A Thought on Mental Retardation

One of my problems has always been that I have a biting tongue, I talk out my ass, I don't think before I speak, whatever you please. The truth is as a child I got in trouble for lying, some scar has stuck with me. So here I am tell the truth and not sparing any one's feelings for better or worse. I know its mean, but I will not stop, I'm to set in my ways.

Today I kept my mouth shut. I had too, I'm living with 16 other people and if any only 1 or 2 were friends before this excursion. Its not a great time to be chomping on my feet. All I wanted to say was

"You are retarded."

thing was I didn't want to insult anyone who was born with any type of mental deficiency. (That sentence sounds mean too... I'm on a roll!)

Its not that this girl is actually stupid or deficient, she just acts like she is. Going on and on about the buttons on your shorts or feeling up her friends fuck buddy (which I'm not entirely sure is against the rules) and blurting out the dumbest fucking shit in class or in public. She prides herself in her ability to drink herself into oblivion and bitches about it the next day.

I just figured out why she bothers me.

The boys like her more than me.

And she has no chin. (which is worse?)

Walking in a Walking City

I'm sure I'll be amending my beliefs about this city at some point but at the moment it is new and exciting and I'm in love.

Walking around town is easy as pie, after the crust has been rolled out. The infrastructure is made for the pedestrian, look at the bridges, the sidewalks, the cross walks, the alleys.

All that is beside the point.

Walking in a walking city with a man who is a foot taller than you is like being the antelope chasing the cheetah, minus the backward predator-prey reference. I think you get it. His stroll is my gallop, his stride is 5 mine. Think short, think sore. For the love of Pete slow down gentle giant we'll keep up!

Coffee or Tea

Today, in the land of the tea, started to notice the obscene number of Starbucks just sitting around being abused. Starbucks is a sick sad statement about globalization, there is one on every corner brimming with latte lovers foregoing the stereotypical tea. I didn't cross the pond for this. I won't stand for the Americanization of the world.

I went three times today.

The Cheaper Flight

Today, yesterday I suppose, I made my first transatlantic flight. My destination: London.



As we all know air travel is not nearly as simple as that automobile travel which we Americans have come to rely on so heavily. No straight shots down the interstate or scenic views, just 39,000 feet in the sky on a bus hurtling toward the next port of call, being warned about upcoming bumps in Dutch, a language you definitely don't understand.



I chose Dutch, or rather Dutch chose me, on this little adventure for the price. I could have flown stop-free in English, my native tongue (on most days at least) and paid for the convince but I'm planning other adventures and am saving up, but I digress... flying Dutch was an experience, the plane was good the flight was nice, the guy next to me? whole other story.


Now it would be silly for me to fly a Dutch airline and not end up in Amsterdam, so I, for the sake of not looking silly landed in Amsterdam and waited. The funny thing about their airport is the security: you go through security at your gate. Fine, makes sense especially with connecting fliers, problem is they only open the gate an hour or so before your flight is scheduled to leave. I had a three and a half hour layover.


Have I mentioned I'm cheap?

I spent €3 on Internet but that's pretty outrageous so I sat on the floor. By the time I boarded my plane had black hands from my seat, very black (if you've ever seen me you know that anything past pink is amazing). I had grown used to the stick of "waste" as they call it Amsterdam (for another day: the many names of trash).


I mused while I dirtied my hands, why would the trash smell so foul? Why was the floor so grimey? I had been sitting on the floor at Dulles, it had been clean, and the US isn't known for its obsessive cleanliness as some places are.


Since this story ends in a city and it began in a clean airport I just want to know, why did the middle have to be filthy?

Gone So Long

Ok, I know, its bad, I'm lame.
Blame the jobs, count them 2.
Or blame the Internet, the shared computer the nice weather.
Blame what you please, but don't fret I think I'll keep up to date now.

People, they're wierd.

I love meeting new people, they're always so interesting, they make me feel interesting. And they make me love those quirks people have that are just enfurating. Lets take a closer look...

I sometimes slip into accents. Its annoying. I know, but its fun, too! I have that stupid All-American newscaster accent that says nothing about where I'm from so I steal. I do say the word "mountain" funny, make fun, but thats not on purpose. Enough about me, lets talk about others.

I'm still connected to one of my freshman roommates via this here interweb. All her away messages and facebook statuses end in "I love you, babe" or "I love my boyfriend" or she addresses him in them saying "boyfriend, blah blah blah I'm uninteresting blah." I haven't seen her in two years, I imagine she does have a boyfriend but what the fuck is his name? I'm totally whigged out by the lack of name, I'd know he existed if she used his name, so Jill what is your boyfriend's name?

I have  a dear friend, who is strongly affilated with the Catholic Church, that can't hold a converstaion without saying "vajayjay." I'm a personal fan of different names for female anatomy but the thing is this dear friend maybe should have been a sleazy director of porn or a creeptastic OB/GYN instead he wears robes and stands at the pupit winking (that is a nervous tick, he's not creepy in the least but it makes it more fun to suggest he is.

I have a roommate who has  boyfriend, said roommate gave me said boyfriends phone number and with said roommate's premission I started texting the boyfriend, nothing too bad just a little suggestive way strange and lots of "...s" we talked about the texts, I managed a straight face. I made it a little more obvious, I made it way obvious. Tonight I sent him a piece of a conversation that we had while making dinner tonight. He hasn't responded yet, so his dense scientific brain hasn't caught on. I have to stop, its getting too wierd, the roommate told me its too wierd.

My fiction professor, I've decided he's in his late 40s, an insanly uncreative man for a creative writing professor, has wierd ideas about dreams. Every class after he decided that he's in love with Justin, who just happens to be growing on me, forgetting the names of the girls, there are 7 of us and none look anything like the others, he puts in his two cents. While explianing that we're not good writers and we don't do this or that right he sticks his hand under his sweater and caresses his chest lovingly. I;m not one to argue the benifits of self intamacies, I stroke my face and pet my hair, but if i were to rub my chest I think that maybe I'd get sideways glances.

There's the 52 state story. Thats not so much quirky as much as evidence that Americans don't know very much about their country. There's others, but I'm getting sleepy and am having trouble remembering. Just know your quirks are good fun and I'm going to continue making fun of them.

The Microfilm Room

Last year, thanks to a friendly history major who actually knows how to use the library, I was introduced to the most wondrous place on Earth: The Microfilms Room. Its the most super handy-dandy spot in the entire old library (which is the second warmest building on the Quad, hence my enjoyment). I use the microfilms room for its secret stash of computers, there is no fighting for time or printers, there are relatively few people who actually use the room for its intended purpose so I very rarely have to give up my spot to someone who needs to read a newspaper from London in 1913, did I mention its warm? Granted today is not one of those days when I need to escape the cold, but I am here anyways because it is still too cold to sit on benches and walls in the sun.

You may be wondering why I'd even bring up my secret hiding spot. Truth is it was outed last night on facebook (Thank You Alan Linic and Facebook). I have been sworn to secrecy about this place, each time I run into a friend or a classmate fiddling with the microfilm machine, pretending that their not using Youtube or peeking at porn (word on the street: that only happens openly in the other library, tacky. Just plain tacky) they look at me in horror and vomit the accusatory "who told you about this place?" and then threaten me.

Cross my heart Matt this is the only telling I have done and seeing as this is both our last semester I think we'll be OK.

The Microfilms Room is a magical place where I find friends, mostly people from my creative writing classes, which is either a coincidence or a creative writing conspiracy, I haven't yet decided, and learn about all kinds of things.

Actually I haven't really learned much about anything in this room. I spend all my time tied to the many "social networking" sites I am socially networking on (ironic).

I have never checked a book out of this library, I have only once looked for a book in this library, I have twice watched movies in the media room but I spend nearly all my break time in The Microfilm Room wasting time. Blame the Internet.

Mother of all Anxiety

My phone rang. I didn't answer it. My mother knew I was unavailable and called anyway. I should have had my phone on silent, I thought I had turned the ringer off, my bad. I was sweating bullets through the identification section of a midterm and didn't need her telling what I forgot to do.

I call her back after the test.

My mom states that she's nearly to the town I live in to visit my grandparents, one of whom is in the hospital, the other's mother is in the hospital and I am too sick to visit with either.

Fine, that's fine.

Then she says "So you're probably going to have a bunk mate for the next week or so." and I nearly died.

I love my mother dearly, she does everything imaginable for me. She is a neat freak. I am a slob.
I don't want my mother in my room examining everything, the pop corn kernels on the floor, the lack of visible carpet, the unfolded clothes, the piles of dirty laundry in my bathroom, the disarray of my bathroom, the beer in the fridge, the grossness that is our kitchen.

Now I understand why my sister pulls her hair out (OK that was low, my mom is not to blame for my sister's Trichotillomania). In all seriousness only a mother can have the kind of affect she has, I dread her seeing the way I live, sloppily. I feel like she'll judge me. I feel like somehow I've disappointed her, no scratch that I know that my slovenly life style disappoints her. She'd walk in and see the books and clothes on the floor and be appalled but the fact that I have sheets on my bed wouldn't matter. I have a clear desk. So what? There is nothing under my bed, who cares? Everything else is disgusting.

Last week I had a different mother run in, my roommates mother. She stayed in our apartment for three days, the entire time fighting with her daughter and making the "common areas" of the apartment impossible to enjoy. While making dinner one night a cloud of smoke covered the apartment (the pan was burning, not the food). We opened the doors and turned on the fans and before too long it was bearable again. The entire time she coughed and hacked in the way that old people do, complaining that I was cooking my food improperly, when the reality is that if I had been using a different pan, on that wasn't way past its prime, one of her daughters pans there wouldn't have been smoke. But alas I cannot use her pans because she can't clean them. But that's beside the point (it pisses me off to no end though) this woman actually went hunting for the bad smell in our apartment. She opened all of our bedroom doors and popped her head in for a sniff (I now lock my door when there are other people in my apartment so that it doesn't happen again) she later revealed the source of the smell... The Whale's room and bathroom! No surprise. None at all. It didn't need to be said out loud, in the same way that I don't need to call her The Whale. We all knew. We live there in the filth.

Mothers don't judge. Other people's mothers stay out of my room.

Spring Break!

Two months later my boss for my school job get back to me and I get to go back to work!!! I need the fundage (remind me later to call my dad and beg $100 off of him because I'm short on rent). 

Did I mention I just got my job back, 8 hours a week at $7.35, the week before spring break? 

Oh wait- I lost my 40 hour a week at $12 two weeks ago!

Phrase of the semester: Mother Fucker.

Its totally uncalled for, I know. The problem is I'm broke. I have bills to pay, big electric bills and I don't even have money for groceries. If I had time I'd get a second job, but college is getting in the way.

Please save me.

I want a spring break.

A Short Thought on ExtenZe

I've been sick so the TV has been too much the ExtenZe commercials keep popping up. In the thirty second spot the word "fun" is said over and over and over. I haven't counted the "fun"s but it sticks in my head. Fun. 

ExtenZe folks: I'd have chosen a different word when talking about raging huge penises and hot steamy old people sex. Fun seems inadequate.

First Floor Living

I have lived in the same apartment for a year (like living in the same place for a year is some type of feat) in the same room, with very few things changed. In my time here in apartment D I've come to the conclusion that I will never again live on the first floor of an apartment building.

Last May while I was at home diligently working to support my college habits of eating three meals a day, buying books occasionally, renting the occasional movie someone nicely slashed the screen of my fairly empty bedroom, unlocked my window and may or may not have enjoyed a stay in my bedroom. Over my Christmas holiday this year I received a call from the lovely management that went a little like this:

"Hi Megan this is so and so, during a routine inspection of your building we noticed that your screen has been cut and your window was open, oh, about five or so inches. We went ahead and called the police and went into your room, it doesn't look like anything was taken but when you get back I need you to just take a look around and make sure everything is where you left it."

Sure enough I get back to my apartment everything seems to be where I left it, my window is still unlocked but shut, my curtain has been pulled down, the cheap rod bent but nothing too terrible. The week progressed and I'm in the throws of tonsillitis before my second class meeting. A week after that, I'm too sick to do anything productive so I go to my movie collection to see what I could put on to fall asleep to. All but four of my movies were gone. They took Jarhead, We Wear Soldiers, Lucky Number Slevin, Monkey Love (that was their mistake), Rocky Horror, The Meaning of Life and quite a few others and left me with Juno, Princess Bride and American Beauty. 

I was asking for it. My window is knee height from the ground. I was begging for my things to be taken.

If the DVD thief just happens to read this, I'd like my movies back. Just leave them in a bag outside my door and we'll just forget the whole thing. Thanks.

With Spring around the corner I'm dreading the warm weather parties that my upstairs neighbors will have. I'm not mad that have parties, they can be fun, I'm mad that at two in the afternoon on a Tuesday I can be sitting on my balcony (porch? concrete slab?) reading in the sun when a shower of jungle juice comes out of no where. I have never figured out why you would dump your drinks through the floor boards but I'm even more confused as to why you would waste booze in such a manner.  I do not like being doused with alcohol before going to class.

 I know its my fault, I live on the first floor. 

Today, after a fairly decent snow, I was sitting in my living room watching the people play in the snow with their dog when a bunch of boys (that looked much like high schoolers and an old fat man or woman) started stealing our snow. They were scooping it up in five gallon buckets and dumping it somewhere out of view. I was subject to the taking off of coats and having to look at these boys in their t-shirts and gloves.  I have to be honest here, it wasn't pretty, and their voices pierced the air over the ruckus inside. If I lived on the second floor I wouldn't have head them, I wouldn't have seen them, I would have been content to look into the woods and at the other apartments. 

But alas I live on the first floor and must live with boys with high voices and no coats stealing my snow.

Physics

Last week I was attempting to study for a physics test. You need to know that studying is not my talent, I avoid it like the plague. But since I haven't taken a science class since high school I figured staring at formulas and trying to remember if kg to N is times 10 or divided by 10 (none of which will be important after May).

I started from the begining...
Page 1 mostly notes about the syllabus.
Page 2 again syllabus notes and a note to write a paper about DHMO (its water don't get all that excited).
Page 3 my serious notes begin, formulas for acceleration and something about psuedoscience (I should have paid more attention to that because the man is a wanker and half the test was about psuedoschience) followed by more formulas and doodles for the next 2 or 3 pages.
Page 5 (or 6) "This man is an atheist."
Page 7 "Didn't he wear that sweater last class?"
Page 8 "He wears that sweater every day" formulas for net force and "why does he hate God so?"

I write about six pages of notes a week for my physics class. Each week four of those six pages are dedicated to commenting on my professors attempts at humor, his attire and his hatred of all things not related to science.

I try to be colorful to make up for his crustiness but each of my attempts have fallen short, that paper I had to write about DHMO was filled with silly quips and notes about my observations about the modern marriage (the website brought it up) but I didn't get full credit because my paper was supposed to say "Yes. Water." I wasn't so explicit. I think that there is plenty of fun to be had when writing a paper for phyics class. I think that there is plenty of fun to be had in physics class (its filled with athletes I love when they ask questions) I was taking hints at bad humor from the man who started his lecutres at "Chapter 0."

What I have learned in physics is (and its important, these lessons are not just for me)

1. Fun is only for professors.
2. Gravity is ok when its rounded.
3. The moon is made of green cheese.
4. God doesn't exist, physics does.
5. You can't believe in both.
6. You're stupid if you think in lbs and not kg even if you are American.
7. You're stupid if you use a calculator.
8. You can wear your pants lopsided, higher on the right than the left (there has yet to be an explanation in terms of physics as to how this happens)
9. I should have left science in high school.

Personal Problems

Of late, I know that sounds pretentious but I like it so let it slide, I've been in a state of melancholy. Maybe its the weather and the fact that I can't button the top button of my coat or maybe its the daunting sense that I don't have a job any longer. I'm going to venture that the cause of all my personal problems come from something a little less tangible. 

Fear.

I'm graduating in less than a year. Stop congratulating me. I have no idea why the hell I was so ambitious, it would be easier to fear my failure with everyone I graduated high school with. It would be even easier to take that fifth year to fuck around a little bit more but alas I have committed to the three and a half year plan and am thinking of running away from life because of it. 

To complicate all of this self loathing and panic I have spent the last year suffering rejection, I didn't get a promotion because I go to school too far away (I want you to know that the kid they hired instead of promoting me lives 3 hours from that job where as I am only 2 and I worked for the manager for nearly 4 year. I'm still pissed), I didn't get a job because I had two other jobs (neither would have interfered schedule wise, but now I know that lying isn't a bad thing at interviews) I didn't get an internship because of my GPA (next time you get 91 credits in two and half years while attempting to have a life and trying to work some of the time and keep a 2.848 over all GPA then tell me I should have had a 3.5). Last week I found out that the job I had for breaks, the one I was counting on for spring break in two weeks, is no longer mine for the having. I have been replaced by three others (my feelings shouldn't be hurt but they are, the people who replaced are fucking too old and over qualified, you need to take your fucking Marine Bio degree and do something other than scan gyno charts). 

When I graduate in December I will be 1 class short of a communications minor, have a concentration in British Literature that I won't tell anyone about because in the end it won't help, and be 1 class short of a concentration in creative writing (I took the class, got the A and then transferred and lost the three credits because it was a general creative writing class and there is nothing similar enough at my current school).

I think there should be less pressure to get Adderall induced 3.5s and 4s. I've learned plenty in college though I've missed the mark I think. I've dreamed too big and been too optimistic. Maybe I should have tried for grad school. 

What I've learned in college thus far is that I'm not enough. And it scars the hell out of me.