I've lost my latest journal. I haven't seen it in a month.

The thought that it could have slipped under Alex's bed when I stayed in his room at the end of the summer popped into my head and I called him immediately, leaving a nervous message.

"I cleaned my whole room looking for your journal, but I couldn't find it," he said. "Honestly, I was really hoping I would."

Couldn't blame him! That's why I'm nervous it's floating around somewhere that I'm not aware of.

I'm not as worried about this as I would be if I were, say, sixteen. But I would like to keep my rather salacious summer to myself if I have the chance.

Stayed up till five in the morning, girl talking with Emily and Jen. It was like a 12 year old slumber party, but with boxed wine.

Chris and I's system is impeccable - we call each other to prevent us from calling people we shouldn't.

"My cheeks hurt from laughing so much," he said.
"I wish I could remember what we were even talking about."

We talked about this dude I went on a few dates with. Chris was cackling.
"Lemme get this straight: you were hanging out with a thirty-year old who works in the milk aisle at Whole Foods and is a metalhead???!?!?!!?!"

Media17.com

Best website ever.
You can make ringtones out of any song for free.

Thanks, internet.

--

It came up in class today that I almost never wear underwear. People kinda freaked. Almost no one I know wears underwear. I don't think it's that weird.

--

My dead friend's birthday is today. His facebook wall is filling up with birthday wishes; for the first time since he died I am not overwhelmed by the complete tackiness of this, but I still wonder how many people are "sendin' a message to heaven" via facebook, and how many know that he is actually, you know... dead.

Not pleased.

--

You know what sucks but also is awesome but also sucks a lot?
Being reminded you suck after you thought that you didn't suck for a while. I saw some sketchbook drawings from a dude I don't even know that lives in the same city as I do, and like.... fuck.

--

Have I ever written lamer sentences than the ones above?

--

Waiting by the phone. This, too, sucks even more because I finally got my first ring tone - ever, ever, ever - and no one has called my phone yet.

--

"You can't quarantine the past."
Not relevant, but man. Somehow this Pavement line always escaped me in the past.

Some people date up, or marry up.
I tend to vacation up.

In December I'm going to Mexico with Audrey. Her family is renting a hacienda.
"It comes with slaves!" she said.

You never know how much you love your home state/city/neighborhood until you see it completely trashed.

--

Paul and I made bets on what type of cancer we are going to get. It's not a question of "if" to us, but "when".

Paul's guesses were prostate and liver.
Mine were breast and lung.

--

What I sound like in text:

Me: wellllll i just likeeeeeeee
i dunnooooooo
he wants to hang out
but tonightttt
i dunno
i'll call him tomorrowwwww

Jen: ahhhaahaa
that was a perfect internet version of you irl
i see you squealing
and rolling on the floor




... I would probably be doing one or both of those things if we had been in the same room.

--

Can I just submit this as my artist statement? I'd give her credit.

"I get why you're bitter. I took exactly one film class in college and — with the curious exception of the Douglas Sirk unit — it bored the shit out of me. I also once got busted for loudly crinkling a bag of Jujubes during a classroom screening of Vivre Sa Vie. I don't deserve to be here. We've established that. But I'm here. Five million 12-year-olds think I'm Buck Henry. Accept it."

I've known this for years, but it's time to point it out again.






Seriously, what the fuck.

After maybe five e-mails from this guy, I tried to be as dismissive but not-burning-bridges as possible. I told him, everytime, that I didn't want to meet. "Well do you have any free moment between 8 am and 9 pm? Anytime at all?" Well, yes, I DO, but I do not want to. I'm not busy. I just don't want to meet. And I said that. Many times.

The kicker of the whole thing is that now I'M the asshole, because I don't want to Teach For America.
Apparently I am against "One day, all children in this nation [having] the opportunity to attain an excellent education."

-

Again, again, I thank you for your consideration and am honored that you are so
dedicated to getting me into this program. I respect that you have a lot of people
to meet with and I don't want to waste your time - which is why I have responded
several times that Teach For America is not in my plans.

I. do. not. want. to. do. it.

So I do. not. want. to. meet. with. Wordna.

I appreciate all that you do, and I don't want to waste your time anymore.
Again - again! - if my stance changes I will contact you for more information.

Taylor

> Hi Taylor,
>
> I'm not sure if you received my last e-mail (I've attached it below), so I
> wanted to check back in with you. I realize how busy you must be right
> now, but I'm hoping you have a few minutes to meet with Wordna Warren, who
> is available on Thursday, 9/25. What times work best for you?
>
> Talk to you soon,
>
> William
>
>
> William Frampton Recruitment Associate Teach For America
> *Pittsburgh/Philadelphia Recruitment 315 W. 36th St., 6th Floor NY, NY
> 10018 (Tel) 212-279-2080 ext. 497 (Fax) 212-279-2081
>
> "One day, all children in this nation will have the opportunity to attain
> an excellent education."
>
> First Deadline: September 19, 2008 | Apply here
> |
> www.teachforamerica.org
>
> Dear Taylor,
>
> I hope that this email finds you well, and enjoying the start to your
> senior year.
>
> As a Resident Assistant, you have distinguished yourself as a leader at
> Carnegie Mellon University. I am looking to connect with motivated
> individuals like yourself, because I know that you would be a strong
> candidate for Teach For America, a non-profit organization that recruits
> our nation's most outstanding recent college graduates and working
> professionals to commit 2 years to being leaders in classrooms across the
> nation
>
> Wordna Warren, a 2005 Houston corps member and the Teach For America
> recruitment director for Carnegie Mellon, will be on campus next Thursday
> and would like to meet with you briefly to discuss your academic and
> extracurricular experience at CMU, as well as your future plans. Are you
> free to meet any time from 9AM to 6PM on Thursday, 9/25, at Skibo in the
> University Center?
>
> Please let me know what works with your schedule. I look forward to
> hearing from you.
>
> Best,
>
> William
>
> P.S. I would encourage you to check out our graduate school as well as
> our corporate partnerships at
>
> http://www.teachforamerica.org/alumni/grad_school_partnerships.htm
> https://www.teachforamerica.org/alumni/employer_partnerships.htm




I guess I finally - finally! got the point across, because I haven't heard back.

It's that time of year again - social retreat. Just in time for colder weather.
I'm not contacting anyone anymore. They know where to find me; I'm not hard to track down.
It's not a sad thing, it's just a thing.

The upside of that is when people surprise you. I had such a nice phone conversation last night. The nicest words to hear? In my opinion they are "and so I think of you often" and "I miss you". Sometimes you gotta make yourself scarce (ie, only be in town for 3 months of the year) to find the best ones.

--

I took a ride from a complete stranger, the first time I've ever done this sober (sorry, Mom). He was completely kind and helpful and really saved the day. It was Pittsburgh's equivalent of a southern gentlemen - scrubbier, scrappier, less polished, but still kindhearted. And that voice - the perfect Pittsburgh voice. Still - I sent Jen a text: "I'm getting a ride from a man named Chad, he just picked up a prescription at 40th and Main." You never know.

That's the thing about Chads - my friends and I always used to make fun of Chads, because none of us had ever met any. Chads represent all the meat-head bro-dudes; "Oh, that guy's a total Chad," we would say. "I showed up at this party and it was so awkward - me and like twenty Chads."



But now I've met two Chads, and it's always the same. They ARE kind of meat-head bro-dudes. But every time I run into one it's the same story:

- I need help, for whatever reason
- I randomly am approached by a man named Chad
- Chad helps me with my task (helps find my car, gives me a ride, etc)
- We part ways and never see each other again.

So Chads are my guardian angels, really. They help once, then they are out of your life forever.

Played 'Sincere Question' with Jen tonight, and taped it. Pretty great.
We talked about self-loathing a lot.
The ultimate artistic vice, in both our opinions.
Can't make art without it.

I gotta be up in three hours and finish a project.
Tired eyes. They hurt.

It sucks 'cause I don't know how to make coffee, so when I wake up before Jen I am without it.

--

Talked to Z. Ross recently:
"Everyone likes you more once you leave."
"Hahaha, that's dark."
"It's TRUE though."

I don't understand anything about the economy, except that I should be very, very worried.

I've got like fifty buck in cash.
Is that okay?

---

I love my friend Chris because we are both really horrible, awful, mean people who are actually really lame, insecure, kind people. Who are still pretty mean. It's beautiful, really.

We've been friends for... what? 6 years? 4.5 if you count the real ones? I don't even have one picture of just the two of us. We are not 'picture people,' apparently.


"Every day that passes I'm pretty sure I'm a little bit crazier than the day before. And everything makes a little less sense."

Oh, Christopher. Me too, SB, me too.

--

I was thinking today on the way home: I wish I had a picture of me making dinner for the boys in Georgetown (hotdogs + macaroni and cheese) in my summer garden party dress, an oven mitt on one hand and a Mojito in the other.

I smiled and felt a really simple appreciation and nostalgia.
I miss having a dog in my bed (literally).

-

I
have
lost
my
(artistic)
faith.

-

Fitting that "Glory Days"/"Dancing in the Dark" is playing now. Bruce, I love you.

Facebook continues to melt my mind.



Some things are too perfect.

Jen taught me how to ride a bike today (remember when I called her my mother in absentia?).
It's not true - riding a bike isn't like riding a bike.
Learning how to ride a street bike was harder than learning how to drive a car; I could hear Jen laughing behind me as I teetered on two tiny wheels like a baby foal trying to walk (yelping the whole time).

Cleaning up all the bottles, wearing hasty pajamas and sloppy ponytails, Jen and I high-fived in the kitchen.

"Good party."
"Good party."

Notes of success:
A lot of good food eaten by a lot of good people, no vomiting, Jim fell asleep on the floor with a burrito on his stomach, blah blah blah.

--

Oh, also:
- if you want an interesting party, make Habenero poppers. Think Jalepeno poppers kicked up about 100 notches. Throughout the course of the night I would see people wide-eyed, crying, running away to find a place to be alone in their agony. Mark got tricked into eating one and was (understandably) upset for the rest of the evening.
- laughing with Jen in the morning. I slopped off the couch and rolled around on the ground, somersaulting into my room. Sometimes you gotta work out your amusement/embarrassment/anxiety in a physical way.
- is there a better song to ease into the next day in your dark apartment (me - avoiding schoolwork, Jen - playing hooky from work) than "Doobie Ashtray"? If there is, I have yet to find it.

Preparing for a party all day today - I can't believe Lisa is missing my debut as a hostess, and it's never a soiree without her, but the party must go on.

--
"I like the message, too." - Tracy, on T.I.'s "Whatever you like." That girl cracks me up.

--
I placed a Brussel Sprout next to a cabbage in at the Co-Op. "It's a cute rule," Jen said. "Something big next to something small = always cute."

--
Oh, and in regards to Ike:
My friends are reacting exactly the way I expected them to. Drinking Hurricanes (vodka, grenadine syrup, gin, light rum, Bacardi® 151 rum, amaretto almond liqueur, triple sec, grapefruit juice, pineapple juice).

Every occasion is an opportunity to celebrate, which is why I love living in Texas with them. My freshman year, unable to get in contact with my family or my brother who was evacuating the city, I drank 'ritas for Hurricane Rita.





"My good friend I haven't talked to in a while called me just now for a rule clarification on Risk. Not nomarl risk either, Risk 2200 AD."

Weighed myself in Spencer's bathroom - I never see a scale - and was a little heartbroken. Not heartbroken, more hmph-ed. Make sense?
When I got back from Thailand I weighed twenty pounds less than I do now.

-

Look for me at the party, I'll be the girl asleep in the corner.

-

Hurricane Ike is now the size of Texas (so says CNN). The beach house will be destroyed. I'm so happy I got to go again for one last time. They will rebuild it, but still. There is so much history that took place there! The amount of fraught high school hook ups/relationships that began there ALONE is staggering.

I didn't even get to sleep in 'my room' the last time I was there, which I know I pouted and whined about. When you are no longer in an established couple, you get trumped for the bedroom with a door.

I don't know how to go to sleep. I have to be "put to bed" - with sleepy stuff, nightcaps, or extreme exhaustion. Without them I tend to lay in bed and think about dumb things I've done. And everything seems dumb when you are laying in bed for hours.

I forgot to eat all day yesterday, and will routinely forget normal hygiene/bodily care activities.

I need a mother.



Jen is my lil mama in absentia. She tells me to work on my sleeping habits, and insists that I drink out of a wine glass - something I appreciate - even going so far as to take my cup out of my hand and transfer the contents to a classier version. When she cooks (cooking? what's that?) I assist her, like momma's little helper. It's a good thing.

I made some chicken, a first.
"You cooked something! Look at you!"
"I did it! I helped! I'm helping!"

--

Spencer, Jen, Anthony and I went to the grocery store last night at 11:30 pm. Anthony didn't have shoes so he wore dark socks to disguise his feet. That tickled me.

At a house show, trying to make a quick exit: "Lemme use the bathroom, it'll take one minute, I'll be back and we can leave."
I end up waiting maybe fifteen minutes outside the bathroom. I am the only one waiting and hear strange rustling noises from inside. He's either doing drugs or having sex in there, I thought. Thinking it was drugs, I decided to knock to let him know someone was waiting for the room.

I knocked.
"Come in!" he said.

Uh.

I eventually did go in, only to find some guy with top off the toilet tank, trying desperately to "fix it". He took a plastic goose statue and stuck its beak into the shower-curtain-ring device to prevent the tank with filling with water.

"Water keeps coming in!" he cried to me. "It's going to overflow!"
"No no, that's how a toilet works. The tank has to fill in order to flush."

This dude thought that it was broken because water was coming in.
"Haven't you ever fixed a toilet in your life?"
"Uhmmmm.... I guess not," he said.

So in the end he was trying to prevent the toilet from filling with water, which is what it needed to work. Weird all around.

--
old memory
being in serbia
laying in the guest room in natalija's house with w.
110 degrees
one of us trying to get cute and cuddle
"get the fuck off me"
no touching in bed, covered in a constant layer of sweat, laying there naked spread out like we're doing jumping jacks
taking 5 quick showers a day in freezing water
someone sneezing in the bathroom
someone on the patio saying "bless you!" in serbian
and then you wonder what else they heard.

Two conversations with two different (TX) friends via the internet.
I am so happy here in Pittsburgh, really. But I still fear/feel that when I am not in someone's line of vision I am completely forgotten.

1.
Chris D
September 8 at 6:20pm
now you're even commenting on pictures?
you get points taken off your "the baddest bitch" account for that, socialite.


Taylor S
September 8 at 6:25pm
stop sucking my mini-feed's dick and we wouldn't have this problem.

bitch.


Chris D
September 8 at 6:28pm
aaaand you just reclaimed all those points plus 6 for that hahaha. well played.


2.
Taylor S
Today at 12:31am
three things you like. i had to tell you -

today, figure drawing, which is nothing new, but:
we're drawing a School of Art favorite, Ron. He appears homeless (remember those old Will Ferrel SNL skits where he is the gross nude model?) with a cart full of props and tons and tons and tons of CDs.

first 1.5 hours:
Ron plays the Olympic theme music - on loop - while posing with discus and spears, leaning against the walls in athletic poses. He is at least 65, i should mention. I have maybe seen him naked 40+ times.

second 1.5 hours:
he plays EVERY JAMES BOND THEME in chronological order, while posing with a child's plastic UFO type gun. He takes different spy positions - pointing the gun (pulling the trigger to make it light up and make 'pew pew pew' noises at the students), pressing himself against a wall, throwing a pretend bomb with fake plastic mardi gras gold coins (to Goldfinger, 'natch. 'He loves only gold'). I heard the theme songs to all the movies we veged out to this summer.

third hour:
he plays the saddest sinatra songs, and poses ( naked! remember he is constantly naked! it adds to the humor) sitting on a stool, wearing a fedora, looking blue, with a cigarette in hand.

I just wanted to tell you. The whole time I was thinking that you'd get a laugh out of it.

Sorry for killing your phone.
- t.


Matt H
Today at 1:07am
so bizzare,

i love you

I met a man in the street, and he talked to me about how hard it is to meet women and how they think that men who approach them are creepy and how they never call you back.

He got my phone number, because I can't say no, don't know how to lie, and he called me cute. I know, I know.

I feel a little badly that I never answer and think he's creepy and never call him back.

just a sampling of much more

Apparently the 6th slipped past me.

Anthony tried to say goodbye to me but I was asleep on Spencer's floor and couldn't be awoken. But he was asleep when he was stretching in those insane windbreaker pants, nose to kneecap, before that. So I guess it's okay. Fallin' asleep at all the wrong times.

Earlier, I had Reds and Jen told me I should get a whiskey on ice, to complete the Texan girl look. I love that it is incomprehensible/weird to her that whiskey tastes like juice to me. "Seriously," I said. "I grew up drinking this out of a baby bottle." Basically true. I went to get a drink for us to share and an old (like old old) man bought it for me.

It's nice when all of your best friends are in bands - when you move away you can listen to them and hear their voices and it feels like you're talking to them.

Yeah I know, it's so Penny Lane and puke-inducing, but it's true.

--

I was walking the toddler I babysit for to school in his stroller. Just enjoying the day, taking a walk in a nice area. A car drives by me and a young man stuck his entire torso out of the window and yelled in a hateful tone:

SHOULDA WORNA CONDOM!


Okay, a few reactions to this:
- Fuck you, dude.
- Oh, I was supposed to wear the condom? Is that where I went wrong? I am guessing that someone who thinks it is acceptable to yell mean things - at strangers, in a cowardly way! - is not sexually educated enough to even know that female condoms exist.
- Hey guy, I kinda wish your dad wore a condom, and you were never conceived.

--

Best review - ever, ever, ever - of this blog:

"It's not the worst blog in the world."
- Jeff L.

band meeting
Between You and Chris D'Annunzio


Chris D'Annunzio
September 3 at 3:33pm
well we've got a show opening for kelly clarkson and i figured i should tell you. get your keyboardin fingers ready. she called me herself to tell me how into 2d1c she is. also, i'm about to go get purple everclear margaritas with charley and heston. you really started an awful thing by introducing afternoon cocktails into my life and i'm still up in the air if i love or hate you for it. i can't stop it. they're too lush for me not to enjoy/crave.

you're the only person i've sent an e-mail (if you can even call this one) in probably 3 years.
DD me soon.


How damn cute is that? Of course everyone thinks the girl should play the keyboards. Puh-leeeze.

9+ months ago

Goddamn, midnight comes so fast these days.


How beatnik do we look here? One of those pictures that looks like it should belong in a biography.

This section in particular:

Years and years of friendship aside, we look like we're about to start the revolution.
Naturally I am holding a beer.

Considering going back on Facebook, after 1.5 (more?) years being free.

I'm in an odd social situation at school, like the kid that skips a grade ('cause I kinda just did). So I don't really know anyone.
Plus I have some answers to the profile questions that are just so witty, I am dying to share and show myself off.

Ugh. Already over it, again.

---

Country music gives me goosebumps. The good kind. I can't help it.

---

"The last time I saw you I was wearing pants, I was sober, and I felt a lot more confident."