My Crappy Day, plus random stuff

[inmyriadbits]

This morning was fine, and then I hurt myself, and the day was downhill from there. I woke up too late to eat breakfast before my first class, which always sucks because the dining hall closes half an hour before it ends and doesn't open again until an hour after, so I can't eat until lunchtime. But I like the class (History of the Modern Middle East), and the professor looks eerily like Gregory House (back me up, here, Katie; or see Exhibit A, B, and C) along with being a good lecturer, so it didn't bother me too much. But then, I was just sitting at my computer, about to go take a shower and eat lunch, when I turn my head and feel a sharp pain start in my trapezius on the upper right side, then run all the way up my neck and down my arm and across my back. It fucking hurt. I had class in half an hour, but by the time I went down to Health Services and waited for someone (since I didn't have an appointment; I didn't know my muscles were going to flip out on me) and got the heat pack and anti-inflammatory medicine they insisted on giving me, I had five minutes to get back to my room, change, get my shit together, and walk to the other end of campus. So when my back said "Hell, no," I was like "But...okay," and fell asleep for an hour. I then realized that I had to go to work, and the idea of taking the subway 65 blocks and walking through Harlem and dealing with a dozen fourth graders for three hours made me want to cry, so I called in sick and fell asleep again. Then, I woke up to a fire alarm on our floor going off, joined moments later by the main alarm, so I threw on clothes and my slippers and went with Emily (a fellow Austinite) to get coffee instead of allowing ourselves to be herded into the gym. She kept making me laugh, because Emily is crazy in the best way, but it hurt my back to laugh, which was just pathetic. Anyway, I ended up not getting to the dining hall until about five minutes before closing, so all I've eaten all day (other than Oreos, a juice box, and apple sauce) is a bowl of soup and a roll, because I had to grab something fast while they were packing up. These are the times I miss having a family member around to give me a backrub

So now all I want to do is sit here with my cramp-cure hot patch on my back and watch TV and sleep instead of reading Freud for my 9:10 class tomorrow. Which is bad, because I didn't do work last night either, because I spent 4 1/2 hours writing an emotionally stressful but cathartic letter to Angie, then tried to distract Leigh from worrying about her best friend Sarah in south Texas whose mother kicked her out of the house, and watched Due South to recover from that instead of doing my work.


So, I was going through some files on my computer and found all these things I've written in Notepad while offline and forgotten to post until now. Most of the later things are like, a sentence. The cuts are mostly for organizational purposes, not actually length.

, from geekwriter143
Simply put your iPod or iTunes or whatever on shuffle and pose these questions aloud. After each one, jump in the random playlist. The title of the song is the answer to the question ... although sometimes the first line or something is a better choice.

1. What do you think of me, iTunes?
"In The Lord's Arms" by Ben Harper: "Like the wings stolen from an angel / Like petals gone from a rose / Like a dove caught in a storm..."

2. Will I have a happy life?
"We Gotta Live Together" by Jimi Hendrix

3. What do my friends really think of me?
"How Come You Don't Call Me" by Alicia Keys

4. Do people secretly lust after me?
"Si Tu N'Étais Pas Là" by Frehel (from the "Amelie" soundtrack; means "If You Weren't There")

Translation of the chorus that I found:
"Si tu n'etais pas là / Comment pourrais-je vivre? / Je ne connaitrais pas / Ce bonheur qui m'enivre / Quand je suis dans tes bras / Mon coeur joyeux se livre / comment pourrais-je vivre / si tu n'etais pas là."
It (roughly) means: "If you were not here / How could I live? / I don't understand / this happiness which intoxicates me / When I am in your arms / My joyful heart comes to life / how could I live / if you were not here?"

5. How can I make myself happy?
"Deep Inside of You" by Third Eye Blind

6. What should I do with my life?
"Other Possibilities" from the Chocolat Soundtrack

7. Why must life be so full of pain?
"Pretty Boy Floyd" by The Byrds (Woody Guthrie cover): "As through this life you travel you meet some funny men / Some will rob you with a six-gun and some with a fountain pen / As through this life you ramble, as through this life you roam / You´ll never see an outlaw take a family from their home."

8. How can I maximize my pleasure during sex?
"I Love You" by Sarah McLachlan

9. Will I ever have children?
"Cumbia Sampuesina" by Conjunto Tipico Vallenato

10. Will I die happy?
"Peaceful Easy Feeling" by the Eagles (live 1994)

11. Can you give me some advice?
"Samson and Delilah" by Reverend Gary Davis

12. What do you think happiness is?
"Lagan" by Afro Celt Sound System

13. What's my favorite fetish?
"Cold Shot" by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble



I remember getting the cut on my eyebrow when I was little and climbing around on our bunk beds. I slipped and sliced it open on the corner of the bed. We went to the doctor, who told up I didn't need stitches and put on a butterfly bandage, which is the only time I've ever needed one of those. My scar is right underneath my eyebrow hairs, at a slightly flatter angle. It makes my eyebrows not the same shape, which I like to think gives my face character. If you notice it.



I love this line from "Meet Virginia" by Train: "She only drinks coffee at midnight, when the moment is not right, and the timing is quite unusual." That song and "Georgia" by Jackie Greene ("She has a tattooed rose she ain’t afraid to show / Yeah she drinks, she spits, she curses / She drives sloppy drunk down a one way street / She keeps a whiskey bottle by her bed / and a pistol in her purse, / and she can drive a strong man down to his beggin' knees") remind me of each other.



You know what I find odd? That people, in the case of an apocalypse, would take the time to spraypaint "THE END IS HERE" on walls.



OMG, they're selling Mal's brown coat. Oh, for several thousand dollars to spend... I'm really curious how much it will actually go for.



We went to see The Dying Gaul at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema in the Lower East Side (where I'd been once before to see Mirrormask with Erin, fellow Neil Gaiman fan, creator of the excellent "All Of My Role Models Are From Tamora Pierce Novels" Facebook group and, until that point, an almost-complete stranger met over Facebook).

Hearing the director speak at the end was interesting. I'm always interested in the contrasting interpretations of audience and creator. He was sort of hyper and tangent-y and very excited about everything, which was endearing. One of the things he said really stuck with me; when discussing the last scene, he said something about only the conqueror having the ability to feel compassion for the conquered. It stuck with me enough that I wanted to bring it up during my Women's & Gender Studies discussion section when we were talking about relations between race-oriented activist groups.



The noise the construction outside my window makes is quite eerily like the noise the TARDIS makes in Doctor Who. It's distracting.

I'm also looking at the list of You Know You're Obsessed With Doctor Who post on time_and_chips...and that's me. Um. A lot.

***present-day addition to this section: I was really excited to find that Christie (girl who lives a couple doors down)'s Scottish boyfriend Marcus (who I randomly met once while watching the Pride & Prejudice BBC miniseries on the Sulzberger lobby TV, started talking to, and deduced was Christie's boyfriend from the three things I found out in that short time: that he was a) Scottish, b) named Marcus, and c) waiting for takeout in the Barnard dorms) is also a geek and fan of Doctor Who. We had a conversation about it at Casbah (Rouge, a hookah bar near school that Everyone goes to), which just solidifies that I am a giant nerd, because we talked about what he thought of David Tennant and Christopher Eccleston and the techniques used to ease the transition to the tenth Doctor and that his favorite Doctor is the seventh and that it sucks waiting for the new season but rocks that Sarah Jane is coming back and that there's a shot of Rose kissing the Doctor in the previews, all while in a hookah bar in 'effing New York City while we were drinking, and ended the conversation with him warning me to look out for murderous Christmas trees and both of us laughing like crazy people.



Some might think it incongruous (Bethany, is it a bad sign that I typed that word and thought "Gryla!"?) that my roommate has cheerful Christmas lights strung up across her giant posters of Sin City, Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, and Snape, but it just makes me rather happy.



Yesterday was a day of coincidences.

It started when I woke up and walked out the door to brush my teeth and use the restroom...and the door to my dorm room locked behind me. With my key, my school stuff, and all my clothes that aren't a pair of boxers and a camisole, inside the room. I had to go across the hall to Paola and Bethany's room (waking Paola up in the process) to use Paola's cell to call Bethany. The coincidence is that Bethany happened to be with Emily, who luckily had enough time to come open our room for me. The trend only continued in Dance in NYC, when Jancy was about fifteen minutes late to class due to a lab running over, only to luck out since Katie (Professor Glasner to those not lucky enough to be her advisees) spent that time going through the roll to confirm ticket purchase numbers. Then, that night, I went swing dancing with the CU Swing group (I went to their first class(es) Wednesday night, and they're super nice) at this dance on 31st and 8th Ave called Frim Fram at Club 412. I walk in, and who do I see almost immediately? Mike Lenneville, who taught me lindy hop back home in Austin, and his girlfriend Katy, who I've known since I was really little and she was my Emma's best friend. And then, on the subway ride home, we ran into this girl Olivia who I met back in March while visiting Jancy at Barnard. She was with her friend and boyfriend, and they'd just finished a bartending job and had acquired several bottles of wine and two leftover cases of beer, which they offered to us. Which was great, because I'd just been thinking that a drink would finish off the night really nicely. It was quite a experience drinking a beer in a New York subway car between 34th and 116th.



I really love fan fiction. Sometimes it just brings out these things about the characters that you just sit there and go "wow, I never thought about it that way, but that's so true" about. For example, Due South, since I've been reading a ridiculous amount of DS fic recently. There's this one fic called Eight Sessions by Speranza, who is a veritable DS fic goddess. It's a great fic; Ray and Fraser have to go through therapy after a particularly bad shootout, and since anyone who watches the show knows just how profoundly screwed up Fraser is on an emotional level, it's bound to be interesting right there. Anyway, more specifically, I had one of those "wow" moments while reading this fic. Ray and Fraser are meeting the union rep to talk about the inquiry:

"Flannery looked over his shoulder at Fraser, and Ray could see instantly that Flannery didn't think much of him. He mistook Fraser for being richer and whiter than he was, which was always the problem with Fraser, when in fact Fraser had less money and education than most of them. If Fraser'd been an American G.I., he'd've opened his mouth and had himself a decent southern twang, which would've given Flannery the right picture: poor white kid, military family, low-level soldier. Except what did Flannery know from a rank like Constable, plus Fraser's big words tended to put people off.

Whatever; he'd deal with it. "This is my partner, Constable Benton Fraser, Royal Canadian Mounted Police," Ray told Flannery, and really, that "Royal" didn't help either, though not like it was Fraser who was royalty."

I remember reading that and just being really struck by it, because really, it's so true. Fraser comes across as a benificent do-gooder, and with his neat haircut and tidy uniform and his hat, he seems as anachronistic and well-put-together as a fancy gentleman of old, an impression compounded by his diction and posture and manners and adherence to etiquette. But he really is a poor country boy who grew up lonely, without a mother, with a father who essentially abandoned him, raised by strict grandparents who travelled a lot with their library. I mean, this is the guy who started shaking his father's hand goodbye at the age of 7, who talks to his deaf wolf more than to human beings, who had his heart stomped on by the woman he loved, who was basically kicked out of his home country simply for doing the right thing. He's an orphan and a loner and was a freak even among his fellow Mounties back in Canada, but no one sees that when they look at him. They see a well-groomed, well-spoken, handsome man in a nice suit with perfect manners, impressive detective skills, and a passion for justice. They don't see the lonely guy who has a hard time trusting people, who lost his whole family, who lost his home. That's what gets me every time about this show; Fraser is so lonely, and it just gets to me when his new friends reach out to him, or when they don't. The show may be funny as all get-out at times, but it's really about loss and recovery and friendship more than anything. It has that element of the found-family that Joss Whedon does over and over, in Firefly and Buffy and Angel, of creating the family you need and who need you rather than the one that life gave you.

They miss the Fraser that lives under all that surface stuff, the one who makes little digs that are so subtle and arbitrary that they fly right past most people, who opens a door into the crotch of a man who is dating his partner's ex-wife and then turns around and opens the rear door of the car for him and apologizes and pretends he didn't mean to, who plants post-hypnotic suggestions that make said partner apologize when he says "cauliflower." And that's just a shame, because I love that guy.


On a last note, I just came from hanging out with Lydia and Julia and Christie down the hall. It's Julia's birthday today, and at midnight Lydia led a contingent of friends into the bathroom where she was taking a shower and surprised her with cake and song. They have the cutest video footage of it ever. I came too late for the shower part, but I think I got the better end of the bargain: toasting to Julia's health in Ukrainian ("Nah zdo-rrov-yah"; Lydia has Ukrainian heritage) with a shot of vodka, helping them eat the cake, and hanging out with Lydia, Christie, and Julia and talking about Eastern Europe (Christie is the daughter of diplomats and has lived in Serbia and Poland and Rome and Belgrade). My day has gotten significantly better.

Comments

[geekwriter143.livejournal.com]

OMG, yes, I love Eight Sessions for all those reasons you just listed, because Fraser really is so much more than "The Mountie" and very people can see that. I happen to think Ray sees it, which is just one of the oh-so-many reasons they're meant for each other.

[geekwriter143.livejournal.com]

Apparently I can't type tonight. That should be "very *few* people can see that."

And I'm sorry about your shoulder--that sucks. I did that yesterday with my leg and spent the whole day hobbling around like a weirdo.

[inmyriadbits.livejournal.com]

My sister and I adore DS. All I have to do to get Katie laughing is say "Loooooouuu Skagnetty!", and when I'm angry and ranting, she'll interrupt with "cauliflower," and I just can't be mad anymore.

Yeah, I love Eight Sessions. It's one of my favorites of Speranza's many great fics. And I agree that Ray sees Fraser as a person rather than as his job or as an ideal, which is a great boon to Fraser, IMO. There's a series of books by Lois McMaster Bujold that I love, and there's a line in one of them about one of the characters that I think applies to Fraser as well. It says something like "She trusts beyond all reason, which is how she gets results beyond all hope." Fraser does this, too; he trusts the good in people and expects them to live up to that, and many of the people he encounters surprise themselves and everyone else by doing just that. It's not that he's naive, although he comes across that way sometimes; it's just that he possesses unparalleled idealism and optimism. Unfortunately, I think that while this approach to life helps people greatly in the situations he meets them in, when turned upon himself, it's rather unhealthy. Fraser expects so much of others, and even more of himself, and that kind of perfection is just not possible, which leaves him feeling constantly inadequate. Ray is a good balance for this; he is very aware of being flawed, and is reconciled with that fact. Fraser gives Ray strength through a sincere, trust-beyond-reason kind of belief in him (one of my favorite moments being in "Asylum"), and Ray lets Fraser know that he's allowed to be imperfect. Other people see Fraser as the person he strives to be, because they don't bother to look beyond what he shows to the world, beyond the behavior he struggles to adhere to.

Another of Speranza's fics, Scrabble, makes a good point along these lines. Although I don't entirely agree with her characterization of Fraser in the story, I think the structure is brilliant, and there's one bit of character commentary I *really* liked. Ray is watching a documentary on John Lennon and musing about how Lennon was abusive and did drugs, then says:

"Now a lot of people can't handle this--it upsets them, ruins the image. But it makes sense to me. 'Course the guy was a peacenick--Give Peace A Chance, All You Need Is Love, Imagine. Way I figure it, you only crave peace like that if you ain't got any. It's McCartney, essentially a poofter, who writes Helter-Skelter--ooh, tough guy, I'm so scared. Bite me.

So see, Fraser's just like Lennon, or that's how I see it anyway. The guy's so into order because he's disordered. Follows rules cause he ain't got any of his own. We all want what we haven't got, and Fraser's no different, I think. See what he shows you, and you know what he ain't.

Now, besides the excellent Ray voice, that's just so spot-on it's scary. I mean, there are other factors that contribute to Fraser's behavior, like his military background and his well-mannered upbringing and his isolation, but that's a lot of it right there, in what Ray said. Ray knows Fraser's not perfect, because he bothers to see the whole guy instead of the red suit, and is his partner no matter what.

Hmm. That was rather long, wasn't it? Anyway, to sum up, I love that icon, I agree with everything you've said about CKR being fantastic, and my shoulder feels a lot better today, which is good, because having to turn your entire body towards someone instead of just your head is a real pain in the...neck. :) I hope your hobbling has gone away as well.

[maribouquet.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. How is your back today?

[inmyriadbits.livejournal.com]

It's much better today, thanks. :)

[maribouquet.livejournal.com]

Glad to hear it. Back pain is no fun, no fun at all. (Go me for the most obvious statement of the day.)

[inmyriadbits.livejournal.com]

*gives award* :)

[spatz.livejournal.com]

Awww, honey! I would give you a long-distance backrub if I could, but teleportation is not yet possible either, so have a hug.

Darn you, being in New York where I can't grin at you for being adorable. Christmas lights over Snape and end-of-the-world grafitti...

Dude, you should email that thinkiness to Speranza (and the bit below), because if I got feedback like that, it would make my day for a WEEK. Also, word.

I need to read Last of the Mohicans, not DS fic. Curses, foiled again in my academic pursuits.

Look! I used my clone icon just for you!

[inmyriadbits.livejournal.com]

Right, because giving me an actual hug wouldn't require teleportation at all... and you can still grin, I just won't see it.

I emailed her. Like, right after I read that, before I lost my nerve/talked myself out of it. "Also, word." *grins*

Aww, how sweet, the clone icon of my clone sister. I ((heart)) Michael Welch, and he was especially amazing in that role.

Hey, you remember that movie "The Librarian"? They're making a sequel. (I got to this end of my tangent via IMDB--> Michael Welch--> some movie called "Choose Connor" --> Erick Avari --> The Librarian 2). Dude.

[infinitenights.livejournal.com]

Boo to back troubles! :-( I'm sorry that I have nothing to remedy them except for really gay Dolce and Gabbana ads which aren't so much a remedy as they are gay and amusing.

Also, I love how at the time, it was a coincidence that I was with Emily. And now it's like, if I'm not with Emily or in your room or in one of my million classes, then I must be dead.