Get crap done.

I'm back home now. Vacations are over. Time to work.

Except I have no work to do. I need a hobby, after a while I just can't sleep anymore. Maybe I will take a class at the KIA. I have to be told to do something or I will never complete it.


Holidays, holidays... I don't care what all you Scrooges say, I still enjoy them. Are they as fun as when I was seven? No, but neither is playing with Cabbage Patch dolls or watching Power Rangers. But now I get to drink beer, see my family, get cooking supplies (better than an Easy-Bake Oven), see all my friends, LEAVE when I am over it, and snuggle up with a pretty alright dude. And I didn't have to work or go to school. Works for me. Also, from now on my room is to be referred to as 'The Luxury Suite.' Bed, bedding, pillows, furniture, rug, lamps.. nothing is what I owned a year ago. I know how to work this holiday/birthday thing, and that means so snazzy digs.

Alright, I suppose I should be going and pretending to do other things. I think Erica's home, so that probably means drink wine.


toothpastefordinner.com

Maybe it's my punishment for being so angry all the time..

Sarah's apartment got broken into this weekend.

Fuuuuuuuuuck.


I know I shouldn't complain. I know it wasn't my house. I wasn't made to feel violated in the same way, her insurance company is covering it, and for these reasons I feel a combination of relief and guilt. But that computer was my house. It's been with my longer than any apartment, anything I have had and discarded over the last few years. My music, my pictures, my journals, my essays, all gone. All there for someone else to see, but never again for me. They took it to Best Buy to get everything they needed to make it their own. The guy at Geek Squad knew it was stolen, but couldn't do anything without losing his job. He contacted me later, found me on Myspace, after the man with my Mac was gone. He asked me for anonymity. Best Buy has too many privacy laws.

Kickin' it old school.

I'm sitting in the "Learning Resource Center" at KCC. In other words, a library with some computers in it. What was it called in high school? The media lab or technology center or something. I don't know why we can't just modify our definition of library a little. It is full of books.

I'm trying to study a bit for my upcoming test in World Lit. Reading over the Spark Notes for each of the ancient texts. Of course, I am slightly distracted by facebook chat. It really is the ultimate in time wasting. And what is going on around me, you may ask?

In our little triangle of computers, there are seven people. Me, a girl who is in my Comm 101 class who I can see is working on her speech for Thursday, and five idiots gathered around the third computer like it was a television in their parents' living room. Three dudes bros are doing very bad impressions of what I gather was last night's episode of Family Guy. The girls are giggling like these guys are the funniest, most clever people they have ever met. They show each other stupid videos on YouTube: headphones plugged in and turned up all the way so they can all hear. All of their phones go off constantly - not on vibrate but instead yelling out the latest rap single - and they sit around chatting over each other saying things like, "I got so hammered this weekend.. No, it's cool, I'm just in the library." The dudes wander off and one of the girls still sitting on the desk tell the other girl quite loudly how she had sex with one of them at his grandmother's house before going out and "getting shitty, hehehe." In the twenty or so triangles around us, the same scene plays out, over and over and over..

Really? REALLY? Have you no couth? No manners at all? I mean, I am not prude, and I'm not that asshole who gets angry if you come over and tell a friend hello, but this is just completely ridiculous. It's shit like this that makes me truly believe all the reports about our generation being the turd of civilized society. As I type this, three hours later, the phone of the girl in the same thing as me has gone off - and this isn't an exaggeration - at least thirty times. She is texting, but has on headphones on also, and doesn't hear it half the time. C'mon. Wouldn't vibrate benefit us both at this point? But instead, over and over, "(Bum bumbum) You came here by yoursellllllf TONIIIIIGHT..."

And that is why, for the thousandth time in my life, I am saying:
Fuck you, KCC.
Fuck all the girls with their Baby Phat coats and Pink! sweatpants, bunched up around their Ugg boots, carrying Lamb purses, talking on their phones like there is actually anyone in the world who would care if you choked.
Fuck the dude bros with their sideways hats and baby faces. Yes, I am five years older than you, and I don't give a fuck how cool you are.
Fuck all you fat assholes who walk around all lopsided because you can't easily reach your fatass arms around your fatass body to your rolly backpack, then take the elevator up one floor and look at me like you are going to eat me for my ability to take the stairs.
Fuck the lazy library staff who don't say anything when it's as loud in here as it is in the lounge.
Fuck all the couples, walking around entwined in each other and making out. It was gross in high school, and it's disgusting in college.
Fuck all the athletes, in your Bruin gear, going to college for free because you can play basketball at a CC level. Athletics/athletic scholarships at community colleges are the biggest waste of tax dollars and my tuition that it makes me shake with anger.
Fuck whoever decided a tiny iceberg salad should cost $4.50.
Fuck all the art students who walk around like this is the hub of modern creativity and they are the next Andy Warhol/Thomas Kinkade.
Fuck everyone who gets in a shouting match/physical fight IN COLLEGE! Grow the fuck up!!
Fuck every moron in all the Soci/Poli Sci classes I have ever taken, who say crime, poverty, illiteracy, etc, are personal problems that deserve no government aid.
But seriously, fuck rolly backpacks.

But here is something I have never been able to say before: Four more days here, and I am DONE! Good Riddance, Kellogg Community College. Congratulations on being the inner city high school of Michigan colleges.

Becoming a Nun

On cold days
it is easy to be reasonable,
to button the mouth against kisses,
dust the breasts
with talcum powder
& forget
the red pulp meat
of the heart.

On those days
it beats
like a digital clock--
not a beat at all
but a steady whirring
chilly as green neon,
luminous as numerals in the dark,
cool as electricity.

& I think:
I can live without it all--
love with its blood pump,
sex with its messy hungers,
men with their peacock strutting,
their silly sexual baggage,
their wet tongues in my ear
& their words like little sugar suckers
with sour centers.

On such days
I am zipped in my body suit,
I am wearing seven league red suede boots,
I am marching over the cobblestones
as if they were the heads of men,

& I am happy
as a seven-year-old virgin
holding Daddy's hand.

Don't touch.
Don't try to tempt me with your ripe persimmons.
Don't threaten me with your volcano.
The sky is clearer when I'm not in heat,
& the poems
are colder.

--Erica Jong

of course.


Hmmmmmmm.... I have been listening to way to much Bright Eyes' Lifted

I don't believe in an interventionist God..

It's funny how little things can come along and keep you from having a major breakdown. School has been driving me nuts, relationships have me swimming, and finances have me drowning, but little things happen that keep me going. I don't believe in some kind of intervening force; too many bad things happen that people can't handle. Maybe it is just that we notice the little things more when we are under stress, and that is why they seem so extraordinary. Either way I know enough to be grateful for them.
A glass of wine with friends.
An unexpected kiss on the forehead, standing in my candlelit kitchen.
A really nice table that tells you how great you are doing.
This morning I was walking out of class, and this nursing student calls out my name (what is his?). I waited, curious, as he caught up to me. "Hey," he says as he approaches, "I just wanted to tell you that I've shown that list you gave out to like everyone I know."
I'm surprised. Last week when I gave a speech on organic foods and how they can reduce your carbon footprint, not only did I get a bad grade (too persuasive, not informative), but I had to practically force a handful of kids to take the half page handouts I had made on the cleanest and dirtiest non-organic foods (even my professor refused one). I went home with about thirty of them still in my backpack. "Wow, really?" I smile at him, "That's really awesome!"
"Yeah," he said, nodding, "Like you said, it's just really easy tool. I just wanted to tell you I've been using it, and it's really helpful. I've always wondered about that kind of stuff. It was one of the only speeches that was actually interesting."
I probably looked like a grinning moron staring back at him while he was talking. I shook my head to make myself speak. "You don't know how nice that is to hear," I say, "I really thought I was annoying people. Thanks."
He smiles back at me, like he understands what I am not saying, then touches my shoulder as he passes behind me and heads in the other direction. His touch feels slightly heavy and warm, tangible even after it is gone.
---


But I know, darling, that you do
But if I did I would kneel down and ask Him
Not to intervene when it came to you
Not to touch a hair on your head
To leave you as you are
And if He felt He had to direct you
Then direct you into my arms

Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms

When it rains, it snows.

Winter sets in and drowns me in it's darkness. I sleep in too late and then it gets dark before I have gotten started. When I get up early the crisp, bright cold is lonely and I desperately want something to warm me up. I'm constantly reaching out. Just put your arms around me and we'll watch the sun come up, looking distant and unimpressed. Then we'll sleep for days and days and days and it will be sunny the whole time.
I
I
I
I
Me
Me
Me.




(Everyone I know is getting all weird and I'm getting all weird.)

Show me all the rules, girl.

I just want to belong.