Sometimes I wish you would just know when I'm feeling lonely and terrible and would call me because I hate the need that calling you would project. Whether or not it's what I'm feeling. I don't want to interrupt what you're doing. I don't like needing. And I don't like knowing that you're pretty much all that makes me happy these days. That's not fair to you, and it paints a sorry picture about my life. Dependency is bad.

Songbook

"But I'm not sure there are words to describe what happens when two voices mesh (and isn't the power and beauty and sheer perfection of a simple chord a bit, you know, Outer Limits?) All I can say is that I can hear things that aren't there, see and feel things I can't normally see and feel, and start to realize that, yes, there is such a thing as an immortal soul, or, at the very least, a unifying human consciousness, that our lives are short but have meaning."

Back in PVD

On a visit. Feels great but weird all at the same time. Dunno. Good morning! It's cold.

Tori Amos - Crucify

every finger in the room

is pointing at me

i wanna spit in their faces

then i get afraid what that could bring

i got a bowling ball in my stomach

i got a desert in my mouth

figures that my courage

would choose to sell out now

i've been looking for a savior

in these dirty streets

looking for a savior

beneath these dirty sheets

i've been raising up my hands

drive another nail in

just what god needs

one more victim

why do we crucify ourselves

every day i crucify myself

nothing i do is good enough for you

crucify myself

every day

and my heart is sick of being

in chains

Life Lesson

Being in pain/hungry does not give you the right to lash out at me. All it will do is make me angry and frustrated and less willing to help you. Complaining that "it's painful" will not make me forgive you for saying that I need to have more presence of mind and that I never think and that you're going to send me away so I can learn to think for myself.

Why do I have such a huge fear of emailing professors and inquiring about research positions? I hate putting myself out there.

From PostSecret

Ha.

I haven't updated this in a really long time. I will for real at some point. Right now, I need a job. One in Providence, preferably, for multiple reasons. Social happiness being the main one. Anyway. Nobody reads this but it'll be fun to keep up for that day 6 years from now when I find this and reread all the entries.

GAHH

People who shouldn't have existed. Or at least never made up reactions:

• Knoevenagel
• Claisen
• Aldol
• Michael
• Robinson
• Reformatsky
• Hofmann

These stupid things are kicking my ass. How am I supposed to take this exam in 2 hours when it took me 4 hours to take the practice one??

MORE Tour

I love the Tour this year. The Top 10 in the GC are so close! This has nothing to do with my own life but they're things I'm thinking about.

Amazing:

• Mikel Astarloza's stage win. I love it when someone wins a stage of the Tour for the first time. It's the highlight of their career and you can feel their excitement and joy when they cross that line and punch the sky. As fun as it is to see the salute's people plan out (see: Vinokourov rocking the baby, Contador's point and shoot), it all seems a little too cool, too noncholant. I love the huge grins and the excitement and the hugging of the reporters he's that excited.
• Lance Armstrong's comeback. When Andy Schleck attacked and brought along a bunch of the pack, including Bradley Wiggins, Contador, Andreas Kloden, and his brother Frank Shleck, Armstrong missed the acceleration boat and got left behind. But after a couple minutes away from the group, riding along with some other people, Armstrong launches his own attack and closes the gap back to the group full of Top 10 riders by himself. His acceleration was crazy. Almost Old Lance-like, but then... Old Lance wouldn't have been left behind in the first place. But he looked good.
• Kenny Van Hummel, the Lanterne Rouge, is STILL in the Tour, 3:35.54 behind Contador and 45 minutes behind the guy in front of him. I love that he hasn't given up, even in the mountains. Tomorrow will be hellacious, I hope he makes it.
  

Heartbreaking:

• Jens Voigt's high speed crash. I hate watching people crash at high speeds. While Joseba Beloki (2004) was definitely the worst (slipping on melted tar, back brakes locking up, back tire popping off, slamming onto the pavement with your hip during a descent down a mountain and shattering your femur), this still sucks. Sometimes the riders like to take their hands off the bike for a little while, take a look around. Apparently Voigt chose the wrong time to do it, his bike hit a bump, and he went flying face first into the road at around 50mph, descending down a mountain. He was apparently knocked unconscious for a couple minutes after the impact. It's no fun losing
• Cadel Evans is no good this year. Man. Come on. He was one of the favorites and is definitely just... not up to it this year. He's in 17th place, 7:23 behind Contador, and with no real way to make up that time. Disappointing.
  

One thing I'm sad about is that I don't get to watch the live coverage. I like Phil Ligget and Paul Sherwin better than the American announcers... but when did Bob Roll start pronouncing "Tour de France" correctly??

"Reverse Racism"

Booo to shots

I hate them. Nobody likes them, but really. It's not so much the initial pain of feeling the needle enter your skin (and then your muscle), but it's more so the feeling as they push down on the plunger on the syringe and you feel the vaccine-y goodness trying to enter a space that was quite happy before without any additional liquid. Bleh. Now my arm is sore and with my luck I will probably have a slight fever tonight because that always happens when I get shots. Silly immune system.

More Tour

People I was already a fan of:

• Alberto Contador, Team Astana(in the yellow! Whooo!)
• Lance Armstrong, Team Astana (seriously just impressed he's still going this strong at 37. Contador is the better rider IMO, but he's also 11 years younger. He knows he's not going to win, but he's really classy all the same)

People I am now fans of:

• Bradley Wiggins, Team Garmin-Slipstream (ummm... he's awesome.)

On a dumb note, I reallly like the argyle on the Garmin uniforms...

Also, how on EARTH can people ride up mountains for 5 hours straight?!

Guhhh

Today, I had two people say things about my weight.

I guess I need to start running again... Muhhhhhh.

WHAT THE FUCK

what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck

WHY?!?!?

Lanterne Rouge

So much respect for this guy. I hope he makes it to Paris.

A goal.

Money

• Stop spending so much of it.
  ie. stop eating at Space Market
  
• Find a job to make it.

I don't believe I've ever been so aware of how dependent I am on my parents for everything. And now I am uncomfortable with spending anything.

Stress.

Thinking about the future puts a huge knot in my stomach and then I'm pretty much paralyzed for the duration of the thought. Then I just want to curl up in a huge ball and sleep forever. It's frustrating. I know nobody ever lives the perfect life that they want to, but that's no good. I don't really want to give up trying to perform so that I can make myself a better candidate for med school.

I think I'm not taking the MCAT on Friday like I thought I would. I'm not ready. Physical sciences are the worst thing on the entire planet. I'm probably taking 2 years off before Med School. I think I need to go to grad school. I think I need to do something related to science during these next few years. I think I need to stop dreaming and face reality.

I'm pretty sure I need a better study space. This is maybe a little bit ridiculous and messy. I don't know how to be a Real Person.

I kind of wish I bought this blanket. Look at the paw! Look at its floppy ears! Isabelle actually ended up buying it... but considering it's meant for children and didn't really reach to my knees, I guess I made a good choice.

Dearest Brother

Stop being such an annoying pain in the ass. Clearly I am studying for the MCAT so that I can have some kind of future. Stop walking into the room while I am studying and trying to ask me stupid things about the wii that happens to be in the room. And when I say that "I'm trying to study, please don't talk to me" that doesn't mean it's okay for you to say "okay, I'll just mumble then" and make inane noises as you slap around the tv. You have claimed the best study room (Eric's room) with your own massive desktop computer which is why I am forced to be in the common room. You are turning 32 in 10 days. Stop acting like you're 12. Also a string of other harsh questions that I'm not going to type out because then I'll feel like a bitch.

And what the fuck are you doing right now that makes so much noise?!?!? And do you really think it's cute to walk in here and hand me a pair of headphones used to block out the noise of gunfire? Yes, I can no longer hear myself type but these really, really aren't comfortable.

BAHHHHHH

Pens! Pens! Pens!

I have lost my two favorite pens somewhere, somehow, and I am devastated. See, you may not know this about me, but I'm pretty much constantly on the lookout for the perfect pen. These past few days? I have been obsessed. An idiosyncrasy has revealed itself to me.

See, there are a lot of things to look out for when choosing a pen to use. Type of ink, for one thing. I prefer gel pens over ballpoint pens because the ink tends to flow more smoothly. Fine point over medium, and if possible, extra fine. 0.3-0.4mm extra fine. This goes for pencils, too. I cannot use 0.7mm pencils or pens or anything of the sort. 1.0mm? Blasphemy! I have only found one ballpoint pen that I really like (the Pilot Better Retractable pen [fine point]), but I can no longer find it in stores.

I blame the cultivation of this obsession on my Calculus TA during the fall of 2007 (that's right, I'm talking to you, Steffen... not that you read this) for giving me the the best pen known to man: The Pilot Hi-Tec-C (0.4mm) in Black. It's supa fine and doesn't bleed through (most) notebook pages. It also comes in a rainbow of colors ranging from Blue, Black, Blue-Black (?), Brown, Brown-Black (again, ?) Mandarin Orange, Clear Blue, Strawberry... I think there are around 27.5million different colors. Swoon!

Unfortunately, this pen is, for some reason, NOT SOLD IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

What the hell, Pilot? What makes you think this is a good idea? I used to perfectly happy with your Pilot Precise V5 and your Pilot G2 but now whenever I write with it the width of my letters seems monstrous in comparison to the fine lines I grew used to with your Hi-Tec-C (0.4) and G-Tec-C4 (0.3). You draw me in and then leave me hanging! WHY?!

Stupid pens. I have found you online, but you require a $5 shipping fee and I am cheap! (But not cheap enough to buy a bad pen.)

I'm currently using a Muji 0.38mm pen, or so it claims, but I think it's lying to me. Plus the ink shows through and then my notes look messy. I can't have those benzene rings showing all over the place. Clean! Thin! Lines! Why are you kept from me!

Oh great, now I sound like a crazy person. But honestly, a good, really good pen is hard to come by. Now excuse me while I go squander some money on pens.

headdesk

I just caught myself thinking that my iced tea sure looked similar to my filtrate in lab today. WAYYYY too much organic chemistry on the brain.

Speaking of which, is it blasphemy to say that I'm actually enjoying this class? Or at least, I think I am when we do practice problems. Because honestly I think I space out a lot during recitation and lecture so I'm not really sure. But the people I've been hanging out with are all really cool, even though I'm not entirely sure of two of their names and I'm too embarrassed to ask again and again. One of the girls is also ridiculously pretty, it's not even fair.

Then again, our first midterm is on Friday and I'm not really sure what to expect, so chances are my opinion of the class could change drastically.

Travelog

Hello from Martha's Vineyard! It is beautiful here, I'm glad I decided to actually make it out, even though I'm apparently incapable of sleeping in now even though I'm still tired. Lame.

So I did a lot of traveling yesterday to get here, which almost caused me to not come since I was afraid I'd be stranded in various places due to traffic. So I decided to ignore my ticket for a 330 Bolt bus from NY to Boston and go for 230 Fung Wah bus from NY to Boston. You know, Fung Way really isn't that different from taking Peter Pan or anything like that other than being a lot cheaper. And I guess you have to go to Chinatown to catch it. But we left and arrived pretty much on time, which is way more than I can say about most of the times I've ever taken Amtrak. I just remembered this one really delayed train trip I had coming back from Spring Break freshman year, but I'll get into that later. Maybe in another entry because I remember it pretty vividly but then this post will be too long.

The bus gets into boston around 630, 645, so I take the bus to Woods Hole at 7, and the ferry to MV at 9, finally getting here around 945. Ran into Ange, Leslie, Johannes and Van-anh on the ferry so we had to squish the four small asian girls into the backseat of Nick's civic.

Today we're having a cookout around 2ish, and then there's going to be a parade in Edgartown at around 5. Excitement! I want to go to the beach but I don't think anyone else is awake and I still need to do a lot of studying...

Quarter life crises abound. Aghhhhhhhhhh so much doubt.

Things I like about...

the Pre-Thunderstorm phase:
- how dark the sky gets
- how you can actually see the clouds advancing
- how, somehow, everything that's green appears greener
- the wind that rolls through and cools down my house
- being able to see and hear the lightning and thunder while standing on my deck w/o any danger of getting wet

Things I don't like about thunderstorms:
- my internet went down for a little while.

I like most else about them.

I want to go play in the rain but there's nobody to play with me.
I like to do things in pairs (of people).

edit:// 8:38p

Also awesome. The sky turned orange after the storm.

Blame it on the Boogie.

Man. I can't believe Michael Jackson died today from a heart attack. And sure, he was crazy and had been deteriorating for all kinds of a long time, but geez. I'd forgotten how amazing of a performer he was. Go watch youtube videos. He's incredible. The way he moves... it's ridiculous. And his songs were SO GOOD.

King of Pop, indeed. RIP MJ.

Why.

Really aggressively annoyed at the world right now for no good reason. Why. Why does everything at home just piss me off sometimes, even if it's not a big deal. Why am I too poor to just move out. I don't want to live here for a full year.

Does it mean I'm a terrible person if I laughed at this song lyric? I mean, I guess I felt really bad about it afterwords:

"I said shush girl, shut your lips.
Do the Helen Keller and talk with your hips"

Dismemberment Plan - Superpowers

I guess you could call it superpowers

But no one is going to save the world with what I've got

Random thoughts

I have a feeling this will happen a bunch. Just a string of random thoughts I had over the past half hour. In approximate chronological order. Bite size. Like a string of twitter updates.

- My parents fight slash get really passive aggressive about stupid shit all the time like how one of them forgot to buy something at the store and so the end result usually is me driving to the grocery store at 10:30p because nobody else wants to.

- I really can't back out of my driveway anymore. I don't know why it's so difficult. But between almost backing into a stone wall or almost rolling over the side of a hill, well. It involves a lot of going back into drive and readjusting the car.

- Where have all the alternative rock stations gone? Why is everything "Hit blahblahblah" playing the same songs over and over again? If I hear Birthday Sex one more time on two stations at once something is going to die. Sorry. Di-i-ie. It will probably be small. Like a bug. But still. Death.

- I apparently can't go grocery shopping without calling home 10 times to verify what kind and what quantity of lettuce, ground beef, hamburger buns, tomatoes, and cheese they want.

- Also, who the hell gets nostalgic over shopping at Stop & Shop?! This person. Right here. In the bread aisle. But oh, Super Stop & Shop in Providence, how I will miss shopping at you with a station wagon full of housemates. Oh I am such a sentimental fool.

- It took me a really long time just now to come up with the word "sentimental". That it turn reminded me that there was a song once called "Sentimental Man" by a band I couldn't remember. The Dismemberment Plan. Oh man, I haven't listened to them in a while. Mmm... gonna get back on that. Getting back on my old indie bands, yes I am.

And so now I'm going to go listen to a bunch of DP songs on youtube. Hooray for pointless blog posts.

Songs stuck in my head

I've had this short little playlist of songs rotating through my head the past few days. So I'm just going to list them and some of my favorite lyrics from it. Just because that's what's going on in my brain right now.

Folding Chair - Regina Spektor

I've got a perfect body, but sometimes I forget

I've got a perfect body, 'cause my eyelashes catch my sweat.

Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying - Belle & Sebastian

Oh, get me away from here, I'm dying

Play me a song to set me free

[...]

Said the hero in the story, it is mightier than swords

I could kill you, sure,

But I could only make you cry with these words

I'm Glad I Hitched My Apple Wagon To Your Star - Boy Least Likely To

I'm glad I hitched my apple wagon to your star

I never would have got here if I followed my heart

I didn't think much of it until it fell apart

I'm glad I hitched my apple wagon to your star

Falling Slowly - Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova

...the entire song...

Yeah. now I need to go try to jump start my car in the rain and bring it to the shop. Thrilling day ahead of me, isn't it.

patawarin mo ako, nanay

pero hindi puede ko itigil-iisip sayo. patawarin mo ako para magsulat na ito.

There was this kid that

I knew when I was younger

who would mispronounce

his words almost beyond

recognition.

Hospitals were "hopsicles"

and I was always left with the

image of an edible building or

a melting heath center

which is much more interesting and

more optimistic than the image

that comes to mind

when I think of

the real thing.

Because hospitals bring pictures

of an old woman with pneumonia

and diabetes

and a prosthesis leg

and alzheimer's disease.

An old woman who would need

to think for a minute until finally

she recognized you and remembered

what your name was.

And she'd be all sad eyes and

sagging skin and her lips

curled perpetually downward.

It would smell of antiseptics and

medicine soap and bad food and

sickness.

And all you'd hear is the murmur

and static of cable-less televisions

accompanied by the occasional

blip of a monitoring machine.

And if I could I think

that I would change it so

people would only say

"hopsicle" and never "hospital"

because sometimes I'd rather be

ignorant than remember her.

Oops

I forgot to have dinner again. This seems somehow inappropriate in relation to my previous post. But I need to stop forgetting meals/being too lazy to cook. Whoops. Going to go throw something together before going to bed...

"More to Love"? Really?

Fox has a new reality show following the format of the series "The Bachelor" called "More to Love". I'm sure you can guess at what the premise is. Promos show women discussing their fear of never being able to find love because of their weight, a couple of them breaking down on camera.

There's something very, very wrong about this show. While it's great that it's not just another dating reality show where the women all look like the same size 2 mannequin, moving to the opposite end of the spectrum and exploiting the emotions of these women to boost viewership just rubs me in the completely wrong way. Early descriptions (from around March) of the show claim that the women will be "confident and secure" but it seems like they're moving in the opposite direction with these commercials.

Why does it have to be so segregated? What a skewed vision of what the dating world in America is like. I really hate some reality tv shows. For the sake of the contestants I really hope this show won't be as bad as it seems.

Hooray capitalism.

I want the new 13" Macbook Pro so badly that it's dumb. First things first. I need a job.

Two Money

Yesterday I heard the sound of
an ice cream truck or an icee truck
driving somewhere around the park
and I had to laugh

Because even after all these years
The sound of The Entertainer on
cheap bells makes my head perk up.

And though maybe I don't run
around the house screaming for
"two money, two money!" or
fifty cents, as they're normally called
I still found myself reaching
into my bag to pull out
two dollars.

Ice cream is so much more
expensive these days

I hate these wasted days

You know. Those days where you don't leave the house because the weather sucks and there's nowhere to go anyway. Your closest friends don't live very close at all and get togethers require large amounts of planning that, unfortunately, never really seem to get done. You could be studying, but instead you waste hours upon hours reading various things on the internet. Right.

But yesterday. Yesterday was a good day. Yesterday I drove to Brooklyn and back, all by myself, for the first time. Yesterday I saw the guys I haven't seen in years and it was good. I mean, clearly not everyone was there. The group's scattered a lot since high school. But still. It's funny how sometimes it feels like everyone is different but everything is somehow still the same. I mean, sure, the activities are slightly different than high school, because we were the group that somehow missed that part of high school where you drink and smoke and all that stuff. But the conversation's still pretty much the same. We are all still huge nerds (even though Hayden is joining the Marines in October. What?).

But really. It's comforting that you can leave this for a while and still come back to it.

I wish I could still write.

I just went through a blog that I started at the end of junior year high school after taking a creative writing class. I hated that class while I was in it, thought the stories we were reading were strange and the people in the class too shallow. How shallow. I never thought in stories, my creativity seemed too stilted and small to be able to come up with an interesting plot and interesting characters. Or they would be all character and no development. No, I much preferred the outlet of writing bad teenage poetry. Mostly nonfiction. How cliche. And reading them, how depressing. But I guess that's to be expected. I find that people are seldom inspired to write poetry when things are going well.

Not all of it is sad, or bad. There were stretches of time when I'd have little bursts of inspiration, and I'd just write, every day. That just doesn't happen anymore. I miss it. The last time I wrote in it was Fall 2007, which, I guess, is expected if you know my life timeline. I wish I had joined Archi earlier, stuck with it, done the writing sessions. Because it's nice, sometimes, to try to make it all make sense in lines.

Maybe I'll repost a couple at some point. Just because I like them. I want to start up again. But lately I've felt like life goes through stages of static and chaos and I don't know what to get out of it. We'll see.

And so it begins...

When I was in eighth grade, I was really into web design. Yeah, I'm aware how weird that sounds. In fifth grade my friend and I decided it would be fun to make websites. They were really dumb. There was nothing on mine, I'm pretty sure, but a description of who I was, some animated gifs and a midi that played the Mission: Impossible theme song. Shut up, it was fifth grade.

But then I started caring about how things looked. I played with photoshop, looked up stylesheets, played around with HTML. And that's when my first blog was born. I'm pretty sure I've had at least four or five online journals since then (some of them concurrently) but they all kind of phased out of my life after a while. Does anyone remember xanga? I used that thing on and off for about 5 years.

So why am I trying to do this again? I'm not really sure. Maybe it's because recently I've been updating my twitter status around 5 times a day and it's getting a little ridiculous. Maybe I need one place to gather my thoughts and spew them all out at once. Maybe it's because I need yet another thing to distract me from thinking about the future. Maybe I was inspired by the start of another blog. Maybe I just need to start writing again.

College is done. Sure, I still need to take a few classes. And yes, at some point I will be back in school. But everything that was easy and organized and planned out for me is pretty much over. I'm an adult now. (hahahahha... right.) But seriously. This is the start of something new. And, as I now try to get the song from High School Musical out of my head after that sentence, I plan on chronicling it. Maybe no one else will care about what I have to say or want to listen to me drone on about various things happening in my life, but who cares? I'm not doing it for you. So here's to the start!