"Apocalypse Cow" was the name of a band in college. They had the best T-shirts ever.

So, today I took the GRE. 650 verbal, 540 math. Wanted to break 700 on the verbal, thought I had done that, then did okay on the math. . . then WHAM! second verbal section, right when i thought i was going home. Fucking killed me. I guess I failed to read the guidelines properly; I knew that there was a possibility of some heretofore unseen types of questions, but I had no idea that a whole section was going to be repeated. Oops. I finished the math, thinking I was done, and like i said WHAM! another verbal section. ouch. I think I messed up the 2nd one pretty bad, cuz my score was way lower than I expected, & i think the first verbals -- which had a "funny-format" question at the end -- were tossed. i swear, i actually clicked out of the first verbal section thinking that i had missed AT MOST two questions, with an outside chance at getting all of 'em right. Then I get a 650? Oh well. The average at NC State for grad students is 600, so I am 50 points above average -- which, you mathfuckers might note, is approximately  8.3333333333blahblahblahetc percent. which, i suppose, would relate to an 8% shift up in where i lie in the percentile rankings? maybe not, i guess nobody gets zeroes on the thing -- though there were some neanderthal looking people in there. plus, somebody complained that i was typing too loud & it was disturbing them. oh cry me a fucking spilt-milk parade. that's what the headphones were for, to block out noise; did the dude think that fucking radiohead was playing through them? plus, when the lady tapped on my shoulder to tell me to "keep it down on the keyboard" [not her exact words; exact words "some people are saying that the volume of your typing is bothering them. . . can you please type more quietly?" & i just nodded & went back to typing the same ol' way. . . wish i'd a had bill burroughs Underwood typewriter from "nekkid lunch" is that peter weller's best role ever or what?] right when she tapped on my i was writing. . . you guessed it, sentence five, paragraph one: the THESIS STATEMENT. . .

you can go here to find the possible topics. . . i went there monday, read four or five of them, & just started laughing at them. almost every other one -- & i knew i would get 2 to choose from -- was a joke. i actually said to anne curtis on the phone [as well to some other people, i'm sure i should be mentioning a dave here somewhere -- BTW, thanks to all for the pos comments & feedback & etc etc ya'll kept me sane] well i said to anne "there aint a question in the world that i can't relate to apocalypse now and/or (read: and) bob dylan in some way. so i stopped looking. again -- just for kicks -- click here to see the topics list. read the first two. then realize that no 2 is really a cut & dry one for me, i totally agree with it. it runs as follows, for you non-link-clickin peeple:

"Originality does not mean thinking something that was never thought before; it means putting old ideas together in new ways."

so, i wrote a 5 paragraph essay: intro, 3 topics, outro. wrote the outro first. then, for my 3 topics, i scribbled [in pencil, on pink paper, no pens because, as shoulder-tap lady told me earlier, pens could be used for things other than scratch-paper writing. . . ]

I. Intro

II. Coppola -- "The Godfather"

III. Bob Dylan

IV.  Steve Martin

V. Outro (agree)

in writing essay, i pointed out that godfather was a book first, plus the film is informed by all the gangster movies that came before it -- realized that the word "recombined" was gonna get used. then realized that Apocalypse Now is based on joseph conrad. . . came up with sentence "Coppola takes Conrad's 19th century novel of colonial Africa & sets it up as a post-colonial American political interventionist self-analysis." that should get me up there somewhere in the 5 range by itself. then decided to switch (III) and (IV) & wrote about steve, then bob, then finished with a messy conclusion that was comprised of beauteous repetitive linguistic tricks. quoted greil marcus ("the old, weird america") & bob himself ("something is happening here, but you don't know what it is")

can't write more now, back hurts sick of typing. will talk about AN Redux later.

Comments

[Ken]

Yer essay outlay is a freakin scream - I want to read that BAD. We need to get to gether & hang in, sometime.

Hail Eris
Ken