What sucks about going to a great school... is now my selection of men is drastically limited.

So basically, now I either am going to have to deal with a guy who is so pretentious I want to vomit, or a guy who is so threatened by my academic caliber that he treats me horribly to compensate. I've had both at this point. I don't know which is preferable.

Sloan made me paranoid tonight about kicking the boy's ass at Scrabble twice in a row.

Fucking Columbia. They're probably not even going to let me back in.

I just realized that today is the last day of July. Where the hell is this summer going?

I've been toying with the idea of starting to write personal essays again, with the idea being to build a collection either for my own reference or that can be published. As research for one of the angles that I'm exploring, last Tuesday I sat down and made a list of every single boy that I've ever dated, had feelings for, or both, and gave each of them a nickname that either reflects the nickname my friends and I gave him at the time or encapsulates his character in a nutshell. It's saved in a very, very safe place and I'm not making any of the information public just yet, but it was a total trip (and I mean TRIP) down memory lane to go through fifteen years of my life in boys.

(This blog might get me in trouble (again) one day, but until then who cares.)

PET PEEVE: People who use the word "karma" in the wrong context (I just saw a stupid Yoplait commercial where the two girls are talking about how good the yogurt is and they used it. IT'S JUST YOGURT. GET OVER IT.) It's someone's religion, smarty pants. Learn what the word means before using it.

ACQUISITION: One blazer, one comfy pair of sweatpants, three pairs of Calvin Klein bikinis, two hot bras, and one gorgeous teal tote bag, all on sale for cheeeeeap.

ANNOYANCE: Losing three hours at home when my flight out of New York was delayed on Thursday, which subsequently led to:

DISAPPOINTMENT: The fact that Thanksgiving weekend is now over, and that I now miss my parents more than I thought possible (especially when I first left home).

EXCITEMENT: I figured out some awesome gifts to give to people for minimal money. They're so much more personal than storebought gifts and my overworked bank account gets a little vacation. I win both ways.

WISH: To be a child again, and to not have anything to worry about except naptime or whether it's going to rain so I can't play outside.

TRIUMPH: I got my mother hooked on Arrested Development this weekend. Too bad it's about eight months too late.

TOO SOON: While window shopping with my mother I happened to point out the kind of engagement ring that I'd like (what? It's just a silly ring, at least I don't have the wedding planned out). Later, I made a crack about having to edit my wedding slideshow/video myself since no one else in our family knows how to do it. Apparently she didn't get the irony in the remark because now she's concerned that since (as far as she knows) all I do is work and sleep, I'm never going to meet anyone. I wisely kept my mouth shut about all past escapades.

SEEN: Stranger than Fiction: good. The Departed: FUCKING AWESOME.

WANT: A cute dress for the holiday party, a nice pair of flats I can wear every day, and enough cash to touch up my now pathetic highlights. My roots are about 4 inches long. I'm not exaggerating.

OVERALL: November is ending much better than it started -- but I hope I'm not saying that too soon.

So there's a bright orange truck parked on the corner of St. Mark's and 4th Ave. every morning called the Mud Truck, and they serve coffee for cheap (it's located bang opposite the Starbucks). I'd never been before, just because when I worked in the MTV building at Astor Place I'd go to Starbucks with the PA -- it was our daily ritual.

So this morning I stopped by before getting on the subway to go to work, and I made a Very Important Discovery:
THE GUYS WHO WORK ON THE MUD TRUCK ARE REALLY FRICKIN CUTE.

Hoo boy. I have to start getting coffee there more often.

Why does everyone except me seem to be dating someone at the moment?

Dear Men in Your Twenties,

Please stop being such assholes.
One among you has ruined what would otherwise be a wonderful day for me.
Please gain some tact and decency as soon as possible.
Or, alternately, go fuck yourselves.

Kisses,
Roopa

This is my current desktop background:



NO WONDER IT'S SO FREAKING HARD FOR ME TO GET ANY WORK DONE.

For those of you who requested mixes, they're all done, I just need to package them and put them in the mail. So don't worry, they'll be in your pretty little hands soon.

Starseed1241 (11:04:29 PM): as much as i try to play the tough girl card...i am such a total innocent.
Starseed1241 (11:04:35 PM): i don't know how i feel about that.
Starseed1241 (11:06:40 PM): i don't want to go out and be a whore just for the sake of being a whore. but at the same time, i feel like there's such a stigma attached to being innocent.
Starseed1241 (11:08:28 PM): it's like...no one wants to corrupt the nice girl...so they just pass her by instead.

I am an innocent. And sometimes I just don't want to be one.

My parents were wrong about one thing. Losing my virginity didn't give out any signals that I wanted to hook up with people. People still see me as just this naïve, sweet little girl who'll be great to marry someday, but right now they'd prefer to hook up with someone else. Usually I'm fine with that, but for some reason it's getting to me tonight. Maybe if I'd garnered more experience earlier...maybe if I threw myself at sketchy guys in bars...maybe if I weren't so picky about who I make an effort to approach...maybe then I wouldn't feel this lonely.

I don't know if the way I'm feeling has anything to do with the nightmare, or leaving home tomorrow, or what. But there IS a stigma to being innocent. People see me as pure. Clean. Uncorrupted. Someone they'd love to take home to their parents, but who isn't any fun on a drunken Saturday night.

Am I going to have to wait until I'm thirty to be approached by anyone?

The thing is, I don't even want to get in a serious relationship right now. I'd just like to be hit on every once in a while. Flirted with. Approached by a stranger (who didn't have intentions of marriage). Something. Anything.

And I have such a strong feeling that being an innocent has painted an indelible black mark on me, that tells people to stay away.

Maybe this is just a cry for attention. I don't know. But as much as I'm proud of who I am, sometimes I can't help wishing that I was someone else entirely.

I love filmmaking. I honest to God am completely enamored with it. I love writing, I love shooting, I love editing. I love reading scripts. I love putting together the visuals and the sound. I love the idea of location shooting. I even love production, and the business aspect of it.

But I'm scared that I'm going to become one of those women too wrapped up in her work to have time for more personal things. Like romance, and marriage, and settling down. And children. And becoming more than just her career.

I've been feeling like a sham lately. I've been feeling like I'm too uninteresting to create. Too boring to waste time with. A mere shadow of who I really could be.

Not being able to write tonight scared me. I don't think I can top my first short, and I feel like anything I write now is going to be a disappointment to me. I don't have that same burst of inspiration that came a month ago, when I saw Hema in my head running across the Great Lawn all decked out in her wedding sari, and developed the script in the last ten minutes of class. That didn't happen this time. I have the story, but the passion isn't coming out.

Passion. That's what's missing from my life recently. Pure, unadulterated passion.

I should go to bed. But I'm too wired on caffeine, and too soaked in worry. When I have nothing else to do I start panicking about who I'm going to be 10 years from now. And my biggest fear is that I'm going to be surrounded by people, but alone. With no one to really, truly open up to.

All I want is someone's arm around me, and a shoulder to rest my head on, and the ability to just sit and exist for a little bit. The comfort of having someone there who understands. To not feel like a placeholder, or a makeshift girlfriend, or someone who'll "do for now" every once in a while. And I want to care about someone in more than an infatuated way. I want the excitement that comes with love. The tingly feeling that never goes away. The 24 hour giddiness of knowing that someone else cares just as much as you do.

I just don't have the energy for any of it right now, and am beginning to wonder if I'll ever have the energy for it again.

They say things happen when you least expect them to. I have too many expectations. And no one around with which to fulfill them.

Last night made it all the more obvious that I'm never going to get into another relationship while I'm at this bloody school, because no one (with the exception of desi grad students looking for wives) even does so much as hits on me or buys me a drink.

It's now clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am incapable of attracting anyone who I'm attracted to as well.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I should just give up and wait for my parents to find me a nice Tamilian boy. And yet somehow I can't get this lingering hope out that maybe, somehow things will finally work out. It's like I keep running towards a locked door, again and again and again.

I am so fucking sexually frustrated.

I know I'm being a little too melodramatic for my own good right now. But it just sucks going out at night with high hopes, and ready to flirt, and (secretly) wanting to hook up with someone that night, only to find that all of them are attracted to your FRIENDS and see you as "that chick who just tagged along." That's me. I will forever be the girl who's friends with the hot one, never hot in her own right.

Maybe I should join a convent, and get pleasure out of religion. I'm thinking that's the only way to calm myself down at this juncture. It may be extreme, but at least then you know you have someone who cares about you in return.

EDIT. Jas is the coolest person in the world.

Joos E Fruit: va va va roopa ur beauty supercedes that of the sun moon and jupiter put together
Joos E Fruit: u smell sweeter than the first honey from a workman bees day
Joos E Fruit: and your song softer than a bluejay singing its final song before slaughter
Joos E Fruit: u put the karisma in karisma kapoor and the kajol in mrs. ugly devgan
Joos E Fruit: you are the wind beneeeeeeeeath my wiiiiiiiings

Mr. Grewal, you're the best. (And you are also...OK. Teeheehee.)

Central Park looks absolutely AMAZING.



( A lot more of the surreal orange gates. )

Conversation with Reeya [mehnaz].

Beagle1795: what are you up to now?
Starseed1241: i just got back
Starseed1241: i have to take a shower and do some reading.
Beagle1795: nice
Beagle1795: yeah i need to shower too
Starseed1241: and then i get some JAZZ MUSICIAN ASS tonight.
Starseed1241: hahahaha
Beagle1795: HAHAHA
Beagle1795: good call
Beagle1795: take advantage of the fact that he appears to have fallen in love with you at first sight...bollywood style
Beagle1795: and is now sort of stalking you...bollywood style (ie in a non threatening but hilariously weird way)
Starseed1241: hahahahaha
Starseed1241: oh my god...
Starseed1241: my life is turning into a b'wood movie!!
Beagle1795: HAHA
Beagle1795: AWESOME!
Starseed1241: dance marathon was just one extended musical number!
Beagle1795: it was like all the musical numbers combined into one
Starseed1241: hahahahaha
Beagle1795: :D
Starseed1241: wow.
Starseed1241: this is a huge revelation.
Starseed1241: now i'm wondering when my parents are going to force me to marry someone else.
Beagle1795: HAHAHA
Starseed1241: WAIT. i'm ALREADY married...to paulash [pbandy34]!!!!!
Beagle1795: hehehehe
Beagle1795: well then, what'll happen is your true love will come and try to infiltrate
Beagle1795: and convince everyone (paulash included) that you belong with him
Starseed1241: hahahahahaha
Beagle1795: through any means possible
Beagle1795: a la DDLJ
Starseed1241: OR he could end up being crazy obssessed stalker a la srk in darr.
Beagle1795: ah yes
Beagle1795: there's the other extreme
Beagle1795: with pictures of you all over his wall
Beagle1795: that he talks to
Beagle1795: when he's not talking to his dead mother on the phone
Starseed1241: hahahaha
Beagle1795: i think i'd prefer the ddlj scenario, myself...
Beagle1795: though it would be hilarious to see paulash beat the crap out of a stalker
Beagle1795: like sunny deol
Starseed1241: HAHAHA
Beagle1795: i'd pay to see that :D
Starseed1241: rise from the dead
Beagle1795: HAHAHA

"Men are intimidated by beautiful women."

It's something my mom's been telling me since I was in high school, as I was crying over the fact that I couldn't find anyone to go with me to the prom. She's been saying it ever since to justify my being perpetually single and pretty much incapable of ever finding a date to anything. For her, it seems to fully explain why my chances of being single for the rest of my life seem greater than ever right about now.

But I wonder how true it really is.

I se all these gorgeous girls around me, many of them my close friends, who have no problem attracting men. Other than that, they are no different from me: we think similarly, get really enthusiastic about things that we love, have similar fashion senses, are very serious about schoolwork (scratch that, everyone is here). The only explanation I can come up with is that they're attractive and I'm not...but I seriously don't think I'm THAT bad looking!

I've spent about 7 years trying to figure out why all my friends are able to date and (this sounds so junior high) "get guys to like them". And in reality, I'm fine without male companionship right now -- it would only clutter up my already overcrowded life. But every so often I'd just like someone there who I can always go to, and who would care about me no matter what, and would, well, love me for who I am. I just haven't found him yet, and if I have, he obviously doesn't feel the same way about me.

And you know, I won't be single for the rest of my life -- my parents are always there to set me up with Eligible Desi Bachelors. I just wish I didn't have to be alone until then.

Those Entenmann's cookies -- the teeny tiny ones that come in the boxes -- are EVIL. I bought a box yesterday and it's almost empty. *EDIT* It's gone now, I exercised 0 self control and ate them all :(

My back is killing me. I'm becoming an old, old woman...at 20.

I feel like I have a handle on what I'm going to write my Middle Eastern Civ paper about -- but of course, I need to actually read the material first, if only to get quotes.

First semester junior year is a bitch, at least in terms of schoolwork.

I'm pretty sure second semester isn't going to get much better.

My across the hall neighbor keeps slamming her door over and over. I hope she's OK :(

Given up on men completely. Of course that's what I said in September, and a fat lot of good that's done me. But this time I mean it. I think.

Tere qurbaan jaavaan, teri marzi jaan jaavaan
Tohar baat maan jaavaan meri soniye

Roopa says:
did i tell you about the gorgeous 27 year old law student in my hindi class???
~*aao na, hona hai fanaa*~ [one of my bestest friends and almost-sister Mekala] says:
yeah u did!!! any advances?!
Roopa says:
haha no he's just really nice eye candy
Roopa says:
i doubt he'd be interested
Roopa says:
he's 27!
~*aao na, hona hai fanaa*~ says:
sooo??
~*aao na, hona hai fanaa*~ says:
who cares?
~*aao na, hona hai fanaa*~ says:
prime marriage material!!!!
~*aao na, hona hai fanaa*~ says:
:)
Roopa says:
HAHAHA
~*aao na, hona hai fanaa*~ says:
lol
Roopa says:
i knowww but what if he's already taken?
Roopa says:
then i'd just feel stupid
Roopa says:
men that age...you have to be careful you know
~*aao na, hona hai fanaa*~ says:
eh screw her...temporary accessories thats what girlfriends are
~*aao na, hona hai fanaa*~ says:
:)

Later...

Roopa says:
OMG he went to HARVARD?!?
Roopa says:
(yes i'm a loser and googled him)
~*aao na, hona hai fanaa*~ says:
LOL
~*aao na, hona hai fanaa*~ says:
ur too cute...coolio...prime prime prime marriage material...call ur parents
~*aao na, hona hai fanaa*~ says:
book a hall
~*aao na, hona hai fanaa*~ says:
i'll be there
Roopa says:
HAHAHA

MAJOR, major eye candy in every single class this semester. (Well, maybe not econ, but I don't know, there are so many people there...)

Just when I decided that men were cluttering up my life too much.

Maybe this is God's way of telling me to jump back in the game.

This semester is gonna be so much fun. :D

there is an incredibly hot boy in my psych class. he sat in front of me today and he smelled wicked good. i don't know his name, or year, or anything about him, except for the fact that he's hot. something nice to look at instead of the powerpoint slides..funny how i always find my hot boys in my 610-725 classes..

we were in the blackbox for 4 hours tonight. some people had been there since 6. we didn't start teching until 1015. but it's ok, there were a lot of laughs. i love my cast so much, they're all such awesome people. and it was hilarious seeing emily so blatantly flirting with ryan today, more obviously than ever before. she's so cute.

::yawn:: ok, keeping this post nice and short. must...go...to...bed...

and remember, erratica this weekend! come, damn you, come!! (that's not to be taken sexually, by the way)

i just postered hogan and broadway and i PLASTERED furnald with posters yesterday. tuesday i have to go to the gap AND foot locker in between spanish and karate and make my t-shirt to wear wednesday and/or thursday. lots of publicity. which reminds me. if YOU ~ yes, you ~ are reading this and are IN NEW YORK this weekend i command you to come to erratica!! sex, alcohol, poetry, me falling down a lot...guaranteed good times.

goddamn. i'm still feeling sick from that damn broadway elevator. maybe i should think about that before considering living there next year. maybe i should lie down for a little before working on my paper.

lianna and jess and i made plans to go out after the show friday and drink. i'm excited...i haven't had alcohol in a LONG time...not since before classes started.

i feel like shit. exhaustion and low self-image come into play hand in hand today. i feel my eyes closing by themselves even now. and i feel like a fat blob. i have to exercise more self-control over what i eat. otherwise i'll go back to the way i was before senior year...not good.

i want a boy but no boys want me. story of my life.

stafford: what goes into a dacquiri?
kit: two parts rum, one part lime juice, one part gomme syrup...and vodka, apparently.

i AM man repellent. don't believe anyone when they say i'm not.

i freaked out last night. i mean, literally, freaked out last night. jess came in here and i was sobbing my eyes out.

i'm having superficiality issues again. just when i thought i was done with that, when i thought i was going to lay off complaining about myself and my (lack of) a love life. i guess with a bunch of people talking about guys and how they have either found new ones or are close to hitting the mark with their respective love interests, i feel really inferior because my life's not like that. i don't have the beauty or the body to attract guys, let alone get them interested enough to talk to me. i don't have someone who i can say is interested. i'm the person that no one realizes is there.

i think i need to work some things out within myself before i can start looking for new guys. because unless i come to terms with the fact that i'm not what anyone wants, i'm just going to be miserable.