Having An Empty Mind

Today Is Saturday

2009-01-10T14:24:00.000-08:00

Today is Saturday and the current Hegemon is making giant double-chocolate cookies. We walked to the little liquor store near us to buy some vanilla, which is almost liquor in a broad sense, and flour, which is bleached, in this case. I can hear him smashing butter from here. I tried to thaw it by the heat vent but he would not relent. The poor young man will have to cart them out in the dark snow. I think it's going to snow until everything is slopey, but I can't tell if that's going to happen because everything is purple outside, or trees, so is it even snowing?

Now he's in here, complaining about the state of the brown sugar. And the butter. There are problems. It may be time for Greek homework, part 8.

Today is Tuesday.

2009-01-06T16:25:00.000-08:00

Today is the first Tuesday of the year. Slowly, carefully, I will begin to have a blog again.

Oh No!

2008-10-16T11:43:00.000-07:00

The ornaments of summertime have fallen away. By that, I mean that someone has stolen Tina. We're going to have to adjust our polling processes now. I'll have to add her to my eulogy queue, right after my desk lamp, which for the most part has been forgotten by the general public. That is, you.

Action!

2008-09-12T14:03:00.000-07:00

No one needs another update on the Krankenhaus, yes? We need issues! Our chimney is crumbling! We need scaffolding! We need new screens! We need a lookout tower! We need a flag!

Does anyone want to build a boat with me? I'd like to resurrect the Boat Forum. I'm thinking about slowly transforming the Book Forum into the Boat Forum. Well, first the Boot Forum, so the outcry will be less oppressive and we can just transfer into our rightful occupation--boat guys. That's not remotely true. There are almost no guys whatsoever in the Book Forum. We're going to be a hip-girl repository. A hip-girl repository with a boat.

Baby Tree

2008-08-31T18:13:00.001-07:00

For all of you who turn to me for your time updates, I tell you that the summer is over. Or not over. Or kind of over. I read a poem about this yesterday. I think it's probably the most discussed issue in poetry in general. The summer is kind of over, though, so you can do what I did when I was little and listen to "Urge for Going" a couple of times and put on a sweater (you might lose focus in the middle at some point, and also get confused because for Joni Mitchell the summer-winter transition is alarmingly quick because she lives in a sort of dream-world where she isn't paying that much attention because she's distracted by all the dreams). Then decide that the sweater is just too much for these uncertain days and put on some shorts to balance it out. Then, someone will invite you to the beach, or some other water's edge, and you'll put on some flip-flops, but then your toes will be cold. It's a difficult time. The good side of all of this is that the water will still be warm at the beach from all the sweet summer sun.
Anyway, this means it's back to being a real person. A real person with a blog of dubious realness.

Good Morning

2008-08-25T07:11:00.000-07:00

Tablecat: Oh, you're awake.

Emmo: Tablecat? Why are you sleeping in my closet? Don't you...hate me?

Tablecat: Eh. Not really. Sorry about that one time I scratched you because we were at Red Hot Lovers and I was too cool to admit I was afraid of the nice almost-bald girl and her nice coworker who was not almost bald. He was not almost bald at all.

Emmo: That's all right. That makes sense, I guess, since you like to follow us when we leave the house, so I always assume you're worried about us.

Tablecat: Well, I wouldn't call it worried. I have great faith in the concept of a mascot, though, and frankly, I'm all you've got.

Emmo: What about Tina?

Tablecat: What about Tina? I don't see her following you to dirty little hot dog establishments.

Emmo: That's true. Anyway, I even kept the door open for you. You really didn't want to leave?

Tablecat: No, I guess not. But now that I see you're awake, can I sniff the side of your bed like I'm going to be affectionate and then shy away when you show overt interest in me being alive near you?

Emmo: OK, if that's what you really want.

Tablecat: Oh, it is.

Emmo: You know, it's my birthday.

Tablecat: That's fine. *Sniffs*

Nobody Knows Like Me

2008-08-05T09:51:00.000-07:00

By now you have heard, good people, that it is August. August already. In fact, this is as good a place as any to comment on the celebration and proliferation of the real romantic holiday to follow close after the new year, which I also have a good bit to say about. But that day, that singular holiday of attraction and commitment, is Cinco de Ocho. Clearly, not nearly enough social engineering has yet taken place to integrate the particularities of our independent cultural mirrors into our actual daily lives, but hey. That's why I was born. (That's not true. I was born because my father refused to play Scrabble with my mother and her mother, who was some kind of Scrabble champion in her day--and one's Scrabble Day occurs long after one's day in the sun, day to shine, or day of anything else anyone ever wants--lived like 750 miles away, which is just too far, with my persistently Catholic aunt, so my mom thought long and hard and eventually came up with the best way to get yourself a custom-made Scrabble partner, if you're the patient type. Unfortunately for her, the vagaries of genetics and her fearsome and militaristic devotion to the game combined poorly, and I haven't played a non-drunk game of Scrabble in at least five years. That is more true.) Anyway, the real aim here is to take the meager evidence we have of the existence and observance of this holiday and coax it into active existence. There is:
Episode 13 of Season 14 of The Simpsons, "A Star is Born-Again," in which Homer mentions said holiday in conjunction with the "Tongue-Kissing Festival" because Springfield is just perfect for lovers. Not widows. Then, apparently, Ned starts dating movie star Sara Sloane, but clearly my attention was diverted by this fascinating opening tidbit. Unfortunately, the intermittently awe-inspiring Simpsons Archive has not made it through the fourteenth season yet, but I can tell you this much:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Star_is_Born-Again

http://www.logicalcreativity.com/jon/2005/08/happy_cinco_de_ocho.html

Mas tarde, muchachos, se acaba la rima.

2008-07-24T07:35:00.000-07:00

But don't be fooled. No one's stopped living as I continue my search for someone truly deserving on whom to bestow the title "Buddy Holly of the Oceans." We've had a charming gentleman-mosquito trapped between a pink plastic cup from the children's section of IKEA and a postcard from Guatemala on our kitchen counter for two days now. (It's the first the Krankenhaus has heard from south of the border that has not come from the sly and deceptive internet. So far.) He seems physically imposing but harmless. Tablecat monitors his life and ours closely while managing to maintain a measure of remove, in the emotional sense, which is impressive given his as yet limited scope of expression. RR, in a much more subtle move to retain Krankenvolker, has proposed we just call ourselves Hotel California and start up a guest registry. We can put it where the shoe-pile is now. That, or she can start standing on people's cars along with him.
ALSO:
We have a new order that I have failed to mention. The startling event that caused this unlikely car-standing alliance, that is, the leave-taking of HR the M, has left a gap in the Krankenhaus, in all senses of the word. But we have adjusted, being efficient and resourceful, with the arrival of the lovely Eternal Roommate, and the somewhat more covert but no less lovely Fair-Weather Roommate: she'll stick around during a rainstorm, but when the leaves fall on the ground and bully winds come around and push them face-down in the snow we'll have to let her go. Unless she intends to leave by car.

That Crazy Avenue of Trees

2008-07-21T20:16:00.000-07:00

The point at which I must begin is the point at which I tell you that, as far as I know, we are all still alive. Except, that is, the mulberry tree that's been hanging out behind our strangely-oriented garage for some time now, rooting itself under the alley which was apparently once a trolley route. And we, humble heirs to the dead trolley, labor on, considering things, typing things out, wondering who is the most famous person to have ever died from ship-sinking. That's us. Except for , who's been reduced to smithereens. On the positive side, the thin layer of woodchips on our trolley route makes driving a little more delightful.

Paper Soup

2008-07-07T21:32:00.000-07:00

I come to you in times of strife and indecision. Specifically this time, when someone somewhere is probably having some problem, or has to make an unsavory decision, and it might not even be the kind of unsavory decision that has narrative value, so there goes that. I write to you from the top of the stairs, where the Internet lingers since David fled the area. And fled he has, so there goes any potential he may have had for saving us from fire or flood, or epidemic, or something. He had that kind of potential. He owned a hatchet and an axe.
But onward, as it may be termed.

Abundance, Camp Life

2008-06-27T22:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday in the daily rain a tree came down in the rugged and dirty dirt road behind the Krankenhaus. We tore it apart with hatchets that were Manly David's, and now I think we should make a fort from it. That way, we can keep more Krankenvolker around us. They can make a fire to keep themselves warm. They can pose as a tree when the landlords come around. They can do their laundry in Tina and keep guard from the raccoons with HR the M's raccoon stick. What a fearsome and rugged and dirty life for them. But we'd invite them in to eat, of course. And every day in the daily storm they could get more branches to add more rooms to their fort, and patch the roof. We can't lose.

Naka-noon: Advice for the Rain

2008-06-21T17:49:00.000-07:00

This has been a much labored-over post. A citadel of a post. That sort of thing. Tablecat took a swing at HR the F's face today. He's a desperate man. I can tell by the glint in his eye and the way he hops over the Krankenthreshold every time the door is just a little bit open. I think I knew how to say "Krankenthreshold" in German at some point in May. He's counted the rooms in the Krankenhaus, over and over, and he knows how many there are and what they contain. He's made peace with each of the daddy-longlegs and the junebugs and the wasps, he is godfather to their children, he is sick of being polite. But I think he knows a little bit about what happens outside of the courtyard, and he certainly knows more about the insides of David's house than we do, and he's got hope for the outlying regions. He has reason to believe in the splendor of the Washtenaw entrance to M-23, and the bright lights of Main Street, and the ramshackle charm of Ypsilanti, and he has not yet come to even consider the outlying rambly rural regions of this 84-square mile pastoral wonderland.

Now, an interlude from the outer fringes of real life. It seems to me that the standardly used Yiddish textbook these days is College Yiddish, which is something I could conceivably have guessed, and so all ye for whom this information is relevant, take heed. I believe that this is many of you, although since you are lurking in the internetty shadows I can't really tell.

So many vowels in so many names. Every day the rain raises its hand in the morning and lets it fall by the afternoon, and every day I hope it hasn't learned to break the windows, or maybe that it has because I'm sitting right next to them so I must be just asking for it and every morning I'm in the same place so it must be that some afternoon I'm going to get washed off down the road. So I suppose that the best I can recommend you is that when you build your boat, you should be sure to give it a good roof and a good door, and when you leave your house for the last time remember to close the windows so your sheets aren't damp when you get back home.

Hrad

2008-06-20T14:54:00.000-07:00

Rejoice, Krankenvolker, and open your windows, for the Radon Man has come and gone!
That's right. So, as I sit on this couch which fiercely and mercilessly wounded me this morning causing another little bit of finger flesh to flutter to the floor, I'm thinking about things like ancient languages that I could take, and how much of your fingers you need to keep around while still keeping your fingers functional. Really, my fingers are some of the most important things I keep around. Without them, there wouldn't even be this thing to read for you. And my shirt-making capacity would be pretty much eliminated. And this day is a day when I value that sort of thing, as I covertly bought such a number of buttons yesterday, and letter paper. In fact, this would be as good a time as any to bring you up to date on my thoughts on desk equipment.
First:
CVS sells the best half-sheet letter paper. I heartily recommend writing all your letters on half-sheets, if you're the lettery type. I also recommend being the lettery type, but that's up to you. Anyway, it comes in pads of 1oo sheets and costs roughly two dollars, and so contains huge potential for lettering. Why, with just one pad my room is already kind of coated with first-drafts. If that's the effect you're going for, you should also consider becoming more indecisive and wakeful.
ALSO:
We have come upon the first age in which owning a typewriter is truly a practical notion. This is true, my friends, because no one really wants them anymore, and so they litter the internet, the garage sales, the Neighborhood Club Thrift Shop, my basement, my thoughts. They're quite cheap, many of them are in very good repair or close to it, and they're an easy and somewhat credible-looking way of putting yourself closer to your words and your work. With a typewriter it's much easier to, for example, adjust for paper size, and you can keep constant and precise track of your formatting. Of course, computers can do so much more, but for my basic purposes of communication and rough-drafting they're absolutely ideal. At this point I've become unexpectedly knowledgeable about typewriters in general, and I'm considering becoming a typewriter authority and advocate as a way of passing the time in my earliest twenties, and then again in my late fifties, and in both stages I will probably maintain that typewriters should not be viewed as a discerning face turned away from modernity and convenience, because that is not what they are. You can adequately supply yourself for most typewriter use through a simple trip to Staples or a complex trip to Staples if you'd rather, and the Internet just goes on and on. Also, the first person to point out that I'm blogging about typewriters may or may not win a prize. I know that someone's going to realize that I have a good point, at some point, or realize that they have a good point that is identical to my good point, and then the Good Age for a Typewriter will be over, or at least much changed, so heed my words, if you like. I won't say much about the sound of industry, that is, the sound of a typewriter that immediately reminds you that things are getting done, except for this. This is all that I will say.
AND:
Keep close watch for an elegy for my desk lamp, which blinked its last about a month ago and in whose absence I have had a hard time seeing my desk. It was a sweet sweet beauty.
That was all supposed to be a brief interlude between the introduction and the meaty point, but since I have forgotten the meaty point, I shall leave you here, thanking the lord for your fingers.

Box to Box to Back and Forth

2008-06-17T23:03:00.000-07:00

One finger down. Kind of. Little bits of finger, falling all around. This has only actually occurred once.
Now it is summer, I see. I have books around my feet and people in the living room. There's old dinner on the stove. Coffee, sleep. More.

The Writhing Moose

2008-06-16T08:43:00.000-07:00

So many things. I'm a free woman. Unless I drive, in which case I will not be a free woman. In some senses. But in the intellectual sense, I'll probably still be floating free. Like a candy wrapper caught in an updraft-free. An updraft free of charge. That's is me. That which that is I am. Crinkly, with a pleasant veneer of grease.

Modern Moonlight

2008-06-12T09:21:00.000-07:00

But I tried to write something pithy last night. I had it all set up. I was on the porch, I was listening to strange music through the open window, HR the F was telling the cat that it was "really fucking loud," I had the typewriter, which RR didn't even destroy when she tripped over it when chasing me to find out the secret of HR the F's birthday, which was beautiful and filled with polyunsaturated fat, and I just ended up writing about bacon and spiders. Mostly bacon. Anyway, this doesn't really lead me to my next thing, which is that this little account of life will be let loose into the wide world in a mere two days. Be ready. Be brave.

Let Me Use The Spoon!

2008-06-10T19:25:00.000-07:00

HR the M is demonstrating what it would be like to eat RR's frontal lobe. It crazy.

Speaking of which, this would be a good time to begin the propagation of the No-S Game. First you must gather some friends, or cooperative people, or at the very least complacent people. Then, pick a letter--it doesn't have to be "S". Then, try like a bootblack to exclude it from your speech. It crazy.

I'm getting ready to say something pithy, kind of.

You're A Big Girl Now

2008-06-09T19:37:00.000-07:00

The world is large and full of menacing weather systems, and we just a little Krankenhaus.

The Cyberhymnal

2008-06-06T12:15:00.000-07:00

Today I took a nap under a tree. Then I watched a movie about the Caucasus. Sergei Bodrov didn't die this time.

Strife

2008-06-05T09:13:00.000-07:00

You should know. I'm now officially a linguistics major, which is one more step in my plan to make sure that my head is properly attached to my neck. (I'm going to work on the neck-to-shoulder connection this fall, at the earliest.) It was a strange morning, though. I emailed this one woman who was apparently the super-advisor, and her picture was on a number of websites, so I vaguely knew what she looked like. But when I got there, there was another woman who was essentially the South Slavic-analogue of the first woman, in terms of position within the department, appearance, and shirt color. If you live with me, which you probably do, you know that my expertise as a conspiracy theorist is developing robustly. Or maybe you don't, but you should, if you think back to the Sandwich Altercation. Yes, that. That's where it all came out. Anyway, no matter what your favorite song about paranoia is (please, vote!), I'm singing it, right now.
Also, I'm beginning to think of Whitney as the Eternal Roommate, so that is what she shall be called herein. Because when I think roommate, I think Whitney. The Krankenvolker are more a complex and highly developed society within themselves.

Lunch-wich the Lunch Update

2008-06-03T09:19:00.000-07:00

I have a proposal for you. In the winter when it is cold and the Krankenhaus is buried in snows, or at least partially buried, and so we leave it as little as we may, I think that the person who does the leaving should, for the good of the people, offer a brief and sympathetic weather report on their blog. That way, the rest of us will know how many pairs of socks to wear. (The answer is probably "a lot.")

Hello Belligerents.

2008-06-02T14:04:00.000-07:00

Not you, gentle and cooperative readers.

I'm a tired lady, Jack. Too much work, Jack. Let's hang out and be dull. Let's hang out and not talk.

Back to the Grasslands, Complaining

2008-05-27T09:21:00.000-07:00

First of all, even if you continue to call something by a name that isn't its name, that name does not become its name. But sometimes it does. But not right now.
That being said, I hope Hegemonic Roommate the Female leaves her translation book on the couch forever. Today I learned about Constance Garnett. WAIT. I think I'll write my paper on Constance Garnett.
I wish I were the kind of person who could sleep for three hours a day and be happy about it. I would sleep from 2-5, or possibly 4-7. I would wear my giant flannel robe a lot more. I would wake up HR the M a lot more with my typing in the early morning hours. He would sigh, probably, or maybe curse up at me but I probably wouldn't be able to hear through the warning "dings." I would have time to do things, maybe, even though right now I want time to sleep. I would probably wake up RR too, except she wasn't there the one time I dared to type in the early morning hours, while it rained and something chittered menacingly at me from outside my window. But at least there were no warning dings.
Are AP classes a lot harder in New York? Anyone?
When my Chemistry teacher in sophomore year told us that people who didn't learn how to work in high school were fucked for college (He was a coldly saintly man. He didn't say it like that.) I think he may have been being much more understanding than I once thought.

Three for the Hedges

2008-05-24T19:00:00.000-07:00

And four or so for the night.

Two For the Alex

2008-05-23T20:57:00.001-07:00

Reasonable Roommate is trying to get the Hegemons to make sweet power-hungry love. I just earned a dollar.

eez vee nee tee yeh.

2008-05-21T09:44:00.000-07:00

So after a brief period this morning when I wanted to name Tablecat "Anderson," I have come to a conclusion.
This cat must have a sonorous and mellifluous name such as has never been seen before on this earth. What this means is that we have to make it up. And by "we," I mean "somebody who knows the cat, or something, or is audacious enough to attempt to name my cat."

So go! And make up sounds!

In other news, I just singlehandedly won a Russian trivia game, felt kind of bad about things but acted appropriately smug, ate some pizza, and called my friend Far-Flung Traveling Wheely Woman.

The Forge, The Forge!

2008-05-20T21:53:00.000-07:00

I came home this evening from a gorgeous evening with the judiciously twangy Avett Brothers, and Reasonable Roommate in tandem with the Hegemons Male and Female had put a survey on the fridge to the effect that they would all rather have someone crawl into bed with them instead of turning on the heat. We don't pay for heat, but while I have been away, probably in the MLB, they have come that much closer to the degree of uninhibitedness that you might expect from the Krankenvölker. But where am I, while they create new social orders?! You know where I am. I am in the MLB. Or at the gorgeous evenings.

That being said, it was the best and most syntactically viable answer to "How cold is it in here?"

Chicken Broth from the Cart of Bitter Difference

2008-05-19T17:08:00.000-07:00

I just did that thing you do to declare a major and applied for a job I'm super-qualified for. This is pretty much the only job I would ever be super-qualified for. Well, that's not true. I'd actually make a pretty great governess, if you're the liberal-minded type. I believe by that I mean that I don't speak French. Not yet, at least.
Which might as well bring me to my topic for the day. Why have governesses gone out of style? I know, I know, there's the nanny racket, but that's different. That is just so different. And what's an au pair, anyway? My mother was a governess, or so she tells me. Then we went to Maine and saw the house that she lived in when she was a governess. Then there were people there, a guy and a not-guy. The guy had bleached hair and glasses. I can't remember if they were related in any way to the people my mother had governedess, but they seemed friendly and confused, in any case. I like Maine. I miss Maine. I miss going places that are not Grosse Pointe, but I miss the GP as well so who knows what I mean. I certainly don't. Do you? But back to the original thing. I think it could really fly as a true retro status symbol to have a young, well-educated young woman who's got the who/whom thing down and doesn't split her infinitives (even though she just learned that was a thing a year ago or so and only the most pedantic grammarians try to enforce it. Really. My mother, who was a governess with the who/whom thing down pat, is also a soaring grammarian, and I never heard a word about it from her) around to teach your children useful things, like languages and how to knit and play the piano, and about small innocuous wildlife and how to avoid the other kind of wildlife, and because she is a governess she is resourceful, and makes her own clothes, and cuts her own and your children's hair, and sees the world and wears a nice hat. This is the only job I am truly qualified for, except that hats don't fit me usually so I would have to wear a man's hat, and then I could be an unconventional governess, which in its absolute irrelevance to the actual life that people live would make my employer even more socially exalted, and I wouldn't write about their family because their family is probably boring and I am famously bad at finishing things that I start writing. Really. I'm not revising my Russian essay right now.

But I am also somewhat very well qualified for the job for which I applied.

The Roadmaster of Cape Cod

2008-05-16T19:04:00.001-07:00

Did you know that there's only one area code for all of Maine? There is. And it's 207. I just learned this. But before that I ate a lot of fish. Like, woak. Woak woak woak.

Atacat

2008-05-15T08:46:00.000-07:00

Really, I've looked through my entire list of "Famous Names Rendered In Cyrillic" and that's the only one that's popped out at me. That, and Aesop, but I just don't know.

I just don't know. Amy asked me what my bike was named a couple of days ago, and that made me realize how truly nameless this animal has become, not to mention the fact that I might should get around to naming the bike as well. Well, perhaps this is not true. He is named "Kitty" or sometimes "Boo," according to the woman he used to live with, and he seems equally nonplussed by every word we say at him, and by "we" I mean my two hegemonic roommates, who have staged a cat-coup. I'm sort of reluctant to give him a new name, but if I refer to him as Kitty he will be cemented as an "it" in my mind and then I will be othering him. Which is not something you want to do to a beloved kind-of-family pet. This is a problem. This is important.
My next question for you, reader, comes in the form of a listless empty list, which you must fill! The question:
What is your main reason for wanting to learn Yiddish?
The answer:
Pretty much anything that isn't some variation of "I don't want to learn Yiddish at all," because that's not true. I would just like some good reasons. From you. You!
So keep that in mind as you read, and as you go about your daily things that you do. My house has had a heavy mind these days, it seems. We sit and eat and think about the apocalypse. This is partially because of a wildly unrestrained French-Silk-Pie baking session on the part of Hegemonic Roommate the Female and the Gal from Kalamazoo who was visiting over the weekend, and the fact that our rarely-used side door keeps being unlocked for no reason (or for Ethan the Landlord-related reasons, but that theory has yet to be explored or proven). Maybe if one of us had taken Arts of the Apocalypse last year we'd know better how to cope. Also, NPR has been a significant contributor to the Atmosphere of Incipient Doom, and I don't mean the Folks Like Us program, which is probably what you assumed, alert and engaged reader. But so far, the sun is still shining and does not seem to be any closer to the earth than is to be expected as the fetid and intermittently flowered days of May progress. So the Krankenhaus abides.

Ataturk

2008-05-14T20:07:00.000-07:00

Is what I mildly want to name my cat at the moment. My roommates are staging a cat-coup, in an emotional sense and in terms of cat nomenclature, so their favorites are, as far as I can remember:
Xerxes
Malloy
Some other one. I don't know. I put it in the letter I wrote today. Ah, yes:
Alyosha.
If you, dear reader, have any other ideas, and you are not one of those two hegemonic roommates, please, dear, let me know. Now, to sick Other Roommate!

P.S. The Cat For Which This Little Place Is Named is grey and elegant. And intermittently friendly. By that, I mean my roommates have staged a cat-coup and it doesn't have any more love to give sometimes.

Yah!

2008-04-29T21:23:00.000-07:00

For those of you who are following the pencil developments (that is, all of you) it was a General's Test Corrector. It fits very well behind my ear. I love keeping meticulous records of things, it turns out, which explains this blog. I'm currently attempting to write down everything I own, but not with the General. He is too important. I'm using a hardy Ticonderoga and everything is in print, which is odd for this cursive devotee. That is me. The collective lies of my elementary school teachers made quite the impression on me, you can see.

I've been practicing my iambic pentameter:

I hope you came to see my pouty face
Although you say there isn't one to see.

I could have named you Chester or Larousse.

I know that you are lying when you say
You can't remember where you parked the car.

The cat has left and is not coming back.

Don't let a sneaky bear steal all you own.

I've been looking for truly good reasons to learn languages. Any languages, or specific languages. Because it's the kind of thing that I do, and the kind of thing that I ostensibly like to do, and so it's the kind of thing that I do with little or no prompting, but sometimes I want to not stare into the abyss of purposelessness when someone asks me why I decided to learn Russian or Czech, or all those other ones that I want to learn, or am about to learn. No one ever asks about Spanish, although for a girl in a life like this girl's life it's not particularly useful. I told my friend the gas-station man that I already knew it when he suggested that I try learning it, and he just beamed and smoked some more. I'm a big fan of the gas-station man, and not just because I am also a big fan of the brilliant green of the BP logo. I'm no fan by association.

But I'm moving tomorrow. Oh man for me. Now begins the real reign of the real Tablecat.

Tractor, Spring Train

2008-04-28T13:15:00.000-07:00

Two nights ago I went to the 24-hr CVS and bought two legal pads and an unlined writing tablet, and some chocolate. I have no idea why they insist on selling two legal pads at once, although with my crazy lifestyle that might be for the best. I generally need about one a week or so, and they are the most eminently useful things on earth, with the exception of seeing-eye dogs on whose backs you can take notes or do your Czech homework. But I think the greater point of this post is that I have an unlined writing tablet and a list of people to write to, which is something I've always wanted.

I'm also a fan of pencils. The black pencils used to be my favorite, but I can't remember what they say on their little spines. This morning before I left for Ann Arbor I found what is probably my favorite pencil on earth, black with most of an eraser that said "McGill Test Correcter." Or maybe "McGee." It said something, in any case, and it seemed a bit deceptive because there was nothing about the structure or function of this pencil to suggest that it was particularly well-suited for test correction. But still, it is the king of pencils.
I do have several practical problems with pencils, though. Dull pencils are madness. And I always lose my pencil sharpeners. SO my first challenge to you, eccentric and competent reader, is to recommend to me the most visually pleasing and well-functioning pencil sharpener from among the sharpenery riffraff. Go!

And now, challenge 2!

You are a twenty-year old man, going out to commune with Nature and the American Literary Canon!

Your friend gives you a hat, ostensibly to keep you warm, but as you are admiring its lovely heather-grey color, you turn it over and lo! A red "M" has been knit into the front! Your name is not M! What can this mean?

Your friend knows. But she knows how you like your puzzles, so she gives you a few good clues and sends you on your way:

mocmep.

Jesus.

Volapuk Encoding.

Mocmep all around. What think you?

Little Radishes, Triumph

2008-04-27T22:29:00.001-07:00

But Marisa has a point. You should know about this. You know what's missing from war these days? A unified aesthetic. If you look at those big wars, the ones that happened and then you have to relive over and over in every grade and then in college, there's a deeply established set of images that people rely on to explain why this sort of thing happened, beyond the actual cause-and-effect racket. World War 2 had victory gardens, and things happening on the home front, and an old woman talking to me in middle school about how she learned about margarine in the early forties when you had to work the yellow dye into it by hand. (She said "mar-djar-EEN." It blew my mind.) War was at least kind of real.

Am I asking for more a more coherent and effective propaganda campaign? Apparently. So let's all go knit a sock (just one) and feel involved in the world.

2008-04-27T22:24:00.001-07:00

I've never been anywhere south of the Delaware. That's not true.