November, 2000

Look what I just figured out how to do!

I should really write these when I'm inspired to. I'm not now. I should instead be analyzing Beethoven or going to sleep so I can wake up and bake cookies for my seminar break.

today a cat licking itself on the steps outside bond, rubbing up against a girl drawing's legs. Sleep now and cookies in the morning. Genuardi's and Paul Simon, driving with laurel, this afternoon. Gado-gado for dinner and i brought the leftovers to cantatrix (we now have org space). Audivi good and half-memorized. Fifths working.

November 6, 2000, 3:00 AM

Oh my god. God. Goddess! I am so scared for the fate of this country. I'm actually a little unsure about how crucial this election is to whether I live or die, but I'm pretty sure it has a lot to do with hastening the latter. Andrew Stout, Laurel, Jenny, Ben Schack, Geoff, Paul, Amelia and I just spent two hours canvasing the campus with signs like:

"When I cast my vote Election Day, I'm voting for Ralph Nader. 'Course, there's just one little hitch. In the swing states (currently, Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin), a Green Party vote really does mean that Bush comes one vote closer to winning. While I am sensitive to the power of a symbolic protest vote, there are larger issues at stake in this election. It's true that Democrats and Republicans have grown disturbingly similar, but there are still profound differences between their agendas. If I found myself in a swing state, I'd remember the record number of executions Governor Bush has authorized in Texas, for instance, and I'd think long and hard about the bleak future of women's reproductive rights in a Republican-controlled White House. And my vote would go to Al Gore." ~ A n i D i F r a n c o Folk singer and radical activist. In The Nation, November 2000

The Republican Party wants YOU to vote for Ralph Nader. Think about it.

"Some voters say they will vote for Nader to make a statement about their disgust over a process that seems designed less for the electorate than for lobbyists and party leaders. They are right about their disgust. They are right about the process. They are wrong about the statement. Statements don't provide hot meals in poor schools, or contraceptives at family-planning clinics. Statements help a small group of people to feel pure and pious and superior for a day or two, and there is still too much need in America to waste a vote on a feeling so fleeting and meaningless." ~A n n a Q u i n d l e n columnist and liberal, in Newsweek this month

Latest electoral college count: Bush: 213 Gore: 192 Up for grabs: 133 Status of Pennsylvania: Toss-up Number of electoral votes Pennsylvania gets: 23 Your vote could decide this election.

We hit all the dorms on campus, and all the bathroom stalls. That oughta mean total visibility--everybody has to pee. And everybody has to vote! Most swatties already have, via absentee, but there are a significant number who either live in PA or who have re-registered here. In that latter case, we really don't need to target them, because if they re-registered specificallly in a swing state, they're not voting for Nader, but what the hell. Get out the message, rock the vote. I'm so scared.

Laurel and Jenny and I came up with a great game for tomorrow night. The entire campus is going to congregate in upper tarble to watch the results come in, beginning at 7:30. There are 9 swing states that are actually toss-ups, and 3 that are leaning:

toss-ups: Pennsylvania Maine Tennessee Florida Michigan Wisconsin New Mexico Oregon Iowa

leaning: Arkansas (bush) W. Virginia (bush) Missouri (bush)

for every swing state bush gets (you get to pick if you're doing the 9-state or 12-state version), you take a shot. That way, if W actually wins, we'll be too drunk to care, and will drown our sorrows in the rest of our bottles, and if Gore by some miracle wins, we'll have an excuse to party, and will celebrate. I think it's an excellent plan. Trouble is, the spirits shoppE is going to be closed election day. I doubt we'll have much trouble though.

	base 10	base 2
0	0
1	1
2	10
3	11
4	100
5	101
6	110
7	111
8	1000
9	1001
10	1010
11	1011
12	1100
13	1101
14	1110
15	1111
16	10000

Aside from election-related angst, my day has been pretty much unproductively wonderful. Or at least damn fun. I woke up, as seems to be my pattern on Mondays, well-rested and at noon. I got my ass out of bed and spent the next two and a quarter hours making cookies for seminar break (Morphology seminar started at 1:15, but the first hour of it was the useless Italian section, so i didn't feel too guilty). I brought a huge tubful of warm chocolate chip and peanut butter cookies (two separate kinds) up to Ling, and Donna Jo said, oh, you're such a wonderful person! it doesn't matter that you were late! you made us homemade cookies! :-) After which I went to Underhill to try and do the Music 40C stuff, but Malika had abuducted the one copy of the tape, so about six of us sat around doing nothing. Peter Yoo was at the desk and in a shitty mood, and asked me to work for him until close (5:15--i had class at 5:00). I said okay, and put on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, cranked up the volume all the way on the decrepit old Mac, and danced around loudly for the next hour with other stranded music 13 students. Difference was, I got paid for it. :-) Couldn't identify a minor 6th today in drill. Whatever; it was high, and i kicked ass on the harmonic dictation (i⁶ - N⁶ - viiº⁷/V - V) so i felt justified. DORKestra this evening; Beethoven IX. Goddess but i love the piece, and it's slowly coming, even if John does call french horns 'woodwinds' and bows 'sticks'. Paces with Phil afterwards, and Eve, who taught me binary. Note that every number that starts with a 1 and ends in all 0's is a power of 2 (in bold). Is that not cool? She can do this really fast and has pages of notebooks covered in counting by 3's in binary. Random skills that girl, like smoking, knitting, and rollerblading all at once. Quite a sight last year--took up knitting to try and give herself some other manual fixation that smoking, but quickly became so good at it that she found she could smoke and knit at the same time, and rollerblading was just a convenient way to get around campus, so there she'd be, whizzing by in front of Parrish, a scarf trailing out behind her, a cigarette between two fingers and long needles between two more, knitting and smoking and rollerblading. Eve. Her blue wig accompanied the binary on the back of a Paces menu tonight. (Awful vegan cheescake.) And just now by mistake managed to prove to myself (emailed Donna Jo) that the suffixes -y and -ish are not a minimal pair (affixing to derivational V. inflectional nouns, as DJ has asserted) by writing to laurel that this post going up was "angstyish," using the both of them at once. Gotta love morphology. :-)

Laurel and i just determined that one bottle of Absolut should hold the three lodge 2 girls in this endeavor tomorrow night. Even if W wins and we need to get shitfaced in order not to harm others or ourselves, we're all relatively small girls and can't do more than 3/4ths of a bottle between us. I'll try to procure it after quartet rehearsal tomorrow (which is going really well! I'm so excited for our december 9th concert!). Goddess, I'm so scared this idiot could actually win! As Phil so accurately said tonight, his dog could run the country better than W. Roe V. Wade! 3-4 supreme court justices! social security (which is a federal program, W.)! national debt! environment! aaaaaaaa!

if you have not voted, go out tomorrow and do so. DO NOT FORGET, ye responsible citizens. and look above if you need reasons to vote for a real candidate, not a clown who's fucking with a real election in a misguided attempt to shake up the political system at the expense of the environment, abortion rights, social security, the middle class and poor, and to the direct benefit of the wealthiest 1% of the nation and big oil. Bush's campaign is funding Nader ads!

Rock the vote, everybody. And don't make me finish that bottle of absolut tomorrow.

page of quiet minimalism and despair*

• Tennessee
• Ohio
• New Hampshire
• Arkansas
• West Virgina
• Missouri

meantime i have to keep going to classes and doing homework. What's the use. Bipartisan america sucks, but nader can kiss my ass--way to throw the election, dipshit. I'm restraining myself--am still speaking to my Nader friends but with some difficulty.

Cross your fingers.
Pray.

footnote: theme for the jamboree cantatrix is hosting this semester

November 11, 2000, 1:11 AM

Gaston:  LeFou, I'm afraid I've been thinking ...
LeFou: A dangerous pastime--
Gaston: I know.

I've been thinking, too, perhaps too much, perhaps too little ... Academically too little, i guess, and in all other aspects too much. Hummus on the floor. (I actually made more hummus the other night, and while i broke Laurel's blender, I don't feel as guilty as I should, because she threw away my contacts!--but i didn't spill the hummus.) No president, and I'm learning more about Florida statutes than I ever wanted to know.

But all this thinking, while it has not made a philosopher out of me (and it never will--I'm waiting till Schuldenfrei's teaching Intro before i attack that heinous, irrelevant-yet-the-basis-of-the-entire-westen-fucking-cannon subject) has produced something useful. I think. (there i go again ...): a course schedule for next semester.

	Astro 001 (pass / fail!)	Music 14	Music 31	Old English
The scientific investigation of the universe by observation and theory, including the basic notions of physics as needed in astronomical applications. Topics include astronomical instruments and radiation; the sun and planets; properties, structure, and evolution of stars; the Galaxy and extragalactic systems; the origin and evolution of the universe. Includes some evening labs.	Advanced work with chromatic harmony and tonal counterpoint.	A survey of Russian music from the early 19th century (Glinka) through Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Rimsky, and into the 20th century: Scriabin, Stravinsky, Prokofief, Shostakovich, Schnittke, Gubaidulina, and Ustvolskaya.	A study of the origins and development of English--sound, syntax, and meaning--with an initial emphasis on learning Old English. Topics may include writing and speech, a history of morphology, the changing phonology from Old to Middle English, Shakespeare's puns and wordplay, a history of sounds and spellings, modern coinages, and creoles. We range from Beowulf to Cummings, from Chaucer to Chomsky.

"...from Beowulf to Cummings, from Chaucer to Chomsky." Yeah, baby. And it's crosslisted in English and in linguistics! So it counts towards my major. That's 3 credits in my majors, and one Natural Science PDC, pass-fail. Four classes and a do-able schedule. Music 14'll kick my ass; 31 will be cool; I love languages so Old English will rock, and Jensen is teaching Astro 001 so it'll rock. ::sigh::--i'm not sure i want to be planning to take more classes right now when the ones i've got aren't going so hot, but hell, that's what one does, right? Erf. Survival.

Ce qui ne me tue pas me rend plus fort.

or something.

rereading my journal from the PYO tour this summer. I'm so glad I did that. I'm really glad I'm writing this thing in general. And that you're reading it, nameless netizen (don't throw things; i got that term from ben). I love this format, this audience, and this archive. I get to write without descending into the shit that I won't want to read later, and create a few pretty things here and there.

But anyhow. rereading this journal, and maybe I really want to study abroad in Prague. Rachel Kane and Anna Woodiwiss are there right now, and i think they're enjoying it. It seems like such an intriguing place, and a cool language (i could have a rematch with the Slavic languages!), and such history, and there'd be opportunities for music. This may be it.

blah, enough of this writing shit. obviously no jewels of prose today. i should go to bed. i'm in on a saturday night pretending to work but have actually just made tshirts that say: Jewish retirees for BUCHANAN Nov. 7, 2000 Palm Beach Co., FL with Ben Schak and Claire. Much fun but no work accomplished. Ice cream with claire at 4? Maybe i'll stay up; maybe not. I hate the sophomore slump! :-( i got striped toesocks today though :-)

joel price's 3-day-shorn head feels the same, stroked, as my black (laurel's black) velvet pants do, up. « bébé jésus en coulottes de velour » -- it's bébé djeesus een velvit paaahnts. Madame Delord, what you taught those of us who understood you. ma dame. notre dame de l'école de l'Ouest, nous qui avons vous entendu. Vous l'avez dit, « on n'est pas sérieux quand on a dix-sept ans », et moi j'avais dix-sept ans et je me suis pensée très sérieuse d'étudier Rimbaud. « Un beau soir, foin des bocks et de la limonade » -- mais moi ce soir j'ai bu un bière et un cappuccino, et un peu de gateau de plus. Les tilleuls seraient verts si nous en avions ... R. n'a pas entendu le rimbaud hier soir. i need to take more poésie française but they're not offering anything que les basic courses de littérature next semester. They'll probably offer good shit when I'm abroad (along with the entire fucking music department!) in the fall. Abroad! a broad. Dame. there is nothing like a dame ... patti and her tongue-in-cheek mockery of the patriarchy; susan mcClary and her vehement and bombastic mockery of the patriarchy (and simultaneous and unintended mockery of herself and of feminism); patti again and her blatant excoriation of the patriarchy and of men, grilling husbands. never was down with that i said and say again. ... nothing in the world ... a broad. I want to go to Prague, drink real beer, live in the city of kundera and kafka, hang out by the puddle by his house, play in the Praha Sinfonietta! i heard them do Mozart Requiem and dear goddess but it was heavenly in that small church simon and juda the clear notes confutatis ringing articulated and tight into the basilica--i played it tonight! or rather played. no italics yet. but aa! simply a gutwrenched monosyllable of hawaiian lava to express my adoration of the brilliance of tonic-dominant hanging on a neapolitan: Confutatis maledictis flammis acribus addictis, Voca me ... et de profundo lacu. Libera me de ore leonis, ne cadam in obscurum, ne absorbeat me Tartarus. la-ti-do-do-do do-ti-la-la-la vehemence for three hours tonight, and god but i love it. a tight show and joel and claire laugh. abram asks if analysis actually adds anything to your understanding of the piece and i try to explain the math in tonalities and why structure can add and become the basis for so much meaning. i desparately want to take computational methods of language in the spring, the cognitive science seminar, which would throw my perfectly-crafted schedule into Tartarus. I'll worry about that more in the morning, though. tomorrow to play the first movements of our shostakovitch and debussy, and then to practice them. peter yoo tells me i'm out of tune and i am, but not on those movements. scathing boy. good to take me down a notch or two from time to time, but not incessantly. tone it down, boy. down, boy. dmitrii the stuffed dog named after -dmitievitch shostakovitch--all russians have whats(patronymics)--on peter's bed (haydn on the toaster G4 computer). weirdness to eat today and sharples makes me cry. the comfort of purple sheets. i need to stop rubbing the nap on these velvit paaahnts and go to bed.

But before I do--or rather, before you do--check out the beautiful shrine to my car (thanks to Allison, who has yet to create a webpage or else i'd link her, for the pictures) i just created. Look! Look!

my beautiful car ...

dude, i'm fucking beat. Laurel's taking a Physics 8 test on my bed. She needs to get her laundry from Willets and wants me to come with her. I think I will out of sympathy. We ate gado-gado leftovers and toasted with them. I love ritual. How's this for a ritual: 8 hours of sleep nightly! Ha, that'll be the day at Swarthmore. I love this school but it's going to drive me insane. I'm so glad this break is coming NOW. I've needed it since Fall break. How pathetic is that. Listen to me, i'm so fucking tired i can't even close this paragraph and get to bed. Bed. bed. bed. go look at my car.

This Thanksgiving, though, has been fun--both advertently and in-. I woke up Thursday morning around 11, having of course intended to be up a couple hours earlier to finish things before driving to Haddonfield. But no tragedy; I called Richard (Tayar, who accompanied us in Italy) and postponed for half an hour. Mix tapes were more important than pies were more important than driving to New Jersey at the precise moment I awoke to Jenny in Jenny's bed and Amelia in Laurel's bed.

Jenny and I broke out all of our CDs and spread them on Laurel's bed. My six or seven pop ones--Sweet Honey, Annie Lennox, soundtrack to Reality Bites, &c.; her albumful! I need more pop(ular) CDs, but i should just burn them at this point. But they're so pretty when you spend actual money on them. I'll start assembling albums on mp3, then eventually burn some. I love my new computer.

CDs spread out and markers equally chaotically and chromatically arranged, we attacked Laurel's box. Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Joni Mitchell Hits. an unopened Sweet Honey. Mixes were made. "Thanksgiving Driving to NJ Mix 2000 (with Jenny!)." I'll give a copy to Allison; i owe her a few.

Richard was there for the last har/r of it. We tried to drive to Genuardi's ("why do you spell it one way and pronounce it another," he asks) but after the 7 minutes it took to get my car going, the store was closed. No pies for me.

Tape finished, Richard and I drove to NJ, only getting lost four times, and only making a short excursion into Delaware. We arrived perfectly on time. Total present 'round the table, Martha Stewarted with chocolate turkeys wearing pilgrim hats with our names written on them, were me, Olivia, Morgen (16), Trish and Curt (all Grubers), Mrs. Gray (O & M's grandmother), the latter's friend Fran, and Richard in his suit and tie, looking Florentine and gentlemanly. A very nice meal, both culinarily and conversationally.

We tried to leave at 8:00 PM. Richard and I bid adieux, got in my car, and then he proceeded to laugh at me and my car for the next 10 minutes while the engine ground and refused to spark, or when it did, catch. We tried at three different instances, but to no avail. Maybe my orange behemoth is afraid of the dark. O. and I drove Richard back to Swat, where i got a change of clothes and my AAA card, conveniently forgetting my catpills (allergies to the beautiful Claudia). The tape deck in their car wouldn't work but we figured out on the way back that that was because R. had been putting the tape in backwards. Ha. So Van Morrison, the Indigo Girls, Rusted Root, and the Village People accompanied our gossip back across the accidental Walt Whitman Bridge (Commodore Barry got slighted several times that evening). Came back, called families, went to sleep.

This morning AAA came and even though all garages appear to be closed till Monday, the guy agreed to tow it over to his shop and take a look at it. [added later. 16:26 pM: the car's computer is gone. I didn't know cars had computers. The guy says he can't replace the part before monday, so now I'm at Swat, just chilling and back to public transportation for a week. Oh well and :-(.]

I've figured out what "AAA" stands for--it's not an acronym; it's what you say when your car won't start. Aaa!

Cat walking across the desk. I'm allergic but i love the felinity. Must remember to wash hands before touching eyes, but i love it when they purr. I wish my car would.

Perhaps I'll console myself with cookies or ramen. Both are about equally appetizing right now. For dinner I tried to eat some of the shit that sharples served up, and gave up in favor of a bowl of green peppers and a banana. Gummy bears were on the condiment bar, and i ate a bowlful of those monsters (decapitated and decorpitated, and restuck together in random color combinations), too. So my dinner was less than satisfactory. I fuckin' hate Sharples.

It was Laurel's fault, I believe. Or maybe Jenny's. She smacked me on the back with a handful of flour in the middle of making cookies (we didn't have any butter; Galen came to our aid bearing requisite oleo around 1:30 AM). I didn't notice until Laurel pointed it out and dipped her hand in the flour. Galen says, "in the kitchen." So we migrated. Damn our tribal mentality. Abram, Jenny, Laurel, Galen, and I ended up in our little box of a kitchen throwing flour at each other, the white dust flying through the air like rosin released from an over-coated bow during the final tonic chords of Beethoven's Ninth ("I can't seem to find the tonic at the end of that piece!" Dan Blim jests about the page-long dominant-tonic alterations). Handfuls of flour pelting down, no two flakes alike. The kitchen covered finally when it all settles in a fine powder. We should have lain down and made angels. Instead we reverted into our violent four-year-old selves and threw more, stuffing it in each others' faces. Like Laurel in the Wharton-Willets snowball fight last year, when our dorm attacked hers and she was the only brave soul who came out and defended the honor of her hallmates. She took us all down, and violently!, stuffing snow in our faces and making us resort to storming through the halls, shouting for the rest of them to come out. Don't know what we would have done if they had.

Now Abram's left and Jenny's retired upstairs, and Keith has joined us--it's 3:19 AM--having called me half an hour ago inquiring about a Tom Jones run. My car's still in New Jersey (I'm trying to convince these cats (a) to come get it with me tomorrow, and (b) to still come out skinny dipping with me)--so i couldn't drive, but i offered Keith the cookies instead. A party chez Lodge Deux basement at 3:30 AM. Yeah, college. Now off to Crum Creek ...