| so, i'm leaving (you can find out how much better things can get). |
[24 Jul 2007|09:56am] |
a decision that has been long in the making: i'm leaving livejournal. it's too...well, "dark" is the word that comes to mind, even if it doesn't sum up exactly what i mean. my journal feels stagnant. i don't enjoy writing in it anymore, but i feel like i have some sort of obligation to write in it, and until i officially shut the thing down that sense of obligation isn't going to go away. i've been kind of proud of the fact that i've had one running journal since mid-high school, and while i'm still impressed at my ability to do something like that, the fact that i've had this thing since high school is bringing me down. it feels a little like i'm still living in my parents' house, writing here.
i'm not going to stop writing; in the words of cairpre the bard, "i was never any good at endings." i'm just moving to another livejournal-esque client, someplace that feels more clean and inviting than this one. i think this decision is partly inspired by my recent physical move, and the realization that my new room feels so much bigger and more free even though it's probably slightly smaller, spatially, than the old one. i don't have all this stuff piled up, getting in my way. it's a relief.
i suppose i could just start up a new livejournal, or give this one a makeover, instead of moving to a completely different host. however, as i've expressed recently, i feel like livejournal has a number of shortcomings, particularly regarding my (& others') mental concept of what the service is like and who goes there. the one thing i did say that livejournal has going for it, in that last post, is that it's a good mass communication tool. i think i lied, there; it's designed to be a good mass communication tool, but nobody utilizes it as such. trying to communicate with others via livejournal is frustrating and ultimately not worth the effort.
so:
1. i'm boxing this place up tomorrow (24 hours from the time of this posting)**. i'm not deleting it, because it matters to me as a form of memory, but i'm going through and making all of the entries private. if you want to hang on to something i've written, i'm flattered and you have 24 hours to grab it. simple. should you miss the day-long gap, or can't find what you're looking for, and want it enough to put the effort in and send me an email asking for it, by all means do.
2. i've considered just posting the address of the new place here, so that it requires no effort whatsoever to follow me there, but decided against it. i'd like you all to keep reading my writing, of course, but one of the reasons leading into my migration is the sense that there are a lot of people who just read what i'm writing out of habit, or a vague sense of personal gratification if the should show up in my posts. i'd like to provide those people with an easy out in which they wouldn't have to worry about offending me by going away. again, anyone else who cares enough to follow me but can't find the new spot (even though it should be about as easy to find as it could possibly be) can feel free to email me about it.*
and that's about it, really. i'll probably still read other people's journals here, i think. i don't know if the new place will be similar to the old place, or if i'll try to take it in some entirely new direction. either way, it will just go where my whims take it. who knows what that will be like - wait and see.
*when i say email, i mean email, not "leave a comment here". i think leaving a comment in a journal i'm closing really defeats the point. if you know my email address, use it. if not, then okay, leave a comment.
**EDIT: since the livejournal servers died for about 24 hours immediately following my posting, and since i don't have time to clear everything out on thursday, it'll be extended until friday.
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| called my friend in new york, 3000 miles away |
[20 Jul 2007|02:50pm] |
song of the past 24 hours: "for tg&y" by the mountain goats.
book of the past 24 hours: "fahrenheit 451" by ray bradbury.
both turned up in my dream last night, about having a little sister who had something wrong with her. the doctors took out her brain, cut it into quarters, and put it back together differently. she didn't talk much, and had very big eyes. she was like the phosphorescent mouse in my dream from a long time ago; i didn't want to put her down.
i find it a little strange that i routinely dream of carrying/protecting things that bring me an inexplicable joy, but not particularly strange that those things are always odd, quiet ones.
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| but i choose "most of your life goes on without me". |
[19 Jul 2007|10:50am] |
things i am tired of:
1. not having the internet
2. not knowing where any of my stuff is
3. having to deal with my mother's obsessive perfectionism, particularly with regard to her mucking around in my stuff all day while i'm not there
4. not knowing what i'm doing with my life
5. having 90% of my friends at any given moment be living too far away to see
6. worrying about things i have no control over, like other people
7. my parents making each other miserable and fighting all the time over the pettiest shit
8. the fact that the only way to change people for the better is to manipulate them or step back and watch them destroy their own happiness, because the honest method of telling them how to make their lives better has the best-case scenario of you getting to say "i told you so" years down the line when you're proven right
9. my inability to have meaningful conversation with my parents, because we disagree about so much important stuff, and because i don't have the guts to let them know how much i'm going to let them down in the relatively near future
10. not knowing myself and my own limits or abilities, including and especially such simple things as whether i'm a stable enough individual to take on some of the tasks i want to take on
11. feeling unfinished, diminished, lost, adrift
12. writing poems about you
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| and they said coffee would stunt kids' growth. |
[11 Jul 2007|09:14am] |
when thomas edison was twelve, his folks let him start working on the newly-opened railroad. that means he got up each morning, rode a train for four hours into detroit while selling fruit to passengers, hung out in the big city all by himself for another six hours, then rode the train four hours home again while selling newspapers to passengers.
when i was twelve, i still hadn't bothered to learn to ride a bicycle because my parents wouldn't let me leave our short, dead-end, residential street without supervision.
no wonder i haven't invented a crucial household product (or taken advantage of a flock of other people who have).
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| "just send more soldiers" is not a strategy, and "stall" is not a compromise. |
[10 Jul 2007|11:16pm] |
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re: this.
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| i guess it doesn't matter that in reality he was gay, or deceased. |
[06 Jul 2007|09:05am] |
i had a really hot dream about frank o'hara last night.
i think my geekiness may be incurable.
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| thoughts on establishing a writing forum that extends beyond mere journalling |
[05 Jul 2007|11:42am] |
i'm always hesitant to make predictions about my writing, because i'm a contrary creature and i seem to always do exactly the opposite of what i say i'll do: i take poetry classes and immediately write in my journal all the time instead; i take a course on memoirs and only want to write fiction; i say i'm going to stop writing in livejournal once and for all and i'm back next week. in this case, however, i think it might be safe to say that my writing in here is diminishing in quantity somewhat. certainly i write here less now than i did in australia, though that's no great feat; i also write here now less than i have at any point since high school. somehow, in the past six months year (i stil feel like i'm living in a time warp as a result of my australia voyage. what, you mean i was sitting alone in my room in sydney a year ago? no way!), i've gone from the excessive 2-5 entries a day i had going last july-september to approximately one entry a week. unless that one entry a week is a throwaway one-sentence description of my dreams of late, i have to remind myself that i ought to keep writing here, if for no other reason than that mike firesmith starts to wonder if i'm dead when i disappear for long periods of time.
so, what does that mean? well, i've been writing more poetry lately, though if i were to be completely honest with myself, the poetry is not a result of the lack of journalling. nor is it particularly good poetry, so even if it were somehow related to the journal entry decrease, i don't know if the transition would be justified. on the other hand, i sort of feel like even if the poetry i'm writing is not very good*, it's still a more valid form of art than the journal is, especially the livejournal. rarely is the private journal given any appreciation when it sees the light of day, and when it is, it's usually for reasons other than those the author had probably hoped; often it seems that it's just the journals that survive the longest that are deemed important because of their historical significance. personally, i find it hard to believe that anything i'm writing is historically significant, though i'm sure someone could see it that way; i also find it hard to believe that, with the better care we take in preserving our artifacts nowadays, there would not be a hundred better, more credible sources of information on whatever it is someone is looking for from the early years of the twenty-first century.
the livejournal, furthermore, is not given an awful lot any credit as a writing tool. as a modern form of comunication, yes. as a culprit in the ever-increasing amount of american & other first-world western individual self-importance, yes.** but as a writing tool? sure, "blogs" have been getting a lot of press lately, but that category seems to only extend to the weblogs kept by individuals who are publishing political commentary, or occasionally technological tips and directories to other places on thie internet. and those weblogs nearly always seem to be either self-published or on a provider like blogger; i've never seen even one serious critique of a blog hosted on livejournal. furthermore, i've never seen one serious (for lack of a better word) blog on livejournal.
thus, i find it more and more difficult to take this journal on livejournal seriously. yes, it's a good place to brainstorm ideas and practice writing, and yes, it's sometimes a good resource as a sort of personal bulletin board, for contacting large numbers of people you know personally without having to send out a mass email over something trivial. it also has the side effect of sometimes resulting in meeting interesting new people who you'd never have met otherwise (and sometimes being harassed by irritating new people you'd never have met otherwise). but as a tool for serious writing, and not just hashing out thoughts, it's sort of lacking.
what i really want is a forum where i can get together with other people who write beyond just journalling, and share what we're producing, and offer specific criticism to one another. with any luck, such a forum would not only be useful in improving what the contributors have already written, but in encouraging them to write more. i would also want to keep it exclusive, for two main reasons: (1) it would have to be on the internet (for convenience), and if it's full of serious writing, heaven forbid a contributor should write something worth publishing, i would want to decrease the chances of it being stolen, and (2) frankly, i would want to make sure that the people involved were going to contribute regularly (be it their own material or criticism of others') and well (meaning serious, considered writing and specific, useful critiques).
the easiest place for me to establish such a forum would be on livejournal, as it's a service i'm already familiar with, and is open to everybody for free. i could easily set up a "community" to serve my needs in creating the writing environment i'm looking for. however, because of the stigma attached to livejournal that i mentioned above, some of the people i'm interested in asking to join said community might be reluctant to have it hosted on livejournal (i'm looking at you, dan). it could, theoretically, be done via email, in a letter-writing style, but i think that email is more conducive to one-on-one interchanges than group discussions. furthermore, since some of the people i'm interested in asking do not know one another, i fear they might feel a little uncomfortable with giving their email addresses out. ideally, there is some other journal- or blog-hosting service that can be used for the forum i'm considering. it would be nice to start with a clean slate.
so: if you are a) interested in joining such a private, serious writers' forum, or b) knowledgeable about a place to begin said forum (or both), please leave a comment here about your interest/information. keep in mind, however, that while i don't care what kind of writing you do (plays, screenplays, song lyrics, poetry, science fiction, fantasy, fiction, essays, memoirs [memoirs != journalling], other prose, whatever), i want you to provide only serious writing (by which i mean, writing designed to be taken seriously as writing - it can be as humorous as you want), and i want you to be willing to provide useful criticism of others' work. this last point is key; you can't get unless you give.
also, please bear in mind that this is just an idea i have right now, so don't expect too much (the more interest there is, though, the more likely i am to do something about it).
*the poem of mine i've seen lately that i've liked the most has been rachel's rediscovery of my high school french class ballad, "where is albert sock?" i think i should write more humorous poetry. not only is it a hell of a lot more fun to write than the angry stuff i usually produce, but it comes out better when i look back on it years down the line.
**an argument in which, by the way, i hold little stock. people claim that being able to publish your personal thoughts on a global forum at the slightest whim creates within us an unjustified sense that the world is interested and what we have to say is important. those people clearly have not ever spent much time on something like livejournal; it only takes a little experience and a few ex-boyfriends who claimed to have loved your writing when you were dating to realize that the only people who care about your writing are those who feel they have a personal stake in it.
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| goooood morning. |
[29 Jun 2007|09:06am] |
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dreamt of (armenian?) holocaust. not historically accurate, at all, but had to carry a baby in a bottle after she'd been blown up, and had to run through snow drifts while being chased by dogs.
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| they looked just like my own, with no face, no name, no voice i'd known.</b> |
[28 Jun 2007|11:02pm] |
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"clean getaway" by maria taylor really reminds me of how it felt to be in australia.
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| empty the ashtray, sweep up the floor, put a lock on your door. |
[27 Jun 2007|04:54pm] |
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i wonder if your backyard is really as big as i remember it. i try to recall what divided it into sections - if it was really divided into sections - the empty fishpond, the big rock, the stone steps leading up toward your house. the exact shades of dark purple and red that the walls were painted. whether you really had a life-size carousel rooster in there somewhere. the smell of your cats' food. i can remember certain rooms (the sunny one with the tv, the kitchen where we read the roster of trolls, your bedroom, your closet), but i can't make the rooms connect. where on your floor did i sleep on weekends? where was the bathroom? what was your phone number? back before we had cell phones, back before we had to include the area code, i had your number memorized and could tap it into the phone faster than i could say your full name. i held onto it for years. when did i forget? how come i'm still trying to make myself remember? it's not like if i recover it and dial, you'll answer.
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| right now i am here, and i here - i'm never here. |
[20 Jun 2007|03:09am] |
thoughts right now:
walking up the staircase to my room almost feels foreign, like i'm not going someplace i spent eighteen years. when i was a (precocious) little kid the thought occured to me, as i was walking up those stairs, that were there a heaven, it might be entered by a staircase that matched that of the house one grew up in.
whie it feels almost unnatural to climb the stairs to my room, it feels completely natural to sit here at 3:00 a.m. and write on livejournal. apparently this habit is stronger.
also, while i'm not sure what i think of "wicked" as a whole, i love the song "defying gravity". or, more accurately, i love my own misinterpretation of the song. funny how i can know what the song is really about, but still read it the way i want.
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| yes, i thought of this in my sleep. |
[15 Jun 2007|05:31pm] |
last night, in my sleep, it occured to me that no real story has an introduction. i mean, when you fall asleep and you start dreaming, you just sort of land in the dream and take it from there. you don't get any exposition in the first chapter. life, as a whole, much the same. you're born right smack in the middle of someone else's story, and by the time you're old enough to remember anything, you can't remember the beginning of your own. everything just starts in the middle.
maybe that's why it's so hard to start writing anything.
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| if you can put a push button on it you’ll make a fortune. nobody can resist a push button." |
[07 Jun 2007|11:01am] |
i wish advertisements still worked like they did back before world war two. wouldn't it be nice if they just told you what the product in question did?
"this watch keeps accurate time." it doesn't make you more sexy or classy. it isn't the watch worn by johnny depp or charlize theron. but it keeps accurate time, which is all a watch is really supposed to do, anyway.
but then, on the other hand, we don't eat mashed potatoes out of spray cans anymore. (just cheese, now...)
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| ...which would explain a lot of about the current state of the world, really. |
[06 Jun 2007|10:55am] |
i called my landlord this morning and left a message with the secretary asking them to call me back because i want to see the proposed new apartment. then i went to whole foods because i thought there was a gaming store in that shopping center (apparently not) and i want to buy a copy of bang!. i wandered around whole foods looking for dolmades (none) and ginger beer (some, but it cost something like $6 for four 12 oz. bottles, and since i didn't even have any idea if i'd like it, that seemed like a questionable purchase). at first i felt kind of good walking around whole foods - it's nice to be in a place where they're selling you food that isn't going to kill you, even if it is expensive. then i felt really depressed and homesick, so i bought a single can of root beer (made with real cane sugar) and left. when i got back i sat in the car and stared at the steering wheel until it got stiflingly hot in there, and then i came inside and put on one of the cds my mother sent me and cried a little bit.
i'm just so frustrated with things right now. i'm mad at my landlord. i just want to move into my new apartment - the one i signed the lease for - and have my own kitchen and bathroom and laundry. i'm tired of people asking me where one of my friends is, especially because i know they're only asking after said friend because they want him to do something for them, not because they're interested in getting dinner or hanging out with him. i miss my family, and i really want to go home and see them and have them come here and see me, which is silly because i know i'm going to be bored stupid within 48 hours of going home and wanting to strangle them all within 48 hours of them coming here (not to mention stressed out from the moment they arrive until the moment they leave).
still, these things aren't cause to slowly fall apart in whole foods and cry when i get home. i was hanging out with dan and another friend of ours the other day, and the third friend said that even though neither dan nor i make our beds, he'd still want us in his zombie shelter, because we're both intelligent and we don't panic easily. i said yeah, i just despair instead. dan pointed out that me despairing during a zombie-infested apocalypse scenario probably wouldn't be too different from me despairing right now, so at least they'd know how i'd react.
owen brought me flowers a few days ago, little pink ones with five petals. he said they made him think of me, and i laughed and said, "what, because i'm so cheerful and bubbly and girly?" someone else in the room said he thought i was pretty cheerful, and owen added, "i think you might be more bubbly and girly than you think."
jeez. if everyone else is an even bigger disaster than i am, we're all in a lot of trouble.
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| does anyone else ever have this sort of dream? |
[04 Jun 2007|10:01am] |
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dreamt of chernobyl.
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| for the record |
[30 May 2007|08:28pm] |
it really pisses me off that the SAT and now, apparently, the GRE have done away with testing on analogies. testing on analogies is an extremely effective way of testing vocabulary in general, because if you don't know all of the words in the analogy, you can't solve it correctly, and because an analogy forces you to not only know the definition of a word but understand how to use that word as well. furthermore, analogies are constantly used in everyday life, particularly in arguments, and are more and more often being used by people who don't understand how to create them effectively, which makes arguing kind of unbearable. on top of that, analogies are what our entire language is based on (well, metaphors, really, but what are metaphors but a version of analogy?). as people come to see analogies as more and more irrelevant, what's going to happen to our language?
it just depresses me that both the SAT and the GRE are no longer testing using analogies, because it means that either they think analogies are now irrelevant (they aren't, but people are treating them as if they are), or they think analogies are too difficult, because they're the section test-takers do most poorly on (which means that tests are pandering to their takers, instead of posing a challenge to them). either way, it does not bode well for the future intelligence of americans.
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| out of curiousity |
[29 May 2007|07:02pm] |
hey, anyone i gave a notebook to about a year ago*:
1. if you were to see someone selling said notebooks somewhere, would you buy one?
2. if so, how much would you spend on them?
feel free to elaborate as much as possible, and include tips on how to improve them (for example, covers that didn't warp would be a plus). also, i'd be interesting to hear if you used the notebook or not, and what you used thme for if you did, but that's not as important as the two questions above.
*to refresh your memory, they were solid-colored with backgrounds of magazine cut-outs, and a stenciled black symbol on each (a few that i can remember offhand were a nintendo controller, a guitar, a cup of tea, and a moon with a rose growing from it).
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| yes, i'll have the hünkarbegendi... |
[29 May 2007|10:13am] |
dreamt it was my first day as a waitress in an absurdly expensive turkish restaurant.
it was no fun.
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| ah, yes, it's because people are selfish idiots. |
[24 May 2007|11:22am] |
i guess it's slightly easier to understand why so many people are fans of the H2 when you realize just how many people there are out there who aren't fans of the H2 but are fans of the original hummer, and insist that "the H2 is NOT a hummer!"
newsflash: the H2 is, in fact, a hummer. no, it's not the original hummer, but it is made by hummer. its full name is the hummer H2. when you go to the hummer website, the first image you are greeted with is not the original hummer (which they are now calling the H1, by the way), but the H2.
your insistence that the H2 is not a hummer only accentuates your ignorance, and does nothing to improve my opinion of you. oh, so you don't want to be associated with the kind of people who feel so compelled to compensate for their shrivelled genitalia that they go out and buy the big lump of social and environmental evil that is the H2? well, i don't blame you, but that doesn't change the fact that you're instead a fan of driving a vehicle that was designed for use by the army. your vehicle doesn't just run on dangerous environmental apathy, it also runs on bringing military devices into a civilian context and treating them as toys. oh yeah, you're much more civically responsible than the people who drive the car that's just a bigger, uglier, shinier version of the one you prefer.
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