Shakespeare in Lust

I started my first class this week – Graduate Seminar in Shakespeare. I was nervous because I am entering this program with no real background in English other than I do a good job of hacking the language to pieces whenever I open my mouth. So I’m sitting in class the first day, very excited, pen in hand, ready to furiously copy down every word out of the professor’s mouth. She starts to give a little background on dear Will and she happens to mention the movie Shakespeare in Love. Next thing I know 10 minutes have gone by and I have no idea what occurred in class during that space of time. I did not black out, nor was I taken up in an alien spaceship for a quick bit of probing - I was deep in thought. Deep in thought on Shakespeare - Joseph Fiennes’ Shakespeare, the one with the fantastic brown eyes and extremely kissable lips, not the dude who looks somewhat constipated on the cover of my textbook. I recovered from my daydream in time to catch the beginning of the discussion on Hamlet – Kenneth Branagh looks REALLY good tormented.

Further proof of freakdom

So I have problems relating to people. If I said it before, it bears reiteration - weird is an adjective that is used frequently to describe me. It used to bother me and I tried to tone the weirdness down, but it didn’t work. Weird is an integral part of who I am. I have found that weird and socially awkward tend to go hand in hand. Case in point – what happened today. I have these “secret crushes” which are crushes that basically everyone I know knows about, except the crushee. I like to keep it that way and hope that they are never the wiser. Those in the know say “oh don’t worry, they’ll be flattered” if the worst case scenario of crushee enlightenment occurs. It actually ends up as “Oh My God! That strange girl who seems to be constantly dressing as Napoleon Dynamite likes me - Must disappear NOW!” As a result I have learned to be so low key that people can never tell who I like unless I tell them and I tell a lot of people – I will never be recruited for covert operations. This works for me - has for years despite most of the planet knowing their identity.

Today I happened to run into one of my secret crushes who informs me that he has run into my mother, my lovely mother who says to him, “So you’re *****, I’m Via’s mom.” With NO OTHER explanation as to why she knows who he is, she left it at that and he relayed it like that and I turned the brightest shade of red (Al Gore could put me in his slide show with the caption – “Global warming leads to world’s worst sunburn”). He said, “Your mom is really nice.” I reply, “mkoajeyeahmfaoeij dajodjbrainnotworkingdakdja daoidjfakjbyekjaojkk” (statements in red actually intelligible words). I could have come up with some fantastic excuse for why my mother knew about him, but NNNNNOOOOOOOOOO, I was blind-sided and all I could do was stand there and mumble. The freak strikes again! AAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!

Happy B-Day Jack Black!

Big thanks to Chapstick for reminding me of today's importance and for being The Black Project's one and only fan!

Back to School

So I've been running around frantically this past week trying to get ready for a new year of school. I am excited and a little scared. I am entering a new program and this semester will be the trial run, make or break time. I'm hoping that I make it. I know that I am dedicated to working my scrawny butt off (at this moment - see next sentence). I'm just worried that my talent will fall short or that a bright, shiny object will distract me and suddenly I'll want to pursue water polo as my life's ambition. On the plus side, I have no social life to cut into my study time.

Words of Wisdom from TP (the person - used for conversing not wiping)

"I really don't mind cleaning toilets. I like to be wet."

I’m pretty sure you just violated the 3 second rule

So I’m hanging out with Miller (he no longer blogs with me, but we are still buds). We had decided to go and get some lunch. We jump in my car - David Hasselhoff like (Miller currently lacks mechanized transportation) and we head down the street. Next thing I know I hear Miller say, “Mmmmm Starburst, my favorite.” I’m about to ask for one when I realize that Miller doesn’t have any Starburst on him, said Starburst have been sitting on the floor of my car for god knows how long because I am terribly lazy and I don’t bother to clean my filthy filthy car. If you searched the floor of my car you would probably find a pair of fluorescent parachute pants and a can of Crystal Pepsi – that tells you how often I clean it. I shriek in horror, “DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG THAT HAS BEEN THERE!?!” To which Miller replies, “It’s still good.” I shrug and decide not to focus on the fact that I’m sure he just ingested a biohazard but instead focus on the bright side - I have one less piece of garbage in my car.

Swapping Spit

I remember the first time I realized that kissing could involve more than the very PG pressing of CLOSED lips. I have my neighbor to thank for that (it is not what you are thinking). My mother was always very mindful of what movies my siblings and I were allowed to watch. They were G or PG, absolutely NOTHING else. Fortunately for us my mother was gone a lot and left my older brother in charge. As the designated caregiver my brother was always a little too busy running around with his friends finding new and unusual places to crap instead of being mindful of what we were watching. My sister and I took advantage of the lax supervision and invited our neighbor over to watch movies – HER MOVIES. Our neighbor, having cool parents, had access to the best PG-13 movies available. One fateful afternoon the movie she brought over happened to be “Dirty Dancing.” I LOVED Patrick Swayze with his fantastic mullet, kick-butt dance moves and lines that would move me to tears – “nobody puts baby in a corner." Damn right Patrick you give that Law & Order guy a piece of your mind and after that – do a sexy dance for me. It was exposure to that movie that had me spending hour after hour passionately open mouth kissing i.e. breathing Fruit Loop breath on my pillow in an attempt to duplicate Patrick and Jennifer’s kissing scenes. It took me a good two years before I realized that there was actually tongue involved and then I felt really stupid and really relieved that in those two years I didn’t try breathing heavily on someone (that’s strictly for phone use only). When I did swap spit with my first beau I remember wondering why it wasn’t as romantic as the movies made it out to be and why my face felt like it had just been smacked with a really wet rag.

The Birds

Have you ever had one of those moments where you feel like you just stepped into a scene from a movie? I had always hoped that I would have one of those moments and that my moment would be the one from “Sixteen Candles” where Molly Ringwald comes out of the church and Jake Ryan is waiting for her outside, leaning on his red sports car. Alas my moment would have to be the one from “The Birds” where Tippi Hedren looks out the window only to find that birds have taken over the lawn.
So I came home from running errands Saturday and found what had to have been a dozen or so magpies standing on my back porch squawking loudly. I had never seen magpies do this before. I was immediately freaked out, because in my paranoid mind they were planning my untimely demise. It is not actually that far fetched that birds would plan my demise, I was once dive bombed by a crow in a parking lot. It scared me so bad that I almost choked on my juice box. It would have made more sense if I had nest hair, but my hair has no volume whatsoever. Miller’s hair looks like a nest, I call it the “Eagle’s Nest.” It is very majestic, like you would picture an eagle’s nest being. Anyhoo, I decided to open the door and do the whole crotchety “What the HELL are you doing on my porch!?!” routine only I would feel horrible if I actually did yell at them so it would have come out more like “Yeah, sorry to bug you, but you’re kind of pooping on my hose.” Anyhoo I opened the door and all the birds flew off, all but one. This bird happened to be lying on the pavement, feet sticking straight in the air. My first thought was “OH MY GOD! BIRD FLU!” I screamed and slammed the door. My step-dad had to dispose of the poor dead thing. He told me that the bird had died of old age and that you could tell this because its legs were wrinkly. I think that he said this because he desperately needed the saran wrap I had used to create my sterile bubble suit. In the end I accepted his explanation and formed my own opinion for why the birds all gathered around squawking at their dead comrade. That bird possessed some knowledge he had yet to share. Knowledge that would have changed magpie life forever. Randall (yep, I named him) the smartest of all the magpies had figured out the plot to “Syriana.”

Freaky Deaky

I absolutely love this blog – Diary of a Freak Magnet. I have spent most of my life feeling that I was a freak magnet as well. However, recently I discovered that I am not a freak magnet - I am in fact a freak (I knew there had to be some reason why all my dates kept referring to me as “weirdo”). While a lesser person would perhaps slip into some kind of depressed funk (one in which they spend all their time creating their own batch of Storm Troopers out of earwax). I have not. I have embraced my freak status and it in turn has given me the freedom to allow my Id to take control. I am free to speak without running the dialog through my poorly operating inner monitor - you know the thing that is supposed to stop completely spastic things from becoming audible. I can verbally spaz to my heart’s content. I can get away with wearing a picture frame as jewelry, I am actually thinking that frames should be the next jewelry fad and they should be distributed by a company called “You’ve Been Framed.” These may not seem that freaky to some, but in the context of my life, they are. I will of course be coming up with new freaky things to do in the future, as soon as freaky replaces my current and primary adjective – lazy.

Adios Miller

So Miller is moving onward and upward and I will miss him. I say I because I am the only one who reads this blog - probably because our/my blog postings are frequently very short and frequently infrequent. I blame myself, I am extremely lazy and suffer from frequent mental blocks (I think I still might be trying to define Quality). Anyhoo, I will miss Miller’s contributions – his poetic rants about poor pastry-related customer service, his quoting of all things “Wayne’s World” and his amazing photographs (my dendritical photos tend to make all things floral look like a sea-witch had her way with them). Miller, your presence will be greatly missed. Our blog has now been downgraded from “teflon hot” to just plain soppy.