trillonious monk

Inspired by Tess Lynch.

1. I parked without my student parking permit three times, thereby receiving three parking tickets, one of which was overdue and thereby increased to $120, thereby totaling a whopping $240 in parking violations.

2. Ate a very bad brownie. Had a very bad aftermath.

3. Went to San Francisco post-New Year’s and ate at five star restaurant. Said Five-Star restaurant served bad fish and therefore induced wicked food poisoning.

4. I watched The Happening on HBO and wasted an entire hour and a half of my life that I will never get back. Ever.

5. I dropped my laptop and cracked my screen. I was completely sober.

6. I dropped my cell phone and cracked the side. I was completely sober.

7. I forgot to eat a solid meal approximately 457 times.

8. When making a joke about MILFs who buy leopard panties, I didn’t realize a MILF was standing right beside me while holding leopard panties. Awkward moment #1334983.

9. I forgot to do laundry approximately 10 times. I’ll tell you though, going commando has its perks.

10. One morning I went down State College Dr. instead of taking the freeway and got rear-ended by a blubbering 21-year-old girl.

11. I drunk dialed/texted many poor friends/victims.

12. I was a sucker for a chiseled jaw line and scruff far too many times.

13. I went on a date with a younger man. He was legal, OKAY.

14. I used the most awful pick-up line with a Frenchman in Hermosa (although, it worked). That’s all I will say about that.

15. I never wrote back the child I sponsor in India. He has written me approximately 5 times and has included pictures of himself this past year. He probably hates me.

16. I convinced myself that the human body does not need sleep for three months. Now my barely human body wants to sleep for three months.

17. I prolonged visiting my doctor for too long. Who would’ve thought that DOCTORS KNOW MORE THAN GOOGLE AND WEB MD??

18. I promised myself only 10 more minutes on tumblr/facebook approximately 7,000 times but did not, in fact, abide by said promise.

19. I tried cooking a creative dinner approximately two times and therefore ate the worst dinner of my life approximately two times.

20. I shouted many obscene/vulgar things while intoxicated in the summer, half of which I don’t remember shouting.

21. I wore denim on denim.

22. I once turned on my car radio and heard Ke$ha’s voice.

23. I once wasted 10 minutes of my life lamenting over a misused preposition in a text message.

24. I upgraded my Netflix account and then never used it.

25. I convinced myself that successful budgeting happens in my head. It does not.

All my other mistakes of 2010 generally involve alcohol or petty consumerism, and I would become entirely redundant. I intend on being a professional adult eventually.

A large part of me is okay with the idea of spending the rest of my life alone. I like coming home to an empty bed and sitting contentedly in white, tousled sheets; I like making coffee and drinking the entire pot myself; I like not having to answer to anyone nor feel the need to inform someone about the decisions I make. There is an entire world of solitude, I tell myself, that a good portion of the population refuses to recognize. A world of eating dinner alone, of laughing at one’s jokes alone, of being utterly comfortable with one’s self alone.

But on nights like these I am duly reminded of that smaller, perhaps less noisome part of me that remains. A part of me who casts aside self-deprecating jokes and a tinge of jadedness to admit that someday, somehow, I do intend to be in love.

There are things in life I don’t understand.

Like the emoticon with the tongue sticking out. So I get that it’s in jest, like poking fun at the person whom you’re talking to, like hey-I’m-making-a-joke-HAHAHA-dont-take-me-seriously-though-because-wit-doesn’t-transfer-well-online-OKAY. But in real life, no one would ever do this. Ever. It would be entirely distracting. And really irrelevant. Your protruding tongue does not help the fact that you are attempting to be funny, nor does it ameliorate the potential offense with which you’ve just harmed me. The other emoticons I get—because hey, everyone smiles with all their teeth when something is outrageously funny or slaps on a pair of sunglasses to demonstrate how cool they are/were/have just become.

Anyway, it’s Friday night, and I declined plans with friends so that I can work on important things like my final paper. But instead I am contemplating some of life’s most inexplicable phenomena like internet emoticons. I plan on growing up very soon.

I speak on behalf of my fellow colleagues in denouncing the nonsensical process of ending a semester—that is, that which you so definitively call FINALS. Years ago, when young students had but a twirl of their thumbs and poppycock fantasies as viable sources of entertainment, you deemed it most necessary for there to be such a thing as finals, to collectively end a period of school through tests and papers and studying. However, now that we’ve crossed into the twenty-first century, my colleagues and I grossly suffer under the pressures of such things as Facebook or Tumblr or Youtube or Skype—it is altogether more liberating, more enlightening to watch videos of fat people trying to beatbox or to stalk hot guy on Facebook. These are the essentials of being apart of the inter-web community of our generation, you know.

We are merely participatory members by partaking in the global conversation that is the Internetz. We can watch gifs of people in other continents and laugh over silly celebrities like poor Miley—because at the end of this long, forsaken day, 99 percent of the population finds itself glued to a laptop. Yes, he and she and we are apart of something larger, something meaningful.

So please, disown the age-old philosophy that students must prove themselves after a semester’s worth of studies. Our brains and talents and energies are already well-committed to the global school of the world wide web. Trust that we are smart kids, give us the A, and let the world spin madly on.

Cordially,
Rachel