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My feet are sore and I haven’t finished the seven readings I need to do by tomorrow, and my damn mosquito bites are still itching (who bites someone on the forehead? come on, mosquito) but I had the most amazing Venezuelan arepas with Lata today and I am way happy. I wish I could create a rule that says the more orange my food is, the healthier it is for me.
mini updates
I really wish I could just sing along to my MP3 player in my office without being a weirdo or a nuisance. In high school I used to crank up my CD player and sing along to showtunes while I did my algebra homework, which, weirdly, made math homework really relaxing to do.
Mark’s visit last week was fantastic – lots of great food, Aerosmith, Transformers, trips to the park, guitar playing and science talks. I’m excited for him to come back again in August (and, of course, to start living in Ithaca).
We had a drain problem in our apartment for the last two or three days and it’s been driving me fucking crazy until I caved and bought some Drano which fixed it magically. The bottle said it was safe for metal pipes but I’m still a little wary — I hope our pipes don’t explode. Having a broken drain made me really cranky earlier in the week and just purely irritated at people who waste obscene amounts of water, e.g. my current roommate, who so far is really cool and friendly but does she really need to take two showers a day? Speaking of which, today’s Leonard Lopate Show had a good conversation about the scarcity of water and makes me want to finally watch that water documentary I downloaded like two months ago. These Malthusian conversations about shrinking resources and overflowing populations are pretty depressing – but hey, all the more reason to explore and colonize space, no?
I started reading East of Eden which is surprisingly easy to read and a great book so far. I think when I was younger even though I was an avid reader I was always far too intimidated by the Great American Classic because if I found that I couldn’t get through one I was less intelligent than the other overachievers my age who did (but really, what 12 year old can get through one and really understand it without the life experience to make you appreciate it?). It’s kind of funny how three or four Bible verses with almost no detail or explanations about a sibling murder can foster such an intricate and epic imagining. I can almost picture Steinbeck rolling his mind around it, inquiring about love and jealousy, wondering forever why Cain’s offering wasn’t good enough for their Father.
Michael Jackson’s death last week made me really inexplicably sad. I know lots of people out there are scoffing at the drawn out media coverage and disgusted that a man put on trial for child molestation could be honored so much. I don’t think anyone not involved can really talk about the latter issue with much conviction, and the extent of the coverage has gotten pretty ridiculous (what Honduran coup?), but the part I can’t get over is just the sadness that blanketed his life – the parental abuse, the public scrutiny, the vitiligo and the surgeries, all coexisting with wild international fame and success. I wonder why it is that we, as a mass audience, take so much intrigue and pleasure in documenting the rise and fall of a celebrity that was pretty much caused, or at least exacerbated, by us in the first place.
I guess though, there were worse ways to go – Marvin Gaye was killed by his own father, David Ruffin of the Temptations died of a coke overdose, Sam Cooke was shot in a hotel at 33, Tammi Terrell died of a brain tumor at 24, Donny Hathaway jumped out of a building. It makes it almost haunting to listen to all the great music they made.
I started summer school on Tuesday and am pretty pleased with the class so far, even though it’s only been a week. It’s a huge relief from that Ethnic Conflicts class I took last semester which sucked a ton and made me completely stop reading or participating at all.
I have to wake up in about 5 and a half hours to spend my day off at the beach in Fire Island. I am really, really excited to sit on a beach and read and eat a hamburger.