You know, I give and I give and I give. I offer you, the greedy Internet masses, scrumptious nuggets of my life and you scarf them down. I update on a rigid schedule to--uh, wait. Not so much that. Nevertheless, now is your turn to give back. I'm activating the subliminal messages I've been implanting throughout these posts to get you to go here and vote for me. If you want to. I'm not forcing you or anything. I'm just saying--I've given you a lot, these past couple of years. I've given you food (for thought), shelte (from the cruel, cruel world), and...clothing (yeah, I'm running out of ways to make this work). The least you could do is click a button and affirm your undying devotion to me and my plan for universal domination.
Am I updating primarily so I can shamelessly promote myself? Maybe, but isn't that what everyone's blog is for, more or less? I'm just taking advantage of the Internet's ego-boosting abilities to transform into what I was always meant to be: rich, famous, and the narrator of the universe. That's right, I wasn't kidding about the whole domination thing.* By the end of the millennium, all actions and thoughts in the universe will be narrated by my voice. Your conscience? My voice. Your multiple personalities? All my voice. This is just the beginning. So vote for me, because you know there's actually nothing you want more than my voice performing a 24/7 monologue in your mind.
I've decided that if I'm ever living in that box everyone in a suit always tells me I'm going to end up in, I'll make money by hiring myself out as a Personal Narrator (TM). People will pay me to follow them around and narrate their every action, creating a cohesive storyline that gives some structure to their lives. I mean, really, how many times have you wanted a narrator to do your thinking for you? You wouldn't have to worry about not knowing why you did something stupid, because your Personal (Third-Person Omniscient, other models pending) Narrator (TM) would know why you did it and be able to explain it in the context of the story they're telling about you. Alternatively, I'll make money by rambling on at people in the streets about my Personal Narrator (TM) plan until they give me a few bucks to shut up and go away. Either way, I'm redecorating that cardboard box.
I really want to tell you about the last month or so, but there's actually so much to say that I don't have anywhere to start. I've been doing way too much to think about updating, which sounds really impressive and productive until you consider that "doing way too much" includes activities like watching three hours of Final Fantasy 12. And I do mean watching--I didn't play for a single second. I just watched Amy, Harry, and Andy try to figure out the controls while we all tried to figure out what the hell was going on in the story. That game is epic. After three hours, we were still in the "introduction" phase. The graphics were mesmerizing, and I'm sure it's a good tool for becoming so immersed in another world you reach enlightenment or something, but it was pretty much the most confusing thing ever.
Speaking of enlightenment, I saw the Dalai Lama again last week. Not just saw him like, "hey, walking down the street, there's the Dalai Lama again, why's he always in front of Dunkin' Donuts"--I saw him for the first time at PeaceJam's 10th Anniversary in Denver. PeaceJam, for those of you who don't know, is straight up awesome. Basically, it brings high school kids together to hear talks from and do workshops with all these Nobel Prize Laureates, like Shirin Ebadi and Rigoberta Menchú Tum. The 10th Anniversary event brought together all eleven of the participating laureates, including the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu, so security was whoa tight--like, Secret Service and everything. Despite that, I definitely got to hug the Dalai Lama--and Desmond Tutu, who is probably my favorite person on the planet--because I had to take the elevator instead of the stairs when the building was all locked down with security and found them hanging out on the ground floor. It was amazing. We didn't have any intimate moments this time, but he's still the man. He came to Smith and all Hampshire students got free tickets because of our Tibetan Exchange and Buddhist studies program. It was a really ceremonial thing, with the presidents of the college all dressed up in gowns and whatnot, but the thing about the Dalai Lama is he pretty much seems to find all that hilarious. He giggles all the time and he does this falsetto voice when he's doing people's voices, like, "And they say to me--pitch rising--'Oh, please tell me, how do I raise my children?' And I say--going even higher--'I don't know! I am the worst person to ask about that! If you want me to tell you how to raise children, let me get married!'"
The one downside to the whole thing was that we had to take the 7:25 am bus to get there, since we had to go through security and get good seats before the 10 am talk. I haven't seen that side of 7:30 in a long time. It was pretty exhausting. So I came home after a Tibetan boxed lunch, slept, and woke up much later to have a bonfire and roast marshmallows in the woods. And for the past week--because classes are over and I've packed up most of my stuff--I've just been doing utterly ridiculous, fun things. I've been wearing my bathing suit non-stop the past couple of days because I've wanted to go swimming so badly and I wanted to be prepared to do so at a moment's notice. It worked out really well, because both days were really rainy, and I was insanely well-dressed to go running out into thunderstorms and then jump in the shower and then repeat the cycle all over again. It led to a lot of nature-frolicking, and today I actually got to go swimming and stop just trying to get wet enough from the rain to pretend I was in a pool. We went to this cool place called Cushman's for burgers and then went to Puffer's Pond. First I swam in the actual pond, which was freezing and kind of creepy because you just know everyone dumps dead bodies in ponds. I mean, I know any time I have an extra corpse around I look for the nearest pond. Then we went into the woods and found this little rock island in the middle of stream. I got to go swimming for real, played fetch in the water with an adorable Chocolate Lab named Dean, and hiked a mountain in my swimsuit and sandals only to discover that what lay at the top of it was--a suburb. Seriously, I hiked this steep mountain in the rain just to reach somebody's backyard. It was pretty weird.
There's a lot more I could say, including things about an apocalypse party, my spirit guide, and Northampton Gay Pride/Free Comic Book Day/Cinco de Mayo, but it's sort of 4 am--a pretty weak excuse, since I have no obligations for the next four days, but still--quality sleep is always my top priority, even in times of extreme relaxation. Maybe even especially in times of extreme relaxation. But just so you don't feel cheated out of a few weeks of my life, here's a picture from Drag Ball, Hampshire's second-biggest party of the year (after the legendary Hampshire Halloween):
Since gender's already kind of wacky at Hampshire, drag ball doesn't really mean dressing up as the opposite gender. It's more like dressing up like whatever you feel like. I was thinking about going as a boy until we went to the Salvation Army and I found this $3 zebra print slip, in just my size. I realized then, "No, I am destined not to be a man, but a hooker, evermore." It was a beautiful moment. So instead i just sort of went as an exaggerated, whorish version of myself, or what I really hope was an exaggerated, whorish version of myself. Amy said she couldn't tell the diffence, but she was wearing curlers and a pink silk nightie over red lingerie, so I think her judgement's off anyway. The shirtless boy--who also attended Drag Ball as a sex worker, it seems--is Chris Perry, our mod's new hobo friend. Well, he's not really a hobo--he's a Berklee School of Music dropout, and he's hanging out in the Valley for awhile. He's converted his minivan into a mini-apartment, with an amazingly comfortable couch and a coffeetable, to which he has Velcroed a plant and a book. It's quite domestic. Anyway, I just thought you should know who he is because he's a magnet for bizarre experiences. If you ever see Chris Perry, rest assured that you will soon be doing some awesome and weird, like wandering through an abandoned mental institution during a thunderstorm or chasing people around campus with a telescope to spy on them as blatantly as possible--both things I ended up doing this week. Really, May is the best month to be at Hampshire, and yet everyone's only here for a couple of weeks of it. They should shift the school year around so we avoid the White Death (aka December, January, February, and March) and just get green, sunny goodness all semester.
*That's what she said.
