A Quick One

“You ready to go?” Good Looking asks.

“Actually, I feel really gross right now,” I tell him.  ”I’d like to take a shower first, but I don’t think I have enough time.”

“What are you talking about?  Just take a quick one.”

I try to explain to him that taking quick showers here in college is simply not an easy task for me.  He doesn’t seem to understand, though, and urges me to go take a quick one.  Forty five minutes later, I return to his room, finally ready to go.

Why is it so difficult to take a quick shower here in college, you might ask.  Well, have no fear because of course I will explain.  You see there are a few things I have to do in order to prepare for the shower.  I must first put on my robe because walking around naked in a college apartment is simply unacceptable.  Then I must also strip my hands of their seven rings, and my right wrist of its hair rubber bands.  After this, I have to brush all the knots out of my hair so that I can finally get into the shower.

However, I have to wait a minute or two for the water to actually get to the proper temperature.  It’s awful to get into a shower that’s too hot or too cold.  So now that I’m finally in the shower, there are a few obstacles I run across.  You see the shower head in my shower shoots out multiple streams of water in all different directions, rather than just one: at me.  So in an attempt to wet my hair and my body, I have to find the spot in the array of streams that is spraying the most water at any given time.

Then comes the shampoo.  While the shampoo is in my hair, I usually like to shave under my arms.  However, in order to keep the shampoo from washing out of my hair, I have to dodge the stray streams.  But when it finally actually is time to wash the shampoo out, I have to walk around the shower to find that area that shoots the most water into one direction.  Then comes time for the conditioner.  I put that in my hair and then while once again attempting to avoid the stray streams, I soap up my body and shave my legs.  Typically the shaving cream ends up running down my legs, though, because there is no one spot in the shower where water is not being sprayed.  It’s impossible to escape it and yet impossible to find it.

Finally, it’s time to turn the shower off and just hope that in all the craze, my body and hair have been properly washed.  So now it’s time to towel off.  Well, let me give you a word of advice.  When buying new bath towels, do NOT under ANY circumstances go for the biggest, softest, fluffiest bath towels you can find.  I made that mistake and now I’m paying for it.  It seems that those towels would simply be Heaven to dry off with, but no, my friend, I assure you, they are not.  You see, the issue is that they don’t actually dry your body.  I’m forced to use one towel for my hair and another for my body, and even still, my robe has to finish off the towel’s job after it’s done.

Then once I’m finally as dry as I can possibly be, I have to dry my hair.  I would leave it wet, but when I do that, my bangs end up flipping out from head in all directions, much like the water streams from the shower head.  And this just looks silly on me, so I have to dry my bangs straight.  And while I’m at it, I may as well dry the rest too, right?

Then it’s time to put on the clothes, the deodorant, the rings, and the hair rubber bands.  And then FINALLY, I am ready to go, assuming I need no makeup.

So, no, it is not possible for me to take “a quick one” here at UCF!

Instead of Studying…

Finals week is just around the corner.  In fact, it begins tomorrow.  But at the moment, I simply cannot bring myself to study, so I thought I’d come write on here instead since it’s been a few days.

You can’t blame me for not being able to study though.  There are many things keeping me from doing so.  The extremely loud music coming from Light Up UCF is one of them.  You’d think the university would have enough decency to keep the volume down while students are trying to study for the exams that THEY are making us take.  But apparently the university does not care and wants all of us Tower Residents to fail our finals.  I’ll show them!!

So what does one do while attempting to evade studying?  Well my roommate has been cleaning anything and everything she can in order to avoid studying.  I certainly will not complain if she’s keeping this apartment clean of course!  Who needs studying?  Let’s clean!

Browsing the internet is also a fun way to avoid studying.  I have an array of different websites bookmarked on my toolbar that I check every day, but it seems that when I have studying or homework to do, I tend to check those website multiple times a day.  

First, there’s Facebook.  This is the standard.  If there’s nothing else to do and nothing interesting on any of the other websites, Facebook never fails.  You can always find something to do, like searching through the new bumper stickers.  For some reason, I always seem to receive more bumper stickers and notifications that I’ve been compared to my friends around midterm and final times.

Then, of course, I check my mail.  Now, I can’t honestly say I know why I check my mail because in all honesty, it doesn’t make much sense for me to do so.  You see, with the iPhone, I receive new mail on my phone the second it is sent.  So when I check my gmail account, I know I’ll have no new mail.  But for some reason, I always hope…

Then there is IMDb.  There’s only so much you can do on IMDb, though.  It’s always fun to check the daily poll, trivia, and quote, but beyond that, what else is there to do?  I suppose you could go look up random movies, see what your favorite actor is working on next.  But IMDb is only good for so much entertainment.

That’s when you move on to people.com and hope that they’ve updated with some new story about a celebrity’s heartache or misfortune.  I know some people will think less of me delving into the lives of celebrities, but don’t judge me!  It’s been an addiction since high school, when I checked it every five seconds on my laptop in order to avoid listening to what the teacher had to say.

After People comes firstshowing.net.  This website is good for all the latest movie news.  You can view the latest trailers, read the latest movie reviews, and see what crazy ideas different directors are coming up with.  Or, you can learn as I recently did, that the director of the Twilight series was recently fired.  Tragedy!  Like People, however, you must simply hope when clicking on the link in the bookmark toolbar that they’ve updated since the last time you’ve checked.  Of course, around finals time, it’s difficult for them to update every five minutes in order to satisfy me.

Next, there is Digg, which can provide hours of entertainment.  Digg can be comical, interesting, even educational!  You see, users submit different websites or blog articles, and other Digg users vote on them.  If a website gets enough votes it makes it to the front page, which is updated quite often with a new random, obscure article for you to read.  I don’t read all the articles, of course — only the ones that look interesting or funny, like “Top 10 Crazy Cults” or “Are you a Facebook addict?”  Of course I had to check the second one!

Once I’ve finished with all of those exciting website, I inevitably end up, but I’m often greeted by disappointing statistics.  Congratulations, Jamie, you’ve had three people visit your blog today.  What?  Seriously?  Three people?  I knew everyone was lying to me!  Saying, oh I love your blog!  You write so well.  BAH!  How would you know if you don’t even check it?!  Sometimes, I’m pleasantly surprised and end up with about 15 viewers a day.  Sadly, those are the good days…

The Alienist and The Angel of Darkness

Father has urged me, as a film major, to write movie reviews on here.  And while I may, in fact, do that in the future, today I will take the opportunity to write a book review instead.  Actually, I will write two book reviews, combined into one.  The first book is entitled The Alienist and the second The Angel of Darkness, both written by the amazing author Caleb Carr.  The Angel of Darkness is a sort of sequel to the first novel, but in a very different sort of way.  It is only a sequel in the sense that both novels contain the exact same characters, but very few of the events of the former novel carry into to the latter.

Each book contains a different murder mystery case in which the characters of the novel work together to solve them.  The novels are both set in New York City in the 1890’s, a time when telephones were still a commodity and horse-drawn carriages were used instead of cars.  Caleb Carr brilliantly incorporates true American history into the novels along with his fictitious characters.  He writes about Theodore Roosevelt at a time when he was the chief of police for New York City and a mere secretary in the Navy.  The famous lawyer Clarence Darrow is also incorporated into the second novel.

Each of the characters seems to represent a different group or stereotype of the time period.  The narrator of the first novel is named John Shuyler Moore, a journalist for the prestigious New York Times.  In the novels, he serves to create publicity through the media.  From a novelist’s perspective, he is also the “dumb one” who has to have everything further explained to him.  Thus, he is a tool that Carr uses to explain things to the reader.

Dr. Laszlo Kreizler is the German alienist (psychologist) who heads an institute where he works with troubled children.  Kreizler is the brain of the group and a forerunner in the psychological field, developing new methods of treating troubled children and new ideas about why those children are the way they are.  He is also the one with all the money, as his family was quite rich, so he frequently treats the rest of the gang to dinner, where they discuss the details of the case.  Throughout the novels, Kriezler mentions the work of his esteemed colleagues, such as Freud and Pavlov.  This is another example of Carr’s brilliant incorporation of true history into his fictitious world.

Dr. Kreizler employs three servants, one of which narrates the second novel.  Stevie Taggert comes from the streets and provides the criminal mindset for the group.  At only 15 years old, he was once on his own in the streets of New York City, left to protect himself with his weapon of choice, giving him the nickname “Stevepipe.”  The doctor, however, rescued Stevie, providing him with a home and a good education in exchange for a bit of work such as driving the carriage.

Cyrus Montrose is another employee of Kreizler’s.  He is a large, full-grown black man, who sometimes serves as protector of the group.  Dr. Kreizler saved Cyrus as well.

Mary Palmer is the maid for Dr. Kreizler, but many things are revealed about her in the first novel, so I shall not discuss her here.  You must find out about her for yourselves.

Then, there are the Jewish Detective Sergeants Lucius and Marcus Isaacson.  They are employed for the New York City police, hired by Teddy Roosevelt himself.  These two brothers are the forerunners in the forensics field.  They employ the use of all the latest technologies such as fingerprinting, photography, and chemical tests.  Because of this, they are not very well liked by the rest of the police force, but they get the job done better than any cop can.

The final member of the group is Miss Sara Howard.  She provides the female insight for the male-dominated gang.  She is also a firm believer and supporter of women’s rights.  Unmarried, Miss Howard (as she is called by Stevie Taggert), does all she can to break through that metaphorical glass ceiling.  She carries a .45 caliber Colt with her everywhere she goes and believes that a shot a to any man’s leg will set him straight.

Overall, these two books are brilliant as well as brilliantly written, and I highly suggest them to everyone.  Though they are quite long and can take a while to get through, I assure you that they are both worth your time.