Why Being a Student Rules

1. If I'm late for something, I can say "I lost my ipod and that's my only clock" - this is accepted as a perfectly reasonable excuse.

2. Everyone is always uber-concerned about my health, happiness, and general well-being here at University.  You won't find that in the workforce.  Well, not anywhere I personally worked anyway.

3. There is free food and swag around almost every corner.

4. Among my student peers, I don't stand out as the only tard who never learned to drive.  They're all in the same boat.  And among the older crowd like the profs, no one assumes I'm poor or retarded or epileptic or had too many DUI's like they do in the outside world.  They think I'm smart and progressive.

5.  Free bus pass! (see above)

6. This is related to being a history student specifically... They don't call us students, they call us historians.  I like that.

7. People go out of their way to help you in their work.  Like the librarian who tracked down a book for me at the public library.  Or the Prof who brought me in a book to read to help with my research for another prof's class.

8. No one laughs when I say I find social policy reform fascinating.

9. I like purple.

10. If I had a job and fell asleep, I would get fired.  Here, if I fall asleep, someone taps me on the shoulder and says, "What time is your class? Do you want me to wake you up?"

More Love for the Man

Maybe it's because I have Spring Fever or something, but I have been feeling especially grateful for my boyfriend the last little while.  We are not without our problems - we have some issues we're trying to work through - we're doing pretty good at it I think - and I know I have done my share of complaining about what a lout he is so I decided the best way to counter that (because lets face it, I'll complain about him soon) is to express my gratitude with the same frequency I express my complaints.

Anyway, who cares?  I shouldn't have to justify loving my boyfriend.  This is my motherfucking blog.

So sometimes he does or says something that almost brings me to tears because I can tell just how bloody much he adores me.  I can't explain it to you but I can see it in his eyes, corny as that may sound.

So today, we're out for lunch and we're talking about a referendum that just happened at my school and he tells me I should get involved in student politics because I'd be really good at it.  I tell him no way would I be really good at it, because, "...they're all way smarter than me anyway."  He got so angry!  I was like "Why the anger?" and this is what he said...

"Because I love you so much and I think you're the smartest person there."

Now okay, I realize this is akin to your Mom telling you you're the prettiest girl in the world, but there it was - the look on his face - he meant it.  I can tell.  I was bashful and honoured and felt really loved.  It is irrelevant that the real reason I don't get involved is because I think I'm too old.  My boyfriend adores the shit out of me and thinks I'm super smart.  And for that, I am grateful.

TEN REASONS WHY MY BOYFRIEND IS PRETTY AWESOME (...despite what I may complain about from time to time)

I'm trying to keep this blog happy.  This is sort of my way of making up for the post where I call him Belial...

1. He has these overgrown thumbs that are really good at working the knots out of my back.

2.  I'm broke and have no food.  He's been feeding me for days.  Food I like, too.

3. He read Paradise Lost so I didn't have to.

4. He tries to make sure I always have weed.

5.  He makes me laugh so hard it hurts.

6. He gives me the CD's that come with the albums he buys.

7. The look he is giving me right now.

8.  He's clueless sometimes about how sweet he is.  See above.

9. I am prone to anxiety attacks and he is prone to calming me down.

10. I tend to believe him when he says I'm beautiful.

More Writing Tips - This Time from One of My Heroes

My prof showed us this in lecture today.  I heart Jack.  Enjoy!

Fellow writers were always asking Kerouac how he did what he did. So Kerouac set down 30 essentials in something he called “Belief and Technique for Modern Prose.” These tips may or may not make sense to you, but that’s Kerouac, man:

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Don’t think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You’re a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

How To Write Or, How I Write

Oh poor blog I'm so sorry to have neglected you.
I've been so swamped with the writing I'm supposed to do that I haven't even had a peek at you.  Good thing we only have 3 followers, eh?
Anyway, since writing has taken over my life, I thought I'd write a bit about writing.
People ask me all the time: "Damn girl, how DO you do it?"  (Okay, no one I know talks ghetto-fab but I wish they did)
So, since I'm laking the creativity & brain juices to do anything else, I hereby present to you...
RECIPE FOR WRITING SUCCESS!!!

• You need a topic.  This seems obvious but sometimes they're hard to narrow down.
• You need a thesis.  This is very important.  It's your argument, the whole point of your paper, Baby. When in doubt - WHATEVER YOU ARE WRITING ABOUT IS CLASSIST.  You can prove that just about anything in history is classist thanks to the proliferation of:
• a) things that actually are classist
• b) Marxist historians and their bleeding heart research

Just trust me, stick with saying things are classist.  Throw in a racial or gendered element in there and you're gold.

• 12 cans of Coca-Cola classic, to be consumed during those all nighters.
• A boyfriend with big hands to pop the air bubbles in your tummy brought on by all that Coke
• 1 roll of Pilsbury Cookie Dough
• half to be eaten raw
• half to be baked - cookies consumed fresh from the oven while writing are delightful
• Cigarettes.  Lots.
• An area where smoking is permitted, close to where you're working. Cigarettes make you focus and are a great excuse to take a break.
• Marijuana.  NOT A LOT!  This is important unless you have better willpower than I do.
• One tiny bowl can really get those creative juices flowing.
• You will also need some for after you finish your paper, but before you put in footnotes.  At this point, all intelligent work is completed, and you deserve not only a break but something to make the drudgery of your citations more enjoyable.
• A clean, well lighted place.  Hemingway, wasn't it? He was on to something.
• Q107 on the radio.  Their stoner DJ's make sitting at your computer at 3 am considerably more entertaining.

Well, there, that's how I do it.

It's Not That Easy

So, I have a class this semester called Me, Myself and I: The First Person Narrative.  We have an assignment due on Thursday where we have to write about our own first person narrative style.  The prof suggested looking at how we present ourselves on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc.  So I came here to see how I present myself and this is all I could come up with:

• I don't have, and don't want, my real identity on here.  Although someone with a modicum of sleuthing skills could figure out it's me I don't necessarily want people to know I have a blog.  I feel that by remaining anonymous it allows me to write freer.  See, if people knew I had a blog I would feel pressure to keep it updated and intelligent.  I also feel that I couldn't be as honest if my identity were known.  I'm not blogging for followers or anything, for me it's a purely personal cathartic undertaking.  I can say what I want without worrying about the consequences.  So, what does that say about me?  That I'm a pussy, I guess.
• I tried to make my blog a complaint-free zone.  This didn't work.  Which says I'm a complainer.
• I'm kind of sarcastic on here - but that actually is a true reflection of me.  I'm sarcastic.
• I don't really have much of anything to say most of the time.  I think this might stem from trying to keep the blog positive and not complainey... I'm at my best when grinding axes.

So - what have I discovered by perusing my blog?  I'm a whiny, sarcastic pussy who likes the idea of hiding behind an invisibility cloak.  Now I'm expected to go write a paper on that.  That's awesome.  (that was sarcasm)
Don't get me wrong, I think the idea for the paper is a cool one, and being aware of how you present yourself is probably important.  But what if you don't like how you present yourself?  Can I write this paper without falling into self-loathing?  I haven't even written it yet and I'm already embarrassed that the prof is going to read it.
I've never really enjoyed talking about myself at any length, usually because I don't know where to start.  I mean, ask me questions and I'll gladly answer them, but say "Tell me all about yourself," and I look like a stammering fool.  Like, I hate when people ask me what my hobbies are because I don't have any and it makes me feel inferior.  I cannot strike up random conversations, and I'm really bad at small talk.  Even worse at pretending to care about what the other person is talking about, which is probably why I'm so disliked (although I think claims of my unlikeability have been greatly exaggerated)
This post has been mainly me thinking out loud (or type-thinking? I don't know) as I try to sort out how to tackle this assignment.  I've realized that talking/writing about yourself is harder than it seems.  Or, harder for me anyway.  Maybe that's why I can write a mean history essay - they're supposed to be impersonal, factual and argumentative.  I have to prove everything I say, and the use of personal narrative is forbidden. 
But, alas, this is an English paper and at least I don't have to do research.