James Franco <3

James Franco is at NYU this semester. Apparently taking a class on Queer Cinema 101.

What I would give to have a class with him...

Although according to a comment on the site, "Even when James Franco is registered for a class, he doesn’t necessarily show up. And when he does show up, he’s an hour late, and he sits in the corner and scribbles illegible, emphatic notes while everyone stares at him as though he might spontaneously combust or turn into a rabbit at any given moment."

Yeah, that sounds about right.

on me dit que le temps qui glisse est un salaud - carla bruni

I don't like staying in one place. I get antsy for a change, a break in the routine. I'm sitting here in bed, listening to French music, wondering why I didn't follow in the footsteps of a ton of my college friends and move to Paris or Geneva. And then I remember that I got antsy in Paris, too. While there, I wrote la nouveauté d'un endroit s'en va toujours a few days before I returned to the States. As much as I loved Paris, for me it has always been New York. Because what does New York have if not nouveauté?

Now I'm at the last dredges of the summer slump. Making plans to break plans. Staying at home and doing nothing at all. At least I'll be out of here soon. This time I refuse to relegate my feelings to the territory of emo "need to escape" angst. How weird is it that I think my feelings are marginalized when someone tells me that other people/groups/movements have felt/are feeling exactly the same way? Sometimes I don't want my life to relate exactly to that song or that poem or that book. You are not alone. But sometimes I want to be.

Cleaning/packing

Cleaning house can be really painful sometimes, because looking back on certain things bring back memories that I'd rather let sit on the shelves for a while.

But it can also be kind of amusing. In a dark way. Something I wrote in a notebook a long time ago while attending a conference:

"58% of intellectual capital around the globe comes from women"

A statistic I no doubt thought was cool at the time, but that I find completely non-nonsensical now (my less sophisticated response while reading it -- "WTF?!"). How do you even measure something as intangible as "intellectual capital," anyways? Doesn't each company define it differently? And even if you could create a common definition (which I guess does sort of exist), how could you quantify it? For the world, no less!

And what about survey biases? Blanket statements like the one above kind of bother me. Not that I'm a statistics snob, but I don't like people trying to make themselves sound progressive with strange statistics that don't really mean anything in the end. I guess that's politics, though.

Sleeping more

This is slightly paradoxical, considering the time-stamp on this blog, but I've decided I need to drastically change my sleep habits.

1 Simple Goal -
7 hours per night. At least, on weeknights.

Reasoning -
Too many late nights in college have messed up my sleep schedule. I don't think I can expect to sleep at 2am and wake up on time for work. Also, I don't want my life span to be shortened because I hvae shitty sleeping habits. That's just not worth it. Good health = good sleep. I think.

Screw all my non-realized goals for this summer. It's now just over a month before I have to start work, and this is all I hope to accomplish. I think it's do-able.

So good night, and wish me good luck (and sweet dreams) :-D

Being Social and Stuff

Certain social mores and unspoken codes come into effect (or are more noticeable) when you get older. It's as if I can't just do whatever I feel like doing or want to do anymore without the nagging worry of being awkward.

Case in point - I met somebody during an event with whom I would really like to speak and re-connect. I got the business card of this person at the time, but could not locate it for a while. Now, almost a year later, I've found it again, and part of me wants to write this person an e-mail while another part of me thinks that the time frame of social acceptability has definitely already been breached. This may seem trivial, especially since I have a decent chance of crossing paths with this person after starting work, but I can't shake the feeling that it would be better to reach out now, if only to say, "yeah, I really did want to talk to you more the last time, I just never had the chance" before we're both working under the auspices of Corporate America.

So normally I would go with my gut on this one and send the e-mail, but I don't know anymore. Since when did I actively try to avoid social faux pas?

Marriage (or lack thereof)

Maybe it's because I'm hormonal, but every other day I somehow get quite upset over little things that multiply into bigger ones.

Case in point - today, some friends of mine were joking about the kind of man I was going to marry. It was all very harmless in tone, as in "oh, I can't imagine the kind of person you're going to end up with," but for some reason, this put me on the defensive. First of all, why are we talking about marriage, of all things? Why not date or boyfriend... why husband? This is another part of getting older, I suppose, that these sorts of conversations actually seem less absurd that they would. Second, I don't exactly appreciate the insinuation, however joking, that it would be crazy to find somebody who would actually marry me. Obviously I'm blowing this out of proportion, but I think I have enough insecurities and enough hormones floating around in my head that these sorts of things really don't help. Third, and most importantly (and this relates to the first), why marriage? Who says I'm getting married in the first place?

Of course my parents wouldn't understand this. Later tonight, we had some family friends over, and it was the same old conversation. "Have you found a boyfriend yet?" Only this time, when I said no, the response was really offsetting. "You'd better find one soon, and get married, too." My parents didn't say anything, but I know that they agreed. My grandparents as well... they keep telling me that they want to see me get married sometime in their lifetimes. I'd do a lot to make them happy, but I don't know if I can do that.

To me, marriage is such a huge thing that I can't even imagine it happening. And if (miraculously) I ever find a nice boyfriend, I certainly don't want to be pressured by outside forces into this huge commitment. Marriage is so much of a non-issue for me, yet so much of a legitimate issue for others who think they have some sort of stake in my life. Just thinking about this makes me sad as well as nauseous.

Yeah... hormones majorly suck.

On a lost USB Drive

I wrote a poem yesterday on a piece of Coscto's catalog when I couldn't find my USB drive amidst all the trash in our living room:

How much of our lives do we put in storage?
Piles of things
Material
Digital
Virtual
Stocked into
heaping columns and
entropic masses
Clutter

and the frantic and
frenetic search that ensues
for Lost Things
memories.
intangible documents
and
electronic pictures
we think we're making for meaning
when really
it's all just an expanse
of glorified
waste

~~

okay, not the best example of creative writing (haven't done that in a while). but it was nice to get my frustrations out.