Saturday, August 20, 2011

Dreams and Sour Grapes

The night before last I dreamed of a woman with seven vaginas arranged vertically down her middle, multiply (-plee) pregnant and a highly popular prostitute.  Last night my wayward soul must have inadvertently entered a swimmer at some foreign, perhaps English or French beach, scaring the swimmer's friend and causing other beachgoers to believe she had lost her mind.  One shocked old man in red flowered swim trunks stands out particularly; he stared at me when I buried my hands in the sand for stability.  I reeled my soul in asap when I realized the mix-up and lurched into the kitchen for water.  On an unrelated (?) subject, I decided optimistically to attempt the ivory tower of grad school.  As with any tower, the approach to this one begins easily but becomes totally dismal when you get to the tower part.  I registered for the GRE.  I looked for scholarships, because nothing is happening without generous moneys.  Would you like to know why I am prepared to resign myself to a life of sometime babysitting and quail egg-peddling?  This is a sample awardee.  Please do read it:

Skroch graduated in 2009 with degrees in Political Science, International Relations, Peace and Conflict Resolution Studies, and African Studies. She studied at Université Gaston Berger in Senegal. She was the recipient of the Abraham S. Burack and F. Chandler Young Awards for outstanding research abroad for her year-long fieldwork examining local resolutions to violent civil war in the Casamance region of Senegal. She has worked with international students and refugees in various capacities, with a dialogue and reconciliation initiative in Israel and the West Bank through the QUEST Program, and as a Soliya Connect Program Facilitator, using new media to mediate dialogue on relevant political and social issues between young people around the world. She worked for Wisconsin Public Television as a documentary editor and transcriber, was interviewed on NPR’s Here on Earth about her experiences, and presented a thesis on dependency theory in the Congo at the Interdisciplinary Conference on Violence. Post-college, Skroch was a Fulbright Scholar in Morocco, researching post-conflict democratic transition via the Equity and Reconciliation Commission, while also interning at a medical rehabilitation center for torture victims. She grew up in the Philippines and Wisconsin, and speaks French, Arabic, Moroccan Darija, and Wolof."

Wolof, huh?  They can program machines to do some pretty amazing things these days.  All that boring human stuff like food, sleep, sex, tears, failure -- gone.  Maximum efficiency.  Fuck me.

My own CV has the stale flavor of a life crisis and seems to be saying, "You're old enough to know that if you ever want to get off food stamps: ITT Tech."  Nonetheless, can I show you a funny thing I made?

3 comments:

  1. Can we some how put a woman with 7 vaginas, a successful intellectual of social justice, and a quail hunting a man all as one? Ahhh...you just have!! Whatever you are doing you are cooler than Skroch...

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  2. you are cooler than anyone i know. did you cut that out by hand with an exacto blade? how in hell? that ain't funny. that is righteous!

    i hope your next step is just as stimulating and adventurous as you are. oh and paved with the money of those who don't even realize it's gone. eh-men, and Ahhhhmen. what programs are you applying to? schools specific? tell me more.

    yores,
    sal the tron

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  3. Gosh thank you. I needed to hear that. I cut them out of white paper with an exacto. Programs: conflict and mediation. Schools: Utrecht U, University for Peace in Costa Rica, Tel Aviv U, and University of NC Greensboro. Tentatively, of course.

    Also, happy pop-out day in three minutes!

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