“what’s a heath bar?”

“who’s john wayne?”

“does ‘conform’ function as a transitive verb in english?”

i think i’ve had some famous ones these past few weeks. it’s not culture shock anymore, because it’s not making me feel sick. it’s just funny. i’m still finding my place. i’ve hardly seen any of the movies that kids around here have seen. i mean, that’s not saying much, since i hardly watch any movies. however, the fact that they consider themselves cultured but have not seen such gems as dead poets society or war games worries me. of course, i’m sure they could say the same for me.

last night, i headed over to new to play pool with j. just after i’d locked up my bike and was texting him to let me in, there was a fire drill. so all of new ended up out on the road, waiting around for the all clear. we played a couple games of pool (first game: i was close to winning. second game: i got pounded.). he went to watch a movie on the cinema floor, while i decided i’d go back to my room and actually, shocker, polish the paper that i was meant to work on. so i got back to my dorm and, just as i was locking up my bike, my building had a fire drill. ironic, since i’d cracked a joke about how we hadn’t had a drill all year. i like irony; i like when my life is nauseatingly ironic.

so i’m here in my room, looking out the window at cars passing on vermont. as i watch headlights and taillights, i wonder who the drivers are. some of them are going the speed limit in japanese compacts. i saw one last night whose car featured blue headlights and spinning rims, spinning lazily even as the car stopped, spinning mesmerizing me until i tore my eyes away to look for the meaning of life in the smog. i wonder if the smog will ever become revelatory, or if it will merely continue to poison my lungs for the next four years or so. there went a pickup truck, an suv. a few more japanese compacts. a soccer mom minivan. a metro bus: it will run all night (or at least until 3 a.m., i’m not sure if it runs between 3 and 7 because i’ve never been awake at that hour.). another soccer mom minivan, and a utility van. there are a lot of those, too. when you stare out the window long enough, though, every set of headlights looks the same. it’s a little like going to class in the mornings. i’m still dazed enough that every face i see looks the same – pale and hollow but still more awake and energetic than me. who are the drivers behind those headlights? do all their faces look the same too? are they as conscious of me, sallow face lit by a dim, old computer screen, as i am of them, sallow faces lit by dim, old dashboards?

it’s funny how, a few hundred years ago, if someone were walking down the street looking at nothing in particular and talking quietly, it was assumed that he was praying. after that, it became common knowledge that anyone walking down the street talking into thin air was crazy. i’m not sure if this has anything to do with the connection of prayer to religion, which many seem to believe is only credible to crazy people. nowadays, if you’re walking down the street talking into thin air, you are evidently talking into your bluetooth headset, which just happens to be very hard to see. odd, how that works.

i haven’t let my thoughts out very much lately. thank you, captain obvious.