January 2009
40 posts
Things that have happened to me: an incomplete...
1. On my first day of creative writing class, the professor came in ten minutes late, handed out a syllabus with all the wrong dates on it, and then asked if we had any questions about the course. When no one responded, he pointed to the girl sitting next to him and said, “go draw a horse on the white board.” So she did. Then told the next girl to do the same thing. I kept thinking he...
Sorry for the persistent lack of posts. To be honest, over the last month I’ve been having some bad emotional side effects from a medication I just started taking and blogging has fallen pretty low on my priority list. That’s not much of an explanation, but this isn’t a very personal blog. I’ll return to my regular posting soon, I hope. Keep checking back :-)
Gin&Tonic cupcakes. →
(via thesoundingbored)
I need to make these immediately. That is all.
On getting pleasantly hit on*
bottle-it-up:
*Disclaimer: by a homeless man
Homeless dude (walking toward me): Lookin’ gorgeous, baby. GORGEOUS! Me (nervously): Ummm, thanks. Homeless dude: Damn girl, you need a television. A television! Me: A television? Homeless dude: Broadcast, baby! Broadcast all that. Me: (fit of laughter)
Is it wrong to find this more amusing than offensive? OOPS.
not wrong at all :-)
Obama Lifts Ban on Abortion Funds →
Things you will find me doing as midnight...
reading the tumblrs of disaffected 20-somethings living in NYC
creating mnemonic devices for french words (la bourse = scholarship = Lah-bore-son scholars, har har)
eating bagel with peanut butter
forgetting to use articles in my sentences
scouring different translations of The Inferno in hopes of dazzling my Dante professor on my forthcoming paper (and by ‘dazzling’ I mean...
where i am going
So I basically haven’t blogged since I got back from winter break. The reason, to put it simply, is that living at UNC is stressful and lonely and disheartening, and not in a way where I really want to talk about it. That said, I’m sure I’ll get used to it and my life will settle into a routine I can manage and even—gasp—enjoy. Until then, excuse the sporadic posting...
Thousands Shut Out from Inauguration →
among them: me
Here we go
5:59 a.m.
Silver Spring, MD
I’m wearing tights and two pairs of pants over them, four shirts, two sweatshirts, and my heaviest jacket.
I’ll see you on the other side.
DC Bound
We’re off to see the president :-)
Things I like about UNC so far
the showers are larger
when i facebook stalk my friends i’m never worried they will walk up behind me.
Stuff Journalists Like
A Stuff White People Like spinoff, found here and including among its charms free food, election day, coffee, all the president’s men, the ap stylebook, NPR, swag, and press passes.
So good.
resurrection
thesoundingbored:
here’s the thing: turkey’s pretty cool. we climb mountains filled with caves and crowned with ruined castles, we come across fields where hundreds of hot air balloons lie dormant like sleeping giants. then, we fly over landscapes of volcanic rocks and pigeon valleys, land in fallow grape fields. we barter for saffron and scarves in a language that feels rough on the tongue, we...
Meanwhile, an email from my friend studying...
Let me sum up my first day of class for you. I have one class on Mondays, Intro to Special Effects, from 7 - 11 PM. It is held on a sound stage at least six times larger than Duke’s entire film department. After going over safety stuff and watching an introductory video, we got to do some demonstrations, namely smashing a clear breakaway resin bottle on someone’s head and making...
these are a few of my favorite things
headbands, T.S. Eliot poems, sweaters with stripes, final jeopardy, boys with long fingers, looking at the clock at 11:11, cold apples, used books, clever t-shirts, long emails, wrinkling my nose, cereals with freeze-dried fruit, Friday afternoons, dry erase boards, photographs of people laughing, the smell of new books, the smell of old books, muffin dipped in cappuchino, male handwriting, rain.
I have decided to rent out my services
After talking to my friend Vivienne today about a certain situation in which a boymanperson she was interested in treated her very, very poorly, I have come to a conclusion:
I should rent out my anger.
See, a lot of people—such as the lovely Vivienne—are simply too nice and forgiving to stay mad at people who do bad things to them. Me on the other hand, I am not nearly this nice. I...
Freshman year part 2
Things I don’t know how to do on this campus
go places
find food
library hours
the internet
have friends
physics
UNC thus far
I walked into my new room, chatted a bit with my extremely friendly Swedish roommate, and then promptly spilled a bottle of dark red nail polish on our floor/her slipper. A half an hour of scrubbing later, there’s still a large, vaguely pink spot on the middle of our floor. Awkward.
My bad, bloglings
Still adjusting to this being in school thing.
Additional complicating factors include
not having a room
not having most of my stuff
not having a workable class schedule
I’ll start posting again soon. Stay tuned…
Dispatch from the first day of classes
There are three Ryans in my 14 person French class. Two of us are from Colorado.
No one knows it, but:
magicmolly:
If you open up Lil’ Wayne, there’s a littler Wayne inside. And if you open up that one, a yet smaller Wayne appears. And inside of him? That I cannot tell you, for I am entrusted with his secret.
when I have nothing to report I re-blog funny things other people say. So sue me. It is pretty funny though, am I right?
packing up, moving out
I’ll be in Durham tonight.
Invention of the year
I said ‘be careful, his bow tie is really a camera.’
Man, that shit would be so cool. I would most definitely buy and wear a bow tie camera. Simon and Garfunkel, let’s totally make this happen.
(full lyrics)
My friend Joella is dating a boy
named Otis Boat Poissons.
Wait, let’s recap: His name is Otis Boat Fish.
As in, his middle name is Boat (really) and his last name is the french word for fish.
That is the greatest thing I have ever heard.
Breakfast foods that are also verbs
magicmolly:
Roll, waffle, butter, jam, milk, pancake, ham (it up), egg (on)
Recommended
If you’re due for a highly entertaining, totally implausible, delightful love story set in a Mumbai slum and inexplicably featuring the song “Paper Planes” and later a bollywood-style dance routine over the closing credits*, you should definitely see Slumdog Millionaire. It’s a bit silly, but only a bit, and really what movie isn’t? Plus it’s actually a pretty...
“I don’t even think people should make Turducken until I can get married. I don’t...”
– Dan Savage (via jennabee)
Meanwhile, back on the RyanBlog YouTube channel...
61 views on a video of Vivienne and me talking about having poison in our eyes.
In that spirit, a few other creations of mine you might enjoy:
The Ryan and Vivienne show continues with a look at what happens when poison does get in your eye. 18 seconds of crazy to start your Sunday evening right.
In the immortal words of Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, circa his 2007 interview with me,...
Blood Sugar Control Linked to Memory Decline →
well that sucks, as does the fact that my diabetes might (probably will?) limit where I am able to go this summer/for my study abroad. Damn you insulin, and my persistent need for you.
Valerie Plame—The Decemberists
So here's a story about our next Colorado senator
Back in the day—the high school day—I worked as a cashier at a Rite Aid in Denver. Around this same time I was also making a documentary about the history of school segregation in the Denver Public Schools. And I was also an outrageously, combustibly awkward human being. Now, a story that will demonstrate all of these facts:
One night at Rite Aid I was working the cigarette...
my boyfriend can play the harry potter theme song...
Me: I just watched this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdTJJOeL350&feature=channel_page
The Boy: haha why would you watch this?
Me: Because I wish I knew you in high school. I would have been your awkward secret admirer.
Recommended for your Thursday night
I want to be a writer so I can write things like this:
Lives of the Saints: Doing Relief Work in Dangerous Places by Jonathan Harr (The New Yorker, Jan. 5, 2009 issue)
Fun fact about the RyanBlog
Far and away the most popular entry on this blog is “To the Crushes of Christmas Past”
I get new hits on this entry every week, which leads me to conclude that is possible to intrigue people with your romantic history even if you don’t have one. Success!
Afrique du sud : l'ex-députée anti-apartheid Helen... →
she sounds like she was a total bad-ass/i really want to go to South Africa/this article took me a long time to read because I don’t speak french.
excuse me while i try to organize my life
next semester I’ll be living at the University of North Carolina, as per the stipulations of my scholarship. So i’m trying to construct a schedule between the two campuses that won’t kill me and will allow me to take most of the classes I want.
here’s what I’ve got:
Intermediate French 1: MWF 10:20 - 11:20 (DUKE) OR Jewish Writers in America: MWF 10:00 - 10:50...