semi-colonics

page 17 of jonathan franzen's the corrections has the longest run-on sentence i've ever seen in my life. what editor let this through? i guess you have to be white and an alumnus of the university of chicago to get away with this. not that i'm a stickler for grammar, but i clearly remember a second-generation brown girl immigrant not getting such a forgiving eye from her english teachers back in high school for the same shit.

i present exhibit A(ck!):

"And since Chip had no association with the Wall Street Journal--the publication to which he made unpaid contributions was the Warren Street Journal: A Monthly of the Transgressive Arts; he'd also very recently completed a screenplay, and he'd been working part-time as a legal proofreader at Bragg Knuter & Speigh for the nearly two years since he'd lost his assistant professorship in Textual Artifacts at D---- College, in Connecticut, as a result of an offense involving a female undergraduate which had fallen just short of the legally actionable and which, though his parents never learned of it, had interrupted the parade of accomplishments that his mother could brag about, back home in St. Jude; he'd told his parents that he'd quit teaching in order to pursue a career in writing, and when, more recently, his mother had pressed him for details, he'd mentioned the Warren Street Journal, the name of which his mother had misheard and instantly begun to trumpet to her friends Esther Root and Bea Meisner and Mary Beth Schumpert, and though Chip in his monthly phone calls home had had many opportunities to disabuse her he'd instead actively fostered the misunderstanding; and here things became rather complex, not only because the Wall Street Journal was available in St. Jude and his mother had never mentioned looking for his work and failing to find it (meaning that some part of her knew perfectly well that he didn't write for the paper) but also because the author of articles like "Creative Adultery" and "Let Us Now Praise Scuzzy Motels" was conspiring to preserve, in his mother, precisely the kind of illusion that the Warren Street Journal was dedicated to exploding, and he was thirty-nine years old, and he blamed his parents for the person he had become--he was happy when his mother let the subject drop."

:: posted by infiniti @ 9:21 PM::

metamorphosis

i better come out a butterfly.

this is the second saturday in a row where i'm just staying in. i guess it's a nice change from the hectic travel schedule of the summer, but part of me wonders if i'm going through some mental hibernation. "d" invited me to her cousin's party tonight, but since i'm staying home at my parents' house (if i'm going to stay in, i might as well stay at a place with cable tv), i turned her down. who needs to meet new people and hang out with people my age? not me. (smell the sarcasm).

i think i'm going through a needed hermetic stage. good thing i have this sweetless diet coinciding with this urge. i have an added excuse not to join people for drinks i can't drink, or food i can't eat. i'm dying for "i's" wedding in two weeks. i've already started to imagine what the champagne and the wedding cake will taste like.

it seems like whenever people take some down time and disappear, they always reappear with something fresh and great, where they can always say in retrospect that their down time was the reason good things were finally coming into their lives.

after being MIA from her friends for over four months, linda returned to her social scene showing off her first published novel!

martin went through an extended period of singledom, with only a handful of sporadic dates. six months later, he's walking down the aisle.

where did this all come from? i don't know these people! i'm not sure who "they" are. maybe i'm confusing some fictional crap on tv or in the movies for an assumed memory of actual events. i guess i'm just feeling that i'm going through this lackluster quiet period in my personal life for a reason. i'm just not sure what the reason is, or what the result will be, but it better be good.

VW golf diaries

i saw "the motorcycle diaries" yesterday with "d." afterwards, there was a brief q&a with the actors, including the lovely gael garcia bernal. someone from the audience asked if the experience of making the movie and knowing the story of how the trip influenced che's political and personal development in turn, affected them in any way. gael answered that it gave him better clarity in the decisions he makes in his life. he went on to talk about globalization and how the structures of globalization do not take humanity into account. va va voom. he's lovely and he's down. woot woo!!!

after the session ended, i was originally content to just walk away and go home, but something hit me. i quickly tailed him into the theatre lobby and acted like a bell boy trying to return an attache case left by a "gentleman."

me: "sir? sir?" what the hell. why was i calling him, "sir?" i didn't want to seem too forward and act like we were buddy-buddy on a first name basis, but come on! "my name is (insert name), and i do media justice organizing and training..." after this, i forgot what the hell i said. i think i muttered something about the summit we're organizing, but i can't remember. i blocked it out.

gael: (looks at my colorful business card that i stick in his hand) wow! all right! thank you!

i gently grab his wrist and say thanks. his wrist? what was i doing? checking his pulse?

so, i suck at schmoozing. i wish i just had the sense to be more straightforward:

"my organization is always open to celebrity donors who are down for supporting organizing work."

but no. hindsight is always 20/20. isn't that the saying?

btw. the film was beautiful. it was much better than "cats." i'm going to see it again, and again, and again. (ok. maybe not that many times).

on second thought...

i got my horoscope from astro.com:

"Consciously or unconsciously, you are pruning your life of everything that is not relevant to what you really are as a human being. If this process is not happening consciously, you may experience a sense of loss for the elements of your life that are coming to an end now. However, do not dwell upon these losses, for they are necessary in order to clear the decks for the major period of action in your life."

next time, i'll think twice before i bite into another cookie. (head lowers. i walk shamefacedly away. begin "twilight zone" theme song here).

don't drink. don't smoke. what do you do?

being a straight edge these days is still difficult for me. i still have a mind for mischief.

i saw "e" read at the cafe tonight, where i ended up co-hosting again at the last minute. i was once again reminded of the fact that i always felt that other people smelled so well of their laundry detergent and fabric softener, and no matter how much i did laundry, i could never smell "mountain spring" fresh. i write this in reference to my co-host, "k," who was sporting a fragrant "fresh out of the dryer" white t-shirt; he could have been wearing cologne. how come i can't smell like that?

maybe i'm just reclaiming my olfactory nerves after quitting smoking.

"m" made a batch of cookies that she brought to the cafe--ginger chocolate chip cookies. i killed one. in a split second, i rationalized that if i had just that one cookie tonight, i would be prepared for when my sugar fast ended where i would begin to exercise my newly learned virtues of moderation. pretty much, i acted like a fiending drug addict. i might as well have been sneaking a cigarette in the bathroom with the window open and the shower running, justifying the act with the idea that the water's humidity would cleanse my lungs as i waft more tar particles into them. addicts are more complicated then god; our minds work in mysterious ways.

did i just blaspheme? was that heretical? was that statement the equivalent of john lennon saying the beatles were bigger than god? (lightning? lightning?)

"e" now says that he's trying to quit smoking and drinking. fucking biter. what does he think this is, a fucking picnic? (hey dude. what's up?) he's going to still eat sugar, though, so i guess i'm only half-bitten, twice shy.

i recognized a guy from nerve.com at the cafe, tonight. i made sure to make myself invisible to him. god forbid he ever approached me to say, "aren't you on nerve?" i think, then, i'd have to deck him. it would be ugly.

i haven't been able to work on my room. it's driving me crazy. wait. i already was. i think i'm still buzzing from my increased glycemic levels. great. fucking great.

anal fixation: is that so?

according to freud, there's a whole new meaning to when i say my room is a "shit pit."