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.

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.

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.

Insomnia ruminations

As should be gathered by the title and the fruitlessness of my melatonin, I can't sleep and am officially annoyed by this. Again. It's turning into an old story. So you get a blog post in return.

Thoughts:

1) The slate gabfest plugged an article which I cannot find, but sounds freaking great: The breakdown of all sounds considered's top albums list. Which, long story short and to further prove my disdain, simply reminds me of the middlebrow banality of the entire NPR franchise. Half the time I think Congress would be doing the country a favor if they followed through on the cutting of the damned funding, if only for the fact that people might actually experience

2) I made a batch of chili last night, which should have turned out delicious and actually was quite tasty, but the damned thing smells like someone upchucked in the frakkin soup. Now, I don't know if this is a bad beer experiment or what, but it's overall quite annoying. Which leads to point three:

3) The fridge in the apartment here is actually not working. Seriously. The freezer is absolutely fine, but the fridge? It's noticeably cooler in the kitchen than there. And we've had the windows shut in this nor'easter.

4) I need some more coffee right now. But I need sleep even more. Enjoy this, enjoy the nothingness of this post, nihilism sucks, creation ex nihilo is a lie (but the truth isn't that compelling, either). Later, kids.

One last thing, and yes, I know this is a postscript but I'm still sleep-optional at this point:

Monday morning one-off

I'm procrastinating getting ready for work, and so in doing I stumbled on this article in the NYtimes: "A Quest to Read a Book a Day for 365 Days." Okay, so this is admirable: basically, this woman has decided to read a book every day for a year. I'm cool with that, to a point. But really, browsing her blog (Read All Day), her assessments are largely superficial. How many book are "beautiful," "wonderful," "one of the best"? Really, while I appreciate what this is, the act of reading, reading a piece of art should elicit a response beyond just the "hey, look, I'm reading."

Now, my father used to read quite a bit as well. Mack Bolan, Marcinko, the occasional Ludlum. Which is fine also, but nobody is going to equate this to reading of depth. These are novels designed for consumption, serving much the same purpose as a big loud explosiony hollywood blockbuster, and should be considered as such. What's my point here? Basically, reading a lot can dangerously lead to treating all books as crap.

To my avid readers out there, take stock. I'm talking (somewhat) to you. Not to complain, but mainly to say that there's more to a novel that sheer rampant consumption is not going to help. It's like physics: every action has its consequences. Reading is still a slow activity, that's where it gets its power. Reading fast is just wasting time.

Hmmm...this post felt like a waste of time. I'll revise it when I think of a point later.

To Whittle this Down to One

I've had a lot come across my plate the last few days that seem blog-worthy. Or rather, rant-worthy and I need to talk about it: The implicit racism of Barbara Walters (or the denial of such underlying racism from Whoopi Goldberg), the fuck-you-in-the-face-W-Bush granting of the Nobel to Obama, the rise and codification of the vocal level "squee," the reminder to my San Francisco denizens that you don't mess with the Chinese woman on the bus.

No, what really got my attention was this:

Now, I know what you're thinking: it's about the cheesecake. And taken into account along with the prostitute story from earlier, that's understandable. But that's not it. Okay, a little bit, but not much.

See, I view this picture -- and mind you, we ran this at work -- I view this picture, and the eternal flipping rolodex that is my fractured memory system remembers a book: Ballard's Crash. Sex, car crashes, removable prosthetics. Beautiful shit. But no, that wasn't the full end of it: From Crash to "Good Country People." Preachers, hollowed-out Bibles containing condoms and whiskey, a hayloft, another prosthetic. And if this is what Hulga looked like, then I can suddenly go to sleep (well, pre-sleep) content.

Thank you, ESPN The Magazine, for re-invigorating this fine, fine work.

The Whores of Midtown

I'm taking a break tonight from the sweltering newsroom (read: the only thing enjoyable about saunas are the humidity and semi-circulating air), when this girl walks up to me, pink dress covered by a studded black cotton jacket, and asks me if I need company.

Reflexively, naturally, I say I'm doing just fine, and frankly I was, the sting of the pre-autumn air doing wonders for my mood, but that was not the reason. Let's face it: she was a whore. Really, a bonafide woman-of-the-discretionary-last-minute-hotel-rooms whore. But that wasn't even the reason. More on that later.

We're going to now rewind to another episode, this time to a planned post-BW retirement celebration about three, maybe four weeks prior. I have the chance to mingle with some of the people in full on decent mood, what now that I'm at this point finally getting my feet on the ground out here. For avid followers, this was the same weekend I moved into the new digs.

And so I'm outside smoking, listening to a shoot-the-shit conversation from a bunch of this-establishment regulars, when I see an african american girl, all decked in white like it's a clubbing outfit (and like it is the 85 degrees at night it was), who waves. I nod, turn my head, ignore her for the ministrations of my tobacco inhalations. She doesn't leave, and instead stops and crosses the street.

"What's a guy like you doing out here all alone tonight?"

"Smoking."

"Well you know, you need someone to keep you company?"

"I'm doing well, but thanks."

"Oh, you don't have a girl in there, do you? Nobody to come in and break all this up?"

"She's waiting on me, actually."

That's essentially how the conversation ended, a few idle lines passed, then she goes clomping along -- clomping not being the proper term but what is the term for somebody wearing knee-high thick-heeled patent-leather boots who still walks with grace? -- and I go back to my smoke.

The bouncer: Holy shit, I haven't seen one of those in years. (descriptor: the guy is a seriously tatted up biker-looker who regaled me later on about going for his gun if t his one guy on the pool table would not...just...quit...egging him on...while he was working.)

Regular: One of what?

The bouncer: She was a whore. Haven't seen one of those around here in a while.

And so, this is my frame of reference. Were I a journalist, I'd probably pull out some prostitution stats showing the increase in such-and-such numbers over the last x number of years. But I'm lazy and a pontificator and a fictionalizer, so I digress. The sound of my voice is what I'm really looking for in all these.

Which cuts back to the story tonight: I'm walking, it's a whore, I'm reflexively prone to not trusting and say no. After the incident happened I dissected it for what it was: It wasn't that she was so obviously a woman of the trades, an ex-mortgage broker or derivatives trader (because really, both these scenarios tell me Pretty Woman might not be a figment, at least in that prostitutes exist that aren't completely cracked out and gumming for the next available stupid cash-laden john. See Spitzer, Eliot.)

No, the real reason why I said thanks, I'll pass, has just been a thing of breeding, an axiom I have: Never trust a woman whose wardrobe consists almost entirely of pink.