sometimes bad days are just meant to be bad days. i mean, i got out of bed. what more do you expect from me, monday? i had the usual unintelligible math lecture, followed by an hour or so of manic studying for the computer science midterm. i don’t know why i bothered. i’d already stopped caring, which is probably good, since i would be in a markedly worse mood had i actually cared. suffice it to say that the program we were expected to write in about an hour on the midterm was the kind of program that i’d spend a good two hours and an energy drink writing on my computer. and then another half hour debugging. so i am certain that i asian-failed that one, albeit i may have passed by american standards. so, of course, the test took up all the time. that was bad, because i then had only ten minutes to run back to my room, pick up my complete time slips, and drop them off on the far side of campus. oh yes, and then go to my sociology lecture – sometimes i think my professor’s voice is so soothing, i just want to recline in that chair and drift into dreamland. so i sat on the floor at the back of the enormous lecture hall. it kept me awake, especially after i realized that i had lost my id card at some point in all the manic biking to turn in my time slips on time (ironic.). so, since i had class until the id card office closed, i had to ditch part of my writing class to look for the card and, upon not finding it, go pay for a new one. i find it really, really sad that the best part about today was the a on my writing paper. i mean, it’s my second a in the class. it shouldn’t be such a big deal. you’re supposed to get a’s on assignment 4, anyway. that reminds me, i need to figure out what i’m writing for assignment 5. but i don’t have to write assignment 5 until… eh… next week. i believe it’s due the same day as my sociology paper, as you do. i hate the end-of-semester crunch. all the professors are like, “oh crap, we were supposed to do this and this…” bleh. so yeah, my crappy day. it would’ve gone a lot better with caffeine, but i’ve been trying to stay off caffeine until my system has fully recovered from last weekend’s food poisoning.

wow, end stream-of-consciousness rant.

“tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow

creeps in this petty pace from day to day

to the last syllable of recorded time;

and all our yesterdays have lighted fools

the way to dusty death. out, out, brief candle,

life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

that struts and frets his hour upon the stage

and then is heard no more. it is a tale

told by an idiot, full of sound and fury

signifying nothing.”

-macbeth (V, v, 16-27)

1. “tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow…” have you ever fallen into that rhythm: you’re comfortable in your routine, but at some level you’re incurably bored? it’s so easy to do. tomorrow just repeats, over and over. life drags on with the excitement and originality of a broken record and, from an existentialist viewpoint, you can do nothing about it. you are life’s plaything. and when you seek to dispel your boredom by scrutinizing and analyzing your routine ever more closely, life “creeps” even more slowly. life is in no hurry for you. life knows you’re going to die, eventually. and frankly, my dear, life doesn’t give a damn. passivity will never break you out of the cycle of endless tomorrows.

2. it feels like high school drama, doesn’t it? we “strut and fret” our “hour” upon the “stage” of our friendscene, fussing over useless, petty things. and they are useless and petty, because afterwards we are “heard no more”. we are poor players on the stage of our lives, as well. maybe some of us are materially poor (or will be, once we’re done settling fees for college). maybe some of us are spiritually poor. maybe we are all poor players – in the sense of inadequate players – on the stage of life, because we fail so miserably to make what we should of it. we are surrounded by opportunities and we pass them up. i was outside my building earlier, talking to a friend. there was a kid coming out the door – these are heavy doors, you know – and he was on crutches. he was capable of getting out the door, but it was difficult. i could easily have gone over and held the door for him, but it really didn’t occur to me until he hobbled out past me. every person not loved is an opportunity wasted.

3. ever turned on the tv to watch the news? yeah, me neither. at least, i don’t do it very often, probably because i don’t own a tv. but when i watch my suitemate’s tv, the newscaster’s tirades are so often “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”. they rant and rave about the most ridiculous and mundane things, sometimes, from sarah palin’s wardrobe to another celebrity in rehab. and then they show footage of bombs being dropped on some country that most americans can’t even locate on a map. full of sound and fury. i wonder if you can still hear if you survive a blast like that, or if you would live with the screech and roar eternally ringing in your ears. wouldn’t that be horrible? and i’ve come to think – i guess i’ve always thought – that these wars signify nothing. what are we fighting for? oil. freedom. deception. our lives. pride. peace. i don’t know. sometimes i think that these ramblings of mine are full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. but that is for you, the reader to decide.

“. . . the first person you find you have to leave severely alone as being the greatest fraud you have ever known is yourself.” (oswald chambers) i recommend you look up the full quote.

“the greatest loss in life is not death; it is rather what dies within us while we are still alive.” (a wall on 23rd st., somewhere in l.a.)