New Thing: I'll Write Diary Entries to Celebrities Sometimes Now For No Reason

Dear David Bowie,

I’m sure you’re at least a little bit used to people you don’t know writing to you on the internet, and because the limits of human weirdness and desperation are boundless, I’m also 99% sure that someone, somewhere has written a diary entry to you before. However, for those of you reading this who aren’t, in fact, David Bowie (approximately 100% of you, man am I ever hitting the percentages hard today), I will just clear some stuff up for you.

I am writing to David Bowie because I feel scared and desperate and alone. I’ve just pulled an all-nighter, and my eyes and face are red, not only from being tired, but also from embarrassment and fatigue (the source of which I’ll get to later). So still, you might ask, why am I writing to David in particular? Well, the theme of feeling like a particularly flashy and well-dressed alien resonates with me. Anyone who knows me can attest to the fact that I am probably not human. Also, David Bowie is an astoundingly good listener, you guys; go watch any of his interviews from just pretty much whenever, and he’s actually very good at talking to people. I like that. I really like the idea of someone weird and also empathetic being on the other end of this, and I think a lot of other people do, too, and that’s why I’m quite sure I’m not the only one.

So what the fuck happened to me? Why, at 5:41 in the morning, am I attempting to talk to a pop star nearly as old as my grandmother over the internet? (No offense, David. You’ve aged very well.)

Well, David Bowie, I’m a college freshman. And I’ve joined a very difficult academic program in this college. I’m attempting to become fluent in Chinese in a maximum of five years (it would be easier if I picked up and went to live in China, but that sort of thing is expensive and potentially fatal.) (also, I think you would probably tell me to just take the risk, because you exude an adventurous persona, but this is my life, David Bowie, so sit down and listen.) It’s a hard program, not because of Chinese, which I promise is a surprisingly simple language. It’s hard because there’s no leeway. Below a B grade, they’ll kick me out of this program, one I’ve been dreaming of taking for four years. And it’s not going to be my grasp of the homework that gets me; it’s going to be my 7:00 A.M. class, and the "no late homework” policy, and the “no making up tests” policy, and the “you had better just pray that you don’t fall ill on the wrong day” attitude. I really hope you’re following this tortured grammar; just remember it’s 5:49 right now. I’m not at my best.

I, by no means, want to drop out. I want to keep going. But I feel as if the administration is actively trying to make that nigh on impossible for its students, what with the early class, and the complete lack of sympathy for human nature. Because the crux of the issue is not that I’m bad at language; I’m very good at it because I enjoy it, and enjoyment seems to be the key to my getting good at something. What’s going to kill me is that I’m not a hoop-jumper. I’m the kind of person that everyone gets mad at, because I should be making straight A’s with a 4.0, but instead I write eleven-page papers in less than forty-eight hours, and through sheer carelessness forget to do homework, or get up in the morning. I’m just the worst kind of wasted potential, and I tried to reform, but I’ve slipped back into myself, and now on a night with nothing but normal, non-stressing homework, I’ve managed to stay up for a solid eight hours, and I’m tired. And I don’t have a room mate.

I’m sure that last bit was a little “wha..?” So let me explain: we’ve got these little key-card thingies that I assume magically open our room doors, because the irony of technology is that the smarter we become, the more advanced the stuff we build, and the less able we become to understand the technology around us. Whatever, I don’t know what I’m doing talking about the technological folly of man.

Back to my main point: I took a shower this morning and then realized that, for the second time this week, I’d left my room key in my room. And this is where a room mate could have saved me, because I could have banged desperately at my door, woken her up, and been let inside. But without anyone to live with, I must go down to the front desk dripping wet and cold in a towel, fill out a form, and pay ten dollars to get let back into my living space. That's the aforementioned source of my embarrassment.

So I’m burning money right and left just to have access to all the shit I own. It’s beautiful, how society finds ways to fleece its literal poorest demographic.

Also I want to ride the bus home this weekend, but the bus times are not doable for me. So I may have to just stay here, alone, again.

I don’t know. What can you even do, David Bowie? Were you actually reading all this monstrous gibberish, I think I would have lost you long ago. But there are times when one’s mother and friends are asleep and one is trapped alone. The sole owner of consciousness in an entire seven story building is a hard title to bear. And you, wherever the Hell you live, cannot angrily text me that IT’S FUCKING 5 AM WHAT THE FUCK IM ASLEEP. So thanks, for simultaneously existing and not existing, like all of my favorite celebrities do. I hope you’re dreaming good dreams.

Incongruous Captioning

Dinner Cooked by a Viking

            Eating a meal my father has cooked is a little like being the winner, or maybe I should say “victim,” of some dubious sweepstakes prize. “Congratulations!” the announcer says, flashing you a winning, yellow smile, “You’ve won one free dinner cooked by a Medieval Viking!”

            On the appointed day, a knock comes at the door, and you open it to find a surly six-foot man in furs with a bag of disagreeable-looking tools standing on your doorstep. “Come in,” you say, graciously, “The kitchen’s just down this hall,” and you lead him to the stove, thinking that whatever he makes will be something simple, rustic, brawny, and uninformed as he is; a reindeer steak with some kind of Nordic vegetable side, or perhaps you’re overestimating him, and he’ll present you with raw meat on sticks.

            But he turns to you with a stony face, and instead presents you with a mile-long list of sophisticated ingredients and the cash to buy it all. “You go to store and you eat good tonight,” he says in a thickly accented growl.

            Walking through the aisles of the grocery store, you gaze at the list and wonder what a Viking Warrior needs with such materials. “Scallions, really?” you think, “What on Earth does he need with scallions? How did he even hear about them?” You buy it all, anyway, and load it into the trunk, but you’re still half-sure that he’ll end up burning it in the backyard as fealty to Odin.

            When you arrive, he totes in the bags, unloads them, tallies the ingredients, kicks you out of the kitchen, and closes the door. Now, of course, you’re scared of what he might do to the granite countertops, especially when you hear the noises that filter through the door. You hear the sound of something crunching sickeningly, though that may be the bones of the live goat he asked for. There’s sawing, and splashing, and cursing. Sulfuric odors waft through your house. A couple of times, you’re sure you hear a sword unsheathe, but there’s nothing you can do, because the moment you so much as crack the door, he turns from the countertop (and the pristinely executed goat sacrificed upon it) and yells for you to get the Hel out.

            After waiting into the evening, your stomach growing ever more uncomfortably empty, he walks from the kitchen proudly carrying a platter on high. He serves you and himself enormous portions, and proceeds to shovel in the food with his hands, swallowing it whole. What eventually takes you an hour to eat has just taken him five minutes. You take your first few bites, and find it is delicious (imagine that)! “Congratulations, indeed,” you think, “Dinner cooked by a Viking is not a bad deal.”

            After staring at you eating for about five minutes (which makes you profoundly uncomfortable, but the food is too good to stop), the Viking seems to warm up to you, and he begins to tell you stories. They’re all good stories, with entertainment value, and most of them are hilarious, but some of them aren’t quite right for the dinner table, and some of them are disgusting. Thank God you have a strong stomach, but woe to anyone who meets this man who has not. Throughout the night, you laugh and cry, and sometimes avert eye-contact, and the two of you generally have a jolly time, and you eventually fall asleep on the couch watching a gory crime show while he siphons up his leftovers.

            In the morning you wake up, and the Viking is nowhere to be found. The only traces of him are a dented mace underneath your couch; a badly spelled letter thanking you for the opportunity to cook for you, and asking you to keep a lookout for his mace, which he could not find upon leaving your house; and in your kitchen, which you never did get a chance to look at last night, the chaos of Ragnarok. You can no longer see your countertops because every dish you own is piled haphazardly atop them, coated in rotting ingredients, and there is a film of grease over every horizontal surface and every wall. Your trash is piled over and around the can, like a skyscraper of garbage. Every dish towel you own is stuck to the floor or some other surface by the spill it was set there to clean. Your fridge is empty and there are several old coffee cans scattered around the kitchen, the first of which, when opened, contained something unmentionable, the rest of which, you are afraid to touch.

            For years to come, you will look back on that night, and pine for the Viking’s fabulous lamb and scallion something-or-other, but then you will look back on that morning, and think to yourself “Never again.”

            My father does this every single night. 

Marianne Faithfull

I had never seen a picture of Marianne Faithfull until today, so I mistakenly drew her voice:

Instead of her face:

Also, I'm sick right now. I look like Marianne Faithfull's voice. Except I'm not so delighted with the concept of flaying someone.

HALLOWEEN

HAPPY HALLOWEEEEEEEN
CANDY
SUUUUUUGAAAAAAR

I'm ok. I promise I'm SUUUUUUG- OK.

OMFG

I'm sorry. It's not you, it's me. Also I'm not actually breaking up with you or anything, I'm just saying that I've got too many responsibilities to post very regularly. And the Jack Black/Jack White question still stands.

P.S. I'm working on a post, but the pictures are taking a long time.

I wondered...

Dear Jack White,
Do you ever talk to Jack Black? Are you guys friends?
                        Sincerely,
                                   Cara