Guilt and Innocence: A daily primer

The Great Shark Hunt : Strange Tales from a Strange Time

Don't ask me how I've done it, but I finally finished The Great Shark Hunt by Hunter S. Thompson, which shall henceforth be referred to as the "tome of immobility."

Now in all truthfulness, this is in a no way a tome of immobility as it's a collection of Thompson's gonzo journalism from the sixties and seventies and if he's not flying across the country he is flying on mescaline, ether, or some other drug.

Now, I enjoyed this book, but I can't recommend it to most because, in my mind, there are two reasons anyone should read this novel. First, if your an enthusiastic fan of Thompson, or secondly, if you're an aspiring journalist who wonders what it might've been like to be a freelancer in during the era of careless drug use.

Which is not to say that it isn't good writing, it is, but after oh four hundred pages of irrelevant journalism it begins to drag just a tad. Thompson covers everything from sports (including a very early superbowl) to Nixon-era politics. I think the politics coverage is the best part of the book, but then I am certainly no fan of sports.

Thompson certainly has a way with words and many of his drug-crazed adventures are deeply entertaining, but everyone except the most hard-core Thompson fan is going to find some part of this book a bore, so hang on to your Barnes and Noble gift cards for now.

I found this to be true...

Stolen from Jason's site:

In a Pixar Interview: ""I think that movies are mirrors, and what people find in them usually says more about the viewer than the movie."

I have always found this to be true of myself. The movies I like I always like because I can seem myself in some character or believe that it speaks to some part of my life. I've always believed you can learn a lot about a person by simply learning what movies they watch, what books they read, what albums they listen to, and what pieces of art they appreciate. What we like and identify with says a lot about who we are.

Perhaps I'll work on compiling some lists of my favorites, so you can get a peak at who I am.

Double Standards

I shouldn't drink so much coffee. It's only when it's free that this is a problem. When I am otherwise distracted and just occupying myself, giving my hands and my lips something to do. It's only when I'm only just interested in the people that I drink so much.

Actually, it only hits me when I stand up, and then the shaking starts and I can't really hear what anyone is saying because my mind is rushing so much.

It's not so much that I'm a caffeine addict; I can go days and days without so much as a drop, but once you get me started and the refills are free, I'm lost. And I drink it black, like a good southern girl should.

But I suppose I'm not really a southern girl. It's one of my many personas though.

I went out with Taryn and Nathan to Denny's for coffee tonight. Nathan has matured nicely since I left, he actually makes good company now. But the thing that struck me tonight, is how singular I am at school now. Here, I have such variety of friends. The band kids, the weird kids, my nerds (who I haven't spoken to, actually.) I have so many different sides, and it really is just impossible to know everything about me when I'm here.

There is the calm book nerd part of me that hangs out with Brendan and talks about simple things, politics and school. There's me and Darcie who are so detached from reality. Me and Mwema who prophesize our own futures and curse dating. Jenn and I who gush about Palahniuk. Ryan, who is my evil alter-ego and indulges me. Taryn and crew who are just fun to be around. Then there were my newspaper friends, whom I was best friends with for those early and late nights

But really, it seems like at Mizzou there is just one Kim. Sort of detached and watchful. This is not, I suppose, a bad thing. Just so different from here.

I can't decide how I feel about being home. I've gotten over the awkwardness of the first week back and realized how truly much I've missed people here, but there is a reassuring calmness about being in Missouri. I get good grades and I am so much more calm and tempered, less unpredictable. I'm not so stressed (though I guess I'm not stressed here any longer, but so many people here much better understand my emotional extremes. They knew me once upon a time, when things were different.

I was telling my mother how it seems like no one has really changed, but now I wonder if maybe we are just different people when we're away, but still the same here. Perhaps we're all inhabiting these double lives, something we find to be necessary when we inhabit two locations.

Tragedy

Death Toll exceeds 70,000

I really didn't see any reason to change the address on my Time subscription when I was home for winter, but now I wish I had. I can't even fathom the amount of destruction these waves have caused. The amount of panic going on in those countries.

Wow. 70,000.

That's just too many to comprehend.

The Quest for Orange Soda

Well, then.

I think that would be an appropriate introduction to the thirty-plus hour ordeal that just occurred in my life for no rhyme or reason.

Last night, at about nine I went to Ryan's house to stay over and watch a movie and I insisted on the "epic" miniseries Angels in America, despite it's six hour run time. So, Ryan and I proceeded to watch the epic and, considering it's six hours we worked in a few breaks as well and by the time we were done it was nearly five in the morning. Considering this, we decided it would be less painful to just stay awake for awhile then go home and crash.

To add some entertainment to our sleep-deprived states we called up Mwema and Atupele and invited them to breakfast with us at Einstein's Brothers. Atupele had winter percussion practice at ten, so the plan was for Ryan, Mwema, and I to go get the oil in Ryan's car changed and then stop by to check out the winter percussion practice.

All of this went as planned, but at some point during the oil change I decided we should go visit our friend Darcie who was spending a few days visiting her Dad in Casper, Wyoming.

Now, I need to explain some geography here. Casper, Wyoming is approximately three hundred miles from Denver. Even the border of Wyoming is a good two hours away, and Casper is fairly central. Assuming we obeyed the speed limit on I-25, a drive to Casper takes approximately four and a half to five hours.

I don't even know that I was serious when I suggested this. I don't know if mine and Ryan's brains hadn't been severely altered by too little sleep and if we weren't apparently running on an adrenaline high if anyone would have considered this. But, somehow, due to some strange circumstances of the universe, we decided that, yes, we would drive to Wyoming to go visit Darcie.

So, after a brief stop at winter percussion to grab some tunes for the road and to say hi, we were off onto I-25 headed for Wyoming, while our unsuspecting parents believed we were at a movie.

Approximately four hours later, we arrived in Casper much to the bafflement of Darcie and her family. We then attempted to find a apparently nonexistent coffee house, but ended up at a fake fifties diner. We ate, hung out a bit, made sure to stop to obtain some Casper, Wyoming postcards to commemorate this epic adventure and then hit the road again.

In the miraculous time of three hours and some minutes we were in Denver again, mostly due to Ryan speeding like crazy the whole way home.

I half don't believe we actually did this because it is so crazy and I am so out of it as it has now been about thirty-one hours since I last slept. So, I think I'll go sleep now...

The Life Aquatic

Just got back from seeing The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou with Brendan, Josh, and Joe, which try as I might to like, I just couldn't.

I like Wes Anderson, and I loved The Royal Tennenbaums. I generally like Bill Murray as well, but I just can't bring myself to like The Life Aquatic. It was definitely funny at times, but overall it was long and boring. None of the characters are sympathetic and when there's nothing to laugh at, well there's nothing to maintain interest.

Of course the lack of comedy is doubly upsetting, because this movie is supposed to be funny, so it feels like being left out of a joke. It's one of those movies I try so desperately to like because I feel dull and uncultured for not liking it. Perhaps, I just missed out on the satirizing of adventure documentaries, which might be, oh because I've never seen an adventure documentary. But, truthfully, who has?

In all, The Life Aquatic gets a sigh from Kim, and a recommendation to watch it at your own risk.

And so this is christmas...

Welcome to angry rant number one.

Sometimes being around this family is like watching a train wreck. A long, unimportant ultimately harmless train-wreck.

My sister knocked over a vase, and rather than get a towel to clean it up, this conversation ensued between her and my mother:

"I don't think the world's smallest christmas tree likes me."
"Did you knock it over?"
"Yes."
"Did the water spill?"
"Yes."
"Did a lot of water spill?"
"Yes."
"Well, get a towel."

I know, this is christmas eve, I'm supposed to feel loving and familial. But my mother can't remember which presents she wrapped and for some reason did not have the foresight to put tags on them. Which may not have been her fault because we don't seem to have any gift tags. Or bows. Or fucking scotch tape.

It seems to me that christmas used to be this wonderful joyous production but now all it feels like is this labored tradition that no one can get quite right. Something is missing. The anticipation, the belief in santa claus, that childish sense of wonder. Je ne sais quoi.

Maybe tomorrow morning I will feel different, but even last year christmas felt so tired and this year I feel so much more removed.

Anyway, I still have christmas presents to wrap. Sans gift tags and scotch tape, somehow.

I would just like to point out...

...that there is ice on the INSIDE of my bedroom window.

And you Missourians think you know what cold is...

In the Dark

The nice thing about Columbia, sometimes, is that our histories are limited. It is less complicated than sitting at a table at PF Changs and thinking about all the words that have been exchanged between our group. The fights and the inter-dating that somehow, most of us seemed to survive. At least on the surface.

In Katie's words, It's been fucking fuck. There's a few inches of snow and the ground and I've been sleeping under about six layers of blankets, because I might as well not have heat in my room. According to good old Weather.com the current temperature is an amazing zero degrees fahrenheit. Wonderful.

I checked my grades. Sweet relief. I'm not flunking out of college yet.

Darcie, Brendan, and I went to the tattered cover yesterday, which is an amazing four-story bookstore. Somehow I made it out without a single book. Mostly a repeating of the fact that I have over $40 in gift cards to Borders. Which will be spent in a furor after the holiday festivities are over.

Then Scott took us all to the new PF Changs in Belmar. And paid. I love that boy dearly, even if he needs to stop growing, right this moment. Then we sat in his basement in the dark and played word association. It was nice, one of those things that would only happen with these friends, these people.

Still, being home feels so bittersweet. I don't even know that home is here. It seems like this place that no longer exists. I feel like I live in this parallel dimension and I just keep flashing back and forth between lives. Here, there.

We went to Red Lobster for my Mother's birthday tonight, which made the second nice meal in a row I haven't had to pay for. It was good and full of seafood meaty goodness. Mmm shrimp and crab, my invertebrate friends.

I think I'm going to go make some hot tea so my insides stop trying to frost over. Till later, mes amies.

Not burning.

I think coming home after three weeks was a bit too soon, but so it is.

I had Sesame Tofu with Brendan and it was amazing. More the tofu than the company, but it was nice to see him. We barely made it to the stage show on time and ran into far too many old band kids who kept referring to us as "dead people." The show, in all truthfulness, was kind of like watching a train wreck. It was bad, per say, but more like a catastrophe you couldn't look away from.

We went to Tokyo Joe's, you know, one of those Colorado restaurants with a random word and someone's name. Brendan and I smuggled in our tofu and I ordered Green Tea ice cream, a delicacy which I'm sure is absent from Columbia, Missouri.

We ran into Taryn, and I wondered if the boy she was with was the boy she thinks she might be in love with.

Luke and I talk about minimalism and it's one of those conversations that I've missed during my four months away. One of those things that is exclusive to the people I met at Lakewood.

We watch Ocean's Twelve which could be just as easily experienced by watching Ocean's Eleven on crack.

We go to Barnes and Noble and I buy Katie's christmas present, but sadly the boy checking me out happens to be my age rather than one of the older clerks who know me so well. He smiles slyly at me when I buy it and I just smile back in defiance, because, well, I'm not catholic, so there.

The night continues on at Scott's house where we end up walking and I end up feeling like a total prude, because I am the last remaining non-drinker it seems. And I'm generally the one who cares the least.

The next day we attempt to go see Closer and after a ridiculous amount of failed communication we do. After the movie ends we sit in the theater for an hour waiting for someone to kick us out, but they never do. Brendan and I discuss politics and the joys of phone banking and the conversation splits into two.

We end up at IHOP and I carry a penguin in with me and just barely resist another pot of coffee. Finally at two in the morning I climb into bed.

This is colorado. It's not burning, yet.

Too much caffeine.

I have no concept of limit. I will just drink and drink and drink until the room starts spinning. Oh, wait, did you think I was talking about alcohol? Oh, no. This is the good legal, available-from-the-CA-down-the-hall caffeine.

Really, I just wanted one cup of coffee, because I was ridiculously exhausted, and was planning on a diner trip at midnight, but for some reason I stayed and drank another and another. While Barry worked on some presentation about education and when if I had any sense of social decency I probably would have left three or so hours ago.

Then, the roommate, Nick, Katie, and I trekked towards the elusive "dirty" diner which, much to our disappointment, was not open, leaving us with the option of the greasy, disgusting El Rancho, which serves a kind of mexican cuisine similar to the slop Casa Bonita liked to refer to as food. I'm really not sure how coherent anything I've said tonight has been, though it all seems painfully clear in my head, we did discuss the possibilities and limitations of leather condoms, which, in retrospect, I may have thought about too deeply. And of course, the ever-present question of purple leotards, our drug influences from nick, and the baffling physics of three-hour make out sessions. And I,I'm sure, rambled about religion at some point, because I've developed an obnoxious tendency of doing so. Which is what happens when you burst my secularist bubble.

Also, we laughed at drunk people which I believe is probably nearly as entertaining as being drunk itself and saw a girl with the most terrifying mustache ever. Sadly, we were cruelly chased out of the restaurant by the scent of the most foul-smelling male ever.

Sadly we did not procure any holiday flavored cigarettes.

And I would just like to point out, I can still master the use of the word "procure" while heavily dosed on caffeine. But I don't think my overdosed brain can handle any more coherent sentences, so I bid you adieu.

Once more with feeling

So, since everyone is jsut raving about blogs, now I have one you can all read, with about half the introspection of the livejournal.

Finals are not my forte. I don't like studying and I sure as hell don't like doing things any amount of time in advance, but I'm running out of time, so soon enough I will in fact stop wasting time and start studying. In fact, I keep not waking up to avoid having to get up and study, wich gives me a guilt complex because everyone else is studying. Silly overachievers.

In other news, Placebo has released a collection of singles which I bought with my bookstore rebate. This makes me immensely happy.

Katie and I were walking to Taco Bell when we ran into my roommate from Summer Welcome whom I hardly ever see. She offered us a ride approximately half a block up the street to Taco Bell. I never know what to say to people in these situations. I really only knew her for two days and I haven't seen her in about five months, so there's not much to say. I'm really not a fan of the awkward five minute conversations.

I feel a distrurbing amount of pressure to be interesting, now. But I'm too tired.