It's been quite a long time since I wrote anything on here. Five months, in fact. But here I am again. IN EDINBURGH!

Which is a wonderful city, by the way. There is a castle outside my window, and a volcano next to the castle. There are old Gothic buildings everywhere and tiny supermarkets that make it much easier to make choices about what to eat. There are thrift shops and used bookstores on every corner.

I am currently also working on my dying Nanowrimo novel. It will get finished, just probably not in the eleven days that I have left in order to "win."

Other updates include: learning to kick ass at judo, and editing things for a literary magazine.

I am going to write something more interesting later, promise.

i am gripped always by maddening want

I once dated a man who taught quantum physics; I learned two things that night. The first being, if you ask a quantum physicist to explain how gravity works--not what it is, not how it behaves, but how it works, he will first talk himself in circles and you wind up crying, and finally sometime between entrée and dessert, he'll call you a bitch and leave.
The second revelation came as I sat at the bar in morose solitude, pondering the cantilevered relationship between the bartender's gut and lower extremities. And this is important, so pay attention. Before the big bang, before time itself, before matter, energy, velocity...there existed a single immeasurable state called yearning. This is the special force that on a day before there were days obliterated nothing into everything. It is the unseen strings tying the planets to stars. It's the maddening want we feel from first breath to last light.

Mary Shannon - In Plain Sight

Its 2 in the morning and I'm watching tivoed "In Plain Sight"s because I'm a masochist. I genuinely enjoy not sleeping. I like being the only person awake. I really hate being tired, and every morning I curse myself for it...but coffee or a coke and I'm back on my A game...or B or C depending on the day...

Normally I'd use that quote as a lead in to something profound. But I'm having a problem and I'm not sure entirely what it stems from. Perhaps unemployment and the resulting days of waking up at noon and watching food network or crime show marathons for hours on end has resulted in a "hulu commercial" brain melting of epic proportions or maybe I'm exhausted from school and literacy fairs. Or maybe I'm just lazy, morphing into an emo underachiever right before everyone's eyes. But I exist on the surface these days. Untouchable, unmoveable. Change is unnecessary. I don't need to go anywhere. I don't know what I want, so I don't have to work to get there. This motionlessness is easy, if useless.

go forth and set the world on fire.

Will someone please explain to me which of our civil liberties are being lost because of the Obama administration? The pundits on Fox News are going on and on and on about it, but they won't tell us exactly which civil liberties they are referring to, just that they affect commerce, industry and security. They won't say exactly which policies are destroying our civil liberties, either.

Could it be illegal wiretapping? Could it be torturing? Could it be holding people without arresting them or officially accusing them of anything? Could it be practically abandoning the war in Afghanistan so that the Taliban has been able to make it within 60 miles of the capital of Pakistan? Could it be ignoring global warming and global climate issues?

Hmm...wait. No. That was the last guy!

I understand that Republicans and Democrats have different opinions. And I recognize that as Jed Bartlett said (what can I say...the West Wing applies to practically everything) "Every once and a while there is a day with an absolute right and an absolute wrong. But those days almost always involve body counts," and "Complexity is not a vice." (That one is courtesy of CJ Cregg). There are lots of different arguements and lots of different questions that need to be asked. But making things up isn't okay. Stretching the truth so far that it snaps isn't okay. Every report has a slant, every station has a side. But let's not get carried away here. Civil liberties are civil liberties. Illegal wiretapping is also a crime against civil liberties. At least as bad as whatever they are claiming Obama is doing, if not worse.

Note: Fox News also was hypercritical of Obama's scaled back, private approach to National Prayer Day. Because religion has a place in government? What are civil liberties again? Separation of church and state? Anyone?


In other news:

It's spring - practically summer, with all the promise that practically summer brings. 3D sidewalk chalk and iced tea and paddle boats and picnics and the way heat seeps into your skin and puts things in perspective. Because nothing is bigger than being warm and golden and alive and drinking milk and eating warm brownies on a playground and seeing movies at night. Because sand and salt water and sunglasses are still what you dream of during dry, sarcastic winters. Because life is better in a bikini :-)

Someone want to get me a job in a private eye's office this summer?

Things I've Learned this Semester:

Karl Marx is on crack.

The sound of rain is very soothing - the sound of torrents of water coming out of your gutters is obnoxious and keeps you up at night.

You don't need your own characters to distract you in class...its perfectly okay to use other people's.

Avoidance only stresses you out. Then again, doing whatever you're avoiding is also stressful. The only thing you can't avoid...is stress.

There is no better cure for existential crises than lots of smoke, crappy beer and the pounding music of mediocre college bands.

Cleaning is highly overrated :-)

Wedge heels are just as dangerous as other kinds of heels.

Torture is evil. And apparently something that we do.

Season 3 of Veronica Mars sucks just as much the second time through. But watching someone else's expressions as they watch it for the first time more than makes up for it.

Frozen pizza and pears makes for a great dinner.

Dumplings and gelato make everything better.

Nothing is as complicated as it seems.

Decisions are made by those who show up.

Turning 20 is a lot hard than you think its going to be, and a lot easier than it seems.

Sarcasm makes friends.

People can see you when you look out your window to watch them shouting at each other at 2 o'clock in the morning. That being said, if you're outside your apartment shouting...you should expect that people are probably watching.

The individual identity in modern society is everything and anything you want it to be. Basically, Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Foucault were just making things up. I have yet to find the relevance. Maybe you'll get a blog post on it when I figure it out...

Summer is coming.

breathing life into nonlife, she whispered what she'd never know.

They meet in dark corners, eyes full of grains of sand that scrape their lids when they try to sleep. They are so tired of guilt, or responsibility. They are tired and sad and scared and as God watches them he doesn't understand, when he is so quick to forgive, when his wrath is so great, why they don't come to him. But absolution is so much heavier than amnesia and they have so far to carry it. And as the liquor burns their throats, the smoke scarring their lungs as they breathe, they rip each other apart with tongues and lips and teeth-nails dragging at each other's skin, pulling open old scars (pain works better than alcohol for forgetting- they will fall inside and never return).

Duncan hates when Logan starts a sentence with "Lilly would hate..."
because they both know what Lilly would hate. She would hate them for
for finding solace in each other's skin while leaving Veronica - shivering,
hardening, cracking, emerging and suddenly cold black fire slowly burning.

One day he can't do it anymore. Duncan is empty- always empty- and Logan is full, boiling, burning everything in its wake and Duncan can't pretend to feel it anymore. The night before his hands had skimmed new scars, coming away red. Tonight his hands would be clean. He led Veronica to his room that night- neither elevating nor soothing her discomfort, her confusion. He shut her in his room, locking the door from the outside before her shock had worn off - waiting for a shrill screech of anger even as he remembered that she was no longer shrill.

Veronica no longer thought in metaphors, in flowery sentences to mask her pain in poetry. She would kill Duncan (and make Logan watch so that he would know what it's like to die slowly from the inside.
-I'm already dead, Veronica
-You haven't seen death yet. )

Logan didn't react- something new and different for him - and Veronica didn't go near him. She sat down on the floor, on the other side of the room and stared.

"Like what you see?" Logan sneered, later (hours or seconds, no one was counting.)

"No."

Logan hated her voice, its detachment (he pulled her apart piece by miniscule piece, hating and loving what came apart in his hands - he shouldn't be surprised.) as if they had never rolled their eyes at Lilly behind her back, as if she had never fought with him about Duncan, as if they hadn't pretended they weren't crying in each other's arms. As if she didn't hate him for what he did to her.

"Just you wait," he spat, standing up. Veronica didn't react the way he expected - standing up or snarking or screaming - she just pulled her taser out of her bag slowly. Something else in Logan died but he was so used it, he barely noticed. He didn't give her the satisfaction of going near her, just ripped his shirt off quickly, hisssing in the gathering darkness as peices (tangible and painful and real) of skin came away. She didn't move, didn't acknowledge, didn't see. He thought that this would be his greatest sin, tearing away her hatred with his scars. His greatest victory would be breaking her gaze.

He stood there, muscles tense and trembling as she dared him to turn around with her eyes. If she could just move, anything to remind him that she hadn't frozen, he could turn around knowing she wouldn't stick the taser in his wounds before picking the lock and walking out of here leaving him empty and numb like Duncan.

Lying down would be admiting defeat, but he was tired from trembling and standing and he wondered why he couldn't keep his eyes on her long enough to watch her blink. But he couldn't stand there draining onto the carpet anymore- she would win and he would be nothing. He wondered, as he let himself down onto the bed slowly, if maybe he would like being empty, if his desperate attempts to fill Duncan (with fire, gin, himself) were cruel and existing was easier than living and fighting back against the light holding tightlyto his pain was nothign anymore. His fire paled faced with living death.

And then he was burning, all his molecules thrashing against each other as fingertips ghosted over his skin. It was all he could do to keep from screaming out in pain. The fingers were light and cold and tortured his skin because they weren't LIlly's and he love dthem anyway. They travelled up his back, drawing on circles and when they reached his throat, pressing on his adam's apple like a trigger, he screamed, air ripping him from the inside out. All the pieces he stole from her flew out from the living space he kept them, the black hole that filled him. You can't hold someone agaisnt their will, no matter how many pieces you think you have. His screams faded only after hours had passed in his minhd, only when he had ripped every piece of Veronica from his ribs and presented them to her on bended knee.

When he could next form coherent sentences in his head (his mouth could only spill words unintentionally like broken skin whispering nonwords like hate and love) a wet washcloth had replaced fingers and the flames that licked his skin had calmed and salty tears burned his open wounds. When he was clean and raw and smoldering, she lay down next to him, curling into herself and facing away. She wasn't touching him but he could feel the way the bed dipped where she lay.

"I still hate you, you know," she said quietly, but her voice had lost its detachment, warming him as though she had breathed the words onto his skin.

In the morning, Duncan found Veronica curled into Logan's side, his arm hoding her tightly to him, her hand clutching his so hard that he thought she couldn't possibly be asleep- as thought Logan was draining his fire into her to melt her ice, as thought she was cooling his rage so that he cuold live by a rule other than pain.

Entropy would equalize them and their jagged edges would merge and no matter how much they wanted to, they could never break away without tearing an unlivable piece from the other. They had broken and torn each toher apart and emerged with mixed pieces they could never separate. Duncan closed the door, went downstairs and took his pills and never wondered what it would be like to be full again.

Insomnia is my greatest inspiration. -- John Stewart

There is something innately disturbing about a lot of what I see on the Daily Show...but rarely does it make me actually sick to my stomach. Recently, documents have been released describing torture techniques used by the United States in the pursuit of information and occasionally just because we don't like someone...

Jon Stewart raises some interesting questions. For example - why do you need to waterboard someone 183 times. By the 90th time they realize you aren't going to actually drown them.... Humor aside however, what I find really, really, extraordinarily sickening is not that there is an outcry of people who are disturbed, confounded and appalled by what we've been sanctioning. Party affiliations aside, our complete lack of respect for human life should be unexcusable. But no. What we are concerned with is why on earth we now need to know that we torture. Why did Obama release these documents?

Patty Noonan said that sometimes its just better to keep walking. Jon Stewart made fun by saying that while you're walking past slavery and genocide, you should put your fingers in your ears because the screams of the tortured will get really loud.

Its a lot less funny when its in writing. "Killing yourself and innocent people to make a point is sick, twisted, brutal, dumbass murder," said Josiah Bartlett on the West Wing. Its harrowing to note that the actions committed by members of our government in the name of security aren't really all that different from the people that he's describing. I don't know how many different ways I can try to say this. I hope this one works.

We have to know. We have to know so we can fight. This is the battle that we're fighting. Its not just against war mongers and terrorists elsewhere. Its not just about fighting enemies across oceans and deserts. Its about getting rid of this within ourselves as well. I'm not naive. I know that there will always be evil. There will always be ignorance which breeds evil accidentally. But that's the battle. Because if we're not fighting, they are. And then they are winning. The prize is our humanity. The cost is watching the world burn.

Good news is, apparently we won the war on terror! Woohoo!

I'm not really this depressing. I promise. Uhh...how to prove this...how to prove this...I KNOW! Wanna hear a few jokes?

Did you hear what happened to the pretzel walking down the street?
He was a-salted!

So there were two muffins in an oven. One turns to the other and says "Man! It's getting really hot in here!" the other muffin screams "AHHHHHH A TALKING MUFFIN!"

What's black and white and black and white and black and white and black and white and black and white and black and white and black and white?
A penguin rolling down a hill.
What's black and white and laughing?
The penguin that pushed him.

Okay... I can't claim credit. But if thinking about torture gets you down... please enjoy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsrZIB8QHic

Courtesy of the delightful Megadamian Nut and Hank and John Green, Nerdfighters!

apathy kills you slowly from the inside

This is mildly late because today I was very productive...but recently I have been faced with an overwhelming apathy. I basically spend most of the day wanting to lie in bed and watch TV. I love my TV and it feels as though everything around me is overwhelming, exhausting and useless.

The "why bother"s are what really destroy the world.

Strangely enough, apathy makes you think. Our generation has been accused of many things from irrelevant and immature reading tastes to a discouraging and fateful lack of interest in everything from the environment to injustice to politics. But its not entirely our fault.

First of all (and this is in direct response to an article in the Outlook section of the Washington Post) Twilight and Harry Potter do not define our generation. Twilight, in spite of its teen fangirl spirit and its devestating escapism, asks some good questions. Harry Potter gives us some good answers. That being said - we read. Just because occasionally there is a mass consensus about good escapist literature does not mean we aren't buying other things. (End rant)

Second of all, we are faced with a new quality of crises. Governments that lie to us, obscure the facts, who don't disclose numbers or results, who seem to care more about egos and being right than the lives they put at stake just to make a point are the norm. Economic and environmental crises are so vast they seem out of our grasp, obscured in smog and parts per million and a economic market that I am still convinced is made up of Monopoly Money.

Its hard to get worked up when you feel that nothing you do will make a difference. When faced with an overwhelming amount of work, it is easier to disappear into fiction that requires nothing from you - it is passive and easy and entertaining. The world it shows you has questions and problems, yes, but they have resolutions. The good guys win in an hour. Apathy lets peace and darkness fill the space around you. It seeps inside and lulls you into complacency calm. "Do it tomorrow," it says. "These things will keep."

But outside the world is ending.