The Tree Pulp!

My tutorial paper is really coming together! I am understanding it more and more as I write. I think one of the scariest parts of beginning, and this always happens to me, is that I was convinced I had to write it linearly. Almost every time I write a long paper I struggle with myself for a while because I need to write nonlinearly but I resist doing so.

I like to write kind of from the inside out, where I'll craft a few argumentative paragraphs and then keep adding premises and topic sentences as scaffolding. I usually end up realizing that the point where I started writing, the epicenter, is the part with the hardest ideas. And then everything else is just kind of the supporting logic that makes the hard stuff possible.

Loooovvee writing!

the butch realness

Let's be real: I got a blog so that something cool would come up when you google my name. Right now, all that surfaces is a naive comment I wrote about PIRG on the comment page of some newspaper in oregon, a couple of things about student senate, and some articles about OC softball from another life. Then there are the other imposter Leah Pines, all of whom I regularly stalk on facebook. Are they a threat to my WEB PRESENCE? Are they encroaching on my digital territory?

How old do you have to be to have a Web Presence? Why doesn't Bill Pine have one?

Short-face Bear!
I can't stop the rocky horror, rockyrock

A poem in two stanzas

The missions on deck

Away 32 Mission Objectives

Take customer ad images
Test Tandem carbon nozzle/valve inserts
Test metered balloon fill
Test new spread spectrum telemetry system
Peak altitude above 100,000 feet
Bag deployment testing
Dual mission operation
Mission Control upgrade shakedown

Away 33 Mission Objectives

Carry PongSats to high altitude
Test reel down system
Test metered balloon fill
Dual mission operation
Peak altitude above 100,000 feet
Bag deployment testing

Breaking the ice

I've been having some anxiety about what to write here, now that I have this official space all to myself. It even has my real name on it, with nothing to hide behind. Will I be intelligent? Insightful? Will I have anything to add to anyone's thoughts? Is this type of soul-baring appropriate for a "Blog"? Is it a journal, or is it expository? How manicured am I meant to be?

I've always been curious about people who keep blogs. (Again, do you "keep" a blog the way you keep a journal?) I used to have a LiveJournal, and I used that as a space to be so outlandish and esoteric that whatever I wrote only had significance to me, and so I never worried about the possibility of anyone decoding my entries and forming unkind judgments about me. But I envisioned this space as being somewhat more formal. Look--I'm already using punctuation 'n all that jazz.

Maybe what I really need is first to reconnect with the freedom of the creative process before I try to write in organized frames. I guess I should just write what comes naturally.

I just helped Matt with some kind of Art History Major duty, where all the seniors have to write up the Senior Studio shows. He wrote about Cara, who I've spent months forgetting to email about selling cheese this summer. His take on her show was that it was about the importance of archiving, how it provides us our only means of understanding the past as it reckons into our present self. Or maybe that's just my interpretation of his piece...he seemed a bit resistant to my suggestions, and it could be that I was just hearing what I wanted to hear.

I finished making a pamphlet to stick outside the Writing Center for people to use as a guide to self-editing. Should I go into editing? I think I'd be good at it, but I would miss the personal interaction that's such a big part of peer tutoring. It would feel like a faux-pas to just slash and burn other people's writing to fit my needs. But then again, I like being in charge of things.

I've gotten really into this LinkedIn thing. I'm going through the same friending frenzy that I experienced when facebook first started to get popular, except with a few more of the quandaries of who it's appropriate to contact. Is it awkward to ask professors who I only kind of know for their professional blessing? Especially because the only relationships that LinkedIn recognizes are peer relationships. Professors aren't exactly my colleagues, or my friends, nor have we "done business together." Actually, there aren't any relationship options that imply anything other than a totally balanced relationship. Then again, it is a professional network...it's not meant for students. If I just wait until I graduate to deal with this, it won't be a problem.

Some anthropologist somewhere must have done some kind of study about the way that social networking websites like Facebook and Myspace and LinkedIn reflect and contribute to the way that people understand their relationships. Like when Facebook gives you the option to describe your romantic status, there are only a few options. And people love to have categories to think in...so do people that use the website a lot tend to adhere to those categories when they think about themselves and their interactions with other people?

I'm at the Writing Center...for 20 more minutes...let's go, minutes...Bah, Friday night. It's actually surprising the number of people that come in for help on Fridays. It's no extraordinary amount. but you know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick andthey won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. And friends they may think it's a movement.

I saw a poster today from when Arlo came to Oberlin like a century ago. Remember when Oberlin used to be the hotspot for vocal, radical, influential people? Like besides Nader the Rasinette? Rasinette Roulette?

From the Archives: Bill does Business

So im finally paying my overdue tuition for this semester. Really, I am being held captive as a spectator to Bill Pine's battle with the Federal Credit Bureau.

Bill and I are sitting in his office calling various banks and asking them all the gory details about the prime rate and the abeyance period. or whatever. really, its like this:

my dad said we have to use my computer so that i can have all the information (what information?)
so im fucking around on facebook

while bill calls up well-meaning ladies with country accents and grills them until they are near tears. he has piles of yellow and white pieces of paper with hand-written notes. but because he cant find or cant read anything he writes down, he asks the same questions over and over again.

i want to run away from this situation! i dont want to be associated with my father's abrasive money-personality. on the other hand, if i sit here quietly he will do all of the grunt work for me, and it'll still look like i'm involved. i am being responsible! being tangential to this process is being a grownup!

AND NOW!!!
(Bill insists on using the speakerphone for all important telephone transactions)
BUT THE BANK GUY CANT HEAR HIM!
BILL IS YELLING INTO THE PHONE:
"CAN YOU HEAR ME?! I AM YELLING INTO THE PHONE, THERE IS NOT MUCH MORE I CAN DO! I AM GOING TO KEEP TALKING NOW! WHAT IS DIRECT DEBIT?! MY NAME IS WILLIAM PINE? WHAT IS YOUR NAME? IM SORRY, WHAT IS YOUR NAME? IM SORRY.....WHAT IS YOUR NAME, SIR?"
Bill's mumbling aside: "the guy's in india, we have a bad connection."

Since Dell's office is in India, and he has spent many bad speakerphone hours on the phone with Dell, he assumes that all phone problems are because of India, not because of speakerphone. That doesn't even make sense. Why would Sallie Mae's offices be in India? He just can't bring himself to find fault with the speakerphone. Speakerphone is the shining merit badge on his boyscout sash of Modern Technology. Hip to the jive, man. "PRIME MINUS ONE PERCENT!"

There is one more farcical condition to keep in mind during all of this. This has now been going on for nearly 4 hours, and Bill is still bellowing into the speakerphone under the guise that since i can hear it, i am involved. Meanwhile, he has asthma. And its getting harder and harder for his voice to maintain its assertive volume. In the last half hour, he has degenerated to a quavery yell. "Pr-PRIME...What's the Prime?!"

The overwrite

I have a blog.
I am blogging in bed. One day I will become clever and dazzle you with my witticisms.

Never ever was

a better bear than ive been now in bed