are you there Jesus? it's me, Ricky...

some emails i found in the copier this week:

Hi Ricky:
Would you mind help Jesus this issue?

Thx...Jesus
----
Hi Jesus:
Talked with Ricky,he already took action...
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Thank you Jesus! Hang in there. It will get better soon.

looks like Jesus and Ricky worked things out.

lonesome cowboy

On August 23, 1973, Jan Erik Olsson, on leave from prison, walked into Kreditbanken at Norrmalmstorg, central Stockholm and attempted to hold up the bank. Swedish police were called in immediately, two of them went inside, and Olsson opened fire, injuring one policeman.

The other was ordered to sit in a chair and "sing something."

He started singing "Lonesome Cowboy."


-----

Olofsson was a repeat offender who had committed several armed robberies and acts of violence, the first committed at the age of 16.

He walked around in the vault singing Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly".




(from the Wikipedia article about the Norrmalmstorg robbery, which originated the theory on Stockholm Syndrome)

life is stupidity!

as i was cleaning my room today, i read through some of the random notes i wrote to myself in the past year and didn't get a chance to do anything with yet. many of them were intended for blog posts but for some reason or other (SR PROJ), i never got around to sharing them.

anyway, here comes one of those now. but since it's been so long, i can't remember the context, other than to say that i was on a shuttle from the Denver airport to my hotel, where a bunch of people and their dogs were incidentally taking up residence. i was there for the weekend for a Students as Colleagues conference presentation, but everyone else in Denver was there for the dogs. (regrettably, i had taken pictures of the experience, but have since lost them in my harddrive death. no, i'm not over it yet.)

written on the back of my ticket stub, a conversation i was overhearing between 3 or 4 business people:
"We could get a salad @ Chili's, put it on ice for our trip to L.A."
"You could get Quizno's @ Phoenix. Or Schlotsky's... Quizno's though... Mm-mm good!" (--> isn't that another fastfood chain's slogan?)
"We could get Sonic breakfast..." (they proceed to talk about ice. they discuss the iced drinks they've tried.)
"Papasito's Burritos, you should get the avocado salad dressing. Ranch blended with avocado. Good fat!"

(i think my thoughts at the time were: "wow, do they know how impossibly ridiculous they sound?" who knew there existed a special sub-breed of human that prides itself on being fastfood aficionados? i pray to god i never become a person who spends so much time at work and/or in airports that i forget the joy of actual food and conversation. i try my best to focus my attention on those mountains i've heard so much about...)

on the other side of the ticket stub, written in different ink, i observe an interaction between a pair of dogs and their owners in the lobby of the hotel. i think i'm in line to buy a muffin. it goes like this:
small voluptuous woman in a visor and spandex pants with a bit of a waddle walk. dog is large and slender, shaggy. dog encounters a small, boxy terrier(?) with an old man-looking beard. bearded dog's owner is a tall woman with a shiny long face. slender dog sniffs up beard dog. barking and attempted mounting ensues.
owners tug at dogs' collars. walk in opposite directions. banter:
curvy little woman: "She wants more of him!" (looks down at her dog, speaks to it as if to remind her:) "No puppies!" (they continue walking, dogs look longingly back at each other) "Oh, she wants more... She likes what she sees..."

at that moment i remembered Best in Show and the way the film satirizes the subculture, and particularly the absurdity of dogs shows' tendencies to simultaneously suppress and heighten sexual tension.



wow, so sometimes the movies really do get it right.

i'm sure i'll have more of the same tomorrow,
stephanie

p.s. the blog post title was under suggestion of my past self. i guess i had a blog post in mind when i took these notes. or, had a title ready, at least. [edit: now that i think about it, i recall that it might have actually been a quote from the first conversation... wow.]

great research tool!

yes, i am writing this at 4:54 in the morning. no, i haven't slept yet.

this is because even though i pledged to stay away from computers, i couldn't help the fact that the next 25 pages of my senior project are due in a week and i JUST started seriously devoting time to it again. i finally cleaned up my desk and found a way to set up my laptop so that i'm not constantly hunched over it and cramping my neck and wrists (tho the new set up seems like more of a strain on the eyes, even though i would've suspected distance from the screen would be a better practice. *shrug*)


so i started reading today. and making reading lists. and stacking the books on my reading lists on my desk and surrounding shelf and floor, so that my reading lists have literally manifested themselves into piles of work to do. it's kinda nice having them in discrete piles and knowing i have to work thru them one by one. seeing the piles shift in size makes me feel like i'm spending my time in some productive way.


with an endless soundtrack of pleasant, unobtrusive music (tonight it's been a mix of Joseph Arthur, Sandro Perri, Asobi Seksu, Ben Folds/Five, and now Beach House, which is GREAT for winding down and sinking in) and a stack of post-its, i've been making some headway.

AND, i found this great research tool for my Firefox browser that might've just saved me tons of time and saved my day:

hello friends and scholars -
i wanted to share this computer tool with you. i've found it useful for organizing my research because i've been accumulating so many resources and articles, that i was having a hard time keeping track of how everything connected. i used to keep dozens of .rtf files with url's and article annotations in them, but those became impossible to search and ended up just confusing me!

zotero is great b/c it's like del.icio.us (another links/tags manager) but has more layers for organization and helps you generate citations. and it's more user

friendly than RefWorks (and you can keep using it after you leave Miami). i've found the folders function to be the most useful, since i can bundle online articles

in .doc or .pdf formats and sort them according to which chapter of my thesis i'm writing.

anyway, check it out: http://www.zotero.org/


i hope it helps you with your various projects and saves you some stress.

happy researching,
stephanie

the past is glittering

readers, fans, friends, enemies -

i was packing up my things today in preparation for going back to school, and became somewhat nostalgic, as i am prone to do when preparing to go back to school.

i woke up realizing this was possibly my last break at home with my family as "a child." as i may be spending my spring break in oxford writing my senior project and gallivanting with friends, i felt guilty for waking up as i have on any other day before. this was a significant moment in my life, i wanted it to be recognized with fireworks and somber meditation, you know? next year, at this time, i'll have my first real-world job, i'll be living on my own - i'll be living far away! - i won't be going back to Miami, i'll be flying back to L.A. to go back to my own apartment, preparing to teach classes. how weird the difference a year makes.

---

today my eyes feel tired and dry, like i've been crying all day (but i haven't). i'm sorting thru the mess that's accumulated in my room for the last 22 years, trying to figure out what's important enough to take back, to keep, to tuck away in secret drawers, to give away, to burn, to preserve, to remember, to leave, to live, to let die.

frequently, the most trivial, ordinary things are the most precious. it's the little notes left in forgotten corners, stuck on doors and mirrors and desktops, that linger on bookshelves and in notebooks and letterboxes. these are the mass of my personal affects, the ones i've been collecting and saving to the chagrin of my mother - who finds this practice messy and pack rat-esque, or that my dad sees and dismisses as over-sentimentality. how to explain...

i don't keep a diary any more. my blog is my living document (oh, the digital age...). but there are things - little things - that i don't post here, but these things, when you piece them together, say more about the life i've lived and the people i've met than anything else. after all, it's the little gestures and details that mean the most. it's not a gift someone gives me that i cherish forever, it's the way they laugh when we're together, the way they hold my hand when we're walking together, the way they tie their shoes, their shape in a doorway, the way they muss up their hair when they're stressed, the way they sip their coffee or chew cookies, their walk, their handwriting when they write a note to me compared to when they're making a grocery list and don't care about presentation.

it's these things - these portraits - of my loved ones that i choose to remember and save. i have thousands of little portraits tucked in books and pockets, which, whenever i feel sad, always make me happy to know that i'm truly very lucky.

---

anyway, this is all very funny, b/c the one thing i really meant to post on today was this note i was looking at today when i was packing up my stuff:
it's from the summer, the contextual clues suggest probly from before i went to Mongolia, and i wrote it about my brother. we had just gotten back from a run - he was running, i was riding my bike - and i was ad-libbing this song about him as he ran, joking him for his tanlines. i sang it in a country accent, high and whiny. there were other verses too, but they were forgotten between the street and my room.

i thot it was funny, an endearing moment b/w my brother and i captured on post-it.

i guess i wanted to post about it but turns out i had more to say.

-stephanie

this is going in a gilded frame above my bed at school next year.


so that, when i wake up every day dreading having to write my 80-page undergraduate thesis, i can look at this and think to myself, "well, at least i don't have problems like these..."

-stefanie

mo' money, mo' problems...

...or, something...

got back from WV with the fam! lost my momentum while mountain-biking on a steep slope of loose rocks and plummeted to a surprising non-death. considering the odds, i'm in good shape, just a few scratches on my knee, bum, and arm.

got some great footage of the parents singing John Denver while driving thru the WV mountains. will post later when i can access the harddrive again! (it's packed and ready for Oxford!)

so many things to do before i move back! how will i ever find all the space and time in which to do it?!

while sorting thru the myriad loose papers and random mementoes i've accumulated in the past 14 or so months, i (re)found these weird decision maps.



i remember finding them for the first time while doing laundry/ working late one night in the dorm.

these are merely a few of the small packet i found - there are oh-so many more! could there be a series of them, awaiting discovery?

the possibility is just too delightful to contemplate right now.
-stef