she's ba-ack!

i <3 new york 2. guilty pleasure!

hit it up on the vspot for a recap!

half of a yellow sun

i will be glad when this emotional precariousness is gone; i am better, but i am not yet whole. thankfully, i think i am happier and more fulfilled than i have been in awhile, but that only shows how unhappy i was in the midst of things with him.

this evening has been somewhat depressing- between the rain and the body bag i witnessed being removed from the 72nd street station on the way home, there haven't been a whole lot of pick-me-ups.

one plus, though, is the book i'm reading, half of a yellow sun by chimamandda ngozi adichie. long quote, but as i read it for the first time it caused one of those moments when you know you're not alone in a feeling that makes you curse your humanity and your weakness. it's those moments that make me such a voracious reader, always looking for the line that will make me feel like i belong, like i'm not alone:

She walked over to the stove and ran a sponge on the warm surface, over and over, her back to Odenigbo. She felt as if she had somehow failed him and herself by allowing his mother's behavior to upset her...But she was upset, and made even more so by Odenigbo's expression, as if he could not believe she was not quite as high-minded as he had thought. He was making her feel small and absurdly petulant and, worse yet, she suspected he was right. She always suspected he was right. For a brief irrational moment, she wished she could walk away from him. Then she wished, more rationally, that she could love him without needing him. Need gave him power without his trying; need was the choicelessness she often felt around him.
...
She shook her head. She would not let him make her feel that there was something wrong with her. It was her right to be upset, her right not to choose to brush her humiliation aside in the name of an overexalted intellectualism, and she would claim that right. "Go." She gestured toward the door. "Go and play your tennis and don't come back here."

- p. 128-129, Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie


another:

This was love: a string of coincidences that gathered significance and became miracles.

-same source

the obenson report

interesting. black cinema podcast.

this is just not acceptable/just so predictable

so. yeah.

the noose on the professor's door at TC.

yeah.

i'm fucking angry. partly because of the noose, but mostly because this song seems to be on repeat. three and a half years ago i was on a college campus that experienced a hate crime that was later exposed to be a hoax. key to that conversation was the fact that the atmosphere of hate and racism had long existed before the hate crime, and that was only proven by the fact that the "hoax" was oh-so-believable when it happened. this came after a cross was burned on the campus of a neighboring school, by students who claimed it was "no big deal." an administration that tried to pat everything back into place.

i fell apart that night, the night the car was vandalized. i cried, and i called my parents and asked them to take me away. i am angry that any other student on a college campus for an experience that is most likely putting them into a life's worth of debt (or not) ever has to feel like they aren't wanted.

i shouldn't be surprised. i know these things. but sometimes the anger erupts and i lose my ability to focus, to dissemble, to assure the people around me that the world isn't killing me day by day with its bullshit, to tell myself that i'm "just fine."

this is some fucking bullshit.

yummy recipe blogs

a little bit for you, but a lot for me so that i can keep track of all of these great bakers!

http://bakingbites.com/
http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/
http://www.cupcakeblog.com/

mexican chocolate torte, topped with chocolate ganache

sssh, don't tell heather, it's for her birthday!

cake....


and ganache so shiny you can see my 'fro in it....



equal yummy birthday wishes. :)

parting gift

fiona apple fucking rocked last night with nickel creek once sasha frere-jones shut up, of course.



this is not last night's performance, but it is close enough.

:D

crazy f*ing world

racialicious really did it up today. instead of rewriting the posts and passing them off as my own, i direct you to www.racialicious.com.

my work environment

today, my job required that i sit in a school auditorium listening to parliament and sly and the family stone for hours on end while talking about multicultural education. when i got back to the office, a few things stood out to my oh-so-relaxed mind:

• the administrative assistant uses copies of the derrida reader and infinite jest to prop up her computer monitor.
• someone is always playing spoon.
• my boss came by to tell me that she bought new makeup for her son's wedding this weekend, but that she's still looking for appropriate underwear (i didn't ask, and neither should you).
• i spend just as much time making tea and laughing my ass off as i do feeling totally overwhelmed and stressed-out. healthy? maybe not. entertaining? most definitely.
• working with a wanna-be improv comedian and an ex-stand up comedian can be good...and bad. eventually, forcing laughs becomes physically painful.
  
• everybody here is too liberal to watch crappy reality tv, so there's never anyone to gossip with about top chef, ANTM, or the latest VH1 crappy "love" show. i leave that to you, my dear blog!

i'm neither making tea nor laughing my ass off, so i should technically be working. boo.

yay hung!

weird title for my first post-move post, i know, but the top chef finale last night made me smile. go hung. you may be an uptight craphead a lot of the time, but boy, you are of-color, and you won a white people's competition. i'm not mad at you. (i considered writing i ain't mad atcha there, but, well, i would never really say that. god, i'm a loser.)

things are good, just like i thought they would be. i figured out an internet problem in the new apt today when i woke up with a weird moment of clarity-- just plug your router into the cable modem too, joy! and poof, i have internet. now if only getting her big ass loft bed out of my room were that easy. maybe that will be my moment of clarity tomorrow morning.

funny aside- my mother got angry with me yesterday for catching an attitude with her over the phone, and she actually threatened to get on a plane from las vegas to come put me in my place. i was in the shower as she was calling, so didn't see the phone lighting up, and when i came out there were five voicemails, each one just one mom-ism long:

• "i don't know WHO you think you're talking to!"
• "you betta ASK somebody!" ("ask" pronounced "ax," of course, because she was pissed- my mother only goes opa-locka on people for laughs or in fits of extreme anger)**
  
• "if you don't answer this phone, you WILL be sorry!"

it's been a good 10 years since i last heard these phrases in relation to myself, and, while it's not nice to laugh at other people's emotions, i am kind of excited about the prospect of using the phrases with my own children one day. :) funny, funny.

**also, can i just say that reading that wikipedia article is the first time i've ever heard that opa-locka is one of the most dangerous places in the united states? i lived right outside opa-locka my whole life and my grandfather was the mayor there once upon a time, and my whole family lives there. i've never felt as if i was in danger in opa-locka. weird.