Me and My Homeboys

Things To Express: Point Form:

• Dorms in Germany and Korea and Malaysia and all sorts of places are gearing up for a new school year right about now.
• I miss dorm life right now. A lot.
• Listening to Shawn Mullins a lot lately.
• Which makes me miss Peter Hochsteadtler a lot lately.
• And Chris Faroe.
• It's been much cooler here lately, and I'm GUNNING for Fall.
• Sufjan Stevens: Illinois
• Muse: Black Holes and Revelations
• Nickel Creek: Why Should the Fire Die?
• The Be Good Tanyas: Chinatown
• Counting Crows: August and Everything After
• Indigo Girls: Become You
• Eats, Shoots & Leaves, by Lynn Truss
• Arrested Development, Season 1 (on DVD)
• I Heart Huckabees
• Garden State (I could never watch this too many times)
• Contemplating some photographic artistic venture; pending.
• I'm learning the art of semi-colons; and colons: they're underrated.
• Highlights of my job: teaching kids how to make pancakes, teaching kids how to care for "homemade" piercings, spontaneous outings with kids, co-workers who make me laugh, grocery shopping and menu planning, Inside jokes with kids.
• Lowlights of my job: covering emergency overnight shifts, filing police reports, calling police, kids who won't go to bed, how all the fans in the house are broken (or will be), that hot hot kitchen, housework, paperwork.
• The fog is lifting; the sun is shining; my mood is brightening....

I'm done! Love to all....~Drew

Sleep Pose: "Bird In Hand"

There's definitely something "in hand" but
I highly doubt it's a bird. Who's on the
left? Heath or Jake? I can't tell.

I recently took an online test to determine my style of sleep. Apparently this test only works if you're sleeping WITH someone. However, it was somehow able to determine that my style of sleep is Tetherball. In this highly disturbing revelation, I realized that one person acts as the pole, while the other acts as the ball. In the testmaker's words, the Tetherball "is
the pose of perfect compromise, the oasis of a full-contact sleeper
coupled with a solitary sleeper. The pose allows the Pole (the solitary
one) a free range of movement, while the tight self-embrace of the
Ball (the full-contact one) supplies the necessary crowded
closeness. Both sides win!"

Both sides win? I don't think so. Who is that on the right? Debra Lafave? Michael Jackson? Am I the only one disturbed by this picture? Unless some woman married a dwarf, or some regular-sized man married an amazonian, this picture is wrong on so many levels.

I also got to thinking that her nightgown looks very odd. It looked kind of Wonderwoman-ish. So, then, while already slightly disturbed, I went googling to see if my suspicions on the outfit were correct, and found the model upon whom this picture was drawn.

ANYway. Needless to say, I'm much more disturbed. There are some things that even a grown man shouldn't have to see. I suddenly feel like the little boy whose rear end is being unceremoniously fondled for the sleep website photo, by faux-Wonderwoman-come-Wiccan-Warrior.

I'm out!

I fell asleep on my parents' sofa (long story), which was quite a feat. It's one of those sofas that sucks you in, like the overwhelming hug from an enormously fat relative. But I digress....

I fell asleep, and then was awoken by a well-meaning text message. And now I'm back awake, unable to sleep. In previous years--especially those poetically prolific college years--I would use such a situation to compose something to commemorate the occasion; to set it in stone, as it were; to, as "they" say, take lemons and make lemonade (badly paraphrased, but work with me here). My thoughts and intentions drift toward MSN, to Xanga, to my photo site: basically to anything that might be characterized as a thorough waste of time. And yet, I'm enjoying this. I have to believe that Shakespeare, on every sleepless night, didn't compose something brilliant and winning. I imagine Chaucer's "'Tee Hee!' quod she" was composed in the dead of night, when bum-kiss trickery seemed the perfect coup d'etat to his floundering, The Miller's Tale.

Perhaps I will try to sleep again. If not, dear friends, I will not bore you with more nighttime ponderings. Next stop: the refrigerator.

I had composed three paragraphs of pure nonsense in several days; I kept them "private"; I just now erased them, because they were even more senseless than the senseless drivel I am sometimes wont to...drivel.

Sometimes I feel the need to write something, but I don't know what to write. Either that, or I know I need to write something, but I'm not brave enough to do so, and I end up writing something else. Why be serious when last week's vote results of So You Think You Can Dance? and the fact that I'm choosing to listen to Christmas music in July are perfectly good topics of discussion?

Drivel.

So what shall I say? I MUST say that I was impacted by Bethany Blanchard's last post. I guess I'm one of those people who, as she describes, "...are utterly confused by their experience of god, and yet love him or at least want to very much, and are determined to make something of their relationship with god while feeling like they have nothing left in them but to walk away, and hate how far they've come in a confusing or detrimental path and yet can still make jokes about it..."

I've come to a simple yet profound realization lately: people need friends. Correction: I need friends. Accepting applications now. Please email any and all applications, inquiries, jests, barbs or praise to andrewjespersen@gmail.com

Hmmm, what else? Yeah, that's about it. I'm at work, so I shouldn't be wasting too much time.

Love to all ~Drew

I had a dream last night, and I'm wondering if anyone can interpret it for me.

I was waiting in some foyer to get into my brother's wedding. I was waiting with all the previous Canada's Next Top Model winners, and somewhat disappointed by the way some of them had let themselves go. Do you remember the oldest daughter on Roseanne? Yeah, one of them looked like her, except she was also smoking a cigarette, and I honestly think she also had a few rollers in her hair.

At any rate, when we got into the wedding, it was actually a live set for a talk show. Present were myself, the aforementioned models, and some uber high fashionista guy who seemed to be running the show, in the figurative sense. I was a bit sleepy, so I decided to nap on one of the sofas, even though it was a talk show. Hmmm.

So then everyone paired off and the wedding celebration began. I was paired with some ex-Canada's Next Top Model, whose face I cannot remember (nor actually remember seeing in the dream). I noticed at that point that the wedding celebration had begun on the top floor of a skyscraper. In order to celebrate my brother's wedding, we had to descend (by stairway) down one floor at a time, consuming a full meal at each level. When we were done a meal, we would get up and descend more stairs, to find another full meal waiting for us on the floor below.

When I got to the very bottom level, it was some dirty utility room/level, obviously used for the janitorial staff, etc. There was a small room adjacent to the main room which I entered. As I looked into the smaller room, I saw some cleaning lady on the toilet (LOL). She said something mean to me, so I insulted her, using some fairly foul words I think I've recently learned at the group home. As I went to reascend out of the bowels of the building, I noticed my cousin, Philip, on the stairs behind me (he lives in California). He said that Mr. uber high Fashionista guy had heard me insult the cleaning lady, and that I had to start back at the top of the skyscraper, and work my way down again.

As I began to ascend the stairs once more, I was awoken by my alarm.

Any ideas?!

I'm bemused; befuddled; bamboozled. I'm also not sure if my use of semi-colons in the previous sentence was correct. Moving on to my original point.

I've had some interesting talks lately, including (but not limited to) abortion, the war in Iraq, teen pregnancy, and the resurgence of leg warmers, the last of which is obviously the most disconcerting. Instant and uncontrollable spasms the day I see Jennifer Grey posing for Lululemon's new leg warmers campaign.

But what's with the recycling of a decade whose collectively misaligned conscience allowed Phil Donahue, Geraldo Rivera, AND Corey Hart to flourish?  Of a decade whose sense of style makes a Bollywood film's costume set couture by comparison, and whose industry produced gems like Maximum Overdrive, Leondard Pt. 6, and Yor, The Hunter From the Future.

It's terrible.
It's a crime.
It's like bringing back the swastika.

So little to write since my last Xanga entry:

Grandpa's funeral was perfect.
My birthday was on the 18th.
I'm 29.
Practically 30.
THANK YOU to those who sent me birthday emails/wishes/greetings!
I have two whole days off now!
I'm going to see 'The Devil Wears Prada' tonight.
I know I still owe lots of you emails: patience, my young padawans.

~Drew~

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
                                      [Edna St. Vincent Millay]

Last night, thirty minutes before the end of my late-night shift at the group home, I received the news of my grandpa's passing. It just makes me think: here was a man I've known my entire life, and now he's gone. I will never see him again in this lifetime. I went to visit my mum last night after work, and she cried a little when I hugged her, and said, "My dad is gone." And then I cried a little with her and said, "And my grandpa's gone." I don't enjoy crying and I don't necessarily enjoy admitting to it, but I don't much care; I think the least my grandpa deserves is a little emotion at his passing. In fact, he deserves a lot more.

I'd like to think I learned a lot from my grandpa. I learned how to be and how not to be. I learned that you can spend the majority of a lifetime affected by circumstance, and in some ways, taking it out on those you love most. I also learned that it's never too late to turn yourself around and make the most of things, of relationships, of opportunities. I learned to be generous. I learned to love Canada Dry Ginger Ale and Digestive Cookies...and how to make homemade Chicken Noodle Soup.

One more thing I want to say. I knew he was very sick, and I had planned on going to visit him today. I had one last chance to talk with him, take my picture with him, and hold his hand. But too little too late. Take the time today to spend time with those you love, because you never know when it will be too little too late.

I love you, grandpa. And you will be missed.