Let's Go Bother Snape. Bother Bother Bother!

In about ten years, I'm going to visit Louisville and discover that the city I grew up in no longer exists, because it's buried in a thick layer of subsidized modern art. The whores city planners keep building shit in the streets. I was driving in the downtown area, and discovered a giant sculpture made of rusty bikes planted smack in the middle of the sidewalk on 4th Street that was definitely not there this summer. Come on, city planners - I'm all for more culture in the city, but people have to walk on that sidewalk. Give that money to Actors Theatre or the Orchestra.

There's also some construction happening on a section of Eastern Parkway that makes it damn near impossible to get to the southern half of 3rd Street. That was ultra-annoying, and nobody seems to know what they're building.

That said, I had a really great Thanksgiving break. Had a tasty dinner and lots of quality time with my family, particularly my mom. I was afraid that being in my room might be a little strange, because there are a lot of Corwyn-related memories associated with it, but it didn't bother me at all, which is a good sign. I also got to see Nick and Emy, which is always oodles of fun. I am glad they seem to be happy and doing well for themselves, though their house that they share with about 20 gay guys is downright unsettling. Not because of the gay guys. Because of the steampunk-looking sculptures all over the place...it's so them :D

The highlight, though, was getting to see Lydia. Partly because we've both been crazy-busy and partly because I suck, we've barely talked at all this semester. But we met up for lunch at Ramsi's (always good!) and aside from the massive amounts of catching up we needed to do, it was seriously like neither of us had been gone. Everything that made our friendship work still works - we don't judge each other, we can laugh at each other and with each other, we'll readily embarrass ourselves in front of each other, we'll smile together, cry together, always know exactly why the other is crying even if the other doesn't know it herself, and we can talk, just talk, for hours on end.

Everyone should be as blessed as I am to have one friend like Lydia. There are few people whom I admire and love as much.

And I just had some good conversation with some people I needed to talk to. That was cool too.

Now to wait for everyone else to get back.

Thanksgiving is just around the corner, to be followed shortly by that month with all the holidays in it. Before anything else happens, I want to make a couple of things perfectly clear:

-If someone wishes you a merry Christmas and you get offended, you are being a dipshit.
-If someone wishes you happy holidays and you get offended, you are being a dipshit.
-If someone expresses any kind of desire for your life to be pleasant in the near future and you get offended, you are being a dipshit. This includes "God bless you," but does not include "I will pray that you find Jesus soon."

Look. I don't care if it's the Great Epic Sneeze of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Just have fun on whatever the hell holiday you celebrate, mkay?

So please. If you want to get your panties in a wad because of your persecution complex, do it somewhere else. That is all.

There are about 27 more people in our hall than there normally are. This is due to an incoming by several Gamma Taus, brothers and pledges from our Georgia Tech chapter. I am currently in my room, taking a break from the excitement before tonight.

We have to decide, come Sunday, where we're going to live for the next three years - or, I guess, more specifically, if we want to reclaim our current section. I am not looking forward to this meeting. There is a small but vocal contingent of brothers that really wants us to pick a new section, and I really, really don't want to move.

Not just because we live in the nicest dorm on campus. Not just because I personally have never known a Chi Delta that wasn't in Keohane 4D. Not just because this section has huge rooms, wide hallways, plenty of hanging space, and an eventual manifest destiny. No, largely because this has become something of a pattern in my life - just as I am beginning to find stability in a place and think of it as home, I am uprooted and hauled off somewhere else, and the getting-used-to-it process begins all over again. Yes, I know that's a totally selfish reason for not wanting to move, but that's how I feel.

The Lower D's is going quite well! People should come see it. I would describe it more here, but I'm still trying to figure out for myself what this batshit-crazy play is about.

A bunch of us went to Chi Psi's party last night, which turned out to be a lot of fun. Did some dancing, had some good conversations. I discovered that I have much better tossing hair now that it's shorter - my long hair was really shitty for tossing. And we determined that Rihanna's "song" "(Please) Don't Stop the Music" suddenly becomes a lot more enjoyable when one of your GT brothers mishears the refrain as "Weasel Stompin' Music."

Oh yeah, my prospective schedule for next semester:

THEATREST 129S: Medieval Drama
ITALIAN 108: Italian Sociolinguistics
MEDREN 298S: Old Norse (yay for my first grad-level course!)
THEATREST 101S: Reading Theatre - Acting Grotesque
DANCE 69: Introduction to Jazz Dance (to keep me in relative shape and make me less clumsy)

DRAMATURGY PROJECTS: New Works Festival, The Miser
MANUSCRIPT RESEARCH: Exeter Riddles, Cotton Nero D.iii

And now they're about to go on a Cookout run without me, so I must flee.

Hey there, Vatican, Southern Baptist Convention, Church of Latter-day Saints and all your cronies,

Go to hell.

That's one option, anyway.

The other is that if you are going to insert yourselves into every area of public policy and try to dictate what other people can and can't do with each other or for each other, you need to FUCKING PAY TAXES.

Of course, the better option at this point would just be to go to hell.  I don't want to see projects for the public good funded with your dirty money.  Your establishments are giving a bad name to the good and well-intentioned people who identify with them, and are providing a stomping ground for sanctimonious blowhards who think the way they love (not very much, apparently) is the only valid way.

So yeah...just go to hell.

Way to fuck up, Maine residents.  Guess your little blue state bubble just got punctured a bit, didn't it?

Sometimes I feel like I'm so lucky to be a red state liberal, because I don't get complacent so easily.

But this is one of those times when something Paul Begala (I'm not his biggest fan, but he has his moments) said really rings true to me: "Never stop fighting.  Never stop believing.  And whatever you do, never stop thinking about tomorrow."  We can't afford to get down for too long; if we do, it means they've won.

However, for right now...something incredibly sad happened yesterday, and the only appropriate response is to mourn.

I seem to go through periods of constant LJing and periods of LJ death.  Just saying.

A couple of questions:

1) Why the hell does nothing in the physics department count as a QS?  Or at least, nothing below the not-a-chance-in-hell level of advancedness?  Maybe my memory is faulty, and admittedly my physics experience is pretty limited, but I seem to remember there being an awful lot of math involved.  It's not just the premeds that have to fill a math requirement, Duke.  It's looking more and more like I will have to take Compsci 4, and I really, really don't want to...but the other option is to take actual math.

They're not giving me a whole lot of room for creativity here.

2) Why does almost every single class I want to take occur in the MWF 2:50-4:05 time slot?
3) Why does the theatre studies major have so many required classes?  My advisor keeps telling me to take my requirements first so that I know I have room for them, but I don't know if or when some of these classes are going to be offered again, and I ABSOLUTELY MUST TAKE medieval drama before I lose the opportunity to do so.
4) Why does the Italian department hate me?

So yeah...decisions, decisions, decisions.  Do I take Intro to Acting and get it out of the way now, or do I take a class at the same time that sounds absolutely amazing and may not be offered again for a while?  Do I take a grad-level course in Old Norse that I know I will love, but may also potentially eat my life?  Do I take astronomy and fill an NS/STS requirement, while risking taking a semester off from Italian and losing my speaking skills entirely?  Does it matter that the Italian department is offering NOTHING that I want take this semester?

Grrrrr.  Will somebody please give me a nice, simple dilemma, like whether to take calculus or Chaucer?

And once again, I am up way the hell later than I should be.  That's the third or fourth day in a row now.

But I've been happy...happier than I can remember being in a while.

I'm doing research that I love.
I didn't completely tank my Italian test.
I love my fraternity, so much.
My non-Psi U friends are pretty awesome too.  I have a great team in the crew of The Lower D's.
Rush is starting soon!  I'm really excited about that.
A couple of huge weights have been lifted off my chest.
Let me reiterate that I didn't tank my Italian test.
Halloween is this weekend.

And something pretty awesome has been in the process of happening for a couple weeks now.  Something I've alluded to before here.  If you want the details, ask me later when I'm awake.

But yeah...it's amazing how good things can get when you make a conscious decision that your life is absolutely not going to go to hell/enter a state of inertia, especially not because of something someone else did.  Wallowing time is long gone.  It's time to live.

I had a really, really great week.  Just generally good, all around.

Now I have a cold :(

Also, the LSRC is WAY bigger than I had previously thought.

I'll just post the lyrics to a song.  Which is "Wild World," by Cat Stevens

Now that I've lost everything to you
You say you wanna start something new
And it's breakin' my heart you're leavin'
Baby, I'm grievin'
But if you wanna leave, take good care
Hope you have a lot of nice things to wear
But then a lot of nice things turn bad out there

Oh, baby, baby, it's a wild world
It's hard to get by just upon a smile
Oh, baby, baby, it's a wild world
and I'll always remember you like a child, girl

You know I've seen a lot of what the world can do
And it's breakin' my heart in two
Because I never wanna see you sad, girl
Don't be a bad girl
But if you wanna leave, take good care
Hope you make a lot of nice friends out there
But just remember there's a lot of bad and beware

Oh, baby, baby, it's a wild world
It's hard to get by just upon a smile
Oh, baby, baby, it's a wild world
and I'll always remember you like a child, girl

Baby, I love you
But if you wanna leave, take good care
Hope you make a lot of nice friends out there
But just remember there's a lot of bad and beware

Oh, baby, baby, it's a wild world
It's hard to get by just upon a smile
Oh, baby, baby, it's a wild world
and I'll always remember you like a child, girl

Obviously there's no girl...but other than the gender-bender, that about sums it up right now.  I'll be okay.

WHY ARE YOU REMAKING SUSPIRIA???

Seriously.  First The Wicker Man, then Cannibal Holocaust, and now Suspiria.  YOU CAN'T REMAKE SUSPIRIA.  My favorite films are like the kids in Cabin Fever, dying off slowly one by one.  What's next?  Are you going to remake fucking Salo?

It's not just that the original Suspiria (one of the scariest movies I've ever seen, with a soundtrack that made the TATTATP music sound like a lullaby, and which caused me to lie awake in fear that my roommate was going to come back from the dead and murder me with a jeweled knife, though I am fairly certain that my roommate is not, in fact, dead) cannot be improved by remaking it.  It's that you CAN'T REMAKE IT.  Without Argento's crazy sight-and-sound style, the plot itself becomes kind of stupid.  Without the blinding flashes of color and the Goblin soundtrack, the horrific scenes become run-of-the-mill.  In short, the only thing they can possibly do with the movie is take it and bastardize it.

Seriously, are you going to remake Salo next?  Would that be a good one to cash in on, Pasolini's bird-flip to the world?  Were the kids in the original not hot enough?

I don't think mainstream cinema is the devil, really, I don't.  But they're trying damn hard to make me think it.

1) The Mystic Burger Van Guy

The mystic burger van, technically called OnlyBurger, is a very sketchy-looking van that magically appears in certain spots on campus when the wind is blowing north.  Or possibly south.  Whatever...it shows up every so often.  The MBV sells some of the best burgers and fries I have ever had.  But that's not why it makes me happy.  That would be the guy who runs the MBV.  He is one of those unbelievably friendly people who remembers everyone's name after meeting them once, and will say hi to them if he sees them even if they aren't buying anything from him.  He also seems to take a lot of pride in what he does.  More people should be like that.

2) Awesome Fun Zombie Themed Parties That Go Really Well

Biohazard.  Nuff said.  It was awesome.  Check out www.duke.edu/psiu and scroll down a bit for more info.  And I got to show off my mad skillz at stage makeup  The stuff on Liz and Mike's faces?  That was me.

3) Dramaturgy

I am SO EXCITED about The Lower D's.  I'm in demand as a dramaturg.  I'm also in demand as an audio tech, but that's because nobody else wants to do it.  Okay, that's also the same reason I'm in demand as a dramaturg.  The difference being that audio is something I'm kind of meh about - I do it to get experience and money.  Whereas dramaturgy is something that I truly love and am truly invested in.  And there's the part where I get writing credit.  It's like doing research in a research group, only instead of doing research I'm writing.

4) Med/Ren

I get my paws on an untranslated Old English text later this year.  YES.

So yeah...everything is pretty damn peachy.  Oh, and I got a new Ren Faire skirt.

The last couple of days in Louisville before I went back to Duke were fun ones.  I said a tearful but warm goodbye to Corwyn (and I promise I am NOT going to start dwelling on that, not yet anyway), partied with some friends for the end of the summer, and had food from Ramsi's one more time.  But there were a few moments of these days, like those of last summer, that were quite emotional for me: when I saw the school buses making their rounds in the afternoon, and realized that I would indeed never be on one again, at least not for its traditional purpose.  And these were emotional moments indeed, and my emotions can be expressed as follows: HAHAHAHAHAHA YOU LITTLE DWEEBS!  YOU HAVE TO GO BACK TO HIGH SCHOOL AND I DON'T! *raspberry*

My Duke experience this year is already quite different from that of last year, with many new concepts introduced.

-Living In Section, on West, in Keohane, a dorm with Air Conditioning, and Washing Machines/Dryers That Work.  Needless to say, all items in bold make for very pleasant changes from dear old Bassett.

-Living In Section in General, which has thus far been a great experience, because there's always someone to talk to, get food with, play a game, or just enjoy company while doing homework/procrastinating

-No Marketplace Meal Plan, which means that I will not suddenly, halfway through the semester, have to ask my parents for even more money because I don't have time to go back to East, have no more food points, and still require food to stay alive

-Taking Classes That I Like, such as those involving Greek theatre and dead languages, and not those involving standard deviations

-Professor Beckwith, who I want to be when I grow up

-The Section Pogo Stick, on which I am currently, with 317 nonstop pogos, the reigning champion

-The Lower D's, the Duke Players mainstage show, which I am helping to write.  Yes.  I am ridiculously excited.

And now I really should go to class.  Because it's on East.  Sometimes I can't win.

You shall be preserved for eternity in an LJ icon!  Congrats!

Today was my last day of work!  I'm free, I'm free, I'm freeeeeee!

As much as I bitched about it, I really did enjoy my job.  I was proud in particular to be a part of Hairspray, which was one of the biggest-selling shows in MTL's history as a company.  Also, I got a glowing employee review from my boss, who was great, and learned a lot about basic audio.

Now to relax a little bit before heading back to Duke...

Going to Boston with Corwyn to visit my sister and her now-fiance (*girly squeal*) over the weekend.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This post contains many derogatory and unkind statements about the musical Singin' in the Rain.  If you are a diehard fan of said musical, you will not agree with the contents of this post.  Also, if you happen to be one of our performers, I would like to stress that you personally are doing a great job and this should be interpreted in no way as an attack on your performance - keep up your great work!

***

So, after several years, I finally understand WHY, exactly, Singin' in the Rain has always annoyed the living shit out of me.  I always knew it did, but I never quite understood WHY.  If that makes any sense.

For those who are living under rocks, Singin' in the Rain is a musical that got its title because it was not considered a shrewd marketing move to make a musical movie called Petty Hollywood Twits on Parade. 

I got to hear it in its entirety last night when we opened, and realized just how much it embodies everything I hate about the world of musical theatre.

(Don and Lina enter)

Gossip Columnist: Hey, look everyone!  Pretty actors in a grotesquely cliched silent movie!  Because as we all know, all silent movies were corny love stories!
Audience: Yay!
(five-minute dance break)
(Movie plays)
Audience: Yay, pretty actors!
Don: Thanks everyone for loving how pretty we are!  Hey Lina, shut up.  Even though you haven't said anything yet.

(backstage)

Publicity Guy: Great job at looking pretty, kids!
Lina: (in a less-than-velvety voice) How come I never get to talk?  I'm prettier than Don.
Publicity Guy:  Well, Lina, we don't want to show the audience that you're an actual human being wih a voice that doesn't sound like Greta Garbo's, so we thought it would be better if Don did the talking while you stand there and look pretty and fawn over him.
Cosmo: Yeah.  Hey, why exactly am I here?
Lina: Hey Donny, this is the point where I deteriorate from a potentially interesting two-dimensional character into a hyperpossessive, delusional, vapid diva!
Don: That's right, Lina!  See you at the party!
Cosmo: See you at the party, Lina!  Hey Don, what purpose does my character actually serve?
Don: I'm not sure, Cos.  I think the writers decided that I needed a goofy dancing sidekick with possible gay tendencies towards me, depending on who is directing.
Cosmo: Okay, Don!  See you at the party!

(Don meets Kathy)
(Don and Kathy spend what feels like twenty pages of dialogue trading stupid insults)
Don: Wow, you're kind of hot and you don't like me.  HAVE BABIES WITH ME PLZ.
Kathy: Go to hell.
Audience: YAY PRETTY ACTORS.

(Don goes to the party)
(Kathy shows up at the party as a showgirl)
Don: Hey, didn't you tell me you were some great stage actress?  Wow!  You're hot, you hate me, AND you lied to me!  MARRY ME.
Kathy: No.
(Kathy throws a cake at Don but hits Lina instead)
(Lina has a freakout of immensely epic proportions appropriate to Kathy having murdered her mother.  Yes, the entire "conflict" for the show is driven by two actresses having a catfight.)

Lina: Hey Kathy's employer, she hit me in the face with a cake.
Kathy's Employer: Hey Kathy, you threw a cake at a customer.  You're fired.
Don: What?  They fired her for behaving totally inappropriately at her job?  How unfair!  You suck, Lina!
Lina: *continues to whine and pout in a totally unrealistic manner.  Seriously, I don't know ANYONE capable of holding this kind of grudge*
Producer : Hey guys, we're making the transition to talking pictures!
Don: Oh no!  But Lina doesn't have a pretty voice!  What are we going to do?
Cosmo: I don't know, Don!  It's such a huge CONCERN, what happens to YOUR career at a time when Lon Chaney's was in jeopardy, Mary Philbin's was deteriorating and John Gilbert's was going down the toilet!  The audience must be in TEARS.
Audience: *weep weep weep*

(Kathy randomly shows up in the cast of a movie)
Everyone in Sight: OMG, Kathy's so awesome.
Don: She totally is.  Even though she hasn't actually revealed any charming personality qualities yet.  Hey Kathy, marry me.
Kathy: No, I hate you.
Don: But I'm pretty!  And rich!  And I can get you more movie roles!
Kathy: Really!  Well then!  I secretly liked you all along.
(ten minute dance break culminating in long smooch)

(thirty-minute dance break having something to do with diction lessons)

(Lina and Don release the preview of their first talking movie.  It sucks)

Don: Well, I guess the public knows now that I can't act.
Cosmo: Nah, it was all Lina's fault.
Don: Oh, okay.
Kathy: Hey, I bet it would all be better if you inserted song and dance numbers into it!
Don and Cosmo: Yeah, that would fix all the problems!  Like the fact that neither Don nor Lina can actually act!  And that the script is a piece of shit!  You're so totally amazing, Kathy!
(Don and Kathy smooch)
(forty-minute dance break)
Cosmo: Hey, I just had a great idea!  Let's record Kathy's voice over Lina's to make it sound better!  Lina totally won't notice anything!
Kathy: Great idea, Don!
Cosmo: But I thought of it...
(Don and Kathy smooch for about ten minutes)
(Cosmo leaves)
(twenty minute dance break for title song)
(End of Act I)

Act II

Everyone in Sight: OMG, Kathy's so awesome!
Kathy: But I still haven't actually done anything...
Everyone in Sight: That totally doesn't matter.
Lina: Hey, there's a girl dubbing for my voice and nobody told me?  I am understandably pissed off!
Don: Screw you, Lina.  I'm totally in love with Kathy.
Lina: Why?
Don: That I can't tell you.
Kathy: Pwned bitch.
Lina: *sings a song in which the entire "conflict" is turned into "who should get into Don's pants"*

(two-hour dance break between plot points)

Audience: Yay, we love the new movie!
Lina: Hey producer guy, since this was such a financial success, she should keep doing my voice.
Producer: Sure, why not?  Lots of actresses dub for each other and it works out fine for everyone -
Don and Kathy: NO EFFING WAY BEATCH.
Producer: ...I mean, absolutely not!  It would wreck her career!
Don: Hey, I have an idea!  Let's play a totally mean-spirited joke on Lina because it would be too sensible to just give Kathy screen credit!
Cosmo and Producer: Great idea, Don!
Kathy: No, that's totally not cool, Don, I won't do it.
Don: Stop displaying positive personality traits, Kathy, you're ruining your character.
Kathy: Sorry.
(Lina runs away in disgrace)
(Don and Kathy smooch)
Audience: Yay pretty actors!
(Lengthy dance break)

I am going to be accused at some point of oversimplifying the show, and my response is that it is a story that deserves to be oversimplified.  I have one really big question for the writers: WHO THE HELL CARES?

A lot of people, apparently.  Meanwhile, Passion, a heartfelt and original love story in which the good personality wins out, is a Broadway flop.  Thanks, audiences.

Mame is over.

I did not murder the leading lady, but only just.  After a while she just stopped talking to most of us, and we were fine with it that way.  I will be shocked if MTL ever casts her again.

I am coming to realize that the pity some actors feel for techies about the fact that they do most of the work and get none of the glory is misplaced.  Techies, by and large, do not want glory.  In fact, the less people see us, the better.

The master electrician drew an analogy that I thought worked quite well: actors are the pirates and techies are the ninjas.  The actors get the shiny costumes and stuff, the fame/notoriety, and the women.  The techies get a certain mystique that surrounds them: if everything goes well, no one will know they are there.  Also, they get the codes to all kinds of cool places the actors aren't allowed into.

And the universe would be utterly incomplete without both of them :D

Onward to Singin' in the Rice!

Temperature outside at peak today: 92 degrees Fahrenheit.

Where I was: LTA warehouse in decidedly ugly and unpleasant part of town.

-We were moving house into the Bomhard for Mame, which opens next week - speakers, mixing consoles, random boxes o' stuff, etc.
-Sound is on the top floor of the warehouse.
-There is no air conditioning in the warehouse.
-I have to wear long pants in the warehouse.

I think I lost five pounds in sweat today.

But I'm looking forward to the rest of this job.  I feel more fulfilled than I ever did scooping ice cream or waiting tables.  Also, this job is significantly less likely to leave me with permanent burn scars.

Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Tag 15 friends, including me because I'm interested in seeing what books my friends choose.

1.  The Green Mile (Stephen King) - my favorite book, always and forever.  I've read it seven or eight times and it never fails to make me cry.  Has contributed significantly to my loud anti-death penalty crusade.

2.  The Animorphs Series (KA Applegate) - was practically my entire childhood.  These books got an undeserved bad rap, and they really had very interesting things to say about how a war works.

3.  The Exorcist (William Peter Blatty) - I read the book before I saw the movie, and I loved them both.  Sick sick sick sick sick, makes you feel pretty helpless while you're reading it.  By the end you're pretty worn out.  But what can I say?  I love horror.  You all knew that.

4.  The Cold Equations (Thomas Godwin) - this is actually a short story, but had a bigger impact on me than many of the longer books I've read.  I had never read a story that was so frighteningly impersonal, and says a thing or two about tough decisions that is really worth considering.

5.  Bacchi (Euripides) - what a seriously messed up piece of theatre.  I love it when people have the courage to actually put this shit onstage.

6.  Pinocchio (Carlo Collodi) - the first piece of serious non-Pasolini Italian literature I read.  Nothing like the Disney film at all; in fact, one of the all-around bleakest books I have ever read.  Convinced me among other things that Disney is evil for what they did to Collodi's work.

7. The 120 Days of Sodom (Marquis de Sade) - taught me that a book can contain nearly 800 pages of incredibly graphic and gross descriptions of kinky sexual acts and still be, in the end, really boring.

7.  Summer of My German Soldier (Bette Greene) - I really like war novels.  Even more than just war novels, I like those with a more unusual perspective - like where the heroine decides to harbor an enemy soldier and is not made out to be evil for it.

8.  Ragazzi di vita (Pier Paolo Pasolini) - what an incredibly artistic and courageous man he was, and how sad that we were robbed of him before the Trilogy of Death could be completed (?)  "Ragazzi" is a book that is incredibly full of life.  That's all I can really say without ruining it.

9.  Requiem for a Dream (Hubert Selby) - this list is starting to take on a really depressing tone, but I like books that can pack a good hard punch - and this one definitely did, almost too hard.

10.  Backlash (Susan Faludi) - a book containing wonderful information and ammunition that should be approached with caution.  Showed me how far women still have to come in the fight for equal rights, but also showed me that some people, including the author, need to learn how to take a joke.

11.  Napalm and Silly Putty (George Carlin) - an entire book about how people need to learn to take a joke.  Celebrates the core of my life philosophy, which is to never take anything too seriously. 

12.  Big Trouble (Dave Barry) - had me on the floor laughing by the end.  That's mostly why I remember it.  Dave Barry, for all the work he has done in the world of making people piss themselves, deserves at minimum the Nobel Prize.

13.  Shades of Gray (Amanda Ashley) - this is an absolutely godawful vampire romance full of dry, one-dimensional characters that for some reason I have read more than once.  It's not that I don't realize it's awful.  It's that I don't care.

14.  The Butter Battle Book (Dr. Seuss) - not that I understood it at the age of three, but what a great Cold War metaphor.

15.  The Long Walk (Richard Bachman/Stephen King) - possibly the most disturbing thing I've ever read.  I can't wait til Frank Darabont (who also directed The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile) gets to work on the movie. 

First of all, the Voyager/Love Terrarium is all better.  We thought its transmission was broken, which would have been scary and would have likely involved a dollar figure containing a comma.  It turned out to be the car's internal computer, which was not telling the transmission to shift into higher gears.  Meaning that I was attempting to go 65 in the gear meant for 35-45.  No wonder it felt weird/was really loud/started bucking.  At any rate, the computer is easier and cheaper to fix, so I will soon have a car again.

Secondly, you must all advise me on a matter of utmost importance.

Once I start work, I am allotting myself enough spending money to invest in, among a few other things, one in-print tabletop game.

Do I get Zombies!!!!, Humans!!!!, or Classic Battletech?

Friends, the fate of my spare time rests in your hands.

The Kentucky Highland Renaissance Faire is AMAZING, and you should all go and spend your money there on a future weekend.  It is accessible to both Louisvillians and NKYers via I-71.

I can't remember having this much fun while supposedly working in a long time.  And yes, the fact that it's something I can do with Corwyn is a definite plus.  But aside from that, the cast, vendors, and patrons are great folks, and I have a pretty new chainmail headband.

I might have some pictures to show people once I figure out where on the Internet they are.

Something is up with my car, other than the vague lingering scents left over from a couple of events from which some of you, and you know who you are, owe me Febreeze.  I hope against hope that it's not a transmission problem, but the signs point to it, in which case hopefully it's easy to fix and not hideously expensive.

I think I'm becoming addicted to Myst.

Ho tentato di ritornare il mio testo d'italiano per i soldi, ed il uomo alla tavola ha mi detto che potrei solo due dollari per un libro che ne costava sessantasette.  A questo parlo: ficcarlo!

(Yes, that was an attempt to prove to myself that I still speak Italian.  Apparently I do.  But I am still ticked about the book.)

I am very tempted to ask Doktor Kaboom what he puts on his tax returns in the "occupation" space.  Occupation: Practitioner of Kaboom.

I would also like to humbly request that people stop writing letters to the editor essentially saying that the don't condone the murder of Dr. George Tiller, but they still hope he rots in hell.  Listen, folks: we were expected to keep quiet while you mourned Jerry Falwell, so let us have a little time to wonder why a man can't go to church without being murdered for providing a service to women who needed it and couldn't go anywhere else.  That is all.

First of all, I finished my freshman year in the top 3% of my class, which is better than I ever did in high school.  Yay me.

And now I'm home.

So, either y'all let Louisville get really boring while I was away, or I've become harder to excite.  Ever since I got back, I've experienced this general blah feeling about actually wanting to do anything.  Though I did join a ren faire to keep me occupied for a couple weeks.  Should be fun.  Corwyn's playing my brother.  Yes, you are allowed to make an incest joke.

I'm excited about starting work.  For those that I failed to inform, I got an internship with Music Theatre Louisville working in the sound department.  Considering that most theatre companies are desperately searching for ways to get rid of people, I am damn fortunate.

Looking at these poor high school kids who are never going to get out reminds me how thankful I am to be out.  Thanks to various inclement weathers, they've had about two weeks added to the end of their school year - and it wasn't even the fun kind of inclement weather where you can go out and have snowball fights.  I was so very ready to be done last year by the time it rolled around, I can't imagine being told I'd have to stay another two weeks.

I am going through the bullshit of filling out my Long-Range Plan so that I can declare my major.  Somebody kill the bureaucracy.

Along with every Democrat in the country, I am hoping that Rush Limbaugh will decide to run for President in 2012, along with Sarah Palin.

Hopefully I can get back into volunteering for PPKY soon as well, at least some of the time.  I'm sure they're still desperate.

I could have sworn something else interesting was going on...

Oh yeah.  Have you ever gone away for a lengthy period and return to discover that one of your old friends went completely off the deep end?  That definitely happened.

I'll update again when I feel more inspired.