Reason Number 10: No Walk Through Columbia's Gates Anita Baker Can't Fix

I haven't updated this blog in at least three months, and there are a few reasons for this (none of which have anything to do with not killing yourself, especially):

1. I've been avoiding all things related to word-production in preparation for (avoidance of) the inevitable, looming beginning of graduate school (September 2nd).

2. I've been planning my wedding, geez.

3. I'm bad at commitments (which, fortunately, doesn't apply to aforementioned soon-to-be-husband Ryan C. Daley).

4. Vodka.

Getting your MFA in Creative Writing at Columbia University is pretty much everything I anticipated it would be, and then some.  Read: reading, EXTREMEXXXX DEADLINEZ, verbosity, people trying to impress other people, not being able to get into a Spanish class because of the Core Curriculum requiring every undergraduate to take a foreign language, and, of course, opportunities galore.  Joking aside, being back at school is better than the best pumpkin muffins or warmed Oban with a cinnamon stick--plunk--in a mug with the cutest kitten ever painted on the side, and is pretty much the opposite of genocide set to Fall Out Boy.  Even when I feel like I'm going to burst into flames/hide in New Jersey/not be able to read every single book I'm assigned because there are so many books/workshop writing samples I'm assigned to read I'm still ridiculously happy in that stupid, silly, wildflower-twirling-scattering way you are when you've won your first game of Candy Land.

In preparation for classes full of people who are smart smart smart, I like to walk through THE GATES after climbing the six thousand flights of stairs that barricade Columbia from Harlem while listening to the stupidest, worst song possible.  Each day I challenge myself to find something more heinously awful than the day before.  The first day it was an accident--I was listening to a Taylor Dayne song (***NOT an accident***) and afterwards, "Higher Love" by Steve Winwood shuffled to the forefront of my ipod from the murky backwater encompassed by the Top 100 Hits of every year ever with which my dear friend Jay provided me, and I was like "It's totally awesome that I'm listening to 'Higher Love' by Steve Winwood in a giant crowd of ivy league students heading to their Machievellian Theories of Darwinian Post-Structuralist Proto-Punk seminar." But then it's like, c'mon I can do better than that.  Steve Winwood isn't nearly as bad as, say, Anita Baker, who I listen to regularly while walking past places like MoMA.

I spend many days wondering what is as soul-crushingly dull as an Anita Baker classic?  Honestly.  Except maybe "Pink Cadillac," possibly (maybe definitely) the worst song of all time, in all its forms (and there are many).  Oh shit, and Lenny Kravitz.  AGDSLKF and Melissa Etheridge!  I have a whole two years to walk through the library stacks while vomiting/laughing to "Come to My Window" before settling down to some good, healthy literature.