My hair was really big today.

What the fuck?

A week ago today, my cousin Adam passed away. Sunday night I got a text from my mom saying that his brother and dad had admitted him to the hospital with some mysterious illness. Monday morning, they diagnosed him with decreased liver and kidney function, but made no comment on his chances of recovery. Monday night, they said he was in the last stages of cirrhosis and there was no hope. Tuesday morning, he was taken off life support, and by 3:15 pm, he was dead.

A complex and dramatic web of family animosity is still brewing and it won't do to describe it here. Suffice it to say that the past week has been strange and exhausting. I haven't had the moment that most normal people probably do, the one where you are supposed to realize that someone is REALLY GONE, but the pervasive thought that keeps arising in my head is simply "What the fuck." Adam and I were close when we were younger, and he continued to be the cousin I connected the most with. Even though he was 13 years older than me, we could still always find things to talk about at family gatherings that no one else seemed interested in -- Family Guy, Danzig, stupid shit we did when we were younger, things we were mad at people about. Family Christmas parties were always boring, but if Adam was there, we could slip away from the geezers and go outside to smoke and talk shit. Why not? We were the funny ones in the family, the ones with the quirky sense of humor. I almost didn't go to last year's Christmas party when I heard that Adam wasn't going to be there; what's the point? I made Jay go to the previous Christmas party just so he could meet Adam -- "You'll love him. Once when I was little he held me upside down until I threw up spaghetti all over the linoleum." What the fuck? There's a comic book store here in Boone called Plan 9 comics. In preparation for last Christmas, I was planning on going in there to see if I could find something for Adam. When I learned he wasn't coming into town, I didn't. But every time I would pass by the store afterwards, I would think, "I should still go in there. I bet I can find something for Adam," but I never had time. Last night I passed by Plan 9 on the way to the grocery store and thought, "I bet I can find something for Adam in there," followed closely by "What the fuck?" After Adam died, his mom, my aunt Linda, adopted his boa constrictor. Its name is Belial, but Linda is renaming her Betty "because Belial means Satan." I wanted to keep her, but for some reason I was vetoed, even though I'm the only one who could feed her a mouse this weekend. I wouldn't have changed her name. What the fuck?

Never talk about Fight Club

Well, it is snowing like a bitch here in Boone. That's exciting, but of course I still have class. I like most of my classes individually, but it's hard to go through a whole day of sitting inside listening to someone talk about stuff someone else wrote in a book. Especially when it's snowing.

Halloween is Friday and apparently there is a big fat party on Hippie Hill downtown. I was going to dress up as Pyramid Head, but I have had no time to work on my costume yet and Pyramid Head requires a lot of work so I've abandoned the idea. Now I think I will go as the bar of soap from Fight Club. I think all I will need to do is draw "Fight Club" on a pink pillowcase and wear some pink tights with it.

I am so lazy but at the same time I'm always busy. I have a lot of homework this semester. In fact, I have a 7-page paper due Thursday that I haven't started yet. It's so easy for me to get stressed out over shit. I feel like I never have time for anything.

Am I a bad friend?

For real

I would like to share with you a couple of actual questions that were on the last quiz I took in my Abnormal Psychology class. (These are all verbatim!)

10. According to the text, you are more likely to develop an anxiety disorder if:
a. You are female
b. You are male
c. You are below the age of 11
d. You are a flaming, gaping ass hole

15. If you believe Generalized Anxiety Disorder is due to a universal fear of the limits and responsibilities of one's existence, you are most likely:
a. A cognitive-behaviorist
b. A sissy
c. A humanist
d. An existentialist

16. When your therapist helps you to overcome a phobia by actually doing the thing that you most fear (i.e. handling a snake, or letting a spider crawl across her arm, etc.) she is using the behavioral method of:
a. Showing you what a freakin wimp, whiner, girly man you are
b. Flooding
c. Modeling
d. Systematic frightening to death

17. If your therapist wants you to get over your anxiety and fear of heights by looking out the window of the 100th floor of a building until the anxiety dissipates, she:
a. Ain't talkin to my ass!
b. Is using the technique of flooding
c. Is using the technique of modeling
d. Wants to see a grown man soil his undies and then be reduced to a sniveling pile of jelly because she is a man-hating feminist turbo-diesel dyke

18. If you swallow all the anti-psychotic, anti-anxiety, and anti-depression drugs in the world at the same time:
a. You will gain five pounds and look like a great fat beached whale
b. You will develop immunity to psychosis, anxiety and depression but it won't matter you brainless dipwad because you will...not be only merely dead, but really most sincerely dead (from the Wizard of Oz, in case you wondered or didn't already know)
c. Why the hell would you wanna do that? Yeeeeesh, what a schmuck you must be!
d. Please mark "d" for this question on the bubble sheet, or you will get it wrong. And once again I accept your gratitude for yet another freebie five-pointer. You owe me, big time.

20. If you had made up this question, you would:
a. Attach a twenty dollar bill to the answer sheet when you turn it in.
(this was the only answer listed for this question.)

And that is for real. College sucks a lot of dick sometimes, but once in a while you get a teacher like Dr. Wilson who doesn't take things so seriously. Don't get the impression that he's a total putz -- he is an awesome teacher, and I have learned a lot from him in the two semesters that I have had him. He just has an awesome sense of humor and once in a while he cuts us a break when he knows we have been going over some really hard material.

In short, Dr. Wilson is the balls.

Shoring up the umbrella of jobs and health trade spending reform money job shores...is essential

Say what you want about Jack Cafferty, but he rules most of the time.

Boring things about things

So, I think I might join a club. This is a big deal, because I've never been very social school-wise since I started college, I guess because I never lived on-campus and all. I mean, I've never even, like, been to a football game (except for 1/4 of one last year but it was cold so I left before halftime). Anyway it's called Psi Chi and before you get any willy-nilly thoughts in your head about sororities or any of that, it's not one, and if you know me you will probably agree that pigs will shit out diamond cheeseburgers before I decide to join a sorority. It's a Psychology honor society that will basically look good on paper and maybe get me some scholarships. Also, unlike a lot of other clubs I have considered, they don't make you do shit like build fences for the whales or any of that. I guess psychologists generally aren't very benevolent people (truth). It's actually got some kind of stringent requirements about GPA and number of hours and stuff, but I just checked and I'm pretty sure I meet them (I'm a genius). Last year I got invited to join some other thing, Psi Gamma Beta or some crap, which was also an honor society, and I joined it and forgot about it, but membership is lifelong so I can still put that bitch on my resume. So I suppose if I do decide to join this thing, the two will look nice together and people will throw money at me for the rest of my life. Right?

I know what you're thinking...Y SO BORING?

for the lulz