Thoughts from the past day or so:

-Being an old woman will be strange—these guys who're our age now'll be smartasses like our grandfathers...using repetitive punchlines from mid-'90s movies.

-What shall I be? Screenwriter? Novelist? Copy editor? Law...something? Columnist? Gifted ed. teacher? English teacher? English professor? What should I decide to crusade for? I've got a lot of causes, but only one life, as far as I know. Must make it count. [shrugs] I should take the easy way out—do everything and never decide.

-I've wanted to yell out the window at these loud kids outside for weeks, but my roommate wouldn't let me, as it's usually 1 a.m. or later when people are being stupid. At that point the other two suitemates are usually holed up pretending to sleep. Anyway, some guy on the ground outside finally got the same idea and yelled at these idiots in the dorm next door with open windows:

"Hey D2 assholes, shut the hell up!"

-Real name found in the phone book while looking for character names: R. Biv.

This place needs a treehouse. Not a clubhouse that overzealous Greeks or business/politics/international politics majors could take over, but just a college kid–proportioned thing built of wood and metal surrounding a tree that we could climb on, sit on, attach hammocks to, etc. It'd be another fixture, much like the swings, the picnic tables, the hammocks, the basketball court, and the sand volleyball court. I don't think it'd be a huge liability, as there are already things on campus (like the ongoing construction) that are more of a danger to our safety.

A treehouse would be great, though. People could go sit on it to make out in the moonlight, have deep conversations on it, or just climb on it for fun. It could become a tradition in and of itself, meaning something different to each of thousands of students. It'd have to be constructed well, of course, and look good—none of these bright, primary-colored plastics for us sophisticated college students, as this will be a treehouse, after all, not a playground. But yeah...what a boon it would be to have such a thing.

Eh. Before that, though, someone just needs to get out of one of the existing hammocks downstairs so I can go lie there and read.

Kim can't very well create a new species of living pony beings out of thin air, but she did the next best thing: She made me a knife fish! There's going to be a trio of knife animals: The knife pony covers the land, the knife fish covers the sea, and the knife duck covers the air. It's a great system of killing...

Aside from that, I've nothing of interest to say. I like the smoke from Marlboro Lights, which Bernie was smoking earlier. For the record, I'm never going to smoke, but I do find myself enjoying secondhand smoke perhaps a bit too much.

I feel nicely commodified—I bought some orange-colored, orange-flavored sparkly Crest toothpaste at Target on Friday, then today got my mother to finally buy me the sparkly, translucent yellow rubber duck and red-black-and-white rubber koi fish I've been wanting from the Art Museum since at least senior year. Nice things to have...and they only cost $5 total; $3 for the duck and $2 for the fish.

I could have a veritable herd of fish (koi are too cool for school, you understand) for that price.

I've also got two new ideas for things that need to come into existence:

1. Real live My Little Ponies, full of tiny cuddliness and loving, in need of nothing but air and kindness.

2. A knife fish! This, much like the knife pony, would be a koi fish swimming around, carrying a big knife in its mouth.

Saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind tonight and cried at the end of it, 'cause there was just so much back-and-forth with it, so much sad and sweet pent-up emotion involved. I wanted to laugh and cry all at once, and so I did. At the beginning of the movie, I frankly thought it was going to suck, and I worried, as it was disorienting and not what I'd expected...but it turned out far better than expected by the end.

It made me think about possibilities and probabilities and all the things that can be done right that need to stay right. "It's so fleeting" is a thought I keep coming back to—I worry about memory anyway, as that's something I'm deeply afraid of losing, and this movie may have touched a nerve with me because of that. Recently I've noticed that a whole lot of memories from the last 20 years of my life that I used to take for granted just aren't quite as clear anymore, and I worry that the same thing could happen to future memories. I fear Alzheimer's disease and such things as could take those memories from me...If we forgot each other somehow, would we find each other again? Are we ineffable—soulmates, even?—or are we simply a product of circumstance? Will we always remember what drew us together? It's like an R. Bach quote I'll paraphrase: "Why do I love you? Because you remember!"

The film also left me wondering whether people's fundamental tendencies really do keep them doing the same things over and over again and whether that's escapable or not, as it could go either way in that particular film. Fundamental tendencies, y'see, have been a big question mark with me since I got on my Calvinism kick last semester, so this was highly relevant to my slow train of thought on the subject. It also get me yearning to become unconscious to the workings of my life, as my very self-consciousness about all of this serendipity and the like makes it less full of wonder.

As far as rehearsal went earlier, I've learned something about my playing, I think: I play clarinet a hell of a lot better after playing alto for awhile, and it's gotten, as I may have mentioned before, to the point where, oddly enough, I play alto better than clarinet.

I love seeing movies in a theater, I've realized—while I'm not sure it's worth that much money, it's still a different experience than, say, sitting here in front of my computer watching 'em. Insofar as all the times I enter a movie theater are tied together with each other, it's rather exciting, or at least such experiences have the potential for excitement lingering about, which is enough to make 'em salient for me. I wonder if in some alternate lifetime, one in which I were exposed to more movies earlier on, I might've become a screenwriter or something...then I wonder if that lifetime might just be this one. While I rather suck at fiction writing—I'm too conscious of what I'm doing, in a lot of cases, to make it work—perhaps screenwriting or playwriting could be my thing.

A lot of things have been constellating for me—impulses, thought patterns, trains of thought, ideas, and actions that have been trickling together for weeks and months—in just this short span of a couple days, and I like it. I surely romanticize things...and that's fine with me.

I like adventures. I like continued existence. I like serendipity and kismet. Here's hoping things continue to work out according to plan, whichever plan that may be.

I just found a great essay about why weblogs suck that includes categories of crappy weblogs, most of which mine fits into rather well.

This is hilarious and sad at the same time:

No, You Can't Have A Pony. (Not Yours)

[five minutes later] I'm still chuckling in a pathetic sad way over this picture, just like I do every time I look at it. It's so funny...yet so sad, 'cause she can't have a pony...but so funny...

Edit 1: It's 5:20 a.m., and I'm going to sleep. Had a fantastic conversation with Austin for the last hour or so that hit on all possible relevant themes from the past coupla weeks or so. Conversations like that remind me why I came here—to meet extraordinary people like Austin.

Edit 2: I didn't really go to sleep. I lied. I got outside and decided it was nice out, so I walked over to main campus and watched the sunrise from the steps of Brookings. I got back home around 6:19 a.m. and went to sleep.

Did you know that you can take the same amount of credit hours during the summer here as you can in a corresponding semester during the regular school year for between literally a half and a third of the price? That's a good deal.

Got a letter from the Girl Scout council asking me to think about being a camp counselor this summer. I didn't realize I could still apply for it this late in the spring! The request makes sense, though, considering that I'm considered to be a council volunteer/Adult Girl Scout by virtue of being in Campus Girl Scouts, and also considering how strongly Indigo, Rainbow, and others have been urging me to apply—there's apparently a big counselor shortage these days.

Sigh. I've been walking around for a few days now in a state of nature-appreciating, camp-missing melancholy/euphoria. I even requested a couple of books from the library related to camp and Girl Scouting...and dug up the portion of my CIT notebook that I have here...and looked for camp people online.

It's occurred to me that a lot of the collections I've been building over the years, including my CD collection, my T-shirt collection, my collection of dress-up clothes, etc., the desire for which I attributed to the intricacies of being an older sister and questing for gnosis in an earlier post, may actually have taken shape during CIT I, when I realized that wearing flashy, distinctive mixtures of clothing was a great way to get campers' attention and keep them interested in what I had to say. My desire for a good sturdy mountain bike also stemmed from camp, when I had a crummy racing bike, which really didn't work well with the gravel on the roads to Manor House, Skyview, Kiamecia, and The Glen. Part of creating my own website, too, was camp-related—I wanted to create a repository of camp songs and CIT notebook observations. (I still want to do that!) As much as I credit MSA with changing my life, camp did, too, to a great extent. My current enduring love of spontaneity and spectacle, for instance, are definitely things that I picked up at camp and nurtured through subsequent summers.

Even with all that I've done over the course of the past five years, I've still considered going back to camp every summer. I really do want to go back, just like I still want to be an RA at MSA—and perhaps there's still time enough to do both. This summer is out, but perhaps the next two summers could be devoted to camp, with the summers during grad school devoted to MSA. There's a thought. I wonder whether returning to camp and/or RAing at MSA could provide that next MSA-style revelation I've been theorizing is necessary to pull me through things...

I worry, though, about being able to pull myself away from the flow of technology and online responsibilities. Can I, at this point, go without technology for a summer? I'd pretty much have to shut down my email account and blog for the summer. My Jablog moderating duties would be impossible to fulfill. (Though by the time I'd actually be able to go back to camp in another year or so, perhaps the order of things here at Jablog will have changed, too, such that I'm not the only person qualified to answer a lot of the questions we get.) I wonder if I would need to keep the same camp name, "Koi," that I had during CIT I. So many campers can't spell it right...though I do like the name.

Possible solutions to a few of the above problems, I suppose, include keeping a "camp journal" that I could blog later; maintaining correspondence via letters, rather than email; and actually picking up a phone every once in a while. My "24s" (24-hour days off) could be strategically planned so I could actually see people at least once or twice in the summer—which, as things are now, is really about all I've come to expect in a given summer. I also worry, though, that I'm just too out of shape for camp—would I be able to make it through demanding 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. days or keep up with campers?

One of the great things about camp, though, is that while things you do there matter, there's also lots of room for flamboyant silliness. As far as things mattering goes, I remember situations during my month as a CIT where counselors attending to things in a timely manner kept disasters from occurring. When you're a counselor, you matter to the dozens of girls you come in contact with in the dining hall and in the unit. You also have to document everything and make sure you haven't left anyone behind or missed subtle interactions between girls. Such responsibility and autonomy as a counselor can be rather frightening and overwhelming—hence why counselors come to value their "personal time" so much, because such time alone is necessary to stay sane and functional. (Heh...perhaps I should apply more things I learned at camp to my existence here at the university, neh? That last one there is one I've been forced to relearn the hard way.) Such responsibility, though, makes it better when you get to be silly and use your marching-band voice singing songs at the top of your lungs...or get to make snow cones...or go swimming...or draw silly pictures...or ride horses...or braid hair...or lead long lines of campers around...or head/foot tables...or run haunted houses...or put on a skits, etc. Those are the good times...

Edit: In more recent news, Jason and Erin may be making me a talking pony (Schizo!Pony?), which will say things like, "Come, Margaret, play with me!" "I WANT TO KILL THOSE WHO PARTY LATE AT NIGHT ON THE FOURTH FLOOR!" and "Here, kitty kitty..."

MD (07:39:17 PM): It might be Erin's old Bride Pony. With a new paint job.
MD (07:39:23 PM): And solder.

Need I mention that this rocks quite a bit? The engineer, on the other hand, thinks the pony should say more pony-like things, like "I want to eat some grass. I am a pony." I think it's pretty hilarious either way.

Upon seeing several people post requests to buy meal points on the LiveJournal community, I came up with my own request, in the spirit of Freecycling and Pick Me:

"Say, here's my humble request, in the spirit of Freecycling: If you or someone you know is ending up with thousands or hundreds of unused points, can't sell 'em, and can't use 'em up by the end of the year, please consider simply donating some to me gratis. This isn't a request out of greed—on the contrary, I'm in desperate need of points. I'm at about $265 right now, which won't last me much longer.

I tried requesting more on the website so it would just charge it to my student account, but it hasn't worked yet, so I may have to visit Bon Appetit and bug them about that. The thing is, though, I know for a fact that there are hundreds of students here who come nowhere near using up all their points, and the profits go straight to dining services and the university. I can't offer you money—I don't even have enough right now to go out to eat, as I have no bank account or anything saved—but if you or someone you know is so inclined as to let me have some points that will otherwise go unused, let me know.

(And yes, I do indeed have wonderful suitemates and friends who will probably hook me up with a meal or two if it really ends up being necessary, but practically speaking, I know there are people who are simply letting hundreds of points go to waste, so I'd like to use those points if I can.)"

I've always been told that if you want something, you ask for it—the results of such an honest approach can be surprising. A lot of times, simply requesting something is enough to make it so people are willing to grant you that and more. We'll see if that holds true with this request; university students in general seem to me to be a bit less open to unorthodox ideas than students in other places are, so it may just end up that I get a bunch of anonymous replies telling me to fuck off. [shrugs] We'll see...

Of course, if anyone reading this has points to donate to my cause, please let me know.

Last night I finally downloaded a version of Soulseek that works after months of being unable to connect to the main site, slsknet.org. Every client I downloaded since this fall's 149c, you see, has worked like crap—their updates, like this last Sygate Personal Firewall Pro "update," have largely turned out to work worse than what I had beforehand. Without the updates, though, you couldn't connect to their servers at all. By no means was I the only person having massive trouble with this program, which suddenly needed an unprecedented amount of semi-expert advice to even get it running, much less working well. Their forums have been flooded with complaints and desperate queries, many of which have been met with derision and scorn. Good filesharing software, at least, which is designed to work for the masses shouldn't have to be tweaked, patched, and prodded to work correctly—yet the developers have insisted that it's not their problem if thousands of users are shut out due to "configuration problems" on end-user computers.

I visited the forums, though, and tried to find threads that addressed the connection problems I was having. I wasn't getting much more than 10 search results for any given search—and that's when I got results at all—nor could I browse other users' files. I reinstalled the thing several times, to no avail. (Part of the problem may have been that in the past few months, a lot of people dropped Soulseek in favor of things that worked.) At one point, I added entries to my hosts file that the Soulseek forum moderators said were supposed to help Soulseek run by defining the correct IP for each server, since their old server had been taken over by a renegade German spyware company.

Well, it sure didn't work—what it did do was make it so I couldn't even ping the server or connect to slsknet.org at all. I asked about this and was literally cursed out by indignant forum moderators, who said it was obviously a problem on my end, then asked (in a private message, of course) if I knew how to type an address into a web browser. Sure, it turned out that it was in fact a problem on my end, as I now know, and I suspected that at the time, anyway—I just didn't know what the problem was. Their comments didn't help me figure that out.

The utter condescension I got, though, from people running a filesharing service that caters to the dumb masses was amazing. [shakes head] I know Soulseek purports to be for users of more discerning taste, those who are looking for eclectic things...but that's not how these things work out. Discerning tastes don't guarantee that one has vast technical knowledge or "power user" status. Further, I don't see a whole lot of people queueing to download Famoudou Konate, taiko drumming, or Blue Öyster Cult from me. Most people I get are looking for Weezer, Ayumi Hamasaki, or the Foo Fighters, to give a few examples of how commonplace the stuff people want is.

On with the story, though. All the while, over the past few months, I was reading, via the Soulseek blog, about new release candidate builds provided for download that I couldn't get, since I couldn't get to slsknet.org. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten about the reconfigured hosts file, or I could've fixed that problem right off. The hosts file problem finally clarified itself in my mind as I fell asleep last night, so this morning I fixed it and saw the front page of slsknet.org for the first time in months.

The real breakthrough, though, occurred last night, as I realized that I could probably find an alternate download location for these new builds. Sure enough, a German site had the 153 release candidate and an experimental 154 build. I installed version 153 and, lo and behold, it works! My much-cherished Soulseek works again, no thanks to the Soulseek forum moderators.

Edit: Here's an interesting article I found when looking to see if Soulseek had yet become an RIAA target. The author discusses Soulseek's status as a haven for nonmainstream music, asking mainstream music aficionados to find someplace else to look, lest they incur the wrath of the music industry. Right on.

Now for something that'll alienate the rest of my dwindling readership:

I feel like making an example of someone else while I'm at it, namely this guy I vaguely knew from the dorm last year. I read his blog, with its unmodified template, tiny font, etc. from time to time, and it's generally okay, though unspectacular. The guy's generally okay himself. (Isn't that great, how I pass judgment on a person's entire life in one sentence? Quite Christian of me, really...) Reading one of his recent posts, though, right after looking at a few people's shared iTunes libraries, reminded me of why I hate most people's taste in music.

Said post had one of those memes of the type that are widely copied, namely "My Top 10 Albums of All Time," which in this case is supposedly original. I'll reprint his list here for your amusement:

"My Top 10 Albums of All Time:

1. Incubus - Make Yourself
2. Guster - Lost and Gone Forever
3. Rufus Wainwright - Want One
4. Ben Folds - Rockin the Suburbs
5. The Godzilla Soundtrack (TRUST ME ON THIS ONE)
6. Red Hot Chili Peppers - By the Way
7. Fall Out Boy - Take This To Your Grave
8. Christina Aguilera - Stripped
9. Jimmy Eat World - Bleed American
10. No Doubt - Tragic Kingdom

Runner Up: Linkin Park - Hybrid Theory, John Mayer - Room For Squares, Dashboard Confessional - The Places You've Come to Fear the Most"

Do you see what's wrong here? I'll give him this: Some of the songs on some of those albums are catchy and worth listening to. Ben Folds and No Doubt come to mind as musicians that have indeed proved their relevance and originality, and Guster is indeed quite catchy, though inconsistently so. I also know that some of my readers would find almost nothing wrong with this list. [shrugs] That's fine—I just think this guy needs a sense of proportion.

Christina Aguilera? The title of that album, Stripped, came up in Adv. Fiction Writing the other day when a girl wrote a story by the same name and wondered whether the connotation of that name being an album title would be a problem. Whether that story title was a particularly good one or not, we agreed that it in a few years, the Aguilera connotation, at least, won't matter—that album will be so unimportant and obscure that you'll need a footnote to explain what it was. John Mayer? Linkin Park? Jimmy Eat World? Rufus Wainwright? Most of these albums have been put out in the last couple years or so and have had about zero impact upon the world of music as a whole. They may sell a lot of albums, but most of these artists provide good examples of what not to do when trying to put together a significant album.

The commentary that accompanies the list is obviously meant to show us how "original" he is, as he notes, "I thought of this one in the shower today.....kinky, I know." Well that's an original thought, associating being in the shower with the term "kinky." I'd never have thought of that. After explaining the concept of listing one's top 10 albums—"Like, CDs you listen to straight through, and could not live without"—he adds this witty aside: "Makes you think, huh?" No, not really, guy. There's a real lack of thought in this process.

As I see it, this guy here has fallen prey to musical shortsightedness. It's almost certain that these albums won't be on his list in 10 years' time—and if they are, then there's something wrong. His friends posted their lists, falling prey to an opposite but equally common problem, namely "Look how eclectic my taste is in music." Their lists, too, contain some recent bands with staying power—No Doubt, Counting Crows, and Ben Folds Five—then a whole lot of crap music like the Dance Hall Crashers, Rosebud, Ozma, and Damien Rice. Then there're the requisite Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel albums, which probably aren't in particularly heavy rotation on their playlists at all—you've gotta look like you're eclectic, though, or lose credibility and coolth.

As for iTunes libraries, I see eight people with shared music on iTunes right now. Let's take a look, shall we?

This first guy is apparently into melancholy, atonal "Generation X elevator music," namely Bob Dylan, Blur, Blondie, Björk, Belle & Sebastian (for this band, think of the really geeky music store employee in High Fidelity who ended up with the chick from Roseanne—he liked them), Beck, The Beatles, Aphex Twin, Brian Eno, The Cure, David Bowie, Depeche Mode, New Order, Joy Division, Pavement, The Pogues, The Police, The Pretenders, Radiohead, The Ramones, The Replacements, The Roots, The Smiths, Sonic Youth, Talking Heads, Tom Waits, The Velvet Underground, The White Stripes, and Yo La Tengo. We can sum this guy up pretty quickly as one of those "the '80s were better" people who claim to have a handle on "real" rock music.

At least the first guy respects the sanctity of whole albums, though, rather than just collecting a big mix of random pop singles like the next one on the list. This chick has a more "Generation Y pop" plus "the obligatory standards" feel: her collection reads like a Who's Who of the last year in Top 40 music, including Busta Rhymes, Britney Spears, Cake, Christina Aguilera, Clay Aiken, Coldplay, Elton John, Elvis, Fiona Apple, Fleetwood Mac, George Michael, Hanson, Janet Jackson, Jason Mraz, Jay-Z, Jennifer Lopez, Jewel, John Mayer, Justin Timberlake, the obligatory few Coltrane songs, Kelly Clarkson, Ludacris, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Maroon 5, Marvin Gaye, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, Michael Jackson, Missy Elliot, N*Sync, Natalie Imbruglia, Nelly, Nelly Furtado, Norah Jones, The Pretenders, Radiohead, The Rolling Stones, Sarah McLachlan, Shakira, Sheryl Crow, Sublime, Tina Turner, Toni Braxton, Tori Amos, Vanessas Carlton and Williams, Grease, Rent, the obligatory two Veruca Salt singles, Weezer, and Yellowcard. Ugh...

Continuing in this vein depresses me and takes too much time, so I'll quit it. Right there, though, you've got two of the more prevalent types of playlists, full of the stuff they think will make them seem cool and eclectic.

Why do I care about all of this, and what qualifies me to pass judgment on it? Those are the necessary questions, I suppose, ones that I oughta answer to remain credible. Let's see. For one thing, these musical choices are ones that I think show the utter conventionality and short-sightedness of a lot of people our age. They listen to the "latest thing" and forget what came before it. Those who try to be "off the map" and hip/eclectic fail, too, because the smattering of older or more obscure bands they include in their playlists are still part of the conventional scene. That's one of the conundrums of the "society of the spectacle" surrounding the music and entertainment industries—no matter what you do, you're still on the map. You can never really reach the "outside" of the spectacle of consumerism. The Beatles? Simon and Garfunkel? The Rolling Stones? The Beach Boys? Gee, kids, you're really reaching there. While the few people I've cited surely don't constitute a statistically sound sample, they're still pretty representative of the trends I've seen in playlists here at the university. Such slavish, petty desires these young ones have...