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The Defenestration of Me

2004-11-19 - 9:01 p.m.

McManu is back! McManuuuuuuuuuu!!! For those never lucky enough to meet McManu, he's funny, hot, and one of the best kissers ever. If you do know McManu, getcha sum!

So, back when she actually had a career to speak of, Helen Hunt hosted Saturday Night Live. She showed a clip from one of her earliest movies, where she played a girl who tried some sort of drug, presumably crystal meth. After trying ONE hit, she screamed, jumped out of a closed window, hit the ground accompanied by a shower of shattered glass, and was up and running around screaming with nary a pause. It was a great moment in American cinema.

And it was exactly how I felt today.

Dudes, this week was rough. Now, I know a lot of people had rough weeks to put mine to shame, but mine? Wasn't fun. I had two major assignments due this week, and, as far as I can tell, bungled the living fuck out of at least one of them, if not both. Worse, the one I definitely screwed up is the one I managed to finagle an extension for (the whole class got it, mind you). I have spent the entire week in libraries, trying to get a handle of a little field of literature called "postcolonialism."

I might as well try to understand the entirety of the ocean. This field covers up to six continents (if you go in for Ireland as postcolonial) and hundreds of languages. There are more major players in the field than in the NBA. They all disagree on nearly everything, including whether or not postcolonialism is either post or colonialism, dicuss.

Yeah, farklempt is only the tip of the iceburg.

As if that weren't enough, a friend of mine posted a note online that looked pretty much like a suicide note, so much of Monday was spent in an extreme panic as various friends tried to track him down. He's alive, but he ain't doin' too great. You can imagine how thrilled I am with all this. I have yet to talk to him. He's not apparently up to talking to anyone yet.

Another good friend of mine had a suicide attempt in the family this week. Both of us came to the same conclusion: when people want to cry for help, they should just cry for help. We would be happy to give them a few hours of our day, but the problem comes from spending the entire day worrying about them. I couldn't focus for shit on Monday, and the days since haven't been that great. I know that these people felt a despair so profound that they needed to call out in such a dire way, but both of us would have come running for a lot less. Y'dig?

This academic stress combined with emotional stress has made me nice and sick. I'd managed to get through the entire semester so far, but on Tuesday I woke up to a sore throat and a slightly hoarse "Oh, fuck me!" That sounds kinda dirty, but unfortunately, it so wasn't. And I can't take a break. I can't take a single day to just say "Fizuck it, I need to rest." I need to get up and drag my ass to the library and deal.

Yeah, you might be thinking "Quit whining, Notorious RRZ!" But this is a diary. Whining is what they were MADE for.

Enough people have actually had rough weeks that I'm starting to wonder if it's in the air. Certainly, the national situation isn't looking too great. The Bush Administration looks ready, willing, and able to sentence the country to privatized social security, anti-choice supreme court justices, institutionalized fundamentalism, and an asthmatic partidge in a pear tree that's rotting from groundwater poisoning. Not to mention a few more colonies for the U.S. to deal with in the Middle East. I mean, I want to move beyond postcolonialism as much as the next critic, but there's gotta be a better way!

Seriously, dudes, what the hell? How are we going to deal with all this? How is my friend going to find himself a reason to live? How the Hell am I going to deal with grad school? What about the children? And also, when the fuck am I going to get up off my fat ass and get some phat ass for myself? I am in the gayest city in the universe. How am I not getting laid yet?

Anyway . . .

I wish I had plans, but right now I have reading to do, not to mention yoga. I want to go dancing, but not tonight. I want to go see Josh Kornbluth tomorrow night, and I may need to go by myself. I actually missed the Le Tigre show tonight . . .

This is a poor showing.

I think the biggest problem with all this is that I retain my capacity to laugh and tend to think that a lot of people have it worse than me so there's no use in bitching. Just pull up your saggy jeans and get back to work. This attitude has got me through life, but it's also probably meant that I've gone without a lot of help that could have come cheap or even free. Maybe if I didn't have such a good sense of humor, I might have the impetus to fix things I let slide, or even get them fixed for me. A number of people have suggested I go cry in front of teachers. I don't want to do that; I think that's cheap if it's staged and unfortunate if it's not. However, I'm thinking about going into their various offices and saying, "Hey, can I get a pep talk? Y'know, something along the lines of 'Don't worry; you're getting this!' or 'Don't worry; you're not getting this yet, but I can see that you will!' or 'Don't worry; you're never gonna get this, but you look good!' or 'You've got spunk, kid . . . I HATE SPUNK!' followed by some sort of martial arts battle with a techno soundtrack behind it. Would you be up for that? Maybe?"

That might be fun. Me and Shjacks in vinyl doing crazy acrobatics, trying to hit one another with chairs, throwing volumes of performance studies criticism at one another, and when we go into air-kicks the action goes slo-mo and the beat streeeeetches out only to have it come back when we hit the ground. We should get on that. Except she'd probably kick my ass.

See, that's the thing, sense of humor. It'll do me in every time. I'll want to seriously contemplate a problem and then I see the funny side of it.

I recognize, though, that I'm lucky to be able to do that. I've got a friend right now who isn't able to do that anymore, and I want so bad to take part of my capacity to laugh shit off and give it to him. I don't want him to die, because the world is full of stupid, selfish, horrible people and he so isn't one of them. He's intelligent and interesting and kind and compassionate and sometimes I wonder if there is any justice in a world where he's contemplating suicide and the people who started a war for money and pride aren't speeding for the windows as we speak.

I don't want to throw myself out of a window. Well, no, I do, insofar as I think it would be really cool to throw myself out of a window screaming and then get up and run around screaming some more, but I realize that I would get hurt and I don't want to get hurt. I want to stop having a cold, and have already done a lot of the work that should technically have been done already, and get to rewrite my godawful paper, and find a cute guy who can hold my attention for more than an hour. And find myself magically transported to the Le Tigre show. I'm not holding my breath, because if I tried, I'd start coughing.

Still, I want to end this entry on a high note, because as recent experience has shown me, a despondent message to the world on a website can throw a lot of people into chaos. I'm totally fine, I just need to bitch and moan. I'm relatively sure that my professors don't consider me a complete idiot, and if they really saw me as struggling, they'd take some time to set me right. Most of the people in my classes have gotten it into their heads that I have a brain, and who am I to argue? I think I'm going to watch Spirited Away or Queen Margot or Monty Python and the Holy Grail and enjoy my evening, even if I'm heading back to the library as soon as morning comes. There's a cup of Breathe Right Tea at home with my name on it.

Except I just remembered that my cable might be out, which is unfortunate when one considers that I wasn't paying for it (it was leftover from the last tenant--the cable company didn't shut it off properly). I may have to start paying for cable, although the odds of me meeting with the cable guy before Christmas break are slim to none. If it's not working when I get home, I may need to throw myself out the window.

I live in a basement apartment. Now THAT would be funny.

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previous - next

The End - 2005-02-11
Let's Go on With the Show - 2005-01-30
The Curse, and This Bee's a Keeper - 2005-02-01
Sisters Lolita and Matronic Explain It All for You - 2005-01-31
Cowboys and Medievalists - 2005-01-30

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