One of the first things I do when I return to Denver is to take an extremely long, extremely satisfying drink of cold water straight from the tap.

I wish Providence water didn't taste so horrible/come from lead pipes....

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November 22-30: Denver
December 12-17: San Francisco
December 17-28: Denver
December 28-Jan 2: NYC
Janunary 20-21: Washington, DC
February 6-11: Paris
February 18-20: Tuscon
March 6-12: Houston
April 29-May 2: Los Angeles

When exactly am I supposed to write my thesis?

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My dream from last night:

It was the end of their third years, and several third years had decided to kill themselves. It happened a lot at the end of the third year, people just decided not to go on. The rest of us regarded the practice with a kind of resignation.

This year it was a little different for me, however, because my roommate was among them. She was unhappy in graduate school, she had had a series of disappointments, she was always worried that somehow she wasn't cutting it.

I understood her decision [in the dream]-- that's just how it went, some third years just killed themselves, you couldn't wish away reality.

The department always held a little ceremony for it, I guess to show their regret that the third years had decided to leave and to mark the occasion of their passing. This year I was supposed to help by taking tiny throwing knives and throwing them so that they would stick into the necks of the third years who had chosen to die. The throwing knife usually severed the jugular, but if it was done just right none of the blood would come out of the skin. The tip of the knife had a little bit of poison, to ease the process.

This year there were three third years that had chosen to die. I knew all three of them, and one of the others was also a friend of mine. I was sad that he had chosen this path, but I understood.

In the case of my roommate, there was a niggling feeling in the back of my brain that made something feel awry. I had never before considered that it didn't have to be this way, that I should be standing up and screaming and doing everything to prevent this from happening. But the feeling was very small.

Throwing the knives came naturally to me, and at the appointed time in the ceremony I flicked my hand and each knife pricked the necks of the waiting students, not drawing a single drop of blood. The student I didn't know very well died easily. Jeff, my other friend, lingered on for a few moments, his breath becoming strained and ragged, before finally expiring and lying in silence.

My roommate didn't die. She stayed on, weak, poisoned, lying there on her side with the little knife sticking out of her neck like an arrowhead. I walked over to her. Sadness was coming over me like a dark cloud as I contemplated my life without her. Minutes from now she would be gone, gone forever, and there would be no way to get her back. She lived on, but most of the meagre crowd that had assembled for the ceremony was filtering out, headed for the modest buffet.

She did not move, except for the faint up and down of her breathing. I leaned over her.

"Can we... can we not do this?" I said, my voice feeling deep and sad like the notes of a cello.

"Can we just... fix you now? Can I just carry you downstairs and we can fix you?"

I didn't want to do anything unless she wanted me to, because I didn't want her to spend her last moments angry with me. If this was what she wanted, I wasn't going to stop her.

But she nodded imperceptibly. Feeling heavy already, I picked her up and carried her to the first floor of the building into one of the teaching labs. One of our professors was there.

"Ah," he said, "You're saving her. Finally someone in this department has come to their senses." He left, bidding us luck and saying that he had to teach a class.

I was buoyed by his words... maybe someone else in the department felt this feeling that I was just starting to feel, that this entire tradition was CRAZY and that somebody had to do something and that we couldn't just stand there while all the third years DIED.

I layed her down gently on the black lab counter next to the sink. She was extremely pale and still. I carefully removed the arrowhead knife with a pair of large lab forceps.

I knew she would recover.


I woke up.

As I lay in bed, trying to remember where I was and what was going on, I heard my roommate moving around in the kitchen making breakfast.

The most beautiful sound in the world!!

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His song came on my Pandora Radio Station.

I still associate it with him, even though it's a popular song and it's been eight years since he used to listen to it all the time.

This is the second time I've thought of him in several days, after many years of not thinking about him at all.

The first time was when I was trying to figure out why my left ear has a big lump in it. It took me forever before I remembered that day, walking back through the courtyard to our dorm, when he accidentally hit me full force in the ear with his elbow.

At the time I wondered if the bump in my ear would be there forever. I wondered if I would never be able to forget him because he maimed me.

Here's to you.

I remember.

I use a piece of your old shirt as a spit-rag for my flute.

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One day this week I wore a t-shirt, a fleece, a pair of ill-fitting pants and a knitted hat to school. I had stayed up until at least three am for the last couple of days, so I was very pale and had deep, dark circles under my eyes. I went into the restroom at work and looked in the mirror. Because of the hat I looked like I didn't have any hair, and together with the pallor and the fleece I looked exactly like a cancer patient. Full-blown, in the middle of chemotherapy, cancer patient. I told this to my friend and she agreed. Thanks, FRIEND.

But you know what I realized that is wonderful?

I realized that I can wear whatever the fuck I want.

And I can look like a chemotherapy patient if I want to, and I don't give a fuck.

Who am I trying to impress?

You don't like Australia? That's not going to stop me from wearing my jacket with the word AUSTRALIA emblazoned across the front.

You think I should wear more sweaters? FUCK YOU. I'll wear sweaters when I feel like wearing sweaters.

I lost eight pounds just because I FELT LIKE IT.
Now my pants don't fit? I'll just wear baggy-ass pants- if you don't like it, FUCK YOU.

After all, my boss is in Antarctica. The only people I ever see are the people in my lab. They already know what I look like.

I'm a fucking adult, I have a job, I buy my own clothes, I do what I want, I run with twelve gangs.

See you later, I'll be the one wearing whateverthefuckIfeellikewearing.

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The 20s and 30s group from church decided to go to Dave and Buster's tonight. I love them because they're always doing fun things and the youth pastor comes so I get to hear about what it's really like to be a youth pastor. She's really awesome and nice and funny. The youth pastor's husband is also a pastor, and he's very forthright about what things about a pastor's life can be extremely annoying. He also swears all the time and and drinks and really likes that youtube video with all of the World of Warcraft characters singing "The Internet is for Porn". He also says "ohmygod!" a lot and talks about how his congregation is really old so he's hoping they'll all die soon so he can remake the church into a totally different type of church. HAHAHA. This 55-year old woman also comes because she's in her 20s and 30s in her heart, and she's awesome and she's always telling us these incredibly hilarious stories about growing up in Atlanta and catching crawfish, and working at a bank where the Connecticut mafia had all their money. Now she works in the jewelry business, and since its Providence, there are all kinds of sketchy dealings going on there as well. When she was threatened several times by her ex-husband, more than one person told her that they "knew a guy" who could "put you ex in the Seekonk River, if you know what I mean".

Oh, Providence, so lovable. Everyone doing each other favors all the time....

I discovered that I have a hidden talent: the JUMP-ROPE GAME. Less than 25 cents to play, I can win 300 HUNDRED tickets in a go. It's just a big oval with lights around it and you have to jump when the lights get to the bottom of the oval. Badda-bing-badda-boom, 300 hundred tickets. So I kept winning and winning, and then I played the claw game and I won a watch, and then I played the jump rope game and I got more tickets, and then I went to the store and bought a stuffed monkey and a yo-yo and a lollypop and a glittery sticker. I still had a bunch of tickets left over so we're going to go back later. We'll probably go back on Wednesday night, when all the games are half-price. We also played skeeball (epic failure), the horse racing game (almost won), and the Rambo game where we were totally dominating in Afghanistan but were destroyed in Vietnam. The DDR machine was BROKEN, so we couldn't show off our mad skillz.


Anyway, this church group rules. I guess I'll actually go to church on Sunday. :D

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Looking back, I started to have yearly theme songs starting my sophomore year of high school. Here is a list of the theme songs I've had in the years since then. In this context, "theme song" just means a song I listened to over and over and over and OVER during that particular year, or one that "defines" the year because of some special meaning being attached to it. I made a special playlist for them in the sidebar.

<-----over there

10th grade: Only God Knows Why, Kid Rock
11th grade: I Want It That Way, The Backstreet Boys
12th grade: In the End, Linkin Park
Freshman year: two songs, Kiss Kiss by Tarkan, and What It is to Burn by Finch
Sophomore Year: Back Home, Yellowcard
Junior Year: Empty Apartment, Yellowcard
Senior Year: Bruised, Jack's Mannequin
1st Year: Bruised, Jack's Mannequin
2nd Year: Bruised, Jack's Mannequin
3rd Year: Count Bodies Like Sheep, A Perfect Circle
4th Year: Flightless Bird, American Mouth, Iron and Wine
5th Year: Heavy in Your Arms, Florence and The Machine

Yeah, I kind of got stuck for a while on "Bruised"... I still listen to it all the time, it's at the top of my most-played list along with "La Tortura".

Playlist.com didn't have Empty Apartment, I'll put it here:

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I waited patiently as a boy and a girl crossed the street in front of my car. The girl was dressed in boots, black tights, a short plaid skirt, wool coat, scarf, and a beret. Yes, you heard that right, a beret. The boy was wearing something non-descript with a wool jacket and a scarf. SoooOoo New England. I could tell within a half of a millisecond of seeing them that she was into him, but I couldn't see his face so I didn't know if the feeling was mutual.

They finally reached the other side of the street where they parted ways. She bit her bottom lip cutely, and made kind of a little skippy-jump as she stepped backwards into the street again.

RIGHT WHERE I WAS TURNING. I HAD TO SLAM ON MY BRAKES AND WAIT UNTIL THE BITCH CROSSED THE STREET AGAIN.





I made myself calm down. After all, I've felt like that before, maybe once or twice in my miserable life, and it would be a shame to kill that feeling by sending the person who felt it flying like a bowling pin before the Great Bowling Ball of Vengeance.

Or would the word I'm looking for be "satisfying"?

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