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[23 Apr 2006|08:15am] |
dos poemas:
THE ONE ABOUT HIPPIES global warming has microwaved the heads of an entire generation. soft-hearted dewy-eyed conversation starters, you don't dig my style. i throw aluminum cans into trash receptacles as you weep into your protein deprived claws about organic food. you make profound fashion statements, refusing to wash for days. cuts down on gray water, you say. dreds, i say, you're living in a fantasy world. here's what: maybe i would respect you if you hunted for your own food, wore buckskin- hand dried- if you constructed lean-tos from broken twigs and wandered, nomadic and serene across the Wilderness of North America. don't fake extremity as you drive the three blocks to the whole foods, you conservative radicals, you careful rebels.
THE ONE ABOUT ME want to feel your breath on the hot sacred hidden places, new and old to me. to me i am still a virgin until we have sex, places on my body like islands, like unexplored rain forest, like topless jungle societies untouched by technology and sin. don't bother with your idiotic pleasantries, your inane cheek kisses and hand holds. just want hot breath and polite can come after like an apology. want to be ravaged and taken advantage of like nature and deer-- want that sad, solemn, knowing look that fawns have despite their innocence. i am a virgin until we fuck, until it's dirty and friendships are ruined, until the sex is scary and with you. i am done with sexless passion, with good solid friendship. want meaningful, sultry looks and uncertainty. want expedition and adventure.
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[26 Feb 2006|07:47pm] |
excitement about writing renewed? good. in chronological order, una cuenta. una poema:
i saw god last night. in the next year i will become a country singer, voice full of twang and horrible, crooning about being saved. i saw him. it. last night in the car. it was the moon. my friends and i drove over a hill and there he was, half full and brown and huge in between radio towers, red lights blinking attention. once in a life time, we murmured, where's my camera? but captured on film it would be a tragedy. without the car and the hill and the night's confusion and eventual intent it would look sour and disgusting. we marvel and sing for absolution spews out of the speakers in a kind of perfection that will never happen again.
he disappears beneath trees and is tiny on the horizon. we continue to marvel, teary eyed, until we turn a corner and it's there again, inches above the road, yellow as a globed street lamp. we gasp again and re-obsess and misunderstand life, the world.
it was everything and nothing, blank and overstuffed on the edge of non-existence. it was round and soft like a woman, but yellow and pock marked like most beautiful men. yellow like old books. yellow like reality.
there was nothing to be done but continue our moving paralysis and for the moment we touched each other sexlessly with our eyes and formed a triangle of undeserving but pure hearts. we turn another corner and he is gone, severing momentary connections, leaving us to drive aimlessly into oblivion or newark ohio, leaving us to decide for hope or despair.
plans were carried out and we return to the car, forgetful. the moon was the moon again and we said we knew it couldn't last.
and:
don't tell me bout poetry cause my daddy knows all them beats. cracker jack said don't tell me bout meaning it's all bout them sounds. daddy don't know about the pot spot, hot spot in the trees, psychedelic mystical clearing. add the deer, dear and it all comes clear like water and the clearing, that yellow spot with leaves, please, on the hill. old roommate and her massive bowl, green smell and blur and seven deer, eight deer and a fawn with white spots. purity and the lack of it, say kerouac and i in unison. revision and the lack of it. sex and the lack of it. wanna spit a river down this hill. daddy don't know bout the time i laid in bed, thought i was having seizures but was really shivering. felt like the soft edge. the hard edge. the softhard edge of orgasms, that trailing scary edge nobody ever feels. thinking i'd rather be drunk. doesn't know bout my sister smoking from a beer can cause texas stole my bowl. texas the state? yes, dallas, texas. doesn't know bout selling those old cds for drinking money. tells about a time he sold his ginsberg so that he could eat, that patron of patronization and dive bars. that kerouacian reviser.
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[24 Jan 2006|09:25pm] |
POEM:
in the car we sit, crowded like cartoned eggs, still hopeful. we leave the tattered edges of dive bars, us girls underage, sober, lucid. you three drunk and essential. matt is almost asleep on my left. kevin bubbles, spilling over onto car seats and my right knee. you and i, we're separate. you talk, simple as sweat, pure as everything, about the velvet underground, about His voice, about passing street lamps. she yells at you, voice like the ticking of a clock, driving wildly even in her sobriety, hair turning red and flying from the sunroof. she is loud and laughing, loud and sobbing, loud. you let it happen, let her suck your cock and fidelity. you laugh, spilling everything that is good from your cheeks, filling the car with love and cigarette smoke, and i am trapped in the middle of alcoholism.
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[17 Jan 2006|07:54am] |
THE LIBERATION FROM JACK KEROUAC
my professor says to change things. beat beat beat poets keep running through university paths, tapping on windows with dead and not dead and imaginary fingers, telling me not to revise. tapping like typewriters and keyboards that aren't. tapping like nature taps in the woods, trying to tell me not to litter, not to waste paper. the faces of people i don't know are sketched and erased and sketched on my forearms thoughtlessly. the faces of people i know are sketched on nothing and eventually disappear because nobody wants to bother changing. and. i say to myself. the process of revision is inane.
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[13 Jan 2006|10:23pm] |
wrote something bitter today. tristan laughed at it:
steak'n'shake is inherently flawed. fourteen year old waitresses bustle about, adjusting their bow ties and tightening their ponytails in order to squeeze a few more cents from the pedaphilic tables of old men staring at their under developed chests. they understand racism and sexism like they're sixth and seventh senses, avoiding blacks, latinos, any minority, and speaking in high, porn star voices because they know they're being fucked and fucked and fucked. they pile on layer and layer of makeup because nobody wants a waitress with zits, with fat, with split ends, with flaws. they scramble to be sweet to you, hovering like vultures, kicking and scratching to seat you in their section. they stand, bored like prostitutes, until they have a chance to convince you that you're loved, safe, served. i am too young for this. i still have ideals and a pure heart. i still think i can save the world, change everything. i'm not ready for my naivete to be served on corporate platters and ripped apart by strangers. i'm not ready to equate money with love, sex with love, nasal, disgusting intonation with love. the entire idea makes me feel nauseous and smell like grease. there must be something i can say to these people that would make everything better, something i can slip discreetly between "welcome to steak'n'shake" and "our soups today are..." something like "my name is katie and i am a person." somehow i think everything you say sounds meaningless when you're wearing a bow tie. one day i'll save up my tips and buy a sail boat. i'll live on it and the only person i'll have to serve food to will be my dog. i'll float around talking to her in my real voice for the rest of my life. or at least until i run out of cigarettes.
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[06 Dec 2005|02:40pm] |
here's a good old fashioned dilemma: should i or shouldn't i post a personal narrative about me wanting to have sex with my best friend's boyfriend? meh. fuck subtlety.
Here's the truth of things: I slept with Ezra's best friend because I wanted to sleep with Ezra. Freud was completely uninvolved; there was no subconscious, no slip, no superego or even ego or even id. I did it because it needed to be done. Here's what: It happened in Ezra's house. In his mother's bed. I'll tell you again that Freud was not involved, but you won't believe it. We searched his mother's bed stand for condoms. We soiled his mother's sheets and rearranged her dresser drawers. I did it because of his best friend's voice. His name was John and his middle name was Patrick, which is only notable because I had a series of one night stands with a boy who had that same name. You CAN have a series of one night stands, I learned from him. They have nothing to do with the frequency and everything to do with the feeling. When it's a one night stand, you feel as though you can't stay the night comfortably, that the whole thing could just be happening because you're drunk. Again, let me tell you, Freud had nothing to do with anything. But anyway, his voice. John and Ezra's voices were different. Ezra's voice is wonderful and sarcastic and sometimes (these are the best times) angry. John's voice was soft and unobtrusive and secretive. Here's the thing though: sometimes their voices would intersect. I don't know who started it, which of them opened his mouth one day and let all his anger and hurt out in several over-enunciated syllables, the lovely ridiculous voice that comes during joking or making fun, but if I closed my eyes and imagined his smell, I could see Ezra in front of me while John was talking. And later, as he was touching my thighs and kissing my eyelids and doing all the other things you do when you feign romantic interest, all I could see was long dark hair and fingers stained with poetry smudges instead of mechanic's grease. All I could feel was the vague sting of misanthropy instead of heavy, exploring fingers. The voice is what really convinced me to sleep with him. The voice was probably the only thing we had in common. Here's what John told me when he was still trying to seduce me: He told me he was a terrible writer and a slow reader. He said that he didn't watch movies. He said that he loved death metal. He said that he could write academic papers all day, that he could calculate anything I wanted him to, but if I asked him to write a story or a poem or something along those lines, I might as well be asking him to walk on water. He said that being a mechanic was his calling. I didn't argue with anything and soon we were making out on Ezra's couch. Don't talk to me about Freud. I knew what I was doing. Here's what I desperately wanted as John was shoving his tongue down my throat and his hand up my shirt; here's exactly what I was thinking: If Ezra walked up here, would he be jealous? Would he rip John off of me and yell "what are you doing with her?" Would there be a fist fight? Would he finally tell me how much I mean to him, teary eyed and stuttering? Would we finally kiss and lay together all night, reveling in the fact of our slow inevitable discovering of one another? Ezra never came up from his basement room and John and I moved to his mother's bed. I faked everything, even the parts that were his to fake. I choked on him and answered his "are you alright?" with a quiet and almost painless yeah." Don't talk to me about Freud. Don't talk to me about symbolism. It doesn't exist. I let him do what he would and then we went to sleep on Ezra's couch. Sleeping in his mother's bed would have been sacrilege. I left him early in the morning, sore thighs and cramping neck screaming for my own bed, driving during the time between drunkenness and hangover, ready to really sleep everything off. We got breakfast the next morning, Ezra, my best friend. Ashley and I. John was not invited. Ashley told me, mouth full of French toast, that John had told her to give me his number, scrawled on a tiny scrap of red paper. He had told her that if I wanted to do that again-no strings attached-that he wanted to. She told me that he had said I give good head. "I should be so lucky." Ezra said and they looked at each other. She hit his arm and laughed. He laughed too, and kissed her. This is the very last time I'll say it: Freud had nothing to do with it.
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| new(ish) poem. |
[11 Oct 2005|07:27pm] |
you are mysterious and confusing like the original source of language. you just happened and i am left bewildered, wondering if there is really meaning in anything. you say "you think too much" and it's true. not everything needs analysis, an origin. it's this science craze. i need to know where you come from like i need to know how tumors grow and what emphysema is caused by and what the cure for aids is. i'm scared of you like everyone is scared of germs. i know you're unhealthy, have been sitting out too long cultivating ecoli and salmonella like that hamburger place in the middle of the desert i heard about once. i heard some little girl died, maybe, eating spoiled meat, but i can't be sure. my memory's no longer reliable. i can't even remember if i believed in disease in the first place.
dallas says that i need to develop the relationship between the known and unknown, the explained and inexplicable. he's probably right.
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[06 Oct 2005|09:39am] |
today has been absolutely AMAZING so far. let me tell you. It's nine fucking forty and already i feel horrible. here's what i get to complain about: 1. last night, i basically didn't sleep at all. it was extremely weird because i was drunk and usually when intoxicated i pass out and sleep like a log for anywhere from 7 to 12 hours. instead, last night i tossed and turned, threw my cell phone off of my bed, (apparently) looked down at maria and asked her "what?", and generally wiggled a lot. 2. this morning i woke up kind of later than i had planned to (due to the fact that i use my cell phone as an alarm clock and when i chucked it in my sleep the battery was detached). hung out for awhile, took a shower, things of that sort. then i checked my america reads schedule at about 8:57. i was under the impression that i had to work at 9:30. apparently, i was mistaken and had to be there by 9. 3. i ran up the hill to get to slayter, where the car to get to america reads was. i wheezed a lot because i'm out of shape and smoke too much. i almost collapsed a lung, but made it up to slayter at about five after. 4. i went to the security office and asked the lady working if someone had picked up the dca car for america reads. she said that the girl had gone to get it and told her that she would be right back. i was ecstatic. 5. i sat on a window thingy in the parking lot and smoked a cigarette to celebrate. i waited for awhile and got kind of nervous, until i saw a tan car pulling up. i was kind of behind a van so she must not have seen me because she just turned around and drove away. 6. i kind of tried to attract her attention, but i'm not really a yeller or a waver or a jumper, so it didn't really work out. i got really really sad and walked back down the hill.
blahhh. today is going to be horrible.
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[19 Sep 2005|02:48pm] |
i've been writing nasty emails all day. i must be in a bad mood.
i got an email from the academic support and enrichment center saying that i missed a meeting about my grades last friday. they said they had rescheduled the meeting for this thursday. i sent this back:
Dear Ms. Payne, I will not be attending a meeting. In fact, I am extremely angry that one was scheduled in the first place. I am an adult and, despite the fact that my grades dropped last semester, can handle my own affairs. I was having very personal family issues last semester, and would rather not discuss them at all. If I need a meeting with the Academic Support and Enrichment Center, I can schedule one very easily on my own. I do not appreciate being patronized. Best Regards, Katie Berta
and then some kid wrote an article in the bullsheet about how he hates denison and how everyone just gets drunk and tries to get ass. my response: To Mr. Drew Gibson, Dude. Chill the fuck out. You are probably the biggest complainer on the face of the fucking earth. I mean, sure, whine to your friends about how shitty everything is and how no one understands you and how life sucks, but leave your bullshit out of the Bullsheet. No one really wants to read about how you’re lacking intellectual stimulation or how much better you are than the rest of Denison campus. There is no reason for you to use the Bullsheet as your fucking diary. Buy a notebook. Start a blog. Something. Just spare me your incessant egotistical inanities. Sincerely, Katie Berta
yep. i guess today wasn't for making friends....
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[15 Sep 2005|08:46pm] |
so. pretty bad day.
i wrote a really shitty poem about fucking shit up. here:
the world is soft and fragile as i sit outside denting it, almost meditating, cigarette in hand on knee. i am like magic, i can make ashes and smoke and destruction with only my mouth and a lighter. i could burn down houses without even meaning to but i haven't- i use my power for good. i could not eat for days and feel my body disintegrate- feel me fall away from myself like dirt eroding off of a hill. i can waste notebooks, writing terrible, meaningless words on every page until they're filthy with lack of talent. i can ignore people until relationships are in shambles- rotting wood and moldy curtains, overgrown grass tightening around ankles until i can't feel my toes. there is nothing i cannot crush unconsciously. there is no paper or person immune to my matches or lack thereof.
this is the first step to me dropping out of school and waitressing. you'll see. i'll write a novel about diners.
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[06 Sep 2005|10:00pm] |
POEM it's 9:32 and my whole life is ahead of me. i walk to a gas station in the dark and buy a pack of camel lights and some doritos. on my way back i sit in a graveyard surrounded by doll houses and eat the entire bag of chips and smoke seven cigarettes. i imagine that the only traces of me pedestrians get are puffs of smoke over the graveyard wall and a muffled crunching. on the street: a police chase, a honking fire truck, a pack of runners. in my room: typing, headphones. my whole life is ahead of me.
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[02 Sep 2005|10:56am] |
oh man. yesterday was terrible. so i wrote shitty poetry:
television took all the fight out of americans you told me, voice like jack kerouac. jack kerouac always talks about america like she's a flawed woman, selfish and stupid. he was probably sexist. in the basement of my house my sister's 16 year old friends get drunk. a boy holds a girl down, twisting arms at wrists, huge fingers thick as trees. just because you're stronger than her doesn't mean you can control her, my sister shrieks. he lets go suddenly and everyone is embarrassed. she's probably sexist too. jack kerouac was always drunk, i've been told. how can we claim alcoholics waste their lives? that's just stupid shit our fathers tell us to keep us from drowning in their mistakes. my father sucks the marrow from my mother's bones. i watch her get dry and pale and wash dishes. i don't need his shit, his crazy warnings. i won't ever drain people or bottles like he did when he was young. if he knew, i'm sure he would cry. i don't need his guilt. i don't want to hate him: my father or jack kerouac. i am going to avoid being the one who sucks you dry and i refuse to be the one whose life gets stolen. i'll hug everyone but you.
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[17 Aug 2005|05:33pm] |
POEM (pieced together from random thoughts that happened over the last week):
a song is still a song even if it has no lyrics i tell you, soft, in the car. out the window firemen tiptoe, avoiding tulips planted around a hydrant. i want to write i love you on your hands while you sleep. you will wake up to the humming of a mystery, and wonder while you shower if you are your own secret admirer. your palms sweat love letters, you give yourself an erection. i tell you to forget about feminism. i say it's for fucktards and politicians. i say objectify me, while i paste a human rights sticker on my car. we drive past the burning house and the tender men worrying about their hoses crushing shrubbery. subtlety is passe, i whine, i want to be raped by a shy computer repairman. i want boys dressed in women's clothing, pecks peeking out of lace like a very confused turtle. i say, i want you to kiss me in this car, your stupid face obscuring the road. you look into your lap, staring at folded hands, and i silently hate you from the driver's seat.
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[11 Aug 2005|02:59pm] |
LAST NIGHT (in my journal):
i have restarted my computer more times today than i have in the entire rest of my computer's life. it is dying. i put my head on its little plastic chest and listened to the erratic ticking beneath and said "hey man, you should calm the fuck down or you're going to wear yourself out entirely." it may be a sign of the apocalypse. a sign that my dog will die soon. a sign that my dad is going to catch me smoking. the health of my computer is a metaphor for my life. when things go wrong for it, things go wrong for me. here's what i was thinking about this morning, unaware of the impending sickness that would soon take over my hard drive (it all seems so silly now): 1. how hot my body looks now that i've been working out. this one time in tenth grade when he was still following me around like i was jesus, john saggocio made me touch his abs. they were the nicest abs i've ever touched. it was a paper thin stretch of skin thrown over ridiculously hard muscle. i was feeling my abs this morning, and though they're certainly not there yet, they're getting closer every day. 2. pick up lines. the moment i woke up dallas sent me a text message pickup line that read "when was the last time you got laid?" and then "yeah? wanna change that?" i sent him the one about the walnuts: "got any walnuts? no? how about a date then?" 3. my dreams. i dreamed that i had won some contest and that i was getting on a bus to meet pamela anderson. and then suddenly meg and i were loitering in a shoe store. the store clerk decided we weren't buying anything and that we should leave. i got really pissed and ripped down a bunch of post it notes (dallas says i want to forget something) that the clerk had behind the register and ran out the door. i was suddenly alone in the street and disproportionately afraid of having my purse snatched. a group of boys pass and one of them was saying "dude. i thought we were going to score some hash today." i followed them and asked if i could buy pot with them. they protested at first, said that i was lame, but finally agreed. i woke up. 4. clothing psychology. today i wore some cowboy boots, red tights, a pleated skirt and a plain black shirt. and i came up with reasons for everything. i wore the boots because i want to be a free spirit and do crazy things and explore like cowboys. the red tights mean i'm ridiculously horny. the skirt comes from my need to fit in: private school and the black shirt, clearly, is the unknown, or possibly cynicism. i just ran norton's anti-virus and i've got about thirty thousand "problems" (and a bitch ain't one). i'm going to contract carpal tunnel syndrome just from tonight....
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[04 Aug 2005|11:05pm] |
i met the stupidest bug today. he was all on his back, struggling to turn himself upright so i was like "i haven't done a good deed today!" and flipped him over with my lighter. he flew in a little circle, rammed into my chair, and fell back onto his back again. i was like "that little fucker. he's the stupidest bug ever." and flipped him over again. good deeds don't count if the subject of the deed undoes it immediately. so we kept fighting about whether he belonged on his front or back until i was done with my cigarette. at which point, i put it out on his little back.
sometimes i think i'm the next jeff dahmer.
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[30 Jul 2005|11:36pm] |
the ending i tacked onto the previous poem:
want the hypnotism of windmills, spokes spinning against the blazing blue windstorms sweeping yellow desert. want graying coverbands saying "here's a little tune by otis redding" and beating on their guitars the way you hit your best friend. want dirt as red as punctuation and sunburn, want trees that fuck the sky, want a book on tape whose words mumble into nothing.
wrote a silly tuneless song:
my charlie horses are charlie horsing. and we decide zombies might be the best thing. and if i needa shoot a bitch i use my belt buckle or nose ring.
because we are so hardcore. yeah, we're so hardcore.
i've got t-shirts full of dinosaurs and hats with no letters. some bitches might call us whores, but we all know better. we dress how we wanna as long as we wear the same thing.
because we are so hardcore. yeah, we're so hardcore.
tell your friends how to suck a dick but you've never done it. shoplifting charges never stick. yeah, we know how to run it. we like all them awesome bands that don't know how to sing.
because we are so hardcore. yeah, we're so hardcore.
(i think i was drunk when i wrote that)
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[25 Jul 2005|09:20am] |
i'm in a hotel in memphis. i haven't showered. i haven't had internet access. i feel like a tiny ball of sweat. i started a poem the other day, and have been waiting to post it. here it is:
i long for california, for yellow light sinking into the cracks of everything like the west is a jar full of honey. want to see the moon predicting the mountains below like a murky crystal ball. want the road to stretch ahead of me, want places with no speed limit, want to listen to bob dylan during the day and billie holiday at night, the light of folk guitar easing into the soft croaking of blues. want to wait under avocado trees for rain that won't come, want my cigarette smoke to be the only cloud in the sky, want to stay on the couches of old friends and wake up to the rising of the same midwestern sun leaking through huge picture windows.
i want to add a part about a cover band saying "here's a little song by otis redding" and beating on their guitars the same way you hit your best friend, but i haven't gotten around to it.
i guess i've got to go. i'm on the verge of missing continental breakfast.
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| Two Poems |
[02 Jul 2005|12:44am] |
6-08-05 The frogs know it's the weekend. They harmonize throatily as I smoke a lonesome cigarette on the balcony of my family's tiny apartment. Through the week they are quiet, diligently doing whatever they do, but on Friday night they get together and sing bluegrass. In the city there's a man on a street corner with a microphone, talking to people, saving them. He talks and talks without looking into people's eyes. And I wonder what the frogs accomplish with their croaking.
6-11-05 I drive down dead end roads until asphalt bleeds into dirt and houses fade to trailers. The sun burns everything orange. My hand ripples the air outside the car window and my fingers need to be longer. An imagined yelp as I hit a rabbit. I look back at its carcass and love it with the ache you feel for someone you want to know better. The road ends in cranes and bulldozers and I turn and go back home.
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[04 Jun 2005|08:46am] |
haven't updated in awhile. moving in several minutes. hung over. a poem:
POEM:
You can spend the day driving and liking Mexico, drinking orange soda like corn tortillas, smoking and coughing in snorts of carcinogens. You wish for something wholesome and go to the apartments of friends of friends in order to smoke pot without your parents finding out. You can write notes to boys you love that say "Te quiero." in tiny letters, can take four dollars without asking, can lay on the floor of your room dissatisfied with philosophy.
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[27 Apr 2005|10:09pm] |
man. am i bitchy today. bitchy things i did: 1) threw a brownie at a girl as she was pudding wrestling. it didn't hit her, but my intent was for it to smash into her eye. 2) made fun of everyone. ever. 3) yelled at people (specifically the ra from the first floor of shorney. i guess he was sort of... mcing the pudding wrestling and i kept yelling "why do people keep giving him a microphone?! somebody go up there and punch him in the stomach.") 4) there were some boys playing soccer in the hall of smith today and the ball hit my door. i screamed "fucker!" at the top of my lungs. then the boy came to my door and peeked in and i did the sort of... open-armed, what the fuck gesture. he said "yeah, it was this room." and continued with his game. he must not have gotten the point.
i am a curmudgeon.
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