The Terrors of iCal

The fever pitch of my consciousness reaches its apex around 2:30 AM on an average weeknight. I become more than aware of my inability to complete anything on time and, rather than reverting to my textbooks or Microsoft Word to find a definitive solution in what the modern social theorist has termed "labour," I decide to update my iCal.

I have three closed tabs, each with the five available colors, designated to specific activities I have since abandoned: community service, the gym, read: studt, read: leisure, correspondence, and formal composition. Perhaps I also have colors for calling home, taking showers, eating breakfast, intentionally forgetting to eat lunch, and oftentimes forgetting to eat dinner. On off days, I add tabs for seeing bad movies, grocery shopping for food I will forget to eat, and buying drugs. If I am lucky, I will schedule sex in for 6 AM, somewhere between when I fall alseep to my boyfriend's heaving chest and wake up to the rhythms of Jackson 5's "I Want You Back." [On a sidenote, I should add a color for every time I play this song. My paranoia has convinced me that my iTunes doesn't record each play.]

The elevated sense of pleasure I experience from my iCal recalls the feverish temerity the Aikin siblings:

"Here, though we know before-hand what to expect, we enter into them with eagerness, in quest of a pleasure already experienced. This is the pleasure constantly attached to the excitement of surprise from new and wonderful objects. A strange and unexpected event awakens the mind, and keeps it on the stretch; and where the agency of invisible beings is introduced, of 'forms unseen and mightier far than we,' our imaginaton, darting forth, explores with rapture the new world which is laid open to its view, and rejoices in the expansion of its powers. Passion and fancy cooperating elevate the soul to its highest pitch; and the pain of terror is lost in amazement."

Indeed, the power that overcomes when considering the fantasy that is my ability to follow any schedule or to do list places me at the top of a hierarchy of consciousness that begins with transcendence and concludes in the Empyrean itself.

Next week I will actually follow my plans. I will wake up every morning at 8 AM, run three miles while watching co-authors of economic textbooks tell instruct me about the decline of modern civilization, read for eight hours, write for four, eat three meals a day, have sex at least twice, and remind myself to tell my mother that I love her. For now, I am going to stare into space and consider St. George's relation to the dragon.

Dwelling

This is the image of roommates who found success at roommatehub.com. Why are these online engines that pair people with homes so absurd? The only reasonable means of finding a place to live (when it is not spoon fed to you by family or "work," incl. "school") is something like Craig's List. Its lifeblood is the inherent ambiguity of every post.

Who counts as "alternative-thinking"? Why are there no-pets-allowed when I would be sharing a living room with two African Grey parrots? Why are the only posted pictures close-ups of the toilet and the walk-in closet? Sure, I "drink socially," but what does "smoking socially" mean? (Am I allowed to pop pills "socially"?) Doesn't "furnished" mean "with furniture"? How much of this rent is associated with the "AMAZING VIEW"? How am I supposed to gauge my "laid-backness" against a two-paragraph description of your "creative" hobbies? Why do you have digitized blueprints of your shoddy little apartment, where the room I would be living in is highlighted in red?

These listings are like online slam poetry. How on earth am I supposed to locate brilliant, pot-smoking, Foucault-reading, home-cooking, Seattle-savvy roomates? And what do I need in a living space? How am I supposed to dwell for three months in an unknown land? In the library? If, today, "it is part of morality not to be at home in one's home," (Minima Moralia, 39) should I even be wasting my time worrying about finding the right living situation? Which is better: 'two quiet, male academics' or 'a girl who is not home very often'? Is proximity to campus a more relevant criterion than the coincidence of interests?

Obviously, the step forward is the initiation of a dialogue with the potential roommate/landlord.
But how do I engage with these people without clinging to two already-formed if-fuzzy images: the ideal situation (my identity); and the situation your craigslist posting already outlined (your identity). Obviously shit is going to get fucked up when I move in. Am I supposed to predict and deal with that interaction, or am I supposed not be 'home' when you're 'home'?

Last Night

The New Yorker as a Music Recommendation Source

Yesterday I fought with the bamboo weave rug in front of my door on the way to take an exam. The door stuck and I started barking "mother fucker" before proceeding to rip the rug from under the door and haphazardly throw it halfway into my bathroom. Fortunately, no one saw me.

It's come to my attention that I have only listened to one CD--digital file of an album, really--in the past week, which would be something recommended to me by the hegemonic brainchild of David Remnick. I don't want to put a picture of David here, though, because I don't want to deify him. Maybe he can endorse John Kerry in the 2016 elections and then I will include him on my blog if I haven't died of a heart attack.

Oh, the album: Gui Boratto's Chromophobia. Fuck. I continue to assume one uses the same keys as on Microsoft Word for Mac to italicize a word. Every time I hit "Apple Sign"+"I", "Page Info" appears.

Integrity [poor syntax on my part]

Dear CONFUSED JOURNALIST,

Although I do know many people who take adderall, they happen to me my close friends. I have no interest in disclosing either their names or experiences. As for my personal life, I feel as though whatever I may have said at a social gathering for the SAID PAPER does not apply to your research. There is a clear division between the two for me. If you'd like me to tell ANONYMOUS EDITOR that I'd be more than wiling.

I do, however, encourage you to write this article. Perhaps it would be a better idea to ask people--randomly--about their feelings (approval/disapproval) concerning the drug rather than about whether or not they consume them. This topic is somewhat taboo--amphetamines are illegal in the European Union--and I feel like there is a great deal of hostility on this campus between people who do and people who do not take these so called "study drugs." Furthermore, their long term effects may be seen all over campus. I know of at least two people whose sleeping patterns are permanently damaged from long-term usage (since they were five and seven, respectively).

I hope this email was helpful while at the same time conveying the fact that I am quite irritated by the fact anyone thought it appropriate to ask me for this information. Consider, for example, your friends who take drugs and then imagine someone asking you for their contact information so you could write an article. Perhaps you wouldn't have any qualms, but this university is small and, after all, I am a critic not a journalist.

Best,
PISSED OFF

On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 6:44 PM, <email> wrote:

Hey,
I'm working on an article about prescription drug abuse on campus. ANONYMOUS EDITOR
told me you could connect me to a bunch of students who would be willing
to talk about their own experiences (they will of course all be quoted
anonymously).
Would you please either give me the contact info of students who would be
interviewed, or forward my information to them.
You can contact me by email or call my cell phone (###-###-####)
Thanks,
name

"Liberation: It's All Connected"

Today, I convinced myself there was a tripartite system of rustication in apartment complexes. I also discovered a rather weighty campaign by PETA 2 to recognize the most environmentally sound college eating facilities in the country. Thankfully, in this time of economic crisis, we have PETA to remind us of what really matters: making our food shittier than the lack of intellectual rigor in two-thirds of the country's collegiate curriculum. As I toil away, confusing plate (jointed) rustication on Palazzo Ruccelai with the simplified forms of Michelozzo's Palazzo Medidi, I will be at ease with the knowledge that bunnies everywhere are being freed from the oppressive shackles of pet owners and zoologists. [What matters to me is not neoplatonic liberation but the sexual pleasure embodied by bunny rabbits.]

I found an especially gripping video produced by the PETA2 fund. The use of jump cuts makes Godard's camerawork look like child's play (this is not a veiled reference to the horror film series). The analogy between between denying human beings and animals political rights is especially telling: today, we must compile a video with images from archives as well as footage of poorly dressed public university students (whose sunglasses' circular forms are NOT echoed in the classical order of their libraries' facades and whose American Eagle shirts must have given either several birds or one underpaid child laborer second degree burns) confessing their deep-rooted fears concerning the importance of bunny rabbit safety.

"In New York, a mother cat suffered deep burns as she returned to a burning building over and over again to rescue her kittens."

Indeed, New York cats are more human than I will ever be.

The Iconography of Updikde is a Dialectic Synthesis of Renaissance Paintings found in a Single Florentine Chapel!

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[Masaccio's Expulsion (top); Masolino's Temptation (bottom)]

The differing iconographic representations found within the Brancacci Chapel at Santa Maria del Carmine are now found on the cover of John Updike's new novel The Widows of Eastwick. Indeed, birth colludes with death in order to force upon the female figure the weight of original sin. Whereas Fra Angelico's Expulsion contains gestural representation of the interior psyhological life of Eve, who expresses her grief through covering her newly sexualized form, Masolino da Panicale's Temptation presents flattened, unterior figures that reveal the absence of chiaroscuro as well as the sense of innocence the first humans had before the fall.

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