st. cyril and co.

roomie brigid informed me that today is not even st. valentine’s day — it’s st. cyril’s along with some other guy; the two of them created the cyrillic alphabet. this reminds me of the best response i got while peddling Roses for Valentines Day! for comotion: one girl shook her head, leaned in and whispered, “that’s pagan.”

(2nd best response: one boy walked by, shook his head, leaned in and whispered, “fuck love.”)

all that said, happy valentines day. last year on this day i woke up in a hospital, the only time in my life so far that i’ve had the pleasure. i plan on dedicating at least an hour today to being grateful for not being sick and whatever else i can think of. for instance, that comotion sold NOT JUST the 500 roses we initially procured, but a whopping 700 !! and made a tidy sum of very necessary cash too. someone even bought me a rose. thanks, someone.

i will almost definitely feel less friendly towards our roses after i spent several hours this afternoon bundling and distributing them. on the other hand, it’s not like i have anything better to do today — or anything at all, actually, for which i am (add it to the list) grateful. i am not accustomed to days where i have to be On On On without a break. i need little breaths of alone-time fresh air. but yesterday i had to a thousand things, including my film theory seminar, a job interview, and attend an opera, one after the other.

oddly, the opera revived me. a student both directed and starred in it — no mean feat. it wasn’t too long, the stars’ voices were incredible, and the story was easy to follow if a little silly because, well, it’s an opera. anyway, i was very impressed. my spirits were glad to have been buoyed and were such good sports from that point on that i rewarded them by drinking nand laughing and not concentrating on a damn thing til the wee hours of the morning.

mass., here i come!

i am going to marry this woman and have her babies. this is not even a joke. if you want to laugh, though, check her entry on the grammys.

2nd choice: carrie fisher. my heart melts. and she wanted to be dorothy parker too!

mr. a. schlesinger, of kennedy administration fame, speaks here this evening. sorenson would be cooler but, off the top of my head, i’d guess he’s been torn apart by alien devil wolves. i suppose this fella will have to do.

all today, i kept furrowing my brow at the calendar, trying to figure out why “february 11” started so many bells ringing between my ears. then of course i realized that four years ago on february 11th was the beginning of my highskool graduation weekend. the 13th was actual-graduation: ugly blue gowns, processions, hebrew songs, corny speeches. i spent 13 years of my life in that skool, yet i have the sense that my upcoming graduation on memorial day might matter even more.

which is to say, in ten years, when someone invites me to go yachting on memorial day, i will smile reflectively, brush away a tear, and sigh, “ah memorial day. the day my kingdom of swarthmore was torn from me …” then i will proceed to get rollickingly drunk, in memory of my two roommates, “irish” and “lush.”

ETA: so schlesinger is actually a groovy old pink-shirt wearing bespectacled dude. he lost a couple points in my book for inadequate audience prep (if you’re going to talk about mr. palmer of the palmer raids at swarthmore college, you have to mention that palmer is our most infamous alum). otherwise he impressed me greatly, making a solid historical case for his argument that the bush doctrine is a dangerous deviation from america’s foreign policy and that dissent in wartime has always been the norm.

i wish i’d recorded some of the quotes he used from sen. taft, presidents (t) roosevelt, eisenhower, and truman, and many others. my favorite was, and yes i know i’ve heard it before, “war never prevents anything, except peace.” also eisenhower who apparently said that if someone approached him to discuss a policy of preventative war, the president would throw that fool out of his office.

he seemed a little shaky at points (man he’s OLD) and i was nervous he wouldn’t make it, like the priest who died in the middle of that wedding i went to. his principles carried him through and for that as much as anything swarthmore rewarded him with a resounding standing ovation.

worth the wait

i knew that if i kept checking in periodically — i.e., every ten minutes — at dooce, i’d be rewarded by a heartrending, funny, beautiful essay in the style of anne lamott’s operating instructions. indeed, i was not disappointed, and you will not be either (assuming you click on that link, you fool).

like operating instructions it certainly doesn’t make me want to have a baby. but it reaffirms my belief that witty writers should crank them out, as long as it doesn’t interfere with their witty writing, in order that i may gape at them in awe and wonder at them while laughing my ass off.

remedies

i left the library this early-afternoon with my arms full of my 19th century fetish. wuthering heights, in video and novel form; northhanger abbey/persuasion in one volume; and quills, which i’ve never seen. if anyone’s interested in drooling over dresses, brooding men, and/or aberrant sexualities with me, please let me know.

i had gone in looking for a b&w soviet film i need to see for my film theory seminar. but, as the wise men say, life is like a box of chocolates, &c.

besides consuming bronte and austen and way too many saltines, i’ve been distracting myself from the gaping newness of ben’s absence with people. a delightfully bouncy Nields concert friday night, followed by a heavy-on-the-gossip, light-on-the-sleep sleepover. an epic dinner that incorporated several overlapping friend groups and locations. a truckload of inappropriate jokes i’d be embarrassed to repeat here (for example: how do you get a nun pregnant? dress her up as an altar boy! how embarrassing).

then last night the barn party which, if i’d been in the mood or dressed for it, would have been smashing. a melange of high-energy people, ranging from those i don’t know to those i’d forgotten to those i only talk to when [they’re] drunk. i snuck up to visit my old room at one point and was startled by the familiarity of the lavendar walls. i remember painting them — indeed, i have pictures — back when the barn was less intimidating because i lived there.

so here’s bullshit

the washington post editorial page piously claims to endorse gay marriage but wags a finger at the “judicial arrogance” that is “forcing gay marriage down people’s throats in undemocratic fashion.”

first of all, i wonder, how could judges force something down people’s throats in DEMOCRATIC fashion? by taking a vote? by taking turns?

that aside.

nothing makes me angrier in this debate than the argument that judges are somehow outside their rights when they make decisions based on precedent and evidence that change some detail about our society. my impression was that is exactly what they’re paid and appointed to do. this kind of thing —

Given the moral and religious anxiety many people feel on the subject and the absence of clear constitutional mandates for gay marriage, judges ought to be showing more respect for elected officials trying to make this work through a political process.

— is preposterous. judges should show respect for elected officials? i thought the legislative body was a separate and distinct entity for a reason.

politicians answer to the people. they can only be as radical as their consciences and purses allow. judges, however, have a responsibility to look forward, beyond the current political climate, and make strong, declarative decisions that pull our society forward. and hurrah for them. if judges in the 50s and 60s had bowed to that kind of pressure and waited to implement civil rights legislation until politicians/the country were “ready” for them, we’d still be living in a segregated country. well, a country even more segregated than the one we live in now.

like with civil rights legislation, of course there will opposition at first. that doesn’t mean it’s not good or just or, most importantly, the wave of the future.

who wants to celebrate may 18 with me?

i know it’s silly to be all giddy and excited, but i am giddy and excited, baby. same-sex marriage legalized in massachusetts! 1/50th of america, at least, has caught up with the most advanced parts of the world.

on the sober side of the issue, i recognize that this means the right will get inflamed and push even harder for an amendment to ban same-sex marriage. the right is in a perpetual state of near-inflamation anyway. bush has so much on his plate right now, it’s conceivable he’ll continue putting the issue off. for the first time since he came into office, according to cnn, his approval rating has dropped below 50% (to 49%, but still). the people whose minds have changed about him recently and who he needs to woo hardly seem to be the kind of people who would forgive all for a pandering-to-the-xtian-right move like that.

still, congratulations, massachusetts! you are, for the moment, my favorite state.

sweeping the nation

so kerry’s kerry-ing a majority of states this evening, but let’s be honest about what’s still on everyone’s minds. now, i didn’t watch the superbowl. at 9 pm, friends were forcibly restraining me from leaping in front of the dense pack of boys and changing the channel to sex and the city. but i’ve read enough about the boob incident to form an opinion and i feel it’s one that’s supported by the pictures linked to above: janet jackson’s breast did not expect to be exposed right then. justin timberlake 100% pure creep. if some soon-to-be-forgotten spotlight-craving jackass twenty years my junior stripped me part-naked in front of millions of people, i’d beat him to death with my microphone.

janet jackson has chosen the more peaceful, feminine apology route. that’s her right. vengeance is mine, saith the lord. i will repay.

the least she could have done is pantsed him, though. i mean come ON.

apropos of nothing, my grandmother turns 91 today. let’s hear it for my grandmother. i’ll bet she doesn’t even know who justin timberlake is.

anni-day

no matter how much i steel myself for eating alone, returning from having eaten alone leaves me downcast. these are the times when i feel like maybe it’s time to graduate, when i sit in sharples by myself looking on increasing numbers of people i don’t know or know just enough that it’s faintly embarassing that they’re seeing me by myself.

i do need to get used to it since so many of my friends have moved off-campus and since ben, who’s been my houseguest for a couple weeks and will be for one more, will be moving off, in his one way, soon. i nearly brought a book today but was waylaid by the fact that surely the only scarier thing than a stony-faced girl eating alone is that same stony-faced girl eating alone while reading dracula.

yesterday we celebrated our anni-day (3 years!), not because it was technically our anni-day but because on our technical anni-day he’ll be galavanting around europe. even if manifactured, and come on, what holiday isn’t?, the day was lovely. we watched fellini’s 8 1/2 which was a visual ballet from start to finish, and surreal and self-referential in that way i can’t get enough off. (it reminded me of one of my favorite films, all that jazz, and not coincidentally i’m sure.)

then we went into the city for mod romance: first to tritone, on 15th and south, and then across the street to bob and barbara’s. since i expected something flamboyant from the latter, the quiet, quirky scene was initially a little disappointing, but the old-skool blues/jazz band buoyed my spirits. at tritone, all was sublime. candles! music! deep-fried candy bars and pabst! the food was good and warm and cheap — our several course meal, including appetizers, main dish, side dish, drinks and dessert was less than $20 each. and we got to carve our names into the table. i reccomend it highly for your own mod romance needs.

little neurotic babies!

holy shit: the most annoying comic character ever may be getting hitched. does that mean we need to worry about potential badly-drawn offspring?

i hate it when things that are supposed to be empowering — i.e., “cathy,” the first widely published comic strip to be written by a working woman about a working woman; or, say, maureen dowd — are actually smug, snide, or irritating.

last night i meant to watch city of god, which was being shown with moderate legality on campus, but after sitting through the entirety of d.w. griffith’s intolerance, i simply couldn’t handle it. my knees cried, Not three MORE hours of being bent and stationary! my hands cried, Not three MORE hours without doodling! my eyes — well, they just cried, and yours would too, because intolerance is an epic of epic proportions, and epics are bad enough when they have sound, color, and coherent plots.

certainly, it’s better than birth of a nation, the other epic for which griffiths is known. this one doesn’t have scheming mulattos and a noble ku klux klan. it does however continue with the theme of very pale victimized childlike women and the terrible tragedies that befall them.

i don’t want to sell d.w. short. he creates a pretty amazing replica of ancient babylon and the battle scenes are direct ancestors of those of lotr. heads succeed in rolling rather believably. i’m just not a fan of his moral messages and three hours of anything can be hard to take.