Okay, Losers

SO yeah. I don't have the time nor the inclination to put up with all your damn hootin' and hollerin'. This'll be my last post. My life is far too uneventful to keep a log, let alone a WEB log. So here's the scoop: I'm majoring in Philosophy, I got a job as a sandwich delivery boy where I work for a large Slavic man named Freddy, and I'm reading Walden by Henry David Thoreau. I hope you have a real cool time on the internet, ya'al.

Once in a Lifetime

Hello all, I hope all is well. So yesterday was my birthday, and I woke up at my usual time, to my roommate singing me a happy birthday funeral dirge. I have a suspicion that he may be a vampire. Then, I made myself some delicious oatmeal from a tea kettle and those space aged pre-packaged oatmeal. Makes it easy, 'cause I don't have to package the oats myself!!!

So it turned out to be a boring day. I read a lot of Lord Jim by my buddy Joe Conrad. Later, I went out with the roommates to my friend Chris' dorm, where he was watching Project Runway. ...Yeah. Don't know why anybody would want to watch that shit, but hey, to the victor go the spoils. That is the expression I'm looking for, right? Anyway, we watched it for a little bit, then afterwards, put on one of the greatest records ever recorded - Creedence Clearwater Revival's Greatest Hits. I know, I know, Greatest Hits records are for housewives and little girls, but man, this one really kicks ya in the groin, if ya catch m'drift!

Afterwards, we went to one of the many bars outside of campus, and wetted our whistles. Chris told the bartender it was my birthday, and the bartender asked how old I turned, to which I foolishly replied, 19. However, he was nice about it, and even gave me a fake ID he found! So, yeah. It was a pretty awesome birthday. Oh, yeah, I had some cold pizza for dinner.

Suddenly There's a Tidal Wave

Hello hello, I write this post in the room of the apartment I have recently stumbled into, and where I'll be staying for the school year. Exciting, yes? Things have been slow around here, as is the case with most places where I stay. I'm a simple man, you see. Allow me to lay out my living space: I have roughly 170 square feet of space in my room, much of which is occupied by two beds, a bookshelf, and a nightstand. So, as a result, the only item of comfort in the room is a small chair... and it's made of metal. Fooey!

But, I've finally gotten the internets up and running, which is good news. To fill you in on what I've been doing, let me tell you that I have been trying to get employed ASAP. I've talked to the radio station, and the Promotions Director has told me to come in the last week of August, giving me a lot of time where I won't be working. Unfortunately, they will only allow me to work 12 hours a week, which is fine by me, but the idea of starting in two weeks gives me two weeks of unoccupied time.

Let me tell you that I think I may be the best at finding things to do. Whether that might be seeing some French movie that I know nothing about, or frying up some potatoes, I can entertain myself with the wave of my hand, so it would seem. Right now I'm in the middle of John Steinbeck's East of Eden, and man, I don't know what it is about these all-American writers, but there is no dull part of their novels. Even I get a little tired of that old queen Oscar Wilde every now and then. Him and his quips and whit spelled with an "h". Damn smartass is what he is.

But as for food, I've been keeping up with my daily requirements of Ramen and cereal. Every now and again I'll make a burrito from the vegetables in the fridge, or maybe I'll splurge and go for a tuna fish sandwhich. Again, I tell you, I am a simple man. Gimme a place to live and a book, (and a girl for those loansome eves) and I'll be a happy fellow. Cheers to you all.

Rebellious Jukebox

Last night I had beer for dinner. This morning, eggs.

Anyone want to go to the Burning Man festival?

There's a Party Goin' Down Around Here

Since my last post, I have returned from that dreaded Roman capitol-mousetrap known as New York, at least for the time being. The trip back is always the longest and most arguous. Walking through the city with a bag packed with clothes is as bad, if not worse, than Jesus' carrying of a crucifix. But, I was happy to be home finally, because my parents had gone to Ireland for the week, and I had the house to myself. Needless to say, my daily activities involved making breakfast naked, reading naked, exercising naked, lounging about naked, walking the dog naked, and generally lounging naked.

But for the past 3 days, I've been in Vermont with my good friends Steven and Andy, and others from New Jersey, or as my roommate affectionately calls it, Jew Jersey. The trip has made me discover the truth that I have spent many years avoiding: that moths are God's chosen creatures. Their only goal in their short lives is to search about for a source of man-made light, and once they have accomplished this goal, they turn their attention to flitting about a bit and doing dances that make me laugh. Humans need television for their daily requirement of culture, but moths are content staring at a goddamn light. That's what I call purpose.

Last night, after returning from a trip to a swimming quarry, my group and I visited one of Vermont's fine book stores (in front of which was a stone upon which was printed, "Nothing is written in stone". Clever.) when I had the sudden urge for burgers. Yes, burgers. After much cajoling of my friends, we snuck out of the bookstore and got McDonald's, without letting the other members of our group know. Unfortunately, we didn't know that one girl was planning on making fajitas that night. So, we had two dinners, the likes of which collided in my stomach like two titans of ages past. But, it was a good trip anyway. Um..I guess that's all.

Jesus? This is Iggy.

Bloggers, this weekend I broke a pact I made with myself. On friday, I went to a Karaoke place with a bunch of hipster doofuses. My friend Chris coaxed me into going to it, promising good times as we would sing the karaoke classics, i.e. Hall and Oates and Abba. So we met up with these supposedly "cool" folk, who live in Brooklyn. Brooklyn is an ugly place, filled with the vainest of the vain, who celebrate their youth and good health by drinking on the rooftops (ooh New York) and basking in their own apathetic beliefs and name-dropping cultured attitude, which amounts to this repeatable phrase: "Oh, you like ____? Have you ever heard of ______? Yeah, _____ is awesome, because (why you should like _____). Yes, it would certainly seem that these hipsters gt along marvelously by virtue of their whacky haircuts and brightly colored uniforms, and their uniformed opinions and tastes, as well. But, that's fine. Spending a night with people you don't like or know is reason to stay in, and the prospect of staying in is reason enough to spend a night with people you don't like. Such is the duality of our existence.

So we went there, and goddamn if I didn't spend all night on the couch staring at these self absorbed, empty souls with their eyes glued to the screen that read the lyrics to them. I paid 21 dollars for the strange feeling of confusion and disgust that this exercise in faux-celebrity derangement brought me. At one point, I got to the front of the room with my friend, grabbed the microphone from the ground, and was accosted by a hipster, who snatched the microphone out of my hand, and turned without saying another word. Such is the attitude of this strange movement in the youth of today, that one need not have any accountability for one's own actions, and yet one may judge another from a merciless and unrelenting standpoint. Perhaps this is not merely an issue of today, but one that transcends all time. I dunno.

So the next day, I met up with my parents before they left for Ireland, the mother country. I met them at Washington Square, and we walked to a pizza place. But, not just any pizza place. Otto's Fancy Pizzareia, home of the unrecognizable Italian meat toppings! I ordered a goat cheese and asparagus pie, Pops ordered some pasta, and Moms ordered an anchovie and olive pie. They brought these fancy small pies, which were very fine, though not as fine as the dripping, hot and sweaty mass of cheese and tomato sauce that I am used to.

After lunch, I walked back to the park and perused the selection of books that a shirtless and bearded man had presented on the sidewalk. There, I picked up three books. CHECK IT:
The Death of Ivan Ilytch by Leo Tolstoy
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Three Tragedies by Frederico Garcia Lorca.
After that, I went back to the Bronx. That's all I have to say for now. So long, all.

Well, I saw...Mushroom Head

Hello all, today is another of a series of what I like to call, “Boring Bronx Days”. I woke up this morning and immediately tried to remember my dreams. In one dream, I remember visiting Connecticut, and while I was flying high above the state, I thought that the state looked exactly liked Pennsylvania. In another, I was sitting on the roof of a tall building, where I could only see the ground and the red sky above me. I have many dreams that take place on top of buildings when the sky is red. I wonder what this means. If any dream interpretors are out there, please comment what you think this means. Anyway, this was a sexual dream, so I won't divulge.

After that, I showered and made myself an egg and hash brown in the basement kitchen. Yes, I am poor. As a matter of fact, this weekend, after going to a party in Brooklyn with my room mates, I am officially flat broke! This is a big step in my life, as I now must hunt for food in the jungles of the Bronx zoo. My first goal? Hunt down the mysterious and elusive Meercat. Actually, I told my parents that I needed food, so my Dad said he would bring me some groceries today. This is good news, as the parents generally know what's up in terms of nutrition.

I went to work today, and my boss was freaking out, as usual about her fears of being fired. I, as my job description entails, calmed her down and listened to her problems. It turns out it was due to a disagreement that some other people had about which ad agency would be best for the station. Yeah. I'm not sure, but my theory is that working in an office atmosphere causes massive brain injuries, either from the sheer lameness and boredom that goes with working in one, or from blunt force trauma applied by a disgruntled coworker. This is why I must never work in an office after college. Thankfully, my dreams of becoming an astronaut/rock star don't require office work. My boss bought me pizza for lunch.

Today, I finished rereading Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce. It's a story of a young Irish man who grows up under the stern and watchful eyes of Catholic school, and eventually becomes a true intellectual badass. This is one of the many benefits of having a boring job; you can read as much as you want. Since I've been working, I also read the Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky, which is a Russian story that's about, you guessed it, a bunch of insane people that hate each other, and eventually go to prison/see the Devil as a man dressed in plaid. In true Russian style! Not sure what to read next, but during these two books, I read the Gospel of Matthew. I gotta tell ya, I really like this Jesus character! Nice guy. Any way, if you have any suggestions about what to read next, comment me up.

My Dad dropped the groceries off in the afternoon, and right afterwards I made myself some delicious Ramen. Yeah, that's pretty much all that happened. Thanks for listening, world.

P.S. You guys should try to come up to Central Park this Saturday, because Vampire Weekend is playing for free there. I have to be there for the radio station, but we can all hang out and watch some stupid Indie rock. Here's the website : http://www.summerstage.org/

HEY GUYZ!!!

Hey, it's yer old friend and com-paint-tree-ut Jake Sanders, posting under Ian's name.

Hello again, internets. It's been some time since I've glanced upon your soiled, impure face. O, how I've missed your vlogs about cats, torrents of ABBA's discography, and countless teenagers with identity crises. Ah, but you must be curious about my day. It begins the night before -

At 10:00, I was reading an essay on utilitarianism for my philosophy class at my desk. That is to say, I created a method of reading the essay in I read one sentence, then attempted to catch the fly circling above me with my hand. I'm a very focused student. My roommate Bobby asks me to go out to an undisclosed location off-campus. Before I go further, let the reader know this – when a student goes “off-campus”, their health – nay, their very life! - are at stake. Stray bullets act as a constant reminder of the campus' position as a pinnacle of white decadence and privilege in the otherwise down-and-out Bronx atmosphere. But at the time, I was pretty tired of reading about some guy who's smart enough to be taught in a university. So, to undisclosed location I went. And there, at an apartment belonging to someone I don't know, I played many a game of Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64, and drank many a Spanish cerveza. Reader, you'll find your reflexes much improved after consuming copious amounts of booze. I even beat the Egyptian level!

So, this morning I woke up at 8:30 with my head on the mattress. I must've missed the pillow when laying my head down the night before. This sleeping arrangement caused my neck to contort, causing it to place on the scale of pain slightly above the point of mild irritation, and slightly below mind-numbing excruciating soreness. Not only that, but my mouth tasted like a car. And it didn't taste like the “new car smell”. That would've been nice. It tasted more like if I were to lift up the hood, take off the engine belt, and give it a nice clean sweep with my tongue. But hey, I can't complain! I ate a bowl of corn flakes to start off the day.

I rushed out of the dorm to make it to the 9:00 philosophy class. I still was feeling the pains of the morning, but man, was it worth it. The prof is a 24 year old angel named Eleanor, who must have asked God very nicely if instead of flying about in heaven, she could instead teach dumbass college students about a subject that most of them don't give a shit about. Well, I think she makes ethics both interesting and dreamy. During the middle of the 3-hour class, I opened up a bag of trail mix, and dug in.

When I got back to the dorm, it was 12, and I, being poor, decided to make lunch myself. My roommates and I buy groceries instead of eating at the cafeteria, because it is a known fact that cafeteria food, upon entering your digestive fact, turns immediately into a substance resembling chocolate pudding which exits your body twenty minutes later in a foul and violent visit to the bathroom that I have deemed, “The Quickening”. So, I grabbed a tortilla, 2 eggs, some cheese, a frying pan, a spatula, and some vegetable oil and took the elevator downstairs to the basement, only to find... that the basement was locked, due to someone leaving the stove top on the night before. DAMN. So, I went back upstairs to my room and made myself the saddest cold cheese and salsa quesadilla that I've ever known.

At 1, I had to go to work at the radio station. My job, you ask? I am a marketing bitch. I do whatever the marketing director tells me to. Yesterday, I took off the return address labels from envelopes, and replaced them with the CORRECT labels, which have the same exact address on them, but include the WFUV logo, so that our members know which station they listen to by the brand that they see. Wow, that sounds really terrible when I say it out loud. Today, I started to edit a video of some cookie-cutter singer-songwriter with a cookie-cutter beard and cookie-cutter fedora playing a cookie-cutter song on his cookie-cutter acoustic guitar. I nearly died of the pure adrenaline high I got from work today.

After work ended at 5, I came back to the room, expecting delicious food. But there was no delicious food to be had! IN FACT, the refrigerator was empty. So, my roommate Chris and I decided to go off campus to one of the fine ethnically-themed (read: Black, Hispanic, Italian, general Asian) restaurants around the area. We ended up at Tino's Place (Italian), where I ordered a chicken cheese steak. It was “good”, but not the same “good” that you get in one of Philadelphia's many fine steak establishments, where the servers pour highly reactive and radioactive yellow cheese all over your sandwhich. This steak was more like a cutlet sandwhich, with a little provalone sprinkled on top. Whatever, I was hungry.

So, I finish off another sunny Bronx day with this blog entry and an episode of Seinfeld. George orders hair growth treatment from China. Elaine leaves a dirty message on Jerry's tape recorder. You know, just everyday normal kinda stuff. Happens all the time.