And then when i walked out the door this morning it felt like summer.

[hermionesviolin]

New England weather is weird. But then again, we already knew that.

Visited the high school. Was as always. Need to go again because i missed a few people i wanna talk to.

I’m not sure if my brother’s going overboard on this Ms. Flemer thing. His letter to the head of the department is impressively professional, though. It’s vague, which is my main problem with it. I’m all about citing specific examples, and what he does is basically say in formal language that she is an unhelpful bitch and then cites lines from the Student Handbook. And his biggest issue (it seems to me anyway) is a project on which his group got a 92 and other groups got an undeservedly better grade. One group, apparently, got an A++ and offered my brother’s group one of their pluses. Now, my brother insists that it’s not about the grade, it’s about the unfairness, and i believe him, but this is not a case that endears you to people in the teaching profession, because it looks like you’re just complaining about not getting as good a grade as you wanted. However, getting more details it sounds like she was unfair. There are also a number of other stories in which it sounds like she was bitchy and unduly unhelpful. I’m not sure how much of this is her just being herself (she barks at people, even when she’s not actually mad, whatcanyado) and my brother and his people just demonizing her.

Mr. MacDonough referred to my brother’s efforts as “continuing the Sweeny tradition of taking the bull by the horns.” What have i ever done to merit inclusion in such a compliment? I don’t know, but i’m flattered nonetheless. And it reminds me that i want to talk to Joe about our plans for our former high school.

(Oh, and while we’re talking about standardized testing and minorities (okay, we weren’t, but my brother just finished taking the MCAS and has complained about that a lot, too) i now have to read The Bell Curve. Do we think i’m gonna get around to this? Along with my current magnum opus on trans issues[grr to the lack of material on said issue in Minuteman]&same-sex institutions and “safe spaces”&affirmative action&mixed-race&how it all relates, with the probable addition of other things that i find relate? And post-modernism, which relates to the opus with its multiple realities and truth of lived experience and personal created belief systems and all that? And Marxism? -- which as of now relates to nothing but my personal tendency to get obsessed, which brings us to fic and the fact that i think i squick everybody but am okay with this fact.)

And anyone who wants to rec me any NC-17 fic set anywhere in the Whedonverse which is worth reading, please do so.

I hate character development sometimes. Can’t just write people fucking. Have to develop storylines and stuff, and then the characters go and do things that weren’t in your plan and it’s just ever so frustrating. *pouts*

I can do an Irish brogue in my head real easily, but not a Southern accent. When one of your characters is supposedly Southern, this is a problem. The reverse problem is when the character who isn’t Mal starts talking like the character who is Mal.

I was going to discuss slashfic here, but then i actually went and did research and it got real long with quotage and stuff, so i’m making it a separate entry, especially since only maybe like 2 people reading this will actually care to read it.

I want to intern at SpeakOutBoston next summer. Despite the plethora of options which relate directly to my major, doing something related to The Gay is what seems most appealing currently. It occurred to me today how very little i am “out” as such. Chatted with Courtney Brown (NHS ‘03) for about an hour and at one point she asked if i’d met any cute intelligent guys and i said no. It’s not that i’m averse to meeting cute intelligent guys or that i’ve met cute intelligent girls who are currently important in that romantic way, so there wasn’t a direct need to bring it up, but i always feel like i’m hiding behind the safety of appearing straight.

Conversation with a friend:

him: so my "friends" are wanting me to go to pride with them
him: I have mixed feelings about pride
him: I understand the socially constructed need for it - visibility, community, and all that
him: I've just never felt "connected" to the "queer community"
me: Yeah, i hear that.
me: 'Course i rarely feel connected to any community, but i'm just nonsocial like that.
him: plus I'm no longer identifying as queer/gay
me: Oh?
me: so that adds another layer of exclusion
him: I'm identifying as fluid these days
me: Okay.

I really like identifying as queer ["For the past few years I have just considered myself queer. To me, queer merely means I don't fit into the dominant heterosexual paradigm. It means I can be attracted to girls, boys, both, or no one. It's a large, fluid category that goes beyond hetero/homo/bi/asexual." -Lauren Martin in her "The Mixed-Race Queer Girl Manifesto"] on a lot of levels (though the political implications are problematic). He doesn’t like Q words. *shrug*

“In case you were talking about me, can you come here for a minute?” -my brother, one-upping Michael’s “insert graceful segue here because I can’t think of one”

My mother’s father has a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) order and suchlike. Last week his heart stopped and the nurse slammed his chest and it started beating again. Now, technically she shouldn’t have done that since he has a DNR and all, but it sounds like it was really an instinctual thing. A friend mentioned, “I hear you had an incident a few days ago,” and my grandfather responded, “Yeah, I almost got the gift.” Yup, he’s definitely ready to go. Oh, and did i mention that Bob Murray is dying?

My mom’s flying to Alaska for the burial, whenever that is.

I can write Oxford their check with the money i have in the bank. The money Smith is giving me will cover all other expenses barring emergencies. This is a great relief.

(Walking down to the library for the first time last week i saw so many houses redone. Lovely. But with that money, you could send kids to college.)

“Hating corporations is like hating sex.” My dad explained that he meant that ultimately mean wishing you were never born, because it ultimately means hating where you came from. Okay, mostly i just wanted to post that one-liner, but it relates (in my head anyway) to jessikins4774’s pondering about what it says if you don’t like, wouldn’t want to be friends with, etc. your previous self and webchicky’s suggestion that you had to be that person to become the person you are today. And this deserves a fuller treatment, but i can’t write a thesis on everything ;) sometimes i’m just throwing thoughts out.

Wow, if you wanna get disillusioned about organized religion? Be part of, or merely privy to, a church council. But i’m just not up for discussing all this. So why did i mention it? I don’t know, because i like to bitch i guess. Memorial Day is in a week. Ack. One of the little boys at church will be singing a solo. Will an hour and a quarter of patriotism and religion make me wanna vom? Surely. Should i bring a notebook and rant in my LJ later? Possibly.

“I am sending good vibes and I often pray to the benevolent power of the universe to comfort you in this very deep time.” As we established, my mom isn’t up for having compassion for most anyone’s failure to quite get it. I just couldn’t believe the “deep time.” It is my new joke.

My mom said it’s not a deep time, is more like “raw pain.”

I think horrible is still coming. Right now, it's worse. Right now, I'm just trying to keep from dying.
-Buffy in “The Prom” (3.20)

I guess because her father is so little a part of my life i hadn’t thought about this must actually be a really really bad time for her. She hugged me tight and long when i got home last Saturday. Tonight we hung out on the couch for a while chatting and then i just sorta half-laid on her and after a while was totally having flashes of Buffy/Spike in “Touched.”

A bachelor who lived at home with his mother and pet cat went on a trip to Europe. Before he left he told his best friend to inform him of any emergencies. A few days after his departure, his cat climbed up on the roof, fell off and was killed. His friend immediately wired him with the message: "Your cat died!"

In a few hours he was back home, having cut short his trip in grief and anger at his friend, whom he told "Why didn't you break the news to me gradually? You know how close I was to my cat! You could have sent a message 'Your cat climbed up on the roof today', and the next day you could've written, 'Your cat fell off the roof' and let me down slowly that he died."

After a quick memorial service, the bachelor left again to continue his trip. A few days later he returns to his hotel and there is a message waiting for him from his friend. He read, "Your mother climbed up on the roof today."

Yesterday she called Naomi and left a message and then went out for a couple hours, so when she came back she joked (asking if anyone had called back), “Is my dad on the roof?” (If we wanna be technical of course, he’s been on the roof for ages; the question is whether he’s fallen off yet.) It’s the dark humor that gets us through, yo.

“People say the damndest things at funerals.” My mother says there’s a Bill Cosby routine in which he talks about putting a tape recorder inside his casket. He’ll say, “Don’t I look like myself?” (I still have difficulty believing that people actually say “Doesn’t he look like himself”at wakes.)

Upon hearing that Joe will be working Saturdays at the bookstore downtown, so i can actually pin him down with a visit (many readers will recall the saga of us trying to plan get-togethers), my mother said, “You can stalk him, like a rug.” We often add “like a rug” to the phrase “you lie,” so i knew where she was coming from, but yeah, sometimes people just aren’t thinking.

My new nickname is MuffinPimp.

My brother, purposely being on crack: “So you’re trying to make hot chocolate. Interesting choice... since you don’t like tomatoes.”

For English, my brother’s class read “To Satch” by Samuel Allen (Paul Vesey) and one of the homework questions was as follows: The speaker describes grabbing “a handfulla stars” and then pitching three strikes. If you were to go grab “a handfulla stars,” what would you then do? His answer:
“I would sell it on eBay like i sold my liver.”

From the sublime to the ridiculous.

And, Neil Gaiman:

While I was in Italy I kept noticing a phrase that repeated on the side of the bottles of Italian Mineral Water. "So-and-so's Mineral Water has a diuretic effect. Also it aids in the dilution and elimination of Uric Acid," it would say, sometimes in Italian and English, sometimes just in Italian, the phrasing changing slightly from bottle to bottle, each time as if it was promising some kind of miracle cure unique to that brand of mineral water.
I'd comment on it to Italians, every time I saw it, puzzled and delighted. "But surely, if you translate that out of impressive-phrase-on-the-side-of-the-bottle-language it means if you drink this water you will pee?" I said.

And they agreed that it did in fact mean that, and said that the Italians liked the fact it seemed to be conferring medical benefits and possible weight loss.

I think that they should go further, and put a note on the side of bottles of Italian mineral water indicating the failure to ingest such water, from those bottles or in any related form, will undoubtedly result in dehydration and inevitable death. I bet they'd clean up.

---

I wrote the following as part of a comment on a friend’s entry and figured i’d post it as a general PSA (one of these days i’m gonna make an entry of something like “Things you should know if you read my LJ,” but i probably won’t)

Don't update just because people expect it of you (or, since i admit i'm one of those people who worries if you're away for a while, just do a daily "I'm still alive. Don't wanna talk to anyone. Go away." or something) but don't censor yourself because you think people don't wanna hear it or shouldn't have to bear it or whatever. We're your friends. We listen because we want to. Everyone needs to know how much they can handle and act accordingly. I can only handle so many people i care about being in crisis and can only get deeply involved in so many situations at a time. I trust that my friends understand that just because i'm not commenting with lots of comfort and/or advice that it doesn't mean i don't care or that i don't wanna hear about it.

polymexina says that the How Much of a Smithie Are You? Quiz is woefully inadequate, and i’m inclined to agree. Feel free to add to our list of questions that would be in a better quiz.

antheia: article on the Honda commercial