Or just call me to talk.

Found in Charlotte. I'm glad I don't live in Charlotte.

People are gross.

People really need to shower before they come up to my desk to check out laptops. Or put on deodorant. Or wipe their asses. Or whatever works.

But I did not shoot the deputy.

This weekend I have to go to Nashville to turn myself in. It's not terrible, I apparently had a suspended license from failing to pay a parking ticket, and then I got a misdemeanor, blah, blah, blah. Supposedly if I show up on Friday morning and pay them a bunch of money, it won't go on my record. Of course, it does involve getting mugshots taken and getting fingerprinted, and I have to be honest, I'm about to hyperventilate right now thinking about it. Luckily (?) I have a friend who had this happen to her, so I'm not quite as stressed because she told me what to expect.

Anyway, the point is, on Saturday, I'm going to be ready to stick it to the man, and I want to go out and get supremely hammered. So, if anyone wants to go with, and by anyone, I mean anyone who lives near Nashville, let me know. Because if I have a shitty time, I may not be back to visit for a long while. (You assholes know you would miss me, stop rolling your eyes.)

This is basically the best poem ever.

(This is a villanelle if you care or know what that is. If you want to know what it is, you can ask me.)

One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

"Lack of money is the root of all evil."

I found the quote above attributed to George Bernard Shaw. However, it is also attributed to Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), so who the hell knows? I do think it is apropos to this entry, regardless of who said it. It's been awhile since I posted an entry. I haven't been feeling very prolific lately. The mindless crap on myspace does not count as an actual blog. Anyway, here we go. . .

My financial situation took a change for the worse yesterday. I am really bad with money. Honestly, MC Hammer is probably better at budgeting than me. Anyway, this has completely stressed me out. I don't spend very much money; I just don't know how to pay my bills. On time. And that's bad. Another problem is that I'm kinda lonely. I don't really have any friends here in Knoxville, except for my sister. I have acquaintances, but surface relationships are not what I'm after. I need some real human contact, and right now I have zilch. Everytime I say this, people (who live in Nashville) tell me to move back to Nashville. But that won't fix things. I'm out of college money (that's not related to the aforementioned financial sitch), and even if I get more money, it won't be enough to go to college there.

So, what do I want to do? Besides crawl into a hole and die? Pretty much my only option is to find a full-time job working for the university. That way, they pay for my tuition, I'll be making enough money to pay my new bills, and hopefully I will be smart enough to pay my old bills. On time. So that's the deal. I know that this is depressing, but damnit, I'm pretty fucking depressed right now.

What if I were to start screaming right now?

Please, let this semester end soon. I'm sick of the library with all these whiny, bratty kids. I need a vacation. And a nap. I miss my friends. Even the ones who live in Knoxville.

I don't have to. All I know is it happened.

So, yesterday Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. died. In a 2003 interview he said, "One kid said he had the key to all my books and he put it in a sentence. He said, 'Love may fail but courtesy will prevail.' Love does fail all the time, you know, and it makes people vicious."

He was the author who got me interested in reading. I used to go to the library a lot after class in high school. I would pick a random book, and start reading it. If I liked it, I'd check it out. I read a couple of chick-lit books, (it was Bridget Jones heyday, shut up) but I got bored with that really quickly. That was when I learned that just because I like one book, I won't necessarily like the whole genre. So anyway, I would just walk down the fiction aisles waiting for something to pop out at me. One day I walked past the Vonnegut section, and I picked up Cat's Cradle. I stood in front of the bookshelf and read the first few chapters. I finished that in a few days, and then I read Galapagos, then Breakfast of Champions, then Slapstick, and Welcome to the Monkey House, and Slaughterhouse-Five, and Hocus Pocus.

About four years later, my dad loaned me his copy of Bluebeard. I still haven't given it back. It's my all-time favorite. I don't really know why, maybe I just think one-eyed Armenian painters are awesome. Anyway, somewhere along the way I had switched from the library to the bookstore. So I began to build my collection of (legitimately purchased) Vonnegut books.

When talking about his decision to stop writing novels, he said, "I felt as I did when the Second World War ended: Please, I've done everything I'm supposed to do, can't I go home now?".

Sometimes there's a penis.

I really did have something to write about. However, now I can't remember what that was. So until then, here's a little gem I found on this new-fangled internet business about the chocolate Jesus sculpture. It refers to the people who are upset about the fact that this depiction of Jesus is anatomically correct:

". . .(A)rt imitates life, and in life, sometimes, there’s a penis. And only in the luckiest of circumstances is the penis made of chocolate."
- Kat, pink india ink