Hair in Buns

I wear my hair in buns. With a pencil if I have one. I guess it's not surprising that I am going to end up working a library then. I like to burrow, to read, and to find things for you.

Last night I went to a dinner party at the Argentines luxurious compound, complete with butler and mirrored bathroom. To help bring down the luxe, I drank more red wine than anyone else. I think this cements my place as favorite dinner guest. Upon leaving, and post inviting everyone to play soccer, my Argentine hosts told me that I have an accent. A foreign accent. French, they said.

Wrong.

My accent, as Andre would describe it, is Latina, when I've been drinking. It's been gone for a while and it's good to see it has returned to me.

All good things in time.

Milan Kundera might hate women. It's hard to tell. It's easy to tell that he is highly confused by them and in turn, dissects them. Not quite like the human centipede, but not too far off, save the actual physical gastric system connections. And the cutting.

My birthday is next week. I have a kickball game on the same day. There will be a bridge party to follow and a real party to follow on the weekend. I'm easy to please.

ouch

this hurts so bad. gonna look so good later

necessity of contradiction

I keep falling asleep while standing. Danger only to the upper extremities.

IF you want the world to give you something, provoke it. Inertia and equilibrium.

Life has been fast paced and liquid. Rain, chlorine, and beer. Rule #3-Clear and copious.

graphic observations

I'm not trying to be political, but come on. It's way too easy.

And maybe because I'm hungover, but mostly because more people need to know, I bring you this .

By the way, how is $250,000 middle class?

Stan's Wedding

I have a choice between two dresses for a wedding on December 26. The color is already chosen-oasis it is-like turquoise or something. The decision is dress style. Let the voting begin.

Physical Displacement

Last night I went to the store to buy things including a folder for my visa petition application. Along the journey I witnessed something that I had never seen before and was delighted to happen upon. Bicycle polo.

At first I didn't understand. Why were the bicycles riding around in circles on the tennis court?Why the tricked out wheels?Then, I saw the mallets and got scared. Deadly bicycle gang training ritual? Stuck at a red light, I had the time to ogle some more and see the elusive polo ball that was stirring these bicycles up in a frenzy.

Fascination.

Today I wore jeans. What a terrible idea. It's way too hot for that.

After returning some L-braces to Home Depot, I went to Bayou Bicycles with my newly returned three dollars. I need some bicycle lights. Relying on my natural night vision has been my technique of late, but it's wearing itself thin. There were no lights that I needed so I showed the bicycle machine my gear shifter/derailer cable that needs fixing and he said I need new casing. I say yes this sounds like a fun idea.

I get cable housing and then realize it's probably something I have to buy. For about two minutes I forgot about buying/selling of goods. Freecycle might be altering my brain patterns for exchanging goods. Next step, to the counter of purchasing I go. I tell man I have three dollars, so let's make a deal. He no respond. I'm hoping real hard and sending out a barrage of mind-bullets. Total $3 with tax.

end of the storey story storey is that mind bullets are appropriate ammunition when you have small money parts in your pocket and you have lots of time to concentrate yourself.

I have a problem: I keep being tired all the time.

You: tell me the solution and/or cause of sed problem.

Pony Hearts Club

It's tough to chin up everyday. It is even harder when your bruises are coming in by the bucketful and scraped knees are making a grand entrance into your collection of peripheral injuries. Probably should not have jumped into a stagnant cesspool of a bayou and probably should not have climbed out using the largest roughest cement blocks around. It did work out my biceps.

Life around these parts is tame followed by manic sprees of drinking and job hunting. Networking is the way to go, but I still am not so sure. What do I say, how much do I lie and when will it be enough?

Everyone is leaving soon. Maybe with little distraction I will be more productive at getting what I want (what do I want). I need to stop thinking so much and start feeling. Emotive, emoticon, emolliant, emo

Bed time.

Keepin me Keepin on

Today I lea rned CPR and First Aid. Can you do 100 compressions per minute? That's the rate to keep those dead people from being permanently dead.

Afterwards I talked to a fellow VL about life and about projects and I was reminded of how bitter and spiteful I can sometimes be. Not because she told me, but because I've been feeling it, and well I don't even agree with it, in principal. I know it's wrong, but it's a trap that is all too easy to wander into because it alleviates some of the frustration of life. In all actuality, it does nothing but move it around and what goes around, comes around, so I need to be reminded of this from time to time and perhaps today was that. Hurricane force winds got me the ride home in a truck full of conversation.

I think I need a constant reminder of the frivolity of it all because it's worth it. Gotta keep me from overthinking. I feel French.

Positive notes of life: I've been drinking exceptional amounts of water and there is no threat to my hydration. My bicycle is looking nice. All brakes working, rear rack attached. The cats were not missing. I can eat really spicy food and not get heartburn. I can drink like a fish.

hunger

it's a constant battle between the stomach and the mind

decisonmaking by decisionmakers

Sitting in my office chair for too long soaks my pillow with sweat and always ends with my over-sized t-shirt clinging to my back, bonding with perspiration. There is no denying the heat and no remedy for a warming room with a red floor littered with cat fur and tire tracks. This is just a glimpse into the visual world that surrounds me right now. Audibly there is Juanes and power-drills and the occasional tapping-rapping-clapping sound from the street, nothing out of the ordinary for a lazy thursday in bayou st. john. Id expect nothing less from my tour books.

Uh-oh. new sound! it's the snowball truck! I should run out but im not even dressed and then i'd have to find money and that's one of those never-ending challenges in the life of allysin. I have small amounts but to get anymore from the fed id have get rid of some. it's a silly circle-some would say a sick downward spiral into oppression. just kidding.

Decisions will be made and then potentially rued if my tarot is accurate. the future holds spiteful allysin while the present should be hopeful-gotta keep on keepin on-the past is miserly.

Forgetting and then Laughter

There is a wonderful book by Milan Kundera called the Book of Laughter and Forgetting. I wish I had it in my possession tonight. I don't. Instead, I have FML.

Lately my life has been rollercoasting. There are extremes of mass chaos and busy. Then there are the envious days of unemployment spent scouring the world for a paying job. It's not the money that lures me it's the capability to: 1. sustain myself 2. send for my foreign object 3. eat legumes.

And it's in the moments of lull and waiting that it dawns on me(you?), there isn't true waiting. This is it, a la michael jackson.

As soon as I start to think all my thoughts flee my brain. I can only hope they find refuge in my fingers as they tap a rap tap on the keyboard.

Eff that. I need to address the most pressing concern at hand. Kittens. There are three kittens plus their mother cat, also slightly a kitten, who are destroying everything is this apartment. The claw up all that can be clawed-have you ever seen a kitten climb up a bicycle tire like it were a cat toy? It's nowhere near desirable and disturbingly cute, at times. Before this experience, I never could understand people who said they didn't like cats-now, I get it. It's a shredded nightmare sometimes. It's probably just the numerosity.

Needs

In order to bring a Geraud to America I need to make at least $9.50/hr in a full-time job. Shouldn't be that hard, but it is.

Any leads anybody?

Just to let you know that I'm still living.

Life has been moving along at a steady pace. Almost something of a slight jog with spurts of sprints mixed in to give it the added flavor of sweat.

I have a job that is less than satisfying but gives me enough independence to come up with coping mechanisms to pass the time and to beat the doldrums. I have a volunteer position that has earned many business cards in the last few days and I have my the warmth of a muggy new orleans hug to keep my spirits up. All in all, this amounts to a wonderful life that no longer suffers the pains of isolation.

I eat lots of hot sauce and I burn my lips. I wear lots of sunscreen and I still burn my arms. I drink lots of water and it doesn't burn when I pee!! YippeE!

This weekend is an anomaly. Guests will arrive one by one and we will all listen to Leonard Cohen and Andre in succession and the times will be merry fueled by the copious amounts of rum that I just purchased in order to receive my mail-away rebate.

Soon, I need to make my way out of computer land and over to airport land to pick up an old friend. It's strange that I was asked, but I understand the need so well that I can't say no.

My concluding remark is this, do not put the goo in your bicycle inner tubes it will only blow up in your face-2 years later.

Idling in Mediocrity

Here I am.

This is a stark break from previous entries raving about my arrival on sovereign soil. I have too much time and too much information coupled with too little experience. Add in my lack of vehicle and you are looking a lady destined for the welfare line as soon as student status clears...

There is so much frustration in learning it all the hard way. I could use an older sister.

The biggest downside is not my stagnating life, but the fact that I will cause stagnation and another to wallow in the self despair and misery that is endless waiting for an unknown future. I guess decisions based on emotion are irrational, through and through-but really I think that a world that refuses to accept love and only embrace cold-logic cannot and will never be good. TED Talks say 'do what makes you happy, pursue your dream and don't give in to temptation of money'. Yes, this is nice and all, but if we are adults born into debt, the youthful idealism of community spirit dies out- almost instantly. We resent the poor who use 'social services' and envy the rich whose money fuels the rising expense of private services. And yet, our derision to the extremes of society obscures the fundamental message-we are all individuals living together as a society struggling to keep on keepin' on. There is no battle between the rich and the poor with the middle getting hit from both sides. This is a militaristic vision of society that only exists in the teleprompters of the TV land man. This perpetuation of violence and this obsession with power and abuse is blinding us all from our shared human existence.

Life is now and then it is gone.

You are the other.

I don;t understand

Maybe it's because we won't put up a fight, but I don't understand. Why I should earn less than you men folk simply because I am a woman. Ain't no sense in that. I didn't pay any less for my education or my gold teeth, so why I gotta earn less. What's the deelio?

Please explain?

Just was looking at random things (internet informations) and it made me sad...At least we should stop pretending like it's gonna be alright and that it's gonna be fair, cuz it ain't.

It's bed time.

It's good to be back

Like I said, it's good to be back.

If you read this, you have probably already heard, but the colors are everywhere.

The grey cloud of depression-dust that settles over the land of Angles exists no more in my field of vision. Instead, I see the vibrant green from a rainy spring in Texas all the way to the tropical exoticism of New Orleans. Fields of wildflowers blossom along the tarmac where, before, in the land over yonder, the only colors edging the motorway were bags of crisps glittering in their oil-soaked sheen. Now, I look out my windows and smile. Gravity, the who's who of solar-power, pulls my face upwards, lips curling towards the sun. I'm like a plant, only better.

There is of course, a downside. My grod is trapped, a prisoner of his own devices, in the homeland of his most historic enemies. Yet, he will prosper and he will not develop a scouse accent nor will he lose his sanity. Why? Because I've got that part of his brain in my left pocket, securely attached to my lucky rabbit foot and key chain magic eight-ball. Try to jinx that.

I saw my first handgun in a gas station in East Texas. I got excited.

I saw my first glimpse of the loose liquors laws of Louisiana in a gas station in Opelousas. I got excited.

It's good to be back. It'll be even better when we're all back.

Take off yer blinders

An excellent explanation of White Privilege in America. Just read this, "Imagine if the Tea Party was Black" by Tim Wise.

And this is what you'll learn when you swap team colors:

White Privilege is "The ability to threaten others, to engage in violent and incendiary rhetoric without consequence, to be viewed as patriotic and normal no matter what you do, and never to be feared and despised as people of color would be, if they tried to get away with half the shit we do, on a daily basis."

___

Of course, this representation of the Tea Party engaging in the normal patriotic behavior of American citizens is due in large part to mainstream Media coverage. If you flip to the Daily Show on the TV or any other source of news that actually attempts unbiased analysis that challenges the status quo, you'll already know this.

______

Second comment, far less political but just as important.

Getting your shoes re-soled is wonderful. It's an experience of born-again proportions. An epic feeling to wear the shoes of your past well into your future without the skin of your heel scraping along the sidewalk leaving an unfortunate trail of tears and scabby foot-flesh.

I think this needs a haiku (5-7-5?) in the comments section cuz I ain't go one in me head now.

___

Soon a terrible sadness will fall on these parts as I make my way across a sky void of volcanic ash towards a land where manifest destiny is embodied physically.

Tenderlings

Today I had several missions. To most people my missions are merely the daily duties of ingrained hygiene. But most people do not know the deliciousness that is cheese.

I bought a lot of cheese.

Then I had to take the bus. I was feeling good with my bus pass in one hand, swinging a bag full of cheese in the other, but just as I settled into my dairy fueled stupor, I saw them. Uniformed children.

Like a flood gate had opened and children dressed in plaid skirts and over-sized, over-dyed blazers were vomited out and no one had the decency to put up a !cuidado! piso mojado!

There is nothing novel, nothing reassuring about the future when this scene rushes into your life. Mostly, you want shelter and warmth but you are ambushed from all angles. You are othered. Read this in all the faces of adults, suddenly shuddering at the mere thought of sexual reproduction.

It upsets the power-balance. It is temporary. Maybe it is all just a moment that is fleeting faster than you can fight it and in the end it will remain as a vague memory, smelling fondly of cheese.

---End Thought---

---New Thought---

I am not excited about calling people anymore. It's lost all appeal. I'd prefer to spend my last days in Liverpool doing what I do well: Conducting Rambunctious Dinner Conversations.

This Volcano spewing ash upset my application. Should never have trusted fedex. The only truly reliable messengers are pigeons not airplanes.

HELP

Quick! What's the answer to the question?

WAIT, what's the question?

I will tell you but first you must agree to tell me the answer and just for the sake of rubbing your egos I'll even award you with a virtual ribbon of sorts.

So I have to answer this question in order to advance to the new level ( level employed) in this new game I'm playing down on planet Earth and I just don't know what to say.

Please describe an experience for which you played a leadership role.

At ease soldier.

Quick Ramblings

I think this sums up the Catholic Church quite well actually.

But more importantly check out the possible new name for gRod and myself.

Shaningans

This is shaningans!

It's colder inside than outside prompting me to drink and recount my Tuesday pretending to be a Monday.

7am wake up alarm goes off. Allysin wonders what time it really is and where Grod is. There has been no kiss goodbye. Maybe she slept thru it.

70?am enter Grod, Bisous and a bonne journee to you too.

730am alarm cries again interrupts a dream where people telling me about my nice facial hair. The coldness is already starting to settle beneath my skin.

8am Drinking coffee. black. Eating yoghurt with muesli with prunes with a spoon out of a nutella cup to the sound of taping fingers. The world appears to have made mostly unscathed through the night, thanks news reporters. (in case jenny reads this, thanks be to god)

834am wanderlust + internet= blasting through the past with photo albums.

answering emails. deleting spam emails from spam employers.

9am back to the kitchen, hi pile of dishes I see you see me, but we'll talk later. OR now. Dishes meet hands plus soapy water.

time unaccounted for exploring job sites and search engines for new postings, reading browsing clicking, repeat, slight flutters of excitement serious pangs of under-qualified allysins.

10am. the clean sheets are nice draped across the furniture turning my dining room into a blanket fortress, but this cold is killing me. New laundry to dominate. Start, spin cycle GO!

1004am. Machine does my laundry, I turn to my machine to teach me. Teach me about Fostering Change in the Health Services. GO!

1117am. hunger begins. Sandwich is for lunch but not yet, must hold out. Decide to boil eggs (2).

1118am. This change is taking time, but I am knowing more and more by the second....ask me anything.

1204am. Hunger dominates and we are back in the kitchen staring at an oven grilling bread. A toaster would have been a good investment.

1225am. Sandwich done, cheese melted, puzzle selected and we eat. Munching away and solving clues left and right. Delicious.

1pm Oh yes, the laundry, the new one clean cycle. Make it come out of the machine and onto the racks. Easy peasy pie.

After 1pm. Wanderbug part 2 comes in. Technology, erm software you say. How about Access? I feel the need to make a database. Here I go!

2pm. Feeling productive, making documents, saving things, editing, general typing extravaganza

3pm. Can no longer put off emailing profs about refs so this must be done. My attitude is jolly. This'll have to do for the shoe shinning emails about to be made. Tell the world I am wonderful, puhleaze and, uh, oh yes you are wonderful too...just in case you forgot. wink. wank.

330pm. Email complete. one out of office reply. I guess that's last minute justice for you. It's ok. I have the outside world to visit. I'm hesitant because the cold is all over. I'll put on another sweater and then be strong enough to defeat the winds.

331pm. Outside is warm. I am a fool for only staying inside my frozen igloo of an apartment, but maybe it was just my frozen brain. Must not dwell on temperatures unless appendages go blue.

337pm Arrival at the library. Deposit 3 books. 2 books on Scotland 1 on motorcycle maintenance. It was not my favorite. Get a big book in exchange about hitch-hiking..its weight is helping me out today in case of a slight failure in gravitational forces. It's ok I'm not gonna float away, not today.

344pm. Somerfields grocery store. Green Grocer? Grocery shoppey? Food seller? IT's all so complicated when yer a prick. (that's fer poule). Pick up some bread, salsa, mustard and pistachios. The pistachios are going to go in the experimental sushi to arrive later this week.

359pm. Back in my home. Less cold. I guess I needed that outside warmth, but I still need this cup of coffee now. Make it hot, eat an oatcake triangle to appease my stomach and energy levels. Decide that today is an occasion for 2 triangle oatcakes and put another into digestion. Coffee hot and spiked with bailey's.

411pm. Office again, neck sore from giant scarf. mood generally optimistic will all the possibilities of being the devils advocate should the opportunity arise.

434pm blogged

It's a been long time

I have not written in a while. Sorry.

Well at least not here.

It is Sunday March 28, 2010 and there are currently three living people in this apartment.

The poule has arrived and the Poule Reunion is now. Good things ahead including sitting, sipping, sharing, and slurring.

In addition to this, I have learned one piece of etiquette. Not sure you dissect etiquette into small chunks, but I am.

So now, I must present the not so surprising nouvelle that Grod and myself are engaged with a pee-diamond to seal the deal. Nothing like the tangy mixture of two gouttes to show some love.

I joke, I joke...about the gouttes.

We have big plans ahead drawn out over several years and which may possibly end with Grod behind a bar wearing cowboy attire serving shots of rum to his herd of faithful drunks. :)

Liquid courage, folks, liquid embrace.

2nd order of business.

I'm coming back home where it's warm and the sun actually works to radiate its fireball. There is some slight anxiety mixed in. It is never easy to collect your life into suitcases and cardboard boxes and more importantly to reinstall it elsewhere. However, I am hopelessly optimistic and have also just realized that I may be arrogant enough to pull it off. This is good?

Where I should go and with what purpose are still unanswered but not in a foreboding sense, more like revelations that the future will bring and is the only one that can.

3rd order of business.

I really need to make my feet meet a beach with sand. They have lived for too long in cotton socks, shielded from the elements. The result is a pair of feet that are just straight up nasty, but without the mold and fungus of feet actually ailing. Nah, I just me some natural exfoliation some good ole fashioned skin on earth action.

Bahabah.

That's the end of transmission.

Now let's go for a pint.

Shake it!

I can't take pictures. iShake. Tremble. I used to think that it was just my hands and figured I was coming down with some terrible chronic disease. Now, I know differently. My hands don't just shake, my entire body does. It's as if the camera appareil gets into my hands and it sways my body. Back and forth like a tiny boat in a tiny sea, but not with all the water.

Two magnets of opposite polar fields fidget and then break apart. This might be relevant to my situation with a camera. I'll take experiment suggestions.

Apart from this discovery late yesterday, my life has been slowly progressing as one would expect life to do. And pleasantly so, I might add. Life as a lady of leisure + the internet has it merits. The social physical interactions may be lacking but then I just walk outside and everyone is orange and is smuggling rabbits in their hair and I feel better about this slow descent into hermitism.

They are the color orange. The bright ones, not everyone maybe, but the visible people are. It's a constant parade of glitz in the afternoon. Little women teetering half a foot in the air. Heads spinning faster with the rise in elevation. Aesthetic drugging.

Need books.

Suggestions? Anti-recommendations?

PS

I just found this on the facebook. It's 7th grade allysin + other randoms, circa 1999.

Done and Out

My dissertation machine turned me (and Geraud) into double-sided printing experts. Have questions, we have potential answers. So much paper everywhere, full of my words. Strange. But now all that hard work and highly productive procrastination has come to an end, and it's sad. No more dreading the thought of something so specific. It's hard to explain, now that I don't have such a concrete task to do, I can't enjoy procrastinating anymore.

In order to reclaim my daily pursuit of internet knowledge, I need something to avoid doing, something real. This is where the people with eyes and typing fingers come in. We need to my next objectives in order that I can profit from the incubation period which precedes them. It's like I am Mark the incubator.

To have idea of what have been up to since mastering the art of plastic ring binding, listen up.

I bought a book "The Ultimate Spanish Review and Practice". The book is a threat to Geraud because of how my previous linguistic adventures in French led me to him, and now I pursue the Spanish.

Trying to win every competition ever. Good thing they are all free entry-competitions otherwise I'd have a serious gambling problem. Maybe I already do, discuss....

That's it. I need some suggestions. Some time killers some time fillers..whatever direction it makes the time go or come or simply stop, I'll accept it. OR look at OR pretend to look at it but really just be studying the unwritten words. FULL STOP.

So, I'll wait here until the end of March when my life comes alive again with visitors from across the seas. Inside the internet because it's warm. I'd take warmth over cleanliness any day.

is this attractive?

Personally, I find it reminiscent of that time I was possessed.

Procrastina

I have 23 + 1 maybe day until I have to turn in my word machine. I am excited only to be finished with it and not have to spend my time sitting behind a computer, although I imagine that's what employment feels like (except for firefighters, teachers, dansing robots, trapeze artists and the lot). I once read that adults who spend years out of full-time employment during their early twenties never recover from the mental tug-of-war between the freedom of chomage and the fulfillment of travail. I really don't know what to make of that. I mean, I'm sure it's true for some randoms but probably less true for people who are determined to rise to the top and then marginalize the rest of society. There is something terrifying about the desire-the ambition-to succeed as an individual, for it ignores the the communal forces that helped along the way. This sentence is not coherent.

All we be saying is that folks be contradictory all der life-long days and the only way to avoid insanity is to ignore the contradictions, ignore injustice, or drink.

Anyways, I made a long example but then realized this is not the place for an imaginary rant about imagination. Therefore, I present thee with a stolen graphic from Natalie Dee.

Happy Groundhog Day

This is old picture time, but new motion time.

Creation happens when forced work takes it toll and solitude turns into grossitude.

Another Gorgeous British Sunrise!

This is what I see when I look out the window at approximately 8am. Somewhere there is a sun, but not here. It's the strangest thing. It's as if there is light without the sun which is a curious and thought-inducing phenomenon for someone who grew up in the Sunlight.

Oh and on a side note, we have surpassed the most depressing day of the year. Hope everyone made it out alive.

:)

Astute Observation of a Cardboard Box & You

Simple and almost smiling infographic. Love.

Public Polling

I'm back. We're back.

Two Sunday arrivals in a row. It's an exhausting taxi back from the airport to find a stark apartment with two dead poinsettias inside. They look frozen. I'm going to keep them for their withering effect and their symbolic representation of winter vegetation. (lame)

Moving on to better events, it's time for a public opinion poll on the continuation of my young years here with you all (ya'll for Geraud).*

2010 Move Away Generator X2

Please select from the following options and submit your desired choice(s) in the comments section followed by an artistic emoticon.

_________________

A) Finish dissertation, move to New Orleans in April, Find Job, Ride Bicycle, Send for my Man

B) Fool's dissertation, move to New Orleans in February, Ride Bicycle, Resent Past Choices, Find Job, Accept and Cherish past choices followed by learned experiences, Send for my Man

C) Finish dissertation, sit on CV until details emerge clearly, Stay in Liverpool until further notice, Find Job, Complain about ERthing

D) Fool's dissertation, join army, Risk life for country which imposed horrendous student loans on Children before allowing them the right and pleasure of excessive alcohol consumption, Adopt stray kitten

E) Order food on the internet, convince Delivery person to write dissertation, eat some pizza/bread, acknowledge the ill-effects of fast food, Detox, move back to somewhere

F) Play the lottery daily, leisurely browse the internet and live vicariously through the acts of others while consuming minimum resources, WIN the lottery, overconsumption, religious awakening, sudden and tragic foot injury

G) Force my Man into the music industry singing covers of French Classics, Generate Geraud's Greatest Hits of 2010, book seasonal gigs in New Orleans and all other choice destination, spurious bicycle activity included

H) Write papers for undergraduate students, ride bicycle, location free, feed cookies to my Man.

The choice is yours.

* Since hanging out with Seth, my Man has taken to saying everyday with a pronounced Texan accent which results in a world resembling 'ER-day' or 'Erreyday' or 'Eur-I-Day"

The State of Now

So many words of frustration have been expressed over dinner that the only thing left to say is visual.

Here's hoping that they have been clearing airplane shaped spots out of this tundra that is Britain.