Wake up, grab a brush, and put on a little makeup

Last night I dreamed that I visited my old middle school. It had changed quite a bit. The walls were all frosted glass. There were vending machines in the lobbey which, in addition to selling cold, plastic-wrapped lunch to students, also sold them scratch-its. In front of the line of vending machines was a jewelry and candy counter run by Robert Downey, Jr. who tried to convince me that a chiclet was a semi-precious stone. He was unsuccessful. The hallways were the same, and I wandered to the end of the 6th grade hall to my old Russian classroom. I waited until the class was over and said to my old teacher in Russian, "Hello. You're still here." He called me the diminutive form of an evil-doing girl in Russian and said, "You can't do this forever, you know." I told him that I knew. We said до свидания and left. There was a building next to the middle school. I was told by a student that it had a high-tech security system. When I went to the door, however, I found that the security system consisted solely of Kenneth from 30 Rock who was handing out silver tokens with flying pigs on them.

Blah

I was going to watch two episodes of Mad Men, read the rest of Watchmen, do laundry, and enjoy a pseudo-productive evening. Instead, I spent my time talking to a friend who just informed me he's joined the Marines and is shipping out next month. Combine an enormous, angry, worried sigh with a WTF and you're almost there. Almost. I also spent two hours responding to an OWL that was 21 single-spaced pages long. My response was 8 pages, for which I am thoroughly ashamed. My powerz of concision are at an all-time low, and I feel as though I've wasted an evening despite possibly having helped someone a tiny bit. I did do laundry. That's something.

The moths are beating against the windows.
Always that pane right by the light.
Silly night Sisyphi (plural of Sisyphus?)
They're never getting in.
You're never getting in.
I'm just saying.
I ate dinner at 1 am.
Tomato garden soup. Biscuit. Water.
That's so not interesting.
None of this is.

Adonai is plural.
Always plural when referring to God (thefathersonholyghostums).
The singular is adon. A lord, not the Lord.
My parents did this weird program at church once.
I can't remember what it was called.
Maybe it wasn't that weird.
Time consuming though.
It had a big binder filled with lessons.
Why can't I remember the name?
It was one word, I think.
No...it was an acronym.
INSTE! Institute of Theology by Extension.
Blogging through memory
Try it sometime.
Remember the forgotten.
In one lesson, they had to learn the names of God.
I can't imagine why.
Maybe if you can't get through on one line, try another?
I quizzed my mother.
INSTE had tests, you see.
Sometimes the names still pop into my head
Like little note cards
3x5 Elohim
Jehovah Tsidkenu - The Lord our Righteousness
Jehovah Jireh - The Lord will Provide
Jehovah M'Kaddesh - The Lord will Sanctify
Jehovah Rohi - The Lord our Shepherd
Not to be confused with
Jehovah Rophe - The Lord will Heal
Jehovah Shamma - The Lord is There
Jehovah Shalom - The Lord Our Peace
El-Olam - The Everlasting God
El-Elyon - The Lord Most High
El-Shaddai - God Almighty

God fucking almighty...
All these pretty ways to keep a sister down.

So full of useless information.

"I can't remember how this got started,
but I can tell you exactly how it will end."

Cut a girl some slack. A. Not the.

Oh the trickery!

From Wikipedia: The beer is primarily known today as the choice beverage of the counter-culture. In 2002, after years of decline, sales of PBR skyrocketed in areas like Portland, Oregon, much to the confusion of company heads. As it turned out, its low price and gritty, urban image appealed to the city's thriving indie and hipster scenes, resuscitating the brand and lending it a great deal of trendy cachet. Despite their website featuring art competitions and photos of young people dressed in alternative fashions, Pabst has chosen not to fully embrace the counter-cultural label or appeal to it arguably because the very same "authenticity" that made it popular would be challenged by over-marketing. Instead, the company has opted for subtlety, finding clever ways to target its growing niche through the surreptitious sponsorship of indie music concerts, local businesses, dive bars, and radio programming such as NPR's All Things Considered. These techniques have proven effective and have been rewarded with remarkable growth in sales- the production of PBR has more than doubled since its revival in the early 2000's. Pabst's success is seen by some analysts as a model for advertising to a new generation of media-savvy, anti-consumerist youth culture.

And many more

Happy Birthday to Former President Bill Clinton! I do so miss seeing him in my bathroom every morning. It was a good way to start the day.

Whenever is here and now

Ender in Exile in November. This makes me happy. Something to look forward to. With the Ender books, he manages not to retell the book of Mormon. Okay. It was only the Homecoming series that got out of control. But it sticks in your mind.

I once played the Angel Moroni in a movie that Kari, Autumn, and I made. I gave Joseph Smith golden spectacles and informed him that disco never died. A disservice on both accounts. I wrote the script. Autumn couldn't pronounce "excommunicated." I crossed it out and told her to say "kicked out."

Also to look forward to in November: And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks by William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac.

For Halloween, I want to be Ellen Page's one expression.

I rarely look in my spam, but for some reason OWLZ were directed there today. I looked, and there is all manner of spam. One is from "Herr" with the subject line "How to make her your slave." No thank you, Herr. "Saini" has sent an email called "Monkey shoots trainer with tranquilizer." "Zul" wants me to know that "China has more internet users than US." Perhaps Zul does not know that China has a billion people while the US has a little over 300 million. Gmail is still not alerting me about OWLZ. I looked and found two just waiting there, unassigned.

I'm tired and think I'll go read.

Some things that shouldn't hurt do.

Frodo Lives!

Done with summer school.
We have to save Dent.
I have to save Dent.

Miss Marjie's Theological Question of the Day

Could God make a smore so big that he couldn't melt the marshmallow and chocolate by the fires of hell?

If God wishes to comment, he is welcome to do so. Of course, he'll have to register with google first. No anonymous commenting, Big Guy!

The head bone's connected to the foot bone

Sometimes I wish my entire body were made of punctuation.

I hate Adobe Acrobat, but Marj^god do I enjoy reading scientific articles. Those reaction articles--wonderful things. It's just not the same in the liberal arts.

My favorite picture from my trip to the aquarium is of the Body Fluid Clean-Up Kit on the big yellow school bus. "Like I really want to stick my hands in a pool of blood..."

I wouldn't advertise the fact that you listen to Bright Eyes if I were you.

I've spent the day (for it is currency) reading articles on HIV prevention and prevalence in prisons. In order for harm-reduction to occur, we would need to acknowledge that harm, which includes some prohibited behaviors, occurs. We would also have to believe that even though people in prisons have their liberty taken away, they still retain rights to safety and health. We would have to believe that the lives of our fellow human beings are as important as our own and warrant consideration when creating public policy. The United States stopped listening to international law a long time ago though, and humility isn't its strong suit. Clubs is. The world is ridiculous and filled with what seems like unnecessary fear.

If I were a polar bear, you would want to fight me. We would meet at the baseball diamond after school. I would take you down.

Angry tact doesn't count for much.

In my dreams, I'm chased a lot. Sometimes there are obstacles and nimble movements--systems of pulleys, ladders, oatmeal factories, giant metronomes... Sometimes people want to kill me. I get tired of it about half the time and turn around and tell them to just get it over with. Sometimes I get choices. I make rational decisions. There is stoic nodding. Daisy Miller adjusts a bow.

Liquid eyeliner is close to impossible.

Imaginary friends with imaginary forks in imaginary toasters.

Slothrop's map

I smell vomit out of the blue and wonder if I've suffered trauma to the side of the head.

Things people have googled lately that directed them to my blog:
"reagan ranch," "family ties rancher popsicle sticks," "dodo bird clone," "beady eyes is right we're needed," "20 gallon brass syringe," "it avails not, time nor space, distance avails not."

I did five owls in the last 24 hours.

I had to cancel my debit card today because of people most commonly known as "fuckers." It will be 7 to 10 days before I have a new one. I'm left writing checks to Steve so I can have cash. It's not that hard, but it is an annoyance. I very much liked my old card number, but it's a thing of the past now.

The other night in a dream, someone said to me, "You're just a silver star on Slothrop's map." Talk about the subconscious taking a person down a peg...

See no, hear no, speak no

My friend Evan posted a link to a wonderful blog earlier. Cake Wrecks "When Professional Cakes Go Horribly, Hilariously Wrong." Check out this creepy creation. This is what the internet was meant for--a fail blog of professional cakes, occupying one very specific internet niche. Someone puts time into this, updates it regularly, because they care about cake wrecks. And I love them for it. They are what makes the internet great.

At what age (and I'm sure this is a part of the natural developmental process) did you think, "I want to know what it feels like to get stapled," and then staple yourself? For me, I believe it was 4th grade. It's the people who simply staple someone else and then ask them how it feels that you really ought to watch out for.

I want to paint my fingernails, but I have never had the steadiest of hands, and it is a long, involved process. God I hate Jenga. And Operation is only good as a drinking game.

It's 7 am, and I must leave the house soon. Field trip today. How they came to the conclusion that this sort of thing is fun for students is beyond me. I'll try to take pictures of strange and magnificent creatures. As far as I know though, there are no turkey vultures at the aquarium or Beverly Beach.

Last Call

Nothing really

School
I have a midterm on Monday in one class and a quiz in the other. There are too many symptoms of Bacterial and Viral STIs to remember.
I need to start writing a personal statement. I need to pretend to have goals. "Real" ones. I don't think "I want a house, with a cat and a library and lots of green tea" counts. Nor does "I want to have the facial expressions of Lillian Gish, the wit of Sarah Vowell, and the super power of reading minds and repairing torn pages of books by will alone."

Home
Yesterday, dvds got organized. It took hours. Discussion. Donnie Darko = fantasy? Also, why do we have two of these? It's not that good. 1939 movies = Should Gone with the Wind or Wizard of Oz come first? Oscar vs. AFI (neither terribly convincing) vs. Chronology. Curtis Hanson movies... L.A. Confidential, 8 Mile, and Wonder Boys really have little in common. Split em up or keep director cluster? Should Passion of the Christ stay with the serial killer movies? What really belongs by Star Wars?

They're still painting. The house is no longer brown. Now it's this light color called, I believe, "Totally tan." As if a sorority decided that for their "charity" they would name paint, paint that isn't just tan, but totally. The windows are still covered by that 3M protective paper stuff. I miss having a view.

Avoiding
The constant debate/discussion of public vs. private. I fear that if I start looking at this in relation to the vast intraweb (our dear series of tubes), I'll never stop. The way some people get addicted to playing WoW or Magic the Gathering.

Paranoid Android

Last night I dreamed that I was late to work. Thom Yorke had dropped me off at a highway near the school with enough time for me to walk the rest of the way, but instead of going straight to work, I went to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s house and fell asleep on his couch. I awoke to a dog pawing through my hair looking for miniature bugging devices. He explained that they were no doubt listening. "Like in the Kremlin," I said, and he nodded. I did not know who they were, but who doesn't believe a talking dog, so I ran my hands through my hair trying to find a tiny listening device. I never did go to work.

This is post 601.

All my words were bound to fail

Spent yesterday with HIV, Cancer, and Batman. School, school, not school. There are reasons to hate summer. I made cookies. Chocolate chips combat catastrophe. Even burnt. Especially burnt. The name is not the same. We're not the same. "To reiterate, my terrible secret is..." I didn’t render under Caesar what was Caesar’s. I'm ticking. Quietly. There's an army inside you, but it can't save your life. Push those words further and further, balanced on the back of the tongue before one deep breath, and...swallow. Peristalsis. Lexicon to lemma. Someone's gotta do the dirty work. Willing and most able. I still can't think of anything.