We're Hummingbirds Who Lost the Plot

There are a lot of reasons why I am disturbing and odd, but the two outstanding reasons right now are:

1) There is a bakery tin full of fruit peel sitting by the trash bin in my room.
2) At some point today I wrote this note on the back of my hand with a Bic pen:
"Do your taxes soon, n'est-ce pas?"

I chewed on one of my hangnails until it became an emergency.

You'd be proud of me, I finally went grocery shopping. It became what some people would term "dire" when I ran out of peanut butter yesterday. Here is a list of all the food I ate between Monday at about 8:00 PM and 6:30 PM tonight:

*2 slices of multigrain bread
*about 2 tablespoons of peanut butter
*about 2 tablespoons of honey
*a Ziploc sandwich bag full of Cheezits

That's it. That's not a good sign. The point is, you can stop worrying because I just bought an enormous amount of fruit, vegetables, and grains at the Midway Rainbow. Healthy and delicious.

I have to write a paper and instead I'm writing to you about food and watching the Wild hockey game. There's very little that I do that's not a mistake.

I've set the high-school-style dating game in motion, or I would, if Mutual Friend would get off his ass and make some phone calls. Steps have been taken on my part, and that's the best I can do for now.

In Heaven, Everything Is Fine

I can't get off of Modest Mouse and right now I'm listening to "Broke" on Building Nothing Out Of Something. There's no point in my life at which I can safely say I would not throw my hotel key at Isaac Brock.

I can't stop with the coughing and it's pretty tiresome. My lungs hurt on and off lately and it's starting to concern me. Of course, what doesn't concern me these days?

I left the house this morning and sang "Float On" at all the passersby on my way to class. Fuck people who don't appreciate a good mood. Fuck them right in the ear.

I may be a shade volatile lately.

I need Spring Break in a pretty bad way. Maybe I can hit reset and start trying on this semester. It wouldn't be the first time I blew off the entire first half of a semester and then scraped it together at the end. I should probably think about taking at least one of my textbooks out of the bookstore bag sometime soon.

I have to go waste my time on this Year Zero thing some more. Secretly I am a 14-year-old boy.

A Fake Jamaican Took Every Last Dime With That Scam

I've been crashing and burning pretty spectacularly lately. I'm sure you've noticed. Last night I remembered that, early on in our acquaintance, Robby made me a DVD with close to a thousand songs on it, including all of the Modest Mouse albums through Good News for People Who Love Bad News. This rediscovery gave me a lot of reasons not to throw myself out a window, so right now I am listening to "It Always Rains on a Picnic" from Sad Sappy Sucker and remembering that it's not always this bad.

I have to leave for St. Paul early to print out the papers I wrote last night that are due this afternoon, as I keep forgetting that my printer is out of ink. Not helpful.

We're due in for another snowstorm, kids. We're all gonna die here. Be prepared.

I'm waffling on asking someone out. Dating is hard. I pretty much intend to play this the high school way and get a mutual friend to do some field polling before I throw my hat in the ring. Is that too immature?

You Can't Hear It But I'm Screaming

He said, "I know how the story ends," so I know it doesn't end like this.

Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani?

I Got My Fist, I Got My Plan, I Got Survivalism

The Departed won Best Picture and I felt like there was some small measure of justice in the world.

If anyone out there wants to give me the new Modest Mouse album, I'd be pretty grateful and maybe give you a hug that lingers just a shade too long and we'd both get awkward about it.

I know too many people named Dan. How about some variety out there, folks? Where are the Wolfgangs and Lesters of the world?

I took some Dayquil before I came to work this morning and I've pretty much checked out on today. I laid in a stash of Dayquil and Nyquil before they pulled the dextromethorphan out of it and took all the fun away. I'd be pretty excited to get rid of this cold but not so excited to face all the failures of my life without any sort of chemical cushion. Speaking of which, larger and more ominous problems still haven't gone away. You know that scene in Slither when the posse walks into the barn and the town slut is swollen 300 times her size and she goes, "Somethin's wrong with me"? That's what's playing in my head all the time these days. Somethin's wrong with me, and God help me if it means I explode.

Oscar Update: Leonardo DiCaprio Is In Love With Al Gore

God, when I look at the schedule I posted on Friday I feel like the world's biggest failure. I got Friday done and then I pretty much gave up on life. I didn't go to AA, I didn't do my parent-child observation, and I certainly didn't go grocery shopping. I have no idea what I'm going to do now, since I have papers to write on both AA and parent-child observations, and I have no food whatsoever.

On the plus side, I went to MAP's Oscar Night 2007 and it was probably the most fun thing ever. I got all dressed up in a dress I borrowed from Susan that made me look stunning, I wore fabulous costume jewelry and made myself up all ladylike, and I ended up flirting with a super-cute girl pretty much the whole time. Plus, all the free decadent food in the world. All in all, a great night.

I wish I'd gotten some sleep lately. I think I'm starting to lose my grip on this whole thing.

Final note:

On my way home from the Oscars, I was on a nearly empty bus and this drunk guy tried to leave through the back door and went ass over teakettle straight into a snowbank. Then, instead of getting up, he used his feet to push himself over the hump on his stomach, and then he chose to crawl/slide down the sidewalk on his face like a seal. Meanwhile, the bus driver is on the bus P.A. system narrating the whole thing, and we're laughing so hard we cried. Me and the bus driver, I mean. It was almost the highlight of everything.

The Six-Fingered Man Did It

My class got aborted this afternoon due to inclement weather, but instead of using my time to write one of the papers I have due in a couple days, I sat around on the internet chasing down the mysteries of Nine Inch Nails' Year Zero viral marketing campaign (start at this one, there are a lot) and having chest pains that might be panic attacks or might be my body finally giving out under the combined weight of this cold and whatever else is killing me lately.

Gopher hockey lost to St. Cloud State and it was a sad day.

Rainn Wilson (Dwight from The Office for the less star-struck) and the Arcade Fire are on Saturday Night Live right now. Pretty much whenever one of them is offscreen the show nosedives. What happened to quality? Oh, wait, this is Saturday Night Live. Quality died of a drug overdose years ago.

I like it when people truly can't see that they've made a horrible miscalculation. For instance, proposing a three-way with a girl you used to know in a haphazard how-you-doing email to your long-term girlfriend. And then not understanding why said girlfriend is awkward and distant on the phone. People's problems are hilarious to me.

Reno 911: Miami was funnier than the reviews have made it out to be but not quite as funny as the show. If you plan on seeing it, stop watching the commercials right now or you won't be surprised enough.

I recently discovered that I can't keep Poison and Motley Crue straight in my mind at all.

I'm such a failure.

I Told You All I Had Was You

i wish we were different people.

bad idea

one day i'll stop wishing and just die

The Dashboard Melted But We Still Have the Radio

Tentative schedule for the weekend of 2/23-2/25:

Friday, February 23rd

9:30 AM-4:00 PM: Arts and crafts day at work! Cutting, pasting, copying, etc.
4:00 PM-5:15 PM: Hauling ass to Robby's and Block E.
5:15 PM-7:00 PM: Reno 911: Miami!
7:00 PM-8:00 PM: Hauling ass to the Cabooze.
8:00 PM-onward: Dance Band!!

Saturday, February 24th

9:00 AM-4:30 PM: Learning about how families deal with grief and loss for 1 credit.
4:30 PM-6:50 PM: Free time, probably dinner except that I don't own any food.
6:50 PM-7:30 PM: Hauling ass to the Basilica.
7:30 PM-9:00PM: Crashing an AA meeting for Addiction Therapy class.
9:00 PM-onward: Dragging ass home, writing a paper about AA.

Sunday, February 25th

11:00 AM-12:00 PM:Parent-child observation, somewhere I can unobtrusively stare at parents with their children. McDonald's, probably.
12:00 PM-2:00 PM: Grocery shopping. So desparate.
2:00 PM-3:30 PM: Unloading groceries, probably eating, getting all prettified.
3:40 PM-4:15 PM: Hauling ass to LaSalle Plaza.
4:15 PM-onward: Minnesota AIDS Project's Oscar Night 2007!

I'm going to die this weekend. It's just a given.

I Had To Drop Squash And I'm Depressed

I'm making mistakes. More than you know.

Against all my better impulses I think I'm going to the Dance Band show tomorrow night at the Cabooze. You should come out and support a goddamn good band.

We won at hockey again, but they're gonna trade Backstrom away this week and he's my special boy. Well, I have a lot of special boys on the Wild. I should get tickets to an actual game but I'm spending all my money on things like Bonnaroo. See the introduction to this entry.

I think I gave up this semester when I got sick originally. I clearly need to go back to the doctor but the thought of that is stressful so I've been pretending I'm alright. I got a $451 bill from Fairview today and basically I'm all kinds of screwed.

I've eaten too much pizza and it's not healthy.

I can't tell if this is going to fall on my side of the net or not. I'm holding steady.

That's All I'm Asking For

tired of being sick.
sick of being poor.

I Wouldn't Write It If I Thought You'd Read It

What we have is probably the most meaningful thing in my life. On the other hand, life is about taking risks. Break up with her and jump in with both feet.

Choke On That, Causality!

Say what you will about the bureaucracy at the University of Minnesota, but they considered my situation and approved my health insurance within three days so that I could go back to the doctor. Things like that make me happy.

I bit my lip at work and it swelled up and now it's all I can think about.

Here's something for you to enjoy while you're feeling sorry for me and my lip:

Even Jesus Hates Creed

I got my grade on that exam in Parent-Child Relationships that I thought I bombed and I got a B. Which is pretty exciting, if you were me.

I have a horrible, horrible cold and I'm surfing a Dayquil and Vicodin wave that pretty much means I've checked out on reality. I just want to sit here staring at my hands, but instead I'm filing and organizing and working on homework in between. It's a hard-knock life.

I got my hair to cooperate this morning so I am sporting a full-on faux mohawk, which frankly is sexy and appealing. I win!

There is a new lesbian bar opening in the Seward neighborhood and I want to check it out but my lesbian friends are currently occupied in traveling and/or working, and I can't really drag my straight kids, so I have to postpone. Damn you, breeders.

Can You Be Hungover From Too Little Sleep?

I gave all my hair to Locks of Love yesterday, so don't be surprised when you see me and I look like a lesbian.

I've been working on a cold and staying up until 5 in the morning watching sexy infomercials and drinking Powerade somehow didn't cure it. Waking up on Robby's semi-broken futon didn't help either.

Last night's Wild hockey game was a good one, you should have watched it too. We beat Nashville 4-1 and I learned what the purpose of pulling the goalie off the ice in the last two minutes of the game is (it's basically a Hail Mary. It didn't work.)

I was going to go shopping for a ball gown today since I have to go to the fake Oscars next weekend, but Susan had a couple extra formal dresses laying around and I'm pretty sure one of them will work. It's been so long since I lived with a girl I can stand, much less that I like; I've really been enjoying it. She also fed me eggs when I stumbled in the door at 12:30 this afternoon. Also she vacuumed the living room. Basically my apartment is the happiest place I've ever been.

I'm tired, yo.

P.S. I watched the Justin Timberlake episode of Saturday Night Live last night and it threw me into a quandary. I have so many reasons to want to hate Justin Timberlake (i.e. his music) but I have so much respect for him and his sense of humor about himself. Also he dated a much older woman for years and frankly, I'm in support of that.

On a related note, Britney Spears has lost her mind. Yesterday as I was getting all my hair removed from my head (they pulled it into two ponytails and then chopped them off! It was so fun, I want to do it every day!) one of the stylists rushed in breathlessly and announced that Britney Spears had shaved her head and gotten some tattoos on her neck. I looked into it further, and according to the E! news crawl, she grabbed her hairdresser's clippers from her and then shaved her own head. When asked why she would do such a thing, she explained, "I didn't want people touching me anymore." This is not the answer a sane person would give. Then again, Kevin Federline.

The Dave Matthews Band Does Not Rock

I woke up with the Dave Matthews Band's song "Satellite" in my head and it is not a promising start to the day.

Thursdays are nice because I almost never have assignments due, and it's my shortest day, so I really just have to cruise through it without really showing up, you know, mentally. Of course, I probably should pay attention in Parent-Child Relationships since I seriously bombed the test I took on Tuesday.

Last night I ended up in an educational conversation that was about half art history and half The Old Testament. I love intellectual discussions with other smart people. It made up for this dead-eyed moron in my research methods class earlier in the week. Here's the story:

The professor is telling us about how historical events that affect the whole sample in a study can skew the results. So he gives an example of someone who is running a study on depression, but happens to be running it from August to November of 2001. So the results in 2001 indicate that everyone is deeply depressed, and he asks us what could account for that. And Idiot Girl's hand shoots right up instantly, and she goes, "The weather in November is grey and dark, and that might affect the depression rate?" That was bad (the professor responded, "uh, I guess that's technically true, but try concentrating on 2001.") but later it got worse. The professor, as an example, said that he had a program that could teach kids to walk, and that none of the kids could walk when they entered the program at age one, but 99% of them could walk by the time they exited the program at age 5. (He said this in order to demonstrate that natural maturation could account for results.) Then he was like, "Why wouldn't you want to sign up for my program?" And she pipes up "Because I can already walk!"

Because I can already walk.

Don't you wonder sometimes how you made the series of decisions that landed you in the same college with these people?

The One That's Sleeping The Next Morning Is The Murderer

At work I have been rediscovering the work of Islands, and it's somehow even better than I remember. They have more than one song about the apocalypse, and that's really what I care about.

The Departed came out on DVD today and I want it so much. So much.

I'm supposed to be on a bland diet and I failed.

I hate Valentine's Day in general, but I've been feeling particularly not alone since I got back into town, and this Valentine's Day is possibly the most tolerable one I've experienced in years. It helps that I live with people I both like and can talk to socially.

There's a whole lot of Law and Order: CI on right now and I'm loving it to the hilt.

I wish I was better.

Just Stop Reading This Now

Here is a list of things I'm failing at:

*The test I took in Parent-Child Relationships today, as I have missed the last three lectures
*Going to my night class tonight
*Managing my finances in a useful way. I just discovered I overpaid my credit card by about $250 because I forgot that I had arranged to have it paid off with my other card. So now I have a huge credit balance on the account.
*Having health insurance, including finding and turning in the forms I need to get health insurance
*Being healthy
*Sticking to the prescribed bland diet I'm supposed to be on for medical reasons
*Not spacing out on Vicodin and getting off the bus at the wrong time
*Not losing all sense of hope or usefulness
*Being glad to be alive

Life Is Hard, There's A Feeling On the Boulevard

I guess I'm going back to class today after being absent since last Wednesday and missing a few here and there before that. Problem is that sitting up, standing, and walking all aggravate the problem. I'm tempted to just take a shit ton of Vicodin and drift away to Vicoland, but I have a test to take this afternoon in St. Paul and I can't really miss it (physically or mentally.) Point is, this is stupid.

His Name Is Dr. Rockso. He's A Rock N Roll Clown.

Yet another doctor's appointment today at 1:25. I can't afford this one, either, as I clearly don't have my health insurance problems sorted out.

Yesterday Susan carved a swan out of an apple on a whim and it was the coolest thing I've ever seen. Then later, Charlie stole somebody's vacuum that was in the hallway and desperately tried to vacuum the living room before they came back. Unfortunately the vacuum was broken, which is probably why it was in the hallway to begin with.

We saw The Departed at Coffman on Friday and it was just as good the second time. The audience was really into it which is sometimes alright, sometimes not. I hate it when people clap at the end of movies. It devalues the institution of applause so that you have to clap that much harder for a live act that truly deserves it. I think this is why Americans give everything they see in person a standing ovation. I have this on pretty good authority from actor Rufus Sewell, who I tried stalking in London and who I overheard making this observation: "You can always tell the Americans in the audience. They're the only ones standing up at the end."

Lately I've been really wanting to drop out of school and be a fat housewife. It seems ideal: no deadlines, someone else to do the worrying, and I get to eat all I want.

Anyway, this is pretty much what I've been doing for the last couple of weeks:

I'm Not 100% In Love With Your Tone Right Now

I slept all day because it just seemed easier. Now I'm awake and bored and it's nearing midnight. I spent a long time reading my old blog entries from the beginning up through when I had surgery. Some of it was funny but some of it was incredibly depressing. I wish I knew what was wrong with me now. I wish I had health insurance. I wish there were more interesting things on television and that my back didn't hurt and that I wasn't 15 seconds from death at any given time. I wish I wasn't out of groceries. I wish I didn't have so many things to do and no motivation whatsoever to do anything but lie in bed and wish for stuff.

No.

It's impressive how quickly your life can slide into meaningless chaotic despair. For instance, I showed up at the doctor yesterday for what would become an extensive and expensive series of tests and found out that I no longer have health insurance. This information coupled with the constant pain I am in make me not want to live anymore. And all this Vicodin isn't helping.

I don't want to play this game anymore.

Maybe It's Hormones, Maybe I Hate You

Something is wrong.

I'm having a high-octane freakout and there's no time on the clock.

Sid Vicious Is Rolling Over In My Grave

I had a good morning at Squash, since we were working on our serves and I practiced that in my own time on Friday. I think wearing my contacts is helping the whole I-can't-see-the-ball thing. Today I wasn't the worst person in the class, and that's all I care about.

I am going to a training course on lit searching today for my sweet job. I'm such a research nerd.

The Dance Band show at the Nomad on Friday was superb. Except that they were last in the lineup and Ronnie Lake and Ronnie Lake's freakishly tiny old lady bass player went way over their set time and I swear to God they were playing the same horrible surf-rock instrumental for an hour. Every time they paused I got excited that it was over and then it would start up again and I'd start screaming "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" I was glad to see them get off the stage and make way for the real band with the real songs. Dance Band is playing the Cabooze on the 23rd. I can't make it but I encourage the rest of you to show up and shake your babymaker.

My boss is playing "Love Shack" right now.

I spent way too much time outside this weekend to be healthy. I kept missing buses at crucial moments, like when it was -33 with wind chill.

Captain Octagon: What do you want?
Crowd: Brains!
Captain Octagon: When do you want them?
Crowd: Brains!