LAST EXAM WITH A PICKY PROFESSOR

IN A CLASS I NEVER PAID ATTENTION IN

FOUR HOURS OF SLEEP

WIRED ON CAFFEINE

FINAL DESTINATION

(K is a female friend of mine)

K: detoxifying cotton to use as a protein food source. discuss.
J: go chew on your shirt then let me know how that turns out. Send pics of yourself post-shirt so science can better analyze socio-economic effects.
K: that's actually an interesting thought. Can one choke another on his clothes?
J: It's more satisfying to take off your shirt and wait for them to choke in shock imo
K:lots of experience with that, have you?
J:well in my case it's the HULK SMASH that immediately follows shirt removal that does the killing but the sequence is the same

---
K: what are his politics then?
J: ... You know me. What do you think?
K: yay guns?
J: YES K**** NICE REDUCTION OF MY COMPLEX SOCIO-POLITICAL VIEWS. YAYGUNZ. AAAAAAHHHHH I WANT TO GET MY HANDS ON YOU
K: oh right, i forgot boo gays...
J: >CRACKS UP< laconic and incorrigible, I adore you so

-----

K: mccaffery? not anne mccaffery please ew
J: THE VERY SAME. And yes, it was some mix of retards and psionic dragons.
K: OH MY FUCKING HOLY HELL WHYYYYYYY

----------

J: hahaha I live for the elipse
K: :elipsis? you live for mispelling it. i don't think you genuinely love it.
J: no that's just three periods. I refer to the bewildered usage, which is spelled different. It's in the AP stylebook.
K: no fucking way
J: Look it up yourself. It's a very obscure rule.
K: WITH WHAT INTERNET, ASSHOLE
J: Guess you'll just have to take my word for it, then :D
K: >glares<
J: *victory dance*

---



As you can see, she has the advantage more often then not.

The people of the 21st century are most indulgent with their sanctimoniousness.

We (the readers of this blog,) live in wealthy nations, surrounded by materiel plenty unheard of even two generations ago. While millions starve in horrid poverty overseas, and Haitians must resort to eating clay to survive, our most pressing concern is what toy we'll buy next.

Yet instead of appreciating their great fortune, many among us lambaste their fellows for partaking of plenty. It's inevitably a moral critique; proclaiming consumption to be vice at best, and an active evil to others at worst. Every flat-screen TV bought, shameful, every over-ripe banana discarded, shameful. The three billion souls benefiting from China's prosperity boom, nor the farmers of Brazil, seem to find their new wealth neither shameful nor wasteful- so who exactly is suffering?

These anti-consumerist critics invariably enjoy the same wealth they lambaste. That these critics own more then one car and one television- as was average in the 50s- is a claim few would hold dubious (for most households these days can comfortably afford it.) These are not ivory tower scholars we speak of- the constant denunciation of our "wasteful, indulgent culture" is on the lips of the common man everywhere; a social-level phenomena, not a philosophical or scholarly one.

The facile nature of such tossed-off opinions are nowhere more evident then their particular manifestations vis-a-vis technology. Twenty years ago, television was the new Satan, according to the leading intellectual lights. Ray Bradbury railed against it in Fahrenheit 451 and many short stories, and Niel Postman immortalized the sentiment in his seminal "Amusing Ourselves to Death." In that work he fondly remembered the highly literate America of old, and claimed that the very nature of visual/auditory mediums such as TV rotted the brain.

But now, now, the Internet dominates our lives- and the internet is primarily a textual medium (for example, you're reading text right now.) So where is the excitement? Where are the intellectuals hailing the rebirth of the textual medium ascendant?

None, of course; only the pedantic preaching of the street critic is in evidence. Social networking sites are dismissed out of hand (people using a communications medium to communicate? Twaddle!) Text messages- which the theory of the esteemed Postman would hold to be the triumph of the sophisticated, literate society over the storytelling tribal one- are sneered at.

Most insulting is how the massive social impact of modern media is ignored. It was once said that 'freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one." Now, anybody with a computer and a blog owns one. The scandal story that would eventually result in the impeachment of a sitting US President was first broke by a clerk in a Hallmark store, using a $50 486 computer and an amateur website. Media power that was once concentrated in the hands of network and newspaper oligarchies is now in the hands of every citizen.

Yet this too is utterly ignored, because people are too busy curling their lip at Facebook, or whatever site is the villain of the week.

This is why criticism of technology betrays the coffee-house social critic most thoroughly- because nowhere is it more evident that they have no idea what they are talking about. This sanctimonious, facile negativism is undoubtedly the most popular indulgence of our century. We all know at least one person who's fond of it.

And personally, I'm sick and tired of it.

There's a movie on TV right now called "Solarbabies" which basically involves six teens/twentysomethings that go everywhere with roller skates and hockey and/or lacross sticks (and wage war with them,) and a magical sentient flying glowing sphere that has befriended them. They are waging battle against some dudes that drive armored cars and motorcycles who dress like Space Nazis and are torturing people with a holographic nightmare machine because they're looking for the Spear of Longinus.

This all takes place in an apparent post-apocalyptic wasteland.

They were smoking some STRONG SHIT in the '80s.

 Now the point of FM radio is for music; all the talk shows are on AM. And in the morning, you want to hear some good music to wake you up. And yet, if you twirl your frequency dial on the FM channels, you are guaranteed to hear a dozen snippets of stupid cunts laughing.

Stupid. Cunts. Laughing.

They all have "stupid bitch and F-list local celebrity" and taglines like 'STUPID BITCH AND F-LIST LOCAL CELEBRITY IN THE MORNING!" They play two songs in an hour, and then banter back and forth about absofuckinglutely nothing like the vapid shitsuckers they are, and then, finally, they laugh at their own diseased humor.

All. Fucking. Morning.

Dear Radio Stations: you only get away with this horseshit because people trapped in their cars on the way to work at 7AM are the last captive audience in the world. Someday there will be a reckoning with those bloodshot AM hordes. Until then, kindly disappear up your own assholes.

The stone cabin crouched upon a rocky outcropping; a small sea cliff hovering over a sad little beach. Hunkered there - gray stone upon gray stone hovering over dark water- the one-room edifice had the solemn and passive aura of a tomb. Easy to pass over, easy to forget; a milestone of the past.

You couldn’t live in such a thing; couldn’t make breakfast in the kitchen and eat it in the living room and play with the cat in the study. You could only lie exanimate in the single room, examining the ceiling with the pallid light pressing through dusty panes.

A sepulcher by the sea.

The wind whispers over the rock as I climb, slides smoothly past the stone edifice and onwards with nary a qualm. The stone corners are rounded, the weathered roof timbers subdued, and the tired door swings open easily.

A dark hearth gaping empty at a low bed huddled in one corner. The wind closes the door behind me with a weak rattle, and in the gloom I float towards the bed, dropping my pack on the floor. Descending to it, I sink into weary slumber.

( Here it is, dear Kelly, a not-haunting written at 5AM. )

It added:"In the end it is just reduced to an anti imperialistic, anti militaristic parable which doesn't have the same cutting bite as other more committed films on the same theme."

FUCKING BRAVO.

This is an extremely concise summary of why Avatar failed to impress- it was such a shameless mish-mash of already used concepts that the value would have to have been entirely in the execution, and there it failed miserably.

( Already used? Let us count the fucking ways: )

The past two weeks can only be summed up with a Mortal Kombat pose and a booming voice declaring FIST OF THE FIVE FINALS STANCE- FINISH HIM!

It's 2:36AM as I write this, and I need to be up at 7AM, so naturally I can't fucking sleep. A great time to update my fucking blog, neh?

School has been insane. First I had a metric ass-ton of late work for my Copy Editing class, which is taught by a very nice man who grades like Genghis Khan on a mean bender. And when I turned those in, I found out that there was an extra credit project I could do, which amounted to nothing less then laying out an entire news page in Indesign, which I did with a partner- and then promptly re-wrote every headline he contributed (half of the ones on the page) so they wouldn't suck my precious extra credit points into a dark vortex of fail. And THEN I was informed that we could re-submit any old work that had received a bad grade, which resulted in me re-doing, and re-submitting, approximately half of everything I had done in that class in a whirlwind of frenzied, terrified activity.

I want to pass that class.

This left me with a single weekend to do TWO papers for one class- the last regular paper, and the final, which was in paper form. That was bad enough, but then I checked my e-mail after hammering them both out and that's when the real cluster-fuck begins, ladies and gentlemen, because that's when I realized that my two exams tomorrow are double booked.

DOUBLE FUCKING BOOKED. And THAT realization was right next to an automated notice from University IT that I had been autobanned from campus internet because I connected to "four known IRC botnet servers," whatever the FUCK that means. I guess the IRC channels I've been connecting to for the last FOUR MOTHERFUCKING YEARS have suddenly become AGENTS OF THE MOST FERAL CHAOS over-fucking-night. Naturally this means I won't be able to log onto any computer on campus, which means the internet, and it's vast plethora of resources, won't be available to me during my open-book copy editing exam. Without answers.com I shall be vulnerable.

With all that said, this semester has seen me engage in a campaign of accomplishment, a whirlwind of getting shit done that is altogether alien to my experience. At least I have that. And when I finally move past this mid-year clusterfuck and decompress over winter break, the release should be nothing short of orgasmic.

... oh, wait, the deadline for submissions to the school lit magazine is the 24th. AHHHHHHHHHHH

I had an absolutely crazy day yesterday- class, then straight to an audition for a nascent a Capella performance group on campus (which I've been accepted to,) and then straight to a campus Repoooblekanz meeting, where I finalized arrangements to head up to Mackinac island for the big GOP leadership conference.

On top of all of this, I have 18 credit hours of classes and papers looming.

AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH