Fleece

I am watching Geraldo At Large. I am ashamed. I had my hopes set on watching the oddities of celebrities, but my shower took too long. The time would pass, their faces become distorted and contorted, not beautiful at all. I must watch a freak show of a different kind now. Oh, Geraldo, you expose the most hideous of evils; the wrongs of undercover investigations revealing pedophiles in Murphy, Texas. Oh Dateline, what have you done to that man who was so ashamed that he was compelled to kill himself? The town is outraged...or ashamed?? Geraldo brings out the worst in everything, currently my writing. He says hazing has gone horribly wrong, I disagree; it looks like they were doing some high quality hazing. Geraldo, your dateline commercials bring me to shame, and the "Red Hot guys" are totally gay. So completely red-hot they have burst into flames. "One wearing fairy wings was incoherent," Geraldo says. I love Geraldo At Large. Perhaps a greater guilty pleasure than Maury.

I thought I saw one, in the water. I couldn't tell through the undulations. It's been so long since I've seen fleas, I can't recall size comparisons. The cat, which hated me so before, has become friendly. I struggle to resist, but amicable animals always avail. I mean prevail, but I could not resist the alliteration either. It's aging: we acquired it months after the dog, which has since deceased. It can't escape lifts and scoops, poor creature. Ethan menaced to push it off the table. Kirsten says I've made a new friend, but will that friendship persevere fleas? At least she doesn't crawl into my bed and wake me up. Growling in my ear. Stepping on my face. I have a stuffy nose that can keep me up instead. I wondered if my long shower could be a delouser, I doubt my shampoo has anti-parasitic components. A useless ritual.

I had all these grand thoughts. Thoughts I thought were grand, but I can't recall them. Thoughts on my father and other turbulent matters. The television is distracting. I should have more to report, being Christmas Break. But I do so little. So so little. I worry about censoring myself, having learned that I have a "readership." Holy crap, Geraldo signs off with the peace sign. Late nights bring out the worst in people. But I don't want to go to bed.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I cannot say that I am looking forward to my birthday, as I am not expecting anything profound. Perhaps reading Walden made me less materialistic, or I may naturally desire few things, or I may have forgotten my principle desires, but in any case I am not holding my breath. Those with the means to supply me with those two chief desires I hold to, have expressed their denial of them. Given the great deal of work necessary to reach my birthday, I haven't much time to ponder it, although I found the thought of "not really wanting anything for my birthday" quite alarming for a time. For the time being, I have been anticipating my birthday as the end of an epoch. This downhill slide to the new semester has forged a much more tenacious beast, for which M2 has suffered. I fill a slight twinge of guilt, but in the moment it is easy to ignore, especially such times as he would bid by watching Yu-Gi-Oh. When I tried to locate an image of the aspect of Yu-Gi-Oh I despise most, I could find no such bestiary, though I must maintain that the "Thousand-Eyes Restrict," as I learned it to be called, looks like a giant floating penis monster. Fans of the show seem oblivious to this fact, or I am inserting penises into anime. Either theory is valid.

Things Ain’t What They Used To Be

I remembered that Christmas concert far too well. I went to it last night. The Santa, who I recognized as a trumpeter named Dave though I had never actually met him, scolded us, jollily, for being FA100 students that wouldn’t have gone for any other reason. It’s true; I probably wouldn’t have gone otherwise. Going to concerts alone has never been my thing, rather going out in the cold at all has never been my thing, and I did have a date. She needed to attend one more performance for her Jazz and The Humanities class, plus the orchestral event requirement Santa mentioned. It bothered me: for once, Santa was right.

A year before, I was in that band, playing that concert. I was pleasantly surprised that they only repeated one song from the year prior, a Jingle-Bells iteration by the popular Glenn Miller, of whom I have never been a fan. Aside from a nerve-wracking piece where I was the featured soloist for about half the song, it was a very enjoyable concert, very family oriented. Frosty the Snowman, Santa, last year Chewbacca, this year Rudolph all came. We were all expected to make it more ‘fun’ (though I did not consider it at the time to be), which led to some unfortunate oldster being cascaded by my indeterminate volleys of candy when Santa came to town.

I had been in that band; I’m not in any bands now. My grandmother found that hard to believe. Sometimes, I do too. The truth is, it stopped being fun. That is a gross oversimplification. And an untruth, I think. But there must be some truth in it, or I would not be able to regurgitate it so easily without getting sick. And if I hated it so much then, why was Santa making me feel nostalgic now?

My parents kept asking me all summer when they were going to hear me practice, after all I had auditions coming up first day of classes and I should be ready. They never did. At summer’s end, my father confronted me with a lecture about procrastinating or something, it was one I’d heard enough to forget. I was in the kitchen, no escape, cornered between a rock and a dishwasher. I confessed that I was no longer interested in pursuing music at this time and admitted that I should have told them sooner but was afraid that they would be disappointed, which they were more so for my putting it off. When they asked specific reasons I scapegoated unpleasant relationships with previous band directors, a partial appeasement.

I come from a musical family. My father played drums in his small town high school. I am often astonished by the propensity of skills my siblings and I display in respect to my parents who I have never considered exceptionally talented. When one rivalry ended my sister had taken the visual arts and comedy, myself the fields of music and academics without considerable effort on either front. I maintain that I am the superior wordsmith, but this may only because Amanda predominately writes pulp adventures with themes rehashed from the television she watches. Though, my sisters play trumpet and flute respectively, music was always sort of my thing. It was what set me apart among my cousins, what we invited my grandparents to see whenever possible, though they struggled to understand “the jazz”. My parents encouraged us to join the band because it would give us “a place to belong.” I’m not sure it was ever really our choice to belong or not.

My mother played flute through her middle school career and retired in that transition that catches so many young musicians. I heard her once blame braces. She would bring out her flute every year Christmas morning, but she stopped some years ago, whether this was because my youngest sister, who had started on the instrument, or even myself, because the fingerings transferred across our respective instruments, were now able to best her. It may have been the shouting match we had when I was in middle school that pushed her over the edge. She said I was wasting my natural talent. I thought it terribly rash to quit over my adamant refusal to continue to participate in a parade with the high school music outreach program. She had been volunteering at CHOMP, as the acronym was called, as the flute instructor at the request of a family friend, the new band director.

I did CHOMP every year I could, it seemed, and quit before it was finished with the same regularity. I even volunteered a few times while I was in high school, but always for selfish reasons with the same conclusion. It was because of CHOMP that I ever started playing. I was playing with my Lego’s in my room when a parent peaked in and asked if I’d like to play an instrument, I shrugged and with a “sure” dismissed them from my presence. It was the single most decisive indecision I have ever had the pleasure to be disinterested in. A parent brought me to the fledgling CHOMP and introduced me to the various instruments. Having “learned” a portion of the recorder in elementary school, something with similar fingerings seemed ideal, as that would be three less fingerings to learn. I picked the saxophone.

The saxophone is an instrument of curious workmanship. It uses bass clarinet reads, flute key-work, the neck of a bassoon, and a body made of brass: The platypus of music. I’ve been told there was a feature from the oboe inserted, but the illustrious qualities of the oboe have always eluded me in both retention and discovery. It is relatively new, invented in the 1840s, and was intended for military and orchestral bands. It came in some 14 variations, of which only about 5 ½ remain in use, all of which more so in the idiom of jazz than anything else. I eventually grew to prefer the Bb tenor sax to the horn I had cut my teeth on, the Eb Alto, which now sits derelict in my room.

I detest Jim Dunlop. I am an anomaly in this; most people celebrate him as one of their most influential educators, and I cannot deny that he is influential but I would contest that it was in an adverse way in my instance. Certain alumnus will visit every opportunity for some years to come. I regret that I also fall victim to the gravity of that band room, but only because my sister doesn’t have her license. While I know I should put it all behind me, I am far too tenacious to allow it. Petty rifflings like “you hold grudges like a girl” do little to sway me, and it is doubtful that an apology would either. I can recall only one time when I ever received an apology from him, and it had been prompted by an irate phone call from my mother, who was probably more upset than I ever could have been over such a solo.

I had the distinct disadvantage of being a member of the few Mormons in the Mormon band director’s program. It is a curious religion populated by mavericks and missionaries, all of whom delight in being called peculiar, although I believe they are the only ones to still use the word and perhaps ever to have described themselves with it. As one of the fringier religions, it was custom to be scrutinized by peers, to be judged by a higher standard. There would be gossip if we slipped a swear, our actions had connotations that echoed through that hall, and our director knew our parents, he played volleyball with my dad, we were held to a higher standard on all accounts. I didn’t care for that, but it was nice to have somewhere to belong.

The high school band was, with few exceptions, fairly good to me as a musician, up until senior year. It feels ludicrous to explain that while I was arguably the second best tenor saxophonist of my class in the state I played second chair in my high school jazz band. I made little effort with the audition piece at the beginning of that year, because I was the best. I played the piece with a few flaws that I had never strained myself to work out, but with a low volume, which was his biggest complaint in my playing the season prior. When the other player auditioned much louder (and with little else), she received the first chair, perhaps to teach me a lesson about arrogance or following instructions. He may have misjudged my character, though it seems very unlikely given the circumstances. I never challenged for the part; the opportunities he presented for that purpose were quite obfuscated. Though my peers continued to ask if I would challenge Xiang, the (un)fortunate overworked, overstressed girl who was handed the part meant for me, I would always declined; I couldn’t do it to her. She was nice, which made it all the most frustrating, and just a little delicious, whenever Dunlop would ask me why I wasn’t soloing and I would reply, “there aren’t any chords in the second tenor part.”

Playing inferior parts was not rewarding, and became less so as Dunlop continued to select songs I had played my sophomore year, on the lead alto part. They were boring and I craved amusement. I shared my frustrations with my peers and we found ways to occupy our minds in ways our music was not. Things became worse, or rather felt infinitely worse, after All-State. Having tasted the nectar of the gods, how could we return to the poor packets Dunlop offered us? At one point, the tension between the director and myself was great enough to quit, but I didn’t; I didn’t want to be a quitter, yet I have only played once in the past eight months.

The fiasco that was senior year was compounded by the experiences I had the summer prior. One of Dunlop’s offshoot programs, a version of CHOMP for the summer, was finally picking up steam and he wanted an admirable jazz band to be showcased, which required a more competent director, Mr. McKelvey. We sounded good; for a bunch of white kids from the suburbs whose bluest thought was that we were a bunch of white kids from the suburbs. I spent the hours after that concert lying on my girlfriend’s couch, trying to recover from a solo.

…If you can call it recovering, for it is really more like coagulating. For a brief moment, existence lights up, stored potential energy is released as burning sound. Many students are burned by this experience, others, like myself, enjoy playing with those scented candle solos, melting different parts of the wax. It is difficult to explain what happens during a solo, with the feelings of elation, fear, and some otherworldly feeling; but the result will be either satisfying, forgetful, or a failure. As I was coagulating on her couch, letting my fingers and knees harden that they might be useful again at some later point, I tried to figure out which it was. I tried to remember what happened, it was all a blur. There is so much to remember during a solo, patterns and other gimmicks useful to trick the audience into thinking you are competent, and much more you cannot learn but must experience, imbibe until it becomes intuitive. The gift and curse of improvisation is that it is temporary, allowing for infinite corrections and mistakes, which is of no consolidation after a solo feature.

I still feel pretty good about that ballad, I’ve Just Seen Her. A classmate had said it even “sounds like a Derek-song.” Mr. McKelvey remarked on day that if I continued to improve at the same rate I had between the last classes, “we’d be in business.” If a word exists for such a statement that both esteems and humbles a man, I wish I to learn it someday. I tried to uphold my end, spending more time working it out than I can recall (it blurs in the same way soloing does), listening to the same track on repeat, trying to play it along the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, failing miserably, but by less each attempt. That is called progress.

The concert was on a Thursday; we were to meet briefly on Friday to pass in our music and have a debriefing on the performance. Mr. McKelvey, whose high school jazz program is nationally ranked, gave us a little motivational speech about “musical highs,” which I understand to be much better than runner’s highs. I eagerly nodded my head in agreement, thinking I knew the rush he was describing that would get us so “hooked” that we “would never quit.” But I question now what I knew then.

The occasional fantasies of playing in the band of a late night talk show aside, I have never considered music as a viable career option, but I still forecast a greater portion of music classes, they have incredible GPA buoyancy. I didn’t know what I was doing, I just had to get in something to fulfill the needs of the scholarship I had received, only after I rejected it, then received a larger offer a few weeks later. It would pay for lessons and then some. Private lessons: the musical equivalent of braces, without which the masters still became masters, and say things like “Don't play the saxophone. Let it play you.” This is our scripture.

The “practice rooms” the housing sheet had described were really just “storage rooms.” After one was emptied sufficient to put a piano in, a very boyish man asked me to not use them in the evening because people were trying to sleep. I had been assigned to the “quiet floor,” and the boy-man promptly would promptly shush me at ten any night or Sunday. I was not a Music major, I had no idea how the practice rooms in the music building worked, so I just did not use them, except right before auditions.

I could never be an actor. I do not have the sort of expressive face with impeccable complexion required, or the desire to acquire an admirable physique at the expense of leisure time, and I’d break scene constantly. But more so, I am terrified of rejection. I wasn’t afraid of public speaking until I recognized the face of contempt on my classmates following an excessively detailed exposition on Isaac Newton, who really wasn’t that interesting and it made them late to the library. But auditions are so much worse than a presentation. Speeches allow for a natural flow of voice, and a few stutters may be forgiven, but the stutters of music squeak, squawk, murmur, and moan, make children cover their ears. Oration has the advantage of being a natural condition of mankind begun in infancy, the want to share ideas in a coherent fashion, but there is nothing natural about pressing a tube of metal to your face and making your body perform multivariable calculus; it is pantomiming public speaking. Auditions are a horrible rush, roller coasters without lap-bars. It’s a verdict without appellate. You’re not simply wrong, but more wrong than someone else, ranked by wrongness. I know of no other discipline held to a standard so high as music, in which the timing of breath has such a measure of perfection, aside from medicine, which has the definite advantage of having insurance.

Band directors are scheming manipulators. All educators are, why else would arbitrary number be assigned to performance, itself an entirely subjective thing, if not for some manner of coercion. It is a system of incentives, with prestige (and currency) for the teacher and accreditations for the student. Would any remember Socrates if not for the prestige his pupil Plato attained? I do not intend to destroy the system in my words, however corrupt it may be, as it has benefited me. Despite admittance in the All-State jazz band, my confidence has never permitted me to accept that I won entry into the top-tier jazz band, Sound Alliance, without some of this director corruption. They groom people, constantly; they play favorites.

The day after auditions I called home. My mother was ecstatic. She wanted to tell everyone she could, but wanted my permission first, as if it mattered to me. She called weekly that semester, providing updates on things that could have been recapped later. “I told Dunlop you made the top jazz band. He seemed genuinely impressed.” Not proud, impressed. Like he really didn’t believe.

We recorded a CD. Someday I’d like to hear it, but I am not holding my breath. He said I needed to work on my breathing, my professor in all areas of music, which had shrunk at semester to the jazz band exclusively. That I had a small lung capacity, which I added to the list of quirks in my anatomy that have been secretly fighting me all along, and seemed to include the entirety of my vocal and respiratory systems. His prescription was to take up swimming, which I find terrifying. I find him terrifying. To me, he stands as a giant, easily six feet in stature; Polyphemus set to devour me at any moment. Each week we discover new some error in my tradition to rectify, to tear down and rebuild, and it seems we will never reach them all. I loathe lessons and their destructive nature that leaves me so self-aware, so naked in my playing. He asks me, “What are the two ways to get rid of a bad habit?” “Let it fade or just power-through.” It was the right answer. And the answer to what I was asking myself. It was the reason I quit.

My most immediate roommate cheers whenever he sees a clarinetist on TV; he says it is his instrument. “Played or plays?” tangent roommate asks. “Plays.” Like the television he watches, I suspect that to be a lingering pathetic fantasy, but I have never met a man who more exemplified the clarinet than him.

A family wedding brought my parents into the region, they called in weeks prior to ask if I’d like one of my saxophones brought when they came, I gave them a list of things. I thought it’d be nice to have around, incase I ever got the urge to practice.

I pulled it out. It had been a long time. I’d forgot how shiny it was, much more so than the tenor I usually played, or the tenor I was told to play. I couldn’t remember which reed was “good”; they’re probably wasn’t one, only various degrees of worse and used, all were warped and covered with tiny hairs from the case lining. The half-used box of reeds was labeled medium-hard; I shouldn’t be playing on those. I assembled the alto, Mr. Bandersnatch was his name, and pressed it to my lips. It struggled, the neck strap jumped, but I wouldn’t let it escape. It wasn’t like I remembered. It was an awkward embrace; a reunion of past lovers, the kind in movies with happy endings, but there was no intimacy between my instrument and myself. It was rape.

In the evening, adjacent roommate knocks on my door. We have thin walls, he’s recovering from a cold, he wants to verify that he wasn’t hallucinating I think. He asks how long I’ve played, fifth grade. “I don’t get to practice much with Mike sleeping all the time,” I go on to blame other things like the thin walls and not wanting to wake the managers’ baby. I justify it to myself with excuses that I’m a tenor player. I’ve never liked practicing where other people can hear me. They always revere it as some sort of art form, but it’s not. I don’t stare at them as they study.

These events haunt me for some time, as awkward conversations with roommates tend to be analyzed over and over, perhaps that they might reveal some snack bandit or toilet paper alliance. I discuss them with my girlfriend as we leave the bookstore, where I imagine they will have that CD at some point that I might have some record that I played in college, that I had not squandered my time with music having accomplished something substantial. I see a familiar face, no doubt my girlfriend thinks I was checking out some pretty face again, but it was something she was carrying.

“I thought…she…played alto…she switched to tenor…huh…” I’m not making sense. I notice more faces. “The jazz band’s up here...” She prevents any flight I might have taken, asking, “Is that bad?” “No, it’s just…” They recognize me before I can say awkward and I hope that it does not become so. While the tenor player has always been unapproachable, the alto player warmly greets me; they ask prepositions about my life. Responses are rushed as we are traveling inversely to each other, I promise to email them before I feel a jestful elbow from that professor.

“I’ve been going to all your concerts; they’re been great”

“Good. Come back and play”

If nothing else, my GPA could use the boon.

A State of Decay

Someone did not flush the toilet. If they do should not be bothered to flush, why should I? If not bothered to flush, why should I bother to aim? To buy toilet paper? To use the toilet at all? Such is the slippery slope on which we dwell. Only a week remains, and it is not my duty to clean that facility, why should I care? Sometimes it is hard to. I plan to put a soup tabula in the shower head tonight during the night, as I do not plan to sleep for the second instance this week. I dismiss my fears, the night lends me solace.

I watched the game they play called "Battleship," a game of swamping canoes in the school pool. Items may be employed to block or lob water as according to some rules, which I have but a rudimentary understanding of. My mind reeled. I saw that the more skittish ships survived longer being out of reach of the other vessels for a greater portion than the others, as the event seemed to be a timed match and I cannot be sure what the rules of participation require of engagement. I imagined canoes powered by cranks connected to Archimedes' screws to shovel in water at an alarming rate in close proximity. Canoes stranded in the center of the pool were reduced to using hands and paddles with pitiful results. Surely, a pole would be of no use; they would never allow for a gondolier in such a tiny pool, neither would it fling with any ease or safety. I began to think some sort of Jai alai raquet (I know little of the sport and had to search extensively to anything of it) would be quite useful as it would make both an effective paddle and weapon. I tire of this for now, perhaps when I know more about this game I shall post more at some later time. My enduring roommates have begun the movie "Finding Neverland," and I shall be up quite late tonight, I am not very thrilled presently.

Silence

I had a most devious thought during a heart retching, for all who love quality in their music, rendition of "Silent Night". One of those thoughts that once planted, supplants all previous opinions regarding a topic. It is one of those things I like to share with people every so often, because I am an awful person, to watch their reaction, sometimes to justify my position in regard to something they enjoy. Like when someone asks if I would like some eggs, I always shake my head sadly and say to them, "No, I don't eat eggs, and it saddens me that you do. Would you eat any woman abortion? Why then do you eat the hen's?" The wiser ovivore, a word which i feel to be true in its description but can find no accreditation to, would correct me at this point saying that not all eggs are fertilized, in fact most commercial eggs are not, and it would be more akin to menstruation. Whatever comparison will be made between menstruation and abortion, I choose the latter in my comparison because of its potent cultural oomf. But I have digressed, in my searching for the word ovivore through wikis and dictis, so I propose to lay down the thought (though not as eloquently as I would hope) which I first thought of during the meetings in a brief respite form the lecture on obeying the honor code in its nth reiteration. Whenever the song "Silent Night" is sung, be sure to not think about it applying to stillbirths. It totally ruins it.

Tired

I worry that she can't escape herself. Everyone should escape themselves: we are all awful people. I receive text messages late at night asking if I ever get tired of everything. Yes, I do. That's when I go to sleep. Get lost in dreams. Happy dreams, sad dreams, scary dreams, sexy dreams, super dreams, confused dreams. I could ramble about the necessity of following dreams, or just remembering them, the reasons we have them, superficial ramblings. They are important, and let's leave it.

I am a strong believer in the importance of deriving happiness from something, happiness wells, or if you will, happy little trees. I left my radio on Saturday, kept telling the alarm clock to keep trying long after I was stirring, to keep my roommate away. Near noon, a man was talking about brainwashing ourselves into positive habits. I heard John Tesh on M2's radio talk about similar things, but he misused the word habit, thinking it was any bad thing that you tend to do rather than a conditioned response. He used the example of misplacing the keys instead of placing the keys, which would be a habit unlike the prior. But I do not mean to talk about Tesh, I will add it to my list of grievances against M2 and continue with my story about the first radio-man. He spoke of the natural tendency to prefer whatever mental mindset is most comfortable, most familiar, even if not the most enjoyable. I see this is in many people, especially M2. I should not share with you the details of his heavy breathing, his hypochondria, and the general aura of discomfort he exudes. But know that I was quite satisfied this morning when he flumbled out of bed to scramble to the phone call telling him he was late for work, just an hour after his snoring had woken me. Which reminds me I need to remember to completely close my eyes when feigning sleep, so I can avoid the cliche comments like "Welcome to the land of the living" which he spouts at every opportunity, no doubt feeling clever for his utterance likely derived from some forgotten entertainments.

I, for one, with no intention of boasting, am doing quite well, in the fuller sense of the words. I have all the appropriate targets of animosity which I desire, which provide abundant malice for me to malign. A hatred set to simmer is my most comfortable mindset.I feel I am slightly behind in some of my schoolwork and have developed awful fall backs of morning math homework, but have resolved not to let this affect me negatively, although that is dependent of perspective and probably not the wisest decision, it is still mine to make. And in comparing myself to others (and do not pretend that you do not do the same) my luck is quite sufficient for my needs, and my ability to fling the most negative of truths, those that people don't wish to have noticed but are readily observed, have been of great use recently. I gave an impromptu lecture to some of my friends, which led to me being hailed a genius, on their failures with women. It did not matter that I could not recite their histories, I knew their patterns, their follies are intertwined with their beings, thus their histories were revealed. It is unfortunate that they did not believe themselves to be attractive men, because it is so easy to be attractive here. I maintain that the interbreeding has led to a net decrease in attractive individuals, and by no means am I asserting that I am a specimen of grand physical beauty, rather I perhaps feel that I am more true in myself that perhaps confidence in that revelation may lead to an aura of attraction. I will freely admit that it is entirely possible that the aura I just mentioned is a manifestation of some latent complex, but I will not apologize for it. The number of beautiful Mormons will decrease through the generations, and I foresee no decline in the trend. Of course, I am primarily referring to those Mormons of many generations, native to "Desseret". Missionary work will continue to bring new faces into the fold, which will be to some benefit, but how much will it affect the cacausian, and i suspect adamantly latent racist, population of the Jelly Belt? I theorize, and I am no theorist, that this trend, of which I seem more aware (or more diluted) than peers with which I have discussed, is because of the emphasis on spirituality in the culture when choosing a mate. I can draw no correlation between attractive people and spirituality, as I am not one of those involved, and whether it is inheritable or taught in the home, or some combination thereof. I am reminded of studies (whose credibility I can not verify in that they were on blog posts) that inferred that natural fearfulness was an inheritable genetic trait in mice, and a book I saw posted on boingboing.net that suggested that denial of reality was too. Could faithfulness follow such a trend as this?
A girl asked in biology class, where we are studying evolution currently, to confirm that evolution is just a "theory" and that there wasn't really any "proof". The professor, who I admire all the more for how he can walk on these eggshells, that he was showing us the, and forgive me for not having the accurate phrasing, "things they use as proof" and then launched into a subsequent discourse on how we could rationalize these things from a Creationist's point of view. I think all the overwhelming observable evidence may have been starting to get to her.


I must apologize for my writing style, I have been reading Walden, and I grow to hate Thoreau a little more each day. I struggle to decide just in what ways I hate him and what the most accurate and complete description this person would be, though I must admit, he can craft an elegant sentence. Perhaps it is that at times, the essays seem to be little more than his intellectual masturbation, but it was the most thrifty choice for a report. I regret that this reading may have influenced the above style. I must go prepare myself for the day now.