(4 years x $80 K) + grossest garment ever= dangly strands

As I’m now a college graduate I’ve now got a wealth of prestige and resources at my hands, or so I’ve been told. Most magnanimous and prestigious of all these resources has got to be my cap tassel. Before you graduate from college, your tassel hangs to the right. After you graduate, you flip it to the left. After take it off your cap, it can hang anywhere! Right now mine is hanging from my closet door. This little set of silk strands has a infinite number of uses and is, without a doubt the most valuable result of my four years of blood sweat and tears, not to mention about 80k in tuition. Here are only a few uses:

1. Cat toy
2. Rearview mirror ornament
3. Harujuko hair decoration
4. Permanently attach it to a hat you will actually wear
5. Tie it to a ceiling fan chain
6. Hang it on your porch to tell which way the wind is blowing
7. Use it as a tail on a very small kite
8. Tie it to a key you need to quickly identify (hey, it worked until the 18th century)
9. Use it to identify a high ranking officer in a military you’ve created
10. Use it to tie back a curtain
11. Cross pollinate flowers

The possibilities are ENDLESS!

Husband Material

I got the inspiration for this post from my friend's new blog, Husband Material. You should check it out.
Pictured above is my future husband, Atif. To protect his identity, I won't say which of those ruggedly attractive men is him. He had me at, “Snakes have TWO penises.” I think I won him over with my delectable Easter pasties, but he'd probably tell you it was my stunning beauty. It really doesn't matter.
We realized our future together when we met while both studying last spring abroad at the University of Bristol in England. That considered, our meeting was pretty miraculous; we could have gone about our entire life in the United States and never have known the other existed! What fortunate stars we have. I can't wait until we get to spend our golden years swapping strange animal facts, eating halal pizza and me teaching him to play the flute.
The best part of this whole marriage business? Islam. That's right, polygamy. That means that while Atif is off running some multinational corporation in China, I get two other co-wives to party it up with, help me raise the llamas on the farm, have awesome movie marathons and other such important things. We've discussed it and think that with low price of land in the areas surrounding San Fransisco, we'll probably settle down there, at least until California sinks into the Pacific. I'll update you when I and my co-wives start accepting applications for a fourth wife. You know, the one who'll actually have his kids and stuff.

Oh Darlin'

Today a screw fell out of my laptop. She's been slowly dying for the past year and as I get closer to graduation, I'm getting a little scared. It started last year with a general slow down of all processes. Right before Spring Break, though, all the hardware just started going to Hell. The panel of plastic below the key board, (where the heels of my palms usually rest), has little spider-web cracks along it's edge. Also, the right-hand hinge that connects the screen to the key board has already come detached once and is now predominantly has a piece of it that constantly sticks out. That was a particularly scary moment: for near to a minute I looked on in horror as my computer was close to being two pieces. Since then, the panel of plastic above the key board (where my speakers are) is entirely warped and I have to keep pressing it back into place. It always pops back out.
The thing is, the software, (with the exception of speed) is working fine. I just have to be sure not to say that out loud; the gremlins might hear me.
Hang in there, baby. As soon as I turn in all my work, you'll have a well deserved rest in technology-heaven.

Things found in books.

The other day while going through a book I'm using for research on my thesis, I found the stub of Robert Freucel's boarding pass for a Northwest flight going from Albuquerque to Denver. It was on the 18th of February at 8:30 AM, flight 396. I don't know who Robert Frucel is or what he was doing with the book I opened, but it's kind of fascinating that a piece of his life ended up in mine.
I realized that two years ago I left a bunch of ransom notes in a book that got returned to the library. My friends had left me after they took all of my shoes hostage and I returned the book, forgetting I had been using the notes as a book mark. I wonder who found them and what they thought of all the meticulously cut out magazine lettering arranged in cryptic phrases.

April Fool's!

I pulled one of the greatest pranks on my professor today. I changed his password to an on-line archive to “hornycentaur69” and gave him a picture puzzle to solve it. He was thoroughly amused and gave the puzzle to all of us in class to solve. What was great is that he was that I hadn't realized that I'd made the password the singular form of centaur, whereas the picture puzzle suggested it was plural. Oops! He never got into it. I'll be changing it back this evening.

Here's a copy of the letter I left in his office last night:

4/1/2009
12:00 AM
 
To the most esteemed Professor Rick Hamilton:
For the next 24 hours, your password to The Beazley Archive Online has been altered. Your temporary password can be decoded through the puzzle below. Best of luck!
 
With respect and admiration,
The April Fool's Fairy

Weekend Moments

I had two really wonderful moments over the weekend.
My Saturday moment occurred around 10:20pm. I was walking across campus to attend a party my friend was throwing. The night was beautiful; the air was crisp and cool, neither humid nor cold. Not to brag, but I looks so freakin' cool; I was wearing these jeans that make my legs look really good, a peach colored, lace top with sequins, topped off with my bamfy black jacket. The party, I expected, wouldn't be very well attended and the music would be mediocre, but I take what I can get; without expectations, you're never disappointed. I was just glad I had something to do on a Saturday night, that I'd be doing it with friends I rarely get to see and that I was going to look good doing it. Just when I felt on top of the world and super excited for this party, the song “Where is My Mind” by The Pixies started blasting from someone's dorm room. This song was so loud, it was as if the building itself were belting it. The song and it's disembodied blaring so perfectly illustrated the moment, capturing my mood indifferent satisfaction and contentment. Were I a smoker, I probably would have leaned against a tree and lit up.
My Sunday moment occurred around 6:10 pm. I had gotten back to my room from an early dinner with two friends I never get to eat with and had decided to watch Blue Velvet, a film I knew nothing about but had heard referenced so often, I decided it was worth watching if only to know what everyone was talking about. About 15 minutes into the movie, the clouds in the sky started rolling and billowing, like smoke out of some great celestial pipe. I had seen the storm approaching on my way back from dinner, the navy blue hue of the sky foreshadowing the thundering downpour that was sure to come. I paused the movie and leaned on my window sill, watching as the sky changed from navy to olive green then to a faded yellow. Then the rain came. There were only a few claps of thunder, more wind than anything, but the downpour was so devastatingly beautiful. As it got underway, I went back to watching my movie, paying more attention to the weather than the tv at points. The rain stopped within half an hour and I was a little sad. The movie was okay.

Like, Oh my GOD!

While, admittedly, I do have an altar ego who is a 14 year old boy named Frank and another who is a nameless 65 year old man, 33.3% of the time, I am such a total girl. High point of my day: buying a lovely white cotton dress in the campus center for $2! Not only does this combine two of my favorite things (pretty dresses and bargains), it also gives me something new to wear on May Day or Graduation. It's so flippin' cute; it's a foux wrap cut, with a collar and short sleeves. Very Ozzie and Harriet. I'm contemplating shortening it, but for now I'll look super 1950's domesticate. This girly mood continued at lunch, during which I spent about 25% of the time making eyes with this blond dude having lunch with his professor. They spent most of the time talking in Chinese, so I couldn't understand what they were saying, but every now and then he and I would glance at each other and share a momentary smile. :sigh: Spring is in the air.
I don't mind that the above bit makes me sound like I'm on feminine over-drive. It just acts as a bizarre counterpoint to my two other egos.

Blow me to Bermuda!

There is a librarian here who I’m certain is a wizard. I’m not kidding. It’s bad enough this school looks like Hogwarts, they don’t need to start hiring people engaged in the magical arts. Though, I must admit, they did hire him before be became a wizard, or at least, before he took on the appearance of one. The fellow has long white hair that hangs down to his shoulders, whisking about him as he walks. His facial hair, though, is very short, creating a sort of interesting contrast from the neck up. I can’t tell you how many times I come into the library to do work and end up just staring at this man as he sits behind the reference desk. I can’t quite call it stalking yet, because I haven’t been caught.
I always want to go to him with a research question, but I never actually have one when his shift is scheduled. Maybe I should just make one up. Really, though, I just want to ask him to teach me everything and anything he knows; he must know EVERYTHING. I wonder if he has a talking owl?

Universal Threads

There’s an odd satisfaction I get when I go into one of the public computer labs on campus, wiggle the mouse around to wake the screen, and discover that I was the last person to use said computer. For some reason, it makes the moment feel special, like the computer was waiting for me to return, that it was completely serendipitous that no one else used it in the 14 hours since I had last been there. It made me feel like I was meant to be right where I was in the world at that moment in time-space. This satisfaction was, of course, followed by extreme frustration as the computer then took close to 7 minutes to load. In all of 2 seconds I had decided this machine was a douche bag and needed to be destroyed.
It’s funny how quickly time-space, the very fabric of reality, can unravel.

"Stand up... just like that."*

I just came back from a comedy show in Philly. It felt great to get off campus and laugh my ass off for a good two hours. Okay, so it wasn't nonstop laughter. In fact it was far from it. One of my friends is writing her thesis on a couple of comedians in the Philly stand-up circuit and wants to interview audience members. Rather than trying to track down people at the shows she goes to, she invited me and a couple other friends to go down to The Helium down in Center City. Hot tip: Tuesday nights is free because it's Open Mic Night. There's a two item minimum per person, but none of us got anything and it didn't seem to bother anyone.
In stand-up, comedians either kill or die. There was some serious murder and suicide committed on that stage. The comedians that did the best jobs knew the audience; college aged, mostly female. The misogynist jokes and stories about kids didn't really go over well. One of the best acts of the evening was this 18-year-old kid. He got major points for using the work “apothecary” in his act. I think I'll be blowing off my work most Tuesday evenings from now on, provided someone will drive each time. This seems like one of the best deals in town.


*Luda

Ruminations on (fecal) matter

There's a particular revelation I had about myself recently that I thought was worthy of breaking my recent absence from posting. It's something I realized has changed since coming to college. When I first arrived here, I was extremely reserved. I'm still fairly reserved, but I've grown quite comfortable with myself in general. Specifically, I noticed that I now am able to take poop in the presence of others. No, not like right in front of someone, but in a public bathroom, if someone else is there, say washing their hands or also pooping, I am comfortable enough to do my business and not care what the other person is thinking. THIS IS HUGE! I can't imagine myself being anywhere near comfortable enough to poop in the presence of another. I guess I've really come into my own as a person. Or maybe pooped into my own personhood.

ACTION!

Do you ever get the feeling you’re in a movie? From time to time I have these outer body experiences where I can see myself and everything happening around me and think, “That’s just what happened in A Fish Called Wanda” or something to that effect. This always happens at parties or in the dinning hall, where the music playing often becomes illustrative of the moment. Then there are other times when I realize I’ve been conducting a very coherent narrative in my mind, something that might work nicely as a voice-over. There are also the great one-liners that seem to pop up in every-day conversation that make me think Seth Rogan has programed my conversation.

The genre I constantly feel I’m walking into is Horror. Not that anything particularly macabre or gruesome seems to be happening to or around me, but it always seems like I’m in those moments right before the psycho killer pops out and kills the unsuspecting type-cast victim. This usually happens when I’m in the bathroom late at night brushing my teeth. The building seems more creeky, the faucets more drippy, and the weather more windy. Call me crazy, but the shower stalls of a women’s college seems like just the right place for Michale Myers to be hiding with a butcher knife.

EXTRA! EXTRA!

As a favor to a friend and a further experiment in writing for an audience, I wrote an article for our college news paper on the concert I attended which inspired my previous rant. For a more complete look at my thought from the evening, I've put the unedited version below, (though I believe uncensored is a more appropriate term).
Enjoy!:

Friday night was my first visit to Swarthmore's Old Club. I came away from it with a mixed bag of feelings but, overall, had a really great time. The theme of the night seemed to be violins, as pointed out by Ra Ra Riot's lead vocal, Wes Miles. After the first opening band's fantastic fiddling fury, the second openers, The Money Notes were indeed money. Their folk-funk funk fusion, (if that even adequately captures their sound), provided the house with brilliant covers of classics like 'Lil Liza Jane and Poison Ivy and a  little Weezer thrown into the mix. Their original pieces had me and my friends breaking out into spontaneously choreographed dance, a sight rarely seen by Swarthmore students, as I overheard from a confused, rhythm impaired individual behind me. Additional attempts of stand-up were also appreciated by those of us who were sober.

Things took an unsavory turn in the set-up time between the end of The Money Notes' set and the start of Ra Ra Riot's. A gaggle of belligerently drunk chicks pushed and stumbled their way to the front of the stage beside me. From that moment until about twenty minutes into the headliners' set, I was jostled and pushed to front row, dead center, which would have been great if I didn't have to restrain myself from assaulting the people standing next to me. I felt like I was on the loosing side of the battle of Thermoplyae from that scene in 300 when the Spartans were pushing Persians off a cliff into the sea. In addition to moving about in a particularly elbowy fashion, they were completely fucking with the sound equipment at the foot of the stage which resulted in a noticable amount of feedback  as well as pissing off singer Miles and cellist Alexandra Lawn. Nearly getting burned in the face by a cigarette belonging to the chicks' tall friend, I decided it was time to get out of the fray and ash and fade to the back of the crowd. Later I had to face the obnoxious antics of moshers, but fortunately I found a place with like-minded individuals. (Side note: Sometimes you don't need to fight for your right to party. You just need to go with it and want to have fun. If it's still not fun, maybe you need to rethink your life or leave the joint.)

Once there, peacefully swaying with the people packed against me, I was actually able to enjoy Ra Ra Riot's performance. I also no longer needed to confront guitarist Milo Bonocci's' tight pants, (let's just say I now know he dresses to the left). The performance was a pure explosion of sound, a synesthesia inducing epic that left me wanting more by the end. There wasn't any time to think about the fact that I had never listened to their music before; I just absorbed as much of the furious melodies pelting me from the stage. There was only the music and we were all just ears. No, I was not high. I was perhaps the most conscious and aware that I've been in a while. Ra Ra Riot delivered, in every sense of the word, dealing nobly with the problems caused by drunk chicks and apologizing several times for having to cancel a previously scheduled performance at Swat. I left a fan of two bands I'd never heard before as well as a new and loyal patron of Old Club.

12 car pile up

A bit of a rant if you don't mind:

I'm currently (rather, perpetually) taking issue with liberal arts student at nocturnal social gatherings. I understand the concept of “study hard: party hard,” however, these people are are trying just a little too hard. Sometimes you don't need to fight for your right to party, especially when it's being handed to you on a silver platter. All that effort is just sad.

For example:
Folk-funk fusion bands do not require body surfing.

A further example:
Most bands are not made for moshing. (Warning: potentially racist comment ahead). White people, quit you goddamn'd inappropriate moshing to the proper genres of rock. I know all of you don't do this, White people, but to those that do, quit it. To those that don't, lead by example. Do not put up with the stupidity of others.

As a sub category of liberal arts students, the ones without any common sense really need a punch in the face.

For example:
If you're in an environment that mixes crowds and movement, (say, a moshing one), DO NOT light a cigarette. I was nearly stabbed in the face twice with the lit end of someone's cancer stick. But forget about my face; there was an inordinate amount of hair gel up in there. Talk about flammable. I doubt waving a stick of cinders at head level is a recipe for fire safety.

All right. I think it's out of my system.

Go back to your lives, citizens. Live another day and make merry.

T is for "Tabogon". I mean, "Tray."

I'm proud to say that I've been doing a pretty good job of keeping my resolutions. Ok, maybe not the posting one, but hey, I'm only human.

I've been especially good on the physical activity part of my resolution. Today I did it in the most wonderful way imaginable: Traying.

For those of you who don't know, traying is very similar to sledding, in fact, it's identical, except for the choice of equipment. When sledding, one uses a sled to glide smoothly down snow covered hills. When traying, one (temporarily) steals a tray from the dinning hall and slides, luge style, down a hill at an alarming rate, getting covered in snow, feeling every bump, and freezing most parts of your body. It is, to borrow the vernacular of a young Keanu Reeves, TOTALLY EXCELLENT! I can think of no better words to describe the feeling of racing down a hill with only your but actually sitting on top of your vehicle, your limbs either in the air or inches from the ground.

We worked our way up, from bunny slopes all the way to the smaller of the larger hills on campus, the slope that leads to the field hockey field. It was great because once you finished coming down the hill, there was a the whole 50 yards of flat space that you would continue flying across. It's the most terrifying and exhilarating experience all at the same time. At one point a did a spectacular 360 on my butt and kept going!

"I'm a big kid now!"

So, apparently I'm an adult now. Or, at least, this is what I've been told. I guess this has something to do with the fact that I'm graduating in May and am waiting to here back from Teach for America to see if I have a job. If I didn't make it, I'll be in the same boat as most people in my year at school, not really knowing what form of employment I'll have after graduation. This means I'll be going to numerous job interviews, which led me to buying a suit.

Yup. It's official; I own a suit. I'm grown.

Not just one, but TWO suits. I bought them on this crazy awesome sale at the Deer Park Tanger Outlet Mall last Saturday. It seemed silly to just buy one when for the same amount I could buy two. I need to get them hemmed and one of the jackets altered, so you could say it's not quite official yet, but we're getting' there.

Also, prompted by my mom, I've decided (as I'm now a grown up) I should get some perfume. Now, I'm not one to be wearing cosmetics in general, but there's something so supremely feminine and womanly I find about perfume. The right perfume, that is. The only perfume I've ever used has been this scent a friend of mine bought me at a perfume factory in France when she was visiting family. It's really nice, but a bit too juvenile for my tastes now. Thus, I spent about an hour in Sephora's the other day, spraying about thirty-five different fragrances on those little sample tabs. I was in completely new territory. It was pretty daunting to be faced with all those bottles, not having a clue what I was looking for. I came up with a strategy of first going for the bottles that were nearly empty; to me, that meant that lots of people had tested it, either because they liked it or had been told it was a good scent. A lot of them really stunk. For the ones I liked, I wrote down their name and price on the tag, then looked them up on-line for a better deal.
It seems I'm on my way to not only looking, but smelling like a woman.

déjà vu

This feels like déjà vu. It’s certainly been a while since I last posted, but with winter break on the horizon, I feel you have a good month worth of posting to look forward to.

I had a similar, very odd feeling of déjà vu this morning as I ate my breakfast. As I was eating a clementine and watching the beginning of After the Wedding (a film I need to finish watching tonight before its due back tomorrow), I had the strangest feeling of being back in Bristol. I realized that this is because what I was doing (eating a breakfast of clementines and watching a movie) was ma routine for most of my time there. Before I began my day, I usually had enough time to watch movie or a few episodes of a television show. It was a pretty sweet deal. I got to catch up on a ton of movies I’d mean meaning to watch. They were mostly classics. I’m glad to say my cinematic references expanded quite a bit.

Right now, as I finish my 7th round of college exams, (7/8th of my undergraduate degree completed!), I’m realizing probably won’t get to loaf around like that again for a very long time. So, in spite of appearing like a bit of a lazy bones recluse for five months, I’m looking at that time as fuel for the years of work ahead of me until I reach retirement or become a professional writer, whichever comes first. I’m aiming for writing picture books for children. Writing. Not illustrating. I’ll leave that to someone with more talent and time of their hands.

Good Advice

A couple of days ago a friend of mine remarked how funny she found it that guest speakers always try to dispense what they consider useful life advice when giving lectures on college campuses. They seem to really take to heart the possibility that what they have to say may have a profound affect on our futures. It seems like an enjoyable task: to mold us. I can understand the appeal; it's pretty satisfying when you're able to save someone from making the same mistakes you've made, teach others how to avoid the pitfalls you may have encountered and to prevent the frustration you've had to endure. I do, indeed, enjoy giving advice.

I've got to say, I also love receiving advice. Even bad advice. That's not to say that I heed all of the advice I receive, I simply enjoy learning how people see the world and what others find worth sharing. One of my favorite pieces of advice came from The Odd Couple t.v. show in the jury duty episode in we are shown just how “assume” makes “an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me'.” Genius. As cliché as it sounds, I actually have gotten a lot of good advice in college, though none of it gat in lectures. For instance, one of my favorite pieces of advice comes from the same friend who made the aforementioned comment.

After all is said and done, you can't go pleasing everyone, so screw it.

It's actually a John Lennon quote, so I guess it's advice from him, but my friend is the person I heard it from, so technically it's advice from her.
The second best piece of advice I received was from a professor. I know, I was shocked, too. But it wasn't given in an class, nor was it truly very helpful, I just liked the analogy he used.

Think of your life post graduation the same way the Communists thought of Russia; have a Five Year Plan.

My final favorite piece of advice comes from a place of many pearls of wisdom: a bathroom stall.

Lovers may not be perfect but love can be.

I'll be sure to keep all this in mind on my way to the top.

It's been a while

Let me begin with an apology. I went away without hardly a word and have been gone for so long. I allowed myself to get bogged down in the hellish academia that a place like this will envelope you in. I told myself I had no time to write for a blog when I barely had time to write the dozens of papers that are due in a given month or to read the hundreds of pages due in a given week. This was a lie. I waste enough time doing nothing. Some of this is constructive mind cruising with the windows rolled down, (as brain with traffic like mine tends to do), but a lot of it is time consumed by worrying about how much work I have to do or how tired I am. There's no point to this.
My original reason's for writing this blog had to do with practice in writing for an audience. That objective has changed as a) I'm back in school and simply practice by doing, and b) it's really more relaxing writing for myself on a daily basis than it is to sit around being exhausted. I find myself being particularly exhausted today due to the amount of physical activity I undertook. Recently, as an off-shot of the dance troupe I'm a member of, I've started playing capoeira. In case your not familiar with it, capoeira is a Brazilian martial art form that's fairly acrobatic and fluid. (Read: it kicks your ass into shape with a hammer). While my body is feeling much of the strain from my two hours of playing today, the sport is fairly addictive. I can't quite explaining but once your realize that your body is capable of things you never imagined you gain the drive to push it as far as it can go.
As a child I was treated like glass; I never had a real cultivated sense of adventure or risk. I find I'm discovering my inner Lara Croft now that I'm coming into my own as a person. I realize that if I fall on my face or my ass, I'm not going to break. I mean this figuratively as well as literally. In capoeira you fall on your ass and your face often when you begin. It hurts but the blisters hurt more. Kind of like running, though, you see the progress you make and the results in your body fairly quickly. I have more upper body strength than I've ever had before. I can do cartwheels in both directions!
I'd like to believe that I'll keep up with capoiera after this dance is over and once I graduate. I can't be sure of that but I am sure that I'll be making a more concentrated effort to keep up with this blog. Not just for you few who actually read it and have asked me to continue writing, but for myself as well. Because while I'm learning lot's of neat new stuff, it's good to hold on to the old.

I'm just saying...

Like most other college campuses, my school has an over abundance of random and inane clubs; knitting club, Irish step dancing club, chocolate lovers club, surf club, I like to scratch my butt club, etc. I love it. I truly love that people are able to make clubs and societies pertaining to whatever it is their hearts desire. All of these clubs are well attended, which shows it isn't just one person sitting around trying to get funded by the student government. I think it's cool that no matter how obscure your interest, there are probably ten other people who are just as interested in it as you. From time to time, however, there are a few interest groups that make me cringe, shake my head or at least ask, “Is that really such a good idea?”

Case in point: Anime club.

Let me begin by saying that I am a fan anime. I'm not saying I'll fall head-over-heels for a show or a movie just because it has people with giant eyes and animal ears, but I do have a couple shows and movies I enjoy. I respect anime (or Japanamation as I grew up knowing it) as a valid art form and find it generally entertaining and full of incite in many cases. There are also many aspects of the genre by which I am completely bewildered and disgusted but I'd say that's true of most other visual mediums. No, my issue is not with the fact that there is an anime club on campus but rather the general tone of said club.

It's a discomfort that's hard to pin-point. It's the same kind of discomfort I get when a person's first or only exposure to African American culture is through gangsta' rap. Similarly, it holds a subtle hint of racism when a person's only or first exposure to Japanese culture is through anime. It doesn't make your a racist if rap or anime is your first exposure to another culure but it does underscore the racial unawareness in your world. Everyone has to start somewhere, a problem arises, however, when that first introduction becomes an essentialization of a culture and the lens through which one understands said culture. Here, I feel the fandom of anime has a tone of fetish, another way of tiptoeing dangerously close to racism and often times crossing the line.

I'm not saying this club should disband, I'm just saying maybe liking anime shouldn't be your reason for learning Japanese or studying in Japan for a semester. I'd kind of like a class on anime to be taught here, either in the film or sociology departments, just to put a different, more culturally aware perspective on this phenomenon. I'd register for it, just as long as I wouldn't have to sit next to someone wearing wings and a pink wig in class and be expected to act like it's normal, 'cuz it's not.