Rockin' the Shire: the Fabulous Life of a Hamp Kid

it's suppertime in mod 43, and we're all having smackeroni

2007-05-15T04:18:00.000-04:00

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.

hey! mark it!

2007-04-18T21:27:00.000-04:00

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.

that sure puts the oyster on the berrybottoms

2007-04-16T11:46:00.000-04:00

Sometimes my friends are vampires. Sometimes I have to stake them with my broken cane. No need to thank me--it's just what I do. Maybe a little too often--but it's all for the good of humankind.

So here's the thing: I really do go to school. Really. I know there are a lot of stories floating around about how I'm actually just an cleverly disguised ex-con living off the goodwill of the unsuspecting Hampshire community (sitcom, anyone?), and I'm sure the above picture doesn't help that image, but I honestly do academic things. A lot, actually, especially since it's suddenly April and I have about .3 seconds left to finish up all my work. That is why I spent Saturday night sitting in my living room instead of doing the things I would usually do on a Saturday night, like...sitting in my living room. Well, there would be a lot more chanting and Play-Doh involved, typically, so for me that was really buckling down. To prove that I do these incredibly erudite things, and for a gratuitous opportunity to use the word "erudite," here's a list of my classes, including what I would have titled them if Hampshire had acquiesced to my humble request to become Empress of the college:

Love and Death a.k.a. Let's Talk About Sex. And Also Dead Bodies. But Not in a Creepy Way...
Myth and Myth Theory a.k.a. Every Story Ever Told is Actually Just a Retelling of Every Other Story Ever Told. Also, Freud is an Idiot.
The Practice of Literary Journalism a.k.a. Shut Up For Once, Spoiled College Kid, and Listen to People With More Interesting Lives Than Yours
Creative Writing Independent Study a.k.a. Ben and Katharine's Totally Offensive Gross-Out Make-Out Fest

All of these involve intense final projects that I have been diligently working on since the first day of the semester (read: daydreaming about how I'm going to write a research paper that will change the landscape of human experience and then watching VH1 since the first day of the semester. On a related note, anyone remember when VH1 just used to be the old people's MTV? One day they were all boring and "adult contemporary," and the next some crazy girl was taking a dump on Flava Flav's stairs. A metaphor for human existence? That could make a revelatory research paper...) The most time-consuming, but simultaneously awesomest, one is the Literary Journalism project, which involves me going into Noho several times a week to talk with Anita, an old German woman with a shopping cart who hangs out in Haymarket and has exactly the kind of wardrobe I want to acquire by the time I'm 90 years old: silk blouses, furry multicolored coats, and blindingly shiny jewelry. She's also kind of a playa: yesterday, she had this rose from this guy and had apparently gone out with two completely different guys on a date to Friendly's earlier that day. Basically, she's sort of my role model. And we're going dancing at a club next Friday, which may prove to be the highlight of my entire life on this planet. When I'm not jamming out with people literally 4 times my age, I'm going to have to do work pretty much nonstop. Luckily, I got most of my weekend awesome fun time in on Friday, when Kate's mom came to visit from Delaware. We've officially adopted her as the mod mom: she periodically sends us homemade brownies, cookies, and various Delaware specialties. I didn't really know Delaware had any specialties, but apparently they actually have a vibrant, complex culture, centering mostly around Wawas. So she came up to Hampshire and made us dinner, then hung out and actually endured our ridiculousness without being like, "Um...you people need to get away from my daughter or I'm calling the cops. Now." We also peer-pressured her into drinking a beer--she had brought Kate a bunch of Delawarean beer but she doesn't really drink. She wasn't going to, until, of course, we chanted. Have you ever been able to honestly say to someone, "I peer-pressured your mom last night?" Because you should pretty much make that the goal of your life.

After our deliciously nutritous meal of nicobolis and Rice Krispie treats, Kate and I went into Noho to see Rasputina play at the Iron Horse. I've given an account of a Rasputina show before in this blog, so I don't think I need to give you the second-by-second rundown, but suffice it to say it was magical. How could it not be, with Melora covering "I Like Big Butts" on the cello? Rasputina pretty much embodies 8th grade for me, so it's always kind of a trippy flashback to see them live--it brings me back to my brief Goth period, where I wore a spiked collar and about a tube of lipstick a day. It was good times. I didn't really get too Gothed out for this show, but I did bring along Sir Hornacious David Clomps-A-Lot, the unicorn hobby horse Kate and Ellen picked up for me at a hardware store one day. Why was there a moving, neighing unicorn head on a stick for sale at a hardware store? That's pretty obvious, I should think. Sir Clomps-A-Lot, with his cotton candy-colored mane and mouth that creepily opens and closes when you press his ear, is kind of the love of my life. And since my cane had literally broken in half the night before (forming the amazing stake I'm stabbing Amy with in the picture above) I brought Sir Clomps-A-Lot to the concert as my ambulatory support. I can now check off "Ride a Unicorn Through the Streets of Noho" off my "1,000 McAwesome Things to Do Before You Die" list. Now I just have to figure out to make that clone army so I can win a corn dog-eating contest in every state capital all at once...oh, these impossible dreams that keep me going...

So Saturday night I was a working girl, and Saturday day I was a working girl, but in a completely different way. That's right, I'm Katharine Hott McAwesome: hooker by day, scholar by night. My modmate Ben is the creator of Hampshire's top TV show, Cop/Detectives, which involves a lot of blood, hilarity, and now, hookers. Ben banged on my door at 11 am, which is pretty much the middle of the night in terms of my Saturday sleep schedule, and yelled at me to get up and dress like a whore. So I threw on fishnets, combat boots, a hot pink miniskirt, and a bathing suit top. It was the trashiest thing I've worn since I literally wore that trashbag full of trash. So I spent most of the day in compromising positions of camera--it wasn't that different from any other Saturday, except there were a lot more kids around. That's right, Camp Kingsmont--the camp that Hampshire hosts over the summer--was having registration/orientation in the building we were filming in, which bumped my outfit up from awkward to possibly criminal. We also had a big knife and a bunch of fake guns, which probably means there are going to be a lot less campers at Kingsmount this year than expected. The kids didn't seem to mind so much, though--they mostly just stared at us and one of them said, "Mommy, look! It's the police!" I'm really hoping that kid is now permanently confused as to the distinction between cops and hookers. That's going to make for some fun times.

That pretty much covers the last couple of days--throw in some random mod visitors, Adult Swim, and some more hookers, and you've basically got it. But there is a crucial piece of news I need to fill you in on: I'm famous. Really, really famous. Well, not yet. But it's starting. This is all a set-up for my anticipated award-winning memoir "How to Be Hott McAwesome Without Even Trying." (Answer: you can't. You have to be born me. And unless you've mastered the clone technology I need, you're screwed. But if you have, get in touch, ASAP). So here's why I'm famous: I'm in the Boston Globe. Actually, you're also sort of in the Globe, as a reader of a college blog. But you're not as much in it as I am, so I win. Of course, the one quote the writer used from weeks and weeks (read: 15 minutes) of talking to me is the one that makes Hampshire sound kind of like a holding cell for sociopaths: "If the stuff on my blog makes you uncomfortable, it should make you think a little about what you will be encountering at Hampshire." What I really mean is: Hampshire's a place where you've got to make your own way. It's not as easy as finding a clique and sticking to it, and you're going to meet up with a lot of people who challenge you. Not to a duel to the death--well, not often--but just people who make you think. The best description of Hampshire was in a comment on our Livejournal community--I can't remember who it was from, except that they were a former student. So here's what they said:

"We're an eclectic bunch at this school, and intolerance of ANY weird lifestyle tends to get looked down on more than anything else. There are New York pseudo and real literati, Providence electroclash hardcore kids, former meth-smoking punk rockers, militant vegans, serious organizers for democratic education programs, heavy drinkers, kids who will snort cocaine off your butt, genuinely nice people, bookworm playwrights who keep quoting shakespere, people who smoke pot five times a day, people who would rather not touch any substance, outdoors enthusiasts who built a rope course for fun in eleventh grade, seriously unstable individuals, straightedgers with tight pants, trannies, genderqueers, heterosexual white males from small towns in Montana, horseriding enthusiasts who are trying to get a novel published, dmt smokers, children of famous producers who own over 4,000 dvd's, good musicians, bad musicians, kids who have had spontaneous religious experiences and don't want or need drugs, kids who took acid every three days in seventh grade, future librarians, wealthy and incredibly generous people with a lake house in connecticut, latent schizophrenics, kids who understand multivariable calculus coming in but whose interests have bent more towards cognitive neuroscience, sluts, borges scholars, virgins, nudists, people who have never seen a naked human being except themselves since they were very young, painters, book artists with this secret store of twenty hand-made artists books they haven't showed more than four or five people, noise artists, people who play four hours of video games a day, serious young people who work waitress jobs 20 hours a week and take like 24 credit hours, drug dealers who make less money per hour than they would at a legitimate job, incredibly excited people, incredibly generous kind hearts who truly love everybody, actors, successful 3-d animators with 50k/yr jobs right out of college, kids from like Baltimore who are like totally tripping on cough syrup from the bookstore and corner you on a misty evening and Tell You How It Really Is while you're having a cigarette in the gazebo, etc. I guess the best advice I can give kids who are new to a college environment is to experiment, but to know when to say that whatever's going on is just Not Your Cup Of Tea."

Basically, I don't mean you shouldn't come here if any of this makes you uncomfortable. A lot of it should probably make you uncomfortable, unless you've really got the tolerance level of a sado-masochist. I'm just saying: you're going to encounter a lot of new, crazy things. You're not going to like all of them. But if you've got some idea of who you are and can maintain that even in the flood of all this, without closing yourself off entirely, then Hampshire will be awesome for you. Wow, this is probably the most Admissions literature-like I've ever gotten in this blog. Although...I'm pretty sure Admissions doesn't have anything to say about sado-masochists. Well, not a lot to say, anyway.

i frequently enjoy musical events

2007-04-04T16:15:00.000-04:00

Was this guy singing sweatily all up in my face Saturday night? Yes. Did I like it? HELLZZZ YEZZZ.

(Okay, I just received a memo from The Alphabet informing me that due to my gross misuse of the letter "z" in that last sentence, I am banned from using that particular letter for at least the next 24 hours. So let's just hope this entry doesn't contain any stories about striped African horses or humped cattle. But dammit, without humped cattle, what the hell will I have left to talk about?)

The stories in this entry is going to occur less in chronological order than in McAwesome order, which means it will follow a pattern of logic only eight people on earth can understand. Two of those people secretly control the workings of the universe and the other six take enough acid, individually, to disable a sperm whale. For you kids at home: Katharine Hott McAwesome does not advocate taking aquatic mammal-sized doses of acid. She does, however, strongly advocate secretly controlling the workings of the universe. So get on that.

Back to the sweaty singing guy. That is the lead singer of the Cold War Kids, a supremely good band that played at Pearl Street this weekend. We get some really good shows around here, especially for not having a big city around, and Kate and I have dedicated to seeing as many of them as we can this semester. We missed my Brightest Diamond because she was playing the same night Kate got back to Costa Rica, but as Kate had just spent two weeks scaling 150-foot trees in 100% humidity, fighting off bullet ants, and getting less than three hours of sleep a night, I guess it made sense not to go. I'd just like to take this opportunity, again, to mention that science kids are crazy. This Costa Rica trip was for Kate's Tropical Ecology class, and when I heard about the crazy, Rambo-style shit her professor had them do, I was like, "Was there any sort of physical fitness test before this journey? Because I actually don't understand how you survived." She did drop her glasses in a crocodile-infested river, though, which means she kind of lost her face, but this trip was hardcore enough that I'm pretty sure she could have just as easily lost a hand. Which would make for a great story, but not a great Ping Pong career. (No, I have no idea why I said Ping Pong, either, especially since I'm fairly certain you can still play it with just one hand. But the other Ping Pong players might mock you and then you'd be forced to resign from the team until you discovered your most respected Ping Pong mentor also only had one hand. And then I think you'd be in the plot of a Lifetime movie.) But back to the concert. Like I said, we get some sweet shows, probably because we have some really good venues. There's the Iron Horse, which is kind of a chill, sit down or stand around bar set-up, Pearl Street, which is more of a jump around and dance like you're on fire deal, and the Pearl Street Basement, which is basically reserved for all the bands, usually from your adolesence, that you really want to see but don't really want to admit to the general public that you're going to see (Kate and I saw Rasputina there, for instance...it was actually the coolest thing ever, but a little shameful.) There's also the Calvin Theatre, where you get the really big name, mainstream people, but I don't think I've ever actually been to a show there. Anyway, this show was at Pearl Street on a Saturday night, which meant crazy dancing and general debachery.

We got there during the first opener--Tokyo Police Club, who were really good and had the most adorably spazzed-out keyboard player ever--and stood awkwardly at the back for a minute before I decided to use my Cripple Power to get us spots at the front. So I edged my way up, using my cane to gently nudge/whack people out of the way. Occasionally they'd turn around and be about to give me a look, but then they'd see my cane and be like, "Awwww...she's hobbling. Let her go wherever she wants." So I ended up pressed right against the stage, directly in front of the piano-playing lead singer, which was amazing. I managed to pull Kate and Amy all the way to the front with me, too, but somehow we ended up surrounded by the most bizarre, obnoxious people in the entire crowd. There was this one group of about four drunk guys that had somehow ended up behind Amy the entire night--they were behind her in line, singing and shuting into her face, and then they were right behind her at the show, yelling their completely nonsensical commentary about everything that was happening everywhere. When the roadies were setting up for the Cold War Kids, they were like, "Look at that guy! He's carrying a thing! That's heavy. That's heavy, guy, isn't that heavy? That guy's carrying something heavy! Yeah, go, that guy!" There was also this bottle on top of the piano with a drumstick stuck in it, which they somehow all decided was a candle, so they kept shouting, "Light the candle! C'mon, light the candle! I bet you won't do indoor fireworks!" Then, to the left of us, there was this tall guy who I immediately resented because he was wicked tall and yet standing right up against the stage. I could have forgiven him for his genetic differences, though, if he hadn't been hardcore making out with his girlfriend the whole time. I mean, hardcore, right in the front row, blocking a large section of the crowd's view with sloppy, over-eager lip gropage. They were right in front of this other tall guy, who looked over at us and was like, "Man, I wish they would cut it out." We agreed and thought we had an ally, but then he would not stop talking about it, which was really awkward since he was about two inches from their heads. He was like, "I did not pay $14 to stare at these two getting it on! If they don't cut it out, I'm just going to punch them. What's it going to take them to stop--the Apocalypse? A firehose?" So we just stood their uncomfortably while the couple doubled their efforts in response to his death threats.

Meanwhile, there actually was a concert happening, I swear. And it was sweet. I like the Cold War Kids a lot--I have no idea how to describe their sound, since my music criticism vocab basically encompasses the terms "sweet" and "not so sweet," but I've posted some songs so you guys can agree with how right I am. They put on a really great show, including this part where they brought the two opening bands back onstage to perform "Saint John," which is kind of a drunken, racuous chorus song. It was like 20 dudes just rocking out and singing at the top of their lungs while Amy and I were like, "Oh man, we so want to be them." They also know how to rock the piano, which was a big plus. This world needs more piano-rocking.

Speaking of piano-rocking:

This guy also sang all up in my face last week. If you do not know who this guy is, you are probably not as cool as you think you are. Or you are cool, but you just have a particular aversion to spastic gypsy punks. Which may be kind of safer for you, in the long run, but definitely not as fun. This dude is called Jason Webley, and he is awesome. I knew I liked his music, but I had no conception of how ridiculous a human being he is until I saw him perform at Hampshire's Red Barn on Monday. The Red Barn is the most homey of our performance spaces--it's a big, wooden...well, barn, but you know, nice and warm and not filled with humped cattle. It's also about two minutes from my mod, so it was probably the most conveniently located show I will ever attend. Our circus collective (Circus Folk Unite!) opened for him, and did their usually crazy acrobatic tricks, including a two-person burlesque dance on stilts to "All That Jazz." It was good, but kind of terrifying--I can't watch people on stilts without being like, "Oh my god they're going to topple and annihilate everyone with their tallness." It was especially anxiety-provoking since they did all their stuff without any mats, and the hard wooden floor of the Red Barn made this awful thwacking sound every time anyone rolled/jumped down on it. Circus folk and science kids--all actually insane. They should form a support group, except that it would just end in the funniest gang war every. Evolutionary biologists versus contortionists is a match I've wanted to see for a loooong time. So once the circus kids had stopped making their bodies into boxes and whatnot, Jason Webley performed. And--the dude rocks. Really. I know I said the Cold War Kids put on a good show, and they absolutely did, but it was very much a, "We're going to get up here and do our stuff and do it really well, but it's polished and in order and we're performing for you, not with you." Jason Webley, on the other hand, pretty much forced group participation. It was a pretty good-sized group of people, for a small venue on a Monday night, so he was able to kind of balance between conversational, confidential performance banter and racouous, foot-stomping mob hysteria. He plays the guitar, the accordion, and the vodka bottle--he fills it with change and manages to make it the loudest instrument ever. He also enjoys stomping--greatly--and having awkwar interactions with audience members. Like, early on, he wanted to do a singalong to "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean," and this one girl started groaning because her name is Bonnie and she hears people sing that all the time. But she consented, and he instructed us to stand up on every word beginning with "B" and then sit down on the next "B" word. Only problem--Bonnie was on crutches. So she points this out and Jason Webley was like, "You've been sent by God to punish me! What have I done?" Then he went on these rants about the movie Footloose and the time he accidentally managed to smuggle a gun from Seattle to Berlin in his luggage a few months ago. He did a lot of singing, but most of the time it was more like he was just doing whatever he came into his head--standing on his accordion, suddenly breaking into songs that sounded similar to what he was in the middle of playing, and often stomping vigourously until his hat fell off. For the finale, he wanted to do a drinking song, but the crowd was pretty uniformly sober. So he made us all stand up, point our fingers in the air, stare at said fingers, and spin around twelve times. Kids, I strongly recommend doing this at home--or, better yet, in the middle of a very large crowd, with everybody doing exactly the same thing. You will get reeeeeeal messed up. And it's cheaper and more legal than booze!* (Man, I strongly hope this catches on and some conservation Congressman tries to introduce a bill against finger-spinning. "It's destroying America's youth! They're all so goddamn...dizzy!"*) Then he made us form a giant, swaying circle around him, grab our neighbors shoulders for support, and sing, "If God wanted us sober, he'd knock the glass over." Public service announcement, everyone: you do not need drugs to get high. You just need your finger, some circus people, and some crazy dude with an accordion screaming in your face. Works every single time I've tried it.

*You should know the alphabet fined me $2,500 all the “z”s that appeared in this entry. Apparently it’s more essential to my life than I thought. I expect all of you to contribute at least $500 to the bill. At the least, next time you see a letter, throw it a few bucks.

And now, the award-winning soundtrack for this entry:
Cold War Kids
Saint John
We Used to Vacation
Hospital Beds

Tokyo Police Club
Nature of the Experiment

Jason Webley
Map

hampshire spreads its seed

2007-03-02T16:50:00.000-05:00

IMPORTANT FACT OF THE DAY: Naomi Watts is pregnant. Now, you probably don't care about this in any conceivable way, unless you're my best friend Amy, who's convinced that Naomi Watts is actually dating Nicole Kidman and sinks into a deep depresssion every time evidence of their mutual heterosexuality surfaces. But this is not the blog for hot, deluded lesbian fantasies. (If you want that blog, though, just let me know and I'll get you the link. I've got it bookmarked). This is the blog for Hampshire news and commentary, and Naomi's pregnancy is absolutely Hampshire news. Why? Because her babydaddy is none other than Liev Schreiber, our very own Hampshire movie star alum. And what does this mean for you, bright-eyed, eager prospective student? FACT: If you come to Hampshire, you will someday impregnate a movie star. Seriously, it's in the Admissions literature. Even if you don't particularly want to, as a Hampshire graduate, you are fated to parent a Hollywood super-child. Now, if that's not your thing, you can go to Columbia or Harvard or Princebrownstanfordtonia, but when you're managing your dumb multinational corporation and curing cancer or whatevs, I hope you remember that you could have had a really ridiculously overhyped pregnancy, and you just gave that dream away. And then I hope you turn on your plasma TV and see me cradling my infant child, who will be the spawn of such famous parents that it will literally be born with Cartier diamonds instead of eyes. Which sort of sucks for the kid, but it'll be a great fashion accessory.

SECOND-MOST IMPORTANT FACT OF THE DAY: All I've eaten today has been cupcakes. And so many shapes and kinds of cupcakes! I was working in the back office at the Eric Carle when my boss walked in carrying an actual dessert platter of cakes, cookies, and delicious gooey baked goods. I was like, "Oh man, you totally got my memo about how work study students should have personal pastry chefs on-call 24 hours a day. Sweeeet." But apparently that crucial change hasn't yet been implemented, because the desserts were really just from prospective chefs vying to take over as the new manager of the Museum café. Though I still think I deserve someone to follow me around and produce top-notch creme brulee the minute I think of it, this was pretty much the next best thing, because there were so many delicious treats around all day. It also means I'm kind of on a sugar high, which is probably why I'm doing a blog update on Naomi Watts's pregnancy instead of cleansing myself of the slushy, greenish snow crap that fell from the sky last night and is now caked onto my skin. Aren't you glad I'm so good with imagery? Who doesn't want a little slushy, greenish snow crap in their day, huh?

The Week of the Peanut Butter Mustaches

2007-03-01T22:35:00.000-05:00

FIRST AND ABSOLUTELY FOREMOST: My house in Tennessee has a NEW PUPPY.

You actually have no idea how much time I've spent drooling over that picture and babytalk-babbling to a silent image on my computer. My modmates have been like, "I actually thought you were tickle-strangling an infant down here. How do you even make those noises?" But when faced with such brain-exploding cuteness, how can you not? Her name's Hanley, she's half Collie and half...sumthin'. And I get to see her in about two weeks when I go home for Spring Break, which means my adorableness-induced squeals will actually reach glass-shattering proportions. And as always, I'm psyched to rupture some eardrums.

Secondly: sometimes previews for movies can be the most deceiving things ever. I know, I know, the media only ever deceives us for our own good, but they really should just be upfront about us about our film selections. I mean, they can tell me Iraq has literally been rebuilt as Disneyworld: Arabia and I'll pretty much accept it, but it's when they start lying about the most important films of the year that I really start thinking about doing some protesting. I feel they're usually somewhat accurate, but the Bridge to Terabithia trailer made me think my childhood was going to be strapped to a screen and flogged to death. It's got all this CGI and these action sequences and the booming voice guy going, "And these two young warriors must save their world because this is the most crucial moment in the universe's history..." while Lord of the Rings-type music plays in the background. However, I went to see it with Harry and Kate this week, and we ALL ended up crying. Even Kate, who I didn't even think had tear ducts. It was super-sappy a lot of the time, yes, but in this way that made me 7th grade self (the one who had read the book in the first place) go "Awwwww!" And for a Disney movie, it really delved into the whole religion and hellfire and damnation issue. It was amazingly sweet and affecting, and, as someone who loves the book, I have to say, it's definitely worth seeing. I don't know if it would really have this effect if you didn't read the book when you were younger, but it made all of us have this really serious, intense conversation about middle school and growing up and how awkwardly adult we're all starting to feel. And then we spent the car ride home not talking because we were singing an improvised techno-beat kind of ritual chant thing for about twenty minutes. We're really getting the whole "growing up thing."

However, as Kate pointed out, stories like Bridge to Teribithia are the reasons why stories like Lolita happen. I don't mean that random guys are going to read Bridge to Teribithia and suddenly get the urge to seduce underage girls...I would kinda hope not, anyway....but the character of Jesse totally paves the way for the character of Humbert. You know, you meet the most amazing person in the world when you're like 12 years old, they die, when you're both like 12 years old, and you spend the rest of your life trying to replace them with their exact replicate. It's creepy and it made our childlike enjoyment of the movie seem really creepy in like .6 seconds flat. We were like, "Um...we literally just compared a young, beloved Disney character to the most famous literary pedophile ever. Awkward."

This week has been a working week like whoa, but Kate and I did still managed to carve out time to go to the Mirah/The Blow concert last night. And when I say we "managed to carve out time," I mean we "used up hours that supposedly would have gone towards work but actually would have been filled with Scrubs and cereal and complaining about how much work we have." The concert was at the Iron Horse, which was completely packed even on a Wednesday--the bathroom line, which I always end up having the weirdest conversations with complete strangers in, contained about twenty people at any given time. The girl from the Blow was hilarious--she pretty much danced like a robot on the fritz and told all these ridiculous stories about her life in this flustered, Miranda July-esque way. She started off with this a capella song called "How Naked Are We Going to Get?" and then launched into this story about how the first time she had ever sung that song was in a karaoke bar. She started with, "A couple of years ago, I had started running...every night....in my jeans...to the karaoke bar." And then she talked about how one night she was up on stage and had a moment of soul-crushing self-awareness and was like, "Barkeep, please don't play the music." So she started performing this a capella piece instead and everyone in the place was like, "What? She's not singing along to the words on the screen?" and gave her a lot of applause so she wouldn't feel awkward about it. She also went to Evergreen State College, which is basically Hampshire: the X-Treme Edition. They gave her credit for performing one of her songs about this boy who never called her back for a presentation in a social sciences class, which seemed maybe even too Hampshire for Hampshire. I'm not going to say I haven't seen it done--somebody definitely did an interpretive dance, complete with dinosaur mittens and a Journey song, for their final in my Creative Writing, Design, and the Body class last semester--but improvised dance numbers are not always accepted for credit in the more text-based classes. I mean, I tried to do a spontaneous ballet to pass my Organic Chemistry class, but I just ended up with a sprained ankle and a bill for $250 in broken lab beakers in lieu of an evaluation.

So the Blow did her awesome schtick, then this girl got up and peed onstage. Not like, drunkenly--she got up, introduced herself, and was like, "Now I'm going to urinate." She was demonstrating this thing called a pStyle, which is sort of like a plastic penis-substitute that allows girls to easily pee standing up and then--using her words, here--"squeegee" off the excess moisture. It was bizarre, but if you can stand up in front of a huge crowd of people and casually piss into a bucket while making a sales pitch, I'm definitely 760% more inclined to buy your product. Plus when she was like, "You know you've always wanted to pee standing up," I was like, "Well, I'm not going to lie, that would be THE flyest thing EVAH." However, I had no cash on me and Kate was like "I am not let you buy something that will actually make you and Amy so lazy you'll just start peeing out the window," so I am officially putting this item down on the "Things to Buy Katharine For Holidays Centered Around Urinally-Themed Gifts." Come on guys, March 25th. I know you've all got it on your calendars.

The whole concert, I had been trying to convince myself I didn't have to pee so I wouldn't miss the beginning of Mirah, but honestly, if you think you have to pee and someone actually gets up on stage and says, "Hi, I'm going to pee now because it's awesome," you should pretty much take that as an unarguable sign that peeing is in your near future. So I went downstairs to join the bathroom line, which was predictably long as hell, and talked to a couple of people from Hampshire before the girl in front of me sparked up this random conversation about the poor grammar of the wall graffiti. Last time I was at the Iron Horse for a show, I ended up in an equally intense convo with another random girl in front of me about my professor Michael Lesy and her deep love for poetry. Nope, not kidding, I think she might have even used the actual phrase "my deep love for poetry." So I was telling graffiti grammar girl about this bumper sticker I saw that read "My son was 'killed' by a drunk driver," which was a horribly sad sentiment made inappropriately hilarious by quotation marks that made you go, "'Killed?' Is that like, a euphemism or a metaphor or something? How can you be (air quotes) 'killed'?" Then she went into the bathroom and this wicked tall guy behind me, who hadn't said anything to us the whole time, tapped me on the shoulder and I said, "I couldn't help overhearing, and I'd just like to interject--what if the kid was in a coma or paralyzed? Like, his life 'ended' but didn't really 'end?'" To which I went, "...Yeah...oh, the other bathroom's open, guess we'll pick this up later!" Then I fought my way through the crowd to get back to Kate and watch Mirah, whose music was gorgeous but kind of sleep-inducing after the strange energy and magnetism of the Blow. We were all sort of like, "Oh...we just remembered it was a Wednesday night and we're kind of tired. Let's all sway and half-close our eyes and contemplate life." But, just like when we went to see Grizzly Bear, there were this group of spastic girls who could have moshed out to a funeral dirge. They were spinning around and bumping into all the stationery hipsters and occasionally making comments about how beautiful the night and the music was even though they couldn't hear anything and the room kept tilting. That, my friends, is why we do or do not do drugs. I just can't remember which.

Tomorrow I'm working at the Eric Carle and not at Small Beer Press because everyone who usually works there (read: three people) are out of town. But last week I finally got to meet Kelly Link! She had been in Australia teaching a seminar or something, so I had just been hanging out in the office at the back of her house with my boss Jedidiah and being like, "Wow, there are sci-fi collectibles and books everywhere. I want to be Kelly Link when I grow up." So we talked about Buffy (because the Buffy: Season 8 comic is coming out next week, if you have somehow managed to avoid The Good News That Will Sustain All Whedon Geeks For A Little Longer) and ate kabobs from Cafe Lebanon in her kitchen, because though the internship is unpaid, my perks include free lunch, hanging out with Kelly Link, and cool free books like The Science of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, which I nabbed from the advance copies pile last time. I also got to write the renewal plea for Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, their literary zine, which I did in the style of a lusty, longing love letter. I went so far as to accuse lapsed readers of "eyeing the massive magazine racks at the bookstore" and "fingering the pages of younger, thinner volumes of prose." I think it might win us back some readers, or just convince them that the new intern's kind of sketch. Either way, it'll be a victory for me.

If you managed to read this whole thing, your love for me must be at least at Stalker Level. And, as you well know, at Stalker Level you receive a free song. (Upgrade to Worshipful Servant Level and get three free songs for only 3/4ths of your soul today!) So here ya go:
Parentheses by the Blow

I love you all--and by "I love you all" I mean "give me 5 dollars"

2006-02-14T00:23:00.000-05:00

In honor of the only man who can simulataneously have sex with your mom while roundhouse-kicking you in the face and smothering Hitler, Osama Bin Laden, and five zombie bears in his chest hair, Happy Valentine's Day!

P.S. Your regularly scheduled blog programming will resume shortly. You can look forward to new and improved ramblings on Ireland, Ramen noodles, and that weird smell your feet get when go out to build a snow camel and don't wear socks. STAY TUNED, or Chuck Norris will tune you. Yeah, you know what I mean.

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

2005-12-11T05:32:00.000-05:00

"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

2005-12-07T20:55:00.000-05:00

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

2005-12-06T04:06:00.000-05:00

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.

VOLDEMORT CAN'T STOP THE ROCK

2005-11-08T04:56:00.000-05:00

So, on a scale from 1 to 20 ninja, I'd say my last two weekends have rated, on average, at about 23 ninja. (Don't you hate when people do that, where they make up some scale and then immediately devalue it by citing a number outside of the scale? It's like saying, "Okay, so last night I either went out dancing or watched Moulin Rouge. Guess which." "Umm...dancing?" "No, actually, I covered a ferret in chocolate chip ice cream and went ice skating on a pond made of frozen goat pee! God, you're dumb." Like, playing by the rules, you could totally never guess the answer.) I was in costume last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night, and not only that--I was in a different costume for each of those three nights. CRAZY. This weekend was not as costume-y, but it did include maple syrup and Angelina Jolie, so I'm going to count that as a win. Onto the incredibly lengthy and gut-twistingly exciting summary of my life, which, as usual, is precisely 65.4% more fabulous than yours:

Sooooooooooooo...okay, so last weekend was the weekend to end all weekends. Man, there was a lot of "end" involved in that last sentence. The weekend before that was spent being a wholesome, academically inclined young lady (read: thinking about writing papers while constructing a fort out of the beer and soda cans left in Kate and Kel's mod--hey, I was protecting myself AND the Kingdom of Cheez-Its-onia) so this weekend was the time to let loose and be merry. It kicked off Thursday night, when Amy and I went into Newbury Comics in Amherst and I bought the first season of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Pee Wee's Big Adventure. (You know, being in college is, I've decided, is really a lot like being twelve, except you have no curfew, a credit card, and full possession of your hormones. No wonder they call it the best years of your life.) I couldn't watch these gems of the universe right away, though, as I had a pressing appointment with the coolest wizards in rock n' roll--a.k.a. Harry and the Potters. As you know full well if you read my NYC blog or have talked to me for more than five seconds, Harry Potter ranks pretty consistently near the top of my obsessions, which is impressive since I have about 1,456 top obsessions at any given moment. As usual, Kate and I were the only two members of our crew to openly express our love for indie/emo Gryffincore rock, so we got super-swanked-out and headed to MHC for what turned out to be the rockingest night in rock history. Well, that might be a slight exaggeration, but I'd seriously like to see Ozzy Osbourne top what Harry (Year 5) and Harry (Year 7) were dishing out--bat biting is nothing compared to ad-libbed Cho Chang/Dumbledore references. Last time I saw Harry and the Potters, they were playing a slightly different sort of venue (read: a library full of 3 to 13-year-olds), so this was a totally new experience. It was mostly MHC girls, along with a scattering of recognizable Hampshire students, all in varying degrees of Potter-themed costume. I don't have a picture of mine, most unfortunately, but just take a minute to form store this image in your mental database: me in black combat boots, fuzzy white leg warmers over black fishnets, a black and blue plaid schoolgirl skirt, Hogwarts jacket, and GINORMOUS fuzzy white witch hat. What's that word you're searching for? Unbearably hot? Yeah, I thought so. Harry and the Potters even had an opening band (ohhh snap) called--you're going to need a moment to deal with this one--Uncle Monsterface. Wait, wait, one more time--Uncle...Monsterface. The minute I heard it, I was like, "My god...I never realized it, but if I ever formed a band, I think that's EXACTLY what I would have named it." Uncle Monsterface consisted of three guys, one of whom wore a dinosaur helmet the whole time, a sock puppet theater, a projection screen that showed random images like a prairie dog playing the piano in front of a swirling psychadelic background, and a guy actually dressed as Uncle Monsterface, who didn't appear until halfway through the set. They made Buffy references, played songs about Count Chocula and a lobster building, among other things, then called on Uncle Monsterface, who popped out from behind the puppet theater and ran into the crowd (at this point, I gotta admit, I was pretty sure there had been something hallucinogenic in the punch) and came back with Spongebob, Sesame St., and He-Man sheets which the band members wore as capes. At the end, they called a bunch of people up on stage (are you wondering if I went? Do you even have to ask? There was a STAGE. Of course I did) to rock out with inflatable guitars while a white mouse running on top of the world played on the screen. I have to say, guys, I deal pretty well with weird shit, but this...was so...weird. I just stood there, completely perplexed, as was pretty much everyone else, until, somewhere in the middle of "Count Chocula (you're never safe)" I looked over at my companions and was like, "You know what, I'm just going to go with it" and started dancing like a madman. Kate's two comments, which helped me process the whole experience were: 1) none of these guys have ever felt the touch of a woman, and 2) this is exactly the band their twelve-year-old selves would have formed, so really, they're living their dream. That helped me to deal somewhat. I'm still somewhat edgy around breakfast cereals and sock puppets, though.

So then, after having our minds scrambled and eaten by sock puppets, it was time for Harry and the Potters. The Hampshire kids got up right in front of the stage, so I was pretty much face-to-chest with Harry (Year 7) which made the whole thing crazy intense. They played the old standards ("Wizard Chess" and "Wrath of Hermione," anyone? Remember those from our wild and sordid youth?) and premiered some Book 6 songs, at which point everyone in the room pretty much passed out from joy. I danced like someone hit with the Dansus Incredibilis curse--okay, more like someone hit with the Cruciatus curse, since I was pretty much spazzing out and screaming occasionally, but it was still awesome. The Harrys crowd-surfed and did lots of jumping up on speakers and were pretty much rock gods. At some point during "Save Ginny Weasley", Kate and I turned to each other and were like, "Man, this is the best night of our lives and we should never, ever mention that fact to anyone we know, ever." Afterward there was a costume contest, based on house, so I entered as a punk-rock Ravenclaw but lost out to Luna Lovegood (that spacey bitch). There was also pumpkin painting, which we did not partake in, and candy, which we heartily partook of. I bought a "Save Ginny" shirt, which you will get to see later, in my Halloween pics, and got it signed by little Harry, who wrote, "KATHARINE--don't let Voldemort crash your DANCE PARTY!" We talked with him for awhile, and I offered Kate $15 to ask him to make out with her, but alas, she is a yellow-bellied fiend. Can you imagine how much your street cred would go up if you made out with one of the Harry and the Potters? I mean, you'd be at like, mega-gansta status. If you made out with one of the members of Uncle Monsterface, though, your street cred would probably just explode and you'd have to live your life in the sewers or something. Not in a bad way, just in a "you are not meant for this world" sort of way.

So, Friday. Oh my, Friday. As you may have anticipated, a large amount of Friday was spent on the floor of my room, trying to figure out how to build a wheelchair out of a zebra footstool, a roly-chair, and 500 LEGO pieces. Because of that whole, y'know, genetic joint disability thing, the day after dancing like a fiend is often known as the day my legs rebel and refuse to fulfill their proper function, but luckily, after a long bath, stretching, and some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I was up and about again. And thank Joss, because Friday night was none other than Hampshire Halloween. Hampshire Halloween is, pretty much, the biggest deal on this campus ever, and that's not just me misusing "biggest" and "ever" again. It's a huge thing, and our most massive party--apparently it was even on Rolling Stone's Top 10 party list and some point, which means that unless your school has a party that involves lots of making out and takes place in a giant ball pit, surrounded by a lazy river, we kick your asses. (Kate decided, and I heartily agree, that the epitome of luxury is having an estate that includes a giant ball pit and a lazy river. Like, if you've got both of those things, you've made it. You're a success. No question. This past week I amended my personal vision to include a Spaghetti-O's lazy river, complete with full-size Spaghetti-O's rafts, but at the moment that's just making me somewhat nauseated, so maybe it's not the best idea.) On Hampshire Halloween, the campus closes down for this crazy-ass, school-wide party, to which all the good people of the Valley come. You're allowed seven guests, who have to register and whatnot, and they all have to enter at designated spots, meaning, as my friend Kel discovered, that there is a two-hour line to get onto campus. You don't want to leave campus at all on Halloween--you may never get back. Around six, when the lawn carnival started, I started to get suited up as none other than Harry Potter in my Save Ginny t-shirt, jeans, black Chucks, and Hogwarts jacket. I used a red pen to draw on my scar, carried around my Hedwig the snowy owl hand puppet, and stole our mod's broomstick to use as a prop/inconspicuous cane. I even wrote Nimbus 2000 on it--man, am I crafty. I couldn't find my plastic Harry Potter glasses, though, so I went over to Kate's, where she and her best friend from Bard, Christine, were getting decked out as 50s-style B-movie aliens. They had a bunch of pipe cleaner left over from making their antennae, so Christine, the craftiest of us all, constructed a pair of amazingly round spectacles for me using only green pipe cleaners and Sharpie. The only problem with that was that the Sharpie then came off on my face somewhat, so I kind of looked like Harry Potter going through heroin withdrawal for most of the evening. Amy showed up in her mailman garb (complete with postal service hat, dirty postcards, and sketchy glued-on moustache) and Ellen was also there in what was supposedly a red Gummi Bear costume, but was really just her excuse to wear comfy red clothes all night. We went over to Harry's mod, where he had just finished getting Hermesed-out--Harry has this weird theory that because he wore only a loincloth and shorts his first year at Hampshire Halloween, he has to be progressively more naked each year. This might make sense if we didn't live in Massachusetts, but because we do, it doesn't make any sense at all and means Harry pretty literally froze his balls off this year. No, really, literally. I think he's now sterile. It was that cold. Luckily, though, the constant rain I complained about last entry had finally let up, so it was dry and actually pretty pleasant if you were wearing an appropriate amount of clothes. Jeff showed up as Oxytocin, the hormone of love (read: he was too lazy to get a costume and made up for it by touching everybody inappropriately), though apparently earlier in the evening someone had actually drawn a big red F on his forehead because he failed so badly at Halloween. Jeff and I frolicked off to the lawn, where they had a bouncy castle, slide, obstacle course, and basketball thing, as well as crazy dance party nonsense. There are three places to dance during Halloween: the big tent on the lawn, where the live bands play; the smaller tent on the lawn, with the DJ; and the RCC, with another DJ. After dropping by Alice's mod and meeting back up with Kate and Christine, we went into the big tent, where ZEBU was playing. ZEBU is a fairly well-known band on campus, but I had never heard them play, and am pretty sure I never want to hear them play again. I mean, it was fine for Halloween, because when you're dancing around with a bunch of crazy people in costume, nothing can really be wrong, but outside of that context I think ZEBU should probably never be heard from. We were kind of standing around, trying to determine if the noises we were hearing were supposed to be musical, until everyone just sort of got into the spirit of things and started dancing to whatever music they heard in their heads. It was actually really good for a Hampshire crowd, I think, because since there was no rhythm, everyone just sort of picked a dance style and went with it, so people were like moshing and salsa-dancing and break-dancing and all kind of nonsense. Dance parties, I've deducted from long years of research, are 78% more fun when in costume, no matter how ridiculous the music may be. There was a guy on stage screaming, "AFRICAN WATER BUFFALO!" and a giant squid head-banging in front of me, and I was like, "Man, this is totally like if one of my dreams came to life. I LOVE THIS SCHOOL." After dancing around a bit, we went to Prescott, which apparently had mini-quiches at some point in the night, but only had nachos and condoms when we got there. Another awesome feature of Hampshire Halloween? Free food. Lots of it. As a semi-independent college student, I will attend pretty much any event that has free food, even if it's like, Skittles. The Greenwich/Enfield house office had an open house the other day and I stocked up on so many mozzarella sticks and vegan brownies--which, for the record, you should never really eat in tandem, both from a political and dietary standpoint. On Halloween, all the house offices have something going on, plus food, so life=good. After Prescott, we went to Dakin to check out the Haunted House, which we actually didn't end up going into since Amy, sketchy mailman extraordinaire, showed up and wanted to dance some more. We went to the RCC for awhile, then to the smaller tent, both of which rocked profoundly. We also just generally wandered, which is always really amusing, since people go all out for Halloween and have the weirdest costume choices. In addition to the giant squid, Edward Scissorhands, and Frank from Donnie Darko, we noticed that this year there were a disproportionate number of unicorns walking around. We counted about a dozen, and though we also counted about a dozen Willy Wonkas, that made sense because, hey, movie. But unicorns? As far as I'm aware, there has been no unicorn-centered media enterprise since, ironically enough, "The Last Unicorn." Maybe unicorns are back, though. Maybe all the cool kids are going to start wearing horns and then some posers will start wearing horns and the original unicorns will laugh at them and call them rhinos and then the rhinos will stampede and destroy all the unicorns. Maybe. Anyway, there were also lots of ninjas, hipsters, and Greeks. In one of the tents we met this girl with an amazing Frida Kahlo costume--I mean, she totally looked like Frida, and had even gone all out with uni-brow and partial moustache. There was a Spaghetti Monster (AMAZING) and my personal favorite, a Cock Block, who was just wearing a giant block and would look for people making out and then get between them and be like, "Nope, nope, can't allow this, I'm a Cock Block, cease and desist." We also passed this Slytherin smoking a cigarette and being generally Slytherin, and I swear he gave me the kind of look Draco would give Harry, the "Merlin, you think you're so cool but you're just a stupid-ass Gryffindor." Christine saw it too, and she was like, "Man, you should challenge him to a duel," and I almost did until I was like, "Wait...we're not actually at Hogwarts. And he's not actually a haughty pureblood, and my wand is plastic." Then I got really depressed because I suddenly really wanted to go to Hogwarts and Christine was like, "I completely understand," and then told me about this theory her sister and her came up with, which is that in the U.S., the wizard school lets you go to college before they send you your letter, because they want you to have a full education in all ways. So it's like wizard grad school, and there's still a chance we can all get our letters. I was more thrilled by this idea then I should really admit in public. At some point we went into the library so Christine could go to the bathroom, and though there's technically nothing official going on in the library, there were a ton of people hanging out there because hey, warm. We met up with my modmate Kate, who was wearing a $5 Salvation Army bumblebee costume, and she and Amy punched each other for no apparent reason until Christine came out of the bathroom freaked out because someone had been having sex in the stall directly next to her. Just then, this girl dressed as Velma came up to us and screamed in this really shrill voice, "Oh my god, you guys have such cool costumes. Let me hug you!" She then hugged, shook hands, and kissed each of us on the cheek, and as she was walking away Christine was like, "Um...that was the girl having sex in the bathroom next to me." We were like, "Oh, sweet Jesuits...are you sure?" And she was like, "There's really no mistaking that voice," at which point we all decided we desperately needed to go wash our hands and faces. At about 1:30, after lots more dancing, we started lining up for SAGA breakfast. I have this theory that Hampshire Halloween is wholly engineered to make our SAGA seem attractive. SAGA's actually pretty good, but after partying like a motha and standing in line in the freezing cold for 45 minutes, it is the best thing you will ever experience in your life. The breakfast starts at 2 am and is served by various faculty members, including, this year, Ralph Hexter and Manfred (!!!) I was a little too focused on getting TATER TOTS NOWNOWNOW to really pay attention to Manfred, but at least he is now more than a creature of myth. The line for SAGA moved incredibly slowly and by this point we were all incredibly cold and hungry, so we had to come up with various methods of entertainment, including--and this was incredibly surreal--leading the entire line in a sing-a-long of "A Whole New World" and "I Will Survive." When we finally got in, after watching someone set off illegal fireworks near Merrill, we sat in the backroom and inhaled our eggs, tots, and French toast with zest and joy. Christine, Kate, and I headed back to Enfield and met up with Freddy, who, of course, was not wearing a costume because he is, as he told us, "Same as always, same as always." Somehow, in the process of his proposing marriage to Christine, we managed to get him to slip up and admit to us that he is building a time machine, so we now know some small part of his master plan. I came back to my mod to find Sean, who had gone out as a lizard, scrapping pastels off his face and decided to just go to bed and deal with the permanent marker on my face later. Man, that's how so many of my nights end up...

I spent most of Saturday recovering from Halloween by sitting around watching "Pee Wee's Big Adventure"--er, I mean "Cool Indie Movie About Intellectualism and Sophisticated Things that Doesn't Involve Pee Wee Herman"--and ordering Andiamo, which I did a lot last week since I really needed to make a grocery store trip. Andiamo is the nearby panini place, and they have incredible panini and gelato, so despite their slightly heightened prices, I can't resist them. The Andiamo guy walked in to find me sprawled on the couch in my pajamas with Sharpie still on my face and was like, "Had a good Halloween, huh?" He told me that as he walking across campus he just saw people crawling toward their homes or the woods, depending on how desperate they were to find somewhere to sleep. I watched movies all day and then that night Kate, Christine, and I went into Noho to discuss Kate's tattoo options and rock out to Hedwig and the Angry Inch. There was a Hedwig sing-a-long at the Academy of Music Theatre, and if you know anything about me at all, you know a Hedwig sing-a-long is pretty much what I've been waiting for my entire life. I dressed up as Tommy Gnosis, which was pretty easy since he wears all black and 86.3% of my closet is composed of black clothing *exactly 86.3%--I calculated it in my mind. You think I'm making up all these exact figures, but they're totally computed by my Calculator of Everything That You Cannot See Because It Is Also Invisible So Sucks to Your Ass-mar (TM).* I also put disgusting amounts of grease on my hair and drew a silver cross on my forehead, which I thought would get me more weird looks than it did until I remembered I was just going to be around Hampshire and Northampton, where nothing, save nothing, is weird. So we went to Lucky's, the piercing/tattoo place in Noho, where the tattoo guy had a heart-to-heart with Kate about the tattoo she's been wanting forever. Like I mentioned in an earlier entry, which you must know because you've been diligently memorizing each word I post, Kate's dream has long been to get three ants tattooed on her shoulder. ANTS. And not just your generic, run-of-the-mill ant: oh no. Kate had a specific ant in mind: the Argentine ant. (Yes, okay, I did have "Evita" playing in my head every time she said its name. Shut up.) That's actually a link to the exact image she got, by the way. Oh yes, accuracy in reporting, what what. The guy convinced her to just get one ant on her back so it could be all creepily detailed, and Kate decided to come back the next day to get it done. So we went to the Academy of Music and met up with Jeff and Erik to sing along to the best movie ever conceived. It was really pretty full, for having an $8 admission tag, and even included drag queen songleaders, which are necessary for pretty much every event ever, especially like, church functions. Everyone was so into it and had great energy, but really, in the face of Hedwig on the big screen, how can you not? Afterward Kate, Christine, Erik and I went to Osaka for a late dinner--mmmm shrimp tempura. Osaka apparently has the best sushi in the valley, but as I try to stay away from fish that's not so much, er, cooked as much as possible, I can't verify that. After Erik drove us back, Kate, Christine, and I went back to my mod to watch Reality Bites, this 90s film with Janeane Garofalo, Ethan Hawke, Ben Stiller, and Winona Ryder that I had never heard of before but was completely revelatory. After watching it, all of us were like, "Um, number one, we feel so much better about life after college, and number two, where has this movie been all of our lives?" Sunday Kate awoke me to ask if I wanted to come into Northampton and watch her get an insect permanently inked into her flesh. Of course I said yes, and we met up with Amy to go into town. It was one of the most gorgeous days...ever. It was warm, sunny, and like...amazing, especially after the Rain Plague of recent weeks. I felt all frolic-y inside, which translates to my outside as a sort of joyful hobbling. We went to Haymarket for breakfast, of sorts *milk and a slice of Boston creme pie, in my case--mmmm, nutritious* and then went down to Lucky's for Kate's fateful date...with destiny. And a needle. She went in the backroom while Amy and I looked on over this half-door thing that made it feel like Kate was a horse we were watching in a stall or something. The tattoo guy was playing Miles Davis and talked to us about squids *which sent Amy into a panic, naturally* and his love for bugs, which made me queasy. Watching someone get tattooed is kind of a weird thing, but Kate said it didn't hurt that much, though I sometimes suspect Kate is an android and it probably wouldn't hurt if you like, fed her to a bear. After that, we got lunch at Pinnochio's Pizza and I went to go see Thumbsucker while Kate and Amy headed home. Thumbsucker was good, but kind of disorienting--I'm not really sure why, though I suspect it had a lot to do with Keanu Reeves being in it. I was sitting at the bus stop when Mara came by and offered me a ride, and of course I said yes because I wanted to get back to campus and get started on my work as soon as possible *read: eat my Chef Boyardee Spaghetti and Meatballs as soon as possible.* I got to take in the loveliness of the day while walking across Merrill quad, where people were chilling out and enjoying what may well be one of the last days until March we can be outside for more than ten minutes without wanting to die. This past week, though, I have to say, really has been beautiful. I mean, short-sleeves, Frisbee-playing beautiful. Remind of that in two months when I'm setting myself on fire to stay warm.

Tuesday night I went to the DeVotchKa show at the Iron Horse, and oh my, were they the amazingness. DeVotchKa is this multi-instrumental, Eastern European-inspired rock band, and by that description alone you should be able to tell how much they rock. They're apparently good pals with Gogol Bordello, one of my other favorite gypsy rock outfits, who apparently came to Noho just before I discovered them--curse you, crafty gypsy rockers! I had never been to the Iron Horse before, but it's right in downtown Noho and is a really nice space, kind of a bar/cafe set-up with a stage. I got a seat right next to the stage, which was awesome, since I was right in front of the accordion play. Rock on. There are four people in DeVotchKa: three guys and one girl, all of whom play a weird variety of instruments, including, but not limited to, the drums, the trombone, the saxophone, the guitar, and some weird metal thing that warbles when you ding it. They were so very, very good, and their frontman is so very, very hot. I mean, guys, I may be gay, but I think I have a serious man crush with this one. He kind of looked like a cross between Simon from Firefly and Joaquin Phoenix in Walk the Line--yeah, exactly. SO. ATTRACTIVE. Also, he sings like a god. After eating at Cafe Fireside I went back to campus to watch Heavenly Creatures with Amy and Kate, which was really disconcerting. Heavenly Creatures is Kate Winslet's first film, and it's directed by Peter Jackson, which, if you've ever seen and/or heard of it, you will agree is really bizarre. It's about crazy New Zealand lesbians--just the thing for a Tuesday night.

Wednesday I spent dying of leg malfunction, but I managed to get up and about enough at night to go the screening of "I Exist: Queer Voices from the Middle East in the U.S.," which I really wanted to attend one, because, hey, awesome, and two, because the QCA was sponsoring it and I figured we should actually go, you know, actively sponsor it. Thursday was really nice and sunny, so after work Kate and I went out to the big tree near the Red Barn to enjoy my Atkins basket and have a reading party--I lent her my copy of Anansi Boys and I started Infinite Jest, which is proving to be an amazing book, except that it's like 3 million pages long and I only have time to read it in about two minute spurts. We stayed out there until after dark, which really doesn't mean anything because it's started to get dark at about 5:00 here now, talking about science fiction (I'm cool, guys, seriously, don't hate) and our new idea for a Div III, called "F--- you, DIORAMAS!" The concept was inspired by the Chem assignment Kate was working on, which required her to write the biography (in comic or story form) of the element of her choice. This is especially hysterical if you know how often Kate puts down the humanities for being all touchy-feely and hippie-ish, and swears that there's nothing like that in the science world. I suggested she just do a diorama, which got us thinking about how long it's been since we did a diorama and how amazing they are. I mean, really, dioramas in shoeboxes were such an inspired idea. So we decided we could do a Div. III art installation piece of all dioramas, which then evolved into a life-size diorama, and then a theater production that actually takes place inside a diorama about living in a diorama. Oh my god, dioramas. I can't even take the genius. After hanging out with Kel at the QCA, I went back to my mod to watch Aladdin with Kate, where she attempted to make microwave popcorn (MICROWAVE popcorn, people. And you think I’m incompetent) but burnt it, causing our kitchen to fill with smoke. We freaked out because we thought the smoke alarms were going to go off and everyone in Enfield was going to yell at us, but they didn’t, which was good for us at the time, but which seems really bad, now, actually. I mean, shouldn’t they have at least beeped a little? Anyway, there was so much smoke in the microwave that we actually took the entire thing outside to air it out. It was a little ridiculous, so is pretty much everything with me and Kate.

Friday was spent errand-doing, including a much, much needed grocery trip. I was pretty much licking my mod mates’ dirty dishes, I was so desperate for substantial nutrition. Oh, but before all the shopping goodness, Kate and I had our meeting for the Ireland trip, which I am now officially going on (thank Joss). It sounds like it’s pretty much going to be the best thing ever—plus we’re apparently staying near my distant Irish cousins, so I might do some family-type bonding (read: awkward interaction with complete strangers in the hopes that they will feed me dinner or something.) Right, so after that Kate and I got lunch at the Bridge, then met up with Kel and Amy to gallivant about town. We hit the bank (because I finally got my paycheck—ahhhh sweet), Barnes and Noble, Stop N’ Shop, then Amherst. When we got back, I went to Kate and Kel’s mod, since they had promised to make me dinner, and ate French toast and scrambled eggs while watching, for some reason, FOX News than BET. They kind of messed with my head, especially one right after the other. Afterward Kel and I watched Palindromes, this movie I’ve been waiting to see since it came out and Kel really wanted to watch. It’s a weirdly amazing concept—there’s one main character, this thirteen-year-old girl, but she’s played by a different actor in each segment. It’s one of those things that could go horribly, horribly wrong, but ended up working really well. Sean came over to distract us with the revelation that he plays Dungeons and Dragons during it, then I think I must have gotten home at some point that night and gone to sleep, but I can’t really verify that statement. Saturday I got up extra-early (read: 10:30 a.m.) to go with Erik and Skim to Vermont on a random road trip. We decided we wanted to get out of the Valley for awhile, so we drove north until we hit Ludlow and stopped for lunch in this place called Trapper’s, which was decorated as a hunting lodge, save for the giant and inexplicable posters of Maui on the walls. It was a brilliantly gorgeous day, so we walked around town, pausing to laugh hysterically and take incredibly tourist-y pictures with a painted llama statue, shop in various souvenir-type places, and take in the town biker gang (consisting of four people) and uni-cycler. We looked ridiculously out of place—not only were we dressed in Hampshire-type attire, but Erik has a BMW that he feels must perform at top speed at all times, which means he doesn’t really blend in on the back roads of Vermont. We dropped by a reservoir Alice, who in her youth had a summer cabin in the area, recommended, and then went to Chester for tea in a real-life tea house of tea-ness. It was like being in every old woman’s house ever. There were various chachkas for sale everywhere, and everything was sort of pastel-colored and comfortably old. It was all very soothing. We were the only people there, and it was only run by one woman and her dog, which hung out with us while we ate. We got tea, of course, and I got a homemade ice cream sundae, which goes way better with tea than you might think. Never doubt my ability to combine a hot fudge sundae with any meal imaginable. After tea, we drove around to take in the Vermont-ness of Vermont some more, including the apple pie stands, lack of billboards, and general quaintness of the place. We weren’t that far from the Valley, but it was like an entirely different land—probably because the Valley is an entirely different land from everywhere else. Before leaving Vermont, we had to do something syrup-related, so we stopped at a sugar shack and the woman let us sample some of her syrup (purely in a literal maple sense) and showed us the workings of her syrup-making machine, though I still don’t fully grasp the whole thing and prefer to let it remain a “good on waffles” type mystery. After returning to Massachusetts, Erik and I decided to go see—of all things—“Chicken Little.” No, I don’t know either. It was actually pretty good, though, and we managed to get away with buying child’s tickets, which I think is fair since we were seeing “Chicken Little” and all. There was a gay pig, Amy Sedaris, and this hilarious fish, so it all turned out well. Afterward Erik and I met up with Kate and Kel at Ellen’s mod, went to Prescott to party for a bit, then went back to my mod to watch Hackers. Really, guys, I somehow missed a large and crucial part of 90s cinema. Hackers, if you’re horribly culturally unlearned, like, apparently, me, is an Angelina Jolie/Matthew Lillard/Marc Antony (HA!)/other random people film about, naturally, Hackers. Only it was made in 1995, so all the super-cool technology they use is just laughably ridiculous—like, all the laptops are the size of suitcases and the computer graphics just make you want to cry. It’s amazing. It has the motto “HACK THE PLANET!” and tries to make it seem as though hackers and gamers were somehow cool in the 90s and rode motorcycles and went to gamer nightclubs instead of sitting in dark basements for hours and hours and hours on end. This past week could really be re-titled, in my the internal spreadsheet of my life, as the week of OMG 90s MOVIES. I mean, first Reality Bites, then Hackers, then, on Sunday, due to Sean’s suggestion, Singles with Kyra Sedgwick and Matt Dillon. The 90s-ness of my cinematic choices comes mostly from the fact that Sean only has VHS tapes, all of which he purchased five years or more ago, so I have access to all these films I feel I would never otherwise encounter. Sunday was eaten up by sleep, Singles, and work, then the Boondocks at 11 on Adult Swim. Adult Swim has ruled my life lately. I mean, now they have the Boondocks, which is amazing and smart and actually makes sense, unlike 12 Oz. Mouse, which I actually love, but for entirely different reasons. Has anyone else seen 12 Oz. Mouse? Because…yeah. I don’t even know, guys. It’s like Uncle Monsterface—plus 500. I don’t even…I can’t even…I mean, the fact that 12 Oz. Mouse is actually on television makes me wonder if everyone in the world is just secretly like me, and civilization is soon just going to fall apart. I could watch it for hours. Literally…seconds. Only a lot of them. So…hours. What?

Okay, it’s late now, as is clear from that last sentence. I just got back from watching House of 1000 Corpses with Kate, Harry, and Amy after a long day of doing not so much. I did meet with Joel Dansky, though, the Disabilities Service Coordinator, who was actually able to come meet with me in my mod so I didn’t have to go to Prescott at 9 am. Ooooh, maybe as a disabled student I can request that all classes be moved from wherever they are to my mod living room. Or better yet, my bedroom. And instead of “classes,” they can be changed to “hot model make-out sessions/ice cream parties.” Sweeeeet cuppin’ cakes, I think I’ve finally found a use for this handicap.

I'm so...cold...

2005-10-25T18:39:00.000-04:00

Okay, here's the thing: I am generally a fairly patient and optimistic person. Really. My glasses are all full *of cool, cool delicious milk...mmmm*, my clouds are all shiny, I've got a bluebird on my shoulder *actually, no, because that would be scary, but metaphorically*--all that jazz. HOWEVER, if the rain does not ceases very, very soon, my brain is actually going to explode. Everywhere. Like a mashed potato volcano. Or just...a volcano. And when it explodes, it is going to explode is such a way that each particle of my brain goo will become an unstoppable mini-killing machine, complete with tentacles and googly eyes, and no one will survive. So please, for all of our sake's, someone shut off the rain. Someone just take a gigantic wrench and turn off that tap in the sky. I'm begging you. Everything smells like wet dog because apparently wet college student and wet dog=pretty much the same thing. I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE. Hampshire Admissions, I've thought about this long and hard, and I have a proposition for you: let's just move Hampshire to the location displayed below:

Seriously, let's just pack up and go there. Someone can just figure out a way to move all the buildings to Tahiti as their Div III and we'll be golden. No one will even know the difference--we can even bring some sheep and some lesbians so people think it's still in the Valley. It's totally a fool-proof idea. There's no chance on it going utterly, utterly, horribly wrong. None.
If this rain continues until Hampshire Halloween, I am switching my costume from punk Harry Potter to slug person. I will give up on sunlight and live in the earth and avoid salty foods. TAKE THAT, RAIN MAN.

cassidy cassidy cassidy cassidy cassidy

2005-10-23T17:53:00.000-04:00

This entry brought to you by the Little Sister's League for Blog Inclusion.

This is Cassidy, who lambasted *I. LOVE. THAT. WORD.* for not including her by name in the last entry, even though I referred to "The Family" like 689 times. Cassidy enjoys soccer, bad jokes, and reversing her eyebrow hair to freak me out. Because it's really creepy. Really, try it. When Cassidy was young, I taught her her first word ("RAT") and generally helped to shape her character. Moral of this story? Never allow me around your children.

The conclusion of this entry brought to you by Katharine's Urgent Need for Scrambled Eggs and A Shower.

sweet cuppin' cakes, i love me some mmmmuffin

2005-10-22T20:15:00.000-04:00

Life is never more perfect than when you're eating a freshly baked chocolate chip muffin, especially if you did not have to bake/pay for said muffin yourself. One of the things I love most about my mod is that the other people in it not only cook, but actually enjoy cooking, so often when I wander out of my room at 3 in the afternoon wondering if I'm going to have to have Cheetos and ketchup for breakfast again, there will be a plate of warm pastries for the taking. It's like magic.

You know, you would think that with a 4-day weekend, you would really have time to get things done. You would think. However, I have come to the conclusion that what everyone really needs is a 6-day weekend...which makes it not so much a week "end" as a "week," but whatever. There should only be one day of work, then 6 days of rest. Just like in the Bible! Er...I think.

Basically, I have somehow ended up with more work than I can throw a stick at, if I were inclined to throw sticks. I'd say that really has to qualify as one of humanity's top ten most useless expressions, because, let's face it, you can throw a stick at pretty much anything. It might not help, but you can do it, and probably feel a little better about things. You can even throw intangible sticks at your emotions for fun--except for that bastard ennui. You can't throw a stick at ennui. It won't care. I wonder if I could hand in a stick as one of my response papers, though. I could just be like, "This is how I responded to the text," and then throw the stick at my professor. That's one case where throwing a stick at things might actually be constructive...or restraining order-inducing...

The to-do list, as it stands today: A paper on The Cheese and the Worms *a book that is not nearly as gross as it sounds* and a paper on Nazi book burnings for Dangerous Books; an essay on Maus and an essay on Poison River for my comic book class midterm; an ending for my Lost in the Story story cycle; my Division I portfolio; my Division II applications. Now, it's not like any of this involves, like, high-level neurocalculus or anything, but it's a lot of words. A LOT. And I like words, most of the time, but at some point there are just so many your brain just starts going, "Merrrrrrrrrrrrrgh," and wanting to draw pictures of bunnies for the rest of your academic career. HOWEVER, as all of my pictures of bunnies end up looking more like pictures of fuzzy scissors, I think I'll continue to slog my way through the writing, even though Kim from America's Next Top Model is apparently wandering around Northampton today. I'm giving up lesbian model stalking for my studies, okay? I think that pretty much says how incredibly scholarly I am.

Where did I leave off in updating? Oh! Last last Wednesday...jeez. This is going to get sketchy, guys. Expect a lot of, "And then something else happened, but I don't remember what. THE END." So, on Wednesday, Kel and Kate dragged me out of bed (so many of my stories start out that way) and made me go to the ThirstyMind, where I ate chocolate cake and more or less studied. Then I went to Lost in the Story, which I've officially decided is my favorite class in the universe. I mean, my other classes rock, but Lost in the Story centers completely around making shit up, and if there's anything in this entire world I'm capable of doing, it's making shit up. We're currently in the middle of a story cycle, wherein six people write six separate beginnings to a story, then six people write the middle, then six people write the end...Ours is kind of weird, though, because it's not like you continue one of the stories--you just write a middle based on all six beginnings, but you don't necessarily have to include all of them. It's a little bizarre, and I'm not entirely sure what's going to come of it, but thus far it's been supremely entertaining. Our final project for the class is to write a 20-page short story, and for once I've actually started working on a final two months before it's due. Thus far my story involves giant squid sex, a legless poetess, and a guy named Edgar. I'm not really certain how it's all going to come together, but I assure you it will be fabulous. After class I went over to Kel's to cook pasta for the QCA's Sexy Spaghetti Soiree, and by "cook pasta" I mean "stand around while Kel cooked the pasta and occasionally asked me to hand her things." We made a ginormous pot of pasta, which we then lugged over to the QCA for our family-style coming out dinner--but a good family-style coming out dinner, not like the family-style coming out dinners that end up with someone getting kicked out of the house. We got about fifteen people, which was good considering the weather was still apolocalyptic, all of whom shared there coming out stories after I pointed to them and forced them to. I told mine first, and I would totally relate it here except that I feel it's completely one of those tales that has to be told in person in order to get the full effect, because it's amazingly ridiculous. So if you see me and we're not in a red state, ask me about my coming out story and I'll totally tell you--and even include sound effects and inappropriate hand motions!

Thursday has been deleted by this blog, since I can't remember anything significant happening that day. Friday, though, my parentals and sisters got into town for Friends and Family weekend and saw my amazingly clean room, which was amazingly clean for a grand total of about 2 seconds after they left. I even vacuumed--it was intense. We were hoping for that, like, picture-perfect tourist-heaven leaf-turning New England weather, but instead we got rain. SO. MUCH. RAIN. I stopped taking showers for about a week just because they reminded me entirely too much of rainfall. I HATE RAIN NOW. I used to really like it, because it only showed up occasionally, but it has overstayed its welcome. Also, can we just dwell on the general bizarre-ness of water falling from the sky every couple of days? I mean, I know it makes perfect natural sense, but it's really sort of odd. It's also odd that the days we think of as nice are created by a giant fireball. Weather is trippy, man.

Right. So, Friday night we went to dinner at the Teapot in Northampton, which is pretty much exactly like Taipei and Tokyo, where I usually eat Chinese and Japanese food, except that they get angrier at you if you and your friends just order tea and one plate of dumplings. After dropping by the Hampshire Mall to discover that every movie we wanted to see had started exactly, like, 15 minutes before, we went to Haymarket for smoothies. Look, if you ever go to Northampton, there is really only one thing that you are, like, required by law to do, and that is go to Haymarket and have a smoothie. Not only is it in a really cool space, but they have the best smoothies in the universe, bar none--and yes, and that includes the Smoothie Planet of Smoothiedromeda. I had the Swamp Thing, which looks sort of like tar and tastes kind of like perfection. The other thing you should probably do if you're ever in Northampton is go to Faces, the store of many wonders, where I brought the Family immediately afterward and bought the coolest tiki-man mirror you will ever see. Then the Family came over to Kate's mod to meet Kate and Amy, which was pretty much hilarious just because any meeting of people I know is generally hilarious, since everyone I know has very little sense of the concept of "tact" but is ridiculously familiar with the concept of "awkwardness." After the Family went back to their hotel, I hung out with Kate, Harry, Ben, and Amy in Kate's room, a gathering which basically consisted of fighting over Fruit Roll-ups *with tongue tattoos!* and freaking out because the tiki man-mirror is kind of terrifying. The mirror part is where the mouth would be, so when you look into it there are these giant teeth above and below your face, which is disconcerting even when you haven't eaten 15 Fruit Roll-ups. Then Kate and I went over to my mod to watch Saved! Ellen came over at some point to talk about how she and Kel have pretty much the exact same fashion sense *read: emo boi/mountain woman fashion sense* and some time after that I fell asleep. Saturday the Family came to fetch me at some ridiculously early hour like 10 for breakfast at the Route 9 diner, where I have spent many a late and insane night. After brunch we went for ice cream at Flayvors, which has incredible ice cream. Look, if you can smell the cow manure, you know the place has good ice cream. It's that fresh. On Friends and Family weekend, Hampshire always has all kinds of crazy activities at the Farm Center, so we went there to pet the donkey and goats and run away from the roosters, which are terrifying. We drank apple cider that was cidered right before our eyes, saw Jacob Wolf Lefton *BEST. NAME. EVER.* blacksmith it up, and took a wild adventure through the wilderness in search of cows but only found mud, a weird girl we think might be one of those mythical Hampshire students who went off to live in the forest, and a hay ride we had to avoid at short notice several times. We also saw Ellen D., the only other person from my high school to apply to and/or come to Hampshire. She was a year behind me at school, and told me she picked Hampshire based solely on the fact that I liked it so much and she didn't want to deal with applying anywhere else, which I found really amusing. After our wholesome family farm fun, we got in the car and prepared to drive 4 hours to the middle of nowhere, a journey that was made significantly more awesome by the fact that we listened to Mitch Hedberg for most of the trip. If you've never heard Mitch Hedberg, you are not only a loser, but you probably can't understand 23% of what I say. So go listen and enlighten yourself, because he's the best guy...ever. My entire family completely loved him, which should pretty much tell you how un-Tennessean they really are. Oh, as to why we decided to drive 4 hours in the pouring rain to destinations unknown--it was my grandmother's 80th birthday, so my uncle had booked us all rooms at this really cool inn called the Governor's House, so named because it was apparently once a Governor's House. Creative. The inn was in New Hampshire, though, and as far as I'm concerned the whole of New Hampshire can pretty much be categorized under "middle of nowhere." It's full of moose and pretty much nothing else. After driving down roads that had no landmarks except "that big tree" and "that slightly less big tree," we found the place and got prepped for our fancy dinner. And boy, was it fancy. My immediate and extended family, though, has some problems with the concept of fancy, so it pretty much ended up being "loud and inappropriate" and therefore really, really fun. They sat us in our own separate room, which was probably very good thinking on their part. I had some kind of amazing pork tenderloin and mashed potatoes and then, of course, huge amounts of the person-sized chocolate cake they brought out at the end. I had been instructed to talk as little as possible in order to avoid scandalizing my young New Hampshire cousins, but somehow we all ended up making inappropriate comments about St. Francis of Assisi and the wedding next door regardless of my direct influence. The next morning we had brunch, which means bacon and cheese crepes, which means *drooooooool*. I LOVE CREPES. Were it legal, I would completely marry a crepe and have half-crepe babies and fight for the rights of crepes everywhere and then open a crepe restaurant called "Holy Crepe" and then realize how if you type the word "crepe" enough times, it starts to not mean anything anymore. Crepe. Crepe. Crepe. Oh my god I need to stop. ANYWAY, after the eating we went to Atkins Farms, which is full of fresh, wholesome food goodness. We got chicken and cider donuts, then I went back to Hampshire and bid farewell to the family. I then had the QCA meeting, to which only one person showed up because the weather had gone from apocalyptic to suicide-inducing. Again--I HATE RAIN.

But Monday! Sweet, sweet Monday! On Monday the clouds parted and the sunshine reigned! I called my mom just to be like, "See, I swear it's pretty here most of the time! You guys just have awful timing!" Monday morning I was so inspired by the sunlight I cooked a turkey. Yes--a turkey. An entire...turkey. This mystified my modmates and pretty much everyone I know, all of whom were like, "Honey...you don't even have the patience for Eggo waffles. Why are you cooking a turkey?" The answer is simple and stupid. Upon my last grocery trip, I realized you could get way more lunch meat from a whole turkey than those, like, deli meat things. Somehow, I failed to realize that to get that meat, though, I would at some point actually have to cook said turkey. When my mom came up, she gave me instructions, and so I just decided, "Well, it's either cook it or use it for arts and crafts, and the latter just seems wrong somehow, so let's cook it!" So I did, and it worked, which is the really remarkable thing. Now, though, I have like 8 pounds of turkey sitting in a plastic pitcher in the fridge since we didn't have a Tupperware container big enough to hold it. I'm kind of like Martha Stewart. Tuesday I went to work, had class, and probably did something amazing I don't remember. Wednesday I had class and then America's Next Top Model, which a bunch of first-years always get all glammed up and come over to my mod for. It's kind of bizarre, as is Shawn in drag, which he always dresses up in for the duration of the show. Wednesday is my total TV night--there's ANTM, LOST, and Drawn Together, which is the most TV I ever watch in one night ever anymore. Thursday I worked, hung out with Kate and Kel, and went to the Yurt meeting--the Yurt is our on-campus media center, built in the style of a Mongolian yurt because hey, you can do that here. I went to the meeting to get a radio show, and lo and behold! I have one. They're actually allowing me airtime, which is hilarious. My friends were so excited and also like, "How do you even find out about this stuff? You lead like seven different mysterious lives." It's on Internet radio, meaning no FCC standards *YES* and right now it's on-campus only, so if you want to hear it you'll have to come to Hampshire. Wouldn't that be awesome if I got some prospective student to come to Hampshire purely because they wanted to hear my radio show? I think I would get a trophy from Admissions or something. After watching Alias and bugging Kate at Pub Safety, I went with Amy to K2, where most of the people who lived with us on E2 last year live. They were all having some insane hall drama that was threatening to escalate into a gang war, but for all the tension it was a pretty fun night. There's just something about living on a hall that makes people extra-angsty. In the mods, I guess, you have more space, so you want to kill each other less, but on living on a hall is like being trapped in tube where you can only run from one end to the other. Not that I know what that's like or need years of therapy from when my parents made me play "The Tube Game" or anything. After hanging with them we went back to my mod to watch Jerry Maguire and eat sourdough bread with olive oil and pepper, which is an excellent snack that makes you feel like you're being healthy even though you're probably completely not.

Friday I...oh right! Was dragged out of bed by Kate and Kel. Right, of course. We went errand-running all day and ate at Cafe Fireside, where someone had decided the special of the day needed to be "combine three of Katharine's favorite foods into a pasta dish" so they had chicken, shrimp, and broccoli alfredo. OMG SO GOOD. That+dark chocolate mousse=the perfect meal. Then we came back to my mod to watch Space Cases, which I loved as a child and just found for download *Firefly fans--it has Jewel Staite as the ship's engineering genius--she's been playing the same character for, like, 10 years.* We also watched Amy's home movies, where she mostly yells about food and falls down a lot, so it's pretty much the same as her life today. Kate and Kel then went off to study, while Amy and I watched Inspiration Today for like 2 hours. It was terrifying yet addictive. We watched some guy named Alvin Slaughter *just pause to take in that name* lead praise worship and then some creepy bishop guy tell us to give him all our money because Jesus said we should. It totally reminded me of my Genesis Weekend experience, which I told Amy about, where one of my friends from school invited me to a "sleepover with her friends" that turned out to be a "Genesis Weekend sleepover" which means "the sleepover in which we try to save your soul." We weren't allowed to listen to anything but Christian music or talk about anything un-Christian, which meant it was not only really boring, but I had nothing to listen to/talk about. There was also this creepy group leader woman who wanted me to fill out a survey with my name, address, and a list of people I hung out with who I thought were going to hell, to which I responded, "OH GOD OH GOD," and locked myself in another room. I stayed in there listening to my Gorillaz CD until this girl came in and told me she didn't think that was Christian music, but I told her "Clint Eastwood" was actually one of Jesus' nicknames, so it counted. The next morning they took me to their mega-church, where me and all the other heathen kids tricked into coming basically tried to act invisible while the preacher guy denounced everything from women to Democrats to people who drive Volkswagens. It was really, really funny/frightening. If you're ever wondering why I'm not so much a fan of Tennessee, a lot of it can probably be traced back to that story. That and NASCAR.

This morning I cooked scrambled eggs and have since spent the rest of the day listening to Miles Davis, Cowboy Bebop, and the Triplets of Belleville soundtrack, because they are somehow the most conducive to studying. And, speaking of studying, mayhaps I should wrap up this entry and do a little of that. After all, contrary to popular belief, I am actually a student here and not just some wandering homeless person who hangs out in people's mods and eats their muffins. I swear...

Someone gives Bush a hammer--hilarity ensues

2005-10-12T02:43:00.000-04:00

I'm no expert in building--unless, of course, it involves LEGOs or popsicle sticks, of which I am the undisputed master--but doesn't the way he's holding that hammer seem like he's unsure what it's for? Or where he is? Or what the hell he's doing? These photo ops are really getting out of hand--a tool belt and hardhat, people? I mean, really--as if Bush has every built anything but an evil empire in his life. I've been put in prison for some of things I've accidentally done with power tools and I think even I'm more competent with a hammer than that guy. Apparently he just spent most of the time chatting, signing autographs, and posing for pictures in the style of, "I have an IQ of 35 and there's a rabid wildebeest running toward me from just off-camera"--or at least that's what I'm gathering from his expression in the above pic. He also made sure to tell everybody that even though it's really, really hard, being the President, he's holding up okay and damn it, he's a survivor. If he can get through Hurricane Katrina, then by the stars and stripes, everyone can. The best part is this picture is from FOX news, who posted it because apparently it's supposed to be inspiring and spirit-lifting, as opposed to irrefutable proof that Bush has the mental facilities of a mentally sub par prairie dog.

I also like the strategy for glossing over the whole horribly, horribly slow response to Katrina: *actual quote* "If I didn't respond well enough, I'm going to learn the lessons." See, we know your city's destroyed, we know thousands of people are dead, we know that some strengthening of the levees probably could have prevented a good deal of this, but the important thing is that Bush learned a lesson, and now he knows not to do it again. Don't you care about the president's education? Stop being selfish and let him hold the hammer, New Orleans. Jeez. You know, guys, just like he keeps telling us, Bush's job is really hard. I mean, he has to keep playing dress-up and getting his picture taken all day. It's just like my job--when I was five. Those were some trying times, my friends--I sympathize with the guy, I really do.

On to my day, which also, incidentally, involved a toolbelt and a hard hat, though in an entirely different context--unless Habitat for Humanity has added free construction worker-themed strippers to their services, in which case it's exactly the same context. I got up at 8:15 *ewwwww* to go eat breakfast at the Bridge and poster for the Sexy Spaghetti Soiree with Kel. She then walked me over to Eric Carle, where I worked until I had to go over to UMass for Noam Chomsky. Now, Noam Chomsky is awesome--like, linguistic superhero awesome--but he's not exactly what you would call a dynamic speaker. It was basically like being in one of those lecture classes where you're not entirely sure the professor actually knows anyone's there and might just be reading out loud to himself, which I haven't actually had to suffer through since high school. He also managed to ruin my childhood--a couple of years ago we found this tape of me telling this story of this boy who turns into a magic pebble and thought it was the best story ever and that I was some amazing child prodigy, but Noam Chomsky revealed that there was a story exactly like it, about Sylvester the donkey, already in print, and that my entire life has been a lie. Don't ask me why Noam Chomsky was talking about Sylvester the donkey--I have no idea--but it was a horrible moment. Though, I have to say, a story about a guy turning into a rock sounds way smarter coming from a five-year-old than an actual adult author. I kind of can't believe anyone wrote that book. I wanted to see Chomsky's other talk, the one actually at Hampshire, which was supposed to be more politically oriented, but I had comic book class and even Noam Chomsky can't keep me from the best class in the entire universe. I got dinner at Fatzo's and also bought a white chocolate mocha at Starbucks for the sole purpose of staying awake during comic book class, what with the having gotten up at 8:15 and not usually being conscious for more than about 8 hours at a time. I'm glad I planned ahead, because the class was awesome--we had a guest speaker named Michael Kasper who does artists books and revealed that apparently Amherst College, despite being Current Preppy, Elitist Headquarters of the Universe, is actually in possession of one of the biggest collections of alternative media ever because of this special fund they got from one of their dead hippie ex-students. So that was weird. He passed out and talked about a bunch of artists books, which he described as the "kissing cousins" of comic books. Really, though, couldn't he have just said that they were cousins? Why do they have to be kissing cousins? When did it become necessary for two things to start making out in order to be related? After comic book class, Sarah and I discussed the accessories necessary for being the coolest person in the world, which include: snowshoes; an umbrella/cane with a pocketknife/pen in it; gloves that exude fingerpaint; goggles that actually attach to your eyeballs and let you switch between infrared, x-ray, and night vision just by blinking; a helmet that beams TV to said goggles; and finally, a full-body camoflague suit. Admit it, if you had all that, there's no way you could not be the coolest person in the world. Wow, that sentence was awkward. For some reason, outlining those requirements seemed really important at the time, but now I have no idea why. Now, though, what will make me the coolest person in the world is to stop smelling vaguely like kitty litter, so I'm going to go take a shower.

I walk like a penguin and love like a stallion.

2005-10-11T04:48:00.000-04:00

You know how sometimes you think, "Wow, even if Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes tried, they just could not get any creepier?" Well, as usual, you are utterly and completely wrong and worthless. *I love making you agree with things just to vehemently denounce them seconds later--it's so empowering!* The Holmes-o-sexuals totally just got weirder. Apparently, Scientology has this thing called silent birth, which, just like their intergalactic alien ruler Xenu, is exactly what it sounds like. You can't talk, play music, or scream during birth, and newborns cannot be poked or prodded for medical tests or be spoken to for the first seven days of their lives. The idea is that the baby goes through so much trauma in, y'know, being born, that it shouldn't have to experience any sort of sensory experience that could further harm it. Okay. Let's discuss. An infant's job, basically, is to wiggle down the biological equivalent of a water slide. Granted, if said water slide belongs to Katie Holmes, I could understand how the infant could be horribly tramautized, but I really don't think it's the infant we need to be concerned about. I'm almost certain I've never given birth, but from what I've heard, it's the sort of experience that requires a lot of screaming. A LOT. And maybe some light Trent Reznor. Also, I suspect the no medical test thing is just something Tom Cruise threw in there to ensure there won't be a paternity test, because this child was clearly conceived with L. Ron Hubbard's frozen sperm. I should know, because I'm a doctor in the field of L. Ron Hubbard's frozen sperm. It's my Div III.

So, last week, starting with the Day of Thurs: I worked all day and then went to the QCA, where we were watching Fire, this Indian lesbian film that was, just like my existence and DVD collection, banned in India. It was basically an excuse to get Indian food delivered, but it was actually pretty good, though the QCA is always disorientingly warm and the film was kind of weird and we all ended up feeling like we might have all just take an Indian food-induced trip together. After Fire Kel and I went to go visit Kate at Pub Safety, where she works as a switchboard operator, which is apparently the equivalent of working as a rock. We were there for an hour and she got exactly one call and spent the rest of her time contemplating on whether to get ants or termites tattooed on her shoulder. If I were to get a tattoo, I somehow doubt the choice would be between ants and termites, mostly because if I had ants tattooed on my shoulder I'd wake up every morning and go, "OH SHIT!" and scrape off my skin with my Bowie knife before realizing it was a tattoo, which would get annoying after awhile. My choices would be between like, getting "AWESOME" tattooed across my forehead or having Bob Saget's face, life-size, on my back, which is way not as weird as bugs on your shoulder.

Friday we decided to go into Amherst for dinner, and for some reason decided to split a quesadilla as an "appetizer" at Bueno Y Sano then go to Fatzo's for our "main course" of foot-long hot dogs and fries. It was some high society shit, for sure. Everything is Illuminated finally came to the Academy of Music, and I decided I had to go see it immediately, so Kel dropped me off in Noho and I killed time in Haymarket with a sweet, sweet Swamp Thing smoothie until the movie. The Academy of Music is officially one of the coolest movie theaters ever--even USA Today says so, and if USA Today says it, it must be true, because their little graphs make everything seem so official. It's this old-time theatre that was converted into a cinema, but they basically just added a screen and left all the interior decoration and chairs and whatnot intact, so they still have private boxes and balconies and a Member's Lounge and library and all that jazz. Plus tickets and popcorn are both very cheap, which is sweet. I've been waiting for Everything is Illuminated pretty much forever, and it was so crazily good. Depressing, at times, but awesome. However, I'm totally baffled as to how people are attracted to Elijah Wood, because to me, he looks like a weird mix between a twelve-year-old boy and a ferret. Plus, ever since Sin City and Lord of the Rings, he's kind of scared the shit out of me. That guy is one crazy hobbit. After the movie I found out that Amy and Kel had decided our "dessert" course would be at the Route 9 diner, which is open 24 hours and which I frequently seem to show up to at 3 am in fishnets and inappropriate make-up. We played "Stacey's Mom" and Patsy Cline on the jukebox, which I'm certain made us popular with the regulars. Our waitress was kind of cracked out, and when I asked for my banana split without nuts, she just stared at me silently for about three minutes, so I asked, "Are the nuts...like...already in it?" even though I could not fathom any way in which that would be possible. On the way home, we listened to Amy's mix CD and discussed how Amy, Kate, and Kel all have various geeky and shameful things that they're into, like Xena and Buffy and Rasputina, but I'm the one whose into every single one of those geeky and shameful things. I'm like the glue of geeky shame. It's beautiful.

On Saturday, it rained. And rained. And--oh, oh, wait for it, wait for it--RAINED some more. It did not let up ONCE--and that's not just doing my usual minor exagerations, like when I say there were 3,000 supermodels at my house last night and really there were only negative two. I waited for it to stop all damn day so I could go do laundry--I know, I know, this sounds like a lie, but it's the truth--and it did. NOT. STOP. Not even, for like, .3 seconds. Kel and I were pretty convinced it's the Great Flood, and she was freaking about because a guy named Noah just moved out of her mod and she thought it was a sign. I went over to Ellen's mod to watch A League of Their Own *shut up, I'm cool* and walking home was terrifying--I just kept singing Madonna and holding my umbrella really tightly in the hope that would somehow repel the rain. My umbrella actually flipped inside out several times, which I'm not sure I was totally aware it could do. When I got back, I was like, "I have so much laundry. My room smells like cabbage. And this rain will never stop. Something's got to give." So I decided to do my laundry in the midst of the rainstorm, which had just added high winds to its reportoire, at 1:30 am. I also decided to launder the dirty, wet shirt I was currently wearing, but I'm not going to tell you how I accomplished that, because I think it's probably illegal in several counties. On Sunday Kel, Sosin, and I spent pretty much all day at the Thirsty Mind, which is this coffee/wine bar near Mt. Holyoke that seems to be one of the only places on Earth I can successfully get a substantial amount of work done. It must be something about its precise positioning in the cosmos--or possibly its Mango Madness smoothies. Whatever it is, it's awesome, so we've taken to going there as much as possible, what with our workloads suddenly and inexplicably expanding to the size of a giant squid. I also called my parents and Mary, my sister, who just took the new and freaky SATs, which include an essay. Now, Mary can write, and not just like, her name and the word "cat" or anything. Most of the time, excepting her constant abuse of the word "incredulous," she's pretty eloquent, but apparently the SAT essay completely defeated her. The question was something pointless and ridiculous, like, "Is success earned through hard work, luck, or sexual favors? Use examples." Apparently, Mary's essay was eight lines long and used Dolly Parton as her primary example. Dolly...Parton. Otherwise known as Tits McGhee, or the founder of Dollywood and Dolly's Splash Country, Knoxville's major amusement parks. Also, the conclusion of the essay was somewhere along the lines of, "Scientists have to work hard to do stuff. So sucess is earned. Byeeee." Sadly, what with Tennessee's education system, it'll probably be in like, the top 15% of essays out there, sheerly on the basis of being recognizable as English. The best part of this whole story is she was telling her friend Katie about it, and Katie was like, "Oh, no, there's no way your essay could be worse than mine. I wrote about Dolly Parton," which I think pretty much proves that all of us Knoxvillians learned about life, we learned from Dollywood.

Today I had no classes due to Anti-Columbus Day, so I did work and made a broccoli and cheese omelet without setting anyone on fire, which is apparently key to the whole cooking thing. Kel also made me a pasta dinner and ice cream sundae because she's amazing and competent, and we were going to watch Arrested Development but could not because Fox bumped it in favor of baseball--and not just baseball, but the YANKEES. This is clear, clear evidence of an evil force at work in my life. Not only are my Sox dead, the Yankees killed my Monday night. CURSE YOU YANKEES--CURSE YOU. So instead of watching Arrested Development with Kate and Amy on speakerphone, we made posters for the QCA's Coming Out Dinner on Wednesday, which I had the fabulous idea of billing as a "Sexy Spaghetti Soiree." I have to get up early to poster tomorrow, so one might think I would get to sleep early tonight, but one would be wrong. For some reason, I've had the urge to watch Boondock Saints and Velvet Goldmine on a loop lately, so I'm currently watching clips of those between writing papers, which is really a bad idea, since last year I actually spent an entire paper written at 5 am referring to a critic named Rhys-Jones as Rhys-Meyers based entirely on Jonathan Rhys-Meyers' rock god hotness.

Apparently this winter is going to be even worse than the last, which was hellish, leading me to decide that I am officially okay with cannibalism. If we should get caught in a blizzard and I run out of chocolate pudding and other assorted foodstuffs, I will not hesitate to feast upon my modmates, and, to be totally democractic, I will simply change our chore wheel into a cannibalism wheel. Speaking of cannibalism, which I feel I do way too much lately--in t.a.T.u's new video, they totally shoot a guy in the head. *Hold on, the cannibalism part is coming, calm down.* It's ridiculous. I feel like if I had a pop band of any sort, my only goal would be to be as ridiculous as possible. I'd be like, "We're all pansexual cannibalistic *see?* Lithuanian bank accountants. OR ARE WE? ROCK OUT!" t.a.T.u's videos are, I've decided, exactly like what the O.C. should be/would be if it were cooler and more gay. Like, Marissa shot a guy in the O.C. season finale *which I totally do not know because I acted it out with my sisters five times or anything* but she wasn't gay or Russian by that point, so it was lame. t.a.T.u. videos are like super-short teen melodramas with no comic relief geeky Jewish guy--oh man, a comic relief geeky Jewish guy would totally make their video better, especially if all he did was come in after they shot the guy and make some smart ass comment and then go listen to some the Killers *Get it? Get it? The Killers? Man, I could totally be a comic relief geeky Jewish guy.* The other thing about t.a.T.u. is that you really feel like they could probably kill you/have you killed. I'm sensing some definite Russian mob connections there, and it's kind of hot. Oh, speaking of the O.C., if you have not yet seen The Bu, you need to. Like, pretty much immediately. But don't watch it at work, because it's got plenty of cursing and also you will not be acting as a productive member of society. But I guess if you're reading this blog that idea's pretty much shot anyway.

I'm creeped out by how all my weird interests end up being connected. For example: I went to go see Everything is Illuminated. This connects to Hampshire by way of the writer and director (Liev Schreiber) and to DeVotchKa, who I discovered because they did the music for the Everything is Illuminated trailer. Yesterday, I found out that DeVotchKa is not only coming to Noho in November, but they're touring with the Dresden Dolls, my second-favorite band of all time. Last year, I discovered that the Dresden Dolls are one of the all-time favorite bands of my all-time favorite author, Neil Gaiman, who is also into the Gorillaz, one of my other all-time favorite bands. Tina Weymouth does occasional bass and back-up vocals for the Gorillaz, and Tina Weymouth is the former bassist for the Talking Heads, my first-favorite band of all time. Plus, Tina Weymouth's kid is now a first-year at Hampshire, and a Hampshire grad did the animation for my favorite film in the universe, Hedwig and the Angry Inch. JESUS. What happened to the days when a girl could have an interest that was genuinely obscure? I'll decide that my new favorite band is like, those guys in Amherst who play "Easy Like Sunday Morning" on the synethesizer, and next week they'll be touring with David Byrne and doing the music for Joss Whedon's new film. This is not helping my street cred.

Okay, I have to go to work, class, and Noam Chomsky tomorrow, as well as write about 7,000 papers, so I'll catch you guys on the flip side. Stay cool and don't take any radioactive nickels, for reasons that should really be readily apparent.

i was a teenage blog queen, part 3

2005-10-06T02:24:00.000-04:00

PART UÇ: Because Turkish is the only language I can confidently count to three in.

Is Salon.com's new look freaking anyone else out? It's not that I don't like it, it's just that Salon is my homepage so every time I open a new window I'm like, "UNFAMILIAR! MUST DESTROY!" and my computer's not handling that too well. I guess I have to learn to adjust to change with more dignity and less electronic violence.

So, I was on Friday, yeah? I might stop at Friday because asking me to remember that many days back is like asking a hippo to cook crème brulee. They can do it, but not without a lot of highly motivational electric shocks. Believe me, I know. So Friday--Kate was sick with something we all were really afraid was mono, but which seems to have just been a 72-hour death plague. So we took it easy during the day and went into Amherst for Mexican food, which we always get from this cheap yet pretty good place called Bueno Y Sano. Kate wanted to see if she could try to keep any food down, so I'm not really sure why her first instinct was Mexican. I mean, most people go with dry toast. Anyway, she didn't vomit on me, for which I was grateful, as usual, and we went to CVS to stock up on black and glow-in-the-dark nail polish because, you see, we were going to a show that night. A show of epically amazing proportions, which I have been waiting for since 8th grade: Rasputina. Oh, yes, the Rasputina concert was Friday night at Pearl St., and man, it was actually ridiculously awesome. Like I said, I've wanted to see Rasputina since I first discovered black nail polish and angst, and I didn't actually know they were still alive until Kate was like, "Um...Katharine...I would feel ashamed to ask pretty much anyone else in the world this, but...would you go to the Rasputina show with me?" I was like, "Kate, I've been waiting for someone to ask me that my entire life, and I've just been too ashamed to say so." Rasputina, for those of you who never went through a teenage goth phase, is a cello-based rock band that sings about death, Transylvanian concubines, and robotic mechanical snowmen *see? Told you there was a robotic mechanical snowman in this part.* So we got all gothed-up: actually, I don't know what the hell Kate's clothing was supposed to represent--she had on, like, clamdigger jeans, a torn Joan Jett shirt, and black Chucks, but she also had glow-in-the-dark nail polish and pseudo-mono-induced paleness, so I guess that's somewhat fitting in the whole child or darkness image. I finally had a reason to wear my skull barrettes and not feel like a jackass, so I donned those and my awesome porcelain doll dress with combat boots. We also spent an hour doing make-up in Kate's room, which was weird since Kate never wears make-up and I couldn't look at her too long without freaking out. We got to Pearl St. around 8:40 and walked in to the weirdest mix of people I've ever seen at a show...ever. There were weirdly energetic Goth kids in the corner, a sixty-year-old man sitting on the floor in the middle of the crowd, creepy drunk guys with out-of-control hair and leather jackets, and lots of people who looked like they weren't entirely sure what they had gotten themselves into. The opening band was called Tarantula A.D., and apparently, the depth of their angst was so great that they couldn't express it through lyrics, but only by moaning while rocking out on the cello and gong. My favorite song was definitely "Who Took Berlin?" which went on for like 20 minutes and ended with an inexplicable recording of bird noises, because....birds...apparently...took Berlin. Throughout this, Kate and I were like, "Oh god...we've made a huge mistake." However, Tarantula A.D. eventually took their fake British accents and left the stage, at which point Rasputina showed up and everything was wonderful. They set up to the opening theme to "Snow White" and they were wearing these ridiculous, like, hippie-gothic-fairy princess costumes, except the drummer guy, who just had these giant bells threaded into his beard. Kate quickly pointed out that Zoe, the second cellist, looked pretty much exactly like what Sydney Bristow would look like if she went undercover as a dreadlocked musician, which I completely agree with. She was so. Incredibly. Hot. I couldn't stop staring at her, because it was seriously, like, if Jennifer Garner lost 15 pounds and played the cello like a madman. Anyway, Melora, the lead singer, was like, "Hey everyone! Can all of you see?" We were like, "*mutter mutter* No *mutter*" and she was like, "Okay, then I'm going to have to ask all of you to sit down." We thought she was kidding, but then she was like, "Really, it isn't fair to pay for a show and not see anything." So, suddenly, we all just sat down on the floor, which, while awkward, actually made the whole thing way more enjoyable than standing for an hour and a half. I totally felt like it was story time, and she was going to be like, "Okay, children, once upon a time..." Which is sort of what she did, only...weirder. She had this amazing, high-pitched, fast voice that I can't even attempt to describe and before ever song she would say these weird little things that made no sense, like, "Jesus juice made Bush's head explode, but I love snowmen and away we go!" And we were all like, "I...okay." It worked, somehow. They played some stuff from How We Quit the Forest, lots of random stuff, and, in what might have actually been the best moment of my life, a cover of Heart's "Barracuda." On the cello. My god. It was beautiful. Anyway, then they got to the end, and Melora was like, "Look, instead of pushing through the crowd and going into our dressing room and pretending we aren't coming back for an encore, we're just going to do the encore now. Okay? Cool." Basically, they were the coolest ever. It didn't really resemble any show I've been to in my entire life, and Kate and i both came out being like, "Huh. We totally thought this experience was going to be way more shameful. Sweet." After coming back home to be mocked by Amy and Andrew for our evening activities, we ended up watching Quills at Kate and Kel's mod until 4 in the morning, which is really an uplifting, family film, if "uplifting, family film" means "makes the baby Jesus and Buddha cry." I also conducted a survey among by friends and random passerbys in honor of Serenity. The poll was as follows: Who would win in an ultimate battle of strength and wits? The choices were:
1. Cowboys
2. Pirates
3. Astronauts
4. Sex workers
5. Dinosaurs

In a shocking upheaval, the sex workers soundly kicked everyone else's asses, with 38.1% of the vote. Now, look, I don't deny that a sex worker could probably beat a cowboy, and maybe even a pirate, but a dinosaur? Dinosaurs are immune to human sexual wiles! They will eat you regardless of your flexibility and poise! Also, I got 42 people to vote in this poll, and only about 1/3 of them were visibly intoxicated. Yeah, I don't know how I managed to get people to seriously consider this question either. Maybe it's one of those cosmic mysteries people secretly wonder about but never want to bring up in conversation because they're afraid of the truth. Or maybe I'm just on crack.

The final part in this trilogy of belated productivity is drawing to a close, my friends. I gave you your robotic abominable snowman, though I admit he was not named Freddy. Freddy is not a snowman, but this weird third or possibly fourth year who lived on Kate's hall last year. He refuses to tell people his name--somehow people just figured it out--and he has, like, 16 titles he's allowed to call people, like "kid" or "girl" or "madam." He refuses to call anyone by their actual name, and he has a creepy tendency to lurk and show up unexpectedly, asking for Popsicles. Some people, you figure, just couldn't really be anywhere but Hampshire. Namely, me and Freddy. Now I have to go to contemplate tonight's LOST episode and all possible meanings of the phrase "Don't try to teach your grandma to suck eggs," which someone said to me today and which has since left me wondering if everything I know about life is wrong.

EDIT: Um, also? If anyone can explain the purpose of this blog to me, I'll give you a prize.

i was a teenage blog queen, part 2

2005-10-05T20:41:00.000-04:00

PART DEUX: In which our heroine faces danger, true love, and the complexities of something called "The Hampshire Mall."

Anyone keeping track of my schedule by way of the Katharine calendar they've painted with the blood of virgins on their wall probably realizes I just had class, thus explaining my updating delay for those of you who have been forced to gnaw off your own arm waiting for the middle piece of this incredible trilogy. Before anything else can be said, though, I think we all need to deal with this. Katie Holmes is pregnant. PREGNANT. By who or what, we may never know. I'm willing to pretty much place a $600,000 bet is wasn't Tom Cruise, though, since I'm pretty sure he would steal some unwitting infant and shove it into Katie Holmes then pull it back out again instead of having to have sex with her. Also, I'm no publicist--at least, not for anyone that's aware of it--but aren't you supposed to wait until people start speculating about your pregnancy to confirm it? Isn't screaming, "LOOK AT THE POTENCY OF TOM CRUISE'S SPERM!" a little suspicious and not in the whole spirit of the media? I mean, we don't even get the fun of guessing if you're just eating too many Ring-Dings or carrying a copy of Dianetics under your dress at all times. I fear desperately for the future of the child--not only are Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes its alleged parents, but they're loudly and frighteningly opposed to psychiatric help, and if Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are your parents, you're going to need a hell of a lot of psychiatric help. This cannot end well--unless, of course, they get their own reality show. Then it'll just be entertaining.

Where were we? Oh, right, Monday. So Monday before class I finally had time to finish Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys, which I, due to my inherent amazingness, have a first edition, signed copy of. Weirdly, there were just a bunch of them at the bookstore in Noho, not for an increased price or anything, so I immediately snatched one up with glee. I completely recommend it, even if--actually, especially if--you didn't like American Gods, because it's really nothing like it. It's a lot lighter than a lot of Gaiman stuff, which is cool to see him do once and awhile. I mean, there's still plenty of death and weirdness, but it's more for comic effect than anything else. So--finished that and went to Dangerous Books, where we talked about The Name of the Rose, A.K.A. "This book I wrote to show you how much I know and how much of a loser you are." It's an Eco novel where he randomly launches into Latin just to be like, "Yo, bitches, I'm gonna go all intellegenter on your asses. Perite, molesti!" Yeah, Umberto Eco's kind of a gangsta. The villain in it is named after Jorges Luis Borges, though, who's pretty much my favorite guy ever, since he writes the sort of stories I feel I, being more Argentinean and blind, might write. Dangerous Books is usually followed by Tai Chi, but I was feeling like something had decided to nest in my insides, so I decided to just go home and wait for Arrested Development, which has just gotten progressively weirder and more amazing. Apparently, in their alternate universe O.C., there's a part of town called "Wee Britain" where all the British live, and it has one "American" restaurant where they just serve donuts and giant piles of ice cream. We laughed heartily at those silly British and their foolish perceptions of Americans as we raped and pillaged my chocolate mousse cake. Then we went to study at the Thirstymind near Mt. Holyoke, which is one of the places where you can study and simultaneously feel really cool and wonderfully pretentious. Sunday--oh, right, Sunday was grocery day/day of my immense and exciting ascension into adulthood. A pressing question: you can just get a Stop n' Shop card while you're in the store, if you have your ID on you, so I'm totally confused as to why people just don't get the card--I mean, you're already spending time buying groceries, so why not take, like, five minutes to get the coupon card? So many people don't have them. I think it's because everyone in the grocery store is kind of manic--maybe it's the lack of windows. I was just kind of chilling, and like, strolling the aisles, but all these people would zoom past and then cut directly in front of me to grab the Windex or whatever and glare at me like I was about to lunge for it. Then when I was checking out there was this one woman who just kept switching lines when she perceived that the line next to her was shorter than the one she was in, which backfired horribly, since she never actually got to the front of anyone's line. Grocery shoppers need to chill and realize they are in, like, the land of infinite food. If you are in a location where you could feasibly buy 15 pounds of raw meat and still have money left over for a Kit Kat bar, you really shouldn't complain. Because of my Stop n' Shop card, I bought a ridiculous amount of Cheerios, turkey, and pudding *pauses, considers* My god...I hope I never get so desperate that I end up somehow combining those things. After Stop N' Shop we went to Trader Joe's, which is like Fancy! Stop n' Shop, with frozen bananas and Fruit Leather. We also had an extensive discussion of Boy Meets World, which may rank as one of my 7 top favorite shows. I told Kel and Kate I'm actually coming home early from October break just because ABC Family is rerunning two episodes I really want to see, and they just sort of stared at me in disbelief. On a slightly more legitimate note, Noam Chomsky is actually speaking at Hampshire that night, so it's not totally unreasonable, since Noam Chomsky=the man. In a good and non-imperialist way, I mean. Sunday night was the Queer Community Alliance meeting--I'm totally a QCA signer, which means at some point this year I get a sweet sweatshirt and the ability to pretend I hold some semblance of authority. We bought popsicles and talked about having another underwear party this year--last year we held it in the middle of November in the QCA, and it smelled like sex for weeks afterwards. We're looking for an airier space this time. The QCA also managed to get Netflix, so we're getting all these cool international queer films, though the one we watched Sunday was pretty horrible. It was called--translated from the Spanish--"I'm sorry, duckie, but Lucas loved me!" and it was the sort of film you kind of want to claw your own eyes out while watching. So we turned it off and put in Hedwig and the Angry Inch instead, because you can never ever go wrong with transgender German rock stars. Unless you're me and you've just managed to overturn a busload of them using only a wheelbarrow and a drunken monkey, but that's a story for another day.

Saturday I awoke around 2 and went to the mall with Eric. Last year, Hampshire Mall was sort of like Oak Ridge mall: dead and empty and filled with old people and fabric stores. This year, it seems to be somewhat more happening, with lots more high school kids loitering in the parking lot trying to look as cool as one possibly can while loitering in a parking lot. We went to JoAnn's so Erik could get miscellaneous fabric for his room and I could come to terms with the fact that some people actually make their own clothes and draperies. I also went hunting for things for my Halloween costume, but found naught--oh man, have I mentioned yet what I'm going to be for Halloween? Because it's totally hot. Alice and I decided to form a Hogwarts contingent, so I'm going to be a punked-out, andro Harry while she does Ginny and Kate's Hermione. This also means I have an excuse to go to the Harry and the Potters show at Mt. Holyoke *but really, who needs an excuse?* so I can get a "Voldemort Can't Stop the Rock" t-shirt and some advice on how to be the coolest Harry ever. We also got smoothies at the mall, because somewhere along the way I have developed a serious addiction to fruit smoothies. I used to hate them, because, you know, marginally healthy, but now I would totally pick a Haymarket smoothie over a chocolate milkshake. My friends, I think this is called growing up. And it's tasty.

After the mall, we hung out in Erik's mod being hipster-ish and watching the Scissor Sisters DVD, which is one of the coolest-made DVDs ever. I eventually tracked down Amy and Andrew and we got on the bus to go see Serenity, which I have been waiting for my entire life. True, I had already seen two sneak previews of it, but this felt legit, like the Geek Nation was finally getting some sunlight for once. I dressed up as Inara, a space prostitute, the first time we went, but I didn't dress up this time because it wasn't opening night and Amy pretty firmly told me she would beat me with a soldering iron if I showed up in costume. Speaking of, what the hell is a soldering iron? I think Amy's perception of it might be of something a lot more hefty than it actually is. Anyway, we met Kate at the ridiculously busy Hampshire Mall theater and saw the most amazing film in the world. The place was packed and everyone was really into it, cheering and applauding and apparently shouting comments at the screen that made no sense unless you had watched not only every episode but the special features on the Firefly DVD. On the way out, I even heard some guy go, "That was like ten ninjas!" which I'm pretty sure is the best rating you can give anything ever. There's not a bus that goes directly from the Mall to Hampshire, so we ended up in Northampton and, due to my complete and utter inability to read bus schedules, ended up waiting about an hour for a bus. Everyone knows I can't read bus schedules, and yet, somehow, every time, I end up in charge of reading them. I feel my friends are just masochists, deep down. We wanted to play four-square to pass the time, so I kept asking strangers if they had any balls, which was particularly awkward since we were at the Smith bus station. Eventually I got home and I seem to remember Jeff or Erik being around and some Diablo II being played before I went unconscious, but I might just be crazy.

Okay, so I lied about there being a robotic abominable snowman named Freddy is this post, but there's one in the next post, I swear. This one is being cut off due to my desperate need for Phish Food and That 70s Show. Never let it be said that I don't have priorities.

i was a teenage blog queen, part 1

2005-10-05T16:20:00.000-04:00

Okay, I have decided that since this past week has been chaos and I have failed you all as a blogging mentor, I will make not one...*NOOOOO!*...not two...*NOOOOO!*...not three...*NOOO--oh wait. Yes, three.* THREE posts in ONE day. Basically that will consist of me breaking this post up into three random pieces, but it makes me feel productive, so I don't really care how inane my reasoning is. Oh, and while in deep and solitary contemplation of this entry, I realized I ought to detail my daily schedule so you can track my every movement and better learn the secrets of my divine being. So:

Monday
2:30-5:20: Dangerous Books--A class about books that can kill. And by "books" they actually mean "jagged pieces of flying metal," so at least it's never boring.
6:00-7:30: Tai Chi--In which I am actually required to move with something sort of like grace. Thus far, I am the star pupil, if "star pupil" means "has not yet broken every one of her limbs."
8:00: Arrested Development--IS. THE. BEST. SHOW. ON. TELEVISION. We watch it at my mod, usually with great quantities of ice cream, though this week we feasted upon the three-layer French chocolate mousse cake I got from Trader Joe's--mmmm. In an only marginally related but incredibly important question, do they have moose in France?

Tuesday
11:00-4:00: Work at the Eric Carle Museum--Because I am a picture book art pimp.
6:00-9:00: International Graphic Novel--A.K.A. Comic Book Class. A.K.A. I love my life.

Wednesday:
2:30-5:20: Lost in the Story--A fiction writing class, which I rock, because people can't get on me for things like "truth" and "perjury."
9:00: Lost--Whoa, I never realized what a "lost" day Wednesday is. Lost is watched in Kitty's mod with great quantities of angst, gasping, and confusion. I have no idea what the hell is going on in the show and every time an episode finishes I'm left with the burning desire to commit mass homicide, but I still watch faithfully.

Thursday
11:00-4:00: Work
8:00: Alias--Is soooooo bad now. Like, "we don't think anyone's watching so we're going to have an episode where Marshall takes some guy's eye out with a spork" bad. I keep watching, though, on the off-off-off-chance that someone will come up with a way to salvage it, which is super more unlikely now that Jennifer Garner has been impregnated by the Affleck. *Is it weird that every time I hear "Affleck" I also hear a little duck somewhere going "AFFFF-LECK?"*

There is nothing in the world quite as good as grilled cheese and tomato soup on a day of this temperature. Except maybe a Jacuzzi filled with hot chocolate. Okay, yeah, that's definitely better. However, since they do not sell Jacuzzis filled with hot chocolate at the Bridge *which, Hampshire admissions, if you're reading, they TOTALLY should*, I had to settle for cheesy/soupy goodness. This is actually my first trip to the Bridge this week, as on Sunday I carried out a mysterious and dangerous task known as grocery shopping. Not voluntarily, mind you--Kate came to my door at 1:30 and pretty literally dragged me from my bed, but I still feel pride. I even got a Stop n' Shop card while I was there, so I saved $25, which I immediately called and told my mom about. Because I'm...cool. I bought actual food, too, like corn and broccolli and mousse cake. AND the other day, I cooked a chicken! Well, not so much "a" chicken as a frozen chicken breast, but coming from the girl who once seriously effed up a box of Kraft's Easy Mac, that's quite an accomplishment. I even used spices! Well...pepper. I'm not about to go too crazy with this whole "cooking" thing--after all, I have a reputation to uphold. A reputation as a semi-illiterate bag lady, but a reputation nonetheless.

In updating, I'm going to go backward, because I'm innovative, edgy, and unpredictable. Also I have the memory span of a retarded squirrel. So: yesterday I went to work, where I entered 80 membership surveys into a spreadsheet. This is not nearly as monotonous as it sounds when they put you in the room with the lollipops, Hershey bars, and chocolate biscotti. After work I went to the Dakin Living Room because the International Studies office was having a presentation on Jan Term trips and free pizza, and if you've formed some sort of theory that free food controls about 88.9% of my major life decisions, you are correct. I really want to go on the trip to Ireland, since it's my ancestral homeland--or the only one I can claim with any certainty, anyway, since my grandfather on my Dad's side goes from telling us that we're descended from African kings to saying he's almost positive we're the last scions of Christ. Plus, Irish accents are pretty much the hottest things on Earth. The trip is to the west of Ireland--Galway, specifically--and it's studying land and literature, which means it's basically set up so the science kids can go off and talk to sheep while the writer kids roll around on the moors and get in touch with the essence of the sheep. It'll be sweet. After the meeting, I went to comic book class, where we talked about Mexican comic books, most of which are apparently pretty bad. We also talked about Rius, who came up with that whole "for beginners" book format, though his were all like "Trotsky for Beginners" and "The Murder of Capitalist Pigs for Beginners." Ironically, when you do a Google search for "Marx for Beginners," the first thing that comes up, before even Amazon.com, is a link to the Wal-Mart page where you can buy it at their low, low exploitative prices. I'm sure Rius would be proud.

I have comic book class with Jeff and Sarah, so going home is always interesting. Last week Jeff introduced me to amazing new concept I'm committed to refer to as much as possible. He explained to us that he is--wait for it--a "sexual ninja." Just pause to take in the awesomeness and all the possibilities of that for a moment. "See," he explained, "people don't know when I'm into them, because I'm stealthy about it and silent. And I make really cool movements." At which point he started to spasm, which is apparently what you should do around people if you don't want them to know that you like them. Also if you want them to move slowly away and never speak to you again. I think I should write one of those, like, "He's Just Not That Into You" books called "Getting in Touch With Your Sexual Ninja" and form some kind of Lifetime-watching army of untapped power. Shortly after the "sexual ninja" demonstration, other-Sarah and Jeff composed an a capella piece in the style of Kel's super-awesome band "Ralph Hextor and the Manfreds," which was basically a musical rendering of Hextor's convocation speech with occasional high-pitched "MAN-FRED!"s thrown in. For non-Hampshirers: Ralph Hextor is our new president. Manfred is his partner, and anyone named Manfred should be worked into conversation as many times as humanly possible.

This week on the way home, Jeff decided he wanted to make new friends. These three fresh-faced young first years got on the bus and sat across from us, looking oddly exuberant because they had gotten a pizza. I think it was very special for them. Jeff, being Jeff, decided to make awkward and creepy conversation with them.

Jeff: Hey guys, nice pizza.
Boy 1: Thanks! If I had more, I would share. But I don't, so I...won't.
*Awkward silence*
Jeff: Soooo...are you guys Hampshire students?
Kids: Yeah.
Jeff: Oh, good. Well, I guess you couldn't really be Mount Holyoke students--except you (gestures to the girl). *Thoughtful pause* And you, I guess (to Boy 1). You're pretty like a girl.
*Awkward silence*
Jeff: Soooo...want to see how I can make a vagina with my hands?

Contrary to popular belief, people will not give you their pizza if you tell them that they are "pretty like a girl" and offer to show them your non-existent genitalia. A lesson hard learned, my friends.

Okay, I think this is as good a place as any to randomly truncate this entry. In Part 2: More ninjas! Spaceships! A robotic abominable snowman named Freddy! YOU CAN'T MISS THIS.

"Sit and enjoy your chew toy, Katharine."

2005-09-26T19:29:00.000-04:00

As I'm sure you are all inescapably aware, I am the author of N to the Y to the C: Internship News Like Whoa, a Hampshire admissions summer blog that detailed, basically, how cool I am and what exactly it is Hampshire students do when released into the unsuspecting outside world. I say that you are all highly aware of this fact because, of course, my blog not only won the Pulitzer Prize for this, and, retroactively, every year dating back to 1917, but recently replaced the holy books of all major religions except Scientology, which is not so much a religion as the stuff you find between your toes, if it were animate and also crazy.

This is a new blog and a new era of awesomeness. With these writings, I shall induct you into the arcane and mystifying world that is Hampshire College, land of farm animals and people who smell like farm animals. I mean--um--bathe regularly. In perfume. And...myrhh. Which I actually think might be poisonous. Anyway, I'm currently a second-year studying mysterious and dangerous things somehow related to writing, performance art, and graphic novels, which means I will either go down in history as a creative genius or live in a box in your backyard.

With this blog, I hope to delve into the larger, more pressing questions of the universe facing our nation and our youth today. For instance, I've been deeply bothered by this particular cosmic query ever since I accidently flipped to Howard Stern the other night: you ever notice how, like, people who appear in porns regularly are always described as porn "stars?" Does that make sense to you? Like, you can be in a movie and not necessarily be a movie "star," but if you're in a porn, you're automatically a porn star. They need to come up with another term for the people who are in porns but aren't necessarily super-good at it, like "porn guy" or "porn person" or..."pornist."

Yes, good people of the internets, this sort of challenging intellectualism is what you can expect for millions of posts to come. I'll also give you regular updates on how much more exciting my life is than yours, like that time yesterday I ordered a sandwich. That was awesome. Speaking of awesome, I'm currently sitting in Hampshire's Bridge Cafe, which, because my cooking usually ends in fire and the screams of children, has become my new favorite place for food consumption. They have paninis, pizza, various pastries, and beef jerky, so you're pretty much covered as far as your major food groups. It's cheap and open until 11 pm, plus it looks out over the gym so you can make fun of the people being athletic while you ear Rice Kripsie treats. I'm waiting for them to open for dinner because all I've had to eat today is Cap'n Crunch and the guy is not easy on one's digestive system. Which, for the record, I mean in a cannibalistic and not dirty way, because this is a G-rated blog. Well, if "G" means "wildly inappropriate for anyone with a sense of decency," which I'm pretty sure it does. Anyway, as much as I love you, anonymous reader/possible stalker/Mom, I love melted cheese on sourdough more. Stay tuned, though, because I'm sure to report back on that grilled cheese, and it is certain to BLOW. YOUR. MIND. ROCK.