good LORD i am so tired. we got monday and tuesday off this week for fall break so i was looking forward to having a lot of time to myself over the long weekend (mostly to write) especially since so many people went home, but friday morning was the scholarship banquet followed by hangin with ashley all day and going out to buffington's that night and then going to andrew's house until like four and then the playground and then ashley's and i didn't get back to my place until about 7 in the morning, then saturday i went shopping (i bought a purple rug! and gold stars!) and quietly celebrated ashley's birthday at home with ashley and valerie and cake and monsters v. aliens, then sunday i spent almost all day hanging out with zach, and today i went to macon with ashley and we got tattoos and went to steak n shake, and tomorrow we're supposed to go shopping for formal dresses for this snazzy party this coming friday night. and i have a writing assignment due wednesday but i'm completely exhausted!

i mean, i'm not complaining. i've had lots of fun this weekend. but. sigh. i feel like the more free time i have, the less i actually get accomplished.

my tattoo looks good, though. so yay! it's my second one. it's the logo from the angel investigations business card. :D

i think it's funny that whenever a guy makes a reference to masturbation, he automatically makes a gesture to go along with whatever phrase he uses. jerk off, jack off, beat off, yank it, wank, whatever - you know he's always going to do the hand motion in front of his crotch to illustrate the point. it's completely unnecessary, but it's like they can't talk about it without showing what they mean. it always sort of makes me smile or laugh, because it's silly that they think they have to do that or else i won't get it, and then it makes them think i feel uncomfortable talking about it. but really i just find it funny that they're making the motion.

girls don't do this. if a girl talks about masturbation, she's not making a gesture that means rubbing her clit or something, right?

posted a nonfiction lyric essay in my blogspot today. it's [here]. i wrote it a long time ago, but one of my professors sort of bugged me about trying to get it published, so i'm airing it out to see how it looks.

we were supposed to write a scene of violence for my fiction class. i interpreted the prompt literally, so i have pretty violent scene up here:

[the whipping boy]

it's got blood and references to extreme child abuse, so don't read it if you're squeamish. it's based on a dream i had where a bunch of us were stabbing one of my friends in the heart over and over with a screwdriver and he was acting like it didn't hurt. this was, of course, after i got really drunk off of screwdrivers one night and listened to him bitch about his girlfriend dumping him.

our most recent writing exercise for my fiction workshop was to write a 3rd person limited point of view scene about a person waiting for a bus. mine is here: [i didn't give it a title]. after i read it out loud, one of the guys in my class said, "kick ass, pirkle!" and then someone else said, "i vote for not reading after jen next time." i felt pretty good about it. i think my teacher liked it, too, but what he said was, "leave it to jen to turn a simple writing exercise into a metaphysical conceit." (the buses in my piece go to times instead of places.)

this was actually my third try at the exercise. the first one was a girl on her way to the funeral of a man she didn't know and the second was an embarrassed superhero having to take the bus because he'd crashed his supercar. the superhero one was funny, but i like this one better.

so i've decided to stop importing my public journal entries to facebook, and now that i know everyone i've ever met in my life won't see them, i feel more comfortable about posting stuff i've written here. the following fiction pieces were assignments for my workshop.

( boring, gripping, and dread. )

i was also supposed to write about a moment of joy, but i haven't done that yet. is it weird that i can't think of anything joyful to write about? i so rarely experience joy that i'm not even sure i could write about it in an authentic way. my friend stephan said i should write about synthetic joy, like being high, so i might try something like that. but it makes me kinda sad that i can't think of anything else on my own. anything without being sappy, at least.

for wednesday, we're supposed to write about a person waiting for the bus. since i don't drive anymore, i have a lot of experience with this. shouldn't be too difficult. i'll probably post it here when i'm done.

three girls i'm starting to like a lot came out last night to dance spanish dances around my living room and hug each other and get drunk and laugh and be sexy. they made a list together:

1 - Tonight's gonna be a good night - Black Eyed Peas
soccer ball
Anything Lady Gaga
2 - "Tonight's Gonna Be a Good Night"
nachos
boys
boys
Joey! ♥ !
give me person!
Sexy Standing up

this morning i'm looking at the list and not really understanding what it means or even why we wrote it, but reading it and remembering these girls dancing drunk around my apartment and laughing makes me feel so much less shitty than i did before. and i've decided to add a couple of items to the list, so the next time i feel shitty, i'll have more to remember:

the haha game
to ONE ICE CUBE!
the perfect shimmy
round things (men like them)
three pictures of bambi's armpit
women have hips. it's a biological imperative to shake em.
the birth of asia

to make cookies. i cut the recipe in half so i would only need one, but i don't think she'll notice. she has 35 more.

still, i feel sneaky.

evan, roger, valerie, and zach came over. we watched venture bros. and ate all the cookies i had made. in my head, i thought of it as "destroying the evidence." there was actually one left over, and i forced someone to eat it. but i still haven't washed my cookie batter bowl. if my roommate had any sleuthing skills at all, she could figure out what happened to that egg.

i dreamed about eating 35 raw eggs last night. i dreamed it made my hair really shiny.

when i went grocery shopping the other day, i bought a little carton of six eggs. the only thing i ever use eggs for is baking chocolate chip cookies, and six eggs is enough for three batches. i have two eggs left, enough to make cookies one more time. i went to the store again yesterday, but i didn't buy more eggs because even though i make cookies a lot, i don't make them often enough to have eight eggs in my fridge at once.

when i got home yesterday and started putting my groceries away, i saw that my roommate had also bought eggs. she bought two jumbo cartons, which have eighteen eggs each. this is a total of thirty-six eggs.

thirty-six. eggs.

the only thing i can figure is she's planning to make four or five enormous quiches. or possibly have an omelet party. or make eighteen batches of chocolate chip cookies.

holy crap.

that would be 792 cookies.

in conclusion, there are way too many eggs here.

i wrote these tonight. each one is less than 300 words. it figures that the first 5 things i'd come up with to write about are time travel, vampires, mysterious eggs, tentacular aliens, and androids.

( bits of stuff. )

it's from the rodeo.

so, deforrest kelley and i went to the movies together. and after we left, he dropped this piece of wisdom on me:

"your sisters draw too much attention to themselves by leaning back in chairs and walking across mountains."

that is a direct quote from my dream, and it just proves that deforrest kelley knows my family too well.

i was watching "adventureland" with my mom last night, and it got to the part where they're eating pot cookies and getting high. and then this happened.

my mom: would that work, though? i mean, can you still get high if you eat it? like in cookies?

me: *not looking up* yeah, but it makes them taste like dirt.

my mom: ...

me: *suddenly realizing* i mean... i've heard. that. but i wouldn't like, know.

*headdesk*

these are just some random things i was thinking about. (which, i guess, means they're not random?)

~we have a fishtank at my house that has one goldfish in it. i named him pasquale (puh-skwah-lee). my brother came into possession of this goldfish while he was in college. he graduated from college in 2001, so the goldfish is at least 8, maybe 9 or 10 years old. i have no idea how long the average lifespan of a common goldfish is, but before pasquale, the oldest one we ever had was about 9 months. so i started thinking, maybe this goldfish is immortal. maybe we have the one immortal goldfish in all the world. but if we DID have an immortal goldfish living in our aquarium, the world would never know. and i find that incredibly sad, that no one would ever know about pasquale the immortal goldfish. so i thought maybe i'd write a book about him. but then i realized that it would be a really boring book. i mean, all he ever does is float around and look at you.

( more things. )

me: i think it's weird that cats don't have eyelids. like, when a cat has its eyes closed, its entire face is shut. there's no actual lid that comes down. not like a person's eyelid. you know?

zach and ashley: *blank stares*

me: what if your whole face closed every time you blinked? your eyebrows would come down to your cheeks. that's pretty weird, right?

zach: i want to live in your brain for just, like, ten minutes.

me: do cats have cheeks? i guess cats don't really have cheeks. or eyebrows. or eyelids. holy crap, how do they even survive with so many parts of their faces missing?

ashley: i can't decide if she's an idiot or a genius.

last night we went to the international banquet thingy, and then we went to leah's after to play apples to apples, scrabble, and blurt. and zach gave me a ride home. of course.

me: (getting out of the car) thanks for the ride, zach.

zach: yeah, you too.

me: heh, what?

zach: i mean...

me: me too?

zach: i don't... i don't know.

me: well, you're welcome!

zach: heh, thanks!

we are so awkward. i'm embarrassed of us, really.

so i started rereading some of my old online diary entries from when i was in high school, and they're a real hoot. one of the entries begins this way:

In light of my recent groundation from the computer, I shall have to write my diary entries on notebook paper and later transfer them to the internet via the computers in the journalism room.

*sigh*

I hate my life so incredibly much right now that it's almost amazing to me that I have the strength of will to get out of bed in the mornings.

Okay, maybe it's not that bad.

But I AM totally disliking it.

haha. man, i used to be so dramatic. "woe is me! i am like, totally disliking my life!" and i love that i'm all bitter about being grounded. a lot of these entries actually sort of read like the twilight books, so maybe stephanie meyer is more talented at writing for teenagers than i'd given her credit for.

1. i have dyed my hair black, light auburn, and hot pink. (but not all at the same time.) right now it's medium brown. at least, that's what it says on the box. i also had it bleached a while back, but i don't count that because i only did it so the pink would show up.

2. i lost 42 pounds before i started grad school, and i've lost another 8 since i've been here. but i've also gained 4.

3. if i like a particular song, i listen to it over and over. sometimes it will be the only song i listen to for a week. over and over. this bothers my sister, but i don't blame her. it would probably bother me too if someone else did it.

4. i've never officially added it up, but if i had to give a rough estimate, i'd say i've spent a little over $3,000 on merchandise based on the tv show "angel." i once had the opportunity to buy a leather jacket david boreanaz wore a few times on the show, but i couldn't make myself spend that much, and i've regretted it ever since.

5. i think elvis presley is the sexiest man that ever lived. his mouth is so pretty. if he were still around right now, i'd have sex with him, even though he'd be 74 years old.

( the other 25 )

it's not a bad problem to have, i guess, but it makes me feel guilty. like, i got this thing in the mail the other day about taking a survey online, and i wasn't gonna do it, but they had put two dollar bills in the envelope and i felt guilty for keeping the two dollars without taking the survey, so i ended up doing it anyway.

and then friday i wanted to make cookies but didn't have any eggs or chocolate chips, so i went to the little store next to my apartment to buy eggs and chocolate chips, and they didn't have any chocolate chips so i bought m&ms instead, only they didn't have any big bags so i bought seven individual m&m packets. the guy at the check-out asked how many m&ms i had, and i told him seven, and then he very deliberately punched in that i only had four. so i only paid for four, but i felt really guilty for the whole rest of the day. in fact, i haven't entirely ruled out the possibility of going back to pay for the other three.

(ps. a dozen eggs and seven packets of m&ms. they probably thought i was high.)

and yesterday i went out to eat with ashley and we split dessert, and i asked the [hot] waiter if he could split the dessert price on our checks, so he did, but then he charged ashley for her half of the dessert but didn't charge me for mine. and since i already felt guilty about the m&ms from the day before, i really didn't want to have to deal with guilt about this dessert. so i asked him to re-do the ticket and include my dessert price on it, and he did, and he gave me a little talk about how much he appreciated honesty. which made me feel worse about the m&ms.

he also called me ma'am seven or eight times even though i'm probably only like three years older than he is. i used to get offended when people called me ma'am because it made me feel old, but when an attractive guy does it, i think it's kinda... sweet. (i was going to say sexy. is that weird? i probably just think it's sexy because that's the way elvis used to talk.)

anyway, i'm pretty mad that i can't just be pleased when i get free money or a break on my bill for something. the blame goes to my mother, of course. i should make her go pay for those m&ms.

tonight i was walking home with zach, and we'd been talking about dispensing condiments from our navels, and i asked him if he would eat the ketchup he could squirt out of his own belly button, and he said that actually, if he could dispense anything from his belly button, he'd probably just kill himself. this is something that zach says all the time - i'm just gonna go kill myself. he thinks it's funny.

so tonight i said, zach, you always say that, and i think it's pretty insensitive, because what if i had tried to kill myself a couple of times in the past and every time you said that it made me think about it again, about being so sad that i wanted to die, while you just stood there making jokes about it?

and he said, i'd ask you what kind of loser you'd have to be to "try" and kill yourself. it shouldn't be that hard. you'd have to be a complete failure if you couldn't even end your own life.

and i said, actually it's pretty hard. jerk.

and he said, shut up. but he said it kind of awkwardly, like he wasn't really sure but he thought we were still joking. he said, you've never done that.

and i said, i wrote my lyric essay about the first time i tried to kill myself. karen cried when i read it out loud.

and he didn't say anything.

so then i said, don't wait until christmas to open your present. it won't be funny anymore.

and when i came back in my apartment, i started thinking about zach, about how many times we've hung out over the course of the semester, about how i consider him one of my good friends, how i sort of kinda wanted to maybe even date him or something when we first met, but now suddenly it feels like we don't know each other at all.

i feel bad that i was bitchy to him, but he really hurt my feelings earlier tonight when we were at leah's. which probably wouldn't have been so bad if we hadn't been in front of so many other people at the time. but. we were.

and now he's started talking again about moving into my apartment next semester if things don't work out with stephen. but i just.

i'm starting to feel like all of these friendships are meaningless. i'm starting to wonder if i'm just wasting my time. i'm starting to wonder if that's all anybody ever does.