all loose ends pt. two

Sam is being gracious enough to let me live with her. Right now I am mired in the move. My desire to have exclusively collapsable belongings was thwarted by living alone and consequently I've accumulated a tremendous amount of lamps and ephemera that simply will not fit within the confines of Sam's one-bedroom apartment. So rather than get rid of my precious collection of tiny black and white television sets, they are now taking up residence in self storage unit. It is not climate controlled because I am not a money tree. When I was filling out the lease for it, the clerk cautioned me against "partying" in my tiny 10'x 15' cell which I thought ludacrus and offered only a nasally snort in reply. Later Sam noted that artist friends of hers had used the climate controlled storage cubicles as ad hoc studios, which reminded me of a short story I wrote years ago about a guy who lives in a storage unit along with his deceased mother's belongings. I considered this briefly for myself at the time, but came to the conclusion that in addition to the likelihood of getting caught and kicked out, the prison conditions and absence of windows would inflame my sometimes-claustrophobia...

all ends loose pt. one

Commencement was a week ago. I took the bus to the auditorium and would have worn my cap and gown along the way but for acetate fabric which would have undoubtedly turned my already profuse, anxious sweating into a deluge. The whole escapade spanned over three mind-numbing hours which would have been utterly unbearable were it not for the tassle I had to play with and then the spanish/english dictionary handed out along with our form letters by the lame keynote speaker, a senatoress and professional commencement orator.
For sixish plus weeks prior to the ceremony, I'd been pretty surly about the whole thing - the complete uncertainty of my future overshadowed any joy I could muster at the prospect of finally getting out of school. Afterwards however, a strange sort of calm fell over me.
Now, a week later, I'm still in limbo, but I've got tasks that demand my immediate attention to keep my mind off more abstract thoughts like what I'm going to do with the rest of my life. My old plan was to pick up and move, to travel, whatever, as soon as I graduated so I never bothered to concern myself with local living arrangements. And while I have a little money to brace myself with, I spent much more than I'd saved over the last six months making a grand egress effectively impossible. So I have to fight my flight instinct and at the very least build a bigger nest egg first before I take off.

everything is everything

The window of time during which I am at my peak performance level as a writer is appearantly somwhere between hour 17 and hour 20 of conciousness. Today, this was around 10am. I'd been writing for about 15 hours at that point, give or take an hour for travel and breaks. Today I wrote. And wrote. And wrote the last essay of my collegiate career. Now I am sweating and shivering and pacing in place, hoping that it was at least decent enough for me to deserve credit for the class, the last one I needed to officially graduate. In three days I am supposed to go to commencement, to walk across the stage in my cap and gown and receive my diploma. It doesn't seem real. And it will seem even less real if I have to make up for my self-sabotage this semester by retaking the class during the summer.

another forgone conclusion

Its graduation time. You've been sent the announcement, received the invitation, maybe even gotten the last minute e-vite, and now here is my collegiate graduation gift registration wishlist.
a hat - I'd really like a hat, fedora stylings but with a short brim. grey. made of something reasonable so I could wear it year 'round.
a tattoo - you don't have to do anything but front the dough.
vegetable bags - no more plastic bags!
knives - J.A. Henckels, full tang, 3 rivet, hardcore.
a bar blender - stainless / chrome.
a box of protien bars - at least 10g soy protien per bar, no whey.
citrus press - lime or lemon sized, cast iron or aluminum.
a belgian waffler - preferably non-electric, non-stick, pan-style.
monogrammed handkerchiefs - too foppish for me to ever buy for myself. a butch block font on the initials (rs), please.
assorted dvds - pulp fiction, gattaca, resevoir dogs, silenceofthelambs, ususal suspects, doubleindemnity, waynesworld, brazil, 12 monkees, being john malkovich, big labowski, fightclub, seven, officespace, oh brother..., memento, following, american psycho, amélie

the meat and the magic of you

I have not quite yet mastered the semantics of relationships. When Samantha and I first started seeing each other, we did so by going on dates once or twice a week without a great deal of contact in between outings. Usually a date involved a meal, typically dinner, and an activity, including but certainly not limited to plays, movies, parties, concerts, random acts of vaudville, and body-mod suspension rituals. Now that Sam and I have been dating for while we see each other all the time but go on dates with considerably less frequency. So Saturday, I took the night off and we went out...on a date. We went to mother's cafe for dinner and I fretted over her newly installed valentine's day nose screw. Afterwards we went to see a play of sorts at the hyde park theatre called Screwed into the Book of Love which was less of an actual play than a collection of lackluster renditions of poorly written monologues on the subject of relationships. I had really high hopes for the thing after Sam pointed out that the playwrite resided in my hometown, the comely village of Bastrop, Texas. My hopes were dashed however when the first monologue was shriekingly delivered by the mime who had antagonized audience members (as mimes tend to do) as part of the pre-show "entertainment." The rest seemed mostly mediocre, but to be fair, my opinion of the piece was immediately mime-jaundiced and my negative reception was bolstered further by the chawbacon three chairs down who punctuated every slightly sexually provocative line with his nervous guffaws. During the show, I finally got a call back about the research study I had applied to participate in: two days of guinnea piggery for 600 bucks. Normally I wouldn't really go for that sort of thing, but I've recently discovered that I have drained my bank account over the course of the past year with my wild bachelor lifestyle and now with my post-graduate future so uncertain, I can totally use the dough. I managed to get back with them this morning for an over the telephone pre-interview screening. Apearantly I'm much more serious about being a vegetarian than I thought I was because without even thinking twice, I gave up an easy 600 clams because I'd have to eat ham sandwiches as part of the study. I wish it had occurred to me to lie to them before I'd hung up the phone. In a way, it makes me proud that I've become actually principled about my vegetarianism since I started out doing it just for a change but in another less gratifying way, I'm horrified that I'm likely not going to be able to participate in any such studies because of my "dietary restrictions" which totally blows. Oh well, I didn't want their money or drug-laced lunch meat anyway. *love, r.

a quick dip in the meme pool

a quick dip in the meme pool

In uncertain times the American people need strong leadership! We need conservative leaders who will defend our nations values. Leaders who aren't affraid to don the people's armor and fight for our way of life! We need leaders who will protect our divine right to worship as we see fit and our right to stalk our crappy president's daughters. But seriously...

black eights and black aces

I love bookstores, especially used bookstores. Generally speaking, I can't walk out of a place like half-price books without my shoulder being strained from the plentitude of my purchase tumbling out of my man-purse. One such trip to HPB months and months ago earned me a copy of American Psycho which I only just completed reading thanks to my propensity for being distracted by shiny things. Unlike the novel's protagonist, Patrick Bateman, I am not psychopath devoid of personal identity or conscience, but we do however share an unnerving obsession with business cards (go segue!).
When I was younger I maintained a slightly ironic collection of business cards that at one point numbered in the hundreds. The collection eventually fell prey to a furious whirlwind of recycling, becoming the price tags for the t-shirts I sold when accompanying my father on his door-to-door art selling expeditions. The cards were gone, but the spirit lived on. A chance encounter with a grad student (by which I mean car accident) a some time ago catalyzed a calling card epiphany: actually having a business (or a job for that matter) isn't necessarily a prerequisite for having business cards.
For twelve dollars at office depot, I got ONE THOUSAND BUSINESS CARDS, each one attractively embossed in the deepest black hue with my name in Times, the sassiest of fonts. For weeks I carried a stack of the cards in my breast pocket, taking every possible opportunity to sneak one out and gaze at it lovingly, admiring the delicate gloss of the imprint, the subtle texture of the stock. I didn't have any business contacts or associates to whom giving a calling card would be appropriate, but that didn't matter. In my delight I dispensed dozens of the cards in my perennial promenades around the city, placing them carefully on bus stop benches, on empty restaurant tables, under windshield wipers and on tree branches hoping that they would be found and stir curiosity in the beholder. The stark, spartan contrast of my name, black in a field of white, to my mind, gave me an air of mystery, "Who is this R. Schlickeisen?" they would ask, examining the otherwise blank card, holding it up to their ear and waiting, perhaps, for it to whisper a response.
Soon I became bored of the card's overt simplicity and pulled out my father's ancient manual typewriter to doctor them with practical contact info, mock professional titles, and quippy slogans - each one became a unique snowflake, each was one the Cadillac of calling cards. The typewriter ribbon ran out and so I took to late night photocopier mischief to satisfy my need to incarnate my identity in cardstock. It has become for me a cottage art industry.
Recently I received an email from a grad student at the university who had found one of my cards I'd been using as a bookmark in a book about subversive magazines. I'd written a hasty note on it and lo! it was received by a journalism design t.a. My hope is that she can give me some pointers I can use to put out some more professional looking publications including a little autobiographical coffee table pamphlet I've been grinding away at when I should have been doing actual work.