i've spent NINE TIMES as many hours in computer labs in the past 2 days as i have sleeping. and i slept on the floor so it doesn't really count.

man there's nothing fun to do on the internet right now. no bull fights, no foam parties, no super-tetris-tournamentz-extreme. seriously. i'll take anything. but hey! page 16! above and beyond. whoo. we shall see.

i found out about my family in paris. it's just this lady called madame bernard-- not too difficile a dire. deux semaines, mes amis, seulement deux. je ne peux pas attendre. perhaps she's a cat lady. i'm SO relieved that she doesn't have children.

everybody in my life is a total flake. everybody. the people who aren't flakes aren't the people i enjoy the most. well. imagine that. anyways, it's good for lowering your expectations of people, i suppose. is that good? jury's out.

got to got to got to keeeep on wriiiiiting. lovely distraction, now it's back to kigali.

yarn scarf

sometimes, when i'm procrastinating real bad
and it's late-ish
and my table is covered in books and index cards and papers with notes scribbled all over them
and my hair's all crazy
and i'm drinking water
or coffee
or one of those weird stay-awake drinkz
like it's my job
or all three
simultaneously

i feel extremely crazy
and extremely genius.
and way college,
i mean "university"
i mean euroskeptic
although it'd be more college to be sitting in denny's
getting free refills on coffee
and eating "moons over my hammy"
and using wireless internet like it's going out of style
which it hopefully never will

in conclusion, i don't think i'll ever stop thinking about rwanda. unamir, arusha, 1959, 1994, habyrimana, rpf, cdr, kigali, hutu, tutsi.... man oh man. 10 minutes until my travelling computer lab tour jets me off to another, 24-hour and exotic, locale.

love, lauren

buffalo: a drinking city with a football problem

AIE. what will i do in buffalo for a week? national karaoke week? get trashed in canada all alone every night? visit niagara falls no less than 6 times? use (and gush over) the wireless internet in cappelli's every single day? sit in the green chairs in the library and very publicly read trashy romance novels? visit the site of the infamous teenage lust-fest? the possibilities are endless, i'm pretty sure.

you know when you send a gazillion emails and make a gazillion phone calls in a very short period of time and nobody gets back to you that fast because it's late or a weekend or something? thats what i did yesterday. when it happens i sorta feel like i don't exist. not in a weird way, just in an "..oh" way. and then a "WHAT ARE THESE PEOPLE DOING WITHOUT THEIR COMPUTERS AND TELEPHONES??" way. maybe it's cause i lost my glasses. laaame.

togo/togo is kanner's favorite example country of all time. i like the headline in the bbc article about the recent presidential elections: Togo's poll loser 'is president' -- so sarcastic

matzah pizza and jewish rappers
itchiest jacket ever
just come outside
farmers in france
maximum tea ingestion of all time
japanapajamajama !
names i haven't heard in ages
so...
what's next?
and
what will YOU be doing at 5:55 5/5/05? make plans. you don't want to be alone at the stroke of 5555555555555555555555555555.

when the going gets tough, the tough get kray-zee

lemon lemon lime mango! three new chapsticks in wonderful fruit flavors. i couldn't be happier.

what i'm wondering is what you're wondering. rick did his beat-box external monologue word games thing. he had a milkshake every day, introduced me to pesto omelettes, and fell in love no less than 12 times. we surrepitiously drank whiskey out of a paper bag at an outdoor barefoot gathering. haw flakes, two free and HUGE plates of food, asian and african, and he missed his train just before it began to rain.

glasses, keys, freshmen, and jenx and i could not be more alike in these unfortunate circumstances.

"so what have you been doing... besides wearing awesome coats?"
rick is here
he has more fashionable facial hair
and romantic entanglements
so i say "tell me everything"
and he doesn't
but he will

"so what have you been doing... besides wearing awesome coats?"
rick is here
he has more fashionable facial hair
and romantic entanglements
so i say "tell me everything"
and he doesn't
but he will

another round of irish/iraqi carbombs

northwest airlines has a seriously fucked up idea of what a crossword puzzle is. i tried to do the one in their "worldtraveler" magazine on the way to detroit, and here are just a couple of the clues available for my brainbarrel to interpret and deduce:

ACROSS
22 Combination of 64- and 74-across
55 See 70-down
64 Ticker symbols?
74 See 22-across
83 See 103-across
103 83-across works
116 22-across and 70-down

DOWN
70 Combination of 55- and 64-across

ARE YOU KIDDING ME? what is this, a math problem? so needless to say i had absolutely NO idea, and i looked up the answers to see what on earth they were talking about, and, get this.... the answers were SYMBOLS AND NUMBERS. heavens. i have never been so exasperated. whoever created this atrocity (Elizabeth C. Gorski, if you want to know) should be forced to be a dentist for donkeys for the rest of life and never again be allowed in a 5-mile radius of any sort of word as she'll undoubtedly mangle it uncontrollably until it creates a funnel of ridiculous word-number-symbol combinations that lead everyone in circles and confuse the hell out of humankind. unfathomable.

in related news, detroit was unproductive in the academic realm of my life but i talked to lots of nice friends and went jukebox craaaazy.

in unrelated news, the eyeball and i tped our living room and she gave me a 7 pound can of pork and beans. it is supporting the growler.

this internet journal is an inside joke with myself.

i trust the views of certain people i know

detroit will be a whirlwind of.... homework papers flying all about.
for realzz.
i'd hate to be jacques right now; his lair is filled with his own filth. it's terrible.
i can't believe i have to call him. this is like middle school... in a good way.
lindsey's employer is a 7yr old who's still on a bottle, can't read, and calls her "fucker" or "servant". aye.

lots of songs about cities

i forgot how much i really do enjoy the matching side of aiesec. being lcp is great, and i really like a lot of the things about it more than vp ogx, but i definitely miss matching. it's rewarding knowing all the answers.

and the weatherman predicted it, here we are one week later, heat cranked up watching russian tv and wearing a lot more clothing than yesterday. the snow adds to the lack of reality of this entire weekend. like gwen is here, guillermo is leaving, and i have a lot a lot of stuff to do that i've thus far chosen to ignore.

i can't get too excited about paris because there's a lot to do pre-paris. i watched a man from senegal speak in french and in general africans i've noticed speak much slower french than the french but maybe he was simply being considerate to his american translator/audience. i'm telling everyone i'm going to senegal next year, and i AM, even if i have to take out a loan to do it. and god damn i forgot to call dotun back.

so. do i call or not? andrew wk is playing for free tomorrow. i've never ever allowed things to be left this way before. good resources are hardcover books. now seems like a good time to invest.

so i'm creating this compilation of a lot of songs about cities/states that are not in california. in response to a certain true mason 3's contention that "so. cal. is NOT overrated".. any suggestions? we will be getting married in las vegas, but only to be able to say "the husband" and "the wife".

clickersapien strikes fear in the souls of those without futures

a book review (not by me, but admired by me):
In the future, robot archaeologists will be sifting through the rubble of a long dead human civilization, patiently searching for the ultimate cause of mankind's extinction. After sifting through the remains of our fallen society, searching through libraries and the streets of ghost towns and the insides of long-dead computers, they will eventually find the horrific shout that set off the avalanche that would destroy us.
They will find TTYL.
It will be the first time a robot weeps.

a question:
what the fuck will i do with RICK for like 4 days?

31 down is ebon, 26 across is smite

i'm getting pretty damn good at crossword puzzles.