Crazed Machinations of the Failed Female

Don't forget Poland

I like how our presidential election has come down to be between a melted candle and a chimpanzee....man, I just want to hole up in a cave now and do physics problems and forget about everything else. I'd also have Wilco on full blast in the cave. Yeeaaah, that's the ticket...

I watch The Clubhouse because it stars Peter Pan

Yeah. So.....yeah. I have no excuses.

Here have a random doodle of some mermaid.

So Paul Bettany is unexpectedly sexy

I watched Wimbledon this weekend. It was entertaining, not great, about as good as romantic comedies get (discounting Love Actually and Two Weeks Notice, which along with other exceptions belong in a class of their own) but it drove home something I had never even considered before...but Paul Bettany (most recently of Master and Commander fame, as the doctor) is a VERY attractive and charming man. And DAMN, wow, that was a nice ass. Goodness. Wow. God bless the jeans and blazer look. Whew.

Now you too can smell like a corporate businessman.

Trump: the Fragrance

So it's been kind of a slow day...Wes let me play the Sims on his laptop and I made a house with Vader and Luke in it, so that's fun. I could play the Sims at home, but by golly, I'm lazy.

Dr Wycherly's class is getting into two-dimensional motion, which means that soon they'll do that lovely lovely maximum range problem. The one that takes two hours. I worked it back out again the other day, it was fun. I love that problem.

So I was thinking over the presidential candidates again and I think I'm going to have to vote for Kucinich...I can't vote for Bush and I can't vote for Kerry, and I think Nader is a lost cause (not that Kucinich isn't, but I like Kucinich better than Nader). I saw Cobb on TV the other day and I think he was alright...I don't know. I can't not vote. I wouldn't be able to live with myself. Maybe I'll just vote for my priest or something...Everything has been so crazy partisan these past elections that I feel we may undergo another party shift in the next couple of cycles...it'll be interesting...ok conservatives/pro-Bushes/liberals/pro-Kerrys, throw your comments at me all you want, it's not like I haven't heard them before and it's not like they're going to magically change my opinion this time.

Last thursday when it was raining and I had driven home in it, I was sitting in the car in my driveway listening to the rain, and watching it spatter on my windshield, and noticing that every drop made a perfect circle, brief enough that it was not distorted by gravity, at least not to the extent my eye could pick out, and then the circles were gone and there were others, then others, then others, on and on and on, thundering down on my car, so beautiful and clean and short.

This post is dedicated to Luke Skywalker: the whiniest Jedi ever.

I would say whiniest movie hero, but Spider-man is gaining on him. Don't get me wrong, I adore them both (Luke more than Spidey I suppose, but I'd take me a Spidey of my very own) but still...come on.

I broke down today. I was in Best Buy and I saw the Star Wars trilogy. I knew I shouldn't buy it but I couldn't help it...there it was gleaming in its silver widescreen case and my hand reached longingly, just to pick it up and look at it, just to admire the case...and then I couldn't put it back down, I was in love. I wanted it. I desired it. I needed it so strongly I could taste the sharp lust in my mouth.

So I bought it.

And I do not have buyer's remorse.

I am in love with Richard Feynman.

So...uh...yeah. Unfortunate, that.

Also, I made a hundred on my calc three test. Not that I'm bragging or anything. But...you know...I thought you might be curious. On how I did on my Calculus Three test. So I wanted you to know I performed perfectly. Just to be sure.

Raining and Raining and Raining and other ways hurricanes effect the non-coastal population

Someone told me that the public schools have been cancelled for today and tommorrow but I need to double-check that information (done and done, it's official)....but so far what I've heard is that Dalton State will stay open as long as the power doesn't go out...which kind of sucks but tommorrow is payday so I don't really want the campus to be closed. I worry about Nathan driving up from Atlanta though.

I love tetris.

The Joy of A Life Saved and other vaguely interesting things....

Yay! The stoplights at 2A and Pine Grove are finally working! Now I won't almost die everyday on the way to school!

My calc three test on vectors, three dimensional coordinates, quadric surfaces, and cylindrical and spherical coordinates included a question on finding the center and radius of a sphere.

I was explaining to someone how sometimes I make silly math errors on a page and said that, for example, I could multiply two and three and get six. *palm-forehead-whack*

I feel bad for leaving the math lab so early, seeing as how I was the only one around who could do the limits well and the calculus one class has their test on limits tommorrow....but I was already late for my sometimes second job.

Dr. Harrellson used the phrase "city dude" today. That is awesome.

I love how on the weather channel the people put the word action on every noun they can. "We'll get some wave action...careful for that wind action..some rain action....the wind might cause some tree action..." The last is the funniest because trees, for the most part, are stationary objects.

Tony gave me a tunafish sandwich today. Therefore Tony shall henceforth be known as Tony the Gracious.

Kevin likes to take his contacts out and type strange things at me. It's vaguely entertaining.

I had a dream the other night that certain parts we can't talk about, but there was a moment where I was filled with such love and happiness that it was like being wrapped in folds of warm cottony joy, like laying in the Brownian dust-riddled sunlight, or in the speckled, rippley light on the smooth bottom of a swimming pool.

After watching American Splendor

I don't know if it was really bleak, or really hopeful.

Brief Excursion into Fiction #2: Stargazing

Val Warner woke abruptly. He sat up straight and tensed there, conscious of the darkness spreading palpably across his skin. He breathed shallowly and open-mouthed as though tasting the night air for some scent or clue of what had woken him. His heart thrummed within his chest in tune with the vibrations that hummed in the muscles of his body. A trickle of cold sweat slid down his back; suddenly his flesh was alive with goosepimples, and he shivered.

There. His head swung to the small rectangle of moonlight that was his window, ears straining. After a moment there was another light tap of something hitting the glass and skidding away into the night.

He grabbed the sweatshirt he had tossed on the floor a few hours earlier and tugged it over his head. He shoved his feet into each leg of the loose pair of jeans he had worn for three days and from there into a battered pair of tennis shoes--no socks. Then he crossed the room in two long-legged strides and silently opened the window.

He surveyed the ground a story below--dark asphalt glowing black, moonlight streaming silver off the windows and car hoods. How strange it looked without the sick orange glow of streetlights bathing everything in unnatural day.

"Pea," he called softly. When no answer came he tried again, "Pea," as loud as he dared.

She emerged below from behind a shadow, dropping her handful of rocks. She beckoned to him lightly; her pale hand was a blinding white beneath the full moon. He frowned. He climbed carefully out his window onto the landing, and then slid down the fire ladder to drop on the ground. She cocked her head to the left and began to walk. He fell into step beside her.

"Is this important?" he scowled. "I was sleeping."

She smiled sideways at him. "You said you didn't sleep."

"Who can with you around?" he returned, blearily rubbing his eyes.

"Don't be mean, Val," she said. He wondered, not for the first time, why this was her response to everything. “I was lonely.”

He sighed and rolled his eyes upward. He paused suddenly, his gaze caught on the stars like a fly in honey. “The lights are still off,” he said quietly.

“It’ll take them a few days,” she said. She grabbed his hand. “Come on,” she ordered, and proceeded to drag him toward some unseen objective.

“Pea,” he said irritably. She didn’t answer. “Pen,” he tried instead. When that failed to work he went for broke. “Penelope.”

“Wait,” she said, “just wait a moment. You’ll see.”

“Pea-” he started, exasperated.

“Just wait,” she repeated.

He sighed for a second time but allowed her to drag him through the darkened streets. He busied himself by trying to catch enough moonlight on the face of his watch to read the time--he finally decided it was between two and three in the morning. He was glad at that moment that it was the summer and he wouldn’t have to slog out of bed in a few short hours, but the lack of air conditioning during the day made the summer heat unbearable. It was cool and clammy out at present; he could feel the night dew settling in his hair and the fabric of his clothing--tiny fingers of moisture tugging at his corners and bending them out of any shape of comfort. He shivered in displeasure.

“It‘s late,” he said. His voice sounded strange in the heavy darkness, and he immediately regretting speaking. He looked ahead and saw silvery light reflecting off a familiar sign. He hadn’t realized they were so close to the park. “I hope they fix the power soon.”

“They will,” she assured. “It was just a surge or something. The panels got overheated, maybe.”

He nodded. “Have you heard from your parents?”

She paused. “No,” she answered at length, “but the phones are down, so I’m not worried.”

He gripped her hand tighter.

“Everything will be fine,” she soothed. His insides felt as though they were moving freely within him. He swallowed against the lump in his throat and bit down the reply that phones or not her parents were already three days overdue.

They started up the hill, feet sliding on the dew covered grass of the incline. He slipped down to one knee, felt the wetness soak his jeans, and cursed loudly. She giggled at him, tugging his hand until he got to his feet. He scowled in the face or her smile. She led him to the top of the hill. They walked along the grass to the tree.

The park was in the center of town, the hill in the center of the park, and tree in the center of the grassy plain that was the hill’s apex, so that tree was the very central most point of his entire world for as long as he could remember. It used to comfort him; when he was younger he would spend long hours in the branches pretending he was king with his great realm spread beneath him. But ever since he had hit puberty that thought had grown more and more depressing. He reckoned that Penelope was the only thing that kept him there in that tiny little bubble, seen in its entirety from the boughs of an old oak.

“Pea, you know I hate it here,” he said evenly.

She did not respond. He slowed, pulling against her. She looked back at him and tugged impatiently. He stopped. There was something nagging at him.

“Val, come on,” she insisted. She tugged again.

What was it? There was something the matter, something beyond the haunt of the invisible town below them, something beyond the clammy feeling of damp hair stuck to his neck and forehead. He turned to the east and there was no glow against the sky from the next town over, ten miles distant.

“Val,” Penelope said again, and there was a warning in her tone. He recoiled and tried to pull away, but she persisted. A panic fluttered in his throat and he wrenched his hand from hers so violently he lost his balance. He hit the ground hard on his back.

Somewhere above him and to the side Penelope was laughing and there were other voices too, voices he knew of people from school and down the street and across the creek. It could have been the entire town but he could not look to see, because falling had thrown his gaze upward toward the stars and he was transfixed and abandoned.

Unnerving and beautiful they were. Never in his life had they seemed so close or bright. All at once he tried to see them in three dimensions--the stars out beyond the sky, the constellations spaced like billboards on the highway; if he could spontaneously move ten lightyears to the left the parallax would be mind-boggling--and suddenly he was painfully, horrifyingly aware of how unshielded he was, of how thin and pathetic the few miles of air above him must be, and how the only thing that kept him in that spot was the weak, tenuous grip of gravity. Vertigo closed around him; there was a wild second he thought he could feel the rotation of the Earth and was terrified he would be thrown off. He reached out as far as he could on either side and buried his fingers into the cold, damp dirt of the hilltop, and felt the Earth, his Earth, his only Earth, the love of it destroying every other emotion in his body save the fear, and the darkness--there was a haunting noise now and all the people on the hilltop were speaking sharply and loudly in tones that made him bleed. He wanted to run, but he was paralyzed; the stars were winking and blurring with his tears, and Penelope was yelling something at him in excitement or panic but he could not make out the words. He could only think of Earth, and it was Earth, his Earth, his only Earth, and the dirt was his and the tree was his and the town was his and even the darkness and the silver moon were his, but the shapes that moved among them were not his Earth; they were not his. The stars above him mocked him, for they were not his either. They were other, and they were cold and aloof, and they would never release him from their hold.

The unnatural phenomenon that is Dr Wycherly's resemblence to Tom Petty

I love Dr. Wycherly. I think he is a fantastic teacher. He really has given me a desire to learn as much as I can about physics, and I am eternally grateful for his recommendation to start working at the ACE center.

That being said.

This is Tom Petty

This is Dr. Wycherly

This is Tom Petty with Wycherly's mustache badly photoshopped on.

The funny thing about this is that it makes my Wycherly hero-worship even worse.

Another reason young people don't vote

You know, after I read this article, if I didn't know that most young people were lazy and distracted and didn't care, I'd say this would be a pretty substantial thing. But this really makes you wonder just how many of those young people who don't vote didn't try in the first place. Perhaps it is a much smaller number than statistics suggest.

To You, whatever your name is.

In the darkness of my living room at night the computer is the only lightsource. I hear a scratchy noise three feet to my left and realize that it's my cat licking the wrapper of a chocolate bar. The clock on the stove in the kitchen (which hasn't worked in six years and suddenly began to tick a week ago) ticks on a regular second-by-second interval. The chair creaks and the keyboard clicks and the tower hums and I am left in the quiet of it all suddenly overtaken by tears without knowing exactly why.

I want you here with me.

I want you here in the night to be with me. I want to wake up beside you and see your smile. I want to kiss you as I leave for work. I want to drink coffee with you in the morning, and tea with you in the evening. I want to live the everyday with you, the in-between spaces of life when you wake up and go to work and come home and eat dinner and go to sleep again...I don't want a love story, and I don't want an adventure, I want a gentle day-to-day, and I want to have it with you.

Please find me.

Please find me.

Finding no correlation

The early part of yesterday evening found me frozen in place on the couch, watching the TV in horror as image after image of that unfortunate Russian school flashed across the screen...my mother, as a teacher herself, was very upset, she had to leave and go to the LFO game to get away from the faces of the children and the screaming parents. So I sat in the house by myself and watched these things...feeling the utter absurdity of my own woes and the heaviness of my lack of ability to do anything at all, absolutely nothing besides sit there and kept my quiet, saddened, worthless vigil.

Nathan and Kevin came over when the evening lengthened past nine, and we drove to Hamilton Place to watch Garden State, a fantastic movie about losing home and finding it again that was alternately hysterical and melancholy...at one point Zach Braff's character mentions how one day he woke up to find that the house he had lived in all his life wasn't home anymore...and I understand it, feeling I am on the cusp of something, feeling like I was heading for something, reaching some summit and then failing to make it...

Then we came home (to my home, still my home) and sat near the driveway for awhile, talking in low tones and watching I-75 three miles distant, the northbound lane almost locked up by people coming up from Florida, people who had to leave home and can't go back, not yet...

And I am ashamed of my selfishness, my want for more, my desire for something of my own...should I have it, I should give it away.