Razhumikin Razzmatazz... it's a dash of Dostoevsky, a dash of show biz, and that's it.

CAKE BALLLLLLLLLS!

2009-09-01T16:47:00.000-07:00

Ok... my world was just rocked today. And here is why. Kathy (of theurbanpantry.blogspot.com) introduced me to cake balls. Now, Kathy is a coworker, and she's also a better blogger than I am. She's a solid writer and her blog has a topic instead of being poopy and unfunny like mine. I've just backslidden, guys; I think I'll redeem my blog one of these days. Her new thing is making, like, all of Bobby Flay's burgers.

Plus, she and her husband Brian are (at the risk of embarrassing either or both of them) a really great couple. She picks out his shoes, guys.

Anyway. Cake Balls. You make cake from a mix and, while it is still warm, just kind of smoosh it with a tub of the icing of your choice, form balls out of it, and dunk the balls in almond bark/chocolate/something that hardens, making eating mass quantities feasibly neat. How American. How genius. Who invented these again?

(Warning to men: I am going to mention PMS in the next paragraph.)

This is the perfect PMS food. Cake balls could have stopped all angry eighties she-rock from ever being written. I don't think you can listen to Joan Jett and eat cake balls at the same time. I could be wrong.

"The deepest cuts are human made," Pat? Cake balls, oddly enough, are ALSO human made. Want one? Crisis averted, problem solved.

CAAAAAAAAAAAAKEBALLS.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is what blogging on a sugar high looks like.

2009-08-30T11:10:00.000-07:00

a. It's killing me that I'm not back at school right now.

I don't wish I was back at school all the time or even most of the time, but I do miss my friends there... I miss my class and how cool we were... I miss the department... I miss getting to welcome the first-years and seeing how they grow over a semester dedicated to the culler of the herd, Miss Pax Xxda*, drama, and stagecraft...

I even miss reading science fiction for Schroeder. I don't always appreciate science fiction--too many bogus terms and made-up names, it's a recipe for nerddom disaster, what's next? cons?--but I look back fondly on Marxist criticism...

In dealing with this, I've been watching MissShanna's makeup tutorials on youtube... it doesn't make me miss her voice or her Coastal Scents palette any less... but it's how I deal.

Actually, youtube is a pretty important coping mechanism. As the form that my grief is taking, I watch any and all videos linked to from Twitter, etc. I just watched Mike's link--a video of his boyfriend, Gavin--last night. And then I looked up the name of my school and watched all the illegal videos of productions, which made me feel incredibly rebellious.

b. Don't tell me what I can't do. Becoming a theme in my life.

c. Reasons to love Publix: the natural section with steel cut oats**, the giant scale in front (what? I'm curious), the fresh sushi, the feeling I get when I shop there instead of Walmart. Grocery stores down here are infinitely better than the ones up there. However, I just realized with a pang that I'm farther away from Wawa. UGH.

d. How about that nighttime shuttle launch? Now I can say I've seen one and will never have to stay up for one again... oh wait... it's the LAST ONE.

e. My latest thing is vegan marshmallow brownies from here: http://www.drunkenmonkeycoffee.com/
I haven't found a coffee beverage that I love yet... but I'm young, give me time...
But yeah... vegan brownies are so good, I may just actually try to make some one day.

*Triple Xs notwithstanding, not a porn star
**Steel Cut Oats would be an awesome band name... it's a little bluegrass, hippie and rock at the same time...

at work and play

2009-08-24T15:39:00.000-07:00

The 411...

I moved, a little over a week ago.

I drove in what appeared to me to be a torrential rainstorm. In hindsight... this opinion may change as hurricane season comes upon me and I get to experience what real rain really is.

Through it all, God... and my confidence in Him... has been pretty incredible. These past few weeks have been full of firsts and full of what I can only describe as "adulthood"--thinking about insurance and checking my radiator fluid and moving my bed away from the window to keep far away from the bugs... and ultimately, I have peace about where I am.

I do sort of miss being a student, and I most definitely miss theatre. I, obviously, am not working a theatre job right now. This was my choice and I'm totally excited about my present job and my future in the arts. However... this is not an artistic borough. It's new, it's developing, and it's a little suburban. Too far away from Disney for the Disney performers to come and detox with the production of real art. We'll see... maybe I can find my theatre after all...

Figuring things out... my nose ring is on the right side (the left) and I haven't starved yet... so I must be doing something right.

I think I want to read C.S. Lewis' Til We Have Faces again. I read it in high school, which is to say that I never really read it... from the quotes that I read from it recently, I think that TWHF really describes the bitterness that a religious person can have... so yeah, thoughts may be forthcoming.

I have been rereading Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Apparently graduating college makes me regress to high school... but I have this new translation that I'm excited about... and Underground Man reminds me of Jordan Hunt... and we all miss Jordan.

2009-08-04T09:08:00.001-07:00

This week is wack.

For those of you who know me, and who pay attention, you know this is the last week of my internship. Then, I'm coming back for a week. Then, I'm leaving to start my job here.

It's a tad stressful... and it doesn't help that Florida is kind of Jurassic Park-ish, with these crazy, baldheaded birds, and I can see all the vultures ominously staring down my back, wondering if I can get everything done or if I am the next roadkill.

Something isn't right. Maybe it's my hair--blond again. Too blond? Not blond enough?

Maybe it's the coffee. Too dark? Not dark enough?

Something doesn't seem to fit... and it's not the opportunities that I'm confident God has given me... it's the waiting for them.

2009-07-17T06:10:00.000-07:00

Truly Great Discovery of the Week: soy milk lattes. OMGOMGOMGOMG guys! It's the best thing since Matthew Morrison decided to do musicals. Soy milk foams way, way better than real milk, and it doesn't have the hot-milk taste... it does, however, taste like soy milk.

Budget: I have been trying to make one for the fall. It looks like I will be living on tap water, bananas and the occasional Lance cracker. Shame, because there's a Dunkin' Donuts on every street corner and I prefer that SO much to Starbucks.

Reinventing myself: I'm basically the same as I always was, but I'm not as scared of some things... like running.

2009-07-06T06:25:00.000-07:00

Florida is turning me into a hippie, sans use of recreational drugs and/or that natural rock deodorant junk... so maybe I'm a hipster instead? I don't know.

I knew this would happen as soon as I got my nose pierced.

Part of it is that I royally stink at being at least a little bit sporty... like 70% of the girls I live with are... so I'm looking for an alternative to that...

Part of it is that I can drink loose-leaf tea with agave nectar and not gag. And also I'm looking to live overseas and make no money.

But yeah, mostly it's the piercing.

2009-06-22T06:56:00.000-07:00

--Still trying, a bit unsuccessfully, to find Orlando theatre I'm interested in... um... is it sad that the only play I really want to see is the 40-minute Finding Nemo in Animal Kingdom?!

--My nose is pierced, and there are gross pictures of the process. Now I'm praying it doesn't get infected; I religiously clean it. I want a hole in my nose forever.

--I just--like just now-- got some bad news; so pray for me.

into:

2009-06-15T11:54:00.000-07:00

art deco

this verse-- For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with Him. 1 Thessalonians 5:9-10... snicker if you will, faith in Jesus is what is keeping me from going crazy wondering what the heck is going to happen to me in seven weeks.

Thai (the food, the language, the prospect of taking a couple of classes at Payap University in Chiang Mai... jealous much? Yes, yes, you are!)

canoeing (but not so much steering)

my housemates... these girls are golden!

living life to the fullest!

Updates from the Field

2009-06-07T12:42:00.000-07:00

Did you know that there is a Rosalind Avenue in Orlando? Well, there is. I think of Shakespeare approximately twice every day here.

It is also part-time-monsoon season here.

And the for-real part of my internship is starting tomorrow... no more team-building exercises that leave you soaking wet, no more trips to theme-parks that result in meeting lots of international new friends... just, no more. But the exciting part is that the for-real part of my internship is starting. And the exciting-verging-on-terrifying part is that in nine weeks, I'll be somewhere that is heretofore unknown. It's like God's keeping secrets from me, but in a good way.

2009-05-19T10:13:00.000-07:00

Did you know that Hershey's now makes 60-calorie dark chocolate sticks that, like Mary Poppins, are practically perfect in every way?

Just sayin'.

I also wanted to clarify what I said earlier about doubt. Full-on, inhibiting doubt should never be a destination because that's not healthy for my soul and it doesn't glorify God, but I don't think there's any shame in having some doubt in transit.

My brother, who is reading over my shoulder, wants me to "put in some kind words" about him. So here goes. I am so proud of this kid: he's a musical genius, a scathing critic, a high school graduate. He's come so far from the silent muse with melted chocolate for eyes, so far from the holy terror, so far from everything he's been. He touches my heart and makes me laugh every time I see him. Even if he makes me laugh because he whispers that I smell like livestock or something else that's just blatantly socially unacceptable. I wouldn't laugh if anybody else in the world told me I smelled "like cattle, like horse poo," as John once did.

I'm going to be making at least one major move soon, but I can tell you now that looking for a new church is going to be excruciating. I have so many ties to this one. These people have loved me through many heinous haircuts and bad attitudes. AND... AND... my pastor introduced me to this youtube video:

I love this song. Usually I don't love reinterpretations of The Beatles. Sometimes I like reinterpretations of The Beatles, because good songs can stand good covers. But usually the covers are not good. (The Jonas Brothers singing Hello Goodbye for Target commercials? I was nauseated for a month. It was like being pregnant without the excuse to eat for two.)And I'd imagine it'd be even harder to cover a Beatles tune that Eric Clapton played lead guitar for... but I like this, nonetheless.

2009-05-17T20:17:00.000-07:00

a. The only reading I've been able to do:
William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. No, I had never read it. I agree, I really wasn't a Southerner all those years. It's perfectly, hopelessly flawed: one of those stirring novels that says a thousand things in a thousand different ways, but when it is coherent, it is heartbreakingly so. I loved it. Oprah loved it in 2005. The sticker on the front said so.

G.K. Chesterton's The Four Faultless Felons. Now, I really like a lot of G.K. Chesterton's writings, because he's really fat and happy*, but these brief, related novellas were some exceptions. There was a lot of anti-Semitic rhetoric and characterizations throughout the stories that weren't relevant and were really disheartening. I haven't noticed this in my preferred Chesterton offerings but it might color my rereadings of those books (Orthodoxy, The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond, The Man Who Was Thursday).

*read: the anti-Dostoevsky. You can't subsist on Fyodor alone. That is, I can't. I love him, but sometimes I need a break.

And I picked up this Bible study on faith. I'll have to look up its name because it has some pretty dap quotes from Flannery O'Connor and a lot of ideas that I agree with, such as the Descartian idea that doubt is part of any journey of faith, and some ideas that took me aback, but in a good way.

b. Public service announcement: Starbucks is offering 1.95$ grande iced coffees with milk through June! See? Such expressions of benevolence can't be from a corporate monster! (Although I do miss that cash-only-please coffee place on Main with the generous espresso artist.) My sister and I took advantage of the special the other day. Fact I found out in the course of drinking our caramel, skim milk iced coffees: she considers coffee shops to be perfect date destinations. (Incidental fact: I do, too. Actually, though, I'll get coffee with anyone for any occasion at all...)

c. I miss downtowns.

thoughts on magna cum laude

2009-05-09T15:30:00.000-07:00

How could I get this old so fast? Time seems to get wasted like a prospective playing Circle of Death.

I mean, it's cool. I'm ready for the new... for brand-new chances to collaborate and fall in love and write. I'd like to move on to the new sprinklers that I can dance in at night. I hope Orlando has a lot of those.

I think that a lot of my friends and my professors and I would agree that I need a big challenge and a big move... something big to help me grow even more. I'd like to experiment with translation and formally seek God and further Christian training and work in emerging, workshop collaboratives and listen to jazz all the time... and now I can!

But the leaving will always be leaving... and leaving, for me, has always been hard. Some goodbyes were easier than I thought they'd be, and others were every bit as difficult as I'd feared.

But I'm excited.

Thank you, my friends. I know you've always believed the best of me, and, I promise, I have and will continue to believe the best of you.

Here's to the wild successes and the wild failures on the horizon.

Here's to all the mistakes I've learned from over the past four years.

Here's to that night in the computer lab right before the Fundies lighting final.

Here's to the Shakespeares, the satires, the 6330s.

iloveyouall.

Freshmen, sophomores and juniors: advocate!

2009-04-18T15:14:00.000-07:00

One. Scott Bakula is on Chuck. There is absolutely no way I can un-addict myself from television now.

Two. I had a series of nightmares last night. The first was so bad that I couldn't go back to sleep for forty-five minutes after I shook myself awake. It'll sound silly, but I dreamed that I went to a party with my dad and he got so drunk that he didn't remember me, and it was absolutely terrifying. The second was your garden variety supernatural serial killer dream. The only weak spots the shape-shifter had were his eyes and mouth, both endless black hollows. The only way to infiltrate the weak spots was to strike them directly. You couldn't second-guess yourself or be afraid of the killer's teeth. You just had to punch.

Three. I think the one thing that I wish I could have remembered to tell the little kids at senior forum was this: you are your own best advocate. I'm on the B.A. student advocacy council. Sometimes I forget that I am because no one ever comes to me with any problems about the department (but maybe they should...) Anyway, once or twice I was grousing to myself about things I was going through in productions, and then I thought, "Wait. I can do something about this. I can try my hardest to consistently be a pleasant person to work with and I can communicate with my professors if something legitimately doesn't work for me." You can be your own best answer to your problem. It's not anybody else's job to keep you engaged and working in theatre productively. It's yours. So be nice, work hard, talk.

Things about College that I'll Miss

2009-04-07T14:15:00.000-07:00

I'm mostly trying to restrict this to non-people... because that's the "well, duh" that I'll miss and people deserve their own entries.

1. Oreo Mint milkshakes from Cook-Out. Otherwise known as Three AM Delight. Otherwise known as the Freshman Fifteen. Cook-Out may claim it offers forty-six or whatever flavors... no, no, it doesn't. It offers one flavor, and that flavor is Oreo Mint.

2. While I do not miss that WYSIWYG all-nighter for Fundies--when Zink came over on a Sunday night to help us out and Jesse's computer flipped out--I will, however, miss being able to tell that story to freshmen/theatre majors at other schools/anyone who knows what WYSIWYG is.

3. Listening to/halfway watching Arrested Development episodes while theoretically "writing a paper." Right now I'm watching the episode when Buster inadvertently flirts with Lucille 2 by not wearing his glasses.

4. Rocking out to German musicals while cleaning the room.

5. Recycle bins everywhere.

6. The fort.

7. Onion rings, mini corn dogs, birthday cake ice cream: what the caf does right.

8. Blueberry coffee from "Le Cafe Bibliotheque"--the stupidest name for a cafe at the library ever.

By the Numbers!

2009-03-25T09:27:00.001-07:00

Number One Thing I'm TO'd I Didn't Get A Screencap Of:

I was on facebook/doing homework at one-ish one recent night. My brother had written on my wall at 12:17am, right? Well, you know how FB says "SoandSo wrote on your wall at suchandsuch time on Wednesday or yesterday or Saturday," right?

It said this:

"H--- N----- wrote on your wall at 12:17am tomorrow." Think about it.

It kind of reminds me of Future Dwight on The Office. And I didn't get a screencap. This is one of the stupidest decisions I have ever made in my life, aside from drinking three energy drinks in one day. (Sophomore year, Mom. I promise that never happens anymore.)

--and--

5 Reasons It Will Be A Little Hard to Leave the Theatre Department (as much as I'm ready for the next thing and possibly that grad program I've been dreaming of...)

5. But...but... but our theatre department has its own set of twins! You can't say that about just any theatre department.
4. It has never been conclusively proven that our department chair is a ninja... or Buddha... or a Jedi master. However, it has never been conclusively proven that he is none of those things. Someone has to find out, and now it's not going to be me.
3. I think I left some of my own personal possessions (or my heart, whichever) in Pandemonium.
2. My work call overalls cannot stand on their own yet. I wanted them to be predominately latex paint, carpenter's glue, and sweat before I graduated.
1. I never got to have a pink mohawk for a show. >:(

(Oh, wait...)

2009-03-22T15:52:00.000-07:00

I will always love Jean Seberg for two reasons.

One. She took being young, kind of pathetic, American, and gamine to a whole new level.

Two. In A Bout de Souffle, she was the first woman to wear a t-shirt in a movie. (The sassy ribbed number above.) I kind of really want a New York Herald Tribune t-shirt now.

more than meets the eye

2009-03-18T19:35:00.000-07:00

My favorite, favorite, favorite song ever at this second and the primary reason for this post:

The Transformers theme cover by Mute Math. It's on my playlist--give it a listen, especially if you're like me and your brain is fried from antibiotics, thesis defenses, and chesty coughs. But you know what? God is so good. My family got to see me present my thesis--AND my classmate's mom came to see her present, too, so it wasn't as weird--and it was just so refreshing to see them. It was the best remedy for a day of feeling puny, insubstantial, mentally foggy, and coughtastic. (And my hair wasn't behaving at all!)

I highly recommend families.

Even though my thesis presentation itself ended in verbal diarrhea (gross?), I have embarrassed myself far, far more in my life.

And now for a recommended reading. I like to think my heart's cry for understanding inspired this particular entry on Joseph's blog. In any case, it's an engrossing review of the outside of the aluminum-packaged beverage I (and Dr. Schroeder and Amanda and Chris Herring) know and love. How cool would it be to drink out of one of those badboy cans at the dupe?! Can you see it or what?
http://www.trendsettingonline.com/2009/03/mountain-dew-can-logo-history/

2009-03-15T21:28:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite moments:
Me: I should come and visit your house in all weather. Then I could get snowed in and stay for so long, I'd have to do chores.

Cheyenne: Then you could really be my big sister! ...Well, you kind of are already.

One of my favorite things about Christianity:
Christians get what they really want out of life. If "I'd rather have Jesus than silver or gold" rings true for you, you're in luck. I might never, ever get silver or gold. I can guarantee you that I will never, ever be the king of a vast domain. But, boy, do I have Jesus.

One of the things that's probably going to happen tomorrow:
My best non-sequiter friend is going to get his wisdom teeth removed tomorrow; if he says funny stuff like David After Dentist, I want to know.

One of my favorite things about music:
Concept albums/rock operas; people do not make enough. I wonder if there's something significant about a fascination in works where music is just as much a character as anybody else, where music is the plot, where there isn't a thirty-person ensemble.

Currently On the Brain

2009-03-04T20:28:00.000-08:00

Ethnodramatology. It's one of those big-word disciplines that makes my heart beat faster. In the Christian sense, it encompasses the idea that there isn't one universal, God-blessed form of drama that speaks to people. In both Christian and secular senses, it's the study of the performative rituals of a variety of cultures, on as much of their own terms as possible, without the intent of Westernizing a theatre that's so important to people.

Road trip. Wait for it. With my brother.

Ricky Gervais. I think I just decided I didn't really like him as David Brent or as Andy Millman. I just think those characters come across as very similar and they're pretty scummy individuals. It's hard for me to relate--or to want to relate--with insensitive protagonists. Most shows centered around scummy individuals just don't really work for me, I guess.

The Avett Brothers. Better than The Jonas Brothers, these guys serve enigmatic heartbreak with a side of North Carolina. The Avett Brothers sound like a Southern summer; warm, sleepy and good with lemonade.

KYO. Not the random, fifty-eleven solo artists. The now-defunct French band. I tried to like the new band, but their songs are all in English. Lame. Even the name is lame... Empyr. Um, ew.

Where's my M(oun)t(ai)n Dew?

2009-02-23T17:59:00.000-08:00

This bodes well for a retraction of the redesign of "Mtn Dew", which is also a Pepsico product. As long as bloggers like me keep trying to stick it to the man.

"Mtn Dew" was formerly known as Mountain Dew. But then Pepsi apparently decided it was too good for efficient, clear, beautiful design. They changed the trade name of Mountain Dew to "mtn Dew" and redesigned the can of "mtn Dew" in some pretty heinous ways. It makes me steamed.

Dear Pepsi,
You're like someone's mom trying to send text messages. Useless abbreviations are not cool and irritate those of us who prefer marketing that follows standard rules of spelling and grammar. You know what's right, Pepsi. You're just a poser rebel, and it's lame.

Furthermore, realize that there is a large market of girls (ok... maybe just me) who drink Diet Mountain Dew like it's ambrosia. And we feel alienated by the hyper-masculine image Mtn Dew is putting out there! Gaming? Sports? The Adventures of Darrell Waltrip and Grease Monkey? Drinking Mtn Dew is like bad hair days, sweatpants, and NFL: it's frumpiness in a can. No matter how much I may LIKE sweatpants and the NFL, I don't necessarily look good liking it.

You know what girly soda looks like? Tab. Tab is a girly energy drink. You know who makes Tab? Coca-motherloving-Cola. Fortunately for you, Tab is an acquired taste. Once you acquire a craving for liquid Smarties... and metal... and butt... then the problem is solved. Until then... I want my Diet Mountain Dew back. The old one. With the swirly green logo with "Mountain Dew" in the middle. Even if it did look like the New York City Cyclones logo... it was still better than this disjointed green crap.

I hate you, Pepsi! And I hate that I'm completely addicted!

love,
claire

Dear proletariat and 18-25 age bracket,

Pepsi wants our money. They suck for taking the oun and ai out of our beverage of choice. Are we going to stand for this? No! Blog!

love,
claire

2009-02-22T17:04:00.000-08:00

WATCHING

"Pushing Daisies." Say you like slightly macabre entertainment with a punch or two of the grotesque... like James and the Giant Peach or Nicholas Nickleby. Also, let's say you love musicals, like Little Shop of Horrors and Grease. Oh! I forgot. You also like a really strong but also kind of ambiguous design fifties-futuristic design concept. Lucky you. You've found your favorite cancelled show. Oh, wait. You probably found it while it was still on. Aren't you smart?

Also, Lee Pace wears clothes that would make my sister swoon. Namely, button-up shirts with rolled-up sleeves.

READING

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. No, I'd never read it before. Say F. Scott Fitzgerald and Jane Austen had a literary baby. That literary baby would probably look a little like The Age of Innocence. My favorite quote, thus far, describes why an evening's opera diva is singing in Italian:

"An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences."

The book actually has a lot of theatrical motifs; I think Wharton was probably a really smart gal to hype up the theatrical context to show that everyone in the novel is essentially an actor.

LISTENING
"Flood," by Jars of Clay. Because, sometimes, at the height of college work and college stress, one needs the quintessential thoughty 90's college band and their quintessential vague and thoughty hit.

I Need... A Break

2009-02-18T09:34:00.000-08:00

So, I did that thing where you type in your name plus "needs" into a search engine just to see what pops up.

Boy, am I glad my name is Claire.

The first one was "Claire needs a visit to the bunny planet," which is, I believe, the title of a story by Peter Balestrieri.

"Claire needs private support"... "Claire needs Facebook"... "Claire needs a boyfriend"... "Claire needs help"... and, my favorite, "Claire needs booze to kiss."

All these things, which, to be fair, are fairly universal things to need... and none of them are really what I need right now, I think.

I need some good, anti-thesis, worship music. I need downtown time.

Incidentally, I went to sleep joyfully praising God... and then I dreamed that I had a birthday party that was really horrible, one of my secret minor crushes was there, looking very suavely grungy and vaguely European, and he was flirting with a high school student ("Don't you know that's illegal?") Mrs. Bell moved to Atlanta (without Mr. Bell and all the children) ("Don't you know you're not cut out to be a heartless, Atlanta-living career woman? Whatever happened to Bellhaven?") and nobody would swing dance with me except my dad. Fortunately, he was remarkably spry in my subconscious. And at least I spoke my mind.

hunger

2009-02-10T10:26:00.000-08:00

Cravings are the weirdest thing:

Right now, I have a sinking feeling that I will never possibly be satiated except with a pecan waffle from Waffle House, of all places.

I am my grandfather's progeny, that is for sure. Minus the trucker cap and safety pin-and-duct-tape wardrobe. (He's the original punk. Yes, I'm proud.)

And he loves Waffle House. In fact, you can't imagine the family drama that has taken place at Waffle House, and I'm not going to tell you.

I went to Waffle House on prom night with one of the nicest, most personable writers to hit the planet. It was deliciously sketch and the pecan waffle was incredible.

Going to the Waffle House is sometimes like flirting with death, but in the best way possible. It's like speeding on the Blue Ridge Parkway or eating M&Ms that drop on the floor.

And I will never be happy unless I eat a pecan waffle. Right now.

the american college theatre festival: a critique

2009-02-07T20:56:00.001-08:00

1) Too much writing reviews; too little theme parties. What kind of theatre kid am I?

2) Fell mildly in love with boys for their punctuation. Bad idea, Claire. Usually, if their punctuation is that good, they've never heard of Chuck Taylors, the Beatles... or they like boys.

3) You write plays? You need a dramaturg. Here's my facebook. You're a dramaturg? You need a dramaturg. Here's my facebook. You're a random professor from a school I've never heard of? Hi, I'm Claire, and I'm a dramaturg.

4) Apparently, at other schools, Alpha Psi Omega members come to a consensus and agree on t-shirts. I know, weird.

(This said, I may never agree to a long-sleeved t-shirt. Suckas.)

5) My own personal paradise will include a Tate Street Coffee. That accepts debit cards. It will have forty-seven paintings on the wall and a barista with impeccable eyebrows.

6) So a professor here was trying to defend someone else's script because she knew him or whatever. I said that it had potential but was undeveloped. "Well, that's the point." Um, no. Ambiguity can sometimes be the goal but some scripts just seem sloppy and unfinished. I know this because every single play I've ever written has been both ambiguous AND sloppy/unfinished and they are different entities.

7) My professional, ambitious heart was broken when someone who is not me mislaid my dramaturgy packet. Arguably, this needed to happen. I didn't like my professional, ambitious heart and wanted to return to my apathetic one.

Still, it left me emotionally drained and exhausted on many levels. I will consume comfort food for an entire week, gaining about nineteen pounds of fat: Brach's gummi bears, cheap-o gas station cappuccinos, Pillsbury crescent rolls--and I will look for Vaughn every day, because I need a long-arm hug. I also bought eyeshadow.

8) I realized that I write criticism like a dramaturg: basically, "OohprettylightsIguessIlikedititwasgood... but the script needs ______." This is why I never win Critics and will never compete as one again. I just do it because I like to see plays and critique my own writing.

9) I like college kids. I hope when I graduate, I'll find out that twentysomethings are cool, too.

They call this... fear?

2009-02-02T18:36:00.000-08:00

I'm so excited!!!!!!!!!!

...I guess I'm scared.

Scared that what I wanted so intensely is too big, too smart, too religious for me and my attached mistakes.

Scared that it's not meant to be and that I'll get burned.

I don't need or want anyone to tell me I'm big enough, smart enough, or Christian enough for this. I need people to pray that God would change my heart to want what He wants. That every struggle would end with a limp--a permanent change in me thanks to a ridiculous encounter.

Occupational hazard of being a passionate person, I guess. I've fallen in over my head for a dream I know is the real thing. I just don't know what to do with it.

I keep seeing myself as so much bigger than I really am. I hate that.

I, I, I, I, I.

Grody.

95 Theses

2009-01-31T09:56:00.000-08:00

I am hammering out my thesis... well, granted, not as we speak, but off and on throughout my day.

It is hard to come up with a lot of smart things to say. It is even harder to do so quickly and with originality. It makes me wonder for about half a second why on earth I didn't go into biology.

And then I remember that I loathe, loathe, loathe biology. And that it's good to finish what I start and knowledge and discipline are never worthless. And that I felt good about doing this thesis. Once upon a time, before I was beating myself up over the particulars.

And I am resisting doing that 25 Things About Me thing on Facebook because no one wants to read twenty-five things about me in a row. So I will give you two.

1. I fully intend to name any pets (probably cats, all female) I may have in my life after The Beatles. Maxwell Silverhammer I may be gone now, but I'm open to a second. Other possible names include Lucinda Sky (LSD for short), Father McKenzie, Rigby, Jude Refrain, Rocky Raccoon, The Walrus (Wally for short), Mr. Kite...

2. I really like dreads. (They don't have to be dirty and gross. If they're gross and dirty, you're doing them wrong.) If I had long hair, I would have dreads, but there is no way I will grow out my hair. Since I am committed to not growing out my hair... I'm contenting myself with looking for the one guy out there who has blond dreads but doesn't smoke pot and loves Jesus.

Back to the thesis grind....

Words Without Boundaries

2009-01-29T13:17:00.000-08:00

I was sitting in grammar, minding my own business, taking notes on infinitives, when my professor said something along the lines of, "Put your pens down. I'm going to give you a question to think about for Tuesday." I finished my sentence, listening for the question while looking scrutinizingly into his sociolinguistics eyes for the answer.

"Is there a difference between 'infinity' and 'eternity?'"

My first thought was that he had gotten himself into a bet with the philosophy professor and had waded into deeper waters than he could handle alone. Fortunately, he's too cool for that and was merely having an in-class existential crisis, I'm pretty sure. I have a fairly brief attention span myself and have been known to ponder such questions while appearing to study infinitives.

But I did ask him why he asked us this.

"Well, if there's a difference, it's got to be a pretty important one, right?"

I've been thinking about it all day, whenever I get bored with writing the first draft of my thesis. I think I may have a hunch.

I think "eternity" can only mean "atemporal," while "infinity" can apply to time and space. And Merriam-Webster says quantity as well.

Hmm. "An infinite quantity...." Does that work? I don't know.

An Open Letter

2009-01-27T13:44:00.000-08:00

... to the MLA Format and Style, Newly Updated:

You really have made my life so much easier easier when it comes to online databases, online periodicals, and no-pagination websites. Thank you, thank you, thank you. If I was going to graduate school immediately, I'd thank you even more.

There's just one thing. You got rid of underlining. Sure, underlining is "gauche." We have computers now instead of typewriters! We can italicize! Huzzah! Whoop-dee-freaking-doo.

I'm going to miss underlining. Underlining is retro and cute, emphatic without being offputting.So you messed up on your bibliography? You can last-minute underline it in pen. You can't hand-italicize.

I am so depressed about this. You do not even know. I'm going to have to listen to a lot of The Beatles before I feel remotely ok about this.

Love,
-------, Claire. "An Open Letter." Razhumikin Razzmatazz (2009): n. pag. Web. 27 January 2009.

the next five years

2009-01-25T16:33:00.000-08:00

So, my assignment this weekend for senior seminar is to write a five-year plan. I have, thus far, muddled through life without any kind of real plan whatsoever, and now I have to write one. But what I wanted to write and what I will turn in tomorrow are two slightly different things. The latter will have such things as "financial responsibility" and "setting up savings" and "work on a film." The former looks like this:

I want to be stylish. Like featured-on-the-Sartorialist-twice stylish. Like distinctive, wear Chucks every day stylish. I want to have confidence in my own skin as I face the realization every day that I am exactly where I am supposed to be. I want to be as fearless as freedom feels. I want to eat rice and beans most days. I want to be really, really excited about what God's doing. I want to have lots of old friends and lots of new ones. I kind of really want to be married in the next five years. I want to be wildly creative. I want to smell lots and lots of coffee. I want to be the best witness that I possibly can that God is real. I want to live with purpose and passion. I want to blog about the most interesting things ever. I want to lapse at will into a completely different language with ridiculous ease. I want to be very well read.

Observations

2009-01-22T19:44:00.000-08:00

1. I have accomplished watching the first season of Robin Hood and we are now onto the second season. (I know. I'm late. Don't give me any spoilers.) Everyone's hair is longer and Djaq has moved on from her Boy Scout vest to embrace her femininity with bangs and woman clothes. I can't decide if Robin has become more or less cocky...

2. My friend/my roommate's boyfriend has Mario sleep pants. They're fleecy. Isn't he cool?

3. Speaking of books I wouldn't be ashamed to be caught dead reading, I've been starting on Orson Scott Card beyond Ender's Game. Specifically, Ender's Shadow, which is about Bean. More on that when I've formulated an opinion. Everyone I know says Bean is better than Ender.

4. All of the Owens I know are adorable.

5. Grammar is mystifying. We acquire language with seeming effortlessness and there's a ridiculous amount of rules that we know that we don't know that we know. And there's things that slip through the cracks. And there's intentional slaps in the face of the rules. Like sentence fragments. I've learned by taking grammar that I suck at categorizing and memorizing the nomenclature of these rules. Oh, well.

Life is Buttercream

2009-01-19T17:19:00.000-08:00

--I can't remember who it was who thought the last line of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" was "Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is buttercream."

--I could have sworn I heard a male voice call out my first and last name twice in a public place and I stopped abruptly and looked around but nobody fessed up to it. Rachel didn't hear it, but she says I have bat ears. My dear roomie also, similarly, heard a male voice call out her name today. None of these summons preceded apocalyptic prophecies, unfortunately.

If this happens again, I'm going to call it a hallucination and cut back on caffeine.

--Dinner? Two servings of ice cream. I'm making up for two whole days of healthy, well-balanced meals (which have included chicken, salad, wild rice, green beans, corn...)

--Latest report? "Vague snowlike substance. It's snowish."

current events

2009-01-18T11:13:00.000-08:00

1. Circuit City: Unplugged and In Canada. It sounds like an album, but what it really means is 34,000 lost jobs and a ton of going out of business sales. And fact, I do need a laptop--with a webcam for Skype. I promised my roommate.

2. I got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart, down in my heart, down in my heart, down in my heart to stay.

I could sing unending songs of how you saved my soul and I could dance a thousand miles because of your great love.

Joy is so inexplicably good to see and touch and hear. And the only thing better than experiencing it for yourself is experiencing it with and through other people. I love rejoicing with my friends!

3. This is the week of the truce: not only did Israeli and Gaza Strip militants take a breath, but Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox also reached a deal about Watchmen. The only graphic novel I've really ever read has been Persepolis, but I've heard really, really good things about Watchmen, so I'm looking into it. Literacy is good, and reading "noncanonical" texts for American Novel is already making me feel like I should read more.

4. For theatre people, this weekend's action verbs: to junk food, to not slack, to sloth, to therapy, to praise, to laugh at Bruce Willis.

new year's resolution #156

2009-01-13T09:08:00.000-08:00

Don't go to an airport without actually intending to fly. You can't take it.

I met a dear at the airport yesterday. C'etait... qu'est-ce que c'est "torture?" Even with am overpriced Starbucks caramel macchiato with loads of foam, the experience was difficult.

I guess it's the aviator in my blood, or the immigrant, or both--but I was filled with a wistful ache, my feet possessing an irresistible itch to walk everywhere. I glared at the posh people whose suitcases were stacked neatly, their European business suits and Spartan luggage organization betraying the fact that they do this all the time. I heard two sets of people speak French.

I love airports too much. The leaving. The coming back. You hear more interesting conversations in an airport than almost anywhere else. The gift shops."Notre nature," said Pascal, "est dans le mouvement; la repose entier est la mort."

Two things I know: God is in control, and traveling is imperative. Maybe next year I will know more.

.......

2009-01-12T11:02:00.000-08:00

I'm already bored with schoolwork.

Classes start on Wednesday. Bad sign?

(Next year, en Maroc, peut-etre? Sans les devoirs?)

In lieu of homework, I have been watching webisodes of The Guild. Not as intellectually stimulating, perhaps, but it also doesn't cause a lick of deadline stress. Nice'd.

Wikipedia.org is available in Esperanto. True fact.

The charade is over; it is time to stop pretending to do schoolwork and start watching movies.

fascinations

2009-01-06T09:58:00.000-08:00

the mildly abstract--

see below.

ink--

can I just say that I'm done with this ballpoint bull? I'm starting to dabble in calligraphy and the scritchy unreliability of nibs and wet watery colors floating at forty-five degree slants across the page is an irresistible combination. I swear those pens flirt with me. And I'm still obsessed with the black Sharpie pen... that felt tip number has feeling and verve and I'm starting to draw mildly abstract things with it, mostly rock stars with intense eyes that stare off from the page with black, felt-tipped moodiness.

two thousand nine--

I'm done thinking that this year will just make me another year older. Watch out, world. I'm almost free.

The Razhumikin (sp) Razzmatazz Guide to Enjoying Movies

2008-12-30T07:21:00.000-08:00

It has come to my attention that I watch movies. And I am, in my opinion, better at watching movies than most people. And the reason is that I watch them with an agenda. I watch them with questions in mind that help me to evaluate the successes of the film. I'd like to share these questions with you, so you, too, can watch movies and enjoy them.

A caveat: It almost goes without saying if you've seen an overly crass or gory movie with me that I very often dislike movies that I consider "gross"-- if a movie is overly crass or gory, I probably will not enjoy it and will very, very likely stop watching it before the ending credits, so this guide does not apply to those movies.

Questions:

Does the movie appear to have a populist theme? I appreciate movies with populist themes because it's so ironic. Yeah, we're a big movie company, but it's the little people who matter! Especially since little people watch so many movies!

Does the movie have Neil Patrick Harris? Extra points if it's Doogie Howser-era, a la the TV production of Cold Sassy Tree.

Neil Patrick Harris can't redeem all of his movies, but if you're stuck in class watching Starship Troopers... well, you're stuck in class watching Starship Troopers, and every little bit helps.

Does the movie invite the invention of new catchphrases, either by possessing a memorable script or inspiring its audience to yell at the screen? For example, my vocabulary has been vastly different since I saw Peter Pan in French. And I'm working on turning Northanger Abbey into the new and improved Rocky Horror Motion Picture Show.

Can you analyze the movie's philosophy and religious themes for hours? It has been my experience that talking about a movie for hours makes it more fun. And I don't have to agree with its philosophy. For me, the movie's perspective can be drastically different from my own outlook. As long as it promotes deep thoughts and not crazy ones, I'm fine with antiheroes or funky theology. Carousel is a really good example. I love the music and dance of the movie. However, Julie seems to be a-ok with domestic abuse. I am not a-ok with domestic abuse, but I can still watch most of the movie. It also seems to suggest that you can give people stars after you're dead. This is not my view of the afterlife at all. This invites instant debate, because my sister doesn't agree. And there you have it! Stimulating discussion!

Can you turn the movie into a rock opera? The answer is always yes, so turning a movie into rock opera fodder is a foolproof method of enjoying many films.

Is there something unique about this film that you can appreciate and/or make fun of? The answer is not always yes. Example: most movies with Pauly Shore do enough making fun of themselves without including anything to appreciate. Once the environmental science club at my school showed Bio-Dome. I left before it was over... I just couldn't appreciate its "uniqueness" (see caveat about overly crass movies.)

Can you crochet/knit/sort socks while watching this movie? The answer is mostly yes. Crocheting is the reason I watch so many movies now. I just can't bear to just crochet.

I will readily admit that many movies are intolerably stupid. But many movies are also entertaining. Several movies that I've seen recently have been particularly good to crochet to. I have liked Lives of a Bengal Lancer (in which--catchphrase--"Gary Cooper goes postal"), Stalag 17, Mr Deeds Goes to Town (ok, I have not seen it recently, but it is one of my favorite movies of all time, and Gary Cooper goes a little bit postal)... and I haven't watched Witness for the Prosecution yet but I can tell you that I will like it because I will crochet to it, Billy Wilder directed it, and it would make a killer rock opera. Now if we could just find someone for the Charles Laughton part....

Because I can tell you right now that my brother's approach to watching movies differs widely from my own (since he doesn't watch girly movies) I would love to invite comments. How do you know if you're going to enjoy a movie or not? Is it imperative that the movie supports your worldview? Did you like Napoleon Dynamite? More importantly, would you like it if it was a rock opera?

Developmental Disorders in Literature

2008-12-28T16:50:00.000-08:00

(Boy, wouldn't something like that be a terribly interesting course?)

I am fascinated by the autism spectrum. I'm intrigued by the attention it's gotten in recent years and the vaccination controversy. I'm shocked by its recent growth. I'm bemused by its spurts of publicity: it's almost like sometimes it's the chic life-complicating disorder, coming with weird social quirks and superhuman powers.*

It's like the attitude is sometimes... Peter Tork has Asperger syndrome! Peter Tork is my favorite Monkee! Craig Nicholls of the Vines has Asperger's! Einstein was socially awkward! I wonder about Andy Warhol? Autism autism prodigies vaccines JENNY MCCARTHY!

*I'm exaggerating. Autism spectrum is far more complex than a set of habits and sensory perceptions and it looks different every time. And do you know what? Individuals are more important than diagnostics. Each human being--all of us--are created with neuroses and gifts, advantages and disadvantages to growing up in society.

So it's always super interesting for me to see characters with autism spectrum disorders depicted in books or TV or movies. I've read far more autobiographies of individuals and their experiences growing up with varying social disorders than I have seen fictional characters with similar disorders.

I think most of this is that a lot of so-called "retarded" people in comedies make me sick and that kind of initially turns me off of movies and literature that feature any kind of character with special needs. I hate it when disorders are exploited so somebody else can laugh. But anyway, I'm all for art involving every kind of people, and I've tried to write plays with characters that come from a variety of perspectives and I know first-hand how challenging it is to write someone who doesn't speak or looks at ceiling fans for an entire act.

I just read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and that was duly super interesting. The narrator and hero of the book, Christopher, is a fifteen year old boy. He is never labeled in the narrative as having a specific condition, but he goes to a "special" school. He also has one habit that I immediately recognized: he tells the truth as he sees it.

He has the chic tics of most fictional autistic characters: he's got the mathematical genius, acute sensitivity to touch, and weird obsessions with certain little things.

So in a way it left me a little nonplussed. It didn't seem to me that Christopher was as terribly original as the quoted praises on the back of the book would have me believe.

But at the same time, fiction doesn't work unless it's true. Christopher sounds unreal, because he is unreal. And at the same time, I recognize familiar things in Christopher's character, because I see them in real life.

The other major success of the book was that Christopher wasn't alone in his quirkiness. You find that the other characters have serious flaws in their coping mechanisms, that Christopher isn't the only one who doesn't always make sense.

All things considered, I thought the plot flimsy and uninteresting. Don't get me wrong. That's a big deal. I hate stories that don't really hold up. But I will say that, in this book, the plot isn't what sticks with you. It's Christopher, who is far more intricate and harder to decipher than a so-called curious incident.

But really, Peter Tork is my favorite Monkee. John is my favorite brother. I wouldn't have either of them any other way.

And now I want to read The Sound and the Fury. It's time to for me to spread out to other developmentally delayed narrators, and Benjy's probably the original.

Movies I've Seen

2008-12-24T14:33:00.000-08:00

Do I like populist, corny Christmas movies as much as the next person? Of course I do. But sometimes It's a Wonderful Life gets a little old... not stale, just overly familiar.

I have decided that, this year at least, my favorite Capra Christmas movie is Meet John Doe, a flawed but nonetheless insightful movie, with more darkness than Wonderful Life. It concerns a young journalist who creates a "John Doe" to protest inhumanity by writing letters to the editor and planning to commit suicide by jumping off City Hall on Christmas Eve. Amid cries of shenanigans from the opposing town paper, she casts a vagrant as John Doe. Eventually, the saccharine odes to American small-town society conflict with monopolizing corporations and political corruption. The movie's mistakes lie in its Icaruslike ambition and spotty (long) script. And I don't like the ending.

I purchased my copy of Meet John Doe at the Dollar Tree. This might tell you something about the state of civilization.

To me, Meet John Doe is a parable painted in shades of gray. Everyone makes an unexpected choice and reveals his or herself as greater or less than what they appear. It functions as a really interesting allegory; it is exquisitely, beautifully directed; Barbara Stanwyck, Gary Cooper, and James Gleason give amazing performances.

Also, I just saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on ABC. It was so much less scary than Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory! I am not entirely opposed to books or movies aimed at children that are a little bit creepy, especially if you wait until you are a twenty-something child before you watch them.

the incarnation

2008-12-21T13:19:00.000-08:00

Religions are weird.

I was sitting in church, and as we were singing about Emmanuel, I just thought about how weird the doctrine of the incarnation is and how weird it is to believe in something like the incarnation.

Emmanuel means God with us. This represents one of the fairly important (I think) tenets of mainstream, canonical Christianity, which basically says that God could be (and was) born and lived.

That's a pretty big, strange belief. And it's fairly pervasive. It's not just a fundamentalist thing to believe that God could become a person. It's not a belief that only a few people in big, scary churches espouse. A lot of people believe in the incarnation, and still more sing about it every December without really thinking about what it means.

It's one of the things that makes the beliefs of this kind of Christianity unique. It's not like God appeared as avatar Jesus, showing us what a human should look like without necessarily being one.

I wrote a play once about a trading card with a holographic image of Jesus on it. I was inspired by real life events, I might add. It's really unfinished, but the gist is a bunch of people interacting with the same trading card that they keep finding and passing on. I always think of avatars as being a little bit holographic. That's really my only tie-in.

It'd take a really big God to be born, to allow yourself to be that limited and constricted. You don't see lots of other myths where that happens. Lots of religions pretty much content themselves with holographic images that kind of flirt with human qualities.

But in orthodox Christianity, it's pretty important that God can be born and can die. (A bunch of dudes debated this constantly in the proto-orthodox days in these cool things called "councils" and ended up with "creeds." It seems like a long, drawn-out process, and I hope somebody made refreshments.)

And, by strict standards, it's kind of like Jesus didn't play fair. Satan can't become a human. If you're not human, according to canonical Christianity, you're pretty much staying not human.

And then you get into atonement theology and all sorts of messy issues! Yay humanity!

Like I said, the incarnation is weird and either you believe it or you don't. But either way, it's kind of shoved in your face at Christmas.

negative space

2008-12-20T15:57:00.000-08:00

I have never been good at not including negative space, even white space, in my artwork. For one thing, I like the clean edge left by emphasizing the negative space around an object rather than imposing an outline on the subject. That's my adulthood answer.

My childhood answer is that my art teacher through school, who, I might add, was on par with Mother Teresa and Bernadette Peters, always said, "Color in all the white!" And I tried. However, paper is big, so it was ultimately very difficult and traumatic.

I've even won awards for paintings that consisted of about fifty percent negative space, simply because I got tired of painting the subject and just washed the whole thing with dark blue or something.

Now that I'm a little more philosophical, I have grown to appreciate what negative space says. I think it's why I like Sudoku. Now, the easiest few levels of Sudoku I usually solve number by number, mentally highlighting rows and columns and putting the number in the space left. However, in the harder Sudoku puzzles, I have to use information I don't have to solve the puzzle, which is far more interesting. The logic is still there--I'm not guessing--but I have to think in combinations and possibilities and in numbers I don't have yet.

I wonder what this means.

Things I'm LOVING Right Now

2008-12-17T07:26:00.000-08:00

FREERICE.COM
My sister informed me yesterday that FreeRice has branched out, subjectwise. Not only can you test your vocabulary, but you can also quiz yourself on grammar, famous paintings, four languages (including French AND German), math, chemistry and geography. I have found my new nerd hobby. In the past twenty minutes, I have donated 1760 grains of rice simply by knowing der Beispiel, Vincent Van Gogh, schnell, and l'ordinateur.

JOHN WILLIAMS
Really, I am really ignorant when it comes to film scorers. And I haven't branched out at all. My brother constantly scoffs at this. But John Williams makes it so easy to, well, just listen to soundtracks by John Williams. My current favorite soundtrack themes to listen to are from Harry Potter and E.T. What can I say? I like tinkly, evocative melodic noise.

Although, I will say that I am not at all opposed to Danny Elfman from what I have heard of the Batmans and Edward Scissorhands.

And, really, music is one of my very favorite things about being home. I am simply amazed by how much my brother continues to grow as a pianist, and I'm so thankful that I like cinematic music with as much enthusiasm as he does, even though he's much more musically erudite than any of us and is, therefore, kind of a snob. (Example of this: I ask, "Is that DAD playing jazz piano?" Bro responds, "Yes." I say, "Wow..." Bro says, "I know, doesn't it sound sort of... childish?" I say, "I mean, I was kind of amazed.")

(Dad, I tell this anecdote because I think it's cute. Both John and I think you're definitely improving, and, like I said, I thought it was quite good.)

PARTNERS IN CRIME: TOMMY & TUPPENCE
This is the series I crochet to. It's kind of flimsy--come on, I can solve all the crimes and I'm not a detective--and I much prefer Poirot--and David Suchet--but I love, love, love the very Eighties take on 1920's design. It's very extravagant, true to the Beresfords, and clothes get changed all the time.

Although I will say that I am getting very tired of someone making a very revealing but enigmatic statement right before they die in mystery novels, like "She wasn't there!" in A Murder is Announced or "Why didn't they ask Evans?"

Christmas Break... By the Numbers

2008-12-16T09:06:00.000-08:00

SIX crocheted stockings. Giant socks are my favorite holiday decorations, a testament to the accumulation of candy and to big feet.

SIXTY-THREE-THIRTY might undergo a name change. Hmm.

TWO dreams in German. One of those dreams also involved a purple dinosaur. (Barney.)

I blame Barney on babysitting last night. My two charges were bent on stabbing a small, stuffed Barney with forks. I must have saved poor Barn (and the forks) (and bare feet) at least three times.

NINE days until Christmas. Believe it or not, I'm looking forward to the day and giving my family cute stuff. My family calls me a humbug because I don't believe in expensive indoor trees with "memories" as decorations (excuse me, but an eleven-year-old, eroding craft is not a memory.) However, the fact is that I like retro Christmas music like Bing Crosby stuff and anything that Harry Connick, Jr. sings... and giant socks. I like big, rogue socks. And, this year, I'm really liking warmer weather in winter solstices.

Listen... bitte noch einmal.

2008-12-10T14:31:00.000-08:00

a. Here is a quote from one of my English professors. He wrote this sentence on our midterm.

"Part V. Sometimes I wonder if I divide this document into sections only because I enjoy the pointy nature of Roman numerals."

Now, this sounds like something my broface would say. Also, I identify with idiosyncratic tastes in document composition. I cannot use serif fonts. They really, really annoy me.

b. Mom, I found the defect in my 2.50$ sleep pants from the Peace Frog outlet store that we shopped in forever. One leg is significantly longer than the other. I can deal.

c. I learned something about myself this week, and that is that I will fixate on absolutely any possible conundrum if it keeps me from studying. Example: When I was a small child, I owned this video about this boy who gets sucked into a board game. Or maybe I checked it out multiple times from Trinity Church Library. In hindsight, that is also very possible.

It started out as live action, and then when he got sucked into the game, everything was claymation. Cool, huh? (John, were you around for this? Do you remember it?) It was also mildy creepy at times because the boy strayed off the path and almost didn't make it out of the board game.

Well, I found out that I will look online for about a half hour, trying to find out the name of this movie, rather than write essays.

Incidentally, I found out the name of the movie. Rockin'. It's actually based on the book of Proverbs. Oh, Christian movie business, you are weird.

LIST!

2008-12-07T06:21:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm relaxing with a cup of dee-licious caramel truffle coffee (thanks, Bets! And, because I'm a bit of a communist with coffee, my suite thanks you, too.) I'm working up the energy to put the finishing touches on my Schroeder paper. I write a sentence or so about every five minutes and I already have five pages... I should be good, eh?

But the real deal is that I'm going to list how I feel about some things...

1) Pens. My pen philosophy is this: pens are essential, pencils are for wimps who secondguess themselves. In Anne of Windy Poplars, Anne Shirley says something about how she cannot write love letters with a scratchy pen. Now, I know quite a few classy ladies who'd say cantankerous pen be hanged, I'm writing Gilbert Blythe a love letter. I mean, am I right or am I right, classy ladies?

But I think that I pretty much agree with Anne, and quality pens are devoutly to be wished for.

Right now I am a huge, giant fan of the Sharpie pen. I got sucked in by the clever advertising--have you seen the spread with David Beckham and the teeny Sharpie writing?

So far, it's really been a fantastic felt-tip pen that doesn't bleed onto the chisel tip of my highlighters. I guess it could be a love letter pen, but I think it's probably more of a poetry pen, and it adds quite a bit of urbanity to my class notes. Call it good marketing (word up, Bethany) but I feel so cool when I write with a Sharpie pen. I haven't even lost one yet.

2) Best purchase of the past two days? 2$ Disney Princess scented markers from Big Lots, an eight-pack, I think. I might be high as a kite... but... they smell so good. I'm writing all of my German flash cards in Strawberry. P.S. My other philosophy is this: markers are essential, colored pencils/crayons are for weenies who don't believe in vibrancy.

3) Christmas trees. I don't like them. They are messy and a pain and they get lost every year somewhere in the theatre. I'm glad my ideal apartment is too small for them.

4) You know, every day I thank God for my family. I just wouldn't be as interesting without them (not to mention that they are all awesome people and the best family in the world. My dad just gets more cool with age and my mom doesn't age at all. And meine Geschwister are both fascinating and funnier than any sitcom on network television.)

My brother has recently been psychoanalyzing the heck out of Through the Looking Glass and wrote about ten posts on my facebook wall about it. I came home from the holiday party hoping he'd written on my wall, and lo and behold! I love that there are multiple critics in my family. I'm appreciating my family so much that I'm a little sick of it and I'm going to ruin the sentimental moment right now: Mom, I want a coffee maker for Christmas. Also, I will still be blonde.

Suckas. I'm SO back on normal terms with my family.

Songs of Water

2008-12-05T12:22:00.000-08:00

A shoutout. Songs of Water is perfect pre-finals week music. Perfect.

What is Songs of Water, you might ask, if you're not from the Piedmont area?

I could talk about the people in the band and how they're the epitome of cool local artists. But instead I'll say that it's a joyful noise with hammered dulcimers and schruti boxes and yes, Jeff, a djembe, I'm pretty sure. It does for my ears kind of what visiting the Roanoke area does for my soul. If the Blue Ridge mountains and faraway friends had a soundtrack, Songs of Water would be on it. It's even global enough for Jesse, I promise.

Because I am not a tease, I have provided snippets of it on my playlist for you to sample and I encourage you to look Songs of Water up on myspace or facebook or download the self-titled album (at least, I think it's self-titled) from iTunes.

Oh, by the way. I'm done with classes this semester. Four finals and I'll be back home for the holidays.

Thanksgiving. Joyce-style.

2008-12-01T10:05:00.000-08:00

woke up the punk rocker in a cold hard bed that was a sofa. God bless you you thank God you eat muffins. When do we live? We live as soon as we're ready to go. Stop before you're out the door step over the dog lose the dog chase the dog put the dog away.

In the car the pillows kiss our little heads the blond the really blond and the brown. we try to live the broadest way immarginable... she's not smart enough to be original here isn't it enough that we write in second person polar? plural? she's not smart enough to be original here isn't it enough that we question?

fastforward several centuries of mayan history of greek history of the fall of rome and we're there.

fastforward several bodies of water of petersburgs and richmonds and getting lost and gloucester like the movie "The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming!" And we're there.

pumpkinpie and pumpkinpie and pumpkinpie and we spilt it and you're so blond and it's good to see you and love and one more pumpkinpie. (because grandma's not making not one this year. )

the dog coughs and I cough, they cough, you cough, we cough, I conjugate, she, he, it conjugates et cetera et cetera etc etc ftw.

it's good to see you again and love and pumpkin pie and I'm drinking all of your coffee because I am so tired, almost as tired as you are generous with your coffee and everything else.

there are umpteen pairs of big blue eyes umpteen hairs of different colors umpteen people who really all act almost exactly the same. pop still has his moustache... it's charming and white like an upper lip polar bear.

Is it hubris to say that my family is almost as interesting as college football day?

2008-11-24T01:23:00.000-08:00

Part One.
Listening to: Mezzamorphis by Delirious?

I have a few thoughts, and this is one. Oksosometimes on this CD, I feel like Delirious? thinks it's U2. Is that a sacrifice of their artistic integrity? Discuss.

The other thought is that Delirious? really liked concept albums. There's such a clear journey in Mezzamorphis. It's like a Pilgrim's Progress, U2 rock opera. Now, I have to respect this. I love a good (or a bad or a subpar) rock opera. (Note: I am classy and trashy, but mostly trashy.)

Dad, do we have Glo?* Because I kind of want to listen to it in rock opera terms. Worship rock opera terms.

(*I miss my dad.)

Part Two.
Mute Math, it is time for you to stop phunking with my heart and being on everyone's soundtrack without releasing your next full-length album (I mean, Twilight? Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2? Do you expect me to follow you that far into the dark?) (Aside to Twilight fans, I am not a hater. I like trash. However, I just can't get into hormonally-charged undead high school soap operas. I tried... ok, no, that was a lie. I didn't try.)

Back to Mute Math--you're missing my entire season of commercial gifts, from Christmas to birthday! Shenanigans!

Part Three.
Dear Pumpkin Spice Latte, you were so good, but you're messing up my sleep schedule LIKE WOAH.

Or maybe I'm just wired because it's THIS close to Thanksgiving and to spending time with my family.

Part Four.

It's that time of the year when I start looking (not feeling) like Vsevolod Garshin (to the left, to the left.)

I love this painting (by Ilya Rupin; he's like the Tolstoy of painters, but I like him better--he's a "realist" in the Marxist critical sense and he's so dang revolutionary!) because it seems much more honest than photographs of Vsevolod Garshin. ("Vsevolod" sounds like the name of a worthy space adversary, I think, though.)

Garshin was a really tormented individual, and I think you see a bit of how sad he was in this portrait. And a bit of his paper clutter problem, with which I can empathize.

I feel like if Garshin lived today, he would have a stack of Diet Mountain Dew cans on his desk, as well.

And maybe things would have turned out ok for him.

Includes many salutations!

2008-11-20T18:16:00.000-08:00

A brief, open letter to my wonderful dad:

Dear Dad,

There is a boy at school whose hair is the epitome of Puppy Bouf-Bouf. It's more bouffant and puppier than yours could have ever been. In case this boy ever reads this brief, open letter--and realizes with a start that only he could be Puppy Bouf-Bouf boy--he should know that I'm fine with Puppy Bouf-Bouf hair and I'm not trying to poke fun at him. But his fluffy hairstyle choice just brings me joy, and it reminds me of you every day. And you are my favorite dad, ever.

Love, me

Prose for my pink hair:

Cotton candies and rosy tones caught my eye in the mirror every time, making me feel otherworldly... or like a My Little Pony... or like Pink. In a way it was cool... and spacy... and lovely. But there comes a time when one tires, if not of pink hair, then of being a pink-haired person. Of the stares from the scandalized sweet little old ladies. Of the honks from the adoring punk crowd in their trashy punk cars. One longs for a hair color that belongs.

So it's over.

I wear hats.

Who inspires me at the moment:

60's era Twiggy. She's just so cutely vacuous and I empathize with that, since I now rely on a lot of medicine to get me through my day. I only relate a little bit with the skinniness, because although steroids make me more ravenous than a pride of fasting lions, the antibiotics make me pretty heinously nauseated. I'm sure you wanted to know that.

Although I do recommend ginger chews. Ginger chews, which I have just discovered, are fantastic. They're pretty much what they sound like--candy-looking chewy ginger things. They're odd-tasting and spicy but they work. Now if I can only find out where they are sold.

Oh! And also one of those English professors I haven't had yet. I just today found out that he speaks, or has spoken in his life, upwards of three languages that are not English. That's inspiring. Rachel says I'm going to learn every European language. I don't know... but I love her.

Listening to Le Roi Soleil and Mozart! Das Musical. Recommend both. Beth Nell, the first Emmanuel Moire song is from Le Roi Soleil--it's a French musical. Emmanuel Moire has such a soothing voice, doesn't he? And the song is gorgeous.

A Couple of Reviews

2008-11-19T10:43:00.000-08:00

The book Starship Troopers: too many pages about space suits and benevolent fascism.

The movie Starship Troopers: not enough space suits (I never thought I'd ever say that) or Nazi Neil Patrick Harris. Too many Aryans and douche bang, too much bug guts. I do not recommend. I do, however, love Neil Patrick Harris, and he is a beacon of typecast intelligence in this film. (Neil Patrick Harris!)

We had this cool guy from Spain in our German class today. Frau Doctor commended him on his independent study of German. For a split second I was so jealous that I'm not independently studying something. Not German or French, obviously, but Arabic or something like that, and then I remembered that Arabic is a ridiculously impossible language to learn independently. (Jesse, you can teach me, right?)

And then I was incredibly jealous that he was European and lives in Europe because we all know I'd love to just move across the lake, where there is actual history and where people speak multiple languages. Oh, Europe--the continent of Beckett and Ionesco and Nicolas Sarkozy (and Carla Bruni) and Ioan Gruffudd. I have not forgotten the sight of the Swiss Alps when I flew to Italy in the spring--big, cold-looking mountain things. So glorious, so big, so cold-looking.

Oh, if you are related to my brother, and are planning to give him a Christmas present, he would love the Edward Scissorhands soundtrack. Now, I find the movie schmaltzy and weird, so I don't often watch it. Apparently, my brother appreciates the sounds of schmaltz and weirdness and was nearly moved to tears by the strains of Danny Elfman. (Yeah, I know, I have the cutest brother on the face of the earth. I'm so spoiled. Other kid's brothers leave the milk out and play video games all day, and mine leaves the milk out, plays video games, and listens to film music.)

2008-11-16T11:23:00.000-08:00

I love my mom.

She called today after she saw me post-show last night because she said I seemed upset and/or sick. I was both, and I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when she totally read my mail. Because she's my mom, and she knows.

I keep saying I'm done with being sick, and then I keep... not being done. That is the essential summary of my bout with bronchitis thus far.

Most of the movies I have seen lately have been too campy for their own good and I haven't read anything for a week or so, so I don't have much to blog about. If I was my brother, I'd write something deep and philosophical but I don't have enough lung capacity for that.

Except I no longer have a mohawk. That's noteworthy.

Still pink, though. For the moment.

2008-11-10T10:36:00.000-08:00

1. I really like show business, and I'm tired of it at the same time. I love crawling into small spaces and popping out of them; I enjoy teasing the mohawk; I like to dance, if badly. At the same time...

2. Ender's Game is phenomenal. I can say this now that I've read it through once. The motifs are so sophisticated and it's so internalized. You really get to know Ender, and I don't care what adults say, kids think like this.

3. I suddenly (still) miss Chagall Guevara.

4. Campus is unusually loud today. It's like Universal People Yell At Each Other Day. Not a fan.

5. Official Post-Election Thoughts: I'm not a hater. I'm not going to say, "Well, of course Obama won, because he's charismatic, smart and has excellent taste, while McCain is an old white guy and Sarah seems a little unbalanced and I hate Republicans." I'm also not going to say, "Well, I hate that Obama won and I hate Democrats and we're going to hell in a handbasket." I don't believe in any of those statements.

No political leader will be the one who will save civilization and the problems in our country. Laws written in stone, enacted by liberals or conservatives, won't necessarily make any individual truly believe in the value of human life or the danger of greed or the importance of protecting our natural resources.

I just have to commit to treating people with love and respect, as I believe Jesus called me to do. I hope that I will be able to see evidence of love and respect in Obama's decisions as president, but ultimately, it's not all up to him. It's up to the grace of God to cover the decisions that we all make.

6. Secret: I actually like having pink hair and, though I will give it up, I won't really want to.

2008-11-08T18:31:00.001-08:00

1. Shows can be exhausting.

2. Cool book that I just read: The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl. It's got a bit of language in it, but it is not too bad. It's kind of quirky, a short read, and it's quite clever and prophetic.

3. I just decided on the post-pink hair color. It is a secret. I am determined; it will take determination.

4. I have been sick for about a week with The Bronchitis, shortly following my roommate's adorable-but-also-really-scary bout with The Bronchitis. Basically, we have bad air over here and so my suitemates and I have all gotten respiratory problems. My roommate had one of the worst cases; she wheezed a lot and missed a lot of school and we were all terrified for her and babied her as much as we could. Well, she also got on this heavy-duty cough syrup with hydrocodone. And she was high as a kite and did some really funny things. I am now also on heavy-duty cough syrup and heavy-duty allergy medications. It isn't so bad now, but my head has very often felt like it isn't really attached to my body. I've had so many metaphysical realizations. I've tripped very many times, and I've found joy in many simple things, such as trying to catch moths and reading the fourth and fifth Harry Potter books.

(Side note: The Harry Potter series was not marketed well. Teachers clung to it because it made children want to read, and many evangelicals called it heresy and witchcraft and never exposed themselves to it. My take on it is this: Harry Potter is pop mythology. If you never explain allegory and myth to your students or children, they won't know how to take it in context. Harry Potter is not about actually becoming a witch; it is not designed to lead children into the pursuit of witchcraft; the series is really just an epic myth. It's not supposed to have practical application; it's supposed to instill in people mythic culture. Mythic culture is not all bad. There are many true things that are echoed and perpetuated in myth, and I would assert that J.K. Rowling echoes and perpetuates true things even if she didn't intend to do so.)

5. I am reading Sartre's La Nausee and to help not-very-adept-in-French me do so, I am also reading Nausea, the English translation. La Nausee almost should never be translated. It's so much better in French. Rien de nouveau.

6. I've started reading Ender's Game, too. I'll let you know what I think of it later.

7. Confession: I wish I had the money/self-discipline/fine motor skills to wear false eyelashes every single day. Because I totally would.

Warning: Size Limit Exceeded

2008-10-26T10:25:00.000-07:00

There's so much I feel like I have to post. I haven't posted in a while, but I have been thinking a lot.

I also have a thesis to work on, and I will get to it this afternoon, I will.

1) I checked my email today and there was Camryn. The dynasty just keeps on getting bigger.

2) Doubters (read: my brother) said it couldn't be done. (What he said was, actually, "So much for the pink mohawk.") Well, scoffers (read: my brother), read 'em and weep. Hugh is here and he is various shades of pink.

Side note: In the process (ha! hair color pun!) of turning my hair into strings of cotton candy, I was bleaching my hair, yada yada... and you know what? With yellow-white hair, I look like Draco Malfoy. I think this is an interesting tidbit of information to keep in my back pocket for special occasions.

3) It's so interesting how humans have such weird things in common (even beyond the things I discovered in the epic conversation I had last night). My suitemate and I are huge cookie-dough fans, and we've just discovered that both of us have dreams of ready-made chocolate chip cookie dough... wait for it... without the chocolate chips. Chocolate chips are fine in baked cookies but they mess up the texture of dough.

4) I'm going to point out that sometimes, it's hard not to be a process theologian. I do not consider myself a process theologian. But, for one thing, I think the trinity can be construed as a a protoprocess thought. So I, very cerebrally, want to see how that works within a Christian context and within my own framework as an adult.

But then again--how much is one supposed to think about the trinity anyway? So much of what I think Christianity is hinges on the idea that to follow Jesus, you need to be getting out and doing things like feeding people or building houses or bandaging wounds.

But sometimes you just feel like you have to think about theology for a bit. I've been in a very active mode for a while, and I don't want to lose the action of the faith... but I'm tired of not approaching religion cerebrally.

5) Politics. Voting makes you feel so responsible, doesn't it? I keep reminding myself about the flawed system to make me feel like my vote counts less. But really.

No, I don't argue the cause of either candidate. In these messy times, advertisers, in a variety of guises and using lots of mediums, try to guilt us into putting our trust into total strangers. But really, all I can do, personally, is trust in God instead, search my heart, vote my conscience. For the country I still belong to. It's full of family who are dear to my heart and strangers who I have a duty as a citizen to protect and as a follower of Jesus to love.

And you know, this election is going to affect a lot of things for me on a personal level, too. It's real now. I'm an adult.

True Story. I call it "Tokio Hotel."

2008-10-21T06:47:00.000-07:00

I have good news and I have bad news.

The bad news is that, unfortunately, my eyeballs hurt, my legs weigh two-hundred-six pounds each, and I kind of want to... what's a good euphemism for vomit? The only one that comes to mind is "upchuck," and I was always told that wasn't nice. I'm going to wait it out and drink Dr. Pepper. Some people seem to scoff at this remedy, but it is how my wonderful mom took care of me when I was a kid. I swear, Dr. Pepper works and it's more accessible than ginger snaps, which also take care of nausea and if Mom were here, she would get them for me.

So that's the bad news. The good news is that last night something happened that I thought was really funny, and that was this.

I call it "The Sheltered Homeschooler Doesn't Really Know What to Do with Boy Bands."

Oh, a little less than a year ago, I guess, I was starting to really try to acclimate myself to a variety of languages. So I decided to listen to pop music, and somehow I stumbled across Ich Bin Nich' Ich, right? It's a song that's a few years old, from a band called Tokio Hotel. The lead singer had this great, raspy, plucky belt. Full of character and rock and zip. I wanted to sing just like her.

I listened in blissful ignorance for a while. Like months. And then I decided to, you know, listen to a little more Tokio Hotel. Come to find out.... Tokio Hotel--and you probably know this because they're crossing over into the States after scandalizing France* AND you're probably not a sheltered homeschooler--is pretty much the German Jonas Brothers. Like, they're really big, really obnoxious. I know. If I was a normal person I would know all of this.

(*Honestly, France is really just jealous that their boy band scene is sadly lacking.)

Not only was I envious (for months) of a prepubescent boy's voice, the boy in question looked like the spawn of Gavroche from Les Miserables, Michael Jackson, Pete Wentz... and just generally like he belonged in a Stephen King novel. I don't say this to be mean; he was really a cute little kid, in kind of a Lost Boy meets The Omen sort of way.

See?

Of course, that picture is a couple of years old, and now Bill Kaulitz looks like a really beautiful scene porcupine.

(It's not fair. He really does have nice ears and a nice face shape and nice eyebrows and a nice nose. They're just nice. Nice, delicate features are wasted on boys, but they do help them become rock stars, I suppose. Just look at Kurt Cobain and Toby Mac.)

And I've realized that I do not like Tokio Hotel's current music. It is lame; it is scene; Bill's hair looks porcupine quills; Tom Kaulitz dresses like he's trying too hard to be Eminem, who is so passe anyway.

Tokio Hotel is the most American German band I've ever seen.

That said, I also cannot stop listening to the original Schrei. The debut album. The one Ich Bin Nich' Ich is from. Because I can't help still kind of wanting to sound like pre-voice change Bill Kaulitz. Because now that I look back on it, yeah, the vocals do kind of remind me of Taylor Hanson's in mmmBop (Taylor was better, of course) and I really should have known it was a boy. Because you know what? Sometimes I like cheesy boy bands even, yes, sometimes if they're scene and kind of horrid and try way, way, way too hard. True confession. Because Durch den Monsun does get in your head, like emo boy band songs should. True confession.

list! ka-boom!

2008-10-20T11:04:00.000-07:00

a) I stayed up way too late last night. Necessary? Yes, yes, AND yes.

b) The main reason for this entry is to recommend a book I read for fun over the weekend. The book is Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene. I had not read Greene before. I think I'd seen somewhere that someone smart liked him--and once on a crossword puzzle for THE NEW YORK TIMES the answer for one of the across phrases was The Quiet American. Now, I sort of have a crush on the New York Times, so I decided to read Graham Greene.

Our Man in Havana is political; it's satirical; it's complex yet short; it's funny. It's my brand of humor--a little too soon, a little dry, a little absurd.

Vacuum cleaners are automatically funny, and this is a story about a vacuum cleaner salesman in Cuba who gets involved in espionage so he has enough money to buy his daughter a horse. He turns in designs of vacuum cleaner parts to the U.K., saying that they're Cuban missiles.

I liked this book so much. So, that's my Reading Rainbow segment for the day.

c) Other thing about the show I'm in? I'm learning Russian dance moves! Sweet!

d) I can't help but think that my life is exciting and it's going to get even better.

e) I've been really getting into quotes attributed to St. Frances of Assisi lately. Mostly because I don't want to be showy or pharisaical. I just want to be a person who can walk around loving people.

f) Oh! And coffee? Chocolate flavored coffee from Folger's gourmet line is possibly one of the best seven dollar purchases one can make. It is caffeinated heaven.

Any Perks of Being a Wallflower...

2008-10-15T10:57:00.000-07:00

...are totally eliminated by adopting a countercultural haircut.

You may quote me.

I have had a mohawk (not a fauxhawk) for two days.

I named it Hugh.

If there is one thing that has assured me that I am not a punk, it is having a punk haircut and feeling stupid.

A lot of people have said that it looks really good. This, I think, is sometimes code for "You have an unusual haircut and I feel I need to comment on it--but I don't like it at all," or, sometimes, "I appreciate that you have the guts to do what I would never do... but it looks stupid." And there are a few people who actually mean it when they say they like it. Anyway, it's too much hair attention for my liking--but what do you expect? I'm a girl with a mohawk. I'm used to it and I am secure in who I am--I am a child of God; I am a peacemaker; I am a dreamer--and right now, I am a child of God, a peacemaker, and a dreamer with a mohawk.

Mohawks are not like dreads; dreads are a way of life. (I love dreadlocks. I love dreaded people. I kind of wish my baby sister was a little less Hollister, a little more hippie so she could have awesome long blond dreads). Mohawks are a lot less time-consuming and you don't have to have a mohawk soul to have a mohawk.

Am I glad I currently have a mohawk? In a way, yes (although I will be completely ok once I can return to a less alarming haircut.)

I honestly think it will contribute scads of authenticity to my characterization in this musical. (Y'all, my hair will look SO good in this play and I am justifiably excited.) (It's also a perverted theatrical status symbol to look weird for a show. I always looked longingly after the muttonchops and curlers of the period-show actors. Is it misguided? Yes. But still.)

I will also one day be able to say, "Children, when I was a senior in college, I had a mohawk. This means I am countercultural; you may obey me now."

And I now have the authority to dispel myths about mohawks. For one thing, it is not essential to shave the sides of your head to have a mohawk. If the hair on the sides of your head is very significantly shorter than the hawk part, it is not a fauxhawk. For another, mohawks can be worn down. The lady who cut my hair spiked it. Hugh hates being spiked. Mohawks do not have to be fanned in order to be legitimate. I looked this up online to make sure. Also, mohawks have minds of their own.

echoes of jesse

2008-10-14T06:47:00.000-07:00

Who you are is what you do, not who you want to be. As Michael said, faith isn't for the future. Hope is for the future. Faith is for the now.

Faith means you do what you hope to be.

So all of a sudden I'm thinking about my friend Jesse--the skinny, weird one with curly hair--and the stuff we do and fail to do, because all of it applies to where we hope to be.

So, here I am. I'm getting out and doing what I hope. I am looking for a school--not as hard as I should be, I admit... but I am thinking about a few schools in the Midwest and, oddly enough, in Germany; I am voting--because the next time there will be a presidential election, I will be directly affected by the international policies of the upcoming administration; I am learning languages--"les paupieres" are "the eyelids" in French, German's going pretty well, and I just recently considered that I should be attempting to learn Arabic (if Richard Engel can do it, so can I); I am writing plays and doing a thesis, because one day I could be a documentary filmmaker or a playwright who travels the world doing research. I know I will be a traveling artist, because I am an artist now. I have a passport now.

So, if where you are isn't where you hope to be--why are you where you are? What are you doing to be who you want to be in five years? If you have a dream, and it's just lying stagnant... why? What's the point of that?

updates...

2008-10-10T05:37:00.000-07:00

What I am Reading:

Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein
One thing that I just recently learned is that Robert Heinlein popularized the acronym TANSTAAFL. Thank you, Robert Heinlein. Starship Troopers is a moral/philosophical novel cloaked in the guise of science fiction. Which means that I love the moral/philosophical parts and I am trying to like the sci-fi, "powered armor" parts. (Apparently, "power suits" mean different things to sci-fi than they do to the eighties).

What I am Listening To:

Urinetown. Duh. Is it hard to be in a show that is nominally about bodily functions?

Yes, sometimes it is. Mostly because I don't want my family to hate it and I feel like they will.

12:02

2008-10-02T21:02:00.000-07:00

There is one distinct time when I wish-I wish-I wish that I had life figured out; that I was (sorry to Caitlin and anyone else who might miss me come May) a graduate; that I was, you know, not in school, but off serving, doing wildly creative things to bless people, preferably in a country where they don't always speak English; preferably with some pretty awesome husband of a guy who accepts me, even with my short hair and propensity to say dumb things; maybe, you know, a tribe.

And that time is shortly after midnight when I am "working" on an essay that's due tomorrow, listening to Songs of Water and/or French music.

My question:

Who are we but the time we spend?

Who are we besides what we do with the time we spend?

I know--
I have to spend my time doing what I'm supposed to be doing. It's not about me, and my time has to reflect that.

But first, before the husband and the missions and the orphanages and the languages and the tribe, even before my next haircut, I have to finish this dingdangpaper.

THINGS THAT MAKE ME EXCITED ABOUT LIFE

2008-09-29T10:46:00.000-07:00

1. Ok... thanks to my roommate, I have discovered the best BBC-TV show this side of "Are You Being Served?" It's the next "Charmed"-- it has cheesy flying arrow effects, more suspense than my Human Biology final, anachronisms out one's ears, and Harry Lloyd (progeny of Charles Dickens) (not to mention Joe Armstrong, progeny of Alun Armstrong, who you will recognize because he plays every villain--ever--on anything BBC).

So really it's not like "Charmed" at all. What it is, is "Robin Hood." AND IT'S H-AMAZING, in an anachronistic, cheesy, suspenseful, Harry Lloyd way. Roomie says it's going to get really intense. I can't wait. I hope it stays just as cheesy throughout its run.

2. Languages. Believe it or not, I still like doing my German homework. We're learning plurals. Isn't that cute? I have trouble weakening in my resolve when I think about how sure I am that I will not be in the States for a significant part of my life. New (read: old goal I've had for a zillion years but don't quite reach... ever) goal: retain French, even though I am very often intimidated by one roommate of mine, who is a French major and knows so much more and reads Hernani by Victor Hugo and reenacts the death scene to great comic effect...

3. There will, come hell or high water, be an ETC next semester. And it will, come hell or high water, include a number of plays that will be staged for the first time. chesseandaaron, if you promise to make me not be a slacker about this, I promise to not let you be a slacker about it. For real, for serious. We need to do this because you guys are mad talented and we're also going to graduate.

4. My broface called me on Saturday. I love talking to my brother! He's just so smart and I'm totally ok with being a soundboard for his brilliant ideas.

5. This past "Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me" was awesome. Thank you, Mo Rocca. Fact: Mo Rocca is really smart and wears bow ties and I love him and he is just so funny on "Wait! Wait" and on "Wishbone" and on everything he's ever done, ever, including "I Love the 80's" and "The Today Show" and thesmokinggun.com. I. Love. Mo. Rocca. In my dreams, I am as savvy as Mo Rocca and I look just as good in a bowtie. Then I wake up and I'm clueless and wear sweats all day.

2008-09-25T13:40:00.000-07:00

Academic novels came up in Literary Criticism today. I brought up the fact that I have tried to read Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis... tried very hard... based on two very heartfelt recommendations. One of them was from a professor in the book that I got in high school that basically consisted of a bunch of lists of all these books that professors from a variety of colleges recommended. The other was from Hugh Grant.

I wanted to know what my professor's thoughts on Lucky Jim were; if he could persuade me to read it. I sort of wanted to like Kingsley Amis, even though I've only ever liked him in moments. (But when I like him, I really like him! Gah! So conflicted!)

My professor's response? "That does not speak well of Hugh Grant."

Then...
"Kingsley Amis, pssh... Lucky Jim is not that great of a book."

I FEEL SO VALIDATED. I LOVE THIS CLASS. And then we talked about Nietzsche!

But I have to say--I love all of my classes this semester. It's a good year.

Die Religion

2008-09-24T10:34:00.000-07:00

...ist das Opium des Volkes.

I've been reading Marx lately, for class. I've been reading German, for class. (And for fun.)

And so this famous quote from Marx is stuck in my head a little.

Which is interesting, because I'm sure that--

"Why, Claire, don't you consider yourself a religious person? Because I certainly do! Why would you even think at length about this one flyaway comment that ol' Karl said?! It seems to be completely against everything you've ever believed in!"

Why, I guess I am a person of faith-- I enjoy talking about it and writing about the phenomenon of religious experience (I mean, obviously.) I like personally experiencing faith. (Most of the time.)

But I think religion can be an opiate. I think that religion, both the major religions and the cultural gods of materialism, etc, can mind-numbingly perpetuate the status quo (which, as Dr. Horrible would say, is not quo.) And I don't want that for my life. I want to be awake.

2008-09-23T18:11:00.000-07:00

Today in class we did one of those acting exercises where you look everybody in the eye for a really long time. If you've ever done something like this, you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't... basically, what happens is that you look someone in the eye. Sometimes they start laughing or you start laughing or... someone loses focus because someone else does something socially inappropriate... or something...

So I've been thinking about eye contact since. What is it about four eyeballs that make people slightly uncomfortable? We're all so scared if we look at someone, they'll see what's inside us--and I know that's silly. You are not going to be able to interpret my secret crush on Henry Tilney from staring straight into my eyes. (Ok, so my "secret" crush on Henry Tilney is... not.)

(Side note: Um, Twilight? I am up to here with all of this Edward Cullen love. It's like Jane Eyre on crack, with hormones. Henry Tilney of Northanger Abbey has been around for years; his family is [kind of] bloodsucking [in Gothic parody-fashion] he wears a greatcoat really well, he has dogs, he is a clergyman [!!!!!] he is tall, dark and [kind of] handsome and [kind of] everything any girl should ever want.)

I'm just not going to try to hide my eyes; why should I? Why can't we be a society that sincerely looks at individuals, in all of their unique craziness?

Oh! Even though my hair is longer that it has been in the past year and a half (I can almost put it into a ponytail... sad) I'm still getting excited about the hair possibilities for the show. It's going to be punk meets Les Miserables meets NYPD Blue.

Yeah. All of that.

Yesterday

2008-09-16T08:03:00.000-07:00

was singularly long and singularly eventful.

The highlight of my day was at 5:51 when my brother called me of his own volition, just to talk. I mean, I could have melted in a puddle on the sidewalk. This has never happened before, ever.

Unfortunately, that phone call came thirty-six minutes after my sister called me of my mom's volition to tell me that my dad was going to the hospital--probably the big bummer of my day.

And now for a bit of context. At Sunday School there was a brother and sister (approximately the ages of my brother and sister) whose dad (who was younger than my dad) was rushed to the hospital. We prayed for him, and that was it. That night I learned that he had passed away. And then the next day my dad went to the hospital.

It was sort of a freak sequence of events and it left me really on edge, probably more so than I would have been otherwise.

Right before rehearsal, I finally called Mom, who has been convinced this whole time that Dad would be fine. When we hung up, I started bawling--a combination of grief for all the stress that he's been under that has caused all of these problems; relief that it sounded like his heart is okay and that his vitals were good. It was then that I got down on my knees, on the concrete, by the theatre, and told God that I was confident that He loves Dad, Dad loves Him, and I love Dad. It was kind of interestingly full-circle--when I was born, I had a little bit of trouble with the whole being-alive aspect of living, and my dad knelt down on the hospital floor and prayed that I would survive.

It was also a heck of a lot better than the last time Dad went to the hospital. It was when I was in high school, it was the middle of the night, and we'd just had a major knock-down, drag-out fight. I went to bed very angry. And then at 3 am I felt just terrible because there was my dad, going to the hospital, and it was an epic-ally bad night for that to happen. And here we are, on good terms, with a lot of mutual respect there.

But seriously--last night felt really, really long because I was constantly wondering how Dad was doing and what was going on. It wasn't until eight-ten that I finally got peace about the situation because Mom said that she was going to get Dad some Chik-Fil-A for dinner. For some reason, I don't think of Chik-Fil-A as a deathbed food.

But there you have it. It was a little nuts, but God has always been in control, and He loves His kids. My dad is one of the coolest people I know: he reads a lot, he plays bass, he wears patterned sweaters... the list goes on and on.

(Dad, you should get into the washtub bass; it's got less strings, it's more temperamental and you'll look like a hillbilly. I'd laugh and take pictures.)

I know my dad will be happiest in heaven and if he were to go there suddenly, I would not wish him back... but I'm still glad that he has some unfinished business down here first.

But really, in conclusion, please pray for the Call family.

Press "Delete"

2008-09-15T11:42:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I am reminded of just how many mistakes I make.

I goof up far too much for my own good. Can we say "Alpha Psi Omega?" (I really don't like to be reminded that I'm a terribly incompetent leader, but it's also good for me and everyone to know...)

My halo slips; I trip over my feet; I don't listen.

Mistakes suck. If I really think about it, I hate that I cause people pain. I mean, part of me really hates to not be universally admired and loved.

But you know what? Life goes on. Every day that I get is another chance to play fair.

And one day it'll work.

I've Lost my Subconscious Mind

2008-09-14T07:51:00.000-07:00

Lately, my dreams, like ten-minute plays and songs from the early 20th century, have been really, really topical. It's pretty unusual.

Like, not even Freudian anymore. I'm beyond the nebulous point of dreams, and it's like my subconscious and my conscious are speaking the same language.

It's like, I think about the script for the show I'm working on right now, and how it was irretrievably lost, and I dream about the script for the show I'm working on right now, and trying to find it in its irretrievably lost state.

And then last night I dreamed about Neil Patrick Harris, a widdly celebrity crush of mine, who I was praising to the skies last night to Landon, who is apparently unfamiliar with Neil Patrick Harris. (I mean, Doogie Howser, MD? Cold Sassy Tree? How I Met Your Mother? Old Spice commercials? Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog? Will and Grace? Assassins? Sweeney Todd? Cabaret? I, fortunately, tend to see Neil Patrick Harris a minimum of all the time, and it is a good thing.)

(Widdly, like posh, is a word derived from an acronym. I coined this term from the phrase Wish I DiDn't Like You, and it describes boys I wish I didn't like because they're unattainable or jerks or taken or gay or some combination of the above.)

In my dream, I met Neil Patrick Harris and he was considering replacing both Jeff Probst and Ryan Seacrest as the hosts of Survivor and American Idol, respectively, and I was vehemently against this. "No, Neil Patrick Harris! You should totally NOT be a host! Your place in the universe is being a ridiculously talented, if unattainable, actor!"

Whatever.

What's next? Dreaming about class assignments and dreadlocks? Not that I have dreadlocks, but I'm conscious of the fact that if my hair was not short and/or naturally poo brown, that I would consider them.

A List

2008-09-09T09:36:00.000-07:00

A 1. Eisley? One of the ten or so English-speaking bands I still listen to. Yay for a gene pool of preternaturally beautiful people with haunting vocals that minister to my furtive emo inner life-- while still making me happy. Quite a feat. Also, my brother says to listen to The Planets by Gustav Holst, because every major soundtrack composer steals from him. Also, I read in... I think it was... geez... some womanly magazine with a cover story on Heidi Klum... I can't remember the magazine... but Seal totally compared Heidi to the seven-movement orchestral suite. Seal is kind of really funny when you think about it. I mean, jeez--he's clearly taking Heidi Klum way too seriously.

A 2. Don't judge my propensity to cherish musicals and/or rock operas from the seventies.

Or, more realistically, judge away, because I know you will, but my opinion isn't going to change. I'm listening to Working right now. I'll also defend Starmania and/or Tycoon with my very non-Gen-X, very cush, square life. Give me Tommy! Give me The Wiz! Dang it!

And eighties schmaltz like Phantom of the Opera can go straight to theatrical Hades, where Allegro and Can I Hear a Waltz and Anyone Can Whistle live, and it can take Cats and Evita and Starlight Express and Miss Saigon with it. I know that some of those are also from the seventies, but--whatever, they're eighties schmaltz in spirit.

A 3. So... workshopping new plays? It makes me dizzy--or maybe that's the allergies--but I couldn't be more in love with the process of structuring theatrical greatness. I love how collaboration makes the ideas of individuals ten thousand times better. I love how in a collaborative process, the idea of intellectual property tends to vanish in a crazy groupthink that allows everybody to steal the best of everybody else.

A 4. But for real for serious. I wish I was an Eisley.

Yet Another Reason...

2008-09-03T06:18:00.000-07:00

...I wear a WWJD bracelet, even though they've been out since their overcommercialized stint ten years ago...

I was at chapel last night for the first time in a while. I tend to forget about chapel, and I'm not affiliated with the United Church of Christ so I don't have a denominational obligation to show my face. But I was around the chapel area and I saw the little tricklers trickle into the sanctuary so I thought, "Why not?"

Ok--the gospel reading pretty much almost made me cry. It was the Sermon on the Mount, something we've all heard: basically, we all love our friends; it's time to love our enemies and bless those who persecute you.

I'm a very diplomatic person. I might even be gracious at times. There just aren't people I consider enemies. I don't have a vendetta against any particular person and I haven't sworn vengeance ever in my life. It's kind of a zen life. But I was still convicted. Even though there is no Captain Hammer to my Dr. Horrible, is it in my nature to bless those who persecute me? I still have pride, so I get offended; I still have a heart, so I get hurt; and what do I do? I GROUSE. It's true. I mumble; maybe I vent to my roommate over ice cream; I wish doctoral dissertations against my nine-minute nemesis, and then I'm back to zen.

And then I was like, "Dang son. I am a craptastic follower of Jesus." I thought about sharing that at Sharing Time, but I didn't want to say "craptastic" in church. There's still a stigma, at least for me, I think.

But really--what if I really responded like Christ all the time? What if that became my knee-jerk reaction, my gut response? Love? What if?

It's sad that I need reminders to love; it's grace that I get reminders to love; it's because of love that I may ever get to love at all.

Ok, so there's a little list.

2008-09-02T13:33:00.000-07:00

So, Labor Day Weekend was about a half-hour longer than it was supposed to be. I am mortified for missing my One Important Meeting of the Day. Sigh.

Maybe I unintentionally blocked out the meeting (though I had written it, in black ink, in my day planner) because it's for work, and I fear that work will cause me to retire my pajama pants temporarily. Screw appropriate daywear; it is for mensches, professors, and news anchors.

I've been told by people on varying sides that no, I should not be a conscientious objector to the national election. Sigh. It is hard to be an American, where citizenship comes with expectations and democratic responsibility. I want to dodge it, hardcore, but I know I shouldn't. There's really just no easy answer for someone with such a conflicted conscience, and, I mean, tempus fugit, so what matters anyway? Four years of consequences forever; why am I such an existentialist all of the sudden? On the plus side, I love how animated my polisci professor and Mo Rocca get about election coverage. They are big ol' dorks.

Geez, louise, Mo Rocca. I don't even care if he just misspelled Marni Nixon's name in a recent Morocca180.com post. I love him, I love him, I love him. Mo Rocca likes [title of show]. Theatre people, have we seen this? Do we like it?

Craving Cherry Coke Zero soda because someone mentioned soda about five seconds ago. I gave up soda for this school year but I may have to recant. Ugh.

Things I have Learned from Dramaturging my Current Show:

1) The washtub bass is not a subtle instrument.

2) Theatre is nebulous and often scary.

3) Professors have opinions.

Predictable--the opinions are more of the same, plus in list form

2008-08-29T14:57:00.000-07:00

1) I'm trying really hard to not be apathetic about the national election. I think I am the only one who is apathetic about it; there's a polisci professor at my school who always wears bowties, and I have never seen him look this animated before in my life. It's just like... they've chosen the running mates--and I just got bored. (However, I will say that sometimes Governor Palin reminds me of Tina Fey and they could have so much fun with her if Tina was still on SNL.)

It's hard for me to see this as something that actually matters. In the grand scheme of things, America's just probably going to suck and I'm probably going to move. That sounded really jaded, didn't it? Yes, yes, it did.

(I'm going to get lynched by a bunch of really conservative homeschool campaign volunteers for saying that, if I don't get shot by very anti-2nd Amendment Obamites from the theatre department first.)

2) I've been kind of apathetic anyway lately. Like, today I wore pajamas. All day. I even had three meetings with professors. I hope I sent off enough subliminal messages of "Don't judge me; this is academia and we're postmodern now so it shouldn't matter that I did not care enough to appear before you in 'appropriate' daywear like jeans." I just... I just... I care about my thesis far more than I do about getting dressed. And I, very appropriately, I think, care about other things far more than my thesis. (Dr. B, if you ever read this, I don't care about a WHOLE lot of other things more than my thesis, but you know, the standard post-grad plans, family, sleep, etc. still reign supreme.)

3) Today I got a picture in the mail of me and my brother from Aletheia. So many wonderful memories... and it brought back his short-lived goatee in living color. My brother's zealous pursuit of facial hair, however patchy and/or BRIGHT RED, was really precious, you guys. (Yeah, I know! Bright red! And this is the gypsy-lookin' brother with the mad dark eyebrows and hair!) It was a really rocking picture. The colors were slightly funky, so I looked like I had gray-violet eyes. I was neo-Elizabeth Taylor only her eyebrows never stunk and mine do.

Sigh. I miss my bro.

Wednesday List Time!

2008-08-27T06:31:00.001-07:00

1) I have succeeded in giving up my pretty-intense diet soda habit. I would not have been able to do this without coffee. Thank you, coffee.

2) I may or may not be up to something. What?

3) My roommate says that I sound weird speaking German. New French Acquaintance (yes, I have an acquaintance who is French, which makes this year already cooler than last year) might argue that it's because German is an ugly language; I disagree. I think I sound weird speaking German because it doesn't come as naturally as English or even French. I know how I sound speaking English (very animated); I know how I sound speaking French (very frontally placed and much more monotone). I'm now determined to watch a lot of German television so I can tell how people talk. My mom met this Vietnamese girl in the Harris Teeter the other day and she learned ridiculously good English by living here and picking it up. I'm determined to be one of those people who picks languages up.

4) There is no such thing as too much mascara. I mean, I'm sure there is, but I haven't experienced mascara satisfaction. Ever, in my life, yet.

5) Ionesco is better in French. I've come to really be peeved by translations; I think I just have to learn every original language.

6) Catch-22. Still need it.

7) Save me some time, people. I've been plugging Northanger Abbey at every single opportunity. It is time for all of you, especially my lovely girlfriends, to READ THIS BOOK and save me some breath. You will thank me later. Or sooner.

Beginning of the Semester Update

2008-08-25T13:31:00.001-07:00

Hello, world. I miss you. I used to have free time. Now I research puppet theatre and junk instruments and people; I'm loving it a little bit, but it means I have officially, officially asserted my ownership of the Theatre Arts computer lab in a way that kind of freaks me out. (Yo, I redecorated it. It's pretty rockin'.)

So, I have this friend who is a pretty rocking guy who reads my blog when it's not long and he pointed out to me that I am "too creative to go to Bible school." Thoughts?

My college library has lost its sole copy of Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. I will never be a literate individual. Dang. I did, however, check out short stories by Kafka. I'm not sure why I read so many stories by messed-up individuals. It's cathartic, I guess--I go through a trial by fire of pity and fear when I read Kafka. He just... he just needed a hug so bad.

Ok... speaking of short stories. "The Birthmark" by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It's like The Scarlet Letter, but much shorter. And minus Pearl. Hated it, can't wait for the other stuff I'm going to read for SciFi class. Let's lose the Twilight-Zone crazy red hand blemish, let's think about robots and space wars.

It's Friday! LIST TIME!

2008-08-22T09:35:00.000-07:00

1. It's early in the school year. It is August. I am fighting the crushes. Yes, I am occasionally plagued by mild-to-moderate distractions from men, usually ones of the "extremely unavailable" persuasion. This year (and by "year," I do not mean calendar year, I mean school year) it is, so far... ta-da... Phil Dalhausser and Dr. Horrible, of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Previous to this month, I had never heard of Phil Dalhausser or Dr. Horrible. Now, I've quite obviously heard of them both, let me tell you. Phil Dalhausser is a beach volleyball player. I used to, feministly, pooh-pooh beach volleyball for being the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue of the Olympics. Then I saw men's beach volleyball--and by "men's beach volleyball," I mean the very bald and well-shaped skull of Phil Dalhausser--and was reformed. Beach volleyball is, ladies and gentlemen, equal-opportunity eye candy. He looks like the Silver Surfer--only not silver.

My other new sort-of crush is on Dr. Horrible. Have you seen Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog? No? You're the worst Joss Whedon/musical/Neil Patrick Harris (NEIL PATRICK HARRIS!!!!) fan ever. You're so corporate you probably were anti-writer's strike. And you probably have no soul, so you would probably never sing along to the Bad Horse messages anyway.

Probably.

...

...

(NEIL PATRICK HARRIS!!! I mean, DAG, yo! AND he sings!)

(DAG, yo!!)

2. Apathy. I let it slip in last year, ghostlike and invasive and unfortunate. I didn't care enough about what I should have cared tremendously about--others, my integrity, being positive, fellowship (which is, apparently, now available on Facebook to sessionites. Just a plug.). I feel the temptation to do that again--not necessarily in a major-rebellion way, but in a just blah way--and I'm fighting that, too. Help me, dear Lord. And help me, sisters. And You are, and you are. So life's cool.

Please suggest, if you can, authors and philosophers who care. About anything. I just want to see fervor.

I'm thinking Immanuel Kant. I hope in his native language.

3. The shows that I'm working on right at the moment make me feel fierce. I must be weird, because I really enjoy that there's a possibility that my oversized, tiny-print railroad books are going to give me major back pain and eye strains.

(NEIL PATRICK HARRIS!)

4. So far, and this is totally a Jesus thing, so let me just say, I love everybody at school. So far.
So, if you're at school--hey! I love you this year! Enjoy it while it lasts.

5. I have too much Flair. I wish you could delete individual Pieces of Flair because people keep sending me Pieces and I am completely and totally content with my current Flair--it includes Brian Williams, Buster Keaton in jail, Kuzco doing his "llama face," Magritte, "Zombie: Eat Flesh," gangster Gollum, and all the Flair pieces I've ever wanted. So, dear, dear, dear people, including my brother, no more "Sith Happens"--I don't watch Star Wars. No more "You Know Nothing of Javert" Flair because I got over my bad-guy crush on Javert by sophomore year of college. No more Flair spam like "I sent you this because I needed more Flair points." That's just going to make me hate the world and Facebook, and we've already talked about the fact that I currently love everyone at school. I wish this habit would continue, but in order to do that, I must have no more Flair.

Just kidding. I really don't care.

4. Coming up with a list of good places to film B-zombie movies in honor of Sci Fi and Culture, my other new favorite class besides German, LitCrit, and Musical Theatre Perf (by a mysterious coincidence, those are all of my classes. Yes, that's right--they are all my favorites) .

Babyland USA (home of Cabbage Patch Dolls) and the Salisbury-Rowan laundry room currently top the list.

Please suggest, if you can, other areas that would also work. I doubt I could get permission to film in Babyland.

back at school... and maybe nuts

2008-08-19T16:55:00.000-07:00

Some things... and by that, I mean, specific things about myself that I don't happen to like very well... some things never change.

Some lines... some eyes... some things will never fail to move me.

I am wired, dude. I am up and I am wired. I have crazy college jitters. I have just been up... so up... and just thinking things through, off-the-wall things through. And praying, a lot, because apparently I do that now. It's on my Aspirations for the Year list of things to do, so I'm accountable to my roommate about it.

So I just shared some secret plans that I've sort of made over the summer with one of my dearest friends--and if she thought I was nuts, she did not say so, which made me pretty incandescently happy. And she's feeling pretty good herself, it seems. So, go friends!

I'm also excited about underground theatre. I think it should happen. I was so inspired by this little friend I have and our deep talk about his cinematic philosophy of "motion graffiti." I can't do movies yet--I don't have a camera--so I will have to content myself with "live performance graffiti" for now. I want to study cultural, non-Western art. I want to write a lot of theatre, preferably with a bunch of other people. And then, dang son--I meet the freshmen and from what I can tell, they should be a creative, inspired bunch--wait, it gets better--and they sing, too. I know. My feet are cold because my socks have been rocked off.

If you, poor lost soul, are reading this jumbled mass of type relayed from a fevered, underslept imagination... you can pray for me, if you do that, and also, if you are an artist, and you know you are an artist, go make art! It's what we do!

Unsolicited Endorsements

2008-08-14T04:59:00.000-07:00

And now, for another instance in which I proselytize regarding things I like and you should, too.

ANY AND ALL HARRY POTTER SOUNDTRACKS COMPOSED BY JOHN WILLIAMS: I don't think I need to explain this one. However, I will say that my brother does not agree. He thinks that John Williams is playing it safe with the boy wizard and his themes. To this I say, "Hedwig? Hello?" To this he says, "Aside from Hedwig's Theme, a lot of it sounds like it was borrowed from Hook!"

BANDANAS: Now that my hair has migrated from "fine, too short, I admit it" to "too long to fauxhawk--sad day!" I have been ganking bandanas from the land of the gangster. Bandanas are addicting.

MUTEMATH: I mean, have you seen the "Typical" music video? No? YOUTUBE IT, dillweed!

(Side note: I think I give them an unsolicited endorsement pretty much every time I write a post with unsolicited endorsements.)

Nope! No excuses! Youtube it, NOWnow!

HAROLD AND MAUDE: One of my favorite romantic comedies since Sunset Boulevard (which should tell you something--do not watch it if your definition of "romantic comedy" is "Sleepless in Seattle"). And the reason is mostly Bud Cort (I think I went into hysterical convulsions over his cameo on the third season of Arrested Development--that was such a good episode...) and Ruth Gordon (a talented actor who is also an absolutely fantastic screenwriter? What a novel idea!).

COFFEE

JONES CREAM SODA: Why? It tastes like heaven. As in, I will be disappointed if, once dead, I stick out my tongue as if to catch a snowflake and heaven does not taste like Jones Pure Cane Cream Soda. Bevnet.com gives it four and a half stars, and Jesse and I give it a zillion.

Noncreative Process

2008-08-13T06:35:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the last week before school, where I defer packing to a later date by blogging all...the...time.

Observation about writing:

Bait-and-switch does not work with writing. Bait-and-switch works pretty well with marketing. Abercrombie will tease you with hot, wet men and then sell you a baby doll t-shirt that will fall apart in the third hot-water wash. See? Bait-and-switch all the way, and Abercrombie's stocks are solid. However, if you start with a dark comedy, you sure as heck must end with a dark comedy instead of a melodrama. I'm still working on that. Darn you, melodrama. Chicken pox on all of your houses.

Observation on religion and creativity:

Here's a paradox that would have caused me to doubt a while back. If Christianity is real, Christians should make the best movies. However, they do not seem to do so. Is Christianity real? In other words, Christians--and I'm going to generalize here, so you can beat me up and steal my lunch money if you want to, but I've been pretty apathetic this summer so I might not cry-- believe they have a divine channel--the Holy Spirit--to the source of all creativity. Blaise Pascal (who I read like he's going out of style, 'cept he's not because he's BLAISE PASCAL) described God as "a master talent ruling all the rest." So, why do movies made by Christians tend to suck?*

(*Side note: There is no such thing as a "Christian" movie. It's a movie.)

And don't give me the "funding" issue. Look at "Clark and Michael." Does their production budget look intimidatingly unending? Look at any retro, cult-classic horror movie. Horror movies didn't use paper currency or financial backers until the eighties. The old stuff, like the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, was made with sweat, tears, and real blood!

You know what I think? We could make better movies, but we don't. A lot of Christians are scared to be artists because it's not mainstream. It's not the clone thing to be an artist, to reference Steve Taylor's biting satire of Christianese culture, in which the point of being sanctified is not to be like Jesus, but to be like everybody else in the church.

You know what? That scares me. A lot of evangelical Christians are scared of Obama becoming president. That is a stupid fear. It's not like cloneliness. Cloneliness is antithetical to the entire Bible.

If you consider yourself a follower of Jesus and you believe that you are, innately, an artist of any kind, don't try to squelch that! You were born a unique expression of God's creativity and it's your responsibility to discover what that means for you.

I love entertainment. Nothing is more telling about a culture or subculture than the entertainment they produce. I want every country, every religion, every fringe group to produce a play and then I want to see it. I almost wish there were more Zoroastrians in the world because they'd make really awesome movies that would knock the entire Left Behind series out of the water. Maybe after I write my science-fiction musical, I'll write a Zoroastrian eschatology play. There is nothing better than a good ol' end-times piece of theatre. Just look at Endgame.

MICHAEL PHELPS MICHAEL PHELPS MICHAEL PHELPS

2008-08-12T20:06:00.000-07:00

1: Five, six, seven, nine...

2:--Wrong!

1: What?

2: We messed something up, something about the order; I don't remember.

1: Five... six... seven... nine... ten...thirteen...

2: NO!

Pause.

2: Boondoggle!

1: We'll be fine. Everything's in order.

2: No, it's not! We missed something...

1: Well, it's the order now!

I started writing this, and it started reminding me of the End of the World play, so I stopped.
I almost haven't written anything all summer--except for two letters to Cody, but it's summer, this is what I do-- so I was rusty. But the only way to get un-rusty is to write something, right? And that's also what I do, and that's what I love. So here goes a piece inspired by Facebook statuses and my den:

CLAIRE: Who's that in the corner?

(A tall lump is in the corner, covered in a tight cap and absently mouthing the lyrics to music streaming through earbuds.)

SISTER: Michael Phelps.

CLAIRE: Why is he here?

SISTER: He's waiting for a race.

CLAIRE: Okay...

MOM: Something might be wrong with the space-time continuum. Just letting you know. I had a little trouble cooking dinner tonight.

CLAIRE: Okay...

(A mustachio-ed young man in a Speedo and bling enters through the living room door entrance.)

CLAIRE: Dang, son. It's Mark Spitz.

(Michael Phelps looks up as if he's not paying attention, but he is. He's kind of intimidated by Mark Spitz, who has been known to not be happy about the possibility of his record being broken.)

SISTER: Doesn't he know that swimmers don't wear Speedos anymore?

CLAIRE: This is clearly Mark Spitz circa 1972 or 3, Boo. He won seven gold medals and he won them with facial hair.

MICHAEL PHELPS: (muttering) Aaron Piersol can't even do that. (mumble mumble mumble to iPod) Apple bottom jeans, boots with the fur...

(Bloody French people come through the backyard door, eating figs and peaches on their way in from my family's verdant pasture).

SISTER: It's the French! I thought we killed you last night!

ALAIN BERNARD: We're ze French. We will never die.

SISTER: I resent the obvious implied contempt.

ALAIN: What can I say? We have a reputation to uphold.

Obviously, I cannot write this. It has tons of conflict (I have visions of Zombie French and Mark Spitz beating Michael Phelps into a little bloody pulp, and of Michael frantically searching for a hiding place in my tiny house that will accommodate his wingspan) but I haven't really got to the plot yet, and I got bored with this.

But yeah. Everybody's Facebook status is referencing Michael Phelps. Who remembered Aleksandr today? I ask you.

P.S. I want to go on record as saying that I like France and the French. It would be real cool if they were zombies, but then Jordan and Joe and I would have to kill them... I don't know how I'll resolve this.

Pardon my French. No, really. It's slang and it's probably really unladylike.

2008-08-11T14:50:00.000-07:00

WHAT I RECIEVED IN MY INBOX THIS MORNING

Bonjour

Je vous prie de bien vouloir m'excuser pour cette intrusion qui peut paraître surprenante à première vue d'autant qu'il n'existe aucune relation entre nous.
Je voudrais avec votre accord vous présenter ma situation et vous solliciter pour votre aide.
Je me nomme Mlle TAPE Carole, j'ai 20 ans et je suis la fille
unique de mon Père Honorable JEAN-MARC TAPE, qui était un
très riche et puissant producteur en café/cacao, empoisonné
par ses associés lors d'un voyage d'affaires . Après la
mort de mon père, ma mère détenait une ATTESTATION DE SOLDE
BLOQUEE ET SECURISEE à mon nom dans une Compagnie de
sécurité de la place d'une valeur de (2.700.000 EUROS).
Ma mère mourut 4 mois plus tard d'une hypertension
artérielle dans une clinique privée à Abidjan.
Ainsi avant sa mort, elle me fit part de tous les documents relatifs justifiant l'existence d'un compte bloqué d'un montant de (2.700.000 EUROS) que mon père m'a laissé comme héritage et elle me conseilla sagement d'ouvrir un compte fiable à l'étranger dans lequel ces fonds doivent être transférés
selon le testament écrit par mon père.
Elle m’a recommandé aussi de chercher un associé étranger qui pourrait honnêtement me faire bénéficier de son assistance pour sauver ma vie et assurer mon existence.
- M'aider à vous rejoindre dans votre pays
- Poursuivre mes études
D'ailleurs, je vous donnerai 15% sur mes fonds, pour l'aide que vous voudriez bien m'apporter Je vous serai reconnaissante de pouvoir bénéficier de vos
aides et conseils utiles.
S.V.P veuillez garder la discrétion à cause des problèmes socio-politiques que nous vivons en ce moment en Côte d'ivoire. Mon père a été assassiné et "LES
CRIMINELS " qui l'ont assassinés en veulent terriblement à ma vie.
Je compte sur votre bonne foi et votre honnêteté
pour que mon héritage soit transféré le plus vite possible
pour que je puisse vous rejoindre.
S'il vous plaît, contactez moi urgemment par mail dès réception de ce courrier.

Dans l'espoir de vous relire et d'une suite favorable.

Que Dieu vous benisse

Cordialement,

Mlle Carole Tape

WHAT I AM NOT GOING TO REPLY

Bonjour, Mlle Tape!

C'est quoi ce cirque?

....You know what?

Ce n'est rien. Je n'en ai rien à foutre.

Amicalement,
Claire

NOBODY TOLD ME.

2008-08-09T06:38:00.000-07:00

This is worse, much worse, than when Kurt Vonnegut died.

My other old-man/writer crush has been dead for six days, and I was vacationing in a neighboring state, blissfully unaware that my heart was going to be put through a veritable mosh pit at an unnecessarily lame hard rock concert.

I found out this morning that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died last Sunday. Thanks to the Cal Thomas column in the paper, of all things. I never read Cal Thomas; his picture freaks me out. But today's entire column was devoted to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and how perceptive and wise he was.

I immediately changed into black sweatpants; red plaid pajamas were just too cheery for such a dark week in the global scheme of things.

Although Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a bit like John Updike in the sense that you pretty much figured he was dead already and it always kind of surprised you that he was still alive and kicking, he was always more influential to me than John Updike. You would never see me quote John Updike on my facebook wall.

I'm now determined that I WILL finish August 1914, which is pretty epic and has been described as positively Shakespearean and which I have had for years without really finishing. (BECAUSE I SUCK, ALEKSANDR, AND I AM SO SORRY.)

(Note: if you have never read any Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, shame on you. Go read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich right now. It's SO much better than anything Tolstoy, and much shorter.)

I am in the depths of despair, and I will leave you with these quotes so you, too, can be crushed by the fact that this dear, bearded man will no longer grace us with his searing intellect or devastating criticism.

STUFF ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN SAID THAT I LIKE:

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.

For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones. (John Grisham and Danielle Steele, anyone? Oh, did I just hit a nerve?)

Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the 20th century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.

If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being?

You can only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power--he's free again.

Own only what you can carry with you; know language, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.

Yes, Virginia, I Do Believe I Will Get Married

2008-08-08T17:50:00.000-07:00

a. Clay Aiken? First Sir Robin, and now a father? He is getting entirely too much power.

(Also... this is ER's final season? Who told me? Oh, no wait! Nobody!)

b. Once upon a time, I was kind of monastic and moody and also fifteen and I decided that I wanted to get married so much (one day, not at fifteen) that God would deny it from me on the basis of marriage being an idol.

I have recently decided that that thought is stupid. I'm going to get married (yes, I know this) and my relationship with God is more important than that. So that was a stupid thought on my part. I did have craptastica theology on some accounts when I was monastic and moody and also fifteen. I don't recommend being fifteen, as a general rule, unless you are fifteen.

My friend Crystal is getting married. Actually, several of my friends are getting married. But with this friend, it is different. It is different, number one, because she is younger than I am. This makes me feel old.

It is also different because I am a bridesmaid. I love being a bridesmaid. I licked fifty-eleven envelopes for this woman's invitations. I felt so useful.

(My dress, by the way, is vaguely Lord of the Rings. More Arwen than Galadriel. When I wear it, my hair feels too short but my paleness feels just right!)

But anyway, it stuns me how happy she is--and how happy I am for her. I am unreservedly thrilled because of how wonderful her story is and how blessed and loved she feels. Some people seem to have the attitude, she has told me (because she is real, just one of the most genuine people you will ever know) that her story is good for her, but "we can't all have what you and your fiancee have." Well, I think that if God wants you to get married, He wants you to have that.

God wants to give me that.

I think my future husband is out there, somewhere, thinking, "Dang, son, I will never get married because my life will be so nomadic and exciting and cerebral and blessed that no beautiful woman will want to share it with me."

I have news for you, dude--it doesn't matter if, right now, you're rebelling or building shacks in Thailand. One of these days, you're going to be nomadic and exciting and cerebral and blessed, and I'll marry you anyway. I am not ready for G.K. Chesterton's "perpetual crisis" of marriage, but give me a little while, and we'll see.

(I don't think he actually thinks the words "Dang, son," because that is an expression pretty unique to me. )

Will the real Miss Claire please stand up?

2008-07-24T09:23:00.000-07:00

Not to get all deep on you, dear lone RazRazz reader, but lately I've been thinking about me.

Hopefully not in as selfish a way as that sounds.

Now more than ever (and by "ever," I mean "in my teenage years") I am wondering who I am.

Teenage Claire was subject to bouts of melancholy, but on the whole pretty carefree. Teenage Claire had no overarching mission, but she tended to be happy and fulfilled doing the youth group thing. Life was so simple. I was pretty darn irresponsible.

Now? Well, I'm twenty-mumblemumblemumble. I am irresponsible and I balance the melancholy with the carefree. I am a strange combination of apathy and analysis and entertainment. (I'd like to point out that this new combination tends to lead to stupid decisions. Since college started, I have watched more really lame movies than ever before.) (And sometimes, I've really enjoyed them.) I read more Dorothy Sayers, Blaise Pascal, and Kurt Vonnegut than I did when I was in my teens.

And the other thing is this. I knew, at fifteen or sixteen or seventeen, that I had no idea who I was.

And now, as my youth meets a fledgeling adulthood, I have little sparks of ideas of who I might be and it's vastly frustrating. I am convinced--I don't just believe this; I am convinced--that somehow, somewhere, a loving deity dreams up people. An ultimate Creative Mind and Personality, the Unmoved Mover, the God of the Universe, has designed me, what makes me tick, what movies make me cry, what songs make me go nuts, and how I can uniquely worship Him.

This means that I need to accept the things that I know I am. I like absolutely everything about art... I like to engage in slightly dangerous activities... I like nerdy stuff like words...

So... that's part of me, anyway. Who are you? Or, at least, who do you think you are? I'm really curious.

Family Reunion 2008 By The Numbers

2008-07-20T15:29:00.000-07:00

96 or so attendees--most of us with oddly similar large noses.

2 sightings of perennial presidential hopeful John Edwards. I can tell you that his hair looks nothing less than amazing in person. He looks like a "Just for Men" ad.

11:53 or so: the time I got to the theatre for my first-ever 12:01 movie event. I watched The Dark Knight. Um, epic.

I think the best way to go into this particular movie for the first time is not to know anything, not to be aware of the lauds and surprises--it's what I did--but I will say that I am impressed with the Nolans' growth as screenwriters and filmmakers. It's so not The Prestige (which I did like, by the way.)

5 en-route Peter Kreeft audio lectures on philosophy and religion. I really like philosophy and religion. Faith is so transcendent; so natural; so weird. Religion is either the greatest lie or the greatest truth known to humanity; why do people believe? why don't they? It's interesting, and it gave me an idea for a sci-fi/fantasy in which finite matter exhausts every possibility in an infinite environment.

3 dreams about The Dark Knight. This phenomenon was eerily foretold by Peter Travers in Rolling Stone. I only really distinctly remember one, in which I was tauting the merits of the movie to a very macho guy friend of mine. "I, I can't go see it," dream-macho-man-friend said, with emotion evident in his low, dream voice. "Heath Ledger... it's too much. Too soon." I've thought about this dream since. I wonder if any real person actually feels like this; if, somewhere, some of Heath's friends and family are quietly, sadly trying to block out the sturm und drang surrounding Ledger's iconic, nuanced portrayal as the Joker, waiting to be reminded of his incredible talent and craft until they're ready.

1 trip to the hospital, an actor's occupational hazard in the wild, wacky world of summer theatre.

3 cans of Diet Mountain Dew.

2 en-route pit stops at Big Lots.

7 group family photos.

3 episodes of "Psych" and 2 of "Shear Genius" thanks to a killer bout with indigestion that left me incapacitated and unsocialized.

3 poem recitations, a family tradition.

2 ventures on winding Cherokee paths, 1 in the dark.

4 kids discussing and/or playing Pokemon at one time. It's happened. Pokemon is retro. Only one of the kids--my uber-cool but enigmatically serious, blond bowl-cutted cousin Sam--had the trading cards, though.

Countless references to "tony ja" and places to tattoo it.

Countless rehearsals my father needed to master "Have You Ever Seen A Penguin Come to Tea?"

Just call me Dr. Doolittle 4.

2008-07-15T14:47:00.000-07:00

No, I am not Rex Harrison (question: why was dude in so many musicals? Talk-singing should really only get you through once or twice. "Talk to the Animals" was just a painful experience; sorry, Rexy) or Eddie Murphy (I am not potty-mouthed, male, or black). Or whoever that kid was who did Dr. Doolittle 3, the direct-to-video sequel.

I was exhausted from a morning spent with Peter, paint, and three little girls (but mostly Peter and paint) but instead of spending my very lengthy lunch break on lunch and a nap, I decided to eat and go to the neighboring pet store. It was up there with "deciding to chop off over a foot of my hair" as the best and most fulfilling decision I have ever made.

My pet-store excursion first reminded me of this vital truth: fish are boring. They can be pretty, but all they do is open and shut their mouths vapidly, with their glassy little fish eyes. Unfortunately, they remind me of some girls I know.

I also realized that when I grow up and am single with my own apartment or married with half of my own apartment, but no kids yet, I would like a mildly expensive pet. Namely, a ferret or a parrot. (Oh, my gosh--that sort of rhymed).

Ferrets are stinky and a pain; but they are cute and spunky. Cute and spunky can cover a multitude of sins. Just ask Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Kind of comes across as jerky, but the spunk! the zip! I feel like I would have to raise a ferret from a small baby so it thinks of me as its mother and will love me for the rest of its ferret life. I would put it on a leash and name it Charles Bukowski--Charley for short, but I would pronounce it "Cholly," like the kid on the "Charlie Bit My Finger" video.

I would want a parrot because I spent, literally, not figuratively, fifteen minutes in front of the cage of a four-month old Quaker Parakeet. His name was Scooter, and he stole my heart. If I had the means, I would've stolen him, because I certainly cannot afford his 259.99$ price tag. My internet research on Quaker Parakeets tells me that 259.99$ is highway robbery.

Anyway, Scooter spent fifteen minutes of his parrot life proving to me that he is the cutest, most affectionate bird in existence, merely by expressing interest in me. He, like any other four-month-old baby, played an absolutely killer game of Peek-A-Boo. He nodded voraciously at me and followed each of my movements with his crazy little side-eyeballs or by climbing on the ceiling of the cage. We definitely had a connection; I felt like The Bird Whisperer. His description on the cage indicated that he is very loving and is a good kisser. If you have room in your heart, wallet, and home for an expensive, flirtatious green bird, I recommend Scooter. Apparently Quaker Parakeets can also learn to talk, which I think is so cool. So yeah.

And then I spent the rest of my afternoon with ten rugrats, including a very, very jaded five-year old. (Five years old, a freckled nose, a pout, and he says, "Give me a break, woman!" He's so precocious; he drives me crazy but I can't stay mad for long--he's just too precocious and pouty.)

Mom, I'm sorry for all my childhood sarcasm and disrespect. I assure you that I'm getting it all back fivefold, in two-hour increments; like I said, karma is not cool. (Grace, on the other hand, is. Unlike karma, grace is not fair. It's grace.)

Tales from the Crayola Gallery

2008-07-14T14:55:00.001-07:00

If you were to ask twelve-year-old Claire, or ten-year-old Claire, or fifteen-year-old Claire, or current Claire, who she kind of wanted to be when she grows up, Claire or Claire or Claire or Claire might very well say, "I kind of want to be a blond Seattle native with a nose piercing and corduroy pants." Which is to say that I kind of wanted or want to be my art teacher, Ms. Patti. She sort of reminded me of my aunt and sort of reminded me of Julie Andrews and sort of reminded me of all that was good in the world.

Not only is Ms. Patti a consummate artist, but she's also a consummate art teacher. Those two things do not always go hand in hand.

My brother used to cry havoc and unleash the dogs of war in her classroom, and she took it all entirely in stride. And she made me feel brilliant.

Well, life hasn't exactly come full circle, but I am now an assistant at another consummate art teacher's art camp. I spend four hours with kids from ages 5-13. This experience reminds me of why I love kids and why I vow to never have more than five.

I am POOPED.

When Peter, with his large brown eyes and high cheekbones, crawled under the table yet again, I remembered my brother (another set of large brown eyes) and Ms. Patti, the Mother Theresa, Audrey Hepburn and Nadia Comaneci of the art world, and how graceful and non-condescending she is. I remembered and I said, "Hey, Peter, you drew a terrific picture of Wall-E and Eve. Will you please sit up in your chair and draw me something?" I didn't lie. I never lie to kids. His picture of Wall-E and Eve was royally good, unusually accurate in shape and proportion, especially for a five-year-old artist. He drew me a pink and yellow Super Soaker in five minutes and then started climbing on the chairs. I love little boys.

The classes were full of precocious kids and quiet kids and talkative kids and kids that made fart jokes. And combinations of the four.

This one seven-year-old used the word "bloodcurdling" twice, along with a host of other words that take five minutes to spell. I was impressed. Even for a homeschooler, she was good.

I don't want this to turn into a Kids Say the Darndest Things entry, but thinking about the funny things that happened today reminded me of babysitting on Saturday night. I went over to my pastor's house to watch his kids. His three-year-old is notorious for getting up after she's been tucked into bed. She treated me pretty well; she only came to the door once. I knelt down to her eye level. "Hey, what's up? Do you need anything?"

"My nose hurts," she said.

"What do you want me to do about that?" I'm still a little hard at reading kids' expectations. I really want them to spell it all out for me. Luckily, she can.

"I need a nakkin to wipe my nose."

I returned with toilet paper wadded up in a little ball. She touched the tip of her nose and said, "I can't get the boogies out. Can you help me get the boogies out?"

I said that I was sorry, but I didn't think I could help her get her boogies out. I then told her that maybe if she went to sleep, they would come out easier. (Remember how I said I don't lie to kids? I don't always lie to kids.)

I'm on to you, aliens

2008-07-08T06:00:00.000-07:00

Dear extra-terrestrials,

I have not read the entire Agatha Christie spectrum of mystery for nothing. I can use those little gray cells. I have made the following observation.

All of our VHS chick flicks are AWOL. Sleepless in Seattle (complete with Rob Reiner and Rosie O'Donnell)... Sarah, Plain and Tall (complete with cheesy 90's Hallmark commercials from when we taped it)... Little Women (complete with Christian Bale.) (I know! This is a tragically tragic occurrence!)

From this observation, I can make several deductions.

1. We were not burgled. All burglers now have DVD players.

2. If we were not burgled, the videos were either confiscated by my father or brother... or abducted by aliens.

I have questioned the male members of my family carefully and threatened them with horrible things: dragging them to shoe stores, making them sit through Sense and Sensibility, interrogating them for their manpinion on my nail polish choices (ok, I make them do that anyway). I am confident that they have not taken my chick flicks. Therefore, I can deduce...

3. The particular brand of alien who has made off with Winona, Meg, and Glenn (and possibly others who have slipped my mind) owns a video playing device.

4. The particular brand of alien is probably female.

I'm sure this limits my suspects considerably. Until I find you, Girl E.T., I assure you that I will be guarding my remaining girly media with all the powers I have in my persuasion. You will NOT take my Jane Austen.

XOXO,
Claire

Wimbledon 2008

2008-07-06T18:40:00.000-07:00

I do not follow sports very well. I'll watch the Olympic trials like a good American citizen, listen to the commentary, and regurgitate the same information, slightly rephrased, two minutes later, hoping to impress my family with my knowledge of all things athletic. Generally, this does not work. Generally, my sister will look at me as if I've sprouted two extra heads, roll her eyes and then level her gaze at all six of my eyeballs. "Yeah, I know, Claire," she'll say. "Bela Karolyi just said that."

So pretty much all I know about tennis is that it's not the one with touchdowns, alleyoops or home runs. It's the Hamptons kind of sport. It's the one with white outfits. Okay!

But I tend to pay attention to Wimbledon... if only for the cheeky name... I mean, really... it's Wimbledon... especially this one. It was so epic. For real. You have the Williamses duking it out and then you have yet another set between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.

I started to watch Federer vs. Nadal. I was turned off by the rain delays, which made more time for replays of women's doubles. When Serena and Venus are on the same team, it's like a wall of tall woman and it's pretty indestructible. They have individual clothing lines, for the love of Pete. I'd sure as heck be intimidated. I already knew they'd won, but I doubt there would have been a lot of suspense in store for me if I'd been in the dark.

Besides, Roger and Rafa played for a very, very, very long time. In order to watch all of those hours of tennis, I'm pretty sure you have to understand the rules of the game.

So I was pretty clueless. Does this mean I did not have an opinion? No, it does not. In fact, I was totally rooting for Rafael. (Sorry, Roger, I'd absolutely give you The Best Hair Award... and oh, ok... Most Swiss.) The reason was simple. I had absorbed enough commentary to understand how historic this year's Wimbledon was, and I didn't know about Federer's bout with mono until after I had decided to support Rafa. I felt like it was time for Bjorn to be displaced a little bit and, thanks to the wonders of replays, I had to give props for how thoroughly Rafa has made over his game. He puts a smile on John McEnroe's face. John McEnroe! And, because of his trophy-biting habit, Nadal reminds me quite a bit of a Spanish version of the muppet Animal.

Furthermore and most importantly, I think Roger's monogrammed cardigans look doofy.

Happy Birthday, United States

2008-07-04T09:39:00.000-07:00

I'll let you in on a little secret. I almost sympathized with Michelle Obama back in February when she said she was proud of the United States for the first time in her adult life. I didn't sympathize, because I thought it was a stupid thing for her to say under the circumstances, which I didn't feel warranted the statement, either. She is proud of America merely because Democrats like her husband? Um. Ok.

But other than that, I personally find national pride overrated. "Pride," to me, means either a degree or two of hubris or a group of lions.

(Hubris means overweening pride. I think pretty much all pride is overweening.)

I just think there's a fine line between the prideful version of patriotism and jingoistic narcissism. Like George Bernard Shaw said, "Patriotism is your conviction that the country is superior to all others because you were born in it."

I'm not always happy with the actions the citizens of my country take, both on personal and governmental levels. Not ok with the KKK. Not ok with Roe v. Wade. As a country, we are pretty much everyone else's wretched refuse and we make a lot of good decisions, a lot of controversial decisions, and a lot of bad decisions.

The question is, is it safe for me to be not proud of my country? Can I live with that? Yeah, sure, I can deal. I will never be a threat to the U.S.A. I love its bigness and its variety and its melting-potitty. I love the Southeast and its culture, although I'm probably going to leave it soon. I will undoubtedly always be loyal to my country because my ancestors chose to live here and I was born here and it's afforded me a lot of opportunities, such as the chance to get a B.A. in a truly sucktacular economy. (Really, I can deal with that. I promise. Cardboard box? Check. Really old army jacket? I think I gave that away freshman year. Stubble? Check. [No, not really.] Am I upset that panhandling is now illegal in my state? No, not really. That stuff is dangerous for hobos and drivers.)

I will stand by the U.S.A., even through a wide variety of governmental leaders I don't like, floods, hurricanes, Hollywood, and the exchange rate. (I have like forty euro left over from my trip to Italy, just in case.)

And I wish it a happy birthday. I may not say that it's the greatest nation on God's green earth, but it's the nation I hail from and it's the nation I will call home, maybe not forever, but for a while.

The One Where I Rant About Walmart

2008-07-02T06:38:00.001-07:00

I'd like to preface this by saying that I know substantial numbers of people who work at Walmarts across America, and I wish them well and I hope they all always have jobs. That said...

Walmart. It's an oversized monument to what I don't like about capitalism. Even its supporters are kind of embarrassed to admit that they shop there. (It's like you might catch a glimpse of me in a Walmart, but I might not say hey.)

It's kind of like the corporation version of Dick Cheney.

The other night it was in the news. For changing its logo. From the familiar stamp-ish looking "WAL*MART" to the kindler, gentler "Walmart (with a sunburst)". If you've missed this, you can go to the Walmart website and see it. Soon stores will gradually have the WAL*MART removed from their behemoth building fronts, to be replaced with "Walmart (with a sunburst)."

Walmart-with-a-sunburst, your logo looks like it belongs to a daycare, or, worse, Kinderfoto. Fail.

Get some people on your side who know about marketing and can live with the self-hatred that probably comes with being in an upper-level office position at Walmart-with-a-sunburst.

Realize that no, you cannot be Target. Targets will just always be more aesthetically pleasing and have better commercials. Realize that you do not actually want to be Target, because your "target" audience default-shops at Walmart anyway and the people who hate you generally also hate Target. At least where I live, the Target looks like a stylized ghost town with inexplicable big red metal balls in front. Because it's right next to the Walmart (which currently is still WAL*MART, by the way.) This is also kind of inexplicable, but I digress.

I'm still harping about the Kinderfoto. What were you thinking?

My Love-Hate Relationship with My Library

2008-06-27T04:20:00.000-07:00

I hate:

That every time I go, Catch-22 is invariably checked out. I have been trying to acclimate myself to Heller since I've been in high school, but I only have Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man at my disposal! The horror! I end up going to the Vonnegut section across the aisle and my dad is tired of Vonnegut. Vonnegut is the stuff he read when he was slightly intrigued by being icked out. I'm still slightly intrigued by things that ick me out.

That the security guard who looks like A.W. Tozer apparently no longer works there. I hope this doesn't mean he is dead. I liked him, even though I had my serious doubts that he would protect me if the library came under any kind of siege.

That it is under construction. Isn't it a rule that libraries should never change?

The Dewey Decimal System and the way my favorite books inexplicably slip through the cracks. Where are the plays? Sort of all over the place! That's where!

Oh! Apparently, the library has lost its print of a Maxfield Parrish illustration. How does this even happen? Maxfield Parrish is my very favorite illustrator! I have to console myself with mediocre abstracts and pseudo- Japanese screen-printed tree-things! Does the library LOOK like a cheap t-shirt, I ask you?! DARN IT!

The limits to their Dilbert collection. Where are the Friends of the Library when I need them?

I love:

Most of the librarians and all of the male ones. There's this guy who looks like he's never seen the light of day, and even though he's shades of Boo Radley, he's helped me find terribly obscure research material with a zeal for discovery that beats my own (which is currently, admittedly, rather jaded). I think this is precious. And I secretly (well, not now) want to impress the one that works on the second floor. I don't know why. He just seems rather hard to impress. So every time I go, I wear my Mutual Funds Magazine tote bag to carry my books. As if I know something about mutual funds.

The DVD collection. They had the entire run of Arrested Development there this time. O... M... G! Did I check it out? Psh, no! I'm waiting for this fall so I can get my hands on a copy of season 2 and watch it with my roommate! My self-control sometimes astounds even me. (As does my hubris.) I consoled myself with season 3 of The Office.

That they have a good fifty-zillion copies of Les Miserables, in different translations. I can read it all the time without feeling like a literary hog. (Though, they do also have Laura Kapalkian's Cosette, which is mindless, heretical drivel-- also known as a SEQUEL to Les Mis. Strike one. Even in my darkest days, I never wrote fanfic.)

I love pretty much everything about the library, actually, now that I think about it (except for the things that I hate.) It's the building equivalent of NPR!

2008-06-26T07:46:00.000-07:00

J: awkwardly keeping his forearms, which are somewhat mobile, at a small distance from his torso.

Me: J, what are you doing?

J: I'm waiting for a hug.

You can't understand the significance of this unless you find eye contact and mutual conversation a victory. Sometimes my brother is more beautiful than Gael Garcia Bernal (but in a different way.)

Jobs

2008-06-21T05:47:00.000-07:00

No, not the work which I desperately need to be finding this summer, but Jobs as in Job of the Bible and G.O.B. of Arrested Development. I've been thinking about them.

I took a trip to Virginia last weekend, and at the church I went to, which was not mine, because it was in Virginia, the pastor talked about Job the book. So I've been reflecting on what I know of Job the book because the sermon was on the first twelve verses only.

Job is a terribly theatrical book, so it's interesting to me dramaturgically; not only is the text written in dialogue form, but the book also translates REALLY well to the stage in a Pulitzer-winning play called J.B. by Archibald MacLeish.

Back in the day, I used to turn everything into a philosophical statement, but reading Job this time, I'm doubting that Job really wants a rational answer. It's all well and good to propose the question, as I did the first time I really read Job, of "is God really loving and sovereign, or are we pawns in a cosmic game of chess to prove power?" but I think it's quite different to BE in the position that Job is in, to go through major suffering. For one thing, the idea that Satan is in control never occurs to anyone in the book of Job. For another, when calamity is real instead of hypothetical, I'm not sure the why is enough. We want comfort. We want love. And I think that's one thing that MacLeish really nailed in his play. Apparently he started out with a play that focused more on the rationalizations and philosophical arguments, but he ended up with something much, much, much more ambiguous in that sense because it was more artistically
fulfilling.

I don't have a lot to say about Job; there's a lot I don't know. I don't think it's a book that forbids us to question God, but I think it's a book that shows us that we can't always understand Him.

And with that, I have to think about G.O.B. I can't think about Job very long without thinking about G.O.B. because their names are homophones. I have that thing about homophones. G.O.B. is a jerk, but he's also lovable. And I think part of this is because he's so fallible and I empathize with that. And part of it is that sometimes he does something nice. And part of it is because he is really dumb. And part of it is because he admits to making huge mistakes.

Interjection: I hope the development of the Arrested Development movie never gets arrested (it's slated for release next year, but horrible things can happen, like THEY CANCELLED THIS SHOW). And doesn't suck. Because dang, that show had everyhing, down to the Hamlet references and the Andy Griffith Show references and the references to making references...

Warning: Stream of Consciousness Ahead

2008-06-09T16:00:00.000-07:00

Dear gnat currently flying around my face and elbow, bugger off. You itch. XOXO, Claire.

Question: How do you feel about blogs maintained by people who are obviously not real, e.g. Schrute-Space, Dwight Schrute's blog, or the Bob Loblaw Law Blog? I go back and forth. The only one I read like it's a real person's is Barney Stinson's. Because Barney Stinson is a real person. Speaking of real persons whose blogs I read, I recently read pretty much the entirety of Things I've Bought that I Love (which Mindy Kaling hasn't updated since Tuesday, April 08, 2008--not that I'm bitter; I still want to be her when I grow up and finish my thesis) despite the fact that I cannot afford 87.668% of the wares that she flaunts for the sheer joy of sharing information, and the other whatever-percent of wares are just soooo urban and I'd prefer to flaunt them on that day when I actually finish my thesis and become a yuppie.

(Warning to men: If you don't understand the significance of a Marc Jacobs shoe sale, you will, very likely, not respond to Mindy's rhetoric so maybe you shouldn't even read it.)

Observation: My baby sister is surprisingly sophisticated and astute. She has proved herself as more than a mere force to be reckoned with in Jenga, more even than a second vote in the "Should we go shopping or save gas and stay at home?" debate. I say this not only because she tends to agree with me on very important topics like the futility of the middle school relationship, the superiority of classic Converse All-Stars, and everything about The Office. I realized today that she has interesting and valid opinions in her own right, and I happen to agree with those. How refreshing. This is my sister, as we discussed the merits and faults of stubble on guys:

"I think stubble is very mysterious. You have to think, 'I don't know what he was up to yesterday, but clearly it was so interesting and time-consuming that he didn't have five minutes to shave.'"

I never would have come up with that, but I'm saving it for when I write my Better-Than-Friends sitcom. (It won't be, but that's what I tell myself.)

Dear gnat, what the heck? We've been off; no more trying to caress my face with your little feeler limbs. I will slap the crap out of you, you hear? XOXO, Claire.

Say No to Ho... and Yes to What, Exactly?

2008-06-06T11:20:00.000-07:00

I'd never heard of Simon Doonan before, since I am awkwardly unstylish, but he has written a book with such zealous rhetoric that I feel it is necessary to put it on my Summer 2008 reading list. "Banish the badonkadonkdonk. Say no to ho!" he pleads with plastic-surgery Stepfords everywhere in an excerpt of Eccentric Glamour: Creating an Insanely More Fabulous You which I read in Elle magazine (I love Elle for its intelligence, although it scares me at the same time by featuring certain ready-to-wear and haute couture items that throw me into a panic by their sheer surreality. I've had nightmares about the Marc Jacobs horizontal heels for, like, two weeks straight and woken up in a cold sweat with my hair standing on end. Ok, my hair stands on end whenever I wake up. But still. Magritte is for paintings, not for shoes. Christian Louboutin is for shoes.)

This message is easy for me to swallow. I have neither the budget nor the tiny dog necessary to be unoriginal. However, Doonan then asserts that there are only three alternatives to "badonkadonkdonk," only three facets of "eccentric glamour," although there are subsets to these general categories. These categories are the Gypsy, the Socialite, and the Existentialist.

I am well aware that I am not a Socialite. Socialites, according to Doonan, are the Jackie O, classic, old money, old school eccentrics. I am too short for that.

I'm hoping that actually reading the book will make everything clearer for me. While I don't own a peasant shirt or strappy sandals, I do like big, beachy totes, green living, and torn-up jeans, suggesting that I may be a brand of Gypsy after all. However, my style icons tend to all kind of look/dress like Marcel Marceau (Jean Seberg, Agyness Deyn, Liza Minelli in Cabaret), I own ten black eyeliners, and I write plays.

I'm still so confused.

I Do Not Talk to My Brother

2008-06-04T12:58:00.000-07:00

I'm going to tell you a secret--at least, a bit of trivia that my brother will not tell you--and that is this:

My brother and I are on speaking terms.

This has not always been the case. In fact, for the first few years of his life, my brother didn't really talk to anyone. Several years of speech therapy and many more subsequent years of talk later, you'd never know that my brother, once upon a time, relied almost solely upon his big brown eyes, shrieks, and the occasional catchphrase to communicate his every need.

However, my brother is also a big fan of talking AT you rather than WITH you. I think this is mostly because he is concerned with such extremely specialized matters that few people are erudite enough to converse fluently with him. Furthermore, he has gathered and memorized a massive amount of trivia and will spout same at the drop of a hat. This gets old. He is also known for making up his own statistics. This also gets old. And finally, he has a disadvantage in the area of reading social cues, so it's naturally a little harder for him to converse.

But... and this is not public information... when the rest of my family leaves the house, my brother and I start to have discussions. Oh, yeah. Even lengthy ones. (I don't know exactly why we pretend we don't speak to each other when anyone else is home, but we don't.)

In these discussions, I will express interest in John Williams' music. He will ask me my opinion on cinematic matters and make eye contact, to boot. We have talked about his future in vague terms, and he agrees with me that he needs to learn how to cook. We just talked for a substantial length of time on the thematic structure of Ratatouille, contrasting it with previous Pixar films. It was enlightening and enjoyable. Furthermore, my brother will get so into the conversation that he won't pay attention to anything else he is doing. Which means that I can easily coerce him into washing the dishes... as long as I check to make sure they actually get clean. He doesn't have a second thought about doing mindless chores while talking to me--in fact, he doesn't even have a FIRST thought. There are so many benefits of secretly being on speaking terms with my brother.

There is no solidarity in this world. Thank you, Geico.

2008-06-03T19:38:00.000-07:00

I don't get out much. Nor do I watch television that often. But when I do, I like familiarity.

I like to know that that Southern man with the carparts business will always be singing his own jingle, badly; that Smucker's jam commercials will have blond children in a vaguely rural setting that reeks of Americana; and that McDonald's commercials will end with "Ba da ba ba.... I'm lovin' it."

I do not like to be faced with a voice I do not know coming out of a face I've grown to cherish.

That's right, Geico gecko. I realize you've changed voices several times since your inception. But that doesn't mean I approve, and now, I'd like to go on record as saying so.

You've changed. You used to sound like Jeeves. Now you sound like some... pseudo British guy. Who is classy and dresses well, but still probably washes cars in pseudo Britain. You know what I mean? It's not stateside, so it's chic and adorable and not TOO far off from the cult-chah-ed original... and it's also a little urban and edgy... hair of Cockney, as if that makes you more down to earth and relaxed.

Ok. Whatever, doode.

This is not to say I don't like your new(ish... you've had it for what? a year now?) voice, because I do. I find it chic and adorable and not TOO far off from the cult-chah-ed original (which, according to my research, was voiced by Kelsey Grammar). But still.

From Chuck Taylors to Sci-Fi

2008-06-01T09:57:00.000-07:00

My Chucks are not accurate representations of my personality.

I bought them in a fit of muteness. They were on clearance and I was in jaw pain. So I bought them. This was in 2006. I would probably never do this now. As any scene kid can tell you, Converse are supposed to be representations of one's inner self.

Mine are "goth Chucks"--remember those?--which means they are Black where most Converse are White. Furthermore, the canvas is camouflage printed. They are a far cry from my Original Chucks which are pink and have disintegrated into a comfortable, not watertight, footcover held together with duct tape, hot glue and a prayer. Now THOSE were "me."

The current All-Stars fit, but they are fiercer than I am. It occurs to me that maybe I should keep wearing them. To make me fierce. Does one adapt to one's Converse or does one's Converse adapt to one? Questions, questions.

In other news, science fiction. Really. It's a genre I've, with some exception, heretofore avoided like rotten eggs, pepperjack cheese, and sloppy kisses. A#1, I'm a girl, which you might not be able to tell by my Chucks... but you CAN tell it from my very disorganize purse, which, if opened, betrays a serious lack of money, Altoids, and about 23 and 1/2 different lipglosses, nineteen of which are the exact same color as my lips. Pointless? Sure. But anyway. Pink Bonnebell is not stereotypically associated with lightyears and unfriendly intergalactic forces. A #2, I am an elitist nincompoop. I am ashamed to say this, but it's true. (I will say that the exception is Star Trek because I love Trekkies. For the most part they are rockin' and very nonjudgmental. And often pacifists, which is interesting.) My knowledge of bad science fiction has led me to believe that the genre is used as an excuse to utilize really nonscientific, contrived literary devices such as antigravity boots and make up unpronounceable names, like Csziminfuglyemmentaller, or Umphzurrrrrrrg V or Friedrich Nietzsche. A#3, I write theatre and Sci-Fi is not very theatrical; it's a lot more cinematic. When is the last time you saw Star Wars: The Musical! I ask you? But it has occurred to me that I do not always stick to and/or enjoy the conventions of theatrical writing. For instance, plays do not often address the work or office environment, and I think offices in general are hierarchal labyrinths of cold-blooded narcissism and vampiric ambition. They are hysterical. So maybe I should start thinking about at least the small screen, as much as theatrical enterprises are exciting and emotionally involving.

So yeah. I think the time has come for me to invent stupid things that defy physics (which should not be hard; I've never taken physics) and step on the keyboard to come up with the name of my main character. But it'll still have the 23 and 1/2 lip-gloss-girly-influence. It'll be like Louisa May Alcott meets H.G. Wells, or Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants combined with "Nightfall" (Asimov, by the way, is not bad science fiction. He is brilliant science fiction. Period. I miss Isaac Asimov and think that January 2nd should be declared a postal holiday.)

So here's my germinal beginning for something: An alien from the planet Q329iat invades Earth in partial fulfillment of her B.F.A. capstone project.

The alien's name is Sam.

--joy---

2008-05-31T18:50:00.000-07:00

I worship a whole lot more than I think about worship.

I think that's how it's supposed to work.

I've been around starstruck people long enough to know that people like to worship. I don't want to overgeneralize, but I know that I personally enjoy focusing on something I perceive as more wonderful than me.

I don't know, I also enjoy focusing on myself quite a bit as well.

But lately I am not enough. I'm really never enough.

C.S. Lewis thought of joy as the desire for something Out There to worship.

This is a more melancholy definition of "joy" than, say, "incessant optimism" or "pleasure in life".

Joy, to me, is not the happiness one derives from eating nachos, although that is a perfectly valid emotion. The eating of nachos by me may happen tonight. (That may be the most ridiculous, not to mention passive, sentence ever to appear on this blog.)

It is not the giddiness I feel when I read Douglas Adams. I just started reading Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. My favorite part so far is the Guide's explanation of Babel fish and how they are used as an argument against the existence of God. You must read Hitchhiker's. I'm not sure why it took this long for me.

Joy, to me, is something incandescent that surprises you and fulfills you regardless of your current circumstances. It's an eye that sees the future and knows that it's good.

I don't know what my life has in store. I waffle back and forth about my "plans" for my future on an hourly basis. But I believe that it will be a joyful adulthood. I believe this because joy is not about what happens to you... joy comes with journeys. It's a fruit... not necessarily an end.

Ghandi once said, "Joy lies in the fight, the attempt, in the suffering involved, not in the victory itself."

And it's also a propeller. As Helen Keller said (or fingerspelled, I guess), joy is a holy fire that keeps purpose warm.

2008-05-28T11:37:00.000-07:00

Fact: I'm excited that they're replaying Season Four of Beauty and the Geek.

I missed it the first time because I didn't have a TV, but I fondly recall Season Three from that fateful year in which I traded Spider Solitaire for reality TV as my mindless homework distraction of choice. I even watched like one (or two or three) episodes of I Love New York, mostly for New York's mother, who is scary, but fascinating.

I started developing reality TV theories and becoming very interested in the idea of editing reality television so that real people, who are boring, can eventually become fake people who sound stupid, via the magic of snipping film and technology.

Fortunately, that level of reality TV-watching was very shortlived, but I retained a soft spot in my heart for Beauty and the Geek.

Anyway, I watched the third season. I think I cried--joy, not sorrow--at Nate's makeover. I mean, here we have a Harvard student... who is a consummate geek... but in a cool way... and now he expresses his style in a way that makes me go a little crazy. The ties! The stubble! Ok. Ok.

And I always thought his band was cool... but anyway.

Like most of the population, I am too dumb and socially aware to be a "geek," but I am not pretty enough to be a "beauty." And I hate that I can think of myself in those terms because our culture is that stratified. I want to say real life is not high school, but it sort of is. So a show that kind of slaps us in the face with our own high-schoolness is not, on the whole, a bad thing.

Furthermore, a show that teaches guys to not wear socks with sandals is undoubtedly a good thing.

And it seems like people really do learn something and grow from being on the show, as cheesy as it sounds. Niels Hoven was on season three as a prospective engineer, and now he is... get this... a social coach. He may not have a PhD, but he is branching out and I'm sure that if he wants to go further with his engineering track in the future, the communication skills that he is developing now will help him in any case.

(I liked Niels, too.)

Everything I've heard about Season 4 makes me believe that I may not like it as much; it's certainly got a lot of changes... but it's also got a lot of heart. (Cue the barf.) Which is what I like about the show... it's like entertainment plus pocket protectors plus nice. And I love entertainment.

Stuff That Should Come Back.

2008-05-27T12:07:00.000-07:00

It has occurred to me that I am old enough to have been around for some trends that, if they returned, could be considered "retro."

Oh, jeez. Just thinking about that makes me want to get married and pop out babies. For a single woman faced with graduation and life decisions, "retro" is another synonym for "your biological clock is ticking."

(The future of my eggs notwithstanding, I'm also a little cool with being old enough for "retro." It's a new and exciting thing to be old enough for "retro." It means I can be a career woman.)

There are also some things that are returning--jelly shoes, I'm thinking of you--which should not return. Ever.

("Jelly shoes" is a synonym for "kind of ugly things that cause massive amounts of sweat on feet in summer months.")

But anyway, I've thought about it a lot, and I think that "The Secret World of Alex Mack" should return.

Also poised for a resurgence is "The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo."

Basically, what I am saying is "Bring back very formulaic television shows aimed at children that are nevertheless funky and entertaining, and have appealing child actors who will never, you know, do a Hannah."

I say that the shows are funky and entertaining from memory. Maybe, at my now retro-level of age, I might not think so. I'm hoping that I would, but you never know. The sets of spin-off Alex Mack and Shelby Woo novels are still, however, at my local library. I should check them out.

Naaah.

I am also fighting for the return of the WWJD bracelet. In His Steps, not so much. The WWJD phenomenon was commercial, it was big, and it approached tackiness. And it didn't just approach it. It embodied it. There was WWJD everything. But everybody's favorite was the bracelet. Maybe it was because the bracelet was like a buck-fifty and the sterling-silver picture frames, mugs, and closed-toed pumps were not.

Well, I think the bracelet should come back. A Number One, we haven't had a huge Bracelet Trend since Lance Armstrong. A Number Two, the bracelet is appealingly ambiguous. While it can, and most often, means "What Would Jesus Do?" you can substitute any WWJD acronym on days when you have no faith. Once you start with the sterling-silver picture frames and the cassette with Big Tent Revival and Rebecca St. James, it pretty much has to mean "What Would Jesus Do?"

I'm seriously looking for a new bracelet... preferably in a burgundy color, similar to one I think I had in 1997. I'm not sure what color I actually had, but it might have been burgundy.

And finally, Tinkerbell. Now, because she is affiliated with Disney, Inc., Tinkerbell never really left, but I like her anyway and I want to find a pendant with her crazy-pixie image on it, dang it! Girl was SPITFIRE.

And by the way, I still think the book Peter Pan is one of the best books ever written, and certainly the best ever written for children.

me vs. world

2008-05-21T13:52:00.000-07:00

ME: Hello, world. I'm going to grow up now.

WORLD: It's about ding-dang time. You're really irresponsible, Claire.

ME: Yeah, I know. You don't have to rub it in.

WORLD: I mean, your mom has to remind you to--

ME: Yeah, I know--you really don't have to rub it in.

WORLD: Have you even thought about writing the request letter to the registrar's office so that they will forward your transcript to the scholarship foundation, ensuring your final year of undergraduate schooling will not act as a trebuchet and catapult the medieval castle of your young life with a massive, debt-sized boulder, reminiscent of the siege of Lisbon in 1147?

ME: (brief pause) Well, I've given it a bit of thought... but no, no action, no.

WORLD: Are you sure you want to grow up?

ME: (eternal pause) Yes. Yes, I do.