Singles Awareness Month!
Hello, anonymous internet.
Included in this LiveJournal broadcast is a clip containing one of my favorite romantic moments in any movie ever. It's at the very start of this clip, ending with "good, I like being here." Forgive the Chinese (?) subtitles, because it was the only clip that I could find that had what I was looking for. Also, I'm not sure how far it goes because I haven't watched past that specific part, but it's probably to the end of the movie. So if you haven't seen "Before Sunset," and don't want to be spoiled, stop after the first 45 seconds or so.
I've been watching a lot of romantic movies lately, for some reason. I'm not really sure what it is, if I'm lonely or whatever. The best thing to do is not think about it. Although "Annie Hall," "Say Anything...," "Kissing Jessica Stein," "Amelie," "Manhattan," "A Home at the End of the World," and so on over the course of not many days don't do much to distract from whatever conclusion about me there is to be made, I don't find myself sending messages to strangers on MySpace, updating information on internet dating sites (feel free to make jokes), or really going out of my way in any way to meet anyone. I have a lot of shit in the air, and I don't really need my penis calling the shots for me, at least not until the summer.
YouTube is letting me down tonight. I was looking for a clip from "Kissing Jessica Stein" where what's his name bossface rips into Jessica about the fact that she's unable to find a decent relationship because she's not open to it, and unsurprisingly I was unable to find it. Anyway I think that relates to me pretty well because, although it's presented as derisive and insulting in the movie, it's pretty accurate. Am I bordering on the line of 14 year old girl quoting song lyrics that in my perception only could relate to a current event of my life? Am I becoming everything I hate? Yeah, probably. Might as well wear PJ bottoms and sandals to school next week and talk about how deep The Fray is. Christ even the one "punk" guy in the brass ensemble who plays bass trombone (not well) listens to Fall Out Boy. What happened to the punk aspect of indie music? Where did people's sense of adventure go? What the fuck am I talking about?
I got side-tracked. By the way, my alluding to "Kissing Jessica Stein" relating to me is not a subtle way of saying I'm into dudes. I don't even like my own cock, how am I supposed to judge others? I'm thinking about taking a beginning painting class in the summer. I've never really done any kind of visual art. Well, once when I was 13 I took a comic book drawing course over about six weeks in the summer at UTA. It was fun because we basically ate pizza and swore a lot, but the instructor basically assumed everyone had some formal drawing training, and so someone like me who didn't know shit about fuck sat there with a sketchbook full of parody cover line drawings and absolutely nothing else. I mean, if you're going to do drawing, comic book drawing takes mastery or competence in at least three areas - drawing, storytelling, and another word that isn't coming to me but basically means a combination of thoroughness and brevity. I was 13 and as such had none of these.
But anyway painting seems like it might be a neat thing to do. I don't intend to take it seriously, because I've never really had a head for that kind of thing, but as the mile-high stack of composition books with false starts, ripped-out pages, and blank pages swirled with the tip of a ball-point that I refuse to believe has run out of ink, I have come to the conclusion that writing might not be the best way for me to get things out. Certainly dribbling in LiveJournal every time Haley's (Halley's?) Comet rolls around serves some purpose, but mostly it's an outlet for me to pretend to be honest while consistently putting up a front of smug self-deprecation.
Well this certainly got long and pointless. It's a lot like the literature class I'm taking (American Lit 1865-current). Sure, there's a lot of great stuff written in that time period (Mark Twain, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Vonnegut, the greats of the post-war era which we'll probably never get to), but the teacher is just ridiculous. She's the most highly-honored seventh grade English teacher in the world. First of all, we have daily reading assignments (which I'm ok with, because it's a reading class), but we also have the most ridiculous quizzes (also daily, which is moronic on a college level). The questions range from "What year was 'The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County' published?" to "Name one pen name used by Sara Orne Jewett." The answer to both is "who gives a fuck, and what bearing does that have on the story that I read?" Actually the answers are 1865 as "Jim Smiley's Jumping Frog," 1875 as "The Notorious...," and Sara Sweet, but the point remains: what the fuck does it matter? This is a 2300 level ELECTIVE literature class, which means that people are ELECTING to be in it and it is not a requirement for any non language arts majors. Which is approximately 90% of the Tarrant County College student body. I will probably do some kind of literature as my second major, but I guarantee you the 34 year old single mother next to me is just trying to get a last humanities credit so she can get her god damn nursing degree and provide for her several children. She doesn't give a fuck that Dr. Joseph has never enjoyed a piece of literature in her life, despite having gotten a BA, MA and PhD in the subject, and has decided to vent her frustrations on her students, who she is systematically turning off of the idea of ever taking another literature class again.
So that's basically what I'm dealing with. I'm also delivering pizzas, which is just the glamorous part-time experience I wanted, but it's both enough money to keep me in whatever the hell I don't need, and easy enough that I can do it and not get all stressy, as I am prone to doing. I'm playing trombone six days a week, which is excellent. I'm getting about three hours of face time every day, plus I'm playing both tenor and bass trombones regularly. So, when I get off my ass and actually get some auditions done for schools (which has turned into a colossal fucking flop thanks to UNT, more below), I should be able to wow them with my superior grasp of bass trombone and my average to above-average grasp of tenor trombone.
So UNT basically fucked up my application process for every one of the eight schools I applied to. Because they don't know how to run a school. I sent in a request for transcripts to be released on the 11th of December, and didn't find out until the last week of said month that they were never sent. The deliverer of the message was UTA's admissions department, with a letter stating that they had not received UNT's transcript. So I called the registrar's office and they said my loan had defaulted and my shit was on hold. It's a very valid reason, except for the fact that my loan was paid off in May and I haven't owed them a fucking cent since then. So she said she'd have to get in touch with the lender and they'd have to clear it up. I faxed the copy of the letter that said my account had been paid off and was considered closed, dated in May of 2006. So a week goes by and the shit is still blocked, I call again and get a "well yes it looks like we received the fax and it is in process. It should be taken care of by the end of the week." Seems ridiculous enough to me that they can't make two phone calls and then send the shit through in the course of two weeks, but whatever. So a week later I'm still blocked and I call again, and get a semi-frantic "that has been put through but I'll have to have someone contact you with the proper status." So I said no, that I was getting a yes before I hung up the phone, and she put me on hold for like ten minutes and then someone said "ok the block has been removed." I thanked them for doing their job in the most untimely and unprofessional of fashions, and my transcripts were released.
Last week.
So I've basically been fucked around by UNT, out of potentially any kind of scholarship opportunities and past audition application deadlines. This means that a lot of the shit I was working on is more or less down the tube, or I'll be spending a lot of time on the phone with the professors I'll be working with directly explaining to them the situation and hoping they can pull strings and get me in. It's ridiculous, but I know I can make that work with UTA, which is probably going to be my fall college destination, and although it was probably the most likely of candidates anyway, I wanted to have some out-of-state options. And now I don't. Not really. Thanks a lot UNT, you won't be getting my money when I go to graduate school. Sorry!
Speaking of really long and pointless, it's 1 a.m. and I've been typing for a long time. At some point I need to go to bed, and I really should have done laundry some time today, but instead I was lazy as shit watching movies and drinking Dr Pepper. And I took a three hour nap. The days are just packed.
See you in the new year, anonymous internet.
Sincerely,
Randy
Included in this LiveJournal broadcast is a clip containing one of my favorite romantic moments in any movie ever. It's at the very start of this clip, ending with "good, I like being here." Forgive the Chinese (?) subtitles, because it was the only clip that I could find that had what I was looking for. Also, I'm not sure how far it goes because I haven't watched past that specific part, but it's probably to the end of the movie. So if you haven't seen "Before Sunset," and don't want to be spoiled, stop after the first 45 seconds or so.
I've been watching a lot of romantic movies lately, for some reason. I'm not really sure what it is, if I'm lonely or whatever. The best thing to do is not think about it. Although "Annie Hall," "Say Anything...," "Kissing Jessica Stein," "Amelie," "Manhattan," "A Home at the End of the World," and so on over the course of not many days don't do much to distract from whatever conclusion about me there is to be made, I don't find myself sending messages to strangers on MySpace, updating information on internet dating sites (feel free to make jokes), or really going out of my way in any way to meet anyone. I have a lot of shit in the air, and I don't really need my penis calling the shots for me, at least not until the summer.
YouTube is letting me down tonight. I was looking for a clip from "Kissing Jessica Stein" where what's his name bossface rips into Jessica about the fact that she's unable to find a decent relationship because she's not open to it, and unsurprisingly I was unable to find it. Anyway I think that relates to me pretty well because, although it's presented as derisive and insulting in the movie, it's pretty accurate. Am I bordering on the line of 14 year old girl quoting song lyrics that in my perception only could relate to a current event of my life? Am I becoming everything I hate? Yeah, probably. Might as well wear PJ bottoms and sandals to school next week and talk about how deep The Fray is. Christ even the one "punk" guy in the brass ensemble who plays bass trombone (not well) listens to Fall Out Boy. What happened to the punk aspect of indie music? Where did people's sense of adventure go? What the fuck am I talking about?
I got side-tracked. By the way, my alluding to "Kissing Jessica Stein" relating to me is not a subtle way of saying I'm into dudes. I don't even like my own cock, how am I supposed to judge others? I'm thinking about taking a beginning painting class in the summer. I've never really done any kind of visual art. Well, once when I was 13 I took a comic book drawing course over about six weeks in the summer at UTA. It was fun because we basically ate pizza and swore a lot, but the instructor basically assumed everyone had some formal drawing training, and so someone like me who didn't know shit about fuck sat there with a sketchbook full of parody cover line drawings and absolutely nothing else. I mean, if you're going to do drawing, comic book drawing takes mastery or competence in at least three areas - drawing, storytelling, and another word that isn't coming to me but basically means a combination of thoroughness and brevity. I was 13 and as such had none of these.
But anyway painting seems like it might be a neat thing to do. I don't intend to take it seriously, because I've never really had a head for that kind of thing, but as the mile-high stack of composition books with false starts, ripped-out pages, and blank pages swirled with the tip of a ball-point that I refuse to believe has run out of ink, I have come to the conclusion that writing might not be the best way for me to get things out. Certainly dribbling in LiveJournal every time Haley's (Halley's?) Comet rolls around serves some purpose, but mostly it's an outlet for me to pretend to be honest while consistently putting up a front of smug self-deprecation.
Well this certainly got long and pointless. It's a lot like the literature class I'm taking (American Lit 1865-current). Sure, there's a lot of great stuff written in that time period (Mark Twain, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Vonnegut, the greats of the post-war era which we'll probably never get to), but the teacher is just ridiculous. She's the most highly-honored seventh grade English teacher in the world. First of all, we have daily reading assignments (which I'm ok with, because it's a reading class), but we also have the most ridiculous quizzes (also daily, which is moronic on a college level). The questions range from "What year was 'The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County' published?" to "Name one pen name used by Sara Orne Jewett." The answer to both is "who gives a fuck, and what bearing does that have on the story that I read?" Actually the answers are 1865 as "Jim Smiley's Jumping Frog," 1875 as "The Notorious...," and Sara Sweet, but the point remains: what the fuck does it matter? This is a 2300 level ELECTIVE literature class, which means that people are ELECTING to be in it and it is not a requirement for any non language arts majors. Which is approximately 90% of the Tarrant County College student body. I will probably do some kind of literature as my second major, but I guarantee you the 34 year old single mother next to me is just trying to get a last humanities credit so she can get her god damn nursing degree and provide for her several children. She doesn't give a fuck that Dr. Joseph has never enjoyed a piece of literature in her life, despite having gotten a BA, MA and PhD in the subject, and has decided to vent her frustrations on her students, who she is systematically turning off of the idea of ever taking another literature class again.
So that's basically what I'm dealing with. I'm also delivering pizzas, which is just the glamorous part-time experience I wanted, but it's both enough money to keep me in whatever the hell I don't need, and easy enough that I can do it and not get all stressy, as I am prone to doing. I'm playing trombone six days a week, which is excellent. I'm getting about three hours of face time every day, plus I'm playing both tenor and bass trombones regularly. So, when I get off my ass and actually get some auditions done for schools (which has turned into a colossal fucking flop thanks to UNT, more below), I should be able to wow them with my superior grasp of bass trombone and my average to above-average grasp of tenor trombone.
So UNT basically fucked up my application process for every one of the eight schools I applied to. Because they don't know how to run a school. I sent in a request for transcripts to be released on the 11th of December, and didn't find out until the last week of said month that they were never sent. The deliverer of the message was UTA's admissions department, with a letter stating that they had not received UNT's transcript. So I called the registrar's office and they said my loan had defaulted and my shit was on hold. It's a very valid reason, except for the fact that my loan was paid off in May and I haven't owed them a fucking cent since then. So she said she'd have to get in touch with the lender and they'd have to clear it up. I faxed the copy of the letter that said my account had been paid off and was considered closed, dated in May of 2006. So a week goes by and the shit is still blocked, I call again and get a "well yes it looks like we received the fax and it is in process. It should be taken care of by the end of the week." Seems ridiculous enough to me that they can't make two phone calls and then send the shit through in the course of two weeks, but whatever. So a week later I'm still blocked and I call again, and get a semi-frantic "that has been put through but I'll have to have someone contact you with the proper status." So I said no, that I was getting a yes before I hung up the phone, and she put me on hold for like ten minutes and then someone said "ok the block has been removed." I thanked them for doing their job in the most untimely and unprofessional of fashions, and my transcripts were released.
Last week.
So I've basically been fucked around by UNT, out of potentially any kind of scholarship opportunities and past audition application deadlines. This means that a lot of the shit I was working on is more or less down the tube, or I'll be spending a lot of time on the phone with the professors I'll be working with directly explaining to them the situation and hoping they can pull strings and get me in. It's ridiculous, but I know I can make that work with UTA, which is probably going to be my fall college destination, and although it was probably the most likely of candidates anyway, I wanted to have some out-of-state options. And now I don't. Not really. Thanks a lot UNT, you won't be getting my money when I go to graduate school. Sorry!
Speaking of really long and pointless, it's 1 a.m. and I've been typing for a long time. At some point I need to go to bed, and I really should have done laundry some time today, but instead I was lazy as shit watching movies and drinking Dr Pepper. And I took a three hour nap. The days are just packed.
See you in the new year, anonymous internet.
Sincerely,
Randy