reader rescue

all the things now missing from my life. but you can help me! read on...

in light of the recent death of my external harddrive (R.I.P. Jannik the swedish harddrive, 2007-08), i have been doing everything i can to try to fill in the now gaping holes in my life.

the most pressing thing, since i am such a huge audiophile, has been trying to recover my music library. i think my music taste exploded dramatically in the past year and a half, and i accumulated hundreds upon hundreds of albums, many rarities, which i am sorely sorry i didn't back up more regularly.

the last 24 hours have been a struggle to retrace my steps, racking my brain for lists of favorite artists and albums, trying to remember a faint and distant tune and trying to locate its context. it's like trying to recreate a complex recipe from the few scraps of leftovers you have from the night before. all i have are memories...

i grabbed lunch with my ma and bro today and when they flitted off to doctors' appointments, i wandered around the UK campus, where i was grossly ogled by a campus police officer as i walked by a drug bust (weird), and then i made my way to the independent bookstores. i only meant to go for a walk, but my sadness and desperation were too much and my will power was destroyed. i succumbed to some retail therapy and blew 50 bucks at CD Central in an attempt to fill in the gaps and now i'm ten albums closer to happy again (hey, i have no regrets. the albums were used. AND it's a local record store. i'm a sucker for supporting local independent businesses, especially if it means i can pop some Grizzly Bear into the cd player as soon as i get home.) alas, soon there will be holes in my pocketbook... (i need a job! i think after i'm done sorting thru my old clothes i'll make little bags and purses out of them. that sounds like a fun project. not necessarily lucrative, but i need to do something with my hands!)

oh, anyway, the real purpose for my post today is that i have a request to make of you, dear readers. my friends, with all my music now gone and possibly irrecoverable, the blog is, once again, my only way to retrace certain memories and their audio accompaniment. just looking thru the posts labeled "MP3" on the blog here, i can already identify several songs i would LOVE to have in my possession again. i'm assuming some of you took advantage of the downloads i put up for a time and now have them at your listening convenience? lucky you...

see, the beauty of this blog is that it often gives. and now, you, dear, precious, esteemed, good-looking reader, have the opportunity to give back. you have the power of edification in your hands! you can help reunite me with some of my favorite songs. you could make me so intensely happy, the waves of good vibes i will be sending you across the internet and geographic space alone will be enough to justify your trouble.

here's what i want: if any of you have mp3s of the following songs, please leave a comment below and we'll be in touch. (links are to blog posts in which i originally shared them with you)
"At the Hop" by Devendra Banhart
"Are Birthdays Happy?" by Jens Lekman
"Tonight, Tonight" by the Smashing Pumpkins
"The Idea of You" by the Neo-Futurists
the avocado couch podcast i did on covers
"Little Brother" by Grizzly Bear

thanks in advance. and have some preliminary good energy waves:
"Disarm" [mp3] by the Smashing Pumpkins

x's+ o's
-stefanie

THE FUCK?!!! (part deux)

i come home from school and begin the tedious process of unpacking all my shit just so i can repack it to move out to L.A. to begin my stint as a teacher.

and what do i need more than anything in the world right now? well, to be back among friends and some hugs, ideally, but i'll settle for some comfort music (the one song i can't get out of my head right now is "tonight, tonight" by the smashing pumpkins, and another S.P. song i don't know the name of but that i know i would recognize it if i could only hear it again, because i was overwhelmed with a feeling of forwardness, of no-looking-back, of immediacy and now, that flooded out the words, all i could hear was the beat and the swell of violins, a tolling bell, as i drove around in the infinite dark and expanse of cornfields in northern illinois, clutching the hand of someone i love, wishing we could drive forever and ever into that blackness and this song would never end and i would never have to let go, never have to say goodbye or even goodnight)

but i come home and plug in my harddrive, and what do i hear? an awful clicking, the whir of a struggling fan trying to bring my computer to life, and then the tinny sound of a clunky alert on my computer, telling me it can't read the disk and to eject it. wow, i want to vomit. this is the same sickening feeling i got in my stomach about a month ago when this happened the first time. and why should i be surprised? of course this would happen, i'm karma's biggest bitch. i want to vomit all over Bill Gates and Steve Jobs' faces right now, for inventing my dependency on technological happiness and for turning my life into invisible data, so easily corruptible and so easily lost. bastards!

i can't even begin to contemplate the scope of what i lost this time. (gag reflex). just about everything of value to me was on that stupid little lunchbox-sized piece of machinery, all of my writing, all of my plans for future writing, drawings, photos of friends and video projects (many still in progress), concert videos, memories of friends, lovers and family, and so many, oh so many good albums i may never be able to recover again. funnily, the only thing of huge value i did manage to save on my laptop was my recently completed senior project. and i don't even care about it, because i have dozens of hand-bound copies lying around my room right now. the materiality of it makes me ill. (gag).

i'm going to go the library now, i guess, to try to find a copy of the Smashing Pumpkins' Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. and then i'm gonna put Billy Corgan on full blast on my half-blown speakers and proceed to drown my sorrows in lemonade and whiskey. and when i sober up again, i'm gonna invest in a typewriter. perhaps i shall become a luddite.

[edit: i go to the library website and find that, of course, both their copies of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness are lost and/or missing. such is my life these days...]

[edit #2: after looking at smashing pumpkins downloads, i realize that the song we were listening to in the car on the ride home was "Disarm."]

with infinite sadness,
stephanie

actualizing a dream

i'm glad that this year allowed me the pleasure of realizing my dream of hand-binding my senior project. i can't tell you how fulfilling it is to look back on the original idea and see that i followed through with my original intentions.

it was the perfect way to wrap up my years as an undergraduate, building a bookpress from raw materials, enlisting the help of my friends in getting the copies made, printed, and assembled, then spending my last few days in oxford, sitting on the floor of my friend's house, binding books to gift to everyone i've met since my freshman year that has had any help in making my project a reality.

so, as a close to this chapter in my life (haha, a book analogy!), i have pictures of the book-binding process, AND, a promise to never talk about senior project again!

hahahaha, i'm done, friends! I AM DONE!

over and out,
stef

loose copies:

the binding station (that's my home-made press!):

the class book (you can see my personal note to my thesis and class mentor):

actualization! hand-bound copy of my thesis (you can see the note written on the inside cover):


for those not lucky enough to receive a hand-bound copy of the original edition of 25, my senior thesis is available in digital copies, to read and annotate, via Ohiolink.

the long goodbye

pictures from graduation, post-graduation Mac N Joe's excursion, mother's day brunch, and the last weekend in oxford with friends... [click pic's to enlarge]

hamming it up in Yager with Tom and Mikey J:

favorite moment:
Tom - "Hey Provost Herbst!!"
[Provost and President look over, wave, grinning like idiots]

Mikey J - "YOU SUCK!!"

---

Western graduation:

on Peabody steps

the strappin' Tappan tutors (and Davida...)

singing "Anyone Else (But You)" with Brandon

me, getting the Miller award

candle-lighting ceremony

post-ceremony

---

later that night, at Mac N Joes:

Ben and me

Pulkit and me

me and Matt Huelsenbeck

L to R: Karmen, me, Sudie, and Nicole

---

the next day, Mother's Day brunch:

---

the following weekend, me with Britt and Ashley before moving out

oh good times in familiar climes,
stephanie

BE LIKE THE BUFFALO

just goes to show that we can always challenge the existing relationships of power and domination, even those we assume to be "natural."

-stephan!e

a short and recent biography

i learned last night, right after we put a wrap on the class i've been teaching for the past semester, that i've been awarded the Miller Award for the Western College Program.

as the email notice describes it:

"You have been selected by your peers as the winner of the Miller Award.

Stephanie, your award is given to the student who most embodies the spirit of Western College. Congrats to you! As part of the WCP tradition that goes along with the Miller Award you will have your name embroidered onto the graduation gown worn by Ms. Miller. The Western College Alumnae Association expects that you wear "the regalia" to both the main campus commencement, as well as to the Western commencement. As such, please plan to attend the campus-wide graduation on Saturday, as well as joining us in Kumler Chapel. It will make for a long day, but you are now firmly enshrined as part of Western's rich history."

what an absolute honor! i was so breathlessly thrilled when i first read the email, i had to re-read it twice, just to make sure it was intended for me and not some other stephanie. but, the sender made sure to send it to all three of my email addresses, so i guess he knew what he was doing, too.

as part of the award, i had to submit a story about "me and my long, long life" (the dean's words). here's what i ended up writing:

In her time here at Western, Stephanie has immersed herself in community life, tutoring in both the Windate Writing Center and the Tappan Computer Lab, serving on Community Life Council (CLC) for her first and second years, and serving on the Traditions and Transitions committee for the preservation of Western College traditions. Stephanie has also extended her community involvement beyond Miami. She has volunteered at the Community Arts Center and with the Earned Income Tax Credit program in Butler County. As a Campus Progress Advisory Board member, Stephanie has helped to organize campaigns and training workshops for student activists all around the nation.

Among Western's many traditions, Stephanie holds the tradition of social justice most dear. As one of the organizers of the group Students for Staff, Stephanie has been continuing the work of Western alums who started the Fair Labor Coalition in 2003. She has spent the majority of her undergraduate years working alongside fellow students to campaign for a living wage at Miami University. And, when word about Western's possible termination leaked to the Western community, Stephanie was at the forefront of the movement to "Keep Western Whole." She demanded a meeting with the administration, and, along with a group of Western students, cancelled their Spring Break plans to stay in Oxford and meet with Provost Herbst and defend the Western Program. They would also raise opposition to the administration in University Senate, where they demanded greater transparency and student involvement.

Her experiences in both Students for Staff and the Keep Western Whole campaigns greatly influenced her to write her senior project on the importance of democracy and community in fostering empowering education. As part of her project, she designed and taught a Western seminar called "Education for Social Change," in which students developed community-based projects that would hopefully transform their educational experiences, as well as those of the people around them. She also built a book press so the class could hand-bind copies of a book they wrote together.

After Miami, Stephanie will be moving to Los Angeles, CA to teach special education as a Teach for America corps member. She hopes to get involved with more labor organizing or community-building projects in LA (she hopes to unionize the teachers in her school system - after her time in TFA) and plans on going to graduate school for cultural studies or public policy. She plans on devoting the rest of her life to educating revolutionary leaders and teachers who will transform the world of education, and dreams of eventually taking office as Secretary of Education and making democratic education the norm in schools all over the nation, and then coming back to Oxford to reinstate the Western College Program as she knew and loved it.

Of all the time she's spent at Miami, and of all the people she's met and things she's done, she's going to miss the moments spent with Western the most. This has really been her second family and second home for the last four years, and she wonders how she ever got by without this beautiful community. Thank you so much for giving her the opportunity to be so incredibly happy.

-- that last part made me tear up a little bit.

bidding you a fond adieu,
stephanie

"... Institutionalized desublimation thus appears to be an aspect of the 'conquest of transcendence' achieved by the one-dimensional society. Just as this society tends to reduce, and even absorb opposition (the qualitative difference!) in the realm of politics and higher culture, so it does in the instinctual sphere. The result is the atrophy of the mental organs for grasping the contradictions and the alternatives and, in the one remaining dimension of technological rationality, the Happy Consciousness comes to prevail.

It reflects the belief that the real is rational, and that the established system, in spite of everything, delivers the goods. The people are led to find in the productive apparatus the effective agent of thought and action to which their personal thought and action can and must be surrendered. And in this transfer, the apparatus also assumes the role of a moral agent. Conscience is absolved by reification, by the general necessity of things."

-Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man (1964), p.79 (in the Beacon Press copy) 

amazingly, online here.

read this book

(a note to Self:)

read this book: 

The Suppression of Dissent: How the State and Mass Media Squelch USAmerican Social Movements 

by Jules Boykoff

it uses "squelch" in the title! (my descriptor of choice!)

-stephanie now

post-thought: also these books...

STUDENT DISSENT IN THE SCHOOLS (eds. Irving G. Hendrick and Reginald L. Jones)

COMMUNITY AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN AMERICA (Thomas Bender)

happy bro day!

today is my younger brother's birthday! he turns the 1-9. nothing particularly special (about turning 19), but he's a good guy, so i hope he has a really great day.

he's living down in Durham, NC and going to Duke to study engineering/ accounting/ education/?who knows what's intriguing him these days. he's pretty easily intrigued. he's also a pretty easy conversationalist. unless he's uncomfortable. or hot. he's hot a lot lately. that's because he lives in the room above the furnace. he eats more than 12 meals* a week. he works out a lot and tans really easy. i freestyled a song about his tanlines last summer. he was running and i was riding my bike. he almost let me film it, but i couldn't ride and sing and film and laugh at the same time. so i didn't.

he's a lot of other great things too, but my words aren't good today. i've used them all to finish writing my thesis. so i was going to post a picture of him instead (b/c a picture's worth a thousand of those, or something), but then i remembered i lost all my most recent pictures in the fire. so all i have are really old pictures of us when we went to the beach once. he must be a freshman in high school in these.

they're still nice though. because we're at the beach. and it's really cold here where i am now...

little bro, i hope they turn that heat down so you can get down off the ceiling and have a dance party for your birthday!

and since he's always raiding my cds for tunes, i thought i'd give him (and you!) a freebie today. happy birthday, bro:

"Little Brother" [mp3] by Grizzly Bear (who i saw in concert recently, and should talk about soon...)

love,
steph

-----

*his meal plan at Duke only gets him 12 meals a week, which is pretty ridiculous and unreasonable, in my opinion. esp. for someone like my brother, who basically works out every day and plays tons of sports and is always hungry. had i better faith in our US Postal Service, i would have sent you a care package, bro, with all sorts of foods and steaks in it. but since i don't, i didn't. and i'm sorry. i'll be sending you books and a movie soon though!

the happiest kind of doom

I FUCKING LOVE THIS SONG [mp3]. i listen to it on repeat and love it, even though/despite/in spite/to spite/because i know someone i love very much hates this song.

this is fevered, obsessive, destructive love.*

"the cruelty's so predictable."
-stephan!e

========

"The past is a grotesque animal
And in its eyes you see
How completely wrong you can be
How completely wrong you can be

The sun is out, it melts the snow that fell yesterday
Makes you wonder why it bothered

I fell in love with the first cute girl that I met
Who could appreciate Georges Bataille
Standing at Swedish festival discussing "Story of the Eye"
Discussing "Story of the Eye"

It's so embarrassing to need someone like I do you
How can I explain, I need you here and not here too
How can I explain, I need you here and not here too

I'm flunking out, I'm flunking out, I'm gone, I'm just gone
But at least I author my own disaster
At least I author my own disaster

Performance breakdown and I don't want to hear it
I'm just not available
Things could be different but they're not
Things could be different but they're not

The mousy girl screams, "Violence! Violence!"
The mousy girl screams, "Violence! Violence!"
She gets hysterical because they're both so mean
And it's my favorite scene
But the cruelty's so predictable
It makes you sad on the stage
Though our love project has so much potential
But it's like we weren't made for this world
(Though I wouldn't really want to meet someone who was)

Do I have to scream in your face?
I've been dodging lamps and vegetables
Throw it all in my face, I don't care

Let's just have some fun
Let's tear this shit apart
Let's tear the fucking house apart
Let's tear our fucking bodies apart
But let's just have some fun

Somehow you've red-rovered the gestapo circling my heart
And nothing can defeat you
No death, no ugly world

You've lived so brightly
You've altered everything
I find myself searching for old selves
While speeding forward through the plate glass of maturing cells

I've played the unraveler, the parhelion
But even apocalypse is fleeting
There's no death, no ugly world

Sometimes I wonder if you're mythologizing me like I do you
Mythologizing me like I do you

We want our film to be beautiful, not realistic
Perceive me in the radiance of terror dreams
And you can betray me
You can, you can betray me

But teach me something wonderful
Crown my head, crowd my head
With your lilting effects
Project your fears on to me, I need to view them
See, there's nothing to them
I promise you, there's nothing to them

I'm so touched by your goodness
You make me feel so criminal
How do you keep it together?
I'm all, all unraveled

But you know, no matter where we are
We're always touching by underground wires

I've explored you with the detachment of an analyst
But most nights we've raided the same kingdoms
And none of our secrets are physical
None of our secrets are physical
None of our secrets are physical now"

-from Of Montreal's "The Past is a Grotesque Animal", from the Hissing Fauna (2007) album

*i think all he hears is the destruction, the agitation. i sometimes wish that's all i heard, too.

in case my computer dies again...

i don't want to lose these scans of blue book insides and outsides

and this scan of a page from my Cultural Studies notebook (a lecture ostensibly entitled "Power")

vivacious life

to prove that i am, despite convictions to the otherwise, in the living, i am posting some delicious pictures from last week's Western Senior Dinner.

i don't think i've ever looked so good after having been so haggard and dirty and sleep/food-deprived in my life, if i do say so myself. wow, what a difference a shower makes!

enjoy your weekends, i will be continuing to write and edit and build and not sleep.

-stephanie

hostage situation

help! stephanie has been taken hostage by her project!

(this is my best attempt at a "hostage situation" photograph. that's tuesday's copy of the student paper! and that's my little cave-dwelling-as-of-late, the Tappan computer lab!)

even though i finished writing it on monday, i keep forcing myself to make more edits, to write more sections, to continue stressing. i'm still trapped in the dark cave-like confines of the Tappan computer lab (my near-permanent residence since my computer crashed last week).

i hope to be freed soon. tomorrow, i work more on the concluding chapters, (there are some chapter titles i'm playing with), and then i am meeting up with an elusive english dept. faculty member to make a book press! (i am way excited!)

send ransom money and kittens to my comment box!
-stephanie

she lives!

(that's me with the "proof" of my finished senior project! alt. title reads: "Idiots and Jackasses: How American Public Education Fails to Meet Its Democratic Ideals." you like?)

hello everyone!

yes, this is stephanie, returning to you from the edge of death and emotional/psychological/existential despair, to say that

1) I AM DONE!
i finished the project after much duress, at noon on Monday, April 14th, 2008. i had to haul a lot of ass to get there, and it was certainly not the easiest thing i've ever done (i slept 10 minutes on Sunday night, 2 hours on Saturday, 3 hours on Friday, ate maybe 4 meals in that expanse of time), nor the easiest to understand (i wrote 25 pages in one night!), nor the most believable (i wrote 25 pages! in one night! with only 10 minutes of sleep!). but i did it! I AM SET TO GRADUATE! (*fist pump and hip thrust!* *yeah!* let's have a party now, pls?)

2) there's still so much to do...
i am presenting my thesis at the undergraduate research forum in 4 hours, and i have nothing in the way of visual aids or even mental preparation. i hope to just show up and be able to garble something remotely intelligible.
the "dress rehearsal" for my big thesis defense in May is coming up on Thursday, which is also a little too early for my taste. i don't think i can whip up a powerpoint and a formal presentation in one night, especially since i still haven't slept more than 5 hours since i finished.
(my body is def taking a toll from all this. on Monday, when i wrapped up writing, my face looked like i'd been chainsmoking 2 packs a day since i was 14. i was so haggard, i couldn't believe i was still alive. and sadly, i still haven't gotten a chance to completely rest up, i've been editing and formatting the project, and working on SFS stuff again, and bouncing around meetings. i can't wait until next week, when i will hopefully be able to sleep and eat to my heart's content and maybe even read a good book again!)
AND, there's still another chapter i want to write, because it just doesn't feel done yet, but i don't know if i have the patience/time/energy/will-power to do it. i'm telling you, i have a disease! i need to just put it aside, let it wait for the dissertation!

3) THANK YOU!
thru all of the trials and tribulations, this blog has really been a huge source of relief for me. it's been a place to informally write what i'm thinking, and a nice opportunity to step away from the project, remember that i can write, i just need to be less editorial about it and let it flow.

and, to know that there are ppl who read it, who enjoy it (don't you?) and who care, well, it really puts the sunshine in my (as of late) dark and dismal existence. (i can't tell you how glad it made me, as sick as this sounds, to know that ppl were worried and wondering if i had died. i'm so glad you care that i live! shucks, yo... thanks!)

and, i wanted to thank the blog itself, as odd as that sounds, because it literally saved me. when i lost all the data on my computer (all my writing from college, all my photos), i didn't know how the fuck i was going to finish my thesis. there were diagrams, little nuggets that i'd written in little .rtf files, little things that i couldn't possibly think to recover. some were screen shots of websites long lost and forgotten. some were passing thoughts that i couldn't reconstruct or re-place.

but then i remembered that i had posted most, if not all, of these things on the blog! and sure enough, there they all were, neatly labeled and organized, even showing me which dates i'd created them, so i could make accurate notations in my citations list! hahaha, what a beautiful thing!

anyway, i should really get back to work. i'm running around to meetings and presentations and interviews all day, and then i'm teaching class until 10 pm (which i really need to prepare for), and then i gotta find time to put a powerpoint together for tomorrow... oh geez, it's looking like another all-nighter week...

when everything is said and done, i hope there will be copious imbibing and heavy snuggling.

until then, yours in life and virtual death,
stephanie

THE FUCK?!!!

48 hours before senior project is due: i'm sitting at my desk, listening to music and working on my paper. i have 10 documents open at once, maybe 3 applications. i'm pressing F9, which on a mac, lets you zoom out and look at everything at once, so you can find your bearings.

i zoomed out and it wouldn't zoom back.

i heard gears spinning, the clicking of some hardwear trying to find its place, a fan doing its best to keep the system from overheating.

3 hours later and my harddrive would be pronounced dead on arrival. when the guy at the apple store plugged it in to try some diagnostic tests, he said he couldn't even detect a harddrive on there.

now i have a useless piece of empty computer, which will cost close to $2K to recover the data from. and i don't know if my external harddrive got fried in the process too. i'm just hoping i made it away from this with just a small piece of my music collection still intact on that external...

i feel like the Universe's bitch right now. what did i do???!! i keep wondering why my karma is so for shit these days. maybe i hit a squirrel with my car and didn't know, in which case i'd like to formally issue my apology: i'm very sorry, it was nuthin personal, i actually love squirrels very much, if i could, i'd adopt the dead squirrel's family and let them live in my home.

just pleeeeaaaase, stop it with the bad karma!

less than 24 hours to go, and i am in some deep shit.

-stephanie

where is my mind?

i can't do it... i can't do anything. i can't write because i can't think, i can't think because i haven't slept, i can't sleep because i can't stop thinking, can't sleep because i can't stop writing...

there are miles to go before i sleep...

i know the end but i don't know how to get there.

this is what it must have felt like when Zeus's head split open and out came Athena. 

my senior project presentation

THURSDAY, MAY 1, 2008

5:15 - 6:50 PM in Leonard Theatre on the Western College Campus

Stephanie Lee will be defending her undergraduate thesis entitled "Actualizing the Democratic Promise of American Public Education."

----

Come if you care. Don't come if you don't.

-stephanie

a beginner's guide to domination and suppression

how to kill activism, reassert the market's dominance of everyday life, and ruin democracy:

1) authority + passivity

(teach 'em not to think for themselves)

2) empty promises

(keep em running. employ 'carrot and stick')

3) divide & conquer

(kill their communities, take away their friends - better yet, have them do it to themselves)

4) the illusion of choice

(make them think they want/need these things and that they're being taken care of)

you'll have a totalitarian state in no time!

(disclaimer: i, of course, don't agree with any of these things. it was just that while i was writing my thesis today i made a list like this to clarify the points i was going to be making in this particular section of my paper and i thought it was interesting enough to share.)

p.s. it should be noted that all these were, and are, being practiced everyday, in the media industry, and especially the school.

this year

I AM GOING TO MAKE IT THRU THIS YEAR

IF IT KILLS ME.

[mp3] "This Year" by The Mountain Goats.

ONE WEEK LEFT.

it's do or die!

(pls not die...)

-stephanie

at wit's end

an email sent to my Senior Project advisors this evening:

Hi Bill and Bill,

I am facing a huge dilemma. I am nearing 40 pages on my senior project now, and the pages I have are pretty well-researched and -written, in my opinion.

However, the project I had planned to write at the beginning of this year is far from done. I could easily write another 80 or 100 more pages, there is just so much I have in mind to discuss and examine in the project.

However, I also know that in the time I have available, this is impossible. But, I don't feel good about turning the project in. It doesn't feel complete, even though I've technically written all the pages I need to write.

What should I do? I can't afford to stay this summer and finish the project, and really, I don't think 2 or 3 more months will really allow me to finish the project I had in mind. The scope of the project demands a book, and I don't have time to write one, in a week or in a summer.

If I reduce the project to just the first two chapters, I feel that my individual voice and perspective on the topic will be left out. But, if I try to write the chapters I have left, they will likely be under-researched and poorly written.

Please advise me, I am at wit's end.
-Stephanie

happy birthday!

photo from summer 2003 (junior year of high school! whoa what a long time ago...)

to my most beautiful Mother, a woman whose energy and unconditional love remain unparalleled:

i hope your day is filled with sunshine and Spring flowers and that i never forget to show you anything but the love you've given me. 

i love you, Mom.

-steph

only at Miami and only in Oxford, Ohio...

the students at Miami have been hit by a "crime wave" in the past year. we get electronic announcements regarding the latest in the spree of thefts, break-in's, (armed) robberies, drunken malfeasances. they are "designed to notify members of the University community about a reported crime that may represent an ongoing threat to public safety."

these are, of course, very serious. Miami takes its image and its terrorism very seriously. nevertheless, i couldn't help laughing out loud when i read the following Campus Crime Alert (they've stopped numbering them as they used to, but i think this makes #20+):

WHITE FEMALES!
WEARING BLACK LEGGINGS!!
(= MIAMI GIRLS!!!)

this has the potential for satire written all over it. too bad it's a couple days late, i'd say the administration finally grew a sense of humor and got us with a good Fools' Day prank.

hm... based on that description, they've pretty much implicated at least half of the female student population (happy to say i get excluded from the line-up on two counts: not being white and not wearing leggings since the '80s or since '80s night disappeared from the weekly Balcony lineup).

i suppose if this should be any suggestion of an "ongoing threat to public safety," we best lock and bolt our windows and doors immediately, b/c our sad campus is sadly overflowing with a preponderance of these dangerous criminals. lock 'em up! not b/c they steal laptops or break into ppl's dorm rooms, but just b/c they perpetrate great harm on the human species for their very existence.

it's gonna be a dangerous Spring!
-stephanie

to build a fire

i've spent the last 15 minutes looking for a book of matches. i coulda sworn i tucked one away in a purse somewhere, but now i'm thinking i might've taken it back out b/c i was boarding an airplane a while ago and worried they'd find it suspicious.

i used to keep a book of matches on me all the time. i was always worried about getting lost in the woods at night and thought i would need to build a fire at some point and might as well be careful and prepared. (which is funny, b/c now, i imagine the woods at night as being a much safer place to be than where i am now...)

i'm in a destructive mood. i want to find matches b/c i want to light a candle. i want to light a candle so i can hold it in my hands and feel the heat, to feel warm and safe. but i also want to light a match so i can watch it burn, because it's against the rules, b/c if i let it burn long enough it might just catch fire to the whole place, b/c it might set off the smoke alarm, b/c it might draw everyone out of their rooms and force them to stand, huddled together, outside. b/c if i stare at the flames long enough, maybe i'll burn my retinas and i could get a seeing eye dog.

i did my winter laundry today, washed a coat and stuck it in the dryer with a bunch of woolens, even though the tag on the coat said "KEEP AWAY FROM FLAMES" (yes, the type was actually in red!) and had a big X through the dryer symbol, all with the hope that maybe it would combust.

of course, none of this happened. i didn't find any matches, and all my scarves and mittens are clean and tucked away in drawers for the spring.

-stephanie

[mp3] "Someone to Share My Life With (words of wisdom)" by Jens Lekman

for some reason, the first part of sampled song with twinkly harp that goes "all i need now is to find myself a good woman" (can anyone tell me what song that is?) is stuck in my head and repeating itself in a loop. it'll replace the fire for now...

real emotional trash

ok so that's the name of a Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks album. but it's fitting, b/c not only have i been listening to them a lot lately, but that's kinda how i feel about my life right now.

i don't have any real reason to feel this way, but emotions are kinda like that. they just happen, that's why i prefer saying "i feel" rather than "i think" b/c emotions are just there and you have to deal with them, and reason is overrated anyway. who wants an explanation when all you really want is a hug?

i don't know if it's the weather in ohio (nothing but rain for days, it seems), or the lack of sleep, or the malnutrition, or my loneliness*, my restlessness, the overwhelming list of things i have to do before tomorrow and the next monday and before i graduate, or if it's the lack of warmth or safety i have b/c i realized i left all my sweaters at home, or the hole in my sleeve, or the mud in my shoes, or the way i feel no one understands how sad i can get sometimes, but...

in the last hour or so i've felt on the brink of tears. and i hardly ever cry. but i guess these little break-downs happen a lot. i guess i document them b/c they're always strange to me when they happen, and maybe deep down i hope by remembering them i can counteract them when they happen again. 

lately, i've been busy and a lot of my friends have been busy. i can understand that when work piles up, we need to take breaks from each other some times. but really, when this happens, i don't get more work done, i just spend less of it being happy. i miss living with ppl who knew me well enough to know that when work kicks in, that's when i need them most. i miss having a friend nearby to reach out a hand and steady mine. i need people the most when i get busy like this, but i find ppl especially don't want me around these days. 

i feel forgotten. i feel alone. i feel like disappearing.

that's usually what i try to do. i turn off my phone, i unplug the internet. i put up a wall of sound around me and let pounding music throb in my head until i can fall asleep again. 

i'm real emotional trash. i'm feeling used and under-appreciated today. i've been running around since the early morning working for various ppl, sometimes getting paid, sometimes getting ignored. i've been really emotional b/c i feel i've put my own work off for so long, and i've spent most of my day making time to help other ppl with things, and only getting pushed around and asked to do more things. one of my friends observed that he seems to notice "ppl seem to want to take advantage of you a lot." this doesn't make me feel very good. 

i think i'll take a trip. i don't know to where yet. i don't want to say i'll be back, even tho i probably will. i just don't want to be sad any more, and if i find happiness on the road, maybe i'll stay there for a while instead.

listen: "We Can't Help You" [mp3] by Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks

-stephanie

*loneliness, even when you're surrounded by people. that's the worst kind of loneliness.

celebrating the '90s

my friends and i were chatting at dinner. making plans for the summer and all the fun, wild and wonderful things we need to squeeze into these last 7 weeks of school before graduation and splitting ways.

the big screen TV was on in the dining hall, per usual, but it was on VH1 today and it was showing one of those "best 100 songs of the '90s" specials and all our "childhood songs" were blasting full force, like a freight train of memories, and we were transported back to the times of middle school dances and summer camps and that nebulous time of your life called adolescence.

we were reflecting on the proto-emo music of the time, laughing as we could recall almost word for word the lyrics to Goo Goo Dolls songs ("when everything feels like the movies, you bleed just to know you're alive/ AND I DON'T WANT THE WORLD TO SEE ME, CUZ I DON'T THINK THAT THEY'D UNDERSTAAAAAND!") and how angst-y we must have been as teens to have loved that song as much as everyone else our age did.

and, in reflecting on how super dramatic and emo (before "emo" was a genre) that song was, i remarked how it would be so funny to do a dramatic reading of all our favorite '90s songs. and from this, an idea for a poetry reading of sorts, a collaborative performance for the sake of nothing but fun times and nostalgia with some good friends, was born.

the place i imagine is Bachelor Hall's courtyard, on a breezy spring evening, entry and exit music consisting of a playlist of all the read pieces, and definitely some wine.

now, i'm trying to think of material. any suggestions? i went through my '90s music on my computer (sadly lacking, i've lost a lot of those old favorites in the process of transitioning to different computers) and only thought of a few enticing reads:

K-Ci & Jo Jo's "All My Life" (probly a much better song than a poem, but a guilty pleasure nonetheless. i especially love how the first line of verse is "Baby (11x)" ha!)

Everything But The Girl's "Missing" ("like the deserts miss the rain")

Sinead O'Connor's "Nothing Compares 2 U" (oh man, this might be "it"!)

Boyz II Men's "I'll Make Love To You" (this would be so uncomfortable to read: "girl relax, let's go slow, i ain't got nowhere to go/ throw your clothes on the floor, i'm gonna take my clothes off too")

other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

x's

-stef

the drive back to school from home was not nearly as harrowing as i expected it to be, and the pain of confinement was lessened considerably by riding until the radio waves from my favorite station slowly crackled and crisped into a steady static, at which point i threw on the driving mix i made for the ride. what a difference a soundtrack makes!

i had dinner with my friends, who i missed terribly, and then skipped over to the art museum for "Scene in Herd," a poetry event put on by the Miami University English Department every year (maybe this was the 5th one? my friend Justin Katko started it a few years ago as a spatial intervention, with the idea that the readings themselves would explore space in new ways, but also that they would break down the barrier between spectator/participant. b/c the theme of our class this week was "critical walking"/"spatial exploration"/"critical reconsideration of space" i thought this would be a good event to go to as a class. the readings didn't really fit the original theme as well as past ones have, but i think they made up for it in content). 

the readings were exceptional, except for one or two moments that seemed ungenuine, made me suspect the poet was trying too hard to be impressive, and so not really saying anything. there were a few times i felt words were just being tossed around for effect rather than affect, and i thot that reflected poorly on the poet. i think a misplaced conspicuous "fuck" can really ruin a poem for me. it's not that i'm averse to profanity, i just think they're a really cheap way for a writer to sound superficially edgy. and i don't think there's any point to its wanton usage. it's like gratuitous violence in films, there really should be a point to it i think. [ok you could argue that excessive profanity is the point. kinda like satirists and sadists like Michael Haneke torture us with violence to make us understand how sick and perverse we are. but, i don't think that's what was going on. it wasn't that kind of poem (nor that kind of poet)...]

most thrilling was after the readings were over, and i finally got a chance to talk to the guy who builds book presses. as far as Justin or i know, he's the only one who can help me build the press i need to bind my project in April! i was thrilled when he finally agreed to teach me, first by inviting me to help him finish the press he's currently constructing, and then to build another one for my use. i can't wait, i was worried for a while that i may never get the chance to bind my project.

and now, to actually finish it so i have something to bind...

-stephanie

racing to the finish line

ok, so calm down...

i'm doing better now. i just had to freak out a bit and get it out of my system. i now have 26 (up from 20) solid (as opposed to lumpy) pages of extremely well-researched critique of free market capitalism (yipee!) and ideas for another 5 pages (at least) of more.

and the delightful thing is that i'm really enjoying putting these various theorists in conversation with each other (Adam Smith, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Aristotle, John Dewey, Horace Mann, and a few radical voices thrown in for fun's sake). the use of Smith's own words to tear apart free market capitalist individualism is particularly exciting, in my opinion.

from here, i move on to a discussion of civic virtue, the role of schooling in developing a civic tradition, and then a critique of the Restoration policies of the 1970s and '80s. then a discussion of the culture of schooling, a rant against grades and incentivized education, and then some discussion of student movements and protest culture (if i have time...)

racing to the finish line (my deadline is April 1st!!!)

-stef

first meltdown of the year

i can't go on like this...

i feel so stupid. so many ppl go thru much worse than this. ppl go to war, ppl get cancer, ppl lose loved ones, ppl die. and i can't just sit my ass down for 3 hours and write my thesis, something i've wanted to do since i entered college and the only thing i have to do to make sure i graduate.

what is wrong with me?!

that's what i keep asking myself. i used to be so good at writing papers, i could sit down for hours and just write endlessly until i was done. i was so clear-headed, so facile with words, concise and cogent. i wouldn't outline or anything, i would just organize the paper in my head, sit down and it would come flowing out of me. it was like magic. i didn't even have to take notes on my reading, i could remember exactly where on the page i read it, could remember what page, and if i didn't, it would be no problem for me to flip back through the book and find it.

i don't know how time has shifted things in the opposite direction. now, i sit amidst piles of books, can't keep them apart, can't find a simple quote or even remember which book it was in, let alone which chapter or page it was on. i feel i am losing my mind.

i've watched winter become spring become winter become spring again. while nature was wantonly blasting thru the seasons, i've been watching her work at my window(s) and feeling older and lazier and more and more incompetent. i'm an old woman now, i can' t do this...

i feel horrible, not just because of these things, but because this thesis really is something i care a lot about. that's maybe why it's hard to do this "right." my friend Brandon described it once as feeling like he wasn't "good enough" to write his thesis. like, the topic required such care, such delicate treatment, that somehow he felt unworthy of handling it. like he wouldn't be careful enough, didn't possess the mental dexterity, didn't have the proper amount of time. and i feel all these things too, but also i'm feeling a little beat up in the process.

it's kinda like making love. i mean, what is this, if not an act of love? i wouldn't have picked something this impossible to condense into an 80-page undergraduate thesis if i didn't love it (right?...) you can't make love with someone(/thing) if you don't feel it loves you back. or at least that there's some chance of mutual connection. you ought to feel like you're doing things because you genuinely care about them, and that the things you do will matter. but really i just feel bullied and used. i am giving so much time and care to it, and it's always fighting me back. and then i'm struggling to be faithful to the task. i'm distracted by the weather, by film projects, by all the fun new literature i could be reading instead... this is an abusive relationship. i feel battered, my esteem is suffering, i feel ugly and inept, and lo, i'm suffering performance anxiety.

well, it's all intellectual masturbation anyway...
-stephanie

is this what democracy looks like?

i was writing my senior project and was trying to find the source of a great quote ("the private citizen is a fool") i remember reading but don't remember from where (really wishing i had that life search right about now...), when, in my searching, i went to Wikipedia and was slightly amused to find this:


a picture of a ballot box and the caption "Voting is an important part of the democratic process!"

this is a gift! i took a screen shot and plan on using it in my appendices. i love the potential for circular critique this presents: a democratic medium (more importantly, one touted for being unreliable/clouded because of its dependence on popular opinion) pointing to voting (what many political critics - myself included! - would argue is one of the most basic forms of political participation) as an exemplar of democratic practice.

it's wonderful. i'm done! (no need to write this, the image says it all!)

[ha! if only theses could be writ this easily...
and i still don't have the source for that quote...]

-stephanie

did you see?

take this test.

in related news, i'm thinking of going to a Mass -- the other religion ;-) -- in Chicago before the year ends. any one care to join me?

-stephan!e

"put me in your suitcase, let me help you pack..."

i was stuffing my things into a suitcase today, readying to leave for my spring break in California, where i'll be taking my CSETs, then spending some long-awaited time with my relatives, then journeying home to retreat into the final days of a blistering senior project.

as i was packing up, i was thinking about how this is one of the last times i'm leaving to return to this place. and as my boyfriend helped me load my things into the car, and my friends gave me hugs before i rode away, this song was all i could think about.

it was like a rehearsal for the real thing, the BIG move, the day of goodbyes... and that's why i like this song, it's sad and hopeful at the same time, it knows that leaving could be a sad thing but chooses to be cheerfully upset about it instead.

enjoy your spring breaks. here's a song for packing and leaving (but please please oh please come back!):

"Put me in your suitcase, let me help you pack
Cuz you're never coming back, no you're never coming back

Cook me in your breakfast and put me on your plate
Cuz you know I taste great, yeah you know I taste great

At the hop it's greaseball heaven
With candypants and archie too

Put me in your dry dream or put me in your wet
If you haven't yet, no if you haven't yet
Light me with your candle and watch the flames grow high
No it doesn't hurt to try, it doesn't hurt to try

Well I won't stop all of my pretending that you'll come home
You'll be coming home, someday soon

Put me in your blue skies or put me in your gray
There's gotta be someway, there's gotta be someway
Put me in your tongue tie, make it hard to say
That you ain't gonna stay, that you ain't gonna stay

Wrap me in your marrow, stuff me in your bones
sing a mending moan, a song to bring you home"

-Devendra Banhart's "At The Hop" [mp3]

if only i could Google my life

i curse technology for creating itself* and nurturing my development as a human, for in the process i've become totally dependent!

we don't do anything ourselves any more. sure, it started with the little things: first we were using abacuses, and then we had to invent the calculator, and pretty soon it was supercomputers and smart bombs and satellite TV, and now people can't even get anywhere by reading maps any more, it's all GPS, a robot woman telling you exactly when to turn! we may not have personal robot slaves like ppl always imagined we would "in the future" but that's b/c everything we do and need is a robot of some kind, hell, we're robots! we're slaves to our own progress!

anyway, this is all just because i've been reading thru some old correspondences on my computer today. and in one of my emails i signed off with the phrase "everything is broken. we need to accept it and move on." now, this sounds so familiar, and i know i wrote it, but the use of the quotes in the email makes me think it might also be from something else, maybe a song or a movie, maybe a book? but the thing is, when i typed it into google, nothing came up except for a Bob Dylan song, which i haven't even heard before, and i don't even really listen to Dylan.

when i performed the same search in all my emails, nothing came up except for this one email (the same one that sent me searching in the first place). very confusing. i remember this being a significant phrase to me, mid-December 2007, right around my senior project fiasco. but i still can't quite place the source or the original context for this quote, and i love it so much. i just want to know if i wrote it, and was quoting myself in a different context, or if i owe someone else for these appropriate (and appropriated) words that are striking so true today. i need to know how my life is repeating itself, how the cycles are forming, why everything today feels like a deja vu but i can't quite figure out the difference between dreams and waking.

so, in my desperate search for the origin of this quote, i became overwhelmingly upset that i couldn't just build a large search engine for my life that would distill data from my brain, the brains of everyone around me, all my documents, notepads, every scrap piece of paper, my pockets, my desk drawers and my various lockers and lock-boxes, a machine that could read the indentions of my hand for notes now long washed away, that could recover erased phone messages and away messages and dry-erase board messages, that could mine all my memories and subconscious thoughts and all the music, movies, books and websites i've ever paid even the slightest bit of attention to, and present a nice list of all the relevant pieces pertaining to this one quote, from the entire whole of my existence.

wouldn't that be lovely?

but no. i guess humans aren't made that way. too bad we aren't. maybe in the future we will be. maybe right now, some super robot tech man is reading this and devising the next BIG THING of the century...

powers!
-stephanie


* "but Stephanie," you say, "things don't 'create' themselves, spontaneous generation is a fallacy!" oh-ho-ho, au contraire! what i'm suggesting is that "technology" was created by robots. that's right, the "people" who gave us the internet are really just trying to feed the cancer that is slowly taking over our lives... mwahahhahaa!!! (gives new meaning to "self-made man" doesn't it? ponder that for a while!)

THROW DOWN!!

The Anna Helen Tappan Center for Computer-Assisted Learning (my place of emploi) is challenging the other Western peer centers to FEATS OF STRENGTH!!!

we'll be throwin' down, West Side Story-style, come Spring 2008.

-stephanie "Tappan it" lee


THE CHALLENGE:


THE LAUGH-TRACK: