French! Ohlala.

Recently, I picked up Les Miserables so I could read it again. Some people have a certain movie, a certain song, a certain place, etc.etc. I have this book.

I honestly think its the best book ever written. Hugo's language is absolutely beautiful. His story is complex and engaging. But, since its focused on the Uprising in Paris in 1832, it also has these beautiful long passages about human nature, the divine and political utopia's.

"What you fellows call progress moves by two springs, men and events. But sad to say, from time to time the exceptional is necessary. For events as well as for men, the stock company is not enough; geniuses are needed among men, and revolutions among events. Great accidents are the law; the order of things cannot get along without them; and, to see the apparitions of comets, one would be tempted to believe that Heaven itself is in need of star actors. At the moment you least expect it, God placards a meteor on the wall of the firmament. Some strange star comes along, underlined by an enormous tail. And that makes Caesar die. Brutus strikes him with a knife, and God with a comet."

Note: Hugo's political beliefs eventually led him to be exiled out of France.

Then, three years ago I saw the play on Broadway. I have never heard a song this beautiful live since.

Bring Him Home

Hawt Dayyymmn, Bogdan!

Note: This blog is centered around a fish. If this offends you, if you think it is not worthwhile, vapid or wasteful, stop reading now.

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I must confess. I thrive with the top down, sun in my face and wind in my hair. I love the heat, the hot rays on my skin, finding solace in the shade. It's blissful. It's relaxing.
My fish, however, does not. He's living in a fucking hot tub. And he can't get out. Not even for a breather.

I think he might be getting sick because his tank is too hot. This makes me very sad because I am deeply attached to this fish. Here is why: he has moved with me three times, been through two breakups, seen me pull all nighters, heard intimate conversations and seen many many strange things. He also has been in a car wreck with me, stayed the summer at my house (across state) another summer at Briana's house and this past winter break at my other friends house in Deming. His mother might of cried a little when I took him back. I know the relationship is one-sided but I love him anyway. Mostly because he's a fucking champ.

I dropped him down the garbage disposal (when it was off) and he was out of water for over a minute. He was found curled up in an eggshell. I didn't mean for this to happen, he just flopped out when I was cleaning his tank in my sink. If surviving with no water curled up in an eggshell isn't badass for a beta fish, well, you obviously have not put as much time or thought into this as I. Shame on you.


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Unrelated Postnote: When looking up images of 'hot tub' on google (safe search on) I found this. I call it "A Man. A Beer. A Bear" I could also see my boyfriend doing this someday like this someday, oddly enough, I only find slightly disturbing.

My Achilles Heel.

In the sheer excitement/terror of graduation I've realized I'll actually have time to get back into music and reading and painting.

What? Time! YOU WIN! YOU WIN! (throws in the gloves)


Songs of the week:

I always forget how fucking fantastic yo la tengo's electr-o-pura album is.


Also noted:
Snoop Dogg-Whats my Name
Violent Femmes-add it up
NWA-Express Yourself (probably one of my favorite rap songs)
Joanna Newsom- The Book of Right On
The Pixies- Cactus
Le Tigre- Well Well Well
Sebadoh-Skull
the flaming lips-christmas at the zoo
built to spill-liar
belle and sebastian-wrapped up in books
bikini kill-rebel girl

(these songs are my default favorites, mostly making me seep nostalgia)
Also french b&w films, mysterious french male poet characters, well written script? I might of just found my Achilles heel.

M-kay.

I do not understand how this man can be so sexy.

Debauchery

I was told that you don’t complete a “Pub Crawl” successfully unless you have a) puked. b)woke up massively hungover or c)woke up drunk the next day.

Luckily, none of these options were any problem for my friends (or I).

The premise of the pub crawl is to complete a whole bunch of tasks to win, like drinking certain drinks at certain bars, and completing assigned things that you would only do when you’re drunk. Certain things correlated to points, the more points the better.
Here are two ridiculous stories to deter people from drinking:

My friends and I were sitting at the bar. The conversation resembles something like this,
chaz, “Hey, so I need to kiss a beautiful girl to complete the task. I can kiss you on the cheek”
Girl on another pub crawl team, “But, that doesn’t work.”
(awkward drunk pause)
Girl, “Well, its not a kiss unless you use tongue”
Chaz “Ok.”
Girl “I hope you know that I’m Bellingham aristocracy.”
Chaz “Cool”

They proceed to make out. The best part of this conversation/make-out session is that I was sitting right next to him and didn’t even notice what was going on.

I realize girls like this probably have gonorrhea. Men like this probably have dirty dicks. I realize those are vast sexist assumptions.


This ones a little more complicated. The task was to switch uniforms with another team. I see a dude wearing a shirt waaaaaay to small for him that has a picture of a Rooster (or cock) and the word, Blocker below it. Yeah, cock blocker.
I refused to take off my clothes in the bar so I make him take his shirt off and give it to me so I can change in the bathroom. In the meantime, he’s just wandering around the bar without a shirt. It gets better.
I used an old shirt that had a sharpie picture of a Jesus Horse with Jesus on it. So once he put it on, he was walking around with a homemade shirt that said, in cursive, “I <3 my Jesus Horse.” He then asked me what the fuck it was and I had to explain to him why the shirt was funny. I’m pretty sure I sounded like a jackass. Nothing worse than drunken babble about creationists and the biblical narrative timeline.

So, later that night I run into the “cock blocker team” while I’m wearing the shirt I switched with the dude. The girl wants it back. She starts trying to take off my shirt, in the middle of the bar. I pull her away towards the bathroom. She begins to take off her clothes. Note, we’re not even in the bathroom yet, but in some corner of the bar. I’m prude and am afraid the walls are covered with strains of sperm and STD’s. She starts stripping. Her strapless bra slips down and I basically see a half frontal nudity of her boobs. Oh God. She gets her shirt back. I get this way too tight orange tank top.

Later that night on the dance floor I saw her rubbing her ass against a dude. Hella. Rubbing. Not the-lets-get-ghetto freaky; the freaky freaky. The kind of butt rubbing that should be in bed, because (vast sexist comment again) she might be into that. Which is cool, you know? I just don’t want to see it, or the heat that man was packing in his pants. Alas, I saw both.

Saddest part is, I have NO idea who has my I <3 my Jesus Horse shirt.

w.t.f.

What the fuck, Pakistan?
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/05/27/lahore.blast/index.html


On the same note, I found this really sweet movie I watched in high school, "Trinity and Beyond" a documentary about the hydrogen and atomic bomb online (fo' free!) and I'm pretty stoked on watching it.

i.d.e.n.i.t.y. & bildungsroman

Go with me here.

"The minute you or anybody else knows what you are you are not it, you are what you or anybody else knows you are and as everything in living is made up of finding out what you are it is extraordinary difficult really to not know what you are and yet to be that thing."
Gertrude Stein

I am fascinated with the idea of 'identity'--how someone can compose an idea of being a subject. The idea that people chose to represent themselves through writing, through conversation, through details, through rhetoric, beliefs, morals...etc. Being human=awesome.

However at the same time, there is no ONE true identify to anyone, like Stein says, you realize what you are, you are not it anymore as things are always changing. So one minute you are one thing, yet, the next something has changed and you are not it anymore.
Ex-
(A-->B; when you don't actually realize you were A in the first place and now you are B)

This always changing ideology leads to a very fluid identity. So True Identity?
Total Bullshit.

So, in this same thought process, and a slightly more tangible, egotistic and highly symbolic example of this idea in relation to identity:
I took out my industrial piercing today. I don't know why. It seems small and insignificant but really, to me, it represents something much larger. I graduate in three weeks. I have this extraordinarily strong pressure that is coming from something external that keeps telling me to do or be a certain way, to normalize myself to the society.
Total Bullshit.

This piercing hurt like a motherfucker. There was no numbing, no pain killers (thins the blood) just a needle, my folded over ear and 10 seconds of cartilage piercing followed by a rush of blood and intense pain. I couldn't sleep on my ear for the next 3 months.

It was a complete spontaneous decision.

If I were to write my own narrative, a witty bildungsroman style, because my ego needs stroking, this would be one of the scenes that I would want the writer to spend time one. People who read it would wonder how & why it was in there. Then, they'd think about it and it'd be some passage to some normalization.
Micro: Macro relation and symbolism. ( I don' t know if that sentence actually made sense)

So, identity? Fluid and changing and never absolute.

Consequently, Plato might be hurling insults at me as we speak.
Total Bullshit.