Venting/Vending.

Now... it seems to me that there should be no reason for a vending machine to not take a quarter. A dollar bill? Certainly, if it's wet or old and dirty or all smushed up into a lump. But a quarter is just a quarter. It's metal, it weighs the same as every quarter ever, and if it gets dirty, it doesn't really matter.
So when the vending machine spit out my quarter over and over again, needless to say, I was befuddled. Why would it do that? What is the purpose of just... dropping it down the slot, back to me. Just take it! Take the quarter. Please.
And, in the end, regardless of the fact that there is not reason not to take my perfectly normal, even shiny looking quarter, fresh out of my pocket, the machine would not recognize that I had more than a dollar.
So, I did not get gummi worms at 1 in the morning, and instead I got skittles.
And maybe that is why the machine refused to take my quarter, because skittles are better anyway.

Lazy Sunday, Reasons why I can't write an essay.

I would like to be writing an essay right now, on Nietzsche and his ideas about self and society, but I do not have any real idea what his ideas were on anything, let alone the high flying topoics that I am supposed to analyze. "What are his opinions on human nature?" I don't even know my own opinions on human nature, how am I supposed to judge his, based on less than 60 pages of writing. This writing that I have was only from one period of his life, what if he changed his views? What of, after he saw the horse beaten and went insane, he decided that all of his views were wrong. What if he realized that the slave mentality was not a result of ressontemant, but was actually a god-given assignment of values. What if the fact that Nietzsche believed that God was dead and that we killed him was actually a conscious joke that God played on him, and once he went crazy, Nietzsche understood that and the two had a good laugh about it?
Not that I actually believe any of those things. In fact, about most of the tings I have read, I think Nietzsche was completely right, and brilliant for saying the things that he did. However, it does not make writing an essay any easier. How can I make an argument about anything that he said. There is no basis for research other than, 'He said, but I think," and that just feels wring. I guess I can do, "He says but Marx says," but I don't want to do that either.

Change?

It is time to stop being an elitist. People do not need to be perfect, I certainly am not. If removing myself step by step from the mindset of everyone needing to be perfect, and exactly to my standards means losing all of my friends at home, so be it. It is definitely time to move on.
All of the amazing people at Santa Cruz have changed my mind about all of the judging that has been going on in my life. That guy I used to work with was right, I do want to say,
"Stop judging, you judging judger!"
Why all this hate anyway? I could never be friends with Cameron, because he smokes! And that makes him bad! Can't take Jessica seriously because she listens to R&B music. Caitlin went to Waldorf school. She's probably to weird to handle, right?
I don't understand it anymore. Where did all this come from? I know, through my many hours of careful self analysis that there are so many things that are wrong with me, I am in no place to be calling anyone out on anything. Life is so uninteresting if everyone has the same flaws that I do. I know what that is about. I think it will be much more fun to find out about everybody else's.

This morning

The sky is blue, what I can see of it through the slats in the blinds over the little window off the rec room. It is 8:30 on a Saturday morning. I would be surprised to be awake and about this early, except for the fact that I have been in this dreary room since 7. The novelty has worn off.
This is a marvelous time to be awake. The whole campus is sleeping, and it is perfectly brisk outside. When I walked, slightly too quickly from Sam's room this morning, in an attempt to get home and sleep for several more hours, I noticed that the sky was like a watercolor. This is interesting by itself, but the part that really struck me was that the watercolor began right at the edge of the field, and unless my memory escapes me, there is a whole city after that field, and then a bay and after that a peninsula. So it was not merely pink and purple strokes in the morning sky, that was genuine cotton candy fog.
I do not like sleeping in beds that do not belong to me. It doesn't have to be anything special, but for me to get a good night's sleep I need to be the primary owner of the bed. I need the autonomy to roll over and to get comfortable any way that I can. And I need to be allowed to throw off the covers or wrap them entirely around my body, or, failing that, huddle next to the nice cool wall to regulate my body temperature back down to something below boiling.
I guess, the point that I am trying to make here, at 8:30 in the morning, in the dirty, dark room off the grungy little rec room is that I did not get a good night's sleep, or really a night's sleep at all, and that I really wish I had. Because this morning was beautiful, but if I could trade the sight of it for 5 hours in my nice cool sheets, I definitely would. And if there was a way of getting into my building without keys when everyone is asleep, well, I would do that too.