Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

Jeremiah and I rented the Lost House some time in 2001 because we wanted a bigger place that would hold us and our friend, Matt. The place was too big, so we had to get a roommate. Eventually, Jeremiah's cousin moved into a room in our house that was not that bigger than a closet. Another guy  moved in upstairs with Mat, and maybe I will discuss him in more detail in a future post. Needless to say the guy was a mess and caused us more stress than you could ever imagine.  We decorated the house in Punk and Industrial Chic, taping flyers, newspaper clippings, and comic strips to the dirty walls. It soon resembled  a larger version of my bedroom in high school. Much to my mother's dismay, I covered the walls of my room with clippings and pictures from floor to ceiling, tacking up whatever took my fancy from punk ads to clippings from old books. My room was on the second floor of the house, which earlier had been converted from an attic, so the lower half of the wall had pa...

I do not have any assignments related to Halloween this semester, but my Freshman Composition class has focused on folklore readings, including an examination of Henderson State University's "Legend of the Lady in Black." I was looking for articles on folklore on college campuses and included part of a chapter on college student folklore from Richard M. Dorson's 1959  American Folklore.  They were surprised by the legends about paper grading and class attendance. For example, many students believe in the fifteen-minute rule that you are excused if your professor shows up after the first fifteen minutes are over. I have never tested this one because I am usually prompt. I told them that I had often heard about the process of throwing tests and papers down the stairs and giving them grades based on how far the papers sailed when I was an undergraduate. The idea is that professors grade papers by tossing them down the stairs and determining grades based on their position...

I moved in that summer, not prepared for a hot, festering several months in a strange, small house that had seen its share of drunken, college parties. I moved in with three other guys who I had known awhile: Dave, Joe, and Jeremiah. We were a motley crew: a punk rock English major, a brusque music major, a science major, and an opinionated psychology major. I was the progressive English major that flirted with anarchism, like a less obnoxious version of Rik from The Young Ones . In some ways, we resembled that troupe, except with far less humor.   Joe was a more conservative psychology major who liked to argue. We were both from the same hometown and had honed our friendship as outsiders. Dave majored in teaching music; he was the authoritarian taskmaster that wanted to keep us in line. Jeremiah, the science major, added a new flavor to our little group of outsiders. We met Jeremiah when he took a room in the house the previous January. He and I would move into another house, T...

I missed working at the library for the last several years, so I plan on working here more this semester. I am still waiting to get my office on campus, so I am sequestered in the library, importing my classes into Canvas and revising my syllabi. Hopefully, I will be doing most of this in my office in the future because I am excited about doing research at the library again. The library is always quiet, and I love hunkering down between books, and working. The musty smell of the books, old wooden tables, brick walls, are like home to me. I have been working in school libraries for years, and I never get sick of it. However, sometimes I get too comfortable and dose off between the stacks.

The side streets are slick and worn as I walk daily to the college working on frustrations as old as time in holey shoes and slighted ambition My twisted ankle, my mucked up transmission tiny travesties leading to submission of mind, of thought, of body rot in flooded back alleys and musty university towns I walk past solemn green and dirty brick a facade thrown across the earth darkened windows hide secrets in the midst of wind-bent trees The fragile ecosystem of roadwork and wax shelters my way through the days past Sycamores and White Oaks unlit houses and the cries of feral cats

In my darkest days I tend to sleep a lot. Nap after nap comes in quick succession when turning off the world is as easy as clicking the light switch and settling into a light snooze. I have become reckless in my pursuit of sleep, searching for one long forgotten dream. Perhaps, I long for anything that will shut out the light. When I was a kid, I had a recurring dream filled with creepy witches and small children, rendered in cartoon detail. This brain animation came weekly for a period, then just stopped. I've never had it again. Could this be the dreamworld I seek? Or, perhaps, there is another world buried deep in my psyche, asking to be explored? I've never had another dream that beat on the doors so often as this one. Most dreams come once and never return. Dreams are always peopled with the strangest or most unexpected characters, random places from the past, and enough chicanery to make election year look like a triumph. Random classmates from grade school appear alo...