morrigirl | "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

Okay, I'll write something.

My dad was in town last week and took Michael, Eddie, and myself to dinner at Sardi's where he related the following story about Woody Allen:

Back during the height of my father's career he auditioned for Woddy Allen three or four times. Woody never cast him but the final time he auditioned for him the casting agent came out afterwards and told him to wait for a moment, Woody wanted to speak to him. Fine. So dad waits and gets a little excited cause, hey, maybe Woody wants to give him a job! A couple minutes later the casting agent calls him back in and there's Woody clutching a pillow against his chest.

Woody says, "I think you're a wonderful actor, but I can't use you."

"Okay," replies dad in a somewhat bewildered tone.

"But I wanted to tell you why," continues Woody. "I can't use you because you intimidate me."

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I've only broadcast one radio show so far and already I'm tired of it. I'm remembering why I decided not to DJ my final year at Knox: because the longer I did it the more effort was required to prepare each show, meanwhile as my extra-curricular participation increased, I had less and less time to devote to it. It's the same thing here. After working 8 hours and commuting for 2 I get home and don't even wanna think, let alone compose a playlist, talking points, and haul all my CD's to Bronxville the next day. I skipped last night's show. Didn't call the station, didn't look for a replacement, just didn't show up because I just didn't feel like doing the show. I threw out my back at the beginning of the week and was unable to haul ANY CD's around, not to mention that I had to go down to Suzanne's for a meeting that morning, so I was tired, hungry, and at the mercy of the station's crappy ass music collection. I have no fear of losing my show. I'm seriously thinking of just quitting. I thought four years off would renew my passion but it hasn't. The fun of broadcast is cancelled out by the hassle of preparing for it.

I'm not going to take another class next semester either. Another thing that's been coming back to me is how much I hate class. I've always hated class. I hate going and I hate doing the work connected to it. What I like is sitting around a table with a bunch of people who are at least as smart, if not smarter, then me, people who aren't the least bit pretentious or arrogant, and having an intellectual conversation about literature. However, as the term draws to a close and I find myself behind on my academic writing assignments, I realize I've had enough of academic writing. I've written so many analytical papers on so much literature through the years:

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Mrs. Dalloway and A Room of one's Own by Virginia Woolf
Oroonoko by Aphra Behn
Roman Fever by Marcus Cafagna
Beowulf
The poety of Christina Rossetti
Old Shirts & New Skins by Sherman Alexie
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Diamond as Big as the Ritz by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Inanna by Diane Wolkstein

I don't mind analyzing a piece of literature. What I dislike is creating a thesis from my thoughts and composing an arguement and examples to back it up. I enjoy the praise I get after writing a good paper, but there is no joy in the actual process. Same goes for creative writing. The process of putting words together on a page no longer makes me happy neither does the simple act of telling a story. The only thing that makes it worth while is the praise I get when it's all done. It's the only thing that has motivated me to keep doing the writing assignments for my class.

So this leaves me with a lot of shit to figure out. If I don't like class should I really be in school? Is it the fact that I'm not getting credit for this class what's making me exert less than the optimal amount of effort on it? Should I try studying something else instead? I do think not getting credit for this class is a contributing factor. It gives me an excuse not to do anything. Why exert effort when I'm not gonna get anything from it? I've thought of giving up on grad school all together but the fact of the matter is I have a grand opportunity here that I would be retarded to pass up. Not many people get the chance to get a masters degree totally free of charge. If nothing else, through the years I've learned you should NEVER waste opportunities that are not availible to most people. It's one of the reasons I went back to Knox. Because after spending a term in community college with kids who were way smarter then me and should have been at more prestigious universities but simply didn't have the money to go, I knew I couldn't continue to waste the opportnity I had as a middle-class white girl to attend a top notch liberal arts school. I couldn't view Knox as a place I was entitled to be. It was a privilege and to treat it as anything less was degrading to myself and disrespectful to everyone who deserved to be there but couldn't for whatever reason. The same is true for SLC. Not only do I have the opportunity to attend this top rated college but I have an opportunity not even open to the other students! To pass it up would be so arrogant and wasteful of me! So I have to get my graduate degree in SOMETHING here at SLC. There's no question. So I'm thinking the best course of action, if I still wantto study writing, is to spend the next year seriously putting an application together. Write some new material, ask for recommendations, that sorta thing. Submit, get accepted, then try taking classes again, this time for credit. Plus, I should be more settled in my job by then, so I may have an easier time keeping up with school work. Who knows? All I know is I don't have my shit together enough to do anything next term, so I'm not.

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I skipped my period again last month. That's the second time in the last three months. I'm going to have a glucose test on Monday and some additional blood tests. My gynocologist out me on Yasmin when I went to see her in October. Said I should start them the Sunday after my next period. As noted, next period hasn't shown up yet. My nether regions feel dry and limp. Sex is out of the question which isn't much of a problem since my boyfriend is moving back to Maryland and I'm not in the mood to be intimate anyway. I just know my body is malfunctioning and I'm tense because I don't know what to do about it. I'm not due to revisit the gyno until January or Feburary so I won't get concrete confirmation on anything until then. I just want my period back.

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In an attempt to improve my terrible, horrible, outrageously bad eating habits I tried to eat a salad for the first time in 16 years earlier this week. I went into it all positive, thinking a little ranch dressing would make it palatable. I was wrong. Not only am I still just as unable to chew lettuce as I was when I was 10 and had to swallow the small pieces whole, but it just tasted AWEFUL! The greens were bitter and the texture was just unbearable. I had to stop three bites in because I felt like I was gonna throw up. So, yes, it's officially OFFICIALLY official: I don't like salad. It makes me sick. Period.

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Other Mike hates Hofstra. He is going back to Maryland at the end of the term and staying there. I know I won't be able to deal with that in the long run. It's no secret that I haven't been happy with our relationship for the last couple months. It's no secret that the thought of breaking up with him has been on my mind. A lot. Nor is it any scret that OM can talk me out of just about anything. I'm willing to give us a brief chance after he gets back to Maryland, but in the long run a stagnant long-distance relationship isn't what I want. I'm getting too old for such things and I'm sure as all fuck not going to wait around for the next four years while he does the college thing in another state. It mightbe nice for him to have an older girlfriend but it's no fun for me to sit around waiting for him. If this thing doesn't move forward fast it's gonna have to end. Simple as that. Hell, even now, the only reason I can put up with him not calling when he says he will is because I've stopped thinking of him as my boyfriend. I can't tolerate that treatment from a bf. However, I can tolerate it from a friend. Of course, I don't sleep with my friends.

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One of the women I work with used to be the president of Def Jam Records. And one of my bosses used to be a Dean at Harvard.

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I've discovered a great way to discover new music. It's called Pandora. Pandora is a customizable radio station. You create a station, tell it what musicianss you like, and Pandora creates a playlist of songs by the artists you entered as well as other musicians who sound like them. For instance, I have a "Piano Man" station featuring the likes of Tori Amos, Billy Joel, Fiona Apple, and Elton John. But Pandora also give me a lot of the Four Seasons, Carole King, and Bruce Springsteen on that station because those artists are musically similar to my piano (wo)men. I highly recommend trying it out. Often times you start off thinking you've created one station and find out you've created something totally different. It's mad fun.

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I'm up to page 390 of "Autobiography of a Blue-Eyed Devil" and I don't know if I can go on. Inga's over-generalizations are getting to be too much for me. And she keeps citing herself as exception to the rule. For instance, she says people should stand up to the eeeevil corrupt Police, but it was okay for her to not report a cop who told her he'd murdered a prisoner in his care because she was afraid for her life. Mind you she tells the fucking reader to report such incidents even if they are afraid for their lives. Her case is special. Her case is ALWAYS special. Apparently no one but her has ever been in a situation where they've been scared to stand up to authority and if they were then they were being cowardly. Sorry Inga, life isn't that cut and dried, a fact you claim to be firmly aware of yet show absolutely no understanding of. Your entire book is all very "If you aren't fighting the problem then you are contributing to it" but you fail to realize that a lot of people aren't in positions to fight the system since they rely on the system for their very survival. And I'm not just talking white people here, I'm talking people of every color, religion, age etc. etc. You fail to see the grey areas and that's whey you're losing me. That and the fact that in this 500 page opus on race you fail to mention EVEN ONCE that race is a social construction. That is my largest problem with your book because it is in looking at race as a social construction that you can get to the grey areas. After tossing your craptastic book aside last Sunday, I picked up my copy of "Everything But the Burden" and re-read Carl Hancock Rux's essay "Eminem: The New White Negro." Rux says more about the performance of race and its repercussions in 24 pages then you say in your whole fucking book. Race is a myth that has a very concrete effect on society. The same can be said for gender, sexual orientation, idividuality and a host of other identifiers that are often taken for granted. I know you are a student of history Inga, but you might wanna consider brushing up on Sociology 101. It will improve your understanding of race exponentially. I promise.

PS It's damn COLD up on this joint!