It's a Very Naked Easter, Charlie Brown!

This weekend, the campus is is completely dead.

Scratch that.

This weekend, the entire town is completely dead. Not only has the school cafeteria been closed since Friday afternoon, not to open again until Monday breakfast, but the grocery store a few blocks from campus closed its doors Thursday night, not to reopen until 12:01 on Monday. The Pizza Hut and Dominos are closed for the weekend. The gas station across the street from my dorm is conspicuously empty, as well as the Taco Bell and KMart. The school's parking lots are mostly empty, save for a few miscellaneous beaters scattered throughout.

The hallways are completely dead. Bad rap songs used to permeate the air, but now, there's only the sound of my footsteps. I've taken to singing aloud the song in my head, and my voice is usually the only thing audible, save for the buzzing of the florescent lights. All the doors are closed, and the bathrooms stayed remarkably clean. There are no announcements over the loudspeaker saying that there's a pickup softball game or that they're showing "The Matrix" in the lobby yet again. The halls don't even smell like cheap pot anymore!

I have yet to see anyone this weekend. I'm not sure, but I think I'm the only person who's staying on campus for Easter Break.

I love it.

In other news, in the commercial for 13 Going on Thirty, they totally play a song about masturbation in the background. I am tres amusant.

Since I have the place all to myself, I've been unleashing my inner nudist. My roommate is singing at his church at home, and he won't be back until Monday morning at the earliest, and I've been letting it all hang out all weekend. I've even walked down to the bathrooms au natural without worry. Admittedly, it was 2 in the morning, but still. Naked naked naked!

I must say that all this time spent alone and naked is doing wonders to help me overcome my BDD. 6'1", 145 lbs, and regardless of what people say, I see flab. Yes, I know that I'm clinically underweight, but I don't really believe it. While I still see flab, at least I'm getting used to it.

Sorry guys, but I don't own a digital camera, so you'll have to use your imagination.

Quote of the day:

Fucking him was like waiting for Godot;
he never came and I was happy when it ended.


Unfortunately, I can't take credit for that gem. It's by Regan. (poem found here)

The odd couple.

My roommate and I are a modern day "Odd Couple." I'm Felix, the fastidious neurotic who knows way too much about the arts, while the roommate is Oscar, a huge slob who is oblivous to the world around him. The only difference is that we both admit to being gay.

All right. I admit it--I've never actually seen the show, and am only going on parodies I've seen and what I can remember of the play. (I left during intermission as the high school's version was pretty damn bad.) But I think you have the jist of things.

And to answer what is sure to be your next question, no, we don't hump. Just what kind of boy do you think I am?



That expostion was probably superfluous and tangential, but whatever.

I started to compose a post about my roommate's obnoxiously laissez faire attitude towards life and the stupid situations he usually finds himself in, but I decided against it.

If I started writing about all the stupid things my roommate has done with his various stupid boyfriends, not only would I have enough material for a novella or two worthy of John Rechy and three seasons worth of a gay soap opera, but a few fey Wagnerian operas as well.

And I've known him for less than six months.



I hate to admit it, but gay drama can sometimes be amusing, as long as it's from a safe distance.

to the scientist I am not speaking to any more

I've received a few inquiries as to my AIM profile and accompanying away message. Both are excerpted from a poem by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz. The complete text can be found here, and here's an mp3 link to her performing the poem, via poetryslam.com.

For those uninterested in adding me to your buddy list in order to read my profile/away message, I've excerpted them below.


You are more absurd than Ionesco.
You are more abstract than Joyce,
more inconsistent than Agatha Christie
and more Satanic than Rushdie's verses.

I can't believe I used to want to Sappho you.
I used to want to Pablo Neruda you,
to Anais Nin And Henry Miller you. I used to want
to be O for you, to blow for you in ways
that even Odysseus' sails couldn't handle.
But self-imposed illiteracy isn't a turn-on.

You used to make fun of me being a writer,
saying 'Scientists cure diseases,
what do writers do?'

---

I mean, have you ever gotten an inner thirsting
for Zora Neale Hurston?
Or heard angels herald for you
to read F Scott Fitzgerald?
Have you ever had a beat attack for some Kerouac?
The only Morrison you know is Jim, and you think
you're the noble one?

Go Plath yourself.

Your heart is so dark, that even Joseph Conrad
couldn't see it, and it is so buried under bullshit
that even Poe's cops couldn't hear it.

Your mind is as empty as the libraries in Fahrenheit 451.
Your mind is as empty as Silas Marner's coffers.
Your mind is as empty as Huckleberry Finn's wallet.




It's too easy to say that I like this poem because I can relate to it, since I used to date a scientist who wasn't as well-read as I, and now that we're no longer together, I'm missing him something fierce. I liked this poem even before I started dating the scientist, so not only is that reason banal, it's false. I like the name-dropping quality, and the mp3 of her reading the poem is kickass. I'm a big fan of slam poetry, and since she's the Slam Master Champion (I think), it's pretty obvious that I like her work.

I like that it's National Poetry Month because I can be lazy and post a poem and feel topical and intelligent, and minimal thought is required.

It's National Poetry Month.

Look at how I care.

No, really, I do.

I'm a poet,
and any citation as to my knowledge of that fact deserves punishment.

Fuck your novels, I'm a poet.
I'm a writer, and I'm right on!

Those lines were in a poem that I wrote. Obviously, they were edited out.

Actually, I'm in the middle of editing some poems of mine for a few grants and scholarships the school is offering. The awards are only $250, but there are 3 different scholarships/grants, and my English teacher last year was the state Poet Laureate, and I was her favourite... (grins). So I'm optimistic. Plus I'm the only student to have more than one poem in this year's lit mag. So they already like my work. I'm going to be extremely presumtious and say that I'm a shoe-in.

Just look at my hubris.

The following is a poem I'm thinking of including. (I'm allowed to submit up to four poems.) Since it's National Poetry Month, I thought I'd post it. The spacing isn't exactly right (damn w.bloggar!), and I'm a bit iffy on the ending. But whatever.


the synergy between love and war

you put my song first on your 9/11 mix
you called me up halfway through the state of the union to hear me scream at the set
we dropped everything & went for coffee when we saw the bombs dropping on Baghdad

it's hard now

I can't always be the great spokesman I try to be for you
I can't always update my notes on the atrocities whenever you're feeling too complacent
and need your fix for the day

you can't drop me as a lover
but keep me on as your do-gooder
to appease the liberal you want to be so badly

you can't call me up 2 days after the fact and say
< we should discuss things between us. we should also discuss the war because I think you'd be good at it >

how amusing.

it's funny cos you wrote me off as a guilt trip
cos you thought you didn't have enough time
cos you wouldn't let me qualify
cos you constructed the big ass wall to cover your tracks

see, well, the thing about that is
I was willing to wait
I was just as busy and I built walls just as big as yours

and you can't call me up, 48 hours later
so you can feel lectured
so you can have another stat to tell when you want to be righteous and indignant
you cannot use my left wing to flog yourself in penitence
it doesn't work that way

you're not allowed to use cheesy war metaphors like
-we fought like atomic bombs
-we were both loose cannons without a cause
-all's fair in love and war

is it fair that we killed 217 civilians during the first 72 hours?
is it fair that we used napalm on Safawan hill?
is it fair that you'll quote this poem in your poli sci class
and be praised for your topicality?
is it?

At an obnoxiously early hour this morning

(NB-to a college student, everything before 10 is obnoxiously early), someone decided that it would be fun to critique my earlier post (or rather a crosspost in a bookreading community on livejournal), leaving angry messages on my AIM, incensed that I, and I quote, "was fucking with Conrad," and likened me to a 14 year old girl with a crush on her 8th grade English teacher, incapable of independent thought. (Of course I've edited the words so I wouldn't have AIMspeak cluttering up the page, e.g. u r lik a 14yr grl) The incensed AIMer must have had too much time on his hands (I'm assuming that it was a male), as he then found my deviantart account and proceeded to leave messages denouncing my ability to string together nouns and verbs in a rational fashion, which was amusing

Well, of course I've since dropped the community and blocked the AIM name, and I'm not taking any of the insults to heart, since they seemed so weak that not even Simon Cowell would use them.

In a note that may seem related but isn't meant to be, I'm currently fleshing out a little bio link to the sidebar. I can't decide how much information I want to give out and whether or not I have any pictures of myself that I would like to share. Speaking of sidebars, I've jumped on the kinja bandwagon. I might go back to blogroll, but I'm enjoying kinja, save for that it doesn't seem to recognize her existance.... Oh well.

Oh, and at the moment, it looks like no photos... sorry.

Maureen Dowd.

You are Maureen Dowd! You like to give people silly
nicknames and write in really short, non
sequitur paragraphs. You're the most playful of
the columnists and a rock-ribbed liberal, but
are often accused of being too flamboyant and
frivolous. You tend to focus on style over
substance, personality over politics. But your
heart is in the right place. Plus, you are a
total fox.
Which New York Times Op-Ed Columnist Are You?

I ususally don't post quiz results here, mostly because they're a sign of boredom and of teenage girl mentality, but for my addiction to the Times, I made an exception.

go Rimbaud!

Thus my sorrow always renewed, and seeming in my eyes more lost than ever,--as in the eyes of all who might have watched me had I not been condemned to be forgotten by all forever!--I hungered for his kindness more and more. With his kisses and his friendly arms, it was really heaven, a sombre heaven into which I entered and where I longed to be left, poor and deaf and dumb and blind. Already it had grown into a habit. I thought of us as two good children, free to wander in the Paradise of sadness. We were congenial to each other. Much moved, we used to work together. But after a profound caress he would say: "How queer it will seem to you when I am no longer here--all you have gone through. When you no longer have my arm beneath your head, nor my heart for resting place, nor these lips upon your eyes. For I shall have to go away, very far away, one day. After all I must help others too: it is my duty. Not that it's very tempting...dear heart..." Right away I saw myself, with him gone, my senses reeling, hurled into the most horrible darkness: death. I used to to make him promise never to leave me. He made it twenty times, that lovers' promise. It was as vain as when I said to him: "I understand you."

I hate it when things written one hundred years before I was born directly relate to how I'm feeling. Rimbaud was exactly my age (almost to the day) when he wrote that. Motherfuck why can't I be a literary genius?

Favorite female author?

Well, ok, but after this, I'm going to have a lot of promiscuous sex with dozens of hot frat boys and blog about it.

   All right, so that's not going to happen, but still. What do I look like, bookslut or something?

First of all, it's hard to go wrong with the Brontes or Jane Austin. I like George Elliot and Mary Shelley. Well, I really liked Frankenstein, but I haven't read anything else by Shelley, but I assume that I'll like it. I like the short stories of Gertrude Stein (her novels can be a bit much at once, though), Dorothy Parker (her poetry is also kickass), Alison Baker, and Margaret Atwood.

But if I had to chose one author, it would have to be Carole Nelson Douglas. While she writes some dumb series about a cat that solves mysteries on its own, she also writes a fabulous series following the adventures of Irene Adler. Irene is, of course, the only woman to have ever out-witted Sherlock Holmes. The series tells the story from her point of view, and also tells of subsequent cases that require someone more discreet (and more qualified) than the world reknown supersleuth.

I must say that it took me longer to compile this list than I thought it would--I never realized it before, but I don't read a lot of female authors. I listen to a lot of music by female artists, though, so I assume that it all evens out somehow.

Civilization tames human passions, but it can't eliminate them.

Someone asked for a brief review of the books that I wasted my spring break reading, the ones I read instead of tapping some ass. Not that a significant amount of ass presented itself for the tapping; I think the most action I got all break was in some chubby junior's imagination who tried flirting with me while I was visiting some old teachers. Strike one: Wearing a tshirt that says "Let me get one thing str8: I'm not". Strike two: Fortysome pounds overweight, frosted hairtips, and black fingernail polish. Strike Three: Making mention of me on your xy.com profile, in the hopes that I would notice. Negative points to Jay, who pointed that out to me, and has proceded to taunt me since. I refuse to be neurotically his, for him to be my chubby shadow, following me in the hallways between classes. I would tell him to go Plath himself, but I have the feeling his poetry is more the 'no one understands me' variety and less like the world's greatest, longest suicide manifesto. He should just up and pull a Mishima or get turned into a tragic after-school special.

Now that I've got that out of my system, someone asked for reviews of the book, and ask and ye shall receive, or something corny like that. In the words of Bitch and Animal, I aim to satisfy, I aim to please, just give me some booty that I can squeeze.

Heart of Darkness was just stupid. Every other word was 'inscrutable,' 'indeterminable,' or similar. It's just bad writing, but I have to read it for class, so at least I got it out of the way. Though I thought I would hate a first person narrative about growing up in Afganistan, The Kite Runner was gorgeously written, probably my favourite book I read during break. The DaVinci Code currently tops the NYTimes Book List, so any review of mine is going to suck. But it was fun, and I felt smart while reading it because I was able to comprehend a few of the codes before the characters. While England Sleeps is by my favourite author, David Leavitt, whom I praised a few posts previously, so I won't now. I really liked it, though. Speaking of really liking something, If You Were With Me.... was some gorgeous short stories about gay guys. While the writing was crisp and clear, my favourite part was that in a collection of short stories about gay men, there was no whining about AIDS nor any angsty coming-out stories. It was good writing, to be sure, but it was good writing without cliched topics, which made it even better. The Goat (or, Who is Silvia) is by Albee, ergo it is genius. It won Best Play from Tony, New York Drama Critics Circle, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle. Yes, I looked that fact up. Bite me. I'm not a big fan of modernist literature, My Antonia was pretty good, better than To The Lighthouse, definately. The Woody Allen Reader is a compilation of his monologues and scenes from his early movies. If you're into that sort of thing, you'll like it. If not, you'll not.