Monday, December 31, 2007

NEW YEAR'S EVE

Hi readers. It's been a while. I don't really know why I haven't posted, since I technically have no work for the rest of the year and have really had nothing to do for the past ten days or so, but here I am, posting.
In the New Year's spirit, I'm going to post a Best of 2007 list.
1. Seeing Paul Anderson, with his German exchange student next to him, catch a Coco Crisp ground rule double sometime in September on TV.
2. Getting into Yale.
3. Tom Brady's last-ditch game-winning drive against the Ravens, Dustin Pedroia's goatee, etc.
I can't think of anything else


BODO

Facebook Blues

I am about
to go out of
my mind--

the thing is,
it's not like 
I haven't done

this before,
or
that it's not easy--

Maybe I should
just quit while
I'm ahead-- or

maybe I should
never go to school
ever again,

and drop out,
and become
one of "those kids"

that sit around
at home and,
listless and spent,

end up getting a 
job and a dirty
apartment in a 

couple of years.
Listless and spent.
That's what I am.

I can't get
out of this
fucking bed.

Bootsie

P.S. We're losing it. Who likes raw skin and its bloody implications?

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

The Fall and Rise of Earthly Majesty

Unending forest, soaked with green,
Washed in colours in dreams only seen,
Who flows beyond life to the faerie queene,
Tell us now where thou hast been.
The gleaming verdance of thy bright leaves' face
Tells a tale of the path thou walked'st in grace
Before shadow o'ercame thee, and left only a trace
Of the lands it infests and ruins apace.

Unbending tree, encased in bark,
Thy roots holding firm to the ground, now hark!
The air hath grown denser, thou astutely mayst mark,
Since thy shaft with nature's armour waxed ever dark.
Behold! between thy hardened case's cracks,
Where even now thy trunk a cover lacks,
Hath grown in vile splendour the head of my axe--
What say you now, you tree-hugging hacks?

Unshaking tower, lined with steel,
Who now doth your screeching whims feel?
We all have bowed, nay, prayed with zeal
Before your looming gate at which we kneel.
Hear our prayers, you monumental thorn!
Our voices echo in the chilly morn,
Our sighing thanks abound, no trace of scorn,
Till all our sodden heads of guilt be shorn.

Unblooming rose, flecked with dew,
Is this not where all thy forebears softly grew?
Dost thou not these monsters' coming rue?
Abandon all, and flaunt thy blossom's hue!

Lil Mugi

Monday, December 17, 2007

BODO BODO BODO BODO

The blister is starting to get infected (or heal over? I don't know) so I'm going to post.
Today my brother was playing with matches during dinner and my mom was like, "you definitely inherited the Rathbun pyro gene, hahaha." I was considering coming out with it, but I decided not to.
Since we are headed for superstardom, I realize that this probably wasn't the best subject for a post, but we have to rip this nasty thing open again.



BODO

Minnesota

How to make sense of this tumult—
Belted wild strapped down into fields,
Rolling highways under
flowing wheels,
Potential gleaned from
Corn silk strings,
And twangs of color
in a malted sky?

Color strapped down
Under malted wheels
Tumults of silk rolling
Down into fields,
Potential gleaned from
wild highway strings—
How to make sense of this sky?

Bootsie

Thursday, December 13, 2007

American Dream

I’m sitting at a round table in a shuttered office. The door is closed; The Professors sit on either side of me, fingers folded, bolstering my upright shoulders. They wait in a comically tense way, like you would imagine black-clad, muscled bouncers to do—one eye on me, the other eye on the small, settled woman facing us, ready for action. Their twin perched bodies exude a detectable, apprehensive scent—the scent of the future.

The room is too small for us. Rather, the room is too small for The Professors. Their lanky, extended legs reach out and knock the bookcase, which is yards in front of them. Their extra-broad shoulders crowd out my peripheral vision and clamp my head in a face-forward position. If I could turn my head and tilt it upward slightly, I would see their heads, like hoisted boulders, jammed against the ceiling. I could have sworn they weren’t this big yesterday.

“So.” Our attention is swiftly brought back to the small woman. She holds a small black machine, which makes small noises. Her icicle eyes look past us as she concentrates. The Professors shift; the room creaks.

“What do you see yourself doing after college?”

My cheeks are pushed together at this point, smashed together by the great masses that flank me; two fleshy, expectant walls. They breathe audibly. I can hear their hearts drumming in their massive, expanding chests. A chair breaks, but The Professors aren’t sitting anymore. The only thing I can see now is a small, unseeing pair of eyes and a small black machine, no farther away than before.

“Definitely graduate school,” I burble. The squeezing, crowding bulk immediately dissipates with a whoosh, like a quickly deflating balloon. I sit there in the strange, bright place, unsure whether the emptiness I suddenly feel is anything more than a dream.

“Good answer,” says Ms. Ross, sitting across the table. “Do you two have any more questions?”

“No. Anna’s doing a fine job figuring out things on her own,” replies my mom, smiling. She glances across me, locking eyes briefly with my dad. My head pulses slightly; I think I feel a bruise forming.

There is no end to it.

Bootsie

Saturday, December 8, 2007

The Work Dæmon

This afternoon, a short time after I had eaten lunch, I was suddenly seized by a familiar feeling: possession by a crazy beast I have come to know as the Work Dæmon. It, I feel, is responsible for most of my academic success, and what's scary about it is that it decides when I'll do something thoroughly and enthusiastically, not anything I have direct control over. In rapid succession, Physics, Calculus, Latin fell before my mighty pencil faster than conjunctions could be inserted between them.

It was pretty amazing.

On the other hand, I've also had uncountable experiences of the opposite, when the Work Dæmon is off visiting some other kid or something, when all I have to do is some little two-page "paper" for an English class, and it takes me about three hours because I keep reading random Wikipedia articles or watching these great concert videos on Youtube. I won't give up before I've even tried, of course, but I have a sneaking suspicion that that will be a more accurate assessment of the state of affairs tomorrow when I try my hand at whipping up another jewel of a college essay or two. This fickle Work Dæmon is what infuses me with the most random swings of absolute confidence and despair, and I've realised that all I can do is pray to it and make offerings to it, hoping it will send at least a femtojoule of its energy to me. I think that is the secret to doing well in school: appeasing the Work Dæmon and making your body an attractive vessel to it so that it spends a lot of time with you. At least, that's how it looks to me now.

Lil Mugi

Missouri?

Back from my Blogblister hiatus. The homework I never did swallowed me whole, and there was no Internet connection in its dark little stomach.

Anyway, back to Jere Hochman. Fact: Before he moved to Amherst in 2003, Jere Hochman had lived in St. Louis for his whole life. He lived in one spot for 50 years. He even went to college in St. Louis. I wonder if he had visited many other states before he came here, or if Missouri was just it. I wonder if Amherst freaks him out.

It's strange that the school district imported such a localized Midwesterner to run the show here. It's not bad; it just surprises me. For some reason, I don't think of Amherst as a place where native Missourians, or any Midwesterners, live. Cambodians, yes. Puerto Ricans, absolutely. Missourians?

Now that I think about it, my next door neighbors are from St. Louis. Well, forget that. I'm too bored to write. Don't read this.

Bootsie

Friday, December 7, 2007

Aimless Mental Wending

It's nice to be back, isn't it? It's been so long since I last posted (something like three days, I think), and in that grand gap of time I felt as though some integral part of my soul had been sucked out by the dementor that loads of homework can become, but, having made my triumphant return, I now feel complete again.

The only problem is, erm, that I have no idea what to write about. Seriously, I have writer's block or something. See, in each of my first three entries, I had set out to do something. First I wanted to establish a good beginning, then I wanted to try my hand at spontaneous heroic couplets, and then I wanted to type something in German, which also ended up being in rime. But now? I'm posting for the sake of posting, with no goal, no aim, no direction. I could write about how much I love the Elgar cello concerto because I'm listening to it right now, but that might get boring, so this sentence will suffice for that.

Instead...

um...

I'll list all the birds I can think of. Here I go--tell me if I leave anything out: albatross, bird of paradise, blackbird, blue jay, canary, cardinal, chickadee, chicken, condor, cormorant, crow, duck, eagle, falcon, fibi, finch, goose, hawk, heron, herrier, jackdaw, kingfisher, loon, osprey, peacock, pidgeon, phœnix, quail, raven, robin, rook, seagull, sparrow, starling, swallow, swan, tern, turkey, woodpecker...

That's all I've got, and you won't believe what a mental strain it was. I'm more exhausted now than I was after the first time gym teachers made me run The Mile. Pathetic, eh? I come to the chair, log in to our esteemed blog expected to just magically transform in a crystalline fountain of eloquence and wisdom at the first sight of this little window we type in, and all I can do is try to write an avian alphabet book. However, much as it may seem a failure of an entry, I feel that perhaps I, at least, can gain something of knowledge from this experience. For example, I feel like I should know a lot about forms of life because I did well in AP Biology. But then, if you dig a little deeper, you might see that I had Ms. McCarthy Prima as a teacher, and that we did not learn such valuable things as an alphabetical list of all the birds. Oh no, we learnt about thin pieces of cardboard cut in the shapes of leaves and drops of water with bits of velcro on their backs. Nothing against velcro, of course. I don't mind the sound of it ripping apart as much as some people seem to.

But this is getting even less productive than the list of birds, so I'll stop. Maybe next time I'll have some more cohesive wisdom. Or if I don't, at least I'll make it sound prettier and try to write it in hendecasyllabic meter (which I did today in Latin today, albeit with only one line) or something like that. Peace y'all.

Lil Mugi

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

TURKMENS

So, yesterday I went to my Turkmen neighbors' house for lunch. It was pretty great. It was just the two parents; no English-speaking younger people.
First, the man, Atajan, brought out a book about his city and talked about Turkmen history and Alexander Nevsky and Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan for a long time. It was kind of incomprehensible, but still awesome to listen to.
After that, I ate a lot of spinach chebureks, which are basically fried dough with spinach inside. They gave me ketchup and sour cream and weird canned tomatoes to put on them. The ketchup and sour cream was all right, but I didn't finish my tomato. I ate chebureks until I was stuffed, and then they gave me a huge bowl of vanilla ice cream.
After that, we drank green tea and watched their favorite channel, Spike TV. It seemed a little weird to me at first that they liked Spike TV so much. Still, I guess if I didn't know English too well, Spike TV would be my favorite channel too, since like 90% of its programming is footage of natural disasters and Ultimate Fighting.


BODO

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Mein Haar ist naß, aber ich will schlafen.
Was muß ich tun, es trocken zu machen?
Die deutsche Poesie, und diese Wörter (meine)
Sind nicht so schön wie meine englischen Reime.
Gute Nacht!

Kleiner Mugi

Monday, December 3, 2007

The second post of BODO

I just took an excellent shower, and in a few minutes, I'm going to go downstairs and watch the Patriots demolish the Baltimore Ravens on Monday Night Football. I don't know why watching the Patriots gives me so much pleasure, but somehow I just love watching those fifty or so huge, lightning-quick mutants destroy everything in their path. I mean, I guess it's a little more complicated than that, and there is kind of a cerebral aspect to the whole thing, but it all boils down to something fundamentally primitive and stupid. First of all, why do I root for the Patriots? Because they're from Boston, and I live sort of close to Boston. Still, it's not like the players are even from Boston, so I'm not even really rooting for Boston.

I like this rhythm we have now.


BODO

Snowday

Well, Jere Hochman granted me a snowday today like I asked for. Thanks, Jere. The only thing was, I didn't really handle it as well as I could have. I abused the snowday miracle by not doing anything that good. I woke up too early and ate a bagel that wasn't that good. I watched too much television that wasn't that good. The snow wasn't even that good; you could see grass tips poking up through the inch or two that covered the ground, and it was icy.

I'm being a little negative, though. I did go on a good run with Hannah, Maya, and Sarah through town, and it was nice to lie in my warm bed doing nothing, bathed in that special white-blue light that happens when it snows.

My day peaked at sunset. In the late afternoon, Andrew, Tommy, and Liam walked over to my house. It was just starting to get really beautiful; the clouds pushed themselves back to reveal this great coral and yellow light, similar to the inside of a conch shell, except more brilliant. The trees, coated delicately with ice, looked like glass, and the snow on the ground muted the rough car sounds around my street.

We crunched our way through the trails around the farmland by my house, taking in the glazed landscape. The impending darkness and lucid, darkened colors compacted and reduced everything, made us feel like we were a part of a toy farm or a Dutch landscape. We saw these brown cows silently huddling together, who were touchingly cute. They seemed to be thinking the same things as us: It's cold, and we can't believe we're a part of such a subtle illustration.

I guess I took the really good parts of my day for granted: The warm bed, the silent air, the crystal trees. My day off was pretty good, actually.

School will suck tomorrow, compared to this. I hate eating lunch at 10:00 AM, which I will have to do tomorrow. I feel so debased every time I go into that nasty, overly hot cafeteria with all of my rowdy classmates pushing each other everywhere, especially at a time when I'm usually eating breakfast at home. Plus, lunch food never really tastes good before noon. It's just weird. Carrots at 10:00 AM. Ketchup at 10:00 AM.

The thing that gets me about our high school is that it takes away all these little liberties that seem insignificant in themselves, but end up beating me down over a long period of time. For example, the freedom of eating lunch at a normal time. Also, learning how to use ProQuest in the form of an hour-long presentation given by a librarian. Again. Getting course expectations signed by parents. Again.

Whatever, it's almost over. At least we don't have to make today up.

Bootsie

Post Numba Two: The Snow Day

Heroic couplets are a tricky thing,
Constricting, aye, but how the verses ring!
So now, on such a topic as a day
When heaven's powder washes school away,
I'll write in such a way, which aptly suits
The joy that lies within a snow day's roots.
They're often rather quiet, even when
You spend the hours on the phone with friends.
The fallen snow, still fresh and blazing white,
Provides the special day with special light,
Which shines between the casements and the blinds
To tell us, when we wake, to rest our minds.
This morning, though, it all in stages grew,
So at the glimmers, I already knew.
At twenty after six I first awoke
And for that mother never came and spoke,
I knew that school at least had been delayed
And I again went down to slumber's shade.
Yet but two hours later, again I stirred,
And thought that deep within my head I heard,
"For certain, that now easily puts paid
To crushing thoughts that school's been just delayed!"
I then remained, while drifting in and out
Between those blissful realms that seemed to shout
"The day is thine, thou overworkèd bee--
Rise whene'er thou pleasest; thou art free!"

Lil Mugi

Sunday, December 2, 2007

The first post of BODO

God, I'm nervous about this. I mean, this is pretty big. My first post in the blogblister. I guess there are already two posts now, so it's not that big of a deal, but still. I want to be proud of this.

I just flicked a ladybug out of my window. I do it all the time. I don't know what happens to the ladybugs afterward though. I like to think I'm being nice to them, but it would probably be better if I just killed them all, outright. They probably just slam into the ground below my window and freeze to death, slowly and painfully.

SNOW DAY TOMORROW PLEASE GOD


BODO

Auspicious Beginnnings

BLOG- an online diary; a personal chronological log of thoughts published on a Web page
BLISTER- a thin vesicle on the skin, containing watery matter or serum, as from a burn or other injury

THE BLOGBLISTER- An online diary of the skin, containing a chronological log of watery matter or serum, as published on a Web page or other injury.

BLOGBLISTER
BLOGBLISTER

BLOGBLISTER

Anyway, the beginning of this blog coincides with the best news I've gotten since that one day last year when it wasn't fifty degrees out all winter:

TOMORROW MIGHT BE A SNOWDAY.

I'm already feeling that snowday magic. Except it's magnified because I don't have any homework. The sky was so heavy all day, which added to my mounting excitement. I went for a solo run right as it was getting dark, and the ground was lightly dusted with snow. No one was out; no cars, no animals. Everything was muted and dim. Shut down. Snowday.

If tomorrow isn't a snowday, I don't know what I'll do. There isn't any worse feeling than being wrong about a snowday. Calling the school cancellation hotline and hearing Jere Hochman say, "Good morning. Today is Monday, December 3rd. All schools in Amherst, Pelham and the region are open today" is the ultimate downer.

BLOGBLISTER

BLOGBLISTER
BLOGBLISTER

I only have one thing to say about our blog that Liam didn't:

Blisters suck. I hate blisters. I used to get them all the time, on the back of my heels. Twice I got blisters the size of quarters, and they ripped off. I couldn't wear shoes with backs for a week. I still have scars on my feet from those two blisters. I'm not sure what that means for our blog, but I just thought it was worth mentioning.

I can't focus tonight because of the impending possibility of the snowday. It's really all-consuming at this point. More later.

-Bootsie (haha)

The Blogblister's First Entry: An Occasion for Wild Celebration

So, all you faithful readers... I hope you're all ready, because I, Lil Mugi (just "Mugi" or "Mügsville" for short), am about to compose the stellar debut entry of The Blogblister, Blogspot's hottest and newest weblog that everyone's been talking about. This is not a joke. It's going to be great. We don't know exactly why... or what, or how... but we certainly do know the who and the where, and probably the when. That's all the question words I can think of for now.

OK, that's enough sharp, witty introduction for today. Let's get down to all the gooey inner workings that everyone's been so eager to read. This is the part that I've been worrying my head over for pretty much all of last night and this whole morning. If you count last night, when I was softly dreaming, I've been absolutely tormented for about sixteen hours now about the possibility that this entry just won't live up to our audience's high standards, and that, by writing a blisteringly lame and unexciting entry, I would plunge the future of this blog into the metaphorical internet junkyard where name-stealers such as Blogpond and Chris Saphavafamapphid's Blogblister (without the definite article, mind) reside. Nothing against them personally, but just think--had that family picked any other name, any other name--say, Blogpool or Bloglake or Blogtarn, we would have been forever blissfully ignorant of their existence, gone ahead with Blogpond, and not wasted something like ninety minutes (I may exaggerate, but only slightly) trying to come up with another name.

Of course, I don't want to sound bitter. I'm sure they're a nice family. They looked nice, at least, smiling in those scintillatingly perfect cosy family pictures, and I wouldn't want to take their happiness away by ragging on their blog's name. I'm sure they have just as much a right to it as we have. Besides, The Blogblister is perhaps even more awesome because it foreshadows the blistering way we plan to burn any who get in our way. Yeah, just try it, Chris Whatever. Don't even start thinking that just because you had the name first, you have more of a right to it. The Blogblister won't take any insolence from silly name-stealers like you.

Oh bloody hell, I've gone on a tangent again. Before I got all hopped up on these name-stealers, I was talking about the consuming angst that filled me about sullying our as yet nonexistent reputation by writing an entry that would make first-time viewers say something like, "Ew, another of these arrogant students who just thinks he's above it all with his biting social commentary. Let's stop looking at this stupid thing and play some more Runescape." See, I'm just a rusty bucket of self-conscious worries, and more than any of you may like to think, that mindset permeates pretty much everything I write, including school papers. (College essays, of course, are the exception--they're actively seeking stuck-up cynics, so it's a bit different.) And don't any of you pretend you're above that. At least I can admit, in this one regard, that I'm no better than anyone else. But now I'm putting myself above everyone else by saying I admit it. Confusing, isn't it? That's probably why I've never really tried to open up my thoughts like this online before--it would get ridiculously complex, probably not even make sense, and also be so full of myself that I would get tinglies in my spine (not the good kind) whenever I read it at a later date.

Ah well, too late now! I'm going to hit the "publish" button in a moment or two. Comment if you will. Or, if you won't, find some other way to let me know you're there. Because I know you are--with a blog like this, so well-established and long-standing in our infinitely rich internet culture, how could there not be droves of readers already furiously cutting in line to see our next putaperience? I know I'd be one.

Lil Mugi