BAK2SKOOL

Gearin' up for back to school! This is my fourth (unfortunately not final) year of undergrad study! I'm excited because I'm taking 3 English classes! 3! I'm going to be so overwhelmed and riddled with bookish knowledge I might throw up! Every sentence in this paragraph ended in an exclamation point! Hooray!

BUT there's a bit of a drawback; all 3 are online. Ew. Let this stock photo of a business woman express my distaste. Trust me, I'm disappointed in my school, too. But! I learned a lot from the first online english class I took last summer, if only from a ton of studying I did on my own. Granted, it was summer and I had a lot more free time, but I hope I'll be able to do something of a similar caliber this time around.

The hardest thing about online classes is sliding into a routine that is practical and effective. My first online class, that one I learned ~so much~ from? I wasn't exactly diligent. I think we had a couple responses due a week from the reading, alongside 2 papers. While the papers were turned in on time, I think 80% of the responses were late. I had an awesome professor who let it slide because I was obviously doing the work, but. You know. That's not exactly how I want to get into it for three separate ones.

So!

1. Figure out when things are due. Since most normal classes meet twice a week, I've noticed professors have 2 weekly due dates. Figure out when those are! 
2. Get all work done before the weekend! One of the things that's hardest is realizing I can do the work whenever I want to so long as it's in by the due date. I hate not having ONE day off from the grind, even if that doesn't line up with a day I have off from work. 
3. KEEP MY DESK CLEAN. The fact I managed to cram a desk into my puny ass bedroom is a miracle in itself. Keep it functional. Right now I've got a bowl of green beans, some birthday cards, an old USA Today, and a copy of Mrs. Dalloway I haven't even started on here. Whoops. 
4. Have a schedule! Work a certain amount of hours, between a certain set of hours, and stop by a certain time. But again, I won't know what exactly is efficient before pounding it into a routine and working at it for a while. Guess we'll see! 
5. Get a lamp. 
6. Get out! If I have a gap in my schedule (specifically: my two normal classes are afternoon/evenings on Tues/Thurs, and I usually work before that, BUT if I don't work. . . ) go to a coffee shop or the library to study! Don't make it a habit to do homework out in and about, but do it now and again.
7. DON'T PROCRASTINATE. This is a hard one, because it's hard for me to produce quality work unless the assignment is due in 5 hours. I can easily skim over things and say "eh I'll edit this on my next round". 

Okay so! I've talked up some interesting points if only to clear the air from my depressing "I'm going to die alone" posts. Well wishes to anyone who has the unfortunate amount of free time to read this! 

Hands.

It's a terrible and ridiculously liberating to know that you belong no where, with no one.

You are free to go where you want, when you want. You can do whatever you want. There are no hands on you to stop you from going where you want, but there are no hands to hold when you get there. It is as pleasant as it is saddening.

When there is no one else to delve into, no one else to consider and devise, you do it to yourself. Your flaws are lined up on like bottles on a kitchen counter; you have them itemized but aren't sure what to do with them. You have no one to bounce ideas off of.

There is no one to tell you you're right but no one to tell you you're wrong.

I guess it's this that makes me miss being in love with someone. I miss knowing I would lay everything on the line for the person in an instant, I would do anything. I don't feel that way about anyone, anything anymore. My indifference is staggering.

It's liberating but frightening. I feel like I'm driving without my hands on the wheel.

But they're my hands and I can do whatever the hell I want with them. I can hold other people long enough to lift them up, I can wave, or I can cradle my own safe hatred. I can do all these things. One can't work without the other, and I've got two of them, and I'll figure them out sooner or later.

Felms.

• Ted
• Chernobyl Diaries
• Hump Day
• Safety Not Guaranteed
• Moonrise Kingdom
• Jeff, Who Lives At Home
• Thor
• Dark Shadows
• Prometheus 
• 21 Jump Street
• Spiderman
• Avengers
• Captain America
• The Puffy Chair
• Our Idiot Brother

I don't feel like this warrants an explanation at the moment but uh. I've been watching a lot of movies because I feel like I don't watch enough movies. This might turn into a challenge or something. Who knows. I'll keep y'all posted or something who cares. 

IT'S THAT TIME AGAIN!

Summer reading list!

To be updated, obviously. Rather than try and arrange it by category I'm just lumping it all into "I READ THIS".

Here's last years list.


Read: 
(italics are in progress)

"Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?" (non-fiction/essay)
By Mindy Kaling

"Ghosting" (fiction)
By Kirby Gann

"June Fourth Elegies" (poetry)
by Liu Xiaobo

"Orlando" (fiction)
by Virginia Woolf

"Someday This Will Be Funny" (short fiction collection)
Lynne Tillman

"As Is" (play)
William M Hoffman

"Inspecting Carol" (play)
Daniel J. Sullivan

"Slaughterhouse Five" (fiction)
Kurt Vonnegut

"Dandruff" (fiction)
Alex Branson

"Kasher In the Rye" (memoir)
Moshe Kasher

"Swamplandia!" (fiction)
Karen Russell

"Unbearable Lightness" (memoir)
Portia De Rossi


In the scope/planning on reading:

i'm not as sad as i used to be.

I was talking to Woods; not about anything in particular besides an individual and a situation surrounding them, and she replied, "It's hard, because you're naturally so friendly," I shrugged, agreed. We hung up. Life went on. Whoopie.

For whatever reason, that line stuck with me. You're naturally so friendly.

Me? Yeah. I guess so. I'm pretty outgoing, thanks to my job and having to approach/strike up conversation with strangers. I'm friendly because I hate mean people. Simple enough?

It's nice to say that and hear it from someone else though, because it wasn't always like that. The majority of my adolescence was spent brooding and hating everyone. Between Miranda and my job I eventually changed, but before those things I was pretty shitty to myself any everyone else.

A friend (who I went to high school with, but we worked together more recently) recalled a time she tried to talk to me in high school and I told her to 'fuck off'. I don't know what's worse; that I did this or I don't remember this. I haven't talked to her recently, but she's all sunshine and lollipops; the fact I told someone so lovely and full to the bursting with light to "fuck off" breaks my heart. It says something about how defensive I was, how terrified I was of everyone else.

I've come a long way, I guess. It's weird to think back on SUPER SAD™Sinclair.

Do I feel nice? Not really. Am I happy? Who is. Does everyone like me? Of course not. But people like being around me and I like being around people. As much self analysis I get lost in, I can come back to that. It's small but I think, sometimes, it's worth coming back to.

I'll leave on another note; a girl I go to school with made the definitive decision she was going to be my best friend because I seem like I'd make a good best friend. Things that make me giddy for 300, Alec.

The Lucky Peak Dam.

Ironically, roughly two weeks after I make a post about "ridiculous things I'm afraid of" something wonderful on the topic happens.

It's Sunday, I'm off work, and Woods and I decide to go up to Idaho city. It's about 1 1/2 hour drive and we're like "Alright! Sunday! Let's do this!". And by "we" I mean "me", and Woods sighed loudly and knew she wasn't getting out of it. What the hell else are you doing, kid, get in my car.

As we passed most of the "Boise" exits, the landscape got more and more sparse, the buildings fell away and we were left with caked brown hills only dotted with sagebrush and dry grasses. Woods looks back and forth at the scenery that's more or less the exact same on both sides of us and says, "It's weird this is where we live, you know? If you took the houses and buildings away, this is what we're left with,"

"This is Nampa and Boise sans the life, yeah?" I muse. It's mid-afternoon, and there isn't a whole lot of traffic. It's too hot to appreciate the landscape, and I absently wonder if that's going to be the motto of my summer, with all the hikes I already have plotted out for the coming months.

"We get to drive past Lucky Peak," I say, nervously laughing. "That's where I saw the Rooster Tail, the whole reason I'm terrified of dams and shower heads and stuff," I add on, off handedly, "Let's hope it's not open today," Why would it be? It only goes maybe once or twice a year. How could it?

The Rooster Tail is as follows; "This water is more than what can be used for power generation, so it comes through the dam's outlet slide gates, or 'flip buckets.' The Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps of Engineers is releasing water from the reservoir to make room for expected rain and quickly melting snow. The release creates a huge plume of water, which looks like the tail of the barnyard animal." (source) (also pictures if you've never seen it)

The river comes into view below us and I tense up a little bit knowing there's a dam ahead. I'm mid sentence and begin stuttering. Woods holds up her hand to block my line of vision without hurting my view of the road. I keep talking, we keep moving. I am calmed knowing this is the worst of it; looking at the Boise River dam isn't that big of deal. Looking at Lucky Peak itself is kind of scary, but. The dam is passed. We're done. In an hour we're going to be in Idaho City looking at a rad forest and a rad ass cemetery.

Predictably this isn't the end of the story.

Fate would have it that yes, the gates are open and the Rooster Tail is out and about. I don't know at what point I saw the water, what point I saw that wall, a literal wall obscuring all vision, complete white, but I remember screaming and immediately crying. Maybe "crying" isn't the right word; I remember my eyes being wet and I remember whimpering and shaking. I think I was saying something. I pulled over at a parking area and told the bored looking teenagers managing it that I was just turning around. I see it in the rear view mirror as we drive off and I'm sobbing again.

Suddenly I'm a kid again. Suddenly that wall of water is coming at me from all angles in a shower stall, suddenly every shower head is threatening to fall off and become that wall and encompass me. Suddenly all dams have the potential to do it. Suddenly I am ashamed and terrified and the strangest, overwhelming fear I have is dominating me again.

I mutter I'm sorry over and over as we drive away. Woods says it's fine and I forget she didn't want to come in the first place. We go to the foothills, we find a trail and wander it for a while. Even the creek running through it makes me flinch but I ignore it and it's nice out. Woods talks about band camp. We laugh. We eventually leave and get Taco Bell. I take her home, I go home. Everything feels normal.

My Mom asks what I've been up to and I'm crying again, sobbing about failed plans and the Rooster Tail. I end up in her room, watching tv, can hear her on the phone with my Grandma telling her quietly "Nah, she's okay. . . you know how she's been with it since she was a kid,"

I eventually convince myself to take a shower after taking three over-the-counter sleeping pills and feeling like my body isn't quite in my skin anymore. I feel like jell-o, I feel the way I feel when I've taken an excess of downers, my being floating and moving ahead of my real, chubby, functional body. My spirit has escaped and I'm trying to keep up with it. I flinch and I yelp when I shower, constantly moving and trying to keep my eyes on all the walls. Don't betray me now, bathroom.

I sleep but my dreams didn't involve dams. I faced a fear and I ran away from it, screaming and crying.

Fear is a weird thing, guys. I've said it before and I'll say it again; it dictates practically everything I do. It's rare I get to see the actual source of the fear, the beginning of it. Too many parts of my brain fire off and I wonder why it ended up this way. How the genetics lined up and why I'm like this. It's weird. It's so weird.

here are some things i've read also you should too.

Again, as I am as the French say, "Lazy As Le Shit", here's another post from my class blog entitled "Shit I want to Read/Have Read and Think You Should Read". ENJOI.

So here's some shit I read/want to read. 

I feel like I should mention, first and foremost, my reading tastes! I like character centric material; where the "plot" is non-existant outside the main character and we, as readers, largely analyze them. 

Disclaimer that obviously this is my personal tastes and rambling and when I say "THIS IS OBVIOUSLY THE BEST BOOK EVER" it's subjective. I figured you already knew that but I hate how entitled I come off talking about my favorite books. Hurrr. 

Also I want to marry Virginia Woolf, no biggie smalls. 

RECOMMENDED: 

• VIRGINIA WOOLF. The only reason my "serious" stuff comes across the way it does is because of her. She isn't an "easy" read by any means; you definitely need time to get into her but if you want to devote the time into studying her style. . . uhhh you should. A good starting point is "Flush" (an autobiography about Elisabeth Barett Browning's cocker spaniel) and right now I'm working on "Orlando" which. . . I don't know how to explain. Wikipedia it. "Jacobs Room" is kind of an old school "Catcher In The Rye" (guy is in school, he goes and thinks about stuff) and pretty 'easy' if you're not deep reading. Her collection of short stories isn't bad either. 
• BRET EASTON ELLIS. A 'contemporary classic', I guess, he wrote "American Psycho" which GOOD LORD IS GRAPHIC AS ALL HOLY HELL BE CAREFUL but SO GOOD. Like, I had to take a walk and re-evaluate myself after reading it. He also wrote a "Catcher In The Rye" sort called "Less Than Zero", again, about a guy in school who thinks about stuff. Some of his other stuff is honestly a little meh, but those are the two I know and appreciate. 
• KURT VONNEGUT. He is hilarious and sad and confusing and so fucking realistic while encompassing these things. . . even occasional sci-fiish twists! HE'S SO AWESOME. He of course wrote "Slaughterhouse Five" but I really enjoyed "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater". 
• JD Salinger. We have a weird relationship, Salinger and I. I love him but I hate some of his characters. His prose is excellent and his tone is very reflective of the time he lived in. "Catcher In The Rye" is a must. 
• Sylvia Plath. Excellent poet and writer. Don't read her when you're sad; you'll get sadder and probably stick your head in an oven. Read any of her poetry or "The Bell Jar". 
• William Faulkner. Because the word "haunting" has never singularly described a writing style so well. "As I Lay Dying" will confuse you and make you feel things you didn't know you could feel. Or at least I did. 
• John Steinbeck. He's a staple, and like Salinger, he's worth it if only as what I assume to be a perfect example of what tone and style during his era was. Fair warning that any of his stuff is kind of slow and then sort of. . . punches you in the last 30 pages/the last paragraph on the last page. "Grapes of Wrath" and The Winter of Our Discontent".
• Sarah Kane is a playwright, not a novelist or an essayist, but her stuff is really good/terrifying/depressing. I've read "Crave" and. . .some of her other short plays I can't remember the titles of. Good if you like fragmentation; which is neat in creating a  different reading experience for each person. 

Also Harry Potter. Obviously. 

I'll add more to this as I think of it. I'm kind of drawing a blank now that I'm sitting down and trying to figure out what I'd recommend to people. Blah blah blah I'm in love with Virginia Woolf. 

I know it's probably not the best thing to say, but I feel like I should mention it even if it isn't reading because it's had a huge impact on my writing. Stand up comedy is the only reason I'm the obnoxious twat I am today, or people seem to be under the misguided illusion I'm "funny". Especially if the writing is clever and intelligent! It's good for you! I love me some Patton Oswalt. He's excellent and was also an English major! Fun facts! 

MEANWHILE. 

So here's the stuff I want to read! 

I'm going to copy-paste some summaries from wikipedia/google because I FORGET. 

Hunger. 
"The novel has been hailed as the literary opening of the 20th century and an outstanding example of modern, psychology-driven literature. It hails the irrationality of the human mind in an intriguing and sometimes humorous novel." 

The Flame Alphabet. 
"A terrible epidemic has struck the country and the sound of children’s speech has become lethal. Radio transmissions from strange sources indicate that people are going into hiding. All Sam and Claire need to do is look around the neighborhood: In the park, parents wither beneath the powerful screams of their children. At night, suburban side streets become routes of shameful escape for fathers trying to get outside the radius of affliction. The Flame Alphabet invites the question: What is left of civilization when we lose the ability to communicate with those we love?"

 The Miseducation of Cameron Post
"When Cameron Post’s parents die suddenly in a car crash, her shocking first thought is relief. Relief they’ll never know that, hours earlier, she had been kissing a girl.
But that relief doesn’t last, and Cam is soon forced to move in with her conservative aunt Ruth and her well-intentioned but hopelessly old-fashioned grandmother. She knows that from this point on, her life will forever be different. Survival in Miles City, Montana, means blending in and leaving well enough alone (as her grandmother might say), and Cam becomes an expert at both." 

House of Leaves.
WHO DOESN'T INTEND TO READ THIS OH MY GOD. I can't even figure out what to copy and paste about this, but here's the wikipedia. Reading the summary trips my balls off. Lord god.  

Look how cool this is. LOOK AT IT. 

I'll probably update these as I think of them. EH.