Hello everyone. Today we began a new semester and with that new semester come giant lecture halls filled with overripe teenagers. Today I was harshly reminded of the flaws in the general etiquette of most people in one of these said halls. Twice. The below is about that experience, but before you read it, I would like to add that I really do like people quite a bit. I am not a bastard and mostly enjoy our tiny interactions, just not today.
SO, I know that whatever you are texting to Becky or Marissa or Becka some other friend with an equally boring name about the labor day party and how you got so wasted that you may or may not have woken up in a bathroom with hep C is very important to your life and to the lives of those around you. I understand your misguided self worth and apathetic notions that lectures on cell biology from a very Chinese man are just sooo totally boring and menial that you must chat with the girl next to you via text. I don't blame you for that. However, the ever-so-eager clickety-click of your cell phone's buttons directly behind my left ear tested my patience. But you eventually stopped, so it's okay. I can and do forgive; it was a boring intro lecture after all. What happened next was really rather horrifying, though. You opened a bag of cheetos. CHEETOS. Cheetos come in a cellophane (or some equally annoying material) bag. The bag crinkles when your stubby fingers go in and out, no matter how quiet you are trying to be. Now I am not a violent person, so I do not wish to harm you. However, I do wish somebody would have made you eat that cellophane bag, no matter how noisy it may have been. Also, if you found some stairs and fell down them that would be great.
The second incident took place in the same lecture, but it was the girl next to you. I was sitting there blinking away the minutes when a certain scent wafted down from behind me. Is that...? Does she have chips too? No, no crinkly bag noise. It's...onion. Continuous, powerful onion. Is she eating an onion like an apple??? I think she's eating an onion like an apple!? Holy jesus is this ever the dumbest thing that I have experience in a while. I'm not really sure where the onion smell was coming from, but if you were eating an onion like an apple, please please PLEASE seek help.
Soooo a few more things. One. If you cannot find your books on your own without minimal help (such as asking the aisle number) please drop out of college (as you have never learned to problem solve) and purchase a helmet. You may need it. Two. I found that if I graph amount of caffeine consumed versus niceness to others (on X and Y, respectively) it's pretty much a straight up bell curve. Gotta find that happy medium...
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Yes, I know it has been forever.
"As you get older, it is harder to have heroes."
Ernest Hemingway said that. One of the few things he's ever said that I like, because I feel it is a truth which everyone experiences but few realize in such simple words. I saw it on the bus.
I was also thinking about American medicine. This is a place where people take their children to the ER because of a nosebleed. Don't. Stuff some Kleenex in there and make him sit still for five minutes, but don't tip his head back because he will start digesting his own blood and die a horrible useless death. Point #1. Point #2: There are places in the world where people shit themselves to death. The water is poorly sanitized (if at all), they drink the stuff, get diarrhea, poop constantly, and expire due to dehydration, which would be okay -- save for the fact that all of the diarrhea went back into the water supply.
In America you might choke on a paper clip and die. You might slip on a dock and break your arm. You might smash your car into other cars -- But you will never shit yourself to death. Could this be what the 'land of opportunity' really means? Our water won't make you deathly ill?
At times it really seems as though there are no real problems here. I once saw a study which stated that most people who live at or below the imaginary 'poverty line' in the United States have cable television. CABLE! AND TELEVISION! What kind of country is this? We don't even know what poverty IS. Money is a made-up thing that will only make you worry about not having any (when is the last time that you saw any amount of real money? As opposed to smaller-than-you'd-hoped numbers printed on an ATM receipt?). Our nation is ludicrous, terrifying, and capitalistic -- and I'm sick of it.
Maybe this Obama fellow will get something done (do you actually think McOldliar has a chance?) and maybe he won't. One thing I do believe he will do is make a lot of intelligent speeches and have a lot of followers who don't know the first thing about the guy.
Oh, and he makes me proud to live here again.
Ernest Hemingway said that. One of the few things he's ever said that I like, because I feel it is a truth which everyone experiences but few realize in such simple words. I saw it on the bus.
I was also thinking about American medicine. This is a place where people take their children to the ER because of a nosebleed. Don't. Stuff some Kleenex in there and make him sit still for five minutes, but don't tip his head back because he will start digesting his own blood and die a horrible useless death. Point #1. Point #2: There are places in the world where people shit themselves to death. The water is poorly sanitized (if at all), they drink the stuff, get diarrhea, poop constantly, and expire due to dehydration, which would be okay -- save for the fact that all of the diarrhea went back into the water supply.
In America you might choke on a paper clip and die. You might slip on a dock and break your arm. You might smash your car into other cars -- But you will never shit yourself to death. Could this be what the 'land of opportunity' really means? Our water won't make you deathly ill?
At times it really seems as though there are no real problems here. I once saw a study which stated that most people who live at or below the imaginary 'poverty line' in the United States have cable television. CABLE! AND TELEVISION! What kind of country is this? We don't even know what poverty IS. Money is a made-up thing that will only make you worry about not having any (when is the last time that you saw any amount of real money? As opposed to smaller-than-you'd-hoped numbers printed on an ATM receipt?). Our nation is ludicrous, terrifying, and capitalistic -- and I'm sick of it.
Maybe this Obama fellow will get something done (do you actually think McOldliar has a chance?) and maybe he won't. One thing I do believe he will do is make a lot of intelligent speeches and have a lot of followers who don't know the first thing about the guy.
Oh, and he makes me proud to live here again.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Our Lady of Decreasing Altitude
I am crushed,
hardened,
ten thousand years old.
I am dirt under traffic cones
miles and miles of protruding bones.
sixty days of caricatures
alone in a skin.
I am glass hands on moldy rivets
melting,
fizzing,
light to helpless trails.
I am dizzy
cornered
well-spoken and well-maligned.
curable if caught on time.
I am tired of the big finish.
spoonbenders beware!
ripped up a tattered sentiment
and lost from keeping score.
****
I wrote this on a bus quite some time ago and just found it in the bottom of my backpack while not being able to sleep and looking for my cell phone charger. I especially like the bit about spoonbenders.
hardened,
ten thousand years old.
I am dirt under traffic cones
miles and miles of protruding bones.
sixty days of caricatures
alone in a skin.
I am glass hands on moldy rivets
melting,
fizzing,
light to helpless trails.
I am dizzy
cornered
well-spoken and well-maligned.
curable if caught on time.
I am tired of the big finish.
spoonbenders beware!
ripped up a tattered sentiment
and lost from keeping score.
****
I wrote this on a bus quite some time ago and just found it in the bottom of my backpack while not being able to sleep and looking for my cell phone charger. I especially like the bit about spoonbenders.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Feet Steps
He didn't knock. Why would he knock? In a town so small, why would anybody knock?
The sunlight dried up all of the fear in the room and turned everything into an angel.
What IS that? He wondered before he knew. Of course he knew before he knew; his brain worked like everyone else's.
A pile of angles. A pile of angles with no straight lines. Skin with creases, giving in to gravity.
Giving into gravity.
The wind blew through the little old house like it always did, and she rocked a little in her chair. She had spent so much time in that chair that it had worn to her specifics, only now she did not appear specific at all.
She looked like matter. Matter with mass and no matter.
And no matter what was she going to get up from that chair.
Years had gone by in that room, every one absorbed by that little old house and by that little old body that had misplaced all of its air when it was younger and was now gawking up at him, smiling wryly.
Now a deflated toy, won from the circus, asking questions to which it knew the answer. Before it knew the answer.
He thought of her as a child. He had never known her innocence, her impeccable phrasing, her skin before she had given it to gravity.
He saw her with sparklers in both of her hands, bright lights grinning with gay fury while the world spun around her so fast, so fucking fast that she couldn't ever keep up, and she would fall down on this flat rock that only seems flat and hurtle through space some more all grins, all grins like the angels grin. All teeth like being loved again. All tears like she only knew them.
He picked up her hand and kissed the callouses. It was lighter than before, but it was so heavy.
Her feet looked as they should. Bloated, chock full of innumerable things that nobody understands, unable to hold any more footsteps. Or feet steps.
He sat for a while thinking. Watching.
She had told him once that time was irrelevant; Time is a mechanism for those who fear the end. Old people. She had said.
I'm not old people.
He remembered that she never really knew what day of the week it was even; she knew what time it was by when she was hungry.
"Now you are above time, my friend." He said out loud, his sounds full of hope.
"Now you are awe."
He stood up and paused a moment, feeling the pressure in his body restore, and walked out of the little old house.
The sun was fighting its way into the clouds, disintegrating into the earth.
It would be dinner time soon.
The sunlight dried up all of the fear in the room and turned everything into an angel.
What IS that? He wondered before he knew. Of course he knew before he knew; his brain worked like everyone else's.
A pile of angles. A pile of angles with no straight lines. Skin with creases, giving in to gravity.
Giving into gravity.
The wind blew through the little old house like it always did, and she rocked a little in her chair. She had spent so much time in that chair that it had worn to her specifics, only now she did not appear specific at all.
She looked like matter. Matter with mass and no matter.
And no matter what was she going to get up from that chair.
Years had gone by in that room, every one absorbed by that little old house and by that little old body that had misplaced all of its air when it was younger and was now gawking up at him, smiling wryly.
Now a deflated toy, won from the circus, asking questions to which it knew the answer. Before it knew the answer.
He thought of her as a child. He had never known her innocence, her impeccable phrasing, her skin before she had given it to gravity.
He saw her with sparklers in both of her hands, bright lights grinning with gay fury while the world spun around her so fast, so fucking fast that she couldn't ever keep up, and she would fall down on this flat rock that only seems flat and hurtle through space some more all grins, all grins like the angels grin. All teeth like being loved again. All tears like she only knew them.
He picked up her hand and kissed the callouses. It was lighter than before, but it was so heavy.
Her feet looked as they should. Bloated, chock full of innumerable things that nobody understands, unable to hold any more footsteps. Or feet steps.
He sat for a while thinking. Watching.
She had told him once that time was irrelevant; Time is a mechanism for those who fear the end. Old people. She had said.
I'm not old people.
He remembered that she never really knew what day of the week it was even; she knew what time it was by when she was hungry.
"Now you are above time, my friend." He said out loud, his sounds full of hope.
"Now you are awe."
He stood up and paused a moment, feeling the pressure in his body restore, and walked out of the little old house.
The sun was fighting its way into the clouds, disintegrating into the earth.
It would be dinner time soon.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Recence
Probably not a word.
The light in our bathroom used to be B-movie, now it isn't.
I played a video game for an entire day today for the first time since probably early high school.
Sometimes I'm a third grader with a lot of fucking dreams. That aren't about fucking.
If there's anything that can keep me awake, it's the thought of being given up on.
Before you go Greek: Don't.
Sidewalks are too opinionated nowadays. People got too lazy to hold signs.
"Almost anything that you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it."
If I played the trumpet in a room full of helium; it would be annoying.
If I played the trumpet in a room full of regular air; it would be annoying.
I don't play the trumpet.
The Fountain has surpassed whatever else was there and is my favorite movie. Probably because I'm forever curious about things like dying.
Whatever that means.
I drunkenly acquired one of those giant Jawbreakers from a friend. It's disgusting to think about all of the dried up little dead bacteriae on there, but I'm still licking it.
They went out of their way to die. It's the least I can do.
Some of the best things in the world are things that you buy way too much of, but can only consume a little at a time. And then you have this stocked bunch of shit that you don't even want because the last time you had some it was really tasty but then turned gross.
That's a great feeling, because it's different from all the other ones.
I don't have a minute for the environment. It never had a minute for me.
Looking at the big picture; he fell off of it.
"If ze French had a baseball team there would only be left field and NO ONE WOULD BE SAFE."
Of all of the teams in the league; ours has to do with beer. It's just how we function. Apparently we started with a good drunk and then got hungover, our stepdad beat us (August), and now we're in therapy.
Yeah, I think I would spend the better part of my thirties in an intellectual war with a dog.
Rascal. Rascal and Punch.
Audio tapes do not count as victims of racism.
Substances are often used to celebrate. Well, if you have a vague idea of how your brain works; they're always used to celebrate. Or not celebrate.
This got long. Unless you're an eon.
Then nevermind.
The light in our bathroom used to be B-movie, now it isn't.
I played a video game for an entire day today for the first time since probably early high school.
Sometimes I'm a third grader with a lot of fucking dreams. That aren't about fucking.
If there's anything that can keep me awake, it's the thought of being given up on.
Before you go Greek: Don't.
Sidewalks are too opinionated nowadays. People got too lazy to hold signs.
"Almost anything that you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it."
If I played the trumpet in a room full of helium; it would be annoying.
If I played the trumpet in a room full of regular air; it would be annoying.
I don't play the trumpet.
The Fountain has surpassed whatever else was there and is my favorite movie. Probably because I'm forever curious about things like dying.
Whatever that means.
I drunkenly acquired one of those giant Jawbreakers from a friend. It's disgusting to think about all of the dried up little dead bacteriae on there, but I'm still licking it.
They went out of their way to die. It's the least I can do.
Some of the best things in the world are things that you buy way too much of, but can only consume a little at a time. And then you have this stocked bunch of shit that you don't even want because the last time you had some it was really tasty but then turned gross.
That's a great feeling, because it's different from all the other ones.
I don't have a minute for the environment. It never had a minute for me.
Looking at the big picture; he fell off of it.
"If ze French had a baseball team there would only be left field and NO ONE WOULD BE SAFE."
Of all of the teams in the league; ours has to do with beer. It's just how we function. Apparently we started with a good drunk and then got hungover, our stepdad beat us (August), and now we're in therapy.
Yeah, I think I would spend the better part of my thirties in an intellectual war with a dog.
Rascal. Rascal and Punch.
Audio tapes do not count as victims of racism.
Substances are often used to celebrate. Well, if you have a vague idea of how your brain works; they're always used to celebrate. Or not celebrate.
This got long. Unless you're an eon.
Then nevermind.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
I had a thought today
In Portuguese. The first one yet.
And I can't get it out of my head.
"No Fevereiro, as árvores são o gelo. E sou também."
All it means is "In February, the trees are ice. And I am too."
Hm.
And I can't get it out of my head.
"No Fevereiro, as árvores são o gelo. E sou também."
All it means is "In February, the trees are ice. And I am too."
Hm.
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