i am a little world made cunningly

tomorrow afternoon my parents and i are going to lakeside for a bit. it is one of my favorite places, the most laid back and chill.

it’s on the lake and small and people ride bikes more than cars and it has a mini golf course and shuffleboard boards/tournaments and a little movie theater and a park with a metal slide that one year when i was 12 or so a lady gave my sister, cousin, and i some tin foil to sit on while we went down it.

it is a semi-religious gated community (or apparently a ~chautauqua~) and central to so many very specific and vivid memories for me.

the hotel lakeside with the air conditioner that dripped on my dad’s face as he slept. my cousin and sister trying and horrendously/hilariously failing to ride a rented tandem bike. going w/cousins and sister ALL BY OURSELVES to sloopy’s and ordering a pizza BY OURSELVES and eating it and paying for it BY OURSELVES and then going back to the hotel BY OURSELVES! wow! making tiger striped clay bowls and pen grips at the crafts building. watching in delight/horror as brad sherwood & colin mochrie called my parents onstage to assist them in a game of moving people. playing at the beach for too long and then going to the tiny movie theater to see star wars attack of the clones and being really irritated by my swimsuit rubbing against my sunburned shoulders. my sister not being very smart and running into the back of a car stopped at a stop sign on her bike and breaking her collarbone and the hospital having to rip off the tshirt she’d just gotten at bible camp and later eating watermelon at a cookout and chip richter giving her a signed cd for free and another anonymous person buying her a new, very nice bike which i was very peeved about because it was only her fault she got hurt and she was getting presents. the tiny black metal spiral staircase in the flamingo palace that lead to a microscopic loft where we slept and the HEAT. jumping off the pier (with life preserver) and cutting my feet on zebra mussels despite following all precautions the rusty metal warning sign had to offer. so many mayflies on buildings that i was too scared and grossed out to try to go into a bathroom. the thousands of tiny sandy glassy beads that coat the shuffleboard courts. watching fireworks over the lake perched atop the rocks at its edge and futilely trying to capture their excellence with our first, new digital camera. refusing to stay in the hoover auditorium for the sandi patty concert (that my mom was unsettlingly excited about). buying a jar of tomato sauce from sloopy’s and taking it home and using it exclusively for gross pizza bagels. buying mango flavored lip gloss at a tiny shop and sort of just eating it out of the tube because it tasted so good???

super chill

a lady came up to me in the library today and asked me if i liked her hair because she’d just gotten it cut and it was shorter than she was hoping (like maybe an inch and a half or two long) and i said it looked nice and mentioned that i have been thinking about getting mine cut short but hadn’t because i’m nervous about it. and she was very nice and weirdly adamant that it doesn’t matter and to just do it because who cares, i’m too young to care so much about things. and i told her about how long my hair used to be and that it is the shortest it has been since i was in 5th grade or so and how i had been self conscious for a long time after a bad haircut to the point where i never cut it after that for years and always wore it pulled back. and she says the same kind of things again about confidence and etc and says i should go for it and that i should ‘get some new glasses’ and that i shouldn’t be scared about being feminine and wearing more girly clothes and that looking like a woman doesn’t mean you are weak which WHAT THE HELL??? i didn’t say anything about clothing or glasses or being ashamed of how i look at ALL. my glasses are brand new and i like them a lot and i have over the past year or so been working on not caring about not looking feminine because i don’t like looking that way and i like the clothes i wear and how i look. she was being very sincere and sweet and supportive with all the rest of the hair stuff and then all that came out. i thought about it all the rest of my shift and i’m perplexed and distraught that she felt like she knew how i was feeling and that i am dumpy and just don’t have the confidence to look nicer and more like a ~girl~? what is your deal, lady?

things that happened today

• got a very very very nice and thoughtful and kind package from iain containing 20-something pg wodehouse novels and a kiva nerdfighters mug. thank you thank you thank you oh my goodness
• dropped my bike off at a shop to get it tuned up/tires replaced so i can RIDE IT
• started a joan didion book (to be finished today)
• helped clean up our backyard and beds for growing things in
• thought about what foods i want to grow back there (salsa garden + strawberries??)
• took a walk around the neighborhood while listening to the new tal episode
• got a salad at wendy’s that was so big i could not even finish two thirds of it
• made a! strawberry cherry blueberry banana orange smoothie!!
• drank it while typing this

the only thing i have to say about ~marriage reform~ is i can’t believe how surprised people on the internet are that bigoted, closed-minded people still exist. they do! they are all around you! and lots of them are not that way because they think that gay marriages will destroy america! unfortunately it is a lot more complicated than that and their beliefs much more deep-seated. nearly all the people i grew up with and went to school with are conservative baptists. and most of them think that being gay is a sin. like other sins. murder etc. so they believe that for the govt to deem gay marriage okay would be like if they said those other things were ok. they see it as a ‘lifestyle choice’ that is sinful. they don’t hate gay people, they hate the sin, and that is what god hates too. that is what they say, but in practice and for the way it looks there’s not much difference between the two. lots of pity and head shaking, a need to show people the error of their ways and lead them (back) to god & righteous living. really fd up good intentions that are not good at all OBVIOUSLY. there are lots and lots and lots of loving kindhearted people who believe these things and it doesn’t make any sense to me that people are so insanely disbelieving of their existence? it sucks but also on the other hand to get all pissy about the exact way people are showing their support of lgbt issues is pretty wrongheaded imo when this is the overall state of things. yes there are lots of more active and helpful ways that people could get involved but please please not all people are as informed you and shouting them down and shaming them for their attempts to become more vocal is toxic and unhelpful in my opinion. gentle education and explanation and empathy and care is the way to go forward with this stuff my friends

i feel like i am a weird position of liminality between pro and anti here and it’s very strange and uncomfortable because i can understand both sides while also very much not agreeing with the latter. i can never work what i want to say into clear enough words to combat a lot of what those people say and the way they use the bible to back up their claims though and that is really frustrating & poop.

be kind/peace out

perfect albums

[[i’ve been sitting on this list as a draft for months or maybe years. i’m too lazy to do anything more with it at the moment so just please listen to whichever of these you like or ALL of them; they are PERFECT and i love each of them very very much]]

Here are some good dang albums. I will add to this as I remember/discover them.

andrew jackson jihad - can’t maintain

this album is the best ajj record imo (maybe besides ppl). rockier folk. if you are feeling like you are a terrible horrible selfish messed up person, ajj has got yr back

fav track - self esteem

architecture in helsinki - places like this

i don’t even know what kind of music this should be called. it is insane freak outy big soaring screaming dance party australian fun. i went to a concert of theirs before i knew their music and it was the best concert time i have ever had, i think. and that is pretty impressive for not even being able to like sing along to any of the songs. THAT MUCH FUN.

fav track - hold music (but also like it or not & debbie)

franz ferdinand - you could have it so much better

every single song on this is perfect and none are weak and that is kind of amazing. if i wanna get riled up i listen to this.

fav track - this boy

ghost mice - europe

this album is about chris and hannah’s travels around europe. they didn’t plan very much of it and they sleep outside and in weird places and scrounge for food a lot. each song is a different country or place they visited and the album leads you through their whole journey. it is very cute and chris is good at telling stories so it is quite captivating to listen to; you have to listen to it all the way through at one time.

fav track - all of them together

the heligoats - goodness gracious

matty pop chart - good old water

the mountain goats - we shall all be healed

nana grizol - love it! love it!

neutral milk hotel - in the aeroplane over the sea

perfume genius - put your back n 2 it

sleigh bells - treats

sparks - angst in my pants

spoonboy - i love you, this is a robbery

the thermals - the body the blood the machine

why? - alopecia

why? - elephant eyelash

last night after ice skating i went to a play for a class (media criticism) (went like a week earlier than we were ideally supposed to because the dates next week don’t work for me so it’s going to be really hard to remember everything from the play and we haven’t even ~learned~ what to look for/think about while viewing things in order to write a good review) and my professor and his wife were there and i sat next to them and they offered to drive me to the rapid station which was very very nice and on the way there we talked about the play a bit and i said that i pretty much like everything until someone says it’s bad and he was like haha hmm. it is hard for me to have opinions! i don’t feel qualified to say anything about anything ever! and i liked the play a lot (this). it was written in 2011 and has not been performed many places yet and the playwright was there & i could see him watching the play which was kind of cool. i’m glad i’ve taken a class or two to do with theater or i would be even more worried about being able to say stuff critically. i hope my notes will be good enough to allow me to remember at least the freakin plot of the play; it dealt with how position/privilege/station/involvement clouds and warps memory and perception of the past so the same scenes were gone over a couple times in different ways. the couple actors whose performances i’d decided i liked the least were the ones my prof and his wife agreed were strongest and most affecting, so huh.

i have to start a review of v for vendetta for tuesday too and i don’t care about that movie, it was weirdly cheesy and i was just repulsed by all the guy fawkes masks the whole time and in love with stephen fry and that was all.

i’m watching an idiot abroad 3 and warwick and karl are in varanasi on a boat in the ganges and when i saw it i started to cry because i’ve read so much about it in “deep river” by sushaku endo and in other research for some papers and read lots of beautiful descriptions of it and life and death mingled together in the river and a lot of transcendent stuff and water metaphors/similes are my favorite and i’d never seen a picture of video of what it actually looked like and it was amazing and moving in spite of/despite karl’s whining about people ripping off other people by charging them more for special cremation wood.

humanity humanity humanity

we’re doing a deep cleaning and rearranging of my sister and i’s bedroom and my mom and i were discussing the arrangement of furniture in there before we got the bunk bed—i insisted that my old bed used to be against one wall under the window and she didn’t believe me. i said i knew it was because at night i would look across the room at our built in bookshelves at a spot around its trim where the paint didn’t fill in, which left a black gap and i’d thought it was a big black caterpillar almost every night and was really scared by it—i knew it was just a paintless bubble but that didn’t matter because it was also a bug i could see slowly crawling up the side of the molding and it was very very scary and was always there. i also knew, i said, that the bed used to be there because i was afraid of the noises the train made and would smash myself between the mattress and the wall and rub my blankie and try not to hear the whistles and my mom just looked at me so sad and alarmed and said “why didn’t you TELL me?” and i don’t know why; it was just My Little Childhood Burden

since 2009 on twitter i have used the hashtag #dadtweets to record the stuff my dad says. thanks to backupmytweets i have them all; there are 112 as of now and they are under the cut. please enjoy. he’s weird.

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