Four Things Taped to One Piece of Paper

I want to make it clear that I did not write the two-item list at the top, though I know the circumstances under which it was written. You don't get to know though - you get to believe that it's a truncated list of the major fears of a self-aware animal on the bottom of the food chain, because that's what it feels like to me.

A Return to Normalcy

This blog has a problem. The problem is not the fact that it is rarely updated and generally neglected, but that its content of late - what little there has been - has strayed from the original themes and motifs that made this blog worthwhile to begin with: Information, and Terrible Ideas Drawn on Notebook Paper. And Airshow Disasters. I hope to rectify this misstep as quickly and effectively as possible starting today, April 3rd 2009, a day that is rainy and sucky.
Please consider yourself Informed.

A Comic From The Past

As is standard for a Saturday night, I was rummaging around through old folders and notebooks in the cabinet of my desk when I came across four panels of information that were generated approximately 360-some odd days ago, but remains relentlessly relevant even today. I don't believe I've shared this with the internet - a cursory glance through this site's archives yields nothing - so while it's certainly not my best work, I think the last panel alone is strong enough to warrant its dissemination. Now, a year after it was drawn, it is robbed of the context that would have been essentially meaningless to all but two people aside from myself. This improves matters, I think.

Can You Tell What This Is?

It's alright if you can't, it didn't turn out at all the way I'd envisioned it, and I am not particularly happy with it. Also, it's no fair if you already know what it is (this is maybe two of you?), so no guessing.

As an added bonus clicking the above image will reveal it in alarming every-hair-fiber-and-rubber-cement-tendril-are-visible kind of high resolution.

Anyway and also here's what happened in class on Friday:

Here are 657 Words About Who Knows What

You might find that this information deviates from the fare normally found here in this needless and needlessly vague and scattered blog. That is because this is a season finale, and as is typical for such affairs all the stops have been summarily pulled out and set aside for later use. Tomorrow I am expected to be conscious and appropriately dressed in a stuffy room at no later than 9 a.m. so that the finer points (and likely most other points) of socialization can be explained to me over the course of two-and-a-half hours every week, in a format that remains – this point – undisclosed. All the beach balls and sparkling cold drinks are being packed away to make room for the thick sweaters and bottles of antidepressants whose respective warmths are sure to be imminently necessary. So.

Here is that reflection on this year’s summer you requested.

Maybe this will not be the information you want at all. Nevertheless, I will present it to you in the form of paragraphs with diction and sentence structure the likes of which nobody ever needs expose themselves to. We here at The Place started the summer sleeping on bare mattresses in hatefully stifling rooms, living like ghosts, occasionally waking up with stomachs full of blood. When we were finally admitted to our proper residence it was unclear whether or not things actually planned on improving. Boxes and garbage bags heavy with personal effects sat on bare floors waiting for furniture and organization to take their rightful places in the Place. There was nowhere to sit, to sleep, to eat, to launder clothes. I spent time in a computer lab being re-taught the basic to intermediate-basics of the monster named statistics. I woke up with ants on me sometimes. I went swimming just once, and indoors. I failed to visit the most proximal ocean. Then that was over with, time passed, I started offering information here, and the days continued.

There were times of progress: the addition and immediate failure of laundry facilities, the possession of a bed, a desk, two typewriters (that I promise to give you information about someday, honest), new shoes, carbonated beverages and at least one airplane safety card. As near as I can tell personal growth was slim to none, and financial growth was of an inverted nature. At some point it seems like everyone got much quieter, and there was talk of serious matters in strained voices heard through walls and satellites. No easily pegged or overarching theme of the season made itself apparent, and despite living like some kind of almost-grown-up for the first time in Ever, very little about my information has changed, making this the summer of the status quo. I did not make any new lasting friends, but no bridges were incinerated throughout the season’s course. Things weren’t stagnant, their pace was simply glacial, their net gains and dividends as yet invisible from such a short distance.

Now it seems like things are happening every day. The reappearance of people I missed more than I was probably even aware of, the disappearance of people whose absences were unforeseen and more unsettling than expected. A conversation that did a little new good to a lot of vintage bad, and the annexation of necessary furniture and an unnecessary but hopefully functional fog machine. I promise to let you know about the fog machine. Looks like we made it.
Now though, it is time to go to sleep in preparation for the rude awakening of academic responsibilities the complete disappearance of the nauseating sentimentality with which this information you’ve just read is so uncharacteristically imbued. Everyone should write down a goal they hope to accomplish in the coming season. Write it down on notebook paper, fold it into quarters, and label it like this:



Don’t sign or date it. Leave it somewhere that it will be found by someone who couldn’t possibly know you.