The End Is Near (Yet So Far Away)

I love to read. You may or may not have noticed that, you may have guessed that, or you may have simply inferred that I was born with a dictionary near my head instead of a fluffy pink pillow, which served the purpose of making me both eloquent and long-winded.

Or perhaps you just glided over this, I'd understand.

At any rate, I love to read. It is rare when a good book comes along, one which hijacks the body and mind and must be read through and through once the first chapter has been read. When this good book comes along and you have the fortune (or misfortune) of happening upon it ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE.

Pardon my loud and angry shouting.

Today, I have been reading such a book. I started it some time ago, found my way back into college for the last semester of my second year, and had to put it on hold.

Horrifying.

The book continued to call to me. I will not tell you the name of the book (but I will tell you that Wilbur Smith is quite possibly one of the greatest storytellers this world has ever seen), so there. I will tell you that it called to me on my cell phone, my room phone, my house phone, and the campus intercom system.

That's a problem.

Alcoholics have beer. I have good books.
(envision me crying, sobbingly confessing, a broken man)
I've started. . . sneaking it in . . . in between classes . . . oh I'm so ashamed! I hold off on sleep just to read one more chapter! I don't talk to people because I have to keep reading it! IT IS THAT GOOD!!! OH I DISGUST MYSELF!!!

All self-loathing apart, there is something magical about this. When you've found a story so enticing and so beautiful that it simply draws you completely into its world, you know that there are books worth reading.

There is also something problematic about this: the more you read on, the more you feel the need to finish the darn thing. What can be the greatest problem is that every page you turn feels as though it were turned the other way; every chapter you read has not gotten you any closer to the end. Something will always pop up and keep you from going any further.

For instance:
I am about thirty pages away from the end of my book. The final problem as appeared, people are rushing to and fro, desperate to resolve the situation. Good and evil are clashing, love is at stake, lives could be lost, and the world is holding its breath.

Of course, a teacher tells us all to pay attention so I am forced to put the book away. Such a pity.

The drive to know what will happen next, and will everyone live happily ever after (excluding the villian), can be all-consuming. You must know, you have to know - but the end of the book may not be more than thirty pages away to you and seems like a thousand pages. This is distressing.

You have to know.
You must know.
There is only one way.

Somehow . . . someway . . . you must finish that book.
I suggest we both hop to it.

Now You've Got It!

The common cold. The flu. The sniffles. The measles. Whatever it is, it has come your way and it is going to get you, whether you like it or not.

That dreadful sickness, that horrible disease . . . IT WILL GET YOU.

Or perhaps it already has.

As a college student, I am forced, every day, to sit in a classroom with other people. One sneezes, and suddenly it goes through the room like wildfire.
Or, consider those that ride a bus. Someone didn't wash their hands in the morning and has a cold, they put their hand on a railing, and the entire bus becomes an incubus of viral plague (thank you to Meryl Streep for this quote).
Or, someone sits down in a restaurant or cafeteria and coughs, but is kind enough to cover their mouth first. They then pick up a plate from the salad bar with this same hand and infect the rest of the plates in the stack, plus all the veggies, plus the tongs.

You are doomed. DOOMED. There is no way to escape it. There is no way to hide.

You don't have it?
Now you do.

But all is lost? NO, you MUST FIGHT BACK.

Let me explain.

You can try the ordinary things. Everyone conscious about the sick season does - wash the hands, carry a tissue, spray everything with disinfectant before you touch it, go to bed early - but these things can only take you so far. All the hand sanitizer in the world won't save you from an unclean surface. Tissues will eventually wear too thin and muck-covered to be used. Sometimes, we just can't help staying up late - so what do you do?

Well, this is where, as my literature teacher said last semester, the miracle of pharmaceutical science comes into play.

- I suggest Airborne if you are desperate. It tastes miserable, it looks like the creation of pondscum in a bottle, and it packs a punch that would knock an elepant over. However, the stuff works to keep others at bay.

- If you have to use tissues, switch often. The more you carry one filth-covered cloth with you, the more disgusting it becomes. In time, you'll just be dabbing your face with that Meryl-Streep-Incubus we talked about.

- Share not. I repeat, share not. If someone has taken a magical pill and they are fit as a fiddle, do not accept their offer if they want to lend you a pill. You are taking a pill from the jar of a person who, at one point, was coughing and sneezing and oozing and digging his gross fingers into that jar, likely touching every last pill on the way in. Do not accept pills, go buy your own, guard them jealously.

- If you can, get away. By this I mean, get the hell away from anyone who sits beneath a cloud of germs, dripping pools of feverish material onto the ground. The elevator door opens, a woman greets you by sneezing into a stained tissue - wait for the next one. You sit down in class and the guy next to you coughs harshly, move your desk over an inch or two. Cruel? Not really.

- Remember: fluid intake is an important thing. Drink, I say, and drink again. Drink at least one full bottle of water a day. Have a glass of orange juice with breakfast. Drink less highly carbonated things.
Why?
Fluid cleans you out. Fluids cleans out your system, keeps your system running, and keeps your metabolism cycling. It staves off the dehydration and allows your body to fight off disease better.

- Ultimately, you need the sleep. Get it, but get it on your own. You will be tempted by the dark side (actually, it is commonly a dark green) and try to swallow a sleeping pill to get through the night. There is a chance you are that one person who doesn't react well to sleeping pills and you will instead be up all night.
OR.
You will build up a dependency to the sleeping pills. When you run out, you'll lie awake and miserable at night, until someone on the fourth floor sneezes into an air duct and it carries down to your room.
Get the sleep, but get it on your own.

So, there we have it.
This is the season of the sick. The time of the self-preservation is upon us.
Grab the tissues. Snatch up the warm blankie. Heat up the tea or hot chocolate.

The time to protect yourself is now.

Lend Me Your Ears

I remember years ago laughing at my unfortunate sister when she had an ear infection. She was forced, twice a day, to lie down on her side and have some drops put into her ear. Furthermore, she was required to stay that way, silent and staring out at the world from her side, for about ten minutes.

Now, a hundred or so years later, I know that if she were present, it would be me she would laugh at and I would deserve it completely.

I have a small ear infection. There, I said it. I have a small cut in my ear and I have to, four times a day, lie down on my side, stare out at the world, and drop something into my ear. I am plunged into the sensation of being underwater as I can't hear out of one ear, pressed firmly to the ground, and my other is blocked by some medicinal liquid.

However, unlike my sister, I am forced to lie down four times, rather than two, and there is no mother nearby to put the drops in and to comfort me. I, a busy college student with much else on my mind, am forced to perform this whole unpleasant task all by myself.

Now, why is this a problem?

I am a college student, as stated. I should welcome the forty minutes daily of bliss and quiet.

I think not.

To begin with, there is no mother, as I have said. No one brings me a cookie, no one turns on the television for me, and no one pats my head and tells me in soothing tones that this will all be better. In reflection, my sister had it quite well off.
Next, there is the fact that every minute I lie here, every second that goes by, I have wasted another valuable moment as a college student doing . . . heaven knows what (studying, perhaps?), and to waste even a second means certain doom.

Finally, I have roommates. And the roommates are treated to the sight of me, lying on my side, plunging a dropper into my ear, and they get to laugh.

Laugh, much like the way I was able to snicker and cackle at my poor unfortunate sister all those years ago.

This must surely be karma.
This must surely be her way, from the years in the past, of wishing a swift and terrible revenge upon me.
Well . . . bravo. She wins.

One time done today. Only three more to go.

Resume, Resume

I had a chance today to glance at my resume. I hadn't looked at that thing in years, let me tell you. The last time I was so much as in the same room with that thing, it was when I was about to stuff it into a series of envelopes and mail them off to several hundred colleges.

To me, it was plain and scanty. I was somewhat shocked upon hearing it praised, openly, in class, as being perfect and consisting of everything that I needed.

Let me back up.

I have not invented anything. I have no awards for curing diseases.
I was not the number one in my class. The top 40, at least.
I was not at any time a part of any major student organizations. I never was one for Amnesty International or Students Rights.

Somehow, looking at that list, it pleased the class and I hadn't an idea why.

There are several notable things. Boy Scout, black belt, playwrite, cleaned a small pox cemetery. But there are no outstanding notices about having competed in the math leagues or published major award-winning articles in the paper.

Actually, the major notable newspaper article I wrote covered the performance of "The Laramie Project" at my school and was the one article which generated a great deal of controversy when it was censored, landing me at the heart of a campus politics war.

So.

Yeah.

This goes to show you this: no matter what we see in ourselves, for a resume is merely a well-documented and articulate reflection of our person, someone is going to see it very differently.

Life . . . it is strange.
I wrote down Head of Relay For Life Team, 2004, and thought nothing of it. The college I was accepted to was thrilled to see this.
I wrote down that I competed in the Drama Fest in Boston, thinking it would be smirked at. Instead, it has identified me as a competitor.
I wrote down that I had worked at two retails, a factory, and mowed lawns, realizing these aren't the most sparkling internships one can have.
Can you say "work study?"

The resume, therefore, is tricky.
You can't see yourself through it. You can see yourself ON it.
To explain that: you can write every brilliant comment and shining moment of your life on it, you can record every time you rescued a kitty from a tree, you can stuff in every A+ that you've ever recieved - it doesn't matter how intelligent or wonderful you see yourself.

All that matters is that someone else will see your resume. And when they see it, they will see you.

So, ask yourself this: who will they see?

Can't tell? Neither could I.

Wipe Your Feet!

There was a disaster today. Oddly enough, it happened because of the snow, however indirectly, and it caused a friend to be carried out in a hospital stretcher, right before my eyes.

She slipped on the stairs, her feet a little wet with snow, and had a concussion.

Now, I know this isn't positive. I know this isn't a great national crisis, I know that soldiers will not be flown in from overseas to protect her, I know that the president will not fly over the hospital with a sad look on his face.

But, so what?

To me, this is a problem. This is one of the greatest problems that can happen and no one ever sees it coming.

That nasty sign, the one which is sitting in front of a slightly wet bathroom floor or the one that appears on the flagstones outside a building the moment a bit of moisture appears in the air - it says CAUTION: SLIPPERY WHEN WET for a reason, people.

We move fast down those stairs and we suddenly have our feet leave the ground, shooting out from under us, moving too quickly to track, and we flail our arms, suddenly realizing that something is wrong. Fall back. Hit the head. See the world go white for a moment.

It says that for a reason. It does.

I remember that I slipped on the stairs once and fell down the flight holding a bag of laundry. I sprained my ankle badly and limped for a week. I was in a rush and I wasn't paying attention.
This girl, however, was completely innocent. She paid attention to the signs, she wiped her feet on the mat, and she calmly stepped onto the stairs.

She just failed to notice that no one had done the same and the stairs were a puddle of water.

To all.
To everyone.
To each and every person who may read this:

WIPE YOUR DAMN FEET, IT IS SLIPPERY OUT THERE!

Dream A Little Dream

Every now and then, the occasional strange dream will hit. You will be jolted from sleep by the sheer absurdity of it, or the sheer horror (depends on the dream), and you will lie in bed, shaking, blinking, and wondering just what the heck you saw.

The following are examples . . .

You were walking down the street wearing a green suit while drinking milk from an expired carton when you suddenly realized your house is on fire, but you live in a rainforest, so what is your house doing there?

Or:

You're drowning in the ocean when the city of Atlantis apears below you and singing mermaids and crabs usher you in, a la The Little Mermaid at which point you find out that you are slated to sing before this undersea audience and you've forgotten your clothes.

Something like that.

The dream is weird. You find it weird, and you know it is weird, and it is so weird within the dream that you tell yourself "This is TOO weird . . . this has to be a dream," and a voice in your head (also you) says, "Wait, it is!"
And you sit up.

I've done that.

The fancy if not elaborate dreams above notwithstanding, what else could possibly happen? Instead of one bad dream, there might just be the possibility of a triple feature bad dream matinee. Those are the ones you have to watch out for.

I, for example, just had one so strange that I woke up merely as self defense.

Dream One: A boy I know here at college, much smaller than me and with an odd temper, threw a chair at me during some sort of stage rehearsal and broke my foot, whereupon I chased him all over campus and would up completely shattering my foot.

Dream Two: My suitemate's hamster, dead over Christmas, came back to life and sat on my dining room table back at home in the middle of a party, at which point I fed it a carrot.

Dream Three: My mother informed me she'd rented out my room to an enemy I hadn't seen or even thought of since high school, and I predictably was angry.

I rest my case.

See, a dream is an odd thing. Who cares about it? You barely remember them anyway, at any rate. But when you do, they really sit with you.

I'm asking myself, what did I do to this boy that made him hit me with a chair? And why did I chase him on a broken foot? That's just crazy. For that matter, how does a dead hamster in Rhode Island crawl all the way to Boston and onto my dinner table? And do hamsters eat carrots?
Ultimately, why would my mother rent out my room to someone I hate?

The questions.
The hidden meanings.
The . . . something else to complete this small comedic triad.

Sound Effect: (rim shot)

We all have these dreams. No, not THESE but ones like them. People you don't know, things you don't care about, and memories you've generally forgotten. They're all fair game in a dream.

So, what am I suggesting you do to fight it?
All you can do when you wake up is take a shower, fast, and hope it all goes away.

Publish And Be Damned

Opportunity, we have been told, is not a lengthy visitor.

And right now, I'm trying to decide what to wear when he arrives and whether he'll take tea or coffee. I'll put stock on tea. I can't make tea myself, just flavoured water which is lukewarm, but I can pass that off as tea with the proper biscuits.

I have a few goals in life.
- Marry rich.
- Invent something.
- Abolish reality television.
et-bleeding-cetera.

My most prominent goal happens to be "Get published." However, with half my works unfinished and the other half unpublished, this has yet to happen yet. I am a writer, sure, but an unpublished one. This is the equivalent of a young girl saying she's a super star because she was booted off "American Idol" without even making it past preliminaries. This would then make me a hack incapable of singing and weighing in heavily on my dancing skills. I can't dance, so we'll leave this metaphor quickly.

The point is this: while I have nothing I can call (yet) a published work, there is always the dream and the chance that someday I will make it. So, I need to find a publisher, an agent, and a miracle.

I may have found just that.

Sparing the specific details, I have come across an opportunity to have one of my complete works passed before the eye of a publisher. By "pass" I mean that he may glance lazily at it as he puts his coffee mug down on top of it as an awkwardly shaped coaster, but he'll see it nonetheless.

Heaven help me, I want that shot.

So, what is stopping me? What is making me stay my hand and shuffle my feet (and if you could see me, I'm fidgeting too)? The possibility of FAILURE.

Yes, failure. The other "F" word. We hate that word, we hate it so much, and we all want it abolished. The problem is, we can't all succeed. We can't all be famous and important and get ahead - for us to get ahead, someone has to fall behind. I have just come upon my move to be one that gets ahead.

But what if I fail? What if I fall behind? Suppose I one day open my P.O. box and find a package inside, containing my manuscript with a rejection letter attached and a coffee ring on the top? This is, sadly enough, a probably reality. But against all that pounds in my chest and all that screams for me not to try, I have to.

So . . . yeah. I said it.
I will be published, or I won't. But that all depends on if I take my shot.

Tunnel(Vision) Of Love

There is a sort of thing one can say which they suddenly want to take back. I am not talking about the three words "I love you." There are, believe it or not, nine worse words . . . well, eight and the ninth attached with a hyphen.

Forget, "I love you."
Try, "Do you think we could ever be boyfriend-girfriend?"

Let me explain.

Last year I was sitting with a friend in my car, driving home from a movie. We'd been friends for some time. We'd been hitting it off well. I got on her nerves, she got on mine, we had our inside jokes, our catch phrases, one of us burped and the other said "Excuse me", that sort of thing. We were close friends of the opposite sex.

So, I decided to open my mouth and say something which, looking back at it from a year later or from a month later, I saw was completely stupid on my part.

Yes, those nasty nine/eight words above.

Now, my question was valid. Her response was, to say the least, unorthodox.

"Eeeew! No, geez, you're like my brother!"

Well. Okay, then.

Let me just ask you, has this happened to you? Don't answer, of course it has. There has been that horrible moment when you've opened your mouth and said something stupid like "I like you," and the other person says, "Sure, I like you too. You mean, you like my hair, right?" Or they've laughed as though you've delivered the snappiest one-liner the world has ever seen, or you've suddenly sprouted a red nose and a fuzzy orange wig.

This may or may not be a reference to Bonzo the clown, but this is besides the point.

You wish you'd never said it. You wish you'd never spoken. And you see hundreds upon hundreds of reasons you should never have spoken in the first place.
1 - Wrong moment
2 - Too soon
3 - Gets in the way of a good friendship
4 - "When Harry Met Sally"
And so on and so forth.

You have done this. You have, or you will.
Or you have done it to someone.
You just haven't noticed it yet.

The Rhythm Of The Night

So, let's talk about sleep. Yes, that's an odd thing to say, but let's talk about it anyway. Because I, for one, want to encourage the world to sleep, sleep well, and sleep again tomorrow night - but we, as human beings, will not ever do this.

Let me explain where I'm coming from.

The Sopranos is, apparently, an excellent show. Very informative, very action-packed, and every third word is the "F" word (when the dialogue isn't punctuated by a gunshot). Call the children, bring in the significant other, gather everyone together on the couch, open a bag of chips, tune in to watch this lovely, family-oriented program.

Watch it, that is, if you are not trying to sleep.

Now and again, you have the roommate who does this. You encounter the cousin visiting your house for the night, the college roommate, the careless parent, or that pesky neighbor next door - the one who, just as you are about to fall asleep for the night, finds it necessary to plug in the television, crank up the noise, and let Tony Soprano curse loud and true into the night for all to hear.

Or, more importantly, for YOU to hear.

Sleep is good. Really, it is. You lie down, get your head relaxed, fall comfortably into a state of pleasant happiness, and then BANG, Jack Bauer is in the other room fighting the terrorists again, or some desperate housewife is in mid-catfight with another desperate housewife. At this point, it suddenly becomes quite impossible to sleep.

Like I said, sleep is good. If you can reach it, that is. In a college dorm, it is very hard to claim. Somewhere, someone in the building, at some time (and likely between 9 and 12) will insist on watching something loud or listening to their stereo.

In my dorm, the top three sleep-related obstacles:
- Roommate wants to chat on IM
- Neighbor nextdoor wants to watch television
- Drunken person outside wants to climb in through your window (really)

Something will happen. You will not sleep tonight. Or tomorrow. So, what must you do?
Give in???? Surrender????

NEVER.

There are ways to combat this. Earplugs, for example. They work wonders. If not, take a strong dose of Nyquil. If this fails, douse your roommates and neighbors with Nyquil (this also works wonders). As a last resort, move out.

Or, if you're the spiteful sort, fight back.

Wait, just wait, like a tiger in the grass, crouching and tracking the warthog in the wallow nearby, until the moment is right. Then, spring.
When they're about to sleep, play YOUR music. Turn on YOUR television and make sure that someone is shooting someone on the screen. Drink and become ornery enough to raise a ruckus. Go a step further, even, and play pop music - and sing along.

Because, in conclusion, the lesson of this blog is this: If you can't sleep tonight, no one should.

Godspeed.

Don't Look Under The Hood

We are, for the most part, human. We are also, some of us, college students. Therefore, I take back the previous statement and say the following:

I am not a human, I am a college student.

Also, I am broke. Flat broke. Well, no, not flat broke, but if there is an opposite to rolling in money then the majority of college students are it. What with paying for meals, bills, services, and textbooks with special software slipped in by the publishing company which the odds are we will never use and therefore the extra hundred dollars attached to the selling price can be attributed to this lone compact disc.

As a college student, I have learned a valuable lesson, as I am a special college student. Why am I special? I own a car. And this car - my very own magic carpet - needs things. Gas, for instance. And check ups.

Like all college students, I panic when I hear a small klunk under the hood every now and then. Well, I DID panic, but now I simply take a new course of action. Follow the steps:

1) Hear the noise.
2) Ignore the noise.
3) Turn on the radio*, loud.

It panics all of us college students around the world that aren't made of money or don't come from fabulously rich and wealthy parents when our cars start to act up. To you it sounds like a klunk but to us it sounds like our last dollar sliding away down drain. We, for the most part, would rather run home to our parents and tell them that we agree with everything they've ever said than have to pay for services to our car.

You can probably guess the state of my automobile at the moment.

A klunk means doom. It means something, somewhere, is wrong. A tire is loose, the engine is about to explode, the gas tank will ignite at any moment, the springs in the seats are preparing to launch you clear through the ceiling.
But we, as college students, stand proud and adamant with our one creed: WE WILL NOT PAY TO HAVE IT FIXED! NEVER! NOT TODAY, NOT TOMORROW, NOT ON THE FINAL DAY OF JUDGMENT!

We are college students, we are broke, and we will wait, usually, until our cars have erupted in a spitting ball of grease and flame beneath us before we call for a repair man.

Go ahead, laugh. But if you're a college student like me, you know you do the same thing.

*Should the radio be broken, sing.