You never thought going to Subway could get any worse.

But you were wrong. Because now they have this order-taking, button-pushing, hideous user-interface, talking-to-you-about-options-that-are-not-on-the-screen Devil’s minion Subway machine.

Gone are the days of being able to ask a slack-jawed worker questions such as: “So if I get the chicken bacon ranch, but have it with mustard, would it still be a chicken bacon ranch?”

Now I am not saying that a conversation with the Subway worker is the high point of my day. In general, I find that we have little in common except for the fact that we both hate being there. At Subway.

Subway is the place I eat out of desperation and maybe a little bit because it shares a parking lot with Starbucks and I enjoy not bottoming out now that I drive a large truck instead of a petite sedan and maybe because it is close to the house and faster than 5 Guys – have you noticed it takes like 1 million years to get a burger in that place? If I had 1 million years, I would make my own burger.

To recap, I’m just saying I do not like Subway to begin with. I think the sandwiches taste like cardboard. 5 Guys is too slow. And I think this machine is completely annoying.

Today we had our final critique in painting.

We laughed, we cried. Some people confessed to sex addiction as the reason why they did not finish any work this semester. I mean as excuses go, I think it’s a good one. Of course we didn’t hear the details.

Most of these are mine, not the ones on the bottom right though.

We were reading the first Harry Potter book yesterday despite the fact that Harry Potter is the cockroach of literature.

And in this book, when the kids get to Hogwarts, there is a marble staircase in the entry hall.

Why is there a marble staircase in a Scottish castle? I’m thinking if there were one we are talking about an entryway done in Rococo or Neoclassical Revival of some sort.

So why in the movie is Hogwarts done in Scottish Baronial, a 19th century neo-gothic style? Wherezz the marble staircase, peeps?

Of course in the third movie which was directed by a Spaniard, we also have that weird wooden bridge, the mini-stonehenge, and the mini-Alhambra.

Crazy stuff, man.

This has been the Harry Potter Architectural Synthesis.

To whom it may concern,

I have decided to have an Italian Renaissance view of my essay as being something I can control, rather than a dreary Northern Renaissance vision of my essay as something that is destroying my life and leading me to perdition.

Sincerely,

Kevin Inman
Concerned Citizen,
Student of the Renaissance,
and Essay Writer

Time: 1:00 AM
Place: Bed

Gravel: WHAT’S THAT BEEPING?
Me: The alarm on my watch just like every night.
Gravel: DO WE HAVE THIS CONVERSATION EVERY NIGHT?
Me: Yes.

I’m reviewing for a final. I have found the following gems in my notes:

Leonardo
kept drawings.

andrea del castangno: like a box

the florentine pieta: some weird shit about a perfect work of art with four figures and one block of marble and how the greeks won

laurentian library: decorative elements are functional and vice versa plus weird stairs

explusion of heliodorus in the vatican- play within a play blah blah

Pendentetndntns- or some word

bosch: alchemy?
utopia? who knows

First, an update on the downstairs neighbor. She’s shaking it up. After playing some Chopin for a change, she proceeded to bang on something loudly with a blunt object for about ten minues. It was only 12:45 AM. A perfectly reasonable time to bang on things loudly with a blunt object for about ten minutes.

After that there was silence below.

Let’s hope she was trying to knock some sense into herself.

So.

I have an essay to write.

I like essays. They are easy and fast. Not like papers which require 35 pounds of books which are strewn all over the back of the 4 Runner owing to the fact that the library drop boxes convenient to a road are all now locked until January. Who thought of this? Do the library workers think that just because they lock the drop boxes, that this somehow magically brings the library itself closer to the parking lot?

Who wants to carry 35 pounds of books to the library from a parking lot miles away? And what could this hypothetical person possibly carry them in?

A bag. And why didn’t I think of this before? When it took me three trips to take the books out to the car in the first place?

I will just get a bag. Problem solved.

But not the problem of the essay which since it must be typed has become A. Huge. Problem and I just can’t spit out the usual. Stream of made-up nonsense. It’s as though an essay can only come out of me in a sudden quick burst in the classroom and if it requires editing, that’s it.

I just stare at the question and my mind shuts down.

It’s an easy question: What’s the difference between northern Renaissance art and Italian Renaissance art?

It’s an easy question: What’s the difference between my ass and a hole in the ground?

I don’t know.

That is my answer to both of these questions. I just don’t know.

Moving right along.

Tonight as I was making the coffee, I had one of those startling realizations. An epiphany, maybe, sort of like the sudden flash of understanding I have just had regarding the bag and inconvenient volume of library books that need to be returned and how the two can be combined in new and exciting ways. And in case you got lost in that sentence the things we are talking about here are books and bags. And you see- books can be placed in bags.

So where was I.

I was grinding the beans and looking at the side of the Starbucks Christmas Blend. Now I will explain two things:

One, the downstairs neighbor is now being yelled at by some guy.

But there are no words just “AAAAAH!! YAAAAH!! HARRRRR!!” Another neighbor enraged by the music and hammering? The cello-playing boyfriend come back for more? Now she is yelling back. I don’t think they speak English.

Two, despite the fact that Starbucks is the cockroach of civilization, I really like the Christmas Blend.

So I was grinding the beans and looking at my bag of Christmas blend where it tells you to put two tablespoons of coffee per cup of water. And I was thinking the same thing I have thought for the past six years whenever I have seen that. That it is weird that my coffee does not taste weak since I only put in one tablespoon of coffee per cup. And actually, more than that, I have always assumed it was a coffee marketing ploy. Try to get people to buy twice as much coffee as they need. And since my coffee tastes just like coffee you get at a coffee shop I figured they were all in on this. This scam. All those baristas and coffee marketing personnel. I was thinking about what a good thing they have going. Making their coffee half as strong as they recommend that their customers do.

But then I suddenly realized that of course, I put in 6 tablespoons of coffee and fill up the coffee pot to the line that says 6.

And this makes not 6 but 3 cups of coffee. And some simple math. 6/3=2 tablespoons of coffee per cup.

I can only imagine this is how people feel when they make that final logical leap. The one that leads to the Nobel Prize. Einstein sitting there chewing on his pencil thinking “It’s squared! E= MC squared! Eureka!”

I mean, six years?

Can limes be recycled?

Well I assume it’s from the pop culture. You know how sometimes you go to lift weights and it’s sort of like a hazy dream?

And that might have something to do with the previous night’s overindulgence in egg nog?

And then you hear something like,” Be happy about whatever you have to be happy about” and then you think about that a bit later and you wonder if it was from a song on the radio, something someone was muttering as they walked past you, or something that you made up?

Anyway it seems like good advice to me. Wherever it comes from.

It’s actually good that I tried to warm up the truck this morning, burning through the last of the gas. Because I’d rather be at home with no gas than on the road with no gas.

And obviously the fuel gauge is of no use to people like me.

So I went to work in my trusty Tiger car which has never let me down. On my way home in my trusty Tiger car which has never let me down, I stopped to get some gas for the truck.

But this stupid square gas can would not let out the last full liter of gas. Not into the gas tank, anyway. I know it was a full liter because it filled the wine bottle. Which was the only bottle in the house. Typical.

Of course I could have used it to start fires, I suppose. But I am a mild-mannered information architect and art student, not an arsonist. I just don’t light fires with extra gas. I use it to power my gazz-guzzling vehicular transportational device.

Unfortunately, by this point I had filled the 15 gallon tank of my truck.

So I decided to put the extra gas in my trusty Tiger car.

Which has never let me down.

This choice item is hanging in my office. But I did not create it.

I do love it though.

With your host, Stupid Kevin.

Me: Would you like to hear the stupidest thing ever?
Innernets: YES.
Me: It is a cold, cold morning.
I: Yes. 16 degreez.
Me: So cold your hair freezes when you go outside.
I: Yep.
Me: So you think- I am going to heat up the car before my 2 mile drive to work. Right. It’s only 5 minutes, you think. Then in the 15 minutes it takes you to get out the door, the car runs out of gas. But- it is nice and toasty because the heater is now running on the battery.

What is the moral of this story?

Dear Downstairs Neighbor,

I have stood by you through the endless piano/cello duets, through the endless Bach and finger exercises after you broke up with your cello playing boyfriend, and through the frankly misanthropic attempts to play show tunes from memory at all hours of the day and night.

And yes, I am guilty of playing the show tunes you attempt to play from memory. And the Christmas carols. And Rocky Horror. So complaining about that is neither here nor there. But.

Playing the recorder at 12:20 AM?

You go too far, downstairs neighbor. Obviously, this means war.

Sincerely,

Kevin Inman
Upstairs Neighbor,
Concerned Citizen,
And Person of Discerning Muscial Taste

We made Christmas cookies tonight.

This composition is entitled Popeyed Bikini Woman Walks Dog in Sweater.

Dingbat: I don’t mean to be blasphemous or anything… but doesn’t it look like Christ is flipping us off?
Art History Teacher: My guess is that for Holbein… that was not an intended meaning.