Paying Homage to the Man

At an early age, I found that I loved to read.

Now, I was no Matilda, but my little illiterate toddler mind thoroughly enjoyed listening to the same stories over and over and then reciting them. Of course, my mom could just be making some bullshit up on the spot, but I believed that whatever she said was on the pages. And eventually I graduated to being able to do it without help. Yay for me not needing hooked-on phonics.

But then something happened. School.

It seems to be a reoccurring pattern to mention a few reasons why I do not particularly enjoy being at school.
However, at the wee age of 5-6 I hadn’t yet discovered why school wasn’t any fun, I just knew that being forced to read things that pertain to NOTHING at all seemed to hamper my appetite for literature.

This decline in my desire to touch, let alone read a book continued steadily until sometime early last year.

Thank God for the discovery channel and Seinfeld, or I wouldn't have learned anything at all for about a 10-year block.

But anyway, the turning point, if you will, came one dismal little day when I went was dragged into Barnes & Noble by a pal and had to waste about 30 minutes while he scampered off to return a purchase.

Now this wasn't your standard, run-of-the mill bookstore, it was one of those whopper Barnes & Nobles with 4 floors that take up half a city block.

As you can imagine, I, the virgin reader, was a little intimidated. But with an escalator and a few shoves from those pushy New Yorkers, I found my way over to the fiction section.

Unfamiliar with the manner in which one explores the racks of books, I nonchalantly glanced around and tried to blend in with the natives.

Ah, picking up a book, good, okay. Looking at the blurb on the back with a furrowed brow--showing moderate interest or fervent dislike. Okay, got that down.

Aha, I looked down and saw that in my possession I had my literary salvation. Alright, maybe that's a little melodramatic, but work with me.

On the cover was a picture of a seemingly dead little yellow bird, a canary if I had to take a guess, and the name Chuck Palahniuk. (Which I later referred to as the novel Lullaby)

I did the routine, back of the book check, skimmed through the book like a natural, and thought to myself something along the lines of “…weird”.

I held on to the book and continued perusing the shelve I found it on.
And whallah, a little farther down the line, I saw a book called Fight Club by the same author.

This was very familiar, and as the wheels of my memory churned and clicked into place, I pieced together that this was also the name of a movie.
One of my favorite movies a matter of fact, which I had watched over and over. And over.

Intrigued, I plopped myself down with both books in hand to see what all the hub-bub was about this reading stuff was.

20-ish minutes later, my friend rejoined me.

He tried the standard calling-of-my-name to get my attention,
then tried it in an elevated tone hoping to provoke a response.
Resorting to physical stimulus he then “gently punched my arm” in an effort to snap me out of my little coma.
Of course my reflex kicked in and I “lightly nudged him in the shin” but aside from that, his efforts were fruitless.
I was utterly engrossed in the novel and there wasn't anyone or anything that was going to get me to budge.

Well it was about damn time.

So, I purchased the book, devoured it the next day, went back, bought another one by the same author, continued this until I had read everything by him I could get my hands on, and then tried again with other authors similar to him. Surprise, that wasn't so bad either.

And so, the main point of this whole long schpiel is to commend, and thank, Chuck Palahniuk, more affectionately referred to as "the fucking man" (not the bad kind), for shedding some light on my little book-devoid world. I haven't been the same since.

flash. give me rampant intellectualism as a coping mechanism.

Technologically Impaired

Just for the record, I generally have No idea how to work with this template nonsense on the blog, and so if you happen to see unusual and misplaced things (like the picture above), you'd probably do well to ignore them.

The C Word

College.

Whenever I hear this word I am reminded of an old Yiddish proverb;
"Oy Gevalt!".
Though I usually try to refrain from doing the standard throwing-of-the-hands-on-the-temples
and moaning routine that is usually followed by this remark, somethings can't be helped.

Back in the day, when I was an angelic and naive little creature, the word college rested on a fluffy cloud, surrounded by bubbly lettering, and the occasional rainbow, on a crystal blue sky. Now. Not so much.

Lately, after hearing this word, my blood pressure tends to elevate at an olympic speed and I find myself cursing my guidance counselor while begging for a 100 mg dose of Xanax.

Of course, I know that this kind of heightened anxiety is normal for most juniors in high school, but it still doesn't ease the pain of having to cram what the hell I'm going to be doing for the rest of my life into one intense moment when the "c" word is mentioned.
Which is usually in question form i.e. "Aw, I haven't seen you since you were this big. My how the time flies, I bet your already thinking about college, aren't you?"
Then I have to do the whole clenched smiling ordeal with a brief yet insightful update on my university search as of yet. This usually happens 5-7 times per week, more if I'm on a vacation.

And so, I am left with few options.

I can:

a) suck it up, load up on prescriptions and bad reality tv to keep me sane, and keep on truckin'
b) get sillicone breast implants to aid in impressing a college admissions officer
c) pay some over-educated foreign exchange student to double for me and take my SAT's
d) consider a career in the meat-packing and/or textiles industry
e) do exceptionally well academically for the remainder of my high school existence
or f) move to the Congo and help save the mountain gorillas from extinction

It's a tough call.

Just a Quote that I Really Liked from Waking Life

By the way, Waking Life is an awesome movie, if you disagree, then we have some problems.

"Creation seems to come out of imperfection. It seems to come out of a striving and a frustration, and I think this is where language came from. It came from our desire to transcend our isolation and have some sort of connection with one another. And it had to be easy when it was just simple survival. Like the word water, we came up with a sound for that, or saber tooth tiger right behind you, we came up with a sound for that. But when it gets really interesting is when we use that same system of symbols to communicate all the abstract and intangible things that we're experiencing. What is frustration? Or love? When I say love, the sound comes out of my mouth and it hits the other person's ear, travels through this Byzantine conduit in their brain, through their memories of love, or lack of love, and they register what I'm saying and they say yes, they understand. But how do I know they understand, because words are inert, they're just symbols, they're dead, you know? And so much of our experience is intangible. So much of what we percieve cannot be expressed. It's unspeakable. And yet, you know when we communicate with one another, and we feel that we've connected and we think that we're understood, I think we have a feeling of almost spiritual communion. And that feeling might be transient, but I think it's what we live for."