ugh. I went out for some food after class last night and ended up doing shots at the bar. I didn't want to drink last night, and I'm normally pretty good at not drinking when I have work to do, but being so close to the endof the semester makes it hard. I ended up leaving my coffee mug there, and I took the wrong bus home. So, on the latter fact I got off the bus when I realized my error, and ended up walking 40 blocks in the freezing cold up hill last night. It was like the dreaded "when I was your age" story.

I got up this morning at about 8:30 hung over and started writing (or typing) the final draft of my last paper. I finally just finished, a 5-7 page paper that ended up being 10 pages and 3,000 words. Not bad, but way about 30% longer than it had to be. My other final papers ended up at around 12 pages. I'm going to have a gourd of Mate, listen to a few tunes, and catch the bus in 30 minutes to turn this thing in. Final stretch, buddy. Final stretch.

Another crappy day hails. Woke up to sleet. Hauled my ass across town for an hour and a half only to find that there were no seats at the library. That's right. It took me at least 1.5 hours to get to campus because the city decided to close the four train stops before and after campus the weekend before finals. Glad to know they're thinking over there. Also it's a good thing to know I pay so much money to go to a school that doesn't have enough library space *during finals*. So I trekked out in the crappy weather to another library on campus. I found a seat, but the outlet wouldn't work for my iBook power adapter. Then I trekked through snow mounds to the other side of campus to try a third library only to find that they had gated off the street exit to get to that library. I decided to give up and just go home. So I went to take the bus . . . which ended up being 15 minutes late . . . then stopped to change drivers. I left at about 12:30 this afternoon, and it is now 4:00. I should have already done about 3 hours of work. Instead I haven't even had the chance to start. It could be worse, I know. But it's still a pain in the ass.

Everyone in this city is on edge. Must be the season. People getting in to fights on the subway, gang fights on my street, people intentionally shoving others. Lots of aggression. Must be the social pressure to buy expensive gifts, to whore themselves to the advertising industry, while they can barely make rent or buy food. I'm not Christian, but I still say it's disgusting how a day which was intended to celebrate the birth of one of the greatest spiritual and moral teachers of all time has been turned into an excuse to stimulate the economy. Seriously, what would Jesus say about all this? He'd probably walk into the largest supermarket and toss it all to the floor, just as he did in the temple.

Anyway, I have three papers due in the next 48 hours. Time to get started.

On a positive note I should say that I got a paper back from a notoriously difficult professor. I spent hours upon hours upon hours on this little 11 pager. His only complaint: format was sloppy. Pretty damned proud of myself. wait . . . .

. . . Just had to call 911. The noise got out of control. I peeked out the window, and there was at least 20 people looking to get into a fight. A lot of posturing, yelling, running . . . more cars started rollin' on the street. I now a violent scene waiting to happen when I see it. Pretty sketch. Just last week a kid got his face broken by three others not but 20 feet in front of me as I was walking back from the train. Three months ago, a guy was stabbed right in front of our apartment.

Within a few minutes of the cops leaving the scene, everyone was back together. It was quick, like everyone was watching from their dark corners just across the street and down the block. Then . . . In three minutes, coming in packs of two and three, there's 30 people in the same spot. But it seems as though they've broken up now. Maybe I can get some sleep.

Today:

1) Got Denied Education Loan which would have paid rent next semester
2) Can't get into either bank account
3) Get email stating a book is overdue and I owe money, even though I turned it in days ago
4) Get stuck on shitty bus that makes me late on my third day of work
5) Get email saying that auto payments that will bounce my and further ruin my credit (I just had to have credit report errors fixed!) will be made in a week and I can't get into my bloody account to change it
6) I have to create a new online banking account with the other account after a couple of calls because they have a problem they can't fix.
7) get hassled by some asshole looking for a dollar on my walk back from the train. He doesn't leave until I shout at him, "I'm not going to fucking make rent asshole!"
8) People in my 'hood decide that because the snow is gone, even though it's well below freezing, that it's party time again, leaving me no peace to sleep at 2 AM.

Why does all this shit have to happen on one day? Why not spread it out a little, like buttah. Then I glance at my previous post and feel like an idiot.

One of the greatest albums ever:

Quasi, "Field Studies".

Common as the cold -
Up for sale, never sold.
Getting older & it shows;
Your disappointment only grows.
& no one seems to care
that you never got your share -
Who said life was fair?
So smile - it's not so bad.
You lost your health -
Never had no wealth;
So tighten up your belt
As you gather dust upon some shelf.
You lost by just a nose
But there's no prize for place or show.
Now, at least, you know.
So smile - it's not so bad.
Tired out & broken down,
You've played the field & made the rounds.
Now you're stuck in this one-horse town -
Your only solace is the sound of melody & verse.
Though your bags about to burst;
Others have it worse.
So smile - it's not so bad.
-Quasi

I had another weird dream last night. I was lost in this weird ueber large park. It was like Central Park but bigger, and it was impossible to leave except by these waterways. Now if you tried to go in the waterways without a guide, you couldn't get out. You would just end up wandering like everyone stuck in the huge park did; they wandered but never found their way out. It was a beautiful park, though, and it was always sunny. That seemed to be the catch. People knew that they shouldn't enter the park, because they would never be able to leave, but it was so enticing they went in thinking they wouldn't wander too far from the entry point. But when they turned around, there was no more entry.

So along came a guide. A woman who came up the waterway network (the water was crystal clear, about 10 feet deep, and only a few feet wide. It seemed as though for years, more people were entering the park than she could help get out of the park (only one person at a time + partner), and the journey to get out was long. It also required green flippers. However in recent years, more guides had come along to help save the stupid who dared tempt fate.

The rest is vague. I remember stopping in a super store off the waterway on the way out, and that's about it. I should have blogged this earlier in the day.

Holy crap I'm tired. It's not even Monday yet. Grad school will do that to you. Each class I am taking requires at least 10-20 hours of reading a week. Then there's the actual going to class, writing 2-3 papers every week, and trying to work a few hours a week for extra cash. Or how I find time to go to my Buddhist Studies class. Working 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, with 8 shots of espresso administered throughout the day. That's how. 100 pages of Sociology Articles from Journals to be read in the next 18 hours (that includes sleep time). Ready. Set. Go!

I had a weird, extremely vivid and colorful dream last night. It started with me in a parking lot at night, and a bunch of people were hissing at the sky. Then money would fall from a tree. People would scramble to pick up the money, and I , not knowing what was going on, joined in in the free money. I soon realized that there was this worm/snake thing. It actually was like a yellow/beige land eel that had brown spots and teeth, but it had a snakes forked tongue. It was granting people money whenever they hissed at it. I figured if all it took for me to get free money was to his at an eel, I’m all for it.

I later realized that the eel was hypnotizing people, and the money was a small exchange for their servitude. Once I found this out, the eel tried to hypnotize me by asking me to spell out everything I was saying. I would talk to the eel and it would ask, “Could you spell that for me?” Somehow the spelling was also feeding its power to hypnotize.

So I tried to avoid the eel and wandered the halls of my old high school underclass campus. then, abruptly, I was out in this area that reminded me of Nebraska. It was a stormy night, and everyone had to evacuate the building because the Eel had gained enough power and was out to get me. I went into the building with a small team of people, and first was able to get my phone charger. It wasn’t mine, though, it was the phone charger or someone who was a casualty in the battle. The eel was no longer an eel, it was a metaphysical entity, and was using nature, specifically storms, lightening, and wind, to prevent us from destroying it.

At some point of wandering this old half-destroyed building which was more like a three story trainer home, I found a piece of material like a tent wrapped around me. It was slowly suffocating me. I tried to rip a hole in it with my restraint key from when I used to work in a mental health ward, but ripping the material only gave it length with which to further strangle me. Someone on my team shouted that I needed to puncture several holes in the material in order to not give the eel “spirit” enough continuous space to control the material, and thus release it eternally into the ether, ultimately ending its existence.

So stabbed and stabbed and stabbed. Then we carried the punctured material in daylight to its grave, and I gave a merit prayer to the effort and said to the eel spirit that I hope it finds peace and happiness where it ends up, telling it that I only have love and compassion for it. I got all upset and sad at the death of the eel. And then the dream ended.

Weird.

Why is it that we think we know what children need? Is it that we know what we needed when we were young? Are we trying to change the future by using kids as our own personal pawns? Why does anyone *need* to know anything? Will I die if I don't learn to read until I feel like it? Will I be hung for treason if I can't remember that sine squared plus cosine squared equals one? Oh, that's right, one needs to know a certain set of material in order to be all around Successful Person. Whatever that means. Shouldn't we ask the kid what THEY want to do and help them get there? Why do we want to make them our pawns, these small creatures who depend on us only so we can take advantage of their trust? I'm so disgusted with our educational models.

Can't sleep. I just got back from three months in India, and a three day drive across country. I'll be here just a few days, and then I have to drive the rest of the country to my new place of dwelling.

Things are strange here back in real life. Since I got back from India, I seem to have this ability to participate in things while observing them at the same time, and there is just too much that went unnoticed before, and that I am now seeing. It's not like you have a little thing come up and you deal with it, and then another thing comes up and you deal with it. Rather, all of those things that have popped up and hung around for years and years, and only now do I see the entire quagmire.

Sheesh. After setting this and a new email account up, and after typing just that, I'm tired. Time for a smoke and then bed. It's already 3:20 AM, and tomorrow I may be seeing a friend I met in India who lives here.

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