Flawed World?

First, I'd like to offer a quick apology and let you all know that I'm over the whole "shat the bed" incident. Bear with me.

I'm just now getting ready to finish up my semester so it has been a frenetic week. I'm putting the wraps on my final project for seventeenth century literature. The class title: Sex, Death, and Salvation, studies in the age of John Donne, or something like that. Anyways, I've grown to kind of enjoy this guy's poetry despite the fact that it's really depressing, and kind of confusing. He talks a lot about the world being flawed. I don't think we have it quite as bad as he did circa 1600's Great Britain(read: be thankful we have some separation between church and state, not enough, but some), but we don't have it that much better.

I look around campus and everyone is somehow fucked up. There's a terrifyingly low amount of students here who don't spend three or more days a week on some sort of drug. I begrudgingly admit (this week aside) that I probably register somewhere between three and four on this scale of seven. This is the future of our country? Most of us are drunks, half of us are stoned, a handful are coked up, shroomed, or on some form of speed. Speed is probably the worst offender. You know what I'm talking about, legal speed, adderall. Some kid you know is one of the reported 25% among us that's been diagnosed with ADD; oh wait, what I meant was he's good at faking sick and has entrepreneurial skills. Do you really need to concentrate on that paper? He's got the hook-up. Shit, I wish I was any different but $5 for a substantial edge going into my chem exam, well that's tough to pass up. Oh wait, even better if I convince myself I need this shit I can surely convince a doctor. I only have an assignment I really need to concentrate on like a couple times a month; I could sell 20 of those pills. Lets do some math; a one point boost in my gpa, plus $100 net profit, minus $15 copay equals a pretty sweet deal. I really am smart! Is this what we learn in college?

Look at the generation 5-10 years behind us; things aren't looking up. Some friends of mine just graduating and are either student teaching or subbing back home. One of my friends who was subbing in the middle school we went to told me something interesting. He's had three students that claim to have kids, two girls, and one guy. The guy is from the same suburban, working-class, predominantly white area I'm from; he's whiter than j-will (a.k.a. "white chocolate"), he's decked out like fitty (I assume this means bulletproof vest, but my friend didn't specify), he's in the seventh grade (to be fair he should be in ninth), and oh yeah, he's some one's baby-daddy.
"Mr. P., I wrote a rap!"
"Wrap your fuckin dick!"
My friend isn't allowed to say that. Someone needs to.

If this sounds like something you've heard before, keep in mind that there's a reason things become cliche; they make sense.

Maybe Donne didn't have it so bad.

This rant brought to you courtesy of, some kid that should be writing an actual paper about John Donne.