"Don't, lift it!"
Exclamation, points
my tense foot;
"They're down there-
brown, monstrously small- under

foot:
drowned in the dirt
of ancestors,
named and faced long before

us, in the uncertain green.
'Where are they?'
millions, miniatures, elephant skeletons,
stuck in the space: my foot, the ground
going on, godlike and finite.

Millions of years breathe up
between my ball and my heel:
civilization, elephant after elephant,
my foot sobs

with millions of pounds of pressure.
I feel civilization
under my foot heave a sigh:
another day of endless summer,
unending worry under the sky my foot."

What are the rules about writing about true events? If, in a completely theoretical situation, I were writing directly from my own life and experiences, when would I need the permission of anybody mentioned to publish?

Is it any time that they're written about, or is it only when it's particularly unflattering?

 I'm putting the blame on someone else.

Is my best friend
My lover?
Are they
The same person?

Our friendship
Led to a kiss,
Stirring curiosity
Within me.

Aren't we
Simply friends?
No, we are
So much more.

In a different society,
She once said,
We could
Be together.

Yes, a different society,
In a different planet,
In a different dream...
Yes.

We could go,
We could fly,
We could dream,
We could love.

Really crazy thing on American Idol that my friend noticed...
If you watch David Cook's performance from Tuesday night, towards the end he's singing it a certain way, holding the mic in one hand, and holding the mic stand in the other. BUT if you watch the episode recap, when it shows him singing the end, he's singing it differently and the mic is on the mic stand in one hand! WHAT? D:


On a more random note;
Regina Spektor is cool. I'm listening to her on last.fm.

It amuses me when in all of the about-hers on various sites it always mentions how she "attended The Frisch School for 2 years" but transferred out because she "felt out of place".

It made me think about how I've changed over the past 2 years. When I transferred into Frisch (for sophomore year) I felt completely out of place. A lot of days I still do. But I guess I just learned to adapt... and I am such a different person now. In mostly good ways. Like, I'm not nearly as shy as I used to be so I find it easier to talk to people I would never have ever approached when I was a Freshman. Especially this year, I've become a sort of quasi-class-clown, (i'll never be a real one since i'm not popular). But people appreciate me more because I've opened up. (And heck, most people still won't talk to me, but who cares.) Maybe Regina Spektor just never opened up to her high school peers. Haha.

Ok, enough deep stuff for today. More useless ranting in entries to come. Whoohoo.

edit: Oh yeah, I BOUGHT TICKETS TO THE AMERICAN IDOL TOUR 2 DAYS AGO. I BOUGHT PRESALE TICKETS SO I GOT FLOOR SEATS. JULY 30TH, NEWARK, NJ, BIZNATCHES.
Yeah, I'm cool like that.
I was in the computer room at my school when I ordered them. The people on the computers next to me looked at me like I was a freak. Haha.

How do you edit?

I have spent the last couple of days editing, by hand, and am now not so excited to try and make sense of it all and enter it into the computer. Does anyone else ever feel like this, what do you do?

Tonight started off really well then it kind of devolved into sameness, but it started really well!

Latin Hustlers feat. Cate - Getaway
Ananda Project - Breaking Down (Morel's Pink Noice Vocal Mix)
Slop Shop - Blue Angel (Atomhockey mix)
E. D. Swankz - Slapping Detectives

So while I was idly googling "writing cliches" for the preceding essay I came across this little website that gives you a cliche-laden paragraph and instructs you to rewrite it. In my belief that exercises properly executed are always fun, I took them up on it. Here's the paragraph offered as cliche:

John Doe had been sleeping like the dead when his alarm clock screamed like a Banshee at him. It was 1:36 P.M., and John had planned to be up bright and early that morning. His eyelids were as heavy as lead as he wracked his brain for excuses. It had been the mother of all lost weekends. Now he had to pay the piper--he'd missed Core again, and the hand of doom was heavy upon his grade in the class.

( Here's my result )

Feel free to post your efforts in the comment section!

This started as a response to an entry of starlingthefool's but it turned into what I felt was too long (and interesting) to not necessitate a post of its own.

----------------------------------------------------

You know I don't believe in this mysticality of writing or of art. I always think that invocations -- or I read it as such anyway -- of the muse in works is more symbolic than actual, known social mores of the writer withstanding. Since a part of me likes and inhabits the literary critical side of things (I find it helpful so long as I can mostly ignore it) I have mystically-distended versions of the common phrases, listed here:

Inspiration becomes "utility"
Creative process = production
Gift = skill
Creativity = adeptness
Expression = representation
And so on.

But I don't think I have an accurate corollary to the term "muse." The muse is often seen as the demiurgic source of inspiration, or so it seems to me, spontaneously doling out simultaneous ideas and motivation for artistic deployment. Somehow "utilitron" doesn't roll off the tongue quite so easily.

I use the term "utility" instead of inspiration because "inspiration" is often bandied about to mean that thing that brings about in a moment of clarity a fit of production, the "light bulb over the head" moment that happens. It's my belief that that moment happens because a knowledge, acknowledged actively or not, of what one wants to write (or produce; I hold that these terms are pan-artistic) coupled with the decision, arrived at consciously or not, of how to execute that idea. But this is the residue of preparation; one arrives at this moment of apparent levity after having conditioned oneself to recognize how to illuminate an idea, having practiced this process in the past, and having a practiced knowledge of and being actively -- no exception here, no subconscious determinations -- in tune with what one finds interesting and worthwhile. This coupled with the recognition of what one wants as a goal of one's artistic production in general and in particular case to case. Thus, when one is struck by apparent artistic levity it is not an inspiration but rather the utilization and product of one's hopefully extensive preparation. In this way, inspiration is utility.

In the described schema, we can find three contributions that lead to a scenario of active utility (passive utility or other types of utilities I can talk about later/elsewhere): one has the conditioning to bring an idea to form; one has the awareness of taste and proclivity; and one has the general definition of how one wishes to ideally combine these two. The result is these elements' utilization. Obviously, the matter at nature is a phenomenological one, but I feel it should be divested from the nomenclature of that, both for purposes of clarity and for autonomy; in this way and others, "logic" is out as a candidate. The question is how to reverse-engineer the display of Conditioning, Awareness, and Nature. "Can" to acronym is too clunky; one wouldn't say "I'm looking for my can," or, "I am without utility of my can"; these terms are certainly to deflate or remove the mysticism of previous terms, but I don't propose them as a mockery.

I earlier thought that "proclivity" might be acceptable as certainly a grammatic rearrangement is not unprecedented in these alternate terms, but that seemed too vague and beside the point. "Knowledge" is too Socratic. What may be most immediate is to term it "wheel." This is definitely up for contradiction, but to those who espouse the existence of a muse or muse-like source remark on both its immediate utility as well as its occasional inconsistency as in "the great wheel". That I don't subscribe to the notion of "writer's block" is, in these contexts, neither here nor there. At the same time, I recognize this term's potential inadequacy and am more than open to suggestion. Maybe "suggestion" is a better term itself. But the search for definition above and forthwith is reliant upon my belief that there is no directly external causation for artistic representationship; to think so is to both limit how far the work can progress and how deeply it can be read by dint of removing or annulling, however slightly, the fabrication of the work by real, tactile hands, minds, and hearts.

Video I took of the Cell Phone Wars that happened in AP Physics today. We realized that if Ariella stood her phone on the desk and it vibrated, it would spin in a circle. So then someone else put their phone on the desk and people would call the phones to make them spin.

The good stuff starts at about 1:33 but you gotta wait until the end... Team Ariella's phone wins!! (Kenny was the one who was calling it to make it vibrate... note his enthusiastic high five).



And in case you're wondering what happened at the end...
Mr. Tarendash: You know what happens when you slam someone's phone on the floor?
Kenny *drops Ariella's phone on the floor*
Mr. Tarendash: I didn't say DROP. I said SLAM.
Kenny: I can do that, too!

Sorry for the brightness... I didn't realize the video settings were set so bright. And the sound sucks, but hey, it's just a phone, you know...

dear internets and assorted loves,

  after an intense bout of arguing with one (rather bitchy) professor i am now the proud owner of straight A's! yes, that's right. going out with a bang! you realize, dear world, that this means i graduate MAGNA CUM LAUDE! oh fuck yeah. for all the retarded bullshit i pull it turns out i'm actually fairly intelligent. ha! (it was kind of a shock to me too.)
  alas tomorrow i graduate. i went to the store today to buy brown shoes to match my brown and yellow graduation dress and instead i bought hot pink jellie sandals. i'm going to leave college in the same exact footwear i left kindergarten in? this seems fitting, given my consistent desire to dress like a 6 year old. maybe instead of my rhoda morgenstern dress i'll wear my 'I <3 DINOSAURS' shirt. maybe.
  you know, i'm going to be an adult now. or at least that's the plan. but i still really like ska and star trek. i get sidetracked by sparkles and i'll do anything if it makes me laugh. i always have dirty hands and bare feet. i talk too loud and stay up too late but never do anything productive. everything seems like a good idea at the time and i can't be bothered with consequences. i sing 'never smile at a crocodile' to myself when i get scared and i puff out my cheeks when i'm bored. i take naps and i visibly swoon. i willingly talk to strangers for g-d's sake. i guess all of this is just my way of saying that i'm scared and i feel unprepared. i'm clearly not an adult.

lovelovelove,
 samantha

ps. i got bored while i was writing and made up the world's geekiest haiku!!

shatner and nimoy
observing shabbos - 'scotty,
beam me up a minyan!'

Bloomsday is more or less right around the corner (June 16) so get your copies of Ulysses all fired up! I've thought back to the book fairly recently and fairly often. As some may know (or have known and forgotten) I had not read it last year, the first time I hadn't read it at least once a year since 2001. This will not be the case this year, however. I most certainly plan to read it (or much of it) on Bloomsday, which should be relatively easy as, since it's on a Monday this year, I will be relatively undistracted on that day. For those of you in or imminently in the Boston area, I will be planning some sort of shindig as is my usual behavior though I haven't decided which weekend to arrange it. I am leaning more towards the weekend following (20-21) for logistical reasons related to completing moving.

In a discussion of the inadequacy of terms surrounding the writing process* -- horizontally related to a conversation with Kelsey earlier today -- I had called to reference the famous line from the "Scylla and Charybdis" section of Ulysses: "The sentimentalist is he who would enjoy without incurring the immense debtorship of a thing done." In ensuring that I got the quotation right, I came across this lovely article that concerns itself with that quote in how it pertains to the definition of the quotation and what that means for the rest of the work. Read up and get those juices flowing for Bloomsday!

The following still suggest that it just may be!!!

For 3 years of constant disappointment (save for that lucky 65 last year) regarding the random number system, I have come to learn that it's not about the number.

Nasa diskarte yan.

Cool.

This is just incredibly awesome. This team of pranksters set up shop at a little league game and made it feel, both through massively increased attendance and massively increased amenities, as if it were a REAL MAJOR LEAGUE GAME. Needless to say, the kids were elated. Check this out guys, it's just incredibly awesome!