March 31

Apparently, when you graduate from UT, the CO-OP gives you a card that entitles you to 10% off all future purchases. This seems totally absurd to me. When you're a student, busy with things, disorganized, and completely lacking money, they expect you to keep track of receipts for an entire year, and then mail them in. But as soon as you have the time to be organized, or the money to spend on these things, the CO-OP gives you a discount card.

March 30

When I was still cool enough to listen to the radio and not old enough to drive, my mom would let me sit in the front seat and man the dial. Sometimes we liked the same songs, sometimes not, but I never listened to 101x in the car, since the language and lyrical content of many of the songs upset her (Uninvited's Too High for the Supermarket is one that comes to mind). Instead, I usually hung around the more commercial stations, 96.7 and 94.7, expertly maneuvering between the two.

(For those of you not from Austin, 104.3 was a very bad ass, commercial-free rock station for a while, as well. I think they ran out of money, since they had no commercials. Also, 93.3/99.7 used to be a ridiculous techno station. 102.3 used to be classic rock. Ooooh, back in the day.)

In 2001, Shaggy's version of Angel was released by Universal. My mother loved the original version of this song, and I thought that this new cover would be equally mother-friendly. I was completely wrong.

Shaggy's lyrical rewrite ran as following:

Girl, you're my angel, you're my darling angel
Closer than my peeps you are to me, baby
Shorty you're my angel, you're my darling angel
Girl, you're my friend when I'm in need
Lady

I remember sitting in the car, singing along a bit, getting my fourteen year-old groove going. My mom reached over and turned off the radio. "I don't like that song," she said. "What?!" I was shocked. It was harmless. "Why not?"

"I don't like that dirty thing he says," my mom replied. I couldn't figure out what she was talking about. She turned and faced me. "Christina, what do you think 'peeps' means?" she asked me, eyebrows raised. I tried to explain to her, "peeps" was people. "You know," I said, "Like, people. Peeps. Good friends, buddies."

She shook her head at me, and I could see how naive she thought I was. "Christina," she said, lowering her voice the way parents do when they're going to say something that makes them uncomfortable, "He's talking about breasts."

March 29 (2)

Today I received a spam email from a kid in one of my classes.

"This is an abuse of the UT email system and strictly forbidden by the UT Acceptable Use Policy," I wrote him back, copying and pasting the relevant part of the policy, and linking him to the entire thing. I almost threatened to report him, but then I realized he could be a super hacker spy.

March 29

When I was in high school, I dated a boy who never spent his change. Instead, he would put all of it in an empty drawer in his dresser. Once a month or so, he'd put all the change into a sock and give it to a homeless person.

I once lent him my favorite sweatshirt, because that's what you do when you date people. After we broke up, I asked for it back. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said. "You're wearing it in your photo on your band's website," I told him. "Oh." He said. "I lost it."

One of his fingers was too short; I guess he'd lost the tip in an accident, but he never told me about it. He'd also dropped out of high school, and when we met in a park--he chased me down after I had walked past and told me that I was beautiful--he had just gotten out of rehab.

He was a terrible money manager, and always broke. Sometimes we'd hang out at the halfway house, all those sad, middle-aged men around trying to put their lives back together.

We didn't date very long. "I'm sorry," I told him. "I think we should take a break." He got in his van and drove away. "I know what that really means," he said as he was walking away from me.

March 28

I just wanted to revisit the sheer genius of this article.

1.) It's Putin.
2.) It's Abba.
3.) It's Bjorn Again.

"'He [Putin] was dancing along in his seat to Super Trouper and raised his hands in the air during Mamma Mia when we asked the audience to,' she said."

March 25

Holy shit. This is like four times the calories I eat in a day. Although I do eat fewer than the government recommended 2k calories/day.

March 23

When I was young, my parents took our television up to the attic where it stayed for at least the next decade, nestled among cardboard boxes, home insulation, and Christmas decorations. I have very few memories of television--I remember my parents once watching Star Trek, I remember pretending I woke up early enough on Saturdays to watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and I remember watching a Disney movie one day with my mother as men replaced the shingles of our roof. But for the most part, I didn't remember anything about having a television, and I didn't miss that it was gone. I spent a lot of time outside.

One of the things I remember best about playing outside (besides the fact it enabled me to watch for and then greet the mail carrier, which was my life aspiration at that point), was the cicada shells. You would find them all sorts of places, where the cicada had decided it was now too big for its skin, and it was glorious for me as a child to find these relics. Sometimes they would be on our wood fence, sometimes the stone of our home, sometimes on a tree, but always magical. A dried, empty, hollow husk of bug, dull brown but, in my small eyes, a complete wonder. We would collect these empty bug shells, take them into our home to show our mother, proud as she was of her beaming children.

The most magical aspect of these skeletons, for us, was that we never saw the real insect. We could hear them alright, every night, but they were shy creatures, I guess, because the only bugs I could ever catch hold of were the big slow moths that clodded around light fixtures. One day my father showed me a picture of a cicada. "What's that?" I asked, staring at the picture. This creature was bright green, vibrant, with beautiful, clear wings. "That's a cicada," my father told me. Looking back I imagine him patting me on the head, but I doubt that happened. I was dumbstruck. How could such a beautiful creature leave such a dull, frightening shell behind?

These days, I don't find cicada shells any more. I don't know if it's because I've gone inside, or because the insects have gone somewhere else. I have a television now, but I still don't have any channels. I'm fairly certain I still wouldn't wake up to watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. But I've never resented that my parents took away the television's monsters so that I could invent better ones in my own backyard.

Maech 22--DUDE

Okay. Blind people in movies and TV? Total gimmick. Who's going to tell them if they do it wrong? DUH. No one. The only people that know can't *see* them.

March 21.2

I have been watching a lot of TV on the computer the last few days in a valiant effort to procrastinate writing my thesis. I have also over-indulged on coffee, which makes me frenetic and obsessive when I have an empty stomach.

TV intrigues me. I guess this is because I grew up without one, but why isn't really so important. Because I have, in the past, had friends who were really into Grey's Anatomy, it's a show I'm more likely to watch than others, since I'm somewhat familiar with the characters.

I guess what really amazes me about these shows is how obsessive people are over them. I mean, all of the major characters have decent-length Wikipedia pages. That's insane.

But what intrigues me most is how much of them are simply the writers playing with the people in the audience. People watch these shows uncritically! Take for example, what I gather has happened in this season of Grey's Anatomy:

Izzy, who is dating Alex begins having hallucinations of the heart disease-ridden fiance that she accidently killed, but the slutty, bi-sexual bitch intern fucked up the charts, so she didn't find out as soon as she should have. Then Grey's boyfriend got in a fist-fight with his best friend who previously had slept with his previous wife but is now dating Grey's younger half sister, and then he went out to this trailer he has and got drunk a whole bunch of days in a row. And this bone doctor in the meantime has discovered she's lesbian and her first female lover left and now she's totally into this obnoxiously happy hot blond doctor who kissed her in a bar bathroom, but this is all after she ran away to Vegas and married a former intern who later divorced her for the girl that has cancer that is now dating someone else.

What the fuck. Life is not like this. It's such an intentional trainwreck all the time. And all of these fake things have wikipedia pages.

But trainwrecks make me think of The Great Collision by Scott Joplin, and that's something without a wikipedia page. But the event it was written about did. Why not try enjoying a little bit of Texas history.

March 22

Another SXSW is over. All said and done, this year was rather harmless--No blistering, all-day hangovers, no sunburns, nothing said or done that I wish I hadn't. Just things I didn't do that I wish I had.

March 21

Holy Moly. Spring break is almost over. I'm bleary-eyed and blinky, squinting at the screen in front of me, the researched microfilm pages splayed across the table. I'm watching my coffee get cold, nursing the inexplicable goosebumps that are sneaking their way down my arms. I am tired. Last night's make up is smeared across my heavy-lidded eyes.

I think I might take a long bath.

March 10

The only thing I've done well all day is spill my coffee.

I finally pumped up my bicycle tires. Yay for pinch flat prevention.

March 8

Today I washed my hair.

March 5!

Today is March 5th. It is a Thursday, and I am currently occupying a position in the glorious coffee haus Cafe Medici. I am procrastinating.

Yesterday I spent all day in the San Antonio library before driving home and losing my phone. For two hours. I also took photos of Tolstoy inside a beer box. Yes, overwhelming cuteness will be coming your way soon. What could be better than beer and bunnies?

I'm going to go to physics at 2:00 and turn in my half completed homework. What a load of crap. I hate that class. Every day I think about the biting honesty with which I will write end-of-semester Course Instructor Survey. It will likely be the highlight of my year.

Last week was the first week in a long while that I haven't picked up the Onion. I always do, and while I don't always complete the crossword, I always put some time into it. The Onion is my favorite crossword. Fuck you, New York Times. Where are your sexual references and inappropriate slang? I'll do the crossword that's written in my language, thank you.

That said, I think I'd be much more likely to read the Chronicle if it had a crossword in it. Actually, I think the Chronicle is much better reading than the Onion. I like to read the fake news headlines, but the fake news stories bore me. Instead, I read my fake horoscope and Dan Savage's fabulous sex column. In the Chronicle, I generally read the editorials and occasionally some other stuff. But editorials are the best part.

This is Teeney, signing off.

March 1

Goodness, dear readers! (Ha! Get it? I said that I had readers!) I've fallen way behind in the realm of blog lately. It's been busy in my life.

I've had insane dreams lately. Friday I dreamed that I went to Leah's apartment, and there was this insaaaane get together going on where everyone was doing drugs and doing other illegal things, which, in the dream, I slept through (which was very Teeney of me). Anyways, one of the guys there had a dad who had a lot of money or something, I'm a little bit fuzzy on this point, but he sent everyone who had been at the mini-drug fest an email with some sort of attachment that tracked your computer (GASP! DREAM SPYWARE!). The email stated that if any of us closed the email, he'd take our illegal behavior to the DA. Well, I didn't really think the whole thing made sense anyway, and I hadn't even done anything since I'd been asleep (and I don't do drugs anyways), so I just closed it. And then the dude got all up on my ass, telling me he was going to put me in jail, etc., etc., and everyone was just like SHE DIDN'T DO ANYTHING! And then, I was so kind to his asshole son that I "broke" him, and he became a nice person too. Which is probably the weirdest part of the dream, since I'm totally impatient.

I then dreamed another dream that I had three (?!) bunnies and a pet parakeet. That is waaaay too many animals to keep up with. Although I now believe the new bunny is a boy bunny, and have decided to call him Tolstoy.

Last night I had part II of a new series of dreams that I've been having lately. In this dream, I replied to a Craig's List ad to help teach a woman's kids at home. When I show up, she tells me that her husband has invented a time travel machine (No! Really! she tells me) and that they use this time travel as an excellent way to teach their children about history and the like. Anyways, last night my dream continued from this; I went over to her house and met the other teachers (there is like, a team of young people who do this), and it turned out that they had covered all the Lessons, except Lesson 3, which it would be my job to teach the kids. Then the mom went into the time machine with me to show me how to use it. Really, it was like a not very good video game that I was horrible at.