Saturday, February 5

S3ND tH1S 2 ALL UR FRE!NDS!!!!1111!

Reality TV has nothing on MySpace for emotional voyeurism and bizarre Schadenfreude. So far I have thirty-two "friends" there and I've only met seven of them; the rest are mainly sixteen-year-old girls with screen names like "I'd.Slash.my.Broken.Wrists.for.You. <3" and "xXwasted/awayXx." (As far as I remember none of them have those exact handles right now, but I'm never sure anymore because they all change once every ten days. It's probably only a matter of time before someone picks one of those. Was "He Vomited Up My Heart" "xPrettyPrettyPrincessx" or "mutilate.me <3" last week? Voyeurism is hard work.)

Each of these girls has approximately 1400 other MySpace friends with similarly angsty handles, and they all post an average of 30 bulletins a day demanding we come rate their new picture* and read their journal** and listen to their sad tale about how There Is No Day, Only Night, The Candle Wax Mixes With My Salty Tears In This Black Cavern of Endless Sorrow*** and also TAKE THIS SURVEY AND REPOST THIS WITHIN FIVE MINUTES OR U WILL BE F**KED IN LOVE 4EVER****.

I'm not sure what they all want with me, since my screen name is just "Jaime" and not "little.broken.angel.grrl," but I'm always up for a good read.

...anyway, the point is that I wanted others to share in this joy, so I've passed along one of the bulletins unedited:

Body: Daniel and Jasmine are sitting alone in the park, one night.

Daniel: I guess we are the left overs in this world

Jasmine: I think so, all of my friends have boyfriends and we are only the 2 persons left in this world with out any special person in our life

Daniel: Yup I don't know what to do

Jasmine: I know! We'll play a game

Daniel: What game?

Jasmine: i'll be your girl friend for 30 days and you will be my boy friend

Daniel: That's a great plan in fact i don't have nothing to do much this following weeks...

DAY 1: They watch their first movie and they both touched in a romantic film

DAY 4: They went to the beach and have a picnic... Daniel and Jasmine have their quality time together

DAY 12: Daniel invited Jasmine to a circus and they ride on a Horror House. Jasmine was scared and she touched Daniel's hand but she touched someone else's hand and they both laughed.

DAY 15: They saw a fortune teller down the road and they asked for their future advice and the fortune teller said: "My darling, Please don't waste the time of your life...SPend the rest of your time together happily" Then tears flow out from the teller's eyes

DAY 20: Jasmine invited Daniel to go to the hill and they saw a meteor...Jasmine mumbled something

DAY 28: They sat on the bus and because of a bumby road Jasmine gave her first kiss to Daniel by accident

DAY 29:

11:37pm

Jasmine and Daniel sat in the park where they first decided to play this game...

Daniel: I'm tired Jasmine...Do you want any drinks? I'll buy you one.. I'll just go down the road

Jasmine: Apple Juice that's all

Daniel: Wait for me.

20mins later; a stranger approached Jasmine

Stranger: Are you a friend of Daniel?

Jasmine: Why yes? What happened?

Stranger: A reckless drunken driver ran over daniel and he is critical in the hospital

11:57pm

The doctor went out of the emergency room and he handed out an apple juice and a letter

Doctor: We found this in daniel's pocket

Jasmine reads the letter and it says:

Jasmine, This past few days, i realized you are a really cute girl and i am really falling for you.. Your cherish smile your everything when we played this game; efore this game would end. I would like you to be my girl friend for the rest of my life. I love you Jasmine.

Jasmine crumples the paper and shouted:

"Daniel ! i don't want you to die. I love you, Remember that night when we saw a meteor, I mumbled something; I mumbled that I wish we would be together forever and never end this game. Please don't leave me Daniel. I love you! You cannot do this to me"

Then the clock strikes 12

Daniel's heart stop pumping

THEN IT WAS THE 30TH DAY;

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Always love your loved ones and show them how you feel before it is too late...You will never know when they will be gone from your embrace...If you were given a time to bestow petals of everlasting compassion and love to your loved ones? Today is the day, love them while they are still here.

Copy Paste and after 24hours, Your loved one will realized how are they significant to you and brings A great Good Luck in your Love Life and Career. <3

*6.4. Is mine. Possibly because of the haircut.

**Obviously this would pale before, say, submitting Google a link to your online diary. Or whatever.

***I TOTALLY have the home-court advantage now when my friend Nabih and I have Teenage Goth Girl Poetry Wars, because I have real Teenage Goth Girls sending me their poetry all the time. I Am The Broken Angel Of Despair, Whispering to a Dawn That Will Never Come, Nabih. You heard me.

***NOT AT ALL why I am reposting one here, NOT AT ALL.

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Thursday, February 3

It's Even Better if You Don't Know the Context

The Essay House just got its first referral from a Google search:

"Free chastity belt."

Guess you gotta start somewhere.

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Wednesday, February 2

An Open Letter to Philadelphia Gas Works

Dear Philadelphia Gas Works:

Last night my roommate showed me your latest gas bill and stormed out of the house, and I hung my head and cried. I've never cried over a utility bill before, Philadelphia Gas Works, but you sure know how to kick a girl when she's down.

Where did we go so very wrong, you and I? Things seemed so good between us once - have you forgotten everything we've been through together?

I still remember that warm August morning when I first called you from my new Philadelphia apartment, fairly bursting with excitement at the prospect of taking a hot shower after a long afternoon of sweeping up the previous tenant's cat hair.

And oh, what a sweet first shower it was, PGW, do you remember? Like clover honey.

Things were simpler then. I knew I could pick up the phone any time, day or night, and listen to your soothing automated voice explain new heater-maintenance plans or shyly repeat my credit card digits back to me. No matter how late I called, you were always happy to hear from me.

And you forgave me my little excesses; even when I discovered my cheap, shitty faucets had been leaking hot water for the better part of a week, you never charged me over forty dollars a month.

Or how about that time my landlord turned the heat in the entire building up to eighty-five degrees and left my broken toilet sitting unhooked in the middle of my bathroom for three days, so that I had to leave every window open twenty-four hours a day in early December?

You were hurt, PGW, but you never let it show, not even then.

I was there for you, too, Philadelphia Gas Works - even when nobody else would listen. Remember that time my landlord forgot to pay you eight hundred dollars, and you threatened to cut service to our entire building?

When everyone else screamed "Housing Authorities," I was there, scraping the very bottom of my own checking account for you so that my starving law-student neighbors wouldn't end up out in the cold. Remember that?

And I never regretted it, PGW, not even the next day when the Water Company showed up demanding another sixteen hundred dollars and I had to grovel before a man holding a large wrench while redialing my landlord's number again.. and again... and again. For you, Philadelphia Gas Works, I would have taken on a platoon of water-service agents. I think you know it, too.

I thought you were happy for me when I finally moved out - for months, the bills were the same, and you even sent me my deposit back from the old place.

But then November hit, and everything just... changed between us. Suddenly leaving the heat at 64 every day wasn't good enough for you; you wanted us to suffer so much that we felt guilty for even running the dishwasher. Every down-click of the thermostat was like a dagger in my frostbitten little blue heart, yet you still demanded more and more money.

And now January's bill - I'm getting choked up all over again just thinking about it.

What have we done to deserve this, PGW? Is it because I don't call enough? Was there just one late payment too many? Can we help it if our new landlord is pushing ninety and insists on doing his own repairs? If his house's skylights and front porch leak air and water like colanders of undercooked ziti while he suns himself in Palm Beach? If, after vacuuming up the previous tenant's piles of mouse-droppings from the silverware drawer, we were just too afraid to poke around checking the insulation?

J'accuse, PGW. This is the last straw. Either we work out our differences, or I'm leaving you for San Francisco. That's right - public utilities in a temperate climate. I don't have to take this kind of abuse anymore, at least not after my lease runs out in May.

You know where to find me if you want to talk. I'll wait for you, but not forever.

Love,
Jaime.

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Tuesday, February 1

Interlude

9:32 pm: Philadelphia public transit and utilities temporarily render Standard Pattern Essay House speechless with psychotic rage. Check back tomorrow for regularly-scheduled fun and frolic.

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Monday, January 31

Monkey Time

Me: "I'm sick of how classical music has all these.. how do you say it.."

Jason: "Pretentious assholes?"

Me: "Maybe. I was thinking more like 'procedures.' Everything has to be this and that way. It never bothered me before but all of a sudden it's just driving me crazy."

Jason: "Oh, yeah. Jazz is the same way, and you'd think jazz would be less ridiculous about that kind of thing. That's why I don't think I can hack it with the performer lifestyle, everyone's so uptight about how things Have To Be. They can't just play."

Me: "It usually doesn't bother me when we're actually playing.. just these fucking auditions. People are SO PSYCHOTIC about the Standard Audition Procedure. There are too many fucking procedures. Like my friend Dan, he went to an audition not too long ago, and they called him into the room, right?"

Jason: "Right."

Me: "And there were like five people in the room, and he was only expecting one, and they don't even shake his hand or introduce themselves or anything, they just, like, stare at him, and then they announce his name like he's on trial or something."

Jason: "Ugh. That's such bullshit."

Me: "And so he goes to sit down, and they're like, 'No, don't sit down. Put one of your clarinets down and leave the room.' And he's like, 'Do what?' So he leaves, and they just leave him out there for like five minutes, so he's just kind of standing around wondering what the hell is going on, thinking, 'Oh, fuck, this is where the robot monkeys come out and eat my face.' "

Jason: "Oooo, I just got this really great image of like the audition room door suddenly flying open, and like fifty tiny robot monkeys flying out going EEEE! EEEEEEE!"

Me: "I know! Right! That would make the auditions a lot more exciting, I guess. 'You there, did you play a wrong note in Brahms 3? That means it's MONKEY TIME!' 'EEEEE! EEEEE! EEEE!' "

Jason: "And then you have to fight them off with your instrument .. I guess then they grade you on whether your face gets eaten off."

Me: "It could even be progressive.. 'Sorry, sir, I believe you played that excerpt at 76 instead of 80. That's one monkey.' "

Jason: "Then it's nibbling on you while you play the rest of the audition."

Me: "We should totally start an orchestra."

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Saturday, January 29

Sha La La La-La LA LA LA

It's probably a dangerous habit to get into, writing when you have nothing to say, but I archived last week's entries and now the site looks all forlorn and empty. So here's my Placeholder Entry Which Is Not About Sex or Alcohol or Why I Hate The War or The Time I Was Robbed By Hitchhikers And Ended Up Sleeping In an Abandoned Trailer Park or Pretty Much Anything Stylish and Bloggable:

My roommate is downstairs singing and playing the guitar. Being a music therapy major sounds like a pretty good time from one floor up: apparently you have homework assignments like "Learn to Accompany Yourself Singing Brown-Eyed Girl." Or maybe he's just learning Brown-Eyed Girl for the hell of it; I haven't asked. He's definitely going after those sha-la-la-la's with a vengeance, though. A-plus.

People who just pick up instruments and learn to play them totally fascinate me and my Classical Music Pedagogy Zombie Brain. I tried messing around with shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute: maybe not quite exactly guitar) once but it always made me feel sort of weirdly guilty to practice that instead of clarinet.. so this amazing shakuhachi Grand Master (for real) who was coming all the way to Central Ohio from Ann Arbor had to teach me and everyone else the same phrase of "Sakura, Sakura" week after week after week. Fortunately my flute ended up moving to Ghana without me, so we were all able to cut our losses without too much heartbreak.

Ugh, even I'm bored by that last paragraph. Here, back to the sex and alcohol:

VegPorn: Vegans taste better.
Modern Drunkard Magazine: "Say it loud, say it plowed."

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