"kan ye" blame me?

Sometimes I fear that this blog will…become yet another item on my list of abandoned half-assed projects left to rest in pieces? Is that what you were thinking I was going to type? Yeah, well, you AND the¼ finished “make your own daffy duck rug” that sits in a closet/basement somewhere in this house. Haha, just kidding. We threw out that box of yarn aaaages ago. Also, fun fact: rugs—even unfinished ones—can’t have thoughts or opinions. (Can they?)

But, no, that’s not what I fear. That’s what I expect. (see March 2010, posts zero-zero) In fact, the thought of that not happening is shocking. Let’s stop thinking about it. Visualizing prolonged productivity wears this lady out.

What I do fear is that this blog will eventually become a collection of artifacts marking my lack of a social life and slightly-more-than-habitual crankiness. Not to mention my comma insecurities and unbridled love of stringing words together with hyphens. (Ah, vices. Cigarettes just seemed a little too cliché and a lot too risky for my asthmatic self. So naturally, I took the next best thing, punctuation marks.) 

But back to the crankiness. On harlanguage (and please get ready for an overstretched “Yanawamsayin? No?” analogy) I feel like I’m Kanye West during the Katrina telethon except there’s no camera cut away and so Mike Myers just has to stand there looking constipated until I decide to stop talking. 

Well, that's the case as far as my point of view goes. I realize most people just navigate to other pages like facebook, or that asian porn website that’s all the rage in my comments section. Seriously, check it out. (That's a link to the comments, not the website. Oh, and to the commenter, while your website isn’t really my bag, I appreciate the warm wishes—thank you, online translator—and reciprocate the sentiment. Thanks for being my most supportive follower!) 

But here, I can be like, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people…and heeerrree’s whhhyyy…” and then I pull out a scroll and start talking about the super dome and end two days later with some tangent about golf. 

...Yanawamsayin? No? 

Well, that’s okay. The important thing is I feel like I’ve atoned (by merely acknowledging my flaws and making no promises to change).

So on that note, I’ma let this finish and start on my next post.

Autumn in New [England] (Brief Followup)

Mistakes were made.

There was a spill.

The candle threw up.

poor thing.

Airing out freshman memories before they go stale: Part 2

Of the ten people that did make 34^th street’s cut, one who was particularly relevant to my own Pennesis is the character that Street aptly dubbed The Awkward Sophomore. 

(No awkward sophomore pictured, just two awkward freshmen.)

Oh dear Graham Trewgarl*, my very own awkward sophomore, a poem for you:

Graham Trewgarl, Graham Trewgarl

How does your awkwardness grow? 

With goodbye notes 

Full of priceless quotes 

You tape to our doors when you go.

Sorry, I'm back. I promise I was not typing in tongues; I just jumped the poetry gun (which is no doubt a weapon made of wildflowers, English Breakfast tea, and latent sexual angst.) 

A little backstory: As I said, Graham Trewgarl was our hall's very own awkward sophomore. He had a pretty big room across from Mo's and kept to himself most of the semester, entertaining the occasional guest who would stop by to play video games and talk in muffled tones (or so I gathered from my post out in the hallway.)

However, as first semester began to wind down, Mo coaxed Graham Trewgarl out of his lair (ironic considering traditional hibernators' seasonal patterns.) 

I discovered their budding friendship one afternoon when I came to wake Mo up from her daily nap with the serene sound of my eating her goldfish (a beloved daily ritual for both of us, I'm sure) and found, much to my surprise, Mo already awake and chatting with Graham Trewgarl! It was awkward and somewhat unnerving. I probably lost at least 7 ounces during that period. 

The friendship got a bit weirder  remained the same when Graham confessed to Mo that he had slightly more-than-friendsy feelings for her. Although Mo didn't reciprocate his feelings, they continued to hang out, and we all got to know Graham Trewgarl a bit better.

However, sometime around winter break Graham Trewgarl announced that he was taking a semester off to work on various movie sets and would not be rejoining our hall second semester. We each said our awkward 'oh no's, and I'd like to think they were all heartfelt. Sure, he would avoid us sometimes, and yeah, he wasn't a champion chatter, but he was still a part of our breakfast-club-on-ritalin-and-sports-scholarships hall. We all thought we were sad to see him go...until we got the goodbye notes. 

Typed onto strips of paper that he taped to each of our doorknobs, Graham Trew's goodbye notes were kind of like a white man's fortune cookie. Except, instead of a fortune, these texts were either insults, compliments, insults veiled as compliments, stamps of approval, or messages to the extent of "Everyone else got a note, don't worry about it. Bye." And unlike a cookie, they almost always (see exception "Julie" below) left a bitter taste in their recipients' mouths.

The highlights that stand out in my mind are: 
(keep in mind these quotes are from memory)

Mo’s:
"So I told you I liked you. Way to avoid me for the rest of the semester."

Elise’s:
"You are so loud. Loud in the bathroom. Loud in the hall. Loud with your voice. Damn, girl. Why you so loud?"

Mine:
"You’re nice—almost too nice."

Tiffany's (my asian roommate):
"We both know there are too many white people on this hall."

(blogger's note: Dear Graham, You are white. You're white! Is that the real reason you're leaving? To reduce the number of white people on our hall? Because, um, you're white, Graham Cracka. It’s like those girls who say they “don’t like girls.” All those assumptions you make about/use against other people could just as easily be thrown back at you. Finally, and more to the point, you’re white.)

Julie’s:
"Wow, I really wish I could’ve spent more time getting into a deep conversation with you. You seem like a great person and I’d really like to make out with you once you and your long-distance boyfriend have broken up."

(okay, so maybe part of this quote is "subtext," but anybody at a 5th grade reading level could see what was written between those lines.)

Now, I realize that said notes were written almost four years ago, and Graham’s opinions may have changed considerably since then, but that does not make them any less hih-lar-iii-oooous. Especially given that said letters were distributed en masse and left like valentines (minus candy--boo) and call Elise "loud" and Julie "perfect" and me "too nice" with italics, which is a font detail that takes extra time, kind of like the extra time he's probably spent thinking about how he's going to knock Elise or me out because we're just a little too conscious for his liking. 


But it's cool because, as I mentioned in the previous post, earlier that semester (by the grace of Jordan's still-in-high-school girlfreak--I mean, girlfriend) my trusty little cell phone and I had already weathered brain assessments (a little too tumor-free), face makeover plans (a little too not-on-fire), and speculation about the size of my vagina (a little too not-little.) No comment on the validity of these claims. Especially the last one. Eyes up here.

So it's cool. Our bridge is not burned so long as my facefire doesn't set it off and that's highly unlikely because I've placed the bridge across my giant vagina so that people don't fall in when they visit the area ("The Grammill Canyon," I think is what the locals call it) and even if our bridge does burn, the brain tumor is likely to wipe out any memory of why I might not want to be friends with him, so I think worst case scenario is that we, Mr.Trewgarl and I, have ourselves a fresh start.

Nice. Almost too nice.


*Name has been changed...ish