I’m bored of cheap & cheerful – I want expensive sadness

So finally the last semester is here – seven years of school almost done, which sounds so long and complete at the same time – a complete illusion, since all that time has left me with the deep-laid suspicion that people have been wasting my time bullshitting me for something like 6 years of that time, and therefore I am woefully underprepared for the pretense of professionalism I’ll have to adopt soon.

My internet collapsed in patents today while the teacher was reading through the syllabus (who DOES that in law school??) and I started thinking of all the classes I’ve been in that I either a)remember zero about and am always startled to see them on my syllabus b)HATED c)took because the school made me. I stopped thinking about it almost immediately because the list was so dismal.  There’s like one year in all my education that I actually was able to do what I wanted, and even that was polluted by the stupid honors thesis requirement.  Clearly I should have gone to Brown and written my own degree.

As for the non-school aspects of this last semester, there’s a bit more of a dismal feeling to everything, I think.  “Being lonely is a habit, just like smoking or drugs” – I’ve put it back on and slipped into the suspended feeling that characterized last semester.  I feel incredible ennui, which always happens after I visit Adam, but this time it’s almost as bad as the first few weeks of the fall semester – I mean, I haven’t washed my hair in four days or unpacked my suitcase or really done anything except eat lots of cheese and take inconveniently timed naps.  The most active thing I did today was fill the bathtub with an inch of water to make the cat stop pooping in it (however, that did require great sneakiness of mind, as well as the courage to trust that she won’t start shitting directly on the floor now, so I’m counting it as an accomplishment).

It’s nothing but time and a face that you lose – I chose to feel it and you couldn’t choose

I cannot live without you Shit, turns out I can. So much for my previous assumption that I can have James Blunt on ALL my goodbye playlists regardless of who the subject is. Either I’ve outgrown James Blunt or alas, my love is too frail for the absolute demands of soppy lyrics.

I’m genuinely concerned about what this whole “getting older” thing is doing to my perceptions of my ability to love, though. The last time I believed myself to be genuinely, desperately, hopelessly in love, only to be tragically torn from my dear love through the demands of those old enemies of the heart, time and space, my mental situation was rather different. I have about one million diary entries written in progressively more wine-sodden handwriting, quoting song lyrics and passionately avowing never, never to forsake the beloved and that I was dead I tell you dead to the things of this life. I believe there may have been occasions when my high-flown yearnings collided bizarrely with trivialities of life, as when I made mostly-vodka white russians one saturday and, in between writing incoherent love into my journal, watched a Roseanne marathon and got a little sniffly every time John Goodman did something charming. Also I napped a lot, and didn’t read contracts, and generally was miserable. (It should be noted that during this exact same period I also carried on a long relationship with someone I didn’t give a damn about, who I never wrote about or cried over. So maybe I’ve actually always been kind of weirdly faithless and this entry is irrelevant. However, since all internal musings are ultimately rather irrelevant, I believe I’ll push on with my main point regardless).

I did live, though, and maybe that was the part where I started to grow up a bit. Maybe Time ultimately proved that it could make all my feelings seem absurd in the end, because between one boozy journal entry and the next, things sort of changed abruptly and suddenly, there was Adam. And now, Adam has been turned into a hypothetically existing entity in my mind and I am having to deal with questions both of absence and of the lengths to which I will go to regain presence, but I am not really in agony about it. I mean, I sort of am, as I try to figure out whether certain paths will be corridors of irrevocable fuck-up-ery. But mostly, I’ve made my decision (or rather, the economy has made my decision) to go back to Phoenix, meaning that my future with this man who I supposedly (and I think really) adore is wholly uncertain. Yet I am really very confident in my ability to keep on living, even living very happily; paradoxically, my confidence in the continuation of my life is severely undercutting my confidence in the continuation of my love.

I visited for the first time last weekend, and I was very happy to see him, and I was tremendously morose as I left. But I did not feel as though my very existence as myself was going to be somehow depleted or even terminated, and I guess I am afraid that I am turning into the reasonable person that I have mostly pretended to be. But I don’t know how to love in a reasonable way, because the essence of what I have always understood to be love is so wholly unreasonable. The  very definitions that appeal to me, after all, are from old crazy Slavoj with his “you choose THIS ONE and let the rest of the world go to hell; thus in the very basic sense love is evil” and his comparisons of the fetishization of the beloved with the fetishization of Christ. (I was in agony for months because I was not sure that I would choose Adam and let everyone in the world die. I finally put aside the question and tried to change that definition in my mind. Obviously to great success).

If he isn’t my life, my air, my soul, and all these other ultra hokey definitions, what am I to do? How do I gauge if it’s even worth changing the pattern of my life for, when I secretly don’t believe that the question would arise ever if it were for real?

And yet, and yet, in the honest parts of my soul I have to admit the following devastating truths: first, in this alleged experience of utter love, I was derailed by questions like “would it be weird to talk about it?;” second, I had this whole paralell relationship apparently without problem, so maybe I’m just one of those sketchy people who likes to have one physical thing and one mental thing because I get off on the unreachability which is wholly unfair to everyone and kind of gross; third, Adam is the first person where all the elements have been in place for a proper relationship (physical presence, acknowleged and reciprocated interest, sex, lack of external opposition) so possibly all my other experiences were generally invalid because of the heavy fantasy element.

Ithink that I just need to find some sort of emotional thesis that helps me navigate these two conflicting statements of my feelings: I totally need to move to California because I dearly love Adam and to lose him would be quite a blow; or, I am mostly rather enjoying the possibilities and mysteries of my life ahead and can feel almost as indifferent to the existence of Adam as if I never had met him. Hopefully, though, as I get to this, whatever truth I face as I sort through things doesn’t involve some sort of depressing statement like “you have never and will never properly love someone.”

I’ve been working on a cocktail called Grounds for Divorce

So, like, end of the summer, huh? Every one of my days was exactly the same so it went by really fast. I griped about getting up early, groped about in my messy room for poorly-fitted “professional” clothing, avoided two homeless people while I went to get a macchiato and a pastry, sat up in my office with a legit lexis window up, a illicit westlaw window up, and an internet window up, flicking boredly from stupid blog to stupid lexis and so forth. Then I went to lunch with some lawyer or maybe two and told the same damn stories about myself, choking myself with how insufferable I really am. Then I got back and worried about lots of things — how much money I was spending, how awful next year would be, how low my billables were, how behind I was on the memo, how soon I could leave. I got coffee at three with my false friend who always laughed at my jokes and asserted I was the most quotable part of her day (apparently, I was, since she quoted me to the partner in charge of the matter I was bitching about one day). Then I went home, changed into very unprofessional clothing, ate a sandwich at Barnes & Noble while reading a children’s book, and then waited for Adam to call and suggest a movie or hookah. Then I wished he wouldn’t leave and then he would leave and so I went to bed slightly too late, grumbling about the time I have to get up and the lack of decently cold temperature in the room. (Unless this hypothetical day is a Friday; then, we make very strong drinks, and watch a movie with the expectation of fucking later. Highlight of the goddamned week, seriously).

I don’t know. Is this my life, like, for reals?

Most of it is my own fault, I know. All of it, since no one is making me live any particular way. I’m unfairly underplaying Adam’s ability to be interesting and I’m not meaning this to criticize him — I’m the tedious one, so tedious I’m irritating myself all the time now. I just feel like I’m stepping headlong into the sort of cliched suburban tedium that pretty much guarantees that I will marry Kevin Spacey, or be Kevin Spacey, or have children named Donnie Darko or Enid/Rebecca or, heaven forbid, Juno, who all hate me and whose hatred I passively allow because, who am I kidding, I fucking suck.

I need Natalie Portman to come tell me how to make poses which, like, no one will ever make again, so I can feel that EACH MOMENT OF MY LIFE is UNIQUE and have my boring, fretful life of blending in TOTALLY TRANSFORMED.

I’ve written pages upon pages trying to rid you from my bones

I’ve had the Decemberists in my mind since Monday, just fragments of various songs. I don’t even think I love the Decemberists, exactly; it’s just that they are so insistent that once heard it’s weeks before I can shake them off.

Tomorrow is work. This will be weird. But not as weird as me driving, which I can’t even conceive most of the time while I’m doing it. About four times the weirdness of it has struck me, and I suddenly was afraid of how fast I was going because the car felt like some sort of trap hurtling towards doom and I felt powerless to control my path. I’m mostly getting better though. At first Adam’s go-to insult was “you drive like Bea Arthur!” and now he’s moved on, sort of.

Work is scary scary though. Tonight was the “welcome dinner” which actually wasn’t that bad. There were boring, dreadful 1Ls there who probably have stellar grades because you really don’t get firm jobs as 1Ls otherwise. And then, after we escaped the bores, I spent a great deal of time trying to figure out why, exactly, I took a massive dislike to one of the lawyers’ wives. She was just…not right. A discordant person without actually being offensive or even noticeably boring. She said things like “I have so many ISSUES with airports. People are like, why is flying such an ISSUE for you? I always ask, Do you think THIS [gesturing to, yes, decently made up face, and yes, she's blond] can fit into 3 ounce bottles?” I think I resented her because her last name was Wand. I want that name. I would be a charming Wand.

Other than that, people were not as scary as I assume they are. The BYU (well, and then Columbia Law, so it’s as fair to call her “the BYU woman” as it is to call me “the Liberty woman”) — anyway, the hiring partner who was at the dinner (that I suspect secured me the position) has, I think, decided that Adam and I are her clique for these events. She’s all like, Let’s sit together! I love the back far corner too! (So, naturally, I was thrilled.) I told her stories of smuggling booze into school via fast food cups and coffee mugs and she declared that we must have been much cleverer at Liberty than she was at BYU. We happily bashed the sorts of brownnosers and gunners who LOVE social events like this; and she said that she, like me, just wants to do her work and avoid politiking. I think it’s going to suck so much to have to be all legit and stuff for another firm, if I have to.

Am I going to be in that horrible hypothetical, where I have a job offer from a place I really, truly like, I mean like TREMENDOUSLY, and then I will have to choose whether Adam’s enough to justify turning it down? The timeline isn’t quite as constricting as all that — that is, I’ll have time to check other places out and time to see if there are external money/emotional reasons not to move — but I just really have this fear since, if it does come to a choice along these lines, I’m going to be in agony. Be the silly goose woman or have the secret fear that I foreclosed Important Love.

Just Another Girl on the I.R.T.

I can’t sleep. So I decided to watch Just Another Girl on the I.R.T.

I’ve decided I kind of really love the bad taste of the 90s. Chantal has this like ridiculous colorful hat which I wish I could wear, and a bright green shirt with black overall-shorts that I sort of like even though I know it’s actually awful. The opening credits are kind of Will Smith style rapping. Since at the time of this movie I was reading my Bible and listening to hymns, I don’t know if the Will Smith style was ever current or whether this movie is just TRYING.

Chantal does the Alicia Silverstone Clueless talk-to-the-camera thing. But she is pretty charming despite this, and also despite the fact that her direct camera talk is mostly of the “UHMM uhm *finger snap*” variety. Some customer is rude to her at the store where she works so she tells the woman that the woman’s father came into the store with a girl half his age. That was like the best revenge ever.

Monie Love, Kane? These people are on her posters. I don’t know who they are. I don’t think that makes me racist though because if it were not for Melissa I would not know any white bands from 1994 either. I’m color-blind-ly ignorant. Melissa might be a racist though. She never told me about Monie Love!

Aw, Chantal wants to go to college and then straight on to med school, and she gets all As and a few Bs and is the top of her calc class. She also wants to graduate at the end of her junior year. Babies fuck everything up. Babies bad.

She’s making out with a boy in some kind of laundry area (not that I can talk, given that the predominant memory I have of my first sex was staring at the giant water stain on the ceiling. Ew). He’s basically telling her she’s a tease and she’s like, I don’t care, I’m busy now. Go Chantal!

She’s such a rabble rouser! The history teacher is trying to talk about the holocaust and Chantal’s like “African American males are dying! Our babies are diseased! We have an obligation to the people of today!” Then she gets sent to the principal’s office. Principal: “You can’t go around making every history class about the plight of black people.” Chantal: “Oh, Mr. Moore, that is NOT FAIR!”

OH SNAP! He’s like “You have to tone your behavior down, tone your mouth down, be more lady-like.” Chantal: “WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN! WHAT THE FUCK DOES BEING A LADY HAVE TO DO WITH BEING A DOCTOR?!”

Ooof, she does have a terrible case of teh Mom Jean though. I may not like the 90s as much as I thought.

The thing is, Chantal’s lines aren’t all that awesome, but she just delivers them pretty well. Her dad (Young-ish Bernie Mac, is that you, or am I just a racist, like that time I though Terrence Howard was Cuba Gooding Jr?): “It’s 7:00! From now on, I want you to come straight home from school.” Chantal: “DAD, I was only hanging out with my friends. Come on now, let’s not get ridiculous.” Bernie Mac (maybe): “Why can’t you hang out with your mother and me?” Chantal: DERISIVE LAUGHTER.

Oh, then it isn’t funny anymore, because she says fuck to him and he smacks her and he hates her bf and says “If you’re not careful you’ll wind up in the projects like your mother.” Jesus, Bernie Mac is so wise, and yet so mean at the same time. If it even is Bernie Mac.

Her friend is wearing the shirts from the 90s that I remember: bizarre faux-tribal combinations of purple and green and orange. How come I don’t remember anyone wearing Rayanne Graff outfits, just these damn purple and orange things?

Whoa, her friends are all like “I don’t care if I get the hiv since everyone dies anyway; at least I’ll die knowing what it’s like to have a man inside of me instead of some rubber thing. Besides only gay people or druggies get AIDS.” Oh early 90s decision calculus.

“If you fuck him while you got your period, you don’t get pregnant.”"If you do it while you standing up, you won’t get pregnant.” You’d think these girls were educated by some prudish Baptists.

New discovery: I would have been like world’s best dancer in the early 90s. No booty dancing here, just angular movements which suit my non-swively hips. Also she’s wearing this bustier with confetti-looking boobs. I am back to wanting early 90s clothing. I would look SO. AWESOME. in that.

Oh dear, she’s getting drunk off the punch at a party. These are the wicked tricks babies pull on you just to creep into your womb when you really, really don’t want them there. Goddamn you babies.

Her boyfriend is so tough. He was so mad at Chantal that he threw an entire handful of pretzels at his own face. The camera zooms in on one caught in his mouth. Incredible.

OMG she’s dating some guy whose “Jeep is fly.” Will Smith still talks like this! I don’t judge Chantal, but my estimation of Will Smith is slipping.

Chantal ditches her friend and her boyfriend for Jeep-guy, leading to the following awesome exchange:

“What does he have that I don’t?!” “HE GOT A JEEP!!”"So? I got tokens. We can ride on the train anytime.”

Oh no…she told her mother she was spending the night with her friend, was going to hang out with The Jeep at his house, and “his mom is called away” on a mysterious errand. I’m learning so many lessons about trust from this movie. George Michael never pulled this shit on Juno.

Jeep Guy: “Don’t stall this for me! Baby I LOVE YOU [note: it's been maybe 2 days since they met]. And there’s only so much MAD TEASING a man can take.” And then asshole is like, “maybe next time we’ll use a rubber” over Chantal’s complaining. Then…oh my god…His argument is, “What’s up with this? At the party you seemed like such a TOUGH GIRL. Was this all AN ACT?” And she falls for it. Condomless sex. Lots of creepy music plays during an extended scene in which we get lots of shots of her bare back. Oh Chantal.

Oh snap, and she’s still been dating this other guy too. Chantal! Though the way she finally dumps him is funny. “I thought I was your guy? Are you trying to diss me?!”"Ty takes me OUT. All WE ever did was hang out in the building.”"You trying to get rid of me!!”"EXACTLY. Peace!”

She does have more sex. So it’s sort of realistic, not the one-strike-you’re-out thing. And pretty quickly we get to the obligatory puking-at-school shot. Scientific lesson for the audience: Toughness is not a known contraceptive.

Then she researches ”teen pregnancy” at the bookstore, which totally reminds me of myself. Weirdly, she claims she “was using the pill; even doubled up.” Hm.

Her friend tries to reassure her. “At least the baby’s gonna be cute!” Boy, is that the worst comfort in the history of the world or what. I would punch someone who said that shit to me.

SO, Chantal produces a wad of money from Asshole Jeep Guy from nowhere, and goes shopping. They spent 500 bucks, although they will “look fierce tomorrow” (TYRA?!). I can’t help but think she should have put that money toward an abortion. Also, I think she like sort of stole the money. Come on Chantal, get it together. I guess she’s got the opposite problem of Ellen Page: instead of seeming like she’s 30, she seems like she’s 13.

Brilliant plan: She bought three sizes of clothing so that if her mom came in to her room all her clothing looked like it was the same size. Well, maybe a brilliant plan for 4 months. She also goes into the fridge and throws food away so it looks like she’s midnight snacking, as a rationale for the weight.

Oh FUCK, he DID give her the money for the abortion, and she just blew it. She says “I don’t know what I want to do.” Chantal is making me crazy. She doesn’t seem to have any rationale for her actions now, and she was so smart before! This movie is letting me down.

Now he’s mad at her about the money (rightly so, I might add. I didn’t like this guy before, but it seems like they agreed on the abortion, and her just spending all the money at the mall is stupid and wrong even if she changed her mind.) Her only answer is “I said I was sorry. I was just scared.”

She’s saying that she’s super tiny for how far along she is, which I bet is a setup for Dead Baby Deus Ex Machina.

And then she has sex and is like puking and bleeding (I assume miscarrying, although she’s 30 weeks). Is this scientific? Boyfriend can’t offer her anything but like water and aspirin because she absolutely refuses to call 911. Chantal, you should have got the abortion. I will say that the level of screaming in agony and so forth is definitely how I picture pregnancy.

Oh wow, and then her mom or someone finally finds out and calls 911, and 911 basically is like, we won’t go to the projects. So there’s this terrible home delivery stuff. Oh my god I will never have children. Chantal’s screams will pierce my skull if I even contemplate it.

“Nobody knows I had this baby. Take it away from me so I won’t see it ever.” If you’re going to kill your damn baby, how about like having an abortion before the baby can feel things? Come on! Chantal is no longer a sympathetic character.

Boyfriend, now entirely redeemed as a decent character despite earlier sketchy ways, is crying as he carries the baby off in a bag. Shit.

Some kid just found the baby in the bag. And then left it, but the bag is open. And…then the cops come. And then the boyfriend rescues the baby. Hooray. I’m against infanticide. It doesn’t make any sense. If you’ve delivered it, just adopt it out. If you’re not going to deliver it, have an abortion. I’m pretty sure it’s alive when it’s delivered and starts breathing and so forth. I mean, I guess I get that she was super immature and that’s why she just wanted to get rid of the baby, but I also think it’s a bad plot device, and kind of a rare occurance (I mean, that stuff makes the news for a reason).

Happy ending, except I now really don’t like Chantal. She starts going to community college and the boy sells the Jeep to pay for the preemie baby’s doctor bills.

So, I don’t know. This movie gets points for: Being in the 90s, having the best excuse for no-condom-use ever, having a truly horrific depiction of childbirth (although actual pregnancy was easy-peasy thanks to voluminous 90s clothing), having an immature heroine who fakes us out by seeming cool and then being willing to smother her baby in a garbage bag.

No points for: Having the heroine bizarrely turn from being smartass and cool to being the sort of person who won’t have an abortion despite money and opportunity but WILL smother a baby in a garbage bag, having an ending that glosses over this kind of strange and bad turn of events, having a script that sells itself purely on delivery without actually funny lines, having no rationale or explanation for Chantal’s changing state of mind as to the fetus/baby. Baby-smothering is worse than babies themselves, and you know that’s saying something.

So, maybe this makes me a racist, but, Juno was better. Not in all ways, and didn’t deserve an Oscar for the screenplay, but better than this movie. I did really try to like it though. Chantal let me down.

I’ve been leaving all my clues like my footprints in the snow

This post is mostly just because I keep hearing disparate lines from the 1900s’ album that I bought and I fall a little bit in love with the lyrics and want to post shit without being That Girl Who Posts Lyrics, because, how lame. I have settled on the title bar as a compromise between decorum and outrageous lyric-mad abandon.

I will observe, however, Pamela-style, that in the ten minutes since I last posted, I have been giving serious thought to the problem of whether to get a summer journal. I think, much more than previously, I’m openly reluctant to re-read what I’ve written unless I am really extremely drunk and want to wallow in maudlin remembrance. I am not sure what to make of this development in myself. It could be that I am becoming less interested in the very process of becoming–and correspondingly less narcissistic; or perhaps merely less aware of myself. Or maybe my life has just become more full of depressing missteps from which I cannot recover, and looking over those makes me terribly unhappy such that I am just not able to give myself to remembering what cannot ever be fixed. On the other hand, I lost two of my books: one from spring semester of my senior year, and the one Melissa gave me as a replacement to the one I left accidentally at my parents’ house–and despite the fact that neither of those times were remarkable for their happiness, I tremendously resent the loss and feel like the foundations of my personhood have, however slightly, been chipped.

This question probably will be resolved in the most prosaic of ways, and will wholly depend on the relative attractiveness of the journals at the Borders, since it’s the only bookstore near me. And Borders really blows, so, problem solved?

I’ve been watching all my time go to waste

Everything is so much nicer now that school is done. This morning, responsibility flickered through my sleepy mind, and then, instead of pushing it away with vaguely guilty feelings, I remembered that I am free, free, free, so I can push it away without guilt. At least for this week.

Another crisis looms, however. The more I think about the fact that I have to, like, drive on my own with my extremely sketchy base of knowlege (after about one week of refreshing my memory on the 6 hours from the driving class last Christmas) the more I am basically convinced of impending doom. Like me crashing, or dying (but not being dead, because, who can picture that?). This is fucking terrifying. I’m trying not to think about it, which naturally means I think about it in ever-expanding detail.

If these are my LAST. DAYS. ON. EARTH., I suppose I should try to fill this upcoming week with cupcakes and sex and maybe some strategic will-making, for that $200 in my checking account.

wish for the time right before I was born

Were you expecting this to be yet another post about how emo I am about law school bullshit?

 

Well then, you would be right. Just in case you missed it, nearly all things related to law school, my part in it, and the spectre of future lawyering make me feel panic and despair. I have turned to online shopping to remind myself of the incentive to do this. This is so much less glamourous than cutting that maybe I should revisit the emo label. I do drink sometimes when I’m feeling particularly awful; maybe that gives me more dramatic credibility.  On the other hand, my drink of choice tonight was, like, pink margaritas, so, you know, I’m just all-around lame.

The Dead-to-Me List

So today, after much thought, I have decided that my next project is one of massive importance which will contribute meaningfully to the general knowlege of humanity. Namely, I have decided to compile a list of things people say which, I think, make me pretty sure we will NEVER be friends, and I will at some point talk shit about them. Although this list is subjective, I feel like the reasons why these sentences make people AWFUL to me are reasons why these people might be AWFUL objectively.

1. “I’m just a wild and crazy guy”/ “I’m just a wild and crazy girl.” Self-explanatory.

2. Closely related to number one: “Oh…sorry…don’t mind me, I’m just SO RANDOM sometimes.” Usually the “apology” comes after a not-funny statement to which no one laughed. There’s lots of reasons to hate this, but I think there’s a specifically objectionable way that it’s deployed which I hate: where it’s used as a way to imply that the reason the listeners did not respond positively is that they just Don’t Get It.

3. “I’m SOOOOO bored right now….yeah that’s about all I have to say right now.” Usually this is an update, either status or blog. I hate it. Don’t fucking type, then. My mother says lots of things which don’t make any damn sense (“Caffeine makes people short.”"Accutane destroys the moisture root in the skin.”"Sex is for marriage”) but the single moment of truth in her entire existence came when she came up with this bon mot: “Only boring people get bored.”

4. “What a riot!” and iterations thereof. I almost put “what a hoot!” as a related category; but the people who say this are generally older and funnier, and there was this great episode of Boston Legal in which this ancient judge kept saying “Stop your HOOTing” every time James Spader made a joke.

 UPDATE: After much thought and deep consideration, I have decided to add “I don’t bite” to the list. I am not really sure why I find this phrase so obnoxious. I also have known relatively legit people who said it. But, you know, this is a subjective list of shallow prejudice, and my hackles sure do rise when I hear someone say this. Obviously, if it’s like “I don’t bite…unless it’s called for” then no one would dispute that this statement is full of fail. And yet, there are things in this life that simply aren’t grey areas, and I think I’m going to go ahead and declare that ”I don’t bite” is worthy of being on the dead-to-me list.

This is a rolling list. I seek contributions. I think the funniest comment that could be made would be if someone said “The most obnoxious thing anyone could say would be:” and then posted this entry.

An Open Letter, From Me to the World

Dear World,

While I appreciate the impulse behind officious meddling, I would like to submit that the appropriate thing to do with, say, a phone you found, is NOT to put it in a lost and found, if you are on a campus with no central lost and found. I am so mad at you I could spit, but let’s keep this constructive. If you find a phone:

1. Leave it the fuck where it is! Unless it is about to be run over by a car, when you can discreetly move it to the side of the path outside the danger zone. No one is unaware that they don’t have their phone for more than, like, one hour, and so it is a guarantee that we careless ones will retrace our steps and then we will be all like “Oh there it is! I bless the lack of meddling meddlers who meddle.”

2. If the phone was dropped in a busy intersection, or it is clearly going to rain in the one hour window before the person finds it, you may, under these specific circumstances, pick up the phone without being a goddamned meddler. BUT THEN you should start calling people in order of recent calls. Not only is that not hard at all, but it’s so cool to be all like, hey your friend is a moron. You can then tell someone where said phone will be left, discharging your responsibility by even the narrowest moral standards of Samaritanism and making everyone happy.

3. PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD do not turn it in to a mysterious and non-central lost and found.

4. I guess if it were to happen that someone did something malicious with my phone, I’d actually be less mad. Maliciousness makes more sense to me than really stupid good deeds gone awry. So, if it’s a choice between turning in the phone to a mysterious lost and found, or jumping on it with your hobnailed boots, please jump on it. At least I would have closure instead of spending two hours going from place to place on highly unreliable instructions in search of a non-existent central lost and found.

That’s all. We can do better in future, World. We just need good policies.

Sincerely,

me

UPDATE: All is forgiven! My phone was turned in to the law school’s lost and found, which is in fact a centralized location. However, the theory behind my statements is still true.