things I think about in the airport...

I'd like to share a few examples of how my mind occupies itself when its plane is delayed for two hours. I scribbled down a few starts for things to eventually blog and apparently today is "eventually." Here they are.

I have a habit of, every once in a while, looking around and thinking "these are the people."

These are the people I will be trapped in this elevator with.
These are the people who will be left alive with me if everything in the world is destroyed except for this room. Everything  except for this specific bank of seats in the B gates at the LaGuardia airport.
These are the people who might (in a survival situation) look at me and think to themselves "could I eat a human being?" Or, you know, vice versa.
These are the people I will be stranded on a deserted island with (if somehow this plane from New York to Atlanta flies over a deserted island. Or an ocean for that matter).

These are the people.

please don't let me spend my last hours on a MARTA train

I will scan the faces of the people around me, trying to judge their character by the way that they talk or laugh or whether they move their stuff and offer the seat next to them. He's a good guy, I think. But will his kindness make him weak? These are the kind of things you need to know. 
(Additionally, which one of these people is most likely to stab me? The small Asian boy. Watching Power Rangers on his iTouch. Just trying to be a hero.)

So this is who I'm stuck with, I think. I already hate the way that woman cackles at her cell phone. That guy over there didn't even bring a book to an airport. He's clearly not the survival type. That muscly guy on his laptop could be useful... Maybe he's a g-man or an ex-cop. 
So as people around me stress about having to deplane and where Gretchen put her boarding pass ("is it in your bag? It's GOTTA be in your bag cuz it sure as HELL ain't in mine!") I am assembling my team. And deciding who to leave behind if we find an abandoned working vehicle in our now post-apocalyptic landscape. 
...I'm looking at you, cackling cell phone lady.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

mmmm light pollution

As my plane was flying over New York on the way back home, I looked down on the sparkling city below.  I had already been delayed 3 hours and thought I might sleep on the plane until I got distracted by the view outside my cabin window.

Then my sense of geography started to fail me.
If that's New York, and we're on the East Coast...it looks like we're going further East right into the ocean! Or maybe North to Canada??  

This worry (that the pilot had no idea where he was going and I was going to be stranded in Canada for the night) began to creep into my thoughts and disrupt my reading.

"Tobacco,  introduced to London the year after Shakespeare's birth,...  

Oh no what if the flight is actually going to Canada?

...was a luxury at first but soon gained such widespread popularity... 

I got in the right gate. Right? B8. Yeah. I got in the right gate. My ticket was scanned. It made that satisfying "ping" noise that means I am supposed to be on this plane.

...that by the end of the century there were no fewer than seven thousand tobacconists in the City....  

Dad would be so upset if he drove all the way to the airport at midnight and I'm actually in Canada.

...It was employed not only for pleasure but as a treatment for a broad range of complaints... 

no. they won't be upset. They'll be worried, won't they? I'll probably end up crying if I have to call home and say I accidentally ended up in Canada.

...including venereal disease,... 

but NO. I won't cry. I'm an adult. I'm a grown-ass woman. I just went to New York all by myself!

...migraine,...

I'll take care of everything. I can get myself a hotel or something, and email work to explain my absence and book a new flight and - yeah. I'll be fine. 

...and even bad breath." 

Shit, I have to read that whole passage again. Didn't take in a word of it.

(excerpts from Bill Bryson's Shakespeare: The World as Stage)

In love with the problem problem:

Why I <3 my classes.

As a freshman I took a class called Intro to Academic Writing, because I was naive and listened to my previously-unknown-to-me Honors adviser, who said that since I had already completed my English requirement with AP classes I should take this intro class to help me write papers in college. I unwittingly signed up, and did not realize until the first or second week of classes what "Introduction to Academic Writing" actually meant. It meant reading journal articles, analyzing "academic" writing styles and teaching me a trick called the "quote sandwich," which I still use in all my papers to this day. However, the most important thing I took from this class was "the problem problem."

In an article by Gerald Graff, he describes the "problem problem" in the academic community as the "tendency to make seemingly obvious assumptions explicit" and a "general obsession with searching for problems where often there do not seem to be any." I was relieved in reading this article that someone else had noticed how "academics" tend to create issues where there don't seem to be issues simply to have something to write about, and thus securing their employment through "searching for problems where there don't seem to be any." While in this class, I discovered a resentment towards academics, or perhaps my professor, for writing things I had to read about which did not need to be read about at all. Perhaps this is more the case in liberal arts disciplines, perhaps not. I just knew I was fed up with reading articles and writing papers about “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adults." Do we really need to analyze how people revise their writing? It happens, it's over, move on.

More recently, however, as I began seeing the problem problem as the underlying architecture for every college course I have ever taken (and therefore higher education in general, I believe), I realized that I do not hate the problem problem as strongly as I thought. In fact, I LOVE it.

Case in point: Happiness.

This semester, I am taking a class called Happiness. That's it. That's the whole name of the class. It is a Psychology class AND a Philosophy class, so we have two professors, 70 students (which is about as big as it gets at CofC) and a whole curriculum of the problem problem.

I noticed in my Family and Childhood Issues class that Psychology is about a lot of unknowns. Most things can not be measured in this discipline, and most of the things that can be measured can not be measured reliably, like happiness. We spent most of the class supplying questions as answers, discussing what influences a child's development: "What about his SES?" "Maybe there is a history of illness?" "Parental discord or harmony?"
My Happiness class is slightly more concrete, but only because Philosophy is a different discipline. Instead of inventing questions to define the situation, each person invents answers. That is why each Philosopher has his own "ism" or theory he is associated with.  There are dualists, idealists, hedonists, and anarchists. So when you get a group full of Question majors in a room with a group full of Answer majors, interesting things happen.

I love this class. I love all my classes because of the problem problem. When there is nothing left to write about, make something to write about.
And read that book, because so far it is excellent.

what's with all the dystopia?

So I finally picked up my next book for book club, A Clockwork Orange.

When we were deciding on books in the spring, most of the suggestions were ones we never read in high school but felt like we should have. So far, East of Eden has been my favorite and is going on my list of Top Ten Books I Didn't Want to Read Originally, But Ended Up Enjoying. Included on the list are Name of the Wind and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? However, I don't think this new book is going to make that list (but then again, that's the nature of the list, isn't it?)

I'm getting a bit burnt out on dystopia. So many of the books we read in high school take place in a sad, grey future where problems during the date of publication are amplified to the nth degree. Books like Farenheit 451, Anthem, 1984, and Brave New World paint pictures of a dismal future where everyday man has accepted a life without books, or names, or become dependent on drugs like soma to endure the sad state of the world. Even my favorite book in elementary school, The Giver, depicts a future without color and without memory.

I fear for the future. I am sure that within 50 years, the oceans will be polluted or dried up, nuclear war will break out, robots will rebel, and aliens will plumb our green planet for needed resources. And I am "sure" of this because of the countless books I have read that tell me that our future is depressing and dark. That the sun will burn out and men and women will be used as batteries for large sentient machines.Look at the movie Wall-E! Earth is a dump, humans have fled the earth, and the only creature remaining in the rubble (that doesn't require solar charging) is a cockroach. No doubt the people that produce these movies and novels hope to influence people; to induce change and new thinking that could save us. But I don't feel empowered and capable of change. I feel crushed by the weight of outstanding evidence that tells me the future will suck. I feel powerless and scared.

The only solution to NOT feeling scared, I believe, is to stop reading these books. But it may be too late. Especially since I have to read this one for book club.

OR I can just concentrate on the movies and books with good futures. Like...

• Back to the Future II
• Star Trek
• ...that's all I can think of.

RLS: I am being courted by a hipster, part 3

Yes, that's right. part 3. Because the story just wasn't. over. yet.

So a few things since last time:

You may recall that this boy sent me a text message asking if I received the mix tapes he left right under my face. I did not respond to him. And I feel pretty crummy about that. However, I did warn him that I rarely answer my phone and am very slow with text messages, so he was at least slightly prepared for it. I wanted to say something- something that might deter him- but couldn't think of the right response, so I just never did. And 8 days after he sent it, I deleted it from my inbox.

Anyway, I woke up this morning and checked my email for a response from my boss, hoping the message would just say: "Of course, Claire! We are hiring 4 more employees so the workload will be lighter and when you go on vacation no one will hate you!" And of course the next thing I did (after receiving a much less helpful reply) was check Facebook.

Most days there is nothing new to see in the morning because I was on the computer late the night before, but this morning I found a message in my inbox. It was not a book club reminder, or a request for prayers, or something from my roommate saying "I found a lamp! It's perfect; there are owls ALL OVER IT," but an invitation to dinner from him.

I've decided to share it with you. I wasn't sure if that would be a mean thing or not, but it helps the story to know exactly what was said. Subj:Hey Claire-

I've come to the park a couple times to tell you that I would like to take you out to dinner. but you look so busy, and I feel bad to pull you away from your job.

Would you like to go to dinner with me?

This short note reveals several things.

1. I was a lot better at hiding my uncomfortableness and get-me-outta-here face than I though I was
2. He restarted his Facebook.
3. He has been watching me at work without my knowledge.
   

Let me go back to #2 for a second. My freshman year at the College of Charleston, I went on a blind date with a Citadel cadet.

For those of you that don't know, the Citadel is a military college in Charleston with no affiliation to any branch of the military, where young men (and a handful of women) willingly attend four years of mandatory ROTC. The freshman are called "knobs" because their bald heads are so shiny and round, they look like they might open doors.

My friend at the time was asked on a date and refused to go alone (because honestly, they're a bit creepy- especially when they hang around outside the girls' dorm on a Saturday night like piranhas) so I went with her for moral support. After the "date"-which was mostly me listening to how great the Citadel is because the older kids beat you with sticks and freshman can't use condiments- we went home, impressed that we had had a truly collegiate experience.

Two days later, I decide on a whim to listen to a friend's band on Myspace (Absence of Ocean- check em out) and check my homepage which I haven't been to in ages. Because let's face it, Myspace is the creepy abandoned theme park of the internet. And I have a friend request. From the knob! The knob who never learned my last name. Creepy. I said yes anyway, went to his page and he has two friends: Me, and Tom the Myspace Guy. Which led me to the obvious conclusion that he created a Myspace just to friend me.

back to the hipster: So I saw his back-on-facebookness and I drew a similar conclusion. That may be a bit self-centered. I dunno. Either way, he's back on the internets.

Anyway, the bigger issue. #3- he has been watching me while I'm at work. Watching me. Enough to discern that I was too busy to talk to him. GAH.
So hopefully that is the end of the story. I let him down gently, via FB message, which I hate to do b/c that is a lame way to communicate about this sort of thing. And he ended it with "see you at Trivia" so I don't think there are any hard feelings. But it could mean a pretty awkward Friday at Starbucks.

if anyone has any wishes, let me know because I'm batting 1000

We had a huge storm last night, with all it's scary rumbling thunder and flashes of lightning. Usually when it starts storming like that, I get a very real urge to watch Jurassic Park. And I usually do. Something about the ultimate surround sound, I guess. Last night it started while we were watching Buffy, so I was happy. As long as it's adding to the fear factor of something.

Then when I went up to sleep, I settled into clean sheets and cracked open East of Eden (which I am reading for book club). The sound of the rain always makes me feel extra comfortable and safe. Soon I couldn't read anymore because my eyelids were too heavy and I went to sleep to the pattering of rain outside my window.

I love rainstorms.

But I love them even more when I can make them work for me. Like adding to the scariness of a movie or putting me to sleep.




OR HAVING LIGHTNING STRIKE THE SPLASHGROUND, ALLOWING ME TO HAVE A DAY OFF!!!!!!

peace. Thank you, thunderstorm.

misc

Ok, I have a few things to say, but none of them are substantial enough for a full post. Here are some things I've been thinking about lately:

THE AIR CONDITIONING IS ON. It's a miracle. Not only can we bake things in the oven again without overheating the house and killing the dog, we also closed all the windows! And that means those stupid birds have shut up. Well, they're still annoying, I just can't hear them as well through a pane of glass. :) It was getting kinda ridiculous. They were talking to me. Their chirping and horny mating calls were starting to sound like real words: one of them always says Germannnyyyy, and one says "shiverme shiverme shiverme timbers" and another says "babysitter babysitter" and then there's one that just copies ALL OF THEM. Doing one call after another, in succession, like the most annoying type of car alarm.


I'm a little bit in love with Simon Pegg. OK, a lot. Watch the show Spaced. I finally did. (hint: it's all on Hulu)


My job is tiring and suckish and I know I complain about it too much. Friday is my first pay day!!! yay. I will make a real effort to not bitch about it anymore because I don't want to be that girl. It's like in high school when I was in orchestra and my friends and I all hated our conductor. We would find ourselves complaining about him on the weekends at sleepovers until we realized "oh no. he won. he's in our heads all the time!" So I will stop. Now.


I'm almost through a book called Name of the Wind, which I was reluctant to read simply because someone told me I'd like it. Which instantly turns me off to it. Except then that someone decided to harass me over facebook and bug me and bug me until I read it. Damn him.


I still have no idea what day of the week it is. When I was in church yesterday, I flipped through the missalette and found out that there are only 9ish more weeks of summer. Which is still a long time.

neutron star collision

ok, so my job doesn't officially start in full force until Memorial day. So...the blah is still here. For now.

Things making me angry today:

• I feel like a lump. par for the course.
• my book club book (which starts Saturday, so I gotta read up) Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut was $15. FIFTEEN DOLLARS. It's a paperback. AND the B&N lady wouldn't let me use my mother's educator's discount card. Because I am not my mother. Of course.
  
• apparently my text messages aren't actually sending.
  
• half priced Frappuccino happy hour is over at Starbucks. Like I need to spend the money anyway. Stupid book sucked me dry.

Alright, now. Things making me happy today:

• it's not so hot today!
• I have half a pint of Americone Dream in the freezer :D
  
• Muse's new single Neutron Star Collision!! I LOVE LOVE LOVE it. and I am listening to it right now. check it out here

Oh, one more thing making me angry:

• Muse's new single Neutron Star Collision was released because it is on the Eclipse Soundtrack.

Alright, this is making me mad simply because of it's connection to the Twilight saga, which is weird. I used to be a pretty big fan of Twilight. I read the books (multiple times. like, a lot of times.) and saw the movies (at their midnight releases. I know). I had the calendar, the soundtracks, and I even own a Team Edward t-shirt. Somewhere amid the frenzy for the movies, I lost interest. It's easy to get so wrapped up in the books, because they are basically romance novels for tweens. Once I was a bit further removed from reading them, the movies began to look ridiculous. I lost any attraction to R Pattz or Taylor Lautner. Kirsten Stewart is clearly regretting signing on. You can just tell how bored she is with the whole situation and that she's thinking back to when she first agreed to act in this seemingly indie-ish off-color "vampire" movie, wishing she could have done the "Heathers" remake or whatever else she was considering at the time instead.

I will probably see the next movie, though most of my friends here (as opposed to campus) made fun of me for reading them in the first place. Which is probably why I read them.