And her nose starts to bleed a most beautiful ruby red

I was tagged by The Little Passenger, aka Jayne, to do this survey thing. Warning: all of my answers will be boring.


What is your current obsession?
I've been going crazy over this story I've been writing for OVER A YEAR that isn't actually very good. It's 30,000 words and counting (not to be confused with the 25,000 word story I have been writing since last Thanksgiving. Too many long stories). I currently have and have always had a love-hate relationship with this story (which I not-so-affectionately call the "journalist" story even though it has pm nothing to do with journalism). I want to finish it, though, because it would be a pretty big personal accomplishment. And because my friend is FORCING me to finish it. She's a harsh taskmistress, always demanding stories that involve rose petals and punk rockers...WHATEVER.

Coffee or tea?
COFFEE. The answer is ALWAYS coffee.

What's for dinner?
My dad is cooking some kind of pasta dish. I don't know what it is, but it smells delicious.

What was the last thing you bought?
I bought a six pack of Heineken on my way home from the Honda service place this afternoon. GREAT VALUE. You can't beat it.

What are you listening to right now?


What is your favorite ice-cream flavor?
I prefer chocolate chip cookie dough, but I'm a big fan of plain chocolate ice cream. I know, that sounds so boring, but I'm a creature of habit. I'm that person who orders the same thing at every restaurant. Routine is the spice of life! I mean, I wouldn't order it if I didn't enjoy it.

What is your favorite colour?
Blue.

What is your favorite piece of clothing in your wardrobe?
Anyone who knows me IRL has probably guessed I'm not all that interested in clothes. I actually hate shopping. But I hate a lot of things. My lack of patience for shopping doesn't necessarily mean I hate being clothed in nice things. If I had to choose an item, I'd probably pick this blouse I bought a couple weeks ago from H&M. It's so cute! It's kind of a peasant blouse/empire waist/flowery thing that I got for $5.

What is your dream job?
Novelist. If I can't be a published author, however, I'd like to work in the promotional/advertising kind of business, specifically in the music industry. I don't even know how I'd make that happen, but I think it would be fucking awesome.

How many times do you press the snooze button before you get up?
I don't actually have an alarm clock. I set the alarm on my phone and put my phone across the room so that I actually have to get up to turn it off every morning. As a result, I don't really end up hitting the equivalent of the snooze button very often. Sometimes I do reset my alarm for fifteen minutes later, but I think that generally requires more alertness and higher brain function than a snooze button does.


I'm not feeling particularly long-winded tonight, so it ends there! You're all lucky. I don't have anyone to tag. I guess I'll just tag anyone who hasn't done this survey yet.

I'm funky, not a junkie, but I know where to get it

I'm sorry, what? I was going to make an actual post, but I was distracted by this gentleman.

Not wolf brendon.

picture from jackrussell-terrier.com
three cubicles away, there is a boy with red bumps wrapped seductively around his knuckles like ribbon, curving down between his fingers and then sprawling up the pale landscape of his inner arm. he has bumps on his elbows, too, and thin, ashy hair that feathers over his spotty forehead, and a dog, Lola, that hides under the desk, chewing nervously on the corner of the file cabinet. walking past this cubicle on a break room run, I notice the dry skin on his knuckles and compare their texture to the rough skin on my own, smiling at Lola around the file cabinet barrier.

later, when Lola makes a break for the open doorway,
the boy goes after her,
head down,
scabby elbows tucked tightly into his sides,
sprinting.

Practice makes [slightly less terrible]

The boy in the corner of the coffee shop is reading three books at once.
He alternates between them
like he's dealing with his children and
trying not to play favorites, assessing them all equally and
giving each book the same amount of attention before
he carefully marks his place and moves on to the next.
His eyebrows are sparse, like someone glued
granules of pepper onto his skin at the place where they should be,
a tattoo that fills in the blank spaces, and
his lips curve down toward the floor,
like there are weights at the corners of his mouth,
landing him like a bookworm on a hook, and
he is wearing a baseball cap with a brim
that might as well be fresh from the hat-making factory, it's so flat.
He pushes that cap up between books to scratch his forehead.

The boy in the corner of the coffee shop is reading three books, too, and
when I glance up, he glances up, too, almost
as if he anticipated my movement and wanted to beat me to it.
It's too early in the morning for a staring contest. I look past him,
feeling picked bare already because the Book of Disquiet
is a manifesto on the art of depression and
"how to constantly wish to be someone you're not"
and I'm reading it cover to cover.
The boy in the corner of the coffee shop is scratching his forehead
underneath the baseball cap, putting
one finger against the flat-as-can-be brim to push it back and
then questing under the band for the itch.

Well, in the waiting room, while waiting for news of you, I hallucinated I could read your mind

The best time to make a blog post is when you do not, in fact, have time to make a blog post.

I've been spending a lot of my time napping lately, which wouldn't be so tragic if I actually had time to nap. At random points throughout the day, I end up stumbling into my room and falling asleep without any warning (but not before blearily setting the alarm on my phone, because who wants to sleep through dinner?), and then I always wake up not knowing what time it is, or what day it is. I've actually woken up a couple times this week convinced that it's Thursday afternoon and that I have missed my POL 152 final. Putting aside the fact that I am clearly very worried about oversleeping and missing my last final (for reasons unknown), my point is that naps, which are most commonly used as some kind of de-stressing technique, should be completely banned from your life if they are only causing you more stress (read: disorientation, racing heartbeat, NIGHTMARES ABOUT MY SISTER THROWING MY COMPUTER OUT A WINDOW...the list is endless).

I think the problems I'm having with naps probably indicate that I'm just having problems with stress in general, but as long as I stay awake I feel fine. Let's not mention the fact that I haven't actually left my apartment to do anything other than make an impromptu Starbucks run since Saturday. Actually, that's a lie -- I drove to the Commons to get a sandwich from Habit burger yesterday. Could poor diet also be contributing to the frequency of my nap terrors? My dad would say yes, but there isn't a lot I can do about it right now. I've been eating a lot of cereal.

As for the people I know who are going through tough times right now, I have one thing to say:


So you've given me all these things and I don't want you to think that I don't appreciate them -- because I do -- but all I really want from you today is a smile. [via pleasefindthis]