Even further than I can take

Well, I try to stray from emo-ness in my blog entries and talk about substantial things, and I really want to, but schoolin' is currently driving me up a damn wall and over it.

It seems that I won't be able to make my Mockingbird entry before the deadline, which ironically enough frees me up to do MORE things...sigh. That doesn't mean I want to stop writing it because it's become something personal to me--maybe too personal.

My English class...sucks. Not enough to make me switch majors but I never do research right. Ever, apparently. It's not that she's too harsh or too strict, I just wish she'd remember that most of us have more than one class to fucking take this semester. I'm getting really annoyed with her piling work on us, and she's really helpful but I've never learned anything by having heaps of work dumped on me at a time and I never will, and all it does is irritate me! I like my teacher, she's pretty nice and kind, but I may be telling her to fuck herself in so many words pretty soon. This was an old tactic I used my last two years of high school...a lot. Basically it involves me just standing by my work grade or no grade.

Now obviously this is a foolish move to make at any grade level but at college level, with my money riding on this shit it's more so. But..yeah, seriously, she needs to go in depth about these assignments. Sometimes when you've got your whole class confused, it could just be us; then again, maybe it's you. Maybe it's all of us! But this is really ridiculous, the assignments are so simple they turn out to be really difficult. I could just go see about it during office hours but when do I have fucking time?!

I can't stand this. It always feels like my hard work is for nothing when it comes to school...

And now, excerpts!

The day started off with orange juice and a newspaper. A sure sign that the week would be askew, breaking my ritualistic habits like that. I’d never started off my morning with the paper before—orange juice, sure, but the paper was usually reserved for the afternoon. I’m glad I did though, or else I would have never learned about my professor’s death.

Dr. Lourdes, or simply Lourdes as he preferred, was my World History professor. Ol’ Lourdes was found last night, the paper said, in one of the dumpsters on the side of Bledsoe Hall to the east. A female student was throwing out some very late night trash—so she said—and heard something thumping rhythmically against the side of the dumpster. She tried to put it off to the wind, she says, but the thumping was so powerful she just had to take a look. So she whips out her cell phone and by its pale light she saw a blood-stained foot hanging from the side slot where Mister Murderer—that’s what I called him—had so haphazardly thrown him, tapping in time to some invisible tune. The poor girl dropped her phone and ran back to Bledsoe screaming, well, murder.

“Mangled” the paper said, mangled over and over. It struck me as a good word to use; “mangle” can conjure up all kinds of nastiness. And nastiness this was, downright sloppy. The paper also described it as “overkill”. Ol’ Lourdes had a startling sixty stab wounds in his stomach, chest, back, and legs. If that wasn’t heinous enough his neck was broken and both his legs had been damn near severed from his body, and on top of that his ankle was shattered, which the doctors said probably accounted for the thumping. It was like it wasn’t even attached to his leg anymore it was broken so bad. His scalp had been ripped from his head and his eyes partially gouged, that piercing hazel glance now mush hanging from his sockets like so much yolk. It occurred to me, halfway through the article, that this person not only wanted Lourdes to cease living but to suffer the whole time. And personally, I kind of hoped they would never find him, crazy bastard.

Finishing off my orange juice, I grabbed my cell phone off my dresser and reset my alarm. In light of these events I assumed, I think correctly, that class was cancelled; ergo I could catch another hour of sleep.

...

When my alarm beeped again it was noon. I stretched a minute, shaking off that good sleep then set about putting on some clothes and just making myself decent for class. I was rolling on some rather pungent deodorant when I noticed the tiny crack in the mirror over the sink. It was at the bottom, near the metal rim in the right-hand corner if I recall correctly. The mirror was old—the whole damn room was old—so I didn’t think much of the fracture, especially when I was in a hurry to make it to my English class. I checked myself again and looked at the crack a moment longer, then got my books and backpack and headed out the door.

... I took the stairs to get to the first floor from my third floor room and made it out the door in about as much time as the elevator would have taken. When I finally made it outside, warm air startled me after being cooped up in my cold dorm room most of the weekend. I was pretty grateful even though I knew I’d be sweating like the devil in about ten minutes. The walk to my second class of the day would have been so much easier coming from the Hilling building where the late ol’ Lourdes was located. From my hall, Mercer, it was about a fifteen minute day trip if I walked fast enough. And quickly I did walk as I didn’t leave myself much time to dally while slowly getting ready in the morning. About ten minutes later I began to see the big, round brick and marble building over the horizon, looking surprised to see me so soon with its glass doors propped open and most of the windows flung open to let in a little late autumn air. Briskly I strode into the building, up three flights of stairs then around a narrow hall to my English lit class with Dr. Kline.

...

“That’s right,” she said firmly, and I knew she was talking to me. I looked down at the five question quiz. It wasn’t long and the questions wouldn’t be too hard. But I was still recovering from Ol’ Lourdes’ massive, four-page test on all five chapters we had covered thus far. Lourdes was known for his frustratingly difficult tests, but I was known for my tenaciousness when it came to tough teachers. His test, however, seemed to have broken my spirit and several other people in the class as we all scratched our heads and balled up our scrap sheets. It occurred to me that I might never know how badly I did on that test.