I should be in Atlanta right now, presenting at my second conference. Instead, I lost my passport and got to write up really boring descriptive statistics all week.
Sometimes I amaze myself with putzyness.
At least my shirt wasn’t on inside-out, I guess.
Also, I ca’t believe I got Osmond-ized, harsh 50 percent ninja, harsh.
FUCK!
I have a literature review due tomorrow, and you know what I have been doing lately? Reading Eragon and, subsequently, Eldest until the wee hours of the morning between work shiftfs.
Ya – I took on a full time job in my last 4 months of grad school.
Word of advice – Don’t fucking do that.
Okay, that was like 4 words of advice.
And one was a contraction.
So it could have been considered 2 words, thus making it 5 words of advice.
But it wasn’t damnit. It was a contraction.
You know what? Fuck you. Stop counting my words, jerk.
I have also been putting more QT into blogging, obviously.
So, I am going to be up stupid late (early?) tonight (tomorrow morning) getting this shit written when I could have done it over the course of the last two weeks.
And the worst part? Eragon and Eldest both rock.
So it follows that I actually like fucking myself sideways.
FUCK!
—-
The symmetry of the opening and closing of this entry was inspired by Citizen Kane, a movie far classier than this blog.
I had a meeting scheduled with my supervisor today, to be done over the phone as I am currently away dealing with family issues. This conversation was to be the first after a month and a half of me e-mailing her, dropping by, phoning her – trying to get some feedback so I know if the work that I have been doing for the last month and a half was all for naught, or not. I had been preparing for several days so I would be good to go, hopefully reducing the amount of stuttering I usually engage in by at least three-fold. I call, right on time –
And she is in a meeting. She will be in meetings all day but will call me sometime tomorrow.
What happened to professionalism? I mean, how difficult is it, exactly, to send an e-mail or make a quick call to say that something came up, and that we need to re-schedule? And you knew about this meeting for over a week, am I so unimportant that you feel free to schedule things during my time? What the hell am I paying all this tuition for? A library card?
Apparently, instead of supervision, my tuition pays for me to work independently and be the proud owner of a $5 000 library card to a lacklustre library filled with first years making out, chatting on msn, sleeping, or talking on their cell phones, instead of new (or even newish) books.
It is Saturday night, 11:00pmish, and I am on away (on msn). People my age are gearing up to go to the bar or pub etc., drinking far too much at home so they don’t have to pay for as many drinks at the bar (stellar logic, by the way, drunkards) and putting on their bests to do it up till about 2-3pm, when they will probably go get a shawarma, or a poutine. (Getting both would be gross. Grosser still if they got a Beavertail for dessert.) Clearly, I am online insofar as I am writing a blog right now, doing the doberman (as it were) instead of working on my thesis, as per usual.
Why do I do this?
I’d like to say I’m not sure.
But I am. I think.
I don’t want to seem uncool – like I am loser enough to be on the computer at 11:00pmish on a Saturday night.
The thing is, I am uncool. People are aware of this, and they give me mad props for my coolness about being uncool. I feel that I have said cool too many times, and that it is possible that cool isn’t the cool way of saying cool anymore, making all of this thereby hella uncool. That last sentence should be in a footnote, but I don’t think there is a footnoting function on wordpress. That one too. And that one. Fuck. Parentheses would have also worked I guess. But I prefer footnotes. Or, apparently, commenting on the paucity of footnotes on wordpress in a paragraph.
In fact, people still talk to me when I am away – they suspect that I am there, idlely surfing youtube or sending half a ninja and the red-headed avenger way, way too many e-mails. And there’s one now. AND NOW I AM MAKING SMALL TALK WITH SOMEONE I DON’T EVEN LIKE.
I suspect I am a tool.
I should probably either sign-out and do some work, or own up to my online disposition, and take some freaking pride in it.
Have a stack of awful first year papers to mark?
I have just the thing for you!
It’s the EMOTER 500!
That right folks, instead of providing your TA’s with an actual marking rubric or needless guidelines, just tell yours slaves, I mean TAs, to just emote the marks!
Emote the waaa?
The Marks!
Under the Emoter 500 grading isn’t so much about the content, but the mark you feel the content deserves!
But, what if the TA is in a bad mood, a bitch, or has a bout of bad gas and is emoting bad vibes generally?
Too bad!
Oh.
So, how does the EMOTER 500 work?
Well, basically you point your Care Bear Stare at the assignment in question, and you will feel a mark, down in the very cockles of your soul!
It’s easy, affordable, and way way less time consuming than making actual marking guidelines!
EMOTER 500: Helping grades get appealed since 2006.
I don’t wear Monolo Blahnicks. I can’t even spell it. I’m not 30 and I can’t go out every night to some new club opening in town:
a) Because I don’t live in New York, and there aren’t a whole lot of new places opening on a fucking Wednesday;
b) Because going out every night costs a fuckload of money that only rich sniveling bastards have and/or;
c) I’m either too tired from working or actually at work to go to the theoretical club/bar opening. Even on Weekends.
d) All of the above.
(Multiple choice format was used in the above fictional exam because multiple choice exams save the university money insofar as they can go ahead and employ less Teaching Assistants, making it less likely for students to get jobs)
The whole “Everybody’s Working for the Weekend” bullshit doesn’t apply to those 20 somethings who pay for their own livelihoods. A yuppie definitely wrote that. (Sure I don’t even know or care who wrote that song or the proper name for it, but I’m ranting and am not going to wiki it.) We 20-somethings are working on the fucking weekends so that we can eat food and/or pay our rent. And possibly our tuition. Oh and we don’t get “benefits” or “paid sick days” or anything like that because we do temp, part-time, or casual work.
You know why there aren’t any television programs about 20 year olds? It’s not because we aren’t interesting or don’t have quirky, laugh-track-worthy lifestyles—it’s because we don’t have any money. We can’t hang out in a coffee shop constantly because we would be fined and ticketed for loitering.
Coffee costs money.
So do muffins.
We especially can’t hang out in shmancy places that sell organic, shade-grown, didn’t-kill-the-whales, libido-enhancing, acne-removing, no-fat fucking lattes.
Maybe, MAYBE we could go to like TimmyHo’s to get a tea one time every other month or so (they totally started serving “steeped” tea so they could up the price on tea—I’m on to you bastards).
All sitcoms are about 30+ somethings. What the shit is that about? Fuck that shit. The only students who make it to the Big Fucking Screen or the Idiot Box are those who go out and party all the time, or take like European vacations where they endure a variety of trials and tribulations and in the end the Boy gets the Girl and they live happily fucking after. And then there’s the ubiquitous college student horror/thriller film that was so overdone that making fun of the “genre” somehow became a new, more pathetic genre (sub-genre?).
I can’t relate to that bullshit.
I wouldn’t want to.
The douches that go on the European Vacation on Daddy’s Visa, or send their liquor bill home to Mommy, were and will always be the assholes that no one ever liked in highschool yet everyone feared and thought was cool.
I never thought you were cool.
I still think you’re an asshole.
So why the shit are you on my fucking television?
Fuck off – I’m trying to procrastinate.
Thus far today I have watched one movie, alphabetized by comic books (and placed them in chronological order), made several unanswered telephone calls, and cleaned my kitchen. I seriously considered washing the dish soap bottle when I realized Danny Tanner had done that once before.
It is important to be original.
I should probably just write my thesis proposal but starting a blog seems incredibly important right now. (A half a ninja told me I had to, or my head would be chopped off. Not actually, but that seems like something a ninja might say. I’m really just copying her starting-a-blog-as-a-procrastination-device-that-I-legitimize-to-myself-as-an-
excercise-in-writing idea.)
I just left to start the chicken, which I am cooking in chicken broth, garlic, and basil. I am going to add white onion, green pepper and broccoli – not because I believe these items will taste good together, but because this is what is in my fridge and the food will otherwise go rotten.
If you brown beef, do you white chicken?
I fucking cut myself and got onion juices in it which both stings and smells. I’m not even hungry. I should probably just write.
Why can’t my neighbours shut up? I think I prefer the 10-year-old floutist to the yuppie-hipster types that are now residing in the apartment next door. I bet they are having granola cosmopolitans over a game of Trivial Pursuit 1990’s edition – so they can actually acquire a few pieces of the pie and finish in time for some curried channa rotis and a thirty- or forty-dollar bottle of red wine. I hear red wine compliments bullshit vegetarian dinners very nicely.
P for Pretention 