Not Quite Third World

it comes to me now, that after years of mirthful depictions on movie screens, weed, too, can be a drug of quiet desperation.

I talked to someone in one of my classes today. We have a midterm tomorrow. I mentioned that I had to go home and do the readings and she literally looked at me like I had three heads and was like “You can’t be serious. Tell me you’re just kidding.”

I guess some people have no problem doing the readings, if not on time, then at least spaced out at some interval other than, like, less than 24 hours before the midterm. Particularly in a reading intensive lecture course.

I went to a SNAP screening today, and the woman told me that I had come up as high on the depression questionnaire. And I was all like, “that’s odd, I thought I lied enough on the questionnaire to pass.” Apparently the main factor was that I had trouble sleeping. I’m like, “listen honey, I’ve had trouble sleeping since I was like three hours old. Don’t give me this trouble sleeping shit.”

But then we were talking and I was talking about how I haven’t done any work at all for this exam. And she asked me if i was a procrastinator and I said yes and then she asked, in only a mildly questioning tone as if it wasn’t really a question just a statement requiring my approval, “do your best work at the last minute?”

I feel like this is the kind of thing I always say no to when it’s on a questionnaire or something like that, because I want to think that if i actually didn’t procrastinate, I would do much better. But the fact is I just can’t get shit done that way. I do all my stuff, like, exclusively last minute and it really is some of the best work I do.

So I guess I’m finally owning up to being a procrastinator. It feels good.

On a side note, they had to shave my wrist so they could put an electrode there. So now I have a weirdly bald square on my wrist. The lady suggested a temporary tattoo; I support this idea.

…that Justice Scalia believes corporations have more rights than women?

I feel bad for this girl. Ashu asked her a question on her reading (which she just gave like a half hour presentation on) and she got it wrong. And I knew the answer because he had mentioned it in one of the first classes. It was, like, the entire reason he assigned this reading. And now she looks like a complete idiot for her big presentation and it’s kind of sad.

That being said, it has to be one of the most boring presentations I’ve ever not paid attention to. So, you know, It’s not like I’m heart-broken.

Lots of times, I just take my veggies out of the freezer and eat them frozen. It takes some getting used to, but there’s a satisfying crunch and it makes my tummy feel like a snowball.

The current retirement plan, as discussed with heychina, is to, at 75, retire to a random as cabin in some godforsakenly cold part of the earth and there live out an ascetic lifestyle: eating simple food, waking up early to greet the sunrise, reading lots of books that I’ve spent my whole life wanting to read, drinking green tea by the fire, and generally complaining about a lifetime of missed opportunities and my impending death.

The current working theory is that the cold preserves you. I feel like I should let you know that this theory has NOT ONLY been endorsed by the Golden Girls, but also by—you guessed it—my Aunt Diane.

You just can’t argue with that shit.

Alright, this post relies on one item of previous knowledge about me, one new item of information, and finally the synthesis of these two phenomena.

1. I’m obsessed with ski lodges. I have no desire to ski. I just have a desire to wait in the lodge, drink hot chocolate (with peppermint schnapps), sit by a roaring fire and wait for my buff ski-expert boyfriend to return. As you may have guessed, this is also the subject of my erotica

2. My friends and I were talking casually about going to a sauna. No actual plans were made, nor was any description of the trip given besides “sauna.”

3. Obviously, I immediately went online and priced hotels. If we go right after my birthday weekend, Sunday and Monday (for cheaper rates), and if we can squeeze 4 people into a room that the hotel says fits “1-4 people,” we can do two nights for $50 a person, including complimentary spa membership for the weekend. Now I just need to work out the transportation issues (and the fact that nobody will actually go on this ridiculous trip because there will be virtually nothing to do in Vermont in November) and VERMONT HERE WE COME.

4. Why do I need a vacation when I don’t go to any of my classes or do any work?

This is the stupid shit I spend my life doing.

Is it wrong to want to write profound shit to nobody in particular on the internet? Well actually I guess I don’t really care if it’s wrong I just think that it’s a waste of my time. But most of the things I do are a waste of my time. So whatevs.

I put most of my effort into things that don’t really count. Like my extracurriculars. Or covering almost every square inch of my room in posters. Or listening to a mix CD my friend made 3 years ago, or organizing my tastespotting bookmarks, et cetera. And when I finish all these things I find that I haven’t done anything that was legitimately productive and I’m still one test away from failing all of my classes. So perhaps devoting more time to writing on my tumblr will be at least more productive than simply staring at my laptop waiting for the interesting to happen.

This blog was formerly a travel blr about my adventures in East Timor. I am no longer in East Timor, and as far as I know I have stopped having adventures there; after a temporary hibernation, very possibly presaging a permanent one, it is being repurposed and repackaged into a personal blr about the random shit that passes for a cohesive life when we use the right connecting phrases. It will seek to answer the fundamental questions of whether there is a kernel of humanity in this ball of cells or in this mass of text, which one, and how to find it. And it will be updated at an interval which remains to be determined.

The name will remain the same with an important distinction: instead of an obliquely descriptive phrase about a situation which might actually be objectively interesting, it will serve its new life as an ironic header, plastered rather simply over a series of random thoughts, designed to look like a reference to our daily goings on or the human experience at large but really just a symptom of the bottomless void of academia.

Welcome to Not Quite Third World.