For those of you who didn't know, up till this morning, there was a way to print pdfs in the reg's mac lab. For those of you who don't know the reg's mac lab, or why anyone would want to print pdfs there, suffice to say that, given the heavy reading load at this school, printing pdfs at the mac lab was a pretty integral part of my daily schedule, mostly because it was free, and I am cheap.

Unfortunately, this had (temporarily) ended in tears. Thanks to the blubbering masses' inability to keep a secret, the custodians of the mac lab have finally got round to reversing TexShop's ability to circumvent the evil, money-sucking UChicago print system (the bastards; by whom I mean the money grubbing university, not the lab technicians, some of whom are pretty alright dudes) as such, I am stuck with the daunting process of actually paying for my piles (and there are lots of them) of reading materials.

Mostly, though, this is directed against those fools who told everyone about TexShop. Admittedly, my lips might not be as tight as they could be, but I figure I was fairly discreet about who I shared these delicate secrets with. The point is, when you try and hook up your friends, you'll inevitably hook up the stupid person who'll end up going to the maclab technician complaining about a problem with their currently printing pdf. This invariably screws it all up for the rest of us, condemning us to endless suckiness. Damn their eyes! I fucking hate stupid people. Unless they're giving me money.

But then, I guess that's enough for this rant.

Sometimes people ask me, 'hey man, why are you so disgruntled?' Other times, people ask me, 'hey man, why are you such a sexist?'

Sometimes I reply, 'well, it's all due to the same reason, namely that your mother raped me while I was still a child and I still carry the emotional scars.'

Somehow, nobody seems to find this funny. This may be the real reason why I'm disgruntled.

So I'm going to bore you with more samples of my writing, since I figure I've whinged enough on this blog, and it's about time for a change. You can stop reading now if fiction bores you. Yeah.

Little Beautiful Things, Part whatever

It is one of those in-between times in the life of our hero, if hero can be used to describe someone of such unheroic proportions and propensities. He does a lot of sitting down, which he figures is better than standing around, looking aimless, something he still looks awkward doing, even with his studied air of nonchalance, practiced at countless parties where he knows nobody, or gatherings he feels out of place in. Direction, as opposed to bustle, is at a premium in society, our hero has decided. It is easy to keep busy; living is a constant stream of tedious little chores. Cleaning alone (your body, your living space, your neighbourhood, the puddles of muddy water your acquaintances track all over your tidy living room) is enough to keep you occupied for the vast majority of your waking hours. Our hero, however, decides to set off on his quest for purpose on a rather tangential path.

It starts on a rather torrid day, as he trudges along, looking for something small to lift his spirits. So many days can be turned around by something trivial; a phone call from an old friend, coming into easy money (even a stray dollar you pick up off the street can do wonders for your sense of well-being) or even a pretty girl, which is exactly what turns this day around for this particular man. He spies her out of the corner of his eye, then turns to take another look. Yes, she is pretty, or at least pretty enough for another look. Her hair falls just below her shoulders, she has those laughing eyes, that easy smile, those gentle curves which seem generous, yet not overly dramatic; her beauty is the culmination of all of these little pretty features. He gawks for a while; it doesn't matter since she's not looking. He likes gawking, sometimes with his mouth slightly ajar. He's just a gawking type of person. She turns and catches him. She notices that she has his rapt attention and, instead of turning away quickly, flashes him that same easy smile before continuing on her way, out of his life.

'Easy smiles are beautiful,' he says to himself. Then again, many things are. He would make a list of beautiful things, but lists are hard for him. His mind wanders far too often for such organizational feats. He decides, therefore, to keep a little book for capturing all these little beautiful things. This way, he will always have beauty with him, to keep his days beautiful. He feels good about this, and tells his friends.

'Who the hell would want to read a book about beauty?' a friend asks.

'I would. Beautiful things make me happy.'

'Yeah, but only when you see them. Reading about them only makes for shitty prose.'

'Yeah, I guess, but at least that way I'll remember them,' he replies.

'Well, as long as it makes you happy.'

Today, he has a project. He buys a little notebook, and wonders what he will write on its cover. Titles are always important. He can't really decide on a title. Names have to adhere to very strict guidelines, lest they spoil their content with their unwieldiness.

He opens the book and takes out a pen.

'Indecision,' he writes, 'is beautiful.'

He pauses, then starts writing again.

'I would write more, but brevity is beautiful as well.'

As much as I'd hate to see my blog turn into the whinging, melodramatic, my-life-sucks-even-though-I'm-better-off-than-those-poor-unfortunate-sods-in-Somalia variety of blogs which I love to despise, the truth is, in many ways, I'm not happy at the moment. Perhaps unhappy isn't really the word for it, though. I guess, in many ways, my discontent is more along the lines of uncertainty. It's that feeling that makes you want to make frustrated grunting noises and perhaps hit things, except I don't really like hitting things, because my head aches enough without having my knuckles compounding the general state of fucked-upness.

I seriously need to get a BA topic if I want to graduate with honors in psychology, and also need to get my life in order so that I know whether I really want to graduate at all, or rather, so that I know what the hell I'm going to do after I graduate. I've had this recurring fantasy of flipping burgers at McDonald's and being deliriously happy, but I'm sort of convinced that, without a shitload of recreational drugs which I wouldn't be able to afford on my burger flipper salary, I would probably kill myself from the Marxian immiseration of it all.

To be honest, I figure I'm the sort of person who could pretty much do anything and be reasonably happy. I've long since given up the ambition of being tremendously content with my lot. The whole best of all possible worlds idea is something which I'll never buy unless the social sorting algorithm somehow screws itself over immensely and puts me at the top of the heap in a bizarre sort of social order where the rulers sit around eating grapes and entertaining themselves all day, so I figure I'll end up leading the sort of reasonably happy, middle-income sort of lives; you know, the type which will lead to mid-life crises where I buy cars or adopt young mistresses (assuming that I'm attractive or rich enough for this, which is, at this stage, dubious), eventually having a beautiful family which I will, on occasion, thoroughly despise, since this is all the rage nowadays.

I figure that, after almost 24 years of life, I've decided that I'm absolutely hopeless at making decisions, a fact which, quite frankly, alarms me somewhat. Up to now, I've made life changing decisions by generally accepting whichever course, well, I don't know, seems easiest I suppose. It would be extremely helpful if a sign from God appeared just about now. I'd really like to live a life of anaesthetized contentment, but somehow, I have a feeling this will elude me. I'd love to lead a life where I wrote about my discontent, but I'm convinced that I'm such a rubbish writer that nobody would really care to read any of my rubbish along that lines. Hell, even I wouldn't read me.

Ok, that's enough whinging. Sorry for all this whinging. I thoroughly despise myself for all this whinging. But man, did I need to get this shit off my chest.