In a mild fit of paranoid, I went back and locked a whole bunch of entries, particularly anything related to my school, program or thesis. I’m debating just using the mass edit thing and locking the whole thing, but I like having my non-LJ friends-list as part of my audience. I may do the “leave an entry public for a week” thing. But, I figured even with having the search engine block, there aren’t too many girls at this school, in this program, studying what I’m studying. And I don’t want people to find me from searches of my fascist boyfriend, because then they’re most likely fellow academics, and this journal reveals way too much of my silly, drama-queen, emo side.

I am braindead from working on my thesis. I am at the point where I need someone else to look at it, because its just a big jumble right now. When I wrote it, I divided my argument into sections and then went merrily through, imputing pulled quotes, little stream-of-consciousness rants, etc. So all the evidence for my argument is in there SOMEWHERE I’m just so close to the topic I’m no longer capable of figuring out which parts make sense, what needs to be moved to other paragraphs, and what sentences just need to be rewritten. This is why I keep dreaming about writing paragraphs and walk around editing in my head. The argument is there, and I know what my evidence is in my head, I just can’t find it in my paper anymore, so its no where near where it needs to be to be a good rough draft.

Bleh. And I’m also paranoid I’m not using enough sources. I really wish I could read German.

Okay. Time to go read something that isn’t Schmitt and fall asleep

Move over Tocqueville!

I’m thesising away, trying to get thirty pages worth at least on paper so I have plenty of time to edit, move around paragraphs, make things click, etc. I have some major reading on the state of exception that I have thus far neglected to do, which is somewhat of a nagging-stressing thing. It should still turn out okay though, I think.

I have been spectacularly anti-social since the end of classes. First, it was that I had final papers due earlier than most people. Then, everyone else was working on final papers, and I was done. Then, my parents were here. Then, I just felt very anti-social, and holed up and was unproductive. I feel much better now though.

I am looking forward to my IR focused classes this quarter. I’m officially signed up for Terrorism, but I know I’m going to have to petition to stay in anyway. I’m hoping the fact that my thesis title includes the phrase “war on terror” and uses the word “terrorism” about 100 times will earn me a spot.

Grades are supposed to be up, but I”m still missing a grade. I know there’s no way I got an incomplete and/or failed, so I’m wondering what gives. Okay, back to work. Have I mentioned I love Carl Schmitt? He’s such a drama queen! In bemoaning the possible rise of unipolar world order he says “the last round, the final step, in the terrible rings to a new nomos of the Earth!” Yeah, take that liberal internationalism!

On a side note, I have been on live journal for four years. That’s a lot of my life on the internet.

So I am waiting for my laundry to be done, which is my excuse for why I can write in Livejournal instead of reading Mill or writing about Machiavelli. Because I’ll just have to get up and retrieve my laundry eventually, which would interrupt what I’m doing, which would distract me ANYWAY, so there’s no reason to even try. Even though I really need to get started on my final papers. Ug, eighth week.

My eyes are burning because I used a ton of bleach in an attempt to clean my kitchen floor. This apartment is going to kill me. I bought a mini-humidifier but it is still 19,000 degrees in here, so I have to do a routine of open window/freeze/close window at least a few times a night. I am still dehydrated. I keep refilling my water bottle. I spent the morning taking lots of notes on Diderot; nothing like French liberalism first thing in the morning.

Today was kind of awesome because David Dyzenhaus was the lecture for political theory workshop. I know that means nothing to anyone else, but I just got his new book, and I’m totally using him in my thesis, and I got to ask him a relevant question. As I’ve mentioned, I had never heard of Carl Schmitt before I came to U Chicago; it was my precept who recommended the class to me. So I told him on Thursday night I was really glad he recommended it, because Concept of the Political was one of the most provocative things I’ve read, and because this is how I got my thesis topic, and because Schmitt basically goes into a lot of critiques of liberal democracy that I’d already had, but had never quite been able to articulate. And my precept was like “Oh great, I’ve turned Rachel into a Nazi.” Hee.

It occuried to me today that, given my LJ whore-dom, I should start a Schmittian blog and start posting pieces of my thesis. Not because anyone would read it, but because I can’t for the life of me get a paper written, but I sure can churn out blog. Maybe I should just get together with the Long Sunday people.

Okay. I’m going to go waste 20 minutes looking up articles on eReserve, get my laundry, and maybe, just maybe start my Machiavelli paper.

I’m out of half and half, but I NEED caffeine and so I’m taking my coffee black this morning. Throwing it over ice cuts the bitterness and I can gulp it down to free my sleep-adled brain.

One sip of black iced coffee brings back a hundred and one snapshots and then my brain is off and running; curse my memory that can never remember where I left my keys, but that remembers every cup of black coffee.

It was the spring I was twenty and I wasn’t sleeping much anyway. I wasn’t doing much homework either. Lukewarm black coffee in a small Dunkin Donuts cup, in the hallway at the top of steps of Hickory A, the night before the APD final, and it was Mother’s Day, because my mom had lectured me because I was giving up my D.C. Internship, but I didn’t care because in those days, nothing mattered, nothing but “this.”  

Black coffee and a corn muffin, playing Dar William’s “End of Summer” CD on the quick trips I used to make for what would stand in for breakfast/lunch/dinner before Comparative Politics.

Iced black coffee, but from the Dunkin Donuts up 29, on one of those fabulous days that I’ve referenced a thousand times. For the entire summer afterwards, until I quit drinking it, black coffee brought me back to that afternoon.

But not the mornings, like this morning, when I couldn’t seem to get myself out of the house to be productive before class, and I would sit there writing instead, no; those mornings were French Toast Coffee.

And French Toast Coffee is a whole ‘nother set of memories.

And reading that, I realize; I got another audience after that, but now that audience is on its way out. So I’ll probably be writing less (this used to be unconscious, breaks in writing) which will relieve my friends-list of my over-analytical and angst-ridden entries, which I’m sure are no less annoying then my “omg, I-am-so-happy-and-my-life-is-perfect” entries. I am mostly kidding, but I do have trouble writing when my life, and my audience, are in flux

I do feel better today, but also worse, because I feel trapped in my fifteen year old self. At least I am self-aware, which in my book, should make it more forgivable, but I am also having to work hard to convince myself I am not being harshly judged. And since sitting here writing in LiveJournal is really not helping my case any, I’m going to get dressed and do something less emo.  

This is gmail’s fault! The ad was taunting me at the top of the screen. I will forgive gmail, only because it is what keeps me sane at work. I use it like AIM. Everyone else in the world left work early today, so since 3 PM, I have been wasting time reading about high-brow subjects like Britney Spears Dateline appearance and the stampeding elephants in Bangledash. 

It’s already March. That is crazy to me.

I know I am tired, but the waves of exhaustion have not yet hit me, and when they do it will be unfun, because I was up WAY past my bedtime last night. But overall, I feel better. Not that I was feeling intensely awful to begin with, but it’s like “Why hello perspective, you seem to be making a good number of guest appearances lately!” 

But that is another entry, and I don’t feel like writing anything that isn’t stream of consciousness right now, because I am hyper, because I had coffee, and
I haven’t really had coffee that much lately, so it actually affects me.

This morning, I walked out the 49th street exit of the subway, and there’s a little newstand there and there were many magazine covers of “Nick and Jessica” so now I have that fucking theme song in my head again. Oh poor, poor Nick Lachey. I always felt so bad for him on Newlyweds. And now he’s getting divorced and no matter what he does he looks like an asshole for going after what is legally his. He is a sad, sad man. And it is sad, sad, sad that I cannot get “This I Swear” out of my head. Luckily, this song is great for singing, complete with overdramatic gestures, in fits of overtiredness. The Publishing Boys better watch their backs.

Speaking of dramatically singing teenybopper songs, Jon and I used to sing this Boyz II Men song to each other (complete with overdramatic gestures) and my-boyfriend-at-the-time would get really, really mad, not because I was making a fool out of myself (which, I don’t need permission to do, thank you very much) but because he took it as we were singing the lyrics to each other seriously. I did not even try to address the stupidity of that idea, nor did Jon and I stop singing. I am not going to tell you what song it was, because that information is a little too embarassing. Then, last week when Jon and I were out for cheap Thai food in my neighborhood, the place we were at played ALL boy-band music. It was a hilarious lunch.

The best description I’ve ever head of “boy bands”: “They just walk around pretending to look all sad”

Like puppy dogs! Kickable puppy dogs!

Good lord, it is going to be a looooooooooooooooooooong day.

“If this is inner peace then the Buddhists are wasting their fucking time”
-Kevin, quote of the week and perhaps the month.

Since the entry this morning was possibly unreasonably hostile, I am writing again, to counteract its tone. Livejournal has truly become the volumes.

Last night was good, then came home, fell asleep watching Shawshank Redemption. I also went for a walk today at lunch, because it is sunny and nice out, even though there is still a disgusting amount of slush.

Also, I love my Prince Charming frog. He is proudly perched upon my dresser the display-shelf-thing that came with the room. I purchased him for half price + employee discount at b&n a few weeks after Valentine’s Day last year, but just because he was cheap does not mean he is not PRICELESS. Obviously.

Hydration is the best thing ever. I’ve not felt like death at work in weeks.

I need to do laundry tonight. It will be an adventure, as my landlord has informed me it is impossible to do laundry, even though there are several Laundromats. My landlord and her husband also have “spirited” conversations in Greek. But she bakes us cookies, so the noise is forgivable. The hissing radiator is still scary.

I’m hyper and I haven’t even had coffee.

After reading Race and Culture last month I decided that my original assessment of Thomas Sowell had been wrong. A Conflict of Visions was dreadful, but he’s redeemed himself in my eyes. Race and Culture addressed complex problems without stooping to BLAME WHITE PEOPLE, which sociological texts on race so often do. The book should technically be called “Ethnicity and Culture” but regardless, he addressed a lot of relatively apolitical issues very logically, and it was a compelling read. (Like the tradition of Jews eating Chinese food on Xmas probably started because high concentrations of Jews and Chinese lived together on the Lower East Side. Immigrant business owners tend to keep their businesses open longer hours in order to be of convenience to the masses.)

And thus I move on to Vision of the Anointed.

Lest anyone think that I am overly pretentious, for the record, I am also reading The Long Winter (Book 6 of the Little House on the Prairie series) for about the one-billionth time and I was reading tabloid-y magazines at B&N on Friday. I simply have to know the details of Nick and Jessica’s break-up!!! Well, not really, but I was briefly addicted to the show ‘Newlyweds’ in Fall 2003, because it made me realize that no matter how annoying a girlfriend I am, I would never be as bad as Jessica Simpson.

I have a red sweater on today and people keep coming in and being like “Oh, you look so CHRISMAS-y!” If I wore blue and white would I look Chanukah-y? Or would I need to wear my Star of David necklace for that?

These are the important questions in life, obviously.

I’ve already lost the hat that I so smartly purchased, and this was the wrong morning to be without a hat. I am probably going to be reduced to buying an “I ‘Heart’ NY” hat from one of the touristy vendors by my office. It will probably cost $12. Yay Midtown-Tourist District. I’m at 52^nd and 7^th, so I’m mere blocks away from Rockefeller Center and the awful, awful tree (stolen from Wayne, NJ!) and Radio City Music Hall and the area is simply teeming with stupid tourists.

I really hope the MTA goes on strike because

a) It won’t affect me

b) I enjoy chaos (which is very un-Hobbesian of me!)

c) I like the fear-mongering in the media. Especially because it is also supposed to snow on Thursday

I am drinking disgustingly bad coffee that I bought at the kiosk downstairs. However, the bad coffee is kind of growing on me, and it does its job.

Also, I am a walking Ann Taylor ad today. Except for the functional footwear.

Apartment drama continues. I go back and forth between really, really wanting to stay in my place and wanting to just move and not deal with the increased rent/lease hassle, so I am making lots of phone calls and playing with budget numbers, and being all Type-A. And Brent would make my life sooo much easier if he would get over his “I don’t want to live with a girl” nonsense.

Grad School

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?

Some things

–I am bored. I just got back from lunch and I know the afternoon is going to be endless. I’m tired and I’m convinced my hair still smells like smoke even though I showered when I got home from last night.

–Because I go out on Thursday nights now. Because I am acting like a college student.

–I have to do laundry when I get home because my smoke-infused clothes infected the rest of my clothes. I have nothing to say.

–And it’s Friday the 13^th! Happy Friday the 13^th! I should rent Part VI tonight – it is my favorite, favorite Jason movie.

–I need to get a dress for graduation. I need to find one of the three dresses in the world that de-emphazies my freakish hips. I hate dresses, and I hate dress shopping.

.

It’s Friday, I’m in love! — The Cure, shamelessly

Edited: It is now 3:29. I have been back from lunch for approximately 900 years. This afternoon is ticking by. Even the phones are quiet. Of course, I could use this time producitvely and start the newest book on my “I am not going to be the dumbest person in the room in my first class at grad school” reading list, but I lack the motivation to do that.

It’s all cloudy out. It’s supposed to rain this weekend, and I’m hoping it doesn’t rain tonight, because walking aroudn Manhattan in the rain, in high-heeled boots is not fun.

I love Pilot V5-Ballpoint Pens in black. They are my current favorite pen. I used the words “thus”, “exacerbate” and “albeit” too much in my paper for horror movies class.

My life is fascinating.

You are a double espresso at three AM.

You are the tortured, nail-biting essence of
coffee. You see visions. You could change the
world if only you were up at the same time as
everyone else. You have created a programming
language that throws errors if the code is not
written in iambic pentameter, and you are
infuriated by the typos in the new edition of
Ulysses. You practice sarcasm as a
form of tantric sex, and your cats have
doctorates. You believe in virgin sacrifice in
a good cause.

What kind of coffee are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Who is procrastinating.

Edited to Add: Is it really bad that I’m going to graduate in NINETEEN DAYS and I had to edit this entry because I spelled NINETEEN wrong the first time. And now I’m paranoid that this way is wrong to, so my idiocy will be further proved. I love my life. No. Seriously. I do. STOP LAUGHING!!!!

“I don’t ever want to be like you/I don’t want to do the things you do”
~EuroSim 2004, with Josh & V/Car rides, November 2004 (I love DEEP emo songs, yo)

Even though I was up till nearly 4 AM I’m up by 10:30, no alarm. I half miss the guilt that comes from “sleeping long and far too late.” I don’t miss the feeling of “I don’t know if I’m going to make it out of bed for my 12:40 class.” That was just unhealthy. Although, as has been determined by very scientific means: 12:40 classes last longer than any other class.

But I do like Senior Night done my way. Besides I was fearful that if I actually to senior night, I’d have no choice but to get mind numbingly drunk. And that means the potential for embarrasment is much higher.

My taste in music, is often akin to my taste in movies (no, not HORROR). Thus I have “Heart of the Matter” in my head. It’s a perfectly cheesy tribute to destruction and forgiveness. 

 It reminds me of 8th grade. And who has GOOD memories of 8th grade? (Although, there are tons of pictures from this time period of me, surrounded by bunch of guys so perhaps I shouldn’t complain. The pictures are really amusing because I’m about a foot shorter than everyone else. I wonder what happened to all those idiot boys.