Saturday, October 24, 2009

The college blog

In an odd turn of events, I walked through the apartment to the kitchen today to find out that one of my roommates, the MD student, was engaging in the medical history portion of a medical examination today. Odd, and I felt like I was walking through something I shouldn't have, which is true because I really shouldn't have.

I haven't said much about the roommates yet, have I? The one mentioned above is a med student at SUNY downstate hospital, Syrian, actually a very affable guy. The other, a painting student at Pratt, I have now not seen in about a week. Oddly enough, this situation makes me feel like I'm perpetually imposing. Which I'm sure I am.

In other odd, much more banal news, I've been getting back to following Delaware football. Delaware, being part of the FCS, is basically impossible to find on TV, but I had established years ago that it was possible to find them online through the radio station. And so I've been listening to them when I have the chance. Now, the Blue Hens are currently ranked 23, which is really irrelevant within itself, but they've lost two games to Bill and the Bitch (William and Mary to those not in the know) and #1 Richmond.

Which gets to the reason I'm bringing this up: the team at #2: Montana. The only reason why this has any bearing -- really, it should be completely irrelevant -- is that I dated a girl from Montana, and, being first off FCS and so just as impossible to know anything about, I didn't realize that they had a decent football team, in Delaware's NCAA class. So the words were thrown about, a little friendly gibing and sparring as to which program is better (it's still Delaware, Jenn, championships won be damned), but frankly now they're on my radar, and now I'm curious, for no rational reason, to see the two teams play. Hopefully in the playoffs.

I guess this is chalked up to the "What you take from the people around you" category. You should hear my rants against Massachusetts. At least, the old ones.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Nothing to report in my balloon here, kids

Except that this might be the luckiest man alive, or the start of a new summer sport:


Okay, so I lied. The balloon boy thing -- yes, that balloon boy, the one with the mysterious flying saucer, a mysterious falling (or not) box, and a mysterious appearance on a tv show after the hoax was all but exposed (including on-cue projectile vomiting).


Now, all I'm going to say is that if you feed the animals (in this case the food is late-20th century narcissism via the construct of the reality tv show. To pull an out-of-context quote from an article in this month's Atlantic: "Is it possible that being on television was not good for these people?").


Ahem -- that parenthetical was too long, so I'll restart the thought: If you feed the animals, don't be surprised when you can't get rid of them. It's a lesson to us all.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Nor'easter ghosts

It's 11:30 at night, I'm listening to spirituals in the form of chorale music while waiting for the melatonin to kick in. In my incredibly comfortable, warm cozy bed setup. Now, which of these things does not make sense? That's right, the melatonin. Why am I taking melatonin you might ask? I understand, I'm having a conversation with an imaginary audience which in general means nobody at all, so I'll cut with the pretense and have a dialogue with myself:

G1: Geof 2, why exactly are you popping the melatonin?
G2: Well, Geof 1, there's a funny story about that. See, I was wracked with insomnia all last week...
G1: I knew that. That's been well-established and in some ways very incredibly not surprising -- Geof can't sleep, maybe Geof drinks too much coffee, maybe he should lay off the nicotine and the caffeine and just let his body do what it's designed to do.
G2: Are you done?
G1: You have to let it shut down every now and then. It's sort of a given. Now I'm done.
G2: Did you save up any energy for the punchline, or is that narcolepsy you're so proposing interfering with your usefulness as a listening partner.
G1: No, I'm really done. And awake. You're not letting me not stay awake.
G2: I'm going to start.
G1: About the alarm clock?
G2: Yes about the alarm clock, you frakking ninny. Of course you know my stories, you're just the vessel of my brain that contains my left ear in its vicinity. Take a pillow. You're more interesting sleeping.
G1: When you let me.
G2: I'm letting you right now.
G1: Right.
G2: Now, as I was saying. I've been known to become so used to my alarm clocks they don't wake me.
G1: And you still buy them.
G2: You're sleeping and not interrupting. Emphasis on the not interrupting. And I buy them -- no words -- because I enjoy being, upon occasion, a functioning member of society.
G1: And yet.
G2: Anymore or I smother you.

So the story is essentially true -- I'd been using the alarm on my cell phone to cajole me out of sleep, which, although useful for the first few months, has now stopped allowing me to wake. Meaning I'm suddenly in the twilight zone of figuring which buttons to depress on the cruise model my parents sent me from a west Indies trip. There's a reason why zombies originate there.

@ @ @

Shit, melatonin is starting to take hold, so this might become a little incoherent. Or it might be to-be-continued. MOst likely the latter.

UPDATE: Today there is sun. The air is still a little crisp and birds are still singing. This weekend was a nor'easter-ish nightmare, what with the wind and the rain and the frightening damp, dank cold. I'd experienced some of these during my time at delaware, but even then my understanding was this was nothing like the cold of the climes farther north. So I got my first taste. I survived, but need a damned scarf.

@ @ @

As for the ghost. You don't get to hear about it. Grand Central is a small microcosm of the world, east and west. Last week was filled with psychological pop rocks of the type that get screened and grabbed at the airport. It's been a rarity.