buyblue.org

phew—tangueray, j crew, and netflix gave money to the democrats this year. starbucks and barnes & noble, evil as they are, did too. my mother won't like the news that saks gave $110,000 to the bushies.

eGREgious suffering

it was awful but it is over. i was not prepared for the absurdity of such arbitrary judgment exacted by an unfriendly computer terminal while being forced to sit on my butt for four hours, addled by hunger and frustration at the strange mentality that demanded repeatedly, cruelly, that i answer committee-formulated, whole-picture questions from an uninformed yet well-adjusted perspective.

the inanity of the princeton review's practice tests did not prepare me for the bludgeon that is ets mentality. extra stress on the mental there. here's an analogy to summarize my experience:

princeton review :: ets: cafe lolita :: a) kahlua b) everclear c) franzia d) a kahlua bottle that actually contains...heroin.

the correct answer is d).

ambitions in canary yellow

trying to make everything happen for my nyu app and trying to be articulate at the same time is making my brain hurt. it feels less like a race against the clock than a stampede traced on a flurry of post-its. maybe they would like an all-post-it grad school app.

re: diculousness of corporate titles

Did you know Les Moonves is the Co-President and Co-COO of Viacom?

Apparently he's not the only one.

actual sentence from a GRE practice reading comprehension

from the princeton review's test-prep cd (the novels in question are toni morrison's beloved and faulkner's absalom, absalom!):

"Both are considered by some critics a Bildungstroman, or coming-of-age novel. Morrison's Sethe and Faulkner's Quentin, find self-worth instead of relying on dominant society's values. Also, although using psychological realism plot style, both novels have a complex, experimental structure, using fragmented viewpoints to further the plot and juxtapose perspectives. I call this method psychological juxtapositioning."*

elsewhere in the passage, the author says morrison addresses the 'psychological affects of slavery,' a flub repeated in one of the questions. how disheartening to be trying to beat a test asking me to comprehend writing that belongs on engrish.com.

*this sentence is faithful to the original. i carefully typed all the errors as they appear in the test. just imagine one giant sic over the whole thing.

harper's rejection came in the mail yesterday. even tho i was prepared for it and had even already rationalized it away, it was still totally demoralizing. i had planned to start my nation letter and study for the GRE, but i just couldn't do it. so ed came over and we drank port with holly's theatRE friends and scarfed many varieties of chocolate.

well, i didn't get an elite internship, but i did get cute shoes for a steal on ebay. they are $240 mary janes made by birkenstock (i know! the nerve!), and i got them new for $60.

so really, my evening had happy ending. my dreams of catapulting into secret literary zones where no one makes excel charts were capitulated,* but as long as i'm pumping my meager paycheck back into the economy for identity-reaffirming goods, who cares? it's the beauty of the capitalist machine that you can't have bootstraps without first having boots.

*more slightly flubbed uses of GRE words coming soon