Because the hobo look is so cool right now.

Feels like fuckin winter out now. Not cool. Whoops, and by not cool I mean “not good.” Obviously, it’s cool out, but only in the temperature sense. Man, that was dumb.

Awkward situation(s) of the day:

Today I was wearing my uniform (like most Tuesdays.) I’m warshing my hands leaving the restroom and this professorly fellow enters, and says something like

—Navy, huh?

To which I’m like

—Um, yeah.

And I leave. Later, I run into a friend of mine, Maria.

—Patrick, what’s up?

—Not much, how are you?

—I’m good. Where do you live this year?

—Lambeth. (For some reason I point sort of forward/upwards, not towards where I live at all.) How about you?

—(About to cross the street.) So are you going home for Fall Break?

—Yeah.

—Well you have a good one. (Crosses the street.)

—You too.

This all happened in what seemed like five seconds, because neither of us actually stopped to talk, we just kept walking.

This introduces an interesting fact that few people seem to know and those that know often forget: I am in Navy ROTC. In fact, one of my apartmentmates, Matt, forgot so much that he said something like this:

—ROTC people are such tools.

To which I sarcastically replied

—Thanks, Matt.

Matt somehow didn’t catch the irony and kept on going. When he finally realized that, oh yeah, Patrick is in ROTC, he apologized.

—I forgot you’re in ROTC.

—I guess I’ll take that as a compliment.

Despite having to wear the uniform, I had a very enjoyable lunch period today. McWhorsky (not his real name) pointed out that I point at people a fair amount, and when in uniform it looks very condemning. And in fact, in one case it was, for I was pointing at a friend of mine who apparently, until the last couple of weeks, was unfamiliar with the phrases double or nothing and loose stools. Considering that this kid is a natural-born American citizen, I found this unacceptable. Fortunately for him, it was his birthday, so as a present I at a (piece of) cantaloupe rind. It was actually quite good.

In between flying banana pieces and accusations of the weirdness of English majors, Justin and I were discussing Virginia Woolf (To the Lighthouse, specifically) and our conversation naturally turned to suicidal writer Sylvia Plath, at which point another kid (whose name escapes me) asks me

—So are you an English major too?

McWhorsky laughs riotously, since almost everyday this comes up. Apparently, I should have been an English major. So I reply

—No, actually, I’m a Computer Science major, which means I inhabit that vast cultural wasteland known as the Engineering School, making the fact that I can construct simple English sentences (like this run-on) a miracle, much less the fact that I have any knowledge of Sylvia Plath.

Inhale.

On that note, those of you who read this with any frequency may have noticed a startling change: stricter adherence to standards of the English language. I decided that capitalization isn’t so bad after all.

Oh, and the title has to do with the fact that two completely unrelated people in my life have been told they look like hobos for wearing a grey hoodie.

Do I look like a hobo too?