Illness Provoketh Random Chattering. You Have Been Warned.

[rushthatspeaks]

I have no voice today. I have something somewhere between a croak and a squeak, that hurts whenever I use it.

I hadn't realized just how much I am accustomed to vocalize during a given day, even if I'm only talking to myself. I sing on my job, I chatter at dinner, I never shut up in class-- but today, whenever I forget and even start humming, there is this Grinding Pain that says 'it would be a very good idea to shut up now'. Which is annoying, because besides that, I'm actually starting to feel reasonable. Headache, yeah, maybe fever, complete lack of energy, but so much nicer than their equivalents yesterday at this time.

This is one of the reasons I like LJ. Because I can natter at people and my throat doesn't hurt at all.

So. Nattering. Not much to tell about my actual, present life, as I have spent the entire day either asleep or in the dining hall. Haven't had enough energy to read or watch anything new-- haven't had enough energy to read anything above the Anne Rice level, in fact. (I was rather deluded in the set of books I brought to college. I brought all my favorite recreational reading and the set of books I can't live without and the set of books I hoped to have time to read at some point. I realized sometime around Winter Break that what I should have done was bring the books I can't live without and as many Georgette Heyer Regency romances as humanly possible [Georgette Heyer: like Jane Austen, but hilarious]. That way I'd have something that would take no work to read but not insult my intelligence *right there next to my bed*. As opposed to having to haul my sick self to the library somehow, settling on Kingsley Amis, of all people, as being closest to light reading, and spending an hour over dinner being appallingly depressed by Kingsley Amis' evident belief that the universe has no point, women are inscrutable, and alcohol is the sole blessing of existence.)What is even more aggravating is that there are a new Jacqueline Carey and a new Laurell K. Hamilton sitting in the bookstore in town, and I haven't got the energy to go and look at either of them, and even if I did have said energy I would have to be using it on schoolwork. Bleah.

This line of thought is not helping things. I will take a very short Internet quiz.

1. List the things you've always wanted to do and never gotten around to.
Not a big list here. I've always had the habit of going out and doing things as soon as I get the notion into my head to do them, so I tend to only not have done things limited by my finances or by other forms of practicality. What I want most is to have my stuff published, but I take it they mean by that 'never gotten around to' stuff that one is not actively trying to do, and I am working on that. Uh, festivals... Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, Burning Man, Sundance. Cannes if we're really dreaming here. Finally managing to track down a copy of William Hope Hodgson's The House on the Borderland. Firing a gun (on a firing range, please). Surfing. Going out to one of the really famous surfing beaches so I can actually see what fifty-foot waves look like when you're standing on the shore watching them come in, something I have never been able to imagine. Hang-gliding. Travel, specifically Greece and the Greek islands and Nepal-- I don't want to climb Mount Everest, just hike close enough to see it. Take Ruth to dinner at La Nouvelle Justine (I haven't the money, the wardrobe, or the chutzpah). Read Russian novels. Watch all those famous movies like Hitchcock and Fellini. I think that about does it.

2. List the things you've done that you never thought you'd do.
Uh, define never. I have a tendency to think at some point that I'm going to do the things I'm going to do, even if that point is as little as five minutes before I do them. Does this mean never as in 'when I got up this morning I had no idea that I would soon' or never as in 'when I was a small child it never crossed my mind that the grown-up me would'? There are few of the former, slightly more of the latter. Going out with and falling for Ruth is the major entry in the first category, although I won't say I had no inkling that things would turn out the very lovely way they have. Hmmm... most of the things other people seem to do on impulse, I seem to have thought over beforehand. I wanted both the tattoo and the nose ring for well over a year before I got them-- I won't get a body modification unless I have wanted it steadily for over a year and for all that time have never thought once that it might be a bad idea, which is why there are a few piercings I do not at this point have. I also have the habit of not being terribly surprised by things. I seem to be able to accept about anything from sex to sudden rock concert tickets to finding myself naked in the Cloisters fountain with six of my closest friends with a 'well, I knew/hoped it would happen someday', as long as the events involved are things over which I have any real control. I am frequently astonished by what other people do and how they react to things, but I don't think that's what this question was asking.

3. List the things you've done that would surprise everyone you know.
There isn't anything that at this point would surprise everyone I know, though there are probably things that would surprise individual people. Uh... I went through a stupid-teenager recreational-drug phase when I was in high school, because I wanted to be William S. Burroughs when I grew up, but I got out of it without significant damage, just extremely occasional acid flashbacks. I had a very scientific attitude about the whole thing. I paid for half of one of my friends' collections of Penthouse, too. The store that sold it to us used to be very confused by a couple of teenage girls coming in and cleaning out their back issues. We found their confusion hilarious; it was one reason we did it. I think that's about it... well, Ruth and I did go to a strip bar in San Francisco, to see what it was like. It was pretty much exactly what one would expect, and I am deeply amused by the entire concept behind a place that will serve unlimited free soda to any patron who wishes it, because they allow people to bring their own booze but want there to be designated drivers, yet does not maintain restrooms for customer use. I wonder if this has made any significant impact on their earnings. They were very polite to us, and I still have very fond memories of one of the dancers-- she'd been doing the whole shimmying-around thing, nice-looking woman, and all of a sudden she simply collapsed onto my lap and Ruth's lap, and the three of us just sat there laughing. Three women noticing the deep absurdity of the situation and the ways the whole thing was stylized and commodified and laughing together. Because what, we were supposed to take any of that seriously? She was very good-looking; it was the ways she was signifying it, the whole artificial language of makeup and gesture and movement, the strip-club seductiveness, that just suddenly struck us all funny. She was infinitely more real while she was laughing. We talked to her some after that, and she was working her way through grad school; we wished her luck. I wish I could have given her more money, but she understood the whole college student thing.
I think that's about all on this question, really, and probably more than anybody ever wanted to know, and I am exhausted and really should try to do some schoolwork tonight.

So. Onward and Upward.

Comments

Thoughts

[eredien]

Russian Novels: Start out with 'Lighter Reading' like "Dr. Zhivago" instead of something like "War and Peace," unless you're insane. I'd also recommend some Russian short stories, plays (Chekov, of course. He's essential, esp. if you want to understand his influence on later authors' works), and poetry beforehand. Anna Akmahtova and Lermontov are two names that spring to mind.

I'm still working on the tattoo design when I have fifteen seconds to think about it.

I didn't know you already Cloister-dipped; I need to find people to do that with next year.

[rabidfangurl.livejournal.com]

The Death of Ivan Ilyich barely counts as a novella, but it's wonderful. Life, Death, other Big Important Stuff...::sigh::. I almost wrote my AP English essay on it, but there isn't enough moral ambiguity for it to have worked for the question. Watch the passage of time...purr.