Routine has long appealed to me, almost instinctively so, much in the way your favorite flavor of ice cream causes you to point and wheeze as soon as you enter the store. To me, routine is the ideal balance between the kinetic and the sedentary, and I still hold to this–but it’s also time to rethink things, refine my thoughts.
I saw two people go this week, just up and leave, and it was absolutely thrilling. Mutability. What does it mean to you, dear reader? There are smaller changes, such as a new pair of pants, a different apartment, a fresh haircut. I’m not talking about these things. Rather, I’m thinking about clean starts. Realities remade. The revolving door spins, yes, and it does so at its own alarming speed.
The tendency, at least in my case, is to picture a life and then shelve it on a ledge in the stratosphere somewhere. There’s still time, I think, and I adopt a glacial sensibility in clambering up to my high shelf. What if I could grab a stick and knock down everything, accelerate the process? This is possible, probably always has been, but it’s altogether different when you see it done firsthand. The temptation to ape is strong, you know?
I signed a yearlong lease for my current apartment after hemming and hawing and working down the rent increase. It seems I’m stuck. Someone, however, paid a good $120k to pump me full of smarts, so I suppose I should craft a cunning escape. It’s time to get a return on that investment.
Talk as we may about a variety of subjects, gentle reader, I harbor no delusions of turning our parlor into a destination for product reviews. Look at Amazon, Epinions, or, if paper still exists, Consumer Reports and you’ll find but a glimpse of a saturated sector. It also occurs to me the very topics we discuss prevent the contours of our relationship from expanding into consumer opinions.
Having proclaimed this, I’d like to say something for posterity and your vacuum-buying needs. I’m going to share, and you’re going to like it. The Euro-Pro Shark Vac is a turgid piece of shit. What may seem like opinion now will, given some time, probably turn into solid fact. Let me phrase this differently, in case bamboozled and yet-to-be-bamboozled customers have trouble Googling this warning: “Euro-Pro Shark Vac = shit,” “europro shark vac AND piece of shit,” “euro-pro sharkvac shitty,” “shitty shark vac,” “middle finger emoticon europro shark vac shitty.”
I think my bases are covered fairly well. The model in question is the SV745, though I’m led to believe all their products bunk in the same part of the neighborhood. I’d post a picture of the Shitty Vac for you, but the effort needed to resize it, not to mention the bandwidth required, gives me pause. Besides, people say the very sight of the SV745 will sear your corneas and send you screaming into the abyss. Touch one, so the legend goes, and it shall bind your will and crush it, turning you into a whimpering, smoking hulk of a person.
I went through three of these atrocious devices before giving up and exchanging Candidate #3 for DVD’s, which apparently clean floors much better. Each Vac worked reasonably well at first, but within minutes the battery fizzled and died. Recharge it, right? Doing so indeed coaxed a second use out of it, until the motor burnt out, forcing me to pump the power switch like an udder to squeeze out some suction. All told, I gained more mileage out of slamming all three vacs repeatedly on the ground in white-hot fury.
I’ve since taken up with the Black & Decker CHV1400. It is dear to me. Maybe we will talk about horsies and buttercups tomorrow.
Tradition tells us longer conversations usually lead to pure negligence the following evening, with you showing up in an empty parlor only to find silence and possibly a link. Maybe I’ll throw you some napkins, even, or wait–make that tissues. Tonight, however, tonight will be different.
From what I hear, a few of you are imprisoned in the ivory tower and, more importantly, the bleak stretch of country called finals week is upon you. Certainly the desire to craft a stunning piece of work courses mightily through your veins, I wouldn’t imagine otherwise, but here you are. Why exactly are you here? Ostensibly to waste time, I presume, in which case you’ve knocked on the right door.
Papers always struck me as the perfect vehicles to show off my most profound thoughts. Of course I’d wait mere hours before class to start, but all it took were a couple choice words, the gnawing guilt that each class cost at least a grand, a conscious effort to restrain my love of italics, a power nap or two, and schwing! An F-. Following are the simple guidelines I worshiped to achieve these incomparable results.
Margins
Whoever devised this 1.0-inch margin shit is, in all likelihood, probably dead in a hole somewhere. Besides, why should you listen to MLA guidelines? Is MLA your mother? Blindly obey it too much and it’ll be your daddy, while the Chicago Manual of Style crouches in the background, whistling catcalls and shouting your name.
These are the ideal margins:
You can’t handle this much paper.
3.0-inch margins? They’re three times as large, which makes the paper three times better, right?
Illustrations
Can your prof honestly tolerate lines and lines of words? Be still, my variable heart rate. Lest you construct elaborate flowcharts and, I don’t know, maps of the mind or something, consider pasting a picture of Vida Guerra right in the middle of your supporting paragraph. Remember, this can only help the person who evaluates your paper.
“I postulate the corpus cannot hold, what with these canonical heresi– Why, hello there.”
On the other hand, if you despise your class and the teacher who commands it, well, Cher.
Citations
Citawhat? Precisely. The library is in you, and don’t you forget it. The most difficult aspect of quoting oneself is inventing a convincing publisher. Thankfully for you, I’ve built a very usable formula.
Publisher = (name of plant or nut) + (body of water) + Press
Let’s put this baby to work.
CEO, Gentle. Procrastination and the Hermeneutics of…Oh, Wait.
Chicago: Almond Lake Press, 2005.
CEO, Gentle. The Complete Treasury of Elven Recipes: Cajun Style.
Chicago: Hazlenut River Press, 2005.
CEO, Gentle. Deception and the Truth About Deception.
Chicago: Pine Rapids Press, 2005.
Go forth and disappoint, dear reader!