When she saw the funny side...

I have a cockroach problem, sort of, in my apartment. Sweet!

About a week ago, I saw a cockroach once, then twice, running around my kitchen. The second time, I saw the cockroach disappear into the corner under one of the cabinets. On closer inspection, it turned out there was a big fucking hole down under there. Needless to say, I was unhappy.

Not knowing what to do, I wrote an email to my landlady, and moved my desklamp into the kitchen, training the light on the hole. I left the lamp like that, night and day, for two days, until my landlady could come and look at the problem. I also bought a shit ton of house cleaners and bug killer, since in my eyes everything in my kitchen (and probably the rest of the apartment, this isn't a big place) was now dirty and infected with bugs. Not just any bug either, but the biggest and most disgusting bug that was ever likely to invade my home. And I waited.

My landlady came, looked at the hole for 20 seconds, then told me to go buy some tape. She then asked me if I could move out of my apartment by early July (my lease and my visa here don't run out until the first of September), because she had someone else who might want to move in here then. And then she left.

After she left, I fumed, and sprayed more bug spray around the house. The next day, I taped up the hole. Soon after, I found a cockroach dying in my bathroom. Awesome. I sprayed it with more bug killer, then covered it with a scoop of laundry detergent, and swept it and the detergent into my dustpan. I threw the contents of the dustpan out onto the street in front of my apartment.

Today, I have been sitting around the house cleaning and waiting for my landlady to show my apartment. 15 minutes after she was supposed to be here, she calls to tell me she is canceling the appointment because the guy is taking another apartment. When I tell her I still need to talk about the bug issue, she tells me she has other business now and hangs up on me. Again, awesome!

I am so glad I don't pay this woman her rent on time. Maybe I will go on rent-paying strike until she fixes the wall.


On happier notes, it's Golden Week, so I can do fuckall for the next 9 days or so and that is just fine. Also, last night, after having a short conversation about the 1994 movie version of "Little Women" (holy shit, Winona Ryder is painful to watch in that thing), I re-remembered my love of Gabriel Byrne and in particular his performance in "Miller's Crossing". Afterwards, I had a long night of dreams in which a young Mr. Byrne was my boyfriend. If only my dreams were like that more often, instead of their more usual form, where I am fighting with my parents or have to save my sisters from the apocalypse. Come on, psyche, cut me some slack here.

I am in love...

With this project.

http://colorwar2008.com/submissions/youngnow

http://youtube.com/watch?v=oRAEm0JPV4E&feature=related

Get that dirt off your shoulder.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/20/uselections2008.hillaryclinton :

Clinton accused Obama of doing too much complaining after he spent most of the ABC debate on the defensive over his political and religious links and his comments that small-town Pennsylvanians are bitter and cling to guns and religion. But he recovered on Friday in North Carolina by using hip-hop moves taken from rap mogul Jay-Z that had a crowd - liberally peppered with white women, supposedly Hillary's grassroots - on their feet cheering.

Drawing shrieks of laughter from a crowd in Raleigh, as he dived south briefly from Pennsylvania for an event ahead of the North Carolina primary on 6 May, Obama joked about the debate. He bit his lip, gave one of his wide, electric grins, and mimed a hand stabbing with a dagger, saying: 'Hillary looked in her element. Y'know, that's her right, to twist the knife a little bit.'

Then he mimed brushing dirt off each shoulder, a move that Jay-Z, one of his musical heroes, uses to dismiss the negative sentiments of anyone ill-disposed towards him or what he stands for. The crowd went wild and commentators declared it a seminal moment in the campaign, combining his charisma, feel for popular culture, youth and resilience.

Clinton had earlier declared: 'I'm with Harry Truman on this - if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen ... just speaking for myself, I am very comfortable in the kitchen.'

Obama was effectively saying: 'I am, too - name your kitchen'.

Noooo!

Wahaha fuck I missed tickets going on sale for Radiohead's LA shows! Wahhhhh nooo.

I seem to be slowing down with the blogging again, but lately it's been hard to find the good few clear minutes I need to write down what I've been up to and how I've been feeling. Usually, if I get those moments at all, it's at a time when I really ought to be doing something else, like homework (such as right now). Still at the same time, I feel odd to think of vast amounts of my life passing undocumented.

So, what has happened lately? I have eaten a lot of indian food, both at restaurants and home-made, in the last two weeks. I went to Tokyo and saw a woman I met two years ago at the University of Chicago present her dissertation research findings, and I told her a little bit about what my experience of grad school had been like. I tried and failed to bake pumpkin bread in a microwave/oven hybrid at the house of some friends. I slept on floors, and had strange dreams. I drank coffee without any sugar or cream. I saw a great deal of art. I missed more school than I feel comfortable with, with no pronounced negative effects (yet). I saw many, many cherry blossoms, and then days of rain washed them away. I smelled a cherry-blossom impersonator flower, that smelled like anise. I got angry at the Chinese government and made untenable plans to go to Nagano to raise a Tibetan flag as the torch passed. I drank organic wine from Chile. I swept my floors, many times, and ran my shoes through the washing machine. I bought hair-ties for the first time in a year, and started to use them every day. So, you know, I was alive.