trillonious monk

-PCs are (still) better than macs
-I will marry a left-handed person. They are just cooler human beings in general.
-Pineapples do not taste good on pizza.
-Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods Market are the best things ever created next to butter.
-Annual doctor’s appointments are unnecessary because my health is immune to all that is terminal and all that is ill.
-ADD is an excuse for overly-stimulated children who need some damn discipline.
-Mom and Pop>Corporate Chain
-Books are necessary. As are shoes.
-You are more Hipster than you think.
-Mainstream music is the sewage of American pop culture.
-Eminem, Ke$ha, and Pitbull have killed the radio star.
-The world was much brighter before Twitter.
-It is perfectly all right to be a snob when it comes to beer. It is perfectly all right to reject michelob and budlite—even at house parties.
-Ants are a hiccup in God’s creation.
-People who quote Derrida and Nietzche religiously are not as smart as you think.
-Misery abounds the corporate world—avoid it all costs.
-Chocolate and wine can fix anything. Guaranteed.

The girls’ bathroom in the University Library (1st floor, North Wing) perpetually smells like death. This has always astounded me because quite often bathrooms tend to smell like piss, not a post-mortem reek of all-that-has-died-in-the-world. Occasionally I walk in and am happy to smell a bathroom of normal smelling piss—you know the acrid smell familiar yet still stinging to the nostrils. You plug your nose with the settling confidence that you’ve done this plenty of times before, trained to defeat the mind’s nose. You go about your business calmly, eventually exiting the bathroom to meet a refreshing gasp of air. But somehow, the females at my University have managed to achieve death in our bathroom; it’s as if every girl kindly took it upon herself to release and collectively die, her body rotting along with fecal matter and unflushed urine. I always wonder how in a span of 24 hours this odor is achieved—I mean, for God’s sake, the bathrooms are routinely cleaned by our handy janitors. Then I get to thinking that the library’s janitorial crew has unanimously given up, resigning to the death-stench of the ladies’ room, only refilling toilet rolls and paper towels.

Whatever the case, I doubt this dire plea for help would gather campus-wide attention. I imagine these girls would adamantly deny ever taking part in such bathroom-foolery, ostracizing me for pointing out that girls (1) actually pee and poop and (2) are capable of not smelling like rose-buds and cucumber melon (which, I believe, might be equally as foul-smelling). I’ll probably need to appropriate a new bathroom. But seriously girls, get it together.

When I was in third grade, I went through a momentary phase of wishing I were a boy. Against my mother’s wishes, I rolled out of the house every morning rocking knee-length shorts (and this was well before the time when bermuda shorts were decidedly “in”), hair pulled in a low ponytail, and an oversized t-shirt. Ryan Robinson, the only black kid in our entire elementary school, approached me during recess one day while I was dominating the tetherball courts and told me, “Hey Rachel, if you didn’t have long hair, you’d be a boy.” Smugly I had answered, “Thanks.”

Little did I know, this single incident would be reflective of my wayward youth into adulthood. At one point or another, I was always fighting some urge to be overly feminine or boyish, trying to ride that fine balance of emotion and rationale. I watched as both sexes waged war in my highschool—the boys brimming with masculinity and bravado, the girls swooning over trivial affairs. I had decided that I wouldn’t fall under any kind of classification, that I would be immune to the inevitable demise of the extreme man and woman…

Today, I encountered my crush while at work. My crush consists of a 6’2 male, charming good looks, on the way to attorney-hood (god help him), and a sharp sense of humor. My crush also consists of a serious girlfriend who is seriously pretty and seriously lives with him. Upon finding this out a year ago, I wasn’t too surprised because as I have learned in my encounters with men, the good ones are either already taken or demonstrably gay, leaving behind a male rummage of jerks and the emotionally retarded. Today we were on the subject of crying, and he was telling me that the tragedy of the world lies with a man’s overt rationale and a woman’s flood of emotions. Men, he reasoned, are blind to the psyche of women as they are too busy rationalizing emotion while women are too busy being overwhelmed by emotion.

And instead of blurting out that I was madly in love with him and wouldn’t mind being overwhelmed by the emotion of his lips on mine, I said:

“But what about me? It’s been ages! I can’t even remember the last time I cried.”

“Well you, Rachel, are an anomaly.”

An anomaly! I looked at him, and he just grinned back at me, leaving me loads of uncertain whether or not that was a compliment. After he eventually walked away, I decided that I would use my English degree and explicate the passage of our conversation. Anomaly, I decided, though readily used to describe someone peculiar, strange, incongruent—indeed, WAYWARD—might also be used to describe someone against the grains, a deviation from the common trend. This set my heart alight, even if subconsciously I knew that this was not what my crush had in mind. Yes, I told myself, he thinks you are different, set apart from the hogwash of stereotypical women, perhaps even apart from his woman.

Nevertheless, he will inevitably go home to her tonight, and I must cope with the fact that I am more of a stereotypical woman then I set out to be—that is, dedicating this entire post to my unrequited love.

At least I won’t be crying over it.

there is a man who is hunched over on a couch.
this man is snoring on a couch.
this man is crossing his arms.
this man is gray-haired.

the man that is snoring looks like a medicine man.
the man who looks like a medicine man dreams of beautiful women.
the beautiful women he dreams of are pearl-skinned.
the beautiful women he dreams of are young.

the man is snoring on a couch.
the man is crossing his arms.

the man that is snoring on a couch sleeps while his wife meets with a white man.
his wife is not pearl-skinned.
his wife is not young.
the man who is snoring does not dream of his wife.

the man is crossing his arms.

the man is a man who has chapped hands.
when he pretends to pray in dim-lit rooms, he looks at his age old hands.
his wife who is not young holds beads and prays.
his wife who is not young imagines heaven and hell.
his wife who is not young swallows worlds.

the man who dreams of beautiful women stirs.
the man adjusts himself, hand on crotch.
the man, nodding head. the man asleep.

the man is crossing his arms.

1. i like when i hear people say “she and i” or “he and i” instead of “her/him and i” when talking about how “she and i went to the store.” i also like when “whom” is used correctly. subjective, objective—there’s a difference, you know. this is not to say that i’m one of those pretentious grammarians who thinks that proper English needs to be saved lest it fall into the winds of EVOLUTION. no, the reason why i enjoy hearing these things is because it means someone paid attention in some god-awful english class. this gives me hope for my career.

2. recently, i got a tattoo. this isn’t so much meaningless as it is an opportunity to flaunt that shit. it actually holds a lot of meaning, something my siblings and i got as a tribute to one of the most important people in our lives. but it’s funny—i find myself reluctant to tell the world that i got inked up, as they say. because i imagine initial reactions going something like this: oh gad, she probably got a dragonfly near her crotch. or, oh gad, she probably got ‘double trouble’ arching over her boobs. despite these hypothetically drawn up conclusions, i can say that my tattoo isn’t some prepubescent idea of “something d0pez.” i can also say that upon first driving home the morning after, i already felt exponentially cooler. imagine me posted, seat reclined (and i DETEST poor posture!), one arm on the wheel, hair blowing in the wind, and all the while i nod to fellow drivers thinking, “hey don’t mind me, it’s just a tattoo.”

3. i have this recurring dream where i’m in a book club, and every time it’s my turn to provide some insightful commentary, all i can shout is “INSATIABLE THIRST!” now, aside from the reality that i am a hapless soul who dreams of being in book clubs, this dream can be interpreted in a number of ways: (1) i have some twisted form of tourette’s syndrome where instead of screaming obscene, socially inappropriate words, i scream unneccessary, abstract phrases, (2) i enjoy non-sequiturs in highly intellectual spaces, (3) i have some repressed subconscious (please omit all freudian references here), and (4) i am, indeed, crazy.

4. also, i have finally paid off the honda coupe that i first received when i was 17. it only took another 5 years, heyyyo! it feels good to actually have something paid off, unlike the heaps of debt currently hinged to my name. now i can probably revise my greetings to fellow drivers while i drive home later on today: “hey don’t mind me, it’s just a tattoo. and a paid off ride. and yes, it pays to be bad ass.”

Last night, I tossed and turned while sleeping in a foreign bed (not what it seems), and thus insomnia crept in until the wee hours of the morning. I remember laying there, cursing myself for not being able to sleep, for not having an excuse like fantasizing about a prospective boy, which might explain my restless movements, switching legs this way and that way, pillow and no pillow—but nay, I had no boy, no reason. Nonetheless, after about a couple of hours of wallowing in sleepless despair, I began to doze off, brinking on a much-awaited slumber. My eyelids became limp, my body a peaceful slump…

And right at the tip of this oh-so climactic moment, my ears were met with the most high-pitched, off-tuned singing voice of a woman:

“Just gonna STAND thereeeee and WATCH me burrrrrn, but that’s alriiiiGHT, b’cos I LIKE the way it hurrrrrrrts!”

Instantly, my eyes were split open, and I stared at the ceiling with disbelief as this woman screeched away. I was doubly amazed: (1) because it dawned on me that I was encased in paper-thin walls, never fully understanding the torture one goes through living in such poorly constructed apartment housing, and (2) because Eminem (and must we forget, Rihanna) had successfully influenced another TOP 40’s dud to scream his misogynistic lyrics at the top her lungs, albeit in post-drunken stupor. Any song, I silently wished, any song but this one!

“…and that’s alriiiight b’cos I love the wayyyy you lie! I love…the way…you liiiiieee!”

I sighed and momentarily hated my life. Lying prone on the bed didn’t help much either—probably because it gave the illusion that this woman was singing above me, hovering over me with her shrilling voice. As it was, however, I was on the top floor, and the whereabouts of this woman, as they might never be known, was really besides the point. Eventually she shut up, whether due to passing out or the hushes of a sober boyfriend…and I was left still detesting the forever-enraged rapstar that is Eminem. After all of this, sleep was not too far away.

Screw counting sheep. All one needs is a bit of insomnia, drunken neighbors (preferrably failed-singers; it encourages their frenzied state even more), and bad mainstream music. And that, friends, is your helpful tip of the day. Cheers.

You know, it’s pretty difficult trying to sleep when your bed is surrounded by a colony of ants. Everytime I would verge on falling asleep, my dream began with a swarm of ants invading my entire bed, and I might thereby look something like the loch ness monster, stumbling about my room whilst yelling desperate pleas for help. At which point (of course to prevent this) I would readily dismantle one of my frames off the wall and murder the little suckers. This only caused me to lapse in and out of sleep, always paranoid that one little bugger was crawling up my leg, between my thighs, across my forehead, aside my arm. The truth is, before I went to bed I told myself that I would sleep downstairs tonight. I said, Rachel, you will sleep downstairs tonight. But I have one of those mattresses that shapes the lining of your back, and I thought, By George! It would be a shame to waste such an accommodative luxury! I reasoned with myself for a whopping two minutes and finally sucummbed to the comfort of my own bed rather than a couch. Rightfully so.

Earlier, I had gone to the store and purchased one of those ant killers—not the ubiquitous RAID that induces the scent of piss and vinegar—but one of those ant baits that resemble duplex housing for the little shits. The cashier frowned when she rang me up, saying how much she hated ants and how she planted an ant bomb beneath her house. “I KILLED THEM! They were gone in a day!” She was practically writhing with excitement. But I couldn’t imagine inflicting warfare on a creature exponentially smaller than me; somehow it felt inhumane, like scathing dog’s fur for a winter coat. Or something. Perhaps I’m being dramatic—no, I admit to being dramatic. But all this talk about ants makes me wonder why colonies of ants go on living and aggravating the human race while cute little pups like panda bears are virtually extinct. Was there anyone who encountered an army of ants in their cupboards pleasantly surprised at such a spectacle? Or felt so inclined to honey-fetch-the-camera and post a youtube video of the adorable movements of ants furtively stealing crumbs from the bottom of their trash?
No, I didn’t think so.

So, like every other normal English speaking person, a couple of months ago I compiled a list of words that I wished were used more often. You know, because everyone does that in their spare time—that, and create grammar equations on the correct usage of commas.

But I digress.

Anyways, it occurred to me that if two people were to actually dialogue with one another using the selected words in my list, it would sound like the following:

“You know, Ethel, it would behoove you to use your cranium in more efficient ways. It isn’t uncommon to be bamboozled by a bunch of hoodlums these days.”

“Thomas! How I loathe thee! I am simply enamored with the human race: including the curmudgeonly and rambunctious lots. Why, just the other day as I gallivanted around the city, I stopped by the edifice and met the most agreeable young man!”

“Do tell, woman.”

“The rain had just begun to pitter-patter, when I noticed this dapper gentleman. He held out his umbrella and offered it to me with the most amicable disposition!”

“Oh, bullocks! He was probably one of those lewd types, desiring nothing more than your knickers, I’m sure!”

“Thomas, how pitiful you are. Woe is you! How swimmingly she courts you every day. Despondency you welcome. Pessimism you embrace. You would say that the sun itself is the most garish light. And anyways, this gentleman had a refined gait. I detest the way you slump about, always bemoaning about something rather.”

“I am filled with angst, I admit. But I have always been leery of your kind. Your panties could be in a wad, your bank defunct, your health betwixt life and death—and you’d still praise that God you so highly esteem.”

“Pardon me, dear. Wait here while I take a big ca-ca.”

In retrospect, it appears that I have an affinity for 19th-Century proper English, sans the last line. It is a wonder why my friends think I’m weird.

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