One of Those Days

Sometimes life just rears up and grabs you by the pigtails. It only happens during particularly lazy afternoons when even folding your clothes seems like a titanic feat, then boom! everything is turned on its head. Even worse, I have nobody to talk to about this. There's no explanation.

I'm having one of those days when I change my opinion of the world from optimistic to doomed. Apparently, one in three French people describes hisself or herself as "a bit racist" or "somewhat racist". Come on, people! We've been through all this. Can't they at least find a new way to discriminate?

Why I Hate that I Love Nerds

They're so smart, but they're just so nerdy.
They dress poorly and style their hair even more poorly.
Worst of all is the defensive nerd-pride, feebly clutching a knowledge of the Second Law of Thermodynamics to explain why they are infinitely superior to all the attractive, outgoing guys. When they fail at that, nerds decide they are superior to all women just because they are men even though that argument defies all logic and most experience.

But I love it so much! I love arguing with nerds because it's just so fun to tear down their defenses. And it is a wonderful challenge when they really are smart and know their stuff. However, I know that many nerds will subbornly refuse to leave a sinking argument even when I'm right. I hate that. Yet, I do it anyway.
I also love how nerds make me feel like the only woman in the room because often I'm the only woman in the room interested in what they're saying or willing to listen to them say it in the first place. With nerds, sometimes I really am the only woman in the room.

Some nerds let me be in charge because compared to theirs, my personality is a steamroller. That makes me really happy.

Most of all, I can't stand that nerds remind me of my dad. Especially engineer-nerds who are way too skinny and who joke about nerdy things without first checking the room for people who would actually understand the joke. It makes me think about all those times my mother told me that people look for mates like their parents, and how my mom looks like my paternal grandmother and how my dad looks like my maternal grandfather. It's just weird; plus, I hate following trends. And then I think about how my mom is so organized and in charge and how I'm not sure I can handle as much responsibility as she has because I'm not organized at all. Some non-nerdy man who'd run my life for me doesn't sound so bad.

I've already lived with my dad. I want someone new! Or maybe resistance is futile: I'm doomed to nerd-wifehood.

Ahhhhhhh!

And that's all I have to say about that.

Another Decemberist Triumph

Occasional discordant hurdy-gurdy riffs which make me want to tear my skin off aside, I love The Decemberists. Sometimes I can think about only The Decemberists for minutes at a time, which is a big deal since I have ADD and rarely think about any one thing for longer than three seconds. However, Jenny Conlee does not have a pleasant voice. It's not her fault, and she plays the pump organ beautifully, but her voice is just irritating. She nearly ruined the otherwise celestial "Mariner's Revenge Song" on Picaresque. That's why I'm ecstatic that The Decemberists asked Laura Veirs to sing the part of Girl in "Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)". Instead of Conlee's Baba-yaga screeching, Veirs brings a sensitive, mellifluous tone to the song. Because I am a closeted hopeless romantic, this bittersweet dialogue between a Confederate soldier dying on the battlefield and his pregnant sweetheart at home, while hearkening to Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain and no doubt countless other Civil-war tales, is my favorite song on the amazing The Crane Wife. It is their most sophisticated record yet.
Should The Decemberists get any better, they may reach true artistic perfection, and then all other musicians will be forced to kill themselves because they will never measure up.

Some Dreams are Unreachable

My family's tragedy is that, for the past 150 years, we have been bred for the upper class while stuck in the working class (and sometimes lower). We work in production but are educated for upper management.
My immediate family's financial situation suggests NASCAR and Cheese Whiz, but our tastes run towards museums and Brie. Actually, I've never tried Cheese Whiz or seen a NASCAR race, but my life would be so much simpler if they were all I wanted from it. Instead I am stuck envying my university friends' summers in Europe while knowing I could never fit into a crowd of American Idol fans either. This is my destiny—to continue the curse by passing my passion for foreign films and nineteenth-century utopias onto the future generation along with a bus pass and a fear of cops.
Since I have decided that I do want a future generation, I have only to ask myself who my oh-so-lucky other half will be: an ambitionless son of privilege whose parents will hate me for being poor (which is actually average) and think I dragged him down, or a working-class man who is happy with his position in life whose parents will hate me because I have educated tastes and think I secretly despise them?
I cannot stand the type of people who do the things that I want to do. I hate how the green-eyed monster cackles on my shoulder when I'm around them. I hate how bored I am with most people who live in small houses where the children share bedrooms, because I am from a small house where I shared my bedroom.
The one silver lining to my situation is that it has kept me out of inter-race/inter-class disputes all my life. I'm not rich and white, but I'm not trash either, so that's something, right?

Why I Avoid Quiet Dark Places Where Thinking is the Only Thing to Do

I just realised that if I had played my cards right—if, for one moment, I were not completely selfish and idealistic—I could be graduating in April. I could have a job—a real job—in an area with a reasonable high school and an affordable standard of living; my little sister could get out of this house with three years of high school still ahead of her.
As much as this Christmas has been nearly greeting-card perfect, I still hate myself for leaving her here so I can soak up useless information for years in a university like a very thirsty sponge desperately postponing my ultimately inevitable destiny of become something wet sponges are not good for, like being a doorstop. This greedy sponge should be satisfied with four years of college study. What more do I want? How is my spring-term trip to see London theatre going to help anyone but myself? How is crawling back to my parents for mission money going to hurt my family? How is my absence already hurting my sister?
Why can't I sleep? Why do I think I'm so important anyway?