Not Mina Harker

12:29 am: "He's reaching them, now I see/ In reaching them, he reaches me"
Post title is a line from a song in "Eleanor: An American Love Story." I'm listening to it now, and I'd forgotten how very good it is. Oh, Eleanor and Franklin Delano Roosevelt and your singular love story. Who knew it would make great musical theater?

Speaking of musical theater, Hannah and I got back to Raleigh just in time to see Avenue Q together. It was fantastic! I know it gets played up as "the one where the puppets have sex," and while these puppets do engage in some pretty non-Sesame Street behavior, the most shocking thing they do on stage is emote. I had no idea how sad I could feel for a foam rubber prop until Rod quietly admitted to Christmas Eve that he missed his roommate Nicky. When Kate Monster hugs that mix tape to her chest and squeals that "he likes me," you can't help but be overcome with girlish happiness. Avenue Q was a very true musical. Sure, it gets dirty sometimes, but no more than life does. The closing number, "For Now," is definitely my favorite song off the soundtrack. "Life may be scary, but it's only temporary."

Hannah and I also watched the first few episodes of Firefly the other day. It seems like it's becoming my job to indoctrinate new Browncoats--Liz, Steph-la, JJ, Karim, now Hannah. Not a horrible job, that.

HANNAH: Ohmygosh, I love all the believable characters!
EMMA: Yes, it's definitely a character-driven show.
HANNAH: Wash is my favorite!
EMMA: ...
HANNAH: I have a bad feeling about this.

The band went to Animazement in Durham this weekend to play in the Cosplay contest. Despite Izzy staying up all night and foregoing showers to register us at 9AM, despite staying in the lineup area for like three hours before we needed to be there, despite practicing like crazy and lugging all our instruments and power cords and amps around that crowded con, the line for entering the Cosplay competition was cut off just one group before us. It sucked major ass. We were really looking forward to playing, and it just sucks so bad that the cosplay competition is organized so poorly and that so many people want to enter. A guy told us that next year they'll have a specific Battle of the Bands, and that it would probably be better for us to enter that than try to squeeze our way into the cosplay. Oh, well. We still had fun. Animazement is like a 24-hour costume party, and it was awesome seeing everyone else's cosplays. Mr. Hat-n-Clogs was a popular persona, as were assorted Narutards and Ed Elrics. I played the easy-costume card and dressed myself up as Winry Rockbell. Hey, I've got a red bandana, cargo pants, black top and wrench. Now if I were only blonde and anorexic...

"How Clean Is Your House?" has really got me working on my room. Every time I start to clean it, I motivate myself to keep going by thinking what Aggie and Kim would say if they came in. The carpet's in a sorry shape but at least it's tidy, though I imagine they'd have some choice words with me about the state of Corakin's litterbox.

12:32 am: The Spoon Is A Lie
My relationship with Karim thus far, in a nutshell:

FIRST DATE: Jerusalem Garden and downtown Asheville

SECOND DATE: Emergency room and IHOP at 2 AM

We were roller skating with Alan and friends when Alan fell and eviscerated his shoulder. Karim and I drove him to the Mission Hospital emergency room and waited with him, because waiting in an ER alone is suckage. Alan folded paper cranes for the little kids, and Karim and I made fun of the awful stuff on Cartoon Network until Samurai Jack came on. Then Alan took us out to IHOP since we hadn't eaten in hours. He also needed something to wash down his Vicodin with. It was an exciting night!

Bennett turned 18 this tax day! It is very strange to think that my little brother is old enough to buy cigarettes and/or porn. Very strange. I made it home for his birthday and took pictures!



He said he expected no cake, with the explanation that the cake is a lie.



Nevertheless, he seemed happy with what he got.



And he's coming to Asheville tomorrow to visit! I'm very happy. I'll have to show him all the cool places to hang out in Asheville, like the discount grocery store.

12:26 am: "Spring" "Break"
Okay, who's great idea was it to have Spring Break at the start of March, when it's still freakin'-ass cold in Asheville? And whose idea was it to call it anything like a "break"?

Pizza Hut has been crazy. Apparently when I go back to school I miss all the fun-- last month, the store got robbed, and just last week Sufian was robbed at gunpoint while delivering a pizza. We've been incredibly busy on top of that; tonight I didn't get home until 11:30PM. And then there's schoolwork during the day. AAAUUUGH.

Earlier this week I did manage to get some funnish vid-making in, producing two little bits that aren't so great. The first one, a Mal vid to Brave Sir Robin from Spamalot, just doesn't have enough action to keep up with the momentum of the song. Mrerh.



Then this one... something is wrong. I don't know exactly what. The music change at 1:30 is bad, I know, but it's something else. This is really bad, because I was trying to do justice to my favorite moment in the entire Firefly/Serenity universe: When the caretaking role changes hands from Simon to River, with the "You take care of me, Simon, you've always taken care of me-- my turn." My relationship with my brother isn't exactly like River's and Simon's, but we are very close. I think of Ben as my best friend. Bennett would never admit to it, of course, but we do love one another, and the second he codes "They're hurting us get me out" to me in a letter from KGS, I don't give a shit what mom or dad or any counselor says, I am getting in my car, pointing it toward Vermont, slamming on the gas and not stopping until I have wrestled him out of that god damn school. The love between siblings is too overshadowed in popular culture by the more "dramatic" themes of sibling rivalry or estrangement, and I absolutely love that Simon and River love one another so much in Firefly. It's so important. So, it sucks tremendously that there is something wrong with this video and I can't figure out what it is. Oh, well, nothing and nobody is perfect.



Now I should sleep, because I need to get up in a timely fashion tomorrow for work.

10:06 pm: Skiing!
How to Brake While On Skis
Start at the beginning of the list and move to the next item as each method fails:

1. Wedge Brake. Put your skis in a "pizza slice" wedge in front of you, widening the wedge to decrease accelleration.

2. Shit Brake. Repeat the word "shit" very quickly many times, growing in intensity and volume as your need to brake increases.

3. Fuck Brake. Repeat the word "fuck" several times, spacing the fucks approximately one beat apart to increase the force of the breaking mechanism.

4. Emergency Brake. Throw your body at the snow-covered ground, avoiding rocks, chipmunks, and other skiiers. This braking method guaranteed to work 95% of the time.


Skiing this weekend with Patrick, Julia, Pappy and Katie was lots of fun, despite my utilization of every braking method mentioned above! Patrick's parents were very kind hosts while we mooched off their food and sleeping space to save on the cost of a hotel. Patrick's mom made us a huge breakfast every morning, and his parents bought all the girls cocoa butter from Wal Mart as a gift. It seemed strange, but it's actually a really useful gift. When we weren't skiing, we walked around Boone and Banner Elk or watched "Land Before Time" at Patrick's house. I realized just how often I must have watched that movie when I was little as I recognized every frame while we watched it at Patrick's. I was really obsessed with copying the little, silly things from movies when I was little-- when Sharp Tooth is chasing Littlefoot and Cera through the thorns, his snout pushes a big thorny vine down on top of them and they crouch between the thorns that are driven into the ground. I tried to recreate that scene exactly many times playing in the bramble patches near the creek and never quite succeeded.

Just got back from the ski trip this afternoon, and dammit I have a lot of homework to catch up on. At least the slopes were fun.

11:58 pm: F*** you, lady, that's what stairs are for!
This is the funniest thing I've seen all day. DarthCulf is a very wonderful person.



Started my new excercise regimen the other day, for Health and Wellness promotion. Now I know why Curves is so successful-- gyms are scary places for the infrequent visitor! Our teacher had to be in the Biometrics Lab the whole class period, so we were just sorta left to look at the weight machines and figure out from their construction exactly what they did and how they worked. Blaine and I managed the first row of upper-body workout machines together, and then the ab-cruncher at the end of the second row. Even on the lowest weight settings, I was getting fatigued and pained and feeling very self-conscious around the other, fitter girls. It's not that I'm uncomfortable with how my body looks, I'm just not proud of how it performs. Ah, well, nothing to do but keep at it. And the cardio requirements give me an excuse to walk to Blockbuster every week and rent fun movies like Shaun of the Dead, which is a surprising masterpiece of cinematography. Also zombies. Yay zombies!

Asheville is a perfect zombie city. After seeing Cloverfield with Karim and Josh (and throwing up in the middle of it because of motion sickness), we discussed whether or not it was feasible for a giant salamander-that-evolution-forgot to attack Asheville. We decided that Asheville was not big or important enough to merit giant monster attack, nor was it backwoodsy enough to be tormented by Texas Chainsaw Massacre-type hillbillies. It's not the sort of town that's old enough to be cursed by some witch-- the only Asheville witches are the froufy New-Agey kind, and they're mostly harmless. Asheville's definitely not gloomy enough to be beset by vampires or a plague of darkness. But zombies, oh man, they would be perfect! Just kooky enough to fit in to the landscape, just creepy enough to send the hippies running in fear. It'd be awesome to see a bunch of zombies shamble down Lexington Avenue, all "braaaaaaaains... braaaaaaaains..." Well, no, if they're Asheville zombies, they'll be all "meatless braaaaains suuubstituuuuute... meatless braaaains suuubstituuuute!"

Asheville had a snow day a while ago, during which I earned honorary manhood for my bravery and sheer mantacularness in snow-battle. After lunch with Karim, Josh, and Josh's friend Arthur, I was invited to a snowball fight down in the Botanical Gardens with them and their friends Joanna and Sarah. As Karim remarked, "Snowball fights get a lot more fun once you’re old enough to know what the words 'rape, pillage, and burn' mean." I have never witnessed such a display of raw manful menergy as this snowball fight. Three big guys with beards and long scraggly hair, all screaming at the tops of their lungs and hurling boulder-sized snowballs at one another, grunting and howling, crushing ice on their faces in pure savage mandemonium. In the Botans, they fell upon a snowman and devoured it, ripping its flesh to pieces for sustenance and bludgeoning each other with its organs. They gave me the title of Honorary Man that day, because Josh hurled an iceball the size of my head at me and I punched it to bits in midair, all while screaming in a manful way. My friend Stanley was going for a walk in the Botans and I told him about my new status as Honorary Man. He replied "Congratulations! I’ve been trying for that for years." Since I took a snowball for him (he’s a civilian, he shouldn’t be involved in the massive snow carnage), the men announced that for saving his life he must now become my slave. I told him to go clean my room for me. He responded with a sigh and muttered "Oh, drat, the boring kind of slave…"

Our Humanities: Ancient Cultures professor does not know how to spell Mesopotamia. He thinks it's spelled "Messoptania." This is distressing, since he's supposed to be an expert on the region.

10:15 pm: Little darlin', it's been a long cold lonely winter
Back in Asheville, where the lanscape is lumpy. And where it's snowing! Hooray! Classes might be cancelled tomorrow, which might mean that the cafeteria staff won't be able to make it up the hill to school, which might mean I'll have to rely on in-room food. For the first time, I've bought food in preparation for a weather event. Wheat bread, jam, and Bacon Salt, woo hoo!

Oh yeah, Bacon Salt! It's awesome. It's completely vegetarian and Kosher, and it makes everything taste like bacon. Great on popcorn, fries, mashed potatoes, eggs, etc. My mom heard about it on NPR and ordered a case of them to give away as Christmas presents. My sister, a vegetarian who still likes the taste of meat but not the concept of it, was thrilled.

Karim and I are busy introducing Gabi to the wonderful world of Star Wars. I never knew it, but Karim told me that Carrie Fisher never wore a bra on set for the Star Wars films because apparently George Lucas didn't think people would wear bras in space. And the whole movie, I swear, I could not take my eyes off of her bouncing breasts. And it's totally true! She's not wearing a bra! She must have done away with it as swiftly as the English accent she inexplicably has for the first thirty minutes of A New Hope.

It's sad that I have the much older, slower computer at college instead of the whippy new one at home. Can't edit videos on this one, and that was more fun than I thought it would be. I might be home for Spring Break, which inexplicably falls on the week of March 3 when it's still cold as the night the Crissie Wright came ashore, though I might be heading down to Lousiana to help rebuild houses with CSA and Habitat for Humanity. Gotta say I'd rather be heading home, but if there's one thing Catholics are good at, it's being guilted into doing good works that they don't neccessarily want to do but must nevertheless be done. I've got two cool ideas, one involving the Beatles and the Chronicles of Narnia, the other involving Captain Mal and Spamalot. They might just have to wait until summer.



My good works as Pizza Girl are at a temporary end, though Todd was very clear that any time I came home there would be a job waiting for me. He's a good boss. I didn't even have to do the prep for the breadsticks my last night! Oh, the breadsticks... hatred.

09:54 pm: Project Awesomesocks
I've been working on this for the past several days, and I believe it is the coolest thing I have ever or will ever produce in my lifetime. (Sorry, hypothetical future children, if you're reading this and feel jilted. But you are just not as awesome as this video.) Watch, please; I want it to become so popular on YouTube that the SciFi channel is so overcome by its awesomeness that it has no choice but to hurl huge sacks of money at Joss Whedon and Tim Minear (I'm so much a fan that I know the other guy's name, too!) so that they will write more shows.



EDIT January 11, 12:15 AM: Holy mother of all that is sweet and buttery, somebody dropped the internet on me. Thank you to everyone who commented! This was a ton of fun to make, and I'm so happy that other people enjoy it as much as I do. My dad deserves a lot of thanks for helping me learn the video editing software, and of course none of this would be awesome at all without the extreme talent of everyone involved with both Wicked and Serenifly.

12:44 pm: Yay Christmas
Bennett came home for Christmas this year! Yaaaaay! They even apparently taught him to hug up there at crazy school in the frigid north! There is so much friggin' snow in Vermont. My mom and I went up there to get him, and we had to rent an SUV to travel. Normally, I'd abhor riding in an SUV, but normally, I'd be riding in it in a state that barely gets half an inch of snow a year, thus a state where an SUV is a complete waste of space, money, and gas. But in Vermont, you really do need something with four-wheel drive in the winter. Three feet of snow. It was crazy.

Anyway, it was good to see Ben and meet his friends. It's good to know that he has friends up there and life isn't unbearable, but I still think he doesn't need to be there. He belongs at Enloe, with his Enloe friends-- whom my parents don't believe exist, but they totally do, as those friends of Bennett's who read this journal no doubt know.

He was very happy to get home, but I gotta say, once he did, I didn't see a lot of him. He stayed in the bonus room mostly, on the computer. Same old Ben. Crazy school won't cure him of his immunity to social obligation, and my parents don't seem to want to discipline it into him, so it's just mom, dad, and me left to draw Grandma Tina's sometimes trying questions, like "Why did people give me chocolate for Christmas?" (This is not a rhetorical question. She really wants a serious and indisputable answer.)

But I kinda get why he was on the computer so much. Bennett downloaded the newest game from Valve, those makers of fantastic storyline'd games and oodles-of-fun physics engines. That game is Portal, and it is pretty much the best game ever. Let me explain why.

( Lengthy description of the best video game ever made by anyone ever. )

Oh, and now I have a job! I'm a delivery driver for Pizza Hut, and I'm also the only pizza girl they've got. And my work uniform looks pretty much exactly like this:

Well, okay, so I may be a pizza girl, but I'm not Pizza Girl. Who cares? I make good money and I get to listen to Wicked on the job. Yay monies.

Eh, guess I should review the Christmas presents... good year, I suppose. Got a Brita Filter that's going to make drinking water in the dorm room so much more pleasant for Gabi and me, and I got wool socks. And let me just say, I am pretty sure that Dumbledore wasn't lying to Harry when he said that he saw himself in the Mirror of Erised holding a pair of good wool socks. So sure, he might have seen his little sister still alive and Grindelwald not evil and still in love with him, but he definitely also saw himself with wool socks. These things are awesome. I highly suggest a pair for everyone.

11:26 pm: I should be cleaning my room.
Meme from Hannah!

( The Seven Deadly Sins! )

10:53 pm: Meme time!
Directions from Steph-La: Post in the comments something random (I hate using that word in that manner, but I must). It can be a song lyric, a title of a song, a strange word you've had stuck in your head all day, a funny sentence you heard someone say on the subway, your sexual roleplaying safeword, anything. By doing so, you promise to answer the five questions I will ask you in a reply to your comment. Post your answers in a post like this.

oligomer's Questions to Me:

1. Quote with the most relevance to your own life. "I don't jump over ten-foot bars. I look around for one-foot bars I can step over." Warren Buffet
2. What do you imagine would be the scariest thing that could happen to you? I'm not sure, but all of my worst nightmares involve people I know acting in horrible ways, doing awful things, and telling me that they have always been completely disgusted with me. So, I guess "too long I've been afraid of losing love, I guess I've lost..." :)
3. How do you react when someone over-shares? I don't get offended or anything with "over-sharing" or "TMI," it's strange. If you were to pull your favorite vibrating butt plug out of your back pocket during a conversation, it wouldn't creep me out at all. I have to worry about that when I'm talking, though; I worry when I've said too much.
4. Do you plan on caving more, living in the Mts. as you do? Hellz yes! And if I get an internship or a job with Bat Conservation International, I'll get paid to spelunk!
5. Rickman as Turpin: will you cry when the ends takes place, as it is Rickman, of all men? I don't know. Rickman is such a good actor that I think he'll make me truly believe that it is Turpin being killed, not Rickman, so I won't feel like my beloved sexy snide Brit actor is getting the bloody razor to the throat.

Okay, your turn!

04:12 pm: Gravity is not caring about you.
I don't think I've yet written in this journal about my Astronomy lab teacher. Imagine, if you will, an eternally optimistic Russian woman who looks almost exactly like Mrs. Achenbach and who laughs and smiles her way through the language barrier with encouragement and life lessons at the beginning of every lab session. For example, today before the final Astronomy exam, she wanted to be sure that we took with us in our lives some important lessons of Astronomy.

(You have to read this part in a deep Russian accent so thick and gooey you could cut it with a spoon, and imagine the teacher smiling brightly the whole time.) "You see, scientific law, they are always there. And if you are deciding 'I do not care about scientific law, I am not caring about gravity,' and you go to window and throw yourself outside, law of gravity will make punishment for you because gravity is not caring about you and will work no matter what you do."

Then there are the life lessons, that will be helping us for always, not just today, if we can be attentive to them. Today, she drew a rough pie chart on the board and filled in the percentages to show that 70% of the universe is dark matter that we can't observe. "But you must try, try very hard in your lives to be radiant good energy, and to take my positive energy that I give to you and to use it in your Astronomy class and in your lives, and to always strive to be making harder choices to be good and in the thirty percent of the universe that is bright and luminous and beautiful like all of your beautiful selves." Yay for adorable Astronomy teachers, even when they take up twenty minutes of the exam period encouraging you to do well instead of administering the exam so you can do well.

So I saw Golden Compass this weekend, and not to spoil the ending or anything, but I can't. Grr. Hooray for Prince Caspian coming out on May 16th, 2008! Hopefully it will be more endingful. I have watched the trailer many times, scrutinizing it for plot details and things, and I really like the way Narnia looks in this movie. That might have been my problem with Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe--watching it again recently, it occurs to me that it doesn't feel like Narnia. It feels like some place pretending to be Narnia. Now, I never liked LWW the most out of all the books, and the Narnia in my head is a greenish-type one rather than the hundred-year-winter Narnia, so this Caspian summer-version Narnia does naturally come closer to my mental vision. The ruins of Cair Paravel look good, and I like Georgie Henley with longer hair. It flatters her. Oh, sadness... this is probably the last time we'll see Susan, unless they make The Horse and His Boy, which would make me really happy but probably make some movie producers really not. The Horse and His Boy is kind of to Narnia what parts of The Silmarillion are to Lord of the Rings: an interesting side-story that takes place in the same world, but that has nothing really to do with the main storyline. Not a good formula for a movie. If they don't make The Magician's Nephew, though, I will punch somebody at Walden. It is my very favoritest of all the books and if I don't see The Return Of Tilda Swinton In All Her Pre-Icy Glory I am going to be very angry. [/fangirl]

I'm excited about going home for break, but worried about the job that I really have no excuse not to get now. I do need the money, and I need the work experience even more. But... gah, I'd be happy doing nothing but unpaid theater volunteer work the whole time, I don't want to go to some scary place and have to fill out job application forms. Mruf.

08:09 pm: We have done the impossible, and that makes us mighty.
I spent the day squeezing through the muddy vagina of Mother Earth, and I feel fantastic! I really wish I had a visual to accompany that sentence, but my fellow caver has not yet put the pics of the trip on the Book of Face.

Yeah, so caving. Awesome. SO MANY SLEEPY BATS! I wanted so much to take off my gloves and pet them, but I knew that would be bad and would disrupt their hibernation, rendering them unable to last the winter without starving to death. Mostly Myotis lucifigus or some other closely related myotis, with one big brown fellow that must have been an Eptesicus fuscus. I can't describe how adorable they were-- little balls of fuzz with cute, itty-bitty ears poking out and their teeny-weeny wings all curled up tight like little sleepy children... awwwww!

This cave was a lot wetter than the last one I went to. As in, this cave had a river in it. As in, we had to swim in the freezing cold muddy river. That was an experience. There was one stretch that was particularly hard: a short swim under low-hanging rock, then a climb straight up a tube to a teeny passage where you had to lift your body up with your arms and then fall sideways into a crack and wiggle like a fish till you flopped out into the mud on the other side, and then after a short rest in a medium-sized room, you got to climb up and go through a hole the UNCA Outdoors trip leaders had nicknamed "the Birth Canal." It's an oval passage roughly the size of a human body (if the human body in question has stayed away from McDonalds) and about three feet long, and you have to again lift your body up sideways and horozontally with your arms, then squeeze and pull and wiggle through that oval without letting yourself slide down to the bottom bit of the oval which was a trap that would grab your pelvis and not let it go. Yeah, my pelvis hurts now. But it was totally worth it!

I only got claustrophobic during one of the water crawls-- all the other times, I was struck by how not struck I was that my butt was wedged between really close limestone rock walls deep underground with no natural light and limited air and thousands of tons of rock and earth between me and the world I knew. Mostly, I was just thinking "damn this passage is a motherfucker."

One of the coolest things was the total darkness games. Way back in the cave, we turned off all our headlamps and all got quiet and experienced total silence and total darkness. It was so weird-- your brain won't let you believe it's completely dark. You see light at the edge of your vision, but there's nothing there; you think you can see the walls or the ceiling of teh cave, but you reach out and you can't touch them where you "see" them; you think you can totally see your hand waving in front of your face, but you can't see anyone else's and you know it's just your brain playing tricks on you. It's crazy. Also, the trip leaders showed us something so cool! You know those mint lifesavers? The plain white ones? They took a bag of those down with us, and then told us all to eat one, chewing it and cracking it in our teeth with our mouths open. THEY MAKE BLUE-WHITE GLOWSPARKS! If you don't believe me, try it in a really dark bathroom with as little light as you can manage. It is so friggin' cool, man.

Hopefully I'll have pictures of this, some time.

10:29 am: We're all lying in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars
So I'm taking an Astronomy lab science, and one of our semester-long projects is to pick a planet and track it as it moves across the sky. I picked good old Mars, which should be easy, I thought, since it moves at a steady clip of 0.5 degrees (or the width of the full moon) per night and stays pretty visible for most of the evening. Hah. Easy. It would have been, had I remembered to go out and track the thing.

But it's all right, since no one else in the Astronomy labs seemed to be tracking their planets for real, anyway. Julia, my friend who is also in Astronomy, and I have been using her computer program KStars to fake our data, entering the dates and searching for Mars. I felt guilty, but it got the job done.

So, walking home from Julia's dorm late last night, I looked up at the sky and saw a bright, reddish object. "Huh," I thought, "wouldn't it be ironic if that were Mars?" So I kept looking, and the stars surrounding the reddish object... well. That little cluster up there certainly looks like the Pleiades, and it's at the right angle and distance to that V-shaped formation, that might be the Hyades... which means that's the constellation Taurus... which means that, yes, that bright star is Aldebaran... and then those bright stars over there are Castor and Pollux... which means that formation, yes, I can make it out now, is Gemini...

I checked my faked observation for tonight's date. Perfectly on the dot.

I have no idea why I never did this before. It was indescribably awesome to be able to look up at the sky and see all this shit and know what it was-- I kept staring and going over what I knew in my head, and I found Casseopeia (no-brainer, the bent W shape that's always visible) and from that, found the much fainter constellation Andromeda and the Andromeda Galaxy, M31. I knew that Draco was curled around Casseopeia, but that constellation is made up of very faint stars, so I couldn't find our fair-headed slashdarling. But I spotted Aurigula the Goatherder up over the horns of Taurus, and he might represent Aberforth Dumbledore.

It was pretty awesome, I must say. I felt like a real astronomer for once. Damn, why didn't I ever do this before? Tonight looks to be a night just as clear as last night, and I am totally doing this again.

08:25 pm: Everybody does better in bowling shoes.
Ah, college, that esteemed hall of higher learning, where bright young scholars come together in intelligent discussion on topics ranging from the classical philosophical questions of existence to pressing current issues, where young minds are constantly opened to new horizons of understanding, where the boundaries of knowledge are continually questioned and expanded.

Or...



where Karim, Gabi and I stay up until 1 AM talking about homemade mustard gas and Prostitutios, the new breakfast cereal out from General Mills.

Truly, we inhabit the hallowed halls of learning.

Would write more, but I really ought to be writing my paper for my class tomorrow. I would save it for the morning, but OMG REGISTRATION AHHH! There are four slots left for LIT 241. I, Gabi, and Jasper have LIT 241 on our schedule wishlists. Tomorrow morning, when online registration opens for freshmen, there will be blood.

12:10 am: On Dumbledore's Sexuality.
So. J. K. Rowling responded to a question about Dumbledore's romantic past by revealing that he is gay and was in love with Gellert Grindelwald. Many people are angry because there is no evidence of this in the books. Others note that there is no evidence to dispute the fact. Most say that it has no relevance to the books.

Ahem.

( So what. )

Oh, and if we're talking about plot and character realism here, I think the more pressing issue is TONKS AND LUPIN. WHAT THE FUCK. Dumbledore liking the men makes a helluva lot more sense to me than that pairing.

05:13 pm: "Dumbledore's got style!"
It is canon.

Dumbledore is gay.

LOVE.

09:59 pm: That Song Meme?
( I don't know why I'm doing this. )

10:45 am: Ballet, Busses, Bats, Bullshit, Break.
COLLEEEEEEEEGE.

A couple of Fridays ago, my roommate Gabi and I went out to get us some culture at the Asheville Ballet. It was cool; I think I'm not entirely a lost cause if I can appreciate ballet. After the ballet, I hopped over to Asheville's only comic book store and bought a set of SERENITY ACTION FIGURES OMG! The Sword and Grail is a pretty awesome comic book store. It's been described as a store too geeky for even Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons.

On the way back to school after the ballet, we had to chase the city bus three blocks past the overcrowded drum circle at Pritchard Park in order to get on. The Asheville busses aren't all that reliable at stopping for people at designated bus stops. Another night, I and several other UNCA students were standing under the Bus Stop sign at Pritchard Park and holding out our OneCards, looking expectantly at the bus, as it drove right past us without even slowing. What the crap?

In her ever-expanding quest for knowledge of the proper use of the English Language, Gabi has become a disciple of Lynne Truss. She has borrowed my copy of the Sacred Scriptures (also known as Eats, Shoots & Leaves) and is instructing herself in the ways of Our Lord Grammaticus. Amen.

I might get a chance to go on the World of Work trip that UNCA's career center sponsors during Spring Break. You go to some city, talk with some UNCA graduates about their jobs, etc., etc. Sounds pretty dull until you realize that this year the trip may be going to AUSTIN, TEXAS this year. Austin. As in the headquarters of Bat Conservation International. As in enormous column of Mexican free-tailed bats emerging from under the Constitution Avenue Bridge at dusk. As in the home city of No Pants Day. As in I could totally get an internship or something at Bat Conservation International. As in I could spend my summer up to the elbows in mealworms and snuggly cuddly BATS. I am so going on this trip, unless it goes to the other choice, Chicago, in which case, who cares?

Speaking of Chicago and bats, I think I've got a funny idea for a story about Batman and his Batcave... but that's for later.

I went on this walking tour of "Haunted Asheville" with my parents when they were up for Family Weekend. It was... pretty bogus. Also, the tour guide failed to omit needless words.

TOUR GUIDE: And people in this church have described hearing a whispering voice in their ear, or feeling a tap on their shoulder, but when they turn to look, there is simply nothing there.
EMMA'S INNER MONOLOGUE: Well, duh. It's a ghost tour. We know there's supposed to be nothing there. What did you think we thought it was, another person asking if they could scootch into the pew?
TOUR GUIDE: Sometimes they are the only person in the church, or there's somebody else sitting way in the back of the church, but there is no one close by. There is simply nothing and no one close enough to have made that noise.
INNER MONOLOGUE: Um... yeah, buddy, we get it.
TOUR GUIDE: There is simply no way that someone could have come all the way from the other side of the church and made that noise or tapped that shoulder and made it all the way back to the other side of the chuch in the time it takes for the person to turn their heads. There is just simply... nothing there.
INNER MONOLOGUE: Get on with it!

Later that tour...

TOUR GUIDE: Many years ago, what is now Pritchard Park was the site of a massive war rally for the Civil War Battle of Asheville. Confederate defenders of Asheville gathered here and danced and sang and beat drums, and to this day, some shop owners report hearing sounds of drums coming from Pritchard Park.
PRITCHARD PARK'S WEEKLY SUMMER DRUM CIRCLE: *makes loud drumming sounds*
TOUR GUIDE: Clearly this must be caused by ghosts.

Later that ghost story...

TOUR GUIDE: And there were no Confederate casualties from the Civil War Battle of Asheville, which means that us Confederates were awesomely invincible!
INNER MONOLOGUE: If there were no Confederate casulaties, then who the hell is doing the haunting?

Ah, ghosts and those who claim to commune with them. Your paranormal antics are so laughable.

Went home for Fall Break this weekend, and it was nice to hug my pets and hang out with my parents. Got my teeth cleaned, was admonished that I must floss for at least 18 hours out of every day, bought some high-fiber, oat bran cereal to help lower my cholesterol, played some more Syberia with Dad and went out to the movies with Mom. A good break. On the ride back home, my driver Amy stopped in Chapell Hill to have lunch with her brother. So, Hannah, Matthew, Alex, Caitlin: I R IN UR TOWN, EATIN UR REASONABLY PRICED COLLEGE STUDENT FOOD. I didn't see you, but damn do you guys have the quintessential College Town(TM). I'm having serious college-size envy.

10:21 pm: Because everybody loves Harry/Draco proto-slash
There are probably a ton of these kinds of fics around, but I wrote my own anyway. This is extremely rough and bad and unedited, but I like it, especially the chance that Harry gets to chide Malfoy for his stupidity--so refreshing to see a Slytherin brought gently off his high horse by a Gryffindor. Because dammit, good old Gryffindor goodness is what a lot of people need, not sly Slytherin smarmy snarking. Like Harry says, it's just a choice to do good things--to simple to explain to an "intelligent" Syltherin. So, here you are:

( Too Simple to Explain-- major DH spoilers )

P. S. -- those artistically inclined readers of my journal are welcome to try illustrating this. I would myself, but I lack skill in drawing human anatomy.

10:45 pm: MAL SHOT FIRST
Well, if I weren't so cheap, I'd have a paid account and I could do this as a real poll. Sadly, I don't, so I'll just pose the question:

What if Malcolm Reynolds and Han Solo got in a fight?

a) They would both shoot first.

b) They would start fighting, but after a few minutes, they'd just start laughing and go get a beer together.

c) They would start fighting, but after a few minutes, they'd just throw down their weapons and start making out.

Post your answer in a comment, or make up an original one of your own! (Hint: other acceptable answers include "River Tam kicks them both in the face" or "Harry leaves Ginny for Draco, who is hotter anyway")

Thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday over Facebook or LJ or email or in person or whatever! I had a very fun birthday. My roommate Gabby and the Catholic Student Association gave me a surprise birthday party--they all burst into my room with a giant birthday poster and a game of Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Donkey, with a donkey named Lontie, and my suitemate JJ brought over her blender and the makings for smoothies. It was a ton of fun! The cold I've had for several days was the only bad thing about this birthday--with this sore throat, I sound like a 40-year-old smoker who is being used as the mouthpiece of Satan. I've been invited to go down to the campus radio station and sing a song at 2 am tonight on top of that. I might just do it, since the song is Da Vinci's Notebook's "The Enormous Penis Song," which is worth singing even if my throat feels like soggy steel wool.