Ho Ho Ho

Marry Christmas!

Me

I hate school and I hate class
and I hate homework and I hate
twelve (12) page papers
and I hate grades,
but I hate myself.

And I hate my dad and I hate my mom and I hate
my sister and my sister's friends and my friends
and acquaintances
and myself
and people I've never met and racial minorities - especially blacks -
and women
and leaders of foreign nations
and the impoverished, flea-bitten bloated-bellied AIDS Babies of those nations,
but I hate myself.

And I hate Aeschylus and Sophocles and Euripides and
Socrates and Plato and Aristotle and
Derrida and Sam Beckett and
the Theater of the Avant Garde
and Theater
and logical derivations and doubly-linked-lists and especially AVL trees.

NYU and C and emails from my grandmother and The
World and God and my father and my grandfather and me and every one of my successes
and all of my failures.

I hate this blog and I hate this poem.

And I hate Global Warming and I hate
hybrid cars and The Economy and Adam
and Eve and Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud,
but I hate myself.

I hate love and
I hate generosity and
I hate diarrhea
and Ayn Rand.
I hate hate and
I hate haters
and hate groups
and hate speech
and speech in general
as well as non-verbal communication and silence.
I hate love again and respect and children
and hope and happiness and suffering.
I hate death and life and my life and me
and my name and my toes and my id and my ego
and my boyhood and my nose and I hate God
and my cock and my balls and my asshole and my mouth
and my interests and my intestines and my aorta and my neocortex too.

But most of all I hate you.
I hate your face and your breath and your ideas
and everything you think, say, and do.
I hate the money you make
and the sex you have
and the things you own.
I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!
I hate you, the world, God, Christmas, and you.

But I hate myself.


If I get a diploma, I will burn it.

Size doesn't matter. Except when it does.

Holy Saint Francis, what a change is here! You will recall the twelve (12) page paper on which I was so recently working which turned out in the end to be a cowardly seven (7) page paper. Well, I embarked tonight to fill out the remaining pages with such extra time as I've been afforded. After a few hours of toil at the library, I jumped back home to do some stuff and plugged the new paper into OpenOffice to check my progress (I write the paper at the library in Google Docs, which has very poor page count estimates). Nine pages. Hmm, thought I. This is going to be a long night. Somewhat crestfallen but eager nonetheless, I returned again to the library for more toil. At 3am they finally evicted me from the stacks (the place with the book) and I relocated to the study lounge. The study lounge has iMacs with Word, so I took a deep breath, crossed my fingers, and pasted the paper in. Sixteen (16) pages. I finished the sentence I was working on, slapped my name on the top, and emailed that bad boy in. Done and done. On a related note, the eight (8) page paper I was also working on weighed in at a clean eight (8) pages. Yeehaw.

News From the Front

Thought I would continue last night's tradition of liveblogging from the library. It's 12:45 and the paper is halfway done (it was halfway done at 12:30 - I haven't done anything the last 15 minutes) and that's very good. Remember, this one is eight (8) pages long. Or it will be when it's done. Yesterday's paper has gotten a new lease on life: it turns out not to be due due until noon tomorrow. Whether that gives me enough time to double its length is doubtful, but I might squeeze in a few extra quotations. I have only slept about two out of the last forty eight hours. I'm actually feeling surprisingly good for so little rest. Not as witty as I might be, but as I always say, "can't be witty after every 48 hours of sleep deprivation." See what I mean. Well, I'd best get back to that ole paper. Maybe if I finish before four I can work on the other paper and get it up to ten pages before noon. Wish me luck!

Essay Terminus or One Down, One to Go

Yesterday's/last night's/this morning's twelve (12) page paper is finished, but at the last minute decided to be a seven (7) page paper. I'm not too worried. Unlike parachute ripchords and French emperors, a short essay never killed anyone. Though I wouldn't put it past my paper. It's already burgled some of my property. My watch - the one I never wear except for when I do - is now lost somewhere in the Bobst library. Thrown from my wrist in a frenzy of page-turning, no doubt. This is the same watch, by the way, that was leaking chemicals up and down my arm. It's a comfort to know that I continue to educate myself in the importance of not loosing shit. Like the children you see on leashes who must always wear their harness, I must always keep my watch on my wrist. I like to think that, at 21, the lesson is only repeated for rhetorical emphasis.

Well I've barely recovered from the no-sleep, no-timepiece extravaganza that was last night's paper, and I'm already gearing up for tonight's no-sleep, no-timepiece eight (8) page essay extravaganza, due tomorrow! I'm armored and ready for battle. I have my sword, my pen, my furry hat, my library card, and but for a wristwatch I am the image of scholarly preparedness. Bring it on, say I! And if this eight (8) page paper is paper enough to meet the length requirement, then I shall meet it in the ring of honor. Tonight. Slash tomorrow morning. Bobst Library. Fourth floor. Be there!

Jealousy

Am still at the library writing the aforementioned twelve (12) page paper. Sitting across from me while I was deep in composition was a girl reading a book. The book was entitled, "Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture among Brazilian Transgender Prostitutes."

The paper (my paper) is about Greek drama, by the way.

Lessions in Search Quality

I'm at the library right now writing a twelve (12) page paper which is something that I don't enjoy doing very much. Anyway, (some of) the computers in the library only have Internet Explorer in a quasi-kiosk mode with no address bar. The only way to navigate to, say, Google, is to open the IE search sidebar and search for "google". The IE search sidebar uses Windows Live Search.

So I get on to one of these computer and need to get to Google Book Search (books.google.com). I type "book search" into the search sidebar and hit enter. Before I tell you what results Windows Live gave me for "book search," let me briefly tell you what Google gives you for the same query: books.google.com - result #1, just what I want. Now here is what Windows Live gave me:

Result #1: www.book-search.com "Best way to search for books on the net! ... All rights reserved. This page is copyright 1994 Triple Threat Sportscards." [Emphasis mine]

Result #2: www.bookfinder.com "Search engine that finds the best buys from among 125 million new, used, rare, and out-of-print books for sale. Includes textbooks and international titles." [Emphasis mine]

Result #3: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Book_Search [The Wikipedia page about Google Book Search]

Result #4: booksearch.blogspot.com [The official blog about Google Book Search]

Result #5: www.usedbooksearch.co.uk [A used book retailer... in the UK]

Result #6: www.usedbooksearch.co.uk/books.htm [Apparently it thinks I could use another result from the same UK estore]

Result#7: books.google.co.uk [Finally it gives me the UK version of Google Book Search. To be clear, I'm not using the UK version of Live Search. It recommended the .co.uk domain before the .com domain]

In the subsiquent results were books.google.ca and books.google.au, but plain old books.google.com didn't show up in the 35 pages I clicked through. I thought that was an interesting observation.

Today

Rain. In December. Rain in December.

edit
Correction: It's sleeting now.

The Legal Definition of Cheese

This, from the Wikipedia article on American Cheese (emphasis mine):

Today's American cheese is generally no longer made from a blend of all-natural cheeses, but instead is a processed cheese, i.e. it is manufactured from a set of ingredients (such as milk, whey, milkfat, milk protein concentrate, whey protein concentrate, salt) which meets the legal definition of cheese.

Further details emerge on my impending doom

Consciousness is knowing you're alive. Sentience is knowing you will die.

Over the past four years I've begun to think more frequently about my death which is, I imagine, part and parcel of growing up. But I realized today that I've only thought about my death in the abstract, "I'm 21 - I'm almost dead," kind of way. It wasn't until this afternoon that I spent some time wondering seriously about the end of my life. This is the stuff self-fulfilling prophesies are made of!

My paternal grandfather lost nearly all of his cognitive powers with age. I have been reminded on numerous occasions of the similarities between he and me. Aside from looking identical at age 7, we share many personal and mental traits, according to my father. I am told to have inherited both his great potential and his propensity to waste said potential. My maternal grandmother on the other hand is frighteningly lucid and shows no sign of slowing down. The family fears she will outlive us all. (My maternal grandfather died when my mother was young and my paternal grandmother died when I was young. My paternal grandfather is also dead.) I am nothing like my grandmother. It therefor seems likelier than not that I will lose my mind when I get old. If in my crazy old age I am only able to remember people and events from my youth, I wonder what time frame that will encompass. For all I know, my life right now will be all I can remember in sixty years. I'm trying to decide if that thought makes me self-conscious.

I usually think of "older me" as another person, but for some reason I don't think of the many "older mes" as a group of other people. What I mean is, I think of me at thirty as another person, and me at forty as another person still. I can, when I so choose, feel the gaze of a singular "future me," judging my current actions, but I cannot evoke the sensation of a group of "future mes" judging my behavior collectively. This, despite my birthday mind game.

Assuming I remand lucid, I do wonder how large a component of my identity age will become. I feel that much of my ego for the past 21 years has been predicated upon youth. I have defined myself in terms of being a "young person." As that bedrock slowly slips from under my personality, I find it's replacement (maturity) to be alarmingly absent. For this reason I think that Old Scott, if his wits are about him, will relish in the appropriation of age to support his identity. To "be old" will probably be my favorite part of being old.

Truth be told, I can't wait to be old. It's the "getting old" part I'm not so hot on. But the "being old" looks like a hoot. Any excuse to shit my pants...

Life is so much prelude to death.

Sun, Dec. Nine

• Woke late (2:30).
• Showered and Interneted.
• Ate food (4:10).
• While eating, ran into my friend Nate. Sat down with his crowd.
• We were then joined by Evan (whom I haven't seen in ages) and other people.
• Had the most amusing meal I've had since April.
• Now it's back home and I need to study.

"Sunday" is redundant.

D. Sam Bur

Happy first of December.

Touching yourself: Good, clean fun for everyone!

Finger Cheese

Fact: If you keep your fingers in the same place on a keyboard for upwards of six hours, those keys will acquire a layer of goo. The goo is probably dirt, sweat, and dead skin cells. I won't tell you how I've learned this, but if these keys mean anything to you, you already know: W, A, S, & D.

The Lesson of Science

We used to think that the Sun revolved around the Earth, and we used to think that Zeus aimed the thunderbolts, and we used to think that God made the Universe and Man. What is important is not that we were wrong, but that we were sure. We held these beliefs - and enumerable others, equally wrong - in full confidence and without appeal to evidence. The lesson of Science is not that the Earth circles the Sun, or that lightning is electricity, or that Man evolved from lesser forms. Those are facts of Science, but not the lesson. The lesson of Science is that understanding must be qualified by evidence. The lesson of Science is that statements of the form, "I believe...," require the conjunction, "because." The purpose of Science is not to inform everyone who previously thought plagues the wrath of the supernatural that, in fact, there are such things as micro-organisms beyond the limits of sight. The purpose of Science is not to replace one arbitrary, absolute belief with another, however more correct. The purpose of Science is to teach that understanding must be supported - must be qualified - with repeatable experimentation and falsifiable theory. Science will never decree that, now, at last, we have the final and ultimate explanation of _____. Science will always only discover more evidence and better theories.

What is important is not that we were wrong, because we are still wrong. What is important is that we thought we were right. Now, we know why we hold what beliefs with what confidence - with what evidence - and we continue to seek better knowledge. I think this is a misconception many people have about capital 'S' Science. People assume Science is an authority of the kind to which they are used: the immaculate, supernatural kind. Science is fundamentally difference from religious explanation in that it demands evidence, not belief. Many people, I think, still misunderstand this point and it is important that this be stressed as the lesson, and the wonder, of Science.

Today was a failure.

A complete, total, holistic, uncompromised, perfect failure. Nothing that needed to be done was done and everything needed not to be done was done. Anyone who suggests that we need failures in order to have successes is talking shit out of their ass and is probably a complete failure them self. We need failures in order to feel miserable about ourselves. If nobody ever failed we would all have self-respect, and imagine what kind of world that would be. Hell. It would be absolute hell and I would kill myself before I'd live in it for two minutes. If you're smiling right now, I want you to remember that I am not. Miserable, foolish, slovenly, contemptible failures like me don't smile. We just fail.

DreamInterstate

Several of my dreams in the past months have featured the common image of a colossal elevated freeway system rising hundreds of feet above the ground, with entrance ramps at 30 degree angles, spanning into the horizon like some incredible cross between spaghetti junction and the BQE. The road is featured as a major plot point in some dreams (grandma looses control of the car on a steep entrance ramp as she tries to commit suicide), and functions only as a set piece in others. I'm open to interpretations.

The only thing worse than a beautiful person is a group of beautiful people.

Riddle Me This (in 1200 words)

What's more fun that writing a midterm paper on no sleep? Doing it two days in a row, of course!

My "talent" for the last-minute paper - the only kind I write - is maturing in a disturbing way. My current modus operandi is to begin at 3 am, hand write the whole thing for three or four hours, then sleep for an hour or two. When I wake up I type it out, give one proof-read if I have the time, and email it to the professor by 11am (I don't print things). I did that last night (slash, this morning) and the night/morning before that. The quality of my writing is not so hot, but that is the price of being a level 70 procrastinator. I've been thinking about why I behave like this. The self-righteous answer is that I find personal destruction more interesting than essay-writing. The self-flagellating answer is that I'm a miserable lout who can't do anything right. The answer in the middle is that I'm a smart boy who hates school and just doesn't care anymore. It's all over soon...

To Do or Not To Do

I don't have a newspaper column, but if I did it would be called "In The Knew" and in it I would provide advice to young people. Here is a fictitious entry in my fictitious newspaper column:

In The Knew
Observations for the young and the young at heart
By S.T. Peterson

"To Do or Not To Do"

Dear Friend,

Amid murder and antique language, it is easy for a modern audience (and a modern theater company) to forget about our tragic hero, the Prince of Denmark, that he is a young man. Hamlet is a young man with a young man's question, and like so many young people before and since, he has confused his linking verbs. "Being" is not the sort of thing over which one has agency. Try it sometime. I think you'll find that you already are. The real question our Little Prince invites us to ask is the title of today's column. As so many bumper stickers which have never been printed ought to advertise, "I'll kill myself if it's the last thing I do!"

Today's topic is how to do the things you need to do. I am something of an expert on the matter: I have had to do many things in twenty one years. Some of them important, other not so, some fun, some difficult, but I have approached them all with the same resolution and the same basic method. I generally abhor "3 Easy Steps to Suchandsuch" by Charlatan McFullofit, but I make an exception here for my own, "3 Easy Steps to Doing the Things You Need to Do," because I wrote it, and because it really works! What follows is the basic pattern I have followed whenever faced with something to do, and look at me. I've got a fucking newspaper column!

Step One: Don't do the thing you need to do. This may seem counter-intuitive, until you consider...

Step Two: Consumerism. Instead of doing what you need to do, go buy something. That will probably make you feel better about yourself. If that doesn't work, try...

Step Three: Masturbation.

So there you have it. The three perfect and only steps to doing the things you need to do: don't do it, buy something, and then masturbate. This is how I have faced ever task in my life, great and small, and it hasn't failed me yet. I can only speculate that things would have turned out better for old Hamlet if he'd know the secret. Make wise use of this knowledge yourself and bright things await.

Sincerely and faithfully yours,
S.T. Peterson

The cost of existing

After many years' delay, I am finally reading The Fountainhead. I am also perfecting the vacant expression which is my coping mechanism for the unbearable contempt the book gives me for the world and by "the world" I mean myself.

Life is the cost of existing.

The Body Politik

I've long been passionate about politics, but I've never actually put my money where my mouth is, until now. Yesterday, for the first time, I donated money to a political campaign: $50 to Ron Paul. Just thought I'd let you know.

I have no patience for fools, myself included.