Straight No Chaser

I Wrote a Cinquain

1. first thing you did this morning?
interviewed for and subsequently was offered a summer job, thank goodness; simultaneously wandered outside to find a giant orange VIOLATION sticker on the front windshield of my new car, peeled it off.

2. last thing you ate?
a cadbury caramel egg, which was a little surreal--so much has happened over the past couple of weeks, easter (which was, in fact, only two days ago) feels like something from a distant memory or a dream. i'm starting to feel like one of those crazy poets who claims that nothing is real until it's been written or recorded, and so far i've succeeded at writing almost nothing about my bad thing, which sort of climaxed easter morning...at which point i was thinking, at this time two thousand years ago, or something, christ was RISEN, and i seriously doubt that with all that going on anyone would have ever noticed what i was up to.

3. is your cell phone a piece of crap?
only because i drop it so often. it has developed this precious habit of spontaneously turning off when i hang up after a phone call. but even that is nothing compared to what i had to deal with when i threw it at the wall and shattered the screen display.

4. what's the thing you look forward to most in the next six months?
kissing marcus.

5. what's annoying you right now?
not knowing when my roommate will return from macon, where she's been since saturday night, and where, hopefully, she'll stay through at least the coming weekend. she has no reason to come back, really. she has officially flunked each of her five classes, and more or less finalized her failure by telling her mom not to pay the last tuition check. i can't imagine why she'd drive all the way back from macon just to sleep on a many-times-used mattress with no sheets on it.

6. what's the last movie you saw in a theater?
v for vendetta. with sean and treesje. trip city.

7. do you believe in long distance relationships?
do i believe that they suck and are impossible except when conducted by emotionally stoic paraplegics? yes, i believe that. i believe it deeply.

8. is there someone you miss?
always. currently it's my brother, who it sometimes seems is the only person who gets my jokes. also marcus, whom i want to kiss, and a third someone whom i shouldn't miss at all but sort of do because i want to slap him. or castrate him with a rusty butter knife. or both.

9. if you could put together a concert of five bands or artists, who would it be?
if i'm reaping the profits of this concert, then i'd want kanye west, fallout boy, um...mariah carey, dem franchise boyz and--uh--i don't know, dave matthews band. if i actually have to sit and listen to this concert, then i still want dave, but also jill scott, the miles davis quintet, 1992-era michael jackson and the 101 strings orchestra. something like that.

10. song that sums up your love life?
sade's "love is stronger than pride." hands down.

11. what are a few things you wish you were better at doing?
i wish i were just a tiny bit better at bullshitting through my academic writing. i mean, i am very, very good at it, but it's a struggle. i just finished my j.l. king paper, just now, and it took four times as long and seven times as much effort as what it should have, because i had to keep thinking through the bullshit, which sort of undermines the whole idea of bullshit, which i find really irritating. i'd love to have a head full of prewritten papers on every topic, and to be able to access them on demand. this week would sail by.

12. if you could be anywhere this second, where would it be?
the smithsonian museum of natural history with marcus, looking at the hope diamond and the harry winston collection.

13. what's your most vivid memory from eighth grade?
nothing really stands out, right now. there was a kid in my class whose left forearm was engulfed by a giant, hairy birthmark. a girl whose parents let her baby brother pee on the floor in their living room whenever he wanted. this one clique, extremely textbooky, who gave themselves a name and a membership cap, and everything, and dedicated their entire year to making life horrible for this one girl named annie, who as far as i could tell hadn't actually done anything wrong. a spanish teacher who made us watch every mainstream movie ever made in spanish, just to totally steal the appeal of movies forever. and then, of course, the acne and the frizzy hair and the crippling self-esteem deficiency. good times.

14. latest addiction?
vault. three this past hour. they make me unreasonably hyper, then send me stumbling into bed. i'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop, now.

15. have you ever had the urge to kill someone?
naturally. hasn't everybody?

16. how many people would you say are interested in you? like, in a romantic way?
i actually have no idea. quantity indeterminate. i'm going to guess anywhere between one and three, but i could be wrong in either direction. i have started to think that people are incapable of being both emotionally and sexually attracted to me. or, rather, that i'm incapable of inspiring both, simultaneously. which is fine. i will start a harem.

17. what do you love doing?
many things. many many things. a list of things to which i've recently added two or three items.

18. do you think someone thinks about you daily?
what a gay/retarded survey. sorry if that offends anybody. at one point during my interview yesterday, the woman asked what i'd do if i overheard one kid calling another one gay/retarded, "gay slash retarded" is how she read the question, and then she went on to clarify that she didn't mean in the "clinical" way, as in homosexual slash down syndrome-afflicted peer, i recognize you as gay slash retarded, but rather in the "derogatory" way, as in, peer, you suck, you're gay slash retarded. she asked me like three thousand times whether i understood the question. i had to suppress the urge to decry its gay/retarded wording, and to explain to her that i'm from the tofu/tolerance capital of the east coast, and that i seriously doubt a single one of those kids will ever say anything to which i don't have a corrective stock response. now. on the other hand, if anybody shows up with a dart gun, or anything, i will almost definitely freak out.

19. who was the last person you saw or talked to?
the last person i saw was the landscaper weeding the patio in front of my dorm, and the last person i talked to was krystle.

20. what do you want to be when you grow up?
happy and rich. and thin.

21. what is your favorite food?
thai fried rice with vegetables and tofu, which i know i've told you more than once. you surveys just don't listen. there is a chance, if a small one, that i'll get to eat my favorite food tonight, which makes the struggles of the past month sort of inconsequential.

22. how many people do you know with the same name as you?
none, personally. which i know is weird, because it's not a particularly unusual name or anything. i know me, and shannon elizabeth, and shannen doherty (the spelling of whose name is positively gaytarded), and there was a shannon wright at my elementary school, and isn't there a shannyn sossamon on tv somewhere? but, no one in my current life is named shannon, except me. oh--i do have a facebook friend with my exact same first and last name, actually. she is white and attends school in the midwest somewhere and we've never met. we friended one another solely on the basis of the one thing we have in common. which is my primary piece of evidence for why facebook is such a stupid waste of time.

23. what was the last thing you spilled?
semen, and now i'm going to hell.