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Forgive the silence, but Ben has been here about 3 weeks and I’ve been mostly busy running him to death.

Smashed out Bioshock2 finally. I love Bioshock, I loved System Shock, all that nonsense. My complaint about Bioshock 2 was mostly that it was very short. I realize there is PvP and online play, but I do try to minimize the sheer amount of stress I get in my life and having to listen to people slur one another for a few hours just isn’t my bag.

My other complaint was that there was no twist. There was a tiny one involving a side character that made me gasp, but there was no “Would you kindly?”

I recall the big reveal in Bioshock and I was on the floor frantically trying to figure out how much I’d been manipulated the entire game. I get into my games and when shit like that happens, I will start yelling at the TV. I prefer to yell at the TV during my games.

Also, Ben wants to get Big Daddy and Little Sister tattoos…which I might fucking agree to, actually.

I’ll go back to complaining about the universe soon, I swear.

Jolie: If you come out here I’m taking you running with me.
Jolie: Though its you so we can go strolling. But for five miles.
ben: cool
Jolie: We will be done in time to start again the next day…
ben: i was gonna say….i dont run
ben: -.-
Jolie: I will make you a deal.
Jolie: If you want it, you gotta catch it.
ben: i only gotta catch it once then
ben: just long enough to chain the weights to you
ben: ‘NOT SO QUICK NOW ARE YA”
Jolie: I’d make sure you didn’t catch it for five miles, though

I quit smoking.

I have been on the wagon, more or less, since the second of July.  This is not very long except for the people who know me and I understand exactly how much I love to smoke.  I am not one of those people who wished she could quit but was addicted.  Smoking is my social outlet, I enjoy it.  In fact, I have made almost all of my friends smoking.  It’s how I regulate my breathing when I’m upset.  It’s how I wind down after sex.

But like most other things in the world, smoking is for rich people.  I can’t keep up that level of money sink for a hobby.  Coffee at least makes me functional.  Cigarettes are a comfort blanket that I can’t afford.  Do you know how drunk I could get for what I spend on cigarettes? I’m mostly kidding.

I miss them.  When I have a good conversation, the kind that makes me want to sit up and lean into the person talking, I want a smoke.  When I’m driving around with someone just bullshitting, I want to smoke.   That kind of lifestyle is lovely to me.  I adore everything about it.  The intimacy and art of the act, the running outside the bar with a few people to just hang about and be apart from everyone else and forge relationships.  I miss that.

Still, the money is nice.  Which is how I judge everything lately.

Chantix, by the way, is evil and made of miracles at the same time.  I quit smoking…and I’ve never been so sick in my life.  Half the reason I am staying quit is because I dread rolling around in the fetal position from that medication again.

But smoking is one of the trappings of my previous life that I miss the most.

Adulthood.  Sucks.

Cao Bao Sez: The world is so much busier on Tuesday.
Sola Sez: That’s because six million unemployed virgins have to find something to do.

Messiah: lol. good for you acolyte what else is up with you
Messiah: like a villain?
Jolie: Like a felon. I slant rhyme my shit.
Jolie: I’m too cool for couplets.
Messiah: wow, you’re all prose and shit
Messiah: I”m aghast

The Saturday Knight: So them fireworks is on that Mall of America?
Jolie: The National Mall, not…
The Saturday Knight: Oh god, yes, the national mall! And…oh man, please don’t tell anyone that. Please don’t blog this.

ben: and tazer him if he looks at you >.>
Jolie Anne: You never change
Jolie Anne: If he doesn’t look at me, benguin, he’s dead inside. :-p
ben: TAZER!!
Jolie Anne: Overprotective gorilla.
ben: im totally buying you a tazer gun for whomever you end up marrying too
Jolie Anne: For the wedding night?
ben: yep
Jolie Anne: You know that’s how I like to get down, though.
ben: imma show up on the wedding night too
Jolie Anne: HAHAHHAHAH
ben: “whats up guys”
ben: “so..whats goin on in here?”
ben: “who is up for some cards?!”
ben: >.>

Let us toast to animal pleasures, to escapism, to rain on the roof and instant coffee, to unemployment insurance and library cards, to absinthe and good-hearted landlords, to music and warm bodies and contraceptives… and to the “good life”, whatever it is and wherever it happens to be.
-Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway

You’re going to have to forgive the long silence.  I’ve spent the better part of two months with my head between my knees, breathing deeply.   I’m fine now, or maybe not fine, but I’m happy.  Which is entirely new.

I’ve also got a therapist, who I didn’t want, until I saw she painted her toenails blue and wore red plastic-frame glasses about ten years too young for her and then I fell in love with her.  Paying for her, however, is going to be a hoot and a half.

The other thing I’ve discovered is that I adore living alone.  It is the most peaceful, relaxing, rewarding thing in the entire world and I should have done five years ago.

I have like 30 seconds before I have to get back to editing, however.

There’s got to be some phenomenon I want to talk about loudly and in public space, though.

I am currently putting in my applications and sending my test scores out.

I’m going to be a big jerk, and I’m putting all my numbers (as in cash money) down here to discuss exactly how prohibitive this system is. People talk all the time about loans, a 30k a year tuition in state but let’s just talk about getting into the door of a four year institution.

On average, people apply to ten colleges. The application fee runs from 50$ to 125$, so I’m going to charitable and say it averages at about 80$ each, as I’m finding the 50$ universities are few and far between (I’d like to right now give my props to Emory University, which waives fee if you apply before a certain date) and let’s count the postage to get your transcripts mailed.

800$ To send in the paper.

The GRE costs about 150$ and I had to pay that twice, for the general and subject test. The SAT is around 75$ but let’s assume you’re taking a subject test because three free college credits means you can spend a year doing silly things like eating, so 150$ for the SAT. You can send that score to four places, but oh, we’re applying to ten. So let’s add another 130$ onto that.

280$

You’re going to need a study guide, because I double dog dare anyone to take those tests cold. In fact, the computer based GRE doesn’t even list the instructions for questions anymore without asking the computer for them, because they figure you’ve been up the ass of the Princeton Review for nine months.

100$

And…hmm…you’re gonna need the gas to get to the test center. I live in a major area and the tests were always somewhere totally ass backwards. I drove to each place twice, once the night before to find it if I could. You’ll need index cards, too. I have a stack of index cards for these tests that is about as thick as my OED twice. You might want coffee, because those cards aren’t going to study themselves. You might want a hot pocket.

How about we say 50$ for incidental costs?

Let me add that. I’m sure I’ve got half the numbers wrong because I suck and fail, but whatever.

You are looking at about 1230$ just to get in the door. This doesn’t mean you got in. It means you sent a letter that said “Please?”

The current minimum wage, unless I’m mistaken, is 7.25/hr.

This is division. It’s hard for me.

About 170 hours at a minimum wage job just to apply to college. Of course, that 7.25 is before taxes…so let’s call it 200 hours at a minimum wage job to get in the door of a four year university.

Five weeks of paychecks to do nothing but ask for higher education. This is assuming, of course, that you don’t need any of that money for anything else, like food or shelter or clothing. This is also assuming that you work forty hours a week and don’t do other things, like go to high school.

To be fair, there is usually a way to waive fees. I know because, well…I don’t hide where I came from. Occasionally, the fee waiver is standard. You send bank statements, tax returns, swear up and down you don’t have a swiss bank account and are living in poverty for kicks and they say yes or no.

There’s a stack of tax math, too, to do before you can even fill out the form but I believe the poverty index is $10,830 for a single person household (if anyone knows how they actually come up with the number that makes you poor, please tell me. I’m dying to know). That works out to about 5.20 an hour for a forty hour a week job, so even if you are a single parent with a minimum wage job living just about in a box, you’re not quite poor enough.

Some of these waivers involve phone calls with financial counselors who would like to fiscally index your life for them, to make sure you’re not faking being poor (and don’t you come in here and Welfare Queen me to death, because I am too educated to buy that line and you ought to be, too). If you bought tampons, they want to know about it.

So you can also work for five weeks and be humiliated over the phone.

Have you ever looked around at the world and gone “What have we done?”

(As a funny side note, Princeton alone asked me for the fiscal status of my parents to help determine my PhD funding. I am twenty-nine years old. Really? You think my mommy buys my clothes, too? Then a friend of mine mentioned that lots of kids from money don’t actually have to work and are dependent on their parents and given the population of Princeton, it’s not that strange of a question. Except for the other 99% of us.

Furthermore, the only options they had for parents’ relationship to one another was Married, Divorced, Widowed. I literally had to call Princeton and tell them that my parents were never married, so what box do I tick? If they wish one another dead, is widowed close enough? I don’t want to guess and get thrown out of Princeton for falsifying my application.

They are divorced by the way. Which is news to all three of us.)