Points to anyone who gets the reference in the title.

This morning, in my half-awake state before the alarm went off, I thought it was Friday, and I was planning on what to wear with my jeans. (Casual Friday. I am soooo corporate. Except not.)

I also had weird dreams, full of giraffes with cancer collapsing in my yard and a giant owl. The giant owl was terrifying! The giraffes were also pretty freaky. I mean, wouldn’t you be at least mildly shaken if a bunch of cancerous giraffes collapsed in front of you?

Quote of the day, via CK: “God I hate the Third World so much!”

I love that I sit next to a Libertarian from Jersey at work

My compliments to Jon who was a wonderful host, looked perfectly urbane, and ensured that every one of his guests had the opportunity to get sufficiently sloshed. Although my body is unforgiving of the decision to imbibe various delicious mixed drinks it is lovely to have a friend who goes to such lengths to ensure his friends not only get trashed, but enjoy their liquor. Love you Jon!

Edited to add, that although this is from Fourth of July weekend, I forgot to include it in my recap and so I’m preserving it for my own benefit, as all my journals are going to be stored in my parents attic upon my move out in 12 days

On the way to Target to buy baby presents:

Laura: …and so apparently there are still dancing bears in Romania
Sebastian: Of course there are still dancing bears in Romania!

Upon leaving Target

Laura: Is it okay if we go to the pet store too?
Me: Yeah, we don’t have anything else to do.
Sebastian: Yes, we are three useless college students wasting time.
Me: Hey! I am not a college student.
Sebastian: Sorry, sorry!
Me: I’m a useless, unemployed college graduate.

At the pet store, buying something for a rabbit.

Sebastian: The only thing I know about rabbits is…
Me: What the term ‘fuck like bunnies?”
Sebastian: Yes. I just didn’t want to say it
Me: You’re lucky you have vulgar American friends to say these things for you.

and “ewwww, it tastes like communism”

Typically girly reunion only with out the shrieking. (And we are frothy as opposed to bubbly, but we certainly do not shriek!)

Me: Aw, Sebastian, I miss having you around to open doors for me.
Sebastian: Find yourself a boyfriend with some manners!

(Well that boy we were going to cat fight over now IS all mine!)

In 95 degree weather, Sebastian removes his suit jacket. Notices me, sprawled out on the couch my jeans rolled up, my tank top out of place, and APOLOGIZES because a gentlemen never removes his coat in front of a lady. I sit up and remark on my indecency by aristocratic standards. He quotes something about beauty to God makes it still decent. How euphenistic.

“All right now just pretend that whole last exchange never happened. How do you like this?”

“As a fond memory or a disturbing memory?”

Me: Maybe I have “O” type blood too, because I never get bitten by mosquitoes.
Laura: Or maybe it’s just the blood alcohol level

“I was really paranoid about running over his foot”

The “ha-ha”

Politically correct baby blankets, Rousseau-ian child rearing, “well, i guess he won’t be hearing from us anytime soon”

N: So I have to go to confession for the right time in like, 90 years and I’m going to be like “I don’t remember all my sins, but they were pretty much all the same…””
F: (interrupting) “I hate people. I make fun of people. I am generally hateful towards most people….”
Laura: Wow. Maybe you need to join our misanthropy club.

Lecture series: Coming soon to a campus near you.

Sebastian and I are going to have a television show called “The Monarchist and the Libertarian.”

Sebastian: Your Libertarian principles are rubbing off on me! I think I should have the right to choose to be stupid!

I just made a Wizard of Oz reference. I must be gravely ill.

Firstly, I realize that my LJ has completely declined into too much of a real journal — too “personal-y” and at times unapologetically sappy, or maudlin.

That’s why if you want to read something I’ve written that’s relevant or passably intelligent, you should read my very rudimentary, still a work-in-progress blog

The LJ will remain for schlok and countdowns.

Anyway.

The weekend was wonderful, and awesome, and filled with pretty weather, and laughing, and goodgood conversation.

Just Rachel 129: talking on the phone is so high school. just like AIM is so college
NascentIgnorance: haha
NascentIgnorance: what do real people do
Just Rachel 129: i don’t know
NascentIgnorance: i think they talk on the phone
Just Rachel 129: or they leave the house and actually see other people
NascentIgnorance: oh yeah
NascentIgnorance: well that’d be awkward.

Just Rachel 129: i want to be the uberwoman
NascentIgnorance: so what you’re saying is you want to be a man

Just Rachel 129: i’m tired and paranod
NascentIgnorance: so what’s different?
NascentIgnorance: sorry
NascentIgnorance: the network gave me notes that i should ‘be more like chandler’ if i want the show to stay on the air
Just Rachel 129: who?
NascentIgnorance: the guy on friends
Just Rachel 129: wow
NascentIgnorance: it was a good reference
Just Rachel 129: you really are the gay best friend
NascentIgnorance: fuck
NascentIgnorance: i can’t believe i was gotten

Just Rachel 129: i had grand plans of being home and continuing my quest to make myself as much of an overeducated elitist as possible. but all i’ve been reading lately is my little house on the Prarie books
NascentIgnorance: haha
NascentIgnorance: how educating
Just Rachel 129: i love those books
Just Rachel 129: and i have a literary crush on almanzo wilder
NascentIgnorance: that’s terrifying
Just Rachel 129: he drove 12 miles each way in horribly cold weather to rescue her from staying at school every weekend!
Just Rachel 129: that’s hot
NascentIgnorance: that’s not hot, it’s inefficient
NascentIgnorance: clearly the opportunity cost of such a decision has negative impact on his cashflow
Just Rachel 129: i want a man who will be irrational, just for me

Our problem is that we’re too grounded. Both of us have to make a pact to be more pie in the sky
~Brent. Clearly drunk

Me: …so he read Atlas Shrugged to impress me, things didn’t work out, and now he’s quoting Ayn Rand in his away messages and making himself look like a fool
Brent: Yeah, you shouldn’t do that to people
Me: It’s not my fault! He’s weird. His nickname was Satan in high school. That was Ryan’s nickname in high-school. It’s not my fault!
Brent: Why do you always fall for the crazy ones?

Me: Singing country music and driving on twisty back roads is so much fun
Brent: Uck, you really are a republican now

Me: I covet a Kate Spade bag
Brent: You are such a republican

Laura: I’m going to go to grad school only long enough to meet a husband. Then I’m going to get married and drop out
Me: Awesome, you’ll set the women’s movement back at least 50 years
Laura: That was my plan!
Me: It’s a good one. As a “conservative” woman my attitude is ‘Sure, I’m capable of taking care of myself, I just shouldn’t have to.’
Laura: It’s true.
Me: So, I’ll be a supportive, awesome wife, and in return I’d like some Mead Spiral notebooks

Laura: I’d say she was annoying. But I don’t really have any reason to think she’s annoying
Me: No, I think she’s annoying too! She just LOOKS annoying
Laura: Well, she is a sociology major.They think they have THE answer for everything.
Me: Right, them and the anthro department
Laura: I guess every major thinks that they have a claim to THE answer for everything. Some of them just have a more legitimate claim to it.
Me: Yeah. Like us.
Laura: Exactly
Drunken Trucker: C’mere baby. I’ll make it worth your while! C’mere. C’mon! I’ll make it worth your while!
Laura: Oh, he’s a winner. You can have him
Me: No, no you take him, I insist.

Resolved: Scotty’s is the only place we can walk into and have every man in the place stare at us.

Me: god i love nietzsche. he is my philosopher boyfriend. his writing is hot
Brent: That’s frightening. He’s anti-semitic and misanthropic
Me: And I’m attracted to both of the above qualities
Brent: I suppose, but Nietszche bothers me. He blames woman and Jews for all the worlds problems
Me: Yes. But he does so in a very appealing manner.

Other men competing for my affections:
Jon Stewart (especially Jon Stewart), Edward Norton circa Primal Fear, F.A. Hayek, and Billy Joel
I realize, my crush on Hank Rearden has dissipated some (but I haven’t read Atlas Shrugged in quite a while, because it will make me cry) but if he and Fransisco want to fight over me, I would be all for it. So long as they don’t invite John Galt.
And I’d say Paul Johnson, but he’s 70+. Which is somehow more bothersome then the fact that F.A Hayek and Nietzsche are dead, and Hank Rearden is a literary character

Me: I’m reading a 900 page book on German History from 1770-1866
Brent: Hot!

“I am so tired of that stupid cave”
~Brent on the Allegory of the Cave

Me: The exorcist wasn’t scary at all
Brent: That’s only because it didn’t play on your personal paranoia; the supernatural = impossible, a hockey-masked killer = possible
Me: Yes, exactly
Me: I never really worried about getting possessed
Brent: Right, because a demon would be rooting around inside you for a soul, find nothing, and leave the way he came in

Me: Well, Road to Serfdom & Failure of Socialism are both on my bookcase if you want to use them
Ben: I know, and Road to Serfdom is all highlited and margin noted. I want my own copy
~This makes me so proud! My younger, wiser sibling is going to go to UChicago and turn into a drunken Straussian.

Brent: …so I was drinking Wild Turkey last night…
Me: Ooh! Did you have lemon juice first
Brent: No, but that was nice
Me: I’m so glad you still get references to IT.

(Earlier in the Day)

Ray: Come to Florence Rachel! We all float down here
Me: Bringing up inside jokes from 8th grade, I love it.
Ray: Yeah, are your Skidmore friends going to do that for you? I think not

-It’s raining here. Remnants of Hurricane Ivan. Appropriate since much of my Russian reading this week has been Ivan III (The Great) and Ivan IV (The Terrible). Russian names sound so threatening and evil.
-”Drinking Green Mountain coffee is virtuous [because it's fair trade coffee]. You’re not addicted to caffeine. You’re addicted to helping people get fair pay for growing coffee.” – Modern Political Thought on Wednesday.

-Saratoga has the oldest operating race track in the country. That’s because after the Battle of Saratoga George Washington was like “We have all these ponies…lets have them run around in a circle and people can bet on them.” Yes. Ponies.- my brilliant housemate

-Buckley and Beer. And Baseball!

-I want to go to Russia. Or Italy.

It’s always been a dream of mine, to be asked by you to go do coffee.

-Adam

Way to be an overeducated elitist

-Brent, on the fact that I knew the date of “The Lottery” (the short story) but not the date itself

What Would Be A Sign of The Apocolypse:

Seeing Brent hanging out at Starbucks

Dara- Whoa, and what happened on your break, missy?

Me- Huh?

Dara- You look so happy! You’re practically glowing.

Me- Well I just got a book I really wanted

Dara- What was it?

Me- Um…it was “The Age of Voltaire, because I’m collecting this series of books and….

Dara- Wow, you really are a nerd.

NascentIgnorance: i want to heckle a motivational speaker

“Don’t make me put you in a good mood!”

I am left with extra time getting ready for work this afternoon, so I feel obligated to tell everyone that, looking at the books I have been reading lately, I have realized that my destiny is not, unfortunately, to become an insane empress who can peer owlishly at the Diet through a speech rolled up like a telescope.

I am going to be one of those insane old guys on the history channel, doing commentary on one of those documentaries. Except, you know, I’ll be a chick. I’ll be like the old women who are always on the Holocaust documentaries telling about their time in the concentration camp, except I’ll be slightly younger, hipper, and tattoo-less.

Yeah, that was tasteless.

First I need to get qualified for this job, because you can’t become an insane commentator on the history channel over night. I’ll probably have to go to grad school eventually and get my degree in some obscure historical specification. And then I will become a professor. But I’d be a cool professor, well, cool by my standards at least. I would find the one girl in every class who was just as loserly as I was at her age and bond with her, and if she was under 21, I would buy her alcohol, because that’s what a good professor does!

I would also marry someone who was really intellectual, but disagreed with me on stuff, like for example, someone who thought “appeasement was the right policy for Britain and France in 1939″ (it wasn’t, and i actually don’t think any intelligent person would really think this, but I’m just using it as an example). Anyway, that way we could get into petty fights about our disagreements, and if we had kids, we could put them in the middle of it. Like, my husband would take the kid out for ice cream and tell them all about how appeasement was the right policy, and then I’d get really mad and make him sleep on the couch and somehow make it to seem like that is what he wanted because it’s a form of appeasement.

I’m still working on the details.

Me: (Commenting on Brent’s poor driving) You’re drifting to the right

Brent: Shut up stupid, you’re drifting to the right

This is sort of true.

Also, as everyone knows, I have crushes on literary characters. However, I recently realized that this is nothing new for me. I never had crushes on stupid teen stars I had crushes on characters in books.

Like in book 8 of the Little House on the Prarie series, when Almanzo Wilder comes to pick Laura up and take her home every weekend, because she’s teaching school 12 miles (i remember everything!) from home and living with people she hates. So he comes and rescues her every weekend, no matter how bad the weather is. I thought that was the most romantic thing ever.

Friday night, I was lucky enough to have a EuroSim reunion with some of the coolest Model EU people ever. Like plenary sessions, I kept track of all the brilliance.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Rachel and Christina Drive to Jersey Extravaganza

Last night:
“There’s no crying at Skidmore!”

“You’re still up?!?” “I’m eating cereal at 3AM. Mostly because I’m hungry, but also because I want to spite Brent”

Today:
Drive thru windows!

“Are you feeling crippled today?”

And THAT is why the Lord created men (the song too)

The guy with the weird hair…they won’t even let him look up.
Keyboards are SO 80s!

“It’s that orange truck again, it’s coming to get you”

They’re selling doctors? Isn’t that illegal?

Proof Xina and I could never have been friends in high school: she liked the Back-street Boys, and now it’s posted here for everyone to see, and mock. (And she led a contingent against a group of N’Sync fans, and she knows the names of all the Back-Street Boys)

In regards to “The Sign” (Ace of Base, yo) There is a tunnel of bad pop music that goes from Sweden to the US. But it’s still relevant!

Liz Phair ‘sold out.’

“Rachel is an institution” –Xina
New plan: Just like Caesar wasn’t a title until after Julius Caesar died, I am going to take over the world, and then after I’m assassinated, my name will be a title for ruler. That would rock.

EZ-Pass GO! ‘Jersey beats New York! Jersey beats New York!’

Crossing the border into Jersey and playing “Livin’ On a Prayer”

God Bless PLJ

Sweet home New Jersey
Where the skies are so gray

Kevin: total gets on the model un pepole

Auto response from Rachel: Reading about the UN, which is so much less cool than the EU. 5 days in an NYC hotel vs a week in a bungalow park in the Netherlands? It’s just no contest

Rachel: if you ever go back to the netherlands, i highly recommend berksee bergen bungalow park. its only a few letters off from belsen-bergen concentration camp

Kevin: lol

Rachel: super tuesday is march 4 this is like, mini super tuesday coming up

Kevin: dean was heroicly on meet the press (is that a word)

Rachel: did anything cool happen

Kevin: i don’t think so

Kevin: i mean he kept up his attacks on kerry basically

Rachel: how droll

Kevin:

Rachel: dean is such an angry monkey

Kevin: no he isn’t

Rachel: on local news station here, they were interviewing people about the primaries and someone said “i don’t care if its a monkey, as long as it can beat bush”

Kevin: i like his style

Kevin: pro-monkey!

Rachel: someone had to inform her though that we already have a monkey in the white house

Rachel: although monkeys fight each other

Kevin: yes

Rachel: so maybe we could just have that instead of an election

Yay, classes started today. Being on campus when there’s no class is just boring, plus its freezing and no one wants to leave their overheated dorm rooms.
But before work picks up and I actually have to do a lot of work, here, as promised (albeit delayed) are

“Conclusions from Model EU Plenary Sessions

1) Blue whale beaching themselves is really funny, according to my LS1 professor (and Model EU faculty advisor)

2) Josh is Jewish, because he gets Chanukah cards
2a) How this conclusion was reached
Josh: (telling a story) …and when I get Chanukah cards…
Me: (2 minutes later) Wait, Josh, are you Jewish?
Josh: No, I just get Chanukah cards for no reason…
2b) And use the “Hanukkah” spelling, because its less retarded

3) Adam is Jewish too!

4) Josh asks dumb questions

5) Group dynamics suck

6) Rachel (me) has really nice handwriting
(commentary: I’ve always been told I have bad handwriting so go figure)

7) Today’s plenary session has 3 parts!

This guy has an ungood fake Italian accent.
(but he’s kind of cute) ((he is???))

9) You can time travel!

10) Josh needs new ties and not “awful gay liberal” ones

11) Shut up Turkey, no one cares about your country, go home to your prostitutes

12) Corruption is not neccesarily a bad thing

13) De-facto is a cool word (re: Interior Minister meeting)

14) “Unanimously” is a difficult word to say

15) Portugal and Hungary should form an alliance and bomb Slovakia! (also re: Interior Minister meeting)

16) Men can be sexually exploited too!

17) Interior Ministers are unimportant
17a) Yeah, but that means we have to do less work                                                          17b) And it lends itself to the joke “Hey baby, can I be Minister of your Interior?”

18) We are all losers, so there can be other excuses or explanations

19)The Dutch drink a lot, because it is always damp and chilly in the Netherlands, and they need alcohol to a) keep them warm and b) keep them sane because its always raining!

20) Why aren’t these meetings over yet? (every day…)

1st weekend bonding, being saved from the awful roommate, confessional why I transfered stories, knowing why never to ask the question “Why Did You Transfer?” in mixed company.

Girly movies, the mat with the ladybugs, singing the 1776 window song, Cherry Garcia drag show ice cream, Robo-Amazon-Truck-Driver. Cheater! the big sweatshirt, “it’s the guy in the furry Russian hat”,

“thats sketch”, thursday night dinners, i want to be japanese! i hate it when i tell the truth, this is gour-fucking-met, Di dancing in the d-hall, THIS IS ALL THE MINT CHOCOLATE CHIP ICE CREAM! i wish i could be delusional & naive & then I could think I was going to just be a rock star, Matzoh ball soup addictions, he’s sketchy,  there are a lot of somalians, pssst, north quad vs south quad (South Quad Rules),

Walking to Uncommon Grounds and ranting, and confessing. Mostly forgotten Friday night of ‘Fun Day’ a school event that was actually amusing. The pond, running around barefoot,  in the middle of an open, viewable field, then running around the campus being giggly drunk girls and having conversations and taking twenty minutes to explain what should take 2 seconds.  waking up with the Worst. Hangover. Ever. but enjoying the feeling of being a typical college student.

The non naked table, “I just saw the boots and freaked out”, I can’t stand it when people I hate are liked by other people. Especially when its by people that I like.  short rides in cars for runs and conversations and honesty, our long lost sister, and that we all listened to the same Jimmy Eat World song the past summer

It just takes some time, little girl
You’re in the middle after all
Everything, everything will be just fine
Everything, everything will be alright.

And getting the house for next year. Perfect.