writing in lowercase is pretentious.

Well, I've been living in Madison for the last 4 weeks. It's an interesting situation. I don't know anyone in the city and I commute 40 minutes to get to the city my internship is in. My three roommates here are all very nice. The house we live in is suitably college-shitty, plenty of bugs, no AC, no cable, ect, but I like it. They have it very well decorated and it's comfortable and in a great neighborhood. My internship is really something. It's at the Rock County Coroner's Office, which sounds exciting... but it has been pretty dull so far. I've seen a lot of wild stuff, but not very many actual scene calls. I've been working there 3 days a week for 4 weeks and I have only been on one real call! It's great that people aren't dropping like flies, but for the purposes of the internship it sucks. If there are no calls (which is 98.99% of the time), I sit there and read. All day. Today I went outside and fell asleep on a picnic table. I am not getting paid for this job. It's value is in the experiences, and I'm not getting many at all. I mean, I've seen plenty of people in funeral homes, the morgue, gruesome pictures from case files, saw an autopsy, and get to see a guy exhumed next week (COOL), but it's not enough. Sitting in an office and reading for 8.5 hours a day is NOT exciting and not a good use of my time. I gave up my whole summer and moved to a strange city just to take this internship, and I can only hope for the sake of my education there that business picks up, as callous as that sounds. I don't regret the experience so far though. I like everyone I work with and I've learned tons already. And I really like Madison. It's just beautiful and clean and young. It seems like a Playskool version of Chicago, smaller and simpler and easier. I love to walk around, especially at night, but I have to be pretty careful. There's been crime around recently.

I've been going home every weekend for family parties and to see friends. Now the family parties are done & I am spending my first official full weekend in Madison starting tomorrow. One of my roommates said she'd take me out, so I'm excited about that. I might go to the Farmer's Market and one of the art museums too.

I'm enjoying being by myself, but it can get very lonely. On the whole, I'm glad I decided on this for my summer.

I like my English 209 class, don't get me wrong. The teacher is great and engaging and the material can be fun. But how can I be expected to pay rapt attention when the champion of distraction, Mr. David Ruthenberg, is asittin' next to me? From categories to listing country competitions to drawing rediculous pictures to crossword puzzles to MASH to scrawling Dave's name approximately one trillion times on a single piece of paper, we have have done it all in the Don't Pay Attention to Lecture arena. Our newest development, however, is one of my favorites. At Dave's suggestion, we have started playing Fuck, Kill, Marry- you select 3 people and the other person has to choose with whom s/he would copulate, enter into holy matrimony, and deprieve of life. Crude? Yes. Funny? Devastatingly. The lists below are from the last 2 lectures; I suggested all the females and answered all the males, Dave did the opposite. Enjoy!:

Brad Pitt but his voice sounds exactly like yours- MARRY
King Henry VIII- FUCK
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi with leather pants- KILL then I will kill myself b/c of henry

Liza Minelli- KILL
Wife of Bath- MARRY
Angelina Jolie with leprosy- FUCK

A blob of sentient fat that has the sparkling wit of Oscar Wilde- MARRY
The Charlotte Hornets- FUCK
300 ft tall Robert Frost- KILL (NO fucking)

Hillary Clinton’s head in a glass jar (glass may be removed for brief periods)- KILL
Coco the Chimp- MARRY honeymoon at the Bronx zoo
The Virgin Mary- FUCK [Note: Oh, the blasphemy]

Huck Finn (must always be on log raft)- FUCK
A can of Pringles- KILL
John Mackin with gold body paint- MARRY

Barbara Bush- KILL
The Mona Lisa- FUCK
Jane Austin on steroids- MARRY

Hulk Hogan with pecs that lactate the most delicious chocolate in the world- FUCK
Walt Disney & Bugs Bunny tag team- KILL
Ryan Maness (all his skin had been replaced with non-stick Teflon)- MARRY

Professor Newcomb with a stoma- MARRY
Kathryn Broderick + 200 lbs- KILL
Whore of Babylon’s trunk (4-limb amputee)- FUCK

Tiny Tim with Tourettes- FUCK
Haley Joel Osment II (unborn sperm son of HJO I)- MARRY hopefully he’ll die soon
Head of a puppy kept alive with science- KILL

Lucy, the Australopithecus afarensis- MARRY go on talk show tour
Lucy, Charley Brown’s lady friend- KILL
Lucy Ball, Ricky’s beloved- FUCK (triple underscored)

Liz Dampf’s left tit (illustrated)- FUCK
Large frosty (illustrated)- KILL (by eating)
Sea Monkey aquarium (illustrated)- MARRY

Virginia Woolf with profuse facial hair- KILL
Medusa (complete with spell-blocking goggles)- FUCK
Martha Washington in her current condition- MARRY

Inspector Gadget; yells “go go gadget!” before every action (example given verbally: Go go gadget take off Vanessa’s bra!)- FUCK with ear plugs
Bucket of sweat collected from bonobo monkeys mating- KILL
Termite mound- MARRY

Dr. Sue from The Late Night Sex Show on the Oxygen Network- KILL
Kate Winslet with every bodily curve replaced with an angle- FUCK
Jessica Simpson with no hair- MARRY

Johnny Depp with monitor lizard grafted to scalp- FUCK
Your TA with a priapism- MARRY yeah I pretty much love him
Pope John Bezdek- KILL for sacrilege

First things first. I feel like a zombie-corpse from beyond. I was very very minorly sick all throughout spring break, and as soon as I got back the sickness exploded into the glorious condition I'm suffering now. I think I may have mono- achy, sore throat & neck, no appetite, swollen glands, and still exahusted after sleeping the greater part of several days. Sorry mono, NO TIME. I have a interview and 2 shows coming up very soon & about a metric tonne of schoolwork. Cross your fingers for me.

Now the fun part. My Alternative Spring Break trip was a RIOT. My group went to Beard's Fork West Virginia (not Hillsboro) and worked with felons to refurbish houses. It was such a great time. I was really scared I was not going to have fun because the trip only had 2 boys and 8 girls and I prefer a better balance, but I loved everyone that went. In the interest of laziness, I will copy and paste the list of inside jokes we had. I pretty much laughed the entire trip. Enjoy!

Hillsboro (or not)

Map not to scale

I’m getting tetanus just looking at this thing
-Casey about a piece of tin roof

Emily’s Casey Songs (including the international smash hit “Casey Shit on My Mom’s Chest”)

Are you ready, Friend of Friends?
-Emily, getting ready to nail up insulation with Matt

Don’t come to my house with a gun, because I’ll have a bigger one.
-Terry

AAOOUUW *fart noise* *grab*
-Ray/ Old Prospector

Would you rather have someone good-looking and stupid or ugly and rich?
-Ju-Young in the question game

All felons have beautiful eyes.
-Vanessa, to be made into the bestselling novel by Alex

You just gotta keep on keeping on, you know?
-Mr. Dud, 89 year old banjo player

Lady: Do you know ‘I’ll Fly Away’?
Dud: Yeah, but I need to remember. Sometimes I get flying the wrong way.

*Screaming & crying*
-Holly

Tit Ninja

Terry’s awful stories about killing cats

NOT a peahen

Holly: I can act really crazy.
Casey: Impossible. I don’t believe it.
…
Holly: *walking around yelling and waving her hands*
Casey: The very picture of sanity.

Stephanie = hoodrat

Vanessa: Ju-Young, you’re so cute!
Ju-Young: I know!

Fake tattoo madness

Falling Rock (just one)

Meera’s apathy

Emily & Casey SCREECHING Since You’ve Been Gone in the kitchen

Make-out lists

Casey: Oh no! Sounds like Emily’s in trouble! *leap*
Emily: Oh God…
Casey: What’s wrong?!
Emily: I’m looking for the apple juice & I can’t find any.
Casey: I drank the last of it five minutes ago! Away! *leap*

Tyler’s air-thrust dance

Every season of the year in a week

Let’s put on aprons.
-Emily, during a lull after ridiculous kitchen chaos

Fascination with Clarabelle’s Antarctic adventures

Katie: I don’t think we’ll eat all this corn.
Emily: Yes we will, I love corn, I’ll eat a baby’s size worth of corn.

All food cooked by SALS being the same shade of brown.

Casey: (on radio) We’ll find another. Porn stores usually have a lot of billboards to advertise themselves. *pause; slightly softer* Not that I know about porn stores.

Emily’s realistic European Union tattoo

Matt & Vanessa’s DayQuil shots

Rescue Scarf TM

Banang (eaten by cheetas)

The Greenery

Horror movie! Hollow in the Hills: Go Somewhere, Do Something… Get Out Alive?… Die?

Steve + Alex = true love

Ju-Young’s peanut butter & jelly & meat sandwich

Fickle cell reception

Vanessa: Hey check it out, I cut my thumb really badly doing the insulation!
Casey: You sound too cheerful for such a painful thing. (in girl’s voice) Oopsie poopsie, I cut myself! Lookee boys!

Hillsboro the Goat

Billy Payne: so hot, even his flames are on fire

Thorny Motherfuckers

Fuzzy ponies

Casey’s unblockable attack vs. Vanessa’s new defense

Playmobile BJs

Can I holler at you?
-Ray, getting Katie’s number

Hot drag queens

Clarabelle & Alex hammering (poorly) nails into the roof while Jim looks on, laughing

Fishheads swimming upstream

Terry = Boomhauer

High school bitches

No rattle snakes in winter

Shoe & nail art

Vanessa: I’ll have my food cooked and brought to me.
Emily: That’s good, because we’re having vagina juices and I’m cooking them right now.

(Vanessa breaks the ice in Hillsboro’s bucket, hoping to find water. Only jagged pieces of ice fall onto the ground) Casey: Here goat, eat your shards.

Does every state have a fucking Charleston!?
-Matt, after passing our like 3rd Charleston

Big ass rooster locked up for murder

Emily: (On radio) Hey Frodo, slow down or we can’t follow you through the land of Mordor.

Casey: Let’s go, you guys.
Vanessa: (w/ finger puppet) I seem to have a finger protruding from my chest.
Emily: (w/ finger puppet) Maybe I should take a closer look. (cue finger puppet makeout)
Casey: (w/ big Frida puppet) FRIDA KAHLO ANGRY.

This break I:

*Became entirely nocturnal
*Had a photo shoot in the bathroom of a downtown highrise
*Continually flipped between the History and Discovery Channels
*Had several SHOPPING ORGIES
*Became a cooking prodigy
*Was told by a legitimate gangbanger that I was "gangsta"
*Began to love Genetics
*Exercised mental vengeance with very physical repercussions
*Got my hair re-striped
*Read Green Eggs and Ham aloud while lying on top of Katie. On two separate occassions.
*Drove on many expressways
*Got lost on many expressways
*Had a “girl fight” to the song Girlfight
*Resolved to carry a notebook with me always
*Worked on coroner internship applications
*Debaucherized
*Continued the saga
*Found some very cool new music
*Got hoarse screaming during a heated game of Apples to Apples
*Read many many books
*Went to a Shrew-union and caught up with the delightful summer interns
*Spent too much money
*Was artsy
*Fell in platonic love with Kaelyn
*Was told “You drink, you drive, you win.” Remain skeptical.
*Discovered Matisyahu
*Rung in the New Year with the wildest night in memory
*Was given a basket of fine cheeses
*Thought about a possible P party costume
*Slept and average of 12-13 hours a night
*Reaffirmed my love for Anthropology
*Broke up
*Ran through downtown alleys at 4 am for no reason with Bryandello
*Spent time with half-cousins from Chili
*Went to The Cheesecake Factory twice. Was unimpressed twice
*Was shocked and delighted with my grades
*Did laundry
*Took pleasure in being bitter
*Saw Pericles at the Goodman with Mike
*Lost my favorite sweater
*Watched the entire 4th season of Aqua Teen Hunger Force
*Mentally compared the social interactions of friends to the Ikpanture trade relations of the Kabre of northern Togo. In a bowling alley.
*Went to Chicago many many times.
*Formed the ACGIOBG Alliance, currently the ACGIYBG Alliance
*Discovered that Katie is my any-time call girl
*Spent $80 at Victoria’s Secret
*Hid in a dark foreign basement from angry neighbors
*Contemplated sending a former employer a headshot that had scrawled on it “Merry fucking Christmas” in the middle of April, at Bryan’s urging
*Wrote sketches
*Accidentally shaved part of my fingernail
*Watched from the backseat in terror as a huge angry man in the front seat threw his phone at the windshield and broke it
*Helped ruin a pillow
*Was lusted after by a boy with a girlfriend
*Lusted after a boy with a girlfriend
*Employed gratuitous namecalling towards deserveing persons not present
*Went to a porn shop with Daniel
*Found out Katie misspelled mug in a spelling bee (MOG)
*Laughed a lot

Had a program tonight- it was a ton of fun, definately the best one yet. I really like the girls on my floor.

The Potted Meat show Friday went really well. It was a lot of fun and the audience enjoyed it a lot. We got tons of compliments. Some people said it was our best show ever. We had 170 people in attendance, which is awesome because the fire hazard sign says only 135 are allowed to be in the building at a time.

Here are some of my favorite moments in the show, which I will document here that I may return later to laugh and laugh:


*"Half-stock, I think you have an erection" (TURNS FACE AWAY IN SHAME = BEST THING EVER)
*Coke fight
*Voyeurs' faces
*the entire Giant Sketch, including "fucking giants"
*"Mom, my eyes hurt! Zach is a dirty hill beast!"
*"That's not my daughter! That's an apple!"
*"It also helps to know about colors and fruits and things."
*"Hey, thanks for the cookies." "What the fuck-" "No, YOU'RE welcome Mom."
*"Sometimes at night my furnace sounds like black people"
*the entire Dr. Seuss-esque Modern Fairy Tale
*"Nice tires... I mean fires" lighting the tires on fire
*"I give good head" "Mr Eschler!-" "Hahaha, no, I'm just kidding... But seriously, I do" (obscene bj motion)
*"Daughter this!" takes a bite out of apple & tosses it back to kirill, who takes a bite and hides
*"Tim! I need your help!"
*"You might notice some of my things around the house. Those ARE mine, so try to appreciate them."
*"They have won a trip to the jungle with only poetry and coffee beans"
*porn repairman seductively approaching Star & suddenly and viciously fixing the sink
*"You dirty clone you"
*"He just punched you Bob Dylan!"
*all of Bleep You
*"Oh congratulations, do you want a fucking cookie?"
*The corrupted RENT ending with huge stolen American flag.

I love Potted Meat.

Yay for things going better than you expect them to! Case in point: The Rover. Jonathan and I did not know our lines. I had no costume. I did not feel like I had a good grasp on the character. I was stressed, not having fun, and wanted the show to be done with more than anything. The icing on the cake was our ugly, slanted, decrepit set, which consisted of 5 shabbily-painted doorways with misshapen doors that ground against the floor or shook doorframe when they were opened.

It came together somehow. Yesterday, the final rehearsal, people were calling lines all the time. I thought there was no way this show could be good, but it worked. I felt good about my performance tonight. Solid. I think I grasped the character better tonight than I ever have before. Yay for that business. I hope tomorrow goes just as well or better.

I cannot believe how patient Liz is through it all. Even in panic scenarios, like having a cast that doesn't know their lines the day before the show opens, she was remarkably calm and supportive. She never got mad and never yelled. If I were in her position, I would have been like a shreiking harpy raining down death from the heavens on my lazy cast.

Ok, less typing, more cast party!

Geology today was interesting. We were supposed to be calculating approximate masses of dinosaurs based on small plastic models. Yes, an accurate method in the extreme.

My TA suddenly asks me to go to the board and write the formula for mass. The last time I've been asked that question was 3 years ago in high school physics, where I spent the majority of my time sketching my teacher in drag and flinging plastic troll heads at the front of the classroom. Of course the formula to calculate mass is crucially important to human society in general, and everyone should know such elementary formulas necessary for the most basic calculations- but please, I'm majoring in English and Anthropology, do you really think I know anything practical? I had no idea what the equation was. Fortunately, a classmate piped up with the correct equation, which is Mass = Density x Volume of course, before I got the chance to flaunt my slack-jawed ignorance. Thinking I was off the hook, I breathed a figurative sigh of relief...

I had sighed prematurely.

(^foreshadowing!!!)

My TA wasn't done with me just yet. We got to the next section of the lab, and she says "Vanessa, since you were supposed to answer the last question, you can go up to the board now and derive the equation we need to answer the lab questions."

I asked not for whom the bell tolled. It tolled for me.

I reluctantly slunk to the chalk board, my mind blank and my stomach full of apathetic right-brained butterflies. I stared at the board where the precocious student before me had written M=DV. I stared harder at the board. I glanced at the TA. I stared at the board some more. Awkward silence filled the lab. My classmates sitting at the tables alternated between glancing uncomfortably at my silent form and pretending to pore over their lab books. Thanks, but your feigned ignorance of my idiocy could not save me from myself.

Looking at my own infernal lab book, I had a sudden burst of inspiration. I hesitantly raised my chalk-clutching, white-knuckled hand to the board and wrote "40" under the V, with a random line connecting the two entities, signifying that the scrawled numerals had something to do with volume. What it was I could not tell.

My TA said something to the effect that I was on the right track. She kept cryptically hinting at things for me to write on the board, but I stood motionless with a facial expression that would befit the proud wearer of a big conical hat.

We exchanged a few words, confused on my part, condescending on hers, which were mercifully stricken from the record of my memory as soon as they were spoken. After a few more seconds of uncomprehending silence and many a number and symbol haltingly written and quickly erased, I decided to try to salvage the last tattered vestiges of my dignity. "I think we would all benefit if someone else did this," quoth I.

The TA conceded and I was at last liberated from my torment.

Another student leapt up and proceeded to write a version of an equation already on the board; not too hard, but still appearing impossibly complex to my dazed ocular organs.

I should have said, “Guess what, TA? I’m not concentrating on mass calculation in my scholastic career. It’s wonderful if you know how to do all these equations off the top of your head, but I don’t. Do you know where the sella tursica of the sphenoid bone is or who the antagonist of Tess of the D’Urbervilles was? BECAUSE I DO.” And then taken the plastic Diplodicus model, thrown it at her head, and ran out of the room screaming.

I have no bitter feelings about the experience, I just thought it was interesting. It’s been years since I’ve been sent to the board to massacre a math problem under the teacher’s disapproving gaze. Cool.

Here's an incomplete list of things I've eaten the past week or so, when I have rehearsals and cannot eat regular dorm dinner:

*fruit snacks
*cookies
*bananas
*easy mac
*yogurt
*sushi
*chocolate
*the ENTIRE WORLD

I am gross.

In other news, I am struggling violently with the decicion of what to do with myself next year. Should I stay an RA? Should I go to Spain? To Britain? I am conflicted.

I get little sleep. It is because I am busy, yes, but also because I am an idiot. I stay up chatting online or have friends over til the wee hours of the morning and then have to drag my shiftless carcass out of bed 3 hours later for a full day of class, homework, and rehearsals. And then more time-squandering.

The Potted Meat show went very well. Love's Labor's Lost went very well. I love the New Revels and Potted Meat. However, I need a break. It's a rare rare thing that a day will go by without at least a rehearsal or two.

I love to write. I have nothing to write about. All style and no substance, that's the way I roll.

So, I got home from rehearsal at 11 last night. I had 2 midterms in the morning I hadn't studied for. I was in trouble.

I start to study while talking sporadically to people online. It gets to be 2 am & my one friends says he is studying too. So he comes over so we can study together & provide moral support in the dead of night. We work on and off til about 4, when we start to take breaks to watch Aqua Teen Hunger Force. I must say, it's even funnier when sleep-deprieved. It gets to be 6 am and I decide since I have to get up in 2 hours anyway and I am nowhere near done studying, I will just stay up.

I do so.

It is now 2:40 pm. I have not slept at all. I took 2 midterms and they went alright. I have 2 more midterms for tomorrow, as well as reading half of Great Expectations and memorizing lines for Love's Labor's.

In short, I didn't sleep the night before 2 midterms to goof around ridiculously with a hilarious friend.

I am so responsible.

I heart college.

So...

Tell me why the last 4 males I've fostered any sort of slight, half-formed, psuedo-interested, mini-feelings for have been:
1) Fitted with a ball & chain (girlfriended)
2) Fitted with a ball & chain and a year younger than me (which = unthinkable)
4) Painfully indifferent
3) MARRIED WITH A 14 MONTH OLD DAUGHTER

Hence, I am terminally single.

I like that phrase, terminally single. It's so perfect. Someone used it last year & I've usurped it. Sorry.

Also, I'm picky. I'd say beggars can't be choosers, but I'm too self-important to do so.

TER.MIN.ALL.Y. SIN.GLE.

I'd forgotten how much I love to dance.

Well let me tell you. A lot.

Last night was amazing fun.

I've been very busy lately. RAing, tons of class work, & my extracirriculars are going to prove difficult to balance this year, not to mention friends and going out. But I really like most of my classes, I've met some very cool people, and I'm reconnecting with old friends.

Vanessa = excited. I just got cast in the New Revels shows Love's Labor's Lost as the Princess and The Rover as Angellica Bianca. They were exactly what I wanted and I'm so happy about it.

ALSO Potted Meat auditions were today. I was disappointed to see only about 20 people audition, but it was surprisingly competitive. After a lot of good auditions and a lot of bad, Potted Meat picked 3 extremely talented, hilarious young men. Now Potted Meat has 3 girls and 6 boys, a ratio that I don't mind in the slightest. I think we have an AMAZING cast this year and I can't wait for the comedy to start rolling! I've already started scribbling down sketch ideas in my Potted Meat sketch book, which is an Anne Geddes blank book that I have vandalized. I have such quality sketch ideas as "Unlucky Boy" and "English 247", named for the class I wrote it in. Yay!

Busy but happy!

RA-ING IS A HUGE AMOUNT OF WORK AND I AM SCARED FOR THE COMING YEAR

But I like the staff & I think this job is going to be a lot of fun.

Freshmen move in today & tomorrow all the other residents move in

NERVOUS

wish me luck!

This year is going to be insanely busy. I need to learn to multitask like crazy and step up my efficency. I like the people I'm going to be working with. Please don't let me mess this up.

I miss the cast of The Taming of the Shrew very much.

I miss my family, too.

My room is cool.

Carl Vuillaume 7/21/05

Dan, if you ever read this, know that he's watching over you from above. No one will ever forget him.

I wish I could say something new, something that could ease the pain for Carl's close friends and family, but there's nothing that hasn't been said one thousand times in the last few days. We'll miss him terribly. What a wonderful person he was.

The wake was hard, but the funeral was harder. I can only hope it gave some comfort to the Vuillaume family. God grant them strength.

I guess every cloud has it's silver lining: I finally learned how to spell Vuillaume.

I'm going to see Faust tonight with Mike B. I'm pretty excited. We're making a whole night out of it, first going out to a fancy dinner, then the opera. I feel so high class. Then I have to rush home to spend a few precious moments with AJ before he leaves for Japan for A FULL YEAR.

I have been reading insanely much, like I used to many years ago. It's nice, I feel like I'm relaxing and learning all at once.

Median salary of a Chicago actor: 40,000
Median salary of a Chicago patent lawyer: 130,000

I've realized I'm happier when I'm busy. When I have too much free time, I sit around my house and mope and eat and become depressed. When I'm busy, I feel productive and content. Perhaps this is because when I'm busy, I don't think. When I have spare time, I can think. I hope to God thinking does not equal unhappiness. I'm not suited for the life of a mindless drone. But when it comes down to it, I think I would choose happy idiocy over tortured knowingness. How horrible. Now, I do not advocate idiocy on any level, and I would never of my own volition become a vapid slug, but when faced with the absolutes of unhappy knowledge or blissful ignorance, I would select the latter. Tell me, why do the great thinkers kill themselves? They've discovered the futility of life, apparently.

I love my brain. I love to learn and I love to know. But the question is, can I handle the truth?

I wrote a letter today. I had forgotten how much I love to write.

I just didn't feel like sleeping last night. I stayed up stealing music off the internet (any song suggestions?) til 3 after coming home from a disappointing 4 of July party, then went to Lifetime to work out at 4:30, come home, showered, did laundry, sewed my brother's torn shirt, and generally kept myself busy til 8 AM, at which point I put on my octagenarian-esque sleep mask and passed out, waking only to the persistent shrieks of the phone in the hallway, which is entirely too loud, and the soothing, hope-infusing tones of my own dear cell phone.