| I just wanted to point out that there is something seriously wrong going on here |
[Jan. 20th, 2009|11:31 pm] |
Here's what I don't understand: Extraordinarily wealthy, salaried individuals with seemingly unconditional job security, fuck up really bad and get bailed out with billions of dollars. Meanwhile, millions of low-income to middle-class individuals (all of whom experience the typical "if you are not completely stellar at your job and simultaneously willing to 100% submit to corporate idiocy, then you will be replaced" conundrum) who cannot make their mortgage payments lose their homes as well as the realistic ability to rent a place that is reasonably secure, clean and otherwise habitable (if you thought poor credit was bad, you should try bankruptcy or foreclosure) for TEN YEARS.
seriously, what the fuck?! |
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| painstaking examination of all that can be heard, felt, seen, tasted and smelt |
[Sep. 7th, 2008|10:18 pm] |
yet i have not been able to make sense of all this chaotic beauty around me nor could i repeat its hideous glory in any words understandable to the rest of the world, but I'll say this much:
I have a great porch and my rhododendrons have not died yet and i may get a job that suits me and i am always discovering new delights and even the darkest days are waylaid by the stunning effects of the olympia summer sun. furthermore, i am learning more than I could have ever imagined possible, especially post undergraduate studies. most importantly i give love daily and always, and am loved in return by my friends, family, and partner.
I think I have finally recovered what i know to be my unique, personal energy, because i wake up everyday with a purpose, no matter how small, and I don't find myself grasping for straws in the dark, not in any context. i feel as though an enormous, crushing weight has been lifted from my shoulders, my feet and my chest, and now i breathe clearly and think without a cloud of despondence over my thoughts.
it's been a long fucking battle and i am very pleased to see full light again. |
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| fermenteds |
[Jun. 7th, 2008|10:17 am] |
i know that everyone always talks about how they are going to stop drinking (or maybe they don't, perhaps everyone else just keeps on drinking oblivious to the surrounding chaos with its increasing voracity)
but this time, I am for fucking real.
I realized that among my problems, the most distressing are easily my tendencies towards the drink and being selfish. I am beginning to understand how being selfish is really a foundation for most of my unhappy situations, and I wonder how I didn't realize this before. I also wonder if other people think about being selfish. Most people are self-involved, but not really selfish. It's more that all of our misery (especially mine) is rooted in our inability to see how selfish we really are, and I am, of course, not an exception but a really good example of how that whole scenario plays out.
Drinking has become a way to deal with that. Obviously, it has not worked. I am still a miserable, wretched person with a distinct lack of skills and a woebegone void of talent that echoes with my overworked chants of how I am misunderstood, how good my life used to be, and how interesting I once was, drenched in liquor and sex. I don't think anyone ever really liked me so much as either loved me because we had an understanding as friends do or had the extreme misfortune of encountering me when I was drunk and feeling jubilant as I showered the surrounding metropolitan population with all the affection and adoration I had to give.
I have fucked up royally. It's not even that I have done something really terrible, like kill a biker with my car while driving drunk (although I had a freaky premonition about that very thing) or cheated on my boyfriend (although I have done that in other relationships, in previous years, and the guilt alone has given me nightmares). It's that I have made myself very unhappy, gained twenty pounds, destroyed another person's psyche, and wasted hundreds of dollars with a liquid that does nothing but make me disoriented and has caused all the previous maladies. I have become uninteresting and in fact very difficult to be with because, sadly, I am a has-been with zero motivation to do anything except swish my cocktail around in my throat until I get drunk enough to wax nostalgic without being embarrassed or feeling like an idiot. There is no point to this anymore.
There is no more glamor in being a crazed drunk. I am not crazed when I'm drunk. I'm sedated and shitty. I fall asleep. I say ridiculous things that are uninspiring and convey pretty clearly how boring my life is to prompt such rigidly adhesive drinking habits. I don't want to do this anymore because it has ceased to do anything good.
It's going to be hard to stop drinking, but I think the hardest thing is going to be accepting the fact that drinking is NOT the critical connector to my past. The only thing that will make me feel alive again is to put down the fucking bottle, get a grip, and find joy in being aware of how vibrant this life really can be for me.
I'm going to need a lot of help. Jason has already said he would go to AA meetings with me. I don't want to be one of those assholes who tells EVERYONE how much more rocking life is when you don't drink, or, God forbid, when you go back to church or whatever. I do, though, want some partners in crime for this psychotic journey. I have a feeling that I will break down at some point and head for the freezer, but I do NOT want to relapse and wake up with a bad feeling and strange bruises. Coming back to Grand Rapids this summer is going to be the hardest thing I have ever done, I think. Every part of my life will be converging in one fucked up city, and I am sure that the connector will assumed to be drink, but I don't want fermenteds to be the only way for me to be in touch with my past and my future and to acquaint them with one another. I don't know how my friends are going to react to my boyfriend and me if we are not drunk. Not to name names, but I have no idea how I am going to be with Ken, Lydia, Tim Novak, Ted, Stevie, Kaaren, Katie, Jenny, and so on if I cannot drink. These are some of my most loved peoples, but our history is so laced with drugs and alcohol that I am afraid that we won't even know each other anymore. I am afraid.
I am really afraid. I need to get a job with the State.
Stevie once said that living in Oly is like living in rehab. I wonder if this was meant to be.
Nichole once wrote about giving up fermenteds and playing in her garden. I want to do the same. I want to be as vibrant and amazing as Nichole, in love with life without destroying it slowly with cancer-causing and age-advancing liquors.
I really want to be sober. but I am afraid. |
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| oh my stars |
[Apr. 8th, 2008|11:27 pm] |
i've made an amazing discovery! the party store down the street, unlike the VAST majority of corner/convenience/party/beer stores in the oly vicinity, carries 40oz bottles of Mickey's Malt Liquor. Thank heaven. However, no Colt45 is to be found, neither in deuce format, nor forty. Curses!
I told Jason, with MUCH excitement, that I had found forties of Mickey's at the party store.
he said, "Party store? like Party City?"
I'm having trouble deciding whether or not the interchangeability of words in the Midwest ( the preceding conversation featuring a single example) is positive, or negative. thoughts? |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 27th, 2008|01:48 pm] |
www.stuffwhitepeoplelike.com
hi-larious. and VERY true. for further, related reading, look to radar.com for their recent article on NPRents. |
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| thesaurus uproarious |
[Mar. 14th, 2008|12:11 am] |
I am gravely disappointed in the quality of Microsoft Word's thesaurus. I realized that I totally overuse the word "increasingly", but the only solutions that Word offered were "ever more", "more and more", "gradually more", and "progressively more".
Is this supposed to be serious? "more and more"? Was I supposed to buy an upgrade to non-fourth-grade vocabulary, or something? There has to be an actual WORD that is a synonym for "increasingly" that I would be able to think of if my brain wasn't totally dessicated. |
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| but the underlying feeling is slowly rising and expanding rage |
[Mar. 11th, 2008|12:11 pm] |
i am feeling the uncontrollable urge to skip the latter half of class, drink wine, and fall asleep in a house that is not mine. I do not want to go back to class, but I do not want to be here. and I do not have any place reasonable to go.
I also wish that I hadn't thought that putting brie in my brown rice would be a good idea....because it wasn't. it's pretty gross. oh, well. |
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| I should've known that utility disasters would happen there |
[Feb. 27th, 2008|02:21 pm] |
damn! I just looked at mlive.com after seeing a few cryptic facebook status thingies, and the former east-tunes building is leveled. that shit is blowing my mind....
at first, I thought that it was Morningstar, based on the photos - it looked like there was a huge cloud of smoke coming out from next to Sami's. I must still have a strange maternal instinct towards that place, because my heart jumped into my throat and I was like "goddamn...if the place didn't finally burn down..."
but I am VERY glad that everyone is safe and secure. this must be the time for crazy disasters. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 14th, 2008|04:42 pm] |
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this is the best valentine's day that I've had since I was 17 years old. and I get to go to a concert tonight, yay! |
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| miracle |
[Feb. 10th, 2008|02:28 pm] |
friday night, jason and I went to a party. we left around 3am, and went back to our house. on the way there, we encountered a mis-marked turn, laden with an oil slick, going about 30mph. the next thing I knew, we were careening over the cliff edge, down a ravine about 150 ft. The car flipped over half-way, and we landed upside down in a little river. We were able to extricate ourselves and crawl back up the ravine, which was at about a 45 degree angle. very steep.
A volunteer firefighter awaited us at the top, by the road. she had already called the police, the ambulance, everything. they took me to the hospital and questioned jason. Later, I found out that they took him in handcuffs because he had asked about alternatives to the breathalyzer. At 19, any alcohol in his system would have warranted an automatic DUI, because Washington is a zero-tolerance state. Because he had two glasses of wine over three hours, he knew that he would still be cited for a DUI. but he didn't refuse the breathalyzer, per se. yet they saw it necessary to handcuff him and take him to the hospital in the back of a police car. I don't think that's legal.
After this whole thing, we are both okay, miraculously. Our seatbelts did their job, and I ended up with heavy contusions on my lower legs and a gnarly bruise across my whole abdomen. We're still picking glass out of our scalps, our hair, our nostrils, our eyebrows, our hands, arms legs and clothing. I swear that we have some sort of divine presence guiding us. Had the car swerved four feet to either the left or the right, we would have smashed into a very large tree and most certainly would have been far more seriously injured. It was so cold, too, that had we been trapped in the car, we could have been frostbitten or gotten hypothermia. I think that I am one of the luckiest girls in the world.
I'm confused about the process for Jason's DUI. he doesn't have an attorney yet, but his hearing is on monday. does anybody know how this works? I'm hoping that even though he probably went above a .02 for his blood test, he won't get a heavy punishment. Does he have to have an attorney by monday? No one was hurt, there was no collision, no damage to public property, he cooperated with officials and did everything they asked. bleh.
just take this as a sign - don't drive drunk and wear your seatbelt! bikes and walking legs make perfect alternatives when you're trying to navigate your way home from the bar. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 8th, 2008|02:09 pm] |
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i wanna know how to do that thing where you compress a whole lot of text (like, say, an essay or article) into a link that people can click on, so as to save space and scrolling requirements. anybody? I seen this done all the time. |
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| I can't believe that I almost forgot about this |
[Feb. 5th, 2008|03:29 pm] |
oh my god! I saw the most amazing photo in People magazine this weekend.
It's a small boy wearing a t-shirt that says,
"I'm autistic, what's your excuse?"
fuck yes. cheers for all the disadvantaged taking back the night. It totally reminds me of a t-shirt that my friend's two-year-old son wears that reads "No, YOU calm down!". hahahahaha. children are such an incredible medium for social hilarity. |
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| beets and silk sheets |
[Feb. 5th, 2008|03:20 pm] |
so far, beets have played a very integral role in my oly life. I have bonded with many a kind soul over some Nichole-inspired beetza, have learned to use them in nearly every dish with delicious results, and have even grown them.
If you eat them raw, they taste like a dirty apple. I sort of really love it.
I think I am going to work for my roommate's silk screening business. It's actually legit, and I would make more than what I make at the Home Depot, and I would not have to drive twenty minutes to work because it would be in my garage. plus I would get to silk screen organic cotton, bamboo, and hemp shirts, and I could buy American Apparel stuff at wholesale price. Yes. Oh, yes.
by the way, not to be like the millionth person to say this, but I think I am moving to Chicago in less than two years. Grad school is a-waiting, and Jason thinks that he may want to open a warehouse in Chicago. The prospect of returning to the Midwest is very, very, very exciting. My mother will be overjoyed. |
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| this is a brief approximation |
[Jan. 31st, 2008|12:53 am] |
i just found a piece that I wrote shortly after moving to Olympia that was originally intended to channel the acidic humor of grand rapids but ended up being a bratty, masturbatory rant.
"I keep hearing about this process referred to as "finding yourself".
I have discovered that it is much easier to justify my relatively pointless and miserable migration to the West Coast by proclaiming myself has having been "found". "Oh, Washington. Yes, Washington has been just...great. Washington has been very...different, but the important thing is that I really just think that I've found myself," I tell my wide-eyed relatives. Yeah, I was on hold at the Olympia Hollywood Video, just waiting for some jackass to discover me and tell me that I'm an indie film masterpiece. I usually skip the part about hating everyone I meet and go straight to the part where I realized that I prefer whisky and seal-watching to human company, at least in Olympia. Interestingly, when I reveal that I haven't been able to get a single fucking day off from my shitty hot-dog stand job to actually go to places like Seattle or Portland, people act like I just said that I enjoy defecating on my partner's chest before intercourse. There went all my personal fortitude - because, obviously, Seattle is like the cultural fucking Mecca of the Northwest, and because, obviously, it is totally inconceivable for a person to exist in some meaningful fashion without living in a grossly expensive city or living in the Redwood Forest, which is, like, really hardcore. If anything, I learned to keep my responses to statements like "Oh my God, I loooooooooooooove Bellingham! I am soooooooo jealous that you live sooooooo close to Seattle" relatively short and generic. I end up hating fewer people this way.
Sometimes, I don't even have to pretend to have experienced monumental personal growth. At any given party or social gathering in the Midwest, someone, if not many hapless acquaintances, will assume that I've made great strides in my moral fiber. I've been given countless "props" for having the "balls" to move "so far away". I don't want props. My ego is already dangerously inflated. The next time you want to give me some props, just give me all your fucking money instead. For real.
West Coast mythology aside, I also noticed a couple of other facets to "finding yourself" that are no less obnoxious.
It's the well-loved phrase of women who have lost stunning amounts of weight and now note that more assholes take time to hit on them than before. It's like, "I used to feel invisible. I decided to submit to societal norms and maniacally monitor my caloric intake, cleverly combined with the novel notion of exercise. I didn't even need to ditch the camel toe. Now, I'm the girl they're talking about when they say 'Get Her Done!'."
What the fuck? I feel as though I need to point out the fact that, by and large, men will fuck anything that moves and is relatively willing. Alchohol, particularly the grain liquors and pilsner beers favored by the men in question, lavishly lubricates the whole process. Thus, I feel as though I need to emphasize the fact that these women have not so much found themselves but rather have been found by the local Coors-hound. Jesus Christ on a Cross, my future is bright!
I swear to God, the next time some bitch in her cropped Lycra yoga pants tells me about how much "energy" she has gained since starting yoga, otherwise known as losing a shitload of weight and claiming that fucking meditation made it just fucking disappear, I will shoot her. No joke. She shall die. I mean, there is the part of me that is annoyed by the implicit competition that this cunt rag introduced by being like "oh, I have soooo much energy but you're still drinking coffee!!", but it's also like, look. Just fucking look at me. Do I look like I give a shit? Absolutely not. I dress like the Dude from the Big Lebowski on a fairly regular basis, and I don't like to dress up unless I'm getting money or free drinks for my pretty presence.
I'm still not exactly sure what it means to have found one's self, but according to many people who write up complete bullshit from the comfort of their plush suburban homes and LA offices, my personal interests inhibit my personal growth. Namely, my brown liquor, illicit drugs and behavior, and occasional lethargy have continually been frowned upon.
I am certain that I am not the only person who harbors some skepticism towards these opinions."
jesus. so much for optimism. I still harbor some deep-seated hatred towards the following:
- state-controlled liquor
- shockingly poor fashion taste + completely staged disinterest in dress-up (skinny jean-wearers fall under this category)
- trendy liberals (but these fools are everywhere)
- trendy liberal v. 2.0: the trendy vegan
- the lethal combination of Stupid, Deranged, and Confrontational, particularly in hippie-format
- self-righteous motherfuckers
- smoking ban
- the price of literally anything that could be bought (because it is so unthinkably high)
- people who drive with no lights on at night (this is real.)
- apparent absence of social gatherings on any level, regardless of merit
- complete lack of social gatherings that are not elitist, boring, or remarkably smelly
these are things that I like:
- Thai food readily available (and not terrible)
- free public transit that isn't terrifying and/or shitty
- the $3.50 price tag of a bus ride to Seattle
- the sound and all of its creatures, such as seals
- the fishy mart
- the food co-ops
- the forests that inundate the city
- using a highway that rhymes with "high five"
- spectacular views of not one but TWO mountain ranges
- fucking huge clams called geoducks, the bodies of which resemble scrotums
- dogs everywhere and allowed in stores such that i might pet a cute one at will
- non-humid summers
- the food bank
- my house
- my roommates
- my school
- my professor
- some of my classmates
- kombucha tea
I think that this evens out pretty well. Oly is not that great unless you ally yourself with other people who are not native to Western Washington or maniacal Earth-Firsters. They are crazy, and not in the good or interesting way. there are, of course, exceptions, but they all moved to seattle or stopped drinking, so I stopped counting them. Otherwise, life's a hoot! |
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| relief |
[Jan. 29th, 2008|06:52 pm] |
sources of stress are moving out of my life, one by one. relationships, particularly those involving passive-aggressive social retards, are vastly over-rated and just make my head hurt.
tomorrow I'm going to go to the fishy mart and buy fresh fish! yum. |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 23rd, 2007|06:31 am] |
mornings like these are dangerous
I came home on time
but to no hurrah
and I find myself longing
for the days of psychotic peace
and I find myself slipping
back into the easy days
of loving slumber
and i find myself desperately clawing
looking for air, life, nourishment
where there is none
how confusing,
that what once sustained you
now throttles you gently
until you admit slow defeat
and slink back to the dog house |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 30th, 2007|05:40 pm] |
man, my feet smell so damn bad right now. and I just cannot get up to take a shower. nuh uh, nope, not at all. four hours until work. string cheese is seriously delectable.
okay, now I have a house where I think I will be establishing an at least semi-permanent residence. It also has an extra couch. If you want to come visit, the address is:
2325 Jackson Ave NW
Olympia WA 98502
and in case you just want to send me a letter, my full name is: Irene Elizabeth Adeline Setchfield.
wine, beer, and thrills are all cheap here. groceries, however, are not. bring ramen. |
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| well then! |
[Jul. 23rd, 2007|03:08 pm] |
My God, I haven't been to LiveJournal in about a week and a half, and I am required to read the sixty most recent entries before I am completely and most assuredly up to date on the contents of everyone's lives. I feel most insignificant.
anyway, I'm in Europe, and am preparing myself to celebrate what is typically considered the most important (or at the very least, the most drunkenly executed) birthday of them all in an exceedingly useless and pretentious manner. I'm turning 21 in Paris, where the privileges of drinking alchohol are carefully measured by one's ability to walk and place money on the bar. I noticed that they've graciously extended these liberties so that the capability to form sentences is no longer a prerequisite, a conclusion greatly substantiated by the mangled speech of London pubgoers.
I'm feeling very bratty, and nasty, and have felt so during this entire trip. It's not very much fun. Things back home are worrying me, and even though I've panned out viable solutions and vowed to subsist on Diet Coke and scowls, I am paralyzed with pre-grief over the possible move of Zach and Chuck back to Grand Rapids. I swear to God, it seriously makes me feel suicidal and that is REALLY strange considering my fervent and ever-present desire to throttle Zach over the last couple of months, as evidenced on a number of occasions in impassioned LJ posts of doom. My little liquor-tinged heart is quavering over my honey and all the associated psychoses. My madness has been stopped up for too long. I predict hibernation with intermittent drug and alchohol binges upon my return to Washington.
Wish me luck. At least I can still speak French. |
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| just a fraction of the incessant rush |
[Jul. 7th, 2007|06:40 am] |
I'm quickly learning that whenever haste and efficiency become necessary in my life, many more obstacles to expediency tend to rear their ugly little Chimaira heads. Some of it is my own fault, but mostly people are just crazy.
I am now required to find housing before July 15th, a deadline that is woefully un-negotiable, as I will be boarding a plane to Europe where I will spend two weeks with my family. Lovely, yes. Timely, not so much. The place that I want to move into does not allow Chuck to wallow on the premises due to the aggressive and violent territorial assertions made by a very large cat that may or may not continue to live at that precise location. Zach has said that he thinks that it is irresponsible for me to move into a place where I can't take care of Chuck, but this place is so perfect for me in every other way and so very very very cheap, which is a HUGE deciding factor since Olympian landlords seem to think that they are living in Kirkland or Seattle, and thus choose to charge completely absurd and utterly impractical rent costs in exchange for a carpeted cracker-box of a shithole that's far away from everything and is really ugly. fuck that.
on the upside, I found out that I'm getting paid for July 4th, even though I skipped work. Something about holiday pay. mmm. so I essentially have been paid to drive to Gig Harbor with my dear friends and man friend and darling canine and get crazy drunk and play in the ocean and run around in the woods. hell yes, I say. More companies should be illogical like the Home Depot. |
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| today is pretty okay |
[Jul. 1st, 2007|06:00 pm] |
i think that the futon mattress that I'm sleeping on has bed bugs. I keep waking up with bites and foul moods. but today the bed moves in, yes. yes. thank fucking god.
since joining the home depot night crew, i remember why i enjoy working nights. i'm able to indulge my compulsive side every night, making lists and checking them twice, tending to the needs and whims of baby blue spruces and volatile orchids, sweeping and neatening the garden aisles and the greenhouse, serenaded by the demented yet strangely comforting cries of the various birds that flit in and out of the store, and finally savoring a cigarette while standing awestruck amidst the vague lighting of the brilliant sunrise. I love it. and I can laze about in chaise lounge chairs on my break and smoke cigarettes, in the garden area! so great for a state that has waged war on smokers.
by now, I have the fortune of established friendships, and anything bad that happens is now mitigated by the true and genuine efforts of dear Stephanie and Aaron, who take care of me and love me as I love them. it's great.
I think that after the middle of July I will have finally stopped moving. I think. I'm going to start saying "jam" instead of "damn", e.g. god jammit, et cetera. I was inspired by a Stephen King novel, of all things, to say "mothersmucker" and "smucking" instead of the nefarious alternatives, but Zach was deeply disconcerted by these forays into funny, childish obscenities. alas. |
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