In which I bare my soul

Time to get in the sharing zone kids.

Dr. History has tagged me in some sort of “8 Facts” meme, and I lack the self control needed to resist the sweet siren song of exhibitionism. Here be the code, me hearties:

• Players start with 8 random facts about themselves.
• Those who are tagged should post these rules and their 8 random facts.
• Players should tag 8 other people and notify them they have been tagged.

1) I dyed my hair somewhat recently and people like myself, my mother, and my co-workers were unable to tell the difference. I visited some friends from college last weekend (who I haven’t seen since last October) and it was one of the first things they noticed. Weird.

2) My college computer (a Dell) was named Yossarian after the protagonist of my favorite novel, Catch-22. This was because he was stubborn and unwilling to submit to my authority. My current computer (a black MacBook…and a much better computer) is named Blackadder after the BBC series of the same name. He has not attempted regicide as of this writing.

3) One two recent-ish long-haul travels I have been seated next to some very interesting people. I will leave it to you to interpret what I mean by “interesting.” One was a man penning a treatise lovingly titled “Zionist Criminal Jew Chieftens in Latin America,” and the other was a man who spent the entire trip masturbating. I was very uncomfortable during both trips. (And so help me God no one had better find this blog by searching the title of that treatise. In fact, I just Googled it myself to see what comes up. Mostly articles from the Economist, if you’re curious.)

4) Back before I was an all-purpose nerd, a nerd-of-all-trades if you will, I was a poly-sci nerd. Before that I was a film nerd. I guess I still do specialize a bit in my nerdy-ness since I’m far more into history and culture than, say, genomes or string theory.

5) I knew I wanted to go to the College of William & Mary since I was 5 years old. Either I am excellent when it comes to long-term planning or very, very stubborn.

6) I am painfully honest. To the point of being blunt. I am also a very talented liar. If you ask me a question I can guarantee you a straight answer (and to earn my trust you must not ask me too many questions, since I prefer to play things rather close to the vest). However I sometimes lie about completely unimportant things just because I can, and if you abuse my honesty by asking too many prying questions I will certainly lie then.

7) I don’t remember birthdays, I’m atrocious at keeping in touch, I hate phone calls, and thoughtful little gestures just don’t occur to me. By the way, I have two X chromosomes.

8) The town I’m getting my MA in, Leicester, is apparently the curry capital of the UK. This means there had damned well better be some spicy food there, because I require copious amounts of spicy food.

I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling a bit drained from all that sharing. I also don’t know 8, non-LJ blogosphere people to tag, which is perhaps one of those shameful things I should be a lot more hesitant to mention. So, for the two I do know, I tag Courtney and Sara. I guess I could tag my mom too, but she’s never realize it so it would be a waste.

A personal update?

This is me, continuing to not be forthcoming about my hopes, dreams, daily activities, or personal hygiene. (Which is, now that I mention it, rather good. Quite up to first world standards, if I do say so myself.)

I never update because I try to pen these deep, cohesive entries that incorporate all of my experiences into some larger and more meaningful whole. Like most lives mine is neither cohesive nor especially meaningful, so I manage to fail every time. Really I’ve just been working, reading, visiting friends, drinking with colleagues, stressing over things I don’t control, and sleeping rather poorly. I expect the next few months to be filled with more of the same. I also filled out my FAFSA. Apparently I can only afford to pay about $4,000/yr. for grad school. SWEET! I do so love me some student loans.

The next entry I am dangling in front of you like a dangly and desirable yet ultimately most likely unattainable thing has to do with machismo and violence and mob mentality. And film. And literature. And the intersection of film and literature. AND THE MOB. I’ll bring the bullshit, you bring the cannoli.

The World Series of Ketchup

When I was but a wee lass I thought that there really was a game called Ketchup. It was what adults played when they had fallen behind. As someone who is ostensibly an adult (I have all of the parts, at any rate) and who has fallen behind rather hideously, I think it is time for a little first-class sporting action in the recently renamed Heinz Arena.

Please bear with me as I try to tie up all the loose ends I have left in previous entries. This could get ugly!

•  Hullo Interweb! and Artery Clogging Sausage Stuffing don’t really have any loose ends. The stuffing is still delicious and lethal, and the only question that might arise from the first entry is that of which person I am in the photograph. The answer is, of course, the attractive one. Or the one on the left. Whichever.

• Why I Can’t Be Arsed To Come Up With a Witty Headline asks the age old question of “what the heck is this blog about?” Like most cosmic queries, it has proven unanswerable. So sorry. I still love the New York Public Library as much as I did when I made this entry, though I have not looked at the available Rosetta Stone software even once. What can I say; I am a lazy American and my monolingualism is imprinted on my DNA.

• Next up was my pièce de résistance, Not So Live Satire Blogging, also known as the only entry of mine ever read by more than a dozen people. Well whaddaya know! Apparently The 1/2 Hour News Hour was picked up by the Fox News Channel, which has been airing it ever since. (Thanks Wikipedia!) I couldn’t be bothered to sit through it again, not to mention that it airs in the same time slot as The Tudors, and I can think of very few television shows that take precedence over Jonathan Rhys Meyers frolicking shirtless and being Machiavellian. Also, um, all that history.

• A Soul Crushing Work of Staggering Idiocy. Where to begin? I’m still pretty idiotic. However, I did finish my personal statements, did hear back from my recommenders, and have been accepted by my top three Museum Studies programs. Oops, programmes. I will most likely be accepting a place at the University of Leicester for the 2007-2008 MA course. Now of course I must stress over finances, visas, health, housing, fitting my copious belongings into one suitcase, etc. I never did make a follow-up entry on the International Spy Museum, but suffice it to say that I got to crawl through an air duct. It kind of shames the museum dork in me, but that was probably the most satisfying experience I have ever had in a museum, and I could have done something similar in a local junkyard. There was probably less of a tetanus risk in the museum though. (Really that’s just me being facetious. I’m a big advocate of making museums more interactive, though that line between Disney World and Learning is a little blurry and hard to pin down. I’m not going to even pretend to start on this topic… I’m supposed to be tying up loose ends not raising more questions!)

• I was such a huge cock-tease in Peaceable Kingdom. What kind of person promises sensationally titled entries like “Fisticuffs with Jesus: 5 People Who Want to Sucker-punch the Lord” and then doesn’t deliver? A real bastard, that’s who.

• Have I mentioned that I managed to finish my personal statement? Because I have. It doesn’t have anything to do with The Universal Curatorial Impulse, though I’m still trying to work out how to build my Master’s thesis around this (completely made-up) concept. You wouldn’t know it from this particular blog, but I am a great fan of making up concepts. If I were a great philosophical genius (or just a genius) I could take these crackpot ideas and turn them into accepted scholarship, but instead I am a passably intelligent crackpot, so I turn them into blog posts.

• I am not even going to attempt to re-type the title of this entry, but know that in the interim my grandmother has attempted to set me up with (among others) distant relatives, parents of my mother’s students, and 40 year old men. There is some overlap in these categories, particularly the “40 year old men” one.

• I came in last place in all my NCAA pools, much as I predicted I would. Also, I still find the kid who plays Harry Potter to be disconcertingly attractive. I console myself with the fact that his haircut in the upcoming Order of the Phoenix movie was a regrettable choice that causes his head to somewhat resemble a penis.

• I never actually experienced Saturday, Computerless Saturday, as I unsurprisingly chickened out and checked the weather online. It was all downhill from there. It was in this entry that I mentioned my “upcoming trip to Costa Rica.” I went and I had a great time. As you might have noticed from the entry previous to this one, there were monkeys there. There were AN OBSCENE NUMBER OF MONKEYS there. This might require more significant follow-up than I can provide in this bulleted list. No promises, of course.

• Unsurprisingly, the majority of Americans do not think the solution to school shootings such as the tragedy at Virginia Tech is to arm students to the teeth so that they can return fire. After those involved had time to mourn, I am pleased that public opinion blew in this direction.

Just so everyone is aware, there is some large and scary bug flying around my room right now. I thought you might like to be informed. Also this entry has not been proofread. At all. I didn’t even intend to write it right now… I wanted to go to bed!

Got My Money on a Bobtail Nag, Somebody Bet on the Bay

Never let me develop a habit for the ponies.

This can be read many ways.

1) Never let me pick up on Rebecca’s sick fascination with My Little Ponies.
2) Stop me from going all Alan Strang on nearby livestock.
3) Prevent me from unwittingly feasting on equine flesh while visiting other countries/exotic restaurants.
*4) DO NOT ALLOW ME  TO BET ON SPORTING EVENTS BECAUSE I SUCK AT IT. I SUCK AT IT A LOT.

Please consider the preceding four points to be your new mission in life. (If you do, I predict you will have an astoundingly successful life.)

A Phone Call With My Italian Grandmother, Who Incidentally Betrothed Me To Someone Whose Name She Did (and Still Does) Not Know When I Was But a Fetus

Me: “Hello?”
Nana: “Oh hello. Is my other granddaughter there?”
Me: “No she’s not home yet. Do you want me to let her know you called?”
Nana: “Yes please. I know she’s home and I haven’t gotten to see her! Not that I get to see you very often either…”
Me: “Yea I know. But I will tell her you called and I’m sure we’ll all get together soon!”
Nana: “Good. Because I want to know if she’s seen M. (her ex) at all.”
Me: “I don’t know if she has. He hasn’t been around here.”
Nana: “Oh, that’s too bad. Because I liked him, apparently. (A/N: She did not.) But then, I liked the old M. too.”
Me: “Yea, they’re both good guys.”
Nana: “And I want to ask her about it, because I know she’ll always tell me. She’s very open about her life.”
Me: “Yea, she’s pretty open.”
Nana: “And I don’t like to pry. You know I don’t like to pry.”
Me: “Of course not.”
Nana: “So I like that she shares these things with me. I like hearing about it.”
Me: “She’s a good girl, that Meri.”
Nana: “Oh definitely.”
Me: “Well, I’ll tell her you called. Love you!”
Nana: “Love you too. Goodbye now.”
Me: “Bye.”

For the record, in her book I hit Old Maid status at some point in 2005. There is still some hope for Meri though, as she is not quite 20.

The Universal Curatorial Impulse: An Excercise in Futility

I am trying trying trying to write my personal statement for grad school. I only have about 120 words. The problems? Well, laziness and procrastination spring to mind, but there are actually two main ones:

1) You might not be able to tell from this blog, but I don’t like talking about myself. I can blog because I have a highly developed tendency towards self-deprecation; I can talk about myself if I am talking shit. I can’t brag, except if I am being sarcastic and giving myself left-handed compliments. I really don’t think I am lacking anything in the self-esteem department, but writing 1000 words about how awesome I am and how I plan to revolutionize the field of museum studies? Not my forte.

2) I WANT TO TALK ABOUT THE UNIVERSAL CURATORIAL IMPULSE. This is my current theory on life, the universe, and everything. It is nebulous at best, but it is my pet theory and I want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk about my internships and classes and where I see myself in 10 years, I want to spew BS! I want to write an essay, not a personal statement!

All that said, Jesus is going to have to wait for his sucker punch. Sorry, James Cameron.

A Soul-Crushing Work of Staggering Idiocy

Thesis: I am dumb.

How dumb? Pretty pea-brained, thanks for asking. It seems, in my attempt to accidentally-on-purpose miss all of the US application deadlines for grad school, I have inadvertently missed several UK deadlines as well. When I say “missed” I mean “I haven’t done a damn thing and several deadlines ARE IN A WEEK.” So my having missed them is only theoretical at this point, but is nonetheless a reality.

I have heard back from only one of my recommenders, which leaves me a bit worried. Is the other on leave? Ignoring me? Trying to think of a kind way to say that he can’t a) remember who I am or b) find anything nice to write about me? Are my emails being caught in his spam filter? So, you know, panic and stuff. Other than that, UK applications are pretty straightforward and, best of all, free. I do need to write a personal statement at some point (or rather, a 500 word personal statement and a 1000 word one…because universities are fickle) but I need to wait until I am in another time-crunch induced tizzy to do so. I wouldn’t even have requested recommendations if I wasn’t in a blind panic. (You would not believe how much faster and more fluently I write when I am running on pure adrenaline. It is a beautiful thing.)

Do you need further proof that I am not fit to walk amongst intelligent human beings? On this blog I have linked to the blog of one of the programs I would like to attend. And I know this and am making this post anyway. *waves*

Oh look, I used stars to denote action. That might be my third strike.

But hey, on the plus side I wouldn’t be sharing this if it were still an actual crisis.

Off to DC this weekend. I will (hopefully) be visiting the International Spy Museum, so maybe I will have some anecdotes to share on my return.