Product!

While I'm on the subject of appearance and the massive debt academia is burying me under, I might as well talk about why these seemingly incongruent lines of thought have become tangled together in my mind right now. As mentioned in my profile, I'm finishing up my degree. That accursed piece of paper is taking me a couple of extra years to acquire, due to the fact that I spent several semesters going less than full time. Had I not done this, I wouldn't have been able to hold a paying job while going to school, and I'd be even deeper in debt than I already am.

Anyway, this was my first year without studio classes, which meant that I was able to go full time, since a studio course is about twice as time-consuming as an academic course.* Silly me, I thought this would allow me to finish up by the end of this summer. Nope. Turns out, the last class I'll need to finish my computer science minor is only offered in the spring. Because of technicalities with student loan grace periods, that means I need to stretch everything out if I don't want to be shelling out $1,000/month on top of living expenses while I'm taking that last class. In other words: an entire extra year of working and schooling. Joy does not begin to express my feelings about that.

*Note: They actually decreased the studio course requirements, starting this year, because they were so unreasonably high. Basically, full time studio when I was doing it entailed being in class 9AM-12PM and 2PM-5PM four days a week, with about 20-30 hours of out-of-class projects per week, if you took the projects seriously.

Last semester, I went overkill on the work thing. I did two part-time jobs that each paid around $10/hour. That was, to put it mildly, hellish. Particularly considering that one of them was a graveyard shift an hour's drive away. This semester I came off of the Federal Work Study waiting list, so I figured I'd try scrimping and just doing that. Turns out that $80 a week isn't enough to live on, even if you happen to live at home. Go figure. I think working two jobs and going to school full time was actually less stressful than trying to live on $320 a month.

So my strategy this time around is going to be different. I'm going to do my damnedest to find something that pays better. This will hopefully mean that I can build up some reserves for when the debtors come a-calling, and that I can get through the next year without borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. This also means I'm going to need to polish myself up into tip-top bourgeois shape for the interviewing process. Fortunately, I have a slight advantage in that area: not only in my taste-enhancing gay genes, but also in a couple of friends who work on Newbury Street. This means free top-of-the-line haircuts and free fashion advice. However, there's one area where my proverbial bases are not covered: skin care.

You see, my skin is something of a challenge. First problem: I'm half Irish and half Mediterranean. As a result, I have pale, sensitive skin and coarse, dark hair. Combine the two, and I wind up with a five o'clock shadow a full five minutes after shaving (along with razor burn from hell, if I don't follow a precise and esoteric washing-shaving-moisturizing ritual). Oh, and did I mention that my skin instantly becomes mottled if I so much as look out the window on a partly sunny day? Also: combination skin, though fortunately it stays closer to the normal spectrum than the extremes of dry or oily.

I've developed a pretty decent skin care arsenal at this point, but there's always room for improvement. So if anybody happens to read this and has some tips, please do share them. If you can't tell, I kind of have a thing for Aveeno.

The current line-up, including razor:

• Aveeno Positively Radiant Facial Cleanser, alternated with
• Aveeno Ultra-Calming Foaming Facial Cleanser
• Kiehl's Ultra Facial Moisturizer
• Aveeno Continuous Radiance tanning moisturizer
• L'Oreal Expert Circle Eraser Anti Dark Circle Eye Moisturizer
• Aveeno Positively Smooth shaving gel
• Gillette Fusion razor (I've tried electrics -- they shred my face without touching my beard)

Defunkification

I've managed to banish my funk somewhat using two techniques perfected by gay men over the last century: consumerism and saturation with (as well as mocking of) pop-culture. When reality gets a bit too unpleasant, there's always a product, a TV show, a movie, or a trashy novel to distract you from it. While it's not exactly a transcendental solution, sometimes a bit of superficial salving does the trick. And sometimes there just isn't anything that can be done beyond a bit of escapism.

As for pop culture, I discovered the amazingly catty world of "Top Design" blogs. Meow! My personal favorite is Pink Navy. Also? While I thought Carissa was both obnoxious and unimpressive in her design skills for most of the season, she definitely had the better loft in the finale. Matt's looked ugly, bland, cluttered and sterile. Of course, combining clutter and sterility does take a unique kind of talent, so maybe that's why he won.

I think the most amusing part of the entire season of "Top Design" was finding out how much the furniture cost. And how freakin' ugly a lot of it was. It makes me sleep better at night knowing that, while I may have accumulated over a hundred thousand dollars in debt pursuing higher education (in my misguided hopes of climbing out of the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder) at least I haven't spent tens of thousands of dollars on a horrible couch or side table. Until "Top Design", I didn't realize such a thing was even possible. I do have friends with that kind of money, but they actually have taste -- which explains why they're my friends -- and so I didn't know that such hideousness managed to sell in that price range.

And speaking of money and taste... On the anti-Marxist side of things, I made a trip to Macy's and indulged myself in a bottle of Burberry London cologne. I'm completely infatuated with that fragrance - it's like Sexy Man in a Bottle. It's not as satisfying as having an actual Sexy Man to call my own, but a couple of spritzes is considerably easier to obtain and manage than a relationship. I also picked up a Kenneth Cole Reaction sweater for $10(!) and a thin Calvin Klein hooded sweatshirt for $25. I love the clearance rack. I also love rolled cuffs/hems, which are featured on both of my finds.

On Drama and Blogging

I've been having trouble coming up with things to blog about. It's not that there's absolutely nothing going on in my life, or that I don't have plenty of ideas swirling around my mind that I'd like to put into text. It's just that, well, I've been having a somewhat rough couple of weeks. As a result, most of the things I've thought to write about have been...well...not really cheery.

Now, I'm not one of those people who feels the need to put a smiley face on everything. I understand that not every lemon can be used to make lemonade. But I do think that it's very, very easy to let a blog devolve into melodramatic whining, and once it reaches that level it has a tendency to stay there. Some things are simply better shared one-on-one with friends who know the full back story, rather than than with the whole of the internet, most of whom have no idea who you are or why so-and-so's seemingly innocent comment would be interpreted as the worst insult/betrayal ever.

So if I've got a lot of crap going on in my life, yet I feel the desire to blog, how do I do that without being all "woe is me"? It seems to narrow it down to one possibility: the This Was My Day blog. I don't like This Was My Day blogs. If you can't turn an event into an entertaining anecdote, or some sort of interesting observation on life, you wind up with something like the following:

"I got up today and had a bowl of cereal. I really like cereal. Then I went to work. That girl I don't like got on my nerves. I had lunch around noon, and the rest of the day was pretty good, because I didn't see that annoying girl again. Then I came home, made dinner, and watched TV."

Some people can take that basic outline, sprinkle it with a few observations, metaphors, non sequiturs, and side-stories, and turn it into something really interesting/entertaining/insightful. I have a huge amount of admiration for people who can do that, and those are the kinds of blogs that I really love. I, however, am not one of those people. Especially when I'm in a bit of a funk.

The other problem with blogging in/about a bad mood is that it sticks around. A few days or weeks down the line, when whatever was bothering you is over and done with, you'll go back and re-read the drama. Either it leaves you feeling ridiculous for being so over the top with it, or it winds up sending you back into the funk. Neither possibility is particularly appealing.

So it may be a while before I have something amusing and/or insightful to say here. I don't think very many people read this anyway. But I figured that I'd explain. You know, in case someone stumbles on it and wonders why there are only about 8 entries (one of which consisted of a photograph and one paragraph, another of which consisted of iPod fandom).

And there you have it. A shitty couple of weeks, not enough energy to find amusing anecdotes from my life that are worth sharing, and a desire to spare random strangers from the rather tangled web of drama that I've become caught up in. I promise, as soon as I've untangled it all and gotten my head on straight, I'll have plenty of brisk witticisms suitable for the masses. Until then, this page will be a bit sparse.

My obsession du jour

I'm up way too early today. Why? Because I need Morrissey tickets. I NEED them. His last show sold out in like half of a millisecond, so I need to be on the ball when the Boston date goes on sale. I may even become one of those annoying fans who runs up onto the stage and hugs him, sobbing uncontrollably as security drags me away.

In other music news, I got me an iPod. Oh, I love the iPod. I was amazed to discover that its sound quality blew away my Creative Zen MicroPhoto. To the point where I heard instrumentation in tracks that I never knew was there. Apparently Apple's done a lot of improvement in the sound department over the past three years, because when I bought my last player iPod was universally bashed for its poor audio quality. Also? I love podcasts. I love podcasts soooo much. PBS and NPR to go? Sometimes in video form? Yes, please. Random people sitting in front of their computers making talk shows that run the gamut from insightful to laughably moronic? What's not to love? And they have What Not to Wear?? Shut UP!

I'm a bit ashamed to say that I'm so infatuated with my iPod, because on general principal I dislike Apple intensely. They steal ideas (more so than even Microsoft), wrap them in pretty interfaces and multi-million ad campaigns, and artists/designers are such frickin' snobs when they talk about their Macs (because the Apple commercial told them that you can only do boring business tasks on a PC, so it must be true). And working in a digital photo lab that runs on Apple equipment, I've come to absolutely LOATHE the hoops that you have to jump through to make certain things work, and/or figure out what's going wrong when something doesn't work.

But I have to admit, they got it right with the iPod. Totally intuitive interface, the aforementioned great sound quality, and a syncing system that I actually like and can trust not to leave me with five copies of every song.

And now I'm off to hopefully obtain the coveted Morrissey tickets. Wish me luck!