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 ^{(it's beta!)}

Hey guys, new idea for a series as I am procrastinating doing many other things... it's funny, as i procrastinate from the thing I was doing to procrastinate from writing here I am again...

Anything in this series will be Reflections about the world from My Insomniac Self...

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Posters

So I had this list that I made yesterday (well really two days ago, Sunday) of all these things that I needed to do. it reads as follows.

1) Go to the Drugstore, get a few toiletries.

2) Check on a Job App.

3) Call Eye Doctor

4) Hang Posters (i gotta get them off the floor)

5) Shower / Shave (i was going to anyway but why not put it on the list)

6) Finish part 2 of my series, (it's half done)

And so here it is, 5 am, and the only thing that I did all day today was #5. I woke up at 10 am, but not really. Then again at noon, but only for a sec. next thing it is almost 4 pm. well there goes #3. I go to get myself breakfast, get out the bowl, the spoon, the super-duper, feed an entire village in Ethiopia sized box of Frosted Mini Wheats, bought at your friendly neighborhood warehouse-cult Costco, and I go to the beverage fridge. We have two fridges see, it is an economical system for a house with currently 3, but eventually 5, college kids living in it. One fridge holds food-stuffs, the other beverages, especially beer. but I didn't want beer for breakfast, I wanted milk. I was sad.

and then as I am lamenting the fact that we are out of milk, I am flipping through the channels and I happen to stop upon Star Trek: Next Generation. Well there goes the next hour. I'm not gonna lie about it, I love Star Trek. I was happy.

but that is not the story of the now. the story of the now is after star trek, it turned out to be a marathon, well there went the next three hours. so then I just said "I'll do it later" for procrastinating is my specialty. The only things left were #4, posters and #6, finish my series piece. I still am thinking about where I want my piece to go so procrastinating from writing, I decide to hang posters in my room. Now I have a variety of posters, many of them just text, but as I was pulling one out I was just struck with this realization that my posters have a lot to say about who I am, and I suppose that this is true for most people. I mean after all, they are gonna put something on the wall that they like. However, I'm talking about what the actual theme and meaning behind the posters. The best way to describe my point is to use myself.

The poster that hit me was one that says "Warning: Hazardously Wasted" with a radioactive beer symbol. This could way one of two things about a person. 1) they are a party animal and don't care or 2) they are reminding themselves to cut back on the drinking... For me it was the latter. I actually bought this after my first semester freshman year of college. I basically drank my face off and didn't care about school and got a C+ for the semester, barely passing one of my classes. I bought that as i reminder of what I shouldn't do next semester, and it along with other things, like a better method of cheating, worked beautifully and I got an A for the semester. I kept it up for a while, but I am slowly falling back into my slacker ways. This realization kinda pissed me off once it had slapped me in the face like that and I got kinda vindictive about it. Then I saw my other posters sitting there and they all just kinda reflected back a piece of my personality.

I was talking about how bad I procrastinate earlier; I have a "Procrastinators Creed" poster. I have a poster with Murphy's Law type proverbs and a "National Sarcasm Society" Poster. It reads Like We Need Your Support; these suggests cynicism, a sarcastic attitude and a hint of pessimism, all of which are true. I have a "This is Your Brain / This is Your Brain on Drugs / This is Your Brain with a Side Order of Bacon" poster; add a really trippy Jim Morrison poster to that and we have possible drugs use. I have two posters of planes, because well, planes are cool. I also have a handful of video-game posters, which hints to my extreme nerd-dom. I am a Philadelphia Eagles fan (fuck the Cowboys). I have a poster making fun of Bush as well. Some may find this strange for a male my age but I only have one poster with a chick on it, and that's only because the quote is funny; it reads "Freshman Girls: Get them while their skinny." Which is funny cause it's horrible but it's also funny cause it's true.

However there are two types of wall-decorations, and I use that term for a reason for neither of them are really posters, that dominate my eclectic collection. The first is a collection of cut out cardboard boxes. Most of them are the sides of boxes of different liquors. I got all different kinds, from Jack Daniels to Tanqueray to Grey Goose. This suggests that I have a very DIY attitude, and go unconventional just to do it. The variety of the boxes suggests one of three things, 1) I am an extreme alcoholic, buying a buncha handles at a time so they give me a box to carry them back to the car. 2) I just recently moved (which is true) and went to the liquor store and got boxes to put shit in (its a good guess but this isn't the case) or the unlikely 3) I worked at a liquor store and picked out all of those boxes with the original intent on putting them on the wall. Working at a liquor store was the funnest job that I ever had, but that is not today's story. The kicker behind all of these cut-out sides of alcohol boxes is a hastily cut out piece of cardboard that says "Unauthorized use of this box will be subject to criminal prosecution." Just what is unauthorized use of a box anyway? Will they get mad if I use it as a hat? am I only allowed to carry stuff from that particular company in that box? and why do the police have to get involved? can't we talk it out like gentlemen? and who bothers to put that on a box anyway? if your dedicated enough to get the police involved over a cardboard box, I would think you would want to catch people. So wouldn't the better strategy be to leave them out in front of your store unmarked?

this brings me to the second group of wall-decorations. My collection of signs and notifications. About two blocks away and 5 minutes after "liberating" the aforementioned Criminal box, we were actually accosted by someone from the place that we had taken them from. We looked very sorry for what we had done, promised to "Put them back" then once he left proceeded to head down a side alley and cut out the writing from the box and then go home. I have an eclectic group of signs. "Danger: High Voltage" and "No Roof Access: For Access Call 421-1743" If you can figure out my current area code I implore you to call that number up and request roof access, just for the fun of it. I have a Delaware license plate that is falling apart (oh shit I just gave it away didn't I) an Exit sign, a "Restricted Area: Authorized Personel Only" which I always put on the outside of my door. However my "Danger: NO Smoking / NO Open Flames / NO Sparks" is my favorite. Add to that the 5 road signs I have donated to the back balcony of our house and you paint a picture of guy who just cant seem to keep his hands off of public property. In light of the particular signs "liberated" along with the rest of wall-decorations, it is very easy to derive me as this cynical counter-culture college kid, casting aside the concerns of civilization carelessly and for my own amusement. And that's just the way I love my life.

But information is not just in the posters themselves, it is in how they are arranged and how many there are. Depending on the room, the mere placement of the posters can make a person seem messy, organized, busy, plain, crazy, etc... is there anything on the ceiling? possible daydreamer.

I was originally planning on outlining different types of posters, but as I write this I have realized that it isn't my understanding that matters. It's all about your own personal conclusions. Look at your own posters, see what they say about you. Next time you are over a friend's place, check out what they got hanging, and really think about it. How did they get it? What do you think it means to them? What does it say about them? But this idea shouldn't be confined to just posters, no. There is information everywhere you look, and you can learn to appreciate almost anything in life if you just stop and think about it for a while.

I sit here writing this and the sun is now shining through the window, posters are splayed (i like that word) across my room and my bed, and I'm not even close to tired but somehow I've been writing for a while. I guess what I'm trying to say is this:

It is not enough to just stop and smell the roses, you gotta understand them too.

Now you'll have to excuse me, I have some posters to hang.