Jerk Work

I am awash in work. I have a myth paper thing (I'm doing the "creative project" and writing Oberlin myths) and two short story revisions due on Thursday, and I've barely started because I spent today in the lab, grading 210 assignments, because I was two weeks behind in grading.

No more work, please. No thanks, really, I'm all full up.

Although, since my new hobbie appears to be weeping and cursing, I'm not sure work is such a bad thing.

Apt

Bad Day

I went to the doctor's today. Aside from giving me the lovely x-ray you see below (Sexy, no? And you thought there were no naked pictures of me on the internet) he told me that I could put half my weight on my foot. And I have to wait a month until I can put more weight than that on it. I can walk at graduation using a cane.

Then I went home, and there was much weeping and wailing. Also, throwing things. Fortunately, nothing was broken, although my metal coffee cup did rebound off the window quite impressively.

So it's looking like I'll have to revise the dates on my Europe plans.

This Is My Ankle

The Best Mix CD Ever

"I made The Best Mix CD Ever today. Here is the track list:

• Black Flag - TV Party
• Me First and the Gimme Gimmes - My Favorite Things
• Stephen Malkimus - The Hook
• The Mr. T Experience - Now That You Are Gone
• The Moldy Peaches - Steak for Chicken
• Johnny Cash - Darling Companion
• Lucinda Williams - Steal Your Love
• The Magnet Fields - Papa Was a Rodeo
• David Dondero - Ode to a 1973 Chevrolet Open Road
• The Eels - Hospital Food
• The Velvet Underground - Heroin
• Lucinda Williams - Essense
• Dar Williams - Iowa
• Rufus Wainwright - California
• Eliot Smith - say yes
• Mirah - la familia
• Beulah - Popular Mechanics for Broken Hearts
• The Spells - Age of Backwards

By the way, you should all run out and buy a Mirah CD. Don't worry about it, if you don't own one it just means that you're not a complete person.

40s & Crocheting

Greetings, Americans. This is Dean Bein, guest-starring on Cyn's blog to remind you that, unbeknowdst to many individuals, I like pussy, whether or not I am straight. I am a god. Now back to Cyn.

This is not me. This is my drunk roommate taking over. She is holding Life in the Pink hostage.

Fucking drunks.

I Love You Guys

My evening was a whirlwind of activity last night - at least until I passed out at one in the morning.

First I went to Art After Hours at the art museum, for free wine and cookies. We were there for about fifteen minutes - we were like "Art? What art? More white wine, please." Then we jetted off to my awards ceremony. I had tricked the host into letting me read first, so I could leave in time to go see Margaret Cho at 8. Margaret Cho was incredible, of course. I want to be her when I grow up. Or marry her. Either one.

Then we went to this Free Beer for Seniors event, engineered to get you drunk and make you sign over your matriculation deposit. I did not sign over my matriculation deposit, since most of my time is spent trying to scam money out of the college, not give money to it. However, I did drink lots of free beer and become The Incredibly Sentimental Senior. I was all "I can't believe I'm graduating! I love you guys so much! We have to keep in touch, y'all! Shit, how can I be graduating?"

Then I went to bed.

Queen of All Media

I'm taking over the Oberlin media. First it was Cyn on the stereo, and now my response to my roommate's letter is in the newspaper.

Real Scared Writer

So I sent off two essays to magazines today. You know, like in the mail. With stamps and stuff. And SASE's.

I figure that if I'm going to try to be a Real Writer, I should start now before I get all distracted by going to Europe and then having to get a real job and shit. I need to get some motivation so that once I have distractions I'll keep going. I need to get in the sending things out groove.

Unfortunately, that means I had to write cover letters. I hate writing cover letters. I never know what to say. Plus that just leads to the "I can't even write a cover letter everything I write is crap" freak-out.

I had kind of decided that I wasn't even going to bother trying to be a Real Writer, I would just try to do computer programming and make money and be happy. But I've wanted to do this since I was five, so it's probably dumb to not do it just because I'm freaking out over whether or not I have talent.

I just really don't want to be the forty-year-old boozy chick in the writing workshop whose fiction no one wants to read, because it's horribly written and also obviously thinly-veiled autobiography combined with revenge fantasies about her ex-husband.

Also, just wanting to be a Real Writer seems horribly pretentious, doesn't it? I want to be an artist. I mean, honestly, isn't Dave Eggers the most annoying person on earth? And he's the Hip Young Real Writer. If I make it big, will I have to go to parties with people like that? But I won't make it big, so it's okay.

I wonder how long it'll be before I get my rejection notices.

Then again, I found this thing I wrote my freshmen year that's a thinly veiled autobiography/revenge fantasy about my ex-girlfriend, and it amused me a great deal.

Cyn On the Stereo

I took over the college radio station today. Well, not really, but I did call in to my super-cool upstairs neighbor's show, and he put me on the air. And then the girl called me, because she had just called him too, and so she was listening to the radio, and she invited me to come visit her on her radio show.

(Side note: Yes, the girl and I are back together. Basically, it just turned out that we were really bad at being broken up and hung out together all the time and got drunk and made out a lot, so we decided that we shouldn't be broken up anymore.)

So I was a special guest on the girl's radio show, and we played indie rock and made public service announcements and talked on the air a lot. Highlights included us implying we'd had a threesome with an androgenous robot named "Lovebot 2000," and me talking about getting kicked out of my co-op.

Forwarding Address

So I'm sending essays off to magazines (because I'm trying to be a real writer and shit) and I realize that I don't know what address to put on my Self Addressed Stamped Envelope.

In about a month, I won't have an address. Come May 30th, I'll be . . . well, I'll be in LA for a day or so, and then I'll be in London for two weeks or so, and then I'll be . . . somewhere in Europe . . . for one week or two, and then I'll be back in LA . . . for a while . . . and then I'll be in Philadelphia for the rest of my life or until I move somewhere else. Not that I have a house or a job in Philadelphia.

So I put my parents' address on them, which probably means that my parents will immediately rip open said envelopes and read detailed essays about my drug usage, as well as detailed rejection letters from editors. Maybe they'll read them to me over the phone. My parents are fond of reading me my mail over the phone.

Maybe I'll put all my worldly goods in a red hankerchief, and tie it to a stick, and be a hobo, and make mulligan stew in an old boot.

To Do

I'm not sure if having a zillion items on my To Do list makes me more or less productive. I decided that having big items like "Find self new life," while amusing, was also intimidating and stopping me from actually finding myself a new life, so I changed it to "Go to career services" when I rewrote the list. (We'll see if I go. "Find self new life" and its abreviation, "new life," have been on my last twenty or so To Do lists, so it was clear that it wasn't working out.)

However, breaking up things like "Find new life" and "Get shit published" means I now have 12 things on my list, and only two are crossed off. It's pretty impressive, considering that I only have three classes and my job is pretty negligable.

Of course, the list doesn't include my 9 appointments/meetings this week. For a girl who doesn't really do anything, I sure seem to have a lot of shit to do. What the hell am I going to do when I have to be a grown up?

Maybe I'll start a blog that's just my To Do list. Just to amuse myself.

Things I Will Do When I Can Walk

• Learn how to ollie.
• Take showers instead of baths in our tiny, sucky tub.
• Get my own damn food.
• Not feel hideously self conscious all the time.
• Wear tight pants.
• Dance the night away.

My Roommate Is the Coolest

Em wrote this letter in response to an editorial on binge drinking in our student paper. She is a mad crazy genius, and I suggest you read it.

Links

Cats hate having to pee in cups.

Brag

I won a contest with a short story I wrote. It was just a silly little Oberlin contest, but it's still exciting. (This means I write good!) Plus, I get a hundred bucks, and a hundred bucks is never bad.

This is what the judge said about my story:
"This story takes the guise of a simple tale about a drug-abusing college boy in love, but upon further investigation, there's much, much more going on. I am particularly drawn to and impressed by the effectiveness of the third person over-the-shoulder unreliability of the narration. Jim is certainly a burnout, a naive college boy looking for his place is this contemporary world, but a second read reveals that he has an innocence, a tenderness, even, that goes well beyond his search for drugs and available sex. Upon sleeping with fifteen-year-old Emma the first time, Jim ponders, "She should be screwing someone her own age.," a line that at first tells us of his guilt, but then reveals a much more hilarious and complex line of logic. I applaud Ms. Taylor for taking a oft-done character, often done without skill, and turning him and his world into such an enjoyable and meaningful reading experience."

"Enjoyable and meaningful reading experience"! I write good!

Yeah, I've actually had the email that's from open on my computer since I got it. I just can't bring myself to close it.

People think I write good!

This Is the Last One, I Swear!

You are Yourself! Gay, straight. These words mean very little to you. You are yourself and that's all you need to know. You fall in love with the same gender, but you believe that isn't all there is to you. Your lack of "traditional" gay pride is interpreted by many queers as internal homophobia, but in truth you just want to be your true self. Not just gay.

Take the what kind of fag are you quiz by PsychosisX!

I find it tremendously amusing that this test exists.

Nowhere To Hide

Someone I don't know called me today because she thought I would know where to find acid. (I don't.)

Man, I'm not that bad a kid. I'm not sure how I got this reputation. Or maybe it's just that she got my number from one of my friends, and I happen to be one of the baddest kids he knows. Which really isn't saying much.

Still. It's a little disconcerting when random people are calling asking where to find drugs. And it does make one contemplate certain, well, employment opportunities . . .

Bad Kid

I talked to my parents on the phone while smoking weed today. It's not the first time I've talked to them while stoned, but it was the first time I was actually taking hits while on the phone.

I'm not sure if they noticed my general stonedness or not. I did talk to my mother for a damned long time with absolutely no idea what she was talking about, but that's not all that unusual.

Tired

I wasn't tired when I woke up this morning. This was the first time in around a week that I haven't been exhausted from the moment I crawled out of bed until the moment I collapsed into my pillow.

I also haven't been sleeping well lately, which is odd since you'd think I'd be sleeping better if I'm so exhausted all the time. It might be because I'm trying to adjust to going to bed and waking up earlier. (Earlier being bed by midnight and up at nine. I know, it's a rough life.) Or it might be because I'm in fairly constant really low-grade pain when I sleep, thanks to the position I like to sleep in and my leg brace.

Or it might just be that my life is exhausting. With three physical therapy appointments every week, I'm up to eight meetings/appointments every week, not counting classes. Plus classwork, plus work work.

What do people who have real jobs do when they break their ankles? How do they find the time to do all this? Maybe they take time off work to go to physical therapy.

Drop Out

I dropped my Artificial Intelligence class yesterday. Mainly because it was boring and I wasn't learning anything.

I realized that physical therapy for an hour three times a week, plus having to do physical therapy stuff at home for half an hour every day, is pretty much the equivalent of a class. Only instead of getting credit for it, I get to regain a full range of movement in my right ankle. I should talk to the PE department and see if I can get an hour for it or something. It can be called "Physical Therapy 101: Please God, Let Me Walk Again Fucking Soon."

It was kind of fun to drop a class, I'd never done it before. I went in and talked to the professor, and he asked if it was going to affect my graduation status at all, and I was like "Whatever. I finished the CS major last semester. There's no way I can't graduate." It felt very liberating to be like "This class is boring, and I don't have time. So I'm not going to do it!" Unfortunately, it was the class I wasn't actually doing any of the work for, so it's not saving me that much time.

A Hypothetical Question for Indie Rock Kids and Naked House Girls

If our relationship was a train, which of the following stations would it stop at, and it what order?

• Dysfunction Junction
• Sin City
• Dumpsville
• Meaningful Relationship Central
• Baker, CA, home of the World's Largest Thermometer

Duh

Girls

Girls are some crazy-ass bitches, man. I don't understand them at all.

You'd think at some point I would stop letting them drive me crazy. But that's where you'd be wrong.

Ain't That The Truth

what kitchen utensil are YOU?

You are a fridge! You can keep your cool, even when faced with a heated situation. You enjoy being the center of attention, and people come to you for advice or when they want something. People also like to stick things to
the front of your body.

Emphasis mine.

Awww, Man

If I were a wine I would be...


This quiz was created by Krazy K. Take it here!

Cheater

This isn't really my inner non-sequitur, I just really like it.

Here Comes Trouble

It's the Quiz Blog. All those online personality tests in one convenient location . . . There goes being productive.

Hey, Barbie, Let's Go Party

Drunk Talk About Relationships

Quoth Cyn: "I used to want someone who understood me and all that stuff. Now I think you just have to find someone who doesn't make you want to take a hammer to their skull."

Note To Self:

Floss, then remove nailpolish.

(makes mouth full of nailpolish remover face)

Does Barbie Have An Electric Wheelchair?

I went to Physical Therapy yesterday. My physical therapist said that she wants to work on getting the swelling down and then on my movement. Personally, I want to work on getting the swelling down and then stopping the skin from falling off my leg in big hunks, and then healing the scars and picking out some nice tattoos to cover them up, and then maybe a pedicure. If I don't get the movement back, well, Barbie can't move either of her ankles, and she's an astronaut, for Christ's sake.

Electric Suck

So, the school has given me an electric wheelchair, because Safety and Security doesn't want to drive me around anymore. Apparently I'm keeping them from putting out fires in ashtrays and telling kids to put the bong down or something.

I don't want an electric wheelchair. Mainly because electric wheelchairs aren't cool.

I know that's a shitty sentiment and probably exactly the kind of thing that makes one karmically deserve to be forced to travel long distances through semi-decent neighborhoods in an electric wheelchair.

But honestly. I have a broken leg. I can't carry anything. I have to ask people to get food for me. It's not humiliating enough that all of my friends saw me drugged out and begging for pain medication and whimpering. It's not enough that I spent four days with a bag of my own piss hanging off of me. It's not enough that I got interrigated by a sheriff while in shitloads of pain and wearing only a sheet. It's not enough that a doctor stuck his finger up my ass. It's not enough that I got left on a gurney in a hallway for an hour. No, obviously I have not yet suffered enough humiliation with this broken leg, and now I need an electric fucking wheelchair.

Besides which, I can't get it into my house because there are stairs at every entrance. And when I tried to bring it around the back of the house to see if I could get it in the back door it got stuck and I had to pull it out and it's heavy and I fell over and it hurt. And then it didn't fit anyway. And I have to plug it in to charge it and I don't have an extension cord, and my electricity bill is going to go up. And I need a tarp, and I don't have a tarp.

Why can't something in my life be easy? I don't care what. I just want something to be easy once in a goddamned while.

Freudian

I just wrote the greatest paper on earth from my classics class. It's on the myth of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, analyzed from a Freudian viewpoint. Basically, I'm like "She's a water-nymph, and her pond is a BIG VAGINA! A big CASTRATING vagina!"

Why isn't there a nice scholarly way to say vagina? With penis you can always be like "And obviously the tree represents his phallus," but with vagina you're just like "And that's her pussy."

Good Foot, Bad Foot

So now that I have an ankle brace instead of a cast, my scary ankle gets to come out and play once a day instead of being all wrapped up. (It gets to wiggle around every two hours, but it still has to keep the ace bandage on then.)

You know how most feet go in under the ankle, and then out again?

Mine doesn't. My leg looks normal until right above my ankle, and then everything gets all scary and puffy and red. Plus, there are big still-healing scars from the surgery incisions.

If I was a forties schoolboy, I would charge people a nickel each to look at my ankle.

I'm currectly thinking of my feet as the little angel and devil that appear on people's shoulders in cartoons. My good ankle is like "Let's go help some puppies!" and my bad ankle is like "Fuck that. Let's snort some painkillers." (Yeah, I don't listen to the good ankle much.)

Duh

Hurts So Good

I went to the doctor today. I still can't put any pressure on my right foot (grrrrrrr), but now instead of a cast I have a stylin' brace. It's black plastic with grey fake fur on the inside, and it has all these straps that hold my leg in it. Also, I immediately put a Bettie Page sticker and a Hello Kitty sticker on the back of it, because what kind of girl wouldn't want a 50s icon getting spanked and a cat with no mouth to live on her leg?

Also, now I can warsh my leg! It's very exciting, especially since all the skin seems to be coming off. The nurse guy at the hospital gave me some gauze with alcohol on it before he knew what they were doing with me, and he was like "You can wipe your leg down a little if you want." I was like "Sweet! I was hoping that they'd loofah me or something." Then he laughed, because the word loofah is funny.

I have big scary scars from the surgery, but the nurse guy claimed that if I poked at them they'd go away. Actually he said "Press down on the scars to break up the scar tissue forming underneath," but it's essentially the same thing.

Also, I had crazy insurance hijinks, but I called Kaiser when I got home and they appear to be fixed, which is nothing short of a miracle, so I'm going to shut up about them.

Reasons Broken Ankles Are Sexy

• Three toes peeking cheekily out of bottom of cast.
• Adds touch of realism to doctor/nurse fantasies.
• Pretty much any sex act likely to involve pain.
• Constantly hanging around phallic symbol in form of crutches.
• Can hop really really well.

Twitch

You know how sometimes right before you're going to sleep, your legs twitch or kick?

That sucks when you have a broken ankle.

Cyn lies in bed . . .

*twitch*

Owwwww! Mother fucker!

As I Lay (Not) Sleeping

My late night thoughts:

Shit. My leg itches. Maybe it's hot. I'll put it outside the covers.

Man, it's like I have some sort of crazy demanding beast attatched to me, and I have to constantly figure out what it wants and placate it.

I wonder if this is what having a penis is like?

Xtreme Resume

Wouldn't it be great if you could put what you really did down on your resume?

Education
Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio
BA to be received too damn soon.
Majors: Computer Science, Creative Writing, Drugs
Cumulative GPA: Mediocre

Relevant Courses: As if.

Academic Awards: Not since high school.

Relevant Activities: Showing up to class in attempt to seem like a good student, then secretly doodling and writing snarky comments through entire class period.

Work History
Oberlin College, Fall Semester 2000 - Spring Semester 2002
Computer Science Grader
Pretended to understand/remember courses,
generated random numbers

Oberlin College, Fall Semester 1999 - Spring Semester 2002
Computer Science Tutor
Fooled those younger than I into believing I am smart

Some Guy's Lab, SUNY Buffalo, Summer 2001
intern
Wasted time

Large Internet Company, San Francisco, Old Economy
Intern for Help Department
Was considered genius, thanks to rudimentary coding skills

Family Stair Business, Too Goddamned Long
Clerical Worker
Filing, data entry, working with big scary power tools when father felt like being mean

Skills
Familiar with: Drug dealers, annoying computer science guys, pretending to like those I secretly hate,
Skilled in: Throwing parties, being well groomed, actually comunicating unlike any one else in computer science, making straight girls cum

Unemployed 4 Life

Is what I'm going to get tattooed in big Olde English letters across my stomach.

I tried updating my resume today. Then I realized that I didn't know how to spell my old bosses name. So I dug through a bunch of crap in my desk and found the letter they sent me last fall, when they told me they had over payed me by $900 and they damn well wanted it back. According to the letter, I was working for the physiology department.

I realized I didn't even know what physiology means . . .

Can I just claim I was a crack whore last summer? At least then I'd have some dignity.

Conversation with My Roommate

Yesterday, I'm sitting in the bathtub waiting for it to fill with water, my cast alluringly wrapped in a trashbag and dangling over the side of the tub . . .

Rachel: You look like a bathing beauty.
Me: I'm posing for CrippleFetish magazine. They want me to switch to a black trashbag, though. They say white's too innocent. Black's hardcore.

Apt

There's a robot bartender with my name.

"Cynthia , who stirs as well as she shakes, serves up the perfect cocktail in what is claimed to be the world's first robotic bar and restaurant in Tooley Street, London."

Little From Column A, Little From Column B . . .

Good Coping Techniques

• Making hummus.
• Crocheting.
• Taking online quizzes.
• Applying eyeliner.
• Updating blog.
• Sending email to people I haven't heard from in last six months.

• Drinking.
• Contemplating which posessions would smash most satisfactorily if thrown at walls.
• Thinking mean nasty thoughts about suckers people who are still happy.

Well, That's News

She Has Pink Hair, Too!

Hit Me

You're Britney Spears! Face it, ya got it made. You're sexy and popular, and have tons of people craving to be you. Sure, you've got some enemies out there, but you've also got a lot of people wishing they were with you. You're the kind of person who knows you're hot, and you're not afraid to go all out to prove it.

What Kind of Pop Princess Are You? Quiz by Jonah

Lab Life

I'm stuck in the lab until four or so.

I need to meet with one of my professors to discuss making up a midterm, and he was like "Hey, there's a meeting for prospective CS majors at 4:30! Why don't we meet before then, and then you can go to that! Aren't you head of the major's committee?"

I was like "Yes. Spending all day in the lab so I can talk to prospective dorks is exactly what I want to do with my life."

I'm not sure what I'll say to them, other than "Run! Run before computer science steals your mind, soul and self-respect!"

Whoop, Whoop

I added an about page, in case you don't actually know me.

If you do know me, I made hummus and it's yummy. You should stop by and have some.

Aloof City

Emily and I are moving to Aloof City. In Aloof City, there are no indie rock kids. The only music is bad pop and punk. In Aloof City, everyone lives in beautiful ice palaces and wears glittering jeweled ballgowns and tiaras and impossibly tall glass shoes. In Aloof City, there is no love, and everyone concentrates on fashion and art and science instead. As a result, the citizens of Aloof City are incredibly beautiful and well-dressed, fantastic conversationalists, and live forever.

Emily and I are currently fighting over whether or not there's sex in Aloof City. I maintain that one can (and I have) have sex with someone and remain aloof, but Em claims one cannot be certain that they can always remain detached in these situations. We've compromised with a bullet train to nearby Slag City.

On Top of Everything

I'm quitting smoking. Partly because I want my body to be as healthy as possible, partly because it's a bitch to buy cigarettes/go out to smoke when you have a broken leg.

When I was on Percoset, I was all doped up nice and didn't have cigarette cravings. Unfortunately, I'm not anymore. I need some sort of hobby to distract myself from wanting to smoke. Right now, I'm thinking of finding some sort of pin and jabbing it repeatidly into my hand. I feel that would work nicely.

Downhill

I talked to the girl last night. She wants to "try being friends for a while."

For those of you keeping score at home, my life has now officially turned to shit.

Loser

find your queer as folk personality!

Maybe I should pretend to be surprised . . .