November 24, 2001

A girl is getting undressed, she's kinda shy. The man holding the camera is encouraging her. I think he's her husband. He says the kids are asleep.
Her breasts are pretty. She sits down next to him, only wearing underpants. It's his turn now. He refuses. Says something to her. She takes off her panties.

static

A swastika. A guy talking about how all the "wrongly-colored people" oughta be thrown outta the country. Tattoos. Beers on a table. A hash pipe is visible in the background. The ceiling is full of holes, as if someone punched through it with their fists.

static

A beer. Music screaming louder than the microphone can handle. Someone attempting to sing along. A guy says this oughta be made into a music video.

static

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I really let her go today.

Odd, I thought I was going to marry her (May 29, 2001). 'Course, things change. Especially when you're not the one changing them (November 7, 2001). We attempted a reconciliation. She dumped the John Deere guy, told me that she was sure that I was the one, that I was who she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. She tried hard. I know she did, you can't fake sincerity like that. Besides, she's no actor. I can read her like a book, always have been able to. When we started, it annoyed her, because when she gave me wax "Nothing"s to sincere What's wrong?"s, I wouldn't stop until I had melted through to the core. Why does it annoy us when someone does exactly what we want them to? She eventually came to rely on it, and it made her feel good to know that I prodded because I cared.

I told her a week ago, nine days now actually. I can't get around it, no matter how much I want to. I can't get around the hurt. I wish I knew this was coming, I wish I could have dealt with this earlier, but the fact is I was dealing with sharing her with another guy, and before that I was in agony over a crushed heart, thank you very much. Too tired to get angsty. She didn't cry over the phone, said she just couldn't find the tears. I'm sure she cried later, she's pretty sensitive. She finished off the vodka I left over there (not much, she joked earlier today), ate some comfort food (Pokey sticks. Good stuff), packed, woke up the next morning, drove home, and was off to Walt Disney World for a family vacation with the folks and two younger brothers for 12 hour days of Fast Pass rides, mother making snide comments about her weight and father scheduling the fun out of everything.

She got home today. We were putting up the tree at my place, the family said invite her over, and I did. We hung out, it was fun, tried to do some karaoke with friends at the casino (no more karaoke ever, turning the room into more slot machines), ended up at Perkins, got tired, came back to my place. There's so much history in that room, you could almost feel it in the air, dank before turning on the baseboard heater. I held her. She cried. I cried. I wished it didn't have to be like this. She says it's her own fault anyhow.

I'll never stop loving you.

She said that to me before. She also said she'd never dump me for somebody else, that there was no one she wanted to be with but me.

She also said she wanted to marry me.

Things change.

I walked her to the door. I held her again. She said she'd call tomorrow. I watched her drive away.

There she goes.

I went to that cheese party because I knew he'd be there.

I met him a week ago. My roomate saw one of her hometown friends through a glass window and we decided to go inside. He was there, and I smiled. I met him once before, and I knew that he didn't remember me. My downfall is that I remember everything and everyone. Then everyone made a big deal about me wearing a red shirt, wearing a red shirt to an anti-Stanford rally was a Cal capital offense! Hey, I like red, and besides, I just woke up. He said that he was going to tell everyone and get me thrown out. My kind of humor.

We sat next to each other and talked sporadically. My roomate walked slightly ahead so we could talk on the way home. He said he would come and visit sometime, and I shrugged. Would be nice, but didnt matter one way or the other. Then a couple days later my roomate told me that her hometown friend was having a cheese party that night. Free food, and I was pretty sure he would be there. One problem: the perfect guy that lives 3000 miles away was coming to visit that night and that night only. Hmmm, well I had a couple hours before he was supposed to arrive, but ended up hanging out with the other guy all night so....it wasnt meant to be with the far away guy. I was trying to be realistic instead of idealistic for once.

There are some things that bother me about him. Or, rather, Im not sure I can relate to. For one, he's jewish. And since I barely know anything about that, I probably will gravely offend him sooner or later. And he's diabetic, which I just feel bad about. And he's slightly fruity. I know its not a good sign when you want to change some things about a person before you even really get to know them.

However, he makes me laugh. I had some fun with him while everyone left a little early for thanksgiving break. Now Im here all alone, and thinking about whether or not I even want to like him. I dont want a relationship and someone liking me scares me. I dont like being liked, Im used to being abused (emotionally) remember? He called me beautiful and all I could do was laugh. Sigh. He had an away message up, it said something about him having to cook something and he would be back soon. And for some reason I thought that it was adorable that he would be cooking at three in the morning. Is this the start of something?

Once again, I've handed in my MSc project writeup. 10,494 words of text, 8,005 more of code. First time I handed it in, I was told that I didn't have nearly enough detail about what I'd done and how I did it, and the structure wasn't up to scratch. They may or may not be going to tell me the same thing again (they didn't), but either way I'm finally through working on this thing.

I wish they'd told me what sort of thing they expected me to write at the start. I did tell them more than once that I didn't have much of an idea, so it can't have come as much of a shock to anyone when this came through all too clearly in what I handed in.

This time I got some helpful comments on it from my friend Tom and three random noders (thank you, thank you, thank you). I should have thought of that sooner, just wandering into the catbox and saying 'Does anyone fancy reading over a 30-page MSc writeup on 3D football netcasting?' - it seems obvious in retrospect. Throughout the time I was writing the thing up I felt it was a problem that I didn't really know anyone (bar Tom) who had the right backround to say anything very useful, but here I am procrastinating daily in what is largely a geek community and it doesn't occur to me to ask here until I'm just about to have to hand the damn thing in!

shakes head.

Anyway... it's over and done with now, and a massive weight has been lifted from my shoulders. Now to do something else! Maybe I'll spending a month or two working on the Cellular Automata-based model of the mind that underpins the theories of my mother and our manic genius friend Mike Lesser. Sort out my tea supply network. Make computer games and/or toys based on simulated gravity and spring systems. Node some of the science I've been meaning to write up ever since I got here. Make my web page prettier, put a load of new pictures and stuff on it, see if I can use it to convince someone that they should be employing me to play about with geometry and computer graphics. Get involved in a bit more of the political activism that I haven't had time for this last year or so, despite the urgent need for it just now. So much to do, and so much time!

On Wednesday of this past week, I was in court, waiting to finish jury selection for my trial. I was going to be tried with two other people, two men named Brian and Carlos. I say was because on Wednesday morning, Brian arranged a plea bargain for himself and plead out.

Brian was and is a stranger to me. I never met or saw him before arriving in court for pretrial procedures. I know nothing about him except that he was in the demonstration, and that he makes music. He sat outside the courtroom playing with a music making program on a handheld videogame console.

On Wednesday morning, Brian plead no contest to the seven charges against him. As his plea bargain was being arranged, he whispered to Carlos that he was doing this in order to give Carlos and myself a better chance at beating the charges. He said he didn't care about having a record himself, or paying the penalty, as long as someone was able to fight this, and he knew that he didn't have the strongest case.

With that in mind, he stood up and acquired a criminal record, seven misdemeanor convictions for rioting, rout, conspiracy to riot, unlawful assembly, failure to disperse, remaining at a riot, and wearing a mask. He received a three day sentence with credit for the three days he served, a hundred dollar fine payable by May of 2002, 30 days community service, and 3 years summary probation.

It's a hard thing to watch someone, perhaps particularly a stranger, make this kind of sacrifice for you.

To see how this started, please see my daylog for May 3, 2001.
For difficulties in dealing with court dates, please see my daylog for May 7, 2001.
The charges against me are listed on May 10, 2001.
For an account of my first arraignment hearing, please see my daylog for May 24, 2001.
For an account of my bad dealings with my codefendants, please see my daylog for May 30, 2001.
For an account of my second arraignment hearing, please see my daylog for June 22, 2001.
For an account of my decision to go to trial, please see my daylog for October 31, 2001.
For an account of pretrial matters and my journey to LA, please see my daylog for November 17, 2001.

Along with Christmas shopping, calling relatives and making a spaghetti dinner with my boyfriend, I've been doing a little cleaning today... winter cleaning, I suppose. (Wow, don't we sound exciting this weekend.) While throwing out a few items, I ran across my middle school diary.

Oh my lord.

I have issues with nostalgia. I've read through most of the thing, and while it's embarrasing, I figure it might be more interesting in my day log than the majority of what I'd have to say about this actual day. So.....

Me in 1990. (8th grade)
"My life is one big mix up. But then again, I've found that everyones life is, and there is no getting around it. Like my stepmother always says, 'Life sucks, then you die.'" {Ah, we see the onset of teen angst here, do we not?}
I talked to Ally today. I told her about a record I found of my parent's called Saturday Night Fever. On the top are the Bee Gees, while below them on a disco floor stands John Travolta, in a white suit with his butt sticking out and his finger pointed in the air. This was such a joke to us. But hey, if there was a song back then we had to like, it was 'Staying Alive.'
Ally wants me to come over this weekend so we can watch the movies 1969 and Parenthood. Guess what? Once me and Ally went to the mall and we saw this guy that looked JUST like Emilio Estevez except he was taller. We tried to follow him but lost him. Oh well. He was good looking and Ally loves Emilio Estevez." {Oh... this poor guy and a number of others were followed when we were budding teens. To the people out there, I apologize.} "Today we got the Olympics! It's the biggest thing! Atlanta Georgia won the Olympics! This morning we heard it in the gym. It was dead silent, then this man said we got it. Everyone jumped for joy. Also in science we were supposed to observe a candle before, during and after it was burned. I wrote 70 observations down, and it was the highest in the class!
I just watched Unsolved Mysteries and it was about circles made in wheat and corn fields made around the world, and due to evidence, they think it might be UFOs. It was so creepy! Right now I'm on my bed and every little noise is scaring me!" {The early stages of my neurosis, I suppose}
"Heath Hale asked me to go with him today, but I think of him as more of a friend. I feel bad about saying no, but, oh well."

All right I will stop this tragedy now. Forgive me.

i overheard a conversation yesterday while shopping. (yes, i admit it, even i shop sometimes. *hides in shame). i was in the ladies' room at the mall, in a stall, and overheard the following from women outside in line. it was a teenaged girl, either talking to her mother or a friend--i couldn't quite tell.

"Isn't this just the coolest present i got for X?"
"Well, yeah..."
"But it's not a christmas present. She doesn't celebrate Christmas."
"She doesn't? What does she celebrate?"
"Yule, or something. She's not christian. She's like... i forget. like 'pagans' or something. i dunno, its all weird."
"Pagan, you mean?"
"Yeah, that's it. But it's just weird. What's the matter with her? Isn't Christmas good enough for her? It's good enough for the rest of us, what's her problem anyways?"

It was hard to keep my tongue. *sigh*.