April 21

Whenever my life gets too serious, I watch this music video. It's sort of a happy version of West Side Story, but with Jermaine Jackson and some angry white "men." It's also sort of like The Lost Boys, but without the vampires.



In doing my research, I came across quite a few articles on Pia Zadora. Apparently, she had it all, except a music career: good looks, great style, and a rich husband.

April 8

Phi Beta Kappa.

It doesn't feel like anything.

April 4

I decided that I am going to move to San Antonio after I graduate, at least for a year, to continue researching this topic.

I foresee the next year of my life alone in an apartment with Tolstoy and Edwige, stuck in a town with nothing to do and knowing no one, with a super platinum Netflix account.

April 1: My new favorite person

Last night, while Tony and I were indulging our egos and flattering ourselves, he mentioned that his older brother had once taken a creative writing class. This class involved writing weekly, as well as reading, revising, and editing the papers that other students turned in during the same class. Tony's brother, indulging his ego and flattering himself, took to making these suggestions and revisions in a gold pen. From then on, he took to calling these corrections "The Gold Standard."

What a badass.

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.