I changed the template. The other one hurt my eyes when I read a lot, or at least made me see weird stripe things because of the contrast. If you do not like the new one, we will meet in single combat.
I'm tired of writing and I'm tired of these 10 minute plays. I feel bad for not showing up to Lethal Inflection rehearsal, but right now, I feel like that's the only thing I can drop out of at the moment.
I made a super smash brothers stage that more or less symbolized my social life. It's got 4 solid pillars, representing you guys, a bunch of drop blocks symbolizing how my social groups sort of drop and reappear sort of erratically, spikes for failed romantic endeavors, and a spinning wheel platform for my family. There were a couple other elements that didn't really mean much, but the stage was unexpectedly playable.
"Majesty, you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself!" "I TOO CAN COMMAND WORDS THAT RHYME! I DO IT ALL THE TIME!"
30 April 2008
29 April 2008
The world was all before them, and they, hand in hand, with wandering step and slow, through Eden took their solitary way.
I'm just back in school from my spring break, which was mostly lovely. The weather was beautiful. Of course, the last couple of days before I left for home, meaning the day of my only final and the day I actually did go home, I had kind of a sore throat. Which by the first day of my break had escalated into a fullscale "hey, your stress level has dragged your immune system down with it" cold. It was pretty awful. I almost lost my voice, and I actually had a fever for a couple of days, which I unusual for me.
I was actually still kind of sick on the day that my mom and I drove back to UIUC to look for apartments. After losing out on the apartment with the girl I met the last time I visited, I emailed a Hanover alumna I'd heard a lot about, who is very friendly and lovely, and she asked around and put me in touch with Arley, who is my new roommate. She is very tall, and plays wheelchair basketball pretty hardcore. She's not actually wheelchair-bound; she has arthritis in her hip and walks with a crutch. She's going into her last year of her creative writing MFA. She's actually already published a book, and if you ask me I will direct you to her book's entry on Amazon. I don't really feel comfortable disclosing that stuff here without her knowledge and all. But it means I'm going to feel like such an underachiever next year, and do all my writing in secret. Her book apparently on a shortlist for a Canadian book award. Arley is Canadian, from Vancouver. Also, she has a cat. Which I'm very excited about. And she's very nice. I met her at a cafe-- Kimberly, too, the girl who introduced me to her. There were some awkward pauses, but we got along pretty well, I think.
We looked at four apartments-- three she found and one I found. The ones she found were better. The first one was tiny, but extremely cheap. Like, it was a two-person apartment for the cost of a one-person apartment. Though kind of fug. The second apartment was charming and spacious, and I knew I liked it immediately because for some reason its weather-beaten door reminded me of a hobbit's house. So I kind of fell in love with that one immediately. It's the second floor of a house. The third apartment was the first floor of a house, but it felt much more housey than apartmenty. A woman and her kid live there now, and it felt kind of... more official and formal than I really wanted. Although there was a bunny living under the porch steps. But afterward Arley and I sat in her car and discussed it, and we both agreed that the second apartment was the one we liked best, and the best deal, really, price-wise. So, I'm really enthused about my new apartment. I feel like such a grownup whenever I talk about it. My new apartment.
After we had made our decision, Arley's shifter thing broke on her car, though, so we walked back to campus. And it's not that far, so that's good to know.
The rest of break was pretty uneventful. Incredibly so, almost. Aunt Barbara and I went to the IMA one day to see a couple of fashion exhibits. Although she liked the second one better than the big-deal first one, I liked the first one better. The fashion was more out there, but more interesting to look at and snark and so on. The second exhibit was focused on some famous designer, but I didn't like the majority of the dresses because they were very formless, which is not something I look for in dresses that people might actually wear. The first exhibit's stuff definitely had form-- although in some cases it was the form of a Japanese lantern, or what you might look like if you stepped out of the shower in space. Also, they put panneirs skirts with t-shirts, and there is nothing not awesome about that. The ground were really gorgeous that day, too, and we walked around a lot. I still think that it would be awesome to just bring people there and do scenes from Pride and Prejudice, at the Lilly mansion.
Now I'm back for spring term. I have one two-hour class four days a week. It's pretty sweet. Tomorrow ITC is performing "300 in 15 Minutes," and on Saturday we're reprising "Harry Potter in 15 (i.e. 45) Minutes." Then, next week, I'm going to Kalamazoo! Whoooo!
"Majesty, you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself!" "I TOO CAN COMMAND WORDS THAT RHYME! I DO IT ALL THE TIME!"
I was actually still kind of sick on the day that my mom and I drove back to UIUC to look for apartments. After losing out on the apartment with the girl I met the last time I visited, I emailed a Hanover alumna I'd heard a lot about, who is very friendly and lovely, and she asked around and put me in touch with Arley, who is my new roommate. She is very tall, and plays wheelchair basketball pretty hardcore. She's not actually wheelchair-bound; she has arthritis in her hip and walks with a crutch. She's going into her last year of her creative writing MFA. She's actually already published a book, and if you ask me I will direct you to her book's entry on Amazon. I don't really feel comfortable disclosing that stuff here without her knowledge and all. But it means I'm going to feel like such an underachiever next year, and do all my writing in secret. Her book apparently on a shortlist for a Canadian book award. Arley is Canadian, from Vancouver. Also, she has a cat. Which I'm very excited about. And she's very nice. I met her at a cafe-- Kimberly, too, the girl who introduced me to her. There were some awkward pauses, but we got along pretty well, I think.
We looked at four apartments-- three she found and one I found. The ones she found were better. The first one was tiny, but extremely cheap. Like, it was a two-person apartment for the cost of a one-person apartment. Though kind of fug. The second apartment was charming and spacious, and I knew I liked it immediately because for some reason its weather-beaten door reminded me of a hobbit's house. So I kind of fell in love with that one immediately. It's the second floor of a house. The third apartment was the first floor of a house, but it felt much more housey than apartmenty. A woman and her kid live there now, and it felt kind of... more official and formal than I really wanted. Although there was a bunny living under the porch steps. But afterward Arley and I sat in her car and discussed it, and we both agreed that the second apartment was the one we liked best, and the best deal, really, price-wise. So, I'm really enthused about my new apartment. I feel like such a grownup whenever I talk about it. My new apartment.
After we had made our decision, Arley's shifter thing broke on her car, though, so we walked back to campus. And it's not that far, so that's good to know.
The rest of break was pretty uneventful. Incredibly so, almost. Aunt Barbara and I went to the IMA one day to see a couple of fashion exhibits. Although she liked the second one better than the big-deal first one, I liked the first one better. The fashion was more out there, but more interesting to look at and snark and so on. The second exhibit was focused on some famous designer, but I didn't like the majority of the dresses because they were very formless, which is not something I look for in dresses that people might actually wear. The first exhibit's stuff definitely had form-- although in some cases it was the form of a Japanese lantern, or what you might look like if you stepped out of the shower in space. Also, they put panneirs skirts with t-shirts, and there is nothing not awesome about that. The ground were really gorgeous that day, too, and we walked around a lot. I still think that it would be awesome to just bring people there and do scenes from Pride and Prejudice, at the Lilly mansion.
Now I'm back for spring term. I have one two-hour class four days a week. It's pretty sweet. Tomorrow ITC is performing "300 in 15 Minutes," and on Saturday we're reprising "Harry Potter in 15 (i.e. 45) Minutes." Then, next week, I'm going to Kalamazoo! Whoooo!
"Majesty, you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself!" "I TOO CAN COMMAND WORDS THAT RHYME! I DO IT ALL THE TIME!"
28 April 2008
Obligatory post so I don't get fed to Lrrr
So, I have also been having some difficulty posting, mostly because I tend to wait for a story to be finished before blogging about it, and there's a lot of stuff I'm midway through right now. In order to avoid being gross, I'm going to be vague - I've had a bit of a medical scare. To make a long story short, I had to go in for some tests on Friday. The tests failed at telling what was wrong with me, but managed to rule out the worse possibilities like cancer and such, so my anxiety has gone down considerably but it's not gone. Still, all weekend I've been kinda freaked out, and this has kept me from getting work done. To make matters worse, the medication the doctors put me on reacts poorly to caffeine, so I'm gonna have to go finals week without any coffee. Actually, I think I'm going through some withdrawal symptoms now. I hadn't realized how addicted I really was.
The other main thing going on is my ten-minute play. It's based on the duo I did for speech, which is in turn based on something I found on the internet. It opens on Wednesday, and it's going to be a disaster. One actor doesn't know his lines, we're short an important prop, and, oh yeah, it's running at eighteen minutes! Far too long for a ten-minute play. We're working on some cuts.
Kylie got a summer job on campus, so that should be fun. Chalkey is sticking around for the first eight weeks as well, and of course, Jonah and Saralyn and Marten will be there. So it should be a good time, even if work is gonna be pretty hard. Still, it'll be great for my resume and portfolio.
I am tired, and I am participating in a bit of IM drama which is not interesting enough to post about, but takes a lot of brain power nonetheless. So I am going to stop now. I'll post again when things are resolved.
"Majesty, you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself!" "I TOO CAN COMMAND WORDS THAT RHYME! I DO IT ALL THE TIME!"
The other main thing going on is my ten-minute play. It's based on the duo I did for speech, which is in turn based on something I found on the internet. It opens on Wednesday, and it's going to be a disaster. One actor doesn't know his lines, we're short an important prop, and, oh yeah, it's running at eighteen minutes! Far too long for a ten-minute play. We're working on some cuts.
Kylie got a summer job on campus, so that should be fun. Chalkey is sticking around for the first eight weeks as well, and of course, Jonah and Saralyn and Marten will be there. So it should be a good time, even if work is gonna be pretty hard. Still, it'll be great for my resume and portfolio.
I am tired, and I am participating in a bit of IM drama which is not interesting enough to post about, but takes a lot of brain power nonetheless. So I am going to stop now. I'll post again when things are resolved.
"Majesty, you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself!" "I TOO CAN COMMAND WORDS THAT RHYME! I DO IT ALL THE TIME!"
27 April 2008
In which Jonah recounts various events, at least one of which includes cross-dressing
A while back I was looking at old blog entries and I realized that emo blogging is not fun to read. As a result I tend to put off blogging when I'm feeling the least bit mopey. However, when the alternative is feeding the Omicron Perseids, well, I'll just try to keep the emo in check.
Where to start?
Dinner with Prof. and ex-wife: not that awkward. Actually not a very good story. Good food but not a good story. I was disappointed, particularly on behalf of you all since I know you awaiting an awkward story. I liked Karen. She was fun.
Comstocks at Common Grounds: We sounded good and drew a decent crowd. Also in his opening, Chalkey played an amazing song about my 24-hour play, the text of which, btw, can be read here. That is the text of the play. For the song, you can go to the same blog, but here. We have attained a small bit of celebrity because our Goliard recording of "Writing a Paper" was circulated a bit by the recording technician, a guy named Jake. I had one random person approach me and tell me how much she liked the song, everyone seems to be listening to the song while writing their final papers, and apparently the weekly Blue Grass Jam session played it, though neither of us was in attendance. We are tentatively thinking about making a CD over the summer. We also played a gig at the OARDC, because Nathan has written some songs about Global Warming and an old lady named Ruth with the Wayne County Sustainable Energy Network loves them. This gig ended up having all of 7 people in attendance, but at least we sounded really good.
Gayla: Most of you have seen the pictures on Facebook. Yes, I dressed up as a woman, for the first time ever. I tend to avoid that sort of thing. All I've got to say is that I looked damn pretty and had a lot of fun. It was amazingly not awkward, except for the part where I didn't tell Saralyn ahead of time and she was a bit shocked on the phone after seeing the pictures. She also asked me if I was gay, which is just not something one wants to hear from one's girlfriend of 2.5 years. Honestly I sort of approached it as an actor, trying to act and think femininely. I'm not sure how well I did, but I do think I'm a less awkward dancer as a girl.
Going (to someone else's) home: This weekend I went home with my friend Amanda to see her sister's high school production of "Oklahoma," which, like last year was vaguely surreal. Sometimes hanging out with Amanda's family is like hanging out with my family if I had sisters instead of brothers. Amanda's family all really like me, and her grandparents are just classic grandparents. They fed me ridiculous amounts of food, and even sent me home with cookies. I also went to the Cleveland Zoo where Amanda works over the summer, and though it was no Mackenzie Day, it was a pretty fun trip. Amanda's little sister Robin (11) accompanied us to the zoo as well as everywhere else, but she is growing older and less obnoxious so it was alright.
Now I'm just dealing with the end of the year, papers, and finals. I'm sure May will be full of much more interestingly bloggable things. By the way, the lj I linked to above belongs to Nate's roommate Chalkey and it tends to be fairly regularly amusing.
One more thing: I'm planning a serious Corndog relaunch as the summer begins, and this should be the relaunch to end all relaunches because I need to start getting more serious about my writing. I will let you all know when it really happens and what the details are.
"Majesty, you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself!" "I TOO CAN COMMAND WORDS THAT RHYME! I DO IT ALL THE TIME!"
Where to start?
Dinner with Prof. and ex-wife: not that awkward. Actually not a very good story. Good food but not a good story. I was disappointed, particularly on behalf of you all since I know you awaiting an awkward story. I liked Karen. She was fun.
Comstocks at Common Grounds: We sounded good and drew a decent crowd. Also in his opening, Chalkey played an amazing song about my 24-hour play, the text of which, btw, can be read here. That is the text of the play. For the song, you can go to the same blog, but here. We have attained a small bit of celebrity because our Goliard recording of "Writing a Paper" was circulated a bit by the recording technician, a guy named Jake. I had one random person approach me and tell me how much she liked the song, everyone seems to be listening to the song while writing their final papers, and apparently the weekly Blue Grass Jam session played it, though neither of us was in attendance. We are tentatively thinking about making a CD over the summer. We also played a gig at the OARDC, because Nathan has written some songs about Global Warming and an old lady named Ruth with the Wayne County Sustainable Energy Network loves them. This gig ended up having all of 7 people in attendance, but at least we sounded really good.
Gayla: Most of you have seen the pictures on Facebook. Yes, I dressed up as a woman, for the first time ever. I tend to avoid that sort of thing. All I've got to say is that I looked damn pretty and had a lot of fun. It was amazingly not awkward, except for the part where I didn't tell Saralyn ahead of time and she was a bit shocked on the phone after seeing the pictures. She also asked me if I was gay, which is just not something one wants to hear from one's girlfriend of 2.5 years. Honestly I sort of approached it as an actor, trying to act and think femininely. I'm not sure how well I did, but I do think I'm a less awkward dancer as a girl.
Going (to someone else's) home: This weekend I went home with my friend Amanda to see her sister's high school production of "Oklahoma," which, like last year was vaguely surreal. Sometimes hanging out with Amanda's family is like hanging out with my family if I had sisters instead of brothers. Amanda's family all really like me, and her grandparents are just classic grandparents. They fed me ridiculous amounts of food, and even sent me home with cookies. I also went to the Cleveland Zoo where Amanda works over the summer, and though it was no Mackenzie Day, it was a pretty fun trip. Amanda's little sister Robin (11) accompanied us to the zoo as well as everywhere else, but she is growing older and less obnoxious so it was alright.
Now I'm just dealing with the end of the year, papers, and finals. I'm sure May will be full of much more interestingly bloggable things. By the way, the lj I linked to above belongs to Nate's roommate Chalkey and it tends to be fairly regularly amusing.
One more thing: I'm planning a serious Corndog relaunch as the summer begins, and this should be the relaunch to end all relaunches because I need to start getting more serious about my writing. I will let you all know when it really happens and what the details are.
"Majesty, you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself!" "I TOO CAN COMMAND WORDS THAT RHYME! I DO IT ALL THE TIME!"
24 April 2008
When an internet cartoonist makes a Monty Python reference, it usually means that he or she has run out of ideas
Haven't done a T&R quote in a long time. Decided to finish that comic once and for all, but it's taking a while.
I am Burnt Out. I have two write another minimum of 7 pages about Maus and Shindler's List and Lanzmaan's Shoah. Excuse me, Lanzmann. I hate it when people's names have too many of one letter. What am I supposed to do, hum nnnnn at the end of his name? How the fuck do I pronounce that? Anyhow, a combination of writing about the Holocaust and having to write anything while it's so pretty outside in general has had me in kind of depressing mood for the past few days. I've spent a lot of time playing pokemon instead of writing. It hasn't helped much. I don't know why I'm so concerned about it, it's only 10% of my grade, and everything else is pretty much done with and shiny. I guess I'm making it comparable to the essay about Dutchman for African American Theatre History that I have yet to finish, which is something like 25% of that grade. I'm so tired of doing anything, I just want to clean up my room and send all the unimportant stuff home and start singing.
Speaking of the summer, I will be living in a dormitory for the first time. All the houses are getting renovated, so OLO is getting a residence hall instead. This will be weird. Maybe we'll get Luce and it will be awesome. Maybe we'll get Armington and it will suck. Maybe we'll get Wagner and we'll try to burn it down, and it'll only get bigger. Either way, I've decided to purchase a mini fridge of my own. Ten percent of the house fridge last year was devoted to beer, and that was only between six people. Five, really, since I didn't really have any of my own beer until near the end. I don't want to see what happens when half the company shares one or two fridges, and Jonah will probably want to keep his.
I have a mustache now. I think it just makes me look older, but it has been said that I look like British villain and a white Billy Dee Williams. I first shaved the lower beard to look like Armand Goldman from The Birdcage for Gayla. It was comical. Jonah can talk about the rest of Gayla, because I don't really feel like it. Kind of depressing, but I'm even tired of procrastinating. I just don't want to do it. If you don't actually do the work eventually, it's not really procrastinating anymore. Gah. This is almost certainly why Senior IS is due at the beginning of March.
"Majesty, you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself!" "I TOO CAN COMMAND WORDS THAT RHYME! I DO IT ALL THE TIME!"
I am Burnt Out. I have two write another minimum of 7 pages about Maus and Shindler's List and Lanzmaan's Shoah. Excuse me, Lanzmann. I hate it when people's names have too many of one letter. What am I supposed to do, hum nnnnn at the end of his name? How the fuck do I pronounce that? Anyhow, a combination of writing about the Holocaust and having to write anything while it's so pretty outside in general has had me in kind of depressing mood for the past few days. I've spent a lot of time playing pokemon instead of writing. It hasn't helped much. I don't know why I'm so concerned about it, it's only 10% of my grade, and everything else is pretty much done with and shiny. I guess I'm making it comparable to the essay about Dutchman for African American Theatre History that I have yet to finish, which is something like 25% of that grade. I'm so tired of doing anything, I just want to clean up my room and send all the unimportant stuff home and start singing.
Speaking of the summer, I will be living in a dormitory for the first time. All the houses are getting renovated, so OLO is getting a residence hall instead. This will be weird. Maybe we'll get Luce and it will be awesome. Maybe we'll get Armington and it will suck. Maybe we'll get Wagner and we'll try to burn it down, and it'll only get bigger. Either way, I've decided to purchase a mini fridge of my own. Ten percent of the house fridge last year was devoted to beer, and that was only between six people. Five, really, since I didn't really have any of my own beer until near the end. I don't want to see what happens when half the company shares one or two fridges, and Jonah will probably want to keep his.
I have a mustache now. I think it just makes me look older, but it has been said that I look like British villain and a white Billy Dee Williams. I first shaved the lower beard to look like Armand Goldman from The Birdcage for Gayla. It was comical. Jonah can talk about the rest of Gayla, because I don't really feel like it. Kind of depressing, but I'm even tired of procrastinating. I just don't want to do it. If you don't actually do the work eventually, it's not really procrastinating anymore. Gah. This is almost certainly why Senior IS is due at the beginning of March.
"Majesty, you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself!" "I TOO CAN COMMAND WORDS THAT RHYME! I DO IT ALL THE TIME!"
23 April 2008
15 April 2008
In which... Well you just gotta read it
So I'm enrolled this semester in an Advanced fictional writing class. It's a followup to last semester's Intro course with the same professor. Part of this class is weekly workshops where we critique each other's work. But the other part involves reading a series of contemporary authors and poets and discussing their styles. A few of these authors and poets, who know Prof. Bourne through his work on the Artful Dodge literary magazine, actually come to visit the class for a day.
The other thing is that students are responsible for leading the discussions on the various authors. We volunteer for the author we want as we go until everyone has done one. The only person in the class who had an author assigned to him was me. Which is to say, earlier this year when I tried to volunteer Professor Bourne said "Actually, Jonah, I'd like you to be in the [I should have taken out her name when I posted this. I'm sure she doesn't want it to come up on a Google search] Jane Doe group. She's from Indiana and she writes about it a lot so I'd like your perspective." And then he said something weird. He said "Also, I think you're psychologically very similar."
That was a weird comment at the time. Flash forward to Monday, four days before Ms. Doe is coming to class, and two days before we start studying her work, when the Professor begins the class by saying "Now before we start looking at Jane Doe, there's something you all should know about her. A couple years ago, she and I were married."
Yes, that's right. The poet who I am "psychologically similar to" is in fact my professors ex-wife. But wait, it gets weirder! He then began to talk about how he had been in the position of being featured in her work, even when it was unflattering. Knowing I'll regret it, I open the book and turn to the poem "As My Husband Translates from the Polish" which, I'll just say it, is about my professor translating poetry in the nude, and includes the stanza "Unselfconscious as a statue,/ he sits heavily in a thin green chair,/ the dusky bunch of genitalia/ hanging between his open thighs." You have no idea how painful that was to type out. I guess I know which poem I won't be leading the discussion on.
But wait, it gets weirder still! On Friday, and this will likely be another entry, I get to have dinner with Ms. Doe, Prof. Bourne, and a few of my classmates.
That is all for now.
"Majesty, you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself!" "I TOO CAN COMMAND WORDS THAT RHYME! I DO IT ALL THE TIME!"
The other thing is that students are responsible for leading the discussions on the various authors. We volunteer for the author we want as we go until everyone has done one. The only person in the class who had an author assigned to him was me. Which is to say, earlier this year when I tried to volunteer Professor Bourne said "Actually, Jonah, I'd like you to be in the [I should have taken out her name when I posted this. I'm sure she doesn't want it to come up on a Google search] Jane Doe group. She's from Indiana and she writes about it a lot so I'd like your perspective." And then he said something weird. He said "Also, I think you're psychologically very similar."
That was a weird comment at the time. Flash forward to Monday, four days before Ms. Doe is coming to class, and two days before we start studying her work, when the Professor begins the class by saying "Now before we start looking at Jane Doe, there's something you all should know about her. A couple years ago, she and I were married."
Yes, that's right. The poet who I am "psychologically similar to" is in fact my professors ex-wife. But wait, it gets weirder! He then began to talk about how he had been in the position of being featured in her work, even when it was unflattering. Knowing I'll regret it, I open the book and turn to the poem "As My Husband Translates from the Polish" which, I'll just say it, is about my professor translating poetry in the nude, and includes the stanza "Unselfconscious as a statue,/ he sits heavily in a thin green chair,/ the dusky bunch of genitalia/ hanging between his open thighs." You have no idea how painful that was to type out. I guess I know which poem I won't be leading the discussion on.
But wait, it gets weirder still! On Friday, and this will likely be another entry, I get to have dinner with Ms. Doe, Prof. Bourne, and a few of my classmates.
That is all for now.
"Majesty, you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself!" "I TOO CAN COMMAND WORDS THAT RHYME! I DO IT ALL THE TIME!"
12 April 2008
But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her.
Continuing...
Last weekend was our sorority formal. We've had bad luck with these in the past-- the buses have been late, the music has stopped working 15 minutes in, last year the power went out in the entire town for about an hour, and at semi-formal the power went out again. But this year, nothing went awry. The location was very pretty-- it had a dance floor with a disco ball, so you know they meant business. And a professional DJ. Initially, I ddin't want to go, mostly since Bethany wasn't here to be my date and I was afraid I was going to be incredibly bored. This turned out not to be the case. In fact, it might have made me more social, because I had to mingle to entertain myself. I hung out with a variety of people, and I actually danced-- both in groups with girls and with a boy! Which, I later calculated, was the first time I'd danced with a boy since middle school. It was a friend of mine, who didn't mind being a goofy dancer with me and made me feel like I didn't look ridiculous. I wore what was to be my bridesmaid's dress, and my friend Marietta did my hair, and it looked lovely. So, I felt pretty and I had a good time. Everything one could ask for from a formal.
The only thing that put a damper on my spirits that weekend was that I lost out on Stephane's apartment offer, and was mad at myself, but Michael told me jokes to cheer me up, and my mom told me I have more money than I thought I did, so that passed.
This week has been insanely busy, while at the same time not feeling that stressful. There were tons of senior IS performances and recitals to attend, and I did attend all I could. And my last papers were due for the semester-- well, my last paper and a poem, which I ended up being pretty proud of and went over well with the poetry class. So, I got to do a lot of "Ha ha, I'm almost done!" at everyone.
Thursday was the school's Honors Convocation. My parents told me they were coming, and I couldn't really see why, because it would probably be boring for them. Earlier in the week I got a letter saying to make sure I showed up, which made me think that I might be getting something, but at the same time it seemed like everybody who was getting something knew about it (even though it was supposed to be a secret), so then I thought, maybe not. So, my parents came and took me to lunch, which was nice. And then I went to class, and from class to the Convocation. All the seniors had to wear our caps and gowns, stand outside forever trying not to let our caps blow off, and then process inside in a rather disorderly fashion. And there was almost not room for all of us in the CFA auditorium. I ended up getting both of the two main awards from the English department. It was kind of like winning an Oscar. I heard them call my name, and the rest of what they said sounded something like, "Blah blah blah Arthurian blah blah blah Illinois." The first award came with two books selected for me by the department (i.e. the Battleses): A Dictionary of Medieval Terms and Phrases, and The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. They are so cool. I pulled them out of their wrapping and whispered, "Sweet!", cementing my status as Such A Geek. The books are signed by all my English professors, and some of them wrote very nice (and/or strange) notes. And all of my sorority sisters, most of whom were sitting nearby, cheered for me. Then they called me a second time, and I'm told I pretty much ran up there and ran back. The second award came with money, which I am officially using to go to the Medieval Conference in Kalamazoo in May. This is the biggest medieval conference in the Midwest, and supposedly a lot of fun. I'm really excited that I get to go.
After the awards, I got told congratulations a lot of times and got hugged a lot, and had my picture taken with Dr. Battles. Then Mom and Dad drove me back to the house, where I deposited the cap and gown, and the proceeded to a reception at the president's house. Sue DeWine, our president, is awesome. I mingled around with friends, and got congratulated more and congratulated others in my turn. I was one of the last people to actually get the sparkling grape juice they had out. There was not enough food, and when I came back in from the porch later, I found that evidently someone had said this: "There is no more food! The people want food! What do we do? What does Sue DeWine have in her refrigerator right now?" "Um... she has some Kraft singles...?" "Fine! Put those out on a plate, and fill the punch bowls with water! IMMEDIATELY!"
Then they took a senior class picture in front of Parker, which took, as you may imagine forever. I was lucky enough to get up on the top level immediately, so my peeps and I were not moved during the endless rearranging of people. After that was a dinner in which senior superlatives and more awards were given. The speaker on our behalf (who was, by the way, in my first grade class) said, "President DeWine is new, so she doesn't remember this, but our freshman year, we were that huge class with so many students. And the next year, we were the class with significantly fewer students."
After that, we came back to the sorority house and chilled for a little while before doing senior wills. In the first phase of this, each senior's little sister performs a song that she has written about her big and gives a prophecy about her big's future. Bethany, because she is amazing, did this for me in France and sent me the lyrics to the song and the prophecy, as well as mailing me a tape recording of her singing the song. Her only request was that she not have to sing the song alone, because she was embarrassed, so I arranged for one of the new members to sing along. The song was to the tune of "The Wizard and I" and it was amazing. It included mentions of Bronte vs. Austen, The Office, and "Taken!". And my future as prophesied by Bethany, in case anyone was wondering, involves me becoming a best-selling author, marrying John Krasinski, making friends with Kate Winslet and Helen Mirren, and having prodigy children. Everybody cheered really loudly when it was done, and later one girl said that the tape recorder and everything almost made her want to cry. All of the other propehcies and songs were really funny, too, to the tune of everything from "I'm Too Sexy" to "Barges" to "Bitch" to "I'm Fucking Matt Damon."
After that, we gave out our stuff, so now I have significantly less crap. Yay! I felt like I should include apology notes along with some of the shirts I gave out, but what else was I supposed to do with them? The final part of the evening involved all of the seniors getting their robes back on and going outside to sing a song and blow out candles symbolically. Except I didn't actually get to blow out my candle because it was so damn windy that by the time it was my turn, my candle had already gone out about four times. I was therefore more frustrated than sad, until we came back out and everybody was hugging and crying. It was very sentimental. Then I came back in and read a note Bethany had given me and instructed me not to open until after wills, and that came very close to making me cry. I think that if Bethany had actually been there, I'd have lost it.
And then we watched The Office.
Last night the seniors did our senior prank, which might have been more effective if more people had actually been there. Some seniors were very bitter about last year's senior prank, which ended with them having to clean up pop tabs for hours (I slept through it, I think), so we decided to do a nice prank. We woke everyone up (and by everyone I mean the four people who were there) with pancakes at 3 am. They had to clean the dishes later, but we didn't even leave them that many dishes. Some of them were grumpy anyway. And later that night someone saran-wrapped the toilet seats.
So, life is pretty excellent right now, which brings with it the anxiety that at any minute the other shoe is going to drop and everything will go horribly wrong. Like, I just sent a couple of emails to Illinois today to make sure that they have my enrollment and to ask them to re-send me an email that my Bulk folder deleted. Hopefully that will go well.
I don't really have anything else to do this weekend, other than ITC rehearsal tonight. Classes ar over, I have one final on Monday, and then SPRING BREAK, WOO HOO!
"Majesty, you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself!" "I TOO CAN COMMAND WORDS THAT RHYME! I DO IT ALL THE TIME!"
Last weekend was our sorority formal. We've had bad luck with these in the past-- the buses have been late, the music has stopped working 15 minutes in, last year the power went out in the entire town for about an hour, and at semi-formal the power went out again. But this year, nothing went awry. The location was very pretty-- it had a dance floor with a disco ball, so you know they meant business. And a professional DJ. Initially, I ddin't want to go, mostly since Bethany wasn't here to be my date and I was afraid I was going to be incredibly bored. This turned out not to be the case. In fact, it might have made me more social, because I had to mingle to entertain myself. I hung out with a variety of people, and I actually danced-- both in groups with girls and with a boy! Which, I later calculated, was the first time I'd danced with a boy since middle school. It was a friend of mine, who didn't mind being a goofy dancer with me and made me feel like I didn't look ridiculous. I wore what was to be my bridesmaid's dress, and my friend Marietta did my hair, and it looked lovely. So, I felt pretty and I had a good time. Everything one could ask for from a formal.
The only thing that put a damper on my spirits that weekend was that I lost out on Stephane's apartment offer, and was mad at myself, but Michael told me jokes to cheer me up, and my mom told me I have more money than I thought I did, so that passed.
This week has been insanely busy, while at the same time not feeling that stressful. There were tons of senior IS performances and recitals to attend, and I did attend all I could. And my last papers were due for the semester-- well, my last paper and a poem, which I ended up being pretty proud of and went over well with the poetry class. So, I got to do a lot of "Ha ha, I'm almost done!" at everyone.
Thursday was the school's Honors Convocation. My parents told me they were coming, and I couldn't really see why, because it would probably be boring for them. Earlier in the week I got a letter saying to make sure I showed up, which made me think that I might be getting something, but at the same time it seemed like everybody who was getting something knew about it (even though it was supposed to be a secret), so then I thought, maybe not. So, my parents came and took me to lunch, which was nice. And then I went to class, and from class to the Convocation. All the seniors had to wear our caps and gowns, stand outside forever trying not to let our caps blow off, and then process inside in a rather disorderly fashion. And there was almost not room for all of us in the CFA auditorium. I ended up getting both of the two main awards from the English department. It was kind of like winning an Oscar. I heard them call my name, and the rest of what they said sounded something like, "Blah blah blah Arthurian blah blah blah Illinois." The first award came with two books selected for me by the department (i.e. the Battleses): A Dictionary of Medieval Terms and Phrases, and The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. They are so cool. I pulled them out of their wrapping and whispered, "Sweet!", cementing my status as Such A Geek. The books are signed by all my English professors, and some of them wrote very nice (and/or strange) notes. And all of my sorority sisters, most of whom were sitting nearby, cheered for me. Then they called me a second time, and I'm told I pretty much ran up there and ran back. The second award came with money, which I am officially using to go to the Medieval Conference in Kalamazoo in May. This is the biggest medieval conference in the Midwest, and supposedly a lot of fun. I'm really excited that I get to go.
After the awards, I got told congratulations a lot of times and got hugged a lot, and had my picture taken with Dr. Battles. Then Mom and Dad drove me back to the house, where I deposited the cap and gown, and the proceeded to a reception at the president's house. Sue DeWine, our president, is awesome. I mingled around with friends, and got congratulated more and congratulated others in my turn. I was one of the last people to actually get the sparkling grape juice they had out. There was not enough food, and when I came back in from the porch later, I found that evidently someone had said this: "There is no more food! The people want food! What do we do? What does Sue DeWine have in her refrigerator right now?" "Um... she has some Kraft singles...?" "Fine! Put those out on a plate, and fill the punch bowls with water! IMMEDIATELY!"
Then they took a senior class picture in front of Parker, which took, as you may imagine forever. I was lucky enough to get up on the top level immediately, so my peeps and I were not moved during the endless rearranging of people. After that was a dinner in which senior superlatives and more awards were given. The speaker on our behalf (who was, by the way, in my first grade class) said, "President DeWine is new, so she doesn't remember this, but our freshman year, we were that huge class with so many students. And the next year, we were the class with significantly fewer students."
After that, we came back to the sorority house and chilled for a little while before doing senior wills. In the first phase of this, each senior's little sister performs a song that she has written about her big and gives a prophecy about her big's future. Bethany, because she is amazing, did this for me in France and sent me the lyrics to the song and the prophecy, as well as mailing me a tape recording of her singing the song. Her only request was that she not have to sing the song alone, because she was embarrassed, so I arranged for one of the new members to sing along. The song was to the tune of "The Wizard and I" and it was amazing. It included mentions of Bronte vs. Austen, The Office, and "Taken!". And my future as prophesied by Bethany, in case anyone was wondering, involves me becoming a best-selling author, marrying John Krasinski, making friends with Kate Winslet and Helen Mirren, and having prodigy children. Everybody cheered really loudly when it was done, and later one girl said that the tape recorder and everything almost made her want to cry. All of the other propehcies and songs were really funny, too, to the tune of everything from "I'm Too Sexy" to "Barges" to "Bitch" to "I'm Fucking Matt Damon."
After that, we gave out our stuff, so now I have significantly less crap. Yay! I felt like I should include apology notes along with some of the shirts I gave out, but what else was I supposed to do with them? The final part of the evening involved all of the seniors getting their robes back on and going outside to sing a song and blow out candles symbolically. Except I didn't actually get to blow out my candle because it was so damn windy that by the time it was my turn, my candle had already gone out about four times. I was therefore more frustrated than sad, until we came back out and everybody was hugging and crying. It was very sentimental. Then I came back in and read a note Bethany had given me and instructed me not to open until after wills, and that came very close to making me cry. I think that if Bethany had actually been there, I'd have lost it.
And then we watched The Office.
Last night the seniors did our senior prank, which might have been more effective if more people had actually been there. Some seniors were very bitter about last year's senior prank, which ended with them having to clean up pop tabs for hours (I slept through it, I think), so we decided to do a nice prank. We woke everyone up (and by everyone I mean the four people who were there) with pancakes at 3 am. They had to clean the dishes later, but we didn't even leave them that many dishes. Some of them were grumpy anyway. And later that night someone saran-wrapped the toilet seats.
So, life is pretty excellent right now, which brings with it the anxiety that at any minute the other shoe is going to drop and everything will go horribly wrong. Like, I just sent a couple of emails to Illinois today to make sure that they have my enrollment and to ask them to re-send me an email that my Bulk folder deleted. Hopefully that will go well.
I don't really have anything else to do this weekend, other than ITC rehearsal tonight. Classes ar over, I have one final on Monday, and then SPRING BREAK, WOO HOO!
"Majesty, you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself!" "I TOO CAN COMMAND WORDS THAT RHYME! I DO IT ALL THE TIME!"
No one who had seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be a heroine.
Okay. I just kind of let the life events pile up on me because I was alternately to busy and too lazy to post about them, so this is going to be a giant mega-post, which may stretch over into two parts, if I run out of time before I have to be somewhere, which I probably will.
My mom came and picked me up from school the Thursday following my last post, and she brought me home for the night. On Friday morning we got up early (soooo eeeearrrrrlllllyyyy) and hit the road. I had intended to sleep in the car, but it turned out I had to be Chewbacca to her Han Solo, that is, play copilot and navigator, so I had to force myself to stay awake. We crossed over into Illinois, which is the flattest state I have ever seen. It was as though God put forth His hands and smoothed out Illinois. Which, I suppose, he did. By means of glaciers. It was also flooded a lot of the way, so that it looked more like Florida than anyplace in the Midwest has a right to, and my mom took pictures with her cell phone to show my granddad and freak him out.
We hit Urbana-Champaign, or Champaign-Urbana, at about 9:30 Central time. (I was so grateful for that extra hour.) It's a rather pretty little city, but with many one-way streets and almost no parking. Which, after a while, really started to stress out my mom ("Um, this says 'permit parking only.'" "I KNOW IT DOES!"). She dropped me off at the English Building, which is completely labyrinthine-- something I'm not at all used to. It had lots of small, rambling hallways, because the building has sort of been cobbled together over the years. I found the office where I was supposed to check in, and the woman there was extremely nice-- she knew who I was, because she'd been expecting me, and was very welcoming. She showed me around the building to the offices I'd be visiting. My first stop was with Dr. Rob Barrett, who is a really cool guy. He was wearing a t-shirt and a necklace his daughter made him, and his office looked a lot like the area around my desk looks when I've been working on a paper-- he, too, had created a Barricade of Books. We talked about the school, I asked some of the questions I'd written down in my nervousness. He complimented my IS, which was very gratifying and unexpected. Then we discovered our mutual love of Star Wars, and I think he was impressed with my store of knowledge. He showed me the Star Wars version of the Dramatic Prairie Dog, and I showed him I Harth Darth, which he enjoyed. He's of the old school Han-Shoots-First school, but he also doesn't hate the prequels, which is excellent. He, then, walked me to the office of Dr. Charlie Wright, who I knew of becuase he had been Dr Battles's advisor in his days at UIUC. So I expected this guy to be 1) old and 2) intimidating. He was old, but not too intimidating, actually. Maybe he will be when I'm in his class, but I just found him to be like an older Paul Battles. They dress alike and everything, which almost made me crack up, because Dr. Battles and I had just had a conversation days previously about scholars who adopt their advisors' dress style. Dr. Wright cleared up a lot of things about classes, and talked about the area a lot, and left me with a certainty that I'm going to have to seriously brush up on my Old English over the summer, because he thinks I can still do it.
After that, I met the girl who was to show me around campus, a Ph.D. student named Stephane. She was incredibly gracious and nice, and we got along well. This is the girl I almost ended up living with, but didn't. She took me to the library first, which is beautiful and huge and impressive. The books are kept downstairs in what seems almost like... a dungeon, but in a good way, if that makes any sense. And the whole place is, again, cobbled together out of carrels that look like cages and staircases that lead nowhere, and endless hallways and rows of shelves. If I ever have to go back to Hanover's library again, I am going to cry and cry. Then she took me to the Student Union, and we made fun of the portraits of famous alumni. It was really funny to hear her refer to the school as in a small town, and kind of small-- at Hanover, we have two famous alumni, two places to eat, and a Wal-Mart. Anyway, then we went to lunch, and had nice conversation, and then a bunch of the other medieval students came in and I got to meet them. They seem like such a great group of people. One of them was actually about to present at her first conference, too, and she was one of the first people I'd found who understood how nervous I was about that. I felt like I fit in there, which was an amazing feeling. And then, after that, while I was waiting for my mom outside the English building, I heard somebody say, "Hi, Erin!" and I thought, Who the hell do I know here already? And it was Dr. Wright again. So, all in all, I'm extremely excited about going to Illinois now. And I'm going to try to get one of my friends who's doing medieval to come there next year, because she would love it and it would be awesome.
So, then Mom and I hit the road again. We got slightly lost for a bit looking for Joliet, which is a pretty small town. The University of St. Francis, where I presented my paper, is in a neighborhood that reminds me of Butler, but the school itself reminded me of Marian. In that, it was kind of ghetto. It looked like a high school. Almost everything was in one or two buildings. Instead of having an administration building, they had an administration office. Nonetheless, a lot of undergrads from schools all over everywhere came to the conference. My paper was in the first round of presentations, and I was really nervous right up until the point when I sat down up front and realized that I'd just be presenting to about thirty people, most of whom where students like me and their parents. So, I was able to relax, and the only thing that made me a little nervous and a little fast with the talking was the time. I presented my paper, it went fine, and afterward three people told me they liked it-- two that night and one the next morning. The presenter who went after me was good, talking about Christina Rosetti poems, although there was a little bit of stretching in the feminist reading, which I don't like. Afterward, Some Guy in the audience told her he wished she'd gotten to the part about comparing fruit to breasts sooner, and I was like... Really? Because, I was thinking she should have cut that part out entirely. Because it was dumb. The last girl that went in my session was the most confident presenter, and her paper was a piece of crap. It was about religious motifs in a movie starring Bjork. When she got to "Bjork," Mom and I shot one another Jim faces across the room. We couldn't help it. Most of her paper seemed like she was just making stuff up, and Mom told me afterward, "You really have to stop making faces like that when you're in frong of everyone. You have a very readable face." When she was done, she and some guy in the audience got into a big debate over the definition of "true beauty" in relation to postmodernism, and I was like, "Aaaaand this is why I do medieval." So, there was the option of a dinner after that, but Mom and I just went to a Chinese buffet, and then came back and watched an episode of Bones on the portable DVD player: "The Glowing Bones in the Old Stone House."
The next day I went back to the conference, and there I made friends with another student and her mom who had liked my paper. I sort of latched onto them, since Mom had had enough academia. They were very nice. I went to her paper, which was over Samuel Richardson's Pamela, and I could have asked some questions since I was probably one of the few people there who was actually familiar with it, but I decided to let her off the hook because she was scared. The rest of the papers in that session were about Jane Eyre: one good one comparing Jane Eyre to Pride and Prejudice, and two iffy ones on the "madwoman in the attic" thing. The last one in particular was Making Stuff Up again, and led me to write in my notes, "Why is St. John tracking a feminine symbol all over Jane's floor?" After that was a luncheon, at which I made some more friends from Mount Union College. The guy caught me being amused at his enthusiasm over pie, and the girl quoted She Stoops to Conquer, in which she had been Mrs. Hardcastle, and I told her I had been Constance, and then they asked me to sit with them. I think there was flirting with the guy, though I'm not quite sure. But I think so. He was presenting over James Joyce, and I had to miss his paper because it was in the last sesion and I had to leave before that, but when he pulled out his James Joyce finger puppet, I took the opportunity to bring out my Jane Austen action figure, which I'd brought for luck, and take a picture on my phone. Now this boy is my Facebook friend. So, that was really fun. I went to one more session over medieval stuff after lunch. Only one of the three presenters was actually there, and the session was notable for Some Guy From The Day Before Who Had Been Excited About the Fruit-Breasts getting really belligerent at one of the absent kid's argument about The Canterbury Tales. He sounded like, if that kid was there, he would have smacked him for being a stupid smart-ass.
Then Mom picked me up and drove home. And once we got back into Indiana, I was allowed to sleep. I woke up when we stopped at a gas station-- Dad called while Mom was inside using the restroom, and we had this conversation: "Where are you?" "Uh... I dunno... I've been asleep... we're at a gas station." "When are you getting home?" "...Uh..." "How long ago did you leave?" "...Just woke up... gas station... ask Mom?"
And then the next day I went to breakfast with my mom, grandparents, and Aunt Barbara. And I've already run out of time. More to come, as we play Catch Up With Erin...
"Majesty, you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself!" "I TOO CAN COMMAND WORDS THAT RHYME! I DO IT ALL THE TIME!"
My mom came and picked me up from school the Thursday following my last post, and she brought me home for the night. On Friday morning we got up early (soooo eeeearrrrrlllllyyyy) and hit the road. I had intended to sleep in the car, but it turned out I had to be Chewbacca to her Han Solo, that is, play copilot and navigator, so I had to force myself to stay awake. We crossed over into Illinois, which is the flattest state I have ever seen. It was as though God put forth His hands and smoothed out Illinois. Which, I suppose, he did. By means of glaciers. It was also flooded a lot of the way, so that it looked more like Florida than anyplace in the Midwest has a right to, and my mom took pictures with her cell phone to show my granddad and freak him out.
We hit Urbana-Champaign, or Champaign-Urbana, at about 9:30 Central time. (I was so grateful for that extra hour.) It's a rather pretty little city, but with many one-way streets and almost no parking. Which, after a while, really started to stress out my mom ("Um, this says 'permit parking only.'" "I KNOW IT DOES!"). She dropped me off at the English Building, which is completely labyrinthine-- something I'm not at all used to. It had lots of small, rambling hallways, because the building has sort of been cobbled together over the years. I found the office where I was supposed to check in, and the woman there was extremely nice-- she knew who I was, because she'd been expecting me, and was very welcoming. She showed me around the building to the offices I'd be visiting. My first stop was with Dr. Rob Barrett, who is a really cool guy. He was wearing a t-shirt and a necklace his daughter made him, and his office looked a lot like the area around my desk looks when I've been working on a paper-- he, too, had created a Barricade of Books. We talked about the school, I asked some of the questions I'd written down in my nervousness. He complimented my IS, which was very gratifying and unexpected. Then we discovered our mutual love of Star Wars, and I think he was impressed with my store of knowledge. He showed me the Star Wars version of the Dramatic Prairie Dog, and I showed him I Harth Darth, which he enjoyed. He's of the old school Han-Shoots-First school, but he also doesn't hate the prequels, which is excellent. He, then, walked me to the office of Dr. Charlie Wright, who I knew of becuase he had been Dr Battles's advisor in his days at UIUC. So I expected this guy to be 1) old and 2) intimidating. He was old, but not too intimidating, actually. Maybe he will be when I'm in his class, but I just found him to be like an older Paul Battles. They dress alike and everything, which almost made me crack up, because Dr. Battles and I had just had a conversation days previously about scholars who adopt their advisors' dress style. Dr. Wright cleared up a lot of things about classes, and talked about the area a lot, and left me with a certainty that I'm going to have to seriously brush up on my Old English over the summer, because he thinks I can still do it.
After that, I met the girl who was to show me around campus, a Ph.D. student named Stephane. She was incredibly gracious and nice, and we got along well. This is the girl I almost ended up living with, but didn't. She took me to the library first, which is beautiful and huge and impressive. The books are kept downstairs in what seems almost like... a dungeon, but in a good way, if that makes any sense. And the whole place is, again, cobbled together out of carrels that look like cages and staircases that lead nowhere, and endless hallways and rows of shelves. If I ever have to go back to Hanover's library again, I am going to cry and cry. Then she took me to the Student Union, and we made fun of the portraits of famous alumni. It was really funny to hear her refer to the school as in a small town, and kind of small-- at Hanover, we have two famous alumni, two places to eat, and a Wal-Mart. Anyway, then we went to lunch, and had nice conversation, and then a bunch of the other medieval students came in and I got to meet them. They seem like such a great group of people. One of them was actually about to present at her first conference, too, and she was one of the first people I'd found who understood how nervous I was about that. I felt like I fit in there, which was an amazing feeling. And then, after that, while I was waiting for my mom outside the English building, I heard somebody say, "Hi, Erin!" and I thought, Who the hell do I know here already? And it was Dr. Wright again. So, all in all, I'm extremely excited about going to Illinois now. And I'm going to try to get one of my friends who's doing medieval to come there next year, because she would love it and it would be awesome.
So, then Mom and I hit the road again. We got slightly lost for a bit looking for Joliet, which is a pretty small town. The University of St. Francis, where I presented my paper, is in a neighborhood that reminds me of Butler, but the school itself reminded me of Marian. In that, it was kind of ghetto. It looked like a high school. Almost everything was in one or two buildings. Instead of having an administration building, they had an administration office. Nonetheless, a lot of undergrads from schools all over everywhere came to the conference. My paper was in the first round of presentations, and I was really nervous right up until the point when I sat down up front and realized that I'd just be presenting to about thirty people, most of whom where students like me and their parents. So, I was able to relax, and the only thing that made me a little nervous and a little fast with the talking was the time. I presented my paper, it went fine, and afterward three people told me they liked it-- two that night and one the next morning. The presenter who went after me was good, talking about Christina Rosetti poems, although there was a little bit of stretching in the feminist reading, which I don't like. Afterward, Some Guy in the audience told her he wished she'd gotten to the part about comparing fruit to breasts sooner, and I was like... Really? Because, I was thinking she should have cut that part out entirely. Because it was dumb. The last girl that went in my session was the most confident presenter, and her paper was a piece of crap. It was about religious motifs in a movie starring Bjork. When she got to "Bjork," Mom and I shot one another Jim faces across the room. We couldn't help it. Most of her paper seemed like she was just making stuff up, and Mom told me afterward, "You really have to stop making faces like that when you're in frong of everyone. You have a very readable face." When she was done, she and some guy in the audience got into a big debate over the definition of "true beauty" in relation to postmodernism, and I was like, "Aaaaand this is why I do medieval." So, there was the option of a dinner after that, but Mom and I just went to a Chinese buffet, and then came back and watched an episode of Bones on the portable DVD player: "The Glowing Bones in the Old Stone House."
The next day I went back to the conference, and there I made friends with another student and her mom who had liked my paper. I sort of latched onto them, since Mom had had enough academia. They were very nice. I went to her paper, which was over Samuel Richardson's Pamela, and I could have asked some questions since I was probably one of the few people there who was actually familiar with it, but I decided to let her off the hook because she was scared. The rest of the papers in that session were about Jane Eyre: one good one comparing Jane Eyre to Pride and Prejudice, and two iffy ones on the "madwoman in the attic" thing. The last one in particular was Making Stuff Up again, and led me to write in my notes, "Why is St. John tracking a feminine symbol all over Jane's floor?" After that was a luncheon, at which I made some more friends from Mount Union College. The guy caught me being amused at his enthusiasm over pie, and the girl quoted She Stoops to Conquer, in which she had been Mrs. Hardcastle, and I told her I had been Constance, and then they asked me to sit with them. I think there was flirting with the guy, though I'm not quite sure. But I think so. He was presenting over James Joyce, and I had to miss his paper because it was in the last sesion and I had to leave before that, but when he pulled out his James Joyce finger puppet, I took the opportunity to bring out my Jane Austen action figure, which I'd brought for luck, and take a picture on my phone. Now this boy is my Facebook friend. So, that was really fun. I went to one more session over medieval stuff after lunch. Only one of the three presenters was actually there, and the session was notable for Some Guy From The Day Before Who Had Been Excited About the Fruit-Breasts getting really belligerent at one of the absent kid's argument about The Canterbury Tales. He sounded like, if that kid was there, he would have smacked him for being a stupid smart-ass.
Then Mom picked me up and drove home. And once we got back into Indiana, I was allowed to sleep. I woke up when we stopped at a gas station-- Dad called while Mom was inside using the restroom, and we had this conversation: "Where are you?" "Uh... I dunno... I've been asleep... we're at a gas station." "When are you getting home?" "...Uh..." "How long ago did you leave?" "...Just woke up... gas station... ask Mom?"
And then the next day I went to breakfast with my mom, grandparents, and Aunt Barbara. And I've already run out of time. More to come, as we play Catch Up With Erin...
"Majesty, you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself!" "I TOO CAN COMMAND WORDS THAT RHYME! I DO IT ALL THE TIME!"
06 April 2008
Damn it, woman, you sunk my battleship!
My experience with this year's 24-hour play festival was a little different from Marten's. You see, I've been looking forward to this since last year's twenty-four hour plays. It's one of my favorite days of the year. Last year's was amazing, so this year I decided to direct. Normally the directors come in an our before the actors and fight over the script they're going to get. As soon as this process started, however, Scott suggested I take the play written by my brother and my roommate because "No one else can make heads or tale's of it." This worried me considering the script my roommate wrote last year, but I quickly realized why after I read it - they had written a time travel story. I love time travel, but I understand some of the dialog involved can be a bit daunting to the uninitiated. I thought it would work well. Now normally, it's not a good idea to cast writer/actors in the play that they wrote. But this play called for one actor to play Tim and the director to play Tim from the future. How could I not cast my identical twin as past self? So it was done.
6:30. Our lead actress is half an hour late, and not answering her phone. So we head over to Douglass hall to bang on her door. Unfortunately, we forgot that you can't swipe into a dorm where you don't live before 8:00. So we stand there for a bit, hoping someone will show up to let us in. That's when Jonah notices a window just slightly open leading to the basement. It turns out to lead to a women's bathroom, but by the time the sex of the bathroom has been determined, we're already inside. So we go up there, we bang on the door and we wait. Five minutes later, she opens the door, in her pajamas.
"What?"
"24 hour plays,"
"Huh? When?"
"Now. Actually, half an hour ago,"
"Oh, I'm sorry. I'm really really tired,"
"We all are,"
"Yeah, I think I'm not gonna do it this year,"
"You do realize that the writers decided how many parts to write based on how many actors signed up, right?"
"I'm sorry, I'm just really, really tired,"
Yeah, well when you're talking to two people who've slept three hours between them, that's an excuse that just doesn't cut it. We were pretty pissed. Especially since we'd BROKEN INTO A DORM to get her. So we went back, recasted, shuffled around the parts and it probably ended up being a better show for it (especially since it resulted in me coming out in a fairly revealing pink toga.) Anyhow, the show came out quite well in the end, despite slight problems, and I think it was probably one of the better plays of the night.
Next up - my ten minute play. Rehearsals start tomorrow. I am quite concerned about having enough time to do it, but we're just gonna half to cross our fingers.
Majesty, you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself!" "I TOO CAN COMMAND WORDS THAT RHYME! I DO IT ALL THE TIME!"
6:30. Our lead actress is half an hour late, and not answering her phone. So we head over to Douglass hall to bang on her door. Unfortunately, we forgot that you can't swipe into a dorm where you don't live before 8:00. So we stand there for a bit, hoping someone will show up to let us in. That's when Jonah notices a window just slightly open leading to the basement. It turns out to lead to a women's bathroom, but by the time the sex of the bathroom has been determined, we're already inside. So we go up there, we bang on the door and we wait. Five minutes later, she opens the door, in her pajamas.
"What?"
"24 hour plays,"
"Huh? When?"
"Now. Actually, half an hour ago,"
"Oh, I'm sorry. I'm really really tired,"
"We all are,"
"Yeah, I think I'm not gonna do it this year,"
"You do realize that the writers decided how many parts to write based on how many actors signed up, right?"
"I'm sorry, I'm just really, really tired,"
Yeah, well when you're talking to two people who've slept three hours between them, that's an excuse that just doesn't cut it. We were pretty pissed. Especially since we'd BROKEN INTO A DORM to get her. So we went back, recasted, shuffled around the parts and it probably ended up being a better show for it (especially since it resulted in me coming out in a fairly revealing pink toga.) Anyhow, the show came out quite well in the end, despite slight problems, and I think it was probably one of the better plays of the night.
Next up - my ten minute play. Rehearsals start tomorrow. I am quite concerned about having enough time to do it, but we're just gonna half to cross our fingers.
Majesty, you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself!" "I TOO CAN COMMAND WORDS THAT RHYME! I DO IT ALL THE TIME!"
05 April 2008
Nothing's ever good enough for you, is it?
I'd like to begin with a couple announcements. Firstly, a thank you to Ethel Merman for her invaluable musical service in the Tribunal of Justice of Compendium of Stupidity. May her successor uphold the ideals she set in place. Secondly, I, in sincere honesty, only voted once in the last poll, just to be a good sport. And it seems that decision has lost me nothing, and invisible allies have assisted my super-democratic methods. That said, I'll probably vote for Helen Mirren several times, though I'd like to know why Tilda Swinton isn't on the list.
Today I was roped into the 24 hour plays. The process occurred at seven in the morning, and went something like this:
Jonah: bursts through the door, shouting Marten! Another actor dropped out! Can you act?
Marten: in the bottom end of an REM cycle mlllleeeeeagh.. shhifflg.
Jonah: So will you do it?
Marten: wha...t. what happened.... who...plays?
Jonah: Owen dropped out at the last second, and we need another guy.
Marten: rapidly going through his previous plans, trying to escape. But... I said D&D... Fay's campaign... they all suck, need me to know how stuff works...
Jonah: on phone, clearly playing to my weakness for directors in need No, he says he's got D&D today. Yeah, Fay's campaign... I guess I could just act in another one...
Marten: admitting defeat Tell them I'll do it. Just wait for me to start moving...
So I did a show as a Senior going to do his Oral Presentation for his IS, only to discover that his professors hadn't actually read it. Instead, they recruit him in a secret war against zombies, which is revealed to be a hoax after his departure. It was pretty funny, and so were all the other shows. I'll let Nathan and Jonah talk about theirs.
The night previous was a Super Smash Brothers Brawl tournament. It was lovely, huge turn out, and I didn't lose until I got to fighting the people I always fight, and Chalkey (one of my regular opponents) won the tourney. We entered as team Off Constantly. The team name is irrelevant to the game play, we just did this so whenever any of us lost, we could say "Congrats, you beat Off Constantly." A bit sophomoric, yes, but what could you expect from a bunch of college kids playing video games for money? I pretty much brought sexy back as Zelda, Ari maintained the utility of Marth, and Chalkey rocked the playground with Lucas. Nathan was out pretty quick, losing to the stubbornly held belief that Yoshi is worth playing in a competitive way. There were a plethora of space animals that held varying degrees of success, and several Kirby's at the beginning while the newer players were weeded out. All and all it was a fun night of gaming, and I look forward to next years competition.
Before I forget, on April Fool's Day, I managed to rickroll people in real life. This was largely through use of a pun; I wrote rick on the bottom of a dinner roll. I was rather proud of myself.
"Majesty, you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself!" "I TOO CAN COMMAND WORDS THAT RHYME! I DO IT ALL THE TIME!"
Today I was roped into the 24 hour plays. The process occurred at seven in the morning, and went something like this:
Jonah: bursts through the door, shouting Marten! Another actor dropped out! Can you act?
Marten: in the bottom end of an REM cycle mlllleeeeeagh.. shhifflg.
Jonah: So will you do it?
Marten: wha...t. what happened.... who...plays?
Jonah: Owen dropped out at the last second, and we need another guy.
Marten: rapidly going through his previous plans, trying to escape. But... I said D&D... Fay's campaign... they all suck, need me to know how stuff works...
Jonah: on phone, clearly playing to my weakness for directors in need No, he says he's got D&D today. Yeah, Fay's campaign... I guess I could just act in another one...
Marten: admitting defeat Tell them I'll do it. Just wait for me to start moving...
So I did a show as a Senior going to do his Oral Presentation for his IS, only to discover that his professors hadn't actually read it. Instead, they recruit him in a secret war against zombies, which is revealed to be a hoax after his departure. It was pretty funny, and so were all the other shows. I'll let Nathan and Jonah talk about theirs.
The night previous was a Super Smash Brothers Brawl tournament. It was lovely, huge turn out, and I didn't lose until I got to fighting the people I always fight, and Chalkey (one of my regular opponents) won the tourney. We entered as team Off Constantly. The team name is irrelevant to the game play, we just did this so whenever any of us lost, we could say "Congrats, you beat Off Constantly." A bit sophomoric, yes, but what could you expect from a bunch of college kids playing video games for money? I pretty much brought sexy back as Zelda, Ari maintained the utility of Marth, and Chalkey rocked the playground with Lucas. Nathan was out pretty quick, losing to the stubbornly held belief that Yoshi is worth playing in a competitive way. There were a plethora of space animals that held varying degrees of success, and several Kirby's at the beginning while the newer players were weeded out. All and all it was a fun night of gaming, and I look forward to next years competition.
Before I forget, on April Fool's Day, I managed to rickroll people in real life. This was largely through use of a pun; I wrote rick on the bottom of a dinner roll. I was rather proud of myself.
"Majesty, you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself!" "I TOO CAN COMMAND WORDS THAT RHYME! I DO IT ALL THE TIME!"
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