the phoenix this week bordered on ridiculous. two articles on a spread read "beer healthier than milk, PETA says" (featuring an actual scientist verbally hitting his head against a wall) and "sperm is an anti-depressant." the second, which argues that women who have unsafe sex are happier than their more cautious counterparts, was an import from a new york paper. while i couldn't track down the original article, i did find an intelligent, amusing reaction to it. the idea that women, after reading the phoenix, will throw all their condoms in the trash, shout "happiness over health!" and embrace their new protection-free, giddy lifestyle, would infuriate me -- except that i'm so damn well-skooled in the ideas of natural selection.

happy halloween, folks. and if you happen to be someone i care about, please, choose milk.

for your reading pleasure, another of my brother's articles. this one's more liberal: it's about gun control, in which he firmly believes. last time, stef asked me incredulously if we were from the same family (because her family is entirely composed of tree-hugging AIDS-activist queers). this one should establish that we're clearly siblings. see how he references movies constantly too?

in a different, ironically wonderful vein, Black people love us! an old friend directed me to this site during a discussion of how a swattie went in blackface to the halloween party. he "apologized" to the campus as a whole and defended himself at the same time. huge deal, of course. most of the people i heard talking about it condemned the action (and the kid) in the strongest possible terms. others, more privately, have shrugged at me and said the kid was just naive. but how could someone never have heard of blackface? never seen pictures of al jolson, or bamboozled, or shots of amos and andy? if he was just naive, how dangerously naive did he have to be to think black students -- or anyone -- would not mind him stereotyping black people just because he didn't mean to be insulting?

most everyone has a moment here when you realize much of what you thought about racism and systems of oppression is wrong, and that you can't live in a merry oblivious state of colorblindness. this poor idiot's moment happened to come in one of the most public spaces on campus; he infuriated a lot of people who had no qualms about letting him know then and there. but i don't think him concluding that now he has to be conscious of race or careful not to offend is such a tragedy. he should have that responsibility. anyone in a position of privilege does.

too late, kross sent me an email suggesting we not announce the kill. i'd already, as promised, reported to his object as soon as i returned from my sojourn to new york to watch kross's band play CBGB's. he found out before we left that i had him (he won't tell me from whom, but if someone who reads this website is responsible, i will track you down, you vile betrayer) and arranged to have my newest enemy make an attempt on my life. expecting that, i brought my careful roomie brigid along to guard my ass until i boarded that van. once safely in, kross turned to me in exasperation and said, "why can't you just die?"

i can't answer that. i never expected to really get involved in this game, let alone make it through weekend 1. but for whatever reason, here i am -- and last night, there i was, in very close quarters with my object. naturally i got him, and he was a good sport about it, and subsequently he was such a rock star on stage it made petty battles fade away. we walked out of CBGB's quite friendly, and into this:

man on street (whispering): acid, acid ...
ross: what?
me, steering ross away: he said Acid, love.
ross (disgusted): oh, that's what he offered me before.

three cheers, cuz i haven't mentioned it here yet, for another rock star: go LANA! another Loveless Girl title stripped away. i'm almost tearing up w/ pride and joy just thinking about it.

a kill! a kill! not mine, but still an astonishing event: the death of my enemy. alex revealed that he was being pursued by G. but when i called G., G. revealed that actually he was just pretending and S. had alex. this morning then i called S. i enlisted him as a temporary partner: i would serve as bait for him to get to alex if he would act as my bodyguard.

a slow cautious walk through the woods brought eliz, well-protected and paranoid, S. and me ten steps to the classroom door. just then, alex leapt out from behind a car. i threw myself on the ground. eliz threw herself across me. S. and alex circled each other, sumo-wrestling style. finally one lunged and the real tussle began.
alex is quick and scrappy, but S. has long arms. before long the two had moved close enough to where i was lying that i could reach up. alex instinctively grabbed my hand and i grabbed his and pulled him down, exposing his ass to the air and S.'s embrace.

bad guys, 0; ester, alive. now S. has me but under our deal i have amnesty until i leave for nyc. YES. last year's champion is brought down.

i'm very much unused to sustaining injuries. rarely in my lifetime have i ever put myself out in a position to be hurt, whether from climbing trees, riding roller coasters that go upside-down, or skiing down black diamond slopes even after numerous lessons (skill-wise, i'd advance to black diamond, then let fear propell me back to the safety and comfort of the blue squares). or whether from contests, for that matter. i submit to publications on campus but i can virtually count the number of times i've submitted poetry to the real world on one hand.

the result of my timidity, or excessive desire to protect myself, is that i have little experience coping. every few seconds i do something normal with my hand for which i am rewarded with a preachy twinge. i'm fascinated by the bruises around my left knee. when i woke up saturday morning i phased through my typical bitter reaction to rejection. ben calmly let me rant about how i'd learned my lesson: no more movies about queer poeple, cuz "i know values are paramount, but my values are Paramount." i railed at the film industry, despaired of my own chances to ever achieve anything.
and then, after a bit, i was spent. since that morning, when people have asked me about the contest, i've replied honestly with very little ire. consequently people haven't demonstrated an excessive need to pity me, which is what i feared most. i didn't think out this strategy; i couldn't have planned it if i tried. but i think it means that, even if unconsciously, i'm getting better at this getting hurt / losing thing. (i even know, as was established in a convo w/ ms becca this evening, that the not-writing-about-queers thing isn't possible. she pointed out i'm surrounded by them. to ignore their influence would be artificial. so fuck paramount, or miramax even, if they don't like it: i'll find myself a capital-a Ally to make movies with, and if no one else my beloved queer-folk will come to see it.)

[*ring, ring*]
T: hello, worth health center
M: hi. i sprained my thumb, uh, wrestling. is there anything i should do for it?
T: hmm. do you have some bone disease you've never heard of?
M: no.
T: just ice it, take some tylenol, and don't engage in any other athletic activity today. you don't have a rugby game or anything?
M: well, no, but what if i have to, uh, wrestle again? should i tape it or something?
T (frostily): i would just advise not doing that.

stress and frazzlement. i've discovered the hard way whose target i am: alex, the boy who WON last year. ruthless soul, he leapt on me as soon as i walked into the dining hall this morning for brunch. luckily i had a book down my pants (thanks, rilke) and i managed to keep him at bay as we rolled around on the floor. someone handed me a tray which granted me a two second reprieve -- the rules hold that so long as you have both hands on a tray in the dining hall, you're off limits -- until he lunged at me again and wrested the tray from me, spraining my thumb in the process. he's a small guy but MAN is he tough.
we wrestled further. i kept screaming, "someone get me a tray!" until someone not distracted by the other kills happening two feet away (eliz's double kill: first her opponent and then her opponent's opponent, who turned out to be her girlfriend. sorry, stef) got me one and i held onto it for dear life.

i made it, shaking, to a seat. he returned a few minutes later, like the specter of death, and without even blinking pulled me and my chair down onto the floor. as i clutched the tray to my chest, he methodically reached into my pants to get the book. once he realized i had taken it out and put it on the table, he calmly picked it up, placed it in his bookbag, and walked away.

eliz and i lingered for a while, then dashed to the nearest dorm to hide out for a while. cautiously and circuitously, we made it back to our dorms, where we both intend to stay for as long as possible. alex actually lives one floor from me. i should leave a horsehead in his bed or something. oh man oh man. and dealing with conflicting loyalites is hard.

well, so i'm one of the un-special 9,750. while i was dancing last nite at the coming out "end of the word" party, i got a flash of it. that, in conjunction with not being drunk enough to feel unselfconscious or unjudged dancing, zapped me of all energy and i trudged home through the sudden, appropriate downpour to find my suspicions confirmed.
the party rocked, though, for which a hard-working ben is to be thanked. he managed all 4 hours of djing all alone and people really responded. they were assisted adrenaline-ly by the drag king show beforehand and then by the presence of said drag kings on the dance floor. at points the show dragged but it also hit a few incredible high points, particularly with a skit which began with eminem, who was then joined by elton john. together they morphed into 'nsync, i think -- some boy band -- and sang an expressive love duet. they're not the first to posit that the new elvis is secretly gay; jonah linked to a nerve article that spells it out and also implicates sir john. played out on stage by drag kings, though, it's even more entertaining.

i have my ASSassins target. hopefully my paranoia will protect me until i get a chance to carry out my plan. and perhaps a strategically placed Fed Ex envelope.

off to an ASSassins pre-party where the ass master reveals to us contestants whom our object is. i won't last five seconds in this game. i can't even keep sorelle from grabbing my ass on a regular day, and worst of all, i squeal indignantly.
the way it works is, you get assigned one person whose ass you have to grab (with both hands, and so the other person can feel it) within 3 days. if you haven't accomplished that goal, the assmaster comissions the death squad and they get medieval on your ass. yes, i will be henceforth using the word "ass" a lot. ass ass ass.

greenlight reveals the oh-so-special 250 and pats the other 9,750 on the head condescendingly. i am very very scared. but two slices of cinnamon toast in sarah c.'s company at dinner, a trip to the pumpkin patch and an aborted attempt to pick apples co|motionly have bucked up my spirits. we'll see how it goes.
now i need to go drink wine.

in honor of coming out week, poor rusty! and in honor of my family, here's my review of punch drunk love and my brother's latest crazy article ("is he crazy?" "nooo, just ignorant.")

i'm trying to listen to fiercely independent college radio but it won't work. fiddlesticks. i'm glorying in the world of sloth at the moment, in an attempt to balance out the world of pain that was this week, monday - wedesday. in the throes of that pain, i managed to write the 2 papers and get them handed in on time, and make my observation, and not sleep very much, and win one great game of scrabble, and go to all of my classes on wednesday except the very last one cuz by 7 p.m. i was just tired of pain.

sarah k. and i trooped back to my room and quickly established there was nothing either of us could do to make the other feel better. then we promptly had a conversation that made both of us feel better. three cheers for that.

i've done much bonding with people recently. perhaps that's a Return from Break thing. complex interesting conversations with sarah c., analytical ones with sorelle, tenderness with ross, and then of course with ben, who is the best person in the world for me to be dating. last night he sent me an annotated copy of the final draft of my screenplay. his notes, in blue text, consisted 90% of him writing [ha] or [ha haaa] by the jokes. i grinned all the way through and felt better about the script than i had in weeks.
and my ed prof postponed the due date of our second paper to monday. that nicely facilitates my sloth. if only the weather were nicer so i could slothful outside.

for my observation this morning, i pushed myself out of my yummy purple flannel sheets at 7:15 and into the cold blue yonder. brigid hiked with me to about where the trolley was supposed to pick me up and take me to upper darby high skool. since she had a class, she had to turn back before we reached the endpoint and consequently i didn't find the actual trolley pick-up point until after the one i was supposed to catch had passed on. after a cold blue while, another came, and i got off at the right stop and power-walked and managed to arrive only 20 minutes late. except, upon closer inspection, it turned out i was at the wrong skool.
a pleasant secretary volunteered to drive me to beverly hills middle skool, which is where i was supposed to be. there, at last, two hours after i'd gotten up after four hours of sleep, i met the transitional education program class i'll be sitting in on seven more weeks.

the teacher of the 2 of the 3 class periods i sat in on is the head of this refugee program. on one hand, she's cheerful and affectionate with the children and seems quite skilled; on the other, she insisted the students call her "miss" ("because i'm not married") and kept telling the girls to "sit like a lady." she introduced me around as "miss bloom" and requested that the children identify themselves and their backgrounds. one by one, they voiced places i'm dimly sure i could find on a map: liberia; ghana; sierra lione; eritrea; sudan. most speak understandable english. just glancing at them, you wouldn't be able to tell that they aren't native born african-americans. but then little details pop up to remind you: two of the girls, when introducing themselves, added that their favorite thing to do is eat.

on a very different note -- in a very different world, even -- back at swat, flirting is a hot topic of conversation. people insist it's a perfectly valid, positive act, that there's nothing wrong with identifying as a Flirt. yet when they themselves are suggested to be Flirts, they become defensive. although i've participated in the who is v. who isn't discussion, no one has ventured to pin me in either category. just as well. quite likely i'd be offended whether the decision were yea or nay. funny that such a meaningless frivolous thing strikes such a chord in people.

sarah chirps, Time to write! time to write? i'm trying to finish two papers for wednesday; i have a third due friday. my first observation tomorrow morning for which i need to rise at 7:20, heaven help me. general nervousness as the stress of the semester descends which, like the cold, i'm afraid won't retreat again before winter break (or, in the case of the cold, maybe not until spring!)

at the co|motion meeting, as we went around the circle checking in, four people in a row described visiting other colleges over break and deciding that they were quite sure that they made the right decision in coming here. only at the tail end of a break have i seen swatties so sanguine. check back during finals week, when no one has washed their hair for longer than they can remember or can speak except in fragments of theory so that typical conversations run: "meta?" "postmodern." *nod* "yeah, man. patriarchy. yeah." that's the acid test.

i also saw punch drunk love at last and was quite pleased with it. for some reason the theater was filled with senior citizens. when the film ended, i alone rose laughing; most of the people around me remained in their seats, looking perplexedly at the screen. it's been a long time since i left a theater feeling like skipping the way to the train station. it would have been nice to have someone to share it with. well, i guess in a small way that's what my reviews are for.

this kind of thing is so against my principles and at the same so weirdly compelling {lara's link}. like the samsung smut (scroll down if you've forgotten, but remember, the same caution applies) it's not the same without the music in the background. maybe it only works as mesmerizing distraction when you have 250 pgs of No Ordinary Time left and two papers to start.
on the plus side, i'm back where i belong. seeing my friends settled at their respective places i realize i could be happy elsewhere. but not quite as happy. swatties are just so uniquely, adorably quirky -- such a combination of pretention, dorkiness, and a need to be special -- i want to hug them all. where else would i fit in as well?

insanely, apparently, the copenhagen metro is opening. they predicted it would be done in four years last spring. who the hell finishes anything ahead of schedule? the metro served as a running joke when i was in denmark, sort of as a substitute for "when pigs fly." {tinka's link}

cambridge, massachusetts. ilana's apartment-like triple. we're in the midst of a crisis here -- a small scale one, as world crises go; micro, not macro, as i seem to be saying every hour on the hour today -- but nonetheless an annoying one. last night around 2 a.m., after the guest lana and i had been entertaining was getting ready to leave, lana discovered that laptop, complete with nearly-complete Justice paper, had gone off the deep end. computer crashes are the worst: there's no country you can bomb to make those go away.
other intermittent crises (identity! ahhehgrhhh!) have added to the atmosphere of stress, so despite the fact that today is miserable-weather-yesterday's polar opposite, we've been dragging around cambridge trying to keep spirits up. dinner at the co-op plus fun evening plans might help. but if worst comes to worst, we can take the laptop out back and have ourselves a hanging. send the good vibes, people. and a windows xp startup cd if you've got one.

other harvard observations: it's not so posh as i envisioned, actually. but it's more mannered. here, everyone shakes hands, and there's this foreign air of gallantry about the men that continues to take me aback. when they hold doors, it's not because you're a fellow human being but because you're a woman. come to think of it, both places i've been reminded repeatedly of my feminininininity, whatever the hell that is / amounts to. at smith, the butches kept holding doors for me and carrying my packages and i felt veritably Pink.
here, one wonders, are the boys so mannered cuz the families that send them here expended much energy acculturating their young ones? or do they arrive on harvard's doorstep in swaddling cloth and absorb, absorb, absorb?

lana's so excited about her classes she wants me to come to all of them. i guess that's the magic of harvard. but today i woke up at 11, the time that her Justice lecture was supposed to start. (meet me in front of the red brick building, she said.) apparently the prof is the character on whom those wacky harvard-grad Simpsons creators based mr. burns. a good-natured, ironic homage to one of the U's most respected men.

i did accompany lana to a class yesterday. good practice in ed observation! i even took notes. maybe i can submit those instead of the observation i skipped last week cuz i woke to the sound of rain. in lots of ways it seemed very typical: the two boys talked as much as the five girls combined, tho one girl said seemingly everything that came into her head, using as many polysyllabic words as possible. at one point she said "homosexual studies," which nearly cracked me up. but generally the class kept my interest for two hours despite the fact that i hadn't read any of the texts, and that's impressive.

rain chased me up here. terrible, stupid rain: we were going to go a-frolicking today. perhaps we can salvage those plans, or perhaps we can trade them in and go see punch drunk love. cambridge is much how i remember it, and with the students criss-crossing the quad it's almost unbearably collegiate. lana's uber-cute here, comfortable and settled. it seems like it could be a happy place.

meanwhile, my brother is publishing articles and outraging people at an alarming rate. he's outnumbering me in letters to the editor, 2:1. maybe i should start writing about politics. tho if i did i wouldn't be quite so tough on the folks who voted for ralph. after all, they're friends of mine.

we played Outburst last night, the same edition ilana and i played in n.c. and shrieked over, and of course we [liz, sarahk. and smithie-christine] shrieked excessively at the cards. "______ man (fill in the blank)" produced "fireman" "policeman" and "mailman" and our favorite: "WOMAN." other cards' topics: "things a woman wears on her face" and "things a woman wears" ("high heels" "garter" "slip". duh.) but the most awesome one, which i searched through about ten thousand cards before finding, was "birth control methods": "abstinence" "visectomy" and (drum roll please) "homosexuality." whahoo!!

a cheerful group it was. we'd just partaken of the food christine and sarah had prepped for us at christine's uber-cool house. i can't deal with the living situation here; i am collard-green with jealousy. posh houses, adorable veggie co-ops, signs that say "trans friendly space" on bathroom doors, hard wood floors, comfy kitchen-like dining rooms, as opposed to ski-lodge type dining halls. not to mention noho itself, which even in the rain yesterday made my eyes turn like pinwheels. in the company of our highskool friend rachel, in town for a barmitzvah, we wandered through coffee shops, juice bars, and thrift stores. oh western massachusetts, you slay me. dead in a rainbow puddle, peered down at by cooler-than-thou hyper-pierced gender-indeterminate indie baristas: that's me.

cambridge tomorrow. more or less posh/leftist/colorful/enticing?

oh my god, i'm still laughing. a person in liz's class made this website. unless you are my mother or another close relative who has no interest in salacious material (i mean it, it's for your own good), click the link at the bottom of this beautifully made page that asks "what's your favorite way to waste time?" i mean it: it's for your own good.

so what if i started a webjournal, sez liz, standing next to me eating sesame chicken (she's the worst kind of vegan -- she has no principles.) oh she's wonderful. i'm using her computer now, which translates the cute little cursor/arrow thing into a rather distracting bowl of fruit. she's about to go for a run in the pouring rain. speaking of pouring rain, it hasn't stopped all week. dry for three weeks, then this week it's nonstop. like it's nature's time of the month!

i love how my committed de-politicization lasts only until my father calls and i have fight with him about iraq for an hour. he opened up a can of rant (re: opec) on my ass, managing to get in references to lenin and ralph nader. i can talk a lot but, man, you should get my father going: he can filibuster his way out of anything, leaving opportunity only for his opponent to stammer things like, "maybe, but --" or "hang on a second!" or "dad, i am *not* knee-jerk leftist cannon-fodder! i just don't agree with you!" arguing with my father is eye-opening: it reminds me what the outside world is like, and that intelligent people who didn't vote for bush really are willing to follow the monkey-faced half-literate oilest-of-oil-men cowboy into war. because they really think it's the Right Thing to Do. just like leftists think it's the Right Thing to Do to march in protest.

exhausting. not as bad as travelling yesterday. through mother nature's untamponed onslaught, intrepid adventurers sarah k., our mutual friend and co-Co\Motioner addie and i started our trip at 2 p.m. on a septa train into philly. sarah and i arrived, drenched and half-sentient but senses of humor still functioning, to smith at 1 a.m. the first bus to new york took twice as long as it should have; then our layover in port authority (motto: even if the busses never pick you up, the sketchballs will) followed the same pattern. the last leg of the trip, curiously, once sarah and i parted from addie, was quick and comfortable. but 11 or so hours, under any circumstances, is tough.

even periods come to an end. assuming this one does, elizabeth and i will venture into northampton, shop and eat. if not, we'll keep chugging through the four videos we rented from the library and take a lot of baths. (they have bathtubs here.)

so, war, perhaps (you mean my phone call didn't make a difference?) but never mind that right now. i have a feeling this is how i'll force myself to be all semester/year. i don't want to be part of the galvanized, indignant left. i certainly am not part of the slobbering, war-mongering right. i don't want to wear love beads or hemp or laugh at those who do; i don't want to spray protesters with hoses or be sprayed.
o, apathy.

kross's party went on last night, despite the rain. banana birthday cake done justice to; cheesecake untouched (people thought it was just cheese, nestled as it was all serene like among the grapes.) some folks danced towards the end. mostly people ate drank and chilled. it worked for me and although it perhaps was not the most rousingly successful of all of kross's endeavors, i knew the majority of the goodly crowd and so felt comfortable and enjoyed myself. not a small feat.

today i go off to smith, despite the rain, buoyed by a giddy sarah k. hard to believe that break's starting. i'm skeptical, tho my last class was canceled and i skipped my second to last. but, giving it the benefit of the doubt, i'd better start packing.

FINALLY i am a WORTHWHILE person.

*ring*
t: common cause
m: congressional switchboard?
t: no, common cause. but i'll transfer you. would you like to make a donation?
m: not right now?

[soft jazz]

t: switchboard.
m: i vote in pennsylvania?

[soft jazz]

t: [mumble whisper]
me: i'm sorry, whose office is this?
t: santorum's!
me: vote no on war!
t: duly noted.

*applause*
now you go.

oh, and i've been officially APPROVED. validated! approved!!

ben made the next watson round! excellent. now i'm glad i slept in a field with him (come on, wasn't it obvious i was going to?) even though "sleeping" is really too broad a word for my burrowing deeper into my sleeping bag, stealing his hat, waking every few hours to squint at a gray sky, and shivering from the cold. waking up made it all worth it: ester, he said: don't you have class?
it turned out i didn't, at least not for another hour and a half. we looked around: we'd slept in the middle of a circle of stones on campus and the sun was busy glinting off each of them and the blue sky beamed down at us. our companions had crept away sometime earlier, apparently. by the time ben and i had made our way there, around 1 a.m. -- we had to shuffle slowly down the path through the woods, aided by my small yellow flashback and constrained by ben's old man slippers -- the four of them had already fallen asleep. once again, no chance to talk with kross's chicklet. oh well.
i came back here after tennis and lunch, ostensibly to crash, but an urgent phone message from the history department drives me back into the breach. we few special-honors-major-wannabes, we happy few, we band of brothers ...

i finally finished my review of "secretary," which i titled "taking more than dictation." but they never keep my titles anyway. i got started on it late: rob, ben's roommate from last year, challenged me to a game of scrabble. with a break in the middle to run errands, it lasted from 7:30 to 11:15. even allowing for the gap, i think that's a new record. now i have to make a snap decision whether or not to go sleep in a field. on the plus side, i could wear my bright red yummy fleece pajamas. on the minus side, i would be sleeping in a field. and it's cold outside.

i managed to write my new sophomore paper, hand it to some people, request a grade report, and apply for the honors program today. still more red tape to cut through (one professor whose signature i requested informed me, "this is just bullshit you know." oh boy do i) but i'm moving forward. with any hope i'll be either approved or brutally shot down before break, and i can go to smith certain of my fate.
i get to go to smith!
man, i'm just sitting next to an open window and i'm cold. what the hell kind of impulse drives people from their wonderful comfortable beds and into itchy grass and sleeping bags? forget it. i'll put on my yummy fleece pajamas here, dance around, and sleep where the bugs can't get me.

yesterday morning i rose at 11. now it's 9 and i'm up while my pretty one sleeps. a difference in the rollicking factor, no doubt. friday night took me back to freshman year. sarah c. asked what i would wear to the party we'd agreed to attend. i pointed to a perfectly respectable shirt in my closet and she emitted a shriek. within seconds she was out the door and back with armfuls of her what-would-be clubwear if she went to clubs. with the advisement of marc, one of my oldest friends here, we settled on tops: mine, black lace. it matched surprisingly well with my black lace-fringed zebra-print skirt-slip.

stef and eliz, and stef's friend from home, joined us and we wrangled eliz into a hottop of her own. it went beautifully with her haircut, acquired that morning in bryn mawr, midwifed by a cosy lady who knew her stuff and attended by both stef and me. so we set off for the ball and danced with sorelle, kross + chick, and my new favorite sophomo who looked at me, pulled his student ID from his pocket, and said, "it's a good thing i brought my library card, cuz i'm checking you out."

good times. last night was a different sort of fun: a thought-provoking secretary in the city, excellent but rushed indian food with city-becca, and dumb city comedy. stef and eliz and i, on the way home, attempted to improve on the improv. 185 weblogs walk into a bar ... i saw a movie about sunday mornings that was so bad (how bad was it?) ...

i'm enjoying this lying mofo thing immensely. of course, i'm also in a vicious-ish mood, which is the same reason i'm foregoing seeing dukakis speak tonite and, when i was tabling with eliz for local high skool outreach, i horrified her by using phrases like "be a chickenhawk," "recruit" and "indoctrinate the young." basically i'm glum because i lost in scrabble to kross, 10,000 to 1. silly and spoiled of me. i comforted myself on the walk to dinner with the fact that at least i'm prettier than he is. then of course i got called chubby.
*sigh*
my earlier political memory is my father despairing over dukakis, knowing that the d-meister would never make it to dc. poor guy. well, at least i'm prettier than dukakis. or i'd like to think so.

my favorite advice columnists were right on today. that pleases me. i would like to be an advice columnist, i think. or a film reviewer. or perhaps some super-special and unique hybrid of the two where i draw on cinematic precedent to suggest solutions. that is a terrific idea that requires a creative and clever name. a prize for the best suggestion: go to.

so i've done it. i've submitted true love waits to project greenlight. the final two revisions i did essentially on my own, though i took into account the hundreds of comments i've received from the people who've read it (and, really, thank you all.) but the deadline's tomorrow and i have too much else to think about this week to worry about continuing to nitpick, or worse have other people nitpick for me. so, there it is.

while i was in process of converting to pdf and uploading, i got a call from the woman whose class i've going to be observing for Intro Ed. i'm one of the last people in my class to be assigned an observation: apparently the bureaucracy at upper darby is intense. but she sounds very sweet. she described the class as a special project for which they only got a grant last january. it group sixth grade refugee children together -- some of whom function at a third-grade level -- and teaches them at a pretty individualized pace. she warned me that they become attached quickly, that they will probably like me immediately and cry when i go. sounds certainly unique, almost overwhelming, but if she can teach it surely i can handle sitting in for 8 weeks.