We Have Two Headed Turtles!

The sun is brightest right before it goes down. I feel like it's just trying to get your attention before it jumps off the edge of the horizon. I suppose that's all I can think about right now because, with the sun down and all, it should be cool in my room like it is outside. It isn't. The heat, despite being turned off, is spreading heat through the building for some odd reason.


There are about eleven days left until I leave Amherst and I still have a few books to reread and 21 pages to write between all of my classes. I always think that once I get to the next step, something will be resolved. It took me two or three years for me to get to Amherst and now all I can think about is where I want to go next. There aren't any solutions in life, I guess. Only more chances and more routes that take you down different paths. The only way to get around this endless meandering game of hopscotch is to be content with where you are. The problem is that you can't. You just can't be content. There's some part of you that knows that you've been content before, and some part of you that knows you will be content again someday, but what are you left with. Just everything in between. I've been considering looking into Buddhism. It's more of a spiritual thing than a religious thing. That reminds me. Today a girl walked up to Lev and I when we were walking back from the Gym and started spewing out this long prepared speech about how we were going to be cast into an infinite ocean of hellfire if we didn't turn our backs on our current religious orientation and proceed to accept Jesus Christ as the one and only. Before she opened her mouth I was ready to shake her hand and make some comment about how great it is for someone in college to be actively involved in her religious community. Most people aren't so passionate, you know? Lev got really mad afterward. He hates it when people push religious beliefs on other people. You do what you want, I'll do what I want, and the world will continue spinning.

This is some advertisement I found for some sort of online pet store. Why would anyone want a "no-eye turtle". That's just ridiculous. Oh well, different strokes for different folks.

Speak easy,
Neil

P.S
150th blog post!

Central Nervous System

Right now I am trying to figure out how you tell the difference between your life's one big mistake and your life's one big regret. Is it possible that they could be one in the same?

The first two times I did laundry, here in the dorms, I mixed in a brand new deep-red hoodie with the rest of my laundry. This led to my socks (and white boxer briefs) to be thoroughly engulfed in a pinkish hue. I did this twice because the second time I washed my clothes I figured that the dye had finished bleeding the first time around and that it probably wouldn't happen again. Wrong.

Last week, Lev and I were discussing masculinity, which is what guys talk about when women aren't around (well that and cars, sports, and ninja turtles). Lev claimed that my socks were feminine. My response was that a real man knows how to fix a washing machine and a woman knows how to use it properly. Therefore, it is manly to have pink socks because it shows the owners lack of knowledge when it comes to operating washing machines.

Yesterday I had to read an essay on gender, written by Myra Jehlen, for my English 200 class. There was a passage in the book that reminded me of my pink socks. Jehlen writes that "threading is what men skillfully do-not-do". Keeping my socks white is something that I very skillfully do-not-do.
In case anyone is wondering, the quote is a reference to Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, in which Huck attempts to convince Judith Loftus that he is a little girl.

Now that I am a man, or pretty close to it, I have noticed a distinct difference between the way that I treat my acquaintances from my friends. When I am trying to be friends with girls, whether it is a pursuit of friendship or a pursuit of more than friendship, I treat them all the same. When I am pursuing a friendship with a man, on the other hand, I find myself making a conscious effort to not be overly friendly. For some reason if a man is nice to me I feel a wave of skepticism. I feel like maybe they would like to be more than friends and that if I am too nice to them, they may get the wrong idea. This reaction is probably a mix between mild homophobia and a desire not to hurt the other persons feelings. Now that I think about it, when I am sure that a girl is being overly nice to me, I treat them in the same manner. It makes me want to go back to fourth grade when things like gender and sex and intimacy don't matter. There was just you, that one girl in the class you never talked to because she was far too cute and smart for you, and everyone else.


It is getting increasingly colder outside. There is one way, I've found, to slightly overcome an unbearable windchill. All you have to do is let the wind flow through you. Just relax your muscles and picture the wind as water and yourself as the jumbled net that it passes through. This may also work if you are being threatened by a polar bear.

The eggplant sandwich falls within the taste spectrum somewhere between chicken and vegetable. Defying logic. Defying reason...and a little piece of it just fell between the cracks of my keyboard.

Speak easy,
Neil

Today's Playlist:
Love: Part I (or A Solemn Ode To Devotion)

1. Feist - One Evening [Gonzales Solo Piano] (Open Season)
2. Broken Social Scene - Anthems For a Seventeen Year-Old Girl (You Forget It In People)
3. Weezer - Always (Island In The Sun Single)
4. Iron & Wine - Love and Some Verses (Endless Numbered Days)
5. Saves The Day - She (In Reverie)
6. The Decemberists - Red Right Ankle (Her Majesty)
7. Death Cab For Cutie - Passenger Seat (Transatlantisism)
8. Bright Eyes - Kathy With a K's Song (Oh Holy Fools)
9. The Mountain Goats - Love, Love, Love (The Sunset Tree)
10. Ben Folds - The Luckiest (Rockin' The Suburbs)
11. Cloud Cult - Love You All (Feel Good Ghosts)