Okay, so today's effort at decompression, also known as "How AOL marginally redeemed itself today by entertaining me for a little while." It's... celebrity hairstyles!

What is WITH my life? It's like the days are over before they've even begun. Possibly that has something to do with the fact that I sleep until one in the afternoon. But I wouldn't have to sleep until one if I didn't have to stay up until four...

Okay, I've been keeping this journal going on three years now. Has there ever been a time when I haven't complained of being way too busy? Made lists of all the friends I'm neglecting? Talked about how I feel guilty if I don't do everything all at once and therefore end up doing nothing? I didn't think so. Jeez. I feel like a scratched CD. (See how I modernized that metaphor for you? The things I do for love.)

I do it to myself, of course, but I am tired of feeling so overwhelmed all the damn time. Hey I know: I could give up bike riding. Or keeping an online journal. Or talking to my friends. Or school...

Yeah right! As if! No, I just have to hang on for another month and a half until the semester's over.

But it's gotten really bad. I'm distracted and confused all the time. I can't even carry on conversations anymore because I don't have the mental energy. Whenever anyone asks me how I am, the answer is always "tired." And I have a ridiculously short fuse right now. There's this one girl in my Shakespeare class that drives me mad, and I was sitting in class today, having an elaborate fantasy about shooting her in the head with a paintball gun.

I need a day off.

My sister said she liked my art, but she wished I had written something about it. Well, I'm trying to do six of these. (So far, I have one and a half done.) (I need to get cracking on this project.) (What else is new.)

I'm taking some of Van Gogh's paintings, writing poems about them, and combining poem fragments with the paintings and my own drawings. Sort of a collage project I guess.

That particular one was inspired by the little blurb inside my Van Gogh calendar, talking about the life of Van Gogh. (Aside: my professor insists on pronouncing it in the "Dutch" way, as "Vahn Ggggg[hairball]goouuugggg[hairball]ggh." Which is really not how the Dutch pronounce it. One less hairball would be more accurate. It's funny listening to him try and be Dutch, though. Hairball overcompensation is funny.)

Anyway, Van Gogh killed himself in France, and his last words were the ones written in big letters on the art, which I don't feel like looking up right now, and they translate to "Sadness will last forever." Which I think is so terrible. Because I feel that it's true in two ways. First, by killing himself when he was so sad, his sadness did indeed last forever. And second, he painted his sadness in paintings, such as the one with the shoes, and art lasts forever too.

Anyway, that was what I was going for. Hopefully you got some of that.

We're reading King Lear, and I'm really getting off on this play. Well, I get off on Shakespeare in general, really. It's not easy to figure out what he's saying all the time, but when you finally get it, and you realize how well he's saying it... well, there's nothing like it. His understanding of the human condition, the dramatic power of his language... he's amazing.

In other words, everything that everyone's been saying about his genius for five hundred years is true. Lucky you have me to validate that for you, eh?

So, Lear. I'm enjoying the ride with these characters. It's been pointed out in our criticism that you start out the play having exactly the opposite sympathies for the characters than you do at the end of the play-- at the outset, for instance, you feel bad for Edmund and you think Lear is kind of an asshole.

Except I think I'm going to like Cordelia throughout the play. Just a hunch.

Well, I have to go now. I am absolutely determined to get to bed before one in the morning, so I can get up tomorrow at a reasonable hour and get some stuff done. Oh, hell, it's Thursday, isn't it? I'm getting together with Joey tomorrow to work on our chapbook, I think.

So no time for a bike ride, trip to the DMV, court... all the things I have to do. Man, I am really bitter I don't have Friday off, because I really need it this week. Time, time, time.

"I also bought a black cowboy hat with rhinestone studs on it (eight bucks). It's the coolest thing ever. I know I just bought the Muppet Hat, but come on. Black. Cowboy. Rhinestones. I'm not made of stone, people."