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?!?!