Connections

So I’m reading this intimidating book about grad school, and it’s talking about the importance of making connections with your professors in order to get recommendations (something I definitely haven’t been doing) and I was struck by the real missed connections in my college life. There are so many people in my classes, and there are a good handful of them who I know are interesting. There are a bunch more that I know look interesting. And how many have I talked to, how many have I gotten to know? A handful – I’ve barely scratched the surface. The problem with college is there isn’t a shared history to fall back on; it’s a lot harder to initiate relationships. And you’ve a lot less time to do it in. Probably I’m not the only one to feel this way, but the difficulty with being in a mutually unsocial situation is that nothing changes until someone makes the first move. Quite honestly, it probably won’t be me.

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Life is opportunity, mostly missed.

Also, I'm going to do stream-of-consciousness. If you have drugs tell me now, for I will require an escalating amount as rapid ingestion raises my tolerance.

Bringing you to the minute updates on my boring life.
I reread yesterday's blog-off, and it's boring as fuck. Sorry, more of the same:
12:03 PM today: During boring discussion of "Murphy's Xmas," I get the hook for my third story. Woo!

So, since you're dying to know: It's going to be noir. It's going to be the same scene from different personalities. It's not (all) going to be over the top and it's not (all) going to be serious. And I'm excited because I've never written a noir story before.

(I'd never written a fantasy or sci-fi story before, but I'd dabbled in magical realism so I'd come sorta close. This will be entirely fucking different; black humor and blood and people who'd rather watch you bleed out than help if it means they'd have to move. Yay for new things.)

Absences

(An appropriate topic, I guess, given that it’s been over a week since we posted. That’s what happens when I have a story to write. PS I don’t like the story I wrote.)

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I’m going to miss some people over break, but that’s a given, almost. What I’m surprised to discover is that I’m going to miss some classes, too. The best classes are the ones I leave feeling full of energy, like I could write a novel before dinner and still have time left over to learn guitar. Usually the walk home drains a lot of that, but shut up. This semester has been excellent, for once:

Something my romanticism prof said gave me without warning the title of my second short story. I was scribbling in my notebook all that day; the story – which had been an idea I was scared to start on for over a month – wrote itself the next two days.

My Wilde/Joyce prof said something about Nietzsche’s concept of ressentiment today, then looked at me and asked if I wanted to add anything. I didn’t, but when a guy who’s actually fucking read Finnegans Wake asks if I want to build on what he said, that’s pretty cool. Also, the day was almost over. Yay!

My Shakespeare class has been lining up neatly with my Renaissance drama class. Like, Jew of Malta at the same time as Merchant of Venice. That’s sorta neat.

And of course my creative writing class...I’m liking it, even though the prof’s kinda nuts and also tends to suck the life out of the course packet readings. And I totally disagree with him on a bunch of stuff. But the other people in the class make up for it; it’s great to have a bunch of people – or maybe just a few in particular, whatever – who know what they’re talking about enough to offer useful criticism. And who are cool. The world and my life need more cool.

In conclusion, I’ll miss my Joyce/Wilde class and my writing class. Especially since it means having an extra week to think about my fucking story before I hear people’s opinions. God, life fucking sucks.*

*Just kidding. It’s my March 15^th resolution to never be a whiny college kid. There are too many of them already.

Test link from here.

English Genius
You scored 100% Beginner, 86% Intermediate, 93% Advanced, and 77% Expert!

You did so extremely well, even I can't find a word to describe your excellence! You have the uncommon intelligence necessary to understand things that most people don't. You have an extensive vocabulary, and you're not afraid to use it properly! Way to go!

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Whatever small ego boost I got from that was quickly destroyed when I started to write this blog-off and realized that Hey, knowing grammar does not make one good at writing. Sadly.

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Missing Rain

This is the worst part of winter, even more depressing than the constant dark. This is the part that makes me long for summer. Snow is fun, the first few times, but when it snowed last week I couldn’t help wishing it was warmer. The first rain of spring is always fantastic – the smell and the sound and the way the air hangs slightly heavier before and after. Summer rain is easier to go out in, but spring rain is more wonderful by far. And so I sit here, hoping this warmth isn’t another will-o’-the-wisp, and anticipating the rain.

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Why drinking is cool

"Theoretically, you can recreate all states of consciousness just by thinking about them but having tried both meditation and drugs and often both at the same time I'm not sure about this one. It's a bit like saying you can recreate the feeling of a Thanksgiving Dinner using meditation. Maybe you could but why would you? Meditation can take you to some places that some drugs can also take you too but I don't believe meditation can reproduce a full-on acid experience or a high dose mushroom or DMT trip, nor would it be helpful if it did. It can reproduce something like an ecstasy experience. Meditators who claim they can recreate all of these drug states are probably either unfamiliar with the drugs or they're being slightly disingenuous about the whole issue."

-Grant Morrison

Okay, so quoting something tangentially related doesn’t really answer the topic question, I suppose. It’s just not that interesting a topic to have to write on, that’s all. Drinking is of course fun because altered states are fun. Seeing the world differently, whether because of drinking or other drugs or new ideas or new people, is almost always worthwhile. I’m of the belief, though, that talking about drugs qua drugs can be – and almost always is – extremely boring. Especially when that talking is a monologue. Which is why I'm letting that quote basically suffice as my entry.

Conscience

What we are hearing is not palpitations of Jack’s heart. What we are hearing are palpitations from Linda, Jack’s girlfriend of eighteen months, from the waiter, from the other patrons at the very fancy restaurant Jack has taken Linda to tonight after so very long waiting. We are not hearing palpitations from Jack because Jack’s heart is beating steadily, matching his always-dependable expression as his fingers lock together around Linda’s throat and he slams her head into the table again, again, again, again.

Now it is three months later and we can at last hear Jack’s heart palpitating as 2000 volts of alternating current courses through his body, charring and melting some skin onto the chair, where a guard will have to scrape it off in an hour or so. We can’t help but smile a little and think of Linda, poor Linda, Linda sitting in the window of her father’s house and staring at the street. Brain damage, they told us, from lack of oxygen. We nodded, we never really liked Linda until we had to feel sorry for her. We always did like little Christine from down the block, though, and we were sorry when she ran away from home and sorrier when they found bits of her in Jack’s basement along with Jack’s sister and mother, and when they carried them out in bags and told us, Jack has no conscience, we nodded. And so we smile a little, now.