I forgot I wanted to go up to see Destroyer and Frog Eyes tonight. Granted, no follow-up was made following the original offer of transportation, but I would've liked to have seen it. Apparently Daniel Bejar wants a no-touring clause in his contract with Merge.

Last night, I went and saw Mirah here in Olympia. Unsurprisingly, it wasn't as good as on record, as all of the cool stuff Phil Elvrum does wasn't there in the sound, but the songs were still good. I was surprised no one sang along at the end of Apples In The Trees, and in a way, disappointed, as the singalong on the record is a really powerful moment capping off a great song. It was an enjoyably show on its own merits, as a singer-songwriter type of evening.

I need boxes to begin packing up everything.

Also, it turns out the class that I wanted to get into next year might've sucked, due to the teacher's preoccupations. It could've just been the class she taught this year, but one of those preoccupations is gender roles being reinforced by the culture, etc. Also a lot of stuff on Japan, and Freudian psychology. This along with postmodernism, the only thing I really care about. The gender role discussion can often lapse into bullshit, especially in academic scenarios here at this college, where it happens. Granted, the teacher of the program I'm currently enrolled in once said that a female writer "writes like a man" as a criticism, which is more genuinely sexist than just having a soft spot for bullshit and seeing victimization where there is none. (The story I heard was one where the class this year, not on Postmodernism, a different one, looked at ads for reinforcements of traditional gender roles. There was one of an elderly couple on the beach. The only "offensive" thing someone in the class "found" was that the man was taller than the woman, and as such, held more power over her. However, that class was called Feminin Masculin, after the Godard film, and as such would be more inclined to be about such topics. But a fun thing about Evergreen academia is how teachers work in their pet obsessions into pretty much everything, unless you're in a science program.)

But I'm to be taking a writing class next year, which is nice as I really wish writing was more my shit, like I claim it to be. I scrapped writing Gasmask, as I realized that the big twist/reveal is really inconsistent with the book's voice and its just too much. I want to finish writing this short story before the school year's done, but as I looked at it today, I didn't really find the urge to work on it today, no new thoughts to add, no clever rewrites except the fact that it does really need a rewrite. After that short story's done, I don't know what I'll do. I've got another short story to finish, but I want to start a novel. Maybe Get Broken. The other book occupying brain-space doesn't seem like a first novel to me, if that makes any sense. That's why I haven't really gotten into that yet, as it seems like once I did it, I'd have to sit on it, because it's not a first novel. Get Broken could be a first novel, I suppose. Gasmask really would've functioned perfectly as a first novel if it wasn't deeply flawed.

Also, yesterday I went to the Olympia Comics Festival. Political cartoonist Keith Knight, responding to my Neutral Milk Hotel t-shirt, said "good band." I told him he did good shit, but the fact is that I respect his work a lot but am not exactly in love with it. No one there really did work I was in love with. I looked around at work I was unfamilar with. Mostly local people, including a girl who goes to Evergreen and does comics for our school paper that SUCK. Not the worst stuff in the paper, but miles from the realm of quality. I recognized her and knew the work, she was just coming off as shy and withdrawn, writing in a notebook. I didn't even bother to introduce myself as someone who knew her work and then try to navigate around saying my opinion of it. I talked with the people who create the comic Urban Hipster, then bought an issue and thought it was weak. There was a dude from San Francisco who started a distribution service of other local people's work, who came up and brought some work by a guy whose stuff I decided I quite liked, but whose name escapes me and I don't want to look it up. Funny stuff, two bucks for each comic, I bought one kind of arbitrarily, but I decided that the guy who does those comics, with his completely unmemorable name, is the future.

I've got this meal plan with a little bit less than a hundred dollars on it. I've decided I'm not going to spend any real paper money on food until the year's out. I kind of wanted to order a pizza tonight, but fought the urge. Now I have a headache, and have eaten all the oatmeal I want to in an evening, and the on-campus store is closed. I think I'm going to try to visit friends with a kitchen and see about making this Macaroni and Cheese that I received this Spring in one of these bizarre college-made care packages that parents can buy for their kids, unaware of the contents.