Dork Rap

I'm the only person to ever rap in an oxford university polo. Probably.

Flies, Pie Charts, and Instructional Videos

Burlington, Vermont, where you spend a third of your year freezing your ass off. It’s not such a great motto, nor does it make a particularly pretty silhouette. Shoulder blades hunching forward trying to meet in the middle of your chest for a kiss until you have a back knot of epic proportions. Bent over in the wind, the end of the winter finds you three inches shorter than you were at the beginning. Other seasons in Vermont include being knee deep in mud, and of course, Fall.

However now it that wonderful part of the year where it gets blistering hot and everyone’s house and apartment fills with bugs.

The flies are everywhere, fruit flies and house flies, there is no amount of cleaning or wine traps that can stop it, it’s a simple fact of a Burlington resident’s existence. Somewhere in my head I can hear my mother’s mantra of “BLEACH EVERYTHING” echoing, yet even the Jersey matriarch’s beloved corrosive chemical can’t kill them. Boiling water is poured down drains, wine traps, and pheromone traps are left out and if you are, as I am, inclined towards sweet drinks (read: Whisky and lemonade is my poison of choice) you draw the little f*ckers to you like, well, like flies to honey.

Thus the invention of my brand new game.

Perhaps an out-cropping of a childhood spend in figure skating locker rooms, I can crack a dishtowel like a pro. (I pro what, I don't know. Maybe there's a league for that sort of thing) It’s something that I’ve use to chase Irish boyfriends out of the kitchen for years, but finally it has come in actual handy. So here’ s the points system.

Housefly : 4 Points
Fruit Fly: 7 Points
2 Fruit Flies at once: 10 Points

So Burlington residents, get your dishtowels ready, check out my helpful instructional video and keep score. It’s hunting season.

MOVIE TIIIME!

They call it shooting for a reason...

So there's been a kind of change of plans in my shooting schedule. I'm going to be shooting all next week and editing the week after. The weather is looking pretty good, and suddenly I have access to this pretty good camera, and a letus 35mm adaptor, (which is sweet, trust me) and if I really kick out the jams I think I can have a good cut of the film for the uvm film festival... Anyway, all this insanity means I need to do all my schoolwork for the next 2 weeks this weekend. I hope that on Saturday I can go out and have a good time, since the next 14 days are going to be full of all nighters and the like...

I am really nervous to shoot, I'm DPing on my own and I want it to look as good as the stuff Jeff does, but he sets a pretty high standard. (If you're interested, look at Box Party under my videography links on the left, he DP'd that shoot.) Sometimes I feel like my shots lack depth, and maybe that's a product of cutting my teeth in theatre rather than film, though I'm hoping to really get past all those hang-ups in this piece. I haven't told you very much about my project, except that it's a dance film, but here's the general idea.

There is a group based in New York City called Troika Ranch, they combine media/dance/theatre in digital films, art installations, and live performances. I happened upon them through a media program called Isadora, which is kind of a long story. Anyway they created this short called BKLYN (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEL0TWF6sBQ) that really got me thinking about how time and space is used in film. I also find myself looking at work by Maya Deren, I know you're not one for arty cinema, but her short experimental films are really engaging to me. I'm also trying to address the issue of the feminine gaze and deliberately have her break the fourth wall on two occasions in the dance. Essentially I will be shooting the dance in the same way in 5 different locations and then editing the footage together as one, shifting location via jump cuts, split screens (sometimes up to 5 at once), combined with moments of the "Algorythmic editing" that's in the "BKLYN short.

The conceptual part of the short as a whole is essentially an exploration of personal perception of space and time. I'll attempt to address the issue of the private mind functioning in the public space, and the gap between who we are seen as and our personal understanding of ourselves. This leaves me with the dubious task of visually expressing the personal experience of time. Reading Deleuze expanded on this kind of thinking for me, and his theory has effected how I am viewing the project as a whole. Though the work itself doesn't directly hinge on the theoretical, it does make some attempts to bridge certain gaps between practice and theory...


I'll be updating everyday through the filming and editing process. Even if it's just grawlix.

Word of the day: Grawlix-A grawlix is a sequence of typographical symbols used to represent a non-specific, profane word or phrase. Here's an example of a typical grawlix: #@$%*!

Shoplifters Beware or Mess with Jersey and feel the burn.

The other day I had some serious girl-detective action.

What with the ecomonic downturn, we've been seeing alot more shoplifing at good old Scribbles. Sadly I'm sure that most of it goes unnoticed, since we have a ton of little erasers and the like. However recently the girls and I had an epic adventure in apprehending a theif The woman in question entered our store on March 7th, 2009 at approximately 2:30pm. After browsing the store she approached the counter with one of the activity books from the front, the On-The-Go Kids activity book. She claimed that the book had been purchased by her husband, and that she wanted to return it, but didn?t have a receipt. One of the girls, Amelia Devoid, thought that she was behaving oddly and decided to check to see if the last activity book was on the shelf where it had been previous to the woman entering the store. It was not. This made it fairly clear that she had taken the book from the front of the store, and tried to return it to us. After this Amelia began to keep an eye on her, and noticed that she had a Jill Bliss wallet in her basket. These wallets are extremely distinctive as they are hand-sewn from old sheets, making no two exactly alike. The woman then began to move to the front of the store to exit. Amelia suspected she was shoplifting, and after checking to see if she had simply moved the product or perhaps returned it to the shelf (which she hadn?t) Amelia alerted me, Christa Pagliei. There was a moment of pause for Amelia to tell me the story, since I was helping some customers at the time and during this second the woman ducked out and onto Church Street. I grabbed my cell phone, told the girls to call the Burlington Police Department and went outside to follow her at a distance, since I figured it would be the easiest way to get back the merchandise. She went into Sweet Thing across the street, and I called one of the girls inside Scribbles so that we would be in contact. (Isn't technology wonderful?) The woman then proceeded up the block and went into Lake Champlain chocolates, but looked back and noticed me. I fell back a little, feigning embarrassment. I then crossed the street and tried to stay out of her sight. Upon exiting Lake Champlain Chocolates she headed towards the Burlington Mall. She entered the mall and I followed behind. Standing in the mall vestibule where I could see her and she couldn?t see me I noticed her crouching next to a kiosk, which I thought was kind of weird. She then continued through the mall, and I followed some distance behind, taking better care not to be seen. She then exited the mall at 110 Cherry Street and proceeded to the bus stop. By this time Ginevra Shay, also a Scribbles employee, had gotten the Police on the phone and it was just a waiting game for them to get to the bus stop. She boarded the bus to Essex junction, and I walked past it and signaled to the driver to please wait. At that point Officer Paul Glynn showed up, and I pointed her out and he began to talk to her and search her bag, neither the wallet or the activity book was in there. The other officer, who was very sweet, but I don't remember his name, asked if maybe she had seen me and ditched the merchandise. As I walked back towards Scribbles I remembered her squatting by the empty mall kiosk, I ran back to the mall, to the kiosk and noticed that the storage door on the one side wasn?t locked. I opened it, and low and behold there was the activity book! I brought it back to the officers. Later Office Glynn stopped into Lake Champlain Chocolates and discovered the wallet! He was right, she'd ditched it right after she spotted me.

And that?s what happened!

6 Brief Impressions of Wyckoff New Jersey Upon Returning

It is a strange moment when you realize
that in the place where you grew up,
skinned knees,
learned to bike,
kissed Ben Goodman by the water fountain
and then denied it,
you are now just a tourist.

***
Woke up.
There is a sort of dizziness
with a momentary heart palpitation.
Where is the girl from this room?
Did I kill her? Strike her out.
Or is she hunkered down in my heart

waiting to jump forth,

sass-faced and switchblade-tongued
when I say something foolish
or trip over my own two little feet.

***
In Polish there is a word, teskanota,
which means nostalgia with a twinge of sadness.
I keep running this through my head as I bike to the old library soaked in sweat.
Having been small here I remember it as bigger, mustier.
I did not recall the lack of anything
other than children’s books and Danielle Steele novels.

***
Ponch shows up at noon
and we shiver in the park drinking bitter coffee.
We talk about Mexico,
his abandoning of this place for a warmer climate.

He ran south as I headed north.
He shakes his head,
“You can’t bleach it, you can’t burn it, it’s in the marrow of your bones.”
We will crack that history open, and examine the red insides.
Then part, not to see one another for a few years.
We will still lean towards one another,

across countries and continents,
little sunflowers.

***
I get lost in the park and somehow end up at a strip mall,
all paths here eventually lead to one I suppose.
The same five kids are hanging out
and the cliché familiarity breeds contempt hammers in my head.
I find myself hoping that these five do not breed at all
for the sake of humanity, and the Wyckoff P.D.

***

This is the place

where I

fell down went bang

and set the precedent for my whole life to follow-

fell down went bang

got up again

again

until the falling and the standing

molded me

by the force of my own weight crashing

over and over

amen

Organizing my records alphabetically. Only in my collection could this happen...Chaucer, Clash, Copland.

I trawl the webs so you don't have to.

#1

i wake
to the sound
of bones clacking
and when I open my eyes
all i see is your face floating
taunting me
waiting for me to tell you
that you were the only one
who ever looked this creature in the eyes
and saw me.

it would be easier
if you had no legs
to stand on in this matter
but at least with this silent way
we are both unsatisfied

maybe in another three years time
you will throw yourself bodily
into my path
again
and we will spend the length of your cigarette
knowing each other
just to rip it all apart again

the bleeding of the feet is difficult
but the dance is too beautiful to cease
a skeleton embrace
stripped it down to the base of everything
white and red and black

Exit 65

It’s in my blood.
“jerz.”
You know what I’m saying?
My non-native friends call it “the jerz”
but it’s a flexible word.
When I am being frank & vehement
I am “getting jerz” on the recipient of my attentions.
Sometimes it even sneaks up and becomes my name.

I had a Vermonter boyfriend who would ask me to say hot dog over and over
“hot dawg”
“hot dawg”
They just don’t know it like me honey.
They don’t have a skull crammed with goomba-english,
with that special “coming home to cousin Nick in the cucina”
something
that makes it home.
Walnuts, oranges, and figs
a course on their own.
Entire conversations held in yells from different parts of the house.
Trains pulling out of the yard
two blocks dopplered.
Their whistles cry destinations
“Hoboken”
“Hoboken”

The abandoned swimming hole in the woods,
it’s concrete docks, jutting out of reeds like aching molars
and haunted by echoes.
The twisted pine barrens, with their wet sap smell, and the 13th child of Mrs. Leeds.
The bitter and gentle shore, and the Cape May diamonds.
They could not know
So I lie,
content between my devil and my atlantic sea.

For some reason this strikes me as hilarious.

Gorehound

I’m a gonna bust you up
break you down
make you cry
I’m a gonna thrust
this axe in your head
but you ain’t gonna die yet.
Hot cherry!
You look good in red

Lemme go an’ trap you
stalk you, with a chainsaw.
Lemme tie your wrists raw.
Get the device revved up.
I know you ain’t fed up
you’re a gonna beg me
you’re a gonna beseech me,
entreat me and implore
and I’ll always always
have just a little more for you.

You like a good screw?
How ‘bout one through your eyeball?
Gotta get those bodily fluids going
all that vitreous humor really flowing.
And I’m a gonna get that fire going
get that pyre really growing up.

I got this need
you’re gonna oblige me.
I’ll fill your mouth,
but please
don’t stop crying.

And who’s a gonna tell me
it’s not exactly all the same?
There’s hysterical shrieking,
someone nearly naked.
But this way everybody’s
gonna be a screamn’ your name.




...

everyone please remember that writers are liars

The Collegiate Sexual Apocalypse

A friend of mine recently admitted to doing what almost every college student considers at one point or another, screwing in the library. I wasn't particularly shocked by the confession, I've actually HEARD people getting freaky on the third floor and the person in question was also just the kind of person who could actually pull off having sex in the library, but it left my wheels turning. I have to admit that I've never really understood the appeal of sex in public places, and to a sick sick biblophile like me, the act of nooky in those hallowed halls almost seems sacrilegeous. There's this little newspaper that comes out at my school, the "alternative" to the big school paper, that described the library around midterms as a "place where learning, drug-use, misery, and sexual tension... all intermingle." I'm of the mind that this could accurately describe almost all of UVM, but considering that that brick-shaped, brick-made building is essentially a microcosm of the school itself it's not surprising. But back to the interesting part.

Why DO people want to boink in bookville? Is is just the taboo? Some collegiate rite of passage that somehow combines academics and sexual recreation? Is it true, as my friend Sophia so often asserts, that "Finals make you horny"? (Please note that ALMOST EVERYTHING produces that effect in Soph.) For most it's probably one third taboo and one third tension relief and one third "sticking it to the man." (pun intentional) 

It also helps that college students are also in an interesting point of their life in general and that this time lends itself to all sorts of odd behaviour. It's a time of discovery, a time that you kind of figure yourself out a little, and apparently it's also time when you knoodle with people just because you're both reading Karl Marx. (Also not me, maybe Jung might do it though.) One of my professors, David Huddle (google him, dude's a bomb writer) referred to our generations way of hooking up as Instamace, and it's fairly accurate. We're an almost completely media driven generation, we want our email in our hand, our entire music library in our back pocket and we want a double mocha skim no whipped cream TO GO NOW DAMMNIT. It makes sense that we would expect the same of our relationships, even the purely sexual ones. I feel like the word isn't even exactly pertaining to the speed at which these relationships develop, though that is often part of it. It's the fact that that there is this TERROR of traversing the fantasy. Of getting to know the real person behind the  "I'm the free spirited political science major" or "I'm the stoner math dude" or  "I'm the cynical english major with a blog."(GUESS WHO THE LAST ONE IS)  I don't feel like this is a new revelation by any means but I feel as though since we're essentially the "igeneration" its effects are a little more dramatic. 

Like Hipsters, there's a primo example. An entire group of people who essentially culture vulture the rest of the art community and then turn those elements into completely vacuous, vapid crap. 

So I suppose that the Symbolic Collegiate Sexual Apocalypse would be two hipsters screwing in the library as some jaded form of protest.

Which is fine as long as I don't have to watch.

And then I get to kill them.

And eat them.

image by Alexander Milligan

Collected Notes from a Month of Sundays

i.
Mornings are feral.
One sock half on, every hair growing in a different direction
I drag myself out of the den. You is up up up.
I’m making eggs and quinoa
and
do you want any?
and I tell her
baby
please
I don’t want no hippie food,
I just want rye toast, black coffee.
(then I cringe cause it sounds rough outside of my own head.
homegirl is just trying to make me eat breakfast
and don’t I have half a kind word for her this early?)
so I try to make you laugh
bring up about last night
when Jefferino told us rapid fire
that quinoa was only $1.50 a pound
recommended we make a big bowl every week
and that it was, in fact,
the mothergrain…yo.
you tell me
Hubert likes quinoa more than rice.
I grind the coffee.
Hubert also made a tattoo gun
out of a pencil sharpener
and got Rex to carve
“Welcome Theives”
in Russian
on his ass.

ii.
See I was at that party
and so was she.
We hadn’t met yet,
didn’t meet that night.
Separated by the oceanic divide
of Hubert’s bleeding ass cheek.
Our mutual fear of being presented
with the bloody horror
(the gun didn’t work so hot)
kept us on opposite sides of the house
and so we missed each other.

iii.
I chew my fingers and eye up that quinoa with suspicion.
They look like curly little tails in the eggs,
and though they seem kind of cute.
I still just want rye toast, black coffee.

iv.
Stop pacing, and if you’re looking for the radio, it’s busted on the floor over there.
The stove’s heat melts the patterns on the pane,
it refreezes into slashes across the glass.
how’d it…
oh it just fuzzed and popped and stopped.
That asshole of a trained rabbit
pokes his head from under the couch
and climbs in my boot,
probably to shit.
A large piece of mirror stands in the corner
reflecting a sliver of the scene.
And I cannot remember
when the glass monster was trasmuted
by lack of time or indecision
from art supply to home décor,
but I have nearly cut my foot open on it twice already.

v.
–I remember
how we did eventually meet.
All five of us were moving into the slanted house together.
You and I were the only ones who showed up early to sign the lease.
You opened the pickup door and the ice cracked like a pistol shot
get in, it’s freezing.

vi.
The radio’s bowels are all over the coffee table.
I am searching for a loose wire.
You don’t have to fix it.
but I really am desperate to fix the thing.
After I drop you off at the hospital
I will be home, alone, before work,
feeling useless as all hell.
I’ll want the news
and the paper ain’t gonna sate me.
I want to lose myself in those disembodied voices,
let their words become my thoughts,
let the waves bounce through my brains.
My toast pops up, it’s burnt.

vii.
oh ¬ and I am wide awake
and it is morning

VERMONT!!!!!!!

you so crazy

Bloodless

It is common in the case of anemics
to develop Pica and eat any number
of strange objects. Coal, hair, metal
wax and dirt. I could never imagine
feeling that familiar weakness
and consuming nails and bolts.
Washers filling the void in my belly,
till my stomach jingled like a change purse.

But when I peel the heart shaped beets,
their red dye, reflective and pooling beneath,
and I eat the raw slices,
they taste like the earth that they were born from.
And I know what the others were trying to devour.

It is the fortification of the self.
Each piece a charm against the flaw in my blood
that grows up from my liver,
until it hits the follicles and I?m left pulling
a thousand tiny hairs from the bath drain,
and the comb, and the rugs of my house, and the pillow where I sleep.
As if my body laments the innate disconnection
in my mode of consumptive urban living
and the brick and mortar worlds and shells I?ve constructed
and then expresses it's sorrow by rejecting a thousand slivers of me.
Screaming as they fall, each piece reminds
that such surroundings are no path to real safety.
You must be brave enough
to swallow all the earth yourself
and stand to be shaped
by the wind and by the rain.

...
Christa Pagliei

Happy Thanksgiving!

I am blessed in so many ways. Thank you for my family, my friends, and my opportunities.

Ok, this is too good not to link.

Nazi Name for Dutch Ship Draws Outcry
AP
posted: 10 HOURS 3 MINUTES AGOcomments: 182filed under: WORLD NEWSPrintShareText SizeAAA
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (Nov. 9) - It ought to be a proud milestone in the Dutch seafaring heritage — the construction of a new ship its owner claims will be the world's largest. But there's one problem: its name.

AP
Pieter Schelte Heerema
Edwin Heerema, founder of the company that has commissioned the $1.7 billion vessel, wants to name it the Pieter Schelte after his late father, Pieter Schelte Heerema, who was renowned as a maritime engineer but was condemned for his service in the murderous Nazi Waffen SS.
The choice of name has provoked outcry and has revived painful questions about Dutch collaboration with the country's World War II occupiers.
"For people who know his pitch-black history, this ship should not be named for him. Not now, not ever," said Ronny Naftaniel, director of CIDI, which monitors anti-Semitism in the Netherlands. He said Edwin Heerema's desire to honor his father was understandable up to a point, but the choice of name was "tasteless and unethical."
Edwin Heerema's company, Swiss-based Allseas Group SA, rejected the criticism.
"Pieter Schelte Heerema was widely appreciated in the industry during his life and the companies that came from his heritage have an excellent name in the offshore industry," spokesman Jeroen Hagelstein e-mailed in response to questions.
But it's an awkward matter for the government. It gave Allseas' Netherlands subsidiary a $1 million tax break for its part in designing the ship, and now acknowledges it didn't notice the name until a Dutch journalist, Ton Biesemaat, raised the issue.
Hagelstein said Heerema joined the Nazis out of opposition to communism rather than enthusiasm for national socialism. He said he then switched sides and joined the resistance in 1943 "as he could no longer associate himself with the ideas of the Nazis."
He noted that Heerema was tried and released shortly after the war, which shows he "cannot have been seriously delinquent."
The respected Netherlands Institute for War Documentation said that's technically accurate. Heerema was sentenced by a Dutch court to three years in prison but quickly released, the courts having recognized his unspecified but "very important" services to the resistance between August 1943 and March 1944.
"You have many different kinds of collaborators: some are passive and some are active. This man was prominent, a leader," said NIOD spokesman Fred Reurs.
Truus Menger, who was a prominent member of the Dutch resistance, called the naming of the ship "an open display of disdain and aggression."
In an interview with The Associated Press, she acknowledged that Heerema ended up aiding the resistance, but said: "Oh, I know how that goes — he had a change of heart. But in the end, he wore the suit and he served Hitler."
Heerema's file at the NIOD contains a report of a speech he gave in 1941 in which he was quoted as saying "The German race is model. The Jewish race, by comparison, is parasitic ... therefore the Jewish question must be resolved in every Aryan country."
Some 70 percent of the Netherlands' 140,000 Jews perished in the Holocaust.
After winning promotions within the Waffen SS, Heerema became assistant director of an organization that rounded up unemployed Dutch workers and resettled them in Nazi-occupied areas of Eastern Europe, where hundreds died.
After a falling-out with his German superiors in August 1943, Heerema disappeared until his arrest in Switzerland in March 1944.
After his release in November, 1946, he headed to Venezuela where he began a new company and rapidly achieved success.
As a postwar industrialist he was credited with such important innovations as the semi-submersible crane vessel for work in rough seas.
He became a multimillionaire and member of the Dutch elite, but questions about his past resurfaced periodically until his death in 1981.
The new ship, to be used for laying oil pipes and decommissioning North Sea oil rigs, will be 1,253 feet long and 384 feet wide, making it the world's largest in area, and the heaviest at 210,000 tons, Allseas says.
It said on Oct. 24 the financial crisis would not prevent the ship's completion in 2012. It said it has reached agreement on around $250 million worth of contracts and is reviewing bids from shipyards in Southeast Asia to build the hull.
The tax break prompted Sharon Gesthuizen, a lawmaker of the opposition Socialist Party, to put formal questions to the Economic Affairs Ministry on Oct. 28.
"Do you see it as your responsibility to protest the naming of this ship, given the extreme sensitivity of the historical events that are connected to that name?" She asked.
The ministry has two weeks to respond.
From Associated Press and AOL

Whaaaa!

What a weekend. You know you're on the rocket car to dork town when you find yourself excited about the prospects of spending the evening listening to NPR's Wait Wait! Don't Tell Me and Say Anything and doing laundry. In my defense, at the end of this laundry party there's my girl Rhea, a Homemade pizza, and a bottle of wine, but seriously folks this has been a doozy of a weekend. Friday I realized that I double booked my two part time jobs. The realization of that fact at 8 in the morning nearly sent me into a panic attack. Now, a normal person would probably figure it out and THEN inform all nessiary parties of the outcome. But instead Hilary, who is the current head of our film department and to whom I am the assistant (Job #2!), got these wonderful  batshit crazy emails from yours truly:

Email One 9:53am

Hilary,

I did something really stupid.

I'm on the work schedule at my other job for 2:30-6 today and I didn't notice until now because I am an idiot. I am calling the other people at work to see if someone will cover. If someone can't cover for me I have to go in. I will fix this. I am so sorry. Between this and the flyer mixup I feel like an jerk. I promise this will be the last "thing."

Chris


Why am I so self depricating? It's like. IN CASE YOU DIDN'T NOTICE I AM A F*CK UP

Email Two 10:10am

Please disregard my former message of incompetence. I will see you at 3pm. Should I be there early to help organize? I get out of class at 2:15.
I'm sorry about that email, sometimes I get anxious when I feel like I put things out of my control.

Chris

So what exactly am I doing here? The email is 20 mins later, when Ginevra said she could cover my shift. (thank you thank you thank you degerotype goddess of my heart.) Why couldn't I just have waited to send the e-mail. It's like my first impulse it always to FREAK OUT instead of say...considering the actualities and true nature of the situation I find myself in. 

So the event that I had to go help at that night went fine. The rest of my daylight hours were spend in Migrane hell in the dark UNTIL I felt alot better and decided to go spend the rest of my night hanging out with Jeff at his place. So I descended from my apartment, only to discover that...

My bike got stolen. 

The bike that was my moms and that I loved forever is no longer in my possession because some ass decided to cut through my chain and take it. I called the police and filed a report but I am just like UBER bummed about this whole event. 

I can't even type about it I'm so friggn' distraught.

That being said. If I find the individual who took my bike I will make them rue the day learned to ride. By breaking their legs. kidding. kind of.

Saturday was better, I worked at Scribbles and had some beers and good talk with friends who I hadn't seen in a long time.  

Which brings me to where I am now. Listening to NPR and drinking smartwater.