for the water pitcher"

5. I have developed a phobia of the last foot of toilet paper in public loos. Usually I rip it off and throw it on the floor. How immature.

6. Never before have I noticed how much I am not myself when I am here than this last few days. I got comfortable just being my real bitch of a self around you guys, because you (kyle) would point out that I was being overly shitty by laughing hysterically at me. Here, though I love my friends, I have had one serious problem already since coming back whereby I sideways insulted my friend because I didn't censor what I said in my email to her. That is exhausting, and I noticed after dealing with that fallout (honestly? I put a goddamned smiley face after the sentence in question to ensure this didn't happen because no one can think you're being a bitch when you put a smiley face, RIGHT?!?!?!) that I do not ever ever relax all the way here unless it is just me and JD and we are making fart jokes.

So I love you guys. And I just miss you all more than ever now! Fuck!

JD's applying for a job in Australia that he'll probably get offered, so if I don't pass my stupid comps I think that's where I'll be after this quarter. Hee.

WHILLLIKERS!

Yo yo yo. I had a blast at Ashleigh and Jim's wedding. 'Twas beautiful and I'm sure there will be gorgeous photos in the next couple weeks.

We made it home yesterday fine, but barely. No one wanted to let us on any planes until the planes were pushing back to take off then they made us run down the aisleway and leap aboard at the last second. And that was lame.

and, I am already so busy I want to die. this is going to be the hardest quarter ever of my entire life. I will be totally shocked if i come out the other side in one piece.

And, because we all talked about it but now I might not have time to follow through, please click on the following links to download that faux-harry potter guy audio book. TRUST ME! WORTH IT:

Part I.
Part II.

ok, enjoy.

bumper boats forever, babes!