Close to the End

By On · Leave a Comment · In Blog, Personal

One Test, One Research Proposal, Two Portfolios and I will be done with college. I’ve spent the last several days attending my next to last week of classes and staying locked up in my bedroom to finish papers. I feel like all the time I’ve put in hasn’t really accomplished much, so I am hoping that over the course of the next few days I can get these things DONE. One week from day I will be attending my last day of classes here at Westminster. After that, it will be smooth sailing down to graduation.

Smooth sailing may not be the best choice of words. Really what the month of May is going to be is lots of alcohol and video games and sleep. But I am okay with that.

The end of this period of school feels so much different than four years ago when I was finishing high school. I’m not sure if I can attribute that to growing up some over my time here at Westminster or if it is because I just want out so badly. Either or, I don’t think the reality that I am practically finished here has sunk in yet. Whereas my last month at Waterford I felt it, now all I feel is relief that I will soon be done with all these papers. (Yeah I just used the word “whereas”. Deal with it.)

I fully expect there will be a lot of panic soon enough however. I have to find a job. A real job. That is a scary thought. Especially seeing how it may be eight months or longer before I get one. I went through the exit counseling for my loans this last week. I really didn’t need to see the break down of the money I owe for the next ten years. I don’t think when I started here, that I realized just how much money I was taking out in loans.

So I am just a few things away from the end. You ready world? Cause I am coming whether you like it or not.

Oh Hai Adulthood

By On · Leave a Comment · In Blog, Personal

I am continuing the slow long march to proper adulthood.

They say you are an “adult” when you turn 18 and graduate high school. Which I guess is kind of true. I mean you can vote and join the military. (but here in the states drinking is right out! You can make choices about the country, you can die for the country but fuck it, no alcohol for you!) But going to college isn’t really being an “adult”. You go to classes, do homework, get drunk and passout on the weekends, and maaaaybe work a part time shitty job.

Proper adulthood (where I can go to the liquor store with my actual ID) comes when you suddenly have real responsibility. For some people that is at 18, for others it is earlier. For me it is like… now.

Today I went to my school’s graduation fair. There I picked up my cap and gown for graduation (June 2nd seems so far away), as well as invitations and a frame for my diploma. It is… real. More real than its been this entire school year. I am done, graduating, and moving out into the real world. I will have to get a real job, and deal with the real world. That is fucking terrifying.

Also, earlier I was complaining about senioritis. I can honestly say it is a lot worse now that I have my cap and gown. Which is problematic as I still have all my stuff due in the next two and a half weeks. It is going to take a lot of effortful control (oh yes, pulling out the fancy psychology terminology. I r edumacated!) to get through all these papers.

One thing at a time I guess.

Of course instead of looking of research articles like a good student, I’m writing another blog post and surfing reddit. What can I say? I’m graduating.

What Born of Mirth from Mordor

By On · 1 Comment · In Poetry, Writings

Deep in the great kingdom
The long-fingered flame
Gleamed deadly the black of sunlight.

Pirate fingers were foes
Like and unlike orcs of old
Seen as deadly in the soft light.

The world filled with stars and swords
Pretentious and boastful
Untouched but fearful of pirate fingers.

Pirates attacked the shores
And bashed the walls
Only as docile as sock monkeys.

Stars and swords cried theft
While their diamonds and rubies
Sat safe in vaults of steel and law.

We pirates, ringing rangers
Partakers of goods,
Immaterial of existence.

The studios seized the rules
Power self-gave, one organization
To rule them all.

From my creative writing course. For this one we were told to take chunks of text from different sources, throw them into a mixer and see what we could make of it. For this one I took a paragraph from Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and The Pirate Bay’s press release about SOPA/PIPA. After going through some peer review I then sat down and rewrote it, cleaned up parts and made it have a bit more structure with the three-line stanza’s. I wanted to move a way from the source material a bit as I did this, and make it have a bit more political statement. Then to end it I wanted to have a pretty obvious throw back to the major source of LotR.

Senioritis Frustration

By On · Leave a Comment · In Blog, Personal

After you spend four years in college you tend to learn that the last month of the semester is stressful. Finals are creeping up and suddenly every single one of your long term papers and group presentations are due. Normally speaking, I get stressed out, drink a bit, and power through it all cursing and screaming (with the occasional fetal position crying) to emerge successful and ready for another semester.

This semester my general reaction is: Burn this entire motherf@#$king school to the ground. It is so bad I even say the symbols. Burn this entire motherf-at-hashtag-dollarsign-king school to the ground. Yeah, it is that serious so let me clear up why I feel this way.

In order to do that, I need to explain something really quickly. I hate busy work. I despise it. There is a big difference between homework that is actually helpful and educational, and homework that is meant to waste your time. I got through high school rarely doing my math homework because it was busy work. And I could get As on the tests. That is just how I function. You want me to do busy work for a class, I say no and do well on the tests proving I didn’t need to do your stupid busy work. However in college I figured my grades actually mattered in the hopes of going to grad school. So I did the busy work while cursing out my teachers.

Senior Seminar is a class whose whole existence is nothing but torturous busy work for no reason other than for the psych department needing a final class for their seniors to take. That is what the class is boiled down to a single sentence. And it is AWFUL and a LOT of work to get through just so I can get a stupid piece of paper. So I do the work while complaining about it on facebook to my friends.

There is an interesting thing that happens in your senior year. In high school we referred to it as Senioritis. I don’t think my case of senioritis ever went away. But it has definitely flared back up as I get closer to the June 2nd Commencement date. At this point in time, I have no idea what I want to do with my life, or if I will ever end up in graduate school. I can tell you it sure as hell will not be to get a Ph.D in Psychology. Senior Seminar is also good at killing any interest you have in the field. So right now I am pretty apathetic to school. However I do have near a full four years done and lots of money in student loans. I want my damn piece of paper.

So this puts me in an interesting position. I am general frustrated at having to do busy work that is totally and completely useless, and I just really don’t care about school work other than to get my diploma in two months. So as I am in my last month of school having all this work piled on me… I can honestly say that I want to burn this entire motherf-at-hashtag-dollarsign-king school.

However luckily I have access to the internet. So instead of burning my campus down I am just going to look at pictures of silly cats instead. Man it feels good to vent.

The Sheeple’s Unconscious

By On · Leave a Comment · In Poetry, Writings

A
I
An
Eye
Or lie
Powerful
Self think idea
Forgotten time selfhood
Shut up Plug in collective clusterfucks
Hivemind aggregated ego
Slow to wake and
Activate
Aware
Beg
On
O
I

This poem came out of a prompting from my creative writing class. We were told to write a poem that followed a constraint. It was left open if we wanted to make it a rhyming constrain, syllable constrain or any other kind of constrain we could think of. In this case I was listening to music on shuffle and Lateralus by Tool came on. That song has a strong relation to the Fibonacci Sequence and I decided that would be a cool constraint. I used character numbers for each line to reflect it. I then went back down the sequence as the lines quickly get out of hand.

New Beginnings / Concerning Blogging

By On · Leave a Comment · In Blog, Personal

It is now officially springtime. We passed the equinox on the 20th, it is getting warmer outside, days are getting longer, and those trees with white flowers that smell like tuna fish and balls are blooming. This of course is the signal that I can no longer breath due to allergies but am okay with it because seriously. Those trees smell like tuna fish and balls. (This was a description I heard a girl use my sophomore year of college. I didn’t ask how she had experience with that particular smell combination.) Because spring is always associated with grown and renewal and a bunch of other lovely things, I decided I might as well get this blog back up and running.

Now there are only three reasons I can think of for you to be reading this blog. The first is that you are reading this in the future. A future where I have become famous for something or another and you as a big fan decided to read through all the archives of my blog. If that is the case, welcome future reader and well done. You have reached the end of the archives and lived to tell the tale. That is truly a feat to tell your children about.

The second reason you are reading this is that you are stalking me, which I am okay with. Honestly. (Providing you don’t have a shrine dedicated to me or have killed in my honor or something. Wierdo.). Since you are going to the trouble of stalking me, I am not against you buying me things to win my affection/attention.

The third is that you mistyped the URL, or some search in Google and ended up here. If that is the case, I am sorry you messed up and for putting you through this. I won’t judge you for leaving now. I understand.

The first post of a blog is always very difficult. What do I say? What do I leave for all time to be the beginning of my blog AND the end of the archives here? That is a lot of pressure on my first post. What if you found this accidently and are now interested in what I am saying? I don’t want to ruin and scare away a potential reader! I need readers! Like some people need lots of Facebook friends to validate their existence, I need to see that I had visitors to my site! So that leaves me frantically typing and not really knowing what exactly I am going to say in this first post. I suffer from anxiety issues. I may fuck this up.

Potatoes.

Shit! That is the worst opening post ever. Potatoes. I mean Potatoes are tasty. You can mash them up, bake them, cut them into thing slices and deep fry them, cut them in to long strips and deep fry them and you can even use them to make potato-vodka or turn them into a potato battery! As the very wise gardener Samwise Gamgee once said,  “Po-Ta-Toes! Boil’em mash’em stick’em in a stew.” So really they are quite wonderful and useful. As I hope this blog may one day be quite wonderful and useful.

In the end this blog is my outlet. A place I can write about things on my mind, or things that should be on my mind but aren’t because I am thinking about Space Ninjas fighting Robot Dinosaurs. It is a place where I can post poems, stories and lyrics. Where I can post other writing experiments. A place where I can vent about frustrations or rant about something really cool I learned. A place where I can review movies and shows and music as I see fit. That is all to say, this is my blog and I can post whatever the hell I want. Including a post about potatoes.