Goodbye November.
You were nice, and entailed all sorts of things, like a car accident in front of my house at one forty-eight in the morning, the premier of the utterly hilarious continuation of the TWILIGHT saga, thanksgiving, cancelled class, and some disgusting weather. Also, you were the month in which I drove into a deceptive pot hole in the road filled with leaves and royally jacked up my muffler, and thus, my car sounds a little something resembling both a badass and a dying bear. I haven’t yet decided if that’s awesome yet, but apparently it needs to be fixed ASAP. I love getting car repairs for Christmas.
As far as succeeding at life goes, I’m still not doing it. Job search still failing. Bank account funds still anemic and growing more scarce by the day. I’m breaking new records as to how long after noon I wake up. Today it was one fifty, yesterday it was one forty. Damn class tomorrow, or I might have be able to shoot for a solid two in the afternoon.
It’s cold, and rainy and altogether too dismal and grey for my taste. I miss summer. I miss sand on the floor of my car and airplanes with banners and playing the radio outside and flip flops and sun and not being the human equivalent of the color #ffffff. Not to say them I’m not white year round, because I don’t miraculously change heritage in the summer, but It’s nice not to be utterly translucent sometimes.
But like I was saying.
Goodbye November.
You were nice.
Hello December.
I hope you’re better.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Monday, November 9, 2009
SPIRES & GARGOYLES!
Today, I finally cashed my pay checks, both pathetic and both under sixty-five dollars, and I was not especially proud when the bank teller handed me a receipt detailing my eighty-eight dollar deposit to my checking account. At least I have finally broken the hundred dollar mark--and for that at least, I'm slightly satisfied. But this is the same story of every broke college student, even if my college existence is a fake attempt and nothing more than one class twice a week at the local community college fifteen minutes and a shitload of traffic away in the next town over.
I remember once, in middle school, someone I had known told me he celebrated his termination of his pot addiction by smoking pot. This logic was baffling, though mostly hilarious to me at the time, though when you give it some thought it sort of does make sense. Today, I did something similar. To celebrate having money, I spent money. I went to Barnes & Noble, which is where I spend most of my money, when it's not being spent online at Forever 21.com or Urbanoutfitters.com. I'd like to think my desire to expand my literary horizons is what drives this equality in my shopping patterns. I think, in reality, it has more to do with the fact that there is a Barnes & Noble ten minutes from my house, as opposed to the local Forever 21 in the Ocean County Mall, twenty minutes away, or the nearest Urban, which is in NYC, and thus, an hour away. Plus, you don’t need to pay for shipping and handling when you bring your book up to the counter and pay with your shiny new TD bank debit card. When I say it's shiny I don’t mean it has a figure of speech-- it's literally shiny. And sparkly. And all manner of other gay adjectives.
I hadn't been in the store for more than two minutes when the lights went out.
I am a literary product of Brick Township Memorial High School’s Advanced Placement/Honors English classes. This basically means that I have been taught to spot symbols in everything, even if the author never intended the event or object in question to mean anything or to foreshadow anything. I have been gifted, or perhaps cursed, this is ability, and thus, when the lights went out, I should have taken this as a foreboding event. Ominous-- should I not have bought anything? Should I have turned around and left? Unfortunately, in addition to being more or less the literary equivalent of a well trained golden retriever, I'm also somewhat obnoxious in my desire to basically say "fuck you" to anything or anyone that tells me I should do something that I don’t feel particularly inclined to doing, whether it be my six-foot-ten boss, or this mysterious event of lost electricity.
So I stayed, and ended up further satisfying the expectations of English teachers past by purchasing some lovely classics-- The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde and This Side of Paradise by my boy, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Anyone who knows me knows I have a ridiculous crush on our dear Mr. Fitzgerald, and if I had been born into his generation, I would have challenged Zelda Sayre to an old-school knife fight to see who was more worthy of earning Fitzgerald's affections. I would have won. In fact, if two men could somehow form a baby, my soul mate would be the lovechild of T.S. Eliot and F. Scott. Fitzgerald. I wish I was kidding. If I ever, in my lifetime, become an author of anything worth reading, I will dedicate nearly every book or every poem or every short story, novella or work of non-fiction to one of those two men. I mean, sorry Hemmingway, you were okay-- A Farewell to Arms was good, The Sun Also Rises was all right, but you just fail to capture my heart. Plus, I plan to take a course on Fitzgerald in the near future, and figured it could only do me good to get a head start on the course material.
The Picture of Dorian Grey is a different matter. I know the plotline, but I regret to say I'd never read the book, and I was more than willing to dish out five bucks for the Barnes and Noble edition to satisfy my curiosity. Also, a movie version was recently made starring Ben Barnes as Dorian Grey-- and Ben Barnes is a babe. He is the sole reason I went to the movie theatres to see the second Narnia movie. His acting--eh, it's all right, but when you've got a face like that it doesn't really matter. And, anyway, if I have the chance, I like to read the book before I see the movie the book is based upon. So I bought it.
Twelve dollars and some odd change gone, but you've got to make sacrifices sometimes. Afterwards, I went to Brave New World-- the clothing store (for the first time this entry, not talking about a book)-- to apply for a job, and the woman at the front counter informed me that she would keep my application on file, but they probably weren't hiring until the summer. It's November. FML.
I stopped at Dunkin' Donuts. I bought a coffee coolatta. I drove home. I was tormented by some asshole kid who thought it would be funny to walk as slowly as possible past my driveway as I tried to pull in. Normally, this wouldn’t be an issue, but I live on a four-lane road with a speed limit of forty-five miles per hour on which nobody (not the locals anyway)except my mom drives under fifty on. I gave the kid the finger and he laughed. I should have hit him with my car, but that wouldn't have been at all fair to poor Alexander the Great. He has put up with me losing a hubcap, hitting curbs, hitting parked cars, getting hit by other cars while parked, being backed into bushes and poles in parking lots that I couldn't see because it was dark out and there wasn't a working light perched on top and all manner of things you hit or scrape or run over when you're just out of your first year of driving. I didn't have the heart to add some punk in tight pants to the already long list of things I'd hit with my car.
And thus concludes my day. All that I have left to do is cheer for the Denver Broncos as they take on the Pittsburg Steelers tonight during Monday Night Football. I love New Jersey. I will defend it from any other ignorant assholes from other states who insist on trashing it with stereotyped garbage, but I can't devote myself to the same football teams everyone else in the area worships. The Giants, The Jets, The Eagles have all failed to win my love. This is what happens when your mother is from Colorado and instills in you a love for her home state from the time you are born in the hopes that one day she will use your love of her said home state to help her in her plans to convince my father to move out west. Her plan failed, and this tiny little state known for cranberry bogs, oil refineries, bad driving, an obnoxious accent none of us have to the extent the rest of the nation thinks we do, diners and polluted beaches will forever be home. However, my mother's love of the Denver Broncos did get passed down to me (my brother was immune, but he's a failure in terms of local team support too-- he's a Colts fan, which only further proves he's either somewhat defective or is adopted) and I will continue to love them, winning season or not.
And that’s it for now. I could complain for another hour, mostly about my job-- more specifically about my boss and about how he and my brother use the same cologne-smelling lotion, making me realize that my life is more or less swirling into a dark abyss of whatthefuckery and general absurdity, but nobody wants to hear about it and I'm sort of sick of talking about it. I could tell you about the fact I haven't yet done my homework despite the fact I have class tomorrow, and almost certainly will end up copying the answers out of the back of the book in the OCC parking lot ten minutes before class, but that’s more or less boring too. So with my options being what they are, oh nearly virgin blog of mine, I have naught to do but bid you adieu.
I remember once, in middle school, someone I had known told me he celebrated his termination of his pot addiction by smoking pot. This logic was baffling, though mostly hilarious to me at the time, though when you give it some thought it sort of does make sense. Today, I did something similar. To celebrate having money, I spent money. I went to Barnes & Noble, which is where I spend most of my money, when it's not being spent online at Forever 21.com or Urbanoutfitters.com. I'd like to think my desire to expand my literary horizons is what drives this equality in my shopping patterns. I think, in reality, it has more to do with the fact that there is a Barnes & Noble ten minutes from my house, as opposed to the local Forever 21 in the Ocean County Mall, twenty minutes away, or the nearest Urban, which is in NYC, and thus, an hour away. Plus, you don’t need to pay for shipping and handling when you bring your book up to the counter and pay with your shiny new TD bank debit card. When I say it's shiny I don’t mean it has a figure of speech-- it's literally shiny. And sparkly. And all manner of other gay adjectives.
I hadn't been in the store for more than two minutes when the lights went out.
I am a literary product of Brick Township Memorial High School’s Advanced Placement/Honors English classes. This basically means that I have been taught to spot symbols in everything, even if the author never intended the event or object in question to mean anything or to foreshadow anything. I have been gifted, or perhaps cursed, this is ability, and thus, when the lights went out, I should have taken this as a foreboding event. Ominous-- should I not have bought anything? Should I have turned around and left? Unfortunately, in addition to being more or less the literary equivalent of a well trained golden retriever, I'm also somewhat obnoxious in my desire to basically say "fuck you" to anything or anyone that tells me I should do something that I don’t feel particularly inclined to doing, whether it be my six-foot-ten boss, or this mysterious event of lost electricity.
So I stayed, and ended up further satisfying the expectations of English teachers past by purchasing some lovely classics-- The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde and This Side of Paradise by my boy, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Anyone who knows me knows I have a ridiculous crush on our dear Mr. Fitzgerald, and if I had been born into his generation, I would have challenged Zelda Sayre to an old-school knife fight to see who was more worthy of earning Fitzgerald's affections. I would have won. In fact, if two men could somehow form a baby, my soul mate would be the lovechild of T.S. Eliot and F. Scott. Fitzgerald. I wish I was kidding. If I ever, in my lifetime, become an author of anything worth reading, I will dedicate nearly every book or every poem or every short story, novella or work of non-fiction to one of those two men. I mean, sorry Hemmingway, you were okay-- A Farewell to Arms was good, The Sun Also Rises was all right, but you just fail to capture my heart. Plus, I plan to take a course on Fitzgerald in the near future, and figured it could only do me good to get a head start on the course material.
The Picture of Dorian Grey is a different matter. I know the plotline, but I regret to say I'd never read the book, and I was more than willing to dish out five bucks for the Barnes and Noble edition to satisfy my curiosity. Also, a movie version was recently made starring Ben Barnes as Dorian Grey-- and Ben Barnes is a babe. He is the sole reason I went to the movie theatres to see the second Narnia movie. His acting--eh, it's all right, but when you've got a face like that it doesn't really matter. And, anyway, if I have the chance, I like to read the book before I see the movie the book is based upon. So I bought it.
Twelve dollars and some odd change gone, but you've got to make sacrifices sometimes. Afterwards, I went to Brave New World-- the clothing store (for the first time this entry, not talking about a book)-- to apply for a job, and the woman at the front counter informed me that she would keep my application on file, but they probably weren't hiring until the summer. It's November. FML.
I stopped at Dunkin' Donuts. I bought a coffee coolatta. I drove home. I was tormented by some asshole kid who thought it would be funny to walk as slowly as possible past my driveway as I tried to pull in. Normally, this wouldn’t be an issue, but I live on a four-lane road with a speed limit of forty-five miles per hour on which nobody (not the locals anyway)except my mom drives under fifty on. I gave the kid the finger and he laughed. I should have hit him with my car, but that wouldn't have been at all fair to poor Alexander the Great. He has put up with me losing a hubcap, hitting curbs, hitting parked cars, getting hit by other cars while parked, being backed into bushes and poles in parking lots that I couldn't see because it was dark out and there wasn't a working light perched on top and all manner of things you hit or scrape or run over when you're just out of your first year of driving. I didn't have the heart to add some punk in tight pants to the already long list of things I'd hit with my car.
And thus concludes my day. All that I have left to do is cheer for the Denver Broncos as they take on the Pittsburg Steelers tonight during Monday Night Football. I love New Jersey. I will defend it from any other ignorant assholes from other states who insist on trashing it with stereotyped garbage, but I can't devote myself to the same football teams everyone else in the area worships. The Giants, The Jets, The Eagles have all failed to win my love. This is what happens when your mother is from Colorado and instills in you a love for her home state from the time you are born in the hopes that one day she will use your love of her said home state to help her in her plans to convince my father to move out west. Her plan failed, and this tiny little state known for cranberry bogs, oil refineries, bad driving, an obnoxious accent none of us have to the extent the rest of the nation thinks we do, diners and polluted beaches will forever be home. However, my mother's love of the Denver Broncos did get passed down to me (my brother was immune, but he's a failure in terms of local team support too-- he's a Colts fan, which only further proves he's either somewhat defective or is adopted) and I will continue to love them, winning season or not.
And that’s it for now. I could complain for another hour, mostly about my job-- more specifically about my boss and about how he and my brother use the same cologne-smelling lotion, making me realize that my life is more or less swirling into a dark abyss of whatthefuckery and general absurdity, but nobody wants to hear about it and I'm sort of sick of talking about it. I could tell you about the fact I haven't yet done my homework despite the fact I have class tomorrow, and almost certainly will end up copying the answers out of the back of the book in the OCC parking lot ten minutes before class, but that’s more or less boring too. So with my options being what they are, oh nearly virgin blog of mine, I have naught to do but bid you adieu.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
OH, HELLO.
BY SEA-GIRLS WREATHED IN SEA-WEED, RED AND BROWN,
'TILL HUMAN VOICES WAKE US,
& WE DROWN."
-T.S.ELIOT.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
