Erm?

Head's up, y'all. My posts are going to become fewer in the next few weeks. Some stuff's going down that sucks away most of my available time. As soon as one project finishes, another vamps up and I see my hours falling away in a haze of books and clacking keyboards. I thought this week was hellish, but apparently I was only standing at the gates of hell, trying desperately to read the entrance sign, a-la Dante, Canto III, Verse III. Unlike Dante, I don't have much in the ways of a guide to help me get through my little pit of hell, so I'm just going to flounder alone. I cannot wait for graduation. The six-week countdown begins. After graduation, I am going to get so wasted. Well, I can't get wasted. My family will be here and they probably won't appreciate it much. Let me rephrase. After graduation, I am going to get so stuffed, and then I'm going to spend the next two weeks celebrating my graduation. You know what that means. Road trip, baby. I don’t have to baby-sit the family pets until June, so from then to then, the world is mine. I probably need to buy a little world statuette, just like De Niro's character had in Scarface.

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A lot of you know that many weeknights have been sacrificed for dance practice. I was on two dance squads: the frat-house squad, and the all-greek squad. See, the greek system here at ISU throws a dance competition every third week of March, appropriately named March Madness. Most of the fraternities and sororities send a team to compete. The sororities compete against the sororities, and the fraternities compete against the fraternities. Winners have bragging rights for the year, as well as a huge muthafuckin' trophy. In addition to the actual competition, there is also the all-greek dance, which happens at the end of the competition. Each fraternity and sorority sends its four best dancers. The all-greek dance is nothing more than a sideshow to the main attraction, but it's pretty fun and nice to look at, as well.

The March Madness competition was yesterday. This week, I've had about four to five hours of practice a night. Often, I would practice for a few hours with one squad, then run to a second practice with another squad. I was weary all week. It's been awhile since I was that physically worn out, but hell, it was worth it.

Sigma Phi Epsilon, my fraternity, fucking won the entire competition. According to people who saw it, we blew away the competition. I somehow managed to make the front line for most of the dance, so I was terrified of losing my rhythm, or fucking up in some way. And, I did make a small mistake. When I get nervous, I lose some of my spinal flexibility, and I wasn't able to do my front body roll properly, but according to people who saw me, I was incredible. The frat is showing the video of the dance tonight, so I'll be able to see exactly how I looked. I'm excited about that. Well, that sounded kind of vain. Let me re-iterate. I'm excited to see us how other people saw us.

The victory party after the March Madness competition was something, all right. It'll be one of those parties that I'll remember for a long time; what I can remember of it, I mean. We had a live band, and a DJ going on simultaneously. All three floors of the frat house were packed with people. I must've made out with about three or four different girls. Best of all, I was wearing my bling.

Yeah, the bling completed the outfit. The bling was originally part of the SigEp dance costume. It's a gaudy little thing and it cost me $20 bucks. A lot of my fraternity brothers bought similar bling for the same price, and their blings all broke. An expensive piece of shit, for sure, but it was worth it for the comments received. My bling had a large, rhinestone playboy bunny logo. I was poppin' mad, all right.

Now that dance practice is over, you'd think I'd have time to myself. We should all be so fortunate.

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My senior thesis is due in four weeks. It will be about fifty pages long. I need to complete a chapter a week. My senior thesis is rooted in art theory, specifically a philosophy named Susanne Langer. I have a stack of thirty books in my room related to art theory, and I've already flipped through most of them. I can look at an art piece, and immediately run through various modes of art theory and criticism. I'm going completely bats here. I actually miss times when I could look at art and just go "Oooo, pretty" rather than, "I believe the artifact here demonstrates a section of essential form, being that the dynamic motion of the piece compels a specific subset of feelings related to the symbolical use of secondary qualities and blah blah blah blah."

The senior thesis wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have all sorts of other papers to finish. My research team beckons for my work, and specific punishment related to the removal of personal body parts have bee specified for my failure to procure.

And, I have a 4000 word mid-term exam for my Kant class due Monday. I have not started it. I'm diggin' my own fucking grave, here.


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I'm sure you've noticed the pictures I posted below. One picture was of a freak snowstorm that hit here a few days ago. It was March fucking the 22nd, and we had about two inches of snow. I was about to go batshit on people, but I had dance practice and my batshitness had to wait a bit longer.

The other picture was, as described, of items I sent my Latvian pen pal on Valentine's Day. She had written asking for something to be sent, and I had no qualms about sending cheap, fake rose petals. It was actually exciting for me to send a package to another country, as I have never done anything similar before. The package, as you saw, consisted of three objects: a box of fake rose petals, a letter, and a blue ribbon. The blue ribbon was pure kitsch on my part. The pen pal had mentioned that her favorite colour was blue. I thought it would be cool to cut a piece of blue ribbon and include it in the letter.

The package came back a few days ago. Apparently, there was no such address. The funny thing was I hadn't thought about her until the package came back. She tried to get some money out of me, about a month ago, and I stopped conversing with her. The girl was nothing more than a figment to me, but for some reason, I was really sad when the package came back. I read over what I had written and my mind was playing this really slow, piano song. I felt like I should have cried or something for dramatic effect. The letter was nothing special, too. Just me boasting about my favorite pizza restaurant (where I had written the letter), and how important food is to me and my family.

I think the package represented an ideal, and having it come back to me was like the ideal had been chewed up by the international postal community. I feel vicious and am in need of kartharsis (Thank you, Mimesis, and Aristotle).

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Speaking of kartharsis, here is a poem my Latvian penpal wrote about me, shortly before I banished her the third page of my gmail inbox:

Bright, eyes
like heaven's stars,
Lips so full
I need to know -
when will be he mine
for all of time?
His name is Jon
He is my Prince
I shall take him to the ball
to dance in front of all.
Midnight will come
though he will not run.
He will be mine
to the end of time.
I've prayed so long
for one as this.
With him beside me
we will have bliss.


Ah, Ekaterina. She truly had the soul of a poet, and the fake tits of a truck-stop stripper.

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It ain't right waking up and having the sun set an hour later.

A Freak March Blizzard and a Few Roses Petals

I really think Ma Nature has it in for me. She's jealous I'm going somewhere warm.









I dont know if y'all remember my Latvian penpal, but I decided to send her something for Valentine's Day; mostly because she asked me to send something. It came back the morning of the blizzard. I was kind of sad.

An exercise in brevity, maybe.

I shall slaughter AIM and use its blood in rituals to unholy to write of in here. See, I do enjoy my AIM, but occasionally, in fits of mad advertising, it blasts weird sounds and attempts to show me movies that I would rather not see. I understand that my free use of AIM brings with it some peculiar treatises, and I expect any day now that goons sent from the AOL office will demand the use of my vas deferens for populating a large population of sentient guinea pigs, however, blasting sounds over my music is an outlandish invasion of my ears' sensitive, yet extremely damaged, cavities. It is particularly galling that the music and movies AIM is throwing in my face is of something called Curious by Brittany Spears. My intense dislike of anything teenage pop is relatively well known and having it shoved down my ears leads too much ranting and raving at the computer, as well as threats involving blood and Christian babies. Unlike many contemporaries, I do not wish pain on Brittany Spears. Federline is more than enough punishment for the odiferous wastes she has purloined on society. AOL, on the other hand, is much deserving of severe crucifying.

In the mean time, I take measures to keep my penis' internal tubes internal.


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In a fit of boredom, I registered for a Myspace.com account. I put up that stylish picture of me popping my ivy cap and put in the usual Jon-crap in the profile. Strangely enough, my friends list has been filling up with good looking girls and many have taken the time to IM me and tell me that they are very much interested in me. I find this phenomenon rather strange and marvel each time a girl sends me an interested email, or decides she wants to befriend me for no other reason than for some reason she approved of my lousy attempt to grow a beard. If this continues, I will have to buy a big, floppy pink cap and a pimp cane, and lease a large pink Cadillac for optimal street cruising.

You are all welcome to join my entourage. We will prance down the streets sporting fur-lined jackets and ray-bans. I will wear platform shoes that have goldfish in the heel, and lots of sparkly bling on my fingers. My chest will be adorned with ice and its glimmer will reflect in all of my posse’s dollar sign earrings. Of course, I’ll need my own rap-beat background and some short, monkey-like guy in front telling everyone to get the fuck out of our way.

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I finally finished that paper I have been avoiding all week. It took me a half hour. I am rather disgusted with myself, but have come to the conclusion that I operate best under stress anyway. I have four more papers due this week, and each is over eight pages long. They will be finished, some how, and I will make it though simply because pressure beckons. Without set deadlines and without the unbearable weight of failure hanging over me like a damned sword of Damocles, I simply will not start. Caution, sudden starts results in a frazzled Jon and short bursts of unsustainable productivity. Please insert beer into the proper orifice at scheduled maintenance times in order to keep a well running Jon.

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School starts tomorrow and I am none too pleased. This was my last undergraduate spring break and it was spent not partying, but slacking off. From here on is seven weeks of torture and then graduation. I feel as if I am on the last half mile of a marathon, and my legs have already given out on me. Certainly, I will crawl to the finish line with bloodied knees and a wicked charlie horse, but in the mean time, the agonizing crawl requires much focus. My parents have already made reservations for my graduation ceremony. That requires my presence. I'm going to have to make it otherwise my dear mother, for the rest of my life, will guilt me about it. Believe you me; my mother is a master guilt-tripper. I refuse to introduce her to my future wife for fear that she will train my wife how to guilt me properly. At times, I like to claim that I can survive any guilt trip, but there are two people whose trips I cannot handle well: my grandmother's, and my mother's.

Blast them and their little doggies, too.

At least everyone's back. I have a lot of people I've been looking forward to seeing again, and all of them are easy on the eyes.

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At times, while lying on my bed and staring at the ceiling (of course, good jazz is on), I try to imagine what my next lover will look like. This isn't much different that those damned MASH-like games girls played in grade school, or that silly girl-talk board game my sister had when we were kids. The only difference is that I have no intention of dating this lover unless she meets my criteria. Future lovers fascinate me because each lover I have had leaves a little piece of herself in my mind. I assimilate certain qualities of hers that I find endearing, and at times, I reminisce about what each of them have brought to bed. Granted, I have kissed more lousy kissers than good, and I have done things with more unskilled people than skilled, but their personalities resonate. In my imagination, my next lover has big eyes, and wit.

Wit is more of a turn-on than bed-skill. Although, proper junk-in-the-trunk is a necessity for a relationship.


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I have been listening to too much Blur. Come on, come on, come on...