Happy birthday, blog!

Hurrah! Today is my blog’s first birthday, and to slack off from writing a real post celebrate, I thought I’d reflect on the past year and bring all of you recent TMA readers up to speed with my life here in Chicago. Just imagine we’re on the last episode of Full House and Michelle has fallen off that horse and now has amnesia and the rest of the Tanners incorporate the effects of a great flashback-episode to make her remember all of the good times. That’s what this is like, only much shorter and probably not as entertaining.

Hey, remember back in October when I was so unemployed that that I went to a job interview in some guy’s condo and could have potentially been killed?! Oh, how hilarious that would have been! Only I figured it out just before knocking on the door (“Heeeey…this doesn’t look like an office building!”).

Laurie moved back home in November, which was depressing and scary, considering I was on the verge of doing the same thing. But before we got all sad and boo-boo bears about it, we got to interview potential roommates (and I got to reflect on why I’m so terrified of living with strangers).

In December, I found out that my best friend in high school, Fuckchill Fuckstin, didn’t invite me to his graduation party. I took it pretty well, don’t you think? Also, I started temping and, to celebrate, I got really, really drunk at my temp agency’s holiday party. Classy!

In January, I got a job working at Urban Outfitters and had a great time waking up at four in the morning and driving out to Schaumburg to count overpriced t-shirts. Oh, and the people were great, too.

I started working full-time in February, and one of my managers made a very important discovery.

Everyone knows that March 17th is St. Patrick’s Day, and this year I looked back on some of my less sophisticated holiday celebrations.

In April, I was pleased to finally acknowledge that I am mature enough to go to the bathroom when necessarily, instead of waiting until the last minute as I’ve done, well, many times. Also, Christina and I started a band.

In May, I realized that I really need to get out of this mining town and make a name for myself, but my anger management issues are keeping me from fully realizing my potential.

I was a big boy and went to a concert all by myself in June, and I realized that it’s not so scary after all. You just might meet an adorable young mother from rural Indiana and have a grand old time!

I recognized I have a variety of psychological problems in July, one of which is excessive paranoia.

In August, Nicole and I went to an Irish pub in Wrigleyville to see some really, really great bands. I also had the sexiest bus ride ever.

Finally, in September, I discovered I had an irrational fear of haircuts. Luckily my new stylist, Drev, helped me get over that.

And there you have it: a whole year of me being bored enough to publish crap online. I promise I won’t do another flashback entry for at least another year. Or until after Blog Sweeps Week.

Life lesson: Your knowledge of skin disease will not help you in the Real World.

Last night during our fifteen-minute break from reading long, boring French essays, I sat in the classroom with a group of four grad students. They all know each other from previous classes and therefore congregate together and look cool while the rest of us (read: me) who don't know anyone else sit there begging for attention with our sad little eyes and pouty expressions that scream, "TALK TO ME! I'm nice and I can be funny and not entirely depressing!"

The focus of their conversation was shingles, since our professor had them on his arm and promised us a longer break than usual because he "might just go lay down in the office and die." One student said that she was impressed that he made it to class, and the other three nodded their heads in agreement. Yes, our professor was a brave, brave man for persevering and making it through the pain (with a little help from Professor Vicodin).

Then one of them said, “What is shingles?”

Silence.

“It’s actually a form of the Herpes virus…you get it when you have chicken pox and it can outbreak later in life.”

My four classmates stared at me and there was more silence.

“Ew.”

Then they all turned around and started talking about the Aldo Outlet.



Tyler: 0. Life: 79,302.

"Mike Hunt" apparently hasn't called to check on his application yet.

My co-worker still thinks "Amanda Hugginkiss" is HILARIOUS.

I'm a little teapot.

Yesterday morning I woke up early (at 6:30; and yes, thirty-five minutes before I’m supposed to leave the apartment does count as “early”) and decided that I’d make myself some tea for the commute. I’ve decided that I like tea quite a bit these days, and to compliment Nicole’s purchase of a new teapot, I spent twelve dollars on a snazzy red to-go mug. I’ve also been trying to ward-off a cold, and I thought some nice herbal tea would be great to have while riding the stupid bus to stupid work.

So I heated up some water and made my tea and let it brew while I hurried around my room getting dressed (because, yeah, waking up thirty-five minutes before I’m supposed to leave the apartment still doesn’t give me a lot of time to do stuff). I got everything together, grabbed my mug, and head out the door.

Perhaps in my rush I didn’t realize that I did not wait an adequate amount of time for the tea to cool from boiling to barely-tolerable-for-drinking, because when I turned the corner on Diversey I took a sip of tea. And it was so hot that I couldn’t even hold it in my mouth.

I rapidly glanced around in the immediate vicinity to see if anyone was there, even though it really didn’t matter at that point. I leaned over, opened my mouth, and spit the tea on the sidewalk. I didn’t even spit it out, really; it just kind of ran out of my mouth.

I would somehow turn this story into some kind of metaphor for my life, but I think you get the idea.

My mouth still hurts.

Monday morning wrap-up.

I'm just going to do one of those lazy list-posts because, well, I'm lazy and I feel like there's a lot of stuff to mention. (I love how I feel there are things I "have" to mention, as if someone out there is relying on me to fill them in on what I did this weekend. Well, whoever you are, this one is for you.)

1. On Friday night, Julia, Renee, and I went to the Pilsen East's Artist's Open House. Julia's boyfriend Eric had a friend from the MAPH program who was co-curating a gallery, so we went down there with her boyfriend and walked around, looking at art. Also, I got tipsy from drinking three cups of wine on an empty stomach, but it was fun. And I bought four posters from these people after I couldn’t buy the huge painting of owls flying into a gun (it was thirteen hundred dollars and I had forgotten my checkbook).

2. Critical Mass also took place on Friday. I didn't really have an opinion about it until I was stuck on the Halsted bus for fifteen minutes watching a few hundred bikers ride by. It'd be easier to take Critical Mass with a grain of salt if they were organized to raise money for a cause - like a real marathon. I don't think "Riding Bikes is Fun" is important enough.

3. I watched The Proposition, which was good, Don’t Come Knocking, which was very good, and Brick, which I didn’t like. Brick would have been wonderful if only it had not taken place at a high school. I tried very hard to accept that, but I just couldn’t. Also, I couldn’t take watching the kid from 3rd Rock from the Sun being serious or the kid from Witness being menacing.

4. I talked to my mom on Sunday, who was about to go see Cats at a dinner theater in Fredericksburg. When I told her that sounded like a miserable way to spend a Sunday, she said, “Well, they’ve got real actors in it. It’s, like, a step up from regular dinner theater.” But probably five steps down from a national tour.

5. A “Spirit of Halloween” store opened on Diversey, so now I’m getting stressed-out about Halloween, which is exactly what I need. What should I be: Pimp or Pimpin’ Priest? Christina had talked about going together as Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton. How much would it take to convince her that these costumes are The Shit?

6. My Southern fiction class is still dreadful. My favorite quote from last week’s class: “Property supersedes humanity. That’s the Southern way.” Sigh.

7. And finally, this week in MySpace friend requests:
and:

My brother is more of a man than I.

I don't really see a resemblance between me and my brother, unless you consider the cold, dead stare that we love to use when forced to have our pictures taken. Orrr the debilitating fear of haircuts.



(That gash would probably lose its effect if I told you that David got it while playing golf.)

Drev should work for Sassy Kutz.

Good news! Yesterday I broke down, faced my fear, and got a haircut.

I was sitting at my desk trying to figure out if I should just trim it myself again or spend the fifteen dollars at Hair Cuttery. I figured it wouldn't be too bad to just get out the old electric razor and thin it out myself in the shower (Nicole still hasn't hung up her mirror, so I could have used that to see the back of my head). After thinking about the possibility that I was just lucky to not fuck it up the first time I cut it, I decided that I should really just have a professional do it, even if that professional worked at the Hair Cuttery.

After practicing what I was going to say ("Um...I want it short in the back and on the sides, but leave some length in the front? I have a big forehead that needs to be covered up. Can you do that? Would that look weird? Can you just not make me look like a Flock of Seagulls fan? I'll promise at least a two-dollar tip."), I walked to the place up the street from my house. I had a good feeling about it since it was just a little south of Boystown, and everyone knows that gay men know good hair.

Then I walked in and realized, after looking at some of the employees, that I was in a Hair Cuttery and there was no way that this would have a positive outcome.

Luckily, however, I had Drev to take care of my hair. Drev just loved my hair and he knew exactly what to do with it. After the inevitable awkward exchange over my hair ("Who cut your hair last?!" "Heh heh... uh... I don't really remember, I mean it's been such a long time..." "Well, this is a weird haircut."), things were okay and normal. Drev was very chatty and asked me many questions. He also said "fuck" a lot ("You live by the Panera? I love that fucking Panera!" "Ohmygod, I fucking hate all that Cubs shit."), and told me that he was about to get into a fight with his manager. If there’s one thing in my life I can’t get enough of it would be positive sass.

Whine and cheese.

If I am going to discreetly not do work and write boring, long-winded pieces of generic prose, I should be writing about George Orwell's essay "Such, Such Were the Joys..." The truth is, however, I could care less that I have a two-page response paper due this evening at 5:45.

I've written about a third of the paper, which is just one very long paragraph. This does not bode well, since the one very long paragraph takes up most of the page, and it's likely that my short response paper will end up being four pages. But honestly, why am I writing short, stupid papers for a graduate class? I was under the expectation that grad school required more reading and more work, but so far I feel like I'm taking the boring, uninteresting general education undergrad courses.

I don't know what this means, exactly. I've been thinking about my situation (the whole hating my classes thing), and it's just sparked a new Life Crisis of the Month. Do I just hate these classes and these professors? Do I not like DePaul? Do I not like graduate school?

I think turning twenty-three fucked me up. This is why I hate my birthday, because it's another reminder that hey, here's another year where I am older but not so much wiser. And I still don't know what I'm doing. And, yeah, I KNOW I'm only twenty-three. But I want to figure things out. I don't feel pressure from anyone but myself.

So now I have a million questions to answer, including:

1. Should I stay at DePaul since the grad school is free, even if I hate it?
2. If I don't take advantage of the tuition benefits, should I continue working here?
3. Should I start looking at grad schools elsewhere? Ole Miss? Georgia?
4. Do I want to go to grad school? Do I want to stay in Chicago?
5. Is PeaPod cheaper than Jewel? If not, is it worth paying extra money for groceries if it means I don't have to walk eight blocks with a cart full of bags and avoid looking like a (well-dressed, let's be honest here) homeless person? (I realize this isn't really related but it's on my mind.)
6. Should I move to New York? (It's possible I have been reading Gawker too much.)
7. Should I just write shitty chick-lit novels and publish them under a pseudonym?
8. How does one get a job in publishing in this damn city?

In the meantime, I'll just suffer through "The Essay" and Southern lit. It'll give me some material to work with here.

This is just one cracker's opinion.

Here's an exchange that took place last night in my Southern fiction class, while my professor was explaining the genealogy of the main characters in Faulkner's Go Down, Moses:

Crazy Professor: And here we have Uncle Buck, not to be confused with the character from the film... John Candy? Right? John Candy was in that film? He's dead now, right? Just like Chris Farley...they were friends, weren't they?
Fellow Disgruntled Classmate: No.
Crazy Professor (ignoring FDC): Yes. John Candy and Chris Farley are one and the same.

Okay, I didn't want to blog about this guy. I kept myself from writing about the first class, when he made us watch a twelve-minute documentary clip featuring James Ellroy walking around LA talking about the Black Dahlia and his dead mother. Sure, it had nothing to do with anything relating to our actual course topic, but Crazy Professor was excited about film noir and the new Black Dahlia.

I didn't say anything when I came to the page in our course packet labeled, "Top 39 Things You'll Never Hear a Southerner Say." (My favorite: "Checkmate!") I can appreciate stupid humor, even if it's of the Jeff Foxworthy kind.

I was quiet when we had to watch two scenes from A Time to Kill, which my professor lauded as "the most accurate film depiction of racism in America." I thought, "Maybe he’s just a McConaughey fan?"

I was kind of taken aback, however, when Crazy Professor started using the terms "cracker" and "white trash" to describe Southern people. "Oookay..." I thought. "Maybe he's being ironic?"

And I'll be honest: I didn't read the handouts he gave us about Sonic restaurants.

Then he started calling William Faulkner a racist because someone once said that he opposed interracial dating. I thought, "Okay, LOOK, Crazy Professor. Not only was Faulkner the greatest novelist to come out of the twentieth century, but he also wrote incredibly moving and honest portrayals of African Americans in the South without a drop of racist commentary. Also, he grew up in Mississippi in the first quarter of the century, and if your sources are true - that he was 'disgusted' by the sight of interracial couples during his tenure at UVA - you should take into consideration where he was from, the way he was taught, and the fact that seeing something like that, even though he was extremely humanitarian and not prejudiced, would be shocking. Also, JOHN CANDY AND CHRIS FARLEY WERE NOT FRIENDS THEY WERE NOT EVEN OF THE SAME GENERATION YOU IDIOT."

I realize that, yes, some of the stereotypes of the South are based on some semblance of truth, just like all stereotypes. But when you group the entire South as a land full of racist, ignorant crackers, you’re not helping anything, especially when you’re teaching these opinions to a group of students who live in Chicago and do not have any knowledge of what the South is really like.

There are about four of us from the South, and I was lucky to make friends with one last night – a woman from Athens, Georgia. She had the same frustrations as I did, and she said that she wanted to address the class and tell our classmates to take all of this information with a grain of salt. She agreed with me that there is much more overt racism outside of the South (especially in Chicago, which our professor described as the most racially segregated city in America). By associating racism exclusively with the South, however, Crazy Professor is continuing the Red State / Blue State idea that American is split into two polarized sections. The truth is that racism is not a Southern thing. It isn’t even an American issue. Racism takes place everywhere, and I find it insulting that people are ignorant enough to dilute it to being a Southern thing. (There’s a line from the song “The Three Great Alabama Icons” by the Drive-By Truckers that says, “Thanks to George Wallace, it’s always a little more convenient to play it with a Southern accent.”)

This morning I wrote a long email to Jean Cash, my professor from JMU who taught the survey course in Southern Literature, as well as courses on Flannery O'Connor and Faulkner. Before I took Southern Lit with her my junior year of college, I had already decided that I hated the South and could never live in a place full of ignorance and hatred after college. After taking the class, however, and reading William Styron, Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, Allen Tate, Larry Brown, Tim Gautreaux, and William Faulkner, among a long list of others, I realized that the South was not filled with the racism and stupidity the rest of the country applies to it. If I had taken this course with Mr. Crazy Professor from St. Louis who once went to grad school in Memphis, I would have still hated the South because he constantly feeds the same stereotypical images and ideas at us.

I wrote to Dr. Cash this morning for the first time in a few months, because I knew she’d be as upset as I am, and she responded with:

What you're telling me about the Southern Literature class fairly enrages me--people with that kind of patronizing attitude about the South have no business teaching Southern Literature (Memphis or no Memphis); tell him off every chance you get. You know how I hate the use of the "white trash" epithet.

So far we haven’t had a chance to speak up in class to give our own opinions or insight into what Dr. Crazy discusses, but I’m going to do my best to be assertive and give him a few of my own ideas.

This is why McDonald's makes me angry.

Exhibit A:


Exhibit B: