you know what's really fucking annoying?

getting a "hey, i just read your story and it was SIIIIIICK" email from your editor as you are in the middle of typing out your resignation.

/such a waste of a polite resignation letter

La reina

Sometimes, Madonna makes me wish I'd been born earlier.

Ce n'est pas une sororité

When I was rushing, I met eight thousand smart women pretending to be sorority Barbies, which, in my opinion, is worse than actually being the sorority Barbie. I also met this wack Australian girl.

That was a good thing.

>Date: 19 Jan 2009 22:04:02 -0500
>From: Awesome Australian Girl
>Subject: read if you can be bothered. otherwise ignore.
>To: sigmadelta@Mac

Ok, so I'm bored, and Jo just did this, and I thought it was a great idea. So I will ignore the fact that no body expressed any interest whatsoever in the little details of the land down under, and regale you with them anyway. If you actually have a life, unlike me, please feel free to ignore this and get on with it.


CURRENCY: dollars. Currently trading at about 66 US cents. This year's been crazy though - in June it got up to 98.5 cents and in late August it hit 45 cents. Notes (we don't call them bills) are also a lot more colourful than in America, and are made of plastic, so if you leave them in your boardshorts pocket and go swimming, you're golden. Also, we have $1 and $2 coins, and we got rid of 1c and 2c coins about a decade ago.

LANGUAGE: English. Like British English (same spellings and all that), but with a funny accent, and a few colourful phrases thrown in here and there.

GEOGRAPHY: Big (6th on the list). But, like Canada, also very sparsely populated -- 2.5 people per square kilometre (Canada has 3.2). Population: about 21.4 million, all of them around the coast. There is nothing (NOTHING) in the middle of the country. If you drive across from Sydney to Perth, you see signs that say "Last petrol for 400km". There are 6 states and 2 territories (NT and ACT). The capital is Canberra (pronounced cam-bra, not can-bear-ra) and the biggest city is Sydney. Perth, state capital of Western Australia, is one of the most isolated regional capitals in the world. That's where I'm from.

FLAG: see attached. The big star under the Union Jack has seven points to represent the 7 states and territories (they didn't include the Australian Capital Territory coz it's tiny, insignificant, and no one cares about Canberra anyway). The constellation on the right is the Southern Cross. It's also on the NZ flag, but their stars are red, with five points. Ours are white with 7 points.

FAMOUS PEOPLE (just some you might have heard of): Nicole Kidman, Keith Urban, Heath Ledger (he was from Perth. The whole city went into shock when he died), Russel Crowe, Geoffrey Rush, Hugh Jackman, Banjo Patterson (poet, author of The Man from Snowy River), Ernie Dingo, Ian Thorpe, Shane Warne, Luc Longley (basketballer), Germaine Greer (feminist), Barry Humphries (alias Dame Edna Everage), Pat Rafter and Lleyton Hewitt (tennis players), Fiona Stanley (doctor, just about invented modern treatment for burns victims), Toni Collette, Cate Blanchett. Aussie bands you might know: Jet, Savage Garden, Missy Higgins, Crowded House, John Butler Trio, Silverchair, Men at Work, Ben Lee, Xavier Rudd...)

GOVERNMENT: Queen Elizabeth II is officially our head of state. We have our own parliament and constitution (we're very advanced like that). The current governing party is the Labor Party (the only time "labour" is spelt without a "u" for some reason), which is centre-left. The other big parties are the Liberals and Nationals (they form a coalition most of the time). There's also the Greens, One-Nation (the far-right one) and some other little ones.

INDUSTRY: Service mainly, but Mining and Agriculture make up about 60% of exports. Mostly wheat and wool, and iron-ore, gold, natural gas and coal, with some other bits and pieces thrown in (opals, silver, tin, nickel, diamonds, a bit of oil).

NATIONAL SYMBOLS: koala, kangaroo, eucalyptus tree, Sydney Opera House: the usual. Australian Rules Football, Uluru, the green and gold.
The Australian Coat of Arms shows all the states' symbols in a crest held up by a kangaroo and an emu. These two animals were chosen because a) they're both tall and b) neither can walk backwards (and our national anthem is called "Advance Australia Fair").
Funnily enough, the koala is not featured on any Australian money: the echidna, lyre bird, platypus, kangaroo and emu are.

OTHER SOURCES OF NATIONAL PRIDE: the only extant monotremes (egg-laying mammals - platypus and echidna), and most of the world's marsupials. We generally rank in the top six medal takers at the Summer Olympics, despite having a markedly smaller population than all the others at the top of that list.
In 2008, four cities (Melbourne 2nd, Perth 4th, Adelaide7th and Sydney 9th) reached The Economist's top ten "world's most livable cities" list.
The fact that we have desert, rainforest, coral reefs and alpine regions. And some of the oldest rocks on the planet (no volcanic activity helps).
Also, we walk upside-down (obviously).
And our swans are all black.

MEASUREMENTS: metric. Did you know that the imperial system is now standardised on the metric system? So an inch, officially, is 2.54cm, a foot is 30.48cm, and a mile is 1609.344m. Go figure. Initially, the metric system was defined by the French, making the distance from pole to equator 10,000km, and dividing it up accordingly. Now, a metre is defined as the distance that light travels in free space in one 299,792,458th of a second. How about that.

HOLIDAYS: We celebrate Australia Day on the 26th of January, Boxing Day on 26th of December, and there is no Thanksgiving. Most of Australia celebrates the Queen's Birthday on the second Monday in June. In Western Australia, we have Foundation day on the 1st Monday in June, so we do our own Queen's Birthday, which is kinda like Easter, with no fixed date. It's usually the last Monday in September or the 1st in October, but the State Governor decides it each year. None of these days actually celebrate any real queen's birthday, and the name will change to the King's Birthday Holiday when Charlie (or William, if it comes to that) takes the throne.

Ummmm.... I think that's it. I have successfully not done any work for about an hour now. Excellent. Good night.

Más de profesoras

My Spanish professor has the ability to pull off wearing cropped wool pants with boots. I am so impressed.

I mean she also has a Ph.D. from Columbia and is like, a big deal, but seriously: ROCKED the pants.

/ok, maybe I need MORE women and gender studies classes. Aaah!

i've decided not to make sense

your girl was named christina.

mine is neither christina nor mine.

also, in 2002 i was thirteen, which is a bit much, i think

fuck you

i prefer "entered this mortal coil with a differently-composited eating utensil in my masticatory orifice," thankyouverymuch.

Bristol, darling

Where, pray tell, is your baby? Hmmm? Because not only would I would hate for these nasty rumors to follow you and your charming mother around, I can't wait to see what you name the little bundle of joy.

/How about "Kumquat"? Kumquat Palin-Johnston. I like it.

Updated with perspective

I could be this guy.

or this guy.

Or a tragically emo blogger.

/oh shit

you owe me twenty four dollars for those pills

did i do something to you

is that why you broke my dreams

pretty girl pretty girl pretty girl
won't you open up your eyes
pretty girl pretty girl pretty girl
stop wearing your disguise

i know a girl next door
she wears all white
alone in her room she's afraid of light
a diary is her best friend
writing away all the things she's too shy to say
too shy to say

a cold day she walks alone
wishing she had someone's hand to hold
so warm
so warm

but she's too afraid to even raise her head
she'll think of all her emptiness instead
her emptiness instead

pretty girl pretty girl pretty girl
won't you open up your eyes
pretty girl pretty girl pretty girl
stop wearing your disguise

break your mirror the way it breaks your smile
hold your head up don't have to hide for a while
and you'll see (you'll see) how beautiful you can be

break your mirror the way it breaks your heart
step outdoors away from the dark
and you'll see (you'll see) how beautiful you can be

pretty girl pretty girl pretty girl
won't you open up your eyes
pretty girl pretty girl pretty girl
stop wearing your disguise

break your mirror the way it breaks your smile
hold your head up don't have to hide for a while
and you'll see (you'll see) how beautiful you can be

break your mirror the way it breaks your heart
step outdoors away from the dark
and you'll see how beautiful you can be

pretty girl pretty girl pretty girl
wouldn't open up her eyes
pretty girl pretty girl pretty girl
forever a prisoner of her disguise

no tienen un problema con desnudez porque en realidad, son desnudos por todos sus vidas. nunca los aprenden a esconder sus pensamientos. no hay mentiras piadosas en su cultura.

es tan interesante a verlos en nuestra mundo. en esta universidad que fue fundado por protestantes ingleses.

me pregunté que ezekiel wheelock pensaría si él viera dartmouth hall, su edificio original, con españolas, italianas, francesas.

probablemente él habría muerto cuando vio a la mayoría de nuestro alumnado.

i ski at ninety-nine miles an hour and i drive like a maniac sixteen-year-old. i have three different kinds of water boards and an obsession with the perfect wave. i chase information, i write stories fifteen minutes before deadline and sprint across campus to turn in my thirty-second-late papers.

i never sleep.

i want boys i can't have, clothes i can't afford and i will fucking out-snipe you on eBay. i email nine people at once and i have five news tabs on auto-refresh--at least.

i am caffeine.

i chase roller coasters.

i talk too fast.

i want the rush. papersargumentsheightsspeeddepthfreefallcoffeedeadlinesoutofcontrolcrazyitisspinning
anditiswild.

i will count the stars.

I drank the Kool-Aid

Yes. I inhaled. Frequently. That was the point.

you sort of doubt she grows roses

you do not remember your dreams. other people describe fantastic scenarios with plots, details, semi-realistic situations. real-life characters.

you remember feelings. images. sounds.

but last night you remembered her.

like fire

hellfire

is turning me to sin

it's not my fault

mea maxima culpa

*pat pat*

So The Blonde with Hot Librarian Glasses is my current roommate. (Yes, I realized it was stupid to name The Awesome Roommate as such because while she is still awesome, she is not still my roommate. I guess I could change her name to The Awesome Thursday Morning Breakfast Buddy. Let that be noted.)

Anyway, The Blonde is a highly HIGHLY intelligent person. She kicks my ass in math. She is also...from Texas. For the sake of preserving warm and fuzzy roommate feelings, we try not to discuss politics that much, but the past few months have forced us to break the rules.

Conversation that took place yesterday (please try to keep in mind the part where she is HIGHLY INTELLIGENT I SWEAR.)

"OHMYGOD I can't believe he's going to appoint Hillary Clinton as the Secretary of State!!"

"I mean...she's smart. And she's bitchy, which is kind of a pre-req. Oooooh did you buy CHEESE?"

"Yeah, I'm making melty cheesy dip."

"SWEET."

"But seriously, like, whatever...ow ow ow cheesy salty stuff in paper cut---if Hillary is secretary of state, we are going to get attacked SO FAST."

"I don't know...would YOU fuck with Hillary Clinton? Because I wouldn't."

"Neither would Bill. Heh. Anyway, she's a woman! Our key diplomacy is with ARABIC COUNTRIES. Are they going to even LISTEN to her? Plus, Clinton Clinton was a pussy--they'll remember that. Can I use some of your jalapenos?"

"SPICY CHEESY DIP! You can have a jalapeno if you answer one question: Who is our current secretary of state?"

"Ummm...."

"You totally know this."

"Oh shit."

"Yes..."

"It's Condelezza Rice."

"Who is..."

"A woman. Give me your stupid liberal jalapenos."

/she makes good food so I keep her around.

*Le Sigh*

I really wish I hadn't taken a civil liberties class because I don't have an opinion on anything anymore but I'm still pretty sure this is fucked up.

As I'm way too cracked out right now to provide intelligent commentary, I will instead provide some entertaining Avenue Q lyrics:

"Now there was a fine upstanding black man!

Who?

Jesus Christ.

But, Gary, Jesus was white.

No, Jesus was black.

No, Jesus was white.

No, I'm pretty sure that Jesus was black-

Guys, guys...Jesus...was Jewish!"

HALP

You know how something that's only semi-funny strikes you at a time when it is unbelievably inappropriate to laugh, like at a funeral or when you're in the course reserves, and thus becomes EXPONENTIALLY funnier?

Yeah.

/I'm really weirding out the person next to me tonight.

Bloody Hell.

*snort*

From Dartmouth 2013 Facebook group:

"Is Dartmouth generally more conservative than some of the other ivies?

Yes, in the same way that Liechtenstein is larger than Monaco and the Vatican. "

/yup

This is my only chance to be blinded by idealsim

I forgot to acknowledge the 5th of November V for Vendetta style. (my transcript of Valerie's thoughts was early). Oh the nerd shame.

If I were a stupid idealistic college student drawing grandiose parallels, I might point out that the reason I forgot was because Barack Obama was giving his victory speech at midnight on what was, incidentally, the fifth day of November. And by 12:30 I was busy being part of a mob. A loud cheering screaming chanting trampling mob. Mobs can be difficult up here in the boonies, because there is really nowhere to go, but we managed, by descending on the president's house. Security was peeved, but he's pretty chill and acquiesced to the rather inexplicable demand that he make a speech. (He managed to satisfy the crowd without actually making a partisan statement. Brilliant. That's why he's the president of the College.) The Hanover police, who were thrilled to have something to do came and broke up the mob, which fragmented into a fraction that went to get drunk and faction that went to get cheese fries at food court.

It was great. (Really shit video) I didn't finish my Spanish homework, and I do not regret it, and when I'm forty, I will say I was an idiot.

However.

""We are told to remember the idea, not the man. Because a man can fail. He can be caught, he can be killed and forgotten."

Especially if the media has crowned him king.