I take the streetcar home sometimes when I'm feeling claustrophobic about the subway. Windows that look out on more than just animated charcoal gray tunnel walls are probably the most underrated aspect of the streetcar. I mean, they're slow, and they hold up traffic at the worst times but at least you can see the sun. At least you know that if it breaks down you won't be trapped in the city's dripping underbelly. I like streetcars, ok?
I took the streetcar home today. I have this pet peeve involving public transit. I don't like it when people talk as if they were sitting in their living room and not as if they were sharing a vehicle with a collection of grumpy passengers. I don't like it when people bare their souls or talk about their medical history or their criminal record or anything else I would never ask you about until we were at least on a first name basis. This lady who struck up a conversation with her neighbour about menopause one time, for example. This is an example of inappropriate subway talk.
So I'm on the streetcar today and it is maybe six o'clock at night heading east which means downtown has emptied all at once into this very streetcar but luckily I manage to grab a seat near the back, mainly by keeping my head down and not making eye contact with anyone with gray hair and I have my book out, On the Road by Kerouac because I figure if I'm ever going to do this road trip thing I might as well read about The Seminal Road Trip, but it turns out I don't like Kerouac as much as I thought I would, or maybe I just don't like the character of Sal Paradise but then they are one and the same right? So anyway I'm busy trying to force myself to read this slim little book that I've been working on for almost a month now when I start picking up snippets of other people's conversations and I try not listen because listening in on other people's conversations is rude, right, but when you do it on a crowded streetcar you are pretty much saying hey fellow passengers I hope you find my life as fascinating as I do because you are about to spend the next half an hour learning all about me. This is the unwritten contract you sign every time you say something on the bus guys.
There were two teenage girls at the very back. Neither could have been more than fourteen, maybe fifteen if their voices told me anything. At first to hear them talk, they liked to talk you see, I wanted to laugh, because it was like they were actively trying to out-white trash each other. These are people you won't often find sitting next to you introduction to cinema studies or your second year philosophy lecture. White trash Toronto is not a place I actively seek out. I'll bike through when I have to but that's about it.
But these girls weren't funny. They were depressing. Their lives, so much of them left to play out, were essentially over. These were not kids who would graduate high school or get degrees or have respectable, steady jobs and invest for retirement or whatever else it is your supposed to do when you have money. I don't want to sound all determinist, oh these poor kids never had a chance it's not their fault whatever they do now. But did they ever really have a real shot?
One of the girls was pregnant. Pregnant! Five months into it and she was just a baby herself, you know? Teenage pregnancy is cruel joke. I can sit here and be all shocked about it because I never knew any one who forgot to keep it wrapped and I grew up in one of those wonderful white neighbourhoods where nothing bad ever happens and you never see police cars parked outside peoples' houses because there is never any reason for them to be here.
It all seems so unfair. Those girls will never get to explore their potential, not while they're so wrapped up in the ephemeral manufactured drama that they seem to think is just another necessary part of life. Don't worry, I know I'm a condescending jackass. Who the hell am I to feel sorry for them. Maybe they'd feel just as sorry for me if they took a look at my life. I don't know. I do know that those girls have no real future beyond failed relationships and unwanted children and dead end careers. That one girl, the pregnant one, how will that child do any better? It's an ugly, ugly circle. She said, referring to the pains that come from carrying a child, "This pregnancy is bullcrap". Why are we capable of having children at such inappropriate ages? Why is it that simply by virtue of being stupid enough to let some punk kid go bareback (don't worry I'll pull out before it happens) she suddenly becomes capable of raising a human life? I feel sorry for that unborn kid more than anything and the more I think about the life he or she will live the more I think that that life has already been set.
Tell me I'm an elitist prick please. Tell me that children born to fourteen year old kids turn out just as well as children from normal families and that your socioeconomic condition has nothing to do with the education you will one day receive or the jail cell you will one day inhabit or not, please. Tell me this please because otherwise what does that say about any of us. We can't just be a product of how much money our parents had lying around while raising us. There's more to it than that. I really hope there is, at least.
Halpern
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Superman That Hoe
I think I erred slightly in naming this blog because this place is hardly a happy refuge. This blog has very quickly become A Depressing Storehouse for Hopeless Thoughts. Then again what else was this ever going to become except a catalogue for what's wrong with me? I don't know. Enough of that, here's our next item up for auction.
Today is about the ladies. It's about me interacting with ladies, or not interacting with them, the scenario that plays itself out more frequently. I have troubles with the ladies. I am shy, though I try to put up enough bluster to hide it and I'm no good in social situations, though again I like to think I can fake it ok. Talking to women is just a subset of a larger problem, "talking to people in general", but one must narrow the focus if one hopes to make progress.
I went clubbing on Friday for what I will call the first time, though let the record show that I did work at a nightclub very briefly one high school summer, receiving payment in cash of course because a sixteen year old working the tables of a club doesn't quite work. That was an awful job, start at 10 and finish at four in the morning and then blow all the money I earned off tips on cab fare because no self respecting subway would be up that late and what really bothered me was having to tip the taxi driver with my tip money. Help a brother out you know? The only saving grace was that it was not a very successful night club (this was still post-SARS Toronto and people were still iffy on leaving the house) and so one Saturday the owner pulled me aside off the near empty dance floor half way through my shift handed me half a nights pay and sent me on my way with the unspoken understanding that I wasn't needed any more.
That's my night club story. There was going to be more, but this will act as a good life lesson for you. The lesson is never expect anything and you won't get hurt, ever, by anyone.
The clubbing was ok, I downed a can of Red Bull in stupid short amount of time because dumbass, no outside drinks allowed and then we were in the club and it occurred to me finally, that I had no idea how to approach women. There was just this gap in the process that I didn't understand and I couldn't seem to pick up from the guys around me even after that can of pure energy and three or four expensive, but small drinks and I don't know what it is that makes me so inept around people with breasts. My best guess, I don't really know, is that it stems from a hard lack of any real experience with women and that this lack of experience is what is keeping me from gaining any experience which is a stupid feedback loop that is not going to get me anywhere. Well, it's not going to get me anywhere in a club where it's all about the dominant male and taking what you want.
What I couldn't grasp was how the ladies felt about strange dudes approaching them and just getting down to dancing. Does that work? These two guys, and they really made my night, they approached Regina like stealth bombers and then all of a sudden it was like A Night At The Roxbury playing out right in front of me and you have to give these guys high fives just for pulling it off even if they were awful and left Regina weirded out, which is the thing because I am a Bad Dancer who can't seem to form any permanent relationship with the beat, making me just another white guy with rank moves that barely qualify as ironically funny which does not impress women unless they are already your friend in which case it is far too late anyway.
Clubs aren't for me, is the lesson I guess, but it doesn't get me any closer to a woman, which is what I could do with right now if just so I could get that monkey off my back, you know? There are a few monkeys crowding on there actually, and makes for an unattractive hunch. I need to get laid, I think.
Horatio
Today is about the ladies. It's about me interacting with ladies, or not interacting with them, the scenario that plays itself out more frequently. I have troubles with the ladies. I am shy, though I try to put up enough bluster to hide it and I'm no good in social situations, though again I like to think I can fake it ok. Talking to women is just a subset of a larger problem, "talking to people in general", but one must narrow the focus if one hopes to make progress.
I went clubbing on Friday for what I will call the first time, though let the record show that I did work at a nightclub very briefly one high school summer, receiving payment in cash of course because a sixteen year old working the tables of a club doesn't quite work. That was an awful job, start at 10 and finish at four in the morning and then blow all the money I earned off tips on cab fare because no self respecting subway would be up that late and what really bothered me was having to tip the taxi driver with my tip money. Help a brother out you know? The only saving grace was that it was not a very successful night club (this was still post-SARS Toronto and people were still iffy on leaving the house) and so one Saturday the owner pulled me aside off the near empty dance floor half way through my shift handed me half a nights pay and sent me on my way with the unspoken understanding that I wasn't needed any more.
That's my night club story. There was going to be more, but this will act as a good life lesson for you. The lesson is never expect anything and you won't get hurt, ever, by anyone.
The clubbing was ok, I downed a can of Red Bull in stupid short amount of time because dumbass, no outside drinks allowed and then we were in the club and it occurred to me finally, that I had no idea how to approach women. There was just this gap in the process that I didn't understand and I couldn't seem to pick up from the guys around me even after that can of pure energy and three or four expensive, but small drinks and I don't know what it is that makes me so inept around people with breasts. My best guess, I don't really know, is that it stems from a hard lack of any real experience with women and that this lack of experience is what is keeping me from gaining any experience which is a stupid feedback loop that is not going to get me anywhere. Well, it's not going to get me anywhere in a club where it's all about the dominant male and taking what you want.
What I couldn't grasp was how the ladies felt about strange dudes approaching them and just getting down to dancing. Does that work? These two guys, and they really made my night, they approached Regina like stealth bombers and then all of a sudden it was like A Night At The Roxbury playing out right in front of me and you have to give these guys high fives just for pulling it off even if they were awful and left Regina weirded out, which is the thing because I am a Bad Dancer who can't seem to form any permanent relationship with the beat, making me just another white guy with rank moves that barely qualify as ironically funny which does not impress women unless they are already your friend in which case it is far too late anyway.
Clubs aren't for me, is the lesson I guess, but it doesn't get me any closer to a woman, which is what I could do with right now if just so I could get that monkey off my back, you know? There are a few monkeys crowding on there actually, and makes for an unattractive hunch. I need to get laid, I think.
Horatio
Monday, November 19, 2007
My Own Worst Critic
Here's why I'm having trouble writing anything lately, I think. I'm afraid of what the man I will be in one, five, ten, fifty years will think of what I have done now and dismiss it for the juvenile self-absorbed dreck I'm already sure it is. And if I can barely read what I've written five minutes ago without gagging, how can I hold my head up and present it to my future self and say here, this what I am. This is serious. I hate that anything I labour over now will one day be just considered part of the learning experience. Damn it I want to write now.
I want to think that I'm am good at this but there still feels like there is so much I don't know and in the mean time, in the middle of this period of uncertainty I can't push myself to write because I know whatever comes out won't be the modern literary classic I so need it to be. I suppose I should be writing short stories, just pumping them out like they were unloved hillbilly babies just to get the hang of this story telling thing but I can't do it. This paralyzing self-awareness is killing me. When was the last time I really, really actually wrote something? These don't count of course. Blog posts aren't anything. They're just distractions really; a way to tell myself, hey look at least you're writing something. No, no, not really. Not really anything at all.
Things were easier back when I thought I would worm my way onto the op-ed page of some fish wrapper and that would be as far as my words would go. Then I started blogging and I realized that stuffing my opinions down other people's throats was about as far a way from what I wanted to do with my life as I could get. There is nothing fun about saying this is right and this is wrong and you are stupid for disagreeing, stupid. Well, not for me at least, though I'm sure there will never ever be a shortage of people who feel naked if not perched on their soapbox. I am not the fiery spokesman of the middle class, the speaker phone for class consciousness or the clarion bell of common sense. I can not tell it like it is, because I don't think it ever really is in that sense, you know? Shades of gray, and etc.
So my writerly ambitions swung back to fiction, literary fiction, as if I would ever be so gauche as to write anything that would dare to show its cover in a drug store, and I convinced myself that I do indeed have a book inside me, somewhere, hiding. A great book. I would settle for nothing less.
Settle for nothing less. That's the maddening perfectionism that leads to my barren stable of stories. I know that kind of attitude is enough to label me a douche, but that's why I write this incognito; this is not the type of thing you tell people face to face otherwise they look at you funny like you were slightly off your rocker and then give their heads tiny patient shakes and polite laughs and say can't wait to read it.
There's this going on as we speak, NaNoWriMo, maybe you heard, where people lock themselves in a room with a typewriter for the month of November and just write. Just write and write and write and push out a cute 50,000 word novel in the space of just one month. The novels are all crap of course, but that's hardly the point. The point is to force yourself to stop editing every sentence twice before it hits the page and just let loose and go crazy all over the keyboard. Burn that mother up. I should have done it. They scheduled it during one of the worst months of the school year for me, but that wouldn't have mattered; I barely do any work anyway. I'm just a big pussy. I'm scared of what 50,000 words would look like. 50,000 of my words all spread over that Word document like honey on bread.
Something I noticed about blogging: it's so much more enjoyable when you do it for yourself and no one else. When you start writing with an eye towards, "what do people want to see?", that's when you run in to trouble. Be true to yourself right? When you write with an audience in mind it can only restrict you. Maybe that's what you want though? Maybe you want people to actually read your words? Maybe you want to make a few cents off your google ads? I remember when I first started blogging I was pretty sure it would be a short road to blogger famedom and I wrote like I was Dave Barry's unacknowledged bastard son all saccharine pop culture inoffensive punchline fun and that didn't work and I read back now and I just feel slightly embarrassed that there was ever a time I could confidently sign my name to the end of those posts. Now I'm all inaccessible like a Chinese menu and I love it. It is so freeing. So what if nobody reads this, it's the Internet man. It's a big place, and I think there's more than enough space for me to tuck away and be happy. Artistic integrity, and etc.
Horatio Halpern
I want to think that I'm am good at this but there still feels like there is so much I don't know and in the mean time, in the middle of this period of uncertainty I can't push myself to write because I know whatever comes out won't be the modern literary classic I so need it to be. I suppose I should be writing short stories, just pumping them out like they were unloved hillbilly babies just to get the hang of this story telling thing but I can't do it. This paralyzing self-awareness is killing me. When was the last time I really, really actually wrote something? These don't count of course. Blog posts aren't anything. They're just distractions really; a way to tell myself, hey look at least you're writing something. No, no, not really. Not really anything at all.
Things were easier back when I thought I would worm my way onto the op-ed page of some fish wrapper and that would be as far as my words would go. Then I started blogging and I realized that stuffing my opinions down other people's throats was about as far a way from what I wanted to do with my life as I could get. There is nothing fun about saying this is right and this is wrong and you are stupid for disagreeing, stupid. Well, not for me at least, though I'm sure there will never ever be a shortage of people who feel naked if not perched on their soapbox. I am not the fiery spokesman of the middle class, the speaker phone for class consciousness or the clarion bell of common sense. I can not tell it like it is, because I don't think it ever really is in that sense, you know? Shades of gray, and etc.
So my writerly ambitions swung back to fiction, literary fiction, as if I would ever be so gauche as to write anything that would dare to show its cover in a drug store, and I convinced myself that I do indeed have a book inside me, somewhere, hiding. A great book. I would settle for nothing less.
Settle for nothing less. That's the maddening perfectionism that leads to my barren stable of stories. I know that kind of attitude is enough to label me a douche, but that's why I write this incognito; this is not the type of thing you tell people face to face otherwise they look at you funny like you were slightly off your rocker and then give their heads tiny patient shakes and polite laughs and say can't wait to read it.
There's this going on as we speak, NaNoWriMo, maybe you heard, where people lock themselves in a room with a typewriter for the month of November and just write. Just write and write and write and push out a cute 50,000 word novel in the space of just one month. The novels are all crap of course, but that's hardly the point. The point is to force yourself to stop editing every sentence twice before it hits the page and just let loose and go crazy all over the keyboard. Burn that mother up. I should have done it. They scheduled it during one of the worst months of the school year for me, but that wouldn't have mattered; I barely do any work anyway. I'm just a big pussy. I'm scared of what 50,000 words would look like. 50,000 of my words all spread over that Word document like honey on bread.
Something I noticed about blogging: it's so much more enjoyable when you do it for yourself and no one else. When you start writing with an eye towards, "what do people want to see?", that's when you run in to trouble. Be true to yourself right? When you write with an audience in mind it can only restrict you. Maybe that's what you want though? Maybe you want people to actually read your words? Maybe you want to make a few cents off your google ads? I remember when I first started blogging I was pretty sure it would be a short road to blogger famedom and I wrote like I was Dave Barry's unacknowledged bastard son all saccharine pop culture inoffensive punchline fun and that didn't work and I read back now and I just feel slightly embarrassed that there was ever a time I could confidently sign my name to the end of those posts. Now I'm all inaccessible like a Chinese menu and I love it. It is so freeing. So what if nobody reads this, it's the Internet man. It's a big place, and I think there's more than enough space for me to tuck away and be happy. Artistic integrity, and etc.
Horatio Halpern
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Why Do Today When Hey, You Don't Know Me
I have a serious problem. I procrastinate, and it worries me because I do it chronically and almost pathologically. I can't not procrastinate, and it is scary. I'll assume this is what it's like to use, because I honestly feel like I'm not in control here. I know the consequences of putting off what is due tomorrow, I know that things would be so much easier if I could open a book and just get down and dirty with it earlier than the night before but I just can't. I should be writing an essay right now, and instead I'm here which makes Blogger an enabler I guess but it also makes me a tool.
Ugh, I wanted to make a joke about procrastinator's anonymous, you know "procrastinator's anonymous: we'll meet later" or something but actually funny so I turned to Google but it turns out these groups actually exist. I don't not do because I'm depressed, I don't think, though self-diagnosing depression does sound sketchy, but even still I don't know why I do it, all I really know is that whenever something needs to be done, there is an invisible wall that stands between me and it, and that wall only seems to get stronger and stronger and taller and taller until I'm left sitting here thinking what's the point at all.
I know why it is important to do this essay. Not doing cannot be considered an option. I learned that last year and my GPA hasn't forgiven me yet. Last year was a waste, but I still thought I had learned some valuable lessons, most of them being "Never again". But here I am. I hear some people procrastinate because they are perfectionists. I may have made that up.
I'm good at wasting time is one of the problems. Between computer games (EA's hockey games are my weakness) and the internet I can sink ungodly hours into the most unproductive crap. There's this group on Facebook called "I stay up late all night and I don't do anything productive" which is me in a nutshell. This person on the internet is advising cutting myself off from video games altogether, but that seems drastic. This isn't cigarettes. Moderation must come in somewhere, right?
Or maybe I have no idea what moderation means. Maybe it would be better, quicker to just hide my games out of sight, out if mind. Maaaaan. What do I do. This procrastination is ruining my grades, and weighing me down under so much stress I do not need. My GPA is already shot, and second year is shaping up to be no better than first.
A deeper question that I shouldn't even be talking about is why am I even school? Motivation is in play here, mainly that I don't have much to push me through. I'm not convinced a bachelors in what, I don't even know that yet, is what I need most right now.
Hey! This is no fun. Goodnight.
H.
Ugh, I wanted to make a joke about procrastinator's anonymous, you know "procrastinator's anonymous: we'll meet later" or something but actually funny so I turned to Google but it turns out these groups actually exist. I don't not do because I'm depressed, I don't think, though self-diagnosing depression does sound sketchy, but even still I don't know why I do it, all I really know is that whenever something needs to be done, there is an invisible wall that stands between me and it, and that wall only seems to get stronger and stronger and taller and taller until I'm left sitting here thinking what's the point at all.
I know why it is important to do this essay. Not doing cannot be considered an option. I learned that last year and my GPA hasn't forgiven me yet. Last year was a waste, but I still thought I had learned some valuable lessons, most of them being "Never again". But here I am. I hear some people procrastinate because they are perfectionists. I may have made that up.
I'm good at wasting time is one of the problems. Between computer games (EA's hockey games are my weakness) and the internet I can sink ungodly hours into the most unproductive crap. There's this group on Facebook called "I stay up late all night and I don't do anything productive" which is me in a nutshell. This person on the internet is advising cutting myself off from video games altogether, but that seems drastic. This isn't cigarettes. Moderation must come in somewhere, right?
Or maybe I have no idea what moderation means. Maybe it would be better, quicker to just hide my games out of sight, out if mind. Maaaaan. What do I do. This procrastination is ruining my grades, and weighing me down under so much stress I do not need. My GPA is already shot, and second year is shaping up to be no better than first.
A deeper question that I shouldn't even be talking about is why am I even school? Motivation is in play here, mainly that I don't have much to push me through. I'm not convinced a bachelors in what, I don't even know that yet, is what I need most right now.
Hey! This is no fun. Goodnight.
H.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
It's Raining in Amsterdam
I don't know what it's like to be a teaching assistant. It looks like a pretty crappy job. Sorry TAs, but it does. I don't know anything about the students around me, but I don't think there would be a better way to intimately acquaint myself with them then by reading the essays they give to you. You have a scary window into your students. You look inside of their heads and for every time that you see something that re-affirms your faith in humanity, there must be three or four that make you wonder whether the count down to the end of the world will be counted in days and not decades. Not every essay can sparkle with wit and intelligence and a charming insouciance like mine, I know, I know.
I also respect your decision to only give me a 75% because if you knew the depths of hell I had to plumb to finish that damn fish wrapper you would have probably reduced the grade just cuz. It was a flawed essay. I did not feel satisfied at any point while writing it, which is a worrying feeling but I find, even more distressingly sometimes that when I write something that I think is only worthy of being coughed up by a diseased cat, other people like it more than I think they have any right to and this worries me because it downgrades my expectations of people and of myself and I know that you are always your harshest critic and I know a lot of people are always aw shucks it isn't very good you don't have to say that when really all they want you to do is keep kissing their ass some more but with me when I say no way you really think it's good it's because I really do think I have just crapped up a bunch of words and this time no way any one is going to dig it and it definitely isn't fishing for compliments because I take compliments like punches to the gut and they just make me feel uncomfortable and yeah, people who can't take a compliment do blow but it's even worse when you can't give someone a compliment without feeling like a big perv who's about to be hauled away for sexual harassment because I really like what you did with your hair it looks really tasty I just want to smell it and touch it is that ok? While reading that last line ideally you should have been mouth breathing and pushing up your glasses. I guess I didn't make that clear.
Man speaking of essays there's this other one due in two days and it's going to prove a lot harder because it's supposed to be ten pages minimum and I have to base it off a book that I should have started reading like a month ago but of course I didn't do that because only friggin keeners get a head start like that and if I die tomorrow I will die knowing that nobody ever confused me for being a keener while at university, thank you very much. Keeners. Maybe you call them brown-nosers but I'm not crazy about that term. I think keeners and I think big jerks with big white smiles and pastel sweater vests and disgusting chipper attitudes and book bags and the really with it ones probably carry their ivory iBook's with them every where they go and always do the assigned reading at least two days in advance and have their essays finished at least a week early so they can send it to the TA for spell checking and don't hesitate to go to the office hours when they have a question because that is the kind of person they are who don't think twice about raising their hand in lecture to ask really deep and insightful questions that they probably spent hours preparing back in rez so that they can show the professor just how much they understand the material and so they can have their secret orgasm when the professor stops and says, that's a really good question except what's the point because the professor doesn't even know who you are unless you have front row season tickets and it just occurred to me that the front row of every lecture ever is probably composed entirely of keeners and maybe the occasional cool dude who showed up late and couldn't find anywhere else to sit because normally cool people sit farther back so that if the urge strikes them they can just fall asleep, not that keeners would know anything about that because I'm pretty sure they all go to bed at 10 so that they can wake up bright and early so that they can check on their stocks and eat halved grapefruits. God dammit.
That was like pure unadulterated jealousy right there. I just know if I did half of those things my GPA would do happy jig on its way out of the dog pit because right now the only way my GPA could be lower was if I never did any of my work, as opposed to my current policy of only doing most of my work except for the ones that are stupid or sometimes the really hard ones but at least I have the good sense to feel really guilty and distraught about it like I just ran over your cat or something.
I just ran over your cat. But it's not my fault. I'm still learning how to drive. Nineteen young and still can't drive, I know, Horatio, you are thinking, I am starting to question your status as Ladies Man Exra -Ordinaire.
Question for you dear reader, when you learned to drive, did you do it standard? I'm guessing not, unless you're some kind of fruity European, but if you did, do you sometimes lie awake at night and wonder why you didn't just be a normal person and find yourself an automatic beauty rather than trying to ride that damn pole like you were a dowdy stripper on her first day? My parents got together nineteen years ago and made a conscious decision to spite me by both going in for standard models. They save gas and whatever but they are hella hard to start. You have to release the clutch and push down on the gas in some kind of complex mating dance that my clumsy feet have yet to master, and it's funny when you're in a car and the bozo next to you stalls his car in the middle of the road but it really loses it comedic effect when it is you who has stalled the car for what you would know was the 26th time if you hadn't stopped counting after the 14th conk out and your dad is sitting in the passenger seat a storm of confused, patient anger because you would think that the law of averages or something would dictate that I would figure it out after enough attempts, but I guess Stats never met me huh.
Hey I could keep this up all night. It's really easy once you get into it and then hit cruise control and the words just come out all automatic like rat tat tat, boom boom boom, let's see how far he can go without a period. There are period shortages in Africa man. What do you think all the stress and guns in Darfur is about? Just doing my part to save the planet, dogg.
H. Halpern
I also respect your decision to only give me a 75% because if you knew the depths of hell I had to plumb to finish that damn fish wrapper you would have probably reduced the grade just cuz. It was a flawed essay. I did not feel satisfied at any point while writing it, which is a worrying feeling but I find, even more distressingly sometimes that when I write something that I think is only worthy of being coughed up by a diseased cat, other people like it more than I think they have any right to and this worries me because it downgrades my expectations of people and of myself and I know that you are always your harshest critic and I know a lot of people are always aw shucks it isn't very good you don't have to say that when really all they want you to do is keep kissing their ass some more but with me when I say no way you really think it's good it's because I really do think I have just crapped up a bunch of words and this time no way any one is going to dig it and it definitely isn't fishing for compliments because I take compliments like punches to the gut and they just make me feel uncomfortable and yeah, people who can't take a compliment do blow but it's even worse when you can't give someone a compliment without feeling like a big perv who's about to be hauled away for sexual harassment because I really like what you did with your hair it looks really tasty I just want to smell it and touch it is that ok? While reading that last line ideally you should have been mouth breathing and pushing up your glasses. I guess I didn't make that clear.
Man speaking of essays there's this other one due in two days and it's going to prove a lot harder because it's supposed to be ten pages minimum and I have to base it off a book that I should have started reading like a month ago but of course I didn't do that because only friggin keeners get a head start like that and if I die tomorrow I will die knowing that nobody ever confused me for being a keener while at university, thank you very much. Keeners. Maybe you call them brown-nosers but I'm not crazy about that term. I think keeners and I think big jerks with big white smiles and pastel sweater vests and disgusting chipper attitudes and book bags and the really with it ones probably carry their ivory iBook's with them every where they go and always do the assigned reading at least two days in advance and have their essays finished at least a week early so they can send it to the TA for spell checking and don't hesitate to go to the office hours when they have a question because that is the kind of person they are who don't think twice about raising their hand in lecture to ask really deep and insightful questions that they probably spent hours preparing back in rez so that they can show the professor just how much they understand the material and so they can have their secret orgasm when the professor stops and says, that's a really good question except what's the point because the professor doesn't even know who you are unless you have front row season tickets and it just occurred to me that the front row of every lecture ever is probably composed entirely of keeners and maybe the occasional cool dude who showed up late and couldn't find anywhere else to sit because normally cool people sit farther back so that if the urge strikes them they can just fall asleep, not that keeners would know anything about that because I'm pretty sure they all go to bed at 10 so that they can wake up bright and early so that they can check on their stocks and eat halved grapefruits. God dammit.
That was like pure unadulterated jealousy right there. I just know if I did half of those things my GPA would do happy jig on its way out of the dog pit because right now the only way my GPA could be lower was if I never did any of my work, as opposed to my current policy of only doing most of my work except for the ones that are stupid or sometimes the really hard ones but at least I have the good sense to feel really guilty and distraught about it like I just ran over your cat or something.
I just ran over your cat. But it's not my fault. I'm still learning how to drive. Nineteen young and still can't drive, I know, Horatio, you are thinking, I am starting to question your status as Ladies Man Exra -Ordinaire.
Question for you dear reader, when you learned to drive, did you do it standard? I'm guessing not, unless you're some kind of fruity European, but if you did, do you sometimes lie awake at night and wonder why you didn't just be a normal person and find yourself an automatic beauty rather than trying to ride that damn pole like you were a dowdy stripper on her first day? My parents got together nineteen years ago and made a conscious decision to spite me by both going in for standard models. They save gas and whatever but they are hella hard to start. You have to release the clutch and push down on the gas in some kind of complex mating dance that my clumsy feet have yet to master, and it's funny when you're in a car and the bozo next to you stalls his car in the middle of the road but it really loses it comedic effect when it is you who has stalled the car for what you would know was the 26th time if you hadn't stopped counting after the 14th conk out and your dad is sitting in the passenger seat a storm of confused, patient anger because you would think that the law of averages or something would dictate that I would figure it out after enough attempts, but I guess Stats never met me huh.
Hey I could keep this up all night. It's really easy once you get into it and then hit cruise control and the words just come out all automatic like rat tat tat, boom boom boom, let's see how far he can go without a period. There are period shortages in Africa man. What do you think all the stress and guns in Darfur is about? Just doing my part to save the planet, dogg.
H. Halpern
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Sleeping on Streetcars
I dozed off on the streetcar today. You know how it is. Your head begins to nod as your eyelids grow heavier and heavier and the world recedes around you and you fall so willingly into sleep inside the rattling tin can that inches so slowly forward. I didn't want to take the subway. The subway is depressing and claustrophobic, and full of sad, frowny faced people who would all rather be driving somewhere than having to share a worn and fraying seat with a smelly man of questionable hygiene habits all the while being shut off from the bitter, beautiful November sunlight that just begs for long walks through the park. So I took the streetcar home.
I was reading Heart of Darkness. Conrad, mod classic, Africa etc. I was a few pages from finishing when my ten ton eyelids began drooping. I've been going to lectures long enough to know that fighting the fatigue is equal parts useless and futile. The streetcar wasn't crowded - they're no fun when they are - and I couldn't think of a reason to deny my body the sleep I had been depriving it.
I didn't sleep much last night. And when I woke up I was hung over. Not a good-lord-I'll-never-drink-again-so-help-me-god hang over thanks, I don't get those. The trick is to drink lots of water before you black out. That's my secret, though I'm sure you could find more knowledgeable boozehounds to get drinking tips from because what I don't know about alcohol could fill a German brewery. We were celebrating Regina's birthday and there is only one appropriate way to celebrate a nineteenth birthday. You know how it is.
Yeah, you know how it is.
Horatio
I was reading Heart of Darkness. Conrad, mod classic, Africa etc. I was a few pages from finishing when my ten ton eyelids began drooping. I've been going to lectures long enough to know that fighting the fatigue is equal parts useless and futile. The streetcar wasn't crowded - they're no fun when they are - and I couldn't think of a reason to deny my body the sleep I had been depriving it.
I didn't sleep much last night. And when I woke up I was hung over. Not a good-lord-I'll-never-drink-again-so-help-me-god hang over thanks, I don't get those. The trick is to drink lots of water before you black out. That's my secret, though I'm sure you could find more knowledgeable boozehounds to get drinking tips from because what I don't know about alcohol could fill a German brewery. We were celebrating Regina's birthday and there is only one appropriate way to celebrate a nineteenth birthday. You know how it is.
Yeah, you know how it is.
Horatio
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
