hatelife, I just don't care anymore.

it's the beginning of spring break for me. therefore I should feel good, but I strangely do not.

someone has turned down the contrast in my life. my reactions to good things are beginning to resemble my reactions to bad things. "okay." "that's cool." "whatever." and so on. if reaction is a function of events, reaction(good) - reaction(bad) —> 0 as time gets sufficiently large.

perhaps this is all because I have a tummy ache right now and my flatmate the funny dumb Irish one is moving out and I'm still uncertain about last term's grades and I have a honeymoon to plan that should already be planned and an upcoming career that is ill-defined and uncertain at best and I sleep too much but not often enough.

and beer is not an option. it turns me into someone I'm not, someone I don't like. no, dear hatelife, my escape must come from some other source. or perhaps I should not be seeking escape at all. perhaps I should admit defeat and move on. I don't feel defeated, though; I just feel tired.

ugh. dummy.

I've been rambling, but I think I'm done. feel free to stop reading now. I won't take offense.

Okay, the ad was novel at one point. It was slightly amusing to poke fun at the guy, but it has to go.

Blech. If ads were soldiers, they'd have taken over the world years and years ago. They outnumber humans twelve to one, I'm sure. Conservative guess.


WARNING: lame, boring, unpublishable venting ahead!

I hate grace. In my philosophy of science course, I missed the first class of the quarter because I misread its location. I asked about it at the registrar's office, and the nice lady there informed me of the class's actual location … where it didn't meet the second day, because they changed locations and didn't leave a note or anything on the door to let the rest of us know. So I missed the second day of class also. Batting zero, as they say. Finally, Thursday saved me, when I and the class were together at the same place at the same time. I found out that there were multiple handouts, assignments, etc. I missed from the first days. Last night I sat down and tried to plow through them, but since they built from the class discussion of Wednesday, I found it hard to form an opinion. SO I email the professor, explain the quandry in which I find myself, and he tells me to "do your best and I'll read with forgiving eyes." Translation: I'll give you a good grade anyway.

This type of "punishment" is not what I need to become a better person. Can't you ridiculous professors understand that? I need discipline! My life will collapse without it! You're making me lazy and overly self-assured! I'll turn into a fumbling bumbling sluggard who sleeps in till noon and expects to sweet-talk his way out of bad grades! I'll become a guy who posts every one of his every lame and boring problems on a blogsite for millions of anonymous mouse-clickers to read! And I'll get my jollies from it! What's worse is tha—

oh. oh crap.

The scene: the college, four weeks ago.

Our Hero paces.

The teacher, the most scatterbrained nonsequential man I know, is late. Again. So I and my classmates are sequestered in the hallway.

One of my classmates, herself an ultra-conservative teacher of fifty-something, turns to me and deadpan says, "You know, Matt, it's hump day today."

I stare at her. I'm not sure if she means that it's a national day of humping, or if the college in the next town (much more liberal—think Berkeley) is celebrating yet another "sex week" and the day's theme is the hump. Maybe she's talking about her pet camels. I know she isn't coming on to me, old and married and conservative as she is. My innards clench slightly at the thought.

I think all these things and feel mostly lost. No idea what to say. Before I blurt something pathetic about a camel, one of my other classmates asks her, "Are we halfway already? Wow."

Oh. "Hump" like the "top" of a proverbial "hill." Oh.

Dear antimattketeers:

Oh so many things heavy on my mind.

For starters. I promised an old, close friend a phone call recently. This promise came on the heels of about three months of no communication, which itself came on the heels of an embarrassingly brief e-mail announcing my engagement. He replied to that e-mail, asking questions that any good friend would ask.

I knew I should have replied earlier. I really don't know why I didn't. I think I'm lame. In fact, that might be the only explanation.

This phone call was promised via e-mail at the beginning of Thanksgiving break—on a Wednesday, if memory serves—and I never called. It's a Tuesday night now and I never called. It's not that I didn't remember to call. It's not that I didn't want to catch up with an old buddy. I want him to be in my wedding and I don't really know who he is anymore. This must be what they mean by a "falling out."

And tonight he called me. Worse, he said he never really expected me to call in the first place.

Have you ever gotten punched in the middle of the chest, really really hard? It makes you want to just stop fighting and sit down and have a good cathartic cry. That conversation entailed the equivalent of about seventeen of those punches.

So tonight I sat down and had a good cathartic cry.

I'm not joking. For once in my fool life, I'm being honest. Not just candid. Really really honest. I'm aiming for vulnerability.

The point is this. I'm realizing that I'm no good with relationships. Just simply no good. Selfishness. Whatever.

Sometimes I really honestly wish I could have an alter, a fugue state (think Fight Club). A personality I really want. One that would be useful in some real and tangible way to me. That id/ego open letter tripe [aside: generated way too few comments for my self-esteem's sake ow my pride and at any rate it hasn't really worked yet] was no joke. I really want that sort of all-encompassing change to take place. I'm reasonably sure I'm stagnant.

*deep sigh*

And on top of this, Stacy still refuses to acknowledge me. I don't know what I'll do without her.

[stands up on desk] STACY! NOTICE ME! NOTICE ME AND TELL ME YOU NOTICE ME! YOU'RE TERRIFIC AND DAN TOLD ME TO GET DRUNK AND PLAY RAP MUSIC OUTSIDE YOUR HOUSE AND WAVE A GUN AND HONK MY HORN TO GET YOU TO NOTICE ME AND I REALLY DON'T WANT TO DO THAT I MEAN YOU'RE A HUMAN BEING AND YOU HAVE RIGHTS LIKE A RIGHT TO PERSONAL DIGNITY I THINK YOU DESERVE A LESS PERSONALLY INVASIVE APPROACH AND THAT MEANS STANDING ON MY DESK AT ONE IN THE MORNING TYPING IN CAPITALS AND COMPLETELY WITHOUT PROPER PUNCTUATION I'VE NEVER STOOPED THIS LOW IN MY LIFE LOOK AT ME I'M PROSTRATE BEFORE YOU ON A GRAVEL ROAD THAT'S HOW IT FEELS! [sits back in chair]

I swear I'm not a stalker. I don't know where you ridiculous people would get that impression.

I went to Taco Bell today for lunch and they messed up my order in at least three ways.

The Most Embarrassing Moment I've Ever Lived Through happened to me over break. I'm sorry I can't provide details; this reference is mostly for my own benefit at this time. And I'm justifying my existence to strangers.

I tried making chocolate chip cookies, the most effective comfort food in existence. I'm not sure which ingredient I forgot to add, but it was evidently an important one. They tasted like butt chip cookies and those just didn't have the desired comfort effect.

And I lost my Requiem For A Dream DVD sometime within the last month. It's like the universe is adding insult to insult.

…And here, after some considerable cogitation, I've arrived at a solution.

I want to become a poem. I want to write the greatest poem ever, surpass all poets dead or alive and become the capstone the goal of poetry and I want to become that poem. I will want people to read me and say "Wow, Matt sure is a beautiful thing. I want to absorb and completely understand his every subtle shade and nuance." I will be put in every textbook related to poetry and people will memorize and internalize me.

But maybe that's sort of what happens when people die. (Not to be morbid—I'm reasonably sure I don't have a death fixation.) Perhaps the better your life was, the better the poem is that you become. Pop singers become noir forced-rhyme too-many-adjectives teenage angst suicide accounts. Pergatory is a limmerick. Heaven is Blake, Neruda, Philip Larkin.

It's wrong, but it's a thought.

I'm slowly realizing this is the longest post I've submitted. I apologize.

But thank you for letting me cry once more on your collective shoulder.

With apologies to DEMachina:

Thank you for your time.



-mAtt.

Well.

In the last few days, I've accomplished much. I've moved into a terrific apartment with two terrific roommates and one who is slightly-less-than-terrific. [aside: right now, he's sitting on the nearby couch, laptop armed with wireless Internet, not-watching a Jay Leno rerun. We don't think he's moved from that very position since we moved in. He's not enrolled in any classes. He hasn't had a job in approximately six months, though he claims to be looking. His parents support him. If he was a drug, he wouldn't be addictive.] (And OBTW: one needs Mozilla or some other non-Mikrosoft Internet Explorer web browser to read those tangents and such. It's worth it. Hypertext rules.) I've finished two stories that have been in my queue for about a year each. I've discovered the smooth sounds of Evanescence. And, perhaps most impressive of all, I wrote a hell of a paper on classical conditioning, cognitive maps, spatial orientation, latent learning, E.C. Tolman's rats. The poor bastards had to run through mazes for cheese. "Path 6, which ran to about four inches from where the food reward box had been placed in the previous maze, was chosen by significantly more rats than any other possible route (ref. Fig. 1). Stimulus-response theory might have predicted that the rats would choose the path most closely in the direction of the first turn in the original maze (path 11), but this was not the case. In conclusion, I sound like a pompous wanker."

Tomorrow is Wednesday. This in itself is not particularly bad. What is particularly bad is that I've already done an amount of work this week that would complete the work quota of most other weeks. Basically, tonight feels like a Friday night. Which means I'm going to be sorely disillusioned when the alarm bell rings at 7:something tomorrow.

And the more I type, the closer that moment of disillusionment gets.