The first thing that I’d like to do? Is to chug it it when it comes to working tonight instead of sipping it politely over the course of nine hours. Too bad I can’t.

So I found out some devastating news this morning. Part of me is wondering how I’m managing not to simply freak the dickens out, but I’m kind of sick and tired so it might just be taking its sweet time sinking into my processing cortex. But, here it is: The UC lady told me today, for the first time, mind you, that the only way I can test out of my prerequisite French classes? Would be to go back in time and take the equivalency test before I started taking my current French class. Groan.

I do have a little hope though. I’m pulling a “When Bank’s Compete, You Win” type scam, or at least trying awfully hard to. I emailed Kent State and asked them if I could test out of my French classes with their equivalency. Of course, it will probably be about mid-January of 2011 before I hear back from anyone, but ya gots to do whats ya gots to do, eh?

Sigh.

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There’ s nothing noble in

Being corpulent and spent.

Looking like a moody marshmallow or maybe

A sad sack of potatoes,

Who really cares?

You’re too broad to be narrow like this.

But despair looks lovely

On the slender and the slim

Who sit with bony knees uplifting bony elbows

With a board flat abdomen that curves,

The head in the hands is only the point that comes at the bottom

Of the body’s question mark.

And the question is:

What’s the point?

So, guess what? Delightfully  I got my french textbook finally. The joy of this most recent conquest almost caused me to pirouette as I bent down and picked it up from my doorstep. Giggling, I peeled back the tape on the package and looked inside. I drew out the mass of pages and opened it to the number for my assigned homework, and-

And-?

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I’ve finally garnered enough support to have a first official re-founding meeting of Writers’ Grope in Real Life. Huzzah! Now I have only to write a dazzlingly spectacular literary dream of a story and I’m in the clear. Speaking of which, if anyone is interested in joining this ragtag band, what’re you doing next Monday at seven p.m.?

I should turn my TV off. I’m supposed to be writing.

But before I do, can I just say that I hate those Above The Influence commercials? They’re about as bad a those anti-smoking public dramas with wind up baby dolls and people trying to mail cigarettes. There’s so much information out there about why smoking whatever it is is a horrible plan with devastating consequences that if someone has already decided to do it, I don’t see how a commercial is going to make much difference. It isn’t as if someone shows up in an NA meeting and says, Yeah, I thought my life was great, but then I saw this PSA about a little boy wearing a million T-shirts and it made me ask myself, could THAT be ME?

Really? When you’re under the influence of drugs you act like a jerk? Didn’t your girlfriend just tell you that yesterday? Really? Blowing smoke in babies’ faces is bad for them? And you’re telling me that the tobacco industry KNEW this the whole time?! Wow. So did everyone.

I know I sound con- and pre-tentious. Maybe I’m just bitter these days. But these messages seem so obvious and therefore a waste of time. A way for people to feel like Something Is Being Done when really nothing is being done at all. I hate the model of, What should we do about this huge problem? We could either become responsible fellow people and talk with specific at risk individuals that we personally know and partner with them and assist them lovingly and thereby reach fewer people perhaps but deeply, or we could make a silly commercial and reach everyone without even scratching their surface. I think we have a winner!

Sigh.

I’m being complainxious. Sorry.

(no endorsements are implied from this video.)

There’s a manic spirit of summer drifting in and making everyone wanting to Do Something, and I’ve decided not to fight the current this year. I will Do Something too. In fact, I’ve already got a head start, as I’m doing my laundry today. But maybe that isn’t enough. Yes, I’m almost certain of it.

Talking with my brother over the last couple of weeks has given me the inspiration and even the method of my new madness. He has a friend who did something called “NaNoWriMo” last year. And what might this wonderful anacronym refer to? Only National Novel Writing Month!!! Basically the idea is to crank out a 50K word novel within thirty days, aka the month of November. But check it, readers. For those insane enough that one month of sleepless nights spent beating their heads against the typewriter, begging, begging, begging for something, anything to occur to them, still leaves them with the shakes? There is apparently a secondary iditarod of fiction, namely JulNoWriMo (Psst! It takes place in July).

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That’s the name of a class I took in college, and the one in which I fell in love with the childish poetry of Stevie Smith and the extra-ordinary stories of Alice Munro. I invoke it’s title to remind myself of the first blush of desire that precedes a good old fashioned book lust.

So I’m off Simon and on to modern classic literature. My sister was kind enough to accompany me to the Half Price Book Store this afternoon and help me peruse the A-D aisle for a sampling of Adams, Balzac, Collins, and DeLillo, to name a few. I even procured a copy of A Clockwork Orange, which I’m already almost certain I’m going to hate.

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