October 2002 Archives
October 26, 2002
I AM NEW HERE
This is my first blog entry. I haven’t used a blog before, but I spend 98% of my waking life bored out of my mind, and I figured blogging was the perfect complement to utter boredom. I could be wrong, and if I am, I’ll forget about this whole thing roughly three days from now.
Posted by Stan on October 26, 2002 9:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Random Musings
I Am Incredibly Responsible
Since the beginning of the semester, I have amassed (at last count) 132 pages from three different textbooks for single class, the History of Africa from 1885-present. Guess how many pages I’ve read since the beginning of the semester? My rough estimate is zero. I haven’t cracked a single goddamn book, and I’m starting to actually feel kinda bad about it. This complete lack of reading any actual assignments coupled with the fact that I’ve shown up for maybe five out of the ten class sessions. This is grossly insubordinate, and if the syllabus hadn’t contained the oh-so-magical phrase “more than three absences may lower your participation grade” as opposed to the normal Columbia standard of “IF YOU MISS MORE THAN THREE CLASSES YOU WILL BE TAKEN TO THE BASEMENT OF THE WABASH CENTER AND DROWNED IN A POOL OF YOUR OWN PUS-FILLED BLOOD,” I probably wouldn’t have missed so much class. But, come on, I can’t even understand what the prof is saying anyway. She has a heavy Liberian accent, and I just sort of sit there drooling and wondering what the hell is going on. Maybe it’d help if I read at least one assignment.
Oh, and speaking of the assignments — since that was at one time the purpose of writing this entry — I planned on getting completely (all right, partially) caught up this weekend, since I quit my fucking bullshit job and my not-girlfriend hates me again, so I have nothing else to do but homework. But it turns out I bought the wrong book. Granted, I have three textbooks, but the bulk of the reading came from the one that I rather inconveniently did not buy. Instead, I have this big fat worthless book that was on the shelf marked with my course number, mind you, but the syllabus says we’re not supposed to buy it — we’ll just be getting intermittent handouts from it over the course of the semester. Now I’m stuck with a big fat semi-useless book, and I’ll only get a quarter of its value during buy-back. I hate college.
So, shit, maybe I should have checked that out prior to my weekly departure from campus on Wednesday night, so maybe I could have purchased the book before going away for the weekend. Of course, I’m not that smart, nor am I ambitious enough to wander all the way into Chicago to buy one textbook. I can just as easily put it off until next week.
It’s Saturday night right now, and I’ve got a few other assignments on tap for Monday, and I’ve started approximately none of them. Fuck, I haven’t even looked at the Fiction Writing syllabus to see what I’m supposed to do for Tuesday. I had also planned on catching up on the reading assignments in that class during this weekend, but of course not. I don’t have the book for that class, either.
And then there’s Aesthetics of Cinema, which I slept through last week. I have to write a paper on mise-en-scène, but I think I’ll be fine if I just wing it by B.S.-ing a paper on how the bowling in The Big Lebowski is a metaphor for the characters, and how that’s backed up by the way the bowling is photographed (by the sp00-worthy Roger Deakins) throughout the film. The prof almost creamed himself when describing my first paper, which was a paper on why Hannah and Her Sisters is the best fucking film in the history of cinema, and that was something I B.S.-ed in the half hour before leaving for class.
And the last thing I need to do is easy as smoking grain alcohol. Writing For Television, my least demanding and therefore favorite class, has required me to come up with two or three A/B stories for the script I plan to write. I think I’m going to write for Scrubs, since I’m only allowed to write for a 30-minute show, but all that medical jargon is hard to B.S. Maybe I’ll just say “Fuck that shit” and write an episode of Ed. Or maybe Push, Nevada, even though it was canceled, because with that show, I don’t even have to make any actual sense. Thank God for Ben Affleck smoking a phat barrel o’ crack and then saying, “Hey, why not do a really bad rip-off of Twin Peaks?” And, of course, I was forced to watch every episode because it had the ultra-cool Melora Walters and the ultra-hot Liz Vassey (of the unfortunately canceled live-action The Tick). I gotta admit, it started to grow on me around the fifth episode. I almost am sad it got cancelled.
Have I digressed again? I guess so. In summary: I don’t do my homework because I’m too busy masturbating during Push, Nevada.
Posted by Stan on October 26, 2002 10:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | School Rants
October 31, 2002
An Anniversary of Pain
New Tori Amos = rocks
A reconciliation of sorts (if there was ever reconciling necessary…I’m still not sure, but then again I’m left in the dark about 98% of what happens in my life) with my not-girlfriend = a happy event that has perhaps fittingly occurred on Halloween
Five hours of Buffy today = severely gg
Three bags of leftover Kit-Kats (yeah, trick-or-treating isn’t exactly over, but I will be sure there are three bags left) = fattening, but who cares other than my jeans?
Very little homework this weekend = yay
No job = no money, but still, yay
Halfway through The Bluest Eye = Jesus Christ, I can’t take another page, but it’s better than being a quarter of the way through
I have time to write again (and I ain’t talking about shitty assignments) = neat-o
That about sums up the day. This evening shall be a festival of the written word, as I plan to finish The Bluest Eye tonight, and I will follow that up by a session of rewriting the story bible for a TV series that’ll never happen that I occasionally write when I’m bored or dreamy or just have nothing else to write but still need to get something down on paper.
Oh wait, the thing that got me back on that series idea is that I’m ingratiating myself upon my Writing for Television professor, and she’s got a disturbing excess of contacts for television in the area and in Los Angeles and in New York. So far, she’s my most exploitable contact, and fortunately, she seems to have some sort of horrible crush on me (or maybe it’s my writing…), so hopefully I can use that to my advantage in a patently non-sexual way. I’ve already got enough sexing up to do, thanks to an early-morning call from Not-Girlfriend that irritated me until she, at the goading of a friend I didn’t even know she knew, apologized for things that she didn’t even do just so I would feel less paranoid (did I address my paranoia in another entry? I don’t remember). Isn’t that sweet? She knows just how to screw with my head to make me normal, or at least as close as I come to that.
Plus, she’s really hot.
Posted by Stan on October 31, 2002 6:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Random Musings
October 30, 2002
Believing You Can Fly at Age 15
I did the ol’ shuffle thing on iTunes today and a song I haven’t listened to in a long, long time came up: Straight No Chaser’s cover of that R. Kelly song “I Believe I Can Fly.” It reminded me of the semi-infamous second debate in my public speaking class last semester, after the extremely infamous first debate got so out of hand that it was cancelled and we started from scratch with a completely new topic.
The new topic: Should radio stations stop playing R. Kelly’s music in light of allegations of many, many, many counts of statutory rape, including one videotaped and several verified accounts from purported “victims?” (I don’t really believe any of these girls were guilty of statutory rape; they knew exactly what they were doing. They just wanted to screw a hunka-hunka-celebrity manbeef, and he didn’t have any particular aversion or moral qualms with the idea of screwing underage girls.) It was a good topic, I thought, as it had been in the news for several days and Kelly is somewhat of a local celebrity. Based on the actual question posed for the debate, which concerned radio stations not playing his music because of allegations, I decided to join the team that was against radio stations doing this.
I don’t like R. Kelly’s music, and he is guilty (of that I am certain), but in theory, we live in a society in which people are innocent until proven guilty. Granted, this theory does not necessarily translate in practice, especially when the accused is a celebrity and the news media has nothing better to do than speculate on his guilt or innocence, and it’s always juicier to focus on the guilt. That’s beside the point, though. The point is that it’s improper for a radio station to quit playing his music simply because he was accused of a crime. If he went to jail, hell yeah, take him off the air. He has no place earning residuals or selling albums from a prison cell. And even if they took him off the air on the grounds of, “Hey, he’s controversial, and we’re losing listeners — that is bad medicine,” but they shouldn’t have done it simply because oh my, he’s all for family values, but here he is supposedly assblasting some fifteen-year-old “dancer” on video.
So the groups divided and planned debate strategies. Granted, this is Columbia College in Chicago’s beautifully grimy South Loop, so there wasn’t really enough combined brainpower in either group to screw in a light bulb, but we tried anyway. But the problem with both group’s strategy was that they were woefully offtopic. The people in our group kept insisting that he’s innocent — there’s no way he did it! — with a list of reasons proving said innocence that bordered on farce. As soon as the first shrill African-American girl stood up and said, “I saw that video on the Internet, and there ain’t no way he’s dumb enough to look right at the camera if he’s videotaping it,” I decided to just not speak during the course of the debate.
The opposing viewpoint was no better: mostly, they concentrated on the fact that R. Kelly’s music sucked. “Yeah, he should be taken off the radio,” they said (and here I’m paraphrasing for the sake of coherency), “because his albums suck. He sucks. He is like crap. Ban him because he sucks, not because he rapes little girls.”
Shortly after the first guy stood up and said, flat out, that R. Kelly sucks, the debate broke down. Not that there was ever much structure to begin with, but it turned from a semi-formal debate into something out of Billy Jack: a bunch of incoherent potheads with nonsense arguments trying to shout down a bunch of misinformed fans with a heavy slant toward fictional innocence.
Don, the professor, was baffled. He tried a few times to settle down the riled group, but to no avail. I did not take part, and a few others also abstained. We all sort of looked from one person to another for reassurance. I could read in the others’ eyes that they were glad that at least a few semi-sane people were in the class. Finally, I looked over at Don, who looked at me with a longing that I would have assumed was lust if I hadn’t been so sure at the time that he wanted me to just stand up and shut the class the hell up. Don liked me because I was the only person in the class articulate enough to bore the class with the proceedings of the Microsoft antitrust case while somehow entertaining the three smart kids in the class (and Don himself).
And all that with no outline!
So I stood up and started talking. In high school, one of the things I learned was how to be fucking loud. So I was fucking loud, louder than any of the screeching R. Kelly fans or whiny, unbathed emo kids (no offense, Jeff), when I said, “R. Kelly is guilty.”
This was enough to shut everyone up. They all sort of looked at me. The people on my team are dumbfounded — how could I turn on them like this? The people on the other side were equally dumbfounded — why was I so brazenly chastising the man I was supposed to support? One of the smart kids, a granola-eating, hemp-loving (but, for once, not because of the nauseating amount of pot she smokes!) girl named Sarah, smiled. I didn’t like her very much, even though she was smart, but at that second, I contemplated jumping over a row of desks, pinning her to the ground, and making wild, passionate love to her. Something about that smile and those emo glasses and the stylish black hair. Then again, I have similar fantasies about many other women at least seven times a day, so maybe this instance wasn’t special enough to document…
I continued to speak, and said something like this: “R. Kelly is guilty, of that I am certain. I don’t think he should go to jail or pay a big fine or become a horrible blight on society. I firmly believe that the girls he had sex with were not coerced in any way — in fact, I believe they coerced him, not the other way around. But that is beside the point.
“Also, I hate R. Kelly’s music. I can’t stand any it. If I hear one of his songs on the radio, I change the station. The sound of his voice makes me want to plow into oncoming traffic, and I think it should be avoided at all costs. But that, too, is beside the point.
“The reason for this debate was to discuss whether or not radio stations should stop playing his music solely because of these allegations. They shouldn’t. It is unfair to him, his record label, and the American public, in the off-chance that he is somehow found not guilty and can put this whole thing behind him. But this debate is not about his merits as a quote-unquote ‘musician’ or whether or not these videos were doctored like the Zapruder film or faked like the moon landing. So if you guys can’t stick to the topic and have a civilized debate, why are we even taking this class? Other than to fulfill the requirement?”
Of course, I’m nowhere near this articulate, so just imagine the above with many more pauses and “ums” and stammers as I attempt to scan my brain and find the words I’m looking for.
But that thing about the Zapruder film or the faked moon landing — that was the money shot. I had the whole thing planned around that as I sat and listened to them all bitch. That was probably the only part that I didn’t stammer on.
Nobody applauded or anything. I just sat back down, and everybody was silenced. I wasn’t grandstanding or anything. Really, the only thing I wanted was for them to shut the fuck up. And to tell my conspiracy theory joke, which only Don and Sarah and Mike got.
In retrospect, this story isn’t nearly as entertaining as I thought it’d be. But it sure as hell is long, so I’m gonna post it anyway, just to torment Jeff. And I’m not even going to end it with some kind of sex pun or gay joke, so he’ll just waste his time.
Posted by Stan on October 30, 2002 9:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (34) | Classic Issues, Random Musings
October 29, 2002
What the Fuck Is WTF?
Fiction Writing is the biggest waste of time I’ve ever encountered. Four hours of worthless “activities” designed to improve writing skills. I’m not saying I don’t need help improving my writing skills, but these exercises don’t work. Well, they don’t with me. The other people in class seem to be responding to it quite well, but then again, the other people in class are part of the problem. The entire class is a nightmare cross-section of everything I hate about art school students.
Two weeks ago, the professor made the unfortunate mistake of saying, “There is no censorship in this class — say whatever you want, and we’ll deal.” That’s the kind of statement you don’t want to say to a guy like me. I get my jollies by relentlessly mocking everything around me until nothing is left standing, or if it is standing, it’s at least crying.
Then, after class, she pulled me aside and said this: “I would appreciate it if you were more participatory.” I gotta say I hate the fact that she constructed that sentence so poorly just so she could use the word “participatory.” I mean, my God, just say, “Hey, you don’t talk enough.” “Hey, participate more.” But, no, she’s gotta add the syllables for no particular reason. I wouldn’t harass people about this type of thing normally, but this woman has it coming. For one thing, she’s a writing teacher. For another, I could just tell that she was like, “I want to use the word ‘participatory’ in a sentence to make myself look smart!” And for yet another, I just don’t like her.
She’s like the fat kid at school. You know the guy. He’s a big fat tub of shit, but that’s not a big deal. Ordinarily, you wouldn’t make fun of this guy just for being fat. But the thing is, he’s a big asshole. And on top of that, he’s a big dumb know-it-all asshole. And if there’s anything worse than a know-it-all, it’s a know-nothing know-it-all. So you make fun of him. You could make fun of him for being an asshole, you could make fun of him for being dumb, you could make fun of him for being a know-it-all — but fuck it, fat jokes are easier. Which is a long way of saying that I’m gonna make fun of this prof’s diction quite a bit, but the subtext will always be, “God, what a damn bitch.”
At any rate…here’s why I hadn’t actually willingly participated since the first session: when we first start class, we sit in a big semi-circle around the prof, and we do what she calls “Recall.” We sit there, attempting with all our might to recall images or anything from the previous session, and we spew it out in a stream-of-consciousness style, as if we are the author writing it. Example: instead of saying, “I remember the part of that letter where Tolstoy realizes his wife has turned into a small porcelain doll,” you would say, “A man is laying in bed, and he’s waiting for his wife to finish getting ready, and she’s behind this Chinese screen undressing, and when she comes out from behind the screen, she’s actually a two-foot-tall porcelain doll. The man says, ‘Are you porcelain?’ She responds, ‘Yes, I am porcelain,’ to which the man says, ‘That’s fucked up.’” I can’t be the only person who feels that an exercise like this is one of pure and horrible torture.
After the nifty “Recall” session, we start to do reading that pertain to the current subject. For example, today’s subject was folk tales, so we read a series of disturbing and hilarious folk tales about people who spend the majority of their time chillin’ like a villain with the Grim Rizzeaper. Previous topics included letter-writing (which contained that fucked up Tolstoy/porcelain doll thing), journal-writing, and dreams. This we do for another hour or hour and a half. Then, we get a brief break.
When class resumes a horribly short 10 minutes later, we do this thing that doesn’t really have a name, but I’ll refer to it as “Gimme a Word.” The premise of “Gimme a Word” is simple: you say a word. And then we sit there and supposedly imagine whatever we see for the word, and then the next person says a word. We go around a room maybe twice, and then she has us think of a place where our word(s) would be comfortable (?). Then we name an object from the place. Then we name a verb not associated with the object we previously named. Then she hones in on what we as a class decide is the most interesting verb (?!!) and she badgers that student until he or she (it’s usually a he for some reason, though) comes up with a cohesive, detailed description of the place and the character(s) in the place.
When that torture is over, we do a little bit of actual writing. And I mean very little. She gives us maybe three or four minutes for actual writing. I’d much prefer a four-hour class in which maybe two or three hours were actually devoted to writing and not devoted to the Fiction Writing department thrusting its “supremely effective writing process” on the students. After we wisk through actual writing, we then blast through reading what we wrote. Of course, by this time we’ve wasted so much time with “Recall” and “Gimme a Word” that we have to rush, and most people end up reading maybe a few sentences of what they wrote. Me, I generally don’t write more than a few sentences. Jesus, I can’t come up with anything interesting and actually write it down in such a short amount of time. Then again, maybe if their forced writing process worked with the way I write, I might have better luck.
So after we speed through reading, we do another horribly rushed “Recall” session and invariably get out of class late, which gets me all in a tizzy because I have a train to catch.
Anyway, so the first week was cool because we didn’t do much with the whole “Recall” bullshit…it was mostly just getting acquainted with the whole thing. But ever since then, I’ve tried my hardest to simply not do it. Finally, two weeks ago, I just stopped. I kept saying, “I have nothing to say,” every time she would call on me. She was fuming, and I was amused with myself. As I said, she pulled me aside after class and was like, “I would appreciate it if you were more participatory.” I would have made a typical big deal about it, but like I said, train to catch, so I was just like, “Uh, yeah, okay,” and I bolted.
Now, I was kinda frustrated by this. I wasn’t able to make a big scene. What a bummer. But then I cooked a plot that I’m sure only I find hilarious. The prof told me before I left that she would be calling on me first thing for “Recall” next week. So, on the train ride home, I was like, “What if I didn’t show up?” And then I laughed out loud. I can’t believe I find such dumb shit amusing, but even now, I’ve got this big dopey grin on my face, still admiring my own comic genius.
Anyway, this week I was back, and since believe it or not I do need to get an A in this class, so I had my fun and it was time to get down to business. I had finally bought one of the assigned books ? a really shitty novel called The Bluest Eye ? yesterday, and I had just started to read it on the train ride to school. I tried to pick out some nice imagery and bullshit for “Recall,” which despite my better judgement, I needed to do. Participation is 20% of the grade, so if I keep my fucking mouth shut the whole semester, I’m not gonna get my A.
This book is the worst thing I have ever read, and I’ve purposely read some very, very bad swords-and-sorcery novels. I can sum it up in two words: pretentious bullshit. Right up the prof’s alley, of course. But, man, I’m glad it’s a fast read, because it’s such a load of ass, I can’t take it for much longer.
I stopped at Borders to buy the new Tori disc, and I ended up being about 40 minutes early to class, so I continued to read. I got about a quarter of the way through it, and ugh. But I had some stuff for “Recall.” And, truth be told, I transformed from the silent guy with the brooding and the loathing of every word that came out of anybody’s mouth to my semi-normal, jovial self in order to save my participation grade. And don’t think it doesn’t make me sick.
I have a horrible, hour-long one-on-one conference with her in a couple weeks. I think I’m going to address some of my grievances, and if she doesn’t stab me to death, maybe things in that class will go a little better. But the long and short of it is that as soon as this class is over, I’m done with the Fiction Writing department 4-evar.
Posted by Stan on October 29, 2002 11:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | School Rants
October 27, 2002
MI FAMILIA LOCA Y TAMBIÉN ESTOY VIVIENDO LA VIDA LOCA!@!
Last night was one of the more bizarre experiences of my life. My aunt recently moved back her from San Francisco with her three demon spawn children. After the Chicago sect of the family abandoned the concept of “family parties,” save for important occasions like graduations and, of course, an annual Christmas party, this aunt comes back and decides, “HELO I ARE HAVING DAUGHTER WHO SIXTEEN OF YEARS SO LET PARTY.” And with that, a group of busy people, not used to having family parties, attempted to clear their Saturday night to celebrate the sweet sixteen of a child who for all intents and purposes should have been killed years ago. I guess in a way the fact that she is still alive and has not been admitted to a rehab clinic, an STD clinic, or an insane asylum is an important milestone worthy of celebration.
I could have gotten out of the party. More to the point, I should have gotten out of the party. Nobody knew I quit my job, so I could have used that as an excuse. Or, since my mom is a terrible liar, I could have stayed home to do all the homework I need to catch up on. If we ignore the fact that I wouldn’t have actually been catching up on said homework, it wouldn’t have been a lie.
The party itself wasn’t particularly bizarre. In fact, it was exactly what I expected — the demon spawn summoned matrons of the damned for some sort of sacrificial ceremony upstairs that involved a great deal of screaming, thudding, and Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4. After they drank virgin’s blood (they must have sent away for it) from novelty-sized wine goblets, we settled in for presents and cake, and we got the hell out of there as soon as cake was done. The only highlight was that I got to see the twins, who are so much fun they make me want to puke. I’ve never been more entertained by the idea of hitting balloons and climbing down stairs.
The bizarreness actually came somewhere in the middle of the party, when I was sitting watching one of the demons take possession of an electronic soul and force him to weave around Alcatraz on a skateboard, and I overheard two of my aunts:
Aunt Frick: …yeah, it’s his 21st birthday, but his mother says he won’t drink. They’re toasting with 7-Up.
Aunt Frack: Oh really?
By gum, they were talking about me. And I could hear them! Excuse the frank urban patois, but what the dilly-yo? It was strange that we were virtually in the same room, and yet they were talking about me like I didn’t even exist. I was also somewhat humiliated by the implications of the “toasting with 7-Up” line — not only was it inaccurate, but it made me sound like an autistic 4-year-old girl.
So then dinnertime rolled around, and since they were sitting at The Table™ (there was only one, which I found odd considering the large amount of people in attendance), I ended up sitting in the general vicinity of them. Aunt Frick asked me, “So, after you turn 21, what do you say to going out for margaritas with me and Aunt Frack?” To which I tersely responded, “No, I don’t think so.”
I felt like I was being sabotaged for some inexplicable reason. Then again, my paranoia occasionally (read: on an hourly basis) gets the better of me. It was like they were trying to goad me into some sort of ridiculous fight about the merits of getting all liquored up versus staying sober, or “straight-edge,” as they call it in a comical section of the seamy punk subculture. Maybe I’m just too used to college, where arguments like that run rampant, and I am generally on the defensive because I’m a minority. I don’t even fit in with the straight-edge kids because they’re all defined by their conscious effort to not drink or use drugs, whereas it was just a decision that I made and decided to stick to. But I don’t walk around making a big deal about it, nor do I write songs how cool I am because of it or get my ass kicked attempting to beat the hell out of somebody who does drink and use drugs.
Granted, there was a time when this did define me, but I’ve since gained the more enlightened perspective of not really giving a shit. That doesn’t mean I want to hear everybody’s hi-larious stories of getting trashed, because they’re generally the type of stories where you have to be there, and be drunk, in order to even vaguely find them amusing. Or maybe that’s just me.
So I refined my response to Aunt Frick, who was staring at me with a sort of slack-jawed befuddlement. She knew I was going to say no, and I knew she knew I was going to say no, but my response did leave just a bit to be desired. I said, “I’m not a drinker. It’s just not my cup of tea. I’ll go with you, though, and hang out and get coffee or something.” They didn’t seem to like that idea. Apparently it was a lot more fun when my sister turned 21, because she apparently enjoyed getting loaded on Aunt Frick’s dime. Which is not cool. I don’t understand why my cautious aversion to my genetic predisposition towards alcoholism (which is streaming through the horrible genes on both sides of my family; thanks a lot, Ireland) has become a liability.
Maybe Jive is right. I need to get hammered, have some “accidental” sweaty man sex, and just get it all out of my system. Shake out the sillies, as it were, and then be done with it. Hrm…on second though, maybe that’s not the best idea, either. I can take the tearing of the anal tissue, but it’s the profuse, unending bleeding that is certain to become problematic. They don’t make maxi pads for the ass.
Posted by Stan on October 27, 2002 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Family: The Horror…
