College Dolldrums

Here are some problems I’ve found with college so far:

My shower

Everyday I get up and take a shower in the morning. Our house of 6 has two bathrooms (thankfully. Or else I would literally kill one of my roommates for hot water. Then we’d be a house of 5, which is more manageable). The general scenario is that I squeeze my way into the 2 ft. wide room and turn on the complicated shower mechanism. It doesn’t make sense. The temperature adjustment knob can spin upside-down. You never know what temperature to expect. Once I have it sort of figured out, I wait a few seconds for it to warm up and I get in. In the midst of washing, almost every single time I’m in there, the water decides to turn into a scalding rain of death. Have you ever seen Raiders of the Lost Ark? When that Nazi’s face melts off? That’s what happens daily in my bathroom.

I’ve tried more methods than I can think of to figure out why this happens. I figured maybe somebody in my house was turning on another shower. Or a faucet. Nope, I’ve taken one when nobody was home and the same incredible pain followed. It’s hopeless. I’m forever afraid of water temperature.

Also, the shower is obviously built for those pumpkin farmer dwarves. The shower head turns to face you at approximately 2 degrees. To wash any part of you above your hips, you have to do the limbo to get underneath the stream of unpredictable hell water.

You’d figure all of this would be enough to drive me insane. Not so. The final nail in the coffin seems to be the almost impossible, incredible fact that, despite any logical reasoning, my bathroom AFTER a hot shower (really hot. Lava) is inexplicably COLDER than the shower, the temperature in the house, or even outside. I turn off the shower, and I’m freezing. I wrap myself in a towel and go into the main apartment and instantly I’m warmed by logic and reasoning.

It’s safe to assume that my shower is a portal into a fifth dimension. Hell.

Oh and one of my roommates only has shampoo in the shower. There’s three of us to that shower. I have a combination bottle of shampoo and soap (real manly), and my other roommate has a bar of soap and a few bottles of shampoo (?). But my final roommate only has… shampoo. I am disgusted and confused. Shampoo showers? No bathing period? Stealer? I’d say the latter, but it can’t be mine because my combo would be gone way before now. And I refuse to acknowledge that ANYONE would use anyone else’s bar of soap without a washcloth or louffa.

You figure it out. That’s what’s wrong with college.

Dear everybody

Dear advertisers.
please continue to make your comforting, vague, universally accepted commercials. please allow me to know, in between the malaise of economic hardship and election debates, that everything is ok. life isn't so bad. things can still be shot in high definition, high speed, high resolution. it's all ok. the world is large, but GE is powering windmills in africa, and maytag is selling appliances to people in trendy houses with clean carpets and cool, calm air conditioners. close out with bold, white graphics set against wide angle satellite shots of the earth hovering in space. peaceful.

Dear sprinklers in Provo.
please continue to spit on and off during the night and morning hours. please hiss and pop when first being turned on. continue to force out the water that's deep in your veins. push it through your constricted arteries and soak the pavements and sod and car windshields. splash against my calves when i walk through you and prickle my skin when i let your residue stay.

Dear all the house and street lights i see driving home.
stay on all night. light the trees in my neighborhood. get caught in the leaves and branches like errant kites and children's arms. flicker when the air flips on. kick against the street when the wind blows the trees like weeds. just please never go out.

I'm in college now. this is what people do.

I'm crouched in a cubicle. I'm hunched over my keyboard, typing away trying to get the feeling back into my fingers. My time here has been brief, but almost two hours. It feels like days. The television is still on from where I reviewed the last documentary. I'm staring at the Emerson display screen, wondering how all those little blue boxes got set up next to each other. Where did that ghost dvd come from in the bottom right-hand corner? What does all of this mean to me? My above head light in my carrel doesn't come on anymore. What has my life come to?

I'm at the KMC. Everything I type IS IN CAPS BECAUSE IT'S GOING TO GO ON TV. AND TVS ARE SMALL SO PEOPLE HAVE TO YELL TO GET HEARD FROM THAT TINY SCREEN.

I guess this is what I'm reduced to. I take off my shoes everytime I sit down because I hate the way they feel on my feet. They cut off the circulation and when I pitch them forward onto the balls of my feet, the blood cooly floods into the restricted arteries.

This is my first post. I'm cold. I'm hungry. They keep the air conditioning on in here constantly. We are all frigid. I'm leaving soon hopefully. To breathe in the air by the Cast Iron factory and to look at the sunflowers in the medians.