Dream

What can I say?* There just hasn't been too much going on.

I mean, there has, but nothing really blogworthy.

Well, I did have an unusually realistic dream last night. I was visiting my high school.

I took note of the surprising fact that this vision was, indeed, a locale resembling my high school. You see, much of my dreams are of the sort where I wander flooded highways searching for my pink aardvark and thinking to myself, "gee, isn't Disney World nice?"

This was one of the first dreams I've had where I see my school and actually recognize that it IS my school. And vice versa.

So, anyway, I magically appeared right outside the door of the blackbox theatre. I was smoking a ciggy. Apparently I also thought it would be amusing to blow the toxic fumes into the faces of my disgruntled peers. Then I decided to put it out, so I dropped it, fully lit, into my pocket.

But it didn't catch fire, of course. Because dreams just aren't that logical. My jacket's chances of catching on fire would've increased tenfold had I not been smoking.

And that's a fact. But, anyway, I arrived in the middle of a performance. Everyone was in costume, and one of my friends from a nearby high school had arrived for an acting class with my director, who could apparently be in two places at once.

Everyone looked just like they do in real life. And I called them all by their proper names. This is a rare phenomenon in my dreams. Generally, not only do I misname my friends, but I also turn into them at some point during the course of the conversation. IDENTITY CRISIS!!!

So, anyway, I see all my old friends and then I go into the empty theatre (because this is in the middle of a performance, of course it's empty).

That's it.

*I used to look at people's yearbooks when I was a freshman in high school, and I saw this one that said "Dear Jack, What can I say?" It continued, but those four words struck me with their profundity.

Then I realized that everyone signed their yearbooks that way.

The Ultimate Christmas Fake Book

With a label proclaiming its status of "Newly Revised Newly", The Ultimate Christmas Fake Book enables hopefuls to con and hoodwink their way through any professional Christmas engagement. The deceptively simple anthology features old favorites, such as "Angels We Have Heard on High", "It Came Upon The Midnight Clear", and "Joy to the World". Tucked between these comfort foods rest the eclectic, the overstimulated, and the just plain twisted. Old favorites? Not quite. Fairly early on we are presented with a song title representative of the question posed by any busybody nasal toned housewife while looking into her heathen neighbor's living room: "Do They Know it's Christmas?" This is followed by more meat-and-potatoes carols, but it isn't long before we come across "Neighbor, What Has You So Excited?" You can tell it's trying too hard; it's desperation for news borders on the obscene. I Hope it doesn't have a heart attack. This song title works best in conversation if recited at the speaker's breaking point, so as to create a prepubescent air of chemical imbalance and self-conscious testosterone. And, to round out our Overeager Category, we have "What Month Was Jesus Born In?" Another prepubescent display of awkwardness sure to turn heads, ludicrously emphasized by the uncomfortable placement of the preposition at the end of the sentence.

Speaking of strange wording, what about "Deck the Hall with Boughs of Holly"? I always thought there was more than one hall. Is that just me? Did the people in this song have to downsize, or something?

On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have the great epic titles, like "Ring Out, Ye Wild and Merry Bells!" What terror, what fervor! King Lear couldn't have put it better. Again, note the hints of obsession. Whoever this guy is, he needs to stop hyper-focusing. He really likes those bells. I mean, really, really likes them. Hmmm.

And lastly we have the exhausted, stuttering"Still, Still, Still".

Enough said. Buy this book.

The Boring Manifesto

I have found many, many ways to combat the post-first semester freshman year existential crisis, none of them being remotely effective in any way. Right now, my eyes are just kind of slicking over the surfaces of the room. I wish I could say that my head was whipping wildly about, or that my eyes were darting, or any of that nonsense, but unfortunately I'm just too sedentary by nature. I killed about fifteen minutes slicking over a green wrought iron gate that stands between the fireplace and me. I contemplate it from different angles. It looks like a bearded flower, with a mouth like a teardrop.

I watched another movie today, went shopping, and curled my hair as a defense mechanism against hard water. I don't mean that in a metaphorical sense; our water softener has been insolently refusing to remove calcium deposits for quite some time now. Hard water seems to encourage and rehabilitate oil, frizz, and dryness so that after a shower my hair resembles, in many ways, a dehydrated squirrel preserved in a bottle of extra-virgin olive oil.

This is not to say that I look back at the past week with fondness and nostalgia; I just managed to kill all my work, and kill it good. Um. Before it killed me. And it almost did. Last week, I read that story about the British teacher arrested in the Middle East for naming a Teddy Bear Mohammed. When reporters asked about her plans for the rest of the season, she expressed her wishes to take a break from teaching until the New Year so she could spend time with her family and recover from her time in jail.

Damn, I wanted to be her. Spend time with my family, even if I had to go to jail.

And here I am, spending time with my family and waiting for the remainder of my friends to get the hell home from college, and all I can think about is a bearded flower and an oily squirrel.

No, I haven't abandoned you

The tyrant is home.

It was a nice trip. And yes, nice is the only word flowing down my bloodstream through my fingers. This is what happens after finals week. Within 48 hours, I wrote a one act play and a 15 page paper and studied for an exam. So you can't really blame me for losing my facility with language, albeit temporarily.

Then again, my parents are in the living room, too, arguing about the validity and reliability of the weather forecast. Makes concentration something I only wish to aspire to.

Remember my blog idea file? On Microsoft Word on my laptop rests a file entitled "BlogIDEAS!.docx". Guess I thought I'd be extra emotive and just shout it out. OMG! Like blog IDEAS! Not words, not phrases, IDEAS!!! Incredible.

I found something on that list which once tickled my fancy. After waking up at 3:15 AM to finish a project, a thought came to mind and I obligingly opened my BlogIDEAS! file to write it down, chuckling like...I don't know, just chuckling idiotically. When I opened that file this morning, this is what I found.

"what if stage directions were written with emoticons? So instead of '(sadly) I'll miss you.' you'd have :( I'll miss you.' That would be hilarious! Hahahahah!!!"

Yes, I actually wrote "hahahaha!!!". Keep in mind that this was written at 3:15 AM, ironically at the same time as my roommate, Lauren, was finishing up a costume design project for Hamlet and nearly substituted "Opela" for "Ophelia" on her design board.

But seriously. EMOTICONS? Why did I find that funny? Perhaps I was retrieving a seed from my corpus callosum, a seed of sharp satire and political lampoon, a message on the horrors of consumerism and puberty in this country. Perhaps I wanted to show to the world that there was something more to this symbol, this colon and parenthesi, this primitive expression. Or maybe it was my goal to point the beacon of the theater in a direction unforeseen and completely uncalled for. A theatrical revolution that would encompass the powers of the written word and the technological era.

More likely, I was just fucking tired.

Now my parents are talking about Linda McCartney, and whether or not she was the heiress to the Eastman fortune. And something about Kodak. And people sitting next to each other in a restaurant.

You know I've been home for 24 hours and I've already watched 4 movies?

Now that's what I call productive.

Lurgh Lurgh!!!

So, like, I was looking at facebook at 5 AM this morning, and all of a sudden, I realized:

Oh

My

Godly

Cream

Cheese

I have a blog?!?!?!?!?






Ooops. So I just thought I'd apologize for my lack of upkeep this past week. In my defense, it's the week before finals, and I've been studying. Er, and playing pool. I'm not so good at what you call "pool", but I'm pretty good at just air-hocky-ing my way around the table. Haven't killed anyone yet.

So, again, sorry, and I promise I'll update more frequently after December 15. And I have plenty to share, because I keep a blog file on Microsoft Word where I list my countless amazing ideas!

I'm not nerdy at all.

Why does every post need a title?

For a comprehensive and highly accurate account of what I did this weekend, I would advise you to visit http://www.myblasphemousramblings.blogspot.com/, which is basically my sister blog. This really awes college kid who goes by Madeline K writes lots of shizz. She updates it, like, more times than I play with my hair, so check it regularly! It's very addictive. More....blogs....uhhh!!!! Neeed...to ramble blasphemously...



Anyway, so I'm at my desk, wondering why everything has grown pink spots. Then I remember...Lauren and I had a pomegranate party last week. See exhibit A.



I was regelated to using my teeth and a plastic knife, even though a hacksaw would've been a more sensible choice.

What's new?

I think it's time for a new post, don't you?

Even though this is all rather masochistic, seeing as I'm typing on my home computer, which sleeps in the coldest corner of the house. So not only am I having trouble adjusting to this keyboard, my fingers are already becoming quite numb. Let's just see what happens if I stop pressing the backspace button every time I make a mistake:

WEll., I went home on Tuesday evenign and my dad made a wrong turn. It was funny. Not rally at the time, baceous I had

Ok, this is just bad. Yeah, I actually fixed that last sentence. Originally, it read "ok, this is just pad."

I have so much to say, but this post has already taken me far too long. I'd like to de-stiff my hands, now, thank you.

A Hymn

I don't follow a Bible, but if I did, I imagine it would be Lonely Planet's guide to every country in the world. I don't know the exact title. This is because the book and I keep a certain distance apart, so people won't ask questions. When I visit the Muhlenberg Bookstore, we (the book and I, that is) act like adulterous lovers suspended, vulnerable, trapped at a public crossroads. Can't look. Can't touch. Not when anyone's looking.

How odd. It's not like it's an embarrassing book to be caught with, indubitably verisimilitudinously. But it's almost like I don't want to violate the book. I hold it, in my mind, and I am traveling though Greenland (people do live there, you know), the Falkland Islands, Somalia, and the Federated Islands of Micronesia, my hometown. It's like a jet plane, in my hands, and I'm not sure if I'm ready for even the voyeuristic pleasure of exploration. It is my dream to visit every country in the world, but with the achievement of that dream comes, I believe, a necessary disappointment. What now? No longer will I sit, wondering idly and ignorantly about Norwegian fjords. Iceland is, at present, walking the border of my preconscious, on tip-toes. No, pointe shoes. Just as delicate as the ice that stings your fingers violet when you touch. If I hop on the next plane to Reykjavik, gone are the fragments, the mosaics, the pink silk threads of baseless imaginings and icy heat. So don't look. Don't touch.

More Eisenstein!!!!!!!!!!!

When I log onto blogspot, I am demanded to procure my username and password. Slumping next to 'password', shoulders hunched, rests a question mark. As in, "What's a password?"



Yeah, so this isn't really going anywhere. Blame it on the anesthesia for yet another toe surgery I was subjected to on Monday. This would be a better excuse if I wrote this on Tuesday. Here's the secret: I started writing this on Tuesday, but had to save it as a draft or risk being late to...something. I don't remember, presently. But the password question mark thingy just struck me as really funny. I guess its for people who've, like, never seen the Internet before.

Or for people who ask the kind of questions like, "Where does the Internet go when you're not using it?"

Ummm....it doesn't go anywhere. It's not even an it. Believe it or not, someone asked me this once. There's an almost mystical wonderment at the idea that this person believed that I was the chosen one; the person who could craft a pearl of the barnacled murk that stands at the intersection of computer science, theology, esoterics, and complete bullshit to satisfactorily answer the question that is so stupid it cannot be answered. And I know lots of things can't be answered, and that doesn't mean they're stupid. But...where does it go? As David Sedaris would say, that's fucked up.

About five times this week, such events have occurred which I desired to commit to the blogosphere. Unfortunately, I have forgotten all of them because I have been too busy to weed them all out. Some of them were worthy of Bridget Jones, too.

Well, we talked about Kerenski again in film. Anyone, anyone? Kerenski? No?

The peacock's ass?

Knew you'd remember that. If you're still like, WTFFF? I'll provide a refresher.

Kerenski is the head of Russia's provisional government. It's 19somethingorother, and we're in the movie October. Yeah, you and I. Okay, I know you'd rather be stuck in a successful revolution, never mind a successful movie, but c'mon, it's Eisenstein. I'd rather be in an Eisenstein movie, even one that's kinda crappy, excessive, and overly ambiguous, than in a horror movie (note: read How to Survive a Horror Movie if you find that I've lucked out with Eisenstein and am now living comfortably on the Russian steppes and you're stuck...in a log cabin in Montana). And the montage is fun to be a part of, you just have to make sure you're not on the edge of the frame or you'll get spliced. So we're in October, yes we are. Do you see that short, effeminate man climbing the stairs over and over and over and over and over? That's Kerenski. Now watch, there's a mechanical peacock. And look...he just walked into its ass. Through the suggestion of editing, of course. And it's supposed to show that he's arrogant. And Eisenstein is really proud of this montage, too, but that's not the point. Yesterday, we watched Rules of the Game in film. One of the characters, the Marquis de Chesnaye, collects mechanical music boxes. It's pretty neat...of course, it's used for different effects in Rules of the Game. Am I going to go into them? No. I'm going to finish writing so I can eat a piece of chocolate and concentrate on solving the enigma of evolution so we can all develop sticky tongues.

Life in Greenland

During a bout of procrastination yesterday, I left the ice cave that some call my dorm room to slink, unnoticed, along the walls of those brightly lit corridors still barking with brash Halloween decorations (maybe I spelled it right this time?). While slinking, I noticed a sign that whispered (for the letters were very small, and the sign itself was hiding between two bolder ones) "Heating Instructions: Brown Hall."

Heating instructions?

Ummm...what? Like it doesn't just come on automatically?

So I turned it on, and it hissed at me like a cat and smelled funny, too, but it was heat and it was wonderful. Then I went to sleep.

Notes from the Red Door Cafe

Forgive me if there are more typos in this post than ever have dared to exist before. I am currently hunched, catlike, over a jurassic computer in the Red Door lounge at Muhlenberg. A group of my friends are playing with sticks and pretending to be all mature and sophisticated about it.

They call it pool. I call it, "oooh! shiny objects! Pretty colors!"

I've always been sort of prejudiced against pool as a form of recreation, perhaps of its unavoidable connotations with the swimming pool. I'm the type of person who could live in a swimming pool, so I don't appreciate any reference to this lovely word without the promise of a nice dip afterwords.

One thing I hate about this computer right now is the lack of a wristpad. My laptop also lacks a wristpad (oh, lackaday!) but I at least have the desk on which to rest my poor, weatherbeaten hands. When I realize it's only November, I cry.

I burned my hands a few days ago. They were not so happy about this because they were already in the red due to the grizzled weather we've been having lately. I really like that word, even though it doesn't sense make in the of much context. It makes me think of grizzly bears and sizzling grilled cheese, which, in turn, makes me think of sizzling grizzly bears. If you can picture being set upon by a pack of sizzling grizzlies, you'll be able to empathize with my plight.

So, anyway, my hands suffered some pretty spindly burns.

Don't ever use hot baked beans as a compress.

This is not exactly what I did. I was getting some beans in the Garden Room, with the object of liberally coating the lining of my taco shell, when a conglomoration of beaness propelled itself out of the shell into which it had been planted and onto the tender knuckles of my left hand. I spewed curses in return, and stood very still for several moments like a burnt ferrett.

Then I found a napkin, and my knuckles will never be the same. I'm now going to go back to my room or something and apply a cold compress of lotion.

Again, I wish I had a sticky tounge. None of this would have happened.

My LIFE!!! Ahhh...part 2

I'm a writer.

I hate writing.

Not all writing. Not most writing. Just essay writing. Whenever I have to write an essay, my heart rate triples (figuratively, I hope) and my stomach turns into an ice-cold slinky. The task of writing an essay is incredibly daunting for me. My thoughts, spinning round me like ill-thrown frisbees, cry "BLACK PIECE OF PAPER BLANK PIECE OF PAPER" because for the first hour or so I try to write the damn thing, that's what I'm facing. Which insinuates an even deeper state of panic. The slinky turns to rubber, and I can't swallow. After a few hours, I have an outline. Maybe. Sometimes, I get so frustrated and panicky I just start writing, but then I end up rewriting it because none of it makes sense. My biggest panic-inducer, however, is the time constraints. I can never put anything off until the last minute.

So here I am, with two reviews due on Friday (one on art, one on film), with literally hours spent on preparatory work and no evidence of any of it. And the more I have trouble writing them, the more I panic because I know, shit, I'm not going to be able to do the REST of my homework for Friday which will really, really, REALLY be bad. Because it's all for the same class (Film) and she specifically told us to have fully processed the readings.

I am now going to have a temper tantrum. Ready?

WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
asd;flkjads;flkajf;lkajew f;lkajwef;liawjef ;alkwejf;lakewjf;lakejf;a lkejf;alksdjdf ;alkjf ;alkwej f;alwekfj

Poopy.

A champion time waster, that's me!

It is impossible to be bored to tears. Tears imply emotion, whereas boredom is more or less apathy. Then again, I suppose one could become frustrated about this state, and frustration leads to emotion, which could lead to tears. But a direct connection between boredom and crying is impossible and therefore ludicrous.

I am now bored, but that boredom is mixed up with frustration and that sense of dread that always comes my way on Sunday afternoons. Damn, I do have to go write that scene. But I don't, really! I can post on my blog instead!!!!!!!!

But I'll eventually have to write this frickin scene. And by eventually, I mean, like, before it's due at five tommorrow. And I sure as hell am not waiting until then.

Do you ever make lists? I have an affection for them. They come in many varieties and are often underused or limited to the everyday, muslin variety of to-do lists.

If you ever want to make a list, here are some ideas:

1. List everything you despise that begins with 'a' and ends with 'a'. Like, er, agoraphobia.
2. Order your friendships. Make a real popularity pyramid out of it. Then drop it discretely on the floor next to one of their rooms, and watch as your friends--disappear! MAGIC!
3. List every word you know. No dictionaries, that's cheating.
4. List all operas that require a contralto and a coluratura soprano. And please, only those written between 1834 and 1972.
5. List the number of times you've had to clean the litterbox. Although, I guess, you could just write down one number and that would make a pretty lame list.
6. List the locations (complete address) of every bathroom you've used since January, 1976.
7. List, in great detail, all your dreams about Gene Wilder.
8. Make a list of 100 reasons your list should never be published. Now, go find a publisher.
9. 100 uses for an OATMEAL COOKIE!
10. 100 reasons why I should be writing my scene, and not posting on my frickin blog.
11. Oooh, ooo, one more! 100 reasons why we should develop sticky tounges. I'll give you one I thought of yesterday: one could eat Pirate's Booty and take notes at the same time without getting the paper all cheesy.

Get to it! I want these lists, all of them, by 5:00 tommorrow!

A Bricolage, or The Can of Worms

There's always that moment, right about when I log in to blogspot, when I think, "ok, Katie, what the fuck are you going to write about today? The same shit you always write?"

And the answer is always the same: "yes. Yes, yes, and yes."

Because I really love this blog. And I mean, like it's my child or something. Which it is, in a metaphorical sense.

So, as you can tell, I've once again solved the problem of what to write about! Therefore, movies are like real life.

Here's what I mean: have you ever seen a 1930s Hollywood musical? You know the kind: the biggest problem is that I say banana and you say bahnahnah, and that's why we're getting divorced, but it'll be fine because we can rollerskate and tap dance AT THE SAME TIME even though we haven't rollerskated since we were twelve! (Note: see Shall We Dance? Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers). Now there's an easy problem to solve. The problem with these kinds of movies, especially at the time, is that they both reinforced viewers' values AND also provided those very same values. It's all so capitalist. So you went to the movies, your stomach as empty as a broken window pane, and realized OH! The problem is that a) I don't have enough money b) I don't know how to woo women [these movies were sooo targeted at men] and c) I really need a sense of fashion [ok, this was targeted at women, as was the idea that all women should want to be objectified and admired all day long]. And the solution? Money will come! And I'll frolic and dance as gay as the sprightly sparrows. Which sounds really nice. This one guy, Richard Dyer, wrote a lot about entertainment and Utopia. Then there was this other guy, Siegfried Kracauer (he wrote From Caligari to Hitler, a real beach read, that) who thinks that showgirls in geometric patterns (ie any Dick Tracy musical) are really, really scary. True. They kinda are. But he meant it, too. These women are just cogs in a machine, not knowing what patterns they're so willingly giving their identities up to make. And what's even creepier? We, the entrapped workers (yeah, yeah, Kracauer was a Marxist) go to see these shows and only THINK we're escaping, but we're really just seeing this gruesome play-by-play of our own blind existence. And it was this fact, still eerier, that predicts and supports the rise of Hitler (yeah, yeah, Kracauer was German and wrote most of his stuff in retrospect, but he wrote this one in 1927). When people are so blind that they only pay attention to their small task, they become unaware of what they may be getting themselves into. It was easy for Hitler to take control. And I, personally, think that we should be more aware now. Not to be political or anything, but there's stuff going on right now that we're completely ignoring. Unintentionally, of course. We're too busy watching Paris Hilton's every engagement.

I'm really, really sorry if I've offended or confused any of you. I just needed to get that out there. Don't even get me started on the portrayl of women in movies. Ughhh...But anyway, my point [originally] with all this, was to draw a parallel between how easy it was for Fred and Ginger to stay married, and how easy it was for me to think of something to write about. I'm being rather self-reflexive now, referring to the writing process.

Isn't this blog indubidubly verisimilitudinous?

Are YOU a bare bodkin?

Again, please accept my apologies for lack of frequent writing. I was busy, um, FORMATTING A SCRIPT AND SUBMITTING IT TO THE TEN MINUTE PLAY CONTEST SPONSORED BY ACTORS THEATRE OF LOUISVILLE. And I found out yesterday, when I thought it needed to be postmarked by November 5, and when it was still happily unformatted, that postmarking needed to have taken place by November 1. I got to really appreciate keyboard shortcuts after that.

They kindly inform entrants that they will be notified of the play's having been accepted or...er, unaccepted by November...2008.

I'll be almost twenty then.

Continuing with my list of excuses (and you must understand that I am not exaggerating in any way, I love writing my blog, it's just that there are these little things called priorities), my first psych paper was due yesterday, and I have auditions for next semester all this week. Wooohooooo!

I did something amazing yesterday in the costume shop. I machine-stitched the most delectable, glorious, perfect button holes. And I used a buttonhole dial, not a buttonhole presser foot. I did it the HARD way. I made two of them. It would be enough to make Edith Head cry (and if you don't know who she is, you should. She created most of Audrey Hepburn's costumes [and then there was that guy...what's his name, Givenchy, yeah...he created the rest]). They rested on the cloth like cats resting on a pile of hangars. Yes, hangars. My cats love 'em. And those buttonholes are a lot like my cats. Sturdy, yet fashionable.

But I digress. From what? I'm not really sure anymore.

Would my blog be more artsy and raw if I didn't spell check it? Or would that just make it stoopid?

It would probably just make it stoopid. But the thing is, I can't spell, and this could lead to hilarious effect in this blog, I'm sure. For example, I can't spell the name of today's holiday. I also can't remember (or I just never learned) whether hangar is spelled differently when referring to something that hangs clothing or acts as an airplane womb.

And in an unbelievable act of double revelation, my psychology class now knows that not only can I not spell, I can't solve puzzles either. We were given a jumbled word. ANIAEV, I think it was. Sounds like Dziga Vertov's brother, or something. But it wasn't. It was 'naive'. And due to my aforementioned faults, I was the only person in my twenty nine student class who could not unscramble this word. Durh.

I am a chameleon. I am also Annie Hall. For the-holiday-whose-name-I-lack-the-ability-to-spell. One person got it. Everyone else either thought I was being myself (of course, I wear ties all the time), or Harry Potter. Which is strange, because my roommate had a dream about Harry Potter last night. GASP!!! Spooky. I was also subjected to remarks such as "you look Prussian" and "you actually look nice in corduroy! That's unusual, for a girl".

Anthony didn't actually say I looked Prussian. He said I looked professional, but I swear, that boy couldn't mumble more if I stuffed his mouth with strawberries. Which would be funny, because Anthony doesn't really like strawberries.

I am now going to awkwardly state the fact that this is a long post. I know we all realize this. I am only still writing because it is a good tool for procrastination.

October 2_?

I wonder what today's date is. I suppose I could minimize this window and just look at the bottom-right corner of the screen, where I have my handy-dandy windows gadgets, but why be conventional? I'll wait, and see what date blogspot labels it under when I publish this post. There's just something so--I don't know--daring about this mystery that enshrouds my knowledge of time at this particular moment. One loses count of the days, soon the hours. It's after midnight, I know that by looking at the toolbar at the bottom of the screen. I didn't have to minimize a window to do that.

But when you don't know the date--doesn't it just throw you into this emboldened yet terrified state?

Okay, slight overstatement, perhaps. But that's because Peter Lorre is my favorite actor.

Don't expect to find a connection between Peter Lorre and my not knowing the date. Well, I guess you could, if you really stretched it, say that time is a central motif of M in which Peter Lorre starred, only that wouldn't really work because everyone knew what time it was. Always. Wouldn't you, if your child was an hour late from school, and you lived in Dusseldorf? The infamous child murders?

Bitch, please. You'd know the time so well, people would wonder if you'd swallowed a clock. But, anyway, Peter Lorre is amazing and you should see every movie he's ever been in, especially M, The Maltese Falcon, and Arsenic and Old Lace. He's just so good at playing these creepy parts, you know, the ones that leave you wondering "what happened to so-and-so in his childood? Freudian analysis! Go!"

Also, why does he look so different in each of his movies? I didn't even recognize him in Falcon after seeing M.

I think I'm going to go to sleep now. And do you know why? Because I just tried to spell "now" like "know" and vice versa.

Linguistics: Lesson 1

I FORGOT TO NUMBER MY PAGES!!!!!! For my play. I totally forgot. And I just checked Blackboard (the place where teachers post asssignements), and it told us to make sure we numbered our pages, starting on page 2. WTFFF? If I told my computer to do that, it would looka at me (I'll get back to you soon on the location of its eyes) and squawk "What the hell kind of an arbitrary number is 2? Why start with the second page? BLANK PIECE OF PAPER!"

I would look back at the computer, and remember, this is all theoretical because I wouldn't even be posting this if I'd remembered to NUMBER MY PAGES, and I would say, "Well, at least I'm not an OATMEAL COOKIE!!!"

That made perfect sense, and you know it. You're dazzled at my incandescent brilliance. It emanates from my extra-long eyeballs.

eeegeeGEEgee!

But this mistake is also proof of Divine Grace. You see, I've been trying to think of ways I could insert a Spanish Language lesson into my blog. Particularly, one about how people should convey the fact they've made a mistake. I now have the perfect example. Thank you, Jesus.

A Spanish speaker would never say, "I forgot to number my pages." Oh, no. Instead, they'd say "Se me olvidaron a numerar mis paginas." Roughly, "My pages forgot to number themselves on me."

No wonder Europe is so secular. Gosh darn it! They have no sense of guilt.

Psychology of Perception--the musical!

My eyeballs are too long.

According to my psychology textbook, people with myopia (nearsightedness) have eyeballs that are so freakin' long that when they stare at something the image goes crazy and misses the retina or goes behind it. Something like that.

All I can say is, I thought everything about me was short.

Weird.

I finished editing my ten minute play today, which I cleverly called Egress. Thank you, Mr. Eynon (my AP English Lit teacher. He had a set of rules, one of which was "place your backpacks under the desk in order to facilitate ingress and egress"). No, really. Thanks, because up until twelfth grade, I thought that an Egress was a type of exotic bird.

Today I bought a book at the bookstore (NO!!!! Existential DOUBT!!) entitled "The Career Guide for Creative and Unconventional People".

When I spotted it across the room, I could only read "Creative and Unconventional People" and I was like, damn right you're unconventional if you can transform yourself into a book. Like, whoah.

And when I brought it back to my room, it insisted on testing gravity by jumping off my bed every time I moved (I had a lot of stuff on my bed). So I guess it is kinda unconventional. Then again, I just looked at it now and read "The Career Guide for Creative and Unintentional People." Ooops! Mom didn't use birth control.

Also, I learned today that Sergei Eisenstein (remember him? The penis guy?) directed a production of Die Valkure in Russia. I was like, ????

Wagner and Eisenstein go together like Lady Catherine de Berg and Soviet sex toys.

Take my word for it.

Blank Piece of PAPER!

Did you know that bloggers on blogspot have a choice to post in English or...Hindi?

I was very tempted to post in Hindi, but I'm not entirely sure if that would mean all my posts would be in Hindi from now on.

So I wrote the first draft of my ten minute play. I've written a play. I've written a PLAY? When did that happen? I've never, ever, written an entire play before (though I've written scenes longer than this one). I hope it's good. It's my midterm.

By the way, I'm really confused about my final exams. We have one scheduled for Stagecraft: Costume Techniques. What, is the teacher going to see how fast we can sew a zipper? I have yet to sew a buttonhole. That's pretty much the only thing I can't do. That's a total lie. I can't sew for shit. Well, I can sew if you help me with every single tiny step.

See how indescicive I am? And how bad I am at spelling?

Sometimes I'm just going to write for fun. I hope soon, but for now, I have more writing to do for school; this one a screenplay for the feature film the MFA (Mighty Fine Ass, known in some circles as Muhlenberg Film Association) is producing this year. I have organized what some might call a studio system of production. I am very proud of myself right now.

She came in through the bathroom window

There's a little phrase that pops up when I log in to blogspot. It happily informs me how many posts I've...er, posted. Twelve posts! It giggles. Twelve? TWELVE?!? Wow, I'm not a very prolific blogger. Sorry, guys.

Well, I'm happy that people are going to help me out with that, because so far, three people have expressed interest in guest-blogging. Let's bring that number up higher, people! I mean, it's a one-night stand. No commitment, people.

I should be working on my ten-minute play. It's my Dramatic Writing midterm. It's driving me crazy, just like my film paper from last week (I did well on that, by the way, gracias a dios), probably because it's a midterm. A midterm is very scary for Katie. She is not sure if she can write a play. A scene, fine, but a whole play, even one ten minutes long, is a tad daunting for her.

I'm sorry if I just sounded like an arrogant fish.

It won't happen again.

See? I'm going insane. I'll just keep writing. I got my shades fixed. It was nice. Great success!

Like, the coolest idea ever

Yeah, I'm sorry I haven't posted in a while. Really, I am. It's quite theraputic for me. But my homework level just jumped a few degrees, again, so I've been kinda preoccupied with that lately.

But guess what? I've thought of a cool idea, one that would promote cross-blog fertilization and diversity in this voluptous digital age. Yes, voluptous. And synergy. Because that was just such a crazy word in In Good Company. Are you ready for this?

Guest blogging!

Here's the concept: Once a month, or more frequently if there's enough interest, one of you lucky people will write a guest blog entry, that is, a post that will go up on my blog. So it better be good. Anyone can write one, just comment on this post expressing your interest, and you can write an email to me and I'll cut and paste your blog post onto my blog!! WEEE!!! You can write about anything you want, so long as it's not porn. That's Maddie's territory. Or, more specifically, gnome porn.

So if anyone's interested, let me know. If you already have a blog, great, you can take this opportunity to spread the word about it. And if not, who cares? Let this be your proxy-blog. Your step-blog. Your I-have-a-plant-but-I-only-water-it-sometimes blog. Because even if you're not ready to commit to a full blog, you can get that one great post out of your head, and into the creepy world of cyberspace!!! WOOOHOOO!

Finally Home!

Walking into one's home for the first time in one and a half months is a very surreal, almost postmodern experience (I've given up on the spelling of that word. For an informed discussion, see John Barth's Further Fridays). I had forgotten that the shades in my room were just as broken as the shades in my dorm room (wow, I have TWO rooms!), but at least the windows in my room at home have curtains. They're nice and green. It makes my room look like a jungle in Argentina when the sun shines. Not that there are any jungles in Argentina.

I am happy to have home cooked meals again. I am happy to have a personal bathroom. I am happy to live in a space that doesn't look like an industrial plant. I don't have to hear drumming and shouts of "one, two, three, four" coming from the dance studio.

The bathroom in my dorm, while nice and functional, is certainly not built with aesthetics in mind. And Brown is the most aesthetically pleasing dorm in general, so I'd hate to think what bathrooms in other dorms must look like.

It's really nice to be able to type with some control again. On my laptop, which I left at school, the cursor keeps moving around without me touching it. So if I wrote that sentence on my laptop, the cursor would have moved, say, from the 'o' in 'around' up to the 'a' in happy, and the rest of the sentence, unless I paid close attention, would look like "I am haund without me touching it to live in a space that doesn't look like an industrial plant." It's a very strange phenomenon. I don't really know what to make of it. My pinkee hurts.

I'm really writing this to avoid the mountain of homework I should be working on. Luckilly, I have my cats to keep me even more distracted.

Hunh?

I'm feeling much, much better after writing the first draft of my essay.

This is me a few hours ago.

This is me now!

My shades are still stuck, but what the hell. I can always tape lots of notebook paper so voyeurs will be forever tantalized with my shadow! Mwahahaha...or I could just call Residential Services and place a work order. But that's no fun.

I'm getting pretty excited to go home and see my family and friends. Not that I don't love all you Muhlenbergers terribly, but I haven't seen my parents since about 11:13 PM on August 20. I'm going to bake an organic, dairy-free chocolate cake!! And--wait for it--I'm going to buy a RUG for my room!!! Who wouldn't want to spend their weekend doing that??

My brain is still buzzing with my thesis...I went to an art exhibition today curated by my film studies teacher, and I just went ahead and analyzed everything in the light of my thesis. It made some sense, though. Maybe. In an alternate universe...

My brain is saying this to me right now:

as;dlfkjasd;flkjas;lfkjawe;lfkjae;ofi aoweifj;aiosfj;oaiwejr f;alijsflakjefr;alkjesf;lkajwef;lkj

Okay, I'm going to do some film reading (!) and then I'm going to do some sleeping.

Waaaaaahhhhhh!!!!

When you blow your head off at the little things, you know you're not in good shape. Like just now I was trying to sign in to blogspot so I could write this here post and the cursor wasn't already positioned in the space designed for bloggers to enter their usernames. I was like, WTFFF (What the fuckity fuck fuck)? And about an hour ago, I tried to pull down one of the shades on my windows, and the cord whipped around the dowel like a hamster on crack. Now it's stuck. And everyone can see me at all times.

Oh, my life is just so great sometimes.

And there's that film paper. I finally--FINALLY!--have a thesis, but the whole writing the paper thing is sort of eluding me at the moment. So I decided to write on my blog instead and try to loosen up, because this is my first paper and for some reason I'm really nervous. I don't know, it's not like that creepy lady from the movie is going to jump off my computer screen and slash my throat, but this is the first formal essay I've written since I took my AP English exam. In May. So that's...almost half a year. Wow.

The cool thing is, the weekly film challenge theme for MFA (Muhlenberg Film Association) is cats. My idea, of course.

Wouldn't it be great if MFA stood for Mighty Fine Ass?

But I couldn't see you! The glass was frosted.

I just clicked on the "New Post" button and realized that I don't really know what to write for today. Ummm...thanks for taking my poll. It appears that Um, Friday is a clear winner. And whoever voted Friday is incredibly boring.
Guess what, guys? My mommy started a blog! She's an artist, and she posts pictures of what she makes, and I comment. You should check it out at www.cindysilverstein.blogspot.com .
I did so much creative shizz on Friday and yesterday that I really have nothing left for this blog. Sorry. I felt pretty prolific, though. I made part of a film, wrote two scenes, watched a creepy movie called Don't Look Now. If I was younger, I probably would've obeyed the title and missed the movie, but we HAD to watch at least the first seven minutes of it for my Film class. I went through maple syrup (hell is a term far overused) trying to get the library to give it to me again. I checked it out yesterday and watched that opening sequence about three times (on the third time I broke down every shot. It took about an hour) because we have to write a paper on it. Then I returned it, before the time limit of two hours given to reserved materials forcibly ripped it from my fragile hands. And I came back yesterday, and they let me have it again, but noted that the computer claimed it hadn't been returned and that I now owed them 2 million dollars. Okay, 2 dollars. But it's the principle of the thing. They knew it wasn't true because the movie was shelved and I obviously didn't remove it from the library or forget to return it. So they had to figure out how to remove the charge from my account. It was fun! I've had problems with the library before, like I paid them 8 dollars for returning Man with a Movie Camera five days late (but I swear it was due October 2, not September 27!). That was even more of a party.
So I'm not going to write about the movie just yet, in case anyone from my film class is prowling around here without my knowledge. Hey guys!
Okay, so when I actually get my paper back and graded, I promise I'll write something. Maybe.
By the way, the title of this post has nothing to do with this post. I just love The Producers. (I almost wrote the phrase "Post title" but then realized that could be taken as the words after the title which is the post itself. Circular reasoning, indeed).

My little brothers

My LIFE!!! AHhhhh...

Have you ever been present at the moment when the sky at dusk preaches an enamel glaze of colors, and clouds carved like marble? If there are buildings in the foreground, they are made more majestic in the light, as if placed inside a seashell. I was walking back from the GQ today (no, I lied, a couple days ago), thinking about autumn and the collective unconscious, when I was met with such a sunset. I whipped out my cell phone and waited as it powered up, but the light was draining away. I took a picture anyway, but it was cheap and just wrong somehow. I ruined it, and the picture came out all dark and scraggly. I took an epic and reduced it to a cartoon. Not that there's anything wrong with cartoons. So instead of posting that awful photo, I wrote this entry. Cause I'm cool like that.

I also made origami at my hall meeting yesterday!!! But my mommy would be ashamed. I tried making a crane. My friend Hannah, who's half Scottish and half Moroccan (just had to throw that in there), says that the crane is supposed to resemble the artist. So I'm basically fucked.

According to this theory, I look like the illegitimate child of a crinkly chicken and a lollipop.

If only I had a picture.

Why didn't I get the camera thingy installed on my laptop? WHY?!?!

Drama Queen

I haven't painted since May. And believe me, listening to the soundtrack of Frida makes you wanna paint like van Gogh's holding a knife to your ear (Heehee, I once got a card informing me that I had van Gogh's ear for music). But fo sho, I haven't touched my paint-brushes. Well, I kinda can't, they're actually my mom's, and therefore they live in my house. So too bad for me. Or I could sign up for a painting class. But I don't think that would be such a good idea. It's not that I'm a horrible painter. It's just that I go through these phases. Like with dance. I really wanted to dance last year. I went to my first dance class in six years. I fell down the stairs. I didn't want to go back. Fun times. And I stuck with it, and was in really great shape, but I just got so sick of it. I developed a metaphorical allergy to dance. I wish that I was one of those people who was amazing at one thing and one thing only and that this one thing was my everything. As cliche as that sounds. But I'm no permanent resident.

If only I could upload photos...

I flip-flopped my way over to Film History this morning, more leisurely than usual because I had somehow managed to leave the GQ (General's Quarters, the caf where I have breakfast, for all you non-Bergers) with a few minutes to spare. What an overused expression that is. But I'm a little too tired to change it right now. I'm so tired that I wrote 'write' instead of 'right', but I fixed that, of course. And then I go and tell you all about it, so it's not like fixing it actually accomplished anything, but...anyway...I was flip-flopping when an image assaulted my senses and stirred up everything twisted and surrealist that has ever taken liberties to breed in my preconscious. If only I could upload photos, but this computer is strange and won't let me upload anything from my hard drive...

How to begin...

Allow this image to hover before your inner eye: A haggard line of life-size wooden crosses has been sewn onto Academic Row, complemented by bales of hay that sit, neatly packaged, on the grassy, er...grass. So I think, okay, I know a lot of people like Civil War reenactments, so is this...it can't be...is this supposed to be the Spartacus slave revolt?

The atmospheric aura (that's the buzzword of the day, according to my friends Jordan and Devin) reeked of...I don't even know...it was just incredibly creepy. I mean, a row of life-size crosses (anything life-sized that's not actually alive is creepy. Like life-sized Barbie). Turns out it's for the Muhlenberg Scarecrow-making contest. Which makes sense, I guess, but even when I realized this, I was contemplating the purpose of the hay (maybe the block of hay serves the same purpose as the trapdoor at a hanging?) and especially of the mysterious signs posted on each individual cross.

Delta Zeta.

Communication Club.

Girls Varsity Lacrosse.


Watch out, Chemistry Club. They're gonna crucify you, too. But no, there's a much more realistic explanation: each of the clubs listed above, in addition to several others, purchased a "scarecrow frame"(choughCROSSchough) and bale of hay for the upcoming (well, not really, depends on your definition of upcoming, but let's not get caught up in semantics, here) Halloween festivities.

At least that's what the ADMINISTRATION is telling us.

Hmmm...

In Film today, we studied surrealism: Un Chien andalou, L'age d'or, and some other stuff. Freud would be proud. Maybe he saw them, I'm not sure. I came to one conclusion about surrealist filmmakers:

They're sixth graders with high voices who still have not accepted the fading allure of the penis game. You know, the one where you shout 'penis!!!!' in the cafeteria to your friend with greasy hair at the other end of the room. You have greasy hair, too. You're in middle school.

But seriously. How many penis jokes can you fit into a seventeen-minute film? It reminds me a lot of John Barth and post-modernism, which also boasts more than its share of penis jokes. Eisenstein was a pubescent boy as well in this respect. It's pretty ridiculous. In a way, I can kinda see where Frida was coming from when she said, "I would rather sit on the floor of the market of Toluca and sell tortillas than have anything to do with those "artistic" bitches of Paris." Nevertheless, she was a surrealist as well, but not by her own definition. Sorta like Barth and postmodernism (Postmodernism? post-modernism?), but I digress. At the beginning of film class this morning, we delved into our unconscious by freewriting.

The basin has been full for the past half hour as I sit, drinking its silvery metaphor and I like it and the golden key, resting precariously on the edge of my unconscious with that water. Water may be in the basin what is in the basin is no different that what is in your mind. Now we look contemptuously at it, grinning with all power from the starlit heights, the mist-filled eyes.

And so on. And ending with:

The key looks at us. We look at me. I look at me without a mirror and I mow the lawn as fast as I can. I mow rocks. Someone left them there. This is saddening like the turtle of laughter and Salvador Dali. I think too much about my future, not futurism, my life, as if it doesn't already exist.

Dr. O called on me to read part of it out loud, so I read the first part. She said it was sophisticated and quite surrealist. I said, cool.

Well, not really. But it was a fun exercise. The phrase "turtle of laughter" reminds me of "rabbit of Easter" from David Sedaris' story "Jesus Shaves" Me Talk Pretty One Day (Kim is probably the only one who gets this reference). That means David Sedaris like, lives in my unconscious.

I bet he vacuums, like, all the time. He vacuums my unconscious, I mean. If it has a floor. If it does, I'm sure it's carpeted and covered with cat hair.

Kerenski!

That is K's name. I remembered when I came back from my voice lesson. I didn't even have to look it up. I'm so intelligent.

By the way, if this is the first blog you've read, be sure to scroll down the page and read the posts from earlier today and yesterday if you haven't already. Otherwise I probably am not making much sense.

But do I ever?

Why did I get up at eight?

There was really no need. My first class is at ten. I really don't have that much homework. Then I realized---Oh! I got up so early so I could write another post for my blog! Could anything be more obvious?

To those who commented, thanks for "reading my shit", as a fellow blogger friend would say (her blog is at http://myblasphemousramblings.blogspot.com/, check it out, it's really the highlight of my day). To those who didn't comment, since you're reading this now, I'm assuming you read my shit and just didn't, well, comment. I like comments!! They're like birthday presents. Really.

Do you know who's really funny? Sergei Eisenstein. He's another Soviet filmmaker; the first to really push the limits of montage. He defined about six different types of montage, ranging from the basic temporal to the intense intellectual. Intellectual montage was his favorite. It consists of showing two shots of completely different things that collide (metaphorically) and make a whole greater than the sum of its parts (like Gestalt psychology!) in the mind. One of my personal favorites is from October, which celebrates the (failed) October revolutions of 1905. There's this guy whose name begins with a 'K' (I think) who climbs up the same set of stairs over and over again to represent that his ascendence to head of the provisional government was really no big deal. I mean, provisional government? Please. If that's the best you can do... So anyway, then he's walking towards the door, and shots of him doing this are intercut with shots of a mechanical peacock. And Eisenstein really hits you over the head with this one. It's like "get it? K is as vain as a peacock! OMG! I'm so intelligent! Did you see it again? Get it?" And then K walks forward and there's a shot of the peacock's ass, so it's like he's, well, walking into the peacock's ass. Hmm.

But really, K. Provisional Government is just not good enough.

Dziga Vertov is the shit

And by God, I mean that. I just watched all 68 minutes of The Man With a Movie Camera. Think USSR, 1929. What I found amazing is how he managed to pair his form (montage [editing], and lots of trick shots) with his content (a day in the lives [not LIFE, because this is Soviet Cinema, goddamnit, and we're talking about the proletariat here, not the silly little individual] of the Russian people). His style of filming combines a paradox of the artificial and the naturalistic; yet he manages to connect the two with industry. MY GOD!!!

Okay, I'm going to calm down now. Most of you probably don't care about Dziga Vertov, anyway. Well, you should. Dziga Vertov is my homeboy.

So this one time I was wandering the streets of Ogunquit, Maine, pretending not to be a tourist, when the woman in front of me stops walking and shouts at her boyfriend, as loud as anyone ever has, "Oh my God, your ass is HUGE!" I guess tourist towns bring together a conglomeration of really unusual people. They're tourists, so they're kinda homogenous in that respect, but they (should I be saying we?) each bring a little special something to my favorite part of Maine. In this case, it was a gargantuan ass, but I guess that's better than nothing...

By the way, I'm listening to the soundtrack for Frida at the moment. I've kinda been listening to it on a permanent loop for the last four days. There's a slightly hilarious song called "La llorona" which includes the lyric "Yo soy como un chile verde, llorona, picante, pero sabroso," which translates to "I'm like a green chile, weeping woman, spicy, but...delicious!"
I just think that's pretty amazing. In a funny little way. Or maybe I'm just tired and need some sleep.