MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
20,22 April 1992
A journal entry for this evening. I hate Lansing. It is a boring city with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. I am terribly sick of this place and when I leave I hope to never return. Except that the filthy bastards at MSU may force me to come back for something. I don't know what that reason will be, but whatever it is, it will probably be something that they failed to do and blamed on me. Actually, it's 21:15, I don't know why my clock is off.
Around the turn of the decade I had an incredible urge to write, and write I did. I must have put out 500 pages worth of stuff in less than two months. Now, I just cannot do it. These last six weeks are just so annoying. Each day a new stupid thing comes up that I have to deal with in order to get my degree from this place. It is never something that will add to my knowledge base. It is always something like, "You didn't fill out this sheet of paper in 1987, so you're not going to graduate." Never mind that I never even heard of that piece of paper until that very moment. They could do that with anything they wanted to, and it seems like they are. "I never knew that there was such a piece of paper!" I protest. The retort that the responsibility of everything falls on the shoulders of the student. Fine, then what, exactly, is my academic advisor for? Obviously it is not to advise. Perhaps they should change his title to academic jeopardizer, that way he could continue doing what he is doing now, but be getting much closer to fulfilling the demands placed on him by his title.
I have absolutely no time to rest this term
because I am constantly taking this form to building A and have Ms. X put her John Hancock
on it so that I can photocopy it and staple it to form B which goes to The Office for
Stamping Co-ordinator only to find out when I get to that Office that the Stamping
Co-ordinator cannot stamp it until it has been spit on by Mother Theresa so off I go to
India and I have to bother Mother Theresa while she's in the hospital and hardly has any
spit left to spit on my form B with the photocopy of form A that was signed by Ms. X. So
Mother Theresa spits on it and tells me that every student has to go through all this and
I shouldn't get upset because it's a big university and, unfortunately, the university
needs a large trail of paperwork to make sure that everything is done properly, and she
sends me on my way. Then I get back to the Office for Stamping only to find that it's
12:15 and everyone is out to lunch so I sit in the hallway and read John Kenneth
Galbraith's The Affluent Society and listen to Thomas Dolby on my CD player until one
o'clock when my Stamping Co-ordinator comes back and calls Calcutta to make sure that I
didn't forge Mother Theresa's spit, finds out it is authentic, stamps my spit-laden form B
with the photocopy of form A with the J. Hancock of Ms. X, and tells me that I need to fax
sixteen notarized copies to every member of The U.S. Senate. So, I go to Kinko's and wait
in a two-block long line with the photocopier fumes doing permanent damage to my brain and
listening to Ryuichi Sakamoto on my CD player until I finally get to the fax machine and
lay out the three hundred dollar fee for the notary public and fax time and begin faxing
only to find that Senator Orrin Hatch's fax machine broke down and I would have to charter
a plan and fly to Provo, Utah, and give them to him in person while he was dedicating a
new shopping mall. I go back to the Stamping Co-ordinator and see if I can't get a waiver
because I really don't have time to get to Provo, after flying to Calcutta already that
day, at which the Stamping Co-ordinator cuts me with a broken razor blade and calls me a
fool. From there, bleeding, I go to charter the plane. The pilot is a homophobe and tells
me that I can't bleed in his plane because I might have AIDS, so i tell him I want to go
to Provo, Utah, which satisfies him and he flies me there and I give Senator Hatch my
paperwork and tell him I think he's one of the most godawful people on the face of the
earth and fly back to Lansing to take the copy of form A with the signature of Ms. X, the
copy of form B with the signature of Ms. X, the spit of Mother Theresa, and the Stamping
Co-ordinator's stamp, the fax log, the receipt from the notary public, the ticket stubs
from the Calcutta flight, the receipt from the charter plane, and a smile for knowing that
I road the hellish waves of the Michigan State University Bureaucracy. He takes the forms
from me and says, "Thanks, but you know you could have just send these forms through
campus mail. It would have been much easier."
Annoyed, but relieved for getting all that
out of the way with, I go home and do my 16 hours of homework and go to bed. The next day,
after class, my advisor approaches me in the hall and says, "Say, did you know that
you never filled out form X in 1988? You can't graduate." "Well, " I reply,
"I can just send it through campus mail, right?"
"Oh no, not a form X, they're too complex." He grins maniacally and sparks fly from his eyes. "Now listen carefully, you need to take this form to the Office of Losing Forms, they will take the form and lose it. Then in three weeks or more they will notify you that they have successfully lost your form, when that happens come back to me and I will give you another form X. You must have every instructor on campus sign form X at that time, except the professors in Human Ecology who will have to sign it two and a half times sixteen days after the second anniversary of the first form X being lost by the Office of Losing Things. After all of the professors have signed it, take it to a professor that hates your guts and have that professor write you a letter stating what kind of student that professor thinks you are. Then send that letter to every graduate school in the country, and of course give me a copy. Then go to the Stamping Office and have the Stamping Co-ordinator spit on Mother Theresa..."
What sucks the most about this whole thing
is that I always felt like I had to physically and forcefully take my diploma from the
University. I always felt like my department was cool and that they would work with me.
Now it feels like I have to physically and forcefully take my diploma from my department
and that is just terrible. It is impossible for me to relate my disappointment. Initially,
I was looking forward to getting my degree so I could get out of Michigan and start my
Master's work. Now I want to get away from literally everything that is in this state.
I HATE IT HERE AND I HATE WHAT IT IS DOING TO ME!!!!!!!!!!!AAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!!
I'm sure that most of you can relate. Especially poor David Fisher who is stuck in a
separate but equal hell (a Jim Crow hell?) in Lincoln, Nebraska. Home of Kay Orr who gets
lots of lusty attention from George Bush, current President and Simp Symbol for the US of
A.
And as my father used to say to me in the Seventies, "What are you doing out of bed?"
This issue seems to be evolving into a series of pseudo-journal entries which several people have said that they like me writing anyway, so I guess it can't hurt too much. It's Earth Day today. Instead of writing the 15+ page paper I am supposed to write for my Advanced Urban Design class, Iam going to go help produce some music. I spent all last night doing it, so why not blow today on it as well?
It is very strange producing music that A)
I am not instrumental in creating as in the past and B) is not related to Corey in some
way. Of course, at the same time producing this music is incredibly therapeutic for me. In
fact, it is likely that if this activity were any other than what it is I would be writing
my paper today. As could be expected, the conditions under which the production is being
carried out are more than primitive. Recording stuff with Corey over the years prepared me
well (surprisingly so!) for it. Last night's stuff was pretty easy. Today I think will be
more of a challenge, or more annoying at least.
But today is Sunday the 22nd. Earth Day. Everybody will be conscious of the Earth for one day. Everyone right now is at some church saying, "Hey, god, thanks for the Earth. We're trying to keep it clean. Sorry we're not too good at it. But you're all-forgiving. Why not give us another? We sure like you god." And so forth. As long as the god-myth exists it will be impossible for anyone to really take the ecological soundness of the planet seriously. As long as everyone thinks that god can just whip up "the heavens and the earth" in a day, or a whole systems of existence in a week, there is really no point in breaking your back to save the planet. If the human-child's toy-earth is broken the god-daddy can fix it.
BVI
Our Founder