Heute

So far today I went to the acupuncturist, rehearsed the Biber Marian Vespers, and auditioned for a solo. The acupuncture helped, as I was really, really sick this past week. Thursday and Friday I felt like I had the flu with chills and everything, except I didn’t have the flu–it was all hormonal. I had to leave the opera on Friday night bent over at a 90-degree angle because my cramps were so bad. And men think they have it so bad when they’re sick. I’ve had stomach surgeries and everything. Western medicine has informed me that my two last options are to a: have my uterus taken out, or b: shut down my uterus and make it think it’s going through menopause and then try to build it back up again. Both of those sound pretty fucked up to me. The only thing that has ever helped me was acupuncture, and it made me a relatively normal person for the past two years–I’ve just started suffering again in the past month (continually, even when I’m not on my cycle). I was glad to hear from a friend of mine who has suffered greatly from cramps that childbirth for her wasn’t too bad–she’s been experiencing childbirth-esque pain every month since she was a teenager, so I guess I have, too!

I always forget how nerve-wracking auditioning can be. I’ve done it countless times (obviously, given all the groups I’m in!), but it’s still not a pleasant experience, no matter how many times you do it. I was first up, too, and the part I was singing was a bit weird tonally. Luckily, I’d hammered out the notes on the accordion last night. I’m sure my neighbors were thrilled. :) I do have the right kind of voice for Biber, however, so if I don’t get a solo or a small-group part, then it’s probably more a matter of taste than anything.

Must. stop. keeping. the. tv. on. all. the. time. Must. read. gone. with. the. wind. I got all these opera people to start reading GWTW for a book group but I myself haven’t been getting it read! Last night, I simultaneously was watching Sense and Sensibility, Best in Show, and “The Bachelor.” Good grief, I need help. (Feeling like complete and utter shit much of the time, though, can make one addicted to TV–when you’re in chronic pain, you can’t really do anything else except knock yourself out. I personally get carsick when I read in pain. I know–I’m not in a car, but I swear I do get carsick.)

So tonight I have rehearsal again for three hours. We have a performance at the library on Thursday and another one next week, somewhere….Or two next week. I can’t keep track of it all. And then I was hoping to actually go out tonight, but chances are, that’s not going to happen, owing to the fact that I’ve been in ridiculous amounts of pain lately and am tired. :( It’ll be weird not to go out on Fat Tuesday, though. It’s Calypso time!

Two links:

I found the Dubious Achievement Awards from 2003. I haven’t found them for any other year since 2000, though–Esquire decided that 2001 was too serious to make fun of, for some reason. But apparently they did 2003 in February of 2004. I’m now on a mission to find others.

Leann sent me this end of the world cartoon.

bhishma’s kool aid


P1010008
Originally uploaded by freyjawaru.

now you get the idea why I freak out! He doesn’t mind at all, though!

shyam


P1010012
Originally uploaded by freyjawaru.

new fishie

I have a new, blue fishie and his name is Shyam. It is an alternative name for Krishna, and it also means “blue or black.” Since he’s both, I thought it was appropriate. And it goes along with the whole Hindu thing.

I put his bowl next to Bhishma’s last night and they now seem pretty happy to flare at each other. Shyam is very fierce. That’s why I picked him–I was so upset when I went to Petsmart yesterday and saw the condition of the bettas. When I got Bhishma, they were all kept in cups, of course, but their water was clean and they all seemed more or less OK. Not so yesterday. Many of them were half-dead and the water was in horrible condition. Shyam’s water was very dirty, but he still acted alert and aggressive and I figured he was probably healthier than most of the others.

It’s amusing that Bhishma’s water is red from his tetracycline, and Shyam’s is greenish owing to the treatment I put in his water. The water is color-coordinated to each fish!

meta moments

I found this guy on Friendster who’s my age and who lives in Cambridge. He has an unusual-ish name and has red hair, and I found him because he says his hometown is Boulder (I did a Boulder hometown search).

I was acquainted with a red-haired guy with the same unusual-ish name, around the same age, when I lived in New York. He was the boyfriend of my friend from Smith for whom I had acquired an Oxford University Press job. So I emailed the guy in Cambridge and asked if he was the same guy who’d dated my friend. He’s *not* the same guy, but he did ask if this was one of those “meta-Friendster moments.” I thought that was classic and a term I should definitely use more frequently.

I’m thinking about getting a Second Fish. Not for the same bowl, of course! I’m not a complete idiot. But bettas like to have social interaction (across walls of glass, naturally), and I thought I might rescue maybe a pretty blue betta from Petsmart. I’ll get him the same bowl, etc. As long as I’m treating Bhishma for all his probably-Petsmart-related illnesses, I could treat the new one, too. Plus, I can start off on the right foot by putting preventative BettaZing in his water when I get him. Then he and Bhishma can amuse each other all day long. Bhishma’s water has been bright red lately, owing to the tetracycline treatment. He doesn’t give a shit, but it weirds me out. It’s like he’s swimming in Kool Aid. Also, he’s a red fish, and then I can’t see him unless I shine a light on his bowl.

And then, there’s this:


You’re Watership Down!

by Richard Adams

Though many think of you as a bit young, even childish, you’re
actually incredibly deep and complex. You show people the need to rethink their
assumptions, and confront them on everything from how they think to where they
build their houses. You might be one of the greatest people of all time. You’d
be recognized as such if you weren’t always talking about talking rabbits.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

lbbm

I hate Hummers

with a passion. I really, really hate them. I’m not too wild about cars in general, especially in areas where they’re not necessary (like Chicago or on campus here). But people who buy giant SUVs and Hummers tick me off big time. Hummers are also a wonderful way of advertising to everyone that you are seriously inadequately endowed. My dad told me about an article he read where people were just flipping off Hummers whenever they saw them. I generally only flip off excessively loud boom cars, but I might just start doing that.

In any case, I thought I would link to this site and press release about a hit and run accident involving a Hummer in Evanston last week. There is going to be a press conference tomorrow in Evanston with Bike Traffic. I really hope someone catches this guy and rips off his nuts.

Bike Traffic says that 160 pedestrians and bicyclists die annually in Chicago from these types of incidents. I had an acquaintance who was killed in Wicker Park last June when a truck broadsided her on her bike. In a society that is becoming increasingly self-centered and anti-social, I think it’s easy for people to feel safe in their ginormous vehicles, shielded from the world by glass and metal, and that driving is sometimes like a video game to them. When they strike someone, I’m sure they panic and drive away, hoping they won’t get caught.

Because communities are set up now for car driving, and because our urban and suburban areas are increasingly full of concrete graveyards that temporarily act like giant chain stores but will eventually become concrete graveyards again, people drive everywhere and don’t interact with their fellow humans the same way they used to. Once upon a time, people would know their grocers and their mail-delivery people and their neighbors, because they’d actually have to INTERACT while completing transactions or walking down the street or whatever. Nowadays you have to pay to see a person at many banks. Our communities need to be better planned and need to start becoming more organic. We’ve created a monster of American society.

Oooh. And as if Cafepress can read my thoughts. I found this. Some of the shirts and things are pro-Hummer, but overall, it’s pretty anti-Hummer. :)

turning into a board


my class is so boring.

Yes, I am reading this book for Adult Popular Fiction. The cover of the one *I* have, however, is far more outrageous and grocery-store-novel-esque. I brought it to rehearsal last night, and boy was it a hit. I saw that a line from it said, “I did not come by spaceship; I came by longship.” And my friend opened it up to a VERY graphic description of an erection.

I have PBS on while I’m listening to class and typing this, and the Queen has a shitload of Corgis. I knew she liked them, but I thought all those jokes about her dogs were just blowing it out of proportion. Apparently not.

I got April in Paris from the library and I LOVE it. Of course, every time I hear that song, I think of Blazing Saddles….

My fish is being weird again. I ordered him brine shrimp, anti-fungus stuff, sea salt, and some other stuff. I’m completely obsessed with getting him healthy. I think I need to put him in a bigger house.

A woman came into the library today (she’s in the French dept.) and was looking for a dictionary of medieval Latin. While I looked, I explained to her that I have an undergraduate degree in medieval studies. She asked if I’d gotten it here, and I told her I’d gotten it at Smith College. Then she said, “Really? Do you know Eglal Doss-Quimby?” She was holding a book by Eglal on women troubadours. And, strangely, I had taken her Women Writers of the Middle Ages class when I was a first year, back in the Stone Age. What a coincidence.

Usually when I’m not on the East Coast, I have to explain what Smith and the Seven Sisters colleges (and sometimes even the Ivy League schools) are. There aren’t a lot of us in Champaign or even Chicago (or Boulder or Denver). Although it hasn’t been so bad since Mona Lisa Smile came out–even though I didn’t see it. And that was Wellesley, not Smith. And probably not a terribly accurate representation of Seven Sisters life now (especially since two now accept men!).

In Non Sequiturville style, I should offhandedly note that I went to a Single Mingle in Chicago for part of the Ivy League Dinner Club (which included Seven Sisters grads) and whoa, nelly. There were a lot of very short, very weird men there. Not that I mind short men—but I must say that I heard the oddest thing ever at that party. I asked one guy (who was hitting on my married friend who had accompanied me) why shorter men don’t approach or even seem to like taller women. OK, this is how he explained it: Basically, he insisted that short men are presumed by society to be inadequately endowed. He said that, similarly, tall women are presumed to be rather, um, loose in that region because it corresponds to their height. He finally just came out and said that short men would never go for me because they all assume that all tall women have cavernous vaginas. WHAT?????!!!!!!!! Yeah, I think he was a bit deranged….. (Incidentally, neither assumption about short men nor tall women happens to be true at all.)

On THAT note, I should sign off and pay attention to my unbearably boring class. :)

substitutiary locomotion


I know I’ve turned into the worst kind of American (well, ok, I know there are far worse in some behaviors), because I seem to have to keep the TV on much of the time. Which is quite distracting to doing homework but hey, I like to multi-task. And of course, my fish likes to watch TV, too. He really likes cartoons the best (which I don’t, so he can watch them with the sound off).

Last night, Bedknobs and Broomsticks was on. My brother was completely obsessed with that movie when he was little. I don’t think we owned it, but he sure rented it over and over and over.

I discovered that you can’t even get the soundtrack anymore without forking out $50 for the CD. Disney has reined in all individual soundtracks and now picks and chooses what goes on which overpriced anthology. That makes me sad.

Treguna Mekoides and Tracorum Satis Dee
Substitutiary locomotion
It’s the power that’s far beyond the wildest notion
It’s a weird so feared, yet wonderful to see
Substitutiary locomotion come to me

Treguna Mekoides and Tracorum Satis Dee
I don’t want locomotiary substitution
Or remote intrasitory convolution
Only one precise solution is the key
Substitutiary locomotion it must be
Treguna Mekoides and Tracorum Satis Dee

Substitutiary locomotion
Lovely substitutiary locomotion
You may substututiary mystery
With Treguna Mekoides and a little help from me
With Treguna Mekoides and Tracorum Satis Dee

me in a nutshell

My types. I knew perhaps I understood vampires, but not Dennis Rodman.
THE INDIVIDUALIST
Enneagram Type Four

The Sensitive, Withdrawn Type:
Expressive, Dramatic, Self-Absorbed, and Temperamental

Basic Fear: That they have no identity or personal significance
Basic Desire: To find themselves and their significance (to create an identity)
Enneagram Four with a Three-Wing: “The Aristocrat”
Enneagram Four with a Five-Wing: “The Bohemian”
Style Four
Enneagramfree enneagram test
Fours are about authenticity. Fours have a deep and wide range of emotions and trust their subjective experience to make their life-decisions. They are frequently highly esthetic (not in talent, necessarily, but in concern), because they have a highly developed ability to think symbolically. This coupled with their emotional richness cries out for artistic expression.

Fours make a personal statement in many things they do, from the way they dress to their choice of Impressionist paintings. They rather enjoy not being part of the crowd and have a natural sense of aristocracy. Taste, they maintain, is not determined by votes.

When they are less healthy, their speech becomes lamentation as they claim their uniqueness because of their suffering. They often develop a spirit of entitlement to compensate for a feeling that somehow they are defective. This defect, paradoxically, is the basis for their claim that they deserve love. They make a claim on their friends’ love because they have suffered and this suffering has made them more authentic – and so more lovable.

Fours you may know: Shakespeare, Dennis Rodman, Nicholas Cage, Marlon Brando, Ann Rice, (Vampires are depicted as Fours), Kate Winslet, Vincent van Gogh, Eric Clapton, Michael Jackson, John Malkovich, Thomas Merton, and Allen Watts.

—–

I also happen to be an INFP (I have consistently been an INFP, after taking many tests, since I was 13), the dreamer/healer/questor/idealist.
.

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