(ps i'm typing with rubber gloves on)

in a crisis, it is always better to have a cat around. when your live-in leaves you, dogs will always be an inappropriately endearing reminder of the male sex. instead of a dog's optimistic and eager demeanor, a cat will simply brush by you, suggesting that you stop whimpering at once, you silly thing. you are far more fabulous than that, go do something posh and stop moping.

there is no music in a teflon reality

the end is nigh, citizens.

i went to the end of my good friend's college graduation the other day, and as i was walking up to the kohl center, watching all the grads flood out of the doors like little sentinels, i just about vomited and passed out. many college kids will be quick to agree that increasingly, college has become, oops, kindofajoke, and that they don't feel like they did too much to earn a college degree (obviously real people with real majors such as Sciencey Things and Businessy Things are excluded). being an english major, i wholeheartedly agree with this. it's not as though i haven't put my fair share of hard work in these past years. my hours logged at memorial library have served in improving my writing skills and for sure my critical thinking/analysis skills.

so, is it just pre-graduation jitters that make me feel as though life after undergrad is an endless dark abyss filled with looming loan payments and unsatisfying jobs that we call 'temporary' but end up staying in to pay off said loans until we find ourselves 37 and divorced, unable to access even a lingering whiff of our younger days of whimsical naivete and insatiable lust for life?

i wish i lived in a time in which the economical crisis (that seems to NEVER end...) forces baby boomers to keep working, making it harder for postgrads to break into the job market. i also wish i lived in a time where there weren't innumerable editions and editions of The Princeton Review's telling you what the odds are that you'll ever live your dream (they are astronomical, by the way), all the while referring you to some sort of booklet that in 500 multiple choice questions determines what field you should go into (that field is amazingly competitive, by the way). All these sources or references or compilations of bullshit seem to be some sort of bullshitty sentence ending in an ellipsis, suggesting that Clinical Pyschology Is a Highly Rewarding Career, However It Requires At Least 7 More Years In A Graduate School, Is Expensive, And Also Amazingly Competitive...sooooo, you might as well get that marketing degree. Also, There are At Least 250 Asian Immigrants In The Twenty Mile Radius Who Are Willing To Work On A Saturday While You Are Watching A Marathon Of Law & Order: SVU.

but then there are those statistics that make us feel so much better, like that a college degree more than doubles average annual earnings, and that only 28% of the population (as of 2004) hold at least a bachelor's degree.

ah, the sorrows of those raised in an uppermiddle class midwestern suburb, whose parents are paying for his/her higher education and want him/her to go into a field that actually makes him/her happy.

it really doesn't help that i loathe the entire aura and experience of professional interactions and relationships. its so glassy and it tastes like the smell of new car and burnt plastic. also, i make really weird first impressions and have a joke of a resume. maybe we suffer from being easily discouraged. what a horrible, debilitating quality.

italy softened me. it stripped me of my cold calculated view of what would have been my rigidly planned entrance into the real world. before i saw dars reports and professor recommendations, and now i am filled with images of uncomfortably dewy beds of grass and drifting conversations, asking the earth we lie on about the last time it danced.

i wish to read and sing and post sassy blogs and visit cool places and talk with people about what they love most in world. double points if it happens to be "80s power ballads".

the remains of a deity

Ahh, there you are, America! You old cod, right where I left you. It's always in the LAST place you look, isn't it? Damn.

Now that I have returned from my enlightening sabbatical abroad, I find American ohsovery droll. These crazy kids and their wide streets and free water. Damn I'm cultured!

I find it really difficult to answer the ubiquitous query, "How was Italy?", largely because of my well-documented and eternally vexing battle with adjectives, those tricky bitches. My first reaction is, I don't really remember. It's very much like a dream, which is crazy considering that for four months nothing else in the world, or about my old life, seemed real. I think it's because almost everything in your day-to-day is in implicit compromise with the other aspects of your life, whereas study abroad was the sole focus of my attentions last semester, and anything else I experienced fell under that umbrella. It seems as though my Study Abroad Experience is wrapped up in a neat little bubble that is a distant yet pleasant memory, floating further and further away.

I've just started telling people something along the lines of, "Oh, it was amazing. It was by far the coolest thing I've ever done". That seems to suffice. It makes me feel awkwardly over-privileged.

The difficulty is expounded when anyone asks me what my favorite city was or what the best part was, and my first instinct is to say, well to really understand why it was so amazing, you have to know about the doctor and her clavel, as well as Art's female magnetism. And then that means nothing to anyone else. Now I'M okay with that, but I don't know how anyone else reacts to my kind of vacant expression a vague assertion that yes, in fact, I DID love being abroad, despite how dopey I look.

You might be saying, stop indulging yourself, the "how was study abroad" question is obviously obligatory. Praise Blogah for bestowing the ability to wax poetic about the trials and tribulations of returning from a whimsical jaunt in Europe. Ay me!

It's odd to return from my suspension of time & reality.

Unrelated, but I like to think I'm not the weakest liquor in the cabinet, but I'm losing faith; I have recently realized I am not even remotely smart enough to keep up with Lost. I've watched all the seasons previous to the latest, and I've been trying to keep up, but I can barely follow it. I have such a limited understanding of the goings-on and I'm feeling a little left out. Maybe it's because I hate all the characters.