![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
You know that weird amusement you get when you go back and read things you wrote a long time ago? I continue to labour under the delusion that I will be attending the University of Chicago... now that I've re-read my essays (I refused to re-read them until I got all my letters back), I wonder how on earth I got accepted anywhere. I'm pretty sure I know why I didn't get accepted to Columbia, though. It appears that my essay there ended with "...will help me contribute to Rochester’s diversity." I'm pretty sure that was added on later for Rochester, but I'm not entirely sure, and I made a habit of not re-reading my essays after they'd been sent, because finding any mistakes would make me nervous. I couldn't have been stupid enough to have sent that to Columbia, could I? Actually, the only essay that I wrote that I can stand now is the one for Chicago that I let one of my friend's boyfriend's friends talk me out of because it sounded like "I fancy myself a trendsetter." I think I have sucessfully learned not to listen to him anymore. At least he's quite far away now. Perhaps I would've been accepted on the first try had I sent this one?
It was 11:15 one Wednesday morning, and I was standing in line waiting for my customarily Italian-flavoured luncheon. It was a day that started out like many others, except for the fact that it was a different day from all the others because generally you can’t have the same day twice. As I paid the usual inflated $1.60 for my lunch and made my way to my typical lunch table, I despaired to find that there were no clean forks or spoons. Luckily, being ever-prepared, I quickly remembered the spork I keep handy in my book bag for just such an occasion. I sat down, and began talking to my friends. I had nearly finished my main course when I noticed something that was not entirely unusual, but disturbing nonetheless residing in the corner of my tray. It was a repulsive gelatinous substance with tiny globules of what could have been ancient marshmallows or the remains of prehistoric man suspended within. Unfortunately, my companions noticed it at the same time, and promptly dared me to eat it. I held out until a monetary reward was offered, and not wanting to back down on a bet, I closed my eyes and stuck my trusty spork into the mess. It had disappeared! I opened my eyes just in time to see the entire table and everything around it, myself included, being sucked into the gooey mess.
With a sickening SCHLOOP, and then a POP, I found myself in the middle of what appeared, at first glance, to be a strangely distorted field, surrounded by fog. After I wiped the bits of jello out of my eyes, I discovered it was in fact what looked deceivingly like my school parking lot. In the spirit of adventurous inquiry, I decided to venture inside the school. The first thing I noticed was the absence of the typical smell. In fact, the school lacked any unique smell, which, as you learn in most science-fearing chemistry classes, means poison. Unwisely ignoring my gut instinct, I made my way into the entrance hall. I peered around the corner into the lunchroom where, less than a minute before, I had received my first lesson on when not to bet on the lunchtime surprise. What I saw astounded me! Everyone was dressed exactly alike. My first thought was that the school had implemented a surprise mandatory uniform policy, until I noticed that they were all dressed exactly like me. Or I was dressed exactly like them… at this point I was becoming quite disoriented, and I couldn’t exactly remember what I had worn to school that morning. I decided that the easiest way out would be to just faint. At that moment, the poisonous gas filling the school finally got to me, and I did.
I awoke a few minutes later, finding myself in the school nurse’s office. I looked up, still baffled by my situation, only to find that the nurse was also wearing the same clothes as me, only in hospital-scrub form. Needless to say, I was quite disturbed by this development. I leaned back on the bed and decided to do some serious thinking. After awhile, I finally concluded that, indeed, I had not come to school in my band uniform. Armed with this information, I snuck out of the infirmary and decided to do some snooping.
As I wandered the hallways, I noticed that there were some people not dressed in band uniforms. Some were in generic athletic outfits; others were in painter’s smocks, and they all seemed to gather in small groups. When I looked into the classrooms, I also noticed that they contained only one type of uniform. The more I looked around, the more it seemed like each group interacted only within their group and, apparently, only attended one type of class. Out of curiosity, I stopped out of the people in the athletic outfits and asked him what was going on. After he got over the apparent shock of being confronted by a band uniform, he told me that everyone was happy the way they were, and not to cause a scene. I shook my head, and turned away, even more perplexed than before. It made no sense to me! Finally, I decided to just go into the nearest class full of people dressed like me, and pretend I belonged there. I walked into the room that would have been my English classroom, had I been in my usual world. As it turned out, it was exactly the same as before. Or so it seemed. I sauntered in, and I was immediately met by the laser-like glare of the teacher.
“And how many times have you been late this week?” she began, giving me a menacing look. I fumbled for an answer, but she went on. “You nonconformist!” she screamed, like it was an obscenity. I decided that backing towards the door was a good idea. “Oh, no you don’t!” she continued, “You’re not getting away this time!” I turned and ran for the door, disregarding the strange hissing noise behind me.
After my escape, I stood in the hallway outside the door, panting. The sound continued. It was then that I noticed that my back was on fire. I stood there, dumbfounded, until the more logical part of my brain managed to convince the rest of me that being on fire was bad. I ran quickly into the Chemistry room and did the one thing I’ve wanted to do throughout my entire high school career: I pulled the emergency shower cord. As the cold, fishy-smelling water rained down on me, I noticed that the room was starting to look slightly different. Slowly, the universe of conformity melted around me and I found myself being given a swirlie by the quarterback. “Ah,” I thought to myself, “at least this makes sense.”
It certainly says a lot more than the one that I actually sent, which I hate except for the most of the style in the writing. It had too many pop-culture references and the way things fit together made no sense. The only thing I liked about the one I sent was the ending: "Slowly, my horrible alternate universe melted around me and I found myself staring into the eyes of a ten-foot goldfish. “Ah,” I thought to myself, “at least this makes sense.”" It was nice and surreal. Surrealism is fun.
I also went back and re-read my short story Sidetrips that I started about two years ago. I really want to finish it, but I have to get myself back into the style, which is a really rediculous matter-of-fact, detached pseudo-sarcasm. Anything that needs that many hyphens in a description takes awhile to get back into.
While I was going through all the loose paper on my mom's desk/our kitchen table I found some of the rough drafts for another unfinished story I started last year called The Adventures of Negro Jim. It was part of an assignment where I had to write a sequel to Huckleberry Finn. I'm so surprised at how many bizarre things my teacher junior year let me get away with. Had I done it this year in English I would've been expelled or something. There are so many strange references in it... I want to go back and finish it too. I only got as far as the Ohio river in the version I turned in. Which is lucky, since awhile after the steamship exploded they were going to run into the Floating Squash Court of Death and meet a time-traveling group of Univeristy of Chicago students along with Enrico Fermi. Eventually, time was going to be altered so that Napoleon was a pastry chef. I'm not sure where I planned on going with it, but I still want to finish it too. I just need to find out what the NBS Half-Rug was an anagram for (Dur! Flansburgh!). I stuck a whole ton of strange anagrams in it (jar my canoe, a thermic sir), and named a canoe the Centenarian Eagle. There was also a character with fourty-two names, thirteen of which started with J, including four variations on the name John. It also included all the members of Guster, most of the X-Men, and the members of *NSYNC that I could remember. There was also an explosive steamboat named the Anola Gay. I'm not sure why all the steamboats kept exploding. Also, all the chapter numbers were in binary.
Table of Contents:
Chapter 0001 – A New Hope
Chapter 0010 – Another Adventure Begins
Chapter 0011 – Down the Ohio
Chapter 0100 – Some Real Injuns
Chapter 0101 – Why the Frenchmen Speak French
Chapter 0110 – Rafting the Eerie River
Chapter 0111 – The Squash Court of Death Floats By
Chapter 1001 – Univers’tee and n’finty
Chapter 1010 – Tom’s Great Idea
Chapter 1011 – Learnin’ about Time-Travelin’
Chapter 1100 – Napoleon the Pastry Chef
Chapter 1101 – Evil John and Nice John
Chapter 1010 – Jim Invents Rap
Chapter 1011 – We’ll All Have Fun with the Waffle of Death
I'm such a geek. A geek that doesn't want to go to work tonight, but needs the money. Drat. Hmm... I wonder what "Tom's Great Idea" was going to be about... I know that by that point Tom's ghost was haunting them because he had been thrown overboard twice. Evil John and Nice John was when they stopped a guy who knocked Linnell off of his bicycle, thus breaking his arm and causing the creation of Dial-A-Song. I think the whole thing would've broken down by then, anyway.
Ummm... this is quite long enough, I think. Usually I don't do more than one entry on a Sunday, anyway. Oo well! I've been entertained for a bit, anyway.
It was 11:15 one Wednesday morning, and I was standing in line waiting for my customarily Italian-flavoured luncheon. It was a day that started out like many others, except for the fact that it was a different day from all the others because generally you can’t have the same day twice. As I paid the usual inflated $1.60 for my lunch and made my way to my typical lunch table, I despaired to find that there were no clean forks or spoons. Luckily, being ever-prepared, I quickly remembered the spork I keep handy in my book bag for just such an occasion. I sat down, and began talking to my friends. I had nearly finished my main course when I noticed something that was not entirely unusual, but disturbing nonetheless residing in the corner of my tray. It was a repulsive gelatinous substance with tiny globules of what could have been ancient marshmallows or the remains of prehistoric man suspended within. Unfortunately, my companions noticed it at the same time, and promptly dared me to eat it. I held out until a monetary reward was offered, and not wanting to back down on a bet, I closed my eyes and stuck my trusty spork into the mess. It had disappeared! I opened my eyes just in time to see the entire table and everything around it, myself included, being sucked into the gooey mess.
With a sickening SCHLOOP, and then a POP, I found myself in the middle of what appeared, at first glance, to be a strangely distorted field, surrounded by fog. After I wiped the bits of jello out of my eyes, I discovered it was in fact what looked deceivingly like my school parking lot. In the spirit of adventurous inquiry, I decided to venture inside the school. The first thing I noticed was the absence of the typical smell. In fact, the school lacked any unique smell, which, as you learn in most science-fearing chemistry classes, means poison. Unwisely ignoring my gut instinct, I made my way into the entrance hall. I peered around the corner into the lunchroom where, less than a minute before, I had received my first lesson on when not to bet on the lunchtime surprise. What I saw astounded me! Everyone was dressed exactly alike. My first thought was that the school had implemented a surprise mandatory uniform policy, until I noticed that they were all dressed exactly like me. Or I was dressed exactly like them… at this point I was becoming quite disoriented, and I couldn’t exactly remember what I had worn to school that morning. I decided that the easiest way out would be to just faint. At that moment, the poisonous gas filling the school finally got to me, and I did.
I awoke a few minutes later, finding myself in the school nurse’s office. I looked up, still baffled by my situation, only to find that the nurse was also wearing the same clothes as me, only in hospital-scrub form. Needless to say, I was quite disturbed by this development. I leaned back on the bed and decided to do some serious thinking. After awhile, I finally concluded that, indeed, I had not come to school in my band uniform. Armed with this information, I snuck out of the infirmary and decided to do some snooping.
As I wandered the hallways, I noticed that there were some people not dressed in band uniforms. Some were in generic athletic outfits; others were in painter’s smocks, and they all seemed to gather in small groups. When I looked into the classrooms, I also noticed that they contained only one type of uniform. The more I looked around, the more it seemed like each group interacted only within their group and, apparently, only attended one type of class. Out of curiosity, I stopped out of the people in the athletic outfits and asked him what was going on. After he got over the apparent shock of being confronted by a band uniform, he told me that everyone was happy the way they were, and not to cause a scene. I shook my head, and turned away, even more perplexed than before. It made no sense to me! Finally, I decided to just go into the nearest class full of people dressed like me, and pretend I belonged there. I walked into the room that would have been my English classroom, had I been in my usual world. As it turned out, it was exactly the same as before. Or so it seemed. I sauntered in, and I was immediately met by the laser-like glare of the teacher.
“And how many times have you been late this week?” she began, giving me a menacing look. I fumbled for an answer, but she went on. “You nonconformist!” she screamed, like it was an obscenity. I decided that backing towards the door was a good idea. “Oh, no you don’t!” she continued, “You’re not getting away this time!” I turned and ran for the door, disregarding the strange hissing noise behind me.
After my escape, I stood in the hallway outside the door, panting. The sound continued. It was then that I noticed that my back was on fire. I stood there, dumbfounded, until the more logical part of my brain managed to convince the rest of me that being on fire was bad. I ran quickly into the Chemistry room and did the one thing I’ve wanted to do throughout my entire high school career: I pulled the emergency shower cord. As the cold, fishy-smelling water rained down on me, I noticed that the room was starting to look slightly different. Slowly, the universe of conformity melted around me and I found myself being given a swirlie by the quarterback. “Ah,” I thought to myself, “at least this makes sense.”
It certainly says a lot more than the one that I actually sent, which I hate except for the most of the style in the writing. It had too many pop-culture references and the way things fit together made no sense. The only thing I liked about the one I sent was the ending: "Slowly, my horrible alternate universe melted around me and I found myself staring into the eyes of a ten-foot goldfish. “Ah,” I thought to myself, “at least this makes sense.”" It was nice and surreal. Surrealism is fun.
I also went back and re-read my short story Sidetrips that I started about two years ago. I really want to finish it, but I have to get myself back into the style, which is a really rediculous matter-of-fact, detached pseudo-sarcasm. Anything that needs that many hyphens in a description takes awhile to get back into.
While I was going through all the loose paper on my mom's desk/our kitchen table I found some of the rough drafts for another unfinished story I started last year called The Adventures of Negro Jim. It was part of an assignment where I had to write a sequel to Huckleberry Finn. I'm so surprised at how many bizarre things my teacher junior year let me get away with. Had I done it this year in English I would've been expelled or something. There are so many strange references in it... I want to go back and finish it too. I only got as far as the Ohio river in the version I turned in. Which is lucky, since awhile after the steamship exploded they were going to run into the Floating Squash Court of Death and meet a time-traveling group of Univeristy of Chicago students along with Enrico Fermi. Eventually, time was going to be altered so that Napoleon was a pastry chef. I'm not sure where I planned on going with it, but I still want to finish it too. I just need to find out what the NBS Half-Rug was an anagram for (Dur! Flansburgh!). I stuck a whole ton of strange anagrams in it (jar my canoe, a thermic sir), and named a canoe the Centenarian Eagle. There was also a character with fourty-two names, thirteen of which started with J, including four variations on the name John. It also included all the members of Guster, most of the X-Men, and the members of *NSYNC that I could remember. There was also an explosive steamboat named the Anola Gay. I'm not sure why all the steamboats kept exploding. Also, all the chapter numbers were in binary.
Chapter 0001 – A New Hope
Chapter 0010 – Another Adventure Begins
Chapter 0011 – Down the Ohio
Chapter 0100 – Some Real Injuns
Chapter 0101 – Why the Frenchmen Speak French
Chapter 0110 – Rafting the Eerie River
Chapter 0111 – The Squash Court of Death Floats By
Chapter 1001 – Univers’tee and n’finty
Chapter 1010 – Tom’s Great Idea
Chapter 1011 – Learnin’ about Time-Travelin’
Chapter 1100 – Napoleon the Pastry Chef
Chapter 1101 – Evil John and Nice John
Chapter 1010 – Jim Invents Rap
Chapter 1011 – We’ll All Have Fun with the Waffle of Death
I'm such a geek. A geek that doesn't want to go to work tonight, but needs the money. Drat. Hmm... I wonder what "Tom's Great Idea" was going to be about... I know that by that point Tom's ghost was haunting them because he had been thrown overboard twice. Evil John and Nice John was when they stopped a guy who knocked Linnell off of his bicycle, thus breaking his arm and causing the creation of Dial-A-Song. I think the whole thing would've broken down by then, anyway.
Ummm... this is quite long enough, I think. Usually I don't do more than one entry on a Sunday, anyway. Oo well! I've been entertained for a bit, anyway.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
I think any university would be very sane not to let you in. However, since sane universities are no fun, then Chicago shoulda been all over that one (at least, from what you've told me.)
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
I think today I'll crown myself the Queen of Irrational Rationalization.
Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?
From:
no subject