Intrepid Girl Reporter

The amount of Ryan Adams I am listening to on any given day is a pretty good indicator of my latitude in these United States. Being in Tennessee, with its relative proximity to Kentucky, is akin to approaching the limit of that particular equation (where Kentucky = maximum alt-country listening possible), so I’ve spent the past few trips to and from my statistics class working my way through Heartbreaker (good but too much of a downer to be listenable on some days), Gold (much better than I remembered) and Rock and Roll, which was fine until the abysmal “Note to Self: Don’t Die” (chorus: “Note to self: don’t change for anyone/note to self: don’t die” – I think he left off the note where he was supposed to pick up the dry cleaning and call back his mother), after which I pretty much checked out and started listening to that Mirah album about the bugs instead. Now that is music which requires no specific geographical location. I should have known better than to revisit any album that was on rotation during my time at Hollister.

I center each day lately around the class I’m taking at ETSU, which features people who say things like “I don’t do square roots” and “The least common denomiwhat?” My professor actually specializes in knot theory – I looked him up – so I’m not sure how he feels each day about coming to class and having to say things like “You’ll find that a basic knowledge of fractions is quite useful in a wide variety of jobs, actually.” Actually, I’m pretty sure that the whole class is a distraction from his Babylon 5 fansite, which I caught him updating today as I went to his office to take a test.

Rock and roll is pretty much the best phrase to describe my life right now, obviously. I did have another interview today with a potential job – most of the positions I’m looking at are in DC, which would be nice, as it would give me the opportunity to come home and see Miguk Sister in her new role as a Division 1 Cheerleader. In the meantime, I finished The New Kings of Nonfiction, which I didn’t want to like* but totally did, even Jack Hitt’s piece. Why must you torment me so, Ira? And when will you realize how you love me?

*Further elaboration on this point: I hate how liking stuff like TAL serves as this sort of shorthand for cool, like, look at me, I’m aware of cool shit. But I also know that I’m not the only one who feels like this, which means that it’s sort of not cool at all, actually, and that is stupid too. Can’t we just like things without considering their larger cultural ramifications? (Asks the Queen of the Navel Gazers.) I wish I had a clearer way to articulate this point.