wrong wrong wrong

in a fit of procrastination, i decided to read through the submissions to a secret valentine short story competition instead of looking for a project idea. yeah, don't ask. can i just say though, that some of those were downright painful to read. i'm all for encouraging people to write, and i think it's great that so many people fancy themselves to be writers, really. but oh my god, there were quite a few times that i literally cringed, and it wasn't just because of the hackneyed plots i was reading through. (because, really, how creative can i expect the entries for a valentine's day contest targeted at middle and high schoolers to be?)

you would think that going through at least six years of school would have taught people the difference between "worse" and "worst" but no. there were several different entries by completely different people who didn't know when to use which. i saw someone repeatedly write "miss read" instead of "misread." there were two different people who thought that "it's" could be used instead of "is." one girl (at least, i think she was a girl) constantly had her characters snickering off instead of running off or skipping off or walking off, or even flying off would have worked better. all of her characters' hearts were also skittering every time they turned around. it was kind of annoying. another person used the word "kinda" way too many times. i can understand you using it in dialog sometimes, but it is not a real word and should not be used in narration. a lot of the entrants were using "big" words for the sake of using big words, meanings be damned. if it had more than two syllables it was going into the story whether it fit or not. and of course, no one felt the need to learn the difference between "its" and "it's" before sitting down to write.

by no means do i consider myself an expert at the english language, but oh. my. god. this is basic stuff, people. let's try not to butcher the language too much okay? i have never once wished to see people misusing your/you're and they're/their/there, but i would have gladly read through a hundred of those mistakes than have to suffer through the ones that i saw. (to be fair, there were a couple pretty good ones that i came across, too, but those were few and far between.)

yes, i realize that i sound pedantic. no, i don't really care. there are very few times that i condone stupidity. this is not one of them.

random side note: after writing "wrong" four times in a row for the title, i have just realized how wrong it looks. i dunno why, but it just looks weird.

*Wrong - Depeche Mode

you left me

i had everything under control. i really did. all the stress was compartmentalized into tiny pieces making up a giant whole, so nothing was overwhelming. in small parts, everything was taken care of. but do you know the downside of building something up from small parts? you can't let one piece crumble without affecting all the other pieces. when something taken care of is suddenly not, anxiety can come creeping in through the tiny whole. and i don't know how familiar you are with anxiety, but she doesn't like to go anywhere without panic and distress, so you know it's only a matter of time before they're here too, most likely with hysteria tagging along for the ride. and they like nothing more than to break down walls and let the stress come pouring out.

i could handle being part of a pathetic group, because at the end of the day, we could make it work. what i can't handle is, the day before class, one person (who by the way was in charge of most of the know-how parts) saying that he had been toying with an idea in his head for a while now and was going to go off on his own. um, you couldn't have let me know this before when i was throwing ideas at you people like they were going out of style? i'm not even asking that you comment on any of the ideas (which by the way neither of them did). just a quick, "hey, i think i'm gonna jump ship and let you drown" would be nice. so now i'm left with the girl who we let in out of pity, who can barely speak english, and who seems to know even less than me about things - which is really saying something. my program has no hands-on anything. everything we are taught is strictly theory because the school is cheap when it comes to academics, but that's a post for another day. and mr. professor of this program doesn't want theory because they do a lot of hands-on crap. i don't want to do hands-on crap. i don't have the time or the energy for it.

the thing that really kills me is that i had an idea okayed by the professor early on and was thinking of ditching my group but didn't for various reasons. and now i can't ditch miss know-nothing because it's too mean. and we don't have a new project proposal yet. and class is tomorrow. and i get an email from her today saying, "it looks like it's just us now. i was thinking we could go with your idea to do this, or possibly with your idea to do that. we could also look further into your suggestion of whatever." um, thanks for copy pasting the broad topic ideas i put out there earlier. i had forgotten what they were. now let me run off and narrow them down into a well-thought out project while you figure out how to turn on your computer. oh, and don't worry about giving me any direction about what you prefer to do, i'll just come up with something that you hate so you can shoot it down last minute like you did last week. no big deal.

a ridiculously large chunk of this grade is given by the class via survey while we are presenting. (every grade gets averaged in, so if someone gives you a zero your grade will plummet. you are not allowed to give everyone hundreds which sucks for the very few of us not in the ISA program that don't have any friends in the class. you know we'll be the ones getting the Bs.) the petty person inside of me is planning on giving the ditcher a bad grade purely out of spite. while i won't actually let her do that, it's fun to think about.

in other news, i wrote something last night that gave me one of those moments where i think, "wow i really do write disturbing things. what is wrong with me?" whenever this has happened in the past, people think the piece is less disturbing than usual (which makes me wonder about how differently my mind works from theirs), but i think you'll probably agree with me on this one. since it's something that i would usually just trash, i'm obviously going to type it up and post it on here when i get the chance. you know, so you can all try and figure out what exactly it is about my head that drains color out of the rainbows and claws off the smiles from every face that i like to read about.

*Congratulations - Blue October

would you miss me today if i met you tomorrow?

i have never once wished that i was dead, at least i'm 99.99% sure i haven't. and if i did, i wasn't being serious. see, i'm too afraid of dying to actually wish it to happen, no matter what is going on in the world. well, not the actual dying itself part, but everything that happens afterwards because, you see, i believe in life after death, and it scares me more than anything else. i have, however, often wished that i was never born. and no, this is not a post that will be discussing any depressed feelings or hatred or anything like that. but whenever i happen to mention the fact that, if given the choice, i probably would have preferred to skip the whole living thing, someone will sneeze the it's a wonderful life crap all over me.

don't get me wrong, i love it's a wonderful life as much as the next person. but while i think it's a great movie, i don't take any great life lessons from it. when someone tells me something like, if you were never born then no one would have ran to the old man with the ladder to save chang from the well and he would have died, i just say that, if i was never born, chang probably wouldn't have been playing around the well at all. what kind of kid chooses to spend a day running around a well alone? anyway, if there was no me, then chang would have been the first son. he would have been named tikitikitembo...etc. he would be better looked after. who knows? maybe with the money saved from only having one child, my mother wouldn't need to do laundry by the river, and she could sit with him. maybe they wouldn't live where we lived. everything would be completely different. you can't ask who would do the things i did, because those things probably wouldn't ever happen or need to be done.

when someone says, but if you were never born, who would romeo fall in love with? the answer is simple. well, rosaline, of course. that relationship would have actually stood a chance, and maybe the story wouldn't have ended with a double funeral. no, he wouldn't be pining over me all day, because i would have never existed. he wouldn't know me. i don't think i believe the whole thing about missing people before you know them. i think that a void in a person's life is not something that can only be filled with one specific person. maybe not everyone can fill it, but if i'm not here, there are at least ten other people that fit the specifications. people are only unique because you generally don't meet the handful of strangers living around the world that are exactly like them.

the worst thing people say is, but people will miss you, and you'll miss them. i have to wonder if these people understand the concept of never being born. you do not miss someone that never existed. and, if you don't exist, you can't miss anyone. i have never once missed my third brother. you know why? because i have no third brother. he doesn't miss me either, though, so we're cool. i have never once missed the years i spent in france, simply because i have never been to france in my entire life.

i'm not trying to belittle anyone here, honestly, and if you think that if you were never born then there would be a you-shaped void in the world, well, maybe there would be. who am i to tell you differently? but don't try and be my guardian angel. next time a bell rings, you won't be getting your wings, so please stop trying.

*Would You Miss Me - Amy Kuney

thanks for watching as i fall

Crowds gather at the edge of the pier, staring down at the churning waters that were calm just moments before. There is not a breath of wind or a cloud in the sky. No ships dot the horizon, nor are any creatures to be seen on the ocean's floor. And yet the waves roll, and the waters rage, and the people stand by to watch.
No one seems to notice at first when she moves too close to the edge. She loses her footing and tumbles into the fury below them. She thrashes around wildly, trying to gain some control in the chaos.
"Look there!" someone shouts, pointing through the salty spray.
All eyes turn to where she's fighting desperately for her life.
"Ha. She calls that swimming? My cat could do better with his legs tied together."
"Don't splash so much. You're getting me wet."
"Have you seen my hat? It fell in just seconds ago."
"You have to kick your  legs."
"You're quite tiresome with all your calls for attention."
"It's a black hat. It should be over there somewhere."
"Your form is atrocious. You have no grace in your movements."
"I suppose you expect me to go find dry clothes for when you get out, don't you?"
"Oh look, it's right by your ear. If you'd just hand it up to me."
She slips under the surface, and after a struggle of only a few seconds, her soul abandons her body in its moment of weakness. It escapes to the surface in a stream of bubbles, breaking free in the air.
The sea goes calm.
The crowds disperse.
"I only wish she could have passed me my hat first."

***

I think I need to sleep. It's ridiculous how tired I get the minute it hits nine.
I'm not even sure if this makes sense, but it felt like it needed to be written, so there's that.
Also, my professor walks into class today, asks if we want our midterm in class or take home. we choose take home. then he asks if we want to switch our project presentations about our papers into a summary about our paper. uh, yes please. i guess he's not so bad after all.
also number two, i just noticed when i was skimming through this for glaring typos that i started off using capitals and then switched back to lowercase towards the end. weird.

*My Happy Ending - Avril Lavigne

why do i keep counting?

since i'm pretty sure i haven't done one of these in a while, here's my life in numbers at the moment because i am sick and can't think straight enough to write a flowing post:

by the way, this post was written from the bottom up so if it doesn't quite make sense, that's why. i didn't realize there might be a problem with that until it was too late to stop.

10- half of the time i spent trying to think up something to write for number ten (this means i thought for twenty minutes). the few thoughts i have at the moment keep being drawn to the tv with every exclamation from my sister and "oww" from my sister's phone. (or, you know, her friend who's on speaker. either one.)

9- the number of times the word "please" was said in the last ten seconds. to get this to stop, i just agreed to play video games. i do not like video games. i have turned sucking at them into an art form, and i get way too frustrated. ash, this is all your fault. (so i played, reached a record level of suckage, ash gave out false shouts of encouragement (as if saying i'm "actually good" will make me suck less) and i lost every. single. time.)

8- the number of days it's been since i hurt my toe. my sister just said, loudly, "fat princess?!?!" and my train of thought has been derailed. her plus video games is really distracting. when we were little, she was often banned from playing video games because she would get too aggressive. now, there's no one to ban her. this has nothing to do with the number eight, but i really can't do much about that.

7- the number of things on my to-do list that i am currently ignoring to write this post and make fun of my sister as she sucks badly in modnation racer or whatever it's called with her friend. after weeks and weeks of stressing over it, she finally chose a username thingie and set up her online account for the ps3 network? as you can see, me and video games are not really the best of friends. but she's racing against her friend, and she sucks.

6- the number of books that are crowding my bed, not counting the two moleskine notebooks or the kobo (who, by the way, is named jj). i would move them, but there's really no space for them to go.

5- the number of months left until i am married.

4- about the number of weeks its been since "sleeping in" meant later than six:thirty. i have been watching way too much ben 10 and nineties reruns every morning.

3- the number of days until my homework is due. i have been talking about it/ridiculing the instructions for three weeks.

2- roughly the number of weeks left until my sister moves across the world. saddest part, she's taking her sons with her.

1- the number of classes left after this semester until i am officially a master of science.

*Why Do I Keep Counting? - The Killers

you're so cold

just so this story makes sense, last friday i hurt my toe. actually, i stubbed it and a piece that resented all the drama going on in the world decided to fall off. belonging to me, though, it got halfway through, changed its mind, and hung on by a bit of skin. it hurt. a lot. it was an awful thing to wake up to. (i stubbed it on my sister's bed while going to turn off the alarm clock.) and it had a long dramatic blog post dedicated to it that i never posted for some reason. anyway, because of the fact that shoes hurt (my toe for pressing on it, my ankle and knee because of the awkward way i was walking), i have been wearing flip flops when i have to go out.

you know what you get when you wear flip flops in below freezing weather when every blade of grass is covered with ice and every puddle frozen solid? pain. lots and lots of pain. when walking across campus (because i can only find parking on the very far edge of campus opposite my class which is on the other very far edge) i have to stop in almost every building (when i'm around them) to let my toes thaw. then they burn for a while. then i go back out and feel the pain of them freezing again. it's good fun. and the more time spent in buildings means the longer the walk gets drawn out. and the faster i walk, the colder my feet get (what with the wind and stuff). it's a real catch 22. people are constantly giving me weird looks, but i guess i do look a bit strange with my summer shoes and winter coat. hopefully, i'll be back in normal shoes for classes next week, just when the temperature is going to make it to above freezing. 

as stupid as i may look, though, the people who see me are just so much stupider. take, for example, these three conversations i had with a couple of people over the past few days. 

[one] i'm sitting in the library reading, waiting for my sister to get out of her class. i'm pulled out of the fictional world by a tap on my shoulder. i look up to see a middle aged asian woman is standing by my chair. 

her: excuse me, but... do you know you're wearing flip flops?

me: *gasp* i am?  really? wow that explains the cold draft around my toes. thanks lady. 

actually, i said, "umm... yeah," but i prefer the answer going through my head.

[two] i join the group waiting outside class tonight.

girl: you're wearing flip flops!

me: yes.

girl: but it's winter.

me: so it is.

girl: your toes are blue. are they cold?

are they cold? are they cold?! no, they're turning blue because i am part chameleon and i'm trying to camouflage with my jeans. i mean, seriously. 

[three] we get into class. the girl from up there ^ sits like two seats ahead of me. she turns to talk to the girl next to her. (in my ISA class, i have a lot more girls than in my other classes. there are like almost ten of us i think.)

girl 1: guess what i just saw? a girl wearing flip flops! 

girl 2: in winter?

girl 1: yeah, i just saw her. 

girl 2: did she know?

girl 1: i think so. 

ignoring the fact that they were practically right in front of me and talking like i wasn't there, did i know? what is wrong with people assuming that i don't know what shoes i put on when i leave the house. i mean, yes, i can be absent-minded sometimes, but come on. i don't think anyone is that oblivious. i'm pretty sure i don't act blind, and the fact that i'm in school must mean i'm not a complete moron, so i dunno what to think. of course, she could have meant did i know it was still winter, in which case i'm pretty sure i know the difference between cold and hot, and it's still questioning my intelligence.

in other news, i really want a cheeseburger. 

*So Cold - Breaking Benjamin

but i guess i didn't

i was always convinced that i had read persuasion. i never could remember actually reading it or what it was about, but i knew that i had at one point or another. turns out, i hadn't. so yesterday, i corrected that, and can i just say that if you haven't read it yet, you really should. unless you're not an austen fan, in which case, what is wrong with you?! (side note: is it just me or does it look wrong when people write !? instead of ?!) anyway, i was very grateful to all the people that kept talking about it to me which made me want to "reread" it when i saw it as one of the free books on my ereader. now, though, i want to watch lost in austen and then curl up in bed to reread it, and i can't.

i felt like i had more to say on the topic, but my brain has decided to launch a sit-in until i sleep and just won't do anything it should be doing. you know, like thinking and whatnot.

anyway, i'm cold but if i get under my covers i know i'll fall asleep and forget to pick up my sister. occupational hazard of being a baby sitter. well, that and waking up at five. my dad just got back from the hospital, and i know that i should go down and ask about my mom, but moving from my current position just doesn't seem possible. i can't even get myself to get up and shower, though i smell of baby spit and sour milk. lovely, no? there are also dishes that need to be washed that i've been doing in small bursts throughout the day, but i think i'll just leave the rest for tomorrow morning. 

this post was written for the sole purpose of keeping me up and occupied until it was time to leave. now, it is time to leave. yay. 

*Not Afraid - Eminem

i haven't thought of you lately at all

remember my very first post on this blog ever? yes, it was a million years ago, i know. before most (read: any) of you even knew this thing existed, before i got divorced from capital letters, and before i gave up using my blog as a place to store pointless rambles. oh wait, i still haven't managed to get out of that phase. oh well.

anyway, in that post that changed the world (or, you know, didn't) i talked about a random guy in my class that watched me doodle. fast forward to last night. i'm sitting at the back of the class scribbling in the margins of my notebook (old habits die hard) and listening to the stories my professor is telling because they're actually really interesting, despite the fact that they're about accounting. people are commenting and asking questions and suddenly i hear a voice that sends me back to the middle of my undergrad years. the voice starts by saying that he just added the class and then makes some comparison between mechanics and japan's marketing strategy or something. i look up, and lo and behold, it's him! the guy from my very first post. 

okay, forgive me if i sound like a jerk here, but i was so not expecting to see him in any of my master's classes. (okay, so maybe i'm a valley girl jerk.) the fact that he didn't pass the class we took together led me to unfairly judge him as someone who probably wouldn't be pursuing a master's degree. but i was wrong. obviously. anyway, i didn't get a chance to talk to him after class because he had to talk to the professor about stuff he missed, but it was an awesome surprise nonetheless. 

*We Used to be Friends - The Dandy Warhols

so i ran with the devil, left a trail of excuses, like a stone on the water the elements decide my fate

last semester i had awesome professors. they were excellence personified. knowledgeable, experienced, and entertaining, they made classes really enjoyable. it seems like, in order to compensate for that overload of amazingness, this semester has blessed me with professors that are just not up to snuff. that, or i got really spoiled last semester. my tuesday night professor is the epitome of boring (although he accidentally moved us to a class with computers. you should've seen his face), constantly confused, and really awkward. he doesn't know how to dismiss class, and we end up wasting an extra half hour while he struggles to do it. my thursday night professor came in half an hour late today. he had also called all the students in the online section and said it was cancelled. when his boss found out today he got really pissed. apparently my professor doesn't want to learn how to use the e-distance software. while i haven't seen enough of him to judge how much he knows or doesn't know about his topic, he acts like we're three year olds and being talked down to gets old fast.

anyway, that was just a long introduction to the fact that i wrote this today in class. once i started writing it went in a completely different direction than what i had in my head. don't you just love when that happens? (i'm not really sure if i meant that sarcastically or not :/.)

***
I let the accusations burning in your eyes scorch my skin, branding me with every false smile and unkept promise I ever made. I unclench my fists, and the poor excuses and elaborate lies fall slowly to land by my feet. I press my lips together to hold back the words fighting for their freedom. I will not try to talk my way out of this one. I will lower my shields and clench my jaw and take every blow you aim at me.

You pull out shards that sparkle in the light and declare them our broken future. You remind me of days we spent building it together, fine tuning the details and smoothing out the rough edges. And you remind me of the night I tiptoed softly through the dark to smash it alone.

You hold your heart up and show me how I broke what I once vowed to make whole. You show me the bruises on your ego and the wounds my words slashed through your confidence. You keep the ashes of your dreams that I sent up in flames in a mason jar on your shelf. Your muscles ache from trying to empty the water from our sinking boat, and I have blisters on my hands from drilling holes into the sides.

You saved all the acid that ever seasoned my words and pour it on me now to dissolve my over-inflated sense of self-worth. You pile every insincere apology and false note that ever fell from my lips onto my shoulders to bring me to my knees and make me feel as small as you did. You let loose all the tears I made you cry until I am drowning in them. Blame falls from trembling lips, more desperate than angry, and all I can do is drop my eyes and whisper, "I know."

***
just for the record, it took me two and a half hours to type this up. i reallyreallyreally did not feel like typing. and i also left out some of the end because it was just way too long. blech. and the title is just what is stuck in my head at the moment because i do not feel like thinking up a relevant one.

*Bling (Confession of a King) - The Killers

and then he says to me, "kill me now, kill me now, kill me now, kill me now."

today is february first. as in, january - the month that simply refused to end - has actually ended. now that it's done, though, i kind of think february came too fast. maybe january dragging on was a blessing in disguise. because now that it's ended, time will surely start to fly. and do you realize that in less than six months i will be married and how much that thought terrifies me?

but i am nothing if not a great avoider of things, so i just refuse to think about that at the moment and instead we'll talk about my tuesday night professor. though calling him boring is the understatement of the century, there are just no words strong enough to really convey the level of torture he can inflict on people by simply opening his mouth, and i don't really want to spend the entire post trying to create them. so, boring he is. well, that and completely clueless about what he's teaching. his inability to read from the slides correctly and the lack of knowledge he has about the subject he is teaching is baffling. really.

the only reason that the police weren't called in to investigate a mass suicide of eighteen students last week was that the class was given in a computer classroom. so while the dude at the front droned on about things no one cared about, we were all online doing whatever. yesterday, we get an email that the room has been changed. to a traditional classroom. with no computers. the change was ostensibly because the room we were in last week was too small. the fact that there were at least nine empty seats, though, leads me to believe that the professor just has a death wish.

what i think he doesn't realize is that, being a class full of IT students, most of us will probably still be online - or at least not paying attention - the entire class time because technology is here to save us from people like him by providing us with laptops, and smart phones, and in my case, a pen and notebook. if he wants someone to listen to him, there are plenty of psychologists around. or, you know, he could actually know what he's talking about. i've heard that helps. i spent a little of last week's class and waiting for my sister afterwards to try and do some writing because i haven't done much in a while. him changing classrooms just gives me three hours of writing time without the distraction of the internet. so joke's on him.

i was supposed to post one of the things i wrote last week, but i haven't gotten around to typing any of them up. whenever i get over my laziness, i'll get right on that.

*Under the Gun - The Killers