give me the learnings about the alphabets or i'll crush you!

No, I haven't been playing Civ III lately. Or any other version for that matter. I've been trying to figure out how I can stretch my fun stuff - writing my book, painting, doin' a little sewing, that kind of thing - into eight hours a day so I don't feel guilty.

That's the thing about having a job, even if it is only 20-30 hours a week. After it's over, I can just putter around and do what I feel like, and if I play some video games or read a fun book in between half hours of writing, who's to say I can't? I already worked for the day, right? Now it's kind of serious. I don't have a job, but if I make the massive investment of time into my book that I'd normally make to my job, maybe it'll be like an investment, and someday I'll be able to sell it and pay for college. Eight hours a day just seems like really a lot.

Also, I miss having a job because when I had one, I got out of mowing the lawn. = )

is there anybody's children can tell me?

OK. I'm over being laid off. It sucks to lose two and a half weeks' worth of paychecks, but whatever. I even declined to chuck the cake up against a wall, that's how over it I am.

I had the craziest dream last night. I was the queen of somewhere, and I got kidnapped, but I shot people with my cellphone and ran away, and I was running down this dryads' path, and people were chasing me, and I was all like "I"ll shoot you with my cell phone!", and then I climbed up a hill and onto an overhanging tree and jumped down on the people that were following me, and I made it back to my capital city, and so I was the queen again. And also I threw some people down the stairs at one point. But it was OK because nobody died, not even when I shot them with my cell phone (there was this huge lag, too, between hitting the down button to make it fire and the bullet actually coming out, so it was super hard to aim).

What will Mackenzie do on her newly-acquired month-long vacation? What will she babble about next? Nobody knows. But stay tuned to find out.

irony is going to a farewell party for your coworker and then finding out it's for you too. because you got laid off, but no one told you until now.

Irony is also coming home today and finding out that they called you and want you to come in, but not because they want you to work again - they just want you to come in and pick up the rest of the cake.

And I don't even like cake!

My life would make a great joke.

I'm a slacker pioneer riding across corporate america on a surly mule called manifest destiny!

Worst genre cross ever: Chewbacula, the vampiric wookie.

I'm not a genius, and it makes me really sad.

Apparently your brain mass is the greatest around 20 years old, and by the time you die, you've lost 10% of it. So I guess I'm at my intellectual prime, and I'm still not a genius.

Quincy the bipolar hamster says, "Self-doubt is like finding a turd in your taco," but I'm not sure what that means. Or if it really relates to this discussion.

But maybe I can be a good writer, even if I'm a bad artist and a not-genius?

To make up for the whininess of this post, I seeded some of my favorite episodes of Able & Baker into the text! Yay?

"pogonophobia" is the fear of beards

Or so says this new webcomic I started reading. Able and Baker, about a monkey and a sheep that are astronauts. So far, at any rate.

I broke 25 pages today! Woot!

My life seems simple, when my greatest acheivement of the summer can be stated in five words.

(Also according to Able and Baker, over 300 cases of spontaneous human combustion have been recorded.)

Me: Hey guys! Did you know nutmeg is poisonous if injected intravenously?
Dad: I'm just glad to find out before I tried it.

but i haven't eaten in eight hours, and food is food, even when it's not

I was thinking today how similar poetry and innuendoes are. I know it sounds absurd, but just think about it. They're both a mental exercise by which you pack more than one meaning into a word or series of words. And sometime's they're both about sex, but that's really kind of incidental. Structurally, they're the same thing. So does this mean that dirty comedians have a sort of repressed talent for poetry? This could revolutionize the world of language.

You can tell I need something else to do to occupy the intellectual part of my brain. When you're in the habit of analyzing language and asking "what if", but don't have that much language available to analyze, you end up asking some weird questions.

Um... 20 pages and counting. Today I think I'll end up with less than I guessed.

"You must either make up a short poem about how much this bothers you, or let each player, in the order you choose, draw one card from your hand."

a deep mathematical inevitability in the sound and texture of her lines

Said about Sylvia Plath. I always thought of Plath as "that woman who wrote suicide peoms," but what a misstatement. I checked out a book of hers, for what reason I'm not sure, and it's no surprise she won a pulitzer. She was crazy full of talent. And also depression, apparently. But she wrote really a lot of beautiful, strong things.

It's, what, eight days after I announced I was nearly at the midpoint of my book, and three days since I announced I had the hero at the mouth of the villain's lair, and I still haven't gotten through the middle yet. This whole conflict thing is more complicated than it looks. I know what happens at the end, so I have to somehow create a sequence of events where they don't die, but they still lose, and plant enough clues for them to figure out both his weakness and his evil plan. No wonder most villains are all taunting and talkative. It makes the author's job so much easier. Well, my villain isn't very talkative, and my hero only has a very limited sort of ESP, so it's difficult. I think in the end they're going to have to risk their necks on a ridiculous - sounding hypothesis simply because it's all I can think of and the world is about to end.

Well, my consolation is this: I've started typing it up (I want to have plenty of back up copies in different places before I lay it aside for the school year), and I might have more pages than I thought.

said the wren to the kitty-cat bird

Ten points to anyone who can identify who said that! And ten more if you can tell me where!

The biography channel has been having a lot of mysteries on lately. And I really really love it. It's fantastic. Murder She Wrote, Sherlock Holmes, Poirot, Marple, even some silly modern ones that I'd never heard of before. Sometime soon they're showing a bunch of Nero Wolfe, and that could be kind of cool, because I've never actually read any Nero Wolfe, and maybe I'll like him.

So, all that goes to say, I was watching a Sherlock Holmes today: "The Final Problem." (I'd warn you about spoilers, but I'm not sure this is a spoiler, for reasons that might spoil it if I said them and you really hadn't read the ending of this episode. Did that make sense? Anyway, if you haven't read any Sherlock Holmes yet, or don't want to know the ending of this episode until you read it yourself, skip this next paragraph.)

I really admire that he (Arthur Conan Doyle) killed off Sherlock Holmes. And I'm sad that people made him bring Holmes back. Because it really was the only inevitable conclusion to Holme's drug addiction, manic-depressive nature, and fierce solitude. And Moriarty and Holmes were so evenly matched that it's perfect that they kill each other. Maybe Moriarty would have been able to go on if he had killed his nemesis, but Holmes really would suffer for not having an intellectual equal. Killing Holmes was the best possible decision. The perfect example of keeping your authorial integrity. Just because everyone will be outraged and demand that you bring your character back doesn't mean that it wasn't right to kill him off. Thoughts, anybody else?

I was also thinking how much I love that actor who plays Holmes. I don't know his name, but I really love him. He has these facial tics that are just fantastic. And he brings out the mean edge that Holmes has in the stories, but I always sort of read him softer, because I wanted him to be nicer than he let on. But that mean edge is also kind of endearing, because everyone sympathizes with the lone wolf figure. Right? Anyway, everyone I know seems to.

In conclusion, Me Like Holmes. The End.

P. S. I've been blogging for 21 months now. If my blog were a child, it would totally be walking by now. Maybe even talking? (See how intelligent my blog is? It's been talking since day 1!)

jebediah feeds the chickens while jacob plows, fool.

Apparently Floyd Landis, the man who's slated to win the Tour de France, grew up conservative Mennonite ('old school' Mennonite? Amish? No one seems quite clear.). He was, in fact, born in Lancaster, PA. Interesting, no? It kind of sucks about him needing that surgery, though.

Today I have done nothing but play games. Video games to be precise, and it rocks. (Well, that's sort of a lie. I also went shopping with Mom and Aunt Laura for a new watch, and we stopped at Jaava Jaay's and had white praline mochas, and I got art supplies and Mom got some food and light bulbs.) And also, I ate a lot of really good food. Tomorrow, being Sunday, I have off from work, and Monday I'm off too. So that rocks my socks off.

Will I actually do anything productive in the next two days? Stay tuned to find out! On the next! Exciting! Update!

P.S. I have the hero at the mouth of the villain's lair! Yay! Do I know what's happening next? Do I know how the propitious meeting goes? No! But it's freaking exciting!

mmrarrg

So I worked ten hours today and I'm really tired. But I figured I need to grab the hours where I may, since they only have me scheduled for fifteen next week.

The big walk-in refrigerator at work broke yesterday. All told, we have three refrigerators and two deep-freezes. Except that another one of the refrigerators is already broken. So we this one fridge stuffed full of everything. It sounds boring to just talk about it, but in practice it's difficult and is a serious paradigm shift. Not the pleasant kind.

I feel like this should be a cautionary tale for people who work in the food industry. Girl works in coffee shop. Guys next door come to coffee shop a lot. They call in their order, girl takes order and later gets made fun of for sounding like a seven-year-old on the phone. Guys bring in Dr. Seuss book for girl. Then guys can't remember girl's name. So girl taunts them: 'Mackenzie' isn't a hard name, not unless you're seven. The moral would be Beware the regular customer! Their tongues are sharp and their hunger for caffeine is fierce!

I went to a book discussion last night, where we discussed "Much Ado About Nothing." (I know, not a book.) The lady who led it was pretty hysterical. In talking about Claudio's sudden change in viewing Hero (from soldier's eyes to eyes of love), she talked about ducks. When a duck hatches, the first thing it sees becomes its mother. Guys, she theorizes, are much the same. When a guy is ready to marry, he just latches onto the first thing he sees, and poof! she must be the one! Melissa (for this is the hysterical lady's name) had a series of experiences in college which involved being in the vicinity when guys 'hatched'. It got to be so much of a problem that she and her roommates used to joke about doing a little 'duck-hunting'. I think that's pretty darn witty metaphorical language. (and no, I'm not being sexist. I'm sure it could be applicable to females too.)

'K buh-bye I'm going to go sleep for at least ten hours now.

math-metal is delicious!

I finally caught up on blogs today, and one of my friends, Abbi, had a list of 75 "you might be homeschooled if" questions up. It maked me chuckle a lot nostalgically. Because I remember all that! I guess college makes me feel more average, what with all the homework, and high school seems a long way away. It's nice that some things don't change though: college gives you the whole syllabus, so you can still work ahead if you feel like it. And snow days? Not really days off. Minor holidays? Spent working. Going to school in pajamas? Some people do it still. Anyway.

Persephone is fixed! 'Tis marvelous!

I feel like I need to atone for using the word "tis" by saying something super hip and cool, but nothing comes to mind.

Now I need to atone for using the word "hip".

Now I'm signing off.

The terminally out-of-style,
Mackenzie

thuh devil kill't mah hae-ur draiyer!

Yes. Someone really said that in the store today. In a southern accent which is nearly impossible to replicate in print, but I tried my level best.

Everytime the mechanics next from next door come into the store to get something, I get mocked relentlessly. It's not fair. I don't have a rapier wit! I'm not good at witty repartees! And I look silly angry! So I can't even lose my temper! (Yay for the printed word, where you can be heck of angry and no one can see you!)

So really the only important thing about this post is the title, and I feel like it might just be me that finds it really hysterical.

"Nothing says 'internet' like making it harder for people to understand you."

"There would be so much less hate in the world if everyone pooped more."
"Less hating, more wiping!"

"Hey look! It's bagels!"
"the tasty bread rings appease my suffering."

let there be light, and light abundantly

Persephone has developed terminal illness in her motherboard. Grrrar. Luckily, Dr. Dad is on the case, and they're flying in a transplant motherboard from Utah. There's a surprisingly short waiting list. Unlike hearts or lungs, or things like that. Y'know. Kidneys.

Also, the sun was this really cool coral color while I was coming home from work today. (Try saying "cool coral color" ten times fast! Or spell it right more than twice in a row.)

Also, I'm playing the gameboy advance! Which makes me chuckle. It's just like the old days when Pokeman Blue was the coolest game ever. I think I was ten or something. No, maybe older. I don't remember. I never did beat the Elite Four. I made it to the third one, but in all the excitement, I saved at that point, and my pokemon were really beat up, so I hadn't a hope in the world of winning, and couldn't go backward to beaf them up or anything either. Trapped! I think he was the dragon master? Yes? I sound like a nerd.

Does anyone else find it frustrating that the pokemon games tried to force cooperation with another human being into the equation? Personally, I hate video games that require teamwork (with a very few exceptions. And only then with people I already like). Especially if you have to cooperate with a human being you've never met in real life. It's just creepy.

Also! (And this is slightly less nerdy in my mind, but maybe not in yours.) I'm just days away (story time) from the midpoint of the book. Woot! I think I must have fifty pages or so now (typed, 10 point font, 1.5 space), so that bodes well for the overall length of the book. I'm not going to finish the roughdraft by the end of the summer, but it's exciting to think I'm nearing the halfway point. On the downhill slope. Close to reaching a goal. Um... some... other euphemism for reaching halfway.

'K. Love you buh-bye now.

it gives me the humorous vegetables

My mother's newest theory is this: I should marry the owner of a coffee shop so that I can always have unlimited access to excellent coffee drinks. She theorizes that I should post a want ad on my blog for any owners of excellent coffee shops who are also single, within ten years of my age (presumably older, since ten years younger than me is 9), and don't mind being married for their material possessions. Any takers? = D

Has anyone seen the movie "Unbreakable"? With um... bruce willis? And some famous other actor? Samuel.... um... played mace windu? Jackson? Samuel L Jackson? Maybe? S'kinda tense. And also full of dialogue, and slow development, which my family complains of. But we're not at the end yet. I'm tense. It's a tense movie. Maybe I haven't been steeped in enough superhero tales, but it's hard to project the plotline. This one dude has all the markings of being a great villain, but we're like an hour and a half into the movie and he's still not a villain. Weird, eh? Anyway.

Edit: Oooookay. So. I got to the end of the movie without combusting. And actually, I really liked it. Dad thought there wasn't much punch until the end. But I think it drew the punch back beautifully. And then, to my surprise, I find out it was directed by M. Night Shyamalan, who I'd sworn to loathe forever (I was disappointed with The Village. And Stuart Little. Did you know he directed Stuart Little? So says IMBD.). He faced quite a dilemma with the last thirty seconds of the movie though. He chose to tie up loose ends. In my opinion, he should've left those thirty seconds off, but, realistically, if he had, I'd probably be yelling about unresolved plotlines. = ) I think you guys should watch it. Really (although I can't vouch for the beginning of the movie, because I missed it).

"I didn't paraphrase! I alluded to it! It's fun to use learning for evil!

millenium hand and shrimp

My mother says that if I ever want to have hope of dating anyone ever, I shouldn't blog.

OK, that was a bit of a mis-statement. What she really said was that anyone who read my blog would never, ever ask me out, even if they were attracted to me. Something about... dating advice? and me hating it. And me being extremely extremely prickly. Something along those lines.

What she didn't say, but she was probably thinking, is that my blog gets kind of manic sometimes. And depressive the other three-quarters. And face it, if you (a theoretical "you", not any "you" that might actually be reading this blog) thought I was as manic-depressive as my blog is, "you"'d never in a million years ask me out, even if "you" thought I was ridiculously attractive.

I don't know where I'm going with this, but I thought it was kind of funny. Railing about dating advice gets me... more dating advice! At least my mother has some legitimate reason to give me dating advice. Reason being, she's my mother. Um... they don't seem to need any more reason than that.

Speaking of which, I must now put my clothes away like a good little girl, and not dump them all over the floor (well, I thought I was nineteen and a grown-up).

"when life hands you sausage and sparklers, make performance art!"

don't shoot me, man! i'm a graceful slow dancer, and not real at all.

So I rented the new Pride and Prejudice last night.

First, my favorite quotes:

"First, I must tell you that I have been the most comprehensive and unmitigated ass." (I mean, who doesn't start a proposal that way? It's the height of style! And seeing Mr. Bingley rehearsing his proposal to Mr. Darcy? Cutest thing EVAR! Especially when Mr. Bingly addresses Mr. Darcy as "Miss Bennet." And Mr. Darcy answers to it!)

"Indeed, more rational, but rather less like a ball." (Oooh, dissed. But dissed so logically.)

I typed out this long analyzation, but as I was reading through it to spell-check, I realized it was really kind of boring, and that at the end of it I would have felt compelled to apologize for being so boring and long-winded. I've already been quite whiny this week. And, having now had two good, long, unafraid nights of sleep under my belt, i'm feeling quite good about the world. So good I can even refrain from criticizing an abridged version of Pride and Prejudice.

I think that someday, someone is going to be able to figure out a way to be less petty, and then I'm going to copy then ruthlessly. = )

the lions?

Vicki actually left town unexpectedly last night, so I ended up being here alone again, but honestly I was so exhausted it didn't matter. I slept like a log, in my own bed, and I wasn't too scared. And look! This morning, I'm perfectly fine! And no one broke into the house! Which makes me feel a little silly for freaking out so much before. And also a little more like an adult. Y'know, for not freaking out, just once.

I think I'm coming to a truce with T. S. Eliot. His later stuff is much better, in my opinion, than his early stuff, including "The Wasteland" (which I find I loathe) and "The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock". Also, it's just plain endearing when a giant like that talks about how hard poetry is for him.

grarrr.

I only got four hours of sleep last night 'cause I was really freaked out. I think tonight I'm sleeping at Vicki's house instead. Did you know that a bathroom floor, even with two sleeping bags, is not a comfortable place to sleep? But it's the only room in the house with a lock on the door. Also, it's really freaky when all of your pets start yowling/howling all at once, and the ones that you can see are just staring at a blank wall....

So I guess... I guess the first night alone wasn't too bad. I didn't sleep well, but I slept, and only one scary thing happened (at nine o'clock at night there was a huge thumping noise on our back porch and a banging on our door... but it turned out to just be a neighbor boy wanting to borrow our basketball). But when I grow up I'm either living in a very small apartment in a building with people I know in a very safe part of town, or I'm having a roommate, or a dog, or all of the above. Liz gave me a call, which I truly appreciate, and my family got to Kansas OK, so all of that is good. I'm thinking maybe a pride and prejudice marathon tonight? I would enjoy that. Maybe tomorrow I should go rent the new pride and prejudice and watch it again. Yeah, that's the idea.

Loves,
Mackenzie

i've got a lov-e-ly bunch of coconuts

I got up at 4:30 a. m. to take Aaron to the airport today... ahhhh! It took a delicious cup of joe from my place of employment to get my body to forgive me. But the way to any barista's heart obviously leads through a cup (or several) of amazing mocha.

I finally figured out the general direction of the next part of my story. It means, however, that I'll have to make up a different last quarter of the book, although the last sentence (for now) stays the same. And that's just about my update. I talk a lot for someone without a lot to say. But maybe I require a high volume of words from which to filter the important ones. Yes?

"She was a pleasant, easy-going companion, if you avoided allusion, irony, sarcasm, repartee, satire, and words longer than 'chicken'."
- Terry Pratchett

circumambulate

This morning I had a turtle and a chocolate pecan biscotti for breakfast. The turtle wasn't a real turtle. It was white cocoa, caramel and macademia nut syrup, espresso and steamed milk combined in a blaze of cafe glory and topped off with whipped cream. The compensations for coming into work on a Saturday are unexpected and, sometimes, wonderful.

Last night I got lectured about dating again. This time, it was my employer, Vicki. I just nodded and smiled again. She got married the first time in 11th grade, and had her first child by the time she was 19. And she just got her 3rd divorce, so I guess she really just needed to talk, but I was still innerly-frustrated.

But I felt much better when I got back and found comments from my friends saying, "Call me if you're lonely!" I love you guys. I'll endeavor not to be afraid while I'm by myself, but if I am, your phones are so ringing off the hook.

"It's a difficult thing to be exposed to the new and strange worlds that you know nothing about and find your way. That's a big job. It's hard, without relying on past performances and finding your own little rut, which comforts you. It's a hard thing to be lost."
- Dorothea Lange

"a certain jagged energy as though they had landed from outer space and were trying to communicate not with our minds but with our livers or gall bladders or pancreases."
- Natalie Goldberg

"I guess this is my position: we, artists, claim that our art is necessary to the world, that it is necessary in a universal way. How then, if the world doesn't know it? What I mean is, if we make art inaccessible, 'high', set apart in some kind of academic tower, then it isn't necessary to 'the world' at all. I don't mean that we should make stupid work, or work that unequivocally supports the status quo, but don't you think we could stop being so snobbish about it all?"