Juxtaposition

Currently: reading Richard III while listening to “Get Buck In Here”.

But it’s ONLY because I really like the part where Ludacris says, “If you wanna learn something, bring your mother!”

Rough Sleddin’

Hello.  I feel like I’m reporting from a war zone or something, because things here?  They are rough.  I woke up yesterday already feeling like I had lived the longest week of my life, and it was only Tuesday.  Here are some things from the past few days that make me feel like my soul is slowly being sucked from my body and scattered on the four winds that blow across the frigid plains of BG all day long, right in your face, never ever ever stopping, no it doesn’t matter if you turn around, the wind will still be blowing DIRECTLY IN YOUR FACE.  Ahem.  Sorry.  The list:

• I have this cough, and it’s not like I’m even sick or anything, it’s just that I have this nagging cough, and it only chooses to be really horrendous when I go to lay down and make an attempt at sleep.
• My German teacher seems to think it’s totally cool to give us 30000 things to do, all to be turned in Friday, including: a take-home exam, a listening exam in class Friday, and three pages of homework.  Why does she seem to think this is at all an ok thing to do?  Dude, I don’t know.  Maybe that’s how they operate in Austria.
• I’m really just worried about a friend from home, and I got distressing news Monday that just reinforced the idea that , man, break cannot come soon enough.
• Along those same lines, my room has been the scene of an awful lot of tears recently.  Like, at least three people cried in here on Monday, and at least one of them was me.  We’re falling apart at the seams, all of us, and just trying like hell to not to go flying apart in all directions days before finals.
• So, Monday is called Pasta Monday around here, which is extremely inventive of us, because Monday’s the day they serve pasta at the Dial.  So anyway, this is usually a highlight of our otherwise crap-ass Mondays, but this week?  This week was sent straight from hell, so of course this is the week where a boy I rejected romantically ends up as the pasta server, thus leaving me with a measly one and a half stuffed shells to eat for dinner, because apparently this is prison camp junior high, where you torture those that heartlessly refuse to go out with you by withholding food from them, even though it’s your job to do exactly the OPPOSITE OF THAT. 
• Five hours of sleep the night before what will probably be the hardest exam you take this semester?  Not the best idea you’ll ever have.  And then, when I came back from classes and took a nap for an hour and a half, I woke up with a headache that morphed into a migraine while at work and ended up putting me to bed at 11:30 last night like soemone’s grandma.
• It poured all day long yesterday, and if there’s one thing I hate, it’s rain when there ought to be snow.  Plus, I spent way too large a chunk of the day yesterday with soaked socks and frozen toes.
• I don’t care to discuss the details, but yesterday also saw me stick my hand in my own pee.
• And then today I come to find out that the bookstore doesn’t buy back lab books.  Motherfuckers, I spent over $100 on this fucking book to do eight experiments out of it?  We didn’t even get halfway through the damn thing!  Are you kidding me?  And you can’t even give me like $20 for it?  And really, the person I should want to cut right now is really my asshole professor who insisted we have the manual and not just make photocopies of the pages, for some unexplained reason which will remain forever locked inside his 87-year-old head.
• I also accidentally skipped ou mandatory floor meeting last night because items just flit in and out of my head at random, and it’s never a sure thing just what will stick in there and just what will go flying out my ear, never to be remembered again. 

I realize all of this is pretty depressing, or maybe just irritating, because I guess most of these are pretty white bread complaints.  I do find it important to note that whenever I yell “There is NOTHING good about this day!” my neighbor Cassie makes me name at least three good things about that day.  Some of them are pretty scant, like “I did not wake up dead” or “I like my socks” or something, but some of them end up being pretty legit.  Today is better than yesterday because I got to sleep in late, remembered that I had a check from work that I hadn’t opened, and realized that I can stay up late tonight because I don’t have class until one tomorrow.  So it looks like, against all odds, things might just be looking up.

A Million Little Paragraphs

I woke up this morning with “Bury Me With It” in my head and briefly considered just rolling over and going back to sleep and skipping Chemistry class, but forced myself up since I plan on skipping Monday’s class.  Wandering back from the bathroom, after I had been awake for less than ten minutes, I noticed that someone had scrawled a message about making love to Edward Cullen one day on my board.  I reallllly did not have the energy to deal with that shit so early in the morning, so instead I just stood there and glared at the message for a minute and then shook my head and went inside. 

On my way out of the dorm, I opened the door into the stairwell and it collided with a cardboard box stuffed inside of a trash bag, and do you know what my first thought was when this happened?  ”What if there were a baby in that trash bag?”  What the hell?  I mean, I had been awake for at least half an hour when this happened, so what the fuck was I thinking with that?  I mean, whose first thought upon seeing a trash bag in a stairwell is “Hmmm, maybe someone’s abandoned their child in there”?  Who thinks like this?  I do.  On a Friday morning before I’ve had Starbucks when all I can think about is turning around and going back to bed, I do.

This morning was the coldest it’s been all school year, and I really had forgotten the way the cold can cut straight through your pants.  Three minutes into my 15 minute walk to class I was so cold my teeth hurt.  And the wind was back too, the kind of wind that makes you want to stop and through a temper tantrum in the middle of the sidewalk, like “We get it!  You’re freezing fucking cold and plan on blowing in my face for the remainder of my walk, constantly and irritatingly.  Consider your point made!”  But then, you know, you’re just the girl that yells at invisible things in the middle of campus, and that’s really not a label I can deal with at this point in life.

Then I was at Chem class, and there was a girl with a really bad weave sitting in the front row.  Now, I’m not normally a person who knows what a bad weave looks like at all, but I mean, this one basically looked like a mop had settled comfortably on top of this poor girl’s head.  So I guess the moral of this story is that if even I can tell your weave’s fucked up, you know it’s bad.

Would you like to know the kind of things I think about during International Relations?  Artie, from Pete and Pete.  You know, like “the strongest man in the woooooooooorld” Artie.  I ate that shit up when I was a kid.  I though that was fucking hilarious.  (I still kind of do.)

So after class, I headed over to Starbucks, and while I was waiting for my drink to be made I was sort of checking out this totally adorable guy in Weezer glasses, a button-up-the-front sweater, and a bow tie.  He was sitting up really straight, quietly reading and there was old-timey Christmas music playing and I’m pretty sure I fell in love for a minute.

I stopped to get some snacks on the way back from class and Starbucks, and my cashier at Chily’s was really friendly and happy and babbling away about something.  Her accent was so heavy I couldn’t understand her at all, but she was making herself laugh so hard that I couldn’t help but to smile and laugh along.

And then my walk home was nice and not as cold as this morning and I got to the lobby and picked up my free copy of The Road and there was a handwritten note inside that said ” *Congrats* “ and this girl who looks like she’s from the ’90’s said hi to me like she was some character on Saturday Night Live and I’m pretty sure the first half of today was almost perfect.

The only lowlight I have is that my precious, beautiful show Pushing Daisies got canceled by the fools at ABC.  There will be a little less happiness and gorgeous set design on my TV next fall…

Well, I feel like I had an update or two, but they’re all gone form my head right now, so I’ll just say this: today I saw the video for Death Cab For Cutie’s “I’ll Follow You Into The Dark” and as that hole in his floor kept getting bigger and bigger everyday, it just kept reminding me, God knows why, of The Metamorphosis.  This makes twice in two entries that Franz Kafka’s made an appearance.  He’s getting his own tag.

Mr. Rochester Will Fuck A Bitch Up

If there is anyone in the whole entire world that could ever make me want to punch Jane Eyre in the face, it would be Ellen Page portraying her in a movie.

No, no, no, no, NO.  I am so fucking irritated at this news, I can’t even manage.

July…What?

So, I really didn’t realize it had been nearly a month since I updated last.  My total bad, internet!  Because you missed me so much.  Anyway, this month I have been practicing some expert procrastination, which includes neglecting this sight to indulge in all of my slightest whims, like buying season 2 of Psych on DVD, sleeping til noon, and attempting to read four books at once.  I also got an email from my future roommate that I have yet to respond to.  This was a couple of weeks ago.  Seriously, I’m such a rude asshole, I’m sure she doesn’t want to live with me.  However, maybe if bitch would accept my Facebook friend request, I would email her BACK.  Speaking of email, you know what phrase I really have no tolerance for?  “Shoot me an email”.  It just makes me visualize some bizarro world where people message each other via some giant, nationwide air hockey type table, which now that I think about it sounds vaguely awesome.  Damn it!  But then again, it also brings to mind thirtysomethings in suits who “network” and have business lunches and people who call your people and use those irritating little Bluetooths. 

Ok, so clearly my mind is locked into summer mode and just wanders at will every now and then.  Sorry.  Anyways, I honestly have been thinking an awful lot about posting here and I have about a million ideas that I want to write about, including lengthy pieces about New York and last year, both of which I have in draft form, as well as the best characters I encountered freshman year of college, which will hopefully become a yearly installment.  Not to mention all the meaningless lists I make every day, which I know are just the highlight of everyone’s lives.  But for now, we can just talk about how I saw The Hold Steady on Letterman last night, and when I heard it announced I simultaneously choked on my Gatorade and tripped on my own feet running to the TV because I am a graceful and desirable young lady.  But damn, Craig Finn was just so entirely adorkable  and awesome that I decided I desperately need to own more than just Seperation Sunday and will probably end up blowing the money I earn working at the Air Show this weekend on their other three CD’s, since apparently Gem City Records has no available copies of Charm School and the CD has gone out of print.  Have I mentioned that it’s been a great summer for my still developing musical taste?  I almost can’t wait for the two-hour drives back and forth to BG this year….

Purging

Hello!  I have adult bookshelves!  That’s not as dirty as it sounds, promise.  It just means that in my new fit of cleaning my room that’s happening this summer, I finally managed to clean off my bookshelves and store books that I haven’t cracked open in, oh, a good seven years or so.  Now my shelves are filled with things like my Shakespeare anthology, Jane Eyre, Dubliners, Atonement and other books for…adults, I guess?  My God, am I really an adult?  That doesn’t feel right.  I totally still feel 12, like all the time.  That’s why I kept Betsy-Tacy, Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man, and A Series of Unfortunate Events up on the bookcase.  Fun for all ages!  Right next to Crime and Punishment and Ethan Frome!  And hell, if Invisible fucking Man is going to get a spot on my bookshelves, you can damn well be sure that Caddie Woodlawn will too, seeing as how I spent way more time enjoying that than I ever did some Ralph Ellison shit.

Going through all my old books was still very fun, though.  I hadn’t cleaned off the shelves since the first time they were put up which was about, uh, four years ago?  And apparently at the time when I was a sophomore in high school, I still had the heart and soul of an eight year old, because there was shit up there like Amelia’s Notebook, all of the I Spy books, and some American Girl series.  As well as some books I had never read: Heart of a Dog, anyone?  Prehaps some Black Beauty?  Well, at least they’re all stored away in my closet with my books from when I was in kindergarten. 

And, as if all this trip down memory lane weren’t already enough, just as I was finishing up, “Stop This Train” came on and I seriously got all teary eyed, like “Yeah!  Stop!  Jesus!”  But this is basically how I feel every other day of my life, so I just rode it out and went on with my life.