My Bladder is Weak and So Am I

There is an old man with a huge grin on his face sitting at the computer right to the left of me. His smile seems a little perverse and it is creeping me out. I want to write something here, but I don't know what and that is what I would term a problem. My life is boring, so boring. If you sit down at the computer and go to write a diary entry and do not really know what to say, even though you have not written in a few days, then something is wrong with the way you live your life - you are too numb to existence, to life.

And I am really worried that I am, that I am just going through the motions these days, waking working and sleeping. I have been doing school work off and on since ten this morning, first studying Greek and then readingWaverly and now, I am going to go home to read Crime and Punishment. These are sadly nothing more than chores, they sap my mental energy - my rah-rah spirit.

A couple of days ago, I saw the movie Jackass, and it was the most wonderful film I have seen in the longest time - there is something so beautiful about watching a bunch of young males living so recklessly, having so much fun, partaking in this rah-rah spirit that I need to somehow channel. Johnny Knoxville and Steve-O had me for a brief hour and a half excited by the prospect of life, of reckless living, I had the tingling in my fingertips and knew that something had to be done. The film seems like such an accurate rendering of the condition of the young American male - I mean maybe not with all those stunts and shit, that definitly is not my reality, but the stuff that is the motivation behind all of those stunts, behind the drinking of your own urine, it is that suburban ennui, that feeling that life is not all it neccesarily could be - and the people of Jackass have a very good solution to it all - a way to create meaning, art, and have a fucking good time within your exisiting conditions, no matter how bland they be.

Danger. Create risks. Make yourself hype-aware of your existence, of the fact that you are fucking alive by doing stuff that puts that into question, that risks your existence, or at least has the risk of bodily harm. Do things that are condoned. Do things that you fear.

Now, how will I take these lessons and implement them within my own life - how will I add a little bit of danger to my life and start to live with more reckless abandon? Wait and see. Wait and see.

because I am scared that American politics died yesterday, that maybe we did

I am once again sad, I am once again at a computer. Yesterday, after my Russian Novel class, I went to the computer lab to e-mail Miriam Wallace, telling her that I would not be in class. While I was there I went to washingtonpost.com to read more about the capture of the snipers, and what do I see instead as the top headline: Something about Paul Wellstone something about Dead something about Plane Crash. Those were the words I saw - I didn't have time to connect the words into a sentence. I just saw those words in big font and knew that he was dead, knew what those symbols meant, what the sentence would say. I gasped loudly. My capacity to be shocked did not show itself during any of this school drama of the past week, it has not shown itself through numerous family crises, through so much shit, I take those horrible events just as another thing in the flow of reality, a little speedbump, shrugging my shoulders and saying, "Well, what can you do?" But yesterday, the world did not seem to have even that sense. My shoulders crumbled, and if I were a more emotional person, I would have cried. I did not know what I could do, what should be done, did not know if anyting even could be.

Paul Wellstone has been one of my (few) idols since high school, one person that I thought was so righteous, so real, so what everyone should be like, what I wanted to be like. I remember my Government teacher, Mr. Chorpenning mentioning him a couple of times, telling us how he had run his campaign and from that point of time, I have been enamored with Wellstone. When I worked on Bill Bradley's campaign in New Hampshire, I was blessed enough to hear Wellstone speak quite a few times since he went out and stumped for Bradley. It was always so funny to watch the two and how different they were. Wellstone would speak before Bradley, getting the crowd pumped for him, giving an introduction - and Wellstone would raise hell like no public speaker I've ever seen - he engaged his audience in such a visceral way, he kept on pointing his finger into the air, jabbing it at the sky, getting more and more impassioned with his tone, raising the crowd to a crescendo of applause with every single person jumping to their feet to applaud Wellstone, his fire infecting anyone who was lucky enough to hear it. And then there was Bradley. He would come out and talk in his not so exciting way, and it just never seemed to compare to the fire that Wellstone had.

I managed to push this news, his death to the back of my mind after a while, started to enjoy the weekend, remembered the good news, that John Moore is the coolest professor ever, that I was once again in Greek and that my future at New College no longer looked so bleak. I played Scrabble with Drew Geer, lost by 99 points, and then went and gorged myself on the yummiest sausage ever at the wall last night. Then I went to Beki's room to see if Wallace had wrote me back and then I saw the news again, I remembered again that one of my heroes was now dead - and I went back to the wall, my excitement about sausage tempered by this news. And I had forgot again until I came to the library just now with Bonnie, and again I am at a computer sad with life, and how capricious it seems.

Now I am going to go sneak into the movies and watch Jackass and Punch Drunk Love, and soon I will forget about all of this again. The knowledge that the world is not just today, that it is not contained within this temporal space, that there is an impermanence to it all, that it contains a yesterday and a tomorrow and even the possible lack of a tomorrow - this knowlege will be lost to today - I will constitue myself, my existence in petty activities, will fill up my day with them because now the shock has lost its value, has faded to mild disgust with the world, and now I can shrug my shoulders again and say to no one, not even to you, not even to myself, just saying it because that's what the perfomance calls for, will say, "Well, what can you do?"

just when you think your life cannot possibly get any worse

Charlie- I've been thinking about our conversation yesterday and about your contract. Finally, I have to say that I'm unhappy with dropping the Greek Language course and replacing it with an IRP on modern novels. The contract is essentially a document to which both parties have to agree; that's why both you and I sign it after we've discussed it. What I'd be willing to sign would be a renegotiation that drops Modern Drama, but keeps Greek Language on there. I'm not willing to sign one that drops both and substitutes and IRP we never discussed. This means that you should contact John Moore right away, and see if you can still get back into Greek. Otherwise, I think we're looking at a failed contract.

I'm sorry about this, but really, it was a decision you made without contacting me. That's not the way it works, and it's not something I'm willing to back down on. This has nothing to do with the merit or non-merit of the IRP, but rather with the principle of the negotiated contract and the sponsor/sponsee relationship. If I had changed the contract without telling you about it, you would, understandably, be very upset too, since you are a party to the agreement as well.

-Miriam

who took the bomp?

Dear Diary,

It is to you that I turn right now, to you that I will confide. Diary, the sad fact of the matter is that I have no one else to gripe to. Nothing against you at all. You have served me well, treated me more than kindly, but sometimes you (or at least, I) just need a little of that human contact. Forgive me for thinking of you as a last resort, I was raised Catholic, I like to confess to a person, to unload my guilts, troubles by telling them to another person, to someone else, to just say them out loud verbally to another human being. The act itself solves the problems, calms the mind, absolves one of their troubles.

And right now, for my Russian Novel class I am reading Crime and Punishment and I feel so much like Raskolnikov these days. Amelia told our class that she had nightmares about the book - and I did too. Two nights ago, vivid nightmares about being Raskolnikov. The book is having some weird effect on me, where I experience it, passages as I am walking, doing things, living, not reading the book. The other day in the library after reading about his fainting, his dizziness, I felt so dizzy in the library, I could not balance myself on those high chairs, I thought I was going to faint and so made my way out of the library, the scary, bright light flickering place, and made my way home.

And anyways Diary, I digress, but you are used to that with me by now. Raskolnikov also has this mental load weighing him down, this guilt, and it seems that he desires to confess it. And I don't feel guilty, I just feel burdened, and so to you, I am turning to lament to. You will indulge my bitching, my whining because you have no choice in the matter, thank god. You will listen to me bitch about how I am forced to bitch to you, how this means that I have no one to bitch to, that I am lonely and that that is another thing that I can bitch about, be sad about.

Today, after my very long meeting with Miriam Wallace, I came home slightly depressed, wanted to bitch about my life, my confusion about its path, and I wanted to touch someone while doing it, to hold their hand and tell them the story, my story, to be indulged for a few minutes. And I have no one that I can do this with. Drew Geer was sitting on the couch, I sat down at the other end, a good distance between us, a distance where no body contact would be, could be made. And this was the closest I could get. I whined to Drew for a few minutes, and it felt so good, but it made me aware of the distance, of the spatial distance that I keep from people in general. How that now in this moment when I wanted to be close to someone, wanted to make physical contact with a human, how it will not happen.

And so now, I will hold the hands of this keyboard, will pretend that it is the same, and will tell you, my dear Diary what I want to tell someone. Will get this out of my system, off of that chest, so that I can move on to other things, the Social Theory paper that is due Thursday, the other school work I have to do, and the plans of saying Fuck You to school, to Florida, to hatching some grand run-away plan.

Actually, I don't know if I will tell you, I don't want to rehash all the details. I just want to whine. Miriam Wallace hates me. Not really, but it was not a very comforting meeting I had with her today. She seemed to forget all the things I had already told her, and was upset when I told them to her again, explained to me very condescendingly how an advisor/adivsee relationship works, that I tell her I'm dropping or adding a class prior to doing so. She told me that I had alienated most of the literature faculty. I thought I had just alienated Schatz. Appearantly, Dimino is not so enamored with me either. We talked about Schatz, her telling me that anyone would be upset if you told them what they had studied for four years was pointless, was a waste of time.

She told me that when Schatz talked to the committee about me and when Dimino did not say anything positive, she was completely blindsided and could not support my application to a lit major. And my hatred of Schatz is growing into an unmanageable ball of fire that I am going to creatively redirect into the form of a venemous letter concerning his seven-year faculty review.

We talked about the logistics of being a Humanites major, about being a General Studies one, about my contract. She rolled her eyes when I told her I was doing an IRP with John Moore, talked about how the subject of it was not his discipline, and that I could have benefited more from getting a lit faculty member to sponser it. I told her about my discomfort with the lit faculty and how inaccesible they try to make themselves, how John Moore is just as capable, if not more so, to lead the IRP simply because of his being outside the discipline.

I am going to unsat the semester if I unsat Russian Novel which is a very likely possibility, in which case, I think I am going to drop out of school, and move to a city, possibly NY, get a crumby job, and eventually finish my degree at some school.

She asked me if I liked the field of literature, expressed some doubt about my interest in it, and wanted to know what I thought, and I could not even muster a decent defense, a passioned argument. I have been broken. My love of literature has definitly been tempered by recent events. My literature spirit has been thoroughly crushed by the literature faculty here these past weeks. LOB, when I told her my story, said that she had never heard of someone being rejected by a division. Christy told me that she had never heard of anyone being rejected from a literature major. And even Rebecca asked me how I got denied from being a lit major. And all of this sort of makes me feel like shit, like a big idiot, who is not only not intelligent but not even competant. And yeah, it's a little bit of downer, makes it hard to smile and say, yes, I love literature, I love this field. When Miriam asked me that question, I meekly gave some answer, one barely audible, not at all confident in its verbalization - and I really don't understand when I became the most horrible student ever.

The world of the mind, of reason is telling me that it does not want me and perhaps this is why I am searching for physical contact today - believing that hopefully I can find comfort, meaning even, in that, in a hug.

Thanks for your indulgence Diary,
Charlie

everybody's working for the weekend or something like that

I just biked downtown and back to deposit my paycheck at the bank, and in a short half hour I will be again biking down the wonderfully gorgeous stretch of US 41 to Domino's, where I for some insane reason am working ten and a half hours today. Three until closing, which is about one-thirty. This did not seem so insane when I read the schedule. 3-close. But now that I have down the math, I think this is fucking insanity. I better be fed lots of free pizza is all I know.

I just want to stay outside all motherfucking day, it is so slighly warm and sunny and perfect out right now. The perfect biking weather.

Last night, I finished Middlesex which I could not put down for the last 200 pages - I just wanted to see what happened next, how this resolved that, and would not even take a break to eat even though I was pretty hungry. I was reading it for this Contemporary Fiction IRP I am doing with my roommates and Johnny Moore - now I have to do the reading for my actual classes, the ones with Schatz and Wallace, reading which makes me stressed because it reminds of those professors, my situations with both of them, my lack of a major, and how I still have no idea what the hell I am going to do about graduating from this place, how I am supposed to meet with Wallace soon after break to discuss this, this stressful stuff - which I have avoided thinking about all fall break pretty successfully.

everybody's working for the weekend or something like that

I just biked downtown and back to deposit my paycheck at the bank, and in a short half hour I will be again biking down the wonderfully gorgeous stretch of US 41 to Domino's, where I for some insane reason am working ten and a half hours today. Three until closing, which is about one-thirty. This did not seem so insane when I read the schedule. 3-close. But now that I have down the math, I think this is fucking insanity. I better be fed lots of free pizza is all I know.

I just want to stay outside all motherfucking day, it is so slighly warm and sunny and perfect out right now. The perfect biking weather.

Last night, I finished Middlesex which I could not put down for the last 200 pages - I just wanted to see what happened next, how this resolved that, and would not even take a break to eat even though I was pretty hungry. I was reading it for this Contemporary Fiction IRP I am doing with my roommates and Johnny Moore - now I have to do the reading for my actual classes, the ones with Schatz and Wallace, reading which makes me stressed because it reminds of those professors, my situations with both of them, my lack of a major, and how I still have no idea what the hell I am going to do about graduating from this place, how I am supposed to meet with Wallace soon after break to discuss this, this stressful stuff - which I have avoided thinking about all fall break pretty successfully.

the halfway point (of fall break)

The moon is not full. Not yet. But it's close, it is on its way there. We are along for the ride, on our way there too.

The moon is not full. My wine glass is not either. But walking here, walking to Drew Geer's room to use the internet, walking from my house to here, enjoying the cold front that has moved through, the breezy chilliness, the darkness, the feeling that it is not endless summer, that smell, that cold gracing my skin reminding me of things, so many things. Virginia. Fall, walking my dog around blocks that also had that smell, this smell of crisp air, so fucking crisp. Halloween is around the corner. Forward or backward, I do not know. I think of walking with my sister and random neighborhood kids around blocks, door to door, smelling this smell, trick or treat, plastic bags, porch lights lit, the Mary Janes that no one likes but me - and I want to take these memories and throw them over myself like raked up fall leaves. I didn't take out the trash yesterday - we used to put our leaves in black trash cans.

Walking here, enjoying the chill, life in practice, not just in theory - I felt a drop, a couple of them, of Pinot Noir splash out of my glass and onto my skin, my nervous skin. I glanced down, taking in what had just happened visually - but to no effect, it is night time, it is dark. You really can not see much. I saw something better. The not full moon reflecting in the wine of my not full glass, white ripples bouncing around within my not full wine glass, a blue one.

I took a shower this morning, a really quick one at high noon exactly and then hopped on my bike, put two wheels in motion, circular motion and made my way to Beki's room, gathered her, made her stop eating granola so we could make it to a movie in a short twenty mintues downtown. About halfway downtown, one of my wheels halted its fast circular motion and became a smaller circle than my other wheel, my front tire. My rear tire was completely flat and so I biked as hard as I could, so fucking slow regardless, regardless of my desires to move move move, frustrating me to no end, impotence, and yes, there is Beki already two blocks ahead of me. Three. Out of sight. Finally we made it there, very winded, bought tickets, and sat down to see The Rules of Attraction, which was really good and I cannot decide if it is good in a really trashy way as Beki argues, saying that the only reason I liked it was because it excited my "penile gland," whatever that is - you are going to have to ask Beki, or if it was a really awesome movie. I really liked the movie while watching it even though Beki sighed throughout the whole thing about how cheesy she thought it was, but now after eating chips and dip with Beki in the crease on a new picnic table made out of recycled plastic, talking to her about it, I am beginning to think that it is old, dated, too nineties, too detached. And I am new, and we can do better. Let's engage ourselves sincerely with each other and with this world, let's fucking rock and roll as James van der Beek's character would say, as he would say quite a few times, in fact if just given the opportunity, if asked the question. Rock and roll. What's your answer, asshole? Rock and roll or nay.

Since my bike is so insanely difficult to ride, making scary metallic noises as the rims scratch against the asphalt, I borrowed Beki's bike later this afternoon to go to work, to go to work non-winded. Made pizza pies, round ones, listened to classic rock, felt the crisp air even in Domino's. It followed me in. Sneaky sneaky.t

warm liquids

I woke up this morning with the sore throat, the sniffly nose - and I am going to go to bed with the same symptoms, with the same throat and the same nose. I am so boring.

a white minivan

"I wouldn't want the people of Virginia to focus just on white vans," Massengill said. "We don't want preconceived notions out there. But certainly . . . you have to play the hand that you're dealt. And the information that has come to us deals with white vans. So we're still interested in white vans."

My mom drives a white minivan - she lives in Virginia. I am still interested in white vans - I always have been. It has been an object to which I have always been drawn. You guys are late to the game. People at work remind me, "Oh, you're from that area of Virginia right?" And I nod my head, sometimes engage in conversation, listen to them talk about punishment and killing. And my mom drives a white minivan - I wonder if she thinks about this - I wonder if it bothers her, if she is worried when driving that other cars fear her, that the occupants of these cars think that maybe she is the sniper, a killer.

a good beginning to fall break

Andrew spent the night, the morning with me.Spent is such a fascinating word, conjuring exchange value, costs, buying and selling, cost-benefit analysis graphs drawn on chalkboards by Richard Coe. We spent the night together, using it to buy things just as vague as the night. Throwing our dollars into the air, recklessly giving our night to greedy merchants and open cash registers. Spending it together, spending it for the common good, for ours. Take it, take the night. Spend spend spend.

Looking up from Andrew's dick, licking his thighs because I was starting to gag, because I needed to take a break, because no one wants vomit on their cock, I saw his chest, the hairs around his nipples. A streetlamp somewhere, the faint light of it interrupted by parralel even strips of shadows on his chest, the Venetian blinds, the wooden ones that came with the house allowing all of this, allowing me to see the fragility of each of us in the intermittent lighting and shading of a sex partner's body.

Throughout the night, I woke up for brief moments to gaze upon Andrew's body some more, to curiously touch it, poking it lightly with a finger, a science experiment, and the hypotheses were right. So fucking right, and so knowing this, that everything is lovely, that I am alive, whatever that means, just take it for what is, alive -I would fall back into the most comfortable sleep curling up tighter against Andrew, making more contact, pressing warm skin against warm skin, alive people living.

the best of David Brain, the worst of me

I just got back my Social Theory paper and boy, oh boy, does David Brain like to let loose in these evaluations. Here is a sampling:

"Again, your reading seems unbalanced by your desire to paint Mill with a particular critical brush. I find the accusation of an "entre nous" style as a "sly technique" a particular outrageous move in this regard."

"...but I would encourage you to tame the rhetoric and stop looking for imperialist outrages long enough to engage the theory itself. Your writing is sharp and your ideas are clearly articulated - although sometimes involving questionable interpretive moves. You do both yourself and the principles to which you are clearly committed a serious disservice when you engage in this kind of basically empty rhethoric."

At least I sated the paper though. This is the second super critical paper evaluation I have gotten back this semester. I got my paper back from Miriam Wallace last week and that made me want to cry. Oh well. I just need to write about boring, easy things like gender I guess. Stuff like that is always acceptable for some reason.

well, i guess i will not be a lit major, or alternately titled: life sucks

Dear Charlie:

On behalf of the faculty in British and American literature, I am writing to inform you that your application for a major in British and American literature has been denied. While you may reapply, the Literature faculty has had some concerns about the rationale for your application and interest in the field that should be addressed. First, although your coverage of genre and period is not complete, the faculty was more concerned that your interest in literary analysis seemed erratic, more dependent on whether texts interested you than on a broader interest in critical theory per se. Secondly, we were concerned that your ability to do good textual analysis also seemed erratic. The facts that you have recently jeopardized your standing in Russian Literature and dropped Modern Drama before consulting your advisor do not give us confidence that you are deeply engaged with literary study. Since you already have a declared Humanities AOC, you might be better served by defining a viable thesis topic, gathering support from three faculty, and working on a project that does deeply interest you. You should make an early appoitment to speak with your advisor about your options and to determine the next step you should take.

Regards,

Miriam Wallace
Associate Professor, British and American Literature

*************************
To: mwallace@ncf.edu
From: seniorcitizendiscount@hotmail.com
Subject: help!

Miriam Wallace:

I am writing to "make an early appointment to speak with you . . . about [my] options and to determine the next step [I] should take." What are your office hours that I could meet with you? I guess we should meet after fall break. I would really like to talk to you about what I should do now.

Honestly, I guess I was not expecting to be denied for a lit AOC - that was not even a possibility in my academic plans. I was just going to be a lit major and that was that, I took this application to be just a minor formality. I just got your letter, took out of my mailbox, opened it carelessly and read that jarringly unambigious word, "denied," and so I am a little confused right now about many things, namely how the hell I am going to graduate from here, from this school. I should have probably held off on writing you until I had thought about this more, until I had figured out what I want to do with myself now, but right now I am motivated - I have lots of thoughts, neurons are firing rapidly, thoughts, plans, and big scary fears are all dueling it out right now, and since you are my advisor, I thought that it might be good to direct these at you, that maybe you might be able to help, that you might be able to advise me even about what you think I should do. So sorry if this is jumbled, is this is "erratic" - it is simply me trying to put things in order, to verbalize them, to make sense out of my confusion.

Here are my thoughts on options. I am fine with being a Humanities major but the thing is that I don't even know if that is possible now at this point since to do that you have to have completed the third semester of a foriegn language, and I only have two more semesters after this one that I can stay here. Staying here next spring is simply not an option - not only would I literally go insane from being unable to escape Sarasota, but it is not humanely possible since my scholarships run out next fall, and there is no way that I can pay for a semester's worth of out-of-state tuition. And I am really worried that I am not going to graduate - that I may even unsat this semester because of Russian fiction.

Which I should probably tell you about. I had a paper due for that class on Tuesday, and granted I had all the time in the world to write the paper, I simply did not do it on time, did not think it would be a big deal if I turned it in Wednesday morning. And it turned out that I am not very good at predicting things, that a late paper was in fact a huge deal to this professor. And so yes, that is all completely my fault and it all could have been so easily avoided, and I have already kicked myself numerous times for my lack of foresight, for how easily all my troubles could have been averted, and I just got spanked with regret again today when it was mentioned in the letter I recieved as evidence of my "erratic"-ness. I am going to go to class tomorrow, participate in discussion, will try not to cry and hopefully will be able to talk to Schatz afterwards, see if it is completely hopeless for me in that class, for this semester, and for my life. It is all the more upsetting knowing that I may not graduate from college because I turned in one paper late that I did not think would be a big deal, that of all the things, all the errors I have made here at this school, this is going to be the one that sinks me, that is my demise.

Okay, so yeah, back to what steps I am considering taking, the Humanities one. I am now kicking myself for dropping Greek, for thinking that I was going to be a lit major and would not need to fulfill any language requirements. But, what I am thinking is that I may (hopefully!) be able to take the second semester of Spanish in the spring since I took four years of it in high school and have a basic knowledge of it that I could brush up on before spring semester. And that I guess is my only option right now for fulfilling that language requirement and still graduating next fall.

The other option which I have sort of backed off from quite a bit now, but which was my resolute decision an hour ago, is to just say "Fuck you" to college, to school - and to start living my life, to do whatever it is that I intended on doing after I graduated from college. But since I am not really so sure what I intended on doing after college, that plan sort of looked a little less appealing, especially coupled with my lack of savings to move anywhere exciting, somewhere other than back home. And then there is the whole social norms, social expectations thing that also wants to be just have a degree for whatever reasons, to get whatever job I believe it is neccesary for, so that I do not have to toss pizzas at Dominos anymore. Another daydream that I was set on a short while ago was going to work on a kibbutz and to just travel. But really, what I would do after that without a degree concerned me. And so, I would like to graduate in the fall still. I mean, really I don't know what I am trying to say, what even to do with myself besides fall asleep, hope that I will wake up with everything figured out, that it will all work out.

And I like to reassure people often that "everything is going to be okay." And now, I don't know. I am so unsure as to if that statement has any truth to it all, if it is not just a verbal pacifer for the world to suck on - but whatever, it's what keeps me living, so yeah, hopefully everything we'll be okay.

Any advice?

-Charlie

when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore

I can toss pizzas like you have never seen them tossed before, never in your life except in those silly cartoons with mustachioed Italians in white chef hats singing "Bella, bella, bella." I don't sing "Bella, bella, bella." I wear a Domino's hat, a beige baseball cap and I sing along to 103.5, Tampa's real classic rock. I am learning the words to so many classic rock songs at work. I feel so American. People, real live people, people other than New College students come in to order pizzas, pick-up specials, knowing that it is all about bargain shopping in this land of milk and honey, about getting that discount. Five fifty for a large one topping pizza pie.

I scrape dough off of a tray, and mold it into the shape of a circle, give it a crust with my cornmealed fingertips, and then I lift it, real high, and toss it. I toss the fucking pizza to the sky, into the pink sky, setting sun, Burger King and car headlights on 41. Release it, hoping that it was meant to be. If you release it and let it go, and it comes back, then you know it was meant to be. It comes back from its cosmicly high adventure. It always comes back. It was so meant to be.

The pizza, your pizza, gets tossed into the oven, and in a few minutes, it is taken out and sliced into eight fairly uniform slices if it is a medium or large. Ten, if it is an extra-large. And all the while, I rock out to classic rock, feel the heat of the pizza oven, look out onto Tamiami Trail and feel like I am the living embodiment of Summer. I talk to my co-workers, my friends about funny things, things other than bullshit, other than school. I talk to a seventeen year old girl about her hangover. I love it. So much. Bella. Bella. Bella.

shooting feet left and right

Oh shit. Okay, so there was that little Russian Novel paper that I did not think would be a big deal to turn in a day late. Appearantly, it was a big deal.

This little paper could very well effect the rest of my life and that is making me quite sad right now, knowing that this all could have been prevented had I been a little more motivated and a little less in love with sleep.

This morning, I went by Professor Schatz's office to drop off this paper that I churned out in the witching hours this morning, a paper that I wrote in a couple of hours, one which I could have easily written two days ago, meaning on time. I had been warned by some people that Schatz was nuts about some things and that he very easily changes moods. I pooh-poohed this when deliberating whether to turn in the paper late or not, thinking that Schatz seemed like an amiable, laid back guy who would not care if a paper that was due at five was instead turned in the next morning. I was so so wrong.

He saw me approaching the door with my paper and started shouting, "Nope. Nope. I am not taking that paper. It was due yesterday." I entered his office thinking that he might still take it, maybe. He told me to sit down and then said Nope some more, said that it was due yesterday, and that he cannot make exceptions.

And I wanted to cry. He told me that I was probably going to unsat the class. And blah blah blah. And I have a four out of four contract - and that would mean I would unsat my contract. Meaning that I could not graduate next fall - meaning that I would probably not graduate at all since my scholarships run out next fall.

And to make matters worse, he said that this could not have come out a worse time, that in half an hour he was meeting with the rest of the lit. department to discuss my application for a lit concentration. I ended up sitting there for half an hour, prodded by Schatz's questions raging about how I hated New College, criticism, and life in general. And yeah, I am full of rage right now and I have to bike to motherfucking work and it better be goddamned busy so I can exert my energy, tire myself out pummeling dough for pizza loving idiots in this fucking town. Today, I daydreamed about dropping out and am thinking of what I could possibly do if I did do that. Schatz told me to come to class on Friday and to talk a lot and that he might take a look at my paper. And we'll see how that goes. If it doesn't go good, Fall Break is going to be spent trying to figure out what I am going to do with my life.

This stupid little paper is going to be my demise - I am going to be a college dropout, working at Domino's because of this one stupid motherfucking paper and I am so ready to rage right now. Grr. And Sean is a few computers away, and I am full of hate for the world right now. Look out Domino's.

tom hoke was my chocolate dealer - naughty boy, tom - what would your mother say, besides "Share that chocolate with me, Thomas!"

I am so wide awake. It is a quarter after five in the morning, I have just finished writing a paper that was due a quarter after twelve hours ago. I am rocking out in Drew Geer's room to "Here Comes Your Man" on repeat, and am contemplating what to do with myself right now, what to do with myself in general, with this life. My life.

We are all going to make it, goddamnit. That's what I know. That's what I tell myself, sort of hope, thinking that if I tell it to myself then it is going to be true, that everything will work out, just say it three times and that motherfucking blue genie will come out of that little lamp and so will our life, unfolding like a beach blanket, ours, and it'll be so fucking lovely. Your friends from high school won't believe you when you e-mail them about it, they'll keep on sending you silly forwards, and never know that it is so fucking on.

So fucking right on.

I ate four candy bars tonight. They were so good. I am a chocolate monster. Grrr. I will eat up your Snickers and your Almond Joys indiscriminately, you sucker. Yum yum yum. I offered some chococlate to LOB, Leigh, and Dustin when they were taping me, asking me if I thought homosexuality was genetic. I told them I didn't know. I should have said who cares, my love of chocolate is genetic - you guys are freaks for not taking any - it is heaven - do you feel that sensation, the yum yum yum thing when you eat it? Are you not fucking human? Or are you vegan? Is that the same question?

Whatever, more chocolate for me.

PS- My man is coming. So is yours. Let's have a chocolate eating date and talk about arrivals, anticipation, and big things.

Right on?

i hate work

I don't want to write my Russian fiction paper that was due earlier today, two and a half some hours ago. I still have not even thought about. I have not asked for an extension. I have just decided to grant myself one, that I will turn it in bright and early tomorrow morning with a kind little note for Schatz.

I am in Drew Geer's room right now while Bonnie is watching some cheesy lesbian movie. His walls are so white, I can hear the muffled sound of traffic on US 41 a hundred some feet away and I cannot think, do not in fact even want to. I want to play. I want to take a break from the paper I have not even started and run outside, dash home, make myself curve comfortably into the couch, drink some wine and watch the bad lesbian movie with Bonnie.

I am in love with all of this, the delays, the protractions, the doings, Forty fucking One. I am going to try to write a formal paper, to follow Miriam Wallace's advice and lose my colluquial voice that I tend to adopt when writing papers. We will see how this goes. Okay, time to start working, here we go, I'm really going to start. On the count of three: one, two, three!

school drool

I have just escaped from yet another boring class led by David Brain, in which I scribbled notes to myself about ideas for stories, scribbled some questions about revelatory literature, and thought a lot about boys since I was slightly horny in class.

For some reason unknown to me, I tend to get physically excited in class quite often. I think this has something to do with how cold it tends to be, how I shiver, and want to go to sleep, rub my arms, the goosebumps on them making me deliriously tired, wanting to curl up in bed, falling into daydreams of things other than David Brain and Karl Marx, of naughty things.

I feel generally unexcited about today, about the past couple of them. Friday I did something with Sean, at night, before the wall, played with his cock, kissed his neck, and then talked. I was asked what I wanted. I was honest. Told him, him. His company. And I was basically turned down, told that he did not want that now, that he had to think. Well fuck you, and your motherfucking stupid thoughts.

Saturday, I went to work, had a fucking wonderful time playing around with Terra. Robin, the owner had made us dinner, steak and rice. The owners are so cool, Robin and Robert, they are like a nice mom and short-tempered pop to everyone at work. It is a really comfortable feeling, one that I enjoy. At a little before eleven, getting off early because it was slow, I biked real fast home, watched the beginning of SNL, and then went to go have my wall, which was really not all that fun of an experience. Throwing a wall is a lot more stressful than just going to a wall. I felt a lot more self-conscious than usual, felt like I had to dance since very few other people were, and was also sort of sad that not that many people were dancing. But Amanda danced a lot to all the songs I really love and so that made me happy. In addition, there was more unpleasantness with Sean. He made an appearance at the wall, I ran up to him, started talking to him, eventually found my hands within his, and basically the conversation again turned to how he was not interested right now, how he is too busy chasing a heterosexual male who is never going to be with him. And so, I have decided I am done with Sean, that I just need to stop flattering the ego of a boy who couldn't give a damn, move on with my life, find happiness in music and god.

I'm very glad that that is all over, all of it, the whole damn weekend and everything it involved. Now I must go to work in four short hours, and then I guess I have to start thinking about my Russian Novel paper that is due tomorrow, that I will start writing tomorrow morning probably. Hopefully.