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Senioritis II: The Quest for More Money

11 Saturday Apr 2009

Posted by mnhanson in Johnny Depp, Lewis Black, Scholarship, school, Tim Burton

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Hello, Friends. I’m trying to update more often so people know I haven’t collapsed under the weight of the stress and gone off the deep end (i.e. suicide bomb the fuck out of whoever invented the future). But first, here’s a little ditty I tossed off recently in the Caribbean:

That dashing young actor called Depp,
Eccentric and a bit out of step,
A lover of art,
And a gypsy at heart,
His image fills maidens with pep.

He’s playing The Mad Hatter in a live-action version of Alice in Wonderland, which I thought sounded lame until I heard how closely it follows the book. Wow, Tim Burton actually digs on the morbid undertones of Alice. Who would have thought?
Long story short, I’m withholding criticism. For now.

I’ve been drinking more often now that I’ve got less than a month until graduation and little idea of how I’m going to go from broke-ass, jobless, and restless to successful, glamorous grad student (hopefully with a paying gig) in just a couple of months. I was in a similar situation 5 years ago, but this go around finds me with even less financial support thanks to my fully tapped college fund.

This month’s exciting mission!: FAFSA. Fucking FAFSA. I have to do this shit if I want to get anything from my school’s financial aid office. Not to mention the host of scholarships that require you to first complete the FAFSA, regardless of whether or not they’re billed as “merit-based.”

Upcoming mission: Applying for the “Delaying the Real World Fellowship.” Sounds like a scam-and-a-half, but there’s no application fee, so what the hell. It’s a $5,000 grant. Deadline: May 30, 2009.
Oh, yeah, I’m supposed to be finding money for school, ain’t I? I guess I’ll do this one, too: The Union League Civic and Arts Foundation Creative Writing Competition. Deadline: June 1, 2009. You must be a legal resident of Illinois living within a 100-mile radius of the Chicago Loop or be registered in an Illinois school within a 100-mile radius of the Chicago Loop and submit an original work of creative writing (short story, creative nonfiction or novel excerpt) to qualify. Lucky me.

One more thing…
Why would anyone be surprised by a major American company censoring gay/homo art? Still, people are freaked out about Amazon’s latest FAIL: Let’s bury this “adult” literature in our system!
Yeah, I’m not shocked. I am, however, pretty offended and irritated by the blatant use of backward logic. They know they’re not fooling anyone, so why bother? It reminds me of Lewis Black and his rant about how the government and major corporations have been fucking us over for decades, but only in recent years do they seem content to just rub it in our faces. Before, it was like “when you’re in a hotel, and you know somebody’s fucking somewhere, you just don’t know where.” Now they have no shame – “they’re like two dogs that are stuck together.” They just don’t care.

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Should I Stay or Should I Go?

29 Thursday Jan 2009

Posted by mnhanson in Iowa Writers Workshop, Philosophy, Sam, school, travel

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Everyone:
I’m sending in my last grad school application on Saturday, I think. I will not know anything until April or May. It’s kind of disconcerting, not knowing where I’m going to be after my lease runs out on July 31 of this year. On the plus side, I get to ask people to give me suggestions about where I should go if I don’t get accepted into any grad schools. It is a possibility. If it happens, I will be running away to a big city. But where?
I don’t want to do that thing where you just spin the globe and go wherever your finger lands, and plus I don’t have a globe, but I am considering moving my entire life to a place I’ve never been. Or maybe I was there once and didn’t dislike it.
So please, if anyone out there has been around, I must decide within the next six months what to do with the next couple of years. Please send suggestions. I have considered becoming a matador.
I’m taking a philosophy class in a last ditch effort to expand my mind before I leave school – perhaps for good. This is a chance for me to learn something about truth and the universe, which I probably need because I’ve spent the last four years watching movies and reading books and writing. So I sit in class and I try to listen because I want to do well, and I really do want to learn this stuff. However, I can’t stop myself from writing poems and synopses for future short stories.
I’ll be taking notes in my notebook, talking about Frege and probably Sartre at some point, and somehow, I’m not sure just how it happens, I start copying lines that I think sound particularly poetic. Or maybe an anecdote in one of the texts gives me a good idea for a story, and I have to write it down before I forget. And that is stupid because most of the ideas I write down never end up becoming a story anyway. So I’m pretty much just throwing away perfectly good knowledge to think about something that probably doesn’t matter.
When I start thinking this way, I look at pictures my mom sends me of my sisters’ kids.
That’s my dad with the kid on his shoulders. And those shoes on the kid’s feet are Timberlands.
I love this kid, but I watched Juno the other day and was reminded why I never, ever want to be pregnant. Yucky. He’s cute though, right?
I think I’ve fulfilled my updating obligations now.
One more thing: Yes, one of the grad schools to which I applied is the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. I will definitely not find out anything until at least late March, probably April. If I get in, I will post an ecstatic message here. If I think of it. You’ll probably hear about it somehow.

If anyone has any extra Christmas cookies they need to unload, you know, taking up valuable freezer space, I can help you out with that. I’m still driving my van, and it has plenty of room for boxes and boxes of cookies, if need be. I will be responsible for the picking up and the hauling and all that stuff. I’ll also work with you if you’ve got cake, pie, fudge, or something with potatoes in it.

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