Well, I could begin this entry with another apology for simply vanishing from the face of the Earth yet again, but I think we're both becoming a tad weary of those. So let's get on with the main event, shall we?

Before I start reporting on the present, allow me to dwell on the past a bit; this will, of course, require employing the Wayback Machine. Let me just set the dials to Christmas Break...

Suddenly, in the classic style of after-school specials and cheesy sitcoms, the room begins to come in and out of focus like a cheap television set. Colours that can only be described as "psychedelic" swim past your vision, and the laws binding the universe together cease to exist for a matter of seconds, during which the Anna Nicole Show is accidentally decent. Nausea and disorientation wrack your body, but subside once Anna Nicole's bloated form (doubtlessly dry-humping some eminent figure) disappears from your vision. When the world reassembles itself around you, you find that you have traveled back to Christmas Break, in a small town located smack-dab in the Middle of Nowhere.

I spent the majority of my vacation perfecting my sloth impersonation with family up North; because I work at the food court on campus, and the food court was closed for break with the rest of the school, I had absolutely no responsibilities for a month. Huzzah! (I also had no source of income for that month: slightly less Huzzah.) Unfortunately, Christmas Break is the one time of year my body decides it can afford to be sick; thus, all enjoyment experienced over the holiday was filtered through a sieve of illness. Aside from being sicker than the proverbial dog, I had quite the uneventful break, which I suppose was a blessing, considering how hectic the school year generally is.

Coming back to Pomona after break was odd. As we pulled up to my humble abode, Zeus (my big red oaf of a mutt) was, naturally, doing his best to ruin my hearing with his blasted barking, which every day threatens to burst my eardrums. My chauffeur departed, leaving me on my driveway to appreciate the simple beauty of my neighborhood at night: the glow of streetlights that throw circles of light among deep pools of shadow; the silence that falls like a blanket over the city, pierced only by the occasional owl's hoot (and, in my case, my hound's howling); the muted splendor of a place that, by daylight, would be bustling with businesspeople making their way to work and children cavorting through the spray of sprinklers.

Making my way into the house, I was suddenly assaulted by an unimaginable din—it seemed that my father was blaring the soundtrack to The Lion King (the theatrical version, not the cartoon) at about 140 decibels. (This was around 10 p.m., just for your information.) I bellowed my greeting to him, and proceeded to unpack while the walls shook; I'm certain the whole neighborhood heard "The Circle of Life" before the night was over. Ah, home schtick home.

The next day was my first day of the Winter quarter at Cal Poly. For those who are not aware, I opted this quarter to commit scholastic suicide by enrolling in two intensive 200-level literature classes (Survey of American Literature I and Survey of British Literature II) simultaneously, as a freshman. Considering that both classes are rife with juniors, seniors, and bloody English teachers working on their credentials, I think I might be just a bit out of my league. Thus far, I have been able to hold my own quite well in both classes, but the pace is only now picking up to what will almost certainly be a feverish frenzy of reading and writing by the middle of the quarter. I'm also taking Introduction to Philosophy and French II, but those courses are so insultingly simple that I should have no trouble focusing the bulk of my attention on Am. Lit. and Brit. Lit.

Incidentally, I have discovered an interesting phenomenon this quarter. You see, in high school, if a guy wishes to take a class in which he is surrounded by girls, his options are simple: Yearbook, Drama, French, Debate (at least at my old high school), and, of course, Cosmetology. In college, the situation is slightly different. For one thing, French classes are, disappointingly enough, rather even as far as genders are concerned. I've discovered that Literature classes, on the other hand, are predominantly female; my Brit. Lit. class is about 70% young women, and most of them are quite attractive.

But enough about school. What about the rest of my life, you ask? To be frank, there isn't much of that going around right now. Between class and work, I'm on campus for the better part of the day, and when I'm at home I'm generally reading for one of my lit. classes. However, I do find time for some leisure. I've gone to Borders a couple times in the past weeks, mainly to spend the $80 in gift cards I received for Christmas, and bought myself some spiffy books. They include: A Confederacy of Dunces (John Kennedy Toole), Who's Who in Hell (Robert Chalmers), The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass (Lewis Carroll), The Inferno (Dante Alighieri), and Maldoror (Comte de Lautréamont).

Recently, my reading has become increasingly darker, while the music I've been listening to has become lighter and more mellifluous. To clarify this, I'm currently reading Who's Who in Hell, The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland, The Inferno, bits and pieces of H.P. Lovecraft and Charles Baudelaire, and, perhaps most importantly, Maldoror. I've been listening to Maroon 5 (part funk, part soul), Billy Joel (I'm nearly addicted to "For The Longest Time"), and, surprisingly enough, Justin Timberlake (as odd as this may sound, I love "Cry Me A River").

Back to reading material, I am reasonably sure that the Comte de LautrČamont is an unfamiliar author for most, so allow me to give you an idea of him. The good Comte, a pseudonym for an obscure young French man named Isidore Ducasse, died at the tragically young age of 24, but left a grotesquely vivid picture of perversity and pure evil that would inspire generations to come. His magnum opus, Maldoror, chronicles the misadventures of the story's eponymous character, a being of vicious and relentless revolt against anything and everything that society, and the species as a whole, holds dear.

Maldoror despises humankind, who will never accept him, and, moreover, God, who created all that is evil in humans, and is responsible for all suffering. Maldoror spits in the face of the Creator who made him what he is, the ultimate outcast, doomed forevermore to be alone in the world. As one reviewer of the novel said on Amazon, "by the end of this strangely dreamlike text...we have seen every barrier of civilization and every moral that lays the foundation of society trampled and spat upon." Widely known as the misanthrope's Bible, Maldoror has the singular power to at once repulse and fascinate its readers; in one particularly memorable scene, Maldoror guns down some drowning sailors who have just survived a shipwreck, then proceeds to have sex (painful, bloody sex) with one of the sharks feasting on the corpses, because he has finally found a heart as dark as his own.

In short, the Comte de Lautréamont makes Marquis de Sade look like Dr. Seuss, and I'm loving every minute of it. To give you an impression of his prose, here is an excerpt from the beginning of Maldoror (don't worry, it's not unduly gruesome):

Perhaps, reader, you would have me invoke hatred at the opening of this work! How do you know you won't sniff it up, paddling in innumerable pleasures, as much of it as you wish, with your wide, thin, haughty nostrils, your belly uppermost like a shark in the dark fine air, as if you understood the importance of this action no less than the importance of your legitimate appetite, slow and majestic, for the ruby flux? I assure you that the latter will delight those twin hideous holes in your unspeakable snout, O monster, if first you set yourself to inhale three thousand times the accursed awareness of The Eternal! Your nostrils, vastly dilated with sublime content, with static ecstasy, will ask nothing better of space—now become embalmed as if in perfumes and incense—for they shall be sated with a perfect happiness, like angels living in the magnificence and peace of the pleasant heavens.

Now, let's see, what else is there I can bore you with? Ah, yes, my emotions, those roiling torrents of torment and anguish which threaten to founder the dilapidated ship of my psyche; the driving rains of despair that soak my soul to the bone with their freezing deluge of despondence. By the sweet loins of Zeus (an exclamation of my own devising—what do you think?), but I do so love to wax poetic! In reality, as I'm sure you've figured out by now, I am far too detached from my emotions to really feel anywhere near the way I describe above. Those who are acquainted with me and the labyrinthine inner recesses of my mind know that I am, by nature, extremely cynical, usually somewhat depressed, and use sarcasm and sardonic remarks to great effect. (Melancholy and saturnine are two of my favourite words for good reason.) But I'm hardly suicidal, here—I don't take life seriously enough to actually want to end it.

All snide remarks and self-deprecation aside (sorry, but I just can't say that with a straight face), I have reached a difficult junction in my life as far as emotion is concerned. At the end of this year, I shall be forced to seek out other living arrangements (I am, unfortunately, currently shacked up at Chez mes Parents), as I have been officially booted by the 'rentals. Most of my friendships have suffered from distance (not so much physically as emotionally) and simple lack of effort on my part. Romance is still as much a fickle bitch as she has always been; her whims continue to torture me with self-doubt and anxiety. Take the case of Aurore as an example: she still hasn't attempted to contact me, and I've now e-mailed her twice. She was perfectly nice and affectionate when I was speaking to her in person, but it appears that she has forsaken me. And I didn't even truly want romance from her; only friendship. When all is said and done, I have lost nearly all faith in humankind, hold the majority of my peers in contempt, and am generally unhappy with the state of the world, as well as the society therein.

Well, wasn't that a cheery post?

[Exit Orpheum.]