what curse?

We won! We won, we won, we won. Red Sox win first World Series in eighty-six years.

that's right, which team do we love?

The Red Sox Make a Leap to the Doorstep. And Game Four is tonight: Go Red Sox! /end obnoxious-sports-fan mode

when you can't sleep

Last night I had the insomnia real bad, so I learned about sonnets (there are three different kinds & the Shakesperian, for example, is written in iambic pentameter--two syllables, emphasis on the second one aka the foot--is fourteen lines long, and has a rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef gg). That knowledge has been added to the trove of useless-knowledge-that-makes-me-happy, but is, well, utterly useless. But I'm okay with that. I wouldn't like it if all the things I know were good for nothing, but I think there's a place for things that lack practical applications. I'm so incredibly tired right now.

Autumn

It finally started raining here (as of Saturday night). Worms on the sidewalk, mud everywhere, and that sweet, sleepy sound of water against pavement, roof tiles, windows. Absolutely hypnotizing. Hardly anyone could stay awake in class this morning, we just gazed (in a sort of slack-jawed way) out the windows at the rain and the low masses of steel-grey clouds that obscure the mountains and skim the ground. Autumnal weather can't be beat, even if autumn in the depths of Southern California is a sad excuse for a real autumn (yes, that's right, I'm saying autumn is truly found only in New England). It makes me want to snuggle up on a couch with hot apple cider, an enveloping blanket, good music and knit. I'm not sure what that says about me.


Across the window-pane
It pours and pours;
And swift and wide,
With a muddy tide,
Like a river down the gutter roars
The rain, the welcome rain!

-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

new Elliot Smith music

If you go to pitchforkmedia.com you can download--for free--Twilight, a track off of the forthcoming From a Basement on the Hill.

* I just downloaded this a few minutes ago and listened to it a couple of times. I liked it, though not as much as I like some of his other songs (such as Between the Bars). I especially like the crickets chirping at the beginning and end of the track, and the strings. I highly recommend downloading it and hearing it for yourself.

web2.0weblog

& this site brings you blogging on the future of the Net. And an mp3 clip of DJ Danger Mouse talking about the future of music (during a panel on the future of music in the context of the Net).

get off the internet and vote

So, if you vote these people will give you free stuff. And that's pretty damn cool. (Not to mention that signing up is painless and if you were going to vote anyway, hey, now you can get some stuff, too.)

monday, monday

So, because I'm told that I don't blog enough (I think that I blog too much--yes, I'm determined to be a very contrary individual), I'm back to blog some more. Even though what I should be doing is figuring how to translate indirect questions and statements from English to Latin and memorizing the conjugation of fero, ferre, tuli, latum, because, tomorrow being Monday, I've got a Latin quiz in the afternoon. This weekend just flew by, just like every weekend, even though I didn't do very much. I was kind of in a funk all week (meditating on some of the more troublesome aspects of my personality does not make me sweetness and light personified) and it sort of carried over to the weekend. So, I felt sort of drained all weekend (and there was some mild physical unwellness, to boot), went out twice, but not for very long, did some homework, but not enough, and the weekend still seemed to last no more than the blink of an eye. But (lest I sound too whiny and depressed), but: I've had worse weekends, I'm thankful for fantastic friends and family, schoolwork isn't too taxing right now (if I know one thing, I know it'll get worse as the semester continues), I'm not, you know, dying of a dread disease, or starving somewhere in Africa... See: I do have perspective, I do! Anyway. Other than that, I don't really have anything to report right now. Oh, but you do need to hear The Old Crow Medicine Show. I can't get their song Wagon Wheel (lyrics by Dylan) out of my head and I'm not a huge country/bluegrass fan. Actually, probably everyone other than me has already heard of them. But in case you haven't--listen now! And I'll try to post something less personal (re: dull musings) later.


tell me, baby, tell me
does his company make
light of a rainy day?
how i've missed you lately
and the way we would speak
and all that we wouldn't say

do his hands in your hair
feel a lot like a thing
you believe in
or a bit like a bird
stealing bread out from under your nose?

--"Bird Stealing Bread", Iron & Wine