August 2002 Archives

To get to the life-changing part, he took me for a ride on his motorcycle. Now, I am not the motorcycle sort of girl. I am concerned with safety--I wear a seatbelt, etc. Also, I am a wuss. But Ben is my little buddy, so I hopped on and had THE BEST TIME. I swear, it was like, the best thing that happened to me since I discovered warehouse supermarkets. We went up to the hills and saw a view of the whole Bay area. It was rad. And I looked really cool. What made me look particularly cool, other than the fact that I was on the back of a motorcycle, was that I was wearing a helmet that said, "I'M RETARDED" in two inch block letters on the back.

God, I am cool.

Anyway, to get to the point, I have now decided that my potential boyfriend will have to have a motorcycle. So far the only other requirement is heterosexuality, so this shouldn't be too hard.

<3.

So I start my classes in a few days. Of course, everything is retarded right now and do I know my class schedule yet? No! Of course not! Why would I? Apparently, I get to register for classes *after* they start, and get to wrestle (or wrassle as I like to say) with the freshmen for the choice classes. Hopefully, this will be some sort of wild girl-on-girl catfight with mud and lesbians, because as we all know, most 17 and 18 year old girls are at least bi-sexual.

This brings me to my latest problem. I hate college girls. Specifically, about 18 years old. Like, freshmen and their even worse counterparts, sophomores. Seriously, I hate college girls so much. I would go so far as to say that I prefer the drunken girls gone wild sluts to the serious, liberal-arts-feminist-but-I-suck-cock-"I hate Columbus"-self-righteous race traitors. You know who I mean, the girls who are as white as, well, me, yet cry about their oppression because they just found out that they are 1/10th native american or croatian or something.

The best part about college girls is when they have "round table discussions" and sit around and talk about things like gender, class issues, race, and sex work. Now I am not going to deny it, for my first couple of weeks of liberal arts college, I sat around on my fat ass and waxed philosophical about my political pet peeves. It didn't take long, however, for me to realize that you can talk (or type) forever, and it accomplishes nothing. Raising awareness is shit--go out and do something. Not marching around in your Doc Martens, but actually put in a few hours of volunteer work now and again.

I mean, how can you take someone's opinion seriously when they have never supported themselves? Or even met the people that they are "fighting for" or making judgements about? I guess you can't blame young people for having a lack of experience, but at the same time, listening to them spout off about things they have no experience with is annoying. Painful even, at times.

My mother always tells me that whenever you get really annoyed about a certain aspect of someone's personality, it is usually because you can recognize something about it in yourself. And maybe that's it. I am embarrassed about the college girl I once was, going to Sleater-Kinney shows and pontificating about women's rights. And I am terrified to be back in a liberal arts college full time once again. But I took 5 years off from college, and now am a lean, mean, hating machine. Look out!

Is there something wrong with me????

Anyway, my classes are starting soon, so I have to get all my "fun" reading in right now while I still can. I am working 3 different books at the moment--here they are:
-Nobrow : The Culture of Marketing, the Marketing of Culture
-The Complete Stories of Evelyn Waugh
-Dangerous Angels: The Weetzie Bat Books

Okay, I'm a dork. ;)
If anyone expresses an interest, I will try and update what I am reading on a regular basis because I read a whole bunch.

Also, for the 3 people that have signed up for my notification list, should I send notifications every time I update? Or just when I do something special, like post a photo album or a great story about a retard? Post a comment, k?

Thanks to davidc for being a genius.

I've been meaning to post the story of the Valedictorian of the City University of New York.

This weird looking girl was in my English class last semester. The first day her eye was all bloody--like, it was red where it was it should have been white. She asked me a question, and I couldn't look at her because it was so gory. It was gross, dude.

Most of the time she was pretty quiet, but it quickly became apparent that she had some sort of disability. Her walking was sometimes a little like lurching. She started occasionally raising her hand in class, and commenting on the books we were reading. Her voice was, well, retarded. It became clear once she starting speaking that she had some sort of 'challenge,' like, multiple sclerosis or cerebral palsy. I mean, that was just my guess.

By the end of the class she was one of the top students, despite the fact that it was clear that she wasn't reading the material, and her contributions to the class were off-topic and hard to understand.

In fact, I heard her telling the teacher that she was going to be the senior class's valedictorian, and would be giving the keynote speech at commencement.

When my little friends and I heard this we couldn't believe it. This girl was being made valedictorian of the class primarily because she was handicapped. On some levels, cool, but the part of me that had to listen to her slurred babble about her high school experiences during class was annoyed.

About a week later, she lurched into class and sat next to me. 'This class sucks,' she spluttered in her Corkey-esque way.

'Why yes, it does,' I agreed.

'The teacher sucks!' This time, she sounded more like Geri from 'I'm not drunk I have Cerebral Palsy' Facts of Life fame.

I told her that I thought the suckage of the class lay less with the quality of the teaching, and more with the fact that no one in the class bothered to do the reading.

She got PISSED, Arnie Grape-style. She hit me with her copy of 'Villette' and told me that she usually does her reading, but it was when she leaned in to tell me that 'reading sucks,' that I smelled the alcohol on her breath.

I watched her the entire class the next time the class met. Her handwriting was similar to that of my grandfather, or the guy in 'My Left Foot'. What was noteworthy, however, was as she flipped through her notebook some pages were in perfect cursive, and others were like what I just described. As she leaned towards me I smelled the alcohol on her breath again, and within 15 minutes she had pulled out a prescription bottle of pills, dumped them on her desk and started counting. Once she was done, she did it again. And again. When she was positive she had ascertained the correct amount of narcotics she had in her possession, she took a handfull and proceeded to count the contents of her wallet. Three times.

Around this time I finally realized that this girl was not handicapped or disabled, she was a fucking drunk. The City University of New York had made this girl the class valedictorian in a failed bid to promote some sort of demented equality within its ranks, but the chance of her delivering a decent speech was overshadowed by the likelihood that she would puke on the podium or pull her skirt over her head, ala Ruca.

And that, my friends is the story of the Valedictorian of the City University of New York.

2. Do you drive very often? I drive often, but not far. I haven't filled up my tank in almost 3 weeks.

3. What's your dream car? I used to have the cutest car. It was an '86 Volvo. Here's my brother in front of my baby. I love the older Volvos, like from the 50's and 60's. I'm not a car person though, so I really don't care.

4. Have you ever received a ticket? Only parking. But lots of those.

5. Have you ever been in an accident? One time when I was 16 my dad told me that if I didn't get into college by that fall he was going to put me in a foster home. So I left the house crying and got into a car accident. It was really just a little fender bender, the car ahead of me didn't even have a dent. But the police were called, and I was still crying, so it looked really bad.

And then the guy I hit claimed to have whip-lash, so it became an at fault accident with bodily injury. So my record was all screwed up. But I moved to a non-driving city (NYC) for a few years and let my record get all clean again. So now I am driving. And I love it. LOVE IT.

I think in honor of this Friday Five I am going to go get a car wash after work.

Word.

In other news, I bought a pack of cigarettes, and my downward spiral is progressing well.

xox

1. What is your lineage? Where are your ancestors from? I'm a mutt. Now, this is all complicated, but to the best of my knowledge, my maternal grandmother is Pennsylvania Dutch and English, and my maternal grandfather is Italian and Irish (he's a redhead). My paternal grandmother was German, and my paternal grandfather was Polish. But he was born in Scotland.

2. Of those countries, which would you most like to visit? I would love to spend time in any of these countries actually. I've been to England, Germany, and Italy, but never Poland or Ireland. I would love to go to Ireland. It's so green. Well, from the pictures I've seen.

3. Which would you least like to visit? Why? I guess the idea of Poland scares me a little bit. I knew a couple of Polish guys in New York who were really proud of their cheekbones. When I think of Poland, I think it is still stuck in some WWII time warp, because that's the only history of the country I am familiar with.

4. Do you do anything during the year to celebrate or recognize your heritage? Nope. My dad has gotten all weird and geneological lately--I think it's because all his relatives are dead and he keeps searching for, like, 7th cousins thrice removed to fill the void. So he's been telling me a little bit of family history, which I had previously been completely unaware of. For example, he told me about my great-grandmother who was keeping guns for the 1905 revolution. When the police came to their door, she got in bed with the guns and pretended to be giving birth so they wouldn't find the guns. Very exciting stuff. I'm planning on stockpiling a few guns for the revolution over here. It's too bad I can't add automatic weapons to my wishlist.

5. Who were the first ancestors to move to your present country (parents, grandparents, etc)? Grandparents, I guess on my paternal side. Being Communist Jews and all, in Germany--not such a hot idea to stay there, right? And I think my maternal grandfather is 1st gen American, and I think that my grandmother's family has been here longer because they are super-white, but when I called my parents to ask them they said they were too busy to talk to me. Har.

If you want to make up your own Friday Five for me to answer (which of course, I reserve the right to not answer, go ahead and email me.