dispatches from oz

 I forgot what a profoundly retarded show Alias is.  I won't go into it, because there are just too many points to mention.  For one thing, J.J. Abrams seems to think that "biological weaponry" is like, one thing that requires one vaccine.  And I don't really know anything about real intelligence work, but my sneaking suspicion is that Alias bears absolutely no resemblance at all to real espionage.  For one thing, I doubt the CIA spends lots of time looking for semi-mythical Dan Brown style mysterious artefacts.  When Emily and I used to watch it, I think we were too caught up in the sexual tension between Sydney and Vaughn to pay attention to the fact that everything about the show is either wildly implausible or outright illogical.  

It's ridiculously stormy here.  Not freezing but so, so windy and rainy and haily.  Especially at my house it is loud and drafty all night long.  I know it will be far colder in Chicago, but at least there I will have proper heating.  

I saw Harry Potter last week and thoroughly enjoyed it.  Now that there are no new books to look forward to, I am just so overwhelmed by affection and nostalgia that I don't mind that the movies are not perfect.  And this one was actually really good, funnier than the other ones, something I always thought was missing.  

Other than that just working to finish everything.  Have been baking lots of cupcakes, drinking lots of tea with honey and lemon to ward off the swine flu, listening to NPR podcasts and starting to decide what to take home and what to get rid of.  

Also, happy 40 year moon landing-iversary.  I felt so bad that I didn't know the name of the third Apollo 11 astronaut, the one that stayed in the command module and didn't get to walk on the moon.  His name was - well, actually still is - Michael Collins.  Anyway I felt really bad about that so I read his whole wikipedia page.  He didn't want to fly again after Apollo 11.  I wonder why.  He would have been slated to command Apollo 17.  

Oh my GOSH I am watching Alias at the same time as I am typing this and I just have to interject, SYDNEY, WAY TO GO, TELL JOHN HANNAH THAT YOU ARE A DOUBLE AGENT EVEN THOUGH HE KILLED YOUR FIANCE AND IS A MENTALLY UNSTABLE BRAINWASHED HIT MAN.  ARE YOU RETARDED.  

Ok.  Sorry.  Anyway that's all I've got.  

So I have been having REALLY weird dreams and the latest was a series of zombie dreams.  In some of them, I was fighting zombies, but in the last one, another Harry Potter book came out and all the characters were on the run because there had been some sort of zombie apocalypse in the wizarding world (in was unclear whether it also include the Muggle world).  It was really dark and scary, and we were all like, "Hmm, it doesn't really fit with the other books."  Other than that, we didn't seem to think there was anything off about it.  

Two month gap = parent's visit, Alix's visit, birthday, Justin's visit, data gathering, emotional turmoil.  Will probably not be detailing all that.  

Rant:  There was a coup in Honduras.  A military coup.  And it hasn't made the headlines, not once, because the headlines for over a week now have been all Michael Jackson all the time, despite the fact that main gist of the story - i.e. that Michael Jackson died - was grasped by all immediately.  I just think a military coup is more important news than the fact that a celebrity who died last week is still dead.  

It seems my life has only two speeds: furiously madcap and quiet to the point of dull.  Last week was the former:  expected Fulbright visitors, manic pipetting in the lab, excursions to Perth highlights, unexpected visitors, massive dinners, and excessive drinking.  This week is the latter:  desk work, empty apartment, lots of sleep, not a single email in my inbox this morning.  As a result I alternate between sleep-deprived and rushed and bored.  It's a problem. Oh well, soon enough I think it will all be madcap.  At least it will be interesting.  

News items:

Actually have data!  Yes.  Very good.  May finish project after all.  

Alix is coming to Perth!  So exciting and unexpected.  What will we do?  I don't know.  Frequent the chocolate shop and drink wine, probably.  

I mentioned earlier I am flying back to LA on August 25.  If you will be in Southern California that week, let me know.  Not that I will have time to do anything other than sort out all my crap in preparation for moving to Chicago.  

Getting excited about Chicago.  New wardrobe, new city, new everything.  Hoping the girls will move there too!  

Getting cool in Perth.  Buying boots.  

Congrats to the Pep graduates!  

Hmm, no more real news, just felt I should post.  Maybe I should do a big post with all the movies I've seen this year and what I thought of them.  There's a lot.  But it would be a little depressing b/c so many were disappointing.  Star Trek tomorrow.  From the previews, it looks like the WB in space.  Which I am all for.  

xoxo

Even if a lot of us die from swine flu the ones who are left will still have Mozart's Requiem.  

 It's Anzac Day (well technically not anymore I guess as it's after midnight) and I've been drinking since 2:30 pm and I think I've had like four meals since 11 am?  I had a sandwich when I got up...well, got up for the second time as I went to a dawn service for Anzac Day then back to bed.  Then bread and nutella at one.  Then lots of beer at the RSL (not a meal) then frites, nachos, and pizza (and more beer) at Little Creatures then massive curry-fest (and lots more beer) at Lauren's.  Anyway what I'm trying to say is I love Australia?  And I'm going home (home-ish?) four months from TODAY and I regret that.  

Three years ago I left Florence on a grey April day, packing a taxi full of luggage at the curb outside viale Milton 41, the precious detritus of an eight month life.  We crossed the Arno in a thin intermittant drizzle and drove toward Pisa, into the Tuscan hills, greening with the promise of spring.  If one thing was clear on that surreal day, it was this:

nothing would

ever

be the same again.

And so it has proved to be: this inextricable scar, this persistent nostalgia, this ache of the unforgettable and irretrievable: these remind us that in some sense, now and always, we are still in the taxi

leaving Florence.  

 Australian Target sucks.  Ok that's all.  

I know I haven't been updating but life has been so busy!  And good.  When I go abroad I feel like I have a charmed life.  Not that things go so badly when I'm in the States, but both my years abroad have had a quality to them.  Things go right, things fall into place...a charmed life.  I'm sure if I lived abroad permanently it would disappear.  So that's why I have to keep doing it this way - the occasional magical expatriate year.  

Australians are sensible and take four day weekends at Easter.  However, everything - and this includes grocery stores and bottle shops - is generally closed on public holidays like Good Friday and Easter Monday.  This has led to problems for me in the past, as I forget to anticipate this.  This time, I planned for it, but I still don't like it.  I was gratified when Lauren confessed the same thing last night - "I feel weird about things being closed tomorrow."  We both have this nervousness about it, and consequently have a planning-for-the-siege mentality about it.  "What do I need?  Am I out of milk?  What if I run out of wine?  Better stock up!"  Which is ridiculous - it's 24 hours, and it's not like we go to the grocery store every day anyway.  But the fact that it won't be available somehow bestows a tinge of panic to our American souls.  

Anyway it's been such a productive week!  I extracted fifty samples and ran gels and finalized another draft of my manuscript (we're getting close to a final final draft now!) and organized my flight back to the states (august 25) and did a major grocery shopping and signed a new lease and wrote sonnet a birthday card and cleaned my entire apartment (like Cinderella scrubbed on my hands and knees!) and planned a fab glam picnic and cooked a nice dinner.  And tomorrow I will pay my electric bill and go shoe shopping!  

On the downside, someone STOLE my camera at the pirate party - as someone pointed out, that goes with the theme...but I'm still pissed about it.  Still, it was my little digital - totally replaceable - not my SLR.  And I only lost the pics I took at the party, as I'd done recent backups.  And then I dropped my ipod down the stairs but it still works.  

And now I'm making a lovely pizza for dinner on our cafe sandwich press (yay for madi!).  

xoxo

In preparation for the big Pirate Party and as a reaction to last weekend's excessive consumption and lack of sleep, this week was Laura and Madi's week of health:  no alcohol, regular meals, ten o'clock bedtimes.  We had some lapses midweek, but tomorrow is the last day!  And then on Saturday we will party it up!  Arrrrr!

exterminating the mealmoth population in our pantry
trying not to drink a thousand cups of tea a day
being unenthusiastic about the seminar i'm giving next week
eating ungodly amounts of pizza
singing rent pretty much consistently
planning the pirate party
buying a new coat 

SO the Tasmania update:  I’m having difficulty putting it together.  I could tell you where we went and what we did, but I’ve been trying for a week and I can’t figure out how to adequately describe it all.  It was sheer hilarity and madcap farce and overwhelming joy.  And perhaps too esoteric to convey.  I’ll post pics when I have them, but for now: 

We got to the airport to discover that no one had bothered to remember where our hotel was or what it was called, thus setting in motion the already inevitable slogan for the week, “Ask Will.”  We rented the world’s smallest car (the Nissan Micra) and ate pizza and drank beer and discussed our talents (“Do you know what irritable bowel syndrome is?”  “That’s not a talent!”) and discovered that neither Lauren nor Joe (allegedly) can wink. 

And we ate a massive breakfast at a German bakery wherein we sat outside and periodically went inside to order boxes heaped with pastries.  Lauren’s lymph nodes swelled up and we all discussed the probability that it was scurvy or something else (“It’s a goiter.  Pirates get them.”  “Do you find yourself exaggerating your r’s?”)

And we drove to Freycinet National Park listening to Shania Twain (“Does she ever say what DOES impress her?  Because in this song it mostly sounds like she’s looking for an electric blanket.”) and climbed up cliffs and ate a delicious lunch on the beach.  We swelled our ranks to ten and interrupted other people’s romantic moments on the beach and made curry and drank entire cartons of beer and started the next morning an hour and a half late. 

And we hiked to Wineglass Bay and discussed what would happen if the American Fulbrights in Australia had to recolonize the earth (everyone would be intelligent but very sensitive to the sun) and played the Fulbright Game, which is where you (not on purpose) end up having conversations that can be summarized as “What do you know about recreational prescription drug use/seal castration/magic mushrooms/etc.?” and discussed what kind of tea can make you have ten orgasms (if you’re Maggie) and Ben’s Massive Melbourne Restaurant Spreadsheet (which can be sorted by rank, genre, or price!).  And almost convinced Maggie that the thing you jump on is a “tramampoline” and watched Ben trip and talked about the suitability of the terms “man friend” and “lady friend” (fifty year old widow’s boyfriends and women in leopard print?) and saw wallabies while peeing. 

And we made pasta and played King’s cup and determined that Joe was “a volcano of misogyny” and listened to Justin snore ALL night and cleaned up the cabin with hangovers.  We visited a disappointing waterfall (in that there was no water falling, per se) and got bit by ants and took gangster pictures of us and our rides (the Micra, the Getz, and the Other One).  We had another awesome bakery experience and had the famous and unexplainable Boner Currency conversation.  We took pictures in Lover’s Lane and did unsafe things on a bridge and learned about skulduggery. 

And then we went back to Hobart.  We slept in a huge eighteen bed dorm christened The Fallout Shelter and rode everywhere in caravans of cabs.  We carefully planned our levels of nightly shenanigans to maximize our fun (mild to moderate shenanigans for no effect in the morning, then heavy shenanigans with the expectation of moderate hangovers…).  We learned about Maggie’s speed reading classes – aka adult literacy classes (in which she was the ringleader of mischief, apparently). 

And we were shocked to discover the German bakery was closed but discovered an equally lovely French patiessere where Shayle told us what it was all about and we ate ill-advised but inevitable chocolate raspberry tarts while rhapsodizing about In-n-Out and real Mexican food.  We drew elaborate metaphors about our relationship with nature and determined that Nature is Laurie’s fuck buddy but only a flirtation for me that never goes anywhere because Nature and I, we like the idea of each other but when we occasionally meet are always disappointed by the reality.  We went to a rather disappointing museum that did not tell us how one pees while out in the Antarctic wastes but found the café.

And we went to our big Fulbright dinner, but first Ben and Shayle and Joe had to go to an op shop and tell the lady, we have a formal dinner in an hour and we need two pairs of shoes two ties a belt a jacket and a pair of cuff links and then they had to show up without the shoes anyway and hide behind a table until relief came.  And we made a pact to all provide each other with alcohol if we were in dire straits and we introduced our ringleader to the Australian ringleader and went out and got hit on by Army guys who claimed to do research but couldn’t describe it any farther than that and continued on to a really, really feral bar. 

And we got up with a collective hangover to go to meetings where we held painful conversations with prestigious Australian Fulbright scholars and forgot the answers to obvious questions.  Gabe disappeared in the middle of breakfast and Joe went to sleep under a table.  We got sentimental about “what Fulbright means to you” and agreed that we’d all had to learn to deal with downtime. 

And we ate pizza and slept in a park with the emo kids and reformed the youth of Hobart and threw grass at Maggie (“This is blatant monogamy.”)  We saw a terrible, terrible movie and ate Vietnamese and played the Fulbright game some more (“What do you know about Somali pirates?”). 

And we refused to say goodbye, but only see you. 

And we came home to a void, thinking, “it’s perplexing that you can meet a group of strangers twice and miss them like you’ve known them most of your life.”

There.  That might make sense?  

This week:  accepting Chicago, running the sequencer, drinking a thousand cups of tea a day, being completely broke (current bank balance:  $72, all owed to other people), signing a new lease, dieting, missing the Fulbrights.

Tasmania was fantastic and beautiful and of course a complete shitshow.  A logistical nightmare of impossibly small rental cars, hiking, formal dinner clothes, hangovers, cab rides, navigating, decision making, and type A personalities.  But seriously, I love the Fulbrights so much and I was halfway serious when I said I wanted to buy a bus and drive around Tasmania with them forever.  Coming back to Perth exhausted and alone (well, with Lauren) has been incredibly sad.  Sometimes I wish I could stop doing new things because you just end up with more people to miss.  

I know I haven't been posting recently, life has just been crazy.  In an hour people are coming over and we're going to eat chocolate and see Zack and Miri Make A Porno.  And then we're going to a birthday party.  And then Lauren and I are sleeping at Bryony and Brendan's so we can go to the airport at 6:15 for our flight to Tasmania.  And then we're going to be in Tasmania for six days with the Team and the other Fulbrighters and the alumni.  

Assignments:  

1.  Look up Kowloon Walled City.  Start with the wikipedia page.  Then google image search.  Then, if you are as fascinated as I am, read William Gibson's Virtual Light (the Bridge is based on Walled City) and Idoru.  
2.  Go see Watchmen, especially if you are a fan of the book.  If you aren't a fan of the book, read it and see the movie.  It really doesn't matter which order.  Probably whichever you do first, you will want to go back to after you have done the second.  Also, resist the temptation to stare at Dr. Manhatten's glowing blue penis whenever it is in the shot.  
3.  Read this comic and wonder how Ryan North has come up with 1423 hilarious comics using exactly the same pictures every time (with the addition, occasionally, of tiny floating batman heads). 

Will return with Tasmania pictures, hilarious stories of Fulbright shenanigans, ETC.  

I bet you didn't know that the War of the Roses was fought by people mostly by spitting fake blood and throwing flour at each other.  

More later, but Cate Blanchett was amazing.

1. I have acquired a new roommate who is moving in in about a week and a half (Simone is travelling then going home to Germany). Her name is Madi and she is a nurse.

2. I'm going to Tasmania the 8th-14th of March to have a Fulbright dinner at a posh winery, check more places off the list (someone's list...I don't know whose) of 1000 placed to go before I die, and reunite with the Team.

3. I am 16.6% of the way through my DNA extractions. At this rate, I should be done in...oh who the hell knows. Let's just say I have some Saturday work time ahead of me.

4. I am back to reading atmospheric period novels about occupied Paris in World War II. This makes me want to be an intrepid young radio operator or a spy passing information right under the Gestapo's nose but I know I would never stand up to torture or be brave enough to bite a cyanide capsule. I guess these fantasies fall in the category of Romantic To Think About But Shit To Actually Live.

5. Apparently Obama is going to fix everything.

6.  I am deciding between Duke and University of Chicago for Ph.D. programs next year.  Feel free to comment with helpful suggestions.  

7.  This weekend I am going to see eight hours of Shakespeare.  All I can say is it seemed like a good idea at the time.  What it is, is the The War of the Roses (yes, it was in a West Wing), which is a compilation of a bunch of Shakespeare's historical plays (all the parts of Richard II, Henry IV-VI, and Richard III), and which we decided to go see mostly because Cate Blanchett is playing in it.  So the questions remain:  what does one wear to such a performance (do you go for glam or endurance? chic or comfy? heels or sweats?)?  does one pack a flask filled with energy drink?  and does one wait for Cate Blanchett at the stage door like the fangirl one secretly is?

8.  Monday you can fall apart
Tuesday Wednesday break my heart
Thursday doesn't even start
It's Friday I'm in love

Next week:  Bryony's birthday, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, more extractions, Tas plans, WATCHMEN

Jason and Daniel were discussing how we would have communicated one hundred years ago and how most of the things we talk about/send wouldn't have been worth the effort. their example:

"dearest laura:

enclosed is a photograph of an adolescent feline in a peculiar predicament. i have additionally attached a caption of my own creation. you may find the juxtaposition initially jarring, but i believe you will come to find yourself quite amused. note how the words i have chosen are incorrectly spelled, for i presume that if a pussycat did one day find itself possessing the ability to communicate using the english language, it would have difficulty following the precepts of grammatical constructs."

(For some reason, all in caps)

Frankenstein:
OH LOOK WHO THE REAL MONSTER IS...HINT IT IS NOT THE ONE WHO LOOKS LIKE A MONSTER YOU ARE JUDGING HIM AND HE IS TAKING HIS NATURAL PLACE IN SOCIETY BASED ON HOW YOU TREATED HIM

or

OH MAN CAN WE CREATE LIFE OH NO THAT'S GOD'S JOB

Heart of Darkness:
THE HORROR IS REALLY PEOPLE GET IT PEOPLE ARE TERRIBLE IN THEIR VERY SOULS AND THE JUNGLE IS A METAPHOR OK

The Great Gatsby:
GUYS YOUR LIFESTYLE IS RECKLESS YOU WILL NEVER ATTAIN THE AMERICAN DREAM YOU WILL JUST DIE IN A POOL

Huck Finn:
YOUR TRADITIONS AND SUPERSTITIONS ARE QUAINT

and

THE BLACK GUY IS MORE FATHERLY THAN ALL THE WHITE GUYS WAKE UP AND SMELL THE RACISM

Animal Farm:
YOUR DESIRED SOCIETAL CHANGES WILL ONLY LEAD TO MORE OF THE SAME

and

COMMUNISM WILL INEVITABLY DECAY INTO TOTALITARIANISM BECAUSE HUMAN GREED IS A GIVEN PEOPLE ARE SHEEP AND THE TRULY NOBLE WILL JUST GET MADE INTO GLUE

Lord of the Flies:
HUMANS ARE JUST THINLY DISGUISED ANIMALS HOLY CRAP THEY KILLED THE FAT KID ALSO YOUR WARS ARE KIND OF CHILDISH

Hamlet:
IF YOU THINK TOO MUCH ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE IN THE ENTIRE PLAY WILL DIE AND YOUR GIRLFRIEND WILL GO CRAZY

The Great Gatsby is my every year book. I read it every year (almost). It is just so incredibly beautiful. I read it not for the plot (which is operatic) or the theme (which is depressing) but for the writing, which is inexpressably lovely. Here are my all time favorite Gatsby quotes (aside from all of it):

"In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars." [I really like the whole description of the parties. But the blue gardens and the moths are the images I remember most.]

"...the air is alive with chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other's names." [On this reading it struck me how funny Fitzgerald is. I never noticed it before. It's satire, but it's hilarious.]

"Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people I have ever known." [It's no secret I'm in love with Nick Carraway, and this is at least half the reason.]

"So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight." [Foreshadowing...and life! Oh F. Scott.]

Pretty much the whole last section of the book:

"One of my most vivid memories is of coming back West from prep school and later from college at Christmas time. Those who went farther than Chicago would gather in the old dim Union Station at six o’clock of a December evening, with a few Chicago friends, already caught up into their own holiday gayeties, to bid them a hasty good-by. I remember the fur coats of the girls returning from Miss This-or-that’s and the chatter of frozen breath and the hands waving overhead as we caught sight of old acquaintances, and the matchings of invitations: “Are you going to the Ordways’? the Herseys’? the Schultzes’?” and the long green tickets clasped tight in our gloved hands. And last the murky yellow cars of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul railroad looking cheerful as Christmas itself on the tracks beside the gate.

When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air. We drew in deep breaths of it as we walked back from dinner through the cold vestibules, unutterably aware of our identity with this country for one strange hour, before we melted indistinguishably into it again.

That’s my Middle West—not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns, but the thrilling returning trains of my youth, and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow. I am part of that, a little solemn with the feel of those long winters, a little complacent from growing up in the Carraway house in a city where dwellings are still called through decades by a family’s name. I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all—Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life."

[When I read this this time I almost cried. I'm moving there! I'm going to be part of that! Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul; soon I'll have connections to all of them.]

"Even when the East excited me most, even when I was most keenly aware of its superiority to the bored, sprawling, swollen towns beyond the Ohio, with their interminable inquisitions which spared only the children and the very old—even then it had always for me a quality of distortion. West Egg, especially, still figures in my more fantastic dreams. I see it as a night scene by El Greco: a hundred houses, at once conventional and grotesque, crouching under a sullen, overhanging sky and a lustreless moon. In the foreground four solemn men in dress suits are walking along the sidewalk with a stretcher on which lies a drunken woman in a white evening dress. Her hand, which dangles over the side, sparkles cold with jewels. Gravely the men turn in at a house—the wrong house. But no one knows the woman’s name, and no one cares." [I love this image.]

"'I'm thirty,' I said. 'I'm five years too old to lie to myself and call it honour." [This would be the other half.]

"Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away." [Oh Nick.]

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." [So depressing, yet so lyrical.]

SO it was high time to get back to Buffy. It had been too long, plus it's just a little teaser for Dollhouse which starts end of the week. Once again, I'm struck by the fact that Seth Green is miles better than the rest of the cast (i.e. he can actually act at a level above you know, junior high drama). Xander actually has a rockin' body, and reminds me more and more of Chandler Bing. Also, they've spent two and a half seasons establishing that Buffy is a mediocre and hardly dedicated student, yet she still gets a 1430 on her SAT? Oh and Spike is still awesome (although Angel's soul has returned so he's back to being emo and boring). Vampire relationships are so messed up! "She wouldn't even kill me...She didn't even care enough to cut of my head or set me on fire!...She said we could still be friends...God I'm so unhappy." Haha genius. God help me this show is so awful but so addictive.

Also, QT on his new movie Inglourious Basterds (apparently misspelled on the original script and kept): "It's like Reservoir Dogs...but with Nazis!"