It's over!

Émile Durkheim was so wrong about mechanical solidarity only being a function of traditional and small-scale societies. Many of the relationships I have are completely mechanical, and when our homogeneity disappears, so does the relationship.

Almost . . . there!

This morning it rained, and as I walked to work the trees dripped on my head. I saw a car with a bike rack and a white license plate with an evergreen on it. It parked and a man stepped out—a very pale white man with very dark brown hair and a brown anorak. I smelled pine. For a moment I thought I was home and all of this university stuff was just a bad dream.

Morbidity

I've been feeling really morbid lately, like I want to watch someone die. (I'll be a lot more mature about it this time.) Like I want to be swallowed by Faulkner's fish. Anyway Pushing Daisies, Bryan Fuller's latest too-good-for-the-general-public television show, is perfect for my mood. So is the rain I can hear with my open window and my new playlist, which includes the aforementioned southern gothic pieces and the following from the Decemberists:

Eli, the Barrow Boy; Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then) [Really, all of my playlists include this song. I can't live without it.]; Shankill Butchers; The Island [especially "You'll Not Feel the Drowning"]; The Infanta; The Bachelor and the Bride; A Cautionary Song; We Both Go Down Together; Leslie Ann Levine; Shanty for the Arethusa; The Chimbly Sweep; The Legionnaire's Lament [another must-have]; The Tain; and

Sold! To the Nice Rich Man – Welcome Wagon
You Know I'm No Good – Amy Winehouse
Down and Dirty – Shannon McNally
Afterlife – Rosey
Falling Away with You – Muse
Crooked Teeth – Death Cab for Cutie
Someday You Will Be Loved – Death Cab for Cutie
The Funeral – Band of Horses
Bleed like Me – Garbage
Lazy Eye – Siversun Pickups
Gone for Good (single version) – The Shins
Your Heart – The Triangles
Strange & Beautiful (I'll Put a Spell on You) – Aqualung
A Perfect Sonnet – Bright Eyes
Love Will Tear Us Apart (cover) – José Gonzáles
Mad World – Gary Jules
Everything Reminds Me of Her – Elliott Smith
Put Us Back Together Right – Headlights
Mouth – Bush
From a Voice Plantation – Guided by Voices
shopping for blood – Franz Ferdinand
Pablo Picasso – Citizen Cope
Sideways – Citizen Cope
Lord Raise Me Up – Matisyahu
Late Night in Zion – Matisyahu
Bones – The Killers
Each Dollar a Bullet – Stiff Little Fingers
Hurt (cover) – Johnny Cash
White Trash Beautiful – Everlast
We've Never Met – Neko Case
Days Go By (acoustic)
Mona Lisa – Grant-Lee Phillips

Jumpin' on the Folk-Gothic Bandwagon after All the Cool People Left

I've created a new genre of music in my digital library: southern gothic. So far the category includes the following amazing songs (with many thanks to You Ain't So Picasso):

Pepper – The Butthole Surfers (Why do they have to have such a juvenile name?)
No More Workhorse Blues – Bonnie 'Prince' Billy
Black Comedy – Bright Eyes
All Your Kitchen Ghosts – The Color Bars
I Will Follow You into the Dark – Death Cab for Cutie
Sixteen Maybe Less – Iron & Wine
He Lays in the Reins – Iron & Wine
Dead Man's Will – Iron & Wine
Naked as We Came – Iron & Wine
White White – Ivana XL
Hanky Panky Knowhow – Miracle Fortress
Look for Me (I'll Be Around) – Neko Case
Things that Scare Me – Neko Case
White Chalk – PJ Harvey
Pickin' Up Rocks – Sharon van Etten
Let the Bombs Fall – Shearwater
Turn Your Transmitters Off – Shearwater
Wedding Bells Are Breaking Up that Old Gang of Mine – Shearwater
Whipping Boy – Shearwater
Seventeen Devils – Starlight Mints
Marianne, You've Done It Now . . . – Vandaveer
The Streets Is Full of Creeps – Vandaveer
The Black Angel's Death Song – The Velvet Underground
Sweet Bloody Murder – Wax Fang

Of course over half of the Decemberists' stuff would also go in this category ("The Infanta"'s a good example), but I already have a literary rock genre for them.

P.S. I'm suddenly smitten with Vandaveer. How did I not notice his songs in my library for so many years? He's amazing.

Last Class

I can't believe I left my last undergrad class today at 12:45. It's too bizarre.

The Perfect Man

Christa has posted a list of the qualities of her perfect man (though I think she really should have included something about looking good with facial hair, since she talks about bearded hotties all the time). It's a good idea, so I think I will emulate it.

If I could stumble onto the perfect man, he would
a. have dark hair (his skin can be any color as long as his hair's dark);
b. teach political science;
c. believe in God's love rather than God's punishments;
d. want 2.5 children;
e. be a little reserved in company;
f. strive for high ideals like truth, equality, sustainability, and harmony;
g. speak at least three languages;
h. have a best friend;
i. appreciate Iron & Wine on summer evenings and Carlos Montoya on autumn ones;
j. love me to pieces;
k. kiss really, really well;
l. understand my need for a 1920s gingerbread house; and
m. know that arguing can be healthy.

So if Christa wants a five-year-old, I want a fifty-five-year-old. Awesome.

Adulthood

In a recent survey, 93 percent of college students between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five said that being financially independent from their parents was a requirement for adulthood. Only 73 percent of college students' dads said that was necessary. Similarly, while 53 percent of college students said being settled in a longterm career was an important part of adulthood, only 31 percent of their dads agreed.

Where do these parents come from? And why, even though I am financially independent of my parents (until I go on my mission), do I not consider myself an adult? Is it because I'm surrounded by frustrated postadolescents? Or does adulthood require something more permanent than half a bedroom?

And the Award for Most Gothic Bollywood Film Goes to

Devdas (2002)
violent desire, unconsummated love, childhood sweethearts, consumption, fallen women, perfect sons, dark nights, supernatural splendor, frantic midnight carriage rides, icy marriages, alcoholism, clandestine meetings, tempests, fate, scars, prophecy, jealousy, flames, faithful servants, fog, delusions, veiling, unveiling, and keysThis Bollywoodized Wuthering Heights has it all—with musical numbers. Someone needs to tell the professor of Women and the Gothic Tradition in Nineteenth-century Britain.

P.S. The driver of a dark gray sedan with Kansas plates DWV 157 (I think) nearly ran into me Saturday evening at the intersection of 700 East and 700 North. Nearly as in I jumped back, slipped, and ended up falling onto the car, staring at the driver through his fogged-up window. He was probably thinking, How dare that pedestrian cross the street when she has the signal? What an idiot.

Report on Iron & Wine at the Great Saltair

Iron & Wine last night were wonderful, even though Sam Beam had a cold. Christa and I met up with two of our former London buddies, who told us about being cool Americans at the O2 Wireless Festival this June. Oh, if I only had money!Anyway, Iron & Wine was better in person. Or at least, in person they were so different from the albums that they can't be compared. I was especially entranced by Paul Niehaus on the pedal-steel guitar; he looks like my sorta-uncle Jerry who makes his own mead, and the steel guitar was fascinating. Over all, I felt so folksy that I wanted to burn my bra, wear a kaftan, and go live on a commune. Except that I was born in the eighties, and we don't do that. We have cellphones.
Also featured in my musings last night was the wouldbe faded splendor of the Great Saltair—the Coney Island of the West. In the early twentieth century, it was the greatest attraction west of the Mississippi. When my grandparents went on their first date there, it was a romantic dance spot. Now the interior's stripped and decorated with nineties black paint and blue lights. Bring back the gothic-picturesque ruins celebrated in Carnival of Souls! They would go so well with Iron & Wine's southern gothic music.

Things I'm Not Gonna Miss about College

• Pollution
• Snow
  
• All-nighters writing a ten-page paper on something I don't care about
• Busywork
  
• Upstairs neighbors
• Stupidhands
• OOPPS in religion—and other—classes
  
• Heart Attack Hill
  
• Walking to the grocery store two and a half miles roundtrip
  
• Walking to the doctor's office four miles roundtrip
• Choosing between food and medication
  
• Only eighteen hours of work a week with no benefits
• People who get offended about everything
• Bad radio stations
  
• Commercials for LDS Living
• Postadolescent boys who throw snowballs at my window
• Frantic dating
• No pets allowed
• Utah drivers' Bowling for People nights, mornings, afternoons, evenings
  

One Naked Second

Today I betrayed myself in Doctrine and Covenants: he was behind me, and I-don't-know-what made me turn and smile. Smile as if to say, "I'm completely smitten with you—let's make out." He was smiling too, and our eyes locked, and it was all over in a second, but it was one second too long.

Darn men with their darn scruff and their darn knitted caps and their darn warm brown eyes and their darn aloofness.

Supercool History of Religions Map

"We would like to remind our American tourist friends that you are almost certainly talking too loudly."

Emma Clarke, voice of the London Underground, has been sacked. She taught me to speak English!

Thoughts on the First Snowfall (excepting that weird flurry in September)

• All of those little rips in my Keds are suddenly more than just an aesthetic problem.
• I'm amazed that I still remember which corners on the way to campus have the treacherous six inches of icy water covered in deceptive street-level snow.
• If the mountain passes between Washington and Utah are too snowy the weekend before Christmas, my dad's gonna leave me here until they clear. Today this seems more likely.
• Drivers are much less likely to stop at stop signs when there's snow. Even when a short young woman is crossing the street right in front of them.