01/23/2006 - 11:37 p.m. | boy of destiny

Same old stupid drama plays itself out. The same day a little money arrives from my parents for books - not even all the books, just the few I really, really need to hold me over, because they don't have a ton of money either - there is a cable bill awaiting in the mail saying we owe $250 blah blah blah service disconnection whatever. So much for books then.

How do I always miss that second notice? I remember getting the first one back in December, but we don't get shit until suddenly the TV clicks off tonight. And lord, 250 seems excessive. Spritz says he'll call and try and get rid of anye extras we have, but I think it's just a damn expensive expense to begin with. And it's just the same old stupid thing all over again, reminding me that soon enough I will have to pay water and phone and credit card bills and eat and travel and argh what is the point of living another month? I don't like my life being measured in 50 and 100 dollar increments here and there. I can see why people turn to crime. It is a stupid, stupid system designed to smash your face in the ground, and it would be nice to fuck the other side over a little, rob a bank, shoot some business suit faggots in the face.

I can't tell if the pain in my stomach is from anxiety or the awful, awful dinner Shelly and I prepared tonight, full of all these six month old cheeses. In an effort to save money (ha!), Shelly and I are trying to completely tap our collective pantries before we go out and buy food again. This has led to some pretty foul concoctions, but the pain can usually be dulled by soy sauce or parmy. Not tonight, though. Shelly and I both made a dish - I went with polenta featuring 2/3 of a block of six month old cream cheese, and she with haphazard chicken alfredo blue cheese ricotta ranch parsley towne. Hers probably would have been fine had she noticed the jar of parsley flakes did not have a shaker lid on it. Instead, we ate Chia Pet. Each approved of their own dish better than the other.

Yesterday Andy came over with some video presents for us. Besides his student-made stuff, which is well-made and bizarre (No surprise there, but the fact that he has time for a GE degree as well as this homemade film major is just a source of amazement to me... Plus all his Adult Swim stuff: Being an intern, having interns, making up elaborate lies to his interns), he brought a Scientology DVD he managed to rip and smuggle out of his mom's massive collection... along with a ton of stories about his time in the church. As far as we could tell, the disc was mostly a series of ads for other things one had to buy to be a good Scientologist (and lots and lots of eerie stock footage), but the excerpts we heard here and there only proved that it is all insane gibberish that sounds vaguely like brilliant ideas... if you're an idiot. Weirder still (if you can believe it) are these pair of movies Ducky apparently once sent to Andy along with a bunch of "Iron Chef" episodes and a Windows CD. In these movies, Ducky tries to convince Andy to come visit... by means of the most boring tour in the world. His house, Petersburg, even good old Shataqua. Now I've been there and experienced all these tours in person, so it was sort of entertaining to me, all the familiar parts (They even got lost in the same spot), but it was on the whole very creepy and awkward. You have to remember, this was back when Ducky was younger and not the charming alcoholic frat boy we know now.

It also occurs to me that I never actually told you about my first week of class. And I'm sure you've been on pins and needles just waiting. So, here it is: Somehow, I managed to take not just one, but two advertising classes I have actually previously had in the past. It seems my brilliant strategy of checking the box on every class in the scheduler, hitting add, and letting God sort it out was not the fast track to success I'd assumed it'd be. That's one thing, though, but my attendence in these classes the first time through was so low that it actually took me two visits before I fully realized my mistake. They're all names and numbers to me - 494, 410 - and similar words like "consumer," "public," and "persuasion" dispersed at random in the titles. I can't really be expected to individuate. I don't know how the rest of you do it. Charts, I imagine. Anyway, what to do about this? I've actually decided to stay in the one PR class, because the first time around I had a right cunt about attendance, and I did not do so well at all. The other one is just dropped in the night, I guess. Weird final glory.

The advanced-advanced creative class (or, as I call it, "four fifty tutu") is nearly half the size as its original incarnation, which makes things a little more intimate. It doesn't hurt that I actually know all these people some now, too. We're going to be doing strange, nearly-grown up things this semester. I guess this makes sense, as we are supposedly going to be grown ups in a matter of months, but it still seems shocking and awful. Anyway, besides some national student contest advertising mailboxes (whatever), we will apparently be working with some real ad people up at DDB (one of the big agencies, up in Chicago) as well as trying to help the right cunts at Classic Tan not look like retards. They won't listen to us anyway, but it will be fun to try. I'm so fucking terrified and excited.

Sign language is sort of silly and fun. Our TA is kind of weird and ditzy, and it's a pretty strange class wherein she makes a hand signal and then a 100 of us try to imitate the little of it that they can see. I hope I learn. I also hope Shelly is able to keep on in the class, as otherwise it is like me and 98 Champaign sorority girls. We sit as far away as possible. I lack the grace and natural talent required for signing; I have already established myself as an angry signer, as apparently the effort of trying to dig hand motions out of my mind comes out manually in a jerky, pissy manner. I look like a spastic lunatic. I will frighten off the deaf people. Were they to come.

Creative Writing is strange as hell. Although the majority of the class is just awful, awful nerds and mutants (like myself... I know, I know), actually living in an archaic world where people still proudly "B.S." about everything, very strange odds were at work and stuck my dreamgirl or something in there. Well, that might be an exaggeration (all of it), but it is still a strange coincidence. I never mentioned it, but back at the end of last semester, when I was in the Greg Hall lab all the time working on my portfolio, there was this pretty journalism student who was also there a lot and would more often than not sit at the computer next to mine. Now, it could be that I was the only one there always with an empty desk nearby (a sad truth so often in my life), but here she is now in this oddly specific memoir writing class, perhaps the one place perfectly designed to show off my gifts and talents. The question is, how to play it? We're going to be sharing our stories with everyone, and a lot can depend on the type of topics I choose to write about, walking the fine line between being sympathetic and a loser or funny and vulgar. I have no idea, so I've decided to test the waters. My first piece is on our encounter with Crazy Guy. We'll see the type of reactions that lunatic earns me.

The professor for that class, meanwhile, is the weirdest amalgam I've encountered in some time. He's this chubby, well-dressed gay Mexican from New York, and he is very, very bitchy and arrogant and opinionated. I sort of love him. He's all mean to everybody and says awful things. Like, no one was answering his questions about the assigned reading one day, and he sipped his coffee and went, "Lord, I'm going to have to start spiking this." Lispy pissy. We could never be friends, but I would love him to be my boss somehow.

I actually think that Sex & Madness will be an interesting class, but then, I didn't hate Judith Pintar as much as most of the people who had her in SOC100 did. The class is just chock full of senior Champaign people who'd either a) heard it was an easy credit or b) heard it had "sex" in the title, and Pintar has been trying to scare them away ever since. The first class she must have encouraged people to drop the class at least five or six times. Too much reading, not enough sex, anything to frighten people off. Well, it didn't work on me, at least. I think the topic is actually interesting. It will be cool to see mental illness from a less psych-oriented perspective. Plus, our first reading was one of my favorite short stories ever, "The Yellow Wallpaper." I could give a fuck about the feminist bullshit contained therein, but it is the creepiest thing ever, and it put me in a Mood for a while, which was fun. I think the scariest stuff is when they take normal things and somehow make them seem odd, Silent Hill-style. A psycho killer running around a big knife is supposed to be scary. Too obvious. There is nothing inherently creepy about a six pack of canned orange juice, but with the right tone, everything can be made eerie. I'm sure I won't be quite so lucky on the other readings, but at least it's a good start. We have to write a sci-fi story for the class, too, and that should be fucking psychotic.

Overall, I feel like it's going to be a really busy semester this time around, but since I am actually interested in(even fond of) the classes I am taking, it should be sort of fun. For the first time in forever, I want to buy books and go to class and try and learn shit. And no, you don't have to tell me that this is the first time I've wanted to do this since four years ago when I got on the meds. I'm fully aware that I have reverted fully back. I guess it's better to be a decent person at the cost of my health and sanity, but don't think I've stopped debating it. My stomach is in knots like it used to be again, which makes me worry about ulcers, which of course knots my stomach further. And I've started doing all the stupid little tricks and shortcuts I had to try and get around the stuff that makes me anxious. I will give you an example from today. I was riding north on the bike path on Wright, and I needed to turn left to go to the psych building. However, there was a bus going north along side me, and though I could have turned in the little crossing path and probably had them stop and let me by (I might have even had the right of way), I didn't want to bother them or have them go to any trouble or something and instead found myself looping around a building to wait until they were gone. Little things like that, all the time. And lots of things feel like a challenge. Had to present ads today, and even though I knew I had to, that I would do fine, that I'd done it all those times before, there were really strong urges to just skip class and hide in bed. They aren't big fears, things I can't face... but I also have no real desire to face them, and each time it takes a small act of courage to get the shit done. And I don't know if I want to rely on courage for each tiny stupid conflict I encounter in a day. What if I need to be even braver in the real world? And worse, what if I'm not that brave?

Oh - here's a weird one. I have been doing this for a while now, but I didn't really catch it for what it was until recently. It seems I have been giving myself motivational affirmations at random during my thought processes. Like, how some people say, "like" or "um" or "uh" when they talk so they have a little extra time to think? Yeah, it's like that, but I'll be running through some thoughts, and I'll catch myself going, "Yeah, I'm pretty smart. I'm smart. Yeah, I'm smarter than most." It is fucking weird. At least try and get yourself confident with girls, stupid brain!