03/16/2006 - 10:56 p.m. | [...] i'll eat my hat

I am pretty sick, I guess. Most people think it is the flu, considering I am crazy feverish and achy like I went for a run. I do not really mind being sick like this, as it sort of plays into the milder masochistic tendencies I seem to hold. Yes, I sort of hurt and moving is a bitch and my brain has pretty much ground to a halt (A dude is at work, asking me how to print on certain paper in a certain way, and I feel like a ridiculous stoner. �What are you talking about? What kind of paper do you want? What�s going on?�). The main thing that bugs me is that I might get other people sick, and I really do not like the idea of that. Probably because of how much I hate it when someone is sick around me, and I�m all imagining germs floating around, coming after me and shit. That is like the worst feeling of the inevitable. Like the plane is going down, and you know you have thirty seconds to live. Maybe not that bad.

So mostly I would just be happy lurking up in my room, but goddamn it, wouldn�t you know it�s Spring Break? And St. Patrick�s Day tomorrow. And damn it all if I am going to let some stupid virus keep me indoors when there are delicious beers to be drank and urinals to be vomited in. Obviously, I know this is a poor idea, and it will probably kill me, but I think it is kind of annoying to be all whiny and lame when sick. I mean, I do it a little bit � I can�t help it entirely � but I�ve got to think that a positive attitude goes a long way to creating the flavonoids or whatever that help get me well. Mostly it�s a matter of pride.

And yes, I realize this is karma paying me back for my fake flu at the start of the year. I am OK with these consequences.

This is only the last part of what was a pretty rough week, with midterms and all. Sign language wasn�t so bad, although I was very nervous about the expressive part and did it too fast (Was it nerves, or was it the fact I had only moments earlier finished a B$ - a B$ that was already trying to fire its way out my butthole?), and the Sex & Madness midterm was pretty OK, if not all the studying I had to do for it.

I have been trying to see things in a new light or something, and I realized that Tuesday wasn�t really a Bad Day; it just happens that a lot of little bad things happened, and the feelings of each little bad thing combine exponentially with one another, and suddenly your life feels all miserable. But really it is not.

Like, I got three hours of sleep with studying, and that never puts me in a good mood. So I got up and did more studying, which sucked, and then it was off to creative non-fiction to have my story turded upon. It was actually not as bad as the first time around (Maybe the lack of booze helped in this case), but that is not to say by any means it was good. I wrote about my crazy, you know: how it started, what it feels like, what I tried to do about it, why I stopped. Thankfully, the workshops were student-run this round, so it wasn�t until the professor got to speak at the end that everyone started to trounce me. The man just does not like the way I write, I guess, and I don�t really know how change so he will, so I�m pretty much going to stop trying to please him. Well, either that, or I am going to write a parody of the type of weakass essay he does seem to enjoy and see if he catches my drift. Something along the lines of an emotional lament in regards to running out of cereal. �My mind raced as I burst forth the cabinets in search of my honeyed bunches of oats. �Woe befall the man who seized them from my pantry!� I thought as I wiped the sweat from my brows. The knots in my stomach clenched and unclenched, alternately from rage and hunger pangs.� Piss off, you prick.

At least I got off better than the guy before me. The professor had everyone convinced that he, the guy, wanted to fuck his stepmom.

Then was the one midterm, then my bike chain exploded off, again, right as I was crossing Lincoln, again. I�m really not well enough to write, I think. The little switch that is supposed to tell me what is and is not good material has been vanished, so now I pretty much want to tell you about anything, all in run-on sentences. And then Shelly�s friend Abby came and I tried some tonic water and it was bitter and we went to Courier and my potato smelled weird and the cashier had the weirdest combination of a troll face and huge exposed boobies so you pretty much had to look and I bought some grape Smirnoff Ice, which tasted like Bubble Tape, and which I do not think I could finish more than three without going into a diabetic coma and then I fixed my bike, which I am getting pretty good at, except clearly not, since it has still been breaking, while Shelly and Abby looked at dongs in the International Male catalogue and I tried to explain zombie movies to Abby and then it was off to the lab to watch as Dan and Brenna scanned our storyboards for the TV spots; I pretty much just sat there and got drunk and sang Avril Lavigne, but they did not seem to mind, and then I left my bike and went to meet with everybody not at Burger King but at Bar Louie for an appletini, which they call a Teaser for some lame reason, and there were dollar burgers and Jevon was never happier and we played the same old lame drinking games until it was time to head home, which for some reason, Abby and I started to jog, and then Jevon joined in because he wanted a piece as well, and he picked up Abby and ran with her for a while to assert his dominance, but we eventually stopped at the gas station for Abby�s bladder was about to burst, but first one and then another, for there was wet paint, and I got some string cheese, and somehow Spritz and Gautam and Shelly managed to catch up, and I drove Spritz to his car and got some chips, which Shelly always judges me for, and we all sort of fell asleep.

The next day I had to ride the bus, which is always an awful ordeal, made even worse by the fact that when I got to Greg Hall (very, very late), I found my bike had been taken. The worst fucking luck, I�m serious. So now I�m pretty much bus-ridden (ha) henceforth, at least until I get drunk enough to steal another bike (There were two on the walk to classes that day!) or ambitious enough to try and repair the old school girl�s one that Smacko took that one time. Shelly tried to make me feel better. �At least two girls waved at you today,� she said. Well, that nearly makes up for another hundred bucks down the toilet. Admittedly, one of them was the elusive Hillary, but lord, I should probably just give up on that, no? Her all up in the Cayman Islands, making out with hella dudes, me all dead here, doing my lame shit. You don�t have to remind me of the parallels, by the way, me all pining for a hopeless case having just left a long term relationship with something of a psycho. I remember this all too clearly.

Everyone at the lab kind of hates me right now, as the color printer is kind of in stasis, but who the fuck had the audacity to try and print a 313 MB document anyway? I keep trying to explain the problem, but I am pretty fucked up, I think, and feel like my explanations are just sweaty, drunken rambles that they don�t really get. Also I�m really sweaty.

We�re finally pretty much done with the Postal Vault stuff for a little bit. We�ve taken to playing a little game that seems to help me get work done. We were given some sort of assignment � come up with a direct mail device, specifically � and two hours to try and get it done. I fucked around, reading Bell Biv DeVoe lyrics right up until someone pointed out we had seven minutes left, at which point I actually stopped to think and came up with a good idea that everyone seemed to like. Clearly, I can only function under the stupidest pressure.

Peter gave us a speech about where we are supposed to be in terms of the job hunting process, and I must admit he made me feel a ton better. I�d been sort of worried of late as people had been visiting agencies and sending out cover letters and shit, but Peter pretty much told us that none of that mattered until we have a portfolio we are actually proud of. Specifically, he said his best advice would be to take like three months off after graduation and just try and bang out some really good shit. Which was pretty much my plan exactly. He also said that portfolio school is for chumps. Well, not exactly. He said it would make your work better, but you would just be accruing even more debt, as opposed to, like, getting a job at some small agency, actually making some money, while still working on your book. So basically portfolio schools are the fast-track to success, and I sure as eff don�t want anything like that.

Shelly and I went out to Dos Reales for a cheer-up dinner. I had a stupidly big margarita while we waited for Dank and Jevon to show up, and then my meat was severely undercooked, possibly leading to stomach cramping I am feeling in addition to all my other symptoms. It�s been a good week. I might have felt the onset of my illness last night, but I was far too caught up in �The Gauntlet 2� for that to happen. Will Alton and Jodi ever become anything more than friends?! Tenterhooks, people. Tenterhooks.

I pretty much did not leave my bed until 6 this evening, when I got up to shower and stuff for work. All day I just slept and sweat and had messed up dreams about that �Moonlighting.� Remember that show �Moonlighting?� Cybill Shepherd, Bruce Willis? Apparently I do, enough for my brain to create subconscious fan fiction. I also rolled around and apparently plotted out exactly how I will win Hillary over, which means I obviously have not given up. As if you were surprised.

Shelly brought me chai, a thermometer (with flexible tip!) and these weirdass flu spoons. The latter are filled with this nasty bitter honey goo that you stir into a drink that is supposed to make you better. I just took it now, and considering it is the daytime formula and I am also drinking tea, I should be rocking and rolling all night long, all hitting the afterparties and spreading my plague everywhere.