Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Summoning the Lamest Most Useful Excuse

So I made a lot of promises on my old blog that I didn't exactly, uh, keep. Stuff like I'd finish posting entries through the end of my service last July. Well, six months later, it doesn't look like that will ever happen. If it does, maybe I'll invite everyone over for a party.

Then, in August, I decided to start a new blog - this one. Except the lamest, most useful excuse for not having to keep any promises happened: grad school. Since then I've spent every minute studying studying studying, except for those times when I didn't, which was a lot of the time. Now, three unwritten papers and two finals are staring me in the face from next week. How many ways can I procrastinate?

Way number one: Revive that blog.

Just ignore the large gaps in posting dates and we'll still be friends.

Freeze Tag

I was walking home from campus tonight, Paul Simon style. You know, slip sliding away, because the city doesn't throw salt on icy sidewalks in working-class neighborhoods.

It's just begun to snow this year. Tonight I made the observation that snow is not only a great way to cover up all the street bum piss and dog crap and rat drool coating the sidewalks, but it's also a beacon for half-hearted graffiti artists: People in my neighborhood tag the layer of new snow on cars.

In general I don't really appreciate the artistic value that graffiti may have. I don't see it as somehow beautiful yet edgy, as an insightful expression of a thriving urban youth culture. It may be all those things. But I'm just a grumpy old lady. In my day, we inhaled paint; we didn't spray things with it.

Either way, I feel like tagging isn't even graffiti. It's just cliche. Everyone does it. How is that a form of self-expression? And tagging in a thin layer of snow? Even lamer.

So "ACE" tagged the hood of a blue Oldsmobile. And when I rounded the corner, someone had tagged a minivan window with the words "death note." I mean, if you're trying to be bad ass, don't sound like you're in your kitchen labeling jars with Post-Its.

"Couscous."
"Wheat germ."
"Walnuts."

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This is one of those posts that's going to reveal me as idiotically middle class.