Pudding Cups and Socialists

A great man once said, “A new semester means new bullshit.  New bullshit means new boots.”  And that great man was me.  I said that.  On Facebook, no less. 

Yes, it’s a new semester for 13th grade.  Brand new classes and brand new expectations, which lead to brand new disappointments.  I’m sitting here in the MCC cafeteria, with my cup of vanilla pudding and my bottle of Sobe fruit punch, thinking to myself about what I should expect from this semester.  More arguements with mom?  More all-night papers?  More breaks?  Luckily, I already know the answer to that last one.  The difference between this semester and last semester is that last semester had NO BREAKS.  Let me repeat that.  NO.  BREAKS.  No week-longs, no 3 day weekends, no single day breaks, nothing but the mandatory Christmas break.  This semester, however, calls for a February break and a Spring Break, both week-long breaks, which are nice to have once in a while, especially for college students.  They relieve a bit of stress and stop us from going COMPLETELY BATSHIT INSANE.

My classes for this semester go as follows: 

College Composition, Contemporary Poetry, Elementary Japanese I, Geology I, and The U.S. Congress.

The ones I look forward to the most are Japanese and Contemporary Poetry.  I haven’t been to Japanese yet, so I can’t say much about it, but I have been to Contemporary Poetry.  I have it on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  It’s an 80 minute class and the professor talks.  A lot.  A lot a lot.

First days are supposed to be short!  All professors are supposed to do are explain the syllabi and send you on your merry way.  That shouldn’t take 80 minutes, right?  Well, my Contemporary Poetry professor had a grand old time spending 80 minutes talking about the syllabus and anything else he could talk about.  He’s a nice guy, and he’s very funny, but he talks incredibly fast, so you’d think he’d run out of stuff to talk about.  But I have a feeling if someone hadn’t told him that 80 minutes had passed, he would have talked for at least 3 more hours.  Holy crap, it was boring.  I like poetry, especially more modern stuff, which is what contemporary poetry is supposed to be, but I don’t want to talk about it for 80 fraking minutes.

A few weeks before classes began, I looked him up on ratemyprofessor.com.  Mostly good reviews with pleasant comments, but one word that seemed to pop up all over the place was “socialist.”  That was the majority description for him.  Apparently, he’s incredibly liberal and doesn’t care who knows it.  I thought teachers were supposed to remain non-partisan in their lectures, but he has a problem with that.  Although, he’s been teaching for something like 30 years, so I guess if he hasn’t been fired for it yet, then he’s going to be fine.

I don’t have a problem with this guy, I’m just not used to using up an entire 80 minutes listening to rapid speech.  I need a bit of movement.  I was practically born in a rocking chair, so I can’t be told to sit in a stationary seat and be expected to enjoy staying there for almost an hour and a half.  I’ve taken 80 minute classes before, but the professors wouldn’t necessarily use the entire time.  They’d normally let us out early.  So after getting used to early dismissals, it’s difficult to now have to sit for more than an hour doing nothing but listening to this man talk.  I just hope, for sanity’s sake, that he makes the class more interesting than he did today.  If I have to return week after week to listen to that kind of crap, then I’m not going to have a fun time fulfilling my literature requirement.

Well, I should probably head to Japanese now.  I’d like to see how that turns out.  I’ll just finish my pudding first.

Y’know, the weird thing about this pudding cup is that it comes with one of those dome tops, but the dome is actually closed in at the bottom.  It’s got a bunch of vanilla wafers in it that I really want, but I can’t seem to take the bottom off of the dome.  I don’t want to take it off with my teeth, because then everyone here will remember me as “that kid who buys pudding cups just to gnaw on the plastic.”  Whatever.  I’ll get it open eventually.

Why this post is so damn late…

Why?  Because it is.  I really don’t have much of a reason other than that.  Although, since it’s taken me so long to post, I have a lot more stuff to talk about.  We’ll start off with what’s going on at this moment…

I’m sitting in one of the student lounges again, accompanied by a Shot in the Dark, which is a drink from Java’s.  It’s hot chocolate with a shot of espresso, and I stupidly ordered an extra shot.  I can only blame myself for how bitter the drink is, and for taking a sip right away, burning away the majority of my taste buds.  But I really needed that double shot; I’m so tired today.  I thought I got a good night’s sleep, but I was wrong.  I woke up this morning, got a shower, got dressed, had breakfast, everything without a single problem.  But when I got into the car, I made the mistake of leaning my seat backwards.  I had about a half an hour of rest (no sleep, just rest) in the car ride to school, and my body didn’t want to wake up from that rest.  I sat through Statistics class, half asleep, trying to take notes.  The weird part was that my left eye kept wanting to close, but my right eye was fine.  And as soon as I closed my left eye, I could focus a little better.  Maybe half of my brain was falling asleep.  I don’t know.  I heard ducks can do that.

Anyway, I’ve been incredibly busy lately with schoolwork.  I had a paper to do for my art class, where I had to go to the Memorial Art Gallery and choose a painting to analyze and compare with a painting from our textbook.  I saw the “Paint Made Flesh” exhibit, which I had only heard bad things about before seeing it.  But it really wasn’t that bad.  Some of the stuff there was unnecessarily gruesome, but most of it was okay.  There were two paintings that really caught my eye: a painting by a German painter (which I forget the title of) and a painting by Jenny Saville, called “Hyphen”.  I wrote about “Hyphen” mostly because of the way it pulled me in and didn’t let me go.  There’s something wrong with that painting, but I couldn’t pinpoint what.  I stood there for several minutes, staring at this huge painting of two girls, trying to figure out what was disgusting me, but I really couldn’t find it.  I think that was Jenny’s intention, to paint something inexplicably disturbing.  I still have no idea what was wrong with that-OH GOD!  FUCK COLLEGE RADIO!

I’ve just been Rick Rolled by the P.A. in the lounge.  Dammit.  That’s low.  I didn’t even have a chance to escape.

Something about that Rick Roll just threw off my thinking process completely.  I can’t even think of anything else to say. 

Uhhh…The holidays are coming up.  I could talk about them.  I really have no idea what I want for Christmas this year.  I wanted a video camera but that’s out of the question apparently.  I just need some kind of idea.  How about a publisher?  I’d like to get some of my poetry out there, I just don’t know how. 

Okay, I’m officially too tired and too braindead to continue typing.  Goodnight, New York.

Hungarian Hungarian Hippos

Standing in line for Taco Bell, I couldn’t help but notice the two guys in front of me were acting kind of sluggish.  It’s a Monday, after all, and nobody really wants to be in this royal blowfest we call MCC.  The Monday crowd at MCC is normally 70% tired, 25% hung over, and 5% inexplicably happy, so I continued to wait as the line slowly inched forward at a rate of 1 step per 30 seconds.  But these guys seemed to be acting different from any normal tired college student; they were kind of giggly and a bit impatient.  They looked around the room to see all the different people, possibly looking for someone they knew, and that’s when I noticed the bloodshot eyes.  All of these are symptoms of lack of sleep, but I seem to get this vibe off of people that are high that I can’t seem to get from people who are tired.

Students come into MCC high all the time, so this was no surprise.  But it was nonetheless amusing.  I mean, they weren’t acting paranoid or explaining to each other how the popularity of the Black Jack Taco was a result of affirmative action.  They were just waiting, talking, chuckling… Apparently, they had experience in being high in public and knew how to hide it fairly well.  Unfortunately, this was not the case for the guy who walked up to me a minute later.  This guy was noticeably high, with red eyes and speech that seemed like it couldn’t get an answer fast enough. 

“Yo, is this the, um, is this the line?  This the line?”

“Yeah.”

He walked to the back of the line, waiting restlessly for it to move, and it didn’t take long before he left.  It seems like pot alters one’s perception of time so that a minute seems like 3.  That explains why some people get impatient when they’re high. 

Anyway, the guys in front of me finally got to the cashier and made their ridiculously huge order, which was probably just for the two of them.  After that, I lost interest and stopped paying attention.

I really don’t understand why some people find it necessary to show up to school high.  I can’t imagine how it would help them in any way.  Why can’t the toking wait until after school, where you don’t end up looking like a sketchball in public? 

Wow, is that all I really had to talk about?  I can’t think of anything else to say. 

I guess I could talk about college talk radio, since that’s what seems to be currently plaguing the Starry Nites lounge.  No matter how hard I try, I just CAN’T find interest in a broadcasted conversation that I could easily encounter in the hallway.  And the fact that they bring in a bunch of burnouts to talk about this crap doesn’t help it become any more interesting.  It’s all so incredibly boring.  I don’t mind hearing people’s opinions, but at least include a bit of personality and humor.  Otherwise, you might as well fart into the back end of a hairdryer and blow it into a crowd of unwilling people.

And once they finally reach the end of their “segment,” they turn it over to some equally boring DJ who starts playing the crap on his iPod, thinking that everyone else will enjoy it just as much as he does.  So as soon as you’re done listening to a bunch of monotone voices talk about the balloon kid for the 1500th time, guess what?  Now you get to listen to an hour of Bjork’s greatest hits!

No thank you.

Now, I don’t want people thinking that I always sound this cynical, but sometimes people need to be a bit more conscious of the world around them and not just of themselves and their cliques, because for those of us who ARE aware of the people around us, we definitely notice how idiotic those people make themselves seem.  So drop the weed, get yourself a personality transplant, and start paying attention.

“Anyone want some meatloaf and cheesecake?”

I think you all deserve an explaination for this title.  I was sitting here, outside of Starry Nites, a restaurant at MCC that is known for selling breakfast cereals and pastries all day long.  I didn’t know what to name this post, so I decided I’d let someone else decide; I listened for the first interesting thing I heard someone say.  Call it a stroke of luck, but it happened right away.  A chef from Reflections, which is a student-run restaurant here at MCC, passed by the small crowd of people that I have become a part of simply by sitting down, pushing a metal cart with two platters on top.  His plea was so unique, I had to type it down: “Anyone want some meatloaf and cheesecake?”

If I were him, I would have phrased it a little differently.  Y’know, like, “Anyone want some meatloaf or some cheesecake?”  Using the word “and” makes the two separate dishes sound combined, so I was understandably not the only person who seemed a bit confused.  But I chuckled anyway, since I’m already in such a good mood.  It just seems like one of those days that deserves a smile out of me.

At the beginning of my first class of the day, Creative Writing, a kid in the front of my row was humming quietly to himself.  Well, at least he thought he was being quiet.  Because I certainly heard him.  But I ignored it, organizing my papers and folders and books for the start of class.  However, even though I thought I was ignoring it, I was actually listening subconsciously.  It didn’t take long before I recognized what song he was humming: Epona’s Song, from the Legend of Zelda series.  I can’t really explain it, but it made me feel happy.  Maybe it was because I realized at that moment that I’m not the only dork in the class.  I didn’t want to say anything, though, because if I spoke, I might make myself the only NOTICABLE dork in the class. 

I suddenly heard the chair next to me squeak with the movement of its occupant.  Kyle Kalish, who sits next to me in this class (and is actually a nice guy, so I thought he deserved having his name mentioned in here just in case he googles his name and finds it here, and if that’s actually the case, then HI KYLE!) leaned over to me.  “Do you hear that kid humming?”  He was whispering so that the kid himself couldn’t hear us. 

“Yeah, I think he’s humming Epo-”

“He’s humming a song from Legend of Zelda.”

“…Yeah, Epona’s Song, right?”

He smirked.  “You know it?”

“Yeah, it took me a few seconds to recognize it.”

Again, I really can’t explain it, but I suddenly became even happier.  I guess I just enjoy knowing that I’m not the only one who has forgotten one of the greatest songs from that particular series.  I don’t know.  It just brings back such pleasant memories.

After class, I headed to the Taco Bell Express up in the cafeteria.  I ordered the normal chicken quesadilla, but this time I got something extra: the Black Jack Taco.  It sounded interesting, so I thought I’d try it out.

And I still haven’t eaten it.  So I figure I’ll just eat it now and explain the experience to everyone who actually reads this.  Give me a moment.

…

Wow.  I wish that lasted longer.  I’m pleasantly surprised.  I think the pepperjack sauce is what really did it for me.

Anyway, I know this day won’t continue in such a cheery fashion.  As far as I’m concerned, I’ll be happy until 3:20, when my Modern Art class ends and I have to look forward to another hour of driving with Gary.  Gary is my driving instructor for these one-on-one lessons I have with the Rochester Rehabilitation Center.  Don’t get me wrong, he’s a very nice guy.  But if I have to hear about how old some of the stuff in his house is one more time, I swear I’ll drive straight into a stop sign.  I just can’t focus with him constantly talking about stuff I could really care less about.

But I guess that won’t necessarily ruin my day, it’ll just make it less favorable.  After all, there are worse things than spending one hour in a boring driver’s lesson.  I mean, at least I’m not Nancy Grace’s panties or something.  (I promised myself I’d fit Nancy Grace somewhere into this post.)

Now, normally I would have ended my post with that last paragraph, but I just realized that I haven’t said anything crazy yet.  I’m going to try and make that a goal from now on, so that everytime someone reads one of my posts, they’re guarenteed to get at least one well-deserved moment of confusion.  So here we go:

Anyone want some meatloaf and cheesecake?

Ooh, I have a great idea.  As an added bonus, I’ll conclude with one of my favorite quotes from Texts from Last Night (http://www.textsfromlastnight.com):

(678): stop calling my apartment porn island.

Why I made a blog, why I named it this way, and why is it always Marsha? MARSHA MARSHA MARSHA!

Ignoring the incredibly long title and even incredibly longer URL for this particular post, I’d like to make a few things perfectly clear.  Some of these things involve not ignoring the title of this post.  You can still ignore the URL though.

I’ve been thinking about creating a blog for quite some time now.  I never really wanted one of those lame MSN-hosted blogs that is impossible just to GET to, let alone show people.  I wanted something a little simpler, which is why I chose Word Press.  So the first thing I’d like to say is my thanks go to Word Press.

Now, in a rapidly changing world, constantly bothered by my rapidly changing mind and rapidly changing moods, I’ve found one thing to be constant: writing always helps.  No matter what mood I’m in, whether it be a particularly silly mood or a frustrated/upset mood, I write to alleviate the little jittery feelings I get that make me want to pull some random person aside and tell them my life story.  But I’ve found that writing through journals and diaries and other private almanacs (I promised myself I would fit the word “almanac” into this post somewhere) really only helps me get to understand myself in a non-social perspective.  Which really should be the same for everyone.  Let’s say you wrote an entry in a diary and then typed a post in a blog.  The diary would obviously be for your eyes only, while the blog is open to examination and interpretation of all kinds of friends and/or relatives.  Your language would differ greatly between the two; blogs force you to write in a way that can be understood by people other than yourself.  Which might help me afterall.  I’m not saying I’m anti-social, I’m just not GOOD at being social. 

…What point was I trying to make?

Fuck if I know. 

Anyway, being a creative writer, I’ve always had my creative ideas and quotes and such that I wished I could spread out to others, making my words gain a bit of popularity.  Which brings me to the title of the blog: The Canvas in the Never-Corner.  An odd title for a blog, yes, but original nonetheless.  The title actually comes from a poem that I made during my Senior year of highschool, entitled “I’ve Been Me”.  The poem itself is one of my least favorite creations, and the title kinda sucked too.  But there were two lines that I wrote that I thought were pure genius: “You’ve only seen the shell, Not the infinite design upon the canvas in the never-corner.”  Those two lines sprouted a lot of great ideas: an independent portfolio, a novel about certain aspects of my life…lots of great ideas.  Great ideas that I would never be able to fulfill.

How the hell am I supposed to stay focused on a novel, anyway?  And portfolios can take years.  So, I figured, I might as well not waste such a great line.  Thus, the title for my blog was born.  And now that I actually have one, maybe I can get my writing back on track.  But this blog won’t be just about my writing; it’ll be a way to let people know how insane I can be. 

If you were one of my close friends, you’d know that I really can’t go five minutes without saying something completely out of the blue.

So, grab a snack, a nice hot cup of hot chocolate, a hot date, maybe find a hotspot, and get ready for the sexiest blog in town, Jeremey.