A Lesson in Vocab

exhighted (adj) - 1. The state of being so high on uppers that one wishes only to stay up late into the night seeking out people to converse with about subjects such as the gender binary, social constructions, anti-civilization, and nerve synapses. This may also result in punching bitches in the face, yelling at everyone in a club, and sitting in a dark room on a computer while a 4am transport occurs six floors below.

2. The state of being so high on marijuana that one actually finds the phrase "exhighted" to be hilarious.

highbernation (n) - the result of highness to the point that one is unable to wake up the next morning, usually resulting in the blowing off of an opportunity or responsibility such as class, internships, or work

enlhightenment (n) - a seemingly profound conclusion that one reaches while high, usually includes solutions to problems such as world hunger, war, poverty, and what to buy from the Eagle's Nest (everything). To be considered a true highvelation, it must evoke an immediate "what the fuck" response in the morning.

Anything worth anything only happens at night.

This Is What a Music Post Looks Like

The weather in DC is atrocious.

It's one of those lack-of-weather days where you almost can't feel the temperature difference between outside and inside, and the only thing that characterizes the day is the complete lack of color when the clouds turn everything to grey. The sky has opened up, but not in the sort of way that causes students to scurry frantically between buildings, books servings as impromptu umbrellas in a torrential rainstorm. It's the sort of mist that you can't really define or avoid, and so you just walk through it, squinting as drops of water rest on your eyelashes and an uncomfortable clamminess works its way through your bones.

Anyway.
As a result of this, it's also one of those existential crisis days for me.
As a sort of follow-up to my last entry, I'm in a bit of an ironically apathetic panic. My education seems pointless, I'm unmotivated, and I just feel like I'm wasting money and time in these classes.

Enter playlist therapy.
In accordance with my lack of motivation, I'm too lazy to make a real playlist. Plus I'm in the mood for epicness, so I'm making it my mission to listen to about seven full albums front-to-back throughout the course of my day/night. It's no Apex, but everything's got it's place, yeah?

So here we go, in no particular order (except the one in which I am listening to them, which is random)...

1. In Our Bedroom After the War - Stars
Epic epic epic epic epic and made entirely for rainy days.
Potentially the most cohesive album I've heard. It manages to be uniform in sound without being dull and repetitive. The album lulls and rocks and carries the listener from the wonderfully synth-heavy instrumental opening track "The Beginning After the End" to the final seven-minute title track. Slow building tracks and perfect harmonies between the etheral Amy Millan and Torquill Campbell lull the listener into a seamless dream-like state in the very best of ways.

Download: The Night Starts Here, Take Me to the Riot, Bitches in Tokyo

2. Set Yourself on Fire - Stars
The predecessor to In Our Bedroom, Set Yourself on Fire functioned today as the more lively, though slightly less mature, answer to my gloomy mood. "What I'm Trying to Say" is potentially my favorite song of all time. As Campbell once announced before performing the piece live, "This song is about fucking and death." Its multilayered beat and carpe diem fuck-'em-all lyrics combine to form a three-and-a-half minute no-fail tour de force. The rest of the album follows in the same vein.
Download: What I'm Trying to Say, Reunion, The First Five Times

3. Pinkerton - Weezer
My first favorite album ever. Originally crafted to be a concept album (this admittedly would have been a fail), Pinkerton serves as the pinnacle of Weezer's discography. It is the epitome of eccentric frontman Rivers Cuomo's style (though he doesn't know his own talent): a collection of confessions, apologies, and love songs expressed through charmingly simple and almost uncomfortably honest lyrics. It also works on shuffle. He screams, he whispers, he makes awkward references to lesbians and half-Japanese girls. It's perfect. Also home to my second favorite song of all time, "El Scorcho."

Download: Falling for You, El Scorcho, Across the Sea (epic!)

4. The Con - Tegan and Sara
I know, you were all waiting for this one. My favorite, and perhaps the ultimate (yes, ultimate), album to listen to front-to-back. With 14 songs coming in just over 30 minutes, The Con is potentially Tegan and Sara's best work to date, all at once featuring their classic harmonies while managing to reach toward the experimental. With a higher production budget, and therefore quality, than any of the other albums, the Quins take on a variety of musical styles, from the standard poppy "Back In Your Head" to the electronic, looping, "Are You Ten Years Ago" to the haunting, quirky "Like O, Like H." Despite the variation among songs, always consistent is the raw and honest emotion that carries the album through a full story arc. I have listened to this album a countless number of times, and I can guarantee that there is always always always something new and wonderful to discover.
Download: THE WHOLE THING
But no, really: The Con, Nineteen, Dark Come Soon, Back in Your Head (demo, if you can)

Okay, I'm actually going to give it a rest for now because (1) I've only gotten this far in listening today anyway, (2) I have a TON of work that I've been putting off through this, and (3) this shit is getting real epic.

To be continued.

This Business of Business

This entry is coming at you live from Global Corporate Citizenship.

Yes, it is as horrible as it sounds, and yes, I am here because of my greatest kept secret: I am a business major.

Not so well-kept secret: I hate being a business major.

The classes are tedious and uninteresting, and I'd swear that there's nothing in the content that you couldn't figure out yourself. Even the professors tell us time and time again that success in business is dependent largely on personality, not whether or not you can list the differences between sole proprietorships and corporations.

I wouldn't necessarily mind pursuing a career in business once I graduate (though my degrees, if successful, will end up being conducive to a career in music journalism), but as far as education goes, quite frankly, this shit is a waste of time.

Business education benefits the pocket, not the mind, and if you cannot expand your mind, then why bother with a college education?

I miss my history courses, my literature analysis, and the intricacies of DNA. There are no questions in business, nothing to explore. Only facts and statistics and fifty-dollar ghetto public speaking pamphlets (not how to public speak in a ghetto manner, rather an expensive poorly-assembled packet).

And yet, I. am still. here.

I cannot leave, despite my overwhelming passion and desire for other subject matter.

And last night I finally figured out why.

How my life was to proceed, according to my parents:

1. Birth

2. Elementary eduction

3. Prestigious Jesuit university

4. Church on Sunday

5. Graduate with a business degree

6. Pursue a career conducive to earning lots of dolla dolla billz

7. Marry a nice man (Filipinos appreciated, but not required, score!)

8. Pop out children

9. Die

My life plan:

1. Check

2. Check

3. Find my inner radical queer at American University

4. Hungover on Sunday (getting better at this. In addition, that's not the only reason I don't go to church. Reference my first entry for vague thoughts on religion)

5. Fail my business classes, pursue Women's and Gender Studies, Anthropology, Biology, Journalism (anything that will earn me no money in the future)

6a. Live in a box

6b. Not mind living in a box, because all my friends from AU live in boxes anyway, and we're in love with our lives so whatever

7. Gay. (not the only reason I don't see myself getting married, but that's an entirely different post)

8. Gay AND irresponsible (and kind of selfish and totally disapproving of the way that childhood is rapidly disappearing for newer generations, also another entry)

9. We'll see.

If I could, I would make a bitchin' venn diagram of this, and it would become even more apparent that I've ballsed (yes, balls as a verb) it all up already. I'm not sure how to reconcile this, because here, away from home, I'm finally able to pursue what I truly want, free from direct restriction from my parents and able to get all my quality out-of-classroom-learnin'. But. My weekly phone conversations with my family serve as a constant reminder that I'm nothing that they expected. Worst of all, is that I've got the feeling that even if I didn't decide to earn a Catholicalicious education and ironically pursue a soulless business degree, all would be well if I'd just settle down and get married.

None of this is happening, and as far as I know, my life is better for it.

But business, right now, it's all I've got.

I Can Stand Up Straight

I'm currently having a bit of trouble trying to condense the ridiculous ups and downs of my weekend into a single entry.

Short version:
1. I think I'm going to get ink poisoning from having my hands marked every time I go out. I got made fun of by a bouncer at Town. That's how you know.
2. Home isn't over for me yet.
3. The Ting Tings/HotTub will change your life.
4. D.C. is fantastic. Thank God for marches on the Pentagon and Guernica signs and shouting at buildings and making up for missed opportunities.
4. Time slows down on a sun high.
4a. The steps of Katzen Arts Center, and now subsequently my body, are covered in some sort of weird chalky substance. Do not fall asleep there.

#3 will probably be expanded upon in a later post, because they really were phenomenal. Seeing both bands reminded me of how I felt when I saw Tilly and the Wall right before leaving for school, and that was pretty significant. So...that will be given attention at some point.

The indirect re-introduction of some characters into my life this weekend brought me to some really unsettling conclusions about the way all my problems from home are very strongly connected.

The main point is that you should not be a janky homophobe.

It's not just your overt disposition toward the LGBTQ community. It's not always violence (both physical and systematic) and offensive language and the like. It's the subtle things that pervade our lives. It's indirect exclusion and slowly losing everyone in your life, and feeling unwelcome in their houses once you get them back. It's gossip and sneers and seeing the disdain of other people's parents reflected in the reaction of my parents when I finally came out. It's the I-don't-mind-gay-people-but-thank-God-that's-not-my-child. Because you know what? If you wouldn't accept your child as queer, then you do not accept queer people. And you need to accept that.

In short, home is hitting too close to home, and somewhere along the line the only rational and mature decision I could manage to make became promising to completley cut people out of my life, and that is a damn shame.

It's not all bad though, because home-induced blues come and go and can always be ameliorated by a weekend on the DC gay club circuit. Welcome back to my life, Apex. I missed your lasers and sticky floors and shirtless men dancing with themselves in the mirror.

Wait, did I? (Yes, kind of, actually).

A day spent lounging on the steps of Katzen didn't hurt either.
Just when I was about to be freaked out by the perpetual motion of the earth and that whole recurring panic about everything moving too fast, time slowed. And it didn't just slow, it swayed and lingered and wrapped me up in a dreamy sun-induced daze.

Also all that chalky shit that's on me now.

How We Operate

I'm doing this because I'm lazy.
There's a 3am life chat-inspired post that I was planning to make, but it's the middle of the afternoon, aka the lull of all my writing abilities, and I don't think I'm going to have any time tonight.

So I'm posting a little piece that I wrote a couple of months ago.
I'm sort of torn between whether or not I'm actually into this. I do believe that it's an incredibly valuable skill to take mundane experiences and dress them up with pretty words until they feel significant and profound (I'm not sure if I've actually attained this ability yet), but on the other hand, I think that life should be lived with such intensity and passion that even the most blase of phrases should convey the beauty of the human experience.

And right now I feel somewhere in between.
So here's what I got out of Winter Break.

They say to expect traffic in Stamford, Connecticut. They say it’ll stop you all the way down I-95. Turn on the radio, and you’ll hear that what was supposed to be a two hour drive will now double itself into four. Nothing weird, no freak accidents, no flipped tractor trailers spilling produce onto the roads or any weird shit like that, just traffic slowly clogging up the arteries of the road.

Arteries carry blood away from the heart, which is funny because this highway is the one that’s taking us back home. We’ve been away because home contains memories that we can no longer chase and people we no longer know, and in this two days’ time, we’ve come so close to truths we may never reach again.

But we cannot be away forever, and so we go, chasing the sunset that my parents demanded that I beat home. Chasing the sunset because it’s unacceptable to chase ghosts. And as much as we wish to speed down the highway, weaving between cars and confronting danger with every change of lanes, we remain in traffic. So we sit and we wait and we turn up the volume, screaming away the melody and drowning out the sound. We hum through words we cannot say, and sing softly the melodies that ring true with a heartbreaking beauty that keeps the silence at bay.

As Far As Waking Up in the Beds of Strange Girls Goes

I think this one may be my favorite.
Probably partially because it wasn't like that, but also because free housing in Montreal is the shit, second only to finding out that that connection you thought you've been making with someone without ever seeing them is actually real and staying up until 4 in the morning watching/mocking The L Word is completely worthwhile.

Anyway, her name is Emily, and we sometimes have similar thoughts, though she's a little more music/photography-oriented and sometimes writes in a more stream-of-conscious style. Read it though. She's got a maple leaf tattooed on her arm, and that's how you know someone is worth your time.

This post is also about Canada.

Lately I've been doing this thing where I'm really cautious about throwing whimsical statements into the air because I've picked up this habit of actually following through.

Among the results of this are my previously mentioned night at the Potomac, thirteen hours of travel for about a day and a half in Montreal, and a rediscovered affinity for girls in v-neck T-shirts. These are a few of my favorite things.

Montreal was immensely rewarding. It taught me that the exchange rate of spending time with people in other countries is about double (potentially because of travel time), that swing dancing is difficult, that there are lighters so tacky that they shock even me, that you cannot make right turns on red in Montreal, and that, yes, I can speak enough French to negotiate last-minute sleeping arrangements in the corridor of a hostel under a bookshelf containing both a French translation of 100 Years of Solitude and the Dr. Phil reader. Brilliant.

Traveling for no reason. It's the only reason.

This Is Not the Jenny Schecter Show

I'm about a week late on this post, and I told myself when starting this blog that I would only post things that brought me to profound conclusions, but I realized that
-that would leave my posts very few and far between
-I am a lesbian blogger, and as such, I am obligated to do an L Word finale post

That being said, here are my feelings on Chaiken (we're on a last name basis now), Season 6, and The L Word in general. In list form. It would be in chart form as a final homage, but...that seems too difficult right now.

(These are in no particular order).

10. Who killed Jenny Schecter? Not even Ilene Chaiken knows. But I know. It was the ghost of Dana Fairbanks. She was angry that Jenny did not try to contact her for the tribute video (because God knows she went to incredible lengths to track down people who didn't. really. matter. A trip to the lesbian underworld would have been entirely feasible). See, what really happened is that GhostDana found Jenny, pushed her off the balcony, and...

9. Stole the armor off Xena Warrior Princess and turned her into a cop. No really. I somehow feel like this is some sort of ten-year delayed apology to the queer grrrls of yesterdecade who sat patiently through the entire Xena series for the Gabrielle/Xena hey-we're-lesbian-warriors deal to finally be acknowledged. The last episode does not count.

8. I hate this show. Wait, no, I love this show. Wait, no, I hate it, but I hope it's memories stay with me forever. Wait. This show is like everyone's ex-girlfriend. Touche, Chaiken.

7. This is not the Jenny Schecter Show.

6. I really appreciated the fact that a really cliche reflective look-at-all-our-good-times

kind of ending was avoided, and the fact that all the characters had to reflect upon their relationships through interrogation was ALMOST clever, but Chaiken (boooooo) handled it in an extremely nonsensical (though aesthetically pleasing) way. Really though, the ladies all looked inappropriately stunning in the interrogation room, but the whole thing seemed like more like some bizarre Lesbian Real World confessional starring, yes I'm going to make the joke again, Xena Warrior Princess.

5. Booooo Chaiken for spending the entire season trying to defame Bette Porter. Man-hater, cheater, etc, etc. For shame, Chaiken, for shame.

4. Booooo Chaiken for wasting the penultimate episode on a glorified dance-off! And with no snarky references to Flashdance?! How dare she.

3. I once had a crush on the actress who played Jamie after seeing her in X-Men several years ago. This isn't really relevant, I just wanted everyone to know she made a really cute purple-haired mutant. Oh right, also, her character would have been great and compelling in ANY earlier season. Starting a new storyline and introducing a new character this (half) season was just inappropriate.

2. Max's moustache? Helena's weird boob-cup-accenting dress during the final glamor shots? I don't know.

1. This show has literally become the center of lesbian culture. Ilene Chaiken was entrusted with the responsibility of SHAPING. LESBIAN. CULTURE. It's a big fucking deal. But no matter how much it may have gotten screwed up, we all still watched it, didn't we? If nothing else, it let us know that, yes, lesbians are real, and yes, there can be inside jokes so extensive that they can be shared by an entire community (I'm talking to you, BETTY). No matter how good or bad this series/finale may have been, there's no denying that many a queer grrl, closeted and out, would be sitting in their rooms, doors closed and laptops open, waiting for the next episode of The L Word to load so they could watch it, low resolution, Korean subtitles and all.

Conclusion: Am I going to boo Ilene Chaiken if I see her in the streets? Why yes, of course.
Will I always be glad that The L Word existed to bond queer grrrls and friends alike under the premise that this is NOT the way that we live, but we're glad we can pretend someone does? Yes.

So thanks for six seasons of the first lesbian sex any of us had ever seen, for the Chart, for the most attractive actresses to be found on cable TV, for women we could secretly relate to (sometimes), for that really weird thing you did in Season 2 everytime someone had sex (you know how it goes...Shane Shane Shane Shane Carmen Carmen Carmen Carmen Fucking Fucking Fucking Fucking), and for teaching us that some scenes really work better on mute. Really. It's been good.

Shakin' (Off) What My Momma Gave Me

I am not genderqueer.

And yes, that has been a real issue tracing back to my childhood, though more prevalently back to the summer when I realized that my predilection for boys' underwear was less (though still very much so) me falling for the trendy wiles of American Apparel and more indicative of the fact that I rarely perceive myself as anything feminine or womanly at all. If anything, for the majority of the time, I simply feel...neutral.

Since coming to American (University this time, not Apparel), I've had a newfound appreciation for androgyny in general, and what I would previously identified as my gender crises became closer to gender-contemplation sessions.

But.
Never ever have a felt more like a woman than on Sunday morning, when before church, my mother stopped me in the kitchen and told me that, as long as I remained in the house, I would have to "look like a girl."

What. the fuck. is that supposed to mean?

Apparently to her it meant changing out of my old-school Adidas kicks into a pair of black flats that actually looked cute with my black skinny jeans, and that I possibly would have worn on my own, had they not been forced upon me for the sake of convincing the world of my gender.

I realized then that it was ridiculous for me to try to "look" like a woman, because I already felt like one.
And not to pull the identity card, but as a lesbian and a feminist...well, I think I know what a woman feels like.

So how dare anyone tell me what it is to be one.
I will admit that maybe (just maybe) my presentation does not exactly adhere to the stereotype by which one would judge femininity, but gender isn't how you look, it's how you feel.
And besides, why, as an empowered and independent female, would I bother presenting myself in a way that would be judged "feminine" when the idea of femininity was constructed in order to oppress women to begin with?

So yes. I am a woman, though unconventionally so.
And it's better that way. Why conventionalize your own identity, or any identity at all?
Diversification and queering of the feminist movement. It's real. It's here. So lock up your daughters.
Or don't.

The Gospel According to Tyrone

I finally made some resolutions I could keep.
1. Start a conversation with every person I bum a cigarette off/from.
2. Make it happen. Anything, by any means necessary.

The basic outline of Friday goes like this:
Brandon and I, broke as all fuck, are standing outside CVS smoking with the homeless people (is there a politically correct term for them?) who sell Street Sense. After warning us about the fact that the Bloods have arrived in Tenleytown, he tells Brandon to show me a good time tonight (I mean, we are a radical queer couple after all), and tell us that, with no money, we've got two options: go to Hains Point and watch the planes go by, or go down to Georgetown and sit by the Potomac. It'll clear your mind, he says. It's just you and the water and God, you don't need anything else. And don't forget to thank God every day when you wake up. And if you wake up one day, and you can't see, thank God anyway, because you woke up. Ten heart attacks and fourteen strokes down, Tyrone still sees it fit to sit on the corner and preach the word.

He simplified religion in what is potentially the most effective way I've ever heard.
1. Keep holy the Ten.
2. Love and respect.
3. Preach a little word.
4. Take care of God's children.

Brandon and I head back to the dorms to polish off our five-dollar bottle of Andre, pick up various supplies, and then head to Tenleytown to pick up the G1 bus down to Georgetown.

The details aren't too important. Just know that we were broke and stoned, and we spent two and a half hours wandering through the city under bridges, through dark French-looking alleyways, across Georgetown's campus (holla at Village C), along highways, down trecherous stairways (it was like a MOUNTAIN, I swear), and across and incredbily vast bridge to Virginia and back. We also encountered a number of belligerent preppy drunks.

I can't express how far from the water we were when we first got there. But it was essentially seeing a point in the distance and making the decision to get there no matter what. It was getting what you want.

Finding the water after all that time is indescribable. The closed park we wandered into was surreal. I had never seen so much newness in one place. The stainless benches sat on the edges of patches of straw; the park was so new that grass hadn't even grown yet. Under the harsh white streetlights, the blackest asphalt I have ever seen gleamed and shone, leading us to the Potomac River.

It didn't need to look like anything when we got there. It didn't need to be grand or vast or endless in its possibility. Knowing that it was there, and we were on the edge of it, and that we had found it simply by seeing it and standing at least fifty feet over it an hour before was enough. The things that you get when you ask and the things that you get when you just look blow my fucking mind.

Plus we sort of found God.

I guess it's all held in the idea that truth and belief are only what you make them. The truth is only what you can get enough people to believe, or what you can get the right people to believe. And so if you believe in God, then Zie exists for you, and that's all that matters. And if Zie does exist, then Zie has given us the greatest gift of all: for us to be able to create Hir for ourselves. God created us, and in creating us, gave us the ability to create God as whatever image we see fit, and whatever we need.

It took us an hour and a half to walk back to school. We made in at about 5:30 and smoked inside a hollow sculpture. You have not been high until you have been high inside art.





I believed in God on runways and starting lines. Zie found me again by the Potomac River.
You don't need to believe it, but I guess that's the point.