Esmee Denters 2: I'll buy you a jet plane, baby

http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/4340/pancakes.jpg

I am writing to endorse J***'s grant to study sexual assault at B****. Josh has brought a great deal of
passion and dedication to this project.

Have you watched My Night at Maud's yet? I still haven't finished the movie, but I read the story it was based on last night.

My friend Katie and I are starting a fake Bible study group and I think we're going to use the movie as a supplementary text.

not yet - maybe Sunday - last night me & the soon-to-be-ex sat on the couch and watched The Wire and ate snack food. Fake Bible study group sounds awesome.

Yeah, but we haven't had our first meeting yet. We were inspired after seeing A Serious Man. Katie was raised a Buddhist, so she doesn't know many Bible stories, and so I explained Job to her. She knew, like, the story of Isaac and some other things. And then I talked about everything I thought was weird about the Sodom and Gomorrah story, and a few other things to pique her interest.

I still have all my back issues of Sassy magazine from when i was a teenager. At one point I wanted to write an article about it, and there was recently a book about it, that was pretty good.

I read Seventeen and Nylon.

past tense

Sassy was pretty awesome. One day, my friend Jen will come over and we will drink bourbon and read old Sassy magazines, but this will probably be after the soon-to-be-ex moves out.

A gif is a victim you are sure of.
You love it because it pulls
gentle enough to call you master,
strong enough to call you fool;
because it lives
like a desperate trained falcon
in the high sweet air,
and you can always haul it down
to tame it in your
image hosting service.

― bamcquern, Saturday, November 14, 2009 11:23 AM (4 minutes ago)

the smoke persian is somewhat like a palimpsest

That's true, except every time it's wiped clean someone draws the Smoke Persian on it.

i guess what i was thinking is that the only residue of the erased marks (deleted posts) is what appears in the admin log

about living in the present & blinders -

my soon-to-be-ex does this - and i've always been somewhat jealous of his ability to do so. Sometimes i felt that he did have blinders on and just didn't want to think about planning for the future. Sometimes I felt that i had blinders on because i was so focused on possible complications with plan a, the feasibility of plan b, and what my life would be like in 5 years, 10 years, what have you, that the present would seem unreal or like something that already had happened.

last night, my friend was telling me about one of her students who is afraid of trees and hand sanitizer

Hand sanitizer is kind of gross.

yeah - apparently the classroom had a display of pictures of hands for MLK day, and the student yelled "Take down hands! Take down hands!" - as if the hand sanitizer fear has grown to encompass hands in general.

several years ago i was talking w/a friend about embarrassing typos, and we concluded that the most embarrassing typo would be on a wedding invitation, and would misspell the word "wedding." I liked the idea of getting married and doing this - sending out invitations to a marriage celebration that could be described by a word that could be read as a typo of "wedding" - like a "welding" or a "weeding" or a "vedding" - the latter would have a Viking theme and we'd get married on long boats in the middle of a lake or river.

So I understand that you want to get married.

My mom volunteered for my fourth grade class early in the school year, before we moved rooms - I've told this story so many times now - and she was making name desk placards on folded white card stock, writing in fat black marker strokes. She misspelled mine, she wrote "Byrce."

well - uh - i just saw creative potential in the act of having a non-standard wedding. i don't have anything against marriage, but it isn't one of my major life goals or anything.

your mom misspelled your name? aw.

MAJOR LIFE GOALS

(read in Hannah Barbara Birdman voice)

ha - i guess what i mean is that if i had a fulfilling relationship w/a guy that had problems with the institution of marriage and we were in love but he didn't want to marry me, it wouldn't be a big deal.

though i liked the idea of the weeding - basically the ceremony would take place in a vacant lot with a bunch of weeds, and the bride and groom would lead the procession chopping down the weeds with weed whackers.

last night on the phone w/my friend Amy, we discussed the business idea of a Revenge Service - it wouldn't do things that would be physically hurtful or cause significant property damage. The best feature, we decided, would be a service where the seeker of revenge could pay to have someone attend a social event where the subject of revenge would be and make humiliating or embarrassing remarks that everyone could hear. It's human nature not to want to do something like this to a friend or friendly acquaintance, but it is also human nature to laugh when someone violates social taboos, so it would be an opportunity for the seeker and their friends to have that release, without having to do the deed themselves.

"Friends"

oh - that was unclear - i was thinking of mutual friends or acquaintances of the subject of revenge would not want to instigate it, not the seeker of revenge seeking revenge on a friend or friendly acquaintance.

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT

That is not clearer. That is making me laugh for all its unclearness.

Example 1:

On second thought, I don't understand this thread at all.

― WHY DON'T YOU JUST LICK THE BUS DIRECTLY (Laurel), Tuesday, November 17, 2009 9:00 PM (25 seconds ago) Bookmark

basically the concept is paying someone to make asshole remarks targeted at someone you dislike or who wronged you, so that you and your friends don't have to, but can have the release/sense of justice served of said remarks having been said.

I get that.

that was what i was trying to say.

it's not about cats or checks.

So I wonder if there will be an adjustment among people. Like, we understand the uses of titles in poems and novels, but when the function of the title bends or alters or multiplies on a message board thread, will people recognize the authority of the text or the title? Can they do both? Do you bail because of multiple discourses?

me? no. but then i like titles that are often confusing or unclear and threads that derail and "metal-platen"

No, I know you do, but consider ilx as a culture, or a board as a culture, or Western Internet users.

i think it depends on the promised topic. Like if it's informational - or something that someone is most likely to look for for information and then it becomes a thread with pictures of cats or pizza or animated gifs of penguins, then they'd probably be annoyed. But things like that fads thread - i can't really see that people should be seriously irritated or feel betrayed or wronged that it went the way it did.

A few of the threads we've derailed recently have been pretty unserious, minor threads, but others have expressed sincere consternation and even confusion about that derailing. Not that we weren't sincere in our participation. We were. But the idea that a title can have the same multiplicity or irony that a title of book runs counter to how some would like threads to function, and for others the fact of it (not on paper, but encountered in the wild) is just disorienting, a game-changer or a game-ender.

xpost Obviously. We were writing partly about the same thing at the same time.

"than that of a title of a book" is what I guess I should've written

You are an Internet enabler!

i mean, you can't really blame people that want the "aw" thread to be pristine and solely consist of "aw" and "<3" or picture threads to consist entirely of pictures if that's the constraint they have mentally imposed on such threads - but it definitely makes them something other than a conversation, or following the natural forms of a conversation.

xp - occasionally i'm tempted to post to threads to see if i can get them all on the subject of lj.

Why does a thread have to be about conversation though? If they want aw and <3, and they have that vision, it's its own thing, which isn't a conversation.

Which, I guess was your point.

minus that extraneous comma

i think there's an assumption that threads are conversations - like on other boards - but there are a number of threads on ilx that are not, they are something else.

By the way, I think I have to strike off that example one. I don't think it's a legitimate example anymore.

the kitsch example 1?

No, the derail example 1.

I don't even know who that is. I think sometimes that Tuomas is more knowledgeable about American culture than i am.

I'm gonna go to the big used bookstore in Berkeley to look for some more of those things I couldn't find - also to get the donuts with the cream cheese frosting and chocolate chips on top.

if only alexa chung was american culture

is alexa chung better than donuts with cream cheese frosting and chocolate chips on top?

Now that I can transfer photos from my cell phone to the computer, I will take a picture of these donuts.

That kind of donut I would think too sweet?

Cream cheese frosting - seems like someone on ilx would already have played the cream cheese frosting is the insufferable indie version of buttercream frosting card.

Yeah, Alexa Chung's an import. She's great. I took some pics of her and DeRulo to post and be suitably ignored later.

I think I've been to that bookstore. I bought Nightwood there. Probably only thing I got there.

it's two doors down from the donut shop which is almost across the street from Amoeba.

the cake part of the donut is actually a bit dry, and not super sweet, so it works well with the frosting -- if the cake part was sweeter it would probably be too sweet, but it isn't. At least I don't think so.

3/4 of the books sorted - more traumatic than the movies - unexpectedly

i think i will make that cartoon i was thinking about - but later

She Is Beyond Food In Weevil (Mackro Mackro) unbanned

I was kinda sad when this guy asked to be banned, because I really liked that display name. Whenever I hear that song now, I almost always think of it as "She is beyond food in weevil"

I think Robert Smith should record a cover of "I've Written a Letter to Daddy" from Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck its 70 degrees out and my stupid brother just turned on the AC.

I don't know that song. I never saw that movie.

basically the "joke" of having Robert Smith cover it - is that in the movie Bette Davis is doing this song she did as a child star - but she is clearly old - but she is still doing her hair and dressing like she did when she was younger.

I read nested. I'm a Scoop power user.

I felt bad that I didn't go buy my friend Jen another bag of kitty litter before she got back. She was out, and probably when she got back she was tired and hung over and the cat had pooped on the floor, as that cat does. And it would have been really nice of me to get her more kitty litter, but I didn't.

I hope they're arguing about who ate the pumpkin bread again.

I think they change the batteries out of the thermostat every couple of weeks thinking that it's just not fucking cold enough. It's funny because they were outside on a perfectly temperate day this weekend complaining about the cold. God it's freezing and they are so boring and irritating and I have to get out of here.

I emailed you the story of my purportedly exciting youth in Gilroy.

I will rent that movie. Maybe I will do that tonight. Go to the video store.

This board is having an effect on my posting to other lists. One of the lists I'm on sends messages in plaintext. For some reason - maybe an iphone thing - some people's posts come out as garbled jibberish. I like replying to them, or editing the garbled jibberish into geometric shapes.

I cooked some chicken and vegetables with a little soy sauce spashed on them, and toasted one slice of bread, and the sister-in-law is pretending to be saying to her annoying little dog, rather than passive aggressively announcing to me, "It's stinky in here. Stinky, stinky stinky. Phew!"

does the dog have a sweater on?

No, the dog has really, really long white hair that gets all over everything. Maybe each hair is about a foot long? Otherwise the dog is quite small. They don't clip its hair in the summer, either, which lasts 9 months in Florida.

And it yaps at everything. These two, they tend to tell ridiculous white lies when confronted about anything, so last night when my brother was on about his wife eating pumpkin rolls, she was elaborately explaining how it could not have been her, even though it's just him or her. And when I said I had taught their dog not to yap when I come home and leave the house, and it'd be easy for them to do, too, they said they like it when she yaps. And when the wife said that I was disagreeable, meaning that I disagree a lot, and I said she misused the word, she went to the dictionary and confusedly read the definition aloud and decided that that is what she meant after all, haw haw. This woman, she's finishing her journalism major and she doesn't know who Bill Moyers is. Not that I asked her - my totally un-news savvy stepdad mentioned him. And when I was watching Fox News one day, my brother said, "I hate Fox News, it's so stupid," and she said, "Why?" They have no hobbies, no interests, no friends. They are eating themselves from the inside. When I move out, there is no way they'll replace me. They wouldn't have anyone and no one would have them, with their goddamned decorative pillows that have to go two on one side of the couch and two on another.

that sounds grim. well, at least the dog probably doesn't mind the air conditioning.

bamcquern y do u live w/them?

Lamp, why on that other thread did you think I was "probably dating someone"?

haha really? it was joke callback to that dude that listed "probably has a bf" or something similar which made me lol cause i read ilx too much

Because he's my brother and it was convenient. There were things about them I didn't know when I moved in. I guess I became self conscious at some point about being so self conscious about spaces, because it seemed finicky and uptight. But I've been reading this Edward T. Hall book about proxemics and it helps me understand a lot of why I'm uncomfortable living in this housing development in East (pretend) Orlando - without seeming like an uptight prig. To myself, at least. Anyway, I'm moving when the semester's out. I'm starting to toy around looking at craigslist listings.

xp - it's not that you read ilx too much, it's that he's not on 77

i almost otm-ed you, but then i restrained myself - it is no longer otm day.

the things that people post to the regional alumni listserv of the college i went to are like a glimpse into a totally different world than i inhabit.

the freedom socialist party does not offer a way to unsubscribe from their mailing list.

today would have been Layperson's Formalist Approach to a Problematic Subject Day

the admin log has a soundtrack