Cat Powerrr.... or Life as an Adult with Braces

This post will start with one idea and suddenly and unexpectedly jump to another idea then clevery tie the two together by an interesting thought involving a universal theme.

More or less...

"The Greatest", Cat Power's latest album, comes out today. Being the totally awesome person I am, I downloaded it YESTERDAY for free. It was illegal, I'm aware. Chuck D summed it up so well when he said, "If a student has a choice between buying a CD or Wendy's, fuck man, he'll choose Wendy's everytime." So with a classic double (no pickles, no mustard) in hand, I listened to Chan's new album with great excitement and anticipation. As the album went on, though, I found myself biting my lip and looking side to side, totally confused. I knew previously that Chan was working with some all time great blues musicians who worked with Aretha Franklin blah blah. In other words, professionals. People you see backing up that white mo town guy with the beard. People that you yell "Brown Eyed Girl in A flat" to and they all start playing; complete with cheesey guitar riff fillers and a horn section dancing in rhythm. This seems like an likely collaboration, but I thought they would conform to Chan's style and it'd be totally fucking sweet. Unfortunately, it's more like Cat Power made a really cheesey adult contemporary album. I'm pretty sure I'm going to hear "Lived in Bars" at my orthodontist's office. Chan Marshall, famous for her breaking of musical conventions and of all things normal in general, has an album she recorded with Jesse and the Rippers. What is this? It's NUTS, just BONKERS

I had a big scary meeting earlier in the evening with the Editor-in-Chief of the Buzz and other important people about the Calendar. I recently got promoted and am now "Music Event Calendar Coordinator." This fancy title basically lets you know I fill in a spreadsheet of all the music events on campus... real important stuff. In this meeting, actually, one would be lead to believe it was all, indeed, very important. I'm a part of this grand offensive to destroy the competitor papers' calendar section. This involves slitting tires, throats, and anything else. It is really important to have the most comprehensive calendar in town. "It'd be huge to have the most comprehensive calendar in town" one of the members exclaimed in a fit of pure passion. They then began talking in acronyms and other jargon and I realized I have no idea what is going on. Since writing for the Buzz, I've never had any orientation, general meeting, training, or anything. I've been blindly feeling at the walls and stumbled into an 'editorial position'; I feel like Mr. Magoo. At this moment I feel it's all going to come crashing down. As they talk about formatting and draft templates I imagine how I'll be fired. I wonder if my superiors will be sympathetic or angry. I'd rather them be pissed, but I feel it'd be condescending... they'd pity me for being incompetent. I feel out of place as I feel my braces with my lips and try to figure out what is going on.

"You know, there's a time when people stop seeing you as a kid. You're in college and this is when you start getting treated like an adult. Nobody's going to scold or yell at you for anything." My mom told me this this afternoon. It was about piano lessons, but still connected loosely. I'm supposed to be a grown-up this days. I'm supposed to be taking my life and constructing it into something tangible and... adult. In the meeting I realized that occasionally writing funny music snob pieces that have imaginary dialogues and fart jokes isn't going to cut it anymore. I have to be structured and organized. I just can't run around all day and work when I want to. I have to do a kind of real job, working with people who definately think their jobs are real. It's all very uncomfortable and it makes me feel like I'm 9.

Cat Power has shown me my existence today. At first I was unstructured and free. Simple and unrestrained. I've always wanted to do things differently, make myself known in that regard. But now this free self is being forced to fit into this very set, very adult form for the sake of keeping a job and persuing a career. My simple piano melodies are now laced with unnecessary drum rolls and over produced horn blasts. My voice is held up with the help of a row of three dancing women in sparkly dresses wooing in harmony. It's really awkward, seems dumb, and horribly unnatural. I don't know... maybe it isn't supposed to be that way, but maybe it's necessary to go through this stage so all the rules can be broken again...

I don't know what that means at all... I still don't like "The Greatest" or my job very much. I would however, like being editor and listening to another good Cat Power album, so I guess I just have to trudge through both, because I need to if I want to get to that next, more appealing step.

My Realist Existence as a College Student.

The idea of enjoying a book while eating a meal has recently grown more appealing to me. This may largely be because I generally eat lunch alone and, if absorbed by an enthralling text, it seems slightly less pathetic. It would categorize me under the much respected ‘well-fed intellect’ label and people would merely judge me based on my hairstyle and fashion sense and not my solitary tendencies. “Look towards the corner of the cafeteria,” a fellow collegiate young person would direct, “that well mannered, goal-driven student has sacrificed his social hour of lunch for the sake of knowledge!” “I noticed the rather striking young man just a moment previous,” his female counterpart would respond. “We should introduce ourselves and invite him to get rather drunk with us.” I would then presumably oblige, if it not be too excessive and the company was of good conversation; the last thing a well-fed intellect like myself prefers is slobbering debauchers with little to say.

With the urge to try this multi-task so apparent in me, I had decided to take the activity up; to finally see if the appeal was valid or if it just be a result of needing to alleviate the awkward feeling of eating alone in a room of peers. So I set out, my paperback proudly in hand and entered the cafeteria. I picked up my tray and the necessary utensils and shortly thereafter encountered my first problem; it proved quite difficult to maneuver around the buffet and selecting food while holding on to the flimsily bound book. I surely needed two hands to move my tray and at the same time place food on it and the book inhibited my performance. No catastrophe in the least, I managed to arrange a decent meal on my plate without causing much of a scene. It was now time to put my anticipated plan into action.

I have never been one for analyzing fiction or the like. I’ve always enjoyed reading stories purely in the literal sense and therefore I am generally unfamiliar with literary devices for symbolisms and metaphors etcetera. Until recently, actually, I assumed literature was some derivation, in fact, from the word literal and accordingly marked all such things, underlying themes and so on, as hogwash; to my chagrin, it was not the case. That piece of information, embarrassingly, was brought to my attention at a rather large social engagement with many onlookers (including several handsome young women) nearby. But the point I’ve been trying to make however, is that I did not recognize my joyless experience in the cafeteria line as a foreshadowing of things to come. Foreshadowing of course is a way that an event presents an indication of what is to come. My attempt to read a book while enjoying a meal proved fruitless and was a much task harder than I could have imagined.

You see, there are three ways one can eat while reading. First is turning your legs outward from under the table and resting the book your lap, propping it up with your left hand and turning your head perpendicular away from the plate in order to read. This gives you an ideal view of your text providing for a simple and pleasurable way to leisurely read. When dealing with feeding yourself, however it proves quite cumbersome and difficult. Only using the peripheral vision, it is hard to properly and neatly place food on your fork and deliver it to your mouth. I often found myself missing my mouth entirely or stabbing around the table fruitlessly trying to pick up something to eat like a blind shoe cobbler. To correct this utterly foolish act I must turn my attention away from my book and face the plate so as to avoid poking my eye out with a piece of meat. By turning my head towards my meal I then lose my place and fail to read anything more than the same paragraph several times.

Quite exasperated by this I moved to the second position. This was accomplished by facing forward and placing the book on the side of my tray. I felt very comfortable holding my book with my right hand in this manner, the problem however, was that I am quite unable to use a fork with my left hand. Though normally, as many may know, my ambidextrous nature allows me to have near equal control and coordination in both hands it was not so with fork maneuvering. When switching my book holding hand to my left, it was increasingly difficult to keep the book still. Despite my ability to sink a staggering hook shot with either hand, I am obviously unable to use both while performing the base task of sustaining myself with food.

The third position was the most catastrophic of them all and was only attempted out of sheer desperation. The sequence of events, hard to capture in mere prose, resulted in my book dripping in marinara sauce, my nose with a rather deep puncture wound and my ankle twisted beneath the weight of my self, my chair, and the table which I occupied. So flustered and ashamed I hurriedly cleaned myself up and limbed as best I could out of the dining hall and away from the hundreds of eyes whose stares clung to me with contempt and confusion. The entire operation was a disaster and instead of enjoying a quite meal while attaining attention and social connections, it only further isolated myself. I should have known it would have been no different than before. I only tried reading it in the cafeteria because I couldn’t properly read the very same issue of Maxim earlier in the bathroom. Multi-tasking with reading material has never been in my grasp. . .

Why I am Here

Blogging, as far as I know, is totally hip and trendy. As one may assume, I am also hip and trendy. You need not look further than my itunes library and vintage t-shirts for verification. My favorite branch of mathematics is Geometry. Just recently in my Math 118 class I discussed my love of both Geometry and the proofs which are such a large part of it. My ultra fav proof being:

If A=B and B=C, then A=C.

This of course is the transitive property...so, according to the laws of math (which are NEVER incorrect) the following is equally true:

1. Blogging is totally hip and trendy
2. BRIAN! is totally hip and trendy
3. If Blogging is totally hip and trendy and BRIAN! is totally hip and trendy, then Blogging = BRIAN!.
4. Therefore, BRIAN! should have a blog.

Now I haven't taken Geometry since sophomore year in high school...so it isn't fool proof by any means, but it's true none the less. Why shouldn't someone create a union with with another entity of his true self? So math is the reason of my blogging. Math... and the fact that college gives you waaaay too much free time.