So you may have heard of omegle.com. It's an interesting concept: a site where you are connected to a random person via a very simple chat interface. I have to say that the few times I have used it before I found it not very enjoyable, as we both sat there waiting for the other person to be exciting. Tonight though I found a conversation partner who actually responded somewhat enthusiastically and at a reasonable pace.

I saw Regina Spektor last night at the Greek Theatre. She was amazing. She played a lot of stuff from her last two albums but definitely hit the high points of her earlier stuff, including accompanying herself with a drumstick and wooden chair on "Poor Little Rich Boy". She had a string quartet and drummer on stage to accompany her on the new songs but did a few by herself and played bass on that one ("Remember that time that I would only smoke par-ar-ar-li-ments?"). The highlight of the night was when she stands up, grabs a mike, and sings this accapella song about the color of boys' eyes and the relation to their trustworthyness, which had to have been completely extemporaneous. The only songs I was kinda bummed that she didnt play were "Oedipus" and "Ne me quitte pas," but her set had a lot of good ones, and Regina's stuff is good enough that I didn't mind hearing a buncha new ones, including "Laughing With" which has been making get all teary eyed lately.

Regina herself was adorable. She had on this big poofy white dress with a bow on the bust, in keeping with her damnable modesty and refusal to give us a glimpse of that massive, awe-isinpiring bewbage. She seemed pretty shy for someone who has been performing for so long. She said "Thank you for coming here with us tonight" like 25 times. Her stage presence was still totally rockin tho because she looked like a porcelain doll with her complexion and that dress and she giggled whenever someone shouted at the stage. Sigh. New goal for living in LA: find a way to bed Regina Spektor!

hey langostino , what's your excuse?

It never occured to me before, what a great message the Odyssey has about relationships. Odysseus has 2 choices of possible mates. Return to his wife who is firmly entrenched in the oikos (home) and society of Ithaka, or stay alone on a desert isle with a dread goddess. I.E. have a healthy relationship with outside friends or a super codependent one where you never hang out with anyone else. Where do we see Odysseus, when we first encounter him in the poem? On the shore of Calypso's island weeping and breaking his own thumos (roughly: heart), because he has grown tired of her. If I had read this damn thing more closely in high school, I would have had a much better time with relationships in college.

So I finally have started settling myself in LA. I now own some pretty cool furniture including a rolltop desk that might be way too big for my tiny little room. It's a quaint little condo in Chinatown. I'm not far from all the hipster-y stuff in Echo Park and SIlverlake (oneword?), but I'm close to Union Station so I can catch a free bus to campus. My roomates seem nice. I'll keep you posted on that one. I had a few other things I wanted to say about moving in, but they seem to have excaped me.

I really enjoyed the 3 day drive with my family. We had a lot of fun. It was more light-hearted than things have been for a while. I think part of that is that I've been kind of a reclusive bitch for a while around my family. Being stuck wiht each other in a car for 3 days forced me to confront that a little. There were a couple of moments when we were all just laughing our asses off at something and a little thought popped in the back of my head that in other circumstances I might have found some way to make a snarky comment or otherwise dampen the mood. I'd tell the funny stories, but they are all kind of "had to be there" stories or maybe " had to be slap happy from 26 hours of driving."

In closing, here are some pics of the view from my balcony:
( Jealous? )

I recently posted some of my things on craigslist, and in addition to the annoying spam responses I got these:

For my bookshelf

Posting:

Black wooden bookcase. The kind you can buy at Walmart for 50 bucks. Approx. 1' deep x 6' tall x 2.5' wide. Put it together myself. Has a couple of stickers from the Mushroom and Dirty Coast on one side.

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=5223522

Replies:

--I would like your bookshelf. Where in uptown do you live? Do you think it would fit in a compact car?

--hi.what exactly are the stains on the bookshelf and where are they located (on which parts/shelf of the bookcase)?

For my small table

Posting:

wood topped table with blue metal legs. 2' deep x approx 3.5' wide x 29.5" tall. I have used it as a kitchen table in a small kitchen and as a desk in my bedroom. very versatile table. Here is a picture of it in its natural habitat. (insert picture of my desk completely enveloped by crap)

Replies:

--Hi.I am interested in your table. What are its dimensions round about?

--(Same girl as above**) I would like your table. Where in uptown do you live? Do you think it would fit in a compact car?

**No, I am not calling her a girl just because she is stupid. I am confident in this assertion because my Mail program tells me her name is Constance Thompson, and she uses a gentle rounded font on a soothing avacado green background. It also thinks she might be junk mail, so I guess there is a good chance she could be spam.

I'd like to angrily message the guy who thinks I have stains on my bookshelf, but he is the only non-Constance Thompson person to respond about that particular item.

"Today, my boyfriend and I were cuddling on his couch when suddenly I tried to get up. Before I could stand, he grabs onto me and says, "I'm a koala and you're my eucalyptus tree!" He then continued to latch onto me for a good five minutes pretending to eat my hair. FML"

Ok, so usually I laugh my ass off at this site, but I dont get this one. That's a great move. Pretend chewing on her hair for 5 minutes? That boys a keeper right there.

So the girl from Greece in my PhD program just friended me on facebook. Grade A hottie. I think I need to learn modern Greek and start pursuing this. Any tips?

Today's XKCD is spot on. No wonder I liked blurry stoned sex so much.

Just started reading Kushiel 2. Might not surface again until I'm finished.

Scheduling your wedding without looking in a farmer's almanac first is not ironic. It's just poor planning.

Well it's Mother's Day and that isn't exactly a time of joyful thanksgiving in the family any more. I'd love to take a little while to just relax and reflect on mom and what today does mean to me, but I am kind of overloaded with my thesis deadline and all of the work that is going to entail in the next few days. Tack onto that the fact that I am now working on the Hesiod chapter of my thesis, which is essentially a revision of a revision of the Hesiod paper I wrote my first semester at Tulane. I had started research on the paper before I had to go home to visit mom in the hospital and some of my most vivid memories are of being in the hospital and  trying to read and notate the same articles I am reading now. The whole thing gives me a queasy feeling in my stomach that compounds with the queasy feeling I am already suffering from diarrhea (pleasant I know. Think how I feel).

I've got the whatever-you-call-the-last-year-of-a-Masters-program-itis bad and I think I've smoked myself retarded these last few weeks. I am writing some BS that includes a lot of abstract postmodern constructs dealing with the breakdown of dialectic logic and "the other." Kind of wish I had some kind of mathematic basis with which to prove my logical approach because there are only so many ways you can try to describe the breakdown of the subjective-objective binary before you realize youre just making shit up as you go along.

Turns out that I also still have a pretty big crush on that freshman girl that decided to go back to her girlfriend. She has no idea what she wants in life or where she is going, but she is pretty laid back and approaches things in a positive non-confrontational way. The whole thing makes me pretty disillusioned about my own ability to decide what or who I want in my life.

Here is hoping that once this fucking thesis is done I will be able to meditate a little bit, quit smoking, and get some better direction in my life.

On a more positive note, I start teaching my Latin for Adults course on Tuesday. I have to have a minimum of 10 students in order for the class not to be cancelled and it looks like I have 10 on the dot, so we'll be doing whatever it is I have to do to keep them all enrolled.

EDIT: have been having a lot of sex lately with several different girls. I am finally living the existentialist sexual program that I always wanted. Some days I feel like a milion bucks, others I get pretty sappy (possibly in connection with all of the emo stuff listed above). Ultimately, I have come to realize that I don't have the energy for as much sex as these girls seem to want, and that I was pretty happy with the relatively non-sexually-focused relationship that I had from Dec. 2007 to July 2008. Then again it probably all has to do with my Cancer-engrained mommy issues.

two of the girls have left town because school is out and I am left with the hottest, coolest, and kinkiest one who lives in town. She made an interesting comment the other night about how when sleeping around you can learn something new from every partner. I think that's true. I am pretty glad for all of my sexual experiences. I guess you just always want what you dont have at the moment.

This month's Playboy Advisor features an interesting semantics note that really jives with my own sexual vocabulary. It cites The Ethical Slut by Dossie Easton and Catherine Liszt: "A slut is a person of any gender who has the courage to lead life according to the radical proposition that sex is nice and pleasure is good for you."

The issue also has a blurb on Charlotte Roche's Wetlands, which tiptoes the line between art and pornography by graphically detailing the sexual adventures of an 18-year-old woman. One of the expressed aims of the book is to create a fresh, sensual vocabulary for women to talk about their bodies and counter the sterile ideal of feminitiy currently popularized by media such as Sex and the City. The terminology used ("snail-tail" for clitoris and "ladyfingers" for outer labia) is somewhat euphemistic, but also brings an air of playfulness that politically correct terminogy lacks. (Why the fuck is politics creeping into my bedroom!) Roche's book is compared to the works of Erica Jong and Anais Nin. Needless to say, I've got another to put on the top of my reading list.

So I typically try to avoid interacting with conservatives because I think they are either willfully ignorant or deluded, and often bad people, but some recent events have gotten me to thinking. This Tea Party thing with its accompanied conservative media ballyhoo and the few of my facebook friends who wont stop tweeting righteously about it all draw attention to the fundamental difference between liberals and conservatives. We've got our Olberman and there is certainly no shortage of assholes in America right now, but generally, I imagine the liberal party line to be peace and love and dont harsh on anybody's buzz man. This is why the Democrats sat there and did nothing for 8 years while the Constitution was used to wipe the BBQ sauce off Cheney's chin. We respect others' freedoms even if we dont necessarily like them, and we try not to get up in anybody's crack too much. But the conservative movement is an angry young man, who shouts and uses inflammatory rhetoric, and generally doesnt care what he has to say to prove his point. langostino  has pointed out before what a successful political strategy being an asshole is. Are the conservatives predisposed to win because theyre just bigger assholes? I wish there was some way to set a better example for the ignorant masses of our country. Short of forcing everyone to actually obtain a liberal education, I'm not sure how to prove that being an asshole is not the solution.

I just got done prancing naked on my porch in a rain storm. Don't worry, it was the back porch.

I received numerous compliments on my tie today. Unfortunately, this pic was taken at 5:30 after a loooong, sweaty day.

( My badass tie )

Police are hunting a radioactive child pornographer. That is all.

Oh and here is an artists dramatization: (you have to click it to get it to show the whole gif for some reason)

Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.

from turtleheart 

1. dinner in yakeley caf - much more fun being on the receiving end of this one, although typically what you receive is a stomach ache and entirely too much sodium. Except this one time, working in the dish room for a conference over the summer, we found a box of franzia in the cooler and made the entire evening so much more fun. 
2. new orleans has become a second home to me. I love it here and hopefully can come back after I finish my PhD. Unfortunately, none of you fuckers have ever come to visit me
3. long hair - I'm trying to grow it out and wear it down more often. I always have it in a pony tail. I'm going to have to wear it down for a while because I tried to shave my own neck and fucked up my hair line something fierce.
4. autumn at MSU is absolutely stunning. Nothing at Tulane compares to MSU campus in the fall or spring. I may get to be on another large beautiful campus next year if I decide to go to Colorado. I really miss East Lansing, but mostly for the people, a lot of whom live somewhere else now, except for..
5. cooper, who always has and always will live in Lansing. Other people graduate and move to other strange and exciting places, but he's always there when I come home to visit, except when he's not. Coop is one of the few people I know who always seem comfortable with what theyre doing. I definitely try to emulate his stability during the crazily transitory period that is grad school.

from langostino 

spanking - I'm not very good at it. Striking people in general makes me a little uncomfortable, but I can see the sexiness in a good spanking or two. Unfortunately, with everything else going on, it's hard to get everything lined up right sometimes.
silly laugh - my laugh is changing constantly and seems more and more fake in each new incarnation. Thankfully, at least, the one that sounds like a mule braying has run its course. I don't think I use my real laugh a lot, mostly because everyone else just isnt as funny as me I guess.
nub - haven't pwned any nUbs in a long time. I miss counterstrike, but i hear the only people who play it now are the same people who have been playing it since we used to play in college. Basically if you arent s00P3r L337 then you'll be on the wrong end of a headshot in about 3 seconds.
holy fucking metal, Batman - I'm down to 11 piercings. I went through a purge a few weeks ago and took out a lot of the more stupid looking ones. It feels great to have an eyebrow and a side of my lip back. 5 facial piercings was just too much.
uiscedaig - my arch nemisis. I think I may have found a cure to this over winter break. Fucking that nympo/slut made me feel like a 19 year old again. I still carry around a lot of sexual baggage from my 3 year sex beg-a-thon with  the now defunct
petitsqueak. I've been on my B+ game in the sack for a little bit now though.


from el_lobo_es_loco 

Pot - something I enjoy but probably too much. I've been trying to get a better grip on my relationship with this substance. Typically, I spend the entire summer dazed in one perpetual bong rip. I can't do that anymore. It still makes a lot of things more fun though.
Outrageous sexual exploits - I could use some more of these. Although recent events have been certainly outrageous, there just hasnt been enough exploitation for my liking.
Body modifications - I want more but I am going to wait a while. I'm trying to respect my body more by thinking a little bit before i put something in, on, or through it from now on.
Consuming too much alcohol - man did we drink a lot. Something about that apartment on hillcrest always made me want to drink heavily .I feel a lot better about my relationship with alcohol these days. I still probably drink too much, but i dont drink too much too much.
Cuddling - tends to lead to sex. I like cuddling both because of its proximity to sex and because its a great way to get to be intimate with someone and let them loosen up and say whatever they want to you. A lot of people wont say what they really want to unless you force it out of them. The caveat to this is that I will say whatever I think my partner wants to hear while cuddling in order to more quickly expediate the sex-having. I guess a lot of people might be that way.

from alethea7 


1. Yakeley Caf. I met you there - Yakeley caf was a pretty happenin place those first two years. Although I do beleive we met by way of a dorian scale on my white board.
2. Marching Band. 4 years man! 4 YEARS! - Sometimes I really miss it, but mostly I dont. I didnt really do anything besides marching band in college, and since then I have gotten to do so many other more satisfying activities. Still, I was great to be in an ensemble, albeit a loud and brassy one. Of all the college marching bands in america, the SMB is probably in the top 10 as far as musicianship goes
3. Redemption. If we can do it, it shouldn't be that hard for everyone else.  - I've never been one for trying to redeem myself. Typically if I fuck up I just cut and run (see exhibits A-Z in all of my college relationships). It's definitely something on my to do list now.
4. Cooper. Aw Coop. I think I saw you two everywhere together for an entire year - if we could ever be in the same city for more than a year again I would totally marry this man. After living i a tiny box for a year, I've always wondered what itd be like to live in a real house with him. his places are always some comfortable and welcoming
5. West Circle in general. God, I miss that place. - in front of the yakely entrance with the mailboxes in the fall, it smells like whatever kind of flower or tree is planted right there. it is a singular smell and one that always makes me long for years gone by. I'll never forget the youthful innocence i felt that first year or so on campus. life seemed to move at such a slow exciting pace.

Just saw REPO a couple of nights ago. I was blown away. I went to see it wiht this girl i like, and i totally didnt have the chance to make a move in the theater because I was too engrossed in the movie. Gotta get better at multi tasking.

Anyone who likes FOTC will probably like Garfunkel & Oates. Theyre a similar comedy folk duo. Most of theyre stuff on youtube isnt arranged as flatterinly as it could be because they have a tendency to sing the entire thing in unison, but theyre still pretty great.

So my fabulous new girlfriend in New York has cheated on me twice now with a married, former herion addict, emotionally abusive, carrier of genital herpes. We're talking serious issues here. I knew she had some emotional stuff, and that she needed counseling because of her low self esteem. The cheating however was an unfortunate side effect that I was actually pretty worried about. And since she's Catholic, both times she has hidden it from me until she wants to burst instead of coming clean. My course of action is clear, I just wonder how I got sucked into dating such a fixer upper this time. I'm usually so good at picking someone who is at least marginally more emotionally stable than me.

EDIT: I know it would be evil, but I'm thinking about sending her this ecard