The Deafening Silence

Welcome to two weeks-ish before finals. See you on the other side.

Take care, everyone, and good luck.

Correct me if I'm wrong -

I thought only new patterns of behavior were supposed to cause astonishment. The U.S.'s powers-that-be obviously disagree.

Here's the skinny on the story from the ever-reliable NYT:

"... The young woman’s offense was in meeting a former boyfriend, whom she had asked to return pictures he had of her because she was about to marry another man. The couple was sitting in a car when a group of seven men kidnapped them and raped them both, lawyers in the case told Arab News, a Saudi newspaper.
The woman and the former boyfriend were originally sentenced to 90 lashes each for being together in private, while the attackers received sentences ranging from 10 months to five years in prison, and 80 to 1,000 lashes each.
Mr. Lahem appealed the attackers’ sentences, saying that they were too lenient and that the treatment of the victim was too harsh. In its new decision issued Tuesday, the court increased the victim’s sentence to 200 lashes and six months in jail. It also increased the sentences of her attackers to prison terms of two to nine years. ..."

And with that, Saudi justice be done.

Stop the Madness

No surprises here.

How about they support a different kind of prisoner release for a change?

The Inspiration

I do admire J's creative energy. If she needs anyone to randomly strum guitar chords really loudly, I stand ready with my baby in hand.

Yes. The guitar, she is my baby. She was actually referred to as a 'he' at one point, until my father informed me that guitars are universally known as 'she's due to their shape. This may or may not be true, but I'm not prone to doubting the Patriarch and the sex change is complete.

Anyhow...

This was really supposed to be an update of a different kind. Found Minnieckey. Dude's living behind the fridge. It was, ironically, J who first discovered that fact. I am now watching our wee housepet poke out, look around, stare me down, and then flit back to wherever as fast as his or her little feet can carry him... or her. Damned irkful.

Perhaps the topic of J's first fauxmo lyrics has presented itself.

As this is a month before finals, I too will be posting only in brief. Adieu, adieu, to you and you and you-ooh.

fauxmo

i realize my posts have been brief recently, but it's only because i'm storing up creative energy for a new project. i have decided to abandon the play in pursuit of something far more promising: a new genre of music. fauxmo, to be precise.

i owe co-founding credit to sal, to whom i owe co-founding credit for most amusing things in my life. inspiration was drawn from the following conversation:

s: it's life -- i think life is a mess.
j: that is so true.
s: but sometimes a fun mess.
j: life is a big mess.
s: man, that sounded so emo and depressing.
j: yes. i have a SOUL. and you have to KNOW ABOUT IT. because i am so EMOTIONAL. we should write a song.
s: an emo song?
j: a...fauxmo?
s: that's a thought.
j: man, i think this could be a whole new genre.
s: we could revolutionize the music industry...or just make it that much more crowded.
j: no, dude, viva la revolucion!!!! what would zapata have done? i think he would have fauxmoed.

goal: to write highly entertaining fake emo songs. i will be attempting in the upcoming weeks. impending finals should provide some healthy (or at least thought-provoking) inspiration.

VIVA LA REVOLUCION!!!!!!!

i'm moving!

not soon, but this summer, to los angeles. and i am very excited.

except that today i realized how much i am going to miss all of my dc friends. i am thrilled to go back, but something tells me that after five years of east coast, it's going to be quite an adjustment.

okay, i admit it

there is definitely a mouse in here. luckily we bought lots and lots of cheese today.

in other news, i am very, very seriously considering moving back to sao paulo. i miss brasil so much.

The gift that keeps on giving

Voted one of the worst fantasy attempts of all time, the Eye of Argon is the most magnificent piece of writing I have ever seen.

Don't make the mistake of giving up too early. There are some really choice lines in there. It gets even better when you start reading it out loud. To other people.

Oh wow. :)

Who wants to go...

just outside a men's room in Dedham, Mass.?

I do. I do!

Click the link and stop letting your mind wander. This is as non-dirty as it gets. But, you know, still funny. And while most who know my sense of humor would consider that not a great endorsement, I assure you that we're talking only the finest cultural education here.

Clickity click.

It happened

J thinks I hallucinated. And to bolster her case she pulled out that whole "who am I going to believe? Sleep-deprived you, or me who cleaned the kitchen and bathroom area when you were away for the weekend and I still didn't find any mouse?" line.

Well, I think the answer to the question is fairly obvious.

I hope Minnieckey gets her good.

where have all the rude boys gone?

oh goodness, i am going to a ted leo and the pharmacists concert in a month and i am so so so so so so excited!!!!!

i forgot how excited i was for a few minutes until where have all the rude boys gone? came on my shuffle and that was definitely enough to remind me. there is about a minute and a half of pure brilliance between 2:45 and 4:20 on the track and if you can somehow isolate the bass while all the rest of the insanity is going on you will see what i mean.

i told you i was a sucker for a good bassline.

activism chic

darfur is an issue near and dear to my heart, which i'm sure many of you know, having met me at least once in person. the people, the conflict, and the potential for peace in that region are something to which i've devoted a great deal of interest, time, and research. i still read the sudan trib and scour the times and the economist for articles on the region, and as a few close friends will attest, one of my favourite things to do is discuss the finer points of the conflict and conflict resolution in sudan. i have talked about it in my sleep. it can only be described as a passion.

so i have mixed feelings about the prominence of activism on the issue and the movement in general. i've really been along for the ride -- from day one when we created the organization that was to spread nationally and internationally, to this day -- and now i have stepped back from the movement and am trying to grapple with my place in the situation at large. participating in all of this to the extent that i have has certainly provided a great deal of perspective. and as happy as i am that the movement has gained the attention that it has, there's something about its larger-than-lifeness which stings at times of insincerity. darfur in some ways (many ways) has become a "hip" cause and i'm just not sure how i feel about it. i couldn't possibly sum this up as well as my dear friend tay does in this wonderful editorial, so i'll leave that to her.

but i had an experience today that bothered me, somewhat along those lines, and i just had to put it out there. georgetown STAND (it used to be Students Taking Action Now: Darfur, and is now simply STAND: A Student Anti-Genocide Coalition -- don't even get me started on the ramifications of the name change and why it bothers me so much), the organization which i co-founded and which led to the founding of hundreds of other organizations like it across the country, still holds events on georgetown's undergraduate campus (the violence, after all, is far from over in darfur). this year, one of its initiatives is to hold weekly die-ins on campus. for those of you who have never been to/witnessed a die-in, the whole point is that you lie on the ground, looking dead, to physically demonstrate and draw attention to the civilian deaths in darfur. the best one i ever participated in was right out front of the white house. i think we might have annoyed mr. prez, but it definitely got the point across. anyhow, i digress. the weekly die-ins.

well, since i am still on georgetown STAND's listserv, i have received lovely emails the last two weeks informing me politely that the die-ins have been cancelled due to inclement weather. now, i'll give you that it's currently 42F outside and raining a kind of light, nasty, drizzly rain. but i have to say that the emails still bother me. it's a function of where we are and who we are that we get to decide not to "go outside and die" because it's not warm and sunny out. how can we claim to represent these people when we won't endure even the slightest bit of physical discomfort to give their cause a voice? i almost wanted to send an email back to the listserv: do you think the darfuris stop dying due to inclement weather? it's the incapsulation of my disillusionment with the movement. it's the incapsulation of activism chic.

we'll stand for something...but not when it's raining.

The Mouse

We have one. I just burst into J's room to inform her that she had an unexpected sleeping partner but then couldn't proceed to find the skinny little dude who had literally just slipped in there after perusing the living room way too calmly for my taste.

She's too sleepy to care, and I'm too drowsy to go on the hunt for a member of the Mickey tribe. And frankly, I don't believe in killing them, so when I'm fully alert, it's still going to be a bit of a question as to what we actually do. On the one hand, it would be nice to never see him again, but if he never re-appears, she's going to think I'm certifiable because she sure as hell saw nothing other than me flicking on her lights at 1:30 in the morning, and waking her up as I crouched on her floor.

Yeah, I know what you're thinking right about now in the midst of all this chaos - maybe the mouse is a she, not a he. My thoughts precisely. I'm glad we're on the same page.

This is too complicated and too late for plotting the demise of anything and I'm starting to ramble again. I'm off to bed.

Hopefully alone.

The Kewl

I've been trying to find cool visuals to show a friend of mine who seems to have an inexhaustible supply of good links.

What's currently floating my boat: water droplet art. Check out the gallery. There's ton more and it's super pretty.

The Speed of Sound

Well, it finally happened. Physicists have managed to decode the spread of gossip. You may now return to your homes.

..."“At a first glance, our central hypothesis may seem obvious: In social systems the number of friends influences the danger of being gossiped,” said Pedro Lind, a physicist at the Institute of Computational Physics at the University of Stuttgart, in Germany, to PhysOrg.com. “But the hypothesis says more than that: Our results show that the optimal number of friends to minimize gossip spreading is neither very large nor very low...”

"Now they'll never realize that we have yet to prove things like the theory of universal gravity," rejoicing scientists were later heard saying as they toasted over what must be ether fumes.

The Clarification

For those of you not previously in on the joke in the first-ever post on this site:

1) I am a girl.

2) J is not my boyfriend. This is because we are roommates and classmates and friends. Further, this also relates to the fact that J is a girl.

3) We are therefore, to clarify, not dating, nor would we ever be of that inclination.


Well, I think my work here is done. If you want fine literature, see J's handiwork below.

a testament to the swamp which lies beneath us

i was waiting for this evening and sure enough it came, since it is colder now and i had been wanting since august to be nipped by the wind outside and wait for my ears to thaw when i walk indoors. i always loved the writing of woolf or eliot because it is so REAL: there is mrs. dalloway with her flowers and lil ought to have her teeth capped and the present and the past and the future all meld into this one fantastic ball because all you are really listening to is the thoughts in someone's head and we are not linear. so tonight i wished i had a pen to write but everything was coming so fast anyway, and i wanted to keep walking, and i couldn't write while walking, now could i? this is what was really in my mind:

isn't it funny that we have built ourselves this beautiful city and filled it up with bridges and monuments and politicians and streets and the occasional statue but it still cannot hide that really all it was, is, is a swamp? if you walk at night the rats will crawl in front of you and if you truly live here you cannot be disgusted by them. they are more this place than any of us are.

there is a girl, a woman, standing in the park on p street across the bridge from the circle and what makes a person stand in the park in the cold in stockings and heels at 9 in the evening (but really 10 now, it is so dark, and the clock will just lie to us for six months)? why is it that we do not look each other in the eyes anymore? i can smile at the woman who walks toward me on the street but as she approaches her eyes cast downward and i do not know where to place my gaze. why do we not greet each other on the streets anymore? or is it just cold and winter again? this is the same street as always but in this light the branches of the trees swoop downward and the leaves make icicles -- there is no wind and the leaves are crystalline, almost (is my sock slipping in my boot again?). i wish it would snow, but not enough to stick.

oh how i wish, i wish i had the mind of eliot which could bounce between the tarot and the bars and the thames and these are the pearls that were his eyes. but my stream of consciousness is not so impressive as his (my consciousness is not so impressive as his) and i do not jump to the story of sibyll or the drooping beauty of hyacinths though for a minute i admit i find myself not here in this city but in paris or brasil. the scarf keeps my neck warm on the outside but inside the air still bites my throat and isn't that how it always is?

here is the house where we stood together and i told you, it is my favourite thing that they grow roses, that the roses climb above the front door and make an arch of flowers. it is cold now and all that are left are the rose hips and a few stray petals. there is the street that is a quiet place and you would not know about it, could walk past it all the time and not even notice it, but if you stood there for a moment and looked you would see copper roofs and light red brick and streets named after caribbean islands where i wish i was right now (and so do you, probably). i love copper roofs because they are so much more beautiful as they age. someone put them there for their metallic sheen but didn't they know it would oxidize, that over the years it would turn that almost sea foam green which i think is so much more gorgeous than the original form (oh, istanbul!)?

all the lights are in my favour tonight although i did have to run to catch that one coming up to the bridge and now i am walking through georgetown to my home and there is a black cat on the doorstep of the house by the church. i want a kitten but i am too inconstant for one right now. where would it live in the summertime? there is my corner and i want to walk around the city all night with my thoughts but there is nowhere to put them anyhow and it would be better if there was someone else to walk with. but i would not tell you all of this if we were walking.

it would be a fun game to play, sometime, though. to sit and say exactly whatever comes into your head just straight for two whole minutes. i bet it would be irrational and WONDERFUL.

a small thing

this is a small thing that i have to say: because it is past daylight savings now and since it gets darker earlier and it is cold this week i think sometimes people forget that everyone is just doing the best that they can. i think setting clocks backwards or forwards always makes the world a little topsy-turvy, as my mom pointed out to me. so maybe that is the reason for some recent craziness. but everyone is trying to adjust to it all the same. and they're all doing the best that they can. it's impossible to be angry at anyone when you look at things that way. and i don't like being angry, so i will look at things that way.

The Quoi?

The stupidest penalty to a sports team in all of history (governement penalizing a team because some of its fans booed during a memorial ceremony for a slain Prime Minister, killed 12 years ago). Luckily, almost no one in the Knesset reacts to this type of stuff , so freedom of speech is obviously safe (government NOT reacting to its own members calling travel bans to enemy countries 'racist' and vowing to break it over and over). Otherwise I'd be worried.


You know, every time I need the news, I need another Tylenol. Practically Pavlovian at this point.

Newspaper print? Pass on the meds.

The Phase

When I was in high school, I had a Welsh teacher of physics for the science class at the end of the day. After leaving school, I'd actually have a bit of a Welsh accent in my English and use some of his inflection.

And some of that type of stuff still happens when I'm talking to someone with a foreign accent. Unless I'm careful to monitor, I will unconsciously use some of their lingo/mannerisms for a few minutes after parting ways.

Now picture that particular impediment that in a school full of LLM students from Lord only knows where.

I'm... so... confused...

And I often... sound... ridiculous...

This brings 'easily impressed' to all sorts of new levels of preposterous.

By the way, you must check out this AWESOME link, courtesy of Small Thoughts.

Cheerio.

The Gratitude

All of my friends are truly incredible people and I love and appreciate you very, very much. Over distance and over time, that will always be the case.

That is all. Over and out, folks.

did you know he's one-quarter greek?

i hope jt forgives me for taking so long to write this! i promised him i'd do it first thing when i got home...but that was really only about two-and-a-half hours ago. the funny thing about having one of these blogs is that you get requests from people to be in it...

so, i saw jt at bar review last night. he was wearing an oklahoma sweatshirt. and a baseball cap which i stole briefly but returned to him upon recognition of some serious hat hair. and i bumped my head on his beer glass, which he says is an awfully nice way of putting the fact that he bonked me on the head with it. i think there was definitely some joint and several liability going on there, so we can leave it at that.

he said that all he wanted here was an acknowledgement that i'd seen him. and the oklahoma sweatshirt. but i will also add that jt is an awesomely sweet guy and that hanging out with him last night was one of the high points of my evening. which i hope will induce him to forgive the tardiness of the post. also it's true.

and on that note, i am off to get hot cocoa because it is brisk this morning, and i can't think of a much better thing to do on a brisk morning than drink hot cocoa.