i'd buy you lemonade right now

Commuting down and up the eastern seaboard on a weekly basis is time-consuming/ totally boring. In order to combat that boredom, I like to spend my (significant amount of) time on the NJ Turnpike listening to This American Life episodes. This week, one of the episodes I listened to was #50: Shoulda Been Dead.

Kevin Kelly's tale of deciding "to live as he would die in six months" made me think about the things I would do if I were going to die in six months. I thought about traveling to every place I've ever wanted to go, of being incredibly honest, of firing a shotgun, of jumping on a trampoline with my little cousins for hours, of skydiving, of sitting down with my extended family and telling them every secret I've ever kept...

But then I realized these are things that are better when you know you're going to live. If I were really going to die, I would probably just have sex with a lot of people I know.

let the axe do the work

Large-scale puppet performance in Berlin to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Read more/ see pictures here, or just take Kanye West's word for it.

The comments on the Boston page are pretty ridiculous, but this one made me super sad: ""Beautiful.
 I'm Korean, my country is the only devide nation in the world. 
I dreamed Korean re-union too."

i can only fall asleep to episodes of "america's castles"

and everyone made it out alive
keep your eyes on the pies
do you have any idea how hard this is
i want sounds and light without meaning
like nothing and everything has happened
(because it has, and hasn't)
since august 14th 2003, nothing has changed
but i know that, now
that's your home, not mine
what i wouldn't give...

"not only is the road one of the great human institutions because it is fundamental to social existence, but also... it is the road which is the the channel of all trade, and what is more important, of all ideas..."

what cheer, netop?

carbo-loading in the clouds (NJ style)
Things I wanna do instead of coming home: travel the world, or become a country musician (grand ole opry preferred), or win the lottery, or fall in love, or re-invent a cure for polio, or time travel a year into the future, or join the witness protection program, or eat a cheeseburger again, or wake up being able to moonwalk effectively without any practice, or...

I turned 24 almost two weeks ago (I am thinking of buying a purple ukulele to celebrate). Nashville is a dream and "Nashville Cats" is equally dreamy. The North is too cold to live in, despite sudden admiration for Roger Williams and Puritan culture. I hate quadratic equations but love being able to solve them.

Texas was amazing. I want to go back to Texas.

the house at loon lake

I am pretty sure that I moving to Baltimore in the coming months (mostly for work, but also I guess for fun). I will miss Petworth and DC and the 52 bus and CityPaper and delicious sandies at Tryst and looking at the Washington Monument on my walk to work every morning.


A few days ago, I went fence-hopping with ex-coworkers in pursuit of free entry to a MGMT show, but determined that the cost of waiting 5+ hrs in the boiling sun to test drive a Kia was a little too high.

In a little over a week, I will be on my first real adult ROADTRIP! Destination: Austin, TX, by way of Nashville, Memphis, St Louis, and New Orleans. FALL BREAK '09!

I am really trying to get over my dislike of men-in-sandals, but no dice so far. Will this endurance be tested en route to ATX?

flingin' off the rails

I'm not sure if I can hack it here.

While at home for a day and half I drove down Commerce Street and yelled, "fuck you, Yorktown Heights!" out the window. None of the pedestrians looked surprised in the least.

Been listening to "Allentown" and "Atlantic City" on repeat, which is probably indicative of a larger problem.

mon dieu!

I think I might be unintentionally drunk on anti-inflammatories/ shandies, because everytime I try to type anything it takes about eight minutes (and sometimes the letter "x" is inserted into places it ought not to go). Tendinitis-gate '09 continues unabated.

I keep on getting invited to work/ Peace Corps/ Capitol Hill related "brown bag lunches", which is always vaguely disappointing (because I will inevitably forget to pack a lunch and then be the only one in the room NOT ONLY not wearing an ill-fitting suit, but also just eating fritos for lunch. Even though I have a briefcase I'm still not an adult, I guess).

Purchased a baguette today, and carried it down the street while having flashbacks to France (less delicious baguette in the nation's capital, I must say), until the smoothed-out wrinkles in my brain prevented any further reminisces. Nothing sums up my current situation better than this (verbatim) excerpt from a voice mail I left a friend today: "Hello ___________ (full name here)! This is Caitlin. I'm sitting on my roof, drinking a shandy, smoking a cigarette... which I was trying to quit, but it's really hard, since... but I AM quitting eating meat, so at least there's some progress. I am missing you."

I want to gallop.