Aldous Huxley

"'... But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.'
'In fact,' said Mustapha Mond, 'you're claiming the right to be unhappy.'
'All right then,' said the Savage defiantly, 'I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.'
'Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen to-morrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.'
There was a long silence.
'I claim them all.'"

The Music I Listen To With My Hip Friends

Meat?

This morning, Ruth asked me to cut her a piece of "vegetarian sausage" and pointed to my cucumber.

Ruth ist eine Schlampe

Here's the scene: I was sitting in the kitchen, a mere moment ago, talking to Ruth on Facebook chat. Nothing too unusual about that, even though we are in the same apartment. She started asking me about the seating situation in the kitchen. When I told her there were no more places, as I expected, she stayed put. A minute later, she asked me to come into her room, "Really quickly", she said. My exact response was, "Of course, for you." As I walked down the hall to find her, I heard movement coming from the room she was occupying. Right as I was about to yell, "Ruth, you don't need to come out! I'm right here!" I saw a shape catapulting toward me. It was Ruth, running so quickly her arms were pumping at her sides with the effort. She bolted past me, naught but a flash, and I followed her to see what the fuck was going on.

The bitch was stealing my seat in the kitchen!

Haha, though. Someone set a dirty mug in the pot of hot chocolate she wanted to drink.

Callback

Callback to an earlier blog entry,
It's kind of like the way I feel when I have a crush on somebody. Something like, "Oh, fuck. This is going to be inconvenient."

Did I just quote myself? Yes, in fact, I did. Sometimes it's worth it just to sidestep the copyright issues.

God, listen to me. I talk enough shit for this whole city.

Lachs and Crackers

I am making an effort to update more, since apparently my darling friend Hailey reads this shit (she sent me a very lovely private e-mail in response to one of my entries).

Today, I went to school in the snow for the first time. Quite the hurdle for someone who moved from California's Central Valley, and who thinks that sitting under a tree in San Francisco's summer is too cold. My Bahn ride to school was lovely this morning, as I stared out the window at the snow "flakes", holding a warm coffee between my knees, until I noticed that the guy sitting directly across from me was staring at me. I looked for his red-tipped cane, but when I couldn't see one was forced to return to my formerly comfortable gazing. I don't know if anyone reading this has ever attempted a forced-gaze, but if not, know that you will never succeed. It will inevitably turn into a sort of seething glare.

Fuming, I crunched on toward my German class, in which my professor told us that if you live in Bayern, a small cherub-child brings your gifts. That's all in order if you're a really little kid, but upon getting older do you have to feel bad about child labor?

Now, I'm taking a forced trip to the Olympic Stadium and writing a six-page paper (1.5 spaced, because my teacher apparently wants to fight the system?) on Erich Mendelssohn's Einsteinturm.

Nunc Dimittis

is the name of the story by Roald Dahl that I'm reading right now. The book it's in is lying open next to me, and I have decided to dedicate this remarkably uninteresting entry of my blog to it.

I've been having a hard time recently. I can't help but compare myself to other people. I'm finding myself growing vulnerabler (fuck off) each day, and my lack of ambition is irritating even to me. Here is the conversation that I am hearing every moment in my head:
"You, Jordan, are an untalented, lazy slob."
"But, that's not necessarily true! I am actually pretty smart, and think I can coax some productivity out of myself if I try harder!"
"But you know you won't try harder. You're too lazy. That's why you're fat too, by the way."
"Enough people have found me attractive for me to start believing it, though!"
"Attractive people don't have to talk themselves into self-confidence! Anyway, no matter how good you look, it doesn't chance the fact that you're an untalented, lazy slob."
et cetera.

I've also started realizing how uncomplicated my friends at home are. This was an adjective I would never have come up with on my own, but you know how sometimes a person who is speaking a second language uses these amazingly straightforward words? Ruth describes people with this word in a way that explicitly expresses how valuable she finds this quality. It's a quality I've always found attractive, but since I'm jaded by knowledge of the English language, I would say, perhaps, "nice", which makes the person in question sound a bit bland. (Is that just me?). Anyway, we are used to describing human quality in these specific words that exist for that purpose. Words that are both the opposite of "complicated" and used regularly to describe people generally imply stupidity. Maybe that's harsh, but it's definitely something leaning in that direction.

The people I prefer are not stupid. They are intelligent, unpretentious, and usually too lazy or exhausted to pretend to be anyone they are not. I miss them so much.

Blatent sexism is hilarious.

Foreign language textbooks say the darndest things. Usually I spend my time in German class flipping through grammatical explanations, looking for names that distract me. Inevitably, they will invent people with names like Inge, Sven, Gitte (which was, by the way, my ex-roommate's name), or Dieter. Today, however, when constructing sentences that explained why Dieter does the things that he does, I could not help but notice the way in which they referred to his wife. Usually I frown upon feminist paranoia, but there was absolutely no paranoia involved in this realization. I was giggling by the end of the first sentence, and by the third and last sentence involving his wife, I was outright laughing. The sentences -- with very few grammatical liberties taken -- are:
Dieter takes care of the kids so his wife could go to the hairdresser.
Dieter doesn't go in the living room, so as not to disturb his wife and her friends, who are gossiping over coffee.
Dieter gives his wife a lot of money so she can buy clothes.

Blogging for someone else's sake.

I really hate writing for the sake of writing. It not only feels useless in itself, but it makes me feel like a horrible writer. I need to roll a cigarette...

Moments later:

One thing Europe has provided me with: if not the ability to roll cigarrettes well, at least the resolve to attempt it instead of buying packs of pre-rolled. Another thing is the self-righteous feeling I get whenever I specify "pre-rolled" instead of "rolled".

What am I doing here? I started this blog with the intention of focusing on the answer to that question, and now I realize that I'm doing the same things here as I did in California. I sit in my kitchen with great frequency, and wittily banter with one to five of the nine people currently living in my four-bedroom. A breakdown: officially, I live with Ruth, Laura, and Lea, from Austria, Spain, and Germany respectively. Lea is in New York until the end of December, and my friend Lauren from the FU-BEST program is subletting until then. A friend of a friend of Laura, Carmen, is living here until she finds an apartment. Four other people, Jon, Andy, Bryony, and Claire are living in our spare room until they find a flat. They are from England, Ireland, Singapore, and England respectively. We recently realized that none of us are actually from Germany, and that Ruth is the only one who has spoken German since birth.

This is an abrupt place to end, but I can't write this shit anymore.

I am sharing my bed with....

-two crumpled up legwarmers
-an empty bottle of Frühstück to GO
-a completely full bottle of Tropischer Saft
-a hat
-Lauren's shirt (??)
-a half-eaten Falafel sandwich
-two plastic bags
-a bottle of soy sauce
-two empty tupperware containers
-chopsticks
-a shoe

Whoops, let me correct that. Tinfoil that was formerly containing a half-eaten falafel sandwich.