Funny how that happens.

The annoying thing is, I can't really go into what I want to go into without exploding into a pile of cliches.  (I mean, okay, sure, cliches exist because they are usually applicable, but that doesn't mean people necessarily want to read them, especially stuffed into the middle of a wad of purple prose.)

I guess what I should have said is, I'm waxing poetic in my head, but would feel rather silly putting all of it down on a page until I can figure out some more unique ways to express it.

(An example would be "prophecy", which I posted a little while back.  I still felt a little silly, because I felt like the subject matter was screamingly obvious, but I also didn't feel like it was stupid.  Later, my poetry classmates proved to be surprisingly perceptive about that poem, especially considering that a couple of close friends I showed it to really had no idea.  Even later and even weirder, a majority of that "prophecy" actually turned out to be true.  But I digress.)

I feel utterly ridiculous quite frequently, but I'm okay with that.

Apropos of nothing in particular, that idea that a group of us developed on Saturday night as to a set of adult-themed crayons might have some merit.  (Examples: jizz white, pube black, a whole spectrum of vagina pinks, blue balls, wasted green, neon condom orange?)

Hey, everyone loves to color.  I'm sure there's a niche there.

Well, technically it was already, but now even more so.

I hate the fact that I have to go back to the real world tomorrow, because I'm insanely happy and I would prefer for it to stay that way for a very long time.

to my pre-Halloween  Puppet Snape costume.

1) Last night I walked down my dorm's hallway wearing the head part of the costume, but with my regular clothes.  I got a few giggles and "what the fucks", but the best one was "OH MY GOD DID YOU SEE WHAT JUST WALKED BY?????????"  I could hear her all the way down the hall.

(That's right guys...I'm a "what".)

2) Lots of spontaneous cell phone pictures.

3) Unrelated - a guy in my media class was handing out candy dressed as the Riddler.

4) Walking out of one building, I heard a guy start singing "The Mysterious Ticking Noise".

5) Lots of spontaneous grins and thumbs-up.

6) Two people "bothered" me before fiction class started.

7) I got a hug from a girl with Joker scars.

8) A balding police officer gave me a thumbs-up from the squad car.

More to come, hopefully.

I had to be workshopped in fiction class.  Considering how badly they tend to tear people apart, what I expected was much worse than what I actually got;   they addressed most of my questions and had a lot of useful information without giving a lot of negative feedback that I wasn't already aware of.

However, there were several things that annoyed me, particularly with the written feedback I got after class.

1) Please stop correcting the grammar in my dialogue.  Correcting grammar in the main body of the work is fine, but there are such things as regionalisms.  If my character is a good ol' boy, he is going to say "he don't".  Please be aware of that.

2) Please do not underline sentences or phrases without giving a reason.  I have no idea whether you like them, hate them, whatever.  I can't do anything with that.

3) There is a reason we are supposed to avoid "prescriptive criticism".  Do you have any idea how annoying it is when you tell me that I need to expand my intro, and then proceed to give me a long, drawn-out "example" of EXACTLY HOW I SHOULD DO IT, down to the sentimental flashbacks.  MAYBE I DON'T WANT THAT IN MY STORY.

4) If you are going to criticize me for having too many adverbs, it would be good if you actually figured out what constitutes an adverb; just because a word contains "ly" does not make it one.  "Grizzly" is not an adverb; it's an adjective.  Words like "exactly", "actually", "usually", etc. I'm less sure of, but I'm pretty sure they don't perform the same function as something like "quickly".  I understand that our professor says adverbs weaken a story, and I agree to some extent, but sometimes I have to specify "accidentally" so that the reader doesn't think a character bit his fingertip off on purpose.  I think you are missing the point.

These are my peeves for today.  There will probably be others.

The first of these is the "weird" poem assignment that sparked the other day's post about my violent subconscious; the other was a more restrictive assignment.  It had to be a sonnet (although we didn't have to write it in iambic pentameter, which I appreciated) and each line had to end with a specific word.  Which words?  You'll see.  It was based on a similar poem in one of our assigned reading books (For Girls by Shanna Compton; I recommend it).

do not feed the beast

my wild child tears through flesh, softly moans

and whimpers

through a mouthful

of red marrow and splintered bones

with blistered hands and rusted claws

she sideways smiles

chipped fangs sprouting from her jutting jaw

because she knows the day will come

when the hinges on her cage will snap

                (free)

and instinct says she will succumb

the world cannot take her and she screams

so loud the earth spreads wide its mandibles

and eats the men alive that feed on dreams

fierce yellow eyes and flesh white as the abalone

my wild child needs a tiger of her own.

authority

when the hottest longest days creep into June

my stomach and my head complain of stress.

I stay awake alone, sitting outside and howling at the moon

and those around me. do not yell, my dear; I know I obsess,

for I make my own feathered netted snakes

that die or wither within days, my efforts rendered moot

without nearly the joy of the same time spent on mixing cake.

but no matter, for these days I feel beautiful

standing  stripped under dimmed ceiling lights, an underground Garbo

waiting for the suits to come and play.

nights like these force the lowest deadest hobo

to stagger on his toes and knees and face the day.

at the end, my shoe has lost a rhinestone

and I bask in sour drinks and weak cologne.

Saturday night I was up far too late online.   This is my own damn fault and I blame nobody but myself, but it would have been nice if I'd at least spent the time doing something productive.  I had to open at the desk the next morning, so I only got about 5 hours of sleep.

Last night I was up until almost 3 working on this stupid fiction piece I have to get workshopped on Tuesday.  It will be torn to shreds, if I know my classmates, but hopefully I can extract some useful information from that.

My point here is that this is yet another incident of me grossly underestimating the time it will take to complete an assignment, and thus being up late doing it.  I am apparently not a very quick learner.

I don't think my procrastination habits have really changed that much; the difference is that this semester, my regular assignments are a lot more time-consuming and I haven't adjusted for that.  Why I haven't, I don't really know.

I wonder if there is a Procrastinators Anonymous?  Is there any way to beat this or is it just human nature?

It seems as though I can't find it.

I've been insanely busy lately, or at least it seems like that.  Not really surprising, considering that a) I'm working about 7 hours more per week - on average - than I did last spring, b) I've been involved with Spectrum's production of The Wiz (in the chorus), which takes up maybe about 8 hours a week, and c) it's midterm season.  Not that I have that many midterms (I only have one), but at the same time, the assignments in my other classes seem to be piling up.  We're workshopping two stories a day in fiction class, which means I need to write two pages of response a couple times a week, plus there are three different group projects in the planning, I've got my own writing assignments to worry about, and we do journals about every week in media class.

GAH.

On the plus side, my bio class is having a cheese tasting on Thursday.  Mmmm...

I think I can handle it.  I'm just juggling a lot of stuff, and getting kind of a weird sleep schedule to boot.

On the other hand, this weekend was (mostly) one big party, Saturday especially.  Basically, I overslept, woke up at about 12:30, dragged my ass out of bed and over to the drag show setup, blew up a lot of balloons, and generally tried to make myself useful.  The setters-up were dismissed at 3, and since I was a performer, I had to be back at the gym by 6:00, but I needed duct tape for the show, so I decided to go to Wal-Mart and maybe grab a burger at Steak & Shake while I was in the area.

However, the Muncie bus system had other plans for me.  The buses are supposed to run every 30 minutes on Saturdays. I waited almost an hour for one. By the time I actually got to Wal-Mart I had about an hour and half before I had to get back, and if I didn't catch the next bus I could be waiting for a very long time (there appeared to be only two running).  So, along with the duct tape, I grabbed a package of Hawaiian rolls, some deli meat and cheese, a bottled Frappucino, and a box of no-bake cookies.  I made it back in plenty of time, so I sat down and had a little picnic in the gym lobby.

The show itself went swimmingly.  A fellow king and I swapped duct-taping tips beforehand, and I shared my cookies with a lot of people.  I took as many pictures from backstage as I could before my camera battery died (that always seems to happen at inopportune moments).  I was suitably impressed with the agility of every drag queen.  Nobody broke any bones, and I made a few bucks for the Indiana AIDS fund (although not nearly as much as anyone else did.  Whatever; it's fun).

(Just as an aside, really experienced drag queens are intimidating as FUCK.  Very nice people, but oh so intimidating.)

I had to leave after the first act because of a prior commitment; I booked it back to my room, replaced the duct tape with a normal bra (because that shit is uncomfortable), hid my cell phone in my sock in case of muggers, and walked about a mile to Lys' house for her birthday party.

Upon arrival, I was offered a drink.  Having had extremely limited experience with alcohol (read: I know what exactly one drink tastes like), I didn't know what to order, so I sampled a half-shot of Skittles vodka (not bad) and Lys poured me her favorite, Malibu and orange juice.  Quite tasty.

I'm not really the getting-drunk type, so I nursed my drink and alternated with pieces of her Pikachu birthday cake while watching everyone except the DD have funny drunk moments.  We all watched Cow and Chicken when it came on (and freaked out at the fact that it was on in the first place) and then later went to McDonalds.  (I got a hot fudge sundae.  Bliss for a dollar.)  I ended up crashing at  Lys' place, since the alternative was walking the mile or so back to my room, alone, at two in the morning.  She gave me and one other girl a ride home the next morning.

I went to a tasty on-campu brunch, and then spent the rest of Sunday doing homework.  Literally.  Like, until two in the morning.  Talk about your wake-up calls.

Anyway, that was my weekend.  I had fun, but damn, was it exhausting.

Here are some things that have happened in the last few days:

-  I spent some time with an intake therapist at the counseling center who I am very glad will not be my permanent therapist.  English was clearly not her first language, which would not be a problem in itself, except for the undeniable fact that it's often hard to explain the extent of one's problems even when talking to someone who speaks the same native language.  Whether because of this or for some other reason, she kept asking me the same questions over and over, as well as other questions implying that the way I avoided Jason during the summer was no different from the way he's behaving now.

I wanted to punch her in the face.  These situations are totally different; I screened my calls during the summer because he would not leave me alone, because he couldn't hold a conversation without getting hung up in our past relationship, and because I started getting mysterious drunk phone calls.  Whereas he is avoiding me because he wants to pretend I don't exist, which makes me angry because that is going to totally screw over any potential future girlfriends, which is unfair to them, and that anger is PART OF THE REASON I WENT TO THE COUNSELING CENTER IN THE FIRST PLACE, SO DO NOT TRY TO TRIVIALIZE IT.    STUPID BITCH.

Apparently I will be seeing a male therapist as well as getting some information about a group therapy for women.  Both of these I feel will do me good.

- I found out that you can apparently upholster a car with whale penis skin.  I can't really fathom why you would want to, but...

- We had a workshop in fiction class today that really upset me.  One of the authors who was going to be workshopped sent her story out to everyone with the note that it was unfinished, so please don't treat the end like the real end.  Everyone apparently ignored this when they read it, so a huge chunk of her workshop time was taken up by people mentioning plot elements that should be there that weren't, and how much they felt disconnected from the story because of it.  It took me a long time to get a word in edgewise to mention that it was an unfinished piece, but that didn't seem to help.  She seemed really pissed off at the end of class, and didn't show up to poetry later that day.  Man, English majors are bitches,

- I dyed my hair black for this weekend's drag show.  I've also been telling lots of people to come because hey, it's free!

- I ran into the couple of people who happen to be running the new Ball State shadow cast (which I was unaware of until maybe last week; how weird is that?)  They seem like nice people, only the guy got on my bad side briefly by mentioning that he just didn't think female Frankies were right.  After I told him that I was a female Frankie, he frantically tried to backtrack but ended up with a foot-in-mouth moment.  It was okay, though.  Hopefully I can get in on this next year.

- My mom was in town this past weekend for the London Centre orientation (!) so I got some new comfy shirts and some free Starbucks.

- Also this weekend, I actually went to church; my gramma goes to the Unitarian Universalist church, which is about as far left as you can get on the Judeo-Christian belief scale without falling off of it.  It's the only church I've ever felt really comfortable, maybe because the sanctuary is hung with stained-gladd representations of all different world religions.  (My favorite one is Zen; it just has a tree with a teapot hanging from the branch, and some sort of stick.  Very pretty.)

Anyway, I picked a good week to go; this Sunday they had a focus on acceptance and a particular focus on different sexual orientations and gender identities.  I saw several of my past professors there, as well as a friend I knew from Spectrum.

- I got invited to another Pure Romance party.  It looks as though the hostess might have invited people just to make more money from them, but I might go anyway, since those parties tend to be a laugh riot.

- I got to watch "Magic School Bus" as part of a school assignment.  WIN.

I rather like this poetry thing, although admittedly in some ways it makes me feel like I'm back in high school.  On the plus side, I doubt that the ones I'm writing at this point are ones that will make me cringe when I look back on them a few years from now.  So you're probably going to be seeing quite a bit of it here.

"prophecy"

this is not mere indulgence.

              knowing this is important.

the day has enormous weight -

                          the weight of weeks.

                                      from weeks.

their smiles are the same but different

              when they think they know.

             (I know they know I know they don't)

faces drop away from the crowd

           in ones and twos

                like cloves

from a sweet shriveled orange.

the day is full and heavy and ready to drop

            and now

            the spirits and shadows are creeping home

                      to hide under the covers.

a dead man howls from the stereo.

he thinks the night is his (and maybe he is right.)

     but the hour has passed for those kinds of songs.

                  outside. it's cold.

                  the air is strung with tangles of frozen breath.

                  it bites. so

we peel back the skin of the night,

poke through its ticklish innards

until we find a safe place.

            (where?)

                     somewhere.

I have stopped wondering what joke comes next;

            instead I wonder

            what your heart will make

                       of my dry, nervous lips.

Friday:  Class until 10:50, work until 2:30, Wiz rehearsal from 3-5, and then The Rocky Horror Show at 8 (although I probably need to get on the bus about 6)

Saturday: Spectrum community service 8 -10 or 11, work 4-8:15, probably shopping with my mom somewhere in between

Sunday: London Centre meeting at 2:30, work at 4:00. 

God, am I gonna have time to sleep?

I feel like these past few weeks have been one giant sludge of annoyance and stress.  Computer hassles, phone hassles, having to deal with Jason's bullshit, Wiz rehearsals, shit weather, a cold that I'm still trying to fully get out of my nose (although at this point it's hard to tell what's residual cold and what's allergies), being up late doing last-minute assignments (my own fault, I know), and now I think I'm developing a bladder infection.

UGH.