LizzyGE's Xanga

Summer Digs

Wed, 14 Jun 2006 06:14:26 GMT

Greetings from Los Angeles. As some of you may know, I am taking the entire summer off and roadtripping in Allison's hybrid across this great land of ours. All of it! Or all of it between Berkeley and Boston, anyway. Which is a lot. AMERICA! I am so pumped for this, obviously.

We've started off at a leisurely pace, to be sure, and we've been in L.A. for an entire week chillaxing at Allison's family's place. It's hard to give up nice showers and Hollywood nights I guess.

An announcement: I've moved my summer cyberspace home! For the next month or so, you can find me at my friend Becca's site:

http://www.instantnostalgia.net/summer2k6

And after that, we'll see. I'm getting pretty old for this kind of stuff. Maybe the road will change me.

I Just Officially Finished School and Now it's Raining

Fri, 19 May 2006 21:38:53 GMT

As the final bluebook found its place atop the stack,
And as the final handshake with towheaded GSI
Electrified my fingertips one fleeting moment more,
My rais'ed fist and rais'ed voice from joy to consternation
Fell away - I had expected birds, the springtime sun;
Instead the heavens op'd, and Berkeley wept.

Fuck You, Boomer Liberals

Wed, 17 May 2006 21:43:31 GMT

You ruined everything.

I don't really have time to get into all the stuff I've been thinking lately (since school has finally tapered off, I've been able to read actual books for the first time in a while, hence the increase in thought production), but one thing seems clear enough to print: fuck you, boomer liberals. Apparently, my whole life will be the shoulder that bears your cross.

Yeah, Civil Rights were hell of important, I don't take that for granted. But what are you gonna do now that they're rolling back all your abortion/AfAction/anti-corporate/pro-environment/SS/healthcare/1st Amendment legislation? All you did was make laws. You didn't change a single person's mind. The only Democrats who have tried to do that since after conservatives realized how dangerous another New Deal could be were MLK Jr. and JFK, and they both got shot. No one after that has even needed to be actually shot, like they were, because no one has posed as much of a threat. Why sniper a guy like Murtha when all you've gotta do is look at him funny and he's done for? People who stand alone are easy targets to pick off, and Democrats who take a stand always seem to be alone these days. Shooting donkeys in a barrel is our new national pastime. You let it happen, boomers. I pray that you atone before you die. And that better be quick, since everyone you ever thought didn't matter is now a member of the Pentecostal church and is pretty sure that judgment day's coming up faster than you think. Smoke if you got 'em, I guess.

I don't mean to be harsh. It's not right to yell at your elders anyway. I suppose all I really can do is sigh while you crank up the volume on your Peter, Paul, & Mary remastered CD almost, but not quite, to the extent that it drowns out the pffssssssssssing sound of you popping the tab on another can of Coors™, and then I will shake my head and try to appreciate the irony that is your entire generation in a way that only an English major can do. Thank God your money bought my degree, people, because seriously I am going to need that shit in order to deal with you. None but English majors are so well suited to inheriting the ravaged, blasted political landscape that, like the mighty buffalo, you once roamed in numbers we all thought were too great to ever wane. We were wrong. At my commencement ceremony last Sunday, a series of inane and boring speakers impressed two points upon the audience of young, mostly white, upper-middle class graduates and their boomer parents: 1. Intellectually, English majors are best cut out for "believing the impossible"; 2. professionally, English majors are best cut out for "washing dishes or picking up trash along highways."

Lucky me that irrational optimism and the ability to clean up other peoples' messes are the two most important skills that can belong to a young Democrat in post-boomer America.

Tragic Peoples

Fri, 05 May 2006 20:24:46 GMT

For serious, Kennedies, can we just stop with all the addiction stuff? I don't want you all to get made fun of anymore...

WTF, MICROSOFT WORD?

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 19:00:46 GMT

So I was just now writing a paper and get this: Microsoft Word DOES NOT RECOGNIZE THE WORD "SUSS".

WTF PEOPLE?

Making me click the "Add to Dictionary" option to erase that little wavy red line from a perfectly normal, useable, not ridiculous regular English word was a fucking travesty of scholarship.

MAKING ME TELL YOU THAT SUSS IS A WORD IS A COMPLETELY ABOMINABLE THING TO DO, MICROSOFT WORD. I DON'T MAKE THIS SHIT UP. THIS IS A THING CALLED LANGUAGE AND IT WAS AROUND LONG BEFORE EITHER OF US EXISTED.

Like srsly did they run out of silicon when they were making the computer chip that had the data for "suss" on it? Is Microsoft Word incompatible with the kind of semiconductors that are needed in order to understand the concept of "suss"?

What. The. Fuck. People.

I tremble with a morbid anticipation as I hit the spell check button on this Xanga...

I've Finally Caved

Wed, 12 Apr 2006 23:26:08 GMT

I just paid like 4 dollars to get a Times article online. As a student at a major research university (and as someone who has lots of friends that understand things like "Lexis Nexis" or whatever), you would think that something like this could never happen.

Yeah well, you would also think that the largest and most powerful conservative think tank in America would not have been co-founded by Tim LaHaye, Rapture theorist and father of the Left Behind series.

But you would be wrong on both counts!

It's a sign of the (end?) times that it's come down to this. Four dollars! That is hella skrill for some words on paper. Why do shell out mad clams for this stuff? Because apparently, America is going to explode - at the hands of men, mind you, and not at the behest of the Christian God (the which scenario, while just as shitty, would still present something of a "well at least there was nothing I could've done" element) - and I need to sit here in my bunny slippers and type furiously and not let it happen.

I AM AN ENGLISH MAJOR, PEOPLE!

Can someone else get on this? I'm seriously underqualified and with a B.A. in English and a Masters in Theological Studies on the way, those are four dollars I'm likely to miss.

Unless America DOES explode in which case it won't matter that I'm broke.

Operation: America Kicks Great Ass

Wed, 12 Apr 2006 04:36:49 GMT

Not rly.

Anyway, today is the anniversary of Abbie Hoffman's death. He was a real cool guy. "Democracy is not some place you hang your hat... it's something you do." He said that. He commited suicide by taking a lot of cocaine, which is a pretty sad thing to do. I get it though.

We don't get that kind of radical too often these days.

New Life Goal

Mon, 10 Apr 2006 03:05:42 GMT

So we all know that my original dream-above-dreams was to play the role of Judas in a quality production of "Jesus Christ Superstar."

Here is my new life goal:

To play a song with the muppets on "Sesame Street." It's a multi-part dream in that being featured on "Sesame Street" means that you are generally a famous or important person, so part of this dream is getting to that level. If I am ever famous or important, I will go on "Sesame Street" and I will play and sing a song (maybe "The Longest Time" by Billy Joel) with the muppets as back-up. They will be clustered around the piano bench and I will make those really intense faces at them while I sing, like the kind of faces you make when you're teaching 3rd grade English to a class of non-English-speaking 3rd graders (I have done this.)

I will be the kind of famous and important person that cares about children and public television. And their intersection. It will be like when Bill Clinton won the hearts of elementary school students everywhere by playing the saxophone.

"I don't care what consequence it brings; I have been a fool for lesser things."
(-Billy Joel)

My State is Just Better Than Anybody Else's

Wed, 05 Apr 2006 20:36:48 GMT

Even if my city within said state is so horrible.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/05/us/05mass.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Now if I get shot I will be able to get a doctor!

You Gotta Go There to Know There

Wed, 05 Apr 2006 03:43:29 GMT

I was checking out some pictures from Berkeley students who went to New Orleans to help with the clean up... pretty sad stuff. I had learned at the conference in North Carolina that relief agencies had a specail code they would spray paint on the buildings they inspected: an X with the date of inspection in the top quadrant, the agency abbreviation and any health hazards in the two sides, and the number of recovered bodies below. So I was looking at these pictures of busted up houses and cars and mattresses strewn all over peoples' yards and what-not, and here and there would be a shot of a house with an X on it. All the pictures I had seen had "0" in the bottom quadrant. And I felt weirdly compelled to look through all of them just in case there was one with another number there. I don't even know why! Just to see it. I felt kind of creepy and sick.

Of course, the final picture I looked at had a big ol fat "1" right there underneath the X. There it was: a house that a person had died in. And I saw it, and immediately I felt so so so horrible. I don't know what made me want to seek out that feeling.

How awful to have died alone!