LA Times Festival of Books 2012

Just got back from it. I had a great time! I got a free mini mocha McFrappe (McDonald's answer to the Frappuccino or however you spell that), a chocolate brownie Clif bar and fruit gummy thing, a sample of avocado-pineapple smoothie (consistency is like applesauce but it tastes like calmer, less acidic pineapple),  a pretty little copy of the Quran, some bookmarks, a purple tote bag, a plastic visor with the USC Keck Medical Center logo, and an I READ button. I wrote what I'm reading on the big canvas poster the LA Times has where you can do that (that's where I got the button), and my nerdy heart was warmed when I saw others had written DFTBA and I BELIEVE IN SHERLOCK HOLMES! :') The only thing I'm sad about is that John Green was only there on Saturday, yesterday, so I wasn't able to see/hear/meet him. I bought a bigger button with the LATFOB logo (this year's has a dinosaur) and saw Julie Andrews (!) from a ways away and heard her read from her children's book. I also went to a panel at the YA stage and heard The Fug Girls and a couple other YA authors read from their books and talk about the writing process. Then I bought Spoiled and had it signed by the Fug Girls themselves! I was so psyched to meet them; I've been reading their blog for years and feel like I know them. They were very nice and just as bubbly as I'd imagined them. Now I have to head back to school, but I'm glad I got a chance to go!

Belief

"I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen—I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it." ~Samantha Black Crow, American Gods by Neil Gaiman

At one point I thought I wanted these things. Now it is certain that I won't get them, and I see that it's for the best. Really, the more I think about it the more I see I don't want them; they're not for me. Yet I am still sad about them.

Let me tell you about my day

My morning:
-filled out and turned in cap & gown pics order form, paid for them
-printed out and had site supervisor sign agreement to intern form
-interned

My class, Information Literacy Instruction, is in Powell Library, which is probably one of the most gorgeous libraries I've ever been in. It's fantastic. I wish all my classes were held there. However, its layout is stupidly designed and so there is no straightforward way to get to the third floor. I have to go up the stairs to the second floor, turn down a few corridors and then take the elevator to the third floor, then go down a couple more corridors before reaching the classroom (one of those technology ones; everyone has a laptop). Anyway, this class seems pretty interesting. However, I (along with the rest of the class) had to create a Second Life account. Your 3D avatar interacts in a computer-generated 3D world... IDK, it's just so 2000s. So high school. I didn't do anything like that in high school, but it feels apt to say it's so high school. The teacher's going to host class on SL at some point, which is why. She loves it. :| :| :| I have no idea what I'm doing on there (how does one chat? I can barely move around) and don't really feel like downloading the SL Viewer software. Sigh. Really the only thing I like about it is that my avatar's a lavender and blue VW Bug.
I also had to get a Twitter account, which I am feeling much less blergh-y about. If I ever get around to using it in an normal manner I may link to it. I've toyed with the idea before but I probably wouldn't have gotten one without an outside reason. We're supposed to tweet questions or something.

The intermediate salsa class begins at 8 pm Tuesdays, so I catch the evening van after "only" 10 minutes of waiting and after finally getting dropped off hightail it to the Wooden Center in order to only be a few minutes late... and another class is using the ballroom. Run into classmates from last quarter's class (they are in this quarter's class too) and they look up the recreational schedule. Yes, the class starts next week! Lovely. I walk back home and finish my ramen.