There's these things and they're pissing me off.

Man, fuck coffee. Or fuck my body. Something's not right — I drink a beverage and now I can't control myself? Fucking Parkinson's juice.

Cigarettes are dumb too. I found one at a party last Saturday, brought it home and smoked it. Now it's sitting in my scented candle-turned-ashtray, all tan, white and black tainting the sky-blue wax, a perfect metaphor for itself. I look at it and feel cool for having a cigarette mashed into my candle. It looks cool. That's fucking ridiculous.

I have work in an hour, and it's the worst thing that could happen to me. Working at Jimmy John's, an expanding company that's glorifying a man's idea to rip off the masses for a solidly made sandwich, thus exploiting the fantastic American laziness and allowing Jimmy himself to live his life however he wants, which he deserves no more than the panhandlers that'd love to score a J.J. Gargantuan that day, sucks. It's a minimum wage job that doesn't compensate its employees with a free meal or sandwich (or cookie, or pickle, or day-old bread, or garbage) unless you work a double-shift. I've worked their four hours today already and have 5-and-a-half ahead of me. Let there be life.

Death is such a fag. Hanging over my shoulder every unhelpful second, checking my work and making silent judgments. If this is the last thing I ever write, and it had better not fucking be, I want death to know that I saw its game for what it was.

Sadness too. Sadness can shoot itself in the head with a dick-loaded rocket launcher. It's either there like a blanket, keeping you draped in it so you're impervious to outside emotions, or its worn like a hat, purposefully worn for certain situations for as long as necessary. You take it at your leisure through movies, books or stories about high school kids whose sports teams get better after they die.

Sadness should be like death, hanging over you but mostly avoided. Death should be like work, necessary for most people but totally fucking stupid to do and done for the sake of others. Work should be like cigarettes, trendy and eventually fatal but people do it for some reason anyway. And cigarettes should be like sadness, unfortunately permanent or sparsely but willfully consumed. Coffee should just calm down; whatever.

--Eliot Sill

Nick - Let Down

I'm going to tell you guys up front; this is a post about my semester. Exit's that way, if you're in the wrong room.

My semester is best summed up with one word: disappointment. It's a beautifully succinct word. It implies expectations, followed by a lack of reward. It describes a hole where there should have been fulfillment. When the day you've waited for for weeks finally arrives, and you spend it in your room listening to music, that's disappointment.

The semester, much like the song First Few Desperate Hours by The Mountain Goats, started out on a high note before delving into more depressing subjects. There was the rush of coming back; the excitement over all that was going to happen this semester. We had improv auditions coming up; we were going to find a house to live in next year; we were going to party like nobody's business.

We found a house, I found a girlfriend, and I didn't have to take chemistry classes anymore. Things were going well, until we lost the house. Problems came up with the lease; one of our housemates pulled out of the deal. Meanwhile my professors were turning out to be crazy and their classes very weirdly set up. This weird rhythm, once established, persisted the entire semester.

But, good news! We found another house! This was the best part of my semester. Living in the dorms started to grate on my nerves after that. I just wanted to have my own room and live in our house. I just wanted the year to end.

Then I got mono. I was really sick for over a month, and I felt shitty in general for a long time before and after that. I pushed through. I pushed hard. I dragged myself to classes when my tonsils were too swollen to talk. I made myself keep moving by focusing on the future.

I got better just in time to miss CU Improv Fest. I still felt awful and tired, but I never once let myself crash. Then I got to spend time being unable to drink, having difficulty staying up past 10pm, and watching as all the good times blazed past me.

Finally, an end is given; finals week approaches quickly. Only one more week. One more week and I'm done. I see light at the end of the tunnel, just as my relationship launches into the final stages of its slow, agonizing collapse. Boom, crash. All that effort wasted and gone. Suddenly the end of the tunnel doesn't look so light.

Here's the part where I spend the day I waited for for weeks in my room listening to music.

I drag myself to my Thursday morning stats final. I hadn't studied. I hadn't really slept. I pushed through, tried hard not to cope with reality for the rest of Thursday, couldn't sleep again, and blasted through my last final on Friday.

Get me the hell out of here.

The worst part is that I don't think I would do anything different if given the chance. I was dealt a shitty hand, and I played it out to the bitter end, card by agonizing card. I was tired and angry, I hadn't learned anything, and there wasn't a damn thing I could've done to prevent any of it.

It's an asshole thing to say, but I was disappointed in everyone but myself.

At least I still have that, I guess.

-Nick.

Summertime

--By Robert Langellier

Aw man. Now I have friend groups in multiple states! What a good problem to have, right? Well, after probably the longest winter I've ever been a part of, summer's finally here, and I'm saying goodbye to both states' worth of friends so that I can throw my summer away working, schooling, weeping, wearing jeans, and not hanging out with you. So, effective Friday, have a good summer, everyone. For me. Please.

And just because you're worth it, here's a real post from my friend Brandon that he wrote for our school newspaper in October. It's my favorite album review in my memory banks, and for some reason, I decided once upon a time that everyone should read it. He gave me permission to publish it here when he was drunk.