Tea and Oranges profile picture

Tea and Oranges

They're all a bunch of apple-eaters.

About Me

I like to feed people. I talk about nerdy things in bars. I think philosophy can be dangerous. I like REALLY spicy food. I drink too much coffee. I have ridiculous routines. I do many things to excess. I desperately want to walk away from an argument believing that I have been proven wrong. Right now Aretha Franklin is playing on my CD player (that is a lie, right now its just typing, But I sure wish it was Aretha.) I don't talk to all the people I love every day or every year. I'm not everyone's cup of tea. I mock a person's most deeply held convictions (especially my own). I think tomato sandwiches in summer time are pretty damn swell. Sometimes I try too hard. I share my table a lot more frequently than my bed. I don't like it when people use the word "feel" when they mean "think". You will know that I love you when I try to persuade you to grow vegetables for me. I wonder, if I put the name Liza Sherburne in this section, will people be able to find this website by Googling me?

My Interests

cooking-eating-feeding-peoplemusic (trading mix CDs)thrift-store shoppingdancing and singing (very badly)when I'm drunkreading for funreading (philosophy, fiction, cookbooks, news, etc.) talking to strangerstaking ridiculously longwalks in tatteredsweat-shop-free shoeslosing argumentsto polite butintimidatingly brilliant peoplemaking bad jokeszombie moviesCOFFEE

I'd like to meet:

Anyone with a quiet disdain for the rich.Or, if You are: 1) nice to waiters. 2) read novels and poetry for pleasure AND 3. don’t mean “I want to share with you my original-free-verse-therapy-on-paper so you can see the darkness that is my being” when you say “I like poetry” If you can: 4. ask hard questions without already having an answer in mind when you ask them 5. can admit that the 20's-style flirtation in "It's a Wonderful Life" is romantic If you like: 6. to drink cheap beer and talk loudly about abstract ideas And you are not one of those people who 7. is embarrassed to turn the radio up loud to songs that are completely out-of-style And you are one of those people who 8. buys clothes at thrift stores to save money But 9. NOT in order to be hip or "ironic" And you are not afraid 10. to take a tentative stand Also, anybody who agrees that e.e. cummings is a great poet to read aloud, wasabi peas are a good breakfast food, and that most people who use the word “metaphysical” in everyday conversation are ridiculous will probably get along with me (note: I do use that word in everyday conversation).In general, I like talking to strangers. Sometimes I have genuinely interesting conversations with crazy, brilliant, interesting, or even impressively normal people in bars and coffee shops, on the bus, and while waiting in line at the grocery store. So I will say tentatively that I am not weirded out by people who randomly message me because they looked at my profile online. (Please do not give me reason to change my mind.) If you're still reading this, send me a message ('somegirliknow' on AIM and yahoo). My only requirement is that you be devastatingly brilliant or at least damn funny.(VITALLY IMPORTANT: Does it bother anyone else that it should be 'whom I'd like to meet' instead of 'who I'd like to meet'?)

Music:

As much as the depressed-inner-teenager-first -discovering-alternative-progressive -indie-label-not-what-your-mother- liked-unpopular-music would like to think otherwise, I've discovered that the music a person listens to is not a very good indication of whether or not I'll like that person. But I'll bite, I guess. Some of my favorite albums are Springsteen's Born to Run, Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, Waits' Small Change, REM's Murmer and Automatic for the People, Young's Harvest, the Stone's Sticky Fingers, Simon's Graceland, Mitchell's Blue, Counting Crows' August and Everything After, and William's Car Wheels on a Gravel Road....Some other artists I like are Ani Difranco, Ben Harper, Nick Cave, 10,000 Maniacs, Elvis Costello, Leonard Cohen, Billie Holiday, Ryan Adams, Al Green, Sinead O'Connor, David Gray, Aretha Franklin, Aimee Mann, Patty Griffin, Otis Redding, Cat Stevens, Dolly Parton, Damien Rice, Belle and Sebastian, Steve Earle, Nick Drake, Elliott Smith, Tori Amos, Gillian Welch, and Paul Westerberg

Movies:

Sometimes I can get into deconstructed-narrative-post-modern -confusing-but-intentionally-so-art- type things (Jim Jarmusch?)and I like clever social satire(Cohen brothers? Kubrick?)and beautiful slice-of-life -pictures-of-humanity(Sayles? Eyre?)if they're not contrived...but mostly I like zombie flicks...jesus, I'm terrified of zombies

Television:

Blow up your TV. Eat a lot of peaches.Plain MySpace Layouts by Iron Spider

Books:

This list is not definitive, but immediately, off the top of my head: Fiction: Sherman Alexie, Roald Dahl, William Faulkner, C.S. Lewis (though I'm not religious), Carson McCullers, Flannery O'Connor, Annie Proulx, J.D. Salinger, John Steinbeck, Mark Twain, Tennesee Williams...Poetry: Billy Collins, T.S. Eliot, e.e. cummings, some Bukowski, and what little I have read of Lorca and Neruda... Non-Fiction (by no means a complete list): Laurie Colwin, M.F.K Fischer, Nick Hornby, Howard Zinn....and (because people ask) some philosophy that is important to me: Kant's Ethics (Especially Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and the Critique of Practical Reason), Mill's On Liberty (even if utilitarianism is ultimately misguided), and Rawls' Theory of Justice

Heroes:

self-reflective progressives, especially those who teach elementary school music

My Blog

across the swollen river to the old abandoned mine

I'm no stranger to country music songs about murdering women. My mother used sing the songs "On the Banks of the Ohio" and "T for Texas" to me as a child and I never thought twice about lyrics such a...
Posted by Tea and Oranges on Sat, 07 Oct 2006 03:00:00 PST

Drunken Gibberish

Sometimes I worry that I shape my life around being the kind of woman described in a Leonard Cohen song.
Posted by Tea and Oranges on Tue, 29 Aug 2006 10:09:00 PST

Information about me (in three short lists)

What I like most in the world:1) Profound conversations with brilliant men....brilliant men with whom I want to have sex, that is2) Profound conversations with anyone else.3) Sex (see 1 above)4) Eveni...
Posted by Tea and Oranges on Mon, 21 Aug 2006 11:07:00 PST

A Derelict In Duct-Taped Shoes.

I have had another pair of cheap flip-flops fall apart on me.  The bottom of the shoe (the flop?) has separated from the top part of the sole (the flip?), and left me stumbling.  There is a ...
Posted by Tea and Oranges on Sat, 05 Aug 2006 11:23:00 PST

Desert Island 25

Some of us just love these lists. My friend Kristen posted a list on her livejournal of 25 albums she can listen to over and over again.  Here is my list for my own amusement and some of yours.&...
Posted by Tea and Oranges on Thu, 06 Jul 2006 07:14:00 PST

Coffee and Whiskey

Coffee is my faithful boyfriend. Whiskey is my destructive lover. I love waking up to the smell of coffee in the morning. On days when I dread going out into the world, Coffee gets me out of bed. C...
Posted by Tea and Oranges on Tue, 09 May 2006 02:34:00 PST

while I avoid finishing my paper

Brevity is the soul of witYOU CAN ONLY TYPE ONE WORD; NO EXPLANATIONS!!!1. Yourself:exaggerated2. Your Lover:NewOrleans3. Your Hair:redolent4. Your Mother:Oceanic5. Your Father:Pastoral6. Your Favorit...
Posted by Tea and Oranges on Tue, 02 May 2006 12:08:00 PST

A Quickie

I'm making a Mix CD called "12 Songs for 2 Days After" (In this case, the "after" refers to Mardi Gras, but any song appropriate for a post-debauchery recovery period will be considered.)  Any su...
Posted by Tea and Oranges on Thu, 02 Mar 2006 11:30:00 PST

Some thoughts on V.D....

I can think of at least two major reasons to hate Valentines Day. The first is the old stand-by: Im single and the rest of the world is rubbing it in my face on this day how pathetic it is to be a...
Posted by Tea and Oranges on Mon, 13 Feb 2006 10:53:00 PST

Back in New Orleans

I haven't updated my blog in months. For those kind readers who may worry about my life (even if they do not contact me directly in order to inquire about it), here is a bit of an update that turned ...
Posted by Tea and Oranges on Tue, 10 Jan 2006 11:06:00 PST