Remarkably Light. Metamessage. Brimming With Ideas.

It's the most remarkably light feeling, selling one's soul.

I just signed up for the Late-Summer Testmasters LSAT Prep course. In fact, in the other tab of my browser (Firefox, you light up my life.) I am staring at an e-mail receipt and confirmation.

I (say that I) hate to overdramatize, but this feels like one of those Big Moments (haha, B.M.), one of those milestone sorts of things. Rather, it feels like it's supposed to be. And yet, all I'm actually feeling right now is my lower-back rapidly stiffening as I hunch over this tripod... chair-like... contraption... upon which my woefully underpowered laptop is precariously tilted. For some reason, Buttface Junior's wireless card refuses to steal signal from my kind (read: stupid and naive) neighbors upstairs when I sit him on my lap. Only when I rest him on this stool, thereby forcing me to bend my torso at a spine-altering angle simply to participate in this in-ter-net thing I've heard so much about. The glaring subtext being that the name "laptop" syncs up with the rapidly-forthcoming soreness of my back, forming the punchline to a horrible joke at my expense. And hot damn, do I ever need more of those right now.

There's a metamessage (to borrow some jargon from Comm 10; no amount of water will wash away this filth) hidden in my horrible digression: I really don't feel like I am appreciating this whole LSAT registration thing as much as I should be.

For Christ's sake (Funny Story: I actually hesitated while typing the Big JC's surname. You can take the boy out of the church, but...), it's the LSAT. You think I'd feel some kind of... something.

Fear of another acronym containing "SAT," the last of which entailed stuffy Saturdays in a tiny room in Pasadena with a weird Chinese man teaching me how to budget my time for the math portion.

Fear of the grim specter of post-collegiate life (this time not in the form of Annie's haggard, jowly visage... whoashitburned)-- R-r-eal... Lai. Lai. Life? I can't even get my fingers to type that out naturally-- which this test is the collosally threatening embodiment thereof.

Fear of sending a $1300 bill to my parents for something I could very well have neither taste for nor aptitude to succeed at.

Fear of... nuclear war?

As you can see, I am a boy brimming with ideas. But just that: ideas. Ideas of what I think I should be feeling. None of this stuff is really coalescing into concrete emotions. My insides are a calm blue ocean.

Fuck that, it's more like a shot of novocaine between the ribs. And, to be perfectly blunt, it's incredibly unsettling.

But enough about me. Let's talk about me and other people.

- Ravi came down from Davis for the weekend. I've missed that guy. A nonspecific "we" determined that Ravi is pretty much Rex from Toy Story. Went to Zuma Beach, I got embarassingly burnt. I physically reached all of my back but apparently my hands ran out of sunscreen at some point, as there are hand-shaped smears dividing the regions of burnt from not burnt. I say it looks like a geopolitical map of Europe leading up to World War One. But I'm no historian. Also went to Disneyland. Managed to go on something like fifteen rides in about thirteen hours. Factor in lunch- and potty-breaks, and we made some damned good time. I discovered that I am an frighteningly fierce monolith of Zurg-crushing Space Ranger awesomeness:


- Apparently Mara put my viking picture up on the refrigerator. You give a girl a personal emblem of warlike Nordic protection, and what does she do? She goes and shares it. What a world.

- Motherfuck stupid, goddamned subjective passage identification questions on English exams. UGH. So fucking frustrated. I fucking get what Wycherley wanted to say in "The Country Wife." Jesus Tapdancing Christ.

- My roommate is watching the Sopranos on DVD. A doctor, referring to one of the character's diarrhea (she has IBS apparently?), just used the word "jimjams." Hahahahaha. Fucking solid gold. Jimjams > Mudbutt.

Oh god. Toilet humor. I'm ending this now, because the only other person even smirking is Kathy.

Lost At Sea. Perplexed Monkey-Face. Unwittingly Unearthed.

Finally starting the new compilation of James Richardson's work, Interglacial: New and Selected Poems and Aphorisms. It's absolutely fantastic thus far. My only gripe being that I'm completely fucking lost at sea with this book. Its greatest shortcoming is that I, Eric Chao, am reading it. I am incredibly unfamiliar with the specifics of reading a collection of poetry. Do I start at the beginning and go straight through? Do I jump from one to the next? If I don't like a poem straight away after the first read, is it apropos to say adios motherfucker and turn the page?

Prose is so much more comfortable. The best I can conjure up is that prose is like a guided tour. Sometimes you get the quirky, sexy guide and sometimes you get the balding, fat guide. But at the end of the day, both of them are showing you exactly where they want you to go. It's simply a matter of how willing you are to follow the literary equivalents to a curvy pair of swaying hips or, as is often the case, a disgusting coagulation of bulging corpulence.

Poetry, however, is like yours truly at the fucking San Diego Zoo. OMGWTF DO I GO NEXT LOOK AT THAT ANIMAL BUT THE SIGN SAYS TURN LEFT TO SEE ZEBRAS I CAME HERE FOR PANDAS AVIARY FULL OF BIRDIES BUT THEN OMGWTF. My knack for metaphor is, like my company, always edgy and insightful. (Please be laughing with me, please be laughing with me, please be laughing with me...)

This is not to say that I am not enjoying the book. Far from it. Despite my perplexed monkey-face (which I am positive is constantly plastered on the front of my head as I'm reading), I am happily digging away. A few gems unwittingly unearthed:

HOW THINGS ARE: A SUITE FOR LUCRETIANS

18

Why touch me, anyway, if nearness is just a metaphor
that leaves us in the cold? But to feel what planets feel,
holding each other to their swift ellipses,
their swinging out a form of their falling in: speak

around me, then, let me misunderstand
deeply, fail to compare yourself to me,
smiling subbornly. Rise so steeply
I can clamber up, scatter my equipment,
sleep, and wake to mountains of the dawn.

This from a cycle that opens with the quote, "The new molecular philosophy shows astronomical interspaces betwixt atom and atom, shows that the world is all outside; it has no inside," Emerson. One cannot help but love this guy's dedication to a metaphor. Fuck that pedantic third-person bullshit. YOU cannot help but love this guy's dedication to a metaphor.

FOUND

At my feet, this poem:
A Shaman, asked
Do these stones live?
glanced: Some of them.

That one was from a section entitiled "Half Measures." Dude doesn't like to waste words, it seems. (I know you're all begging to say it, so I'll go ahead and save you the trouble: I guess that means that I waste enough words for the both of us, then. Hah hah hah, jackasses.)

If you're like me, when you saw that whole "aphorisms" thing, you thought immediately of Ben Franklin and chuckled. Then thought Richardson was some arrogant prick. And if not, please stop ruining my fucking hypothetical fantasyland and just pretend you did. His aphorisms are actually rather interesting. Not all of them are exactly as melancholy as the following but shut your fucking face, you know I like melancholy:

150. A car or stone becomes the exact temperature of the winter, but a man gets colder and colder.

James Richardson. What a guy. Some of the quotes on the back cover of the book are pretty funny, too. But I won't waste anymore of the internet boring you people with it. Go find a copy of Interglacial! Unless you're too stupid to read. I'm looking at you, Kathleen Bola Kim.

P.S. This just in: drinking unsweetened iced coffee from Starbucks makes your pee-pee smell vaguely like coffee. That gets a "Wow" with an awkward silence followed by an "Ew." (Related Logical Leap: It can be deduced, therefore, that Kristina must urinate pure Colombian Dark Roast.) Couple that with the frequency with which one must make tinkle, and we have yet more reason to be slightly unsettled by coffee.

P.S.P.D. (Post Script Part Deux; teehee.) Oh, and check out these songs. The first band (Raising The Fawn) is a side-project of one of Broken Social Scene's guys. The name escapes me, but I'm sure that they will ride the BSS (voluminous) coattails into glory nonetheless. I seem to remember it sounding pretty good though, regardless of my snide douchebaggery. The second band, though, is out of left field, man. Check that shit out. They only have a four-track EP to their name at the moment, but I am excited for any full-length releases. The little synth bubble after the singer says something about "little red lights" makes me smile every time. Oh, did I mention that both these bands are playing in Chicago and asked the (fabulous) Palaxy Tracks to open for them? Fucking gigantic brownie points for picking my favorite band that no one has ever heard of.

Addendum: Apologies; long post. Hope you found something rewarding in there. The implication being that you should have, as there is so much cool shit locked away therein. Philistine.

Mysterious Stain. Successive Force. Chinese Myopia.

When I went to put on my pants, carefully laid onto my bed so as to make the post-shower ritual as problem-free as possible, I saw a piece of lint on them. So naturally I stooped down to pick it off.

But it didn't come off.

Thinking then that it was a mysterious stain on the left buttock of these pants, I started working it with my fingernail to see if it would flake off or something.

It still didn't come off.

I spent the next two minutes applying successively greater amounts of force with my +5 Thumbnail of Ogre Strength (I am so fucking cool.) to try and eradicate this brazen stain from my pants.

It was at this point that I realized that I was trying to scratch off a spot of sunlight that was pouring through my window.

Score one more for hereditary Chinese myopia. Wear your damned contacts kids, or the fucking Commies have already won.

The Wave of the Future. Ad Hominem. Terrible Preservationists.

Round One: Skirmish
Chaodoom: because if there's one thing i'm all about, it's physical violence
mrsewan: lootin'
Chaodoom: and on some days, pillagin'
Chaodoom: (ha harrr)
mrsewan: pirates.. haha.
Chaodoom: you know what
Chaodoom: i'm over pirates
Chaodoom: vikings
Chaodoom: are the wave of the future
Chaodoom: despite being themselves very pasty pale, they were the original cracka stompas
Chaodoom: i mean lookit what they did to pretty much all of the british isles
Chaodoom: and a fair portion of western europe
mrsewan: FUCK THAT NORDIC SHIT
Chaodoom: dude
Chaodoom: Nordic Track been exercising the flabby masses since the way, way back
Chaodoom: you best show some respect
mrsewan: fuck you fatty.

Chaodoom: (p.s. Vikings even dance with their fucking swords. cheeyeck it: http://www.cvm.qc.ca/mlandry/folklore/vikings.JPG)
mrsewan: pirates can do that too
Chaodoom: look at that one on the right
Chaodoom: he looks so homosexual

Chaodoom: but you KNOW you don't want to fuck with him

mrsewan: i was kind of hoping this would be a moving picture
mrsewan: like a .gif
Chaodoom: shut your word-hole
mrsewan: you know what?
Chaodoom: dude. pirates need sumptuous, frilly boats
mrsewan: you're going on my "FUCK YOU" list
Chaodoom: because they're giant pussies
Chaodoom: vikings
Chaodoom: shit

Chaodoom: all they need is a hollowed out trunk
Chaodoom: and a sail
Chaodoom: http://www.jjcurling.k12.nf.ca/block/explorers_pics/vikings.jpg
Chaodoom: look at that shit
Chaodoom: Cap'n Blackbeard would shit himself and run away
mrsewan: haha
mrsewan: stop sending me viking pictures
mrsewan: vikings are so lame
Chaodoom: he'd be all like, "Waaaah how am I going to count my golllldddd in my frilly bedddddd"

Chaodoom: whereas Bjorn Fjordson here
Chaodoom: he's all like

Chaodoom: "Ja, eet ees cold. Vee vill sail south and pillage."
Chaodoom: vikings - proactive
Chaodoom: pirates - pussy bitches
mrsewan: yarrr
Chaodoom: jaaaa

mrsewan: pirates have skull flags
mrsewan: what do you guys have
Chaodoom: you think john the baptist was just picking fights?
mrsewan: NOTHING
Chaodoom: WE HAVE THE SKULLS OF OUR ENEMIES
Chaodoom: our male enemies
Chaodoom: our female enemies
mrsewan: don't pull your religious allusions on me
Chaodoom: we keep THEM in our BEDS
Chaodoom: because we are fucking VIKINGS
Chaodoom: and we TAKES what we WANT
mrsewan: yea well you're a taiwanese former engineer
mrsewan: take that reality
Chaodoom: MY NAME IS ERIC
Chaodoom: ERIC -> ERIK -> ERIK THE RED
mrsewan: what Eugene was taken?
Chaodoom: VIKING BLOOD COURSES THROUGH MY VEINS
Chaodoom: i do not have to stand for this
Chaodoom: i'm gonna go hew down a mighty tree
Chaodoom: and smelt some iron
Chaodoom: and cave your face in with a battleaxe
mrsewan: snooooze
Chaodoom: that is correct
Chaodoom: pirates have to wait till everyone is snoozing before they attack
Chaodoom: you had better believe that people fucking flee in terror when they see vikings coming on the horizon
Chaodoom: we don't even need "surprise."
Chaodoom: shit
Chaodoom: there isn't even a word for "surprise" in the old tongue
Chaodoom: there are, however, fifteen variations on "kill," ten on "burn," and a walloping thirty-three on "smash."

Intermission:
Chaodoom: i'm taking the liberty of transcribing this conversation to my blog
mrsewan: haha
mrsewan: dude i was half assedly arguing for pirates
mrsewan: that's unfair

(Editor's Note: Yeah well you know what? Vikings don't have a word for "fair" either. Vikings - 1, Everyone Else - 0)

Round Two: Kathy Kim Starts Arguing In Earnest
mrsewan: pirates don't have to wait until people are snoozing to attack any more than vikings
mrsewan: they fucking pillage too
mrsewan: they are a more recent/modern equivalent of the vikings you git
mrsewan: they do the exact same thing, except they're not as outdated
Chaodoom: oh hoh.
Chaodoom: this just got more interesting
Chaodoom: please do not equivocate the noble viking
Chaodoom: wit your unwashed, grog-swilling, peg-legged, one-eyed motherfucker
Chaodoom: it insults the both of us
mrsewan: unwashed? hello vikings.
Chaodoom: we bathe
mrsewan: grog-swilling? hello vikings
Chaodoom: oh hells yes we bathe
mrsewan: peg-legged? ok, that's us.
Chaodoom: we bathe in the blood of the innocent
Chaodoom: while laughing
mrsewan: and mother fucker? that's totally you.
Chaodoom: and please. grog?
mrsewan: we have PARROTS. we have class, style.
Chaodoom: mead, honey.
Chaodoom: yeah. right.
mrsewan: we have fancy boots.
Chaodoom: parrots
Chaodoom: the animal
Chaodoom: that got gilbert godfrey
Chaodoom: as a voice
Chaodoom: dripping with class there
Chaodoom: besides
mrsewan: ok just because you had to read beowulf doesn't mean you can heighten your cause to celtic traditions.
Chaodoom: the viking doesn't need an animal to keep him company
mrsewan: and i don't care how many times you saw aladdin with cece chao.
Chaodoom: that's why he has an axe
mrsewan: that's arabic you twit.
Chaodoom: hah hah. lookeehere. ad hominem
Chaodoom: the last refuge of the desperate debater
Chaodoom: let's try to stick to the facts, please
Chaodoom: namely
Chaodoom: the fact
Chaodoom: that pirates are in every way subservient to the noble viking
Chaodoom: in fact
Chaodoom: i grant you one thing
Chaodoom: pirates are indeed a derivative of vikings
Chaodoom: but they are just that: derivative
Chaodoom: they've dumbed it down
mrsewan: you do not have permission to transcribe this debate.
mrsewan: FUCK YOU and ALL PEOPLE.
mrsewan: ESPECIALLY the vikings
Chaodoom: they've cluttered it with bullshit that detracts from the sole purpose of the viking:
Chaodoom: slaughter. for profit.
mrsewan: and if pirates are just derivative of vikings
mrsewan: than taiwanese people are just derivative of chinese
Chaodoom: do i really not have permission?
mrsewan: then taiwanese people*
Chaodoom: because we made a pretty good debate here
mrsewan: if you fix my spelling errors.
mrsewan: use it
Chaodoom: as assiduously as i've been fixing my own
Chaodoom: RAWK
mrsewan: hahaha
mrsewan: we are terrible preservationists.
Chaodoom: no argument there.

Apostrophe

"Man Eric, you haven't changed a bit, have you?"

Well-intentioned, I know. But you don't (didn't) even know me anymore (then), do (did) you?