Conor - Several Short Essays, All Intended For Different Audiences

Essay # 1
Intended Audience: Females that I'm friends with, but I don't know all the super well. The specific instance that sparked this train of thought involves Emily Eby

     Okay, hey, what's up, The Female Gender? How have you been? I just had an etiquette question I wanted to toss your way. See, I pride myself in being a good, non-threatening, non-factor guy friend. In fact, I think there's a good argument to be had that that's practically all I'm cut out to be. It's okay! I get that. So you and I, female that I know, aren't into eachother, but we get along. Let's assume all of this is true. I am, at least. I've learned to take the safe route. I may be the King Of The Friend Zone, but I'm not blind, female that I know, and I've noticed your cute friend, who's always busy having such a pretty face. She's really pretty! To put it plainly I am attracted to her, and I would like to know really anything about her. Beyond her surface level prettiness, she seems really nice and interesting! I don't know her name, even, but I've seen her around with you a few times. All I know is she spends a large percentage of her time always looking really pretty.
     So here's the question. You and I, as I stated, have an established friendship, and I don't see that changing. I guess I just don't feel that way about you! (<--- hahahaha why does that exclamation mark feel so painful) We haven't talked about this because wow what a weird conversation would that be, and I also assume you don't feel that way about me! It's not because you're less attractive than your super pretty friend that I'm working towards asking you about. It's just some x-factor about her that I'm aaallllll about. If I ask you about her, and I admit that I'm asking about her because yeah, I'd totally date her, am I being offensive to you in some way? Is this line of questioning rude because I supposedly never asked someone about you in a similar fashion? We don't know eachother extremely well, or else I would probably know who she is if she's one of your good friends, or I just wouldn't care about offending you in such a way. Do you see my dillema here?
     I want to hit on your friend (as much as I've ever hit on someone [barely enough to even classify it as hitting on someone])  without feeling bad.
     Yo Emily Eby you have a pretty friend. I saw her driving today. She has a nice smile. So do you. But like, I really like this girls smile. Am I being offensive? Damnit.

Essay # 2
Intended Audience: Robert Langellier, Cassandra Tipping

     Dear Robbie!

     Help! How do I wear a sweater vest? What do I wear it over? I wear it over something, right? I feel like I definitely don't just wear it, alone. Yeah, this definitely feels silly. It's like a classy, stupider tank top. A short sleeve button up? Is that the proper companion to this article of clothing? Maaan, I know nothing about how to pull this off. Please text me as soon as you see this. It's urgent that I learn how to do this.
                  - Completely Confused Conor!


Essay # 3
Intended Audience: Everyone who came into Pickleman's Thursday morning between the hours of 1 and 3 AM, specifically the girl who admitted to having stolen chips, a fountain drink and a serving of croutons but still somehow sounded offended that I asked her if she had stolen chips and/or a fountain drink and/or a serving of croutons.


     Fuck you. 
                    - Conor

Essay # 4
Intended Audience: Springfield, Illinois, other people having difficulty in college

     See you soon, man. I've really missed you. It's a little embarrassing how much more comfortable I am when I'm back with you. Truth be told, I've had a hard time making friends in Norman. It bothers me. I know lots of people and I like lots of people, but I'm not all that close to many people. That's part of what made this a really weird, tough year. I think I also didn't prioritize well. Living in the Leslie House, with 6 other roommates and 11 people regularly just milling around was fun, but I see now that it wasn't an environment meant for focusing. I wasted a lot of time this semester and my grades suffered for it. There was no good way for me to do things. When I was being productive and working with Redliners (the a capella group I'm now the director of) or going to the practice rooms or reading or something I felt like I was removing myself from my group of friends, and it was regularly brought up to me that "you're never around," or "aw, Conor's going to read rather than hang out" or something like that, which made me feel worse. When I would hang out, I would always be fretting about things I should be doing. Either way led me to worrying too much and preventing myself from having too much  fun.
    Towards the end of this semester I got closer to finding a mix that works for me, and it's much more heavily slanted to the work side of things than to play. I've spent several late, late nights in the MIDI computer labs recently working on compositions  and Sound Design projects, and I've been happier doing this than I have been practically all year. Even though I'm doing this things alone, even though it's not a social thing, I'm happy doing these things. I was looking at the compositional work I was putting out a year ago, and it's bad. I've gotten better! I really have. I haven't improved as much as I should have by this point though. I've put in the bare minimum of work to get by in the composition department, because I was always hanging out, or just sitting around, or something. I'm ashamed of that now. Music makes me happy, and it's awesome, simply incredible that I get to do this for school. I'm taking how lucky I am for granted, so fuck that. I don't want to take this for granted anymore.
    I don't have a lot in common with lots of people here, but I like everyone a lot. It's been sortof painful for me to see that maybe some relationships aren't going to work out very well. I don't know who to talk to about it. That's sortof the problem, see. We'll see how things go next year. I want to strengthen existing relationships and make new ones, but I'm realizing I'm willing to sacrifice that goal in order to work harder at music. My friend Michael Ray accurately called me out the other day at Norman Music Fest, saying that I'm in my element when I can just go around and give shout outs to the tons of people I know, blah blah blah. Yeah, I get a kick out of that. It's a way for me to cling on when I was better at getting to know people.
    I'm back Monday, Springfield. I'm looking forward to this summer.


Essay # 5
Intended Audience: The New Contacts I Put In Today

    As I put you into my eyes this morning I told myself that today marked a new day, a new story, a new saga. From now on I'll take my contacts out every night, I though, from now on there will be no more falling asleep with you fellas still in my eyes, getting all crusty and what have you.
    Oh my god was I lying. I'll never change. I'm weak. I'm so weak and pathetic. Slowly but surely I'll lose my eyesight- I swear I've noticed the vision in my left eye getting worse and worse! - but I am weak. Look at my Monster addiction! Never before has someone sucked so much.
    I have no one to blame but myself.


Essay # 6
Intended Audience: The Pottermore Sorting Hat

    Fuck you.
            - Conor

Norway

Last weekend I went to Norway with a friend. Specifically Bergen, Norway's second largest city with about 300,000 inhabitants. I've learned that Norwegians don't look much like Swedes but their language is almost mutually intelligible and they are equally as unlikely to smile back at you when you pass them on the street, mountain, bus, etc. Norway is also freezing. It snowed a bit while I was there and I wore a heavy coat every day.

However, Bergen has more going for it than just being a really small big city in Norway. Bergen looks like it was pulled straight out of a fairytale. The city is surrounded by seven mountains all dotted with colorful little Norwegian houses. It is full of thin, winding, brick roads, fish markets, red churches on top of hill and has a port that connects it to the Atlantic Ocean.

The sun set here takes over an hour and finally went down around 10pm which allowed for this kind of beautiful lighting much longer than anywhere in the US (excluding Alaska, I know nothing about that place)

As I mentioned before, Bergen is surrounded by seven small mountains. This has had some interesting effects on the town including the fact that everyone we saw was more fit that I will ever be at that respective age. When you have free time in Bergen you don't go to the movies or out to eat. You Hike/run/cycle up the nearest mountain. This also meant that everyone had really intimidating and fashionable sports clothes on at all times. The first people my friend and I couchsurfed with while there was a young Norwegian couple just out of college. The girl half of the couple was always going out for runs and bike rides and after seeing some swwiming gear in the bathroom we asked her if she did triathlons. She admitted that she had but wasn't very into them. Oh, but this summer she's going to do the Norse-Man AKA the hardest iron-man in the world. Fuck you Karoline of Bergen. Seriously, I hate you. Because of this girl and because the guy I was traveling with is super fit and outdoorsy, I then had to pretend that I was definitely up for climbing mountains and I certainly wouldn't complain the whole time FOUR DAYS IN A ROW. I mean, the first day was fine. I wanted to sense of accomplishment and the views were unparalleled but it took every fiber in my being by day 4 to not admit that hiking another mountain didn't sound fun even a little bit and I just wanted to watch TV all day. I'm so fit! I'm the perfect girl!

Being connected to the Atlantic Ocean, Bergen is also connected to the reason why everyone in the world should visit Norway: the fjords.

A fjord is a thin inlet of water surrounded by steep cliffs. In The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy the character Slartibartfast is given an award for hand carving all of the fjords on Norway. These things are some the most beautiful landscapes in the entire world. Real talk. I paid more money than a day trip should ever cost to go on a boat trip through some of these and all I could think while surrounded by the steep cliffs and clear water was "well this exists". Along some of the prettiest  parts were some little 300-person villages tucked in the valleys and you have to wonder whether the inhabitants of those villages even appreciate the fact that they live in a Thomas Kinkade painting.

I'll calm down now. But you should really google image search these fjords. Anyway, Norway is a fairytale land. It's also cold and often cloudy, has complete darkness for a couple weeks in the winter and the sun never sets for a couple weeks in the summer. That shit cray.

Mada

Conor - Statistics, real and imagined

My best guess as to my stats thus far in life.

Days alive - 7394
    Days used wisely - 7
    Days wasted - 7390
    Days spent doing literally nothing other than playing Final Fantasy - 6

Real worlds I have saved from the brink of destruction - 0
Fictional worlds I have saved from the brink of destruction - I wanna say around 20

Highest combo in real life - 11
Highest combo in one of the Tony Hawk video games - 9,273,846

Longest Amount Of Time Spent On A Toilet - However long it took me to read that Calvin & Hobbes book

Shortest Shower - 2 minutes - 47% clean
Longest Shower - 63 minutes - Stupidly clean

Hours I've spent playing video games I don't enjoy with Nick Dietrich - Around 300

Statistics I hope I am never ever confronted with
Texts sent
Monster Energy Drinks consumed
Time spent on facebook
Amount of time spent talking about the Wire
Amount of time spent thinking about talking about the Wire
Classic Brian posts skipped


Times I've listened to Outset Island by Hot Freaks in the past year alone - 13,722 times

Hairs grown on my face -  97

Relationship status - It's complicated with Pickleman's Gourmet Deli

Percentage of time spent staring at my own video feed during skype conversations - 88%

Frisbees thrown - over 9,000

How many times I've said the word sick - 6,745, or, enough for it to be not ironic anymore

Days until I go back to Springfield for Summer break - 9 days
Days until then that will be hellish - the next 3
Hours I will sleep - negligible

At the Wheel

robert langellier

I can rejoice in the days when I can drive the two lane roads fast with the windows down and bright, banal pop playing. Those are the greatest days.

Tonight is not the greatest, it’s a pretty bad night, but it’s a hot night and the windows are down and I’m at least going fast.

            I work in the nursing homes. Or rather, I volunteer in the nursing homes. Or rather still, I invest in the nursing homes. Time, that is. I invest time. I put time in, and it is like volunteering, and I take out experience, and eventually when I’ve amassed enough of that I shape and mold and ball that experience up into a brilliant work of art, a grandiose, seminal masterpiece of magazine literature, which I sell for profit, and that is how it is like working.

            I choose nursing homes to invest in because they are a problem. They are prison-like institutions, which is a simile made to me by the majority of residents I’ve gotten to know. They are inhumane, identity-thieving places that treat breathing, sentient animals like nonbreathing, nonsentient obstacles. They are ugly monsters of bureaucracy, creatures foaming with regulations that tie sprightly elderlies to their unneeded walkers (falling is a liability) and throw pie-baking parties (the most exciting event of the month) to the dumpster because the granny smiths are not FDA-approved. They are waiting rooms for the funeral pyre.

            And it is a growing waiting room running out of chairs. Baby boomers are settling in today, and tomorrow, when the aging process is liable to have become even more arduous and desperate, I will be. That is why I invest in their improvement.

            I try to treat these elderly folk as people. It is a lot to ask of me, but I do it. I do not baby talk them because they are not babies. I do not yell unless they really can’t hear me. I do not talk to them about the weather, or about dinner. I talk to them about their histories and their happiness, and there is much and there is little, respectively. Nobody from this particular institution pays me, and so I have no need for pretending, no motivation for putting on airs. No reason to say, “Ma’am, it’s okay” when I really mean, “Ma’am, be quiet and go to your room if you do not need assistance.” I don’t say either of these things. I have no cause to advertise today’s daily activity as “fun.” I have no purpose toward bustling past a woman murmuring, “Help me…” because she is too frail to get back to her room in her wheelchair in less than ten trying minutes. I have no agenda to buff the appearance of the place. I have no agenda to convince these people that they are invalid and happy.

            My agenda comes from a different source. It comes from no administration, but from the cognizant mouths of residents who very ably tell me what they want and what they need and what they are capable of and how they feel about their environment. And there is a chasm between those two agendas.

            Tonight is a bad night, though, so let’s return to that. It’s draining work, what I do. It makes me happy that I may be doing something good, but it is the most depressing and lowdown feeling experience to be in the place, which makes me even happier that I may be doing something good. I hate being there. It is overwhelming and insurmountable and the unhappy atmosphere is crushing to anyone inside who has no motivation for putting on airs. Rarely do I feel good upon leaving the place. I didn’t tonight. On my way out, I heard a harmonica, and there is no music in that place so the blowing was enough to elate me. I meandered over to check it out, whereupon a desk nurse called me over.

            “Can I help you?”

            “I’m just listening.”

            “You like that harmonica?”

            “Yeah.” A man in a wide-brim Texan hat was sitting in a wheelchair by a side door, blowing. He wasn’t very good.

            “He’s been banging by that window forever now.”

            “Oh yeah?”

            “He lives down the hall that way.” She pointed.

            “Well, I love harmonicas.”

            “Are you leaving?”

            “Yep. I’m out of here.”

            “You wouldn’t mind taking him with you?” She grinned.

            “Sure thing.”

            I walked up to him, and after an awkward exchange, I convince him he ought to play by another door to “get a new view.” Convince is a strong word. I rather told him he should play by another door until he conceded, because it was difficult to make out what he was saying.

            I wheeled him across the hall and gave the desk nurse a nod of acknowledgement. Upon arriving at Pop’s room—that is his name—he requested to be stopped there instead of at the nearest side door. Inside he reproached me.

            “Why did I need to be moved?” Pop is old, but he’s big and he’s confrontational and he’s not taking my shit.

            “I just thought you might want to play at a different window.”

            “What was wrong with me playing there?”

            “I, uh, I just thought that, uh, you’d want a different view.”

            Now he began each word slowly, with seething emphasis. “What was wrong with me playing there? Why did I have to be moved?”

            “Well. The nurse told me to ask if you’d want to be moved somewhere else.”

            “The nurse?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Why couldn’t I play by the door? Why did I have to be moved?”

            “Well. I don’t know. I, uh. The nurse just told me to ask if you’d want to move somewhere else.”

            “I didn’t want to go anywhere else. I was happy right there.”

            “Well you should’ve told me that. I didn’t know that.”

            “Right. Go along. You’ve done your duty.” Pop knew.

            And so I left then, having removed the obstacle from the nurse’s area. I turned the music on loud in my car, and I began driving fast, fast enough to shatter any fear of youth and speed and control that I had before having witnessed the dead, unholy opposite of it.

Nick - Saffron City Fighting Dojo

This is one of the first songs I ever wrote for guitar. I don't play that set of songs very much anymore, but for some reason this one sticks with me.

It's not even particularly good; the lyrics aren't witty, the guitar part isn't intricate. Maybe it's the title (my favorite song title to date) or maybe it's the zen feeling I get when I'm playing the guitar part. Em7 to D, over and over again. At any rate, this is the first time I've ever recorded it, so enjoy this shoddy recording.

Memory Audio

robert langellier

You don't have to read this. But that's what this is about, that's what inspired this thought. It's by Nadia Wiwatwicha. Do you remember her? I do.

A few years ago my grandparents moved. They lived in that Quincy, IL Victorian house my entire life, and most of theirs. When I visited then, I knew it was the last time I would see the building with my eyes. In a heroic attempt to capture the image of that particular "last," I decided to invoke that one thing where you listen to a song while something important happens and you associate that song with that moment in time and space forever and ever and ever. Except normally, that happens by accident. You just happen to listen to "I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing" by Aerosmith on the way home from a 4th of July fireworks party where your first love stood you up. Or just by chance your mix CD breaks and it plays the first 30 seconds of of track 1 for the remainder of the entire summer. They are coincidences, and sometimes they don't even happen at exceptional times at all. Sometimes songs monopolize driving through a small city in the winter at night, or sitting in sand on the Atlantic coast. That's pretty greedy of those songs, in my opinion, but it isn't my fault or their fault because it's all just coincidence.

Anyway, on that particular day I decided to test if I could do it on purpose, if I could break the coincidence principle, because apparently being at my grandmother's house for the final time is something I recognize as probably important but that in reality I don't really trust myself to treat with all that much sacredness. At some point in the day, I walked around their backyard, probably billions of times, listening to "Thrash Unreal" by Against Me, which, for anyone who knows me, isn't something I'd typically listen to elsewhere because it has electric guitars and loud noises. ("No mother ever dreams that her daughter's gonna grow up to be a junkie.")

I walked around listening to that song, punching slow and heavy footprints into the low and wooden borderlines of my grandpa's treasured garden that I historically have liked to break things in. Repeat, repeat, repeat. ("No mother ever dreams that her daughter's gonna grow up to sleep alone.") This, until I felt satisfied. Maybe I should've chosen a less ominous and dually applicable song than one about the horrors of denying your own aging, but I did this until I felt satisfied. And you know what, it worked, god damn it. I actually have vivid memories of the menial task of simply walking in circles around a fucking yard. All it took was the simple decision to remember it, and then some merciless musical repetition. I completely intend to document the rest of my life in this way. My memoirs will be a Spotify playlist.

I'm the worst.

I know I haven't posted in awhile and I feel pretty shitty about that. I also know that when Tuesday night rolls around this week I will almost certainly forget to post again. Therefore, with your blessing, I'd like to post right now since I'm thinking about it. I know this isn't much of a blog post but I'm linking an album I put up on facebook as my post for this week. I put about as much effort into as I would a blog entry and I think it's somewhat entertaining. Here ya go:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3873543601171.2168307.1356093286&type=1

Sorry if you're not friends with me and can't see it. Sorry if You're Robert and don't have a Facebook. Not sorry if you're anyone else and don't have a Facebook.

-The real Mada