Monk, the Monkey Man, which is to say, the Man

"Being an NS kid just requires a lot of weeding through shit. Science...is like...gardening." --Kate, 5:03 am

As you can probably tell from the time of this entry, I'm pulling an all-nighter. It's not totally necessary, but Kate is leaving tomorrow--er, later today--and Ben and Harry showed up for studying (read: talking about Robocop and drinking hot chocolate) at my mod, so it happened. I've gotten two of my five papers done, for those keeping score at home, with progress being slowly made on the rest. I'm just sort of going for broke until my Winter Break actually starts--my sleep schedule is ridiculously off at the moment and I've come to accept 1 am as an acceptable time for dinner and 4 pm as a pretty okay time for breakfast. This week totally puts the "Al" in "finals"--if Al was a big guy who smelled like rotten salmon and beat you constantly with a frying pan until you cried. (Guys, it's 5:30 am. I'm really not responsible for anything I type.) But it will be over soon, and I will have learned something from all of this, and that something is: never go outside at 4:30 in the morning without a coat and roll around in the snow (the exact path of snow which, for some reason, you thought it would be a smart move to throw failed Jell-o the night before), no matter how good an idea it seems at the time. Because it really isn't. Trust me on this. I'm an expert in Arctic Scien...tology.

Okay, so before you do anything else with your lives, even reading the rest of this entry, you need to put aside about 54 minutes and listen to 700 Hobo Names. And yes, it is exactly what it sounds like. I'm always really comforted by the discovery of things like this, because it's like, "Huh. There are other people out there like me who don't attend Hampshire and who think it's a necessary thing to record 700 hobo names, scattered throughout the mental asylums and recording studios of the world." It just gives me confidence that someone, some day, will pay me money to hear my own magnum opus, "4,536 Things I Found Under the Dumpster, Categorized by Color and Smell." That, my friends, will be truly glorious day.

So Friday we had a Snow Day (read: Katharine Falls Over a Lot Day), and I have to admit it was pretty fabulous. I mean, even in college, the whole "snow day" concept doesn't lose its allure, and even though I ended up burning snowmen in effigy (no, I don't know how that would work, don't question it) because I hated snow so much by the end of last year, it is kinda fabulously gorgeous right now. We've got like, a little Christmas village thing going on here in Enfield right now, because the snow's so high and there are just these small paths through it and it all feels very North Pole-like. Snow days also automatically mean you're going to have a pleasant, cozy sort of morning, so I slept in and made scrambled eggs then did work until Kate, Amy, and Kel burst into my mod in that angry, loud way they do. They annouced we were going out, which was the last thing I had ever considered doing on such a day, but somehow I found myself dressed and suited up and ventured out into the snowfall. We met Ellen at the bus stop, which was fairly uneventful, but getting off the bus was a little more of a trip. See, the bus in Noho pulls up to the sidewalk, but the sidewalk was currently covered by about a foot and a half of snow, so there was not so much a side to walk or step down onto. So I got off the bus first and just sort of--fell. Face first. Into the snow. I then rolled over and lay there like a slug, because there was no surface I could really use to pull myself up, as everything around me was, well, snow. My friends all got off the bus and proceeded to attempt to help me up, which just resulted in more facefuls of snow, while the people still on the bus (first-years) just sort of stared at us as we laughed helplessly at our own incompetence. I think they probably assumed I was just very drunk--I really think I need to start some sort of club for people like me, who have no motor or social skills. We'll call it, "We're Not Intoxicated, That's Just How We Are!" It'll be like D.A.R.E., except with a lot more inappropriate phallic references and awkward silences.

So we ate dinner at Fireside Cuisine, née Cafe Casablanca, which I think was a much cooler name. If you're going to change something's name to contain "Fire," you should at least write everything in that fiery-looking font, or just have a lot of people with flamethrowers around. Yeah, I should probably never be allowed to run a restaurant. They still have basically the same menu, with crepes (omgcrepes) and some of the best mousse you will ever witness in your life, except that they spell it "moose," which makes me wonder if maybe moose have really been full of chocolate deliciousness all along and we just didn't know. After dinner we went to Haymarket, land of heavenly smoothies, and studied, because we are, above all, repsonsible members of the academic community. Also, it's much easier to write about sixteenth-century literature when you're drinking a smoothie, somehow. We headed back to Hampshire, where I fell over again, but this time not off of a bus, so it was an improvement. Then we went back to my mod and watched a couple of episodes of Arrested Development: Season 2, which I ordered from Amazon.com about three years ago but which has not surfaced--curse you, SecondLongestRiverintheWorld.com. CURSE YOU.

Saturday I must have woken up sometime, and probably got dressed, though I'm not going to say that one's for sure. I finished one of my papers and then went with Ellen, Kate, Kel, and Gengjess Khan to go see RENT! at the mall. We got there early and went to Target to find snacks to smuggle in, which somehow translated to us buying the biggest bag of everything we could find. We got some of those caramel-filled Hershey's kisses, because, in all honesty, I think they may be the most orgasmic foodstuff in the universe. I'm usually not even a huge caramel fan, mostly because I can't ever decide how to say it, but man, these things are like whoa. I also bought a 1/2 gallon of milk, which, besides being really sketchy, meant I had to pee really, really badly about halfway through the movie. Planning? Not my strong suit. RENT! was, overall, pretty good, though there were some ridiculous, "what-are-we-doing-in-a-bad-90s-music video" moments. And they assumed that since it's no longer the early 90s, we've all forgotten what AZT or Life Support or AIDS is, so every time someone had AIDS (which was pretty much all the time) they were like, "We're going to a Life Support meeting. It's a meeting for people with AIDS. People like me. Do you get it? I have AIDS. Mark, you can come, even though you don't have AIDS and it's for people with AIDS. Like me. I have AIDS. You still with me on that?" It was still really depressing, though, when *spoiler* *spoilered.* Kel and I both cried, because we're little girls--well, a little girl and a little emo boi. I really enjoyed it, especially seeing it with people who know the show backwards and forwards, but nothing can compare to the stage performance. Especially since they kept a lot of the dialogue almost-but-not-quite the same, and when things rhyme on Broadway, it's just the way it is, but when they rhyme on screen, you just wonder if the characters have developmental disabilities. It was also good because it distracted me from thinking about work for two-and-a-half hours, but then I was like, "Ohhh...right. I will never have a moment of happiness again." So I went home and worked until Kate, Harry, and Ben showed up at around 3. Harry's doing charcoal nonsense, Kate is writing scientific babble, and Ben brought no work and is just sitting there being sketchy--he just spent his entire life working on this film project and now seems to be pulling all-nighters purely out of habit. So, that, in sum, is life at the moment, which this cartoon (courtesy of Kel), may just completely describe and explain:

See, when it comes to a showdown between Orhan Pamuk, Turkey's foremost novelist, and the Dinosaurs/Girls in Bikinis Team, I just think it's no contest. I mean, you can be a master at describing your homeland's dualist soul, but when that T-Rex comes around with Candy, the Pantsless Wonder, you just don't stand a chance.

Renée Zellweger eats children

No, I have no evidence for the above claim. At all. I just like the way it sounds. But Renée Zellweger was at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art last week, and I decided to post about it because, as we all know, this blog is the first place to go for hot celebrity news. And by "hot celebrity news," I mean "this one time I thought I saw Paris Hilton but it was actually a rabid emu." I, unfortunately, was not actually working the day Renée showed up (yeah, she's Renée to me now--we're buds), but apparently everyone was watching her walk around via the security camera, which I feel is the truest measure of success. If people are willing to give up work and crowd around a grainy, black-and-white picture of you for an hour, you've made it. That's how I know I'm famous, anyway, since they do that to videos of me down at the police station all the time. Anyway, Renée, apparently, did not just get a sudden, urgent need to view picture book art and abandon all other plans to drive to Hampshire's college as soon as possible--no, she's actually going to be portraying Beatrix Potter, whose books we're currently featuring, in a film that, unless it includes "Harry" or "Peter Rabbit: Uncut" somewhere in the title, probably isn't going to get me all that excited. I mean, I'll see it out of loyalty to Renée, since we're such good friends now, but the biopic craze is getting a little old. What's the fun in making a movie about things that actually happened? That completely rules out the possibility of killer robots and alien hookers, and if a movie doesn't have killer robots and alien hookers, I'm not really sure what it does have. Though Beatrix Potter was apparently kind of weird: she kept a diary in this secret code they didn't break until 20 years after her death and she spent 10 years of her life working on scientifically accurate paintings of various types of fungi, which sounds like the behavior of an alien hooker to me. I'm totally planning to do the secret code thing, but when they break it after I die all it will say is, "My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard" and then they'll have to spend another 20 years figuring out what the hell that means and then they'll drown themselves because they've just spent 40 years deciphering a Kelis song. I think I'm going to pass on the scientifically accurate fungi paintings, though, because if I had to think up the world's worst punishments ever, painting scientifically accurate fungi would score only slightly lower than having my toes and fingers nibbled off by angry molerats while getting a sensual back massage from Dick Cheney.

Of the events of the past few days, the Renée sighting is probably the one most worth mentioning, and I wasn't even there for it, so I think you can safely assume that finals week means life stops being interesting and starts being "that time between 2-hour power naps." People from those crazy other colleges where they have "tests" and things assume that the last few weeks here must be a breeze since we lack final exams, but I feel it's way easier to take a test than write thirteen 20-page papers on the life cycles of Mongolian marmosets. Well, okay, I don't even know why anyone would ever require you to write thirteen papers about Mongolian marmosets, and I'm not even sure there are marmosets in Mongolia, but you get the idea. Projects and papers are far more time-consuming than tests. Way more rewarding, in my opinion, but much with the crazy-making. I just turned in my portfolio for Lost in the Story today (ohhhh snap) but I have three papers due for Dangerous Books and a final essay and final exam for International Graphic Novel. So why am I updating my blog? Because I care more about your needs than my own, random member of the Internet. I'm looking out for you, and in no way using this forum purely to procrastinate. This is all for you, nameless, faceless perusers of college-age girls' blogs (you perverted sketchballs).

Besides spending every waking minute contemplating how much I have yet to complete before I can go home and watch Degrassi: Next Generation for the rest of my existence, I'm starting to run out of food. I don't really want to do a grocery run, because I have less than a week left, so I've reverted to the scavenger lifestyle, which thus far seems to be working out well. Today, for instance, my professor brought in donuts, cider, and cookies to commemorate the last day of class, so I fully filled my carb and sugar quota for the day. Then when I got home, one of my modmates offered to make me sauceless pizza with cheese, broccoli, and carmelized onions, leading me to believe that whatever powers may be are prepared to provide me with sustenance for the next six days or so. I mean, I still have a cheese stick and some Jell-o mix in case I run into a rough spot, but I think it's going to work out. People like to cook for me--not necessarily because they really like me, but because they're afraid if I try to do it myself I might set myself on fire, and really, who wants to clean up that mess? I also slept until noon today, which I haven't done on a weekday in awhile, so it was a pleasant, unconscious trip down memory lane. (Wow, did anyone else just get a weird vision of a narcoleptic skipping merrily down the road? Because I totally did.) And there's that whole 'going to class" thing, too--yesterday Jeff and I did the usual bus ride to UMass, except we both had one of his iPod earbuds in our ears and silently danced and mouthed the words to Pink and Violent Femmes' songs, which made the Amherst students riding with us do that thing where you pretend crazy people don't exist. I think a lot of Amherst students just pretend Hampshire as a whole doesn't exist--like, when they drive past it they just go, "Oh! Look at that verdant, empty field!" and whenever they hear a Hampshire student talk they're like, "Hold on a minute, Edmund, did you hear something? Because I didn't." I base this wild assertion purely on my Hampshire-Amherst bus rides and the one Amherst party I ever went to, where people kept looking at me weird because I was drinking Yoo-hoo all night *they had a Yoo-hoo vending machine I was a little too excited about*, despite my explaining to them that it was chocolicious and refreshing. One girl actually asked me if my father owned Yoo-hoo (to be fair, she was very, very drunk) to which I responded, no, but I was pretty sure he owned a Yoo-hoo. Wow, if you type "Yoo-hoo" too many times, it really starts to freak you out. Yoo-hoo. Yoo-hoo. Yoo...hoo...Okay, that's a serious sign that it's time to work now.

"With you, Katharine, nothing is weird anymore." --Kel

Maggie: "Did you just put that whole thing of Brie on top of those chips?"
Sean: "Yeah."
Maggie: "Man, that's soooo the gay man's nachos."

Oh, the Hampshire College Queer Mod. Indulging stereotypes and misusing Brie since Fall 2005.

Yes, I know I haven't updated in about 24 years. Yes, I know you've all been forced to make mini Katharine dolls out of chewing gum and Slinkys to get through my absence. Yes, I'm a horrible, negligent person, but maybe if you bought me nice things and complimented my hair once awhile, I would stay home and blog instead of hitting the clubs with Hortensia every night. Er--but in any case, since trying to recall my life in any sort of chronological order would make this entry exactly 76,548 pages long, I'm just going to break it all up into semi-relevant categories so you can store this information properly in your Katharine files:

Getting up before noon: Okay, so the past few Monday mornings, I've been getting up at 7:30 (I know, I know, but hold on--it gets weirder) and gone swimming. Swimming. In a pool. Not of my own vomit. It's weird. You know what else is weird? Naked teachers in the locker room group shower. But we're never going to talk about that. EVER. Anyway, it's made me all...active. And...wholesome. And I'm not sure I like it. It's given me a lot more energy, which I feel can only be dangerous, as I discovered when I was talking to my supervisor at the Eric Carle Museum and trying to explain to her what was going on. I was like, "I think I'm turning over a new leaf, right, but it's only been a few weeks, so it's like the leaf is sort of precariously balanced on its edge, right, and it's on the verge of tipping all the way over, but it could also tip back the other way, or it could just stay there and then it wouldn't be an old leaf or a new leaf, it'd be, like, in purgatory and then what have I done to that poor leaf, you know?" And she was like, "Yeah...you're clearly very, very high." And I was like, "No! That's just the way I think." And then she was like, "Oh...why do you work here again?" Which gives me the perfect segue way into our next category: work!

Work! Working in the Eric Carle Museum is basically like working inside of a giant picture book, which is simultaneously comforting and terrifying. It's very spacious and mostly white, with these occasional crazy splashes of color all over the place, and everyone smiles all the time and there are always yelling children underfoot. Luckily, I mostly work in the back office, since I'm the Development and Marketing intern, so the only time I encounter children is in the cafe for lunch. Kids are really cute, but they can also turn on you really fast. Also, I'm still really scarred from my experiences as a babysitter, because the main girl I sat for had this favorite game where she would pretend to tie me up, set me on fire, and kill my entire family, so I'm not really a huge believer in childhood innocence. But the job is actually very sweet, and they mostly set me up in the room where they keep all the bottled water and chocolate biscotti, so I'm kind of set for life. I work for five hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays--for any potential work-study students reading, that's really an optimum amount of weekly hours. More than that and you have to start making ridiculous excuses for why you can't come to work because you have so much work, like "My dog ate my right leg" or "My grandmother's on fire." (Wow, there have been two mentions of "people on fire" in this one paragraph alone. I feel like that's a bad sign.) Working at the Eric Carle is an awesome job, because it's right on campus but isn't an actual on-campus job, which usually consist of menial tasks and getting to find out way too much about the seedy underbelly of Hampshire College. Not that our underbelly is particularly seedy, but apparently there are some things you just never want to discover about the personal lives of staff and professors--like what they look like in the shower, which, again, we are never discussing again. EVER.

Mod life: My current enemy of enemies is TBS--and no, I didn't just mistype TB again, like that awful, awful time at that children's hospital. The problem with fighting a television network is that venting your anger to anyone associated with the TBS at all takes work, be it a phone call or an e-mail, so you end up just yelling at the TV instead and that does you little to no good. Plus, it's not like TBS is technically doing anything wrong that I could ask them to stop doing--it's just their current existence in general I'm pissed about. The reason, other than their insanely annoying promos--you know, the ones where the people call in to ask if things are funny--is my modmates' obsession with "Sex and the City." I liked "Sex and the City," when I was 13 and I would watch it on HBO after my parents went to sleep and feel like I was really cool because, you know, this whole sex thing was really a recent development at that point. But now it's five years later, and "Sex and the City" is no longer so much risqué as it is insanely boring. And it's TBS, so most of the sex is censored, anyway, and the sex that's shown is all heterosexual and all with rich white people and all takes place in some version of New York where all everyone has to be concerned with is if they have enough money to buy 4,000 pairs of shoes. If they changed the name to "Rich White Heterosexual Sex in Upper Manhattan," I might be okay with it, because then I'm pretty sure everyone at Hampshire would recognize its pointlessness and stop watching it, but at the moment Sarah Jessica Parker's voice alone is sending me into panic attacks.

If I was going to be completely fair, which I'm not because having a blog means you never have complete control over all sense of justice in the universe, I would point out that I probably have no right to judge any show that anybody else watches, considering how I screamed out loud with joy when I found out that last Friday was "Phil of the Future Fans Appreciation Day" on the Disney Channel. But I'm not mentioning that, and that last sentence should in no way be interpreted as something I actually did while making "I Heart Ricky Ullman" badges and sewing my own Keely costume. Because that never happened. EVER. (Huh, a lot of my paragraphs end that way. Coincidence? Must be, because it could in no way mean I have many shameful secrets or an unhealthy obsession with children's television.)

Katharine Hott McHomemaker: Um, well, I made a giant squid out of Jell-o, which was probably my biggest culinary accomplishment in...well, ever. It even had little whipped cream suckers and was all green and jiggly and completely delicious. I made it for Kate, though I can't remember why--probably because she yelled at me or threatened my life or something--and at the pre-Ireland meeting, I somehow got identified as the cook in my three-person apartment solely because of my ability to make shit out of Jell-o. I was like, "People, I get that Jell-o is fun and exciting for awhile, but I don't think it's going to keep us satisfied for three whole weeks, even if I cut it into little star shapes or make it look like a steak or something." So, I'm not exactly Martha Stewart or even Rod Stewart, who I hear makes a mean chocolate soufflé, but I get by. I'm successfully managed an broccoli omelet and French toast in the past few weeks, so I feel that if it has something to do with eggs, I'm pretty set. If I ever end up going vegan, though, I'm screwed. I'm just going to eat rocks and hope my body somehow evolves so I become some sort of super-mineral-based being, because that would be awesome and I could probably walk through fire and start a successful rock band based solely on the novelty of me being an actual rock person.

The Gay: Oh, and I'm still gay. Actually, the only reason I included this category is because I've been spending an insane amount of time in the Queer Community Alliance, the queer space at the top of Donut 4, which has a TV, VHS, DVD player, refrigerator, bathroom, and the most comfortable couches ever. I'm a signer for the QCA, but Kel actually works hours there, so we've sort of commandeered it as our second mod, which also benefits the community since young lost queers can usually wander in at all hours to receive our incredible advice and wisdom on the ways of the world. And by "receive our incredible advice and wisdom on the ways of the world" I mean "eat ice cream and make out with us if they're hot." Mostly we study and sing RENT up there, but a couple of weeks ago we had a honest-to-Jossness tea party--a tea party complete with matching tea cups, muffins, and handmade scones. I'm pretty sure I've never had a scone in my life, much less a handmade one, so it was kind of intense. We also had a sleepover, complete with junk food and staying up until 5 in the morning--I feel like old-fashioned sleepovers don't happen enough in college, because, hey, everyone's bed is about 5 minutes away, so why sleep on someone else's floor/couch? Unless, like it was this particular night, it's really really cold and you've just watched Romeo and Juliet and Josie and the Pussycats and it's way more important to stay warm and talk about Rosario Dawson than get to your own bed. It did sort of throw my modmates off when I stumbled back in the next morning, though, because I was covered in Peppermint Patty remnants and lugging this enormous bag of bedding and food and they were like, "Um...we would assume you were doing something kinky all night, but it seems more likely you just decided to go on some sort of 'communing with nature' quest that went horribly, horribly wrong." Besides hanging out in the QCA, I also had to help Kel draw up the budget proposal for the QCA, which means we get to plan crazy events and buy all sorts of new books and movies. I was in charge of book-picking, which meant I had to make all sort of important decisions, like whether to buy Gay Sex or Ultimate Gay Sex. Of course I chose Ultimate Gay Sex--come on, when given the choice between the regular version of something and the ultimate version of something, you'll go with the ultimate every time. Unless it's like, "Destruction by Vicious Fire Ants" or "Ultimate Destruction by Fire Ants," because no one in they're right mind (read: Kate) would ever pick the second option.

OMG MOVIES: As the temperature drops, my film-watching time increases. See, movies mean you'll be in a warm place for at least an hour and a half, which is really top priority in everyone's social life this time of year. I can't even remember all the stuff I've wasted my life and time watching in the last few weeks--I remember that I watched the Devil's Rejects with Kate, Amy, and Jeff a few weeks ago, which you should probably never see unless you've pretty much surrendered your last vestiges of decency and morality and which has forever changed the meaning of Lynard Skynard's "Free Bird" for me. We also watched the Rules of Attraction at some point, which is the most depressing portrayal of college ever and has that girl from "A Knight's Tale" who named her kid "Audio Science." Having that name is bad enough, but what would be completely awful is if her kid was deaf and really bad at science and everyone was like, "Hey, Audio Science! Hey, you can't hear audio, and you can't even pass biology! Hahahahahahahaha, oh, the irony!" I also watched the "Bitter Suite" musical episode of Xena with Amy and her new girlfriend at like 2 am, which was probably a bad move on Amy's part, because I'm pretty sure her girlfriend thought we were completely nuts. (The first time we saw this episode together, Amy and I thought we had jointly hallucinated it because it was so damn weird, and we watch Xena all the time, so to a normal person I'm sure it was completely inexplicable. Then we watched it with Lucy Lawless and Renee O'Connor's video commentary, which means we need to be banished from society as soon as possible.) Besides watching movies in various mods, I've also ventured out to see Good Night, and Good Luck, which was good, and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which was kjnowijevjwnohmancrazy. I didn't like it nearly as much as PoA, but the twins were adorable, Harry and Cedric were so slashy I thought they were going to have babies on screen, and the scene where they came out of the maze made me cry both times I saw it. I haven't had as much time for theater-going as I'd like, though, which means I still have to see RENT, Jarhead, Capote, and a bunch of other films, as well as find the time to see the other amazingly exciting movies that are coming out, like Brokeback Mountain. I've pretty much come to terms with the fact that I'm going to have to physically muzzle myself while watching Brokeback Mountain, considering how much ridiculously unnecessary screaming I did over the web site and trailer. This film is bringing out the fangirl in me times 4,000, and it's very, very shameful. I'm almost afraid for this whole, like, gay subtext becoming, well, text thing, because I already do enough shrieking and freaking out over subtext alone, even when it's not there at all. If they're like, "Yes, they're gay, yes, they're making out, yes, they're in love," I'll probably just expire of sheer squee. (Wow, I just actually used "squee" in a sentence. That can't be okay.) I may actually just have a heart attack watching Brokeback Mountain, but at least I'll go out shrieking.

Thanksgiving: My immediate family abandoned me to go college-visiting in Florida, so I went to my uncle's friend's farm *yeah, it sounds a little sketchy, now that I consider it, but I heard they had food and cable, so I was there* where they always have like 200 people and animals running around. There was lots of free food to be had *which was excellent since Thanksgiving is actually, in my mind, "Grab as Much Food as Possible and Run Away" Day and I got a chance to try out my new-fangled pie-concealing pants* and Degrassi *OMGSOINTENSE* and sleeping. We had a thirty-pound turkey, which freaked my supervisor at Eric Carle out. (I was like, "Man, that's like, a small child of a turkey." Her response was, "Yeah, why didn't they just cook a small child?" and I was like, "Um, one, because I think that's frowned upon in most societies, and two, are you at all aware that you work in a children's museum so that statement is 20 times as creepy?") I miss my dogs like crazy, so I bonded with their various animals, even the really stupid Irish Setter who seemed to have the intelligence of a brain-damaged tree stump. My 15-year-old military-obsessed male cousin and I managed to bond over Diablo II, which lead to lots of conversations about composite bows and their various merits I'm not really sure I should mention in public. I also introduced my eleven-year-old cousin to Next on MTV, which was probably a bad idea, and she in turn made me watch Star Wars 3, which made me laugh so hard when I saw it in theaters that I had to cover my face with my coat in order to avoid getting killed by the other members of the audience. I mean, has George Lucas bodyswapped? Did somebody exchange his consciousness with an eleven-year-old boy? (No offense, former Lucas employees who may or may not be reading this blog at this very moment. George, though, if you're reading this: look, buddy, we need to talk. Come by sometime for some tea and we'll work this out.) I greatly appreciate any stretch of time where I don't have to pay for my own food or wash my own dishes because of that whole "dishwasher" thing, so Thanksgiving worked out well, despite the fact that I ended up getting an 80s-style, "big hair" cut I never want documented or spoken of in this life or the next. (It's gone now, trust me--long, long gone.) Also, my relatives bought me groceries on the way back to Hampshire, which is awesome because it's getting to the point in the year where I don't want to buy groceries because I'll be leaving soon, but I also have to eat something besides ketchup packets. (And yes, I mean the whole packet. You'd be surprised how easily it goes down.) My relatives were, I think, slightly sketched out by Hampshire, but they would have been significantly more sketched out if they had arrived earlier in the morning to pick me up, when the Inexplicable Band came by. You remember the Inexplicable Chicken Parade that came by a couple of months ago, that completely baffled me but I said things like that happened more than they probably should? Well, this was another one of those things. I walked out of my mod to go get my laundry and there were these four guys standing there, wearing buckets and aluminum foil on their heads and playing this weird, eerie music on broken phones, recycling bins, and violins. They were all just kind of swaying, though at the end they went crazy and started throwing their phones everywhere, and I couldn't make out any of the lyrics, which were all uttered in some kind of zombie language. It was creepy, but it was even creepier because it was the day before Thanksgiving and the campus was completely deserted so I was like, "Oh, sweet gods, someone else witness this with me! I cannot bear this experience alone!" Things like that are exactly why I can't live anywhere but Hampshire at the moment. If you don't have Chicken Parades and Inexplicable Bands roaming the campus, really, what's the point?

Oh yeah, occasionally there's this thing called school: Lest you get the impression that my life is some kind of bacchanalian of gay movies and Jell-o, I feel I should include a section about that whole academic thing that happens, you know, sometimes. I have a Division II committee--OH YES. For those of you not versed in Hampshire, for certain departments (like Creative Writing and Theater) you have to apply for your Division II faculty, instead of just like, chilling with them and then asking them awkwardly if they'll guide your academic, professional, and personal development. So I applied and got my first choice chair (Ben James, my Lost in the Story professor) and member (Wayne Kramer, who taught my Theatre of the Eye and Theatre of the Ear courses). The title of my Division II is "Reinventing the Story: Multimedia Approaches to Creative Narrative," which is an incredibly Hampshire title, but not nearly as Hampshire as some others (think "F--- you, DIORAMAS!" or "The Effect of Menstrual Blood on the Mating Habits of Serbian Crickets," which I seriously think Kate should consider doing.) I'm incredibly thrilled to be working with Ben, since he teaches what may be the best class ever: to prove it, consider that just last week we workshopped: a romantic comedy about a compulsive grave-digger who unearths his fiancé’s mom; a story about a crazy French women who lives under a pile of leaves; and a woman who steals her husband's father's memory then has sex with him (the father) in order to conceive a child that will look like her husband. My final story, in case you're wondering, was about a blacksmith named Edgar, his legless mother, and giant squid sex. Yeah, it was awesome. Ben also spends a good deal of class talking about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, his pregnant wife, and his goats, who bred a couple of weeks ago with a stud named Mozart. (Are they still called studs if they're goats? This is a piece of knowledge I never thought I'd need in my everyday life.) That particular story ended with Ben shouting, "Mozart! For God's sake, stop ejaculating all over the yard!" just as this girl got into class late, causing her to give all of us one of those, "Oh man, this college is just not like any other place, is it?" That sort of thing gets more clear when I go to UMass for my comic book class--oh, yeah, I got an A on my midterm International Graphic Novel exam , which I'm completely thrilled about, though I was sort of confused when he handed it back to us, because he sort of scribbled the grades in the margin and I, being a Hampshire student and used to comments versus grades, was like, "A? A what?" Then I caught on and was like, "Oh! An A! Sweet!" I mean, cool, but it was sort of a hollow victory, because you really have no idea what your professor thought about your essay. I mean, you know A is better than B, but is your A any different from the person next to you's A? Are you now both the same person? Do grades give anyone else the identity crisis they give me, or am I completely insane? I think if people insist on having a grading system, they need to come up with more descriptive symbols: a zebra, or a half-eaten melon, or something. It doesn't really matter much, as long as it describes your work, or how your prof reacted to your work. Like, a lamp covered in Skittles could be, "Mildly illuminating, but superficial. Also chewy." There's only a week left of Hampshire classes and two weeks of UMass classes, so we are getting to the crunch time, which is bad because we all feel like we've already finished our work and are fully prepared for winter break to happen nownownow.

And then there was this weekend: On Friday, I got up at noon, made some scrambled eggs and microwave bacon *which taste pretty much exactly as good as it sounds* got my paycheck *oh sweet, sweet money of life*, and went to Walk the Line with Amy and Kel. I've been going through a hardcore Johnny Cash phase for some reason lately, so I was crazy excited. Plus the movie theater at the mall has these snacks called Dibs that are AMAZING. I usually hate buying food at the movie theater, because I always seem to end up $20 poorer and sicker, but these things are the awesome. They're, like, little chocolate-covered ice cream bites, and they're only $3.50, which for a cup of bits of heaven is not so bad. *No, Dibs Inc. did not pay me any money to mention them on my blog but, incidentally, I am now set up with a lifetime supply of Dibs, purely by coincidence.* Walk the Line was pretty sweet, Reese Witherspoon didn't make me want to eat my own liver like she does sometimes (read: Sweet Home Alabama, which I will only admit under torture to watching), and Joaquin Phoenix was hot, though his cleft lip was occasionally surprisingly distracting. Friday night I hung out with Amy and we went to K2, where we met up with Hannah and Sven. Sven used to be a professional chef (he's 38) so he made this amazing guacamole that I actually approved of, which is weird since I'm usually against anything green, on principle. He also just got new teeth and this authentic furry Russian Communist hat, which in combination makes him pretty much one of the coolest people I know. After that I went to the Crazy Pitches performance with Kate, Kel, Jess, and Harry, which was a little intense. The Crazy Pitches are the audition-only a capella group on campus--there's also the Gin and Tonics, which Jeff co-founded, that anyone can join, who also performed a set between the Pitches' sets. Now, a capella versions of modern songs are really damn cool, honestly, but after awhile, the novelty of the thing kind of starts to wear off. The show went on about two hours, and by the end I was just like, "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, SOMEBODY PLAY A DAMN INSTRUMENT. EVEN A GODDAMN TRIANGLE. I CAN'T TAKE THIS ANYMORE." Saturday I woke up, presumably--oh man, what did I even do Saturday? Oh, right, Kate, Kel, and Amy and I went into Northampton to study at this coffee shop that has the best sandwiches in the world and tiramisu that is not, in fact, tiramisu at all, but banana cream pie, which is weird. We worked for awhile, went by Atkins, then I went back to campus and hung out with Amy. Afterward I went back to Enfield and met up with Kate and Kel, and we sort of checked out the party at the Greenhouse Mod but decided hot cider back at Kate and Kel's mod was a much better idea. Sunday I rolled out of bed around 2, did work, and then piled into Kel's car around 5:30 to go to Hartford for the Rusted Root concert. Rusted Root is this crazy hippie band--they did "Send Me On My Way," that song in Ice Age, which is sadly the way most people probably know them--and they are super-cool. We got spots right up by the railing, which is really the only place to be when you're a cripple who dances like a spaz and has a distinct tendency to lose her balance. Jess, who had seen one of their shows before, said they didn't have quite as much energy this time, but they were still much with the awesomeness. Their lead guy looks exactly what I would picture, like, Lucifer looking like if he just decided to give up the whole evil thing and form this earthy, multi-instrumental band. Plus there was this really hot chick who had amazing silver boots and played crazy and inexplicable instruments, and this guy over in the corner with glasses and a scarf who played the bongos and just sort of chilled out. I rocked like none other, because I am willing to surrender use of my limbs for a day or two for the sake of crazy dancing. My priorities are most definitely in line.

In closing, I would like to present you with my latest idea for Hampshire's new logo, since they seem to have roundly rejected the "Katharine's Image on All Hampshire Material and Merchandise Idea." Allow me to unveil my inspired new image:



I stumbled across it on LiveJournal and immediately decided it encompasses Hampshire, which is actually impossible, since nothing could really ever completely encompass Hampshire. But it comes close--I mean, Lenin is already the team mascot of the only really sport we have (Ultimate Frisbee) and come on, DDR? Speaks for itself. Except when I play it, in which case it does not so much speak for itself as it does eat my soul and cause me to have multiple fractures. But that's a bedtime story for another day.