Carteresque

Fresh off some breath-taking three-post days, you may have noticed that the frequency of my blogging has dropped off considerably.

I'd apologize if I thought anyone really cared, but we can all take some solace in the fact that I don't think it's going to last forever. I've got a lot of things on my mind, like what the goddamned heck fire I'm going to do when I grow up. I also get tired of things really very easily (See: Computer Science degree, See also: singing career, See also: the marriage to Susan Sarandon). Luckily [for you] the one thing I never tire of is hearing myself talk and watching myself type. This could go on forever.

No, what I think I'm experiencing is something the man-to-be-judged-by-history would call malaise.

It's a caustic bitch's brew, this emotion. It's sickening and emboldening, bitter and savory. It's an ache I have like I'm having too much fun at the world's--and my future's--expense. Like soon it'll be time to pay the fiddler.

What it boils down to is personal freedom. I'm unemployed, living off the deposits of capital I've stored up like Victoria Gotti's pet camel. I have no day-to-day responsibilities, yet, for a time, I can pay my bills. Also, somewhere in there, I have a deep desire, once this money runs out, to be well on my way to staving off those bills indefinitely. Barring catastrophic personal injury or the kind of uncharacteristically selfless humanitarian lunacy that would send me to the Peace Corps, the only way to back burner the bills is to get back into school. This is Fear and Trembling.

Thankfully, school's actually something I think I would want to do even if I didn't have a sizeable, federally-subsidized debt monkey clinging to my shoulders.

Academia, as an abstract concept--as a reek of old books and tweed--tugs at me like the horniest of sirens. Oh how I yearn for her. It's not so much the pursuit of knowledge as it's the high-minded and pointless meta-speculation and long summers. Also, it's the captive audiences. I want to be listened to and revered for not really knowing anything. That means I'll have to stay in Academia as long as possible. First, I return as a student. Later, I weasel my way in as an instructor--preferably a tenured one.

Hence, for ease of getting in and staying in, I've narrowed the program search to that academic subset--that dinosaur--the liberal arts.

This is for no other reason than loyalty. So far this set has been good to me. I spent two years with Sparknotes, Playstation and Carlo Rossi Paisano [the least expensive of all alcohol-based ethnic stereotypes], walking away with dual liberal arts degrees. Not bad for failing succeeding to [not] learn a goddamned thing. I want to see how long this can continue.

True: Going into literature (the current front runner) will mean that I will have to learn something (two languages that aren't English for example). But: even that isn't really learning anything new. It's more taking what you know and expressing it differently. Spanishly or Germanly.

True: This costs much more of the money I didn't have in the first place. But: I'm fiscally irresponsible and hedging my bet on a graduate fellowship and a book deal.

So school it is. Bought m'self a book fer lernin the GREs and gave myself one sprawling week in which to prepare for it. I sit down at that terminal next Monday. I want to do well enough to get hired as a tutor at the Princeton Review or some place like that. Prior instructing would no doubt help with the graduate fellowship thing. The GRE subject test will be more troublesome because, rather than being esoteric like the SAT, the GRE Lit test actually tests you on facts, dates, movements, authors, essentially all the crap I'm trying to avoid learning.

I also have to figure out what schools have really good [contemporary world literature] programs, so that I'll hopefully be able to ride the tenure track on strength-of-school alone.

This morning I drive my uncle to the doctor. He has problems with his colon. The main problem is that he doesn't have one anymore. They split over a difference of opinion. He felt the colon should do its job like all the other colons, without slowly rotting away. The colon had other ideas.

For those who were grimly riveted to the story of my grandmother, I may write a followup about this character, or about my grandfather, who, in one short election cycle, became more cynical than even I.

Also, I just bought Palaniuk's Diary, so that might be a post soon, if I can stop playing Tecmo Super Bowl long enough to read it.

I just don't know.

In other news, a different uncle effectively called me a faggot tonight. Here that's like calling someone a liberal, only with more gender ambiguity. Certain friends have been calling me that for years, but with more playful affection.