it hangs down. and it can eat.

My poor, slutty laptop said yes to some Good Time Charlie spyware and adware thing and now it's totally taking advantage of her. Which means, sadly, that I cannot get on the Internet from my computer anymore. Although I did do some adware housecleaning last night and got the pop-up ad for "penis pills" to stop flashing at me, I still can't seem to get to any normal Internet sites. So if I am tardy in my posts/responses, please forgive me.

I think I'm going to have to do a system reconfiguration, which is just an inconvenient thing to have happen during comps. Which are still going on because now I have to do rewrites (which is normal, but still irritating). Plus, I have senioritis. Actually, I was kind of born with it.

Gypsy, I'm making you something. It's on the needles.
Mao.

I want to do this SO BAD! Who's WITH me???

Seriously, do any of you know anyone that I could crash with close to Fairfield? I will rent myself a car and go to this, just because I think Fairfield is crazy and David Lynch is crazy, and in spite of the not as great as Blue Velvet movies of late, I think that Straight Story is the best movie about Iowa I've ever seen, and I really want to go be with the crazies and the hippies.

Why isn't there a co-op in Vedic City, I ask you!!!

i love jesus and i'm gnarly

It is so weird that I am almost done with school. I ordered my hood thingy today for the commencement ceremony. And I'm almost finished with the turning in of things, last minute papers and suchlike. It's weird living in the dreamtime between what happened before and what's going to happen! This is totally always the time when I would have made some bold move and upset the teetering balance of something, just to make it stop teetering. England is totally just such a move, don't let me fool you for a second.

I don't know, I'm teaching now and the left side of my brain is totally upset because the right side of my brain is planning the whole class. Or, I should say, "planning" the whole class. I'm using improvisation for most of the first three weeks, not coincidentally. I've actually come up with some cool things to do. I started them out with the ol' observation thing, where you come in and perform a one minute movement piece where you imitate someone you saw. Next, I'm going to have them write stuff in their character's voice and perform it for the class so they have to really think about who the person is (I gave them a bunch of questions to answer to get them writing). Then I'm going to assign students to work together to come up with scenes where the characters they've created meet each other and interact. I haven't decided whether this will happen in or out of class. The final result, I'm hoping, is that they just think critically about character and objective and scene structure and all that, which will then be part of their formal scenework later in the semester. This has a lot of purposes, really, but my ultimate purpose is to set the atmosphere in the classroom up in a positive way.

I don't know. If y'all have any suggestions about this, please do send them over!
Mao

almighty beauty salon

Ten Top Trivia Tips about Kitty mao!
1. US gold coins used to say 'In kitty mao we trust'.
2. It takes 8 minutes for light to travel from the Sun's surface to kitty mao.
3. Two grams of kitty mao provide enough energy to power a television for over
twenty-three hours!
4. Kitty mao once lost a Dolly Parton lookalike contest.
5. In Ancient Egypt, people wore glittery eyeshadow made from the crushed shells of kitty mao.
6. Oranges, lemons, watermelons, pineapples and kitty mao are all berries.
7. Kitty mao was originally called Cheerioats.
8. The Eskimos have over fifty words for kitty mao.
9. Kitty mao is the only metal that is liquid at room temperature.
10. Kitty mao can fly at an average speed of fifteen kilometres an hour.

i feel on the verge of going pleasant

Amy Lou-you are WISE! What a wonderful thing to say on your blog. I am so very glad you are my friend.

Also, the song of the day for me is Thanksgiving by Poi Dog Pondering.

Love, Mao

There used to be this TV show on California Public Television called "Self" and it would present moral dilemmas to children and then STOP DEAD at the crucial moment of truth and you the viewer were supposed to think about what your action would have been and perhaps discuss the show with family and friends. SO here's one for ya:

You walk into the bathroom first thing in the morning to go potty. You pull your pajama pants down and come to find that you must have slept on a penny because it was stuck to your skin and COMES OFF, ROLLS DOWN YOUR BODY, AND FALLS INTO THE TOILET. In order to retrieve it, you must reach your hand, still sleep-warm and a little disconnected from your body, into the cold toilet water to get that coin. Or... do you leave it? Do you flush that coin?

There are some things to consider:
a) the toilet is reasonably clean, and there is no poop or pee in it.
b) the propensity for the swallowed penny to show up in poo is well-documented. It's like corn. So you could totally flush the toilet, and the likelihood that the coin would simply disappear into the sewers with no damage to the plumbing is very high.
c) this coin is not encased in poo.
d) the coin is worth one single cent. I didn't check the year that it was minted, but it couldn't have been that long ago. And I can report for certain that this was not a wheat penny.
e) no one will miss this coin.
f) this coin is heads side up, and bears the likeness of Abraham Lincoln, our nation's sixteenth, and arguably our greatest, president. He wrote, among many other things, the Gettysburg Address and the Emancipation Proclamation. He began his life in a log cabin in Illinois, and wrote his first lessons on the back of a shovel with a piece of coal. He rose from nothing to become a lawyer, and then to lead our fledgling nation through its worst national crisis, both freeing slaves from bondage and and saving the Union.
g) pennies are no longer made from pure copper. They are made of zinc with a thin copper plating overtop. The actual worth of a penny is much less than a penny.
h) Honest Abe Lincoln also suffered from melancholia.

Taking all these things into account, I will now stop the story and ask you what YOU would do in this situation?

Go ahead and discuss it with your family.

poop. back and forth. forever.

I went to Iowa in a rent-a-car! It was way fun, I did everything I wanted to do!!! We ate at Thai Flavors and saw Brokeback Mountain and ate waffles made out of millet and semolina and danced and sang and got coffee at the Java House, and there were puppies and kitties and hairdye and fun times for all. I think I will do that again sometime. Rent a car and swing into town and have a weekend of fun. It's pretty cheap to do, and I feel that it renews my soul.

In spite of all the fun, I am glad to be back in what is for now my home. I healed my boyfriend of his cold with tried and true hippie remedies the night before last and in return (though this is of course unnecessary) he is taking me to Biaggi's for dinner, which is a fancy Italian place. Cause I'm a fancy Italian lady, know what I'm sayin'?

O.K. here's what I'll admit. I am feeling kind of sad at how much things have changed in only a very short time in Iowa. I walked around and while I noticed lots of new things that I liked, it was still alarming to see how many things were gone or completely changed. I guess it's good to have things renew themselves, but it's also scary. I guess it's also scarier because I'm not there to supervise the changes, I'm only dropping in every few months and finding something else they've torn down or built up. It's also unsettling to me how much the co-op has changed, which is something I know it's kind of set up to do, but still. For all the people that are still there, there are lots of new people too and I long to be home but home isn't really the home that I remember, not like it was with everyone there... Dylan and Sherene and Miranda and Joseph (do you remember those dinners? like the one when we pretended it was summer outside even though it was February?)... and this is all just a lesson to show me how to remember the past fondly without clinging to it, and to wait for the future to happen and not force it, and to enjoy the present moment, here on my floor, typing on my computer and waiting for my new and beloved friend Courtney to call so I can pick her up at the bus station, while periodically getting a witty and endearing text message from my boyfriend, and valuing deeply the fact that I can go back to Iowa City and still find a place like the co-op and all my wonderful friends that are still there even though they might not be there much longer, and not being so neurotic about things all the time!

A mao.

1. What did you do in 2005 that you'd never done before?
I did Shakespeare outside. For money. And it was hot.

2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don't remember what they were, if there were any. So if there were any, I totally blew it. But if there weren't any, then I'm home free!!!

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
To a child? I can't answer this question until the parameters are more specific.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No. (whew)

5. What countries did you visit?
I'm still on a decades-long immersion experience of the American Midwest.

6. What would you like to have in 2006 that you lacked in 2005?
I don't know. I can't think of anything right now. Confidence, maybe? And a puppy.

7. What date from 2005 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
I don't remember anything specifically. This quiz seems designed to humiliate the slightly forgetful.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I guess I made some pretty good strides as an actor... but I'm happier with the process than the products, really.

9. What was your biggest failure?
I always feel like I'm not quite the person I could be. I can't figure out whether I just need to stop thinking that or whether I should follow a more saintly path.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
No, not really. Other than soreness from the car accident.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
My stereo, I think.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Barak Obama, Cindy Sheehan, my fwen Gypsy, anybody that spoke truth to power.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Oh, the usual suspects. G.W. & crew.

14. Where did most of your money go?
To school or to my car.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
The Tim Miller project, doing ISF, becoming smitten with someone.

16. What song will always remind you of 2005?
Song... probably this DMX song that we always play in the grad offices.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:i. happier or sadder?
I think I am about the same for different reasons. Last year I was happy that certain things at ISu were overwith and that there was a new beginning on the horizon. I have kind of lost hope that ISU will actually get it's poop together at this point, but I have some cool opportunities coming up and some good things going on in my social life, so I feel good anyway.

ii. thinner or fatter?
Fatter! I've gained between five and ten pounds since I got here. Some of it is probably muscle since we work out like crazy all my clothes still fit about the same, but it's still weird. I think it's mainly because I never walk anywhere (which is something I won't be able to help doing now!). But I imagine when I get out of B-N things will get back to normal.

iii. richer or poorer?
I'll say "richer" but it's only because I have a student loan now that I will have to pay back, so in actuality, I'm much poorer!

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
I wish I'd been able to get back to Iowa more, and that I'd been able to take a better acting class as an elective (our grad one wasn't so good). So what I'm saying is that I wish I had done more challenging acting work and made more strides as an actor.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
I wish I could learn to be more careful about releasing negative energy/comments. I got pretty wry and bitter last semester when classes were weak and the faculty was SO involved in their own in-fighting... and I should have been able to be more positive and mature about it all.

20. How will you be spending New Year's?
I spent most of it at my mommy's. We made burritos and drank champagne.

21. Did you fall in love in 2005?
Well, I'm definitely smitten!

22. How many one-night stands?
That's a goose egg, my friend!

23. What was your favorite TV program?
Arrested Development. Or the Golden Girls.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
As I get older, I find that I lack the force of passion to hate anyone. I lose respect for people, but I don't usually get all that rankled about it.

25. What was the best book you read?
Windfalls, by Jean Hegland. And I just started Julie and Julia and it's really good so far.

26. What was your greatest musical (re)discovery?
Bright Eyes, Rachel's, Billy Bragg

27. What did you want and get?
Weirdly, I got all the roles I wanted. June in Marisol, Maria in Twelfth Night, Hannah in Arcadia.

28. What did you want and not get?
I want to become a truly impressive actor. I have felt for years like I'm waiting at the door that never opens!

29. What was your favorite film of this year?
Seriously, I haven't seen any. I want to see Broken Flowers, Good Night and Good Luck, Syriana, Walk the Line, Kung Fu Hustle, Me and You and Everyone We Know, Junebug, Thumbsucker, Proof, Everything is Illuminated, Capote, Mrs. Henderson Presents, Brokeback Mountain, Memoirs of a Geisha, Match Point, Munich, I want... I wa... I want all these things! Oh, yeah. And also Roll Bounce.

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I partied down at ISF housing with all my friends! It was a really good time. I am 32 now.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
If the faculty were not in a collective state of paranoid schizophrenia, I think better stuff would happen in classes and in shows. I don't mean to be negative here, just honest.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2005?
Derelicte.

33. What kept you sane?
Was I sane? Actually, my friends and I are there for each other like crazy. And the grad class has really bonded.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Fancy? Oh, my! I believe Pee Wee Herman is topping the list for his 20th year in a row!

35. What political issue stirred you the most?
The war and Hurrican Katrina.

36. Who did you miss?
My friends in Iowa and my friend Nicole. And puppies and kitties.

37. Who was the best new person you met?
Michael!

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2005:
Don't worry so much and stay positive.

39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
(Whachu doin?) We be chillin at the Holiday Inn
(Who you wit?) Me and my peeps won't you bring four of your friends
(What we gon' do?) Feel on each other and sip on some Hen
One thing leading to another let the party begin

Final Thoughts:
I can't wait to graduate! And to do ISF again! And to go to England! And to turn 33!

Meow! Meowmeow! Meow! Meow!