“You’re living in an unheated apartment like some dostoyevksian prostitute”
-Brenty

quartaltritone65: I’m getting old, I will like utilitarian things
quartaltritone65: for instance, I am currently using an upside-down garbage can as a night-table
-the younger wiser sibling

And now I am off to send out the last of my December applications.

I have a rather long entry to write, for several reasons, but I don’t have time right now, and don’t know when the words will be there.

So Three Things. Real Quick.

I wasn’t planning on even considering a move until September. I had my cushy temp job, that paid me well, and was allowing me to save. And then I realized how doable it was. I decided that, if I was going to do stupid secretarial work, I might as well do it in New York. And I might as well move there. Plus HWSNBN has been telling me for months that I should move there.

So with very little knowledge of NYC neighborhoods, I set out to hunt for an apartment. I ignored Manhattan completely, thinking I could never afford it as I did not want to live above 125th street. (I have several friends who are Manhattan snobs who attest “Manhattan ends at 125th street”…one purist insists “Anything above 96th street is the Bronx.”).

Just Rachel 129: you live in brooklyn heights now, right?
asterphage: yeah, but this place is for chumps
Just Rachel 129: why is that?
asterphage: this housing place sucks more over time
asterphage: and rich folks areas are never any good
asterphage: the restaurants are mild and overly classy, the stores are uninteresting
Just Rachel 129: what’s a non-chump neighborhood in brookyln?
asterphage: i don’t really know
asterphage: practically anywhere is decent
Just Rachel 129: i mean, i’d love to live on the lower east side, but i’m not a rich trust fundie
asterphage: also it’s unbearable down there
asterphage: i wouldn’t want to live over by the shitty little overpriced designer shops and expensive little cafes and crap
Just Rachel 129: upper manhattan seems like it sucks
asterphage: why would you even look at uptown? even if you could afford it? uptown is for middle aged professionals who are afraid of things outside their life, and for people who are raising families

With a bit of research I found Park Slope and Williamsburg were considered cool places to live in Brooklyn, and Astoria in Queens was also quite nice (I never did get out to Astoria, I probably should have).

Just Rachel 129: i’ve been going to a lot of roommate interviews. they are incredibly depressing
Just Rachel 129: picture a job interview, only more like middle school
asterphage: wow, that sucks
Just Rachel 129: i’ve been to a few cattle call style open houses, and several others where i was interviewed and given the “tell us about yourself” thing
asterphage: that’s really fucked up, the cattle calls
asterphage: the interviews are fairly reasonable i guess
Just Rachel 129: i think they are, except when they’re mean to you
Just Rachel 129: “why do you think we should want you to live with us”
Just Rachel 129: and then they smirk at each other
Just Rachel 129: and then you know they’re making fun of you the second you leave
asterphage: if that happened
asterphage: i would be like “go fuck yourself, this place isn’t nice enough for me to deal with smug assholes.”
Just Rachel 129: right, i should be more confrontational
asterphage: i mean jesus, what kind of people are these? lower east side pretentious hipsters?
Just Rachel 129: all in park slope, so far

This went on for about three weeks. I looked in Park Slope, and Williamsburg, Beford L-stop. Williamsburg seemed great – it’s on the water and most of the buildings have roof access so you get pretty views.

But again, the people were total assholes

asterphage: this is why anything that is cool sucks
Just Rachel 129: like, my attitude is, these are the neighborhoods i might like to live in so i’m searching there. if i find roommates i can hang out with sometimes, great. if not, we’re all adults and we can be civil to each other.
asterphage: right, at some point though, does it start to seem like maybe the people in these neighborhoods are not the kind of people you want to be around?
Just Rachel 129: it does
Just Rachel 129: i love williamsburg, bedford stop, it’s on the water, it’s so nice. but everyone has been a total asshole
asterphage: did i not tell you that hipster neighborhoods are so not cool
asterphage: williamsburg = fuck dat

So I went back to what had been my plan last February, before I was even seriously considering a city move. I would look in Jersey City. The apartments in the Jersey City financial district are new, and clean, and have normal people living in them. It’s not NYC, but it’s on the PATH. It’s on the river for good walking at night.

Just Rachel 129: i’m looking at apartments in jersey city, because i’m not hipster enough for brooklyn
Just Rachel 129: brooklyn = lots of people like hampshire students
ZGoTenksZ: hippies
Just Rachel 129: hip-sters
ZGoTenksZ: what’s the difference?
Just Rachel 129: hipsters shower
Just Rachel 129: i’ll probably wind up remaining true to my jersey roots & move to Jersey City
ZGoTenksZ: so? you’ll get a bigger place for same money
Just Rachel 129: i don’t know. i want an NYC zip code, cuz i’m shallow
Just Rachel 129: but jersey city is probably better for me than brooklyn
ZGoTenksZ: why?
Just Rachel 129: the people there are professionals and not hipsters
ZGoTenksZ: so…go to jersey city then
ZGoTenksZ: you pay less tax

(and we all know how I feel about tax!)

And then Saturday morning, I stumbled upon the perfect apartment. A small room on the third floor, with a normal roommate. He just wants to find a quiet, sane person, because his good friend from college is moving into his spot in late August, and she wants a female roommate. “I got hundreds of replies to my ad,” he told me on the phone. “And yours is one of the only one’s that I’m answering.”

Sitting in Starbucks, taking that call on Friday, I was pretty sure this was going to be the apartment.

Just Rachel 129: i’m moving to jersey city in august. It’s not manhattan, but you can’t beat the commute, and I can stay true to my jersey roots
Five tenn: hell yeah…and babe, you are a jersey girl.

Yes. Yes I am.

On The Weekend

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

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.

I completely lack coherence. So I present “Thirteen Stories About One Thing”

ONE

Random, hysterical laughter and then “Did you watch Dawson’s Creek in high school” (Because if even I watched Dawson’s Creek, than clearly every female on the planet watched Dawson’s Creek.)

“I watched Dawson’s Creek in college!”

“Ok, well remember that Dawson’s dad got killed, because he…

“…went out to get milk, and then got in a car accident…”

“…because he was eating an ice cream cone, and he dropped it, AND THEN HE TRIED TO PICK IT UP…”

“Yeah, so if you drop you’re ice cream, don’t try and pick it up.”

“What a stupid way to kill off a character.”

-Me & Xina, after a shopping jaunt

TWO

Me: Ooo, Pretty Woman is on.

Brent: What?!? You awful person!

Me: Shut up, I love this movie

Brent: You’re the last person in the world I would expect to love that movie.

Me: Shut up, I know, it’s shameful. I think every female has this chip in her head that makes her like this movie.

Brent: But you hate Julia Roberts!

Me: I know!

Brent: I’m going to use this against you. And Richard Gere is awful

Me: I know! But he buys her lots of clothes. And she saves him!

Brent: Richard Gere is awful

Me: I know! That’s why Primal Fear is so cool, because Edward Norton totally got him.

-Spring Break, last year.

Edward Norton was crazy, smart, manipulative and so-o cute in that movie. Hm. Typical.

THREE

It doesn’t make sense that someone as rational, cynical and paranoid as I, is at times incredibly idealistic and a ridiculous romantic. (I adore alliteration!). I also wonder if I should be saying: It doesn’t make any sense that someone as idealistic and romantic as me could be so cynical, rational and paranoid.

-Now the two sides will engage in a fight.

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

NascentIgnorance: later stupid

Just Rachel 129: fuck you stupid

NascentIgnorance: shut up stupid

Just Rachel 129: you started it stupid

Just Rachel 129: I’m glad we have such a loving relationship

NascentIgnorance: you wouldn’t want it any other way

-”If I’m crazy then it’s true, that it’s all because of you, and you wouldn’t want me, any other way” Because, you saved me in 6th grade from being a typical girl, even if I do like Dawson’s Creek & Pretty Woman

EIGHT

I know prospero wins and there is some subtext about government

-Brent, on the Tempest

NINE

Laugh at the things that formally bound you

-Shakespeare Class on Thursday

TEN

I want to go scoff at Camp Hamp for failing in it’s attempt to turn me into a communist, filthy feminazi. In fact, that really, really screwed up because I’m a capitalist, and

ELEVEN

“I’m independent and I can take care of myself, but what I really want is a hot, emotionally detached workaholic man to fall in love with me because I’m so wonderful”

-Circa August, drunken whinings that the hippies would certainly say was an example of how the patriarchy has gotten to me.

TWELVE

Anyone want to go on a day trip to Amherst soon-ish? I would definitely buy you dinner and protect you from the dirty hippies You’ll get the chance to see the Hampshire bubble up close, a hellish representation of why utopia shouldn’t exist

THIRTEEN

Joy is not a state of being. It’s an activity. It doesn’t exist independently of our actions. Joy is supposed to be fleeting and transitory because it was never meant to be permanant.

Mono-no-aware, “The sadness of all things.” The sadness that informs everything, evne joy itself. Without that, joy cannot exist. Joy is what we do, joy is pagan, and absurd and tinged with lust and sadness. Bliss is not. Bliss is death.

-”Happiness” – pg247

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

YWS: we had to do one of those stupid arts and crafts projects in health today where we have to cut pictures out of magazines

YWS:: I picked up and opened a Time magazine and saw the table of contents

YWS:: talking about how ‘Bush’ was planning a space program for Mars in order to boost the technological age, restore purpose to NASA, etc

YWS:  SPACE: America should embark on a mission to Mars
Two decades after the first moon landing, President Bush has a chance to launch an ambitious, long-term program that will give NASA a goal and restore the nation’s technological prowess.

YWS: I saw another article about Isreal/palestine ESSAY: If the Palestinians win, so will Isreal.
The dangerous notion that the intifadeh must be defeated rather than calmed transcendes Isreal’s current political crisis. True statesmen would seek victory for everyone.

YWS:  Then I flipped to the front of the magazine

YWS: it was from 1989!

Me: thats really horrible

YWS: hilarity

Me: this proves that bush is not like FDR, nor mckinley. bush is like bush

YWS: along with another ’89 one about the Supreme Court setting the stage for a corrosive political fight by upholding a restrictive abortion law

YWS: who the hell compared Bush to FDR?

Me: a lot of people. cuz he’s a wartime president whose massively expanding the government

To add to that, um, stirring comparison…Kuzma compared Bush to FDR, because Bush ‘used his instincts, not facts, to guide his foreign policy.’ This was before September 11, but I think it still speaks volumes.

Me: at the lecture today the guy referred to bush as “shifty” which i thought was a good description

Brent: it is, he’s like a crafty ape

Me: well he was talking about how we’ve lost whatever credibility we might have had, because we should have started doing something about regaining stablity in the region as soon as bush declared major combat over, but bush keeps changing the direction of the mission

and he wants to do things so it works out around election time, which is impossible

Brent: those crazy bush planners… what won’t they do!

Me: you can’t bring democracy to a country thats ethnically and religiously fragmented, and has never had democracy and has no gov’t structure in 8 months, which is what they want to do

Brent: what they’ll end up with is a weak democracy that falls apart quickly

Me: well look at afghanistan. We set up government there quickly, it was real successful

Brent: well no one cares about that

Me: exactly “Thats not the issue”

Me: pity me and my american political thought stuff
YoungerWiserSibling: I have no pity for someone who takes a class because of a crush on an elitist libertarian

Upon Hearing My Complaints on Hippies Here

Brent: skidmore is like hampshire lite
Me: I KNOW
Brent: it’s like the six flags to disney world

Me: six flags tries to be disney world though, skidmore doesn’t try to be hampshire

Read the rest of this entry »

Neumy6109: nothing is more satisfying than watching a big green balloon deflate
DagnyCat522: hm?
Neumy6109: going into round 3 we were tied 24-24 with Ramapo
Neumy6109: we were also very close to each other pre-adjustment at the end of round 3
Neumy6109: then the guy went back and adjusted ours, leaving us with 39. they got really happy, because they thought they had won
Neumy6109: because they were up by 7 or something. then, he adjusted theirs, and it went down to 38
DagnyCat522: wait, did you win super quiz?
Neumy6109: and they all went ‘ahhhhhhhhhhhhh’ and it was like a big green balloon deflating
DagnyCat522: ??????????????????
DagnyCat522: what place/
Neumy6109: 1st
DagnyCat522: yay!!!!

Stupid old high school rivalries rule!

Ben: heh, I just flipped past CNN for a second and they described ‘a militant splinter group of anti-war demonstrators… oh the irony

Me: exactly, It’s so frustrating here. stupid greens are staging a walk out here ” yes lets show that we’re irresponsible enough to walk out of class and disrupt the day” they even admit they don’t have anything planned for the day

Ben: like Robert Byrd making a big speech against the war…that’s what the anti-war movement has on their side. The French, who are against war for oil (ironic, considering the fact that everyone likes to claim that Bush is _for_ war for oil, which also discredits the anti-war movement because it’s such a bullshit argument), Robert Byrd (a former KKK member), and a bunch of unruly phish fans

DagnyCat522: i should warn you though, i have a rather bad cold. so in addition to getting you sick i probably won’t be much fun
chronic CYNIC: but i’ll get to see you, and i love you, so it is good

Going to Troy to see Ryan; dinner with his parents for his birthday. Then bringing him back here for the weekend.