I don’t think guys realize how easily girls (in general, or maybe just me) startle.  It takes less than a quarter of a breath for me to go from genial and pleasantly minding my own business to suspicious and overflowing with “oh god what does he want.” 

(And yes, there is no question mark at the end of that because by the time the thought finishes crossing my mind, I’ve already moved on to a possible list of answers.) 

I dropped by a Redbox today (not sure why I find the Underworld series so endearing, but I finally got around to seeing the third one) and on my way out I stood at the bike rack settling my bag and my jacket into my bike basket and this guy—quite a good looking guy, too, I should add—approached me with a rather hesitant but endearing smile.  He said hello, I was polite and answered.  He looked like he was gearing up for a question, so I looked up from my stuff and gave him about three-quarters of my attention in case he was lost or needed help or something.  He asked if I was a student at UCSB, and I could feel my expression freeze over.  I told him yes, but when he asked my name I gave him a fake one.  “S—Rachel.” 

(Rachel is an old, old character of mine from a post-apocalyptic world.  She was a timid, frightened little slip of a thing and I’ve always felt that she wouldn’t mind me using her name to make myself feel safer.) 

(She was also one of the Animorphs, which I’m pretty sure is where the name originally came from.  Originally in my lifetime, I mean.) 

So he says something very amicable in an unassuming, nonthreatening way along the lines of “oh, that’s where I’ve seen you from.” 

Which was a lie.  I’m observant and I’m sure I’d have noticed such a good-looking guy in one my lectures—and since I’ve only had a total of three lectures this year, all small(ish) upper division lectures, it cuts way down on the number of people around me. 

That and it was clearly just a line.  I almost played along, even, except that it was so clearly a line and I didn’t actually know what he wanted out of me.  My number?  Not happening.  Not interested, not even for such a friendly, attractive (brave) guy.  So I said something along the lines of “oh, neat.  That’s cool.  See you around, then.” 

Part of it was that I’m really just not interested in general.  But a much bigger part was that he startled me and then I couldn’t get over my initial suspicion.  And yes, stress and other recent situations have left me more on-guard and less chatty than usual, but I’m pretty certain I still would have reacted better if he hadn’t been my age. 

So, (girls especially) help me out: am I the only one who startles like a goddamned rabbit over stuff and people that most likely are not dangerous? 

Screaming over spiders when we smack them off the wall with the end of a Swiffer mop and they land on top of the trash bin, thenjumpsomewhere.

Somewhere we can’t see.

Loud, extended shrieking.

I’m never going to finish my essay. 

Fourteen class days left.  Four weeks to graduation.  Twenty-one days.  Twenty-five days until my last final exam.  An unfortunate biproduct of finishing off GEs at the last possible moment.

When I was thirteen I hurt my left knee playing soccer.  I did the whole physical therapy bit (and it sucked, of course) and ended up wearing a brace to bed every night until March 24, 2011 when I took a train from Edinburgh to London at the beginning of a three-week long trip through Greece and Romania and ended up forgetting my brace.  I left it under my pillow in Edinburgh. 

But as it turns out, I didn’t need it those three weeks I was gone.  I just didn’t. 

I hadn’t worn my knee brace for 390 days. After leaving Edinburgh I put it inside my hollow purple ottoman and it stayed the ottoman at the foot of my bed all year after moving from San Diego back up to Santa Barbara.  I didn’t have to think about it often—the only other things I’ve got inside the ottoman are the serving spoons my grandmother gave me and extra mulled wine spices—but I always knew exactly where my knee brace was. 

And last night I pulled it it out and put it on, and I hate myself a little bit for it.  I got up this morning (afternoon) and did the leg exercises I’m supposed to do something like three to five times a day, but I made this horrific, relieved noise when the brace closed over my knee last night before I could even stop myself and I can’t stop thinking about how much I hadn’t even realized it hurt until it suddenly only hurt half as much. 

This is mostly just a melodramatic complaint about how difficult it is to take care of myself.  Food every five or so hours (it never ends!), laundry, exercise—the only enjoyable part of the upkeep are warm showers. 

I’m so stressed I can hardly think straight. There’s just so much to get done this week. The poetry magazine I’m working for (“Into the Teeth of the Wind;” the title comes from a William Carlos Williams poem.) has to be fully put together by Friday, and I’m not sure if it’s going to happen. That’s the big source of stress—the rest is just schoolwork and wishing I had more time to write and read and watch my shows.

But on top of everything else I had a slightly scary experience on campus (in the middle of the day, no less!) yesterday. This guy was following me for quite a distance—I could hear him pacing me, and it just makes me very, very angry that it frightened me. (Not that what he did was okay, of course. But still.)

And this morning I had a nightmare that I’d failed to plan out this week’s Villains in Fiction class and that I’d even forgotten all my notes and extraneous stuff I always bring to class in case we run through the stuff I’ve planned too quickly. And then I woke up believing that I had no money but that I’d spent it all on plane tickets to Edinburgh. (I.e., I was dirt poor and didn’t mind. I was actually immensely disappointed when I realized it was a dream.)

I’ve promised myself that if I make it through this week I get to go see the Avengers. An afternoon all to myself. I just need a light at the end of the tunnel.

My last post didn’t show up on my Facebook newsfeed; I’m kind of hoping this one doesn’t, either. 

Every Tuesday and Thursday I’ve a class on Thoreau with possibly the biggest contemporary hippie in Santa Barbara (at least)—he’s a wonderful man and marvelous professor and I think he is most likely the kindest and most compassionate man I’ve ever meet and maybe will ever meet.  And for some reason last Thursday he mentioned that in one of his other classes he participated in his first class-wide group hug ever and wasn’t it a shame that was the first and that it hadn’t happened again and who knew how long it would take before it did happen again—

And my first thought was, ‘Before it happens again?  I doubt anyone in this class would mind doing a group hug for Teddy.  We all adore him enough.’

And my second thought dawned with an awful kind of sinking feeling: ‘I don’t want to hug anyone.’ 

But they’d already voted on it and I think I was the only one to not raise my hand—we trudged (well, I trudged) outside beyond the concrete patio and huddled together in a big group. 

Then everyone lifted their arms and I was the last one out of the building so they made room for me and the guy who’d held the door for me and we squeezed in at different spots of the circle and I was suddenly surrounded by warm bodies.  Warm, breathing, kind bodies.  People.  On my left was a girl I knew solely because she submits beautiful poetry to the magazine I work for and on my right was a young guy who I’m not sure I’ve ever really even looked at before, let alone spoken to.  But my arm fit around the girl’s waist kind of perfectly and I fit slotted into the guy’s side with his arm over my shoulders kind of equally perfectly. 

We stood out there with our arms around our classmates and our professor for what felt like a long time, but was probably only a minute or two, and for the most part we kept silent.  I wanted to say, “I’m glad I’m in this class.  Even if I haven’t been keeping up with the reading, it helps.  With everything.”

But I didn’t.  I couldn’t make the words take on air and noise. 

And then after a long moment we all went back inside and continued on with our discussion on Walden. 

Go ahead and skip ahead to about 5:01.  No, really, go for it.  It’s a knee-slapper.  (They cut out some stuff, but I think I’m still the most entertaining interviewee they got.)

I remember once, not more than a few years ago, I complained to my parents that we were expected to go to school in the beginning of our lives, rather than the middle.  The middle would be better, because we would know enough toappreciateeach moment of learning, but we’d not be so old to be unable to continue learning (if we wished to) or to use what we learned. 

It occurred to me that, finally, I’m learning toluxuriate in classes.  Not so much the classes themselves, I guess—my English 50 course this quarter isdullandpredictablein its approach, but the material is both unnerving and somewhere between “pretty” and “beautiful.”  

The learning, though—I’m getting it.  It’s nice to feel thatstretchin my mind that happens right before something clicks, to listen to someone vocalize something I’d have never thought of and feel the new thought raise goosebumps as it settles into my skin.  It’s nice to work hard, to reallywork hardand make one of my stories better than anything I could have written a few years ago and toknowthat it’s better than anything I could have written a few years ago.  

It’s just a shame, you know?  I’m finally getting it—I’m understanding what’s so great about school, but I’ve only eight weeks of it left. 

Maybe that’s why we send people to school for so long, though.  It takes us a while to get why it can be so wonderful, but after that it’s time to move along—like we shouldn’t get too used to living with something wonderful, but we should know how to look for what’s wonderful in whatever comes next. 

Lying in bed at 2:15 reading an e-book for class (“The Marriage Plot”) and a train goes through the Goleta station. Probably only two or three miles away if you’re a bird. Possibly as many as four or five with roads.

The train whistles, which isn’t an unusual sound come nighttime, but then I hear it clatter through the station without stopping. Wheels on the tracks, thwacking away without fading for several long and quiet minutes. It’s quiet outside except for that noise.

Then the clatter starts to fade, and a gaggle of happy, screaming drunk girls bike by. I half wonder if they know it’s Tuesday. More importantly, though, do they remember any words beyond “oh my god?”

futurejournalismproject:

The antitrust lawsuit accuses Apple and five separate publishers of colluding to fix the price of e-books in violation of federal antitrust law. Hachette, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster have settled with the Justice Department, but the remaining three defendants—Apple, Penguin, and Macmillan have not.

Apparently, the price-fixing scheme began a few months prior to the release of the first iPad, and the publishers reportedly took steps to conceal secret communications with each other. 

via Talking Points Memo:

The publishers and Apple ended up entering into an agreement. Jobs’ own email to a publisher proves to be quite damning with Jobs stating that the publishers could work with Apple or pursue one of two other choices: “Keep going with Amazon at $9.99” or “hold back your books from Amazon.”

In April 2010, publishers began charging $12.99, $14.99 or $16.99 for e-book versions of new hardcover titles.

Previously, the DOJ points out, e-book pricing occurred in a “wholesale model,” wherein publishers sold their books to retailers at varying prices, then retailers were free to charge whatever they wanted for them.

The “agency model” that Apple and the five publishers implemented involved agreeing to fixed prices prior to selling the books through Apple’s iBookstore, according to the DOJ.

If approved by the court, a settlement will grant retailers such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble the freedom to reduce the price of their e-books. They would also be required to “terminate their anticompetitive most-favored-nation agreements with Apple and other e-books retailers.”

This is BRILLIANT!  Cheaper ebooks! 

I have to say, the more I read about publishing houses—the big ones, mind, the ones that it would be a “dream come true” to sign with—the more I sympathize with self-publishers.