La Entropista

I usually don’t discuss boy disasters until they are terribly over, but I was looking at my calendar this morning to make sure I didn’t miss anymore important meetings (I know, the form) and I saw that one week from today I was supposed to meet up with the chef in Amsterdam, for a week of coffee and arguing about Jan Steen v. Vermeer and the nature of community and looking longingly into each others eyes and visualizing family photos of us standing outside of our sustainable network organic locally procured produce Philadelphia restaurant that has turned into a meeting place for artists and writers and architects and people who change the future with little communist afro-puff babies pouting at our ankles (I didn’t have the guts to tell him that this has been the vision of my future for years, and can we also have a book shop attached, and btw I’ll be famous cutting edge urban planner, and we can be like those cool people in Dwell that share glass desks while working on their laptops).

This man withstood a holiday (on the second day we knew each other) spent with my family astutely conversing about Ken Lay and astrophysics and Islam and sheeps balls with my father and my Uncle Stan, and cooking with my mother, and not only didn’t bat an eye, but felt comfortable and asked if that was all that could be brung. I sat watching in amazement at his grace and thoughtfulness and open heart and the way he touched my sock, and thought, I’m going to fuck this opportunity up but good. 

I spent most of Friday night, to the chagrin of my dinner companion, talking about it all relentlessly, and how I’m scared (of what? being happy?), and that its too late already, and geography, and timing, and missed opportunities, and present tall cuteness and young lederhosen services, and why its good (but tiring) to be doing the dating thing because that way you don’t get so emotionally invested and thus incredibly disappointed when you have to just LEAVE again.

God, I hope he doesn’t read this, my moment of girl-weakness in the face of independent-womanness: I would have moved back there M! And not just for your orange kitchenaid!

Because I have to submit my application for advancement to candidacy/graduation form tomorrow, I’m compiling a list of useful and useless information to share with you instead:

1.   My Wu Tang name. Hmm:

la entropista from this day forward
you will also be known as Shrieking Menace

2.   The reason I read Outpost Nine. Thank you, Eric:

“Shut the hell up, you son of a bitch! Motherfucking puppet, shut up.”

3.  This might actually be useful:

http://www.citeulike.org/

“CiteULike is a free service to help academics to share, store, and organise the academic papers they are reading”

A quick glance through and I found stuff on economics, public choice, public policy analysis, game theory and participatory design. ALREADY SORTED OUT FOR YOU. Yes.

4. Why it’s no good to consider the young ‘uns. Really, WTF?:

hey hya hows u doing just checked ya profile on friendster

out and thought u looked gr8 just wondered if u wanted
to chat, hows
ur week going, mines been ok, we got
lots of snow here yay how about u have u had any.
the noveltys warn off now and now i just want it
to be hot again lol,. anyway mail ya messenger
add and we can chat seeya soon x

   5.   Speaking of which:

Friday, three, count ‘em, three social invitations in one night. Word.

6. That’s it. I love opening up MS Word and seeing a document called “Shut the hell up.” It just makes me smile.

P.S. I don’t know what the deal is with the color of the type. I tried to fix it. I don’t want to hear it.

Thanks to all of you who have been introducing me directly or indirectly to blog sites across this digital expanse. At this point I am regularly lurking about in a dozen or so blogs, constitiuting about half of my online activity, not including google, searching for journal articles, trying to track down elusive urban/spatial planners, and girlcircle email. And then there’s friendster (in case any of you were interested that’s where you’ll find chickenhat pictures) and nerve and onion and salon and so on. Anyway,

some blogs I read:

valerita, ew dyer, radio free mike, the confabulist, waterbones, Lauren in Mae Sot, my.bicycle, Pound I’m not the new me, Outpost Nine, my rants and raves, dooce and blurbomat.

I’m patiently waiting for MesheleMay to start, as well as Alikazaam, cause these girls have traveling stories to tell and deep piercing insight into dating angst, among other things.

Morning weirdness:

After nursing migrane last night with cigarettes and prescription strength ibuprofen, I went to go pee this morning only to find that half the bathroom ceiling was now on the bathroom floor. Or more accurately, in the bathroom toilet. Thank god for the toilet shelf, cause in general I hate having to fish things out of there, but early morning hand in frozen toilet water after migrane was the last thing I wanted to deal with. So I just picked it out and threw it on the floor and am now waiting for handy east german to wake up and fix the damn thing before his girlfriend gets home and asks me for help. Like I know what to do.

What else? For breakfast: milschkafee (will I ever learn how to spell it?) and Papa Joe’s Kartoffelchips Paprika. I’ll have vegetables tomorrow.

So yesterday, to clear my head, that’s what I did. I just took off and walked and walked and walked, and the snow soaked through my sneakers and stuck to my eyelashes and got my nose a-dripping. I ended up at the
Pergamon Museum, on museum island. This is the place that houses the Gates of Ishtar and the Pergamon altar, and they were so huge and beautiful and overwhelming that I almost couldn’t leave.

the official story is that the shah gave the Gates of Ishtar to Germany as a gift, other accounts relate that the Nazis stold them during WWII

But I did leave, finally, and made my way to the Deutsches Guggenheim to see the Jackson Pollock Malerie auf Papier exhibit. I now understand why people in galleries just stare and stare at art: because if you look at it long enough, and release your whatever and let your mind at ease, you start to SEE things. I saw things that I think he meant for us too see but sometimes don’t if we’re too much in a hurry or aren’t mindful. Aha.

isn’t it beautiful?

Today I went to the Markisches Museum, which for some reason I had a hard time finding despite the fact there is a whole U-Bahn stop dedicated to it. At first I thought it was just a random collection of crapola, but then in the basement I found it. There was a wonderful model of Berlin in the Middle Ages, when it was just a little bump of civilization on the shallow banks of the river Spree. Oh. My little map-loving brain went bezonkers, and the guard gave me weird looks as I kept stooping over to look through the little wall-gates to see the viewscape down the main arterials of the mini ancient city.

And for dinner….from DDR Kochbuch….a lovely soup. It’s not so easy cooking something new from a recipe in a language that you barely understand, but it was pretty basic, and though rusty, this girl has mad kitchen skills. Very glad I didn’t give up little german dictionary.

it didn’t look like this

Berliner Kartoffelsuppe

600 g kartoffeln, wurzelwerk, 1 zweibel, 60 g magerer speck, 1 ½ l rinderbruhe, ½ Tl kummel, 1 lorbeerblatt, 30 g fettigkeit, 1 bund petersilie, 1 Tl marjoran, etwas kalte butter, salz, pfeffer, muskatnuss.

Die kartoffeln get to ger-washen and ger-choppen. Puten broth and herbs in pot and fur 20 minuten kochen. Den rest of the kartofflen and gemuse puten in, boily boily, check to see if it looks like picture. No? Add milk (not in ingeredients). Braten zweiblen and bacon mit dem rest der butter until goldgelb (not crunchy brown, mind you) stir in, add parsley and more butter. Serve to German bouncer-type and no-bullshit girlfriend. Verdict? “Ser gut. Quite German.” I’d say it’s the kummel and the petersilie that really pull it together, don’t you?

Next week: Königsberger Klopse an Kapernsoße mit Reis. Sounds yummy, doesn’t it?

I really need this interview and he’s NOT RESPONDING.

Plus, really wishing I knew how to use GIS, and GIS in german, please. How am I supposed to map this shit out? My presentation is going to be shitty. Fake and shitty.