2:00 AM: You lost me amidst the cityscape

So, I've been back at school a couple guys and do have plenty to report... nothing urgent I suppose... but I felt like I'd get through a bunch of tangents first. I am, of course, made of tangents. I get up in the morning thinking one thing and just keep constantly diverting my attention this way and that until I find myself at the end of the day unsure what it was that got me out of bed to begin with. But I digress.

I had one of my famous running dreams last night. Two nights ago I had a dream where I was not running, which is rare to remember - I was in bed with a girl (a specific one) and she wanted me to wake up and play a board game, except while we were playing, she changed what board we were using. Weird. Very obvious metaphor, thanks subconscious. Last night slightly more obscure: I was imprisoned with a girl (fictional one) and had to escape. So I kissed her goodbye, we squeezed through the bars, and went our separate ways. I ran frantically around the underground complex until I found myself topside outside the Museum Subway station, and then ran into Queen's Park (the park, not the building,) where I attempted to recruit homeless people into distracting my pursuers. They instead pontificated about how Blue Man Group got their start the same way. Eventually, I was found by Amanda, her fiance and his parents. Which is odd, since I've never met or seen his parents. Then I woke up, but it was before my alarm, so I rolled back to sleep and when I found myself back in a dream I was in the front seat of a pick-up truck, and the girl driving (different made-up on, Asian,) was pulling up to the GO station. I marveled at the moon, which was full, and invited her along. She said, "Well let me put it this way - it's bad enough I'm here with you." I agreed (?) so I removed my pants (??) and kissed her goodbye before hopping out. Then I woke up.

I was on the GO train today riding home, feeling good about the day's work, when I was approached by a lady. We'd stopped at Long Branch and I was alone enjoying my book - a book I should've finished weeks ago if not months - when I notice this woman standing awkwardly over me, like she had something to say. I was plugged into my headphones and anyway she handed me a sign saying she was a single mother and had no money and so forth. I didn't remove my earbuds nor even my sunglasses to tell her, "I haven't got anything." And she went on pestering other people.

Oh, don't look at me like that. I'm not some hard-hearted Scrooge. She knows what she's getting into with all this begging. I've seen her before, even given her money. Hadn't seen her in a while though, and how'd she get a ticket anyway? There's a hundred and ten bucks she could use to feed her kids if she ain't got one. Anyway, you can't count on human kindness. you can believe in it, you can seek it out, but you can't count on it, because it'll just let you down. It's just nice when you win one. And me, I'm a student - I've got nothing, I'm allowed to be uncharitable. Also, I'm not uncharitable, I give more than $10 per month (which is more than $10 in excess of my typical income,) to Sick Kids hospital. I'm a goddamn philanthropist for what I make. Anyway, when that happened, it got me thinking about something completely opposite: the feeling of being extremely pissed off.

I'm not known for being cool under pressure (except in those times when I fake it well enough) but there are just those times that get tenser than others. Like that time I had to wait an hour for pizza to arrive, and when the guy showed up, he had two giant party pizzas (we'd ordered medium) and tried to argue with us that a) this is what we'd ordered, and then b) we could eat these no problem. Doesn't really matter if we could eat them, since point A wasn't true, it wasn't what we were going to pay for. But I was so hungry and disoriented from this ridiculous and fundamental fuck-up that I just paid what was owed, took the pizzas, and sent the asshole back to his dickweed pizza place never to be ordered from again.

There was one incident that came to mind, and I wasn't even around for this and it doesn't affect me directly, but it pisses me off by proxy. Before the end of the semester my brother's house was host to this party. So he spends a great deal of time chatting up this girl, which this housemate stops by. And there's been some animosity between the two because apparently the other guy is a dick. But my brother thinks "Okay, since this guy's got a girlfriend, he must be here to give me some backup." But what ends up happening - and I'm actually shaking with rage as I type this - the guy takes the girl into his room and they don't come out. I can't think of a single scummier move one can make. Not only stealing a girl away from somebody, but to do so for the sake of cheating on your girlfriend? What a fucking lowlife. Of course, it is at that point that I would resort to violence, I think, at least if there'd been prior offenses. I've only been put in that position once before, and it was by a gay dude who was just clingy a friend with the girl in question. It ruined my night and pissed me off, but I couldn't hit the dude. In that case, I might actually have. I assume my brother is the same way as I am - once you spend enough time working on something, you need to see it through as far as possible.

The simple solution, to keep in mind for next time, would be to say to the offender, "By the way, how's your girlfriend?" If he doesn't bark back "We broke up" (which would've been a lie) you've successfully put him off his game and given the girl a good reason to walk back to you. The other measure of revenge is to wait until the girlfriend is over again, and when you see her in the hall, go, "Oh, are you guys still together? I didn't realize." Dick moves both, when taken on their own, but this asswipe has it coming.

So I had this old harddrive. It was from the computer I had between grades 7 and...12, I suppose. By the time I got to Sheridan it wasn't functioning well at all but the harddrive remained intact. That is to say, there were two in there, the larger was put into my new computer and the smaller was discarded. Well, the larger ended up biting the dust about 6 months ago in an incident I now refer to melancholically as "the fire," destroying a veritable wealth of old documents. Well, thanks to ane xternal harddrive I've recovered gigs upon gigs of even more ancient documents. I've not gone through them all, but in addition to old grade school and high school projects, stories and scripts (nothing good) there's a bunch of old MP3s (most of the worthwhile of which I've already recovered in some form or another,) and games I downloaded illegally off my brother Brando's old illegal abandonware site, most particularly Lemmings. I haven't gone through it all yet - and there's bound to be very little of actual use - but it forms a sort of patchwork narrative of my computer activities, some of which comprise my gravest embarrassments. Yay me!

So getting back into the spirit of school hasn't been hard in and of itself. I saw Claire in Shakespeare and we caught up on the break - she got into the Writer in Residence course (I didn't apply, and it's real elite) and I told her I'd submitted to the Hart House review. for my 70-word bio, I wrote the following: "Scott Williams is an English major who has also studied journalism and devoted the bulk of his life to learning the secrets of women and awesomeness. He spends more time than he ought to in the suburbs and enjoys exploring the ideas of contradiction and irony. He tends to write fiction and poetry in notebooks between or during his classes, which has always made him popular with his professors." I submitted three of my Reiby-era poems, (For A Stalker, Where We Live and Fragile Thing, my three most lauded,) one from around then that wasn't in-class material (but holds a special place in my heart - Coolness Part 1) and a very short story. The prose I had a problem with because even my short fiction tends to be lengthy, and they had a limit of 300 words for short stories. The Insomniac, the best example of what I can do in short fiction (in my opinion) is like 5000-6000 words. However, "The Train Rider," a cute little one-pager, was floating around, so I sent it in, thinking what the hell, give 'em some variety to pick from. Hopefully they like any of it.

After that was Canadian Lit, where I got my essay and midterm back, which were ridiculously consistent. They were B's, in the low-mid 70 range, which seems to be my style that semester. I guess I can't be disappointed, but I wish I were slightly more capable of growth. Also, some of the remarks were a little harsh considering the mark. But that's me, always been a little sensitive guy.

Today, after napping in the screening of Maria Candelaria, I went to Wymilwood for lunch because I forgot the sandwich I'd fixed myself last night. There was no tables free at Wymilwood, so I took it across the street to wait for my fancy schmancy new History class. So I'm sitting on the steps to the balcony eating my roast beef sandwich and generally looking like the creepiest dude around, when this guy comes up to me and asks whether I was in the horror film class. I say no, and he says "Oh, I must be thinking of someone else then." So I check and see whether he was actually thinking of me - "Were you in the sci-fi film class?" I ask. He says yeah. So we shake hands. He's Mike - I think. talk about blah blah, what'd you think of that class, what else are you taking, what major... for once, someone didn't ask me what college I was in. Seemed like a cool enough guy. Guess I made a new friend. Cool?

Anyway, that's life. I meant to have more tangents but I forgot some. But I can end on a tangent. In first year, I always noticed these two guys on my subway car, Mondays and Wednesday mornings. It wasn't long before I noticed they were in the same Philosophy lecture as I was - I sat in the balcony and they in the lower section. They looked grungy, wearing leather jackets and torn jeans, one had long hair and the other was bald, both had beards. They looked basically like thugs, but you know what? I saw them in every lecture, and that was a 9:00 class. I never spoke to them, but I always wondered how they ended up doing in that class. I dunno if they'd be any smarter than me - 50/50 likelihood I'd say in Philosophy - but they sure attended as many or more classes than I did. Maybe they were good students, maybe not... but they sure as hell were punctual.

Keep on rockin'
-Scott