sometimes silence is a lie

How sad is it that I can hear revolutionary social and political statements and just wonder how they'd apply to my personal life?

now the question is:

Should I borrow a costume from his girlfriend to wear out tomorrow night?

six months ago

me: I feel like I don't have enough statistics

Tyson: really?

me: yeah

Tyson: I've never taken any and feel I have too much.

me: like /how/ much worse is it?

and does the bad ending effectively erradicate the effects of the good beginning?

and do these indulgences make my mood swings worse?

Tyson: depends.

that I cannot answer.

Kate, I gotta go, but here's the thing: whatever you do, make sure you feel like it's the best thing for you and no one else, and know that people will be around to support you regardless.

me: of course

I'm always selfish

Tyson: Of course you are.

but not really.

me: oh I am

I just subconsciously change my own impressions of my needs to match the needs of others

so I can be selfish without ever disappointing people

it's pretty tricky

Tyson: that is pretty tricky.

me: my shrink hasn't even figured it out yet

maybe I'll tell him next week

Tyson: you're going to blow his mind, you know that?

me: my shrink?

he thinks I'm funny

Tyson: Of that, I've no doubt.

I never reallly considered myself an anarchist

but I have to admit, when announced by a sixty year old man at a Halloween party at the commune that he basically founded (amidst stories of the halcyon days)...

"There's a difference between being an anarchist and being anti-establishment on a purely social level, and that is taking responsibility for your actions where and when they occur."

Dear Regina,

Beautiful set. You are stunning. Please lose the band.

signed,
three adoring fans

good movie

You know that feeling you get—especially when you're on an airplane and really need to pop your ears—where the yawn won't go quite deep enough?

You ever get that crying?

I don't know anything about boys with laptops

but this was one of the nicest men I've met in years:

a straight question

i.e., don't say, "No! No one! You're totally unique!"

Does anyone (who actually knows me) know anyone else who panics quite like I do? What do you do with/about it?

(this is probably one where anonymous comments are ok...)

I have this written down somewhere

and I keep meaning to go back and read the paper, but real quick: That mushy, lovey, "no one else could possibly" feeling that makes people say, "S/he gets me more than anyone else"...

Does that mean "S/he gets me more than anyone else does", or "S/he gets me more than s/he gets anyone else"?

oh, and

I hereby bequeath, in the event of my death, any and all random scraps of paper covered in inscrutible handwritten notes to my dear friend (and soon to be tireless biographer) Tyson Lynn.

I can't figure out what apologies do.

Which is strange, really, since I feel like I apologize all the time. (Because even if it seems defensive, when I start a sentence with "I'm sorry", I actually do mean it.) But something (maybe the same thing that makes me want to apologize constantly) keeps me from accepting them. I keep finding myself in situations where I kinda feel like someone should apologize to me, and all I can think is, why? What possible purpose could that serve?

I apologize as an anti-territorial gesture. It's the only thing I can think to do akin to putting my tail between my legs and exposing my underbelly. When I do it, it's almost always an attempt to start an interaction by expressing how incredibly small I feel. And while I feel like some restitution would be nice sometimes, I don't ever want people to feel small around me.

The "I'm sorry" that starts sentences isn't a throw away. In fact, it's usually an admission of weakness. ("I'm sorry, but I just can't do this anymore" doesn't mean, "Gee, sucks for you, but I'm out", it means, "I really wish I were a bigger person and could handle this and didn't have to be so small and rude and unintentionally mean, but really, I'm not, and I can't not be.")

I can't not accept apologies because I feel bigger. (It's not that I feel superior that makes me unable to accept apologies?) It's not really a "'Sorry' doesn't cut it" kind of situation. Except, I guess it is? I feel like you can't say that unless someone has knowingly broken some rules (or, you know, they're /three/). But also, I feel like, how could you not know these rules, and how much longer do I have to spend explaining them?

I hate that I feel small. And that apologizing just makes me feel acknoweldged in my smallness, but that receiving an apology makes me feel like I'm trying to make other people small. I forget how that worked when I had energy and we seemed to feed each other equally, and not to anyone's detriment. Can we go back to that? To where your feeling bigger made me feel bigger, too?

the best typo ever

It's probably pretty obvious that I hate cleaning. Partly because I have a bit of that OCD-hoarder instinct, which makes it nearly impossible to throw anything away, but not enough of that OCD-germ-theory problem that I feel the need to actually buy a mop. Now, I had a friend in college who was severely OCD, but /never/ cleaned. He claimed his obsessiveness manifest purely in personal relationships (and his roommate constantly screamed "Why can't you be a normal obsessive compulsive and /clean/ things once in a while?"). Mine does, too, obviously (at least in part because I always felt like he was a kindred spirit, and probably modeled my behavior after his), but there's this curious crossover section of my house—the little pieces of paper that I can't throw away because they preserve a piece of my personal obsession. It's everything from dinner receipts to movie stubs—anything that resulted from a significant occasion; anything that reminds me of a particular person.

I was just cleaning up a bit (and now I'm procrastinating, I suppose), but I found something really curious. It's a love note written to my sister (from her Ducky). I can't remember where I found it originally, but I remember deciding to keep it for a while. (He's a sore subject for her these days, but I'm convinced she'll want this eventually, while if I sent it to her now she might throw it away.)

side note: I'm pretty sure we're safe—I don't think she knows what a blog is, let alone that I keep one.

And maybe I'm just stuck on the guilelessness of teenagers, or maybe I just love how he really seems to love her, or it's voyeurism, or nostalgia (I really liked this guy), but this was one of the sweetest things I've read in years.

"the smile I get when the phone wrings at the thought that you're calling"

boys over bookmarks

Misheard by Mary: "Do these single guys seem more beat up than normal?"

you, too

"You're a foul weather friend, Grover—you're only interested in people when they're suffering like you."

and this, too

(click here)

the other reason I have to go to LA

me (over text message): Why do you suddenly occur to me? Are you still around?

my friend in LA (over friendster mail): just got your message on my old cell phone, and I don't think I have any kind of current e-mail for you, so I go to friendster.../ I occur to you because we have virgo sychronicity, that makes us clean the trunk of our car on a sunday morning/ and I occur to you because I just had a dream last night where you made a cameo appearance in an experimental video where you and several well dressed men were playing in a neo-classical fountain/ I occur to you right now because you need to come down to l.a. with no boyfriend in tow or boyfriend-and-potential-mother-in-law-dinner-in-venice-on-a-weeknight-as-destination or at least in a frame of mind-situation such that I get to spend more than 5 minutes with you.../ we need to ride bicycles and we need to go to museums and we need to have picnics and we need to go buy shoes and we need to eat and drink well and you need to let me watch you roller skate in multiple outfits/ selah/

similarly

I watched this boy perform tonight. I wanted so badly for it to be endearing. I wanted to be encouraging and encouraged. In short, I wanted a little passion. And I got nothing but ego. I even spent the last half of the night (or what of it I could stomach) watching for a crack. I kept hoping for a little piece where he might be embarassed—a spot where maybe he realized he'd set up an unecessary battle—but I got nothing.

I want so badly to appreciate that kind of egotism, at the very least because it seems to produce such wonderful things. It seems like an unabashed, uncalculated, basically impossible sense of superiority is almost necessary to great feats of experimentation, in self-expression particularly. But I can't do it. I hate it. I can't empathize, except in so far as, yeah, I remember being like that in high school. But I remember being like that and I'm mortified. It stops my breath; I avoid doing things every day because I'm scared I'll do it again.

(Sorry there's no snappy round up. I feel like I should sign off with a witty statement about the vast usefulness of tequila. I'll have time to mull it over later, I suppose.)

I feel like it's telling

that everyone seems to have forgotten the last half of the "Jack of all trades" cliche.

And I'm losing my ability to stave off the feeling that people don't like other people so much as they just like being liked.

oh, also

I have an enormous chestnut-colored bruise. Why didn't anyone tell me the tambourine is a grace instrument?

word choice

Does "privy" come from "priviledged"?

Can Type III Jealousy manifest as sexual attraction?

Why is sex such a stamp of ownership? Or, why is the promise of sex so powerfully more alluring than almost anything else? (Or, actually, more repulsive, too?)

Which of the set of three would you prefer to be?

so now the problem is

How do you avoid becoming a caricature of yourself? And how does it feel when you suddenly feel shallow in one person's eyes? And I don't mean surface-oriented and ditzy, but more—actually two dimensional. And what do you do when suddenly you feel like you're all reactions?

ok, I promise there ain't anything wrong

So, I know there are /so many/ of you sitting out there wondering what's going on...

So here's the deal: I got a job. By accident, of course, but it happened. And I went to Minneapolis for the wedding. And basically the job's boring, but it lends itself to hour after hour of brilliant brainstorming. And I met this great girl. And I've been drinking a lot of wine. And seeing a lot of good shows. And Fred keeps encouraging me to do things that are bad for me. But basically, it's wonderful. I guess the point is, this is a promise. Not of anything wonderful, or meaningful, or anything like that, but there's something on it's way. And it will involve girls, and blogs, and monsters, and a little bit of singing. (But if anybody makes fun of me for that, you won't get to hear about it.) So, um, I guess you have it there. Thanks to all the good people who've engouraged this nonsense. And thanks, also, in your own part, to people who have pushed me past you. Also, thanks for the contrast? And, um, I bought a ukulele today...

and then...

"You're going crazy tryin' to be the one to save me. Babe, believe me, there ain't anything wrong."

"In three long years not a girl has ever touched my heart. You did it in two days; you ripped it apart."

"Too many messages unreturned."

warning

drunken rant coming later tonight.

for now: click here

xo,
kc

a link

(click here)

am I being unreasonable?

So, someone left a message on my voicemail. It says, "Hi Kate. Give me a buzz. Peace."

Now, I hate to be rude, and I'm sure this person isn't being overly presumptuous, so it must be someone I know pretty well, but really? Even if we're best friends, over a cell phone voicemail? With only, like, four words? There's no way. And there's also no way I'm calling everyone it could possibly be and saying, "Hey, I don't really need to talk to you, but did you call me by any chance?"

(For the record, I did listen to it about fifteen times. And based not at all on the voice, but on the use of the word 'peace' as a sign-off, I have a pretty good guess...)

I'm all for alternative theories

but should I really trust anyone who claims to be able to cure low self-esteem?

I've been meaning to do some research

but if anyone happening across this blog happens to know something about the science of it all:

Is it possible that smartwater is actually addictive?

what happens when I clean my room

some weird things that have happened to my underwear

When I was a Freshman in college, a friend of mine used to come into my room at night and steal it (for his roommate).

Recently, my friend's wife's dog went into my suitcase, ripped open my dirty laundry bag (stolen from a motel), and tore a pair into several pieces.

I just found four pair (and some boxers) under my bed.

and my life in song lyrics continues

"You didn't have to do it but you did just to say / that you didn't have to do it but you would anyway."

advice from the grave

or, what happens when the DJ reads my text messages.

"It's ok, I'll just keep quiet, if it's easier for you / to make believe I don't love you as much as I do."

I think he's right

What's the one thing you really do like a thouroughbread?

because they practically begged to be blogged

(read: So F-ing Cute)