hey! mark it!

It's Wednesday night, and you know what that means, you psychic Internet stalker, you. It means I'm chilling in Haymarket with Anita, the woman I'm stalking, except in college you can call stalking "a Literary Journalism project." I also just finished an Americano with two shots of espresso, which means I'm going to be awake for approximately the next 3 weeks. I never drink caffeine, but I just had my Pilates class and was feeling really pumped, so I was like, "Hey! I like feeling pumped! I should feel even more pumped! That would be cool!" This, however, was an incorrect inner exclamation, because now I just feel like I smoked a lot of crack and filled my skull with firecrackers. Not that I've ever done either of those things--but if you are going to do the latter, I strongly recommend cleaning your ears first. There's just nothing fun about exploding ear wax. Well, okay, almost nothing fun.

So, on those occasions when I actually remember that this is an admissions blog, I start trying to think of ways to fully convey the Hampshire experience to you via the Internet. I would post complete transcripts of every one of my classes, but I think you would derive about as much pleasure from that as you would if I posted a picture of a kitten soufflé. (If you would derive any pleasure from the latter, please go see a psychiatrist. Or go see my friend Legless Joe, who makes the best kitten soufflé I've personally ever tasted). It's not that my classes aren't monumentally exciting and consistently mind-blowing, because of course they are, but there's no way to make a classroom experience sound stimulating the second time around unless you add some explosions and unicorns into the telling. Of course, in Hampshire's olden days you could have just taken "Explosions and Unicorns 101," but PETMA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Magical Animals) made us get rid of that one in the 90s. The biggest academic news of the week is that I had a presentation on Mircea Eliade in Myth and Myth Theory on Monday and--I'm not gonna lie--I rocked it. I don't know why I would lie about that, because it's probably the weirdest and most trivial thing in the world to lie about, but I still wanted to reassure you, in case you were worried. (A note for the future: you should always assume that everything in this blog is 100% true, except for the things that are 100% false. A pretty easy rule, I think). So Eliade is this kind of awesome Romanian religionist who writes about how all myth and ritual is actually just designed to reenact the sacred time when everything was all new and amazing (think Garden of Eden, the Golden Age in Greek myth, etc.) but nobody can ever really attain it again. So, basically, things used to be sweet, but now they suck, and humanity will spend the rest of its gradually declining existence dwelling on that fact. It's a pretty uplifting concept. Anyway, my strategy for presentations generally revolves less around compelling content and more around a powerful performance. You've really got to go for the academic Oscar with these things. I don't care if the class has learned anything by the end, as long as they're crying. (That's why I always peel onions during my presentations.) Plus there were prospies there, so I had to kick it up a notch. I mean, I was talking about cool stuff, but I talked about it in a booming, authoritative tone, which made it sound way cooler than it was. Unless you've purchased the McAwesome Text Translator (TM), which will read all of your text aloud for you in my voice, you may not realize that I was born with the voice of a 45-year-old woman. Seriously. It's kind of creepy. But convenient, because I can make even the most inane statements sound like they might have value. For instance, the only reason you don't give me $5 every time you see me is because you've never heard me tell you, "Give me $5 every time you see me." Well, the other reason is probably that you never see me, unless you're an especially motivated Internet stalker who's actually hiding under my table right now. But since I just checked and no one's under there except Chuck, my usual stalker, I'm thinking you're not up to those standards quite yet.

There's a lot happening in the world at the moment, but after reviewing the most important news items of the day, I've decided there's really only one event you need to know about: Quaker Agrees to Tone Down Their Claims That Eating Oatmeal Gives You Magical Powers.
I'm pretty happy about this, because there's probably nothing I hate more in this world than oatmeal. Oatmeal is the enemy of all that is good about breakfast. It's like, "Hmmm, I could have fluffy, delicious eggs, crispy bacon, warm waffles, crunchy cereal--or I could have a mouthful of tasteless, disgusting mush that looks like steaming cat vomit and has a creepy, smiling old man on the front of the box. Whatever do I choose?" Come on, guys, breakfast is the dessert of the morning. Let's be straight about that. It is not the meal to worry about your health. It is the meal to inspire you to get up in the morning, and the only thing oatmeal inspires me to do is gag. But you know what kind of breakfast will give you magical powers? 13 bowls of Lucky Charms. Well, not so much "magical powers" as a stroke, but you might hallucinate that you're flying before you lose control of your bowels. And that's always exciting. (The hallucinatory flight part, not so much the bowel control part).

That was a pretty gross passage I just wrote. I really hope you weren't eating during any of that. I especially hope you weren't eating oatmeal, because then we couldn't be friends. Actually, that's in no way true, because just today I ran into my best friend Amy devouring oatmeal out of a Tupperware container this afternoon. I would mock her for eating that as she was walking to class, but as I recently carried an full plate of Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meatballs and a glass of orange juice to class, I don't think I can really do that. Um...wow, things are just getting grosser as I go on. I think it's the caffeine. I'm going to stop now. Please still go to college, even though it seems really unappetizing. THE END.