Garrett Hall

Garrett Hall is not sexy arrogance.

Not graduating is.

But not if the main reason you didn’t graduate was your fear of the old biddies at the front desk of Garrett Hall.

Therefore, facing Garrett Hall unabashedly, flicking off the old biddies and grabbing a minor declaration form, crossing out the word “Minor” and writing in “Major”—well that’s sexy arrogance at its finest.

What purpose does Garrett Hall serve, really? It once served the sole purpose of Pick Up Your Course Action Forms Here, until they decided that would make them too useful and instead put a polite flyer in their place, demanding you print out your own form. I think we both know the ladies behind that flyer.

You walk into Garrett Hall and you are instantly bombarded by signs demanding way too much out of you. “TURN OFF YOUR CELL PHONES” screams a neon green sign with an Xed out Windows 97 clip-art phone. The phone is grinning. The ladies behind the desk are not. And any of us with the smallest ounce of S.A. are not even moving towards our phone. Some of us are willing to gamble that our phone may not ring and send the ladies into insanity spasms in those 4 minutes we’re in this building. And others of us are confident that it will ring, and anxiously await that moment.

Seriously, what do those ladies do? The last time I was in Garrett Hall, I needed to turn in my graduation form (alas, I haven’t gotten the boot for mis a behaving yet). I politely told this to the lady at the front desk, who did not look up from her four-year-old computer as she raised a pointed finger, Ghost of Christmas’ Future style, at a sign she created. “GRADUATING? GO TO ROOM 118.” I wonder how many times she had to strain her vocal chords before finally deciding that U.Va wasn’t paying her enough for this shit and making a sign.

Down at Room 188, which had a stressful line with arrows outside it, reminiscent of absentee in-person voting booths, had another hard-working Garrett Hall employee inside it. She waited, arms crossed, not saying a word, as I examined the sign above her door. “STOP! GRADUATING? YOU WILL NEED A VISTAA REPORT.”

I turned around, waited a few days, printed my VISTAA report, and attached in neatly with a yellow paper clip. I marched up to Garrett Hall, bypasses the ladies, and did not turn off my cell phone. Room 118 was locked with a sign “CLOSED FOR THE THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY.” A Windows 97 clip-art turkey greeted me with more hospitality than anyone else in Garrett Hall ever could.

this bottle of beast is taking me home

Current music: Dashboard
Current mood: NOTHING MATTERS :(

I need to stop. Really. I was stalking people from kindergarten (again!) and I happened upon a super...(I'm not saying it) depressing quote that sounded like it could be from some terribly (again, it's not happening) whiny song. So I googled it, of course. And then I happened upon this blog:

http://www.xanga.com/bottle_of_broken_hearts

Bottle of broken hearts. Yep. But don't ask how they got in there. I am personally more intrigued by the pear inside the liquor bottle on Bea's shelf.

At first, I thought that this blog was some poor middle-schooler pouring his heart out. But as I read on, I was embarrassed to realize that I actually knew about 60% of the song lyrics posted here. Eh. An interesting literary technique used in this blog ( I suppose since the words are unoriginal, we've got to give this kid something) is the use of spaced out adverbs. For example:

i want to lead you on
and let you go --->
e f f o r t l e s s l y

don't go worrying about me
it's not like i think about you
c o n s t a n t l y

My teacher told me not to use adverbs unless it was absolutely necessary. Is it here? I guess that's debatable. Maybe some people were a little too busy drawing black hearts in class to catch that advice.

or maybe they're just doing it
i n t e n t i o n a l l y.

6 degrees of separation

Now that would be a sweet name for an emo band.

But here it is, and I'm hoping that this is one of many volumes:

I drove out to a tiny woodsy neighborhood of cul-de-sacs today off RIO Road (which use to be called Route Ten until people in Charlottesville decided to be retarded...I hope Alexandria doesn't soon spawn people calling our favorite strip-mall-Applebee's corridor RI Road) and started knocking door-to-door to find people to interview for a story I'm working on. This activity was prescribed by my boss, who apparently has not seen the Sexual Predators Map of this area. Anyway, after I chatted it up with a harmless-looking older man listening to headphones, he directed me to the home of an elderly couple who had lived there for 20 years.

The nice old lady got side-tracked, as old people often do, and started bragging about her granddaughter, as all awesome old people always do. Apparently she's a sixteen-year-old who plays drums. She rocks. At least, that's what the drummer for the Dave Mathews Band told her. Seriously, grandma alleges. It happened for real.

But the real talent in the band is the lead singer/guitarist kind (grandpa shakes his head at this. Our granddaughter is the real talent, he says.) But this boy has been away for six months, at sea. At SEA? Well you see, his mother is a professor at the University, and she took her family with her to Semester At Sea...

His mother isn't any old professor. His mother taught me fiction writing. She sent me an anthology of American fiction in the mail to my home in Northern Virginia, for god sakes. Me and Lizzie-girl go WAY back.

So there you have it: I interviewed my teacher's son's bandmate's grandma and grandpa. I guess that's only four degrees. It left me feeling kind of good about life in general and Self, Solitude and Connectedness (but that's another story for another occasion entirely). But it also left me extremely jealous of this sixteen-year-old drummer who has the respect of someone in DMB (whose name I still think is missing a U, but still. Their respect is kind of a big deal). I think grandma could tell, and as I walked out the door she told me I still had time to learn how to play in a band; I was so young.

If she's right, I at least know what to name it.

Only a woman named "Bunny" could come up with this

I just saw Howard Huge. And just like the comic strip, it wasn’t even funny.

I knew as I ran down Old Farm Road that I had made a wrong turn into the Secret Lives of Wealthy Charlottesvillians. There were gardens here. And bunnies. And quaint cottage-mansions protected from the outside hooligans like me by enormous bush-fortresses.

As I trekked to the end of the road, obviously too caught up in whatever I was listening to to notice the blatant error with reality, I stopped at a miniature bridge leading to a clearing in the woods. Like any yuppie cottage-mansion dweller would dream of having in his backyard, I saw in the distance the glowing cursive-ish sign for Barnes and Noble. I’d really entered an alternate universe now, and no more than .5 miles away from my own modest bedroom.

I turned around, deciding I could get overpriced lattes and the Best of Emmylou Harris some other time (Barnes and Noble sells books, too? No way.) And that’s when I heard the loudest bark ever known to man.

God, I thought, that thing’s gonna kill me. And that was before I even saw it.

The sight shocked me about as much as a real-life version of Clifford the Big Red Dog. There was Howard Huge, a breed of dog that I had believed to be entirely fictional until today. I was worried he might chase me down/paw me to death, but I found that just like in the pathetically short wiki article for Howard Huge, he was “somewhat of a gentle giant.”

This all took place not too far from Wayside Place. Perhaps on my future runs, cows will populate my school, my teacher will have an ear on top of her head that hears thoughts, and I, Marissa, (actually Maurecia, but in fourth grade this seemed to be my first and only opportunity to almost share a name with a fictional character. In tenth grade my theory proved to be incorrect.) will be forced to read aloud the dictionary page with “Journey” on it after I accidentally ripped it out and felt terrible about it.

T$$

Oh, it sounds real sensational. It almost sounds like that dumb portugese band that everyone loved after they made that iPod commercial—CSS. Cansei de Ser Sexy. (Me too.) But doesn’t it sound a little too…convenient…to be true?

Toxic Shock Syndrome- the SYNDROME where you wear a tampon so long that your state of being unclean sends you into toxic shock. Toxic shock? Aren’t those adjectives…overkill? Isn’t the fact that it is a SYNDROME bad enough?

But let’s be honest. If there was no such SYNDROME, what would stop people from wearing the same tampon all day? (I should really stop saying “people,” but these days, who knows.) Also, have you ever heard of someone dying from this SYNDROME? Granted, dying from this is somewhat embarrassing. A little like dying from gangrene or leprosy. Only much more dramatic sounding.

Oh, she died of Toxic Shock Syndrome??? Was it one of those hairdryers-falling-in-the-bathtub type thing? Oh….that’s the TAMPON thing? Gross.

So basically, what I think I’m trying to say is, you could probably wear the same tampon for years if you really wanted to. All TSS stands for is Tamponcompany $$making $cheme. Yeah.

things i know because of katelyn

1. Louis XIV uses sexual slang so advanced that you can’t even find it in urbandictionary. Yet.
2. Some sorority girls at U.Va are a tad overweight. They compensate by spending extra hours in the tanning booth. The result is something referred to as a Fat-Tan.
3. Pesto is delicious.
4. Wheelchairs have four wheels, not two. Additionally, when the guy in Placebo says “think of me stuck in my chair that has four wheels” he isn’t merely reflecting on his cooped-up office life. He is reflecting on his life as a paraplegic.
5. Along those lines, “white lines that sped us up” from Bright Eyes’ Gold Mine Gutted are not the white lines marking the yards on a football field. Furthermore, making a nice clean cut “like a bag we buy and divvy up” is not talking about candy. To summarize, Marissa=naïve.
6. Christian kids are confused about what constitutes a fun time. Many think that group activities such as stealing stop signs are what should make them feel giddy.
7. Man-plaid is bad.
8. Any slide show of party pictures can be made an epic viewing experience if set to The Killers (feat. Lou Reed) – Tranquilize.
9. The coolness/mad street cred of any artist can be greatly increased by featuring any one of these three artists in a song: Lou Reed, Iggy Pop or David Bowie. (Also, take note of the omission of the Oxford Comma. Not that I give a fuck about it, or anything…)
10. The awkwardness level in a room can be dramatically increased by verbal recognition of the presence/absence of sexual tension.

The RIAA can finally feel cooler than me. Jerks.

So I just got back from a trip that involved a 4 hour bus ride and 100 minute train ride each way. This is a lot of time to sit and do nothing…and since I’m not one to be productive the first week of summer, I brought with me two crucial entertainment objects—my iPod, and the latest copy of Rolling Stone (which I was forced to purchase, by the way, because all of a sudden Spin is very obscure in convenient stores, and which also, by the way, appeared pornographic thanks to the ladies of the Hills stripping on the cover). I was very excited to have a solid amount of time to engross myself in Death Cab’s latest album, which came out right before I left.

Okay, I lied. It came out the very day I left. Knowing I wouldn’t have time to buy it (which I really would have done, I swear. No one wants to contribute to the Buy Ben Gibbard Some Actually Fashionable Glasses Fund more than me) I downloaded it off the internet. And I don’t mean off of iTunes, either.

Now I’ll admit that I have done my share of downloading in my years, and I’ve been cursed a couple of times. Back in my Kazaa days (God, that program was awful) once in a while I’d be treated with a corrupted file that would turn into loud alien static at the end of a song. Luckily, I would only end up listening to these songs when I was falling asleep alone in a dark, creepy house. Or driving alone for the first time in the middle of a severe thunderstorm.

But it was never like this. I only reserve this title for the extremely elite, but the dudes who recently fucked up my illegal Narrow Stairs experience…they were some crafty motherfuckers.

So, on principal, I decide to give the entire album a listen first—start to finish—before I open my Rolling Stone to see what they have to say (although I can already see that it says on the cover, “Death Cab For Cutie: 4 Stars”). It’s…okay…Death Cab has done better, but this definitely resembles some of their better older stuff, and I’m sure that it will grow on me.

I open the article and instantly agree. This album is dark, man, dark as fuck, if the fucking we’re talking about is illegal, immoral and heartbreaking. And yeah, it does kind of sound like it was recorded in a tiny room picking up all kinds of reverbs and what not. But as I read on, I swear that I never heard any of the lyrics featured in this feature once. I mean, of course I recognized that “Cath…” was about an unhappy, unfulfilling marriage, but I didn’t think he actually ever said it outright. It was just one of those things I kind of knew. In hindsight. After reading the article. And it would seem cheesy if he ever actually sang the words “Talking Bird.” DCFC was just trying to pull a Brand New and make really obscure unmentioned song titles. Riieeeght?

Nah, man. Thank god for Wikipedia. The album I had listened to was actually by an obscure German band called Velveteen who “leaked” the “New Death Cab” album as an April Fool’s Joke. Real funny and all, but come on guys. If you’re sure everyone is going to fall for you calling yourself Death Cab, and you aren’t as good as Death Cab, why even exist? I mean, they’re slightly more depressing than Death Cab, I will give them that, and that is no small feat.

don't get hanged

Contrary to popular belief, there is more than one kind of hangover. For decades, scientists were under the impression that there was only one kind of hangover: the kind you wake up with (Hangovertes Mellitus Type I.) But ladies and gentlemen, my life of late has proved otherwise. Hangovers don’t just strike the innocent. Just like another disease to which I will not directly allude, there is another type of hangover that, by living your day in a sloppy, unhealthy, frowned upon way, you can fuck yourself into having. You might try to tell me, oh no, Marissa, this kind of thing doesn’t run in my family. Well guess what? It doesn’t matter. Hangovertes Mellitus Type II is deadly, and it doesn’t discriminate. If you aren’t careful, you could be next.

The ideal morning after a night of wastecasing—roll over at noon. Look at the clock. Cancel all plans. Roll back over. Get up at 3 (If it’s Sunday, get up at 2:50. I know every minute counts, but so does every ounce of fat). Go to Bodo’s. Order your normal order X2. Actually, in an ideal morning, these steps would be skipped by you handing your credit card and an exhaustively detailed order form to a friend (it better be munster cheese this time, not provolone, you absent-minded fuck). Consume Bodo’s. Go back to bed. Begin your day as the sun sets.

You might wake up at 9:30 and say no man, I’m fine! You’re not fine. You’re like a little kid gallivanting around a mine field shouting “I feel so alive!” Come 1 or 2, that hangover is going to strike you with a sadistic smile.

Unfortunately for me, I’ve been an irresponsible morning person. I will admit, I’ve tried to attend a 9 am after a night of drinking. I’ve tried to go to work. I’ve even tried to drive two hours home to Alexandria. And do you know what I’ve received as punishments (respectively) for my thoughtless actions? 1. A pool of vomit in a New Cabell Hall stall 2. A pool of vomit in a chocolate store toilet 3. A puddle of vomit in a certain Alexandria driveway.

Hangovertes Mellitus Type II is a serious medical condition (so what if it’s not on WebMD? Neither is penis envy) that can affect all of us if we’re not careful. Don’t be stupid. Functioning is overrated.

This blog is dedicated to the high school kids in Madison, NJ who live in the internet*

So, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what I have, and what I lack. What I am and what I’m not. What I have done and what I have failed to do (shout out to JC). And I’ve come to a couple of conclusions. Now, I wouldn’t ordinarily do this here, but the Myspace generation does everything online. Including self-reflective rationalizations.

My wit may be lacking at times. I might not have the highest IQ, SAT score, GPA, or whichever totally bullshit numerical method you’d like to use to measure my worth. I may not work my hardest (or do I? It’s hard to tell when everyone around you sacrifices sleep, food, fun, and life in general To Be the Best They Can Be. I try to work hard, but I also try to stay alive, which is frowned upon around here.)

But I figured out why I’m going to make it—why I have to make it. And that’s because I’m fearless. If your GPA is so super-high that tons of societies send you letters to come join them, but you’re afraid of your own (purple?) shadow, then that 3.9 is no more than a number on a piece of paper. It’s a pretty number, don’t get me wrong. But as far as aesthetics go, 0.8 doesn’t look so bad, either. You know how they always say, “It’d be cool if I went to this thing, but I’d never be able to because [insert tragic shortcoming here]”? I don’t speak these sentences. Instead, I say, “It’d be cool if I went to this thing, so I guess I’ll go.” So while you’re at home making sure your numbers stay pretty on a piece of paper, I’m out conquering the world.

I’m not trying to be cocky, really. That was an apophasis.

A final thought (that came to me while completing an assignment for my favorite Media Studies TA): Brilliance without the ability to articulate these thoughts is like a thing that really needs something else in order to function—without that thing.

*especially the one who deviously told her webcam that her parents weren’t home so she was gonna GO CRAZY, and then proceeded to dance to jimmy eat world’s sweetness. Netsister, you are me, but on a five year delay. And boy, do you have a lot to look forward to. Now when I’m home alone…I dance to AFI.

For every 1,000 people who read this blog, I will contribute $1 to the Homeless Cobbler Association of America

As a young child watching Cinderella’s hideously big-footed stepsisters attempting to squeeze their monster feet into her pretty glass slipper, I thought two things: 1. I sure hope I grow up to have elegant, petite, size six feet, and 2. too bad that glass slipper isn’t from Old Navy.

Old Navy shoes will never cease to amaze me. They are affordable, they are colorful—hey, they are even magical. It doesn’t matter what size Old Navy shoe I purchase; it will end up fitting me like a fitted suit-coat regardless. Sparkly sequin flats? Size six but never felt roomier. Canvas platforms? Seven and stayin’ on my feet. But of late, I made a crucial error, or so I thought, under the fluorescent lighting of the cash register. I bought size eight moccasins.

After I tried twice (unsuccessfully. I have not lost my charm, Old Navy’s return policy is seriously just that stringent) to return these monsters, I finally slipped them on my feet and had an epiphany.

Old Navy shoes are like the pants from the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, and I was like that fat whiny Latina girl (except the magic of fitting worked the other way around). Haven’t you ever wondered why they don’t have half sizes? It’s because they don’t need them! These shoes can read minds! If every store were like Old Navy, cobblers would be out of business. I think they probably already are anyway, but it certainly wouldn’t help matters for those of them choosing to reside outside of Amish Country.

Old Navy shoes are more than just form-fitting and stylish; they are extremely egalitarian, broaching on borderline communism. They accept that all one really needs in a shoe is a cheap piece of foam and a plastic strap. They don’t disguise this fact and pretend to be all orthopedic and made of leather, like Rainbow (P.S. Rainbow, how is this for a little marketing advice: put your fucking tag on BOTH sandals, for Christ’s sake. Someone might only see my right sandal and think I have ghetto fake rainbows.) I also have my suspicions that at least the straps, if not the whole shoe, can also be boiled down to corn-starch components and consumed when foodless in the dessert, just like Crocs. Where you’re going to get a stove, pot, and water from is beyond my range of knowledge.

There are always exceptions to egalitarianism, and in this case, Old Navy only makes the cheap flip flops okay for women to wear. Men shouldn’t wear under any circumstances. Even if they are living in extreme poverty because they recently lost their job as a cobbler. They especially should not wear the white ones, guy in my Films Under Fascism class whose British accent comes and goes. No one is impressed by the fact that your feet are dainty enough to fit into woman sandals. ON, read the gray letters on the inside of his ugly shoes. But they sure aren’t turning me ON.

But I digress. Old Navy shoes are the best. They are cheaper than payless, last half as long, and fit even the fattest feet. They are the All-American shoe, and you should go buy them now.*

*Old Navy has no comment on this blog. The CEO guy said, hey, I guess it can’t hurt. Oh. But they have no comment.

(Originally posted on Tuesday, April 01, 2008)

second best has never been this embarrassing

In every shitty coffee-serving establishment I’ve ever worked, we have proudly served Seattle’s Best Coffee. I find this name to be not only pathetically quaint, but also inherently incorrect. Seattle’s Best? Really? The most embarrassing part is that they could have chosen to be “The Best” coffee from a different city—in fact, ANY other city in the fucking world—and no one could argue with them. But 9 billion dollars a year say that actually, there’s another little café straight outta sleepless Seattle that might be better.

My suggestions for this company?

1. Change their name to Seattle’s Other Coffee
2. Drive half an hour south and become Tacoma’s Best Coffee

(Originally posted on Thursday, March 13, 2008)

not sure if i'll fail or pass, can't stand the girl in class...

When I’m watching a film or television show, I often have trouble focusing. It isn’t that I can’t focus…it’s more like I can’t focus without motivation. This motivation can easily be inserted into any program with the addition of an overwhelmingly attractive individual. Hell, I’d watch Wolf Blitzer Reports if Brandon Flowers were on it.

Similarly, I need some kind of motivation to go to class each day. Now, the attractiveness of a UVA student can only go so far. Without several layers of make-up and an ultra-airbrushing lens, none of these kids are much to look at. So I stay focused through a motivation that has always seemed more empowering than attraction anyway—pure hatred.

Sometimes it’s obvious who you are supposed to hate in a class (see the white girl in my Fictions of Black Identity seminar who on one occasion broke down crying because she felt there was too much racism in the world and on another told us about how when she wuz a lil gurl in Atlanta, all the black kids who went to her scoowul would corn row her hayurr and call her their white Barbie doll. There were black kids in our class, too, and they called her things too, none of which were “white Barbie doll.”)

Other times, you have to get creative. Here’s a helpful clue—pick someone sort of ugly. Obnoxiousness without ugliness is like lemonade without lemons. For me, it’s usually someone who could have looked normal had they been a normal person, but for whatever reason, the more they talk in class, the more warped their face becomes. I’m thinking of two people in particular right now…The Reason I Go To Spanish and The Reason Aside From Matthew Hughy’s Wrath That I Go To My Media Studies Discussion.

The Reason I Go To Spanish could be cute. Really, if she had been my suitemate first year, I’m sure we would have gotten crunk juntas. Pero, eso no was the caso. I met her, short and jean-jacket clad, while doing a group exercise. See, what I usually do when the teacher assigns a group exercise, is avoid all eye-contact. Everyone is throwing around subjunctivos and pluscuamperfectos like they’re frisbees and beach balls. The chaos is such that in my non-eye-contacted-bubble-of-safety, no one notices that I use group exercise time to take four minute power naps. With my eyes open. But not this particular day. This day, the girl takes me under her with into a three-person group, where I try to sit in silence, but she keeps going “Y tu, Marissa, que piensas?” She sees me as the weakest link and is trying to power-tutor me in four-minute intervals. This is not all. She starts every sentence with, “Cuando estaba en Peru…” and every time the teacher walks by, she makes some little comment about how her time abroad relates to what we are studying now. The more she rolls her R’s and fakes an accent, the more she resembles a cartoon dog. To be more precise, she looks like Gromit with a swollen eye. Like Wallace just took a frying pan and comically banged her in the eye, and now she is barking for attention with really advanced palabras.

The Reason Aside From Matthew Hughy’s Wrath That I Go To My Media Studies Discussion is not cute and never would have been my friend even if a tsunami blown way off course killed everyone in Charlottesville but the two of us. She looks like a turtle and wears those glasses that are actually so convex that they make her eyes look tiny and beady. Matthew has a question, and she has an answer. Every time. But of course with Matthew, no one ever has the answer (except him) so really all we get from turtle girl are sonic booms of overconfidence stifled by Matthew’s unapologetic rejection. It’s actually quite entertaining.

Once in a while, you can have lemonade without lemons…like that Country Time Powdered stuff. And what you get with this is the case of the Hateable Hottie. There was def a hateable hottie in one of my discussions. I saw him and the vacant seat next to him from afar, and walked over with a suggestive “Is this seat taken?” No, he told me, hair falling perfectly and eyes twinkling. I took my seat. I had found my new boyfriend. And then I saw his shoes. His shoes looked like someone broke apart several different colors of highlighters, gave them to Jackson Pollack along with a pair of white Reeboks, and let him go to town. Then they fed a bunch of kids various flavors of that Pop Quiz colored popcorn from the early nineties, forced them to chug Surge for several minutes, and then let them puke all over the Pollack canvas. Seriously. That doesn’t even begin to describe the atrocities that are his shoes. That isn’t the end of the story, either. It’s most of it…but also, he really sucks and thinks he’s the shit, and he’s in the military and like wears his uniform to class on days he doesn’t wear the terrible shoes.

That’s all I have for now. I need to go sit with turtle girl pretty soon and watch her shell get cracked.

(Originally posted on Thursday, February 28, 2008)

What is sexy arrogance, you ask?

Asking the definition of sexy arrogance is akin to asking the definition of liberty. Or ideology (wassup, Althusser, wassup.) There is no single definition for the abstract concept that is sexy arrogance, but I can provide you with several examples of what it is not. Sexy arrogance is not arriving to class early. Sexy arrogance is not having a “value system” (herego, sexy arrogance can not be found in the stall seat journal). Sexy arrogance can not be found in U.Va sweatshirts, but it sometimes can be found in U.Va hats when tattered, dirty, and worn haphazardly on a perfectly disheveled head.

Distinciones (throwing in Spanish terms out of the blue complies with S.A. standards, but never for more than four words at a time, and never anything too advanced. You don’t ever want to say chicharrones instead of pork rinds, for example.)

Getting expelled for school for misbehaving is not sexy arrogance. Well it is, but not if you’re going to say it like a friggin fifth grade teacher. Under these circumstances, you got the boot for missa behavin. Ya dig? Aight, moving on. Going to office hours to improve your grade is not, I repeat NOT sexy arrogance. Neither is laughing at your professor’s jokes. However, seeing the teacher for a little help outside of the classroom, well, we all know what that means, man. You’re a fuckin god (take notice, not capitalized).

Now, for things inherently sexually arrogant. As for names, they should rhyme with things that mean complete moral disarray or an Asian sense of inner peace, like wayward or Zen. This limits options, but it is really for the best. Destructive habits (when performed with an air of indifference) like smoking or drinking hard liquor before noon are sexy arrogance. Walking in to the first day of your foreign language class twenty minutes late, hungover and wearing sunglasses, is sexy arrogance. It may cause your teacher (of whatever gender) to fall slightly in love with you, which can potentially be used to your advantage, even though you could care less about how you do at anything.

Emo is never, ever, under any circumstances, sexy arrogance. Emo and sexy arrogance are each others’ antithesis. What is sexy arrogance is not ever emo and what is emo is not ever sexy arrogance. Never. Except maybe for Taking Back Sunday. Which leads me to pointing out the next pillar of S.A.: mind-changing. Flip-flopping, if you will. No. I know what you are thinking, and no. Politics is not sexy arrogance and never will be.

Someone kinda important once said that the medium is the message. Was it McLuhan? I’m not really sure because I am not afraid of Matthew Hughy. But as far as sexy arrogance media goes, I believe the only true sexy arrogance form of self-expression is writing hopelessly indifferent messages to ex-loves con llaves on leather interiors. Blogging is not sexy arrogance, but due to limited resources, I suppose it will do for now.

(Originally posted on Friday, February 22, 2008)