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Do you believe in precognition? Premonitions, extra-sensory perception, whatever you call it? No? Me neither, or at least I didn’t think it was real. Well, I still don’t really, but I’m not quite ready to accept the implications of the contrary. Not that the implications of it’s existence are much better from an epistemological standpoint -deterministic ordering of the universe, causality and what not – but from a strictly personal perspective, its not really ideal if it isn’t possible. Then again, nothing about these last few months- god has it really been that long? It’s weird how time gets dissociated from its meaning in the absence of external cues and when the context for that meaning is removed. Or is it the other way around? I guess if I had the foresight I could’ve tracked the lunar cycles or whatever. Or you know, I could just look at the bottom right corner of my screen: 2/9/20XX … 4 months and 5 days.

Shit, what was I talking about? Sorry it’s getting stuffy in here again.

Click. An electric motor buzzes and the window rolls down, allowing a rush of cool air in.

Right, precognition. Have you ever just gotten an eerie, ominous, or just plain bad feeling about something? Imagine yourself walking past an alley. Not even a dark alley. Its broad daylight, in a nice part of town. You’ve walked passed it dozens, hundreds of times before. Even cut through it on your way to the convenience store a block over. But this time, something is different. Not quite right. The hairs on the back of your neck stand up, your stomach starts to churn, and your brain starts to tingle like someone has opened up your skull and started pouring cold sand on it.

You close your eyes, try to dismiss it. An image flashes in your mind. It doesn’t even stay long enough for you to register what it was you saw, but a chill shoots down your spine, and a faint nausea creeps up into your throat and you are overcome by the desire, the need, to get out of there as quickly as possible.

Except imagine now that you can’t get out of there. You’re in your car and the alley that you pass by and through daily is the rest of the world. Imagine answering the phone and telling your boss that’s why you didn’t show up to work for the first time since you took the job three years ago. Or telling your father that’s why you won’t be making it to that fundraiser dinner next week, despite the effort he went through setting you up to go with the daughter of some congressman or district court judge or whatever important person it was.

If you’ve been following along, you should now be imagining yourself as me. The twenty-five year old, _______ educated, only child of the Representative for the State of Delaware in the United States House of Representatives, formerly employed as a _______ at ______ and possesed of the irrational notion that if you get out of your car, the world will end.

You don’t know how it happened. Or maybe you do. It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to know. I don’t need to know. Perhaps your girlfriend or your mom or your dog got bit during the outbreak. Maybe, you were walking through a cemetery late one night, and a hand reached up and grabbed your ankle and you decided to take it and the body attached to it home. Possibly, you and some friends were stupid unfortunate enough to be reading by candle light from some dusty old book, bound in what you hope was just leather, and you “accidentally” brought the corpse that you just happened to have lying around back to life. Like I said, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that it, whatever it is, and however it got there, is there and you don’t know what to do with it. Don’t worry, calm down. You’ve come to the right place. I’m a professional.

…

Sort of.

I wasn’t sure how he got there. Perhaps he had mistaken himself for a period (one whom was perhaps made fun of by periods for having that little tail).

He looked a little lost, so I took him in and named him Virgil.

He doesn’t say much of anything, but he helps me with things like making lists, and slowing me down when I get to rambling.

He’s sleeping right now, and I like to think that he is dreaming of one day becoming a semicolon, valiantly connecting two independent clauses, but I know he is content with who he is- Virgil, my pet comma.

• A service similar to Netflix for books. Yes I know there are public libraries, but their collections are far from exhaustive and I dare say most don’t offer home delivery, or a system where it suggests other books: “Based on your interest in ____, we suggest the following:”.

Here’s what you’ve missed:

Tomorrow is my 23rd birthday, awesome.
I had been riding solo for about a year, but not anymore, me and Jessica are back together, and I couldn’t be happier.

I’ve decided that I’m going to spend the Fall 2011 semester abroad at Oxford (yes, that Oxford). Details forthcoming.

I am also officially the Vice President of the the Beta Nu Chapter of Tau Sigma (GMU’s chapter of the National Transfer Student Honor Society), currently involved in Phi Alpha Delta’s (pre-law fraternity) Mock Trial team.

Anyway, that’s about it. Short and sweet. I’ll add more later when I feel inspired, but right now I’ve gotta get back to this Econometrics midterm.

My biggest difficulty here will be structuring his novel (which is embedded in my novel about him writing it, further complicating things). The central threads will be the intertwining pasts leading up from the truth of his life and the truth of his life as she knows it, to the present. I don’t know how to make it work yet, since he will want to disguise the truth she doesn’t know (which she will obviously recognize when the only point of comparision is the truth as she knows it). I just know that size and structure will be an issue, there is so much I want to do with it, structural experimentation, exploration of the concepts of infinite pasts and futures, the nature of truth (subjective, objective, irrelevant altogether?), Its going to be a massive project, since I REALLY want to finish this one (something I have yet to do with any of my stories), and I want to get it right…

Here are 5 songs, you’ll never hear these people cover, and probably for good reason:

Number 5: Kanye West

Covering Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain”

Its a little weak, but he probably does think that song’s about him…

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Number 4:  Marilyn Manson

Covering the “Here Comes the Sun” by The Beatles…Seriously, that dude needs a tan.

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Number 3: Susan Boyle

Covering “Crazy On You” by Heart. Pretty self-explanatory…I kinda feel bad for her though. She’d do the song justice though.

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Number 2:

Adam Lambert

Covering Shania Twain’s “Man! I Feel Like a Woman”. Either that or “Dude Looks Like a Lady” by Aerosmith…either way, do I really need to say anything…I mean, seriously…

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And Finally,

Number 1: Rihanna

Covering Britney Spear’s “Hit Me Baby One More Time”. Tasteles? maybe. Funny? Only if you have a twisted sense of humor. Of the songs on this list, this is the one you’re least likely to ever hear, which is why its Number 1.

5) A Tow Truck

The serial car thief’s equivalent of wishing for more wishes. Thats why there are no awesome Mercedes, BMWs, Porsches, etc on this list.

Sucks to be this guy

4) A Lifted DeLorean

Where we're going, we don't need roads...

88 miles per hour, a nuclear reactor providing 1.21 gigawatts of power…and 48″ monster truck tires…Doc would be proud. And if you come across any Libyan terrorists in a VW Bus, you can run their murderous asses over.

3. M1 Abrams Main Battle tank

Nothing says “You’ll never take me alive coppers!” like 67 tons of guns and armor rolling down the highway. The only two problems; Sneaking onto a military base and convincing them to let you take one for a “test drive”. Secondly, if playing Grand Theft Auto has taught me anything, its that cops don’t have much trouble climbing on from behind and pulling your soon to be incarcerated ass out.

2. The Magic School Bus

Traveling into space, meeting dinosaurs, and shrinking down and going into Ralphie’s body to learn about germs, the magic school bus is guaranteed to make your next field trip the BEST ever. Which is why I want it…

1. NASA’s Crawler-Transporter (Space Shuttle included)

The 2400 Ton Crawler-Transport is used by NASA to take the Space Shuttle 3.5 miles from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the Launch pad, a trip taking on average 5 hours. To be sure, the top speed of 1 mph loaded wouldn’t make much for a high-speed chase, but when you’re in prison and your cell mate asks you what you’re in for, you can proudly say “I stole a frickin’ space shuttle man”.

To the Moon!

My brother got pulled over the other day. It turned out his license was suspended, so his truck was towed and he can’t drive. Since everyone else is working, it falls upon me to drive him to work, almost an hour away, in Chesapeake, at 10 in the morning. I should probably be asleep, but I fail at that. Anyway, while I’m there I need to stop by my old employer and either see if they need me to work again, or turn in my uniform and get my deposit back, that’ll be like $100 or so, cha-ching. Also, I can’t find my tax information from when I worked there, and I need to know how much I made from them to finish my FAFSA (I know I’m way behind on that, don’t judge me). Hopefully they’ll have that info. Then I get home, do the FAFSA and study for my Math Placement test. On a side note, I still can’t believe I missed passing it by one point last time. Anyway, after that I’ll start working on figuring out what clothes, books, etc I’ll be taking with me to school…and my brain just died. I’ll pick up my brother from work around 7 come home have dinner. Hopefully everything will work out swell and I’ll feel accomplished. That’s all I’ve got, goodnight.