Mid Semester Break, Also Known As: Game Time

Hey, you there, with the eyes.

Yes you, the one reading this, you know who you are. You know what time it is? No, it's not Adventure Time. It's Game Time. It's officially Mid-Semester break, and since I just finished my essay for Film Western literally 25 minutes ago (it is now 8:40), and The Legend of Korra  is on, all I have to do before I can play los video juegos (Spanglish on yo asses) is watch the rest of Korra and all 42 minutes of Once Upon a Time in Wonderland. 

Tomorrow, Pokemon X comes out, and I found out earlier that the usual 3 PM shuttle to Walmart on Saturdays does not exist during Mid-Semester break. So it's another hour and a half round trip to Gamestop for me in the AM. I am so thankful that I won't have to do this trek to Gamestop for the rest of the semester, unless I decide to get the new Super Smash Bros. for the 3DS, and I'm not sure if I will, at least not day one. What? You think I'm kidding? Look at me.

Do I look like I'm kidding? Do I look like someone who enjoys four mile walks just to pick up a game? No. No one likes doing that. NO ONE. Especially lil' ol' me, who likes nothing. That was a lie, I like things. I'm sorry I lied to you, here, have a cookie. Sorry, he got to it first. He always seems to do that.

So I've been trying to beat Pokemon Black 2 before X comes out --- Oh shit, Korra has amnesia. Why are these children's shows so damn good. They're better than a lot of other crap out there on television. This is coming from a guy that watches almost everything television has to offer. You know, aside from the no good worthless schlock. 

I don't have a prejudice over what can be good television, anything can be good television. Anything. And I mean it. They just have to try. Take the new show The Millers for example. With that cast, the sky was the limit. I figured the show couldn't possibly be anything less than good. But the writing, the sheer horridness of the writing, words cannot describe just how bad the writing is. I don't know how it hasn't been cancelled yet. Maybe it got better, maybe episode two wasn't as terrible as episode one. But when episode one makes you want to cry because you actually know you could have written a better episode of television in your sleep, you don't even want to find out how good episode two turned out. That being said, the only two new shows that have been cancelled so far, are We Are Men and Lucky 7. 

The former I quite enjoyed, while admittedly the latter didn't find it's standing yet, and had the worst possible ratings a show on ABC could have had. We Are Men, despite having rather poor critical acclaim, and poor ratings, was not that bad of a show. I honestly don't know how it didn't do better, considering Tony Shaloub was in it. But now I'll never know how the show will end. I hate when a show gets cancelled just a few episodes in, because they don't even have the capability of finishing a season for the million or so who actually liked (or just watched) the show. I need to know how it was going to end. Why are shows cancelled so Early? I want to know why, tell me why. TELL ME!

In other news. My list of movies, its still at 106. If you missed the drop from 107, it was Prisoners, I saw Prisoners, it was good. I recommend it. A lot. It was fantastic. Go Watch it. If you want to know how good it was in three words, ask Dr. House.

Sometime later tonight I'm going to watch Much Ado About Nothing and The Croods. The latter to shut my suitemate up who keeps telling me I have to watch it. You know who you are, you can stop telling me to watch it now. Seriously. Stop.

In case you also missed it from my previous post. I mentioned a little project that my Advanced Poetry class was doing involving a typewriter, my jaw, and dropping said jaw.

Here you see the thirty pound beast in its natural habitat. The Dr. Pepper can runs away in awe of the typewriter's majesty. If you recall, the assignment calls for the students to write a long, linked poem, in the style of Japanese Renku. We were given seven rules (they are labeled rules, but they are really guidelines), which I will list below verbatim.

Rule #1: There are no rules. Write what you want, in any style, any voice, any manner, but do keep in mind that you're (we're) writing a poem, not a long, thing block of fractured prose.

Rule #2: In the spirit of Ammons, the shape of the poem (the lay and play of lines) will be dictated by the width of the paper (3 1/8 inches). As a group working together, we should be "listening to" eachother, but no one should feel limited by another person's poetic trajectory.

Rule #3: Like improvised music, your lines should be written "on the spot," and not "pre-written." The poem must be typed, and no words or phrases can be erased. Think by typing. Type by thinking. Follow the clackety keys.

Rule #4: The typewriter may not be kept by anyone for longer than one week. It must be returned to class on the Monday after you took it away. The exception is that you may pass the typewriter off to another member of the class during the week if you work out the logistics (but please let me know). Also, you might want to organize a group "type-in" where several people get together to work (this, in the more traditional spirit of Renku). Finally, if you'd like to drop off the typewriter early to me, feel free to do so, I will then contact someone else about picking it up.

Rule #5: Just as Basho, considered the master of haiku (and a great practitioner of Renku poems), had many disciples working with him, you should consider Ammons' Tape your masterwork: think about the way he works with the limitations of the paper roll, how his use of the poetic line makes the paper's width both inevitable and invisible. If you get stuck, turn to Ammons. Let him be your guide.

Rule #6: You may write as much as you like (there's plenty of "scroll" to go round). Please date the start of each new section. When you're done with your section, please type your initials, not your full name. The paper roll is rather delicate, so take care that the paper is not torn. Roll up the poem when you're finished with your section. But of course everyone can and should read what's been written.

Rule #7: Write like you mean it. Go wild.

So those are the rules. There are not that many of them, and they are pretty basic. But yeah, I had the thing from Wednesday after I wrote my blog post. I had no idea I was actually going to be the one to take it Wednesday, and then took I it back on Thursday. This was the email I sent out to let the class know it was in the English Department Office - Our drop off/pick up zone. "Attention Alpha Team, the eagle has returned to its nest, intercept at your own risk." 

So the other day my ex told me to go read a recent Tumblr post of hers. I hadn't been on Tumblr in ages, ages being weeks, and I don't really plan on going back to Tumblr. I just don't get it. It doesn't appeal to me. Any way, the post was basically her taking the blame for our relationship ending. As we both suffer from depression, it's practically impossible for either of us not to think it's anyone's fault but our own. So really, I respect that she is saying it's her fault, but come on, I mean, I'm the man right, it's never the woman's fault. Am I right ladies... heh... hehe... heh... God I'm so terribly awkward. But yeah, relationships man.

I don't understand them, they kind of freak me out, and I don't think that is normal. People typically aspire to be in a relationship, and so do I. But gah am I terrified to start a relationship, to be in one just... I can't even think about it. The way the last one I was in went, I'm afraid of what it would be like with anyone else. Literally. She understood me and the way I was before we started the relationship, she knows I'm terrible with communication, and most people aren't. So when I think about getting into another relationship with someone, or whatever. I just think, okay, when I don't tell them that I have free time, or whatever I don't say, it's just going to end the relationship before it can really begin because that's how pathetic my life is.

Who knows, maybe by the time I'm 30 I'll have worked through all this bullshit and I'll be able to properly communicate everything to everyone. Hell, the only reason I'm able to do it here, is because my writing is the only way I can express my emotions and what-not. Seriously, and the only reason that is is because I'm writing this while nobody else is reading it. If I know somebody is able to read this as I write it - which come to think of it, someone probably is - I wouldn't be able to write it. That's how hopelessly hopeless I am. For reals.

I'm not that awkward with conversations though. I can talk to anyone about anything really, as long as I know the subject. But I can't start a conversation with people I barely know. If they instigate, sure, I'm able to talk to them. If they don't, I'll be damned if a word is ever spoken between us. I'm the same way in class too. As a creative writing major, I'm in a lot of workshop classes, which are basically submit your work to the class, and then discuss the positives and negatives. I can write everything that is good and bad about their work with great ease, but I have trouble speaking up unless called upon. It's just the way I am wired. I can't help it, and it has negatively affected my grade in every workshop class I have been in. Here's Emma Stone using a Shake Weight: 

That's how we move on here, we post pictures of attractive celebrities using Shake Weights. God I love her. Back off Spiderman, she's mine now.

True, I can't really compete with that. You win this round Spiderman.

So. I have to go watch Once Upon a Time in Wonderland and Much Ado About Nothing. So here, have this amazing video:

College Sucks

Or Wednesday, whatever. As for the title, I couldn't really think of anything else, so, college sucks. Mainly because I have so much work to do this week, as it is midterm week. That things had to be pushed back a bit.

Let's see here, I had to write a poem for advanced poetry today - that took a whole thirty minutes so it doesn't count, a reading review, which took thirty to forty minutes, I had two 5-6 pages essays that were due Friday at midnight (Both got moved, one to Saturday at midnight, and the other to next Friday, the 18th by midnight), I had to write a journal entry on Girls, which is basically just me discussing the episodes we watched and discussing the readings for that week. And to top it all off, I had a shit ton of Modern Logic work to do. I love this class, it's challenging, and I love a good challenge, but by God is the workload ridiculous. The assignment was one through five, six through ten for over achievers. I know what you're thinking, ten questions, that ain't so bad. WRONG. Each question has multiple parts, each part is a letter, question one goes to "r," two to "m," three to "n," four to "f" (and each part is two problems), and five goes to "i." The over-achievers have six to "h," seven to "m," eight to "g," nine to "n" and ten to "h." Essentially that's 60 questions for non-over-achievers and an extra 50 for the over-achievers.

Why is this, in any way, acceptable. Do professors not realize that we have other classes, that require us to read, and write as well. I didn't even include the reading assignments I had, or the movie assignments for my film classes (I had to watch The Searchers for Tuesday and I have to watch High Noon for Thursday). I get that professors don't keep in touch with each other and all discuss what assignments their handing out. But for Pete's sake (again, who is this Pete I keep talking about), were they not students themselves. Do they not remember this? Or do they, and this is just their sick way of getting some sort of satisfaction out of it? As if it were some diabolical plot. "I had to do fifty problems write four essays and read 120 pages all in the span of three days and it sucked, so now you do as well."

After class on Monday, the assignment was at first, not even possible. I mean it, I spent more than an hour doing everything short of banging my head against a wall to try and figure out just one problem in the first set of 18 (1, a-r). On top of all of that, the cherry on top of the icing. The thing that pisses me off about this the most. I have no time to play Grand Theft Auto 5, Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 ReMix, or Beyond: Two Souls, AND I am four shows behind. I have Sleepy Hollow, The Blacklist, Supernatural, and Sons of Anarchy. After tonight, who knows how far behind I'll be, it makes me sad, very sad.

I don't know how my suite mate can manage being behind. He still has like shows from last week to watch.

Thankfully, there's a break coming up, Friday from 3:20 until Wednesday at 11:15. That entire break will be spent catching up on shows, and destroying GTA and B:TS. Hopefully, my professors don't come up with any surprise assignments for us to do over break that completely ruins the point of a break. In high school, it was terrible, in college, it's even worse. Because in college, the assignments are longer, and the breaks, shorter. When you finally finish, you do this, and when you wake up, the break is over and you had literally no free time to yourself.

It's straight up torture. I've had tough semester's before. Tougher work load semesters. Hell for some reason I decided that my second semester as a Freshman would be fun if I had six. SIX. Literature classes. That's just reading, and writing essays. Reading a lot, and writing a lot of essays. That's all it is. Nothing more, no fun assignments, no sixty logic problems. Just pick up a book, read it, and write an essay on it. Every week. But I will admit that my favorite class I've ever taken was in that semester, so I don't regret it at all. Confronting Death was the class, and it was phenomenal. God, that Michael Cera .gif is mesmerizing.

So, about that poem assignment, it came out of left field, right after he had just given another assignment, which admittedly is going to be one of the best assignments ever. The first assignment is longstanding, for the rest of the semester - and son of a bitch my suite mate just turned on his X-Box, time to listen to Call of Duty for the next twelve hours. I don't understand the appeal of Call of Duty, well, the appeal of taking Call of Duty seriously and playing for anything other than fun. He was literally yelling at the TV yesterday, well, yelling at someone over his mic, about how they were "dicking around" and having fun. I know right, I guess no one is allowed to play video games for fun any more. I think that's what I hate about it the most. It changes people, it turns non scumbags into scumbags, and scumbags into meaningless sacks of shit.

The best part was that someone called him a "bitch ass nigga," nigga is used in a vain attempt to be politically correct, rest assured there was an "er" in the place of that "a." Then he accused that person of not knowing how to speak English. As the English major in the room, I had to inform him that "bitch ass nigga," is proper grammar, and that the person was giving him the label "bitch ass nigga." I don't normally get joy out of doing this, but it felt so good here, because he is so annoying when he gets into these stupid insult arguments where it's just one insult thrown back and forth one right after the other, that I just want to punch the mother fucker. Anyways, I have to write "bitch ass nigga" one more time.

So back to that first assignment. My professor bought a typewriter, off craigslist, for what I believe he said was ten bucks. and he is giving it to us, to take ho our homes, and use in order to write a poem that is confined to the space of adding machine tape. All of this is in the spirit of the book we just read, A. R. Ammons Tape for the Turn of the Year in which he does the same thing. We all contribute to the piece, one at a time, and we keep going until the semester is over. I'm not sure what will come of it after the fact, i.e. once the class is over, but it will be a fun little experiment. He is even allowing us to get together and work on some of it in a group, passing it around as we write.

The second assignment was just to submit any poem we had for workshop and bring in four copies. So I reworked an old poem that means quite a lot to me that I have used in every poetry class I've had, all three of them now. But the form is entirely different, a lot of the words that were in the old poem are still there, but reworked and moved around to create an entirely different poem. I actually prefer this newer version to the older version. the poem was written as a letter, to my older brother who died shortly after birth, and it didn't have the shape of a letter, now it does. It just looks better, though I'm not quite convinced it sounds better, it's still a slow reading poem, with a lot of pauses and breaks. I just haven't read it aloud to myself enough to know whether or not it sounds better compared to the old version.

Anywho, I have class soon, thirty minutes to be exact so I gotta bounce (who says bounce anymore? God I'm lame). So here's a video, and I'll see you Friday.