Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Fractions
So I downloaded the blogger app for iPhone, I'm not going to be doing any serious writing with it because the teeny tiny keyboard is a bitch to use with my giant, bear hands. However, I will be utilizing it for micro-blogging on the go (or as I've dubbed it: fractional blogging).
Makes Sense to Me
I can honestly say I have never been this busy in my entire life before. I'm writing this before Project Management II starts. The first presentation is due today and I'm content with it. I am not, however, content with having to present it to the class. I always feel so stupid when I have to do something like this. It should be pretty straight forward but the first part of the presentation is a mood board that is supposed to sum up our visual aesthetic as a designer. Whenever I have to get in front of a group of people and try and make sense out of my predilection for pandas, cemeteries, and Nic Cage I can never seem to verbalize what I'm trying to convey. I wish people could just crack my skull open and peer into the teeming mass of red and self-loathing that is my creative process. It really would be easier than having to explain to people what I'm trying to do. I'm a mentally handicapped (seriously) artist, just smile and nod and we'll move on to the next guy.
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Indian Summer
So my first show, as in one that I've written, researched, and produced, is on the calendar for 10/15. It's gonna be the second hour of the show which is usually reserved for human interest and weird shit that the producers don't know what to do with. I'm really excited but I have a fear in the pit of my stomach that no one is gonna call in and that Dan isn't going to know what the hell to do with the curator of the Baltimore Tattoo Museum. Although, I guess I can't really help that. All I can do is provide a well written script and exhaustively researched notes and the rest is out of my control. Just to be safe though I'm going to make sure that everyone I know has the show's number and a well formed opinion regarding tattoo culture. Now if only that PHD asshole from Michigan would call me back and then this show would be phenomenal. So far the radio station is going well. I was able to do an admirable job on my first big assignment...ughhh...ughhhh...now I have to explain about Rudy. Have you ever seen the movie "Rudy"? No? Me neither. "Rudy" is a stupid feel good, heart warming movie from 1993 about an underdog named, you guessed it, Rudy, who despite the odds is able to fulfill his dreams. Are you done puking yet? Now, anyone who knows me knows that I detest heartwarming and feel good on principal alone. But I digress. Rudy has recently written a book about his life and the hoops he had to jump through to get the movie made. My assignment was to read his book and take notes on it. These notes are what Dan Rodricks, the host, uses before the show to prep, and during to reference. I also had to come up with some questions for him to ask Rudy. Rudy has had, without a doubt, the most boring, pointless life of anyone ever. He's so fucking wholesome he wrote "heck" about 20 times in his book yet there was nary a "fuck" in sight. Now, would you trust a grown man whose go to cuss word is "heck"? I don't fucking think so Rudy. Anyway, the book, and Rudy himself, were just as awful as you can probably imagine. The only interesting thing about the man was that he was charged with fraud by the SEC last year and had to pay almost $400,000 in fines, but unfortunately this wasn't a trial so Dan didn't really ask him about it. Oh and Rudy hogged all of the catered lunch that day too. I'll see you in hell Rudy.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Black, white, and sleevless, just like my heart (UPDATED)
I am sitting in class waiting for 211 to start and I'm suddenly filled with an unbelievable rage that I doubt I will be able to quell without the aid of some kind of chemical substance which I obviously can't take. I don't want to say why I'm so mad but suffice to say I haven't felt this particular feeling in a very long time. I had to go all the way to Texas for that fucking hoodie and you fucking gave it to motherfucking him?!!?!?!?!?!
UPDATE: So as it turns out it's not my sleeveless hoodie, my mistake.
UPDATE: So as it turns out it's not my sleeveless hoodie, my mistake.
Monday, June 25, 2012
is what it is
"Fuck me gently with a chainsaw Heather", that quote (from the best movie ever BTW) pretty much sums up my life right now. I'm utterly, tragically alone right now. It's okay I guess. I mean okay in the sense that whatever is going to happen is going to happen regardless of what I do. I leave for Northern Ireland on Saturday. I'm excited and nervous and scared and scared.
Sunday, June 10, 2012
leftovers
Okay so I suck at this sorry everyone. I'm still working on a few essays and I promise they will be up this week. To tide you over until then here is part of some short fiction I've been working on.
The Leftovers
I broke my own heart. There’s really no other way to put it. I didn’t want to break up and I wasn’t really dumped. Well I was but it was the logical outcome of my own illogical behavior. Unbeknownst to myself I had, years ago, set down a path that could ultimately lead to only one inevitable conclusion: self implosion. I was like the child who keeps knocking over his towers of blocks that he had painstakingly built up. The child cries when the blocks fall down even though he has done it himself. It’s like I had set myself on fire and was using gasoline to put it out.
Looking back now, through a haze of painful memories and too many regrets to count, I can see the solution to all of our problems so clearly now. Were probably doomed from the start. I was juggling problems as if they were chainsaws. I refused to address a single one while fervently adding more to the cycle. I can’t blame him for leaving me; I would’ve left me too. He probably deserves an award for staying as long as he did. I can still hear the last words I spoke to him, hanging dead in the air, like a weather balloon caught on some power lines.
“What am I, if I can’t be yours?”
He couldn’t answer that. In the interest of self-preservation he quickly distanced himself. I was left trying to build a life out of the smoldering ruins of a relationship that I had seemingly, purposely driven into the ground. I have always been my own worst enemy and I sabotaged this relationship like so many other opportunities throughout my life. I spent weeks lamenting the dissolution of a love that meant more to me than the very breath in my lungs. He was supposed to save me, but I was just too far-gone.
I began to self medicate. Drinking, which was already a priority, completely took over my life. Let me tell you, from first hand experience, there is nothing more unattractive than a fully grown man child with a drinking problem that’s getting much, much worse before it gets better. I can think of nothing more depressing than being the first customer at the liquor store. Actually how about taking the handle of cheap vodka that I had just bought and drinking it out of a water bottle in the school library while I skipped another class. My transcript at that point was like some kind of bizarre version. I didn’t even have F’s, just row after row of FX’s that meant I didn’t even fail because I had never shown up to begin with.
Buying alcohol became a game of sorts for me, or rather, an exercise in prolonged, self-destruction. Initially, I tried to retain a small semblance of dignity. I would frequent several different shops that specialized in peddling the last legal drug. I would try to project an image of the hard partying but totally in control college student. I would imagine that I was just ever so busy and it was just more convenient to buy booze early in the day.
I had a running list of reason as to why I was buying liquor so early on a daily basis:
“End of the semester party,” I would tell clerks who couldn’t care less about my self-imposed descent into complete desolation.
“East coast mardi gras,” was always a good one. Most people in Maryland only have a vague notion of when Mardi Gras actually takes place, so it was easy to stretch carnival season to unheard of lengths.
“Oh, you didn’t know that there’s a raging ground hog day party every year?” This usually fell on deaf ears because by the time I would trot it out people could see what I was doing no matter how opaque my delusions were. The thing about lying is that you eventually get so used to it, so it just becomes another aspect of your life. I never actually believed my own lies, I’m not crazy. However, I started to view my life as having two parallel timelines. The first was the true one. I had a life that I could only get rid of. The second one was the imaginary one that I tried to project outwardly to anyone I came into contact with. I knew I was lying but it was just easier than facing the mounting consequences of my double life.
The cashiers never questioned me, why would they? Their fake, Colgate smiles never faltered, never once revealing their silent judgments as I scurried out the door clutching a bottle in a brown paper bag. They had already seen this movie too many times before. I was the idiot who thought that he was the first person to ever discover the bottomless depths of self-destruction.
People eventually noticed of course, I was sloppy and didn’t really care all that much about hiding my problem. “Why don’t you just stop?” was something I heard constantly. The truth is I didn’t want to stop. I didn’t want clarity and lucidity and I certainly didn’t want to accept responsibility for my actions. I just wanted that murky fog to roll in and shield me from the world. I was a grown man who couldn’t let go of his security blanket. I lived that way for a long time.
The Leftovers
I broke my own heart. There’s really no other way to put it. I didn’t want to break up and I wasn’t really dumped. Well I was but it was the logical outcome of my own illogical behavior. Unbeknownst to myself I had, years ago, set down a path that could ultimately lead to only one inevitable conclusion: self implosion. I was like the child who keeps knocking over his towers of blocks that he had painstakingly built up. The child cries when the blocks fall down even though he has done it himself. It’s like I had set myself on fire and was using gasoline to put it out.
Looking back now, through a haze of painful memories and too many regrets to count, I can see the solution to all of our problems so clearly now. Were probably doomed from the start. I was juggling problems as if they were chainsaws. I refused to address a single one while fervently adding more to the cycle. I can’t blame him for leaving me; I would’ve left me too. He probably deserves an award for staying as long as he did. I can still hear the last words I spoke to him, hanging dead in the air, like a weather balloon caught on some power lines.
“What am I, if I can’t be yours?”
He couldn’t answer that. In the interest of self-preservation he quickly distanced himself. I was left trying to build a life out of the smoldering ruins of a relationship that I had seemingly, purposely driven into the ground. I have always been my own worst enemy and I sabotaged this relationship like so many other opportunities throughout my life. I spent weeks lamenting the dissolution of a love that meant more to me than the very breath in my lungs. He was supposed to save me, but I was just too far-gone.
I began to self medicate. Drinking, which was already a priority, completely took over my life. Let me tell you, from first hand experience, there is nothing more unattractive than a fully grown man child with a drinking problem that’s getting much, much worse before it gets better. I can think of nothing more depressing than being the first customer at the liquor store. Actually how about taking the handle of cheap vodka that I had just bought and drinking it out of a water bottle in the school library while I skipped another class. My transcript at that point was like some kind of bizarre version. I didn’t even have F’s, just row after row of FX’s that meant I didn’t even fail because I had never shown up to begin with.
Buying alcohol became a game of sorts for me, or rather, an exercise in prolonged, self-destruction. Initially, I tried to retain a small semblance of dignity. I would frequent several different shops that specialized in peddling the last legal drug. I would try to project an image of the hard partying but totally in control college student. I would imagine that I was just ever so busy and it was just more convenient to buy booze early in the day.
I had a running list of reason as to why I was buying liquor so early on a daily basis:
“End of the semester party,” I would tell clerks who couldn’t care less about my self-imposed descent into complete desolation.
“East coast mardi gras,” was always a good one. Most people in Maryland only have a vague notion of when Mardi Gras actually takes place, so it was easy to stretch carnival season to unheard of lengths.
“Oh, you didn’t know that there’s a raging ground hog day party every year?” This usually fell on deaf ears because by the time I would trot it out people could see what I was doing no matter how opaque my delusions were. The thing about lying is that you eventually get so used to it, so it just becomes another aspect of your life. I never actually believed my own lies, I’m not crazy. However, I started to view my life as having two parallel timelines. The first was the true one. I had a life that I could only get rid of. The second one was the imaginary one that I tried to project outwardly to anyone I came into contact with. I knew I was lying but it was just easier than facing the mounting consequences of my double life.
The cashiers never questioned me, why would they? Their fake, Colgate smiles never faltered, never once revealing their silent judgments as I scurried out the door clutching a bottle in a brown paper bag. They had already seen this movie too many times before. I was the idiot who thought that he was the first person to ever discover the bottomless depths of self-destruction.
People eventually noticed of course, I was sloppy and didn’t really care all that much about hiding my problem. “Why don’t you just stop?” was something I heard constantly. The truth is I didn’t want to stop. I didn’t want clarity and lucidity and I certainly didn’t want to accept responsibility for my actions. I just wanted that murky fog to roll in and shield me from the world. I was a grown man who couldn’t let go of his security blanket. I lived that way for a long time.
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