this page is not my actual journal, but just a few excerpts and prolific thoughts that i have had in recent months. some are more prolific than others.
We live now in the days of numbers: $8.75 to see a movie, 9-11 is the reason, 77% approval, 7-News thinks it�s all right, never 4get 2 write 2 me, working 9 to 5, the 57 bus takes me to your house, the 6-day war left 6,000 dead or more, I wear a size 32 men�s shirt, there was 48 hours notice, I have a 3.89 GPA and Boston Anarchists Against Militarism meet at 7:00 on the 1st Tuesday of every month.
Perhaps the only official use of letters remaining is on the SATs,
a) stupid shallow answer number 1
b) stupid shallow answer number 2
c) stupid shallow answer number 3
d) all of the above
Yet even with that, you will receive a registration number, 923455-22, and a neatly numerical score of seven-hundred-and-thirty for the verbal section and six-hundred-and-eighty for the mathematical section. Clearly the student has not allotted his time properly as his verbal score was numerically higher than his mathematical score�what a useless skill to have.
There was a day when letters bore far more importance. If I got an E in math on my report card, my dad would give me a dollar. Later, if I got an A, I wouldn�t get a dollar, but it was still nice. Now all of our letters represent numbers, instead of the other way around. We sang the ABC�s and watched PBS and listened to NPR and were afraid of the KGB and the USSR and the IRA, instead of the Iraqi 52 most-wanted and the #1 oil producer in the world.
I firmly believe that if �twenty-six� had only one syllable, our school-children would be singing the 1 thru 26�s to the tune of twinkle twinkle little star. If they could do it, I�m sure the State would abolish letters all together. They create too many problems, interrupt the system far too much, and give far more freedom that is convenient. A ballot with nice, numerical, ovals to fill in is lovely, manageable. Imagine if the voting public were to instead use letters, and each person wrote what they looked for in a leader and the State had then to find the very person meeting all the demands. The nation would crumble to a state of anarchy, as they say. Oh the horror.
I am still afraid of letters. FBI CIA NSA CNN NBC FOX ALA NYPD GDP GOP NAFTA IMF WTO ALCA FTAA FCC IRS CBS ABC. Acronyms are merely attempts at turning words into numbers, as poems are attempts at turning thoughts into ideas.
Because Lava is the land trying to be water.
Snow is just the water trying to be land.
Clouds are just the sky, trying to be mountains.
Mountains are just the Earth, trying desperately to fly.
I nearly became a number myself. I�m going to the �number 2� college in America. I�ve sold $1275 worth of knives. I got a 96 on my last Spanish test. Today isn�t Monday, it�s 5-26-03. But the girl, you, smiled sadly at the numbers, and warmed to my letters. I found my words again. My songs once again filled with images, the ink once again flowed from my pen to saturate pages of Tibetan paper. I awoke and spoke.
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we will have to bring it with us."
And the historians--and kids writing comparative English papers (which are bullshit by the way)--will say, "As a young man he struggled with issues of identity and motivation. His overuse of dashes and parentheses display his self-doubt. He is consistently self-aware of a non-existant audience to which he writes in his journal. He shows this awareness clearly in his journal entry written on 12-05-2003, which reads:
'And the historians--and kids writing comparative
English papers, (which are bullshit by the way)--will
say, "As a young man, he struggled with issues of
identity and motivation. His overuse of dashes and
parentheses displays his self-doubt. He is consistently
self-aware of a non-existent audience to which he
writes in his journal. He shows this awareness clearly
in his journal entry written on 12-05-2003, which
reads: "And the...""
They will have missed the point--I think.
that's never stopped a man from worrying."