#anyway someone I know from undergrad went last year with her kid who's like 4 and he looked like he was having fun on insta :D

[gayferrari]

do you know what the ferrari finali mondiale is? is it like a race or an exhibition or like the world ducati week thing?

It's an exhibition event mostly! There is a race, but iirc it's for amateur drivers — basically, Ferrari have their own amateur sports car racing series that's open to all owners of Ferrari GT models who want to compete. They have continental series (I think it's like Europe / Japan / North America) and winners race each other at the final. It's held at Imola and tickets are pretty affordable / Friday entry is free so I guess it's popular if you're car sexual and can get to northern Italy without much trouble.

The exhibition part is because different competition models are shown off etc, and they might have some of the pro racers as special guests. I think Giovinazzi was there last year, I'm expecting some of the hypercar drivers will be there this year since it doesn't conflict with Bahrain WEC.

[bigmoneypastelhalloween]

I wonder if the chronology of my last post is coherent enough...

Missing context:

In summer 2010 just after the g20 riots i moved to toronto with veña and simon, we got the cheapest 3 bedroom we could find, it was "above the 401" as they say, the hinterlands. Veña and i moved in first and smoked salvia in the empty apartment, simon got there a month later. I got a job at a queen street headshop after a couple months, hand of god given that i dropped off 5 resumes total and spent all day every day blogging and agonizing over where i could get decent weed and how to afford more. leni moved in that fall, originally sharing a room with simon but there was conflict and she switched to veña's room. Holding pattern while i make connections thru work and hang out with coworkers. By the new year we're rolling again, we're going to dj nights, etc. The manager at work changes when 50k of legal highs disappear. Martin, who i know from uvic, moved in may or june of 2011. We all ended up on 2cb or some research chem near-analog, i was supposed to have mdma for us but the batch sold as, was later confirmed to be 2csomething via the dealers gf postfacto. Immediately martin got us househunting and within a few weeks we saw a bunch of places and then moved from 2441 finch west to 114 finch east i guess starting in august because we had a big summer moving in party. Leni and veña were on speed and i told them not to jook up with this undergrad they knew but they did anyway. The kid and their friends hung around all summer wondering when we'd actully be fun. The kid figured out martin was the fun one and got mad at veña for liking their ex better. The kid is lux. Lux starts talking to martin about metal instead of veña. Halloween '11 is a 0 degree night out of nowhere and we're at a bridge show martin has a reading at, after going to a party at my store managers place with lux, which sucks so bad lux bails for the night. Someone does a callout of a stylistic choice in martins work and things sort of derail. Martin wants us to play defense, which turns things into a popularity contest, and martin would win going strictly by defender numbers, 4 v 1 ("your network is your networth") except because the girl and her friend who are complaining about martins story have more metal attached to their clothes martin is ashamed of our bad optics. This foreshadows much to come. I lose my job by being more and more of an insane mess and go on employment insurance. Yule 2011 I went back to bc with my fiance garrett who was living in boston working on his phd in psychology. I spent that easter doing k and acid with lux. In march 2012 i had what garrett said was a psychotic break.

Martin moved out may of 2012. I went to panama to teach the primatology class at a field school for 2 sessions from june to august. I got assaulted by a coworker, martin was the only person i told from home who took the position that i was being unreasonable. I got my septum done in bocas del toro, it was a body-ownership move as much as a memento of the place; Ive never stopped wearing a ring in my nose since then, ive even gauged up a bit. I got garrett a ticket to panama, he moved into the house with us after we got back from panama together, he still had to write and defend his thesis. 2012 we had a big vegan house party for yuletime. A few days before that was the big mayan calendar failpocalypse, i spent it writing on 2ce. Somewhere in there i got into a facebook spat with martin over veña, and got blocked. New year 2013 i got a job i'd written a preholiday rush cover for, at a headshop really close to the house, at yonge and steeles. Worked there 5 months, ran into another coworker issue. General workplace friction with the whole vibe of working for GoT fan ancaps in the legal high/weed paraphernalia business. 2nd verse same as the first. I started spending more time with lux because they were the most sympathetically in tune with my rage about the panama situation and my sorrow about the state of the world, and i ended up going with them and nat to meet suzy for the first time that spring after end of session at u of t when she was moving out of the student res that a few years later got closed for being uninhabitably damaged. Suzy gave me a hundred or so caps of name brand dexedrine as a parting gift. Blast off.

Right at the time things were melting down at work again martin told the others about moving back to the city. It triggered a midtier manic episode but i was also on long speed jags at that time, it all coalesced. I left martin a letter in the paper tray of the copier they wanted to pick up. A month or so later they came to the house, probably while i was at the fort. Id started hooking up with lux after doing speed at a backyard show there and they were insanely demanding after that. (I met nix spring 2013, at one of the fort shows that happened during that time.) When i got back everyone said martin had spent the whole time trying to get them to shit talk me and itd been pretty awkward. Leni said she saw martin find my letter and disgustedly throw it away. Emma came over and we all unloaded about how martin was being so bizarre after moving out. But then simon decided to move out. I asked them to give me my first stiknpoke before leaving and they gave me a division symbol on my wrist. Lux was squeezing someone out of the fort at that time, the house founder in fact, and needed someone they could stand, on short notice, to take over a large share of the rent, so they used emotional leverage and got me to bail on veña and leni. I was almost out of money and my big plan was to go on welfare for the first time after moving to the fort.

I left in july to go hitchhiking with lux, who wanted to chase their remaining roommates to a grindcore festival in bc and basically make sure people werent just sitting around complaining about the coup that had actually scared off the house founder and her bestie, so the rent situation was tenuous and being held down by the mom of this guy ryan who lived there and had spent 3 or 6 months in prison for being a g20 rioter, he got beaten every day by guards and left with crippling depression. He was dating someone from another collective house who was in bc waiting for fastcore with nat already because they'd trainhopped and made it the whole way thru ontario in 2 days. I got my first smartphone so i could document the trip and i started a new facebook, maybe i was hoping my sudden metamorphosis into someone with a punk name would register to martin and theyd add my new account and we'd talk. We go to mtl to visit nix and bug at death church; bug had moved out of the fort before luxs coup. We doubled back quickly and then headed north. I got my 2nd stiknpoke from lux outside wawa (infamous hitching black hole), a bong. Lux and i got lucky with a 2 day ride across the praries in a dodge charger after a week in north ontario. We met cassidy and her gf at the time in edmonton, & after a few days there we got over to vancouver where we met up with ryan who said he was there to try to find shrew because theyd had a fight. He said some bad consent stuff happened, after we'd been hanging out for a day (lux loved him) and lux and i nervous laughed & called shrew who said to lose ryan and get up to squamish. We caught up with nat and shrew, eventually linked up with nat and shrews lost travel crew....and an old roommate of luxs named natalie who had gone from plur to acab in the same space of time as lux had. (All very coincidental im sure.) Remember natalie. In squamish i gave myself a mans ruin stiknpoke while we hung out at the skatepark, beautiful day. After fastcore we bummed around vancouver a couple days before lux got their guardian angel cj to buy them a bus ticket because they were cranky from bin-diving giving them food poisoning and all their internet friends we'd met turning out to be normie libs (no one wanted to lay pipe). I spend my last cash on a ticket for myself. Greyhound still runs cross country in 2013. Garrett and i move in to the fort right as nat and lux hitch to mtl together to visit nix. Shrew was still living at george street, i think doug was trying to get them to stay there at the time but all the guys there were saying ryan was a good guy and we were all totally willing to kick ryan out whether shrew moved in or not. I dont know where he was at this time, but based on the stimulator screening we went to with him back in van, he hadnt even noticed being leftcoast famous for getting arrested until that outing, and there were a lot more warm welcomes to make a tour of before trying to talk to shrew again. He was all set up at a well known collective house by the pne grounds.

So garrett and i were actually alone at the fort with shrews miniscule cat beez for a couple weeks before anyone came back. I was on my way to shrew and ryans first face to face over at g street, on my bike, and got arrested because a cop said i spit on him. He said some got on his shoe. I got cuffed and ticketed but they let me go. I missed the thing with ryan and no one at g street found getting arrested remarkable. I went home to the fort and garrett found it so remarkable that he dumped me. I spent the next three months crying at sammy yatim demos and police hearings and watching tv in bed or having last chance sex. During this time lux and nat were trying to find more renters and this runaway kid who'd been having trouble at another house moved in, along with a street artist the others knew from around. As soon as garrett was gone at the start of December 2013, nat and i took a bus across the border and started hitching to IDA in Tennessee so they could tell us how to make an effective collective house. We learned that everyone needs their own house and its normal for people to go years within a community not talking to eachother. We got back and the street artist and shrew were at it with eachother. I got a tattoo from her anyway, in the living room. On her birthday we all go to a soup kitchen, martin is there with a bunch of shrews old friends. We're weird and avoidant of one another, i decide to let martin say hi if they want to, they dont, more to it but whatever. Skip to, we tell birthday gal we need to find someone who is actually paying rent. She sets the house on fire. We put it out. Happy 2014.

Then came the business of kicking lux out for being a manipulative weirdo who turned out to be mad at natalie because natalie was like "the sex we had was not consensual, youre a rapist" and lux was just like "what a bitch can you believe this bitch" about it, and then also "technically i also raped my ex who veña always liked better" about it, too. So that was a mess. That winter and early spring are a blur, nat and shrew and i go to some parties. Doug moves in. Various other people move in and out. Random people are in and out all the time. I live in a closet, which i consider heaven. I take a bike repair class. Nat and i go to a party at emmas and i meet luke, its still cold old. I ask luke out but he seems uninvested and morbidly curious from the get go. Im morbidly curious myself once i realize that bug called this guy out over something and i recall that while lux and i were in edmonton lux defaced a bunch of his bands show flyers. I get a really cool bike via nat and start joyriding all over the city, im hoping kismet will kick in and I'll run into martin. Nat and shrew hear from shrews friends that martin lives on the eastside with them. Nat and shrew go to one of martins readings and i say be nice dont troll like you did at the soupkitchen in the winter. They troll worse, tell me all about it when they get home. It sounds like martin won them over by being mildmannered afterward but theyre not forthcoming about that part.

I think that kind of catches things up to where we were before...

I spent summer of 2014 living at the fort and hooking up with luke and a guy who lived at george street named chris. That year on my birthday i sprained both wrists doing a stupid bike stunt. That was the same day i applied to be a courier. Shrew and i got into a conflict over the runaway kid's whole deal and i decided to move out as soon as shrew said they were going to. They stayed, i left. I bused back to bc to regroup with the gang. First i met up with simon, who was hanging out with martins bestie a lot and thru an awkward series of events i ended up crashing at that persons place with them and their bf felix, even tho martins bestie was clearly terrified of me and couldnt understand why simon had brought me in the first place. Then i went to stay with veña and leni, who were living together at veña's moms place. We all did m during a bloodmoon watch and i accidentally outed some information leni had been withholding. Garrett and i kept meeting up and hooking up too, and he got annoyed that i wasnt making room for him in the veña/leni/me situation and left things on bad terms but later apologized. I kept trying to get them all to move back and get another place but the only one who was all in was leni, after the big reveal she felt like relocating would be more fun than staying and facing the music.

Over halloween we hitched from van to winnipeg to save money and bused the rest of the way. They broke up after she got to toronto with me. We stayed at emmas moms place for a month (nov 2014) while i started the courier job it turned out i'd had for weeks, and leni apartment hunted. Doing a good deed is remembered by the spirit of the city, and we found a cheap basement in the trinity-bellwoods area I'd flyered for the first sammy yatim response demo.

I kept working the courier job and one day leni and i ran into luke. He started crashing at our apartment because it was so close to the rehearsal factory. I started writing a summary of the lefty witch agenda as a thesis project for suzy because i had been relying on her counsel more and more since leaving the fort and i wanted to do something that might have some kind of tangible impact and ime she's a very talented witch, one of the most talented i know if not the most, so in her hands a document like that could go anywhere. Lord knows if she ever read it all. I remember she started it and was like you didnt cite so and so and i was like as far as i knew that was original, and its like ok well, she's seen it before. Collaged in with all the same other stuff, too, most likely. I think she thought my format choices were cute, anyway.

I stopped going to the courier job so i could work on my speedifesto full time. I spent new years 2015 on acid at a party on the eastside with a girl i was dating and leni and the girl she was dating. The night ended badly. I ruined things with the girl so many different times but having a self-obsessive bad trip while she wanted to have mindblowingly romantic sex instead, was a big one of the ruiny moments. She's happy now with someone who isnt stupid.

[sirphillipcranestanaccount]

Modern AU teaser under the cut. Let me know what y’all think!

“Ugggh” Eloise said, dropping her forehead onto the textbook that lay on the table in front of her. She looked at her phone, 10:30 on a Friday night and she was still in the library. “How did I get myself into this situation?” she raised her head and looked across the table at Penelope, “Pen, when I said ‘oh I think I’m going to get a master’s in English’, English of all things, why didn’t you talk me out of it?”

Penelope shifted her eyes from her laptop screen to Eloise without moving her head. “Because,” she began to reply, never once stopping her typing “I believe your exact words were ‘Pen, I’m going to grad school and there’s no way you can talk me out of it’.” 

“She’s right, El,” Edwina said not bothering to look up from her computer, “I have it on video.” 

“How many drinks had I had up to that point?” Eloise’s head was once again in her textbook making her words difficult to hear. “And was I aware at the time that I would have to read The Canterbury Tales again?”

“None and yes,” Penelope replied.

“Ugh,” Eloise repeated, “what are you two working on?” she wanted to distract herself from Chaucer for a moment,

“I’m writing a paper about the works and political activism of Susan Sontag,” Penelope answered.

“I’m writing a reflection on a trip I had to take to the Met,” Edwina stated, “so I’m attempting to be engaging about statues I have seen on what must be at least a hundred occasions.”

“Do you guys remember in undergrad when we used to do fun and interesting things on the weekends?” Eloise asked. 

“I don’t think that emptying 4 bottles of Barefoot Riesling and eating buffalo wings while watching Golden Girls re-runs could be deemed interesting in any sense of the word,” Penelope said, “plus, judging by the frequency with which Eddie’s phone has been vibrating, she certainly has an interesting weekend ahead of her,” she smirked.

Eloise’s head popped up in interest. Finally a distraction! “Are these texts from a gentleman?” she asked with a tone of overstated interest.

Edwina started to flush “Do you guys remember that TA I had last semester for my archaeology class?”

“The one who’s so smart and funny and cute and always replied to your e-mails right away?” Eloise replied, “I’m not sure if you mentioned him.”

Edwina’s eyes narrowed at Eloise’s teasing, “Well, we went out and got coffee the other week and we’ve been texting ever since, and long story short I think I’m going to marry him.”

“Marriage?” Eloise scoffed, “have you two even…?” she let her words trail off, but let a rude gesture with her hands finish the statement.

“I was being facetious,” Edwina replied, “and no, I haven’t slept with him,” she returned to typing just before adding, “Very ladylike hand gesture by the way.”

“Well, it’s a good thing I’ve never once tried to be ladylike in my life,” Eloise retorted.

“The blouse and pencil skirt you’re wearing at the library would state otherwise,” Penelope teased.

“Pen, you know I have to wear this when I tutor,” she shot back “apparently I have to look professional when I’m trying to help freshmen comp lit majors figure out what Candide is about.”

“What is Candide about?” Edwina asked.

“Hell if I know,” Eloise replied with a shrug. She looked back at her phone, “can we go home now?” she asked, “I hate walking through the park after 11.”

Penelope closed her computer, “I was about to suggest the same.”

As the 3 women walked out of the now-empty library Eloise spotted something on a bench in the vestibule between the library doors. It was a leather-bound notebook with a snap closure. Eloise couldn’t help but be curious, so she opened it.

“What on Earth are you doing El?” Penelope asked, “we are in New York City, god knows where that’s been!”

“Calm down Pen, it’s not street trash,” she replied. She opened to the first page of the notebook and read: property of Phillip Crane. If found, please contact pcrane282@nyu.edu

Phillip got home and all but went straight to sleep. Well, first he thanked and said goodbye to his Aunt who had been kind enough to watch his children after their most recent nanny had quit.

It appeared that the final straw for the most recent young lady–in what seemed to be a revolving door of unfortunate women (and some men)– was when the twins had decided to put a layer of cream cheese on the deodorant that they found in her purse. Phillip was more bewildered by his children’s antics than anybody, but even he had to admit that someone who decided to pursue a career in child care ought to be made of sterner stuff. 

But today had been a long day, and he needed to sleep before he went back to the lab tomorrow. He peaked his head into Oliver and Amanda’s room to make sure they were asleep. Or, if not asleep, not causing trouble. Then he went to his room and simply fell face down on the bed.

Phillip woke up the next morning to his alarm at 6 am in the clothes he had worn the day previous. He cursed under his breath, he was planning to wear that pair of khakis again today, but now they were all wrinkled and so was his shirt. Phillip went out into the kitchen and started making coffee when he heard a small voice from behind him.

“Daddy, you’re not going to wear those clothes to work are you?” He turned around to see Amanda in her pajamas. 

“Don’t I look good?” Phillip joked with her.

“You look like you slept in your clothes,” she said flatly, moving a chair to the side of the cabinet to reach for the cereal that was a bit too high for her to reach on her own. 

“That’s just the look I was going for,” he smiled and took a sip of his coffee, “do you want me to pack your lunch for you?” he asked. He didn’t have to be at the lab until 9:00 this morning. 

“No thanks,” Amanda said passing him to get milk from the refrigerator, “Me and Oliver packed our lunches last night.”

Phillip felt his stomach knot. He was proud that both of his children were self-sufficient, but he hated the fact that they had to be. Ever since their mother died–and frankly, before–they had needed to be like little adults, in spite of being 8 years old. Phillip tried the best he could to be a good dad to them, but working toward a Ph.D. and having the pressure of a research fellowship on one’s shoulders made active fathering somewhat difficult. 

“What did you pack, is it healthy?” Phillip asked, trying to make up for his dead-beat ways.

“Sandwich, apples, yogurt, and cheez-its,” she said matter of factly “I don’t know what Oliver put in his.”

As if on cue Oliver walked into the kitchen, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, “I made the same thing but with chips instead of yogurt, because yogurt is gross.” He joined his sister at the countertop and poured cereal into a bowl that Amanda had already set out for him.

“Alright, kids, what’s on the schedule for today?” Phillip said, putting down his coffee, “anything after school that I should let Aunt Gertie know about?”

“I have piano right after school,” Amanda stated.

“And I have a hockey game at 5,” Oliver said with a mouth full of cereal, “can you come, Dad?”

Phillip’s heart sank, he knew he probably wasn’t going to be able to make it, but he decided to try and humor his son anyway. 

“Let me check my book,” he said walking over to his bag. He looked in the brown satchel to find that he couldn’t find the familiar brown leather datebook.

“Shit,” he whispered under his breath, “shit shit shit shit shit.”

“Are you okay dad?” Oliver asked, once more with his mouth full.

“Yes,” Phillip said with a sigh “I just can’t find my datebook.”

Phillip grabbed his phone to check the schedule he tried to maintain electronically and saw that he had an e-mail.

Dear Mr. Crane,

Hello! I just wanted to contact you because I believe I found your datebook outside the library last night. At least, this is the e-mail that was written to contact in case it was found. What is the best way that I can return it to you? I know I’m personally lost without my planner. Let me know how I can get it back to you and I will be sure to do so ASAP.

Sincerely,

Eloise Bridgerton, B.A.

Student | NYU Graduate School of Arts & Science

ebridge240@nyu.edu

(212)995-3422

P.S. I suppose I should ask you to describe it, just to make sure I’m handing it off to the right person. Once you’ve done that I will promptly return it to you.

[redrabbitspod]

happiness?

first, i wanted to start by thanking dan for allowing me to post this. for a while, i wondered if i even should. but, a lot of you have been asking about me, my upbringing, and who the fuck i am. i think this is, in part, due to my team interview and rumor. i have to admit, not all of the rumors are wrong, but i wanted to come completely clean and after a long time of thinking and a big change in my life, i decided why the fuck not?  maybe, i told myself, it would help some of you. i hope it does. 

but, it is personal and it does mean a lot to me. if i’m being honest, it also makes me feel a bit vulnerable. however, after taking quite a few L’s for rrp, dan agreed, so here we are. 

where are we? here. the fuck does that mean? i don’t exactly know, but i’m going to fuckin wing it.

so, here goes. let’s start from the top. (art by me)*

QUICK OOC! THIS IS A CHAPTER! CLICK HERE TO READ ABOUT SETH’S TIME IN MIAMI AND MORE OF WHAT HE TALKS ABOUT UNDER THE CUT 

*BloodyDamnit: it’s my art. but we like to think Seth is an artist :)

vvvvvvvvvvv

my name is seth gordon, i’m 31 years old and 1 of 7 sons. i’m smack in the middle and i severely suffered from middle child syndrome.

31 years ago, i was born in rural alabama to a white, military father and a black, hard-as-rocks mother. i had your typical, strict military upbringing. my dad was hard on us from the jump and refused to acknowledge the fact that at the time, he had 4 black sons (to have 3 more). i still don’t think he realizes that to this day, he raised 7 black men to hate themselves, but that’s not what this post is really about. i can write an entire critical essay on how much my fathers obliviousness to race and racism ruined my and my brothers psyches, but anyway. 

growing up in the deep south, meant we encountered racism every single day. a lot of it was severe and ultimately, barely acknowledged. to my dad, we were white (which was odd in itself because he was ostracized by everyone around him for marrying my mom) - to my mom, we were hers, but undeniably black. to her family, we were mixed. it was confusing in the household, to say the least. 

while we were accosted at school, bullied, and harassed, my dad had the usual macho-man response of ‘punch ‘em back’ and ‘none of my sons will get beat by some scrawny kids’. if you didn’t punch back, then you were a pussy. 

i, was a pussy. (for many things, but we’ll get there)

my mom, on the other hand, tried her best - bless her fuckin heart. when he wasn’t home, she’d do her best to remind us what we looked like, what we were, and that people wont ever treat us right. she wasn’t wrong, not there, not in that town. 

what was ironic about it all, was while she was trying to get us to understand that being black wasn’t wrong, that it was something to be aware of, yes, but also to be proud - being ‘queer’ was out of the question. 

to start, i was a sensitive kid. that alone was enough to have my older brothers mock me, call me names. when i cried, it got worse. i vividly remember my dad gripping my arm, shaking me, and getting in my face to ‘stop crying like a girl’. i was called queer, i was called fag, i was ostracised by my family - all for crying, all for being ‘sensitive’. i was 6? 7? i was young. a child. 

i learned early. 

as i got older, all the homophobia i’d encountered from my family assuming, made me hate myself for more than just being black, but being whatever i was, too. as i started realizing that boys looked just as good as girls, i became the worst version of myself possible and when my parents divorced, it only festered. 

middle child, remember that? when my dad left, my mom was the only income. she had 7 kids, 7 boys to take care of. my youngest brother was a toddler, my oldest a junior in high school. the older kids were tasked with taking care of the youngest and while my older brothers were working, succeeding in school, making sure the youngest succeeded too, i was left somewhere in between. i was a menace. i created problems in every single fuckin way i could. i wanted attention, i wanted love, i wanted someone to take care of me, too. but i was in middle school and deemed able to take care of myself, so i did. 

i continued to, even as my older brothers went off to college and pursued careers, and i was the last to take care of the kids. i put my mom through the ringer and i had no real prospects. i was getting into fights, smoking weed every day, getting involved with girls, partying, drinking. my second oldest brother pulled me over at the beginning of my senior year and told me that i needed to get out.

he thought it would help - to be away from family, away from my dad, away from the toxicity i’d grown to only know. for a long time, i thought he was stupid. so stupid to think that someone like me, someone with my temperament, my habits, my ability to seek out trouble in every fuckin way i could, should be trusted on my own at college. 

turns out, it was the best advice he could’ve ever given me. 

because i was accepted to psu on a hope and a fuckin prayer. 

i get more into my time at psu here*. it details my drug abuse, my addictions, my severe homophobia, and my path to accepting myself as a bi man. i don’t really feel comfortable explaining that all here, on this public page. but if you would like to read more, you can click the link.* 

anyway, all of that was thanks to wymack and surprisingly, minyard as well. they helped me realize that i could get better, i could be better, that i could overcome the thick fog id lost myself in. 

which brings me to here, today. 

the title of this post is happiness? i asked myself wtf happiness was for the majority of my life. after my undergrad, i questioned if i was happy, every single day. i still do, sometimes. 

you all know me as happy-go-lucky seth; the memester; the goofy guy that is in all actuality, older than the majority of tfn, but treated like the younger brother. maybe, some of you see me as immature. maybe, you think im lying about my age, or that i really am just a happy fuckin guy. 

i am happy, most of the time; so long as im distracted, working, partying, playing music, or helping my friends. but thats really all it is. i need to be busy, in order to forget how unhappy i find myself, sometimes. 

that is, until now. 

relationships are weird - hard to explain. but for me, finding someone i found complete comfort in became important, it became a blessing and i’m not even slightly religious. but that’s what this feels like. 

as many of you know, i’m in a relationship now and maybe im just honeymooning, but by fuck im happy. i havent been able to find solace in quiet for over a decade, full self-acceptance in a lifetime, until i truly met him.

none of you have to know his name, or who he is. but it was in meeting him, someone so like myself with similar struggles and experiences, that i was able to realize that i can love myself. that i have the ability to be proud of who i fucking am, and that i can drop the fucking facade of happiness and actually be happy. 

maybe it’s sappy. 

sounds like it. 

feels like it. 

it is. 

but it was in meeting him, that i learned to have real pride, with no lingering hate dancing around the back of my mind. it was in meeting him, that i learned to accept all aspects of myself and make sure everyone felt just as good as i do.

people like me have the ability to grow. they have the ability to overcome and learn from past mistakes. i was a horrible fucking person for the majority of my life. most of the people i knew wouldn’t even recognize who i am now. doesnt matter that i was a kid, or in college and overcoming grief and ingrained self-hate. i grew, i overcame. i found people that care about me, accept me for the man i am today.

i wish i met them sooner. i wish i’d listened to them sooner. maybe i could've avoided hurting people i hadn’t meant to hurt. 

maybe i could’ve avoided hurting myself, for this long. 

but im finally here and that feels good to say. i found happiness. 

im happy. 

- seth

ooc: * = links to the chapter, where seth goes more into detail with his college experiences, addiction, and past relationships. 

[florablume]

Character Development Questions

Part 1: The Basics

What is your full name? Flora Elizabeth Blume

Where and when were you born? San Francisco, California on April 4th 1978

Who are/were your parents? (Know their names, occupations, personalities, etc.) My mother is Joanne Blume, a retired teacher who isn’t ever afraid to say exactly what she thinks. She has little to no filter, which has made for many an awkward conversation in the past. My father is Richard Blume, a retired accountant. He’s proud, probably too proud sometimes, and occasionally outspoken. Apparently I’m the most like him out of his three daughters.

Do you have any siblings? What are/were they like? I have two younger sisters - Pippa and Sam. I get on with Pippa the most, probably because our personalities don’t clash so much. We’ve always been able to open up to each other about a lot of things. Sam and I butt heads a lot and we always have done. I’ve always just assumed it’s because I’m the oldest and she’s the youngest, but who knows.

Where do you live now, and with whom? Describe the place and the person/people. I live on Manhattan’s Upper East Side in New York City, with Henry and our son Finley. Henry and I have been through a lot together - we’re not married but we act like we are. The apartment is Henry’s and we’ve lived there as a family for about a year almost. 

What is your occupation? I’m a Nurse Practitioner

Write a full physical description of yourself. You might want to consider factors such as: height, weight, race, hair and eye colour, style of dress, and any tattoos, scars, or distinguishing marks. I’m about five foot one, so not exactly blessed with height. I don’t make a habit of weighing myself, but I’d say I’m about average for a woman of my height. I’m caucasian with brown hair and brown eyes, and a few freckles all over my skin. I enjoy a floral print, and I’m probably more comfortable in dresses and skirts than trousers, although at work I don’t have much of a choice. No tattoos, but I do have a couple of piercings - ears and my naval (don’t ask). I have a small scar in my right eyebrow, and a couple of marks on my back from past scrapes.

To which social class do you belong? If you’d asked me this a year ago, I would’ve said working to middle class, but I’m not too sure any more. 

Do you have any allergies, diseases, or other physical weaknesses? No allergies as far as I’m aware. No diseases or physical weaknesses - I’m in (near) perfect shape.

Are you right- or left-handed? Right-handed

What does your voice sound like? Like my voice? I don’t really know how to describe it. (Cue Henry shouting “whiny” in the distance)

What words and/or phrases do you use very frequently? Too many terms of endearment probably. I use them a lot at work and that’s bled into my home life. I probably roll my eyes way too much as well.

What do you have in your pockets? Nothing because I don’t have any. You can thank the manufacturers of women’s clothing for that.

Do you have any quirks, strange mannerisms, annoying habits, or other defining characteristics? As far as I’m aware, no. You’re probably better asking Henry or Fin this question, although I dread what that answer would be. 

Part 2: Growing Up

How would you describe your childhood in general? Wonderful. I had a really happy childhood and I know how lucky I was to have two very loving parents. They couldn’t have done any more for us than they did. 

What is your earliest memory? The day Sam was born. I remember us going to visit my mom in the hospital, and my dad left me in charge of Pip while he went to get my mom some flowers. I remember feeling so grown up being an older sister a second time.

How much schooling have you had? All of it - all the way to undergrad at college at least anyway. 

Did you enjoy school? Yeah, I liked it. I enjoyed learning a lot when I was a kid, and I still do. 

Where did you learn most of your skills and other abilities? Through working. Studying nursing is one thing, but it’s a whole different ball game once you start on the job. You learn things that can’t be taught in a classroom.

While growing up, did you have any role models? If so, describe them. Probably my dad. He was always so hardworking and I knew I wanted to be like that when I grew up. Sometimes I thought he put a little too much into his work, and he could’ve spent more time with us, but I suppose all he wanted to do was provide for his family and I respect that.

While growing up, how did you get along with the other members of your family? I got on pretty well with most of my family. Sam was the only one I really butted heads with. We’re just like polar opposites in some ways, but then we’re both really stubborn too. She thinks I boss her around too much, and I think she needs to take more responsibility for herself. We’re still like this with each other now.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? I honestly can’t remember. Probably a teacher because my mom was one, and it was the only job I’d ever really come into contact with. 

As a child, what were your favourite activities? I played with dolls a lot, and me and my sisters would always make up games together. Embarrassingly, we’d sometimes make up dance routines to show my parents. Thank god there’s no video evidence of that.

As a child, what kinds of personality traits did you display? Bossiness was the main one, which I dispute to this day, but everyone tells me I’m wrong. I was also pretty protective of my sisters too, always helping them whenever they fell over or got into any kind of scrape. I didn’t like seeing them hurt.

As a child, were you popular? Who were your friends, and what were they like? Not really, no. I had a few close friends when I was a kid, but I think Pip was definitely the popular one out of the three of us. The friends I had lasted all the way through to high school though - Lillian, Maggie and Kathryn. I still see them every now and again. 

When and with whom was your first kiss? I think I was about thirteen or something. It was with some guy at school that I thought I liked. It was awful, just like a first kiss is meant to be because neither of you has a clue what you’re doing. 

Are you a virgin? If not, when and with whom did you lose your virginity? No. I don’t remember a lot about my first time if I’m completely honest. I was at college and I just wanted to get it out of the way so I was pretty drunk when it actually happened. I don’t even remember the guy’s name...

Part 3: Past Influences

What do you consider the most important event of your life so far? Giving birth to Finley.

Who has had the most influence on you? Probably Henry and Fin, both for very different reasons. I changed a lot after I first met Henry, and becoming a mom has probably changed me the most throughout my whole life.

What do you consider your greatest achievement? Raising Finley in a safe and stable home, and being able to watch him grow up.

What is your greatest regret? Not telling Henry how much I loved him before he left all those years ago. If I could change one thing in my life, that would be it.

What is the most evil thing you have ever done? I don’t think I’ve ever done anything evil. Does elbowing Henry in the balls to get out of watching a horror film count? If so, then that.

Do you have a criminal record of any kind? A small one, from stupid behaviour in my twenties. 

When was the time you were the most frightened? When they first took me into the House. I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared in my whole life.

What is the most embarrassing thing ever to happen to you? I can think of a million embarrassing things that have happened to me - most involving Henry.

If you could change one thing from your past, what would it be, and why? Borrowing money from a loan shark while I was in college was a very stupid thing to do. But then, if I hadn’t done that stupid thing I might never have met Henry, so I probably wouldn’t change that. I’d change the moment when I decided not to tell him that I loved him. 

What is your best memory? I have two - the first time I ever held Fin, and the year that Henry decided to spend Christmas in Florida instead of with his family. 

What is your worst memory? There are way too many to recall from living in the House. We’d be here all day.

Part 4: Beliefs And Opinions

Are you basically optimistic or pessimistic? Optimist.

What is your greatest fear? Losing Henry or Fin.

What are your religious views? I’m Christian, but non-practicing.

What are your political views? Liberal.

What are your views on sex? It’s great?

Are you able to kill? Under what circumstances do you find killing to be acceptable or unacceptable? My gut response is no, but if someone put anyone I care about in danger then that answer would quickly change to yes. I wouldn’t ever say it’s acceptable, but I’d do anything to protect the people I love.

In your opinion, what is the most evil thing any human being could do? I mean, murder is the obvious answer.

Do you believe in the existence of soul mates and/or true love? Sort of, I think. I believe in love and I think that’s enough to believe in. 

What do you believe makes a successful life? Honesty, loyalty and having a strong and loving family around you, whether you come from one or you have to build your own from scratch.

How honest are you about your thoughts and feelings (i.e. do you hide your true self from others, and in what way)? I’ve been told that I’m a bad liar, so I’d say I’m pretty honest about most things.

Do you have any biases or prejudices? Not any more, I don’t think so. Well. Maybe a little. Some rich people are still snooty and up their own asses, the Dunnes excluded.

Is there anything you absolutely refuse to do under any circumstances? Why do you refuse to do it? I can think of one thing that I keep refusing to do, but I might be slowly coming around to it. I don’t know. I can’t decide. GAH.

Who or what, if anything, would you die for (or otherwise go to extremes for)? Henry and Fin, without question.

Part 5: Relationships With Others

In general, how do you treat others (politely, rudely, by keeping them at a distance, etc.)? Does your treatment of them change depending on how well you know them, and if so, how? I’d like to think I treat everyone politely. I wouldn’t ever want to make anyone feel uncomfortable (unless your name is Jen Breslin).

Who is the most important person in your life, and why? Finley, because he’s my son. Henry and I have to put him first all the time.

Who is the person you respect the most, and why? My mom. She’s put up with my dad for over forty years and she probably deserves a medal for that. She’s also so easy-going about everything and I don’t know how she does it. 

Who are your friends? Do you have a best friend? Describe these people. I still keep in touch with my old school friends. We don’t see each other as often as we’d like because we all live in different states now, but we try. I have a few friends at work who I’ll sometimes socialise with, but I wouldn’t say I have a ‘best’ friend.

Do you have a spouse or significant other? If so, describe this person. I do, Henry - very attractive and mostly very annoying but I love him a lot. We spend most of our lives bickering over stupid things but that’s kind of our thing now. I wouldn’t change what we have for anything else.

Have you ever been in love? If so, describe what happened. Already in love and it’s going pretty well. 

What do you look for in a potential lover? I have no idea how to answer this question without me just describing Henry. 

How close are you to your family? Pretty close. I don’t see them nearly as much as I’d like to because we live at opposite ends of the country, but we see each other as much as we can.

Have you started your own family? If so, describe them. If not, do you want to? Why or why not? Yeah, it’s just me, Henry and Fin at the moment. Not that we’re planning to expand any more.

Who would you turn to if you were in desperate need of help? I’m the idiot who chooses not to turn to anyone because she’s stubborn and thinks she can handle it. I would probably turn to Henry though.

Do you trust anyone to protect you? Who, and why? Henry. He’s done it in the past and I’ve never had a reason not to trust him. 

If you died or went missing, who would miss you? My whole family, I hope.

Who is the person you despise the most, and why? I don’t despise anyone. Jen Breslin.

Do you tend to argue with people, or avoid conflict? I’ll be honest, I tend to argue. I’m not always very good at avoiding conflict because I like to make my opinion known. Because, let’s be honest, I’m usually right.

Do you tend to take on leadership roles in social situations? That depends. I won’t dub myself leader if I have no idea what I’m doing. Surprisingly I’m good at taking orders sometimes.

Do you like interacting with large groups of people? Why or why not? Depends on the people. I’ll do it if I have to, and I’ll always be polite, but I don’t like having to stand and listen to someone drone on about something I’m not interested in (which is what most of Henry’s mom’s dinner parties have involved...) If it’s family then I’m happy to be in a big group of them.

Do you care what others think of you? Unfortunately, yeah, I do. I know I shouldn’t care.

Part 6: Likes And Dislikes

What is/are your favourite hobbies and pastimes? I like gardening, although I don’t have anywhere to do that in New York. I also like reading, going for walks, watching movies, dancing badly to whatever’s on the radio.

What is your most treasured possession? A necklace my mom gave me when I was sixteen that had belonged to my grandma. I don’t really wear it much because I’m so scared of losing it or breaking it.

What is your favourite colour? Pink

What is your favourite food? Lemon cheesecake

What, if anything, do you like to read? I like thriller novels, and I love a good romance one too.

Do you smoke, drink, or use drugs? If so, why? Do you want to quit? Don’t smoke, occasionally drink, and I’ve never taken drugs. I’ve never been interested in smoking or drugs, and I can definitely say that I never will be.

How do you spend a typical Saturday night? Sprawled out on top of Henry, forcing him to watch Dirty Dancing for the hundredth time. If Finley is out then we’d probably spend all night having sex, I’m not gonna lie.

What makes you laugh? Stupid things like people falling over - as long as they don’t actually get hurt. Successfully winding Henry up makes me laugh to.

What would you do if you had insomnia and had to find something to do to amuse yourself? I’d probably be boring and just read a book or do a puzzle or something. 

How do you deal with stress? I’d like to think I deal with it pretty well. My job is quite stress-filled, but I try to stay as calm as possible. Freaking out isn’t going to do anyone any good.

Are you spontaneous, or do you always need to have a plan? A bit of both. I like to be organised in life, but I don’t want to plan every second of every day out. I need some spontaneity for life to be exciting.

What are your pet peeves? Anything unhygienic is a no-no for me. Like people who don’t wash their hands? Gross.

Part 7: Self Images And Etc.

What is your greatest strength as a person? I like to think I’m quite resilient and adaptable.

What is your greatest weakness? Always putting everyone else before myself.

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? To be a little less argumentative and stubborn.

Are you generally introverted or extroverted? I actually think I’m a healthy mix of both. Maybe a tad more extroverted.

Are you generally organised or messy? Always organised.

Do you like yourself? Mostly, yeah.

What goal do you most want to accomplish in your lifetime? I’ve sort of already achieved my main goal in life. I always wanted to have a family of my own and I have that. If it got a little bigger then I wouldn’t mind that, but I’m not sure if that will happen.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years? Dealing with a terrible teenager.

If you could choose, how would you want to die? Peacefully, in my sleep, when I’m very very old.

What is the one thing for which you would most like to be remembered after your death? Being a good mom. Helping people as much as I could. Drinking way too much coffee.

What three words best describe your personality? Affectionate, protective, intelligent.

What three words would others probably use to describe you? Stubborn, dramatic, smothering.

[danishprince]

redid this 92 questions meme from 4 years ago for Fun and Profit because i like seeing how much i’ve changed over the years. not tagging anyone, but if you want to answer the questions, go wild

what was your…

last beverage? woter

last phone call? a confidential call to a research lab at my university because they’re studying alcohol use in young adults and wanted to know if i fit the criteria to be in the study (i do, so i get money for it fuck yeah)

last text message? i told my dad that our neighbors got two of their trees cut down and his response was “Wwwow”

last song listened to? currently listening to “evening prayer aka justice” by ezra furman!

last time you cried? maybe like saturday or sunday? not really sure

have you ever…

dated someone twice? nah

been cheated on? don’t believe so

kissed someone and regretted it? eh i’ve had a few kisses that i look back and kinda cringe at because we were really drunk or i was Not Into Them or whatever, but actually, truly regret? no. 

lost someone special? it’s been awhile since anyone close to me died. my maternal grandma (and step-grandpa) are getting pretty old/less healthy though so i’m like starting to already feel weird snatches of anticipatory grief for that which :/

been depressed? i’d say so yeah, on occasion

been drunk and vomited? fun story i briefly thought i was allergic to alcohol freshman year because i’d throw up every time i drank. TURNS OUT however i just was a dumbass who didn’t know how to hold their liquor

list three favourite colors: hot pink, teal, black

in the last year, have you…

made a new friend? yes indeed

fallen out of love? cannot say that i have

laughed so hard there were tears? oh constantly. though i do that regularly because of the dumbest shit, so that’s not, like, an anomaly

met someone who changed you? YES the professor of my psych lab whom i ADORE

found out who your true friends are? yeah, or at least i feel way more comfortable and grounded in my friendships than i did. which is cool!

found out someone was talking about you? i overheard my coworker at our (drama-filled, my god) orientation leader job bitching about some other coworkers, but then what she said about me was “yeah katie’s pretty cool” so i was like :) :) neat

kissed anyone on your facebook “friend list”? hell yeah babey

general questions.

how many of your facebook friends do you know in person? the vast majority. there’s a few Spelling Bee Kids who’ve just added me for Spelling Bee Clout that i don’t know irl, but otherwise i don’t really add people i don’t know

how many siblings do you have? 1 (one) 16-year-old bröther

do you have any pets? 1 (one) very old round guinea pig named hamlet

do you want to change your name? eh not really. i’m not, like, obsessed with it, but it’s a decent name and i have no urge to change it

what did you do for your last birthday? i turned 21, but it was a monday, so i went to a restaurant with three of my friends and ordered 1 (one) Alcoholic Beverage. then later that week i went to a coffee bar that serves alcohol later at night with some of my other friends and had more Alcoholic Beverages there

when did you wake up today? 9:30ish

what were you doing at midnight last night? being asleep lmao

something you cannot wait for: going to arizona and later going back to kentucky for senior year of college (holy fuck)

when did you last see your mother? like 15 minutes ago, she’s doing laundry or something

what is one thing you wish you could change about your life? where 2 begin. uhh i wish i was more naturally outgoing instead of having to consciously turn on my Extrovert Persona in certain scenarios and end up getting super drained from it. i also wish i knew what the fuck i was doing with my life but i think that’s just, like, The Eternal Twenty-Something Mood (at least i hope it is dear god)

what are you listening to right now? the song “rodeo” by lil nas x, which PERSONALLY said gay rights

have you ever talked to a person named tom? yes multiple, and every tom(my) i have hated (sorry if you’re a tom and you’re a decent human bean)

what’s getting on your nerves right now? i have to do a bunch of important life and school stuff but i am procrastinating it! so i guess...my brain

most visited webpages: twitter, tumblr, discord, instagram, the dear prudence advice column on slate dot com lmfao

blood type: o+ i believe, but i am too smol to donate blood so i do not know for sure :(

nicknames: some of my friends refer to me over text as k8e and i love it tbh. also katie itself is a nickname

relationship status: single but like, kind of a thot

zodiac sign: virgo sun cancer moon cancer rising 

pronoun: they/them but she/her is also fine

primary school: private lutheran school

middle school: the same private lutheran school

high school: public school

college: university of kentucky for undergrad and also a concurrent grad program (long story). maybe more grad school???? somewhere else??? or not???? I Don’t Know

hair colour: honey blonde

long or short: hair? just got it cut short in january and it was the best decision i ever made

height: 5’6"

do you have a crush on someone? define “crush”

what do you like about yourself? i’m a good listener and writer and also sometimes my Funney Joaks land

do you have any tattoos? nah. i am afear’d i’d regret it

are you right- or left-handed? right-handed

first surgery: some ear procedure thing in kindergarten. if that doesn’t count i got half my wisdom teeth out the summer before college and the other half the summer after freshman year (but was technically awake for both) 

first piercing: ear piercings when i turned sixteen

first best friend: uhhhhh my friend stephanie from home-preschool? or this girl named grace who was my kindergarten best friend but then moved away

first sport you joined: i believe dance classes when i was but a little peanut

first vacation: idk? we went to san diego when i was two i think? don’t remember it though

first pair of trainers/sneakers: good question. had some boss-ass light-up shoes once 

right now i am…

eating: popped corn

drinking: woter 

about to: hopefully write this [bernie sanders voice] damn email, but who is to say : - )

listening to: my liked songs on spotify (currently “i think i’m going to kill myself” by elton john)

interested in having children? if that’s how the proverbial cookie proverbially crumbles, yeah. that idea seems really far away even though i know high school classmates with kids.

interested in getting married? yes, but if and only if i meet the right person

ready for a career or have one? [sobbing]

which is better…?

lips or eyes? eyes generally, but lips are also Good

hugs or kisses? k i s s e s. i lov to kiss. love hugs too though if it’s with friends

shorter or taller? actually being a similar height to me is optimal! 

older or younger? mmm i tend to subconsciously lean older, but younger is fine too

romantic or spontaneous? the wording seems to imply that “romantic” and “spontaneous” are opposites which just isn’t true. both?? 

nice stomach or nice arms? arms i guess?

sensitive or loud? my first impulse was “loud” but like....loud in that i tend to gravitate to people who are more extroverted than me, but not in terms of being overtly annoying or demanding.

hook-up or relationship? :^) judging by my History(tm) it’d be committed hook-up, lol. but like either is good. am not about sex with a stranger though.

troublemaker or hesitant? troublemaker ~vibes~ but not actually, like, a danger in any way. being hesitant can be cute, but i myself am often pretty hesitant so it can become an Awkwardness Standoff more often than not

have you ever…

kissed a stranger? no, but came damn close in greece

drunk hard liquor? oh yeah lmao

lost glasses or contacts? i’m sure i’ve lost a pair of contacts somewhere in there

had sex on the first date? depends on your definition of “sex”, and also on your definition of “date” really, but also Yeah

broken someone’s heart? i hope not, but i think maybe :/

had your own heart broken? ....ish?

been arrested? nope

turned someone down? yyyyyyep

cried when someone died? not in my memory? though i might have

fallen for a friend? :^) haha oh yeah

do you believe in…

yourself? i try oh my god do i try

miracles? i think

love at first sight? nah. i think intrigue at first sight is a thing, or lust at first sight, or even just a bizarre extraterrestrial sense of Knowing, but real genuine love? nahhhh son you gotta know someone deeply for that. mortifying ordeal of being known and all that

heaven? mm yeah i’d say so

santa claus? no, and i haven’t for a hot minute there

kissing on the first date? lol yeah kiss away

angels? fuck yeah sometimes they’re circle things with 56879879677 eyes and they’re cool af

well in review i have indeed changed quite a bit from myself four years ago! in summary i am more of a thot and also drink alcohol. idk. my answers then ~seemed~ more sure of myself in terms of, like, this façade of being chill all the time, but less sure re: how i related to other people. all my angst on those questions was about school instead of general personhood. 4 years ago i also definitely /remember/ being insecure (at the time) about the fact that i’d never kissed anyone/etc., but my answers themselves don’t look that way. (sidenote being insecure about that kind of thing really isn’t worth it, everyone does life at their own pace.) whereas now i feel more open actively discussing my insecurities (see above re: future plans/etc.) instead of just boxing them down and pretending they don’t exist. as a high schooler i thought i was bad at being a person, and i feel like i’m a lot better at being authentic with myself (and ergo, being a person) now. though of course there is no right way to be a person which is something i still frequently have to remind myself.

ANYWAY yeah that was a fun waste of an hour feel free to use these questions for yrself

[thelonelytraveler11]

Is this really the best I can do?!

It's been three years since I've done any form of research. I haven't worked in almost three years. Just in case anyone's wondering, yes, I filled out job applications (a lot, like ~250 before I gave up). For the past couple years, I've been living off my savings, the little bit of money I get from my family, and the little bit of money I get from having part time jobs. My work experience since dropping out has been pretty dismal (on average), I haven't been able to hold down a job that gave an appreciable amount of money for longer than 3 months at a time without being fired or being so miserable that I just said "fuck it" and quit.

I understand the concern some may have. You may consider it my fault for being unemployed. Quitting a job that I'm miserable while doing may seem irrational or irresponsible, but speaking as a person who spent almost the entirety of his college years being miserable, I can say with all honesty that being broke is better than being miserable. I envy those that can’t seem to comprehend my way of thinking, because that probably means they have a very good life. I wouldn't want to work in an environment that negatively affects my emotional state for 4 decades anyways. Having disposable income isn’t more important than my well being. Having a job I actually enjoy doing is very important to me because I don't have many sources of happiness in my life.

I'm kind of a loner. I don't have a strong relationship with any of my relatives and I don't have friends anymore (and even more troubling, I don't care to have those types of relationships anymore). The only potential source of happiness is my job. I don't foresee me failing in love or developing a close relationship with anyone. If the current trend continues, I think its more probable that it doesn’t happen.

I feel numb most of the time and when I do feel something, I'm usually thinking about my college days and that something is usually anger. It honestly was my biggest regret, going to the University of Illinois. Sometimes I wished I never went to college. Literally the only thing that was even remotely good about my college experience was my grades, everything else sucked. Looking back, I wish I went back to working at CVS after I graduated from HS.

In the alternate timeline, I probably would have been better off in the long run (very little stress, no debt, live rent free at my mom's house for a couple of years after graduation while working a presumably full time job which would enable me to save up a fair amount of cash before moving out). Instead, I came away with nothing. My college education was completely worthless, I reaped no benefits from being a degree recipient. All I did was waste 7 years of my life and thousands of other people’s dollars studying stuff that ultimately wouldn't matter. If I were a benefactor for the UIUC department of chemistry, I would be pissed to hear my story because that means my money isn't being put to good use, especially if I added into one of the scholarships that was awarded to me.

So, I know what your wondering, why am I writing this post? Well, I was trying to get ride time with CFD and I called for a specific person that wasn't in. Someone took a message and wrote my name down as Joel Dennison. Dennison was the last name of the NMR guy at UCI. That got me thinking about my college days and how I hated basically everyone. I caught myself looking through emails and for the most part, the more I read, the more I remembered, the more enraged I got. Now that's one sure fire way to put me in a bad mood, get me thinking about the bad ol' days. I bet many of the people I went to grad school with are enjoying their careers, while I was completely forgotten (and if they're not enjoying them, well at least they have them).

I’ve always wondered why were the other students so complicit? Is racism really that prevalent? Is there something else going on? See, it's one thing to not say anything while they were still students because it runs the risk of them being treated like I was treated. But to not even offer a helping hand even after their careers were established, knowing what they know, is un-fucking-real.

I never really felt welcomed in chemistry. People seemed to be more in love with the idea of me. I noticed the longer I stayed, the worse I was treated. At U of I, it was .... kinda bad. I experienced a form a discrimination where I would have written essentially the same answer as my lighter counterparts but received lower grades (slightly lower, but still). People assumed I did well in certain classes because the professor "liked me" (pretty sure no one at U of I liked me much). People also made statements that are crazy racist and then tried to pass them off as jokes. I fucking hated life in Champaign-Urbana.

SIDE NOTE: the following story doesn't necessarily reflect the chemists, but it does represent a subset of the student body at U of I. So, I'm sitting in the cafeteria with three dudes I already knew and some guy from the next table looks over to me and says "Sorry, if I offended you". I calmly replied "what did you say?" And Oh....My....God.... the look of utter fear was plastered all over his face. I said, "What did you say?", again, calmly. I can not stress enough that I was visibly calm throughout this entire situation. And then I noticed he was shivering, I figured I would warm up a lil bit by using my hot ass breath, so I repeated the question louder and slower (you know, to give the guy's body time to come to thermal equilibrium), again.......calmly. He was still frozen in fear. So now I am mentally gearing up to jump across this table to snatch this little boy's neck out from under him. And then something miraculous happened, my tunnel vision broke down and I realized someone was calling me. It was Jon (one of the kids I was sitting with) telling me to drop it...so I did......so, yeah, that's the story of how I almost got kicked out of U of I for snatching the neck out from under some little white kid during sophomore year. 


But there was one instance of me being the butt of racist jokes in chemistry that I can remember. Then UIUC grad student, John Overcash (who I believed worked for Ken Suslick), made mention of me "cooking crack up in the kitchen" on more than one occasion. Apparently, since I was a black chem major (that specialized in organic chemistry) I must have been a drug dealer beforehand. Or maybe he thought I was a drug dealer then....who knows...

To make matters worst, people have used the stuff other people made up to put themselves a head of me. Senior year I had an interview with eli lilly. My interview was at 9 am and there was one person interviewing before me at 8 am. The 8 am slot was taken by one Joseph Cullen (a fellow undergrad). During the end of his interview , I could vaguely hear what was said, but it sounded like Cullen told the interviewers that I was a drug dealer. The door opens up, the interviewer shoots me a look and goes into the room where my interviewers were and talks to them. Meanwhile Cullen walks past me. I give him a thumbs up and he walks away chuckling to himself. These are not good signs. I can’t say for certain that these people really believed I was a drug dealer, but their behavior suggested it. It was their reaction to me saying the phrase "nice white crystalline product", that’s what suggested it. I was describing the physical characteristics of the product from a reaction I ran and it just so happen to be a white crystalline solid (...smh). What I want to know why were these people so quick to believe Cullen? Yes, what Cullen said could be true (which it wasn't) but couldn't it also be true that he's trying to give himself a better chance of getting a job by undercutting the competition?

I wish I got a job offer as an undergrad. I honestly didn't want to go to grad school, but I had no other choice. Visiting grad schools was a whole ordeal, I was told in one way or another that I wasn’t welcomed ... at every school. At Scripps I was told explicitly that I wasn’t good enough to be there by complete strangers (how exactly would they know given that they never assessed my ability to think ... who knows). At Indiana University, I was placed in a hotel room by myself because they heard I slept naked. At UCI, I was told that I wouldn’t make it pass my first year (again, by complete strangers). At Caltech, I was told I didn’t belong because I was a drug dealer (or that I look like a drug dealer, apparently).

Now, I ask you, how do drug dealers look exactly? What are they’re defining characteristics? I ask because if you asked someone who lived in Champaign-Urbana for four years to imagine what a drug dealer looks like, they might imagine a srcawny white boy in a frat (not someone that looks like me). What makes the Caltech visit even weirder was that Prof. Sarah Reisman was just standing by, staring at me while I was being told I didn’t belong (by the help, you know, the people who was serving drinks). It was like she was trying to read my facial expressions to get a sense of what type of person I was (or am). Or was she using the help as a proxy to express her own thoughts (I’m not sure)? Was she waiting for me to “defend myself”? 
How would I be able to do that exactly?

SIDE NOTE: it’s impossible to defend yourself when there’s no evidence for or against whatever accusations there may be. It all comes down to what people choose to believe. The help has already chosen to believe I’m a drug dealer (or at least look like one) and I’m willing to bet there’s really nothing I can really do about.

No matter how I analyze the situation, Reisman’s behavior does not reflect positively on her as a person. I’m not sure if she knows this, but she was the primary reason I had to not go to Caltech. I found her behavior to be very off-putting and I got the sense that she didn’t really want me to go to school there. On top of that there was talk of her wanting to have (oral) sex. 


DISCLAIMER: I am effectively asexual, I don’t have sex ... with anyone ... or anything (yes, I actually needed to say both).

Now, I didn’t believe the talk when I first heard it because I thought there was no way a self-respecting, competent professor would admit to wanting to engage in a sexual relationship with a perspective student ... this is what I choose to think. However, the more I heard of her desires to have (oral) sex, the more I believed it. But I never fully accepted the rumors as the truth until my first year at UCI. Reisman came to Irvine for a talk and as always almost all the Organic students showed up. Before the event, I was sitting at the small table with another grad student in my year, her name was Beth R. (I don’t know how to spell her last name and I’m not going to try to google it). Beth ended up mentioning how pretty Reisman looked .... I “mmmhmmm”ed her. I could hear the chatter going on behind me, Reisman seemed mildly disappointed that I didn’t agree. Beth soothed her ill feelings by saying that I didn’t disagree. After the event, I was talking to Prof. Scott Rychnovsky and Reisman came up in the conversion. This was the final nail in the coffin that made me believe the rumors were true. It wasn’t the fact that he said she would’ve blown me, it was the fact that he said it soooo enthusiastically. He was as enthused as a person could possibly be in a professional/academic setting. No one should that enthused by the thought of a man getting his dick sucked as much as Rychnovsky was by the thought of Reisman putting my dick in her mouth, no one. It was kinda weird. 


The thought this woman hocking loogies on my dick tip, and imagining the sensation of warm saliva slowly rolling down my shaft (as I quote lines from the movie, Shaft (the Samuel L. Jackson version...obviously)) as I knock my head back, praying to god that I don’t come away from this situation with paper cuts (she has thin lips) just to look back down after noticing she paused just so she could fill the waves from my pulsating erection and make eye contact as she goes deeper and increases the pace eventually moving to the point where she starts straggling my balls and moaning like Lady Gaga singing a lullaby to baby while stroking my hard cock until I cum for her as Nicole Nava sits beside her while taking notes shouldn’t be even remotely amusing.....TO ANYONE...EVER!!!!!! But apparently to Rychnovsky, it was. It was at that moment I never wanted to be affliated with Caltech as long as Reisman was there. If Caltech and Illinois were the only two places that offered me jobs after finishing the PhD, I’d have to change careers.


Okay, so here’s the thing. I don’t really view professors as people. When I was a student, they were more like encyclopedias that could talk to me. They simply took the form of a human, kinda like a barbie doll. They’re anatomically incorrect, they lack genitalia, so they don’t have a gender. I honestly, believed this. One time, during senior year, I walked in the third floor bathroom in RAL and I saw Prof Steven Zimmerman taking piss. My face immediately screws all the way up, my inside voice says “How is he standing up and taking a piss when he doesn’t have a dick?”.....I thought that....I literally thought that....I shit you not. Just so you know, it wasn’t just Zimmerman, it was every professor. The women are doubly dickless, in my mind Suzanne Blum was like —(Mia Khalifa) because she has negative two dicks inside of her at all times.

DISCLAIMER: just so we’re clear, I’m NOT alluding to the fact that Blum has to get people to agree to have sex with her. Nor am I alluding to the assertion she’ll probably be nothing more than an afterthought for literally anyone. I’m merely trying to stress the fact that I don’t think of professors as people, but as encyclopedias that can talk to me.

I was made to feel unwlecomed at every school I visited. Why? Well, you'll have to ask them. I can honestly say that by the time graduation (from U of I) came around I didn't believe that i would have a successful career as a chemist, but I put everything into this so I couldn't just leave...

Grad school was even worst because on top of being the black kid, I was also the social pariah. The other students did a real good of making me feel unwelcomed. So much so that after two weeks of living in Irvine I stopped trying to make friends. No one seemed interested in being cool with me (I'm basing this off people's behavior ... obviously). And if some of them were, the way they showed it was so unique that I couldn't even recognize it as a sincere attempt to get my attention.

I also experienced some the same stuff I did when I was at U of I. Namely, instructors not giving me what I earned. In Dave VanVraken’s class I always received the second highest score on the exams. The really curious thing is that no one knows who received the top score. Once, when I asked to see the printed out distribution, the TA refused to show me (why?). I'm willing to bet that single point ahead of me was a dummy point. In Liz Jarvo’s class, when the first exam came around, we found out the high score was a 83. Who got the high score?...no one knows, but when I received my test the number 38 was written on (Also note I just so happen to get the same score as the other kid from U of I). At first, I was puzzled and glanced over to Peg (the TA). She sees my score, turns to Jarvo and says "he knows he didn't get that low". While I don't remember Jarvo’s exact words, she stated in some way that I would come to her and argue my case for a higher grade. So, here's the thing. I shouldn't have to defend myself or argue with you to ensure that I'm treated like everyone else. It should be a given. 


From what I hear the reason why I was treated this way has something to do with them not wanting me to "talk stuff" to the other students. 


Okay, so where is this coming from? I ask because I’ve been me long enough to know their opinion of what I’m like isn’t actually based off me. If they actually talked to my fellow classmates, the most common thing you’d probably hear is that I’m quiet. So either these people are just making up stuff to justify treating me how they want to treat me or my classmates are liars. I’m not really the type to talk about my grades (or really anything) unless the topic is explicitly brought up in conversation (and this is assuming I feel like talking at all). You can dress it up however you want, but treating me like a second class student for any reason solely reflects poorly on you (it gives no indication as to what I’m like). There were instances like this in half the classes I took. Some, admittedly were a smaller deal than others. In Vanderwal’s class I got marked off once because I didn’t draw both arrows in a mechanism that included a homolytic cleavage. For those that don’t know, if a homolytic cleavage occurs and you show one electron going in one direction, it is assumed that the other electron goes in the opposite direction and therefore does not need to be explicitly stated (minor, but mildly annoying). In polymer chemistry (taught by Aaron Esser-Khan), we had one assignment where we needed to propose something that wasn’t in the primary literature. I proposed a polymerization based off a derivative of the Hiyama coupling. Khan’s critique was that since it wasn’t already in the primary literature, it probably wasn’t a good idea ... really?! And don’t even get me started on spec because that spec TA was sketchy as fuck. He intentionally told me the wrong due date for a homework assignment and I’m pretty sure he shaved a couple points off one of my exams...

Okay, so these experiences are only a subset of the shitty things I experienced as a UCI student. But do you know what made life at UCI worst than life at U of I? My research advisor (Suzanne Blum)....and to a slightly lesser extent my fellow group members. Over the years I grew to hate them. I was lied about, I had a homework assigns hidden behind water coolers (Darius Faizi), I’ve had the nitrogen lines removed from air sensitive reactions (Darius Faizi, Suzanne Blum), I had products from reactions switch out for reagent alcohol (it’s a mixture of ethanol, methanol, and isopropanol) (Josh Hirner), I’ve had septums removed from reaction mixtures (Josh Hirner), I’ve had people try to placate me with sex (Katrina Roth), I’ve had people try to use the fact that I was in an agitated state to get something they wanted (Katrina Roth), I’ve had people turn on the indoor lights in my car in an effort to drain my battery while I’m allowing them to use my car to practice driving so they can get a U.S. driver’s license (Muhammed Al-Amin), I’ve had people ask questions just so they can not listen to the answer (Chao Zheng, Drew), I’ve experienced asking people for help just so they can not even try to help brainstorm what the answer could be (Darius Faizi, Kim Tu), I helped others brain storm shortcomings for a proposal, just to catch an attitude when they realize I didn’t catch everything the first time around (Quinn Easter). 


SIDE NOTE: To provide context, Quinn asked me to look through a synthetic route in his proposal that he was intending to present in his advancement to candidacy exam. There was something I didn’t immediately see but did bring up during a group when he was giving a practice presentation. He became visibly upset and mentioned he thought I was trying to make him look bad. If I was really trying to make you look bad, I wouldn’t have told you anything, so that you would’ve made the same mistakes when it actually mattered. Quinn, you’re an idiot.  


l’ve had people call me after I already dropped out and given up on chemistry from a redacted telephone number claiming to be an official representative of UCI calling me in an effort to get my address (Suzanne Blum, Ashley Davis), and I’ve had the experience where I ask for information pertinent to group website maintenance and they act like I’m hitting on them (Adena).

SIDE NOTE: 
This is something that always amused/offended me, having  someone assume I’m attracted to them because I acknowledged their existence. It’s funny because because they have the audacity ... but it’s also offensive because the operating assumption is that I don’t have standards, which couldn’t be further from the truth. (They seem to make a lot of faulty assumptions)

What was this experience suppose to teach me? How was I supposed to become a better person or scientist because of my affiliation with the group/university? Me coming to Irvine and working for Blum was a total waste of my time. I’m not entirely sure what her deal was, but it seemed she had a preconceived notion of who I was. No matter what type of relationship we have (or suppose to have) this will cause problems where there shouldn’t be. 


Is the request that someone’s opinion of you is actually based on you too much to ask for? Because I feel it’s a basic request that most people should be able to easily do. The contemptuous treatment did subside with time (mostly because I avoided talking to other students when ever possible) but it never really stopped. Why did it start to begin with? I’m willing to bet the only things they don’t like about me has everything to do with me reacting to the way they treat me.  Again, I have to ask, is racism really that prevalent?


Then one day, I started getting so fed up with life that I decided I needed an escape, even if it’s only for a couple weeks. So, I started planning a trip to Europe. I worked hard in the weeks coming up to the trip. I was trying to finish my entire project before I left (sadly, I didn’t, but I tried). Things were looking on the up and up. Before I left, Blum even said I was meeting her expectations, that was the nicest thing she ever said to me (it was the nicest thing anyone at UCI has ever said to me). I went off on my trip, and during the middle of it I received an email essentially telling me that my time at UCI was finished. Why? I still don’t know. 3 years later and I still don’t know why my career was ended before it was even given a chance to start.  It’s hard to move on with your life when you don’t have closure. It’s really hard to move on when you still have to live with consequences of other people’s actions.

 SIDE NOTE: I got the sense sometimes that Suzanne Blum did not really care about her job 100% of the time. I’m not entirely sure what to make of it. It’s like, either she truly didn’t understand the importance of her role (as the leader of a research group) or she truly doesn’t give a shit. Either way, she doesn’t deserve to be in the position she’s in. 


I still remember my last day in Irvine. It was bitter sweet. I was so happy to finally get to leave but also a bit anxious because I knew that the thousands of hours I spent studying and doing research was time wasted and it would never amount to anything. I knew I wasn’t going to get a job with my credentials. I even saw Eric (the other kid from U of I) in the student center when I went over to get lunch. He was looking at me all sad and shit because he knew I didn’t have a future in chemistry. We didn’t talk, we just walked past each other and exchanged glances. I tried to conceal a smile as I walked by. By the time my Dad’s flight landed, I had moved most of the stuff out my apartment. 


Life at home was hard. Depression is a mother fucker. I liken it to  a less severe version of sleep paralysis. I felt like I was stuck in my own body. Kinda like how I felt in the early Irvine days when it would take me hours to roll out of bed. I would literally wake at 6 am and just stare at the ceiling for ~4 hrs before I could convince myself to get up. And to make things worst, no emotional support was offered by my family. Their assumptions that I’m somehow responsible for other people’s actions along with their snide remarks about me being lazy did the opposite of help. I regretted coming home, even more so when I found out I somehow failed the background check for CPD. 


Now, how in the holy fuck does someone without a criminal record fail a background check? The only reasonable thing I could come up with to explain this is that the work experience I listed (my research experience) doesn’t count as work experience because instead of working for a salary, I worked for credit hours or a stipend. I have to tell myself things like this to convince myself I’m not getting screwed over in every facet of my life. If this is true, then my college experiences are doubly worthless because not only can the credentials I’ve earned not be used to get a job I’m more than qualified to do, but they can’t even get me a job you don’t even need a bachelor’s degree for.  


I wish I moved to LA after dropping out. If I stayed in Cali, I’d be force to move on with my life because I wouldn’t be able to sulk in my mother’s house for months. What would I do for work? idk...but I’d find something, and when I get fired, I’d just move on to the next dead end job.

As time went on, I found it easier to move, I still have scars though. Scars that may never heal. What can I do from here on out? I’m not sure. Going back to graduate school isn’t an option (or any program that requires letters of recommendations) because after experiencing what I’ve experienced and allowing those that I depended on for letters of rec to learn about my experiences, everyone seemed to be complicit. Either they didn’t do anything to change the course of action or it seemed like they were trying to cover it up by telling me to take the site down. I lost faith in everyone, I don’t think I can trust any of the profs to submit a letter of rec on my behalf when they either have done something that goes against my interests, are complicit in the wrong doing of others, or seem as though they’re attempting to cover up what happened to me. Even if I could get in anywhere, I still don’t want to go back to school. I lost faith in higher education. I lost faith in people. Whatever I do, I have to be able to do it without a college degree.

Just in case you’re wondering, I can’t depend on my college friends either. Mostly because I wasted no time trying to make friends. I’ve come to believe that friends are a worthless luxury.

I honestly believed that if I studied hard and knew my shit someone would hire me. I was wrong. I learned the hard way that to the outside world you are not you. You are not the sum total of your thoughts and actions. You are your skin color. You are your hair texture. You are the clothes you wear on your back. You are what people choose to believe you are. You are not you. People don’t care to get to know the people around them, they just want to feel as though their justified in believing the way they do. So I guess in order to get by in life you just need to be everyone’s friend and present yourself in such a way that everyone deems acceptable. Having the skills needed to do the job is more of an afterthought, huh? You know, one of the corollaries is that you’re expected to exhibit a certain level of extroversion. Welp, it just so happens to be the case that I’m an introvert and if the previous statements have some truth then I can honestly say this system was set up for me to fail. The only way I can get by in life is because I’m better than the other guy. No one will ever choose me because I’m their best friend.

I believe that’s where some of my problems stem from. When people see my face, they expect an extrovert (or at least someone who is more extroverted than me). When they find out I’m not who they want me to be, the reactions can range from essentially nothing, to mild disappointment, to mild hostility. And I think this is because people are more interested in the idea of me than actually getting to know me. So when they meet me and actually get to know me after building me up in their heads they’re kinda like “...oohh, this is it?!”. I don’t understand people. It’s like people just assume that you’re going to conform to their world view while refusing to even bend to yours. Now, I’m totally opposed to the very concept of “fitting in” because of all that. I got the sense “fitting in” means assimilation, which may involve losing qualities that make you unique (ones you may actually like about yourself). I don’t see why I should change in any way for people I don’t like, that I don’t see the benefit of being associated with, or for people that never liked me to begin with. People even sometimes mock my behavior, presumably because I’m not what they want me to be and this is just their way of trying to get me to conform.


The most recent example of this is my cousin Sonia (she’s multicultural). I went to her graduation party during the summer. And as with most family functions, it pretty much consisted of me sitting quietly most of the time. So fast forward to when it’s time to go home. My mother and 2/3 of my brother’s children are making their way to the car, noticing the third one is missing I go back for her. As I’m making my way up the front porch, three of my cousins (one of which is Sonia) are in my path and I say “watch out”. As I walk past Sonia, she says something along the lines of “woah, he must be serious....” while laughing... I’m going to say this once, “Mocking my behavior because I don’t act how you want me to act will never help anything”...... unless you’re actively trying to get me to dislike you. I have to remember that Sonia is just a child. Maybe it hadn’t dawn on her yet that there’s more to life than what she’s experienced. She’s probably never met a person like me, so she won’t know what to say in order to get me to interact with her. But then I’m like, “But what makes her think making herself look like an ass would actually help her in any capacity?” How does this explain the behavior of grown ass men and women who do the same thing?”. I wonder if it’s a cultural thing, and these people just don’t realize how bad they make themselves look to people that aren’t like them. 


On the way home, I started thinking, “Is this really the best I can do?”.  Have I been doomed to live a life where I’m not really happy? No, it can’t be the case. I still have faith. I may not have faith in other people anymore, but I still have faith in myself. I believe I can make something out of nothing, even if no one else does.

After going through all I’ve gone through, all I want is to not suffer anymore. I just want to be insanely rich for no reason. This won’t solve all my problems but it will eliminate many. If I ever come into having an ungodly amount of money, I’d give some of it to my family so they can afford many of the things that they want in life. Then I’d disappear, never to be seen or heard from again.


I’ve become acutely aware of the fact that people want to learn useless knowledge without ever having to talk to me.

DISCLAIMER: the knowledge is useless because we won’t/don’t have a relationship of any sort. Why waste your time learning information that isn’t relevant to your life?

So I’m going to take this opportunity to answers some personal questions because the thing I hated the most about you people is your unique combination of arrogance, ignorance, and obliviousness. While I can’t help with the arrogance and the obliviousness, I can help with your total lack of knowledge. So, without further ado ...

QUESTION TIME

Did you ever like life in Champaign county?

I was excited to be there in the beginning, then I met the people and all that excitement went away quick.

What’s your fondest memory from college?

That one time when Chipotle was doing that 2 for 1 deal. That was cold.

So, what’s up with your sexuality?

I don’t have sex because I don’t want to take the risk of having children, also no STDs. People were oddly obsessed with my sexuality and I never quite understood it. Here’s the thing, I’m a little self centered and I’m like you in the sense that I don’t immediately acknowledge other people’s way of thinking all the time. I honestly don’t understand why there was as much “interest” in knowing what I’m interested in (I use quotes because if people were actually interested they probably would have try talking to me). My viewpoint is that your claimed sexual orientation is irrelevant, it’s not even worth bring up in conversation. The reason why is simple. If you see a pretty girl and you know she’s interested in men, it doesn’t necessary mean she’s interested in you (assuming your male) right? That’s why the only thing that matters to me is whether or not the person I’m interested in is interested in me. 

It’s funny because if you completely ignore the fact that not everyone thinks like me, it would seem as though there were ALOT of dudes that wanted me to fuck them when I was in college.

To the people “interested” in knowing my sexual orientation. Ask yourself two questions. Do you want a shot? Do you think you have a shot? Think hard about it. If the answer to one of those questions is “no”, don’t waste your time.

If you haven’t already figured it out by now, I don’t think like a normal person. I’m never going to adjust or change to make you feel comfortable, the best thing I can do is not talk to you at all. I don’t adjust to you, you adjust to me. Why? because fuck you, that’s why.

Are you ever going to have sex?

Maybe, maybe not. What’s it to you?

Do you think people like you?

I know they don’t. Based off their actions, they don’t want to like me either. They’d spend less time gossiping about the negative characteristics I could have and more time actually getting to know me if they did.

You don’t think people know anything about you?

It all depends on what you think it means “to know”. Personally, I don’t. I’m never around people long enough for them to be able to get a true sense of who am I as a person. All people get are snapshots. Sadly, that isn’t good enough. That’s something I don’t think most people realize, actually.

What if after reading this, people actually started trying to get to know you, how would you react?

My recommendation is that you don’t waste your time. You can’t undo the damage that’s already been done. I’ve already stopped caring.

If you could go back in time and pick another college, which would you pick?

Xavier University in NOLA. I’d pick this HBCU because I’m fairly confident some of the problems I encountered at U of I wouldn’t have existed there.

Why did you choose UCI?

Because they told me I wasn’t going to make pass my first year.  I knew what type of student I was. I knew I had what it took to make it through any program. But I was at a low point in my life, where nothing seemed to be going right. I figure If I go there and get forced out after a year, it wouldn’t be my fault. The devastating thing is they let me get so close to graduating before just booting me out like they did.

Why did you use the word “they”?

Someone easily could have stepped in and did something. The department just enabled her (Suzanne Blum).

What grad program do you think you should have choose?

Indiana University or Rutgers probably would been better for me.

What motivates you to do well?

Meaningful positive reinforcement. Don’t just give out compliments for the sake of giving out compliments.

What’s one thing you hate most about people?

Their stupidity. Before I was told I failed the background check fro CPD. I’d get calls from some sort of case worker for CPD who was suppose to determine my eligibility. This dude asked me if I “resigned” from the Blum group and acted like that was a perfectly valid question. This wasn’t a job, it was a component of an academic program. I WAS A STUDENT. There was no resignation. You don’t resign from school. You either graduate, drop out, or get expelled. I know some college education is required for employment with CPD, so it’s far more likely that this guy is an idiot. REMEMBER GRAD SCHOOL IS STILL SCHOOL AND THERE ONLY 3 WAYS TO LEAVE.

Did you ever consider taking legal action?

Yes, but I know the people I’m dealing with aren’t above lying. Since there’s no physical evidence (that I have in my possession) proving that wrongs did occur, I’m reluctant to believe I’d actually win. It’s not smart to get into a “he said she said” battle with people that are believed to be pathological liars.

Are there any common misconceptions you’d like to clear up?

I wasn’t doing the school shit to make friends. I only wanted to make money. That’s the only reason why I was there, to make money. Every time someone why I as getting a PhD, my answer essentially went like, “I’m getting a PhD because money.” I see no point in trying to make friends with people who seemed to have been conditioned to dislike me.

Also, just because I’m quiet it doesn’t mean that I’m stuck up. It is in fact possible to be someone who isn’t a big talker.

Contrary to popular belief. I am in fact a HUMAN BEING. I have emotions and sometimes something could happen in one part of my life that can affect other parts of my life (like how well I do in school or how productive I am in lab).

Why did you just give up?

What’s the point of playing the game when you know you’ll never win.

It seems like the college years were a hard time for you, did you ever do something to ease the pain, like drugs or alcohol?

No, I love myself too much to potentially set myself up for problems later. I gave comedy a thought, but I found really hard to want to be funny when all I’m thinking about is the depressing shit that inspired the joke. If I’m gonna do something, it’s gonna be something were I don’t have to live with the consequences of my actions. I was suicidal. I was planning to kill myself the night before my thesis defense.

Why then?

I was fairly confident that no one there cared to save me from myself. But just in case someone wanted to surprise me, I figure it would be best to do when no one would expect it.

How?

potassium cyanide. The night before my defense I was going to make it my point to get a bottle of potassium cyanide. a couple months before my trip to Europe, I looked up who had it. It was on the fourth floor (or maybe the fifth). Go all the way down to the last lab space on the right hand side. When you walk into the lab space go along the right hand side and go through the door on your right. After that go to the first door on the right hand side. I placed a bottle on KCN in the first column on the left hand side, top shelf. The bottle should be on the wall on the left side (assuming it’s still in the same place I left it). I figured it wouldn’t get much use due to its inherent toxicity so it would probably be in the same place I left it when I needed it. I wouldn’t be surprise if the bottle is still in that exact spot.


Did you ever think about getting help?

From who? When I did finally ask for help, the first thing I was told was that the department sided with Blum (mind you this is before any type of investigation occurred). As soon as I posted the email from Chris Vanderwal on this blog, his tune changed immediately. But his actions didn’t reflect the words he put out in the public space. He was of no use. He had no interest in helping me in any capacity. I’m sure of it. I’m all alone in this world, I don’t have a safety net so if I fall, that’s my ass.

What about the professors from UIUC?

My previous statement stands. I had no one.

Is that why you started the blog? You felt like your were all alone and just wanted someone talk to, even if that someone was actually a void in space?

Yes, that’s exactly it.

Is that why you’re still posting, you still feel alone?

yes

But what about your family?

With them I’m a dependent not a provider. They’d be okay without me.

So have you really never sought out a therapist?

I couldn’t find steady work. I can’t afford it. Depression is a rich people disease. When you’re broke you’re just labeled as lazy.

What’s one thing you want everyone to know?

You shouldn’t let your assumptions or the assumptions of others affect how you treat me. Remember, you don’t know me. I could come to be your best friend, your faithful and supportive business partner, or the love of your life and you’d just let me slip away all because someone told you dislike me.

(Also, please don’t waste my time talking to me about all the typos I made)

[morningrainmusic]

Makin’ it feel like summer: Whitney brings chill vibes to Milwaukee

7/10/17

Whitney is a Chicago-based band comprised of two dudes who used to be in other high profile indie bands. Pitchfork has dubbed them “Sons of Summer” and called their debut album from last year “profoundly enjoyable.” I agree wholeheartedly with the latter but think the former is sort of a shitty title for a feature article. Anyways, I’ve wanted to see these PBR-chopping Jeeepsters in concert for a while now, so a quick drive up to Milwaukee to catch them at Summerfest was a no-brainer.

Quick note before I go on: a Marquette undergrad named Lily Wellen wrote a pretty straightforward review of this show for OnMilwaukee.com. She does a nice job describing how the stage lighting “really made it feel like summer” and drops the word “chill” a couple times. I’m going to refrain from including a lot of the details she covered to avoid being redundant. Read her piece here.

On Friday I spotted the lead singer, Julien Ehrlich, in Logan Square shortly after I got off the el. Feeling bold and acting on impulse, I quickened my stride to catch up to him and tell him I’m a fan. He was very nice and I mentioned that I was going to see them at Summerfest the next day. “What time are we on again, 8:00 or something?” he asked. I said that sounded about right and asked if the band was excited for it. He said they just came off a lengthy tour so they were feeling a bit run down, but that it’d be a good time. Then I decided to be annoying and ask for a photo and he very kindly obliged and I took a selfie of us. Julien threw up deuces.

So that was cool.

On Saturday afternoon I headed up to Milwaukee and met up with my friend Joey Burns to eat some delicious flatbread pizza he and his girlfriend Kelly made, I believe from scratch. Kelly is a bit of a health nut and has a food blog. It is far more professional looking than this one and presumably more interesting. Check it out.

I digress. We entered the venue, grabbed a couple $8 16-ounce Coors Lights, and got a decent spot for the show. This was my first Summerfest experience at one of the stages with benches. For those who don’t know, some of the stages at Summerfest (like Johnson Controls where Whitney played) have rows of benches in front of them. And what do audiences do at these stages? You guessed it, they stand on the benches. I have a feeling this has been common at Summerfest for some time but somehow I missed it/didn’t recall it. My initial feelings were mixed, but once we stepped up and landed on a solid location, I found that I quite enjoyed standing on those benches.

Whitney was still soundchecking when we arrived just before 8:00. Folks cheered as Kakacek strummed the opening bars of “Dave’s Song” and Ehrlich sang the first few words of “Polly” to check levels. This was, as far as I could tell, a predictably easygoing, polite crowd ready to enjoy some soulful rock tunes on a warm summer night. I don’t want to veer into gushing territory, but I mean come on, we’re approaching idyllic here. They kicked it off with “Dave’s Song,” and we pretty much immediately reached peak mellow status. Ehrlich’s signature falsetto sounded great, Will Miller masterfully wielded his trumpet, and Kakacek stoically fingerpicked his guitar, the same no-nonsense, functional attitude he adopted in his old band, Smith Westerns (RIP).

Ehrlich’s between-song banter was pleasant and humorous. He was the only band member to speak the entire show, occasionally telling the crowd to “stick around” for the remaining two of three covers they played, or don’t stick around and go see Migos instead. “This song is about depression,” “this song is about dying of old age”—he had a little intro for almost every tune, some surprisingly enlightening to me.

Burns and I had one semi-noteworthy crowd encounter that warmed the heart. A couple probably late teenage/early 20s guys made moves right in front of us about 20 minutes into the set. One of them, a long haired, boyish-looking lad wearing a tie-dye Grateful Dead shirt, skimmed past us while stepping over the rows and accidentally slid my flannel shirt off the bench where I’d set it. He picked it up from the ground and handed it to me. Was I mildly irked by these kids at first? Yes. But again, it’s Whitney at Summerfest on a July Saturday night. It’s going to take a lot to harsh anyone’s mellow.

Anyways, these kids managed to sneak into a spot on the bench directly in front of us and slowly their friends started showing up and sharing hugs/hellos. They had great luck in capturing a wide space in front of us, and they genuinely seemed like a solid, good-natured crew. So much so that after the show wrapped up, I told them as much. We chatted briefly, one said he thought Burns looked like someone he knows, and we went our separate ways. Perhaps I saw some of my younger self in these carefree youths. Leave it to the music of Whitney to bring out traces of nostalgia and wistfulness.

The three covers Whitney played included their version of “You’ve Got A Woman” they released this year, 45 seconds of “Thank You For Being a Friend” by Andrew Gold (AKA The Golden Girls theme song, which is what Ehrlich referred to it as), and a song called “Magnet” by NRBQ. Those songs are from 1975, 1978, and 1972 respectively. Fitting, coming from a band so frequently noted for their 70s sound—each almost sounded like the band could’ve written it. “Magnet” was a highlight of the show. Sort of a quirkily-worded take on “Hello, Goodbye,” it’s a fun song. Kakacek broke into a tasty guitar solo, which transitioned seamlessly into a trumpet solo provided by Will Miller.

Around 9:00, they closed with “No Woman” and said farewell. I speak for the entire crowd when I say it was one of the best concerts we’ve seen this year. We descended from the benches, feeling satisfied and optimistic. The “Sons of Summer” had delivered the goods and then some. Then we all went to Migos.

Here’s a tasteful photo of my dog laying in a groundcover bed today:

^taking a note from “The Kelly Diet”

Setlist

1. Dave's Song 2. No Matter Where We Go 3. Polly 4. Red Moon 5. You've Got A Woman (Lion Cover) 6. Golden Days 7. Light Upon the Lake 8. On My Own 9. The Falls 10. Follow 11. Untitled new song (”as the days go by”) 12. "Golden Girls" theme song 13. Magnet (NRBQ cover) 14. No Woman

[moderndayhawkeye-blog]

The Beginning

This is probably my 5th or so attempt to begin writing a blog, all of which have failed due to my laziness, my love of doing nothing besides checking Facebook for the third time in the past seven minutes, and getting drunk and singing along to my whiny playlist (soon to be a running theme throughout this blog). Plus, you know the medicine thing.

I’m a newly minted doctor (straight outa residency yo’) stationed in Korea to cure whatever ails our Army soldiers (Which for the most part is ouchy ankles and knees). That brings me to the handle I so wittingly created for myself for all of you MASH fans out there.  I only need my own vodka distillery for martini usage, and I’m basically the same guy.  But we’ll also get to that later.

My first foray into ‘blogging’, journaling, or typing away my hard fought feelings was probably around high school. It was strange times back then, Al Gore had just invented the internet and to spend time on this gateway to knowledge and porno superhub required the 45 second long ear drilling dial-up noise that will forever be etched into my brain. Now to not tie up the phone line, internet usage was best used after everyone had gone to bed in my house and I could easily leave the connection brewing to download the latest secret blink-182 track on Kazaa (Ha! Nostalgia! This has basically turned into a shitty buzzfeed article). Anyway, the dial up ringtone was complete with the screeching, clicking and ghost murder and was the only gateway to this great series of tubes of information the internet had to offer. Of course the actual noise was uncontrollable with your standard computer volume switch. No, this bastard had to be snuffed out like the guy you ran over last summer (Nostalgia!). Because of the aforementioned late night connection to hear Tom Delonge finally tell you how to feel about that girl that’s ignoring you at school (Why Janet? Brad was such an asshole) if you didn’t smother it like a golddigger at her 90 y/o husbands’ deathbed, your parents would send you straight to your room without knowing how exactly tell Janet how you felt in the best 3 chord way possible.

That was a long digression, sorry. But those dialtones were fucking awful.

So back in those days, those in my high school (primarily the girls I wanted to impress, except that terrible Janet who couldn’t see how fucking bad Brad was for her) all decided to open up a blog on the website freeopendiary.com. It was probably my favorite website name, just so I could drop freeopendiary.com whenever my dad asked what I was doing to kill whatever faith he had in me being a man.  So everyone (the women) in our school mandated that we should get one of these blogs to passive aggressively missile each other into the ground. Didn’t like someone who stole your fruit cup at lunch? Go to freeopendiary and call them a slut, under a pseudonym say, subtlety30. Necklace bestie ditch you for that douche on the football team thereby violating code 5-346 of the lady doctrine (the hoes before bros compromise of 1876)? Trash her all over the diary.  As you could tell, these blogs were only used for the advancement of mankind.  I remember one witch hunt specifically about a certain someone who commented ‘slut’ or ‘bitch’ or ‘2 dollar bukkake face’ on my girlfriend’s blog because my ladyfriend had a interweb laden ‘airing of passive aggressive grievances’. A world wide web of festivus if you will. I naturally stood up for my beau, by vigorously questioning anyone I could in our school, anyone who would be afraid of my 160 pound frame. Despite my vigor and intimidation, we never found the culprit, and the diary fad kinda died out shortly thereafter. As for my writing at the time, mostly quoting whiny rock and beginner level sarcasm strewn about.

I then went to college and my sarcasm progressed, and I began to journal. Never really anything special, just when I got rejected by the pretty co-ed for the fourth time that semester I’d go home and cry on my keyboard while most of my entries were as poignant as “WHHHHYYYYYYHHY don’t girls like me? My mom always told me I was handsome as a kid, why can’t these girls see that”, then I’d call my mom to reaffirm my supermodel like looks.

Given my affinity for sarcasm, I tried to apply to the school paper as a humor journalist, but they thought me so funny that they didn’t respond to my email. I basically blew it out of the water that hard that I was too good for the newspaper. Yeah, that’s what I’m sticking with. Most of my writing at that point was lost to a crashing hard drive that definitely had nothing to do with porn.

After undergrad, I ended up moving back home which was about 3-4 hours away from most my college friends  at the time. Having a couple jobs and a car whose engine block was about to fall through the frame of the car, I wasn’t able to see them as one would hope, so I began to write Facebook notes to try keep everyone up to speed of my application to med school and the shenanigans that soon followed. It was also a nudge to all my friends to let them know that I was still alive in the frozen tundra of the north.  That lasted two weeks, until I decided most of my time was better spent eating Chicago style pizza at the pizza place I worked at. (I got hefty that year in between college and med school, but it was delicious).

Throughout med school the journaling somewhat continued but was stymied by studying, studying, and estudiar. The same occurred during residency, with some outliers when I would journal away my loneliness as many neckbeards had before me.

That brings me to today, where I’ve decided to give blogging a shot again. I’ll generally use this blog to write about my life, my thoughts,  and medicine if I get angry about something in particular, that is until I get bored or a new Witcher game comes out. That game stole all my free time for a year. Anyway, follow along if you so choose. Or don’t. Meh.

And here, we, go.

[tkuhnhackl]

1-10, 50-60 🌝🌝🌝

i love you (also I’m putting this under a read more so none of y’all have to suffer through me talking about myself if you don’t want to)

1: Who was the last person you held hands with?

My friend Katie; we were freezing our asses off at a bar despite my parkour skills to get us a table under a heat lamp and so we were cuddled up to keep warm, and then some jackass that a mutual friend had a crush on (the only reason he was even invited because the rest of us don’t like him) decided to make homophobic comments so we held hands for the rest of his night to piss him off.

2: Are you outgoing or shy?

Painfully shy if I don’t know someone. I don’t do social situations where I have to talk to a bunch of strangers, and I’ve had professors who seemed genuinely surprised to hear my voice (one guy literally said ‘oh, i didn’t know you talked’). But I’m pretty outgoing once I know someone.

3: Who are you looking forward to seeing?

My mum is coming to visit in February, so I’m really looking forward to that.

4: Are you easy to get along with?

I’d like to think so? I’m fairly laid back, fairly friendly, and grouchy as fuck but not rude, so while I’m certainly not everyone’s cup of tea (I’m a bit of a weirdo sometimes let’s be honest), I can usually superficially get along with most people. Although my dad jokes and tendency to discuss politics probably does not help me much.

5: If you were drunk would the person you like take care of you?

I don’t have a crush on anyone right now, but I do trust my friends to take care of me because I try not to be friends with anyone who’d leave a drunk friend to fend for themselves.

6. What kind of people are you attracted to?

Tall people with a strong sense of right and wrong, people who are comfortable in silence but also capable of letting loose every now and then (even without the help of alcohol), who are confident in themselves and compassionate towards others. Smart people, passionate people, people who don’t shy away from politics and social issues.

7. Do you think you’ll be in a relationship two months from now?

Hahahahahahahahaha no. I’ve enjoy being single too much and also grad school will always come before relationships so ain’t no one getting in the way of my thesis next semester. (the only thing I’ll be in a relationship with is the art history library, a microscope, and some military statues)

8. Who from the opposite gender is on your mind?

Ben Davies bc the Spurs posted the new christmas video and i am living for all the content of my favorite welshman whose voice is somehow the most relaxing thing i’ve ever heard

9. Does talking about sex make you uncomfortable?

Depends on the person I’m talking to - I don’t think I could give the sex talk to a child but my best friends from high school and I literally were having a laugh at some strange sex toys in the middle of a mall food court this summer. 

10. Who was the last person you had a deep conversation with?

My mum, this afternoon when i was in the middle of a full breakdown.

50. What was the colour of the last hoodie you wore?

Grey, with a pen stain, a pasta sauce stain, and a maple syrup stain because adulthood is like that sometimes.

51. Ever wished you were someone else?

Yeah, absolutely. As a kid I wanted to be Kobe Bryant (until I realized he was maybe not as good of a person as I thought) and as an adult, every once in a while, it would be nice to not be me for a bit and just live a stress free existence for a while.

52. One thing you wish you could change about yourself?

I’m such an anxious person - about deadlines, papers, friendships, everything. I get myself easily worked up over small things and I hate that about myself. Sometimes it works in my favor like when I always turn in papers ahead of time, but it also affects my relationships with people because I second-guess everything.

53. Favourite makeup brand?

Probably Bare Minerals or Tarte bc my face rejects almost any other brand (also Bare Minerals has lipsticks that smell like chocolate and every time, I want to lick my lips even though I know it won’t taste like chocolate)

54. Favourite store?

I love whole foods bc I’m a grocery store nerd who thinks about food 24/7. Back home, everyone in their cheese department knew me and would give me lots of free samples; plus their frozen foods are amazing and they have wonderful pies and tarts (the bakery also knew me and would sell me empty tart shells so I didn’t have to make crust at home)

55. Favourite blog?

I mean, yours is definitely up there...also @motoleafs​ because she provides such wonderful gifs for Tottenham and England so I’m constantly being a creep and seeing what new content she’s posted

56. Favourite colour?

Any earth tones - I love soft greens and browns.

57. Favourite food?

All food tbh.....I love tacos, drunken noodles, dal makhani, cacio e pepe, my comfort foods have no geographic specificity or anything. I do have a soft spot for dairy though (there is an ever-growing collection of pictures of me eating cheese and chugging farm-fresh milk in the middle of Scottish streets)

58. Last thing you ate?

These bagel chip things that my aunt has in her house - they’re salty, bread-y goodness

59. First thing you ate this morning?

Bread with butter, salami, and cheese, along with a glass of milk

60. Ever won a competition? For what?

I’ve won a few, mostly for writing (culminating with my thesis winning a departmental award in undergrad); my proudest one is my 3rd grade spelling bee because I beat the most popular kid in school who everyone thought was going to win (he spelled light wrong and ran off the stage crying.....he went on to be the QB of the football team and point guard of the basketball team and was kind of a dick to a lot of kids so sometimes I liked to tell that story to people just to break up the cult that formed around him.....as I write this, I realize that I should not be this petty about things that happened 15 years ago but here we are anyway)

[blogmichellea-blog]

THE HURDLES OF HARVARD

(Play is set in the Harvard Admissions room, with 6 members of the admission committee seated around a rectangular table, all deciding on the final round of acceptances. 

Staff includes:

- Nichole Young and Gary White, the chairman and deputy chairman of admissions (respectively), both middle aged and Caucasian, the most experienced members on the table. 

- Earl Q, Rex Tan and Trent Blue, three mid-thirty aged Caucasians, have all worked in admissions for a few years. 

- Newcomer, Tim John, a 40-year-old African American. 

Each application is displayed on the smartboard and read out by a different staff member. 

ACT 1 

Nichole: Okay! As we all know, this is the last round of acceptances for the September 2018 incoming undergrads and it has been a great set of months. I’d just like to thank the whole admissions staff for their dedication always. You are what makes Harvard well, Harvard. Thank you, let’s get started. 

Gary: Thank you Mrs. Young, and thank you everyone again. You all play very important roles in the upstanding of this university. It truly is always a pleasure working with you all in picking the finest from around the world. Now, let’s begin.

Earl: We have 21 students left, only 4 slots available.

Gary: Okay, reference letter analysis. First person? 

Rex: Khan Chi, Journalism, SAT Score of 1450/1600, reference letters from principal, local government chairman, CEO of CarringtonWrites, and The New York times editor. 

Nichole: CEO of CarringtonWrites, so that letter is from Blake Carrington himself? Fascinating, what does it say? (Rex scans through trying to find the vital information) 

Rex: it says Khan was a summer intern… uh …. Reliable, smart, lots of initiative… he said he sees Khan as the next him, wow. 

Gary: Take him to the left pile. Next. 

Trent: Serena Waldorf, Aeronautic engineering, Perfect SAT Scores, reference letters from CEO of Shell, Bass Industries, principal, and it says here that her grandma went to Harvard Law, and wrote her a letter of recommendation. 

Nichole: what does the CEO of Shell have to say about her? (Trent scans through)

Trent: The best high school intern yet… Harvard will be lucky to have her… and a bunch of her other skills. 

Gary: Ha! This is Harvard, she would be lucky to have US! (Everyone starts laughing) Gary: Pile to the left. Next. Tim: Erin Miller, Film Studies, SAT score of 1300/1600… 

Nichole: what makes him stand out from the others then? Tim: Uh, I see he has slightly more letters of recommendation than most, he has 15 and applicants like Michelle Lee and Rachel Adams have 4, the lowest number on the list. 

Gary: Are the 4 references from very notable people?

Tim: Principal, Minister… Organizations… nothing extraordinary here. 

Gary: Put Erin Miller, Michelle Lee and Rachel Adams on the right pile 

Tim: Are you sure sir? Gary: We have 4 slots left. This is Harvard and their applications don’t cut it, I’ve been here for 21 years I know the kind of applicants I’ve seen. These do not cut it, maybe they’ll get into Princeton or Yale, Next. 

Earl: Renee Howard, Law, 1250/1600 on her SATs, Letters of recommendation from her parents. Says here she’s a legacy, her parents are both Harvard law graduates. Reference Letter from Judge Judy herself, says she was an amazing intern… 

Nichole: Judge Judy herself said something nice about someone? Wow, I’ve truly seen it all. (Everyone starts laughing) 

Gary: This is nothing. Remember about 7 years ago, when an applicant was endorsed by Oprah and Ellen DeGeneres personally? 

Nichole: I do! Renee is fascinating, take her to the left. Rex: Next person we have is Jenny Humphrey, Fashion Designing, 9 Letters of Recommendation, one from Donatella Versace herself! 

Nichole: 23 years of being here and it still shocks me every time how these 18-year-olds get affiliated with the most famous people. 

Gary: This is Harvard, Nichole, they better. (Everyone shakes their head in agreement) 

Gary: Left. Next person. 

Trent: Vanessa Abrams, Criminology, Her SAT scores are 1100/1600… 

Gary: Right pile. Next. 

Earl: Wes Scott, Human Resources, 1350/1600 on her SATs, 8 letters of recommendation, one from Michelle Obama herself. 

Gary: Impressive. Left. Next. 

Rex: Rebecca Philips, Aeronautical Engineering, Perfect SAT Scores and 18 Reference letters, says her dad owns Aric Airlines too. 

Nichole: Left. Next. Staff 4: Dequan Richards… 

Gary: Oh God, Dequan, really? (Whole room goes silent) 

Gary: Right pile. (Everyone looks at each other) 

Tim: What do you mean by that? 

Gary: I think we all know why… 

Tim: (Tim being new, confused and naïve asks) No actually, I don’t.

Gary: Tim, Harvard just isn’t for people called ‘Dequan’. Maybe he’ll get into Howard or even UCLA. 

Tim: But you didn’t even look at his application. 

Nichole: Perhaps we should move on, we are running out of time… 

Tim: No Gary, please tell us, how does his name being Dequan disqualify him from Harvard. 

Nichole: Wow, it says here he got perfect SAT scores, Business student and he has 17 letters of recommendation. One from the governor, senator and Tesla CEO Elon Musk himself. Incredible. 

Gary: (Mumbles quietly) Wow. 

Tim: Oh well, he’s not good enough for Harvard anyways as his name is still Dequan right? (Mumbles) Racist. 

Gary: What was that Tim? 

Tim: I think you heard me. (Whole room goes silent) 

Gary: is anyone not going to say anything? 

Nichole: We’ll sort this out later. 

Tim: No, this man has been here for 21 years? Who knows how many qualified African Americans he has done this to? I’m honestly horrified. 

Nichole: Tim, I promise you we will talk about this later, we have a deadline to meet. (Tim stays quiet) 

Nichole: Please. Trent: … Well, next we have Connie Thompson, performing arts, 1300/1600 SAT scores, worked with Julia Andrews on Broadway, Letters of recommendation from 7 people including Meryl Streep and Shonda Rhimes. 

Nichole: Nice! Left, Next. Rex: Sean Willow, African American studies…. 

Tim: (Coughs and speaks mockingly) Gary isn’t this the part when you barge in and disqualify this person immediately? 

Gary: …and mind telling me why you’d think that? 

Tim: Well he’s majoring in African American studies…? 

Gary: Don’t start with me kid, I can get you out of here with a click of a finger. 

Nichole: Gentlemen please, not here not now. Continue please. 

Rex: Okay… SAT scores are 800/1600, 4 recommendation letters. 

Gary: With those SAT Scores? Who is even writing him the recommendation, my God. 

Everyone: Right! Next. (Everyone starts laughing) 

Earl: Is it bad that I love people like this because they make our job so easy? 

Everyone: You can say that again! 

Nichole: How many years of me doing this and I still feel guilty declining people.

Gary: It’ll pass. 

Tim: Oh, of course you’d say that. 

Nichole: Ha-ha…okay (trying to break the tension) let’s just move on, shall we?

Trent: Sheba Tay, Telecommunications, 700/1600, re… 

Earl: How did she even have the heart to apply to Harvard with those SAT scores? 

Gary: Well, often in that case, their strengths usually reside in other aspects in other aspects they feel could balance that out. 

Trent: Says here both her parents and both her grandparents went to Harvard, she is a complete legacy. 

Gary: That’s your answer. Left pile, next.

Earl: Ann Costa, Psychology, Perfect SAT scores, only 3 letters of recommendation. 

Nichole: Hm, only 3? Anyone renowned? 

Earl: Not that I see, no. 

Nichole: If only you could get into Harvard with grades alone… and the guilt returns… right pile. Next. 

Tim: Riah Richardson, Sociology, 1400/1600 SAT Scores, 6 Letters of recommendation. 

Nichole: Who do we have that sticks out? 

Tim: (Scans through all the names of the reference letters) Uh…nope…nope…nope…Oh! The chairman of Zuckerberg foundation. 

Nichole: anyone else that’s high up there? 

Tim: Not necessarily. 

Gary: To the right, next. 

Rex: Elvis… Nichole: Presley? Next. 

(Everyone starts laughing) 

Rex: (giggles) Pratt actually. 

Nichole: Close enough. (Everyone laughs again) 

Rex: Elvis Pratt, Cellular Biology, 1400/1600 SAT Scores, 5 letters of recommendation, including from CEO of Bill Nye the science guy himself, says here he was the youngest summer intern from grade 10. 

Gary: Right. Nichole: Are you sure? 

Gary: Yes, he’s good but for science at Harvard? He should be getting 1500-1550/1600. Maybe… 

Everyone: (mockingly) “Princeton will accept him” (Laughs) 

Trent: Next we have Terry Dion, Music, 1200/1600 SAT Scores, Son of Celine Dion actually, letters of recommendation from 8 people. 

Gary: Left. Trent: You don’t want to know who the letters are from? 

Nichole: It’s Celine Dion’s Son. Celine Dion. Harvard doesn’t keep its honorable name for just accepting no-name geniuses. 

Trent: Okay then, next person is Robet Yatson, International student from Indonesia, Politics, he’s also a son of an ambassador, 5 letters of recommendation and perfect SAT scores. 

Nichole: Impressive, left. Next. 

Earl: Moren Recks, Comparative Literature, Perfect SAT Scores, 6 letters of recommendation. 

Nichole: From who? 

Earl: Uh… The most intriguing person here is Stephen King, the writer. Says here Moren was hand chosen to interview Stephen King at a school function and was noticed by him straight away and called for a private meeting afterwards.

Gary: Great, left. 

Tim: Next is Yip Keller, Immunology, 1500/1600 SAT score, 3 Letters of recommendation. 

Gary & Nichole: From who? 

Tim: I don’t recognize anybody’s name, just the principal, a university lecturer and… 

Gary: Nothing extraordinary then, Right pile. 

Rex: And that’s all, we’ve officially viewed everyone’s application. (Everyone starts clapping) 

Gary: Thank you all, 30-minute break and we shall continue to the left pile and pick the top 4 candidates based on their extra curriculums and personal statements. (CURTAINS CLOSE)

[canaryatlaw]

Well today was pretty good. I have to take back a little of what I said about my abs not hurting very much, because they hurt a bit more today, mostly just when stretching or moving or like, laughing lol. Still not as bad as over the summer though. Alarm went off at 9, got up and got ready and headed to church. I was signed up for the nursery for the 11 and I would go to the 12:30. Once I got off the train another girl who works in the nursery had just gotten off so we walked the few blocks together, she was attending the 11 and working in the 12:30. Once we get there I go upstairs, it's only like 10:35 at this point so the 9:30 service is about to wrap up, which means there's still like 15 babies and 7 volunteers up there lol. It's always the craziest service but luckily it's always pretty well stocked with volunteers, so that's good. I helped work through the transition, and then our service was underway, two other volunteers with me, and I think we got 7 of 8 babies, so a good number. Things were...interesting, lol. There were a couple that were in and out of crying for most of the service, and we did have to text the mother of one of them because she just wasn't stopping anytime soon, but I think we got the other two to settle down after a while. The boy who was there last week and just stood by the gate for the second half of the service was back, and he pretty much just wanted to stand by the gate the whole time this week too haha. He's a real cutie, he's like 23 months (so about to get moved to the preschool room) and he's a big little guy, but he's just kind of like a teddy bear. I couldn't get him interested in any toys, so I decided to try one of our tricks to occupy crying babies, which is pulling up some "baby songs" on YouTube on my phone and watch how they get mesmerized looking at the screen which generally has adorable illustrations and just listen to the music. I'm sure their parents aren't thrilled at the prospect of them getting more "screen time" but I mean the poor kid was just gonna sit at the gate the whole time, I didn't want him to be totally unoccupied because that would likely lead to boredom followed by tears. But he was captivated quite quickly, and just sat down and basically just looked at and listened to my phone the whole time haha. Interestingly enough, it kind of attracted most of the other well-behaved (not crying) kids, so by the end I had a little crowd of them, most of whom were fine with just leaving the phone on the floor and watching haha so that was cool! Towards the end it got a little hectic because they all wanted snack and the other two volunteers were in the other room with the two crying babies and I had like 6 of them being like "more please!" and it was a little crazy haha but mostly it was fine. Service ended and I ran downstairs to the next one. I know I say this every week, but I really do love my church so much. It's always just so awesome to be there and feel so surrounded by God's presence and people who love others so well. The female lead pastor ("the wife") was speaking, and she was talking about Romans 8 and the idea of being "more than conquerors" in our lives and how that plays out on a daily basis. She told this really adorable story of being at a fitness class at the gym and being like, so out of energy and ready to give up until "firework" by Katy Perry comes on and she gets this amazing second wind and of course they start playing the song when she says it and I just couldn't helps thinking how happy I am that I go to a church where people are fine with a pastor referencing Katy Perry and playing a little bit of her music. I feel like I say this a lot (and I probably do) but never in a million years would that happen in the church I grew up in, so this is such a welcome change. Service wrapped up and I realized I left my coat in the closet in the nursery, and more so I just wanted an excuse to go in there and play with my little tiny girl because I know she was in there this last service and she's always the last to get picked up since her parents have other church responsibilities. So I go up and she's hanging out, and she sees me and starts jumping around and laughing so I go in the gate and start chasing her around and tickling her and she was laughing so much and loving it and it was pretty much the cutest thing ever. So I ended up hanging out with her while the rest of the people actually working that service headed out haha because I had to hang around anyway for a babies coaches meeting. Her family was kind of hanging out in the little foyer area so we went over there and then I went to sit down and took my little bag of cheezits out of my bag because I was hungry haha and she's like, looking at me from across the room with her eyes getting big and she comes over and I'm like, I know you you little sneak you just want me snacks and it was also pretty cute lol. Not long after that I was joined by the other babies coaches, who at this point are one of the ladies I served with and the couple that heads up the 9:30 usually and both actually graduated from law school last year, so we always have fun conversations. After a few minutes the babies coordinator or whatever her actual title is (I really don't know) came out and we went into one of the classrooms and just talked about like, procedure about checking kids in and out, how to handle things, different scheduling things and just a bunch of other little things that need to be handled. They're trying a new check in this so we get a little more info about the kids that can definitely come in handy. We started at 2:30 and talked till 4, so we obviously spoke for quite a while. By the time we got out I knew it was gonna take me another like, hour to get home if took the train/bus and I knew I had reading to get done so I opted to take an uber, which didn't really turn out to be a better option, lol. The guy was nice enough and we had a good conversation, but he like didn't know how to work his GPS and took us like wayyy out of the way and then had to go back, and he definitely like cut in and out of traffic on multiple occasions, all of which had multiple cars honking at him....yeah, it wasn't a very pleasant experience haha and by the time I got home it was almost 5 anyway. Sigh. I knew I needed to get groceries at some point but it was snowing and the sun was setting so I didn't want to go back out, so I instead put in an instacart order, which then when I was done told me they wouldn't deliver until tomorrow morning which was like UGH because at the beginning they definitely said they could deliver tonight. Sigh. So I have to be up at 10 tomorrow for that, which could be worse of course, but still the extra sleep would've been appreciated. Oh well. I dove right into my crim pro reading, because at this point I've pretty much decided reading for mission based lawyering and trial ad isn't really mandatory so most of the time I'm just not going to do it....lol, it's bad that I'm saying this on like the 4th week of class, but I know my limits well enough to know that if I do have to do the reading I will, but also when I can get away with it. I got like 2/3 of the way done with that before kind of losing interest since I'll have other time during the week to possibly do it because the class wasn't until Wednesday night. But that still left the trial ad assignment, because I can skip the reading but I still gotta prepare the directs and crosses and such. There were four this week, with alternating directs and crosses for each "team," and I was the witness for one so I had to do 2 directs and 1 cross, and then just the witness problem which was about like, an old lady who slips on ice in the grocery store parking lot and gets a severely sprained ankle and a mild concussion so that should be plenty of fun to play of course (I'm planning on being like "and my head was hurting and my ankle was burning and I was just like Jesus is gonna take me any second now!!!" 😂). The others weren't too bad, the thing is this week the topic is objections, so of course the problems are full of objectionable content that they want you to prep for objections to, mostly hearsay ones in like 10 different contexts and you gotta find an applicable exception for all of them haha so that was interesting. Finished with that by 8:30 and was planning on watching Conviction at 9, so I put on the Chicago episode of legends until then, but at 9 I ended up getting a call from a friend from undergrad who asked earlier if we could talk, so I of course went to take that. Usually when I'm asked to do this kind of stuff it's either mental health related or legal related, my two main areas of expertise haha (though for the former while I'm fine talking people off the proverbial "ledge" and have done so many times, I always always say I am not a therapist and they need to get professional help). This one was legal though, which is always interesting because some people will assume (and have done so my whole life, even before law school, just on the count of my dad being a lawyer) I know the answer to every obscure legal question they can come up with, which of course isn't quite true. This one, however, unfortunately was right up my alley, unfortunately being that I deal in a very hard line of work that I wouldn't wish on anybody. I won't get into details because of the sensitive nature of the issue, but basically there had been an initial physical incident by a parent after a long pattern of emotional abuse (not my friend, someone she knows who's still a minor) and they really just didn't know what to do, and unfortunately in that situation the only real answer you can give is that if you want to do something you really have to call DCFS. If you tell anyone, school counselor or doctor or teacher, they're mandated to call them so it's gonna end up happening. People don't realize though that calling DCFS doesn't immediately result in the kid being taken away, that DCFS offers a variety of services designed particularly to keep families together and fix the problem so the kid doesn't have to be taken away. It's just that beyond that kind of thing, there's really no way for an "outsider" to deal with such things, like my friend said she thinks the dad really needs therapy and I'm sure she's right but how is that going to happen without external assistance? It's just not possible. I am always a big proponent of calling DCFS though because I know child abuse tends to be WAY under-reported because people "don't want to get involved" or they'll make excuses that "oh they'll just end up making it worse" and ignoring signs of child abuse like that is how we end up with dead kids- because leading up to a child death there were always, always be signs, and in those cases they were just ignored by everyone for long enough that a child ends up dead. I'm ranting now though. But I think my advice at least helped settle things a bit. I went to turn on conviction when I finished, knowing it was their last episode. It was....okay I guess. Nothing spectacular, and definitely not a whole lot of closure, which is pretty much to be expected being that they got cancelled mid-season, but if was still kind of disappointing that it kind of ended just like it was any other episode. The case was okay, not really all that interesting, though the ultimate cause of death was intriguing. The whole Sam kiss thing in the end was weird because at first I was like WAIT WHAT WHAT IS HAPPENING DID I MISS SOMETHING then she said it and I was like oh okay good I was gonna be worried there for a moment, lol. But yeah, I'm sad it's gone before it got to live up to its full potential, but that's life I guess. Hung out for a bit longer before heading to bed and now here we are. Eyes are wanting to close now, and wake up is in t-minus 9 hours and 8 minutes, so I'll end things here. Goodnight my loves. Stay sweet.

[innersoul7]

01272017

I have already began my last semester of college and I’m not sure how hard I should try... it’s not like I can fail my way out now. I have already began slacking. And not really eating right... I was on such a great path before New Years. I would actually make the best decisions when eating food. I’d eat salads whenever available and I would minimize the amount of carbs I would have in a day. 

Right now, I don’t read chapters before class, I’m pretty slow when it comes to getting information out to my organization and I play Sims for hours at a time. I mean I could work harder... but exactly who ever does? .... Maybe next week. I keep telling myself that. 

I hate my roommate pt. 1

The biggest pet peeve I’ve been having is that my roommate (randomly assigned...) claims to never have time to do anything. I got this new roommate last semester when the fall semester began. She graduated from A&M in Ag. Econ., so I don’t even know what that entails. It sounds like the economics/finance of agriculture... But anyways: at the beginning of the year, she was like ‘hey can I use your dishes’ etc. w/e. Me, being nice and tryna help another girl out, was like ‘yeah go for it’. BIG MISTAKE. So who knew that this meant that she’d use my dishes AND not wash them... it probably took about 3-5 business days to process the work request and another 3-5 business days to actually get to the cleaning. I would low key ask her hey clean this blah blah, and she’s like yeah sure. 

I went on a trip to DC for a 10 miler, so on the way there I texted my roommate to clean my things up after she used them. Because right before I left I found one of my knives with icing on it on top of the icing container. Then I ‘kindly’ reminded her then she sends me like an entire textbook with time references to when she used my things and didn’t wash them. I honestly, personally, did not care. All I saw was that my dishes/silverware were dirty.

Sometimes I’d find a bowl with food scraped off of it in the common area; one time I was talking to her through the doorframe of her room and saw my plate on the floor with a pizza crust on it; 

this girl is a complete mess. 

So after I low key tell her to not use my stuff and to simply respect it, she took that way too personally than it should’ve been. She sent me an entire textbook back telling me how she doesn’t have time to clean my stuff and blah blah blah. I didn’t really look at it, because I didn’t need that negativity in my life. My friends just read it for me and paraphrased lol. But she’s in law school. That’s her excuse. I get it, you sign up for a program and you’re busier than usual. That doesn’t give you an excuse to use someone else’s stuff and then not clean it. It was funny because to counteract that she got paper plates and paper bowls and plastic ware because she literally didn’t have time to do her own dishes. 

SO this happened last semester. 

Oh, by the way, she does not clean the common area at all. I clean the floors at least once a month. Especially now that it’s winter, we bring in salt from the ground into our apartment. 

I left for winterbreak before she did. I had my boyfriend come in and check up on the place because I personally do not trust my roommate. When he got back, he snapchatted me a video of the common area. There were gigantic salt splotches on the floor. It’s really easy to see anything on the floors because they are so dark. 

When I got back, and sometime my roommate told me that she was cleaning her truck (or whatever she does...) (by the way, she has a F-150 and it doesn’t even have 4WD! wtf??) before she drove back to Texas. So that mean that she was going in and out and didn’t really have a super crucial time hack. She left the apartment floors a mess... 

My apartment is absolutely embarrassing to come back to. 

I actually came back to do a winter statistics session. My roommate came back a day or two after me because law school starts before undergrad. A lot of the times I’d come back and she would be in the common area watching tv. It seemed like she would literally come out whenever she heard me or my boyfriend walk out (our doors are really squeeky) and try to have a conversation with one of us. The problem is that she is difficult to talk about because all she talks about is herself. She’s also a country person... and a very snooty country person at that. 

She’s also very desperate for boys. She was like ‘so are there any single guys at your unit?’ and I was like ‘no’ because literally all the males at my unit are old and married or young married with kids... it was funny because later that day she had a guy over. And then I asked her about him later and she’s like yeah we haven’t talked since. 

She claims that all the guys here at the school dress like ‘fags’ which 1) way to use a derogatory term for gays and 2) sucks to suck, your sister already set up an account on farmersonly.com for you. She really prides herself on being country and ‘different’ because she likes to wear fishing shirts for leisure. 

Whenever we talk, it’s usually about her, and that’s pretty much it. She (not so) humble brags about herself constantly. 

The first day she was there she randomly asked my boyfriend where the mental health clinic was. Our campus is not that small, so unless you actually go there, no one would really know. I don’t know if that was a conversation starter for her but it definitely made my boyfriend uncomfortable. 

She’s told me that she sees like 3-4 doctors for various reasons. Like her body’s messed up and for mental/depressive issues. I’m usually a caring person but she seriously annoys me and I am not going to talk to her because I know myself. I know I will not be nice to her lol. She seriously needs to get a hold of her life and her dishes. 

Oh yea, back to my main point: 

Recently, I found a (mine...) bowl dirty in the sink that I didn’t use. I’m pretty good about washing my dishes. Then a day later I find multiple things of mine in the dish washer. That was seriously fucking shady. I asked her if she used them or whatever and she told me she only wanted to help. That was shady to me because she had a gigantic pan that she could’ve washed that was sitting in the sink (it’s still there... over a week later). And she has her own things to wash. I haven’t gotten around to telling her to seriously not touch my stuff. Because that’s fucking shady. I don’t think it’s helping if she takes my stuff to wash and it takes about 2 weeks to wash. 

By the way, our kitchen sinks were clogged up. The plumbing for that and the dishwasher are connected. So she starts the dishwasher and it starts leaking on the floor. After the cycle ends, it smelled like shit inside. I obviously then had to wash them yet again... so she didn’t really end up ‘helping me out’.

I really hope this girl lives alone or at least with someone dirtier and messier than her. Who knows. SHe’s just too ‘busy’ to do anything.