Your mutter is like somebody else's banshee scream.

Mike said this to me during staff meeting today.

That is all.

That Darn Cat

Yes, I know it should read "damn." I just couldn't bring myself to be that violent in a title. And I think you all know exactly what feline I'm referring to. Damn cat indeed.

In a breakthrough of astronomical proportions, I've quit moping over certain male specimens of the human population, mostly because it produces really crappy poetry. Instead, I am going to focus on the happy. The following is the beginning of a list. Feel free to contribute.

1. Super Amazing Mixes (by Sven) which invariably include "Title and Registration" by Death Cab for Cutie and "I'd Rather Dance with You" by Kings of Convenience.

2. While we're on music, "Common People" as sung by. . . William Shatner. Completely serious. He's backed up by Joe Johnson, but still. I'll let you all have a listen next april.

3. april.

4. April.

5. Trashy magazines that somehow make me feel both superior and a new conviction that I don't have to spend more than 34 minutes on my appearance. Unless I'm styling my hair, in which case there is no such thing as a time limit.

6. Unearthing my best DI find ever--a compilation of five of Jack Weyland's made-for-brainwashed-teens novels, including A New Dawn, which is about a female student at Princeton who discovers an equation that basically explains the whole universe--something Einstein couldn't do--but then becomes too popular and has to find somewhere to hide out for a while. And where does she go? BYU, of course. And what does she do there? Major in musical education, fall in love with a cowboy-ish figure, and win the Nobel Prize, of course. I'm surprised you had to ask.

7. London in. . . I haven't started a countdown yet. But it comes after three, I think. We'll be living in Manson Place and spending an unhealthy amount of time in the Tate Modern. Or at least I will be.

8. Okay, forget it. My poetry is still crap because I'm still a little melted after some choice encounters with a certain young man who attends "the school on the other side of the point."

9. The tub that I'm going to go clean after I finish this rambling post.

10. My new London friends--meaning students going to London with my study abroad. The best moment was today when Whitney told me she wouldn't mind roomming with me. Which means I'm not the nasty-alientating type of TA. Hooray.

Rambling and running out of steam are not a good combination. I think I'll let you go now. (yay for HMP posts)

Cheers, sej

iocaine powder

I don't know if I spelled that correctly. What's more, I don't know if I care if I spelled that correctly.

my world has decided to spin out of orbit. this is not a poem, nor an attempt to mimic the great oh!resolution. i just feel like lower-casing everything. makes it seems less confrontational.

chad is not engaged. i'm going to england. today was a great staff meeting. i am now working 25 hours a week, plus inscape, plus april/fad, plus class, plus class, plus class. and i don't want to drop anything, but something has to drop and i'm hoping that something isn't me.

i'm playing chad's demo cd tonight. my roommate who knows me the best noted that it's rarely a good thing when i'm listening to chad's cd. but she finally figured out why i do it--it's like iocaine powder. i'm trying to build up an immunity to it and to chad and to the past and to everything else. my life is so good right now, but it's dropping away from me. undergrad is almost over. and knowing where i'm going to grad school isn't enough to couch my future in.

is anyone else terrified?

The Play's the Thing

I love the theatre. This obsession began in 2002 when I overdosed on plays during a little thing I like to call "The Dean and Gideon Show in London," aka the Theatre in London study abroad. So when my friend reminded me to check out the show he was directing at the Alpine Playhouse, I was so there.

The show was "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and I thought Josh did a brilliant job. There were times when it felt as if the entire play was coming from Josh's personality and experience, and other times when the play actually lived. Most of those times came when Puck was on stage. Played by an AFHS student, Puck created some of the most beautiful and funniest moments of the play. His final monologue was perfectly lit and the silver glitter he had spread over the stage earlier was reflecting from his hair and it was perfect.

It was only later, when I was driving back to P-town with my roommate, and analyzing the play when I realized two things. One, that AMND is about sex and sexuality and sexual tension, of which there was very little in this production. I was commenting on the exchange between Puck and the fairy, which I personally think is best played with some tension between the two. In this production it was treated like a child's argument, with Puck teasing the fairy. It bugged. Reason for this choice, and the other choices in the play? Utah Valley perhaps? Survey says: eh. The real reason is that Josh is a very good young man recently returned from a mission who gets a little queasy at the thought of a hug. And though he's had some excellent kisses on stage, off stage his love life hasn't really happened post-mish.

Second realization. I love theatre, but I always come away feeling somewhat empty. Why is that? I was debating that it's because I don't have a way to transfer the emotion created by the play, but I have this (aka writing). Maybe it's that I don't have a physical outlet. Maybe it's that I'm jealous that performing artists at least get to display their talent to their friends and family--most people who fall in that category for me don't want to read anything more than the most superficial of articles and they definitely don't want to hear about my theories re: contemporary anything.

I'm hoping grad school will provide an outlet. But I've decided to stay at BYU for my masters, and will that really change anything? When do the writers get to be heard? Especially if we're not looking to be the next Jack Weyland or Anita Stansfield, John Grisham or. . . I've run out of steam. Why do we do this? Why do we write? Because if it's for acclaim, we might as well stop. And now there will be many philosophical and slightly self-righteous postings about how we have to write, which is the right answer according to Leslie Norris. But is that the answer? Why do we write? Is it creation? And does it count if nobody is around to appreciate it?

Misinterpretation

Hello. I was feeling a tad guilty that I haven't written anything lately. Wait. Let's revise that. I was feeling a tad guilty that I haven't written a blog lately. I've been writing enough to publish a book. A very boring one, but a book nonetheless.

So, thought of the evening, not about poetry (insert gasp here). Tonight I was treated very respectfully by a guy and it surprised me. Not that the men of april are disrespectful, or most other men that I associate with, but this one surprised me. It was almost enough to distract me from trying to decide what to wear when I present at the AML conference on Saturday.

Any opinions?

Tuesday as Monday or Monday as Tuesday or. . .

Is anyone else terribly confused? It's not enough that they control our meaningless, consumer-driven lives, now they have to play games with the days of the week. I've spent the day trying to remember if it was Monday or Wednesday and receiving mild shock therapy every time someone mentions that it's actually Tuesday. Did I lose a day or gain an hour or what?

That being ranted, I am writing yet another paper. Maybe I should change my blog title to "yet another paper." Or maybe something clever. Any suggestions?

This one is just a 6 to 8 pager about, well, something from my civ class. I'm thinking of expounding on a quote from the Bacchae: "Man's true nature's seen in darkness not in light." Now, I know that nighttime is when HMP busts out the speedo and goes high stepping it down 9th, so no need to point out that correlation--but if you have any other ideas, they are most welcome. Granted, the paper is due tomorrow. Maybe I should be more worried than I am. Then again, maybe not.

Cheers. And april tomorrow.

Losing My Voice, or Questions of the Universe for 200

Luckily it's just my physical voice, not my writing voice. Due to the decided lack of writing classes this semester, this voice is here to stay, my friend.

As to the other half of the title, I'd like to clarify the first item on the april agenda. Not that anyone else can be absent without excuse or explanation, but such is my lot. Sigh. I was supporting my friend who was in The Rainmaker tonight. The facts that he is very attractive, loves Shakespeare, and took me to dinner a few weeks ago is irrelevant.

Just Duckie

Hi all. Who "all" is, I'm not sure, but it makes me feel more directed.

The debate has returned to the JKHB--or at least one side of it--in the form of eye-searing yellow posters. Just in case you missed them.

One of my favorite reactions to the debate have been the duck pictures. You know, the duck near Hickman's old office, with papers listing off different forms of criticism: feminist, Marxist, postmodern, etc. This go around there was a note under the duck saying "Poetry as Criticism," then papers with sonnet, limerick, and haiku available along with the standard options. There were a few haiku, a note on the limerick, and nothing on sonnet. And because I had nothing better to do during class, I decided to contribute to the conversation. You can check it out in the JKHB (if it stays up--I used tape) or here it is, free for the mocking.

Duck Sonnet 1

Here, this yellow means of explanation--
my feathered love for you sits a waiting
duck, overlooking these halls debating
which theory to give our dedication.
Yet is this duck true magnification
of my affection? In its elating
"quack," is it real or is it the grating
squeak of rubber duckie? Hesitation,
my love, will demand we pause our passion
and here in structured form lay out our vows
yet with only one hundred and forty
syllables at hand, I can but fashion
a construct of love and this will not wow
or woo, but seem only rubber duckie.

Charybdis

Thanks to everyone for their comments on nostalgia a few posts ago. I've been thinking about it a lot this weekend for a very specific reason. But before I go into that, I want to recap some of the comments made, mostly so I have them in front of me as I write tonight.

and on nostalgia. i can't say i agree with you the least. i don't claim to speak for all, and girls seem to be somewhat unified with you on this, but i love to reflect back. even on the stupid crappy stuff, i never liked the question 'what would you do different if you were to go back into the past' it seemed so...disrespectul maybe. even to change the absolutely wrong things i did, i would be very hesitant to say i would like to change it, even if i wish i never did it. i like to look back, i like to be sad on occasion, and to stew in my despondancy. (HMP)

On rememberese, I vote: depends on the memory. Some are fun to savor. Others give me physical pain. True I wouldn't change my past; however, I would still choose not to remember some of the hurt with quite as much poignancy as I am prone to do. (Miss K)

think i am in the same boat as HMP with the whole nostalgia thing. I love diving into old memories, often just as a way of renewing my gratitude towards H.F. Even the bad memories give me pleasure when i realize how far i have come from them...but i guess that all depends on how far back you cast your mind. (AA)

Apologies for the length of that. And apologies for what I'm about to write. I'm mostly doing it, as always, to give my mind a sort of release, so if you want to stop reading here, go for it. I don't blame you.

Chad is engaged. Chad is--was--boyfriend number one. I don't think my life is a drippy romance story at all, but this weekend it's felt like that. The nostalgia that I so dread has been sucking me in and spitting me out and tonight I feel broken. No, that's not quite right. I feel numb. Because I'm not sure what to feel.

I've been trying to explain this all weekend. How an old boyfriend's engagement to another girl can make my entire world spin out of orbit. Chad was my first kiss--a perfect first kiss, as far as I'm concerned. He was the guy who taught me how to kiss. He was also the first guy to tell me I was beautiful. And the only guy who has kept telling me that, even after we broke up. I guess in the back of my mind was always the comforting thought that even if no one else thought I was beautiful, even if no one else wanted me, Chad was there.

This is sounding like a pity party for one. And in a way it is. I've spent the weekend wondering what happened, when I know exactly what happened. I wasn't there for him when he needed someone. I kept reasoning that I needed him as much as he needed me and it was his turn to make some effort. But part of it was knowing that Chad wasn't who I needed, that he wouldn't make me happy--and vice versa.

The shattering came on Thursday. I had decided to call him when I went home this weekend, just to see how he was. And then I found out, Thursday afternoon. My mother told me. And I told her I was fine, even though I couldn't focus the rest of the afternoon.

I interviewed a group of people that night for an article. After the interviews, one of the guys asked me if I had a boyfriend. "No." Was I upset about/with guys? "Not tonight." Where did that answer come from? I was upset, more upset over a guy than I'd been since my freshman year. Again, something to distract me this weekend. And tonight I'm coming to the conclusion that nostalgia does operate like Charybdis--we get pulled into the swirling mess and then spit out again, only to wash up broken on the shore of some empty island. But I missed what comes next. Nostalgia is a good thing, because it allows us to re-learn our mistakes and our successes. After we're left on the shore, we're given time to heal, even though sometimes it feels like a redundant process.

Part of me always expected Chad to show up on my doorstep, or to at least call. And part of me has held that against every guy I've known. Somehow, though, I've arrived on the opposite side of this bout of nostalgia. I'm still not feeling too hot, but I've rebuilt my world again, this time one without a ghost clouding my view.

While the iron's hot

I found my story tonight. Meaning, I can write anything--I really can. But tonight I found the article I want to write. I can see how it's going to be set up, I know the descriptions, I have the quotes inserted all neat and tidy. This is a feature I know I can write.
Now I just have to convince somebody, aka Mr. Super Cool Editor.

"DC" can stand for so many things

Not much to say, except that every once in a while, life is really good. This would be one of those times. Which means I have nothing interesting to say. . .
Question: literature, stories, narratives, texts, whatever you want to call it, is most often and most successfully the relations of conflict, resolved or not. So the question is, is that necessary? Can you write a successfully entertaining anything--poem, short story, personal essay, blog--without that tension? I read through my journal last night. Anyone reading it will think that my life was the greatest melodrama of the twenty-first century. Which it isn't. Yet. But who honestly writes when life is just ordinary? It makes for a very boring read.
Point. Counterpoint. Bring it on.

A Series of Inexplicable Events, or Everything Tastes Like Soap

This weekend has been decidedly bizarre, at least from my POV. When, or rather if, you read this, you'll probably sit there dumbfounded at what struck me dumbfounded. And so we proceed.

Chapter One. Friday. A very short chapter, in which editorgirl waits for the phone to ring. When it doesn't, she attempts to read The Tempest without falling asleep, is unsuccessful, and consequently goes to bed before 10:00. Lights out.

Chapter Two. Saturday. A slightly longer chapter, in which eg begins--again--by reading The Tempest. Is more successful, in that she finishes it. Receives phone call she had expected the night before. Now has evening plans. Is picked up sometime after 5:00 by Josh friend. Is surprised by Josh friend's sudden chivalric mood of opening doors and paying for dinner. Realizes that she is on date with Josh friend. Loses a game of name that show tune before receiving dramatic end of evening hug. Wonders when Josh friend grew up.

Chapter Three. Sunday. A chapter which was supposed to be another short chapter, but which rambling tripled its size, in which eg recalls receiving random phone call from male on Tuesday. Remembers male asked if she still plays Speed Scrabble on Sundays and if she would be playing Sunday night. As it is now Sunday, eg decides that she will play Speed Scrabble and leaves message for aforementioned male. Aforementioned male does not receive message as he is at a superbowl party, but calls eg to find out if Speed Scrabble is being played. She informs aforementioned male that she will be playing with an assortment of individuals at nine o'clock. Aforementioned male agrees to come. Speed Scrabble game begins at ten to nine; male comes around nine twenty. Male plays Speed Scrabble, eats dessert, and leaves, without much fanfare. Eg is confused. Eg is used to being confused, but can usually find farfetched explaination. There is no explanation, hence the title inexplicable events.

Eg will now return you to your regularly scheduled programming and the use of first person. Good night.

Reality! is overrated! [sic]

Has it really been a week since I last blogged? Scary. I've had one of those weeks where at the end of the day I can't tell you what I did at the beginning. Everything is blending together in a frightening combination of literary theory, the Pub, work meetings, interviews, and just a little bit of Houdini for good measure.

So, thoughts of the past week, in no particular order.

Nostaligia is like Charybdis in The Odyssey--a deep, black, swirling whirlpool that pulls you in and then spits you out, broken and wasted. I've never been one for memory lane. If I could, I'd put up a DETOUR sign in my head to keep me far far away. This week has been particularly bad. I've been reading Doctorow's Ragtime for one of my lit classes. I decided to pull out the soundtrack for the Broadway musical, even though they don't have much in common. But somewhere in the past four years I forgot that Ragtime was the top choir's big number my senior year of high school. I wasn't in choir that year, but I went to the concert to see my best friends and my kind-of boyfriend, who later became Boyfriend #1. Listening to the music has brought back a good month and a half of people singing "Sarah Brown Eyes" to me, but changing the lyrics to "Sarah, blue eyes." And BF1 singing the Henry Ford solo and ranting about the minor lyric changes made so as not to offend the conservative parental audience. In a way I feel as if I've had ghosts following me around.

That was a lot, but one more thought. Maybe two. I've been thinking about art and Mormonism and how the two inform each other in my writing and wondering how it works for visual artists. This is definitely something I want april to pursue.

Last thought. Promise. I was talking to my dad about how the decisions I make in the next month or two will affect the rest of my life. Is anyone else scared witless by this idea? Chime in. We'll start a support group.

Projection

I just got done puzzling my way through Aaron's blog. I have one thing to say: paragraph breaks.

Actually, I have many things to say. This topic came up with Trent and seems to be the central theme of most of our discussions. And by this point in a post I should have identified my topic, but I'm not sure what to call it. Poetic project, poetic theory, poetic function? None of these really encapsulate what I'm after, but slap your own label on it when you get there.

Aaron referenced Leslie Norris and I'm going to follow suit: "I truly spend my life waiting to write." This was towards the end of his presentation in our 518 class. He began it by asking "Why do you write?" and his answer was "Is it because you can't help it?"

I don't want to come off as self-righteous or self-indulgent or even self-congratulatory, but I write because that's what I do. I'm not concerned with my reader. Writing for me is a purely selfish pursuit. My poetry comes when it comes and unless I have an assignment, I don't sit down to write a poem. I sit down to write and I just happen to translate my thoughts into words and hyphens and line breaks. I do admit to being too fond of the em-dash, but as that didn't stop Emily Dickinson, I'm not overly concerned.

I bring a unique reading to poetry in that I'm more interested in publishing other poets than getting myself published. I'm more interested in teaching a class out of poetry anthologies than seeing my name in one. This alters what you do, how you write, and for me is the only answer.

This is turning into altruistic drivel. My apologies. I don't expect that my theories or concepts will work for anyone else. If anything, this thread of blogging proves that we all approach our art from different angles, even if we voice it in a plethora of ways. Yes, plethora. As in pinatas. Aaron has his cat in the orchard. And from that experience, he has given me the voice of the woman sitting in the front seat. Maybe voices are what I'm interested in, even if they all are portions of myself.

Late. Rambling. Good morning.

Return of the Midget Stalker

This post will not actually be about the midget stalker, although he did return and this time I didn't have my personal bodyguard/poetic genius friend around to scare him away. Aaron, where are you?

Hickman discussed Benjamin's "On the Concept of History" today. I admit that I only understood every third word. No, actually, I have a decent if simple grasp on Marxism and Hegel's dialectic, so I was feeling pretty good about myself. But the concept of history has always fascinated me. Who makes history? I would argue the writers. Who says what they write is accurate? This becomes a contract between the writer and the reader which is inevitably broken.

This concept of history and historical accuracy and recording has been playing in mind in tangent with the 24 Hours at BYU photo essay. Is that history? It is from our point of view, or at least history from the lens of a camera. There is a website my brother directed me to called the Thought Project. A photographer asked people what they had been thinking about right before he walked up to them, then took their picture. The pictures are simple portraits, but their answers vary in depth and apparent importance and interest. But is that the truest form of history? They must have censored their answers for this random photo-man. And some of them have been translated into English, adding another layer for their stories to filter through. Check it out, though. Just google "Thought Project." It should be the first one to show up.

Shuffle Off to Buffalo

Every time I access the internet at work I'm confronted with yet another add for the iPod shuffle thing. And while I am intrigued by a gadget that weighs less than a pack of gum yet will randomly shoot at my eardrums music from my personal collection, I'm a little afraid of the implications. Continuing the literary analysis applied to real life from yesterday, it amazes me that we, meaning Society with a capital S, are so willing to sacrifice choice, control, independence of thought on the altar of chance and do-it-for-me mentalities. Sure I like having a Postal Service song followed by Peter Gabriel, but only when I make the mix. Maybe I just feel threatened that my singular talent of creating bizarre mixes featuring at least one nostalgic-induced track has become obselete. Shuffle indeed.

On my desk is a large bag of Sweethearts, those disgusting, flavorless, chalky hearts with cheesy sentimentality stamped onto them. The bag is red and the hearts are green, white, purple, pink, orange, and yellow. Which is the order I'll eat them in, ignoring the "Kiss Me" "Marry Me" "Be Mine" corporate messages.

I walked through the Bookstore yesterday to find a new calendar. Not that I really want to be the means of my roommates announcing their personal lives to the world on our wall, but there was a calendar earlier this month with brilliant shots of London that I thought would be the cause of much rejoicing, at least on a personal level. The calendar was no longer there, so I checked out my other options. Puppies. Flowers--more specifically, roses. Romantic Europe. Dead people. More puppies. Nothing really tempted me. I mean, the Chinese Propaganda was cool, but doesn't really go with my eclectic apartment. So the great calendar hunt continues.

[sic]

I'm writing this during class, which is to say I'm writing with pen on paper and will probably make multiple spelling errors, none of which will appear in electronic form if I can help it.

My brother asked me last night why I haven't been posting and today I ran into Aaron who was off to the library to read blogs. Point taken.

I haven't been writing because I've had a crap guy week and after two blogs, plus multiple other drafts, I got tired of writing about it. But I think anyone can relate to not being able to think of much else after rejection and other matters of the opposite sex. This blog will hopefully be a break from past trends, but I make no promises.

I am sitting in English 363, American lit 1914 to 1960, listening to yet another clean shaven, close cropped, tie wearing male present on how the feminine functions in literature, in this case My Antonia. May I be so bold to ask what makes guys think they can understand and explicate the feminine? The best paper I ever read on feminist criticism and l'ecriture feminine was by a guy. Granted, he was married. Maybe his wife wrote it. Anyway, this male/female dichotomy (the ever abused friend of the English major) seems to be appearing in most of my classes, most noticeably in The Dean and Gideon Show (not to be confused with The Gideon and Dean Show). Spurred on by the inexplicable, I have taken scrupulous notes this semester, including pages and pages on this male vs. female concept. What is most striking is that women rarely factor in the literature we're reading and by virtue of their absence, we're allowed to talk about them, use the feminine in correspondence with the nebulous other.

On the flip side, and I apologize for dragging in some of "crap guy week" here, but it is applicable, do we honestly have a definition of the feminine and the masculine anymore? The feminine is the irrational, the other, the mysterious, the weak, the fairer, the innocent. It all depends on what person you talk to, what text you read. And the masculine is the known, the strong, the heroic. The masculine is Odysseus, Dante, Virgil, Siddhartha, Newland Archer. The feminine is something we avoid, something we escape in literature because it's oppression and unfamiliar. The masculine is something we embrace, something we feel safe with. Isn't it? "Crap guy week." Right.

His idea is being the man, taking care of the woman, standing as sentinel over her at all times. ("His" here refers to a specific person.) His concept of a relationship is her (any her) waiting to here how his day went without telling him anything about her day. His idea is that she should be seen and not heard.

Maybe I need to remove literary theory/analysis from real life. But then what is the point of literature? Is it just a bunch of pretty words that create a pretty picture and then we step away, sigh, and say "that was nice" and then forget about Billy Pilgrim and Galadriel and Valancy? If we believed that we wouldn't spend our time reading. We wouldn't be English majors. We'd go study science, we'd break down life into numbers and decided dichotomies rather than allowing the postmodernists to break everything apart so that we can piece it back together again. (Note: I am now sitting in English 365, American lit 1960 to the present talking about The City of Glass. Slightly different mode of conversation here.) Does the Elephant Love Medley accurately or remotely resemble the way we approach life? My brother is defined in many ways by his music. We are all defined by our culture, whether it is the acceptance or rejection of our culture.

Now somebody tell me to pay attention.

Diatribing

So last night my friend Seth was over. Maybe friend is too strong a word. He's my home teacher and the other "ward menu supervisor." I had called him over to talk about the ward menu, actually, which he really doesn't care about.
Seth is usually a nice guy, but consistently negative, especially when it comes to the fairer sex. Last night I made the gross error of asking him if he was currently interested in anyone. This innocent, albeit stupid, question set him off on a diatribe of his own with poor little old me dodging darts and arrows and the opinions of someone who truly hates girls/women.
Guys can usually get away with telling me how ridiculous females are. I agree. Girls/females/women/chicks/babes, whatever you want to call them are annoying and obnoxious and demanding and stupid and collectively irritating. Not that guys/males/men/dudes/boys don't receive and deserve similar treatment. But at the same time, both guys and girls can be pretty wonderful. It's an interesting dichotomy. The opinions thrown at me last night, however, were of a completely new variety.
Seth has, like everyone else, been hurt by girls in the past. Unlike everyone else, Seth forces these experiences onto every girl he subsequently meets, making the entire gender one nasty mess of a beast. He is holding out for the perfect woman, who in his mind, does exist and will conform to what he wants.
This isn't following logically, and I don't care, but the few points that stuck from Seth's argument were that 1) girls are selfish. Seth complained that in past relationships, the girls expected him to work around their schedules. "Didn't you expect them to work around your schedule?" Of course, but that is the way it's supposed to work; the girl is supposed to adjust her schedule and her life to meet the guy's needs while he continues on as normal.
The conversation continued with me more than a little bugged with him and somehow reached the point of Seth saying he required a girl to show a lot of interest in him before he would lift a finger in her direction. I argued that there is only so much a girl can do before she is seen as forward, chasing, and desparate, and basically discussed negatively in the ward. He claimed that there were certain things a girl can do to let a guy know she's interested. "Fine. Tell me what to do. I'll test your theories." Seth, of course, laughed at me and then asked, "Are you willing to fall in love? And then get hurt?"
He then proceeded to tell me who I would be calling on, if you will. It's a guy I know pretty well, who I respect a lot, but who I have no desire to date. And I now I realize that this is the major flaw in Seth's theories: he doesn't realize that there has to be some form of attraction and that the two people have to want to make the other person happy. I know that this guy Seth decided I should date wouldn't make me happy, and I wouldn't make him happy. Seth only wants someone to make him happy--he's not out to reciprocate. I've gone on dates with him and he is a great date, but he's a great date because that's what a guy is supposed to do, not because he respects the girl he is with and wants to make her happy.
At this point in my own personal diatribe, the doorbell rang and two of the greatest guys in the world were on the other side of the door, which, thankfully, ended the discussion.
Fin.

Truth, Dare, and Eighth Grade

My roommate Emily and I walked into our apartment Friday night to find it occupied by the strangest of creatures--law students. I suppose we should be used to this by now, seeing as how our other two roommates are law students, but usually they don't travel in packs. And it wasn't so much that they were there, strewn about our living room and kitchen, but what they were doing: threading Fruit Loops onto (my) thread to make necklaces and bracelets and I think one guy made a crown.
The night digressed from there, with Emily and I thrown in the mix, until only about ten people were left (2 guys, 8 girls), and someone decided the next game should be "Truth or Dare." Everyone jokingly went along, writing down truths and dares on pieces of paper. Each person had to draw and either answer a question or perform a dare. This was mildly entertaining until after the first round the questions and dares continued to have a common thread: kissing. "Tell about your first kiss." "Describe your first kiss in detail, but not graphically." "Kiss Rich on the cheek. If you're a boy, throw this back and get a new question." Okay, so the last one was kindly put in by one girl hoping her friend who is interested in Rich would grab it and finally establish some form of physical contact. But still, are you people 3Ls or 8th graders? I don't even know if a self respecting eighth grader would ask and/or answer those questions. Sheesh.
This whole incidence begs the question, what bizarre world are we living in? Is everyone so obsessed with kissing and relationships and physical contact that we can't break away, even in a stupid party game? The sad thing is, the answer is yes. We cannot break away from these conversations and analyses and all-to-human desires that we have effectively distanced ourselves from.
And as for my first kiss, he missed.

"Like, there goes another lemming"

In a full on attack of "everybody's doing it," I hereby jump off the cliff.

Three names you go by:
1. Sar-bear (I wish I was kidding)
2. Captain Spanky
3. oh editor queen

Three screen names you have:
1. editorgirl
2. whyherecoldsister
3. barbiegirl

Three things you like about yourself:
1. my hair
2. I know when (and how) to use a comma.
3. my dedication to things

Three things you dislike about yourself:
1. my tendency to trust sterotypes
2. my inability to clean my bedroom
3. that I let people walk all over me

Three parts of your heritage:
1. English
2. Danish
3. Prince John, the phony king of England

Three things that scare you:
1. large bodies of water
2. parking tickets
3. people at Disney theme parks

Three of your everyday essentials:
1. hot shower
2. good music
3. control

Three things I am wearing right now:
1. jeans
2. the ubiquitous navy blue hoodie
3. silver jewlery

Three of your favorite bands/artists today:
1. Frou Frou
2. Rooney
3. America

Three of your fav. songs at present
1. “Accidentally in Love” (Counting Crows)
2. “Such Great Heights” (both Postal Service and Iron & Wine’s cover)
3. “Someone Like You” (Jekyll & Hyde)

Three new things you want to try in the upcoming year:
1. leaving Provo
2. dyeing my hair
3. being lazy

Three things you want in a relationship (love is a given):
1. communication
2. respect
3. height (hey, one of these has to be superficial)

Two truths and a lie (in any order):
1. I got my first pair of glasses when I was 18 months old.
2. I hate peas.
3. I refuse to date psych majors.

Three things about the opposite sex that appeal to you:
1. great eyes
2. great lips
3. facial hair

Three things you just can't do:
1. admit I’m wrong
2. throw away my Baby-sitter Club books
3. be honest about my feelings

Three of your favorite hobbies:
1. write
2. read
3. edit

Three careers you're considering:
1. writing (articles as a professor)
2. reading (student papers as a professor)
3. editing (everything)

Three places you'd like to go on vacation:
1. London
2. New York
3. Washington coast

Three kids names:
1. Beatrice
2. Amelia
3. Gideon

Three things you want to do before you die:
1. kiss someone taller than me
2. visit NYC
3. live in Europe