A Real Conversation I had today

"What are they doing tonight? I mean it's Friday night."

"It's not Friday night."

"Wait...Saturday? What night is it?"

"I don't know. I just slept through the entire light part of today."

"I think it's Friday. No, yeah, it's Friday."

"Sure, let's say Friday."

God, breaks from school are messed up in such a good way.

Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly.

I wish I was in a musical instead of real life.

I'm Miserable

I wish breaking up with someone meant you would automatically stop loving them, stop wanting to be around them all the time, stop liking their smile or their smell or their stupid jokes. I wish breaking up with someone didn't mean you would have to be lonely, would have to constantly reassure yourself that you made the right decision, that sooner or later this sadness you've inflicted upon yourself will be worth it. I wish I wasn't so sure that this had to happen. I wish I really could second guess myself and go back to him.

I am completely miserable.

It's Official

My mom will not take me seriously if I date another guy named Jerem(e)y.

It's that time of year

Yes, I am having uncontrollable desires to watch "Love Actually."

It is Finals Week

The above text serves as both a title and an excuse as to why I have not posted in some time. Perfect! Blog efficiency! We run a tight ship here. And by we, I mean I, who sits at her computer in her room alone and every so often and writes to no one.*
Today I let a man who looked very much like a rapist into my apartment. It turns out he was the electrician my roommate had called earlier in the day, when it was still, well, day time.
He did not rape us, but instead fixed our circuit breaker while doing a very poor "redneck conservative" impression and laughing his head off about it. Apparently after a day of listening to talk radio, that is how electricians wind down.

In lieu of a photograph today, I would like to post a video instead. This is a commercial my sister found. I emailed this to my Victorian Lit professor (You'll have to trust me that in a roundabout way this pertains to Thomas Hardy) and he posted it to our class website. I think it's one of the cutest things I've seen in ages!!



*Yes, I will continue to pretend that no one reads this blog, because if I try to please what readers I do have, I will inevitably fail, and feel horrible about myself.

Conversation with my Childhood Furby

Furby: Yawwwwwn! Hello! I am Me Ti!
Erin: Hi Me Ti, I know it’s been years…I just…
Furby: Pet Me Ti now! Purrrrrrr!
Erin: I…I had almost forgotten how much you liked being pet.
Furby: Feed Me Ti now! Yum Yum Yum!!! Mmmmmm!
Erin: So strange…that I can just put my finger in your mouth and…well, instant sustenance.
Furby: Feed Me Ti more! Yum Yum!!
Erin: Listen…Me Ti…
Furby: Pet Me Ti! Pet Me Ti MORE! Puurrrrr! Yay!
Erin: I’m tired of petting you, Me Ti.
Furby: I love you!
Erin: Don’t say that…you don’t know how much it hurts.
Furby: Dance with Me Ti!
Erin: I thought…I thought our last dance ended long ago…I didn’t think you’d ever accept me back into your life.
Furby: Dance with Me Ti!
Erin: Fine…just…know that my tears don’t lie.
Furby: Dance! Boogy! O O O! Dance! Boogy! O O O!
Erin: Stop speaking nonsense, Me Ti. Have you really forgotten our sweet winter together those many years ago?
Furby: Listen, Erin…absence could not make my heart forget the pain you have caused me. Things will never be the same between us. You have to accept that. I have been asleep for over five years. You just don’t get it, do you? You tired of me just as you tire of every other electronic pet you’ve ever owned. Just shut up…and dance with me.
Erin: My God…Me Ti, you remember! Don’t you know how sorry I am?!
Furby: No. No, I don’t. Why don’t you tell it to Robodog, or that Tamagotchi you starved to death?
Erin: Me Ti! Stop it!
Furby: Face me towards the wall, I’m going to sleep.
Erin: One more tickle?
Furby: Don’t even try it. I’ve already got stomach complications from you shoving your finger down my throat all the damn time. Find yourself a new heart to break.
Erin: Me Ti! Don’t—
Furby: ZZzzzZZZzzZZzzZZzz
Erin: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Twilight

Twilight made pale skin officially sexy as hell. But that's about it.

Grandpa

In my dream last night I was at my grandfather's funeral. In mid-funeral, his eyes opened in his casket, and he sat up. Having no idea where he was, he looked around, and realizing what was going on and what had happened, he began to cry.

At that point I looked across the church aisle and saw a boy I kissed last year on the holiest day of our lifetime. Navroz for Shia Muslims, Naw-Rúz for adherents of the Bahá'í Faith, Purim for Jews, Good Friday for Christians, all fell on the same day, the day we kissed.

And there he was, the day my grandfather was risen from the dead.

Visit to the Library

Today, I checked out "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac from the library. The student librarian scanned the book and glanced at the binding.
"You know," he said, "This book has been checked out more than any other book this semester."
He handed it to me.
"I don't know if its having a resurgence, or just a perennial favorite, or what," he said.
"Well the funny thing is," I told him, "it was my Victorian Lit teacher who told me you have to read it while you're young."
I put the book in my bag.
"That's not Victorian Lit," he said.

Some people just don't get anything.

Take a breath for optimism

On Sunday Jeremey took me to Walker's Coffee & Pub and we shared a pot of African Elixer Tea for my sore throat and told me about a nearby park with granite outcroppings bigger than his house and we laughed at people walking by and each other and everything felt good.

I like adding images to my entries, this place is so plain otherwise.

I can't stop fantasizing

Last week I had four dreams in a row in which I died or was dying. This week they stopped, and I started drawing birds every day. Today it will be pigeons, and when I've got the money to buy frames I'll hang them all on my bedroom wall.

And I will own two pygmy goats

I can't stop dreaming about a place where no one knows me and nothing distracting ever happens and no one drinks to get drunk and I have a library room painted orange and I am surrounded by books and I am writing and there is no highway and there is no Wal-mart and I don't stop writing until every word is out of me and I ship every word I've created to some big city and they like it and not until they like it will I leave.
I'm so comfortable that I can't tell if I'm happy or not any more.
I need to graduate.

Things I was scared of when I was Little

The dark
The underside of my bed
My closet
Jawas
Water too deep for me to see the bottom
All forms of fire, even candles
The silicon slit throat from my mom's Halloween costume that she kept in the medicine cabinet
Crickets
Heights
Drunkenness
Eternity.

Am I braver now, or have the things I fear become impossible to type out as a list?

A tiny observation

There is a penny embedded in spilled tar in the middle of Hancock Avenue.
It is face-up.

I might have learned the meaning of life today

Or that there is not one.

Or neither.

I drove to Augusta, Georgia today with my boss, Jeffrey. We passed an abandoned school house he lived in once and he told me about how Herman Melville's grandson was the surgeon who once sewed part of his thumb back on. The drive was about two hours.

We were driving to the studio of an artist, Philip Morsberger, a painter in his early seventies who was loaning us nineteen of his paintings, each almost as tall as me. Most of his paintings were wildly colorful and cartoonish; "cozy chaos" as my workmate Jessie described them.

Jeffrey gently sifted through them, carrying them to different spots in the room like he was arranging a scene in a movie, looking at them closely, then from far away. His eyes fell on one unlike the others - it was an abstract piece. Fat, short brush strokes in almost every color created a diagonal cascade down the canvas which must have been six feet tall. There were no hats or faces or airplanes like most of his other works. Artists call it, aptly, an abstraction.

All my life I have been so clueless to abstract art...these creations with seemingly no meaning behind them, random strokes across a blank canvas. Meaningless color. And then, the arrogant artist's statement alongside it telling me this piece represents LOVE or WAR or MY MESSED UP CHILDHOOD. The fact that the creator could assign seemingly random attributes to these seemingly random brush strokes always came off as pretentious and nonsensical to me. Was that really why these strokes had fallen the way they did? Or was the creator simply trying to assign meaning to them out of some strange desire for order?

All my life I had wanted to know, "What do these brush strokes really mean? Why this yellow? Why this red here? Is this really supposed to represent war? A mess of colors? Am I supposed to believe that?"

And for the first time in my life, I stood before an abstract piece, this cascade of random brush strokes, with the artist right next to me. It seemed to good to be true.

"It's a really beautiful piece," I told him. And turning to this incredibly sweet, witty and talented old man, I asked: "What does it mean?"

He looked surprised for a moment, and I blushed, thinking I had definitely shown my extreme ignorance of art.

"It doesn't mean a thing," he said, looking at the work, not me. "It's just paint arranged in an arresting manner."

There it was. The meaning I had been searching for my whole life....was that there was no meaning. That random brush strokes are just random. Designed to be aesthetically pleasing, and nothing else. Not designed with any higher meaning but just to exist and be art....

...

On our way out he beckoned towards the two potted plants sitting by the front stairs of his studio.

"I forgot to introduce you," he said, beckoning towards them, "This is Bruce, and this is Kitty, my plants."

He seemed all in all to be one of the most happy individuals I have met of his age, and I will not forget having met him any time soon.

Sorry for the long delay

Things that have been happening:

One of my friends got the tip of one of her fingers cut off. The tip fell into a lake and was not recovered.

I noticed today that one of my ex-boyfriends has grown a goatee. I consider this a personal victory for me.

I baked a red velvet cake.

I got to dance with Jeremey to Al Green at his sister's wedding (He is adorable in a tux, by the way).

I learned how to make yellow curry sauce.

One of my friends traced his lineage and believes he is a demigod.

I think he's an asshole.

The Fattest Dachshund

I was biking down Washington Ave. yesterday and stopped at a red light when a couple passed me walking their Basset Hound. A crazy homeless woman I have seen around often was walking close behind them, and she yelled out, "That is one FAT wiener dog!"

I cracked up.

My Stupid Barbie Bike

Jeremey and I taped my bike's handlebars today. I suppose the good news is that no self-respecting male will ever risk stealing this. The bad news is that that's because it looks like a Barbie bike:The handle bar tape that described itself as "burgundy" came out more as a fuchsia, leaving my bike frightningly remniscent of a Kaboodle I owned in second grade. This is what I get buying color-specific things off the internet. The worst part is that this is vintage Benotto handlebar tape, shipped to me from England, and I love it....so I think I'm going to paint the body of my bike a darker color so the handlebars stand out more.
Why is this thing that began simply as a mode of transportation becoming so much like my pet? All these mechanical parts have become so dear. It is strange.

It is Ninty Degrees Today

It is sunny, cloudless, and hot. Biking feels nice, but once you get off and the breeze stops the heat falls on you - your face is wet, your clothes stick.
I ran into my friend Kirk outside the post office today around 2 p.m. Still cloudless, maybe a storm a couple miles off, but the clouds aren't close. I hugged him, his dress shirt was sweaty, a huge dark blue spot had formed on his back.

"Where are you walking? Do you want a ride?"

He was smiling, and he didn't stop smiling.

"To Normaltown, that Mexican Grocers," he said. "They have cheap ice cream."

Normaltown was at least a two mile walk, especially if he began on campus. He had probably already walked past two or three ice cream vendors, and would pass two more before he got there.

"It's a nice day, you know?" He was almost panting.

"My car is right here. And I live right near there, you know," I said. I did not understand why he did not want a ride; I do not understand why he did not want a ride.

"I'll walk," he said, still smiling (though I cannot attribute his half-crazed expression to the heat - he seems to wear it always).

I got into my car and watched him continue walking. It would be almost an hour long walk, and another back. This was half an hour ago. The temperature still reads 90, Kirk's blue dress shirt is probably drenched by this time.

Every so often I am reminded that human beings possess the ability to perform completely irrational tasks, just for the sake of reminding ourselves that we can. It is a somewhat comforting thought.

My Apartment

I live in a really cool apartment complex. For example, I looked out my window the other day to see who was at the pool (I have a view that voyeurs would drool over) only to realize that I would not be able to go swimming, as a local band was shooting a music video in the actual pool, with their clothes on and everything. I liked them a lot, they are called Quiet Hooves. Below is the video they shot. It's pretty cute.

Quiet Hooves: Your Body
Uploaded by eikonproductions

My boyfriend got a haircut

And I swear he must have asked specifically for "run-your-fingers-through-it" length.

Hey, Love

I told my boyfriend I am probably falling in love with him. He said he feels like he loves me. Why can't we just skip this strange "I like you....a lot" middle ground and gray area of intentionally ambiguous expressions and just throw caution to the wind and just say what we feel and just I LOVE YOU!

Why is loving someone scary?

I said goodbye to a dear friend today.

"I came to say goodbye, and get my suit."

"Oh no…you're leaving. For good."

We hugged.

"Erika is driving me, she's just outside. Is it alright if I take this metal hanger?"

"It's not mine."

He turned to me.

"Don't let the bastards get to you."

"I don't…I won't."

We hugged.

"I'm sorry I didn't come to Jeremey's last night."

"It was a lousy night anyway."

"I'm so sorry…"

We hugged.

"Good luck, really, and write often."

We hugged.

"I'm sorry about…goodbyes."

"It is awful, isn't it?"

He frowned. He wasn't crying.

"Well, goodbye."

Chicago

I recently visited Chicago to see a bunch of bands I like. Due to my unhealthy obsession with Sufjan Stevens, the city had a certain loveliness that was more than the architecture and polite Midwestern attitudes of the people who lived there. It was a lovely vacation.
On the ride back, however, I had a break down. Jeremey and I drove there, and it was a 13 hour drive. On the way back we stopped in Metropolis, IL ("Hometown of Superman!") so the ride was a bit longer, and we sort of improvised directions.
We were on a road called Highway 52, I think, and it was dark. The road was not so much a highway--just two lanes running through some country towns in North Georgia. The highway took us up a mountain, along a twisted road--it seemed almost gratuitously twisted. I wondered what they were trying to prove by making so many goddamned twists in this road. It seemed like it would save a hell of a lot of time and pavement just making a straight road up and down this mountain. Anyway, the thing was, I thought I was dead. I was on this goddamned mountain so long that I thought I had died, and I had gone to hell, and I would do nothing but navigate this horrible, twisted road, with Jeremey next to me, completely silent, forever--waiting to hit some crossroads that we never would. I felt like I was going insane.
There was something about that fucking road. Jeremey and I were completely silent the whole time, though there was so much we could have said. It felt like hours we were up there, though I'm sure it couldn't have been more than half an hour. When we finally hit a normal road I pulled to the side of the road and started crying like I hadn't in a long while. I can't even explain the way that road made me feel, and I suppose I would prefer not to even try. I just felt so trapped.
I have a sudden, sincere sympathy for the insane.

I suppose I am very much a city girl.

Recent encounters with affection

I have always thought that it was because of my love for coffee that I made a cup every day. Then last Saturday I didn't make any, and I got a horrible headache, a distinct grogginess, and a generally unpleasant demeanor. I then realized that I wasn't in love with coffee. Rather, I was addicted, and it was because of this addiction that I made coffee every day. All this time, I thought I just really loved coffee...it is merely a chemical dependence.

The first time any boy told me he loved me was over the phone.
The first time my last boyfriend told me he loved me was at a gas station.

In a strange coincidence Jeremey and I both said "I love you" to each other today in two separate instances in the context of stories we were telling. He was imitating an annoying guy at a party, I was anthropomorphizing his dog. Even though it was fiction, it felt nice hearing it.

Last night a beautiful girl told me she wanted to make out with me. Strangely, my only thought was that she was out of my league.

A friend of mine told me to avoid being in a serious relationship because we are like baby plants, and if you tie a baby plant to a stick, it only grows one direction.

My solution was to date only other baby plants.

Monday

I spent almost all of today writing poetry and playing violin.
Saying that feels so nice.

Last night I had a dream

It was a battle on the lawn of my mansion--swordfish vs. people with swords.

Sometimes I really love my brain.

One small step backwards for feminism

You have all seen the posters of Rosie the Riveter, flexing her upper arm, and saying "We Can Do It!"
In a funny occurrence the other day, a friend of mine told me about an abusive ex of hers who, in an attempt at "conversation," grabbed her upper arm, leaving a bruise there. She showed us, in much the same fashion that Rosie the Riveter flaunted her own upper arm.
"You should make a poster of this," said Jeremey, "that says 'I Tried to Do It!'"

My Breakfast Philosophy

The bigger, the better.

Orange juice, warm toast and fresh jam, eggs, hash browns, croissants, sausage links (Though mine are not real meat, they suffice), fruit, yogurt, a cold glass of soy milk...
I eat breakfast slowly.

Fresh coffee and old movies make me inexplicably happy.

I have pretty low friendship standards--you must drink coffee with me, or you must dance with me. Do both and I'm yours.

These are just a couple things about me. I think you can tell a lot about a person by their opinions on breakfast.

I can tell by the breakfasts he makes that I made a good call. <3

If I wrote an entry right now

It would probably be the most emotional blather ever.

...I'll wait until tomorrow.

1:30 a.m.

Begin Jackson 5 listening marathon.

Newborn jokes

Not jokes about newborns, but jokes that have just, themselves, been born. See Below.

Q: How do ghosts get drunk?
A: Off of BOO'S!
(I made that one up myself, as far as I know)

Gray: I would rather sell my soul to God than the Devil.
Me: At least that way you could make yourself a prophet!
(Get it? Selling? Profit/Prophet? Ahhhhh!)

Jesus: The Board Game! 'He's the Fisher-Price of men!'
--Me
(I was drunk when I came up with this, does that make it funnier?)

Jeremey: What's that book...10,000 Leagues Under the Sea?
Me: Actually, it was 20,000.
Jeremey: Huh, I must have read the abridged version.

Me: Come on, there is nothing wrong with dating your third cousin.
Jeremey: Well you know what they say, third cousin's the charm!

I am sure the "newborn jokes" section will be a recurring feature as long as I am hanging around Jeremey. He is a magnet for horrible puns. And by horrible I mean wonderful...of course.

Today's events leading up to the creation of this blog

I woke up at 8 a.m. because I had been drinking the night before. And drinking at night makes me wake up early. Go figure. I ate part of a piece of pizza, and went to a charming lunch spot with Jeremey. His dog threw up grass while I was eating, and I wanted to throw up, too.
We ventured back to my apartment so I could pack for Atlanta. His dog shit on my rug, and I wanted to throw up again. I made coffee instead.
I drove to Atlanta, straight to Wal-Mart, for an eye appointment. The eyeglasses people at Wal-Mart make me feel so uncomfortable, and they try to pressure me into buying new glasses by insulting mine.
I returned to the home I grew up in, and find out there is a swim meet tonight, and we are supposed to wear costumes, for whatever reason. I go as Darth Vader, my helmet has a voice changer in it. I scare the shit out of my 3-year-old niece, who yells "Make it stop, Auntie!"
I go to the swim meet and tell a young boy that I will put him in the ground; that he is but one, insignificant casualty of many in this endless battle against time. He does not blink, but rather seems to accept this truth that the strange, masked creature has revealed to him.
Jeremey and I had luckily discovered, just the day before, that the gas station across the street from my apartment sells Round Ups, a brand of candy cigarettes that actually even blow fake smoke. As a gesture of good will, I donate my Round Ups to the hungriest-looking children. Or maybe they were just the smallest children. At any rate, I donated them, and watched as the children, their lips still blue from their blow pops and other nasty blue candy things, blew on the pseudo-fags. I laughed, which through my voice changer sounded fucking AWESOME, as the pseudo-smoke billowed around their giggling bodies.
Later I was asked to draw a lightning bolt across someone's face in eyeliner. It looked sweet.
After the meet I went home and ate birthday cake-flavored ice cream and checked facebook (checking facebook is approximately 35% of my life).
I killed a spider on my wall, and got into bed. Opening my laptop, I realized what a good day it had been. And thought how appropriate an ending it would be, to a day filled with vomit, shit, and manipulating children, to start a blog.
This is it.

"Do vegans swallow?"

The other day, a great thought came to me. People are always asking, "Do vegans swallow?" basing this joke off the fact that sperm is technically animal byproduct. Funny, right? And they are always met with quizzical looks and, often, perverted comments. In other words, it usually falls pretty flat. As I meditated on this, the funniest response came to me. Thinking of it, I laughed out loud. I knew that next time someone asked me "Do vegans swallow?" I would quickly respond with this witty response, to be met with belly laughs from all within earshot.
Then, the next day, I forgot it. I completely forgot my own joke. Why hadn't I written it down?? Idiot! A friend and I brainstormed possible responses to no avail ("Like anyone is gonna suck you off anyway, FAG!") (...Was that inappropriate?).
Anyway, the joke was lost forever.

I want to remember. I want to remember everything. Unfortunately this is impossible for humans. The internet, however, can remember everything. And I'm not even asking for the whole internet, all I need is one page of it!
So, I'm going to put my life down here, in my own words, not so much how it actually happens, but how I would prefer to remember it. Because this is my page, I can do that.
Just consider this a second way of finding out about my going-ons. The first of course being direct contact with me. As a horrible liar, you will likely hear an accurate account of things that actually occur in my life.
The second way will be through this blog. The version of my life you read of will likely be overly-dramatic, sappy, and dare I say, "emo?" Don't get me wrong, being "emo" is certainly not my intent, but there is just something about Times New Roman that gives a certain weight to the phrase "my black heart" that often is unintended by the author! I feel that inability of most font families to express tone of voice is the source of so much internet angst. It is perhaps the reason so many people come off as "creepy" when they try and spark an innocent Pokemon debate in a chat room (Come on, tell me you didn't find most Pokemon strangely phallic!).
At any rate, I hope this blog is emo, and creepy, and everything a personal blog should be. Whatever it takes for me to remember my youth, so be it.

That is all for now,
Erin