mean girls, anyone?

I swear I was at The Diner today and saw a group of girls at a table all wearing pink. And it's Wednesday.

american idol gives back?

I'm currently watching American Idol, the big hyped version where Celine Dion sings with Elvis Presley? I'm a little confused about this one.

Guns and Murderous Psychos

What exactly do guns do other than kill?

From the Voice of America:

"A leading gun rights group, the National Rifle Association, issued a statement on its Web site expressing condolences to those victimized by the shootings at Virginia Tech, and adding that it will have no further comment on the incident until all the facts are known.

The NRA Web site also contains interviews with gun owners worried that gun control groups are always pushing for new limits on firearms.

NRA WEBSITE: "Gun owners, we are paranoid for a reason. It is because we have been burned over and over and over again."

Another pro-gun group said that gun bans were the problem, and that Americans should have the right to arm and defend themselves.

Gun control advocates like New York Congressman Charles Rangel acknowledged they face an uphill climb in trying to tighten regulations.

"It is a regional thing, it is a cultural thing and it is a sad thing,” he said. “But it is some type of a cult, 'do not touch, do not take the gun from my dead, cold hands,' and I do not understand it."

my fallen hero dies

He fell down some stairs and then he died. God bless you Kurt Vonnegut.

in search of a book sure to make a jackass of me

I figure that every good English major should find some esoteric book, some lifelong gem of knowledge found in the dusty corner of a used bookstore, to quote in a most highbrow and assholish manner at cocktail parties for the rest of her life. I just feel like college is the right time for that. So in that spirit, I ordered (from Betterworldbooks.com, in a most environmentally sustainable way) the book, Any Place I Hang My Hat by Susan Isaacs. I mean, I knew that wasn't going to be my life-long cocktail banter, but I'd never heard of her, so I gave her a try. It angered me so much by page 59 that I slammed it on the ground in disgust.

Here's your snippet: "I'd heard enough Mahler, read enough Donald Barthelme, seen enough Peter Greenaway films, and inspected enough Matthew Barney art to understand that a certain understanding was missing in me."

I may be drooling snot as a freshman college columnist/wannabe intelligent person, but I know unnecessary pedantry when it smacks me in the face. Especially when the allusions, the analogies, the wisecracks smack you multiple times with varying degrees of ouch. I'll only google things in a book so many times.

Anyway, the whole experience of reading about a bunch of stuff you don't really understand but reading it anyway because one may possibly reap some unforeseen benefit somehow related to cocktail parties, kind of makes me feel guilty of the same assholish thing. I doused my last column, which outlined the artistic inclinations of collegiate party-throwers, with literary allusions. They were pretty tame- a little Hemingway love, a little Ayn Rand hate. (I admit I've never read Ayn Rand, just scrunched my face at the obnoxious behemoths that swallow shelf spaces whole. How many pages do you really need to make your point?)

What I'm trying to say, is that I'm guilty of the same thing that pisses me off the most. Hell, if I'd heard of half the things that Susan Isaacs knows, I'd want to shoot out my own sarcastic educated babble too. I guess we all have our goals when it comes to writing, but I should probably make a faux-resolution to sound as little like her as possible. Or else my readers will end up with less brain cells than they came in with. Or they'll hop onto Google midway, trying to figure out some haute allusion I made and in a true sign of the Adderall generation, end up on Text Twist.

things to do before i die

-Invent a word that gets into the dictionary.

back from india

I got back from India on Friday and it was a delicious experience. The origin of Indian food is, of course, India. Traveling alone was unpleasant and I found out that I hate Germany (see Lufthansa Airlines, the German Language and smoking in airports and inadequate numbers of toilets). But since I was alone, I got in on some of the family's secrets and tribulations. I didn't travel much around the country like I did last time when I was with my family, which really helped my face stay somewhat clear and allowed for more shopping days. I started writing a faux-memoir/diary entry while I was there, sort of just to help myself grasp some things about my extended family. It's entitled "My Family is Incestuous!?! and Other Tales from my Solo Voyage to India". All I have to say is that one can experience great moments of clarity while on an overnight train. Other points of interest are that all of John Mayer's albums put me to sleep and the Indian definition of morning does not include 9am.