to the guy who touched my butt in the lockerroom

I just googled the phrase, “what the fuck is a rhombus.” Surprisingly, this search term yielded far fewer useful results than simply typing the word “rhombus,” even if the latter fails to capture the sense of desperation I hoped to convey. Oh well. Nevertheless, wikipedia did answer my query (f.y.i., it’s an equilateral quadrilateral!). Another mystery solved. Yesterday wikipedia told me what Monica Lewinsky is up to these days (f.y.i., she got her master’s degree from the London School of Economic).

As you can see, these I’m devoting much of my precious free time to applying to grad school procrastinating.

But in all seriousness, I’m developing a severe eye twitch.

And in case you didn’t notice, the title of this post has nothing to do with the content. This is why I’ll never get into grad school. Well, that and the fact that I’m bound to flunk the two GREs I’m gearing up to take.

Potty Mouth!

This just happened. A little kid was reading and he came across the word “also.” Failing to notice a couple of letters and one syllable, he read “ass.” Then he looked earnestly up at me and asked, “It says ‘ass,’ right?”

I managed to keep a straight face the whole time. It was at least easier to do this time than it was the day another boy seized on the word “cock” and ran with it for several agonizing minutes.

Thank God for Google

Lately I’ve taken to phrasing each of my Google queries in the form of a question. In addition to making me feeling more like a contestant on Jeopardy, I enjoy knowing that what I am googling* becomes exponentially more ridiculous when asked as a question. Plus, the majority of such googles tend to yield results from Yahoo! Answers, which is quite the treasure trove of information. Upon googling, “should my cat’s nose be wet or dry?” I discovered the following charming response, “PLZZZ DONT TELL ME YOUR CAT NOSE IS DRY!!!!!!” Of course, I also learned that one’s cat’s nose should be dry, so I certainly won’t go so far as to say Yahoo! Answers bats a thousand (or a hundred or whatever that sports idiom is).

Most recently, inspired by reading the CNN article on Garrison Keillor’s minor stroke, I googled, “what does a stroke feel like?” Though there’s was a surprising dearth of people describing what a stroke feels like (besides saying that they were unable to move various parts of their body), there was an interesting post from an individual who described witnessing his uncle have a stroke. Here’s an excerpt from his little narrative:

i was with the stubborn uncle during a hunting trip to his camp when he had his stroke. he called out in the middle of the night. i went to his bedroom to see what he was calling for. he told me to turn the light on. i told him it was already on. he told me to turn the light on in the hallway. i told him that light was on, too. with absolute fear in his voice he said, “I can’t see!”. i told him i’d take him to the hospital. his stubborn azz refused and he layed back down in bed. i called the local hospital (12 miles away) and they sent an ambulance. he didn’3t last long after that.

I judge people, even when I know I shouldn’t.

 

* I just googled, “googling” to see if the verb should be capitalized!

This seems about right

So, I’ve spent the larger part of this afternoon studying for the GRE subject test. It is a gorgeous, Labor-Day-weekend Saturday and I have been forced to stay cooped up in my bedroom furiously writing notecards, able to enjoy the day only inasmuch as my open window allows. As such, I found the following few lines from Matthew Arnold’s poem, “Dover Beach,” particularly poignant:

The world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light.

wʊlstənkræft

Chris wanted to go to World Market so that he might procure some hoity-toity coffee beans, so I took the opportunity to procure something myself. Not distracted by the aisles of expensive furniture and exotic alcohol (or coffee beans), I made a beeline for the section nearest and dearest to my heart — the candy and cookie aisle. Last week I happened to have noticed and, as a result, was sorely tempted by the packages of McVitie’s Digestives I’d seen gleaming in the artificial light of Cosentino’s Downtown Market. However, for more than five bucks a package, I decided I could live without the fibre*-packed cookies. Luckily for me, I found them at World Market for nearly half the price! And, if I wanted to, I could watch In the Loop for the third (fourth?) time. Ohhh, memories!

 

* Ha ha. Get it!?!

Consumerism

So today I used a 20% off coupon [at a store that would otherwise be a bit too rich for my blood] and bought Chris’s birthday present. This would not be especially news-worthy, which is not to say it is newsworthy by any means, but the cashier’s behavior fit somewhere outside the schema I have developed for cashiers. You see, typically, I expect the person to whom I give money in exchange for a good or service (helloooo!) to smile, possibly make uncomfortable (but inoffensive) small-talk, take my money and send me packing. This woman, by contrast, did not smile, made mildly offensive small-talk, took my money and made further — albeit inoffensive — small-talk before finally allowing me to meander toward the exit. Furthermore, it wasn’t immediately clear that she even was a cashier!

I could go on, but I think I’ll let you  judge the situation for yourself. Here’s more or less what transpired between the two of us:

Sales Clerk (SC): [mutters something inaudible, looking generally in my direction]

Me: [thinking she had asked if I was ready to check out] Yes.

SC: [mumbles something further, looking vaguely confused]

Me: I’m sorry?

SC: [unable to mask the slightest hint of disdain in her voice, but finally making her way to toward the cash register] Is that it?

Me: [looking down at the large box I was holding] Uh, yeah.

SC: Is it a gift?

Me: [distractedly, unused to such questions when making similarly mundane purchases when Christmas is still two seasons away] Uh, yeah.

SC: Do you need a gift receipt?

Me: [recovering slightly as I began to feel as though I was reentering the realm of normal small-talk] Oh, no thanks.

SC: Are you sure? Who’s it for?

Me: [hit by another curveball] Uh… it’s for my boyfriend, but I don’t need a gift receipt.

SC: [evidently judging the cost my purchase, which, for the record, was not even especially expensive] Hmm. Well I hope he’s worth it.

Me: [noticing the distinct lack of humor in SC's pronouncement] Well he’s stuck with me for nearly two years, so I guess he is, ha ha.

After my lame attempt at humor, several seconds passed in silence before the cashier sent me off with the, obviously insincere, hope that my boyfriend like his gift. I, for my part, scurried toward the door, anxious to escape the humiliation* I had so recently suffered.

 

*This being a hyperbole, an exaggeration for effect.

“A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”

Today’s title is brought to you by Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and was once responsible for inspiring the title of William Faulkner’s fourth novel, The Sound and the Fury. Faulkner’s title refers to a misfortunate character called Benjy Compson, an idiot who was castrated for allegedly raping a girl (and is, thus, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing). Benjy, like his two, similarly impotent brothers, represents the end of the once-aristocratic Compson family in the fictitious town of Jefferson, Mississippi.

Guess what, boys and girls? That’s right! I’ve once again commenced studying for the intimidating and terrifying (not to mention utterly useless) GRE Subject Test in English Literature. So begins a mad dash to recognize and know a bit about every piece of so-called important literature composed between approximately 700 A.D. and 2008, all within the next 6 (or 10) weeks.

Naturally, I’m beginning to recognize the mid-semester, freaked-out version of myself I came to know so well during the five years I spent pursuing a B.A. in English, a realization which has me feeling both nostalgic and irritated. On the one hand, I am reminded of conducting research, talking about ideas with my peers, coworkers, and/or classmates, and writing papers (perversely, this is the nostalgic part). On the other hand, I’m forced to accept the fact that I am not conducting any truly interesting form of research; instead, I am learning notecard-sized amounts of information concerning what have been deemed (by the test-making gurus at ETS) to be important pieces of English and world literature. The latter of these two hands has instilled me vast quantities of resentment.

In the week that has elapsed since I began seriously studying for this thing, I’ve managed to do a reasonably good job keeping to my goal of studying an hour a day, but I’m quite concerned about how I’ll be able to make time for everything else I’ve got to do. I still don’t know for certain what schools I want to apply to; I still need to (drastically) revise my writing sample; I still need to study for the General GRE, for cripe’s sake! All of this is, obviously, greatly impeded by the job to which I’m slavishly bound . All in all, I devote somewhere in the ballpark of 11 hours of my day to driving, working, eating lunch; and when you consider the fact that I go to bed sometime between 10:30 and 11:30 and have to find some time to [possibly make and] eat dinner, shower, and hopefully go to the gym, you begin to see the problems that arise regarding these farkin’ tests.

Added to all this is the nagging fear that my faith in myself is ill-placed, that perhaps my teachers and professors were wrong in encouraging me to pursue a graduate degree. F. M. L.

 

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to apologize for all the parenthetical asides, imbedded clauses, and my excessive use of commas and compound adjectives. Right now my mind is not my own, but is instead some shapeless mass under the control of ETS and its litany of standardized exams.

Hey guys

Turns out I’m not dead, even if this job is killing me (har, har!!!!). But seriously. I am now almost entirely unable to sleep past 7:30 and I dream about work — not to mention lip poppers and tongue tappers — most nights. I’m literally dying inside.

In other news, when not at work I’m trying to spend most of my spare time eating and studying for the GRE subject test in English literature, which accounts for my rather noticeable absence from the ol’ Blogosphere of late. I would like to have spent some more of this summer swimming, but weather and rowdy kids decided otherwise and I was therefore forced to spend most of my time sulking/drinking/sleeping. As such, now I’m feeling thoroughly depressed about autumn rearing its ugly head; this year, for the first time in recent memory even the prospect of wearing jackets and seeing plays and watching good movies isn’t enough to console me. Things are really quite serious.

But let’s not kid ourselves any longer. I know I put up a brave face, but really it’s clear that I mostly just hate the fact that the end of summer marks the end of my adolescence. For good. For ever. Society has deemed me capable of supporting a family of my own and all I just want is to go back to school like everybody else* and postpone adulthood a little while longer.

Well, it’s 10:39, well past bedtime.

 

* I told this to one of the kids at work today and she seemed positively aghast.

Which of these things is not like the others?

So I’m currently spending my lunch break “running errands” (i.e., getting stamps and then sitting in the parking lot writing this) because one of my coworker stole my primo outside alone space. Bummer dude! I can’t stay inside during lunch because the conversation is pretty much exhausted after we discuss our love for fresh vegetables and our mutual child-related annoyances. All I want to do is read a doggone book in the shade outside… Is that really asking so much?

Obligatory apology post

Once again, I have failed miserably in my blog-upkeep duties. Is it any consolation that I almost blogged on Saturday? I logged on to WordPress and everything, but then one of the featured blogs mentioned Pet Society so I decided to check in on little D. Cooper instead. And now I have to go earn those dolla billz. Sorry, y’all!