Best plan ever

So when Kitty Harris loses her seat in Congress what will we all do for fun?

ADiz and I have come up with the perfect plan. She should be made an ambassador. To Canada (we don't want yer David Wilkins!). So she can be IN CANADA. With us. Well, in Ottawa. So in the same country. And the CBC can cover all the fun that will ensue (which would be awesome, because they only run really unflattering pictures and our dearest Kitty, as the WaPo tells us, is very image conscious. I was going to say insanely image conscious, but I think the insane may just be implied when talking about her.). So she would still be in the news, she would doubtlessly be pissing off an already shaky ally, and she could date Peter "where my bitches at?" McKay. If Just In Florida Katherine Harris is so much fun, what will International Katherine Harris be like? Photo ops at the Giant Nickle! at Peggy's Cove in a sou'wester! sipping coffee and ignoring pasteries in Montreal! on a B.C. beach! reading with immigrant schoolchildren in inner-city Toronto! at the Calgary Stampede in boots, chaps, and a hat!

So, as personal favors:

• David Wilkins, please quit being an ambassador. You can become a televangelist- since "fiscal and social conservative" from "South Carolina" means revivalist nutjob, right? Jesus wants you to fundraise for him and not just for the GOP.
• Bush- Kitty Harris for Canada would actually be a (relatively) good decision on your part. Plus, Rumsfeld told me it was a good idea. And she did get that wacky voting machine thing sorted for you. Don't be an ingrate.
  
• Kitty, take losing gracefully. We want you more than Florida does, anyway. Fuck them haters. And you will look so cute in little fitted snowgear with little tasselled hats and eensy teensy mittens!

So, kids, let's make this happen!

This is what happens when ex-pat American political brats and journalists get together to figure out what would make the world a better place. But seriously, Kitty, if you are at loose ends after the election, come stay with us. We will make you fat-free carrot cake and bad-mouth your staff with you. You can plot your return to power from our lovely student dump in historicalicious Halifax, NS ("We're a port city too! Just like New York!"). We can go to Martini Mondays at the Fireside together. Our treat.

xXx

I was xstraightxedgex once, but then I dropped some acid and licked some toads.

My health is failing, I smoke too much, I dally with the sweet Mr. Johnnie Walker far too often. I do not usually get the recommended 8 hours of sleep per night and when I do it is only because last night's barroom conquest refuses to untie me from the headboard so I might as well sleep since I cannot do the drugs being as I am bound like vanity press publishings. I may not live to a healthy 105 because I am poisoning my body.

All because of those damn toads.



[Note: looking at the sXe tattoos on BME just makes me sad for all the twerps who got the edge because their older brothers did not take them out to the backyard to drink beer at a young enough age.]

True love

(In advance, I would like to state that I have been reading far too many short stories. I feel guilty about this, since my father has told me ever since I was a little girl that short stories are a degenerate throwback to an pre-literate society and that the novel is the ultimate achivement of Western civilization. So guilt and pleasure.)

Dear Raymond Carver,

You are dead. That is ok, I feel we can work this out anyway. Because you write beautiful stories, cruel and brief and telling. You kept me up last night and woke me up early this morning. There are dirty tea mugs by my bed, but you don't care. You told me to keep reading, that you didn't care about the clutter. This morning when you finished, when I finished, I stumbled into the kitchen, mugs forgotten. Because you are wonderful. I've been around a bit- Chekhov, de Maupassant, McEwan, Beattie- but you stand out even compared to them. Hell, you love them too, so maybe you can forgive me my youthful reading around. I want to read your poetry now. I want to find your uncollected stories. Even the ones you hate. Especially the ones you hate, to see why you hate them. Because even in imperfection, you will still be beautiful next to me on the pillow early on Sunday mornings.

I love you.

Julia


(Those of you who have not read"Cathedral" and "What we talk about when we talk about love" should look for them. They are seriously worthwhile.)

Perhapses

My Mum asked me if I were going to come home for Christmas. Where else would I go? Turns out, I no longer have a bedroom of my own at home. And I don't know how the "just pretend like I never left" thing will work with the Boy, who is also going home for a bit. I need to be adopted. And I need to not feel so damn unwanted. Big family, small house, makes sense. They can't just leave that space for me forever. But this is the most depressingly grown-up I've ever felt. Apartment of my own (maybe one of the cheap GW seasonal ones) for this summer?

Should I drop the EMSP portion of my degree and finish my lit degree next year? I can almost do it, if I take a summer science course. I could graduate on time.

What the hell is happening after school? My parents are ok with acting as a safety net if I want to work below education level and travel for a bit.

Do I want a job in DC? Is that too easy? It could be fulfilling, it could be financially worthwhile. Why don't I have a dream job?

What about the Boy? We need talks about the whole thing. I don't know if I want to go back to the living in sin bit or if he wants it. I have no idea how seriously he takes the whole couple-y bit, what he wants, anything. I can't imagine never seeing him again, I can't imagine commitment to anyone right now. We are so fucking young. Will I feel cheated out of my youth? Will that be worse than losing him?

What happens to y'all after we graduate? Can we still be friends? Or will it be like highschool, 6 months of communication and then distance and time set in?

I need someone to make decisions. Like me, perhaps. Or an Oujia board.

(Sorry to be whiny. Ask for me to write about anything else.)

Romance, IRL

Dear Hemingway,

Your short stories are lovely. But any time you write more than 15 pages about any one group of characters, they become so boring I can't even be offended by them. I mean, I couldn't be even if sexism and solopsism really bothered me. But that's not the point.

The way you write sentences changes too. You novels seem to take the import of one of your short stories but spread it out without adding to it. You do not give words the weight with which you can trusting them. They are unnecessarily buttressed by the hundreds of thousands of words around them, losing meaning because of context.

I hope you don't mind me saying this, but I want someone to edit down all of your novels to novellas. Actually, I want you to do that, Hemingway. Because your short stories are so good I get angry with people for talking about your novels.

Love,
J.

IMPORTANT

There is a movie, made in Britian, 1938, called 'Queer Cargo'. It is about pirates. The IMDb does not yet have a review for it. I must find and watch this film.

This is my new life goal.

I think it may be not only out of print, but also only known through hearsay.

C'mon, world. Queer Cargo! Best name ever.

Character Flaws

I am so paranoid. Oh, so paranoid. Like Alan Ladd in his more serious roles, like cartoon spies, like kitties that have been sprayed with plant misters. I am a squrge of paranoia. I am, right now, anxious that I am spelling "paranoid" wrong.

I am paranoid like the middle of 'The Lady Vanishes'.

Also, I am self-focused. Which is tragic because I am not that interesting. Also, I would like to spell "focused" British, with 2 "s"es, but I do not have the stones to. I am boring and self-focused and worry too much about how I spell things and worried that others will be bored with my life.

But I feel pretty cheery, despite all of my me problems. And how are you?
(I think this whole mess shall just become a chapter by chapter summery of HoD: V1, ET. That may be more worthwhile.)

Common Tragedy Tragedy

So, the Donne presentation I was supposed to give today? The one I was really excited about and that I actually prepared for and everything? The one that gave me new faith in this higher education thing?

I got to the classroom 5 minutes early and there was a sign saying that class was cancelled for the evening.

I am so sad. And Dr. D has not sent me an email to tell me when (if?) it will be rescheduled.

This makes me stupidly upset, and I have a bad feeling that I will change up the readings and find pictures and perhaps the musical setting for one of the poems I'm presenting already and scholarly research and talking about Donne ad nauseum to anyone I can find and...

Oh, you sauce-box!

SO, I've been massively neglecting my science-y schoolwork to read Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded. Johnson just doesn't understand how women work, does he? "Oh, yes," thinks Pamela, "although this man has imprisoned me in his country house, seperated me from my family and friends, attempted to assult my Vartue, marrying him is a GREAT idea. Yep, and I should call him master and thank him for his kindness and condescension. Wow, he's sure swell. I ought to drop to my knees, kiss his hand, and thank the baby Jesus for his kidnapping me cause it meant that we could be in love for ever and ever." I'm pretty sure if she were real and alive today, she'd be 'proud of her sexuality as a woman', not virtuous, and would be in bukkake. I love it when female characters are so obviously creations of their male authors' fuckwitit bits.

It's cute when I get all outraged woman.

Beyond that, Dr. S.D. is letting me lecture on John Donne for her Common Tragedy class. I get to pick readings, I get to lecture, I get to lead discussion. How cool is that? So we are going to look at rhetoric use of death as a sexual motivator, ie. "Hey baby, nice eventual decline into the grave that shall claim us all. Wanna fuck?" using "A Fever", "A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day", "The Relic", "The Damp", "The Expiration", and "Death be not proud". So if anyone has anything smart to say about these, speak up. Otherwise I shall just rock out with my bad Donne-loving self.

And reading all this Donne recently has made me cry lots (which A.H. says is the point). He is so wonderous that I cannot bear it. But it's also made me realize that I can't write a love letter. Or a letter at all. I can't tell anyone that I miss them and love them without sounding about 12 years old and under the influence of 17 Magazine. Advice on this would be good as well. Or those I love shall just have to learn to act as if I myself have written:

Sir, more than kisses, letters mingle souls;
For, thus friends absent speak.

Until then, I will just mock and sneer and insult and snark and underappreciate those I love. I will do those things without the love to the Superfluous Vegan, because he inturrupted my presentation about patronage during the Scientific Revolution to make a comment that was just a veiled insult about my historical (as opposed to scientific) take on it. I want to puke on his longboard in messy messy vengence.

Guess what?

I miss the Becca most of all.