At this time the awarding of the Bulletin Scholarships has been completed. Unfortunately, you were not selected for a scholarship awarded by the Office of Scholarships and Financial Aid (OSFA) for the 2008-2009 academic year. There were over 475 applicants this year and only 147 received a scholarship. We will keep your application on file and will consider you for additional scholarships that may become available. Please apply again in March 2009 if you are not graduating in May.
We wish you continued success as you pursue your educational goals.
Sincerely,
Judith Boyd
Assistant Director
Scholarships and Financial Aid
Okay, so if a 3.95 GPA can't get me any academic scholarships in this country, what am I suppose to do!?!
Up: I got beginning boosts (TWICE) in Mario Kart. And then I never got it again.
Up: Work sped by. And I got thanked for being nice to someone. Which was weird but neat.
Up: Nick let me choose dinner and I ate chicken nuggets from Wendy's. And it was num-num.
Down: Our lease is up at the end of June, not July. That would be this month, not the next month. That would be a week and a half to find a place to live, not a month and half. So. Yes. Needless to say, I am freaking out.
Down: I am PMS-ing like whoa.
Down: My Marian Keyes book took a bad turn. So bad that I shouted at the characters to STOP and DON'T because they are ruining everything. I do not think they are STOPping. I should go check.
Mario Kart
Katti/Oliver bought Mario Kart Wii over the weekend. I are hooked.
I got my first sparks today. Blue and orange. I was proud of myself.
Picky thing one: blue shells show up a lot more than they used to. Maybe it is because I am in first place a lot more often but I never get one to throw at people, I only ever get them thrown at me. Every lap. Picky thing two: I oversteer and then overcorrect and then over the edge of the map I go. Stupid maps without walls. Stupid maps with walls, actually, messing up my sparks. Picky thing three: I am obsessed with those stupid sparks. They distract me from actually racing and I just focus on milking the drift for orange sparks.
For those with the game (Jason/Michelle), how in the world do I do the boost at the start? I have tried the Mario Kart 64 timing at the arm drop and it's not working. That is picky thing four.
I also suck at bikes. I need to practice more, I guess.
I still use Peach. I always have. Baby Peach gets used sometimes to because she is too darn cute.
Anyway, here is our Mario Kart friend code: 3652 1810 6619. This game is way fun, just frustrating. My New Year's resolution of not swearing is always put on hold as DK or stupid Mario go blowing past me.
I love you all.
P.S. Drafting? AWESOME.
P.P.S. Wario's mine level and DK's snowy retrofitted level SUCK. I hate them. I hate them like whoa.
P.P.P.S. We saw The Happening on Friday. I read what it was beforehand and was expecting horrible things. What did I get? A horrid movie. It was bad. And way too over the top. I just kept promising myself that if M. Night showed us one more person killing themselves, I was walking out. I stayed and just kept looking away and covering my ears. It was BAD. The people throwing themselves off of buildings made me think of September 11th and the thunking noise they made as they hit the ground made me want to throw up. The dialog was awful.
P.P.P.P.P.S. Hulk, on the other hand, was awesome. Nick is right, I am a closeted comic book fan. I am excited for Cap'n America's movie.
It's late and I'm extremely exhausted; yet, I cannot, will not sleep. My body will not rest, so I am up, and writing. I am here.
I was reviewing some of my anthologies of literature as I often do upon trying to sleep. I flip through the pages and catch words, lines, sometimes whole stanzas or paragraphs of immortalized words and tonight I happened across one of the most depressing, yet insightful poems written in the modern period. It is T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men."
It seems like this time in the world-this time in my life with which I can view the world-fits into this piece so well. It talks about the fall of man because of what mankind has become: weak cowards. Eliot likens men to scarecrows in the desert that have no eyes and can only whisper meaningless things; their only hope is death.
I.
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
We shipser together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry glass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II.
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appera:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
IN the wind's singing
More distand and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer-
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III.
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, her they recive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV.
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V.
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
1925
Eliot says "This is the dead land" because we aren't living, and as much as we want to repent and "[tremble] with tenderness," we are only forming "prayers to broken stone," the same stone Eliot reveals that only exist because of the "supplication" of mankind's hands. We worship what we make, but prayers don't help any when you worship false ideals and material wealth made in hopes of becoming whole again that were made by corrupt hands. The act of the prayer can't even be completed because it can only be formed by the lips of the dead man who cannot speak; prayer that is nothing more than whispers that are "quiet and meaningless."
The whole effect? The futility of life, the cowardice of man, the corruption of man, inability to speak or see, the only possibly redeption and hope in man's death or nonexistence, the "shadow" of corruption in which we ruin everything that is good and pure in the world, man's inability to end his world "not with a band but a whimper."
There are so many journals that are suspended in time like a fly in an amulet of amber.
It seems like everyone leaves off on a high point in their lives, descibing good times with friends they probably don't talk to now; high school replaced by the doldrum of the working world, paying bills, realizing how disparate we all are from each other. Instead of writing about an unremarkable life they just all decided to inexorably stop at the climax.
Or maybe they're all off having such a good time they just forgot about woohu.
Or perhaps they're all indolent. Writing is an excerise of the mind. Sometimes it takes all the energy I have to come up with a complete transcribed thought; then again, I will never be able to completly transcribe my thoughts into words. Words are insufficient for the goings-ons of my mind.
Doo doo doo doo :)
Sooo crazy. Why am I so overwhelmed? Things haven't felt this way for a longgg time. It's ok though, I'll do it because I'm good like that. I just want a job already. PLEASEEEE give me a job, seriousssssly.
I had an Andy sighting today. He was at Meijer with Clem and Jessa. Yes, folks, the great creator of woohu goes to Meijer.
On to other items:
I'm reading The Inferno by none other than Dante. I've always been curious about the whole hell thing for the simple fact that if it does exist, that's where you can mail your correspondences to me in the afterlife. I don't believe in God GOD...you know, He who smites and give powers to part seas and all that. I believe in a higher power, which I prefer to call fate.
So, it was my pleasure to start reading about where I could possibly spend eternity in some nicely translated verse. In all actuality, I would only be banished to the second circle, or the realm of the damned for having premarital relations. This entails constantly contorting while being thrown through "That hellish cyclone that can never rest" which "snatches the spirits up in its driving whirl/ [and] whisks them about and beats and buffets them." That is for people who commit adulterous affairs...so I'm not quite sure if I would fully fit in there.
If I don't, then I'll only be relegated to limbo, which isn't all that bad I guess. It would just be a bunch of people, like Virgil, Homer, Aristotle, and some unbaptized babies who "did not sin." People who "lived before the Christian faith, [but] did not give God homage as they ought" and the only bad thing is they are "hopeless, [and] live forever in desire."
Poetry just makes everything seem a little better. That's why I'm an English major. When I'm starving because food is too expensive and I have to pay back college loans, I'll have my poetry and the knowledge that I'll have a cyclone to one day call home.
I don't know about you but I never knew
On Nielsen ratings and Nielsen boxes: Read more..
So it's like some crazy exclusive quilt-making club that no one is allowed to see, hear, join or talk about. You only get to see the quilts and wonder why your favorite quilt design got discontinued. Then you can only conclude that they obviously aren't recruiting the right type of quilters. If they were, the Arrested Development quilt would still be available.
After the whole postal scandal, I'm not sure what's going to happen in the next two months. The only thing I know is that I won't have to work with that group of people after August, and I doubt I will ever work with them again.
I can't believe the shit I go through to make $7.50 an hour.
