It's About Style

Tentatively assumed my Copy Chief duties at the Lawrentian earlier tonight. I have to resist the urge to be heavy-handed, as I've been pushing the limits already with my rampart paragraph-making.

I'm used to blog paragraphs. So small. Micro-nonfiction.

I'd like to think that this is an old editor's trick, testing the writers on the first day to see who's touchy. How cunning.

(Representative Man, the new Editor-and-Chief (and former Copy Chief) as of this term, is definitely not touchy.)

Well, I'm certainly not that clever or calculating, though I aspire to be. I just don't quite understand my job quite yet.

Killing Every Spider In Sight, Of Course

Got together at Jinx's house last night for a few hours of moderately pleasant small-group conversation marred only/primarily by the recurrence of bestiality as a conversation topic.

Neither Parallel, Nor Perpendicular

Watched Indian Jones and the Last Crusade tonight, with group, after some tandem video gaming with Jonas.

(I'm still working on Morrowind, which after 30+ hours has devolved into random fetch quests, while he's started the beautiful Beyond Good and Evil. Thank goodness for multiple televisions.)

The movie was good, although I didn't correctly remember a few lines Graham and I have been (mis-)quoting for years. We've said "got lost in your own library, eh?" almost as often as "let's roll."

Maybe this is a sign that I need to be more original. I do hate easy jokes, and despise myself for making them. And the others? Well, I'm a little easier on the others.

I fell into the old rhythm a bit while I was around my little brother during break, but I think I've been good about avoiding overt Simpsons references and the like while at school.

Though I will make jokes that are obvious and unfunny on occasion just because they're there, right there, and everyone knows it. Jonas, at least, seems to understand the temptation. He's thrown a good-natured curse my way after certain exceptional duds.

Well, that sort-of joking is different. Ironic. And less habit-forming than recycled humor.

Gads, when did I decide to be "jokey"? I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that.

This. I need to consider it.

(These are the all-singing all-dancing antecedents on parade.)

Speaking of idiocy, I also mistook the Grail guardians for Italian blackshirts.

I was trying to convince my dad recently that I had a poor memory; Eternal Sunshine, a great movie everyone seems to have seen Saturday, only reminded me how few scenes from the past I can conjure up. And now I have proof.

I must have seen The Last Crusade a half dozen times. It's on TBS all the time, so I'm sure I've seen it within the past year.

I'm working on a conspiracy theory in which the copious amounts of ginkgo I took as a teenager have addled my mind in some way. Hoping to connect it with whoever put gum in my hair a few weeks ago. Someone is behind all this, goes the theory.

I worry that the memory thing, much like every grammatical mistake I make (I start copy editing Tuesday, by the way, and could've started tonight if I'd flaked on the movie), undermines my authority.

It's all about authority, I'm learning. Write with perfect authority, and you can do anything.

Without it, people might take you for a fool. And we'd all rather be knaves, given the choice.

And term three begins.

A Body At Rest

Acceptably entertained at present, I'm staying in the cities tonight to see Eternal Sunshine with Jenna and whoever else is willing.

The steaks I'm bringing back, safely covered by a half foot of ice, should be fine for a while. Despite near-room temperature temperatures, the ice hasn't actually melted at all in the last twelve hours, boggling my understanding of the laws of physics.

Later.

Academic Future: Locked In

Yesterday I saw the first diet advertising itself specifically as an alternative to Atkins, by the way.

So I spent an hour or two this afternoon going over Lawrence's course offerings, requirements, etc., and I came to a few disappointing conclusions:

1. My moxy notwithstanding, it's impossible for me to major in Philosophy or Linguistics at this point. I have to stick with German and English.

Yeah, that was a shock. Required classes for both majors were offered while I was abroad and will not be offered next year, so although I have the time and energy, I'm out of luck.

No more holding my potential triple-major over everyone as if it makes me better than them. This also means that Symbolic Logic (which I took because it applied to both majors) was just as useless as it felt.

2. In fact, it's impossible for me to get even a minor in Linguistics.

I was bored, I'll admit, by my Intro to Linguistics class last year, but no one can honestly expect to like all aspects of a particular discipline other than English. Like Economics, Linguistics seems really boring but has some really capital factoids. (I'm still amazed that there's a culture which conjugates verbs differently for statements of varying reliability.) It would have been a hellish major, but it's a nice minor.

3. I can minor in Philosophy or learn about poetry, but not both.

One of today's odder revelations is the concurrence of English department poetry classes and required Philosophy classes. I really do have to choose, and as much as I'd like to learn more about Yeats and Eliot, the minor is more important.

4. I'm getting cut off.

Basically, I can't take more than a set number of English courses and still get credit for them. I like English. Looking at the classes I am able to take next year, I feel that I may love English. Lawrence, of course, envies and despises this love, and this is nothing but a shallow attempt to destroy it.

Still, I now know what I'm doing all next (school) year.

Lazybones

Home, comfortably settled into an old rut.

I haven't accomplished anything, but, having only about a half hour of work to do all week, I'm not especially motivated.

I did read The Da Vinci Code, however. It's mildly interesting but pretty poorly written. In short, it seemed eerily familiar… whatever that means.

Parting Shots

Went to a local bar called the firefly last night with Jinx, Frisbee Matt (who I won't see for nine months), Carrie (who I'll see in ten minutes, because I'm driving her home) and various other legal adults for $1 rail drinks. The last of my cash is gone.

And now I've packed up the Xbox, retrieved as many dirty clothes as I could from the communal pile which stands as a symbol of my love for Jubb, and listened to that Eels b-side I don't have on the computer at home. I am ready to go.

Since I will surely die in some sort of horrible car crash (taking, thankfully, at least one innocent person with me) some summation of this term is in order.

Good term, I'll say. Went somewhat fast, though at the same time I feel like I've been living with Jubb (who leaves the music on, loud, even when he's not in the room) and Jonas (who would gladly abandon room 207 to the forces of entropy) for a lot longer than just a term.

But even if my roommates fail to reach the same level of perfection as Our Bold Hero, we've had some good times. Theme parties, epic arguments, the mutual enjoyment of electronic media, etc..

I don't feel that I've learned very much this term, which is partially my fault but also partially a realization (chilling) that there's not going to be a flipping of the switch. All the answers, academic and otherwise, will probably elude me for the rest of my life. Turning 21 certainly didn't change anything.

Have decided that I'd better learn to fake it. I assume/hope that's what everyone else is doing.

Have also decided not to stop in the cities, as I have no one's contact information now that Graham is gone. Also, I have no money. I'll probably try to hunt down some B-town people next week before I go home.

And now I'm late for Carrie's ride home. Later.

One Hour, One Test, One Dead Horse

Prove that:
If there is something which is a cube and is small,
Then there is something that is a cube and something that is small.

Prove that:
If everything is either a cube or a tetrahedron,
And something is not a cube,
Then something is a tetrahedron.

The above problems represented more than half of my Symbolic Logic final. A child could do them, and I don't expect anyone in my class to get less than a B on the test.

It was open book, open notes (and we actually did one of the above test question in class, if I'm not mistaken) and utterly shameful.

Why did my college hire such a professor? Why does he have tenure? And why, if there are reasonable answers to the last two questions, am I here at all?

To be fair, I should note that only a final this easy could have saved my grade in this class. I didn't somehow deserve such a final, however.

Bitter?

So the game Morrowind, a popular RPG for the Xbox, seems to make me stupid. True to my addictive-personality ways, I've spent most of the past few days playing that game and the surprise is not that I realize I've wasted hours of my life, but that I want to waste more.

Hundreds and hundreds more.

Soon I'll be having one of my rants about how I need to start reading and exercising and all that. I've had enough of those, so let's skip to a different rant and just take my galling failure to improve, even when it's clearly in my best interests, for granted.

I worry sometimes, begins this rant, that I'm becoming too bitter.

I certainly don't feel bitter, not usually. This, however, seems to be one of the emotions that gets ascribed to me quite often and I'm starting to consider the possibility that I am one of those "bitter people."

Well, I'm not.

Seriously though, I had a talk with the bitter little ball of bitterness inside me and we decided that I usually try to be skeptical and often go so far as to be cynical, which I'm fine with. I'm very satisfied with that, in fact.

As far as displays of bitterness go, I do worry that I attack certain people too often. At least once a week, for example, one of my roommates (I think it's usually the skinny one) seems to develop a persecution complex. Worse, I frequently attack beliefs I should—tolerant moderate that I am—probably leave alone.

I mean, it's acceptable to attack Jubb for not believing in evolution, but I should (and, for several weeks now, have) lay off attacking his religion itself. However crazy it may be.

This is where I was going to point out that fact that I don't argue with people to prove that they're stupid, that I don't get some high off of the ignorance of others, but after some deliberation I've decided that's probably not true. I don't argue out of spite or bitterness, but I'm not about to claim that I don't enjoy being right.

I do like feeling smarter than other people, Dear Reader. (And years of journaling and introspection have made me quite conscious of the underlying motives for such behavior, so—don't worry—I know what I'm "really" doing.)

What's more, you probably get the same high that I do. That guilty rush of self-righteousness. Yeah.

I suppose some attacks, which have absolutely nothing to do with bitterness in any way, should be addressed separately.

I use big five-dollar words (words like "solipsism" and "naive" have got me in trouble this term) because they fit, and because I hope that someone at my supposedly-excellent college understands them.

(Not—as Miß Sarah insinuated today—because I hope people don't know what I'm talking about.)

My infrequent attacks on bad grammar, likewise, have more to do with geekness than bitterness. It's twisted interest, not twisted rage, that impels me.

So as far as outward displays of bitterness go, I think most of the evidence against me is at least debatable. There are other flaws in my affect, plenty of them in fact, but I'm not about to own up to any bitterness at the moment.

All misconstrued, goes the blanket statement. I'm not bitter.

Of course, professed introvert that I am, what I think is naturally more important than whatever impression people seem to be getting of me.

As I said before, I don't "feel" bitter. I'm usually happy and rarely bored. I do suspect that I dislike more of my acquaintances than most functional adults, but I feel that I dislike them not out of envy or some other obviously Freudian emotion, but because they're monsters.

As far as the people I do like go, I don't begrudge them anything; that would be somewhat unhealthy. And I believe too much in personal responsibility to be bitter towards some sort of overpowering force because of any flaws in my own situation. Look how well-balanced I can be!

I have felt a bit frazzled and tense these past few weeks, I suppose, which is what has me worried about this bitterness thing. Cabin fever, Jubb's explanation, is probably the culprit.

Expect a calmer, less visibly antagonistic (and, it follows, less seemingly "bitter") Our Bold Hero next term. In three days, I'm gone.

Thinking Alike

Found an article that validates my own thoughts last year on the subject of protest lemmings.

Otherwise, there isn't much new. Had my Fiction Writing and Symbolic Logic classes for the last time, decided to take Advanced Fiction Writing spring term of my senior year.

There'll be real content here again, someday.

Late-Night Pretension

For those of you who are sick of me talking about things you don't care about, I've got a treat: someone else's writing.

Granted, you still might not care about what Joseph Epstein has to say, but it is important, and I agree with every word of it, and he is my favorite living essayist.

I still remember reading his "Confessions of a Low Roller" this summer; in fact, he's probably the only essayist whose name I know, offhand.

Christopher Hitchens, I suppose. Lance Morrow. But I don't like either of them too much. And they have that "columnist" feel to them.

O.k. That's enough of this. Sleep now.

The Aftermath

I had my forty minutes of fame today in Fiction Writing, as the class discussed "Summers in Town X," the only story I wrote this term. As the author, I was not allowed to participate until everyone was done speaking.

There were mixed reviews.

The Postmodernist had the most thorough criticism, pointing out flat characters, failed ambiguity in the third act, and a few stupid errors that undercut my authority as an author. (And, it follows, the story itself.)

The Bombastion noted the same troubling characterization (though he took issue with Sala rather than Sparkle and Bold) but praised the story's internal logic and little details.

Prof Dintenfass, always the clever and perceptive reader, insisted on the story's irony and deadpan tone, pointed out a few good sentences ("Finally, on June 28th, I totaled the Audi") to prove his point, then proceeded to criticize the piece on a conceptual level:

Were all the would-be vampire hunters just killing pale loners? Does the story leave us an option that isn't somehow dark?

That kind of thing.

Others liked it (the Tolkein contingent, for starters), others hated it, several didn't seem to get pretty obvious jokes, or the story, at all. Everyone hated the brackets, which I am desperately in love with.

Then I got to speak.

I like ambiguity, you see, and I tried to work it into that story. I tried to do a lot of things, work with a lot of themes, and I think I dropped the ball on some of them.

The satiric elements, for example, caused most of my characterization problems, but I wanted three-dimensional, dynamic characters and good satire and my cake, too.

Prof Goldgar, whose Satire class I took last fall, would say that's impossible, and I didn't prove him wrong.

But I had fun writing the story (except for the last woods scene, which was like pulling teeth) and I managed to sustain a more-or-less good tone for fifty pages, double-spaced. Someone called it a great exercise in tone.

Most heartwarming of all, someone called it original and everyone seemed to agree. Jubb and Scott Adams to the contrary, there are original thoughts in this world, and now I have had one.

I took the vampire mythology I knew, played with it, made something original, and commented on everything that had come before.

I'm sure I can find influences (that "Buffy" show I've never seen seems a likely candidate, as does Shadow of a Vampire, which I have seen), but I've combined a bunch of elements in a way no one has, to my knowledge, ever done.

How many disappearing magazines have you read about? I thought so.

So go me. I got enough criticism to drastically improve my writing style and this story, should I have world enough and time to do so.

And what praise I did get was enough to encourage me to keep banging my head against the proverbial wall. I'll end up destitute yet.

The Beforemath

So I have to work in 10 minutes, but here's the deal. Wait, that probably needs a colon. Here's the deal:

The deal is, my story is getting discussed today in Fiction Writing. There are many other things happening today, including what promises to be an epic trip into town, but the Fiction Writing thing is, as I said, the deal.

I'm a bit nervous about the story's reception. I suspect I could have written a better story, and I'm glad if people can find mistakes, because that's why I take the class, but I don't want people to think it's crap.

I want to hear that it was good, but that there were fatal mistakes on about every other page. I want one of the Literati, their pretentiousness notwithstanding, to have found a part especially hilarious. I want everyone to like the some of characters and some of the scenes, which I spent a great deal of time on.

But I want criticism. Let's just leave it at that. This story is not my baby, it's more of a nephew. Criticism is good.

It's my inability to predict reactions that bothers me, not the prospect that there will (because there will) be negative reactions.

Mission Accomplished

Went to the sexy party upstairs yesterday night in an all-denim outfit of seduction and, once there, got jolly-drunk on delicious alcohol, which was of course the plan.

Jubb mixed me a delicious drink in a large dixie cup, his version of the sex-on-a-beach. Here's the recipe:

The Busticator
3 shots vodka
2 shots peach schnapps
2 ice cubes
Fill the rest of the glass with a 50/50 orange juice and cranberry juice mix

I couldn't taste the alcohol.

Or all the alcohol, at least. I thought it had one shot, not five.

So it was a good time, though honestly I don't remember doing much of anything. Talking too much (and about myself and my writing, what's worse), taking too many pictures of the many people there.

Nothing historic or epic or embarrassing or especially interesting seems to have happened.

Unless you count scuttling around a corner Zoidberg-style, unwittingly fleeing an R.A. and the no-open-containers policy he represented. My kinesthetic sense had kicked in at that point and I was geeking out on movement, as is my wont when I've had a few.

I should have been a pair of ragged claws…

I went to sleep after having a ridiculous argument about the ridiculousness of being ridiculous about the ridiculous (I wish that were a joke) and deciding to be bored by both The Truman Show and Jonas' golf videogame.

I woke up with gum in my hair. Paranoid. Shaved it out, because I really don't care that much and didn't think that any of those home remedies actually works.

In the shower this morning, I vowed revenge. Except for those little sticks of cinnamon Trident, which my mom pulls from her purse every time I'm in a car with her, I don't usually chew gum.

And, in any case, I certainly didn't chew any last night, which means that either the Rand Corporation or one of my fellow students is to blame.

I'll post a picture or two from the party when I find a good one and feel like posting again.

Dressed up for Starsky and Hutch. If only the movie (which I found only mildly enjoyable) were as creative as us.

From left to right, for the uninitiated: Our Bold Hero, Jonas, Jinx (playing tomboy for the night), Ben, Frisbee Matt, and Jubb.

After the movie, things went somewhat downhill. My refusal to drink things that taste disgusting led inevitably to an unpleasant situation; with the exemption of Jinx, who drank nothing tonight, everyone was drunk.

I was not, and there's nothing that annoys me like drunk people when I'm not one of them. Thankfully, these were drunk people I like, so I could be incredibly tolerant.

I long for debauchery. Tomorrow there's a party, and I'm drinking-drinking, even if it means buying palatable alcohol in town.

Now, To Regain A Blogging Presence

So then, where was I?

I shudder to think of the minutia, interesting to me alone, that has gone unrecorded while I worked this week.

I finished a story Wednesday, I finished an essay today. I got invited to go drinking last night, while writing a paper, and almost decided to go until reality set in. I finished the paper a few minutes before class, then rocked my presentation.

It's good to be done.

More minutia: Had Jubb take a bunk empathy quotient test at some point this week; he got an 18. I'd taken the same test last year and gotten a 22. Both of us, according to this test, are nearly autistic. Bunk, as I said. That said, Jonas got a 43.

Just ate a lasagna dinner with the U-Frisbee team. Going to see Starsky and Hutch in forty minutes or so. Need to get my costume, ready. It's opening night, after all.

Twelve Hours To Punchline

Working on nonfiction, nowadays. As of 2:40 tomorrow afternoon, I'll either be done with my paper (Freshman Matt and Ben, one or both, I forget, said I can't call such a twelve page monster an "essay") or very screwed.

50/50

Need to revise it, probably, but here is my story.

Qualifications:

1. If you would rather waste paper than your eyes, you should probably print it out and read it that way. It's very very long.

2. I'm not especially satisified with the ending, which (like other parts of the story) may be unnecessarily melodramatic.

3. It's so obviously an attempt to get 50 pages that I'd be surprised if it weren't uneven.

Now, of course, I have to write that 12-15 page essay for Modern British Fiction. Tomorrow!

Home Stretch

I will finish my longass story, tenatively called "Summer in Town X," either tonight or tomorrow before dinner. I've discovered that the characters, to my delight, can function without me after this many pages. Which makes the writing much much easier.

Volunteers to read/proofread before 4:00 tomorrow? Hahahaha. I'll be doing that, I'm sure.

43/50.