12MoF: The Curse, 3.0

Previously on 12 Months of Frozen:
Prologue
March: The One Where Elsa and Anna Send a Lot of Letters
April: The One Where Elsa is the Snowman NO WAIT HEAR ME OUT
May: The One Where The Snow Queen Isn't Elsa. Also, Lesbians.
June: I Go It Old School, Take Two
July: A Wild Kristoff Appears
August: The One Where Elsa is an Accidental Kidnapper
September: The One With the Curse
October: The Other One With the Curse

So it turns out I really like curses. WHATEVER. YOU DON'T OWN ME.

Credit where credit is due: like half of this idea is entirely because of my sister, who very kindly let me bounce ideas off her over the course of our entire four-hour bus ride back home and (FOR ONCE) (just kidding) (mostly) was very helpfully like "Yeah, you cooooould do that... or maybe instead you could do this other thing that actually makes sense." THANKS BABE YOU'RE THE BEST.

This month we get The Curse 3: Now With Actual Villains! This is very exciting for all of us, since I am generally reasonably miserable with villains. This is also very exciting because I get to talk about how much the patriarchy sucks; I know you're all obviously looking forward to that.

Will there be more curses in upcoming months? MAYBE. WHATEVER. YOU DON'T OWN ME.

kenneth libbrecht over at snowcrystals.com

12MoF: The Other One With the Curse (aka, rom-com Frozen)

Previously on 12 Months of Frozen:
Prologue
March: The One Where Elsa and Anna Send a Lot of Letters
April: The One Where Elsa is the Snowman NO WAIT HEAR ME OUT
May: The One Where The Snow Queen Isn't Elsa. Also, Lesbians.
June: I Go It Old School, Take Two
July: A Wild Kristoff Appears
August: The One Where Elsa is an Accidental Kidnapper
September: The One With the Curse

As you may have noticed, dear readers, I am all about reusing themes from previous months in slightly different ways. Innovation is not the be-all end-all of creativity, here. I mean, I'm not in the "there are only really two stories in the world" camp, because that seems a bit... delusional (I mean, even if you're saying there are only two genres in the world, action and romance, you're missing out on things like the classic literary genre of "white dudes doing exactly nothing and then, presumably, dying eventually," which I have been informed is very important to people who are not me) but many glorious things have come out of people reworking and reinterpreting tropes and story elements with a long, long history behind them.

tl;dr look whatever this just has some stuff in it that didn't make sense in last month's version so I gave it its own month, okay.

[Edit: Okay, I SWEAR I meant to do this before the last day of the month. I started it like a week ago and everything. And yet! Somehow here we are again. Alas.]

[Edit 2: Also, then Halloween happened. Specifically, Halloweentown 2 and the fact that I had to drag myself out to Brooklyn. In case you're curious, although this was planned beforehand, most of it was written on the 2 train, which I guess is one argument for long commutes.]

[Not an edit but just so you know, this is the ROM-COM-IEST THING I HAVE EVER WRITTEN.]

12MoF: The One With the Curse

Previously on 12 Months of Frozen:
Prologue
March: The One Where Elsa and Anna Send a Lot of Letters
April: The One Where Elsa is the Snowman NO WAIT HEAR ME OUT
May: The One Where The Snow Queen Isn't Elsa. Also, Lesbians.
June: I Go It Old School, Take Two
July: A Wild Kristoff Appears
August: The One Where Elsa is an Accidental Kidnapper

Somewhere outside my room, Roommate A (as opposed to Roommate 1) is talking about falling down the rabbit hole that is the Mexican Revolution. I have no idea what that means.

Anyway! Hurry up and get beneath the cut tag, nerds; this month, we're talking curses.

Picture of ice crystals shamelessly yoinked from Steve Truett's website. But hey, I'm crediting.

12MoF: The One Where Elsa is an Accidental Kidnapper

Previously on 12 Months of Frozen:
Prologue
March: The One Where Elsa and Anna Send a Lot of Letters
April: The One Where Elsa is the Snowman NO WAIT HEAR ME OUT
May: The One Where The Snow Queen Isn't Elsa. Also, Lesbians.
June: I Go It Old School, Take Two
July: A Wild Kristoff Appears

I am a little late on August. So it goes. In life, we must accept the things we cannot change, ducklings.

Anyway, happy halfway-point to all of us! You for sticking with me, me for... only posting these a little late, I guess. To celebrate, we're going to shake things up. I get bored astonishingly easily for someone who hates change so much. So today, ducklings, we get to talk about how I would write Frozen as a webcomic. With illustrations, even! Well, okay, one illustration and one set of stick figures, but whatever, good enough.

Trailer Trash-Talking

Alternate post title: "I Have a Lot of Feelings About Trailers, Okay, Shut Up"

I saw Guardians of the Galaxy this weekend for the second time, and while I had approximately the same feelings as I did last time, that's not what this post is about, because instead I've been thinking about how they didn't show the trailer for The Giver like they did last time, presumably because it's been released already, and how I was glad about this at first, because that meant that I didn't have to sit through that trailer again, but also a little disappointed, because that meant that I didn't really have as good an excuse to complain about it again.

Then I remembered that I totally don't need an excuse to complain about how much I hate the trailer for The Giver, because whatever, it's my blog, you can leave if you want to.

Warning: do not watch the following trailer unless you want to be spoiled for key aspects of The Giver.



SHUT UP. SHUT UP, TRAILER FOR THE GIVER, I AM MAD AT YOU.

12MoF: A Wild Kristoff Appears

Previously on 12 Months of Frozen:
Prologue
March: The One Where Elsa and Anna Send a Lot of Letters
April: The One Where Elsa is the Snowman NO WAIT HEAR ME OUT
May: The One Where The Snow Queen Isn't Elsa. Also, Lesbians.
June: I Go It Old School, Take Two

We've gone through a third of 12MoF thus far (a third! halle-frickin'-lujah), and this whole time, I have stubbornly refused to include Kristoff. If by "stubborn" we mean "he was pretty extraneous to the plots I was writing, and also I don't feel any particular sense of regret about this," anyway. But no matter, because this state of affairs ends today!

Interestingly, in a certain sense, this month's offering — very abruptly made up because the two other versions I was working on weren't cohering in time — is actually very similar to certain things about Frozen that I was ambivalent about the first time. Heavy on the Anna+Kristoff action, ambiguous Elsa, trolls... This is just a different spin on those things.

But I drew the line at making Kristoff a cis/straight dude, because screw that.

And because I was having a conversation about this just now: for the record, the reason why the last two 12MoFs have featured a central queer romance, and the reason why I'm planning to have multiple trans Kristoffs, is because the central thesis of this entire project is "working within certain limitations, how could I remake the elements of this story in order to make it work better for me?" And writing an outline for a kid's movie that features LGBTQIetc. characters works better for me than writing yet another cishet romance. Because when I was a kid, if I had seen a movie aimed at me where a girl fell in love with another girl, I would've watched and re-watched that VHS until it died a grueling electronic death.

This is a selfish project at heart. As with most things that I release into the world, it's just a selfish project that I hope other people will like.

12MoF: I go it old school, take two

Previously on 12 Months of Frozen:
Prologue
March: The One Where Elsa and Anna Send a Lot of Letters
April: The One Where Elsa is the Snowman NO WAIT HEAR ME OUT
May: The One Where The Snow Queen Isn't Elsa. Also, Lesbians.

Short post this month, ducklings, because I am sick and don't want to think too much.

12MoF: The One Where the Snow Queen Isn't Elsa. Also, Lesbians.

Previously on 12 Months of Frozen:
Prologue
March: The One Where Elsa and Anna Send a Lot of Letters
April: The One Where Elsa is the Snowman NO WAIT HEAR ME OUT

Shh, this totally still counts as May. At least, I came up with it in May. Okay, so technically speaking I came up with the idea on June 1, but hey, I was with my family and then I was exhausted and on a bus and then I started working nights for this ushering thing, so. SHH. TOTALLY COUNTS AS MAY.

We're going a little more old school this month. If the first month was a producer's edit — tightening the vocals, dropping a useless chorus, adjusting the bass — and the second month was a cover, then this month is more like a mash-up. And specifically, mashing it up with an older version of the tale of the Snow Queen, where we've got heart-hardening shards of ice and kidnapping, except then I mixed in sisters and bad parenting and kissing. I can do this because the older story and Frozen are still in the same key, which is the key of epic quests and love fights all. Also, I ditched Frozen's chorus of heterosexuality.

Possibly this music analogy got a little out of hand somewhere.

On a different note, I think I’m beginning to understand how and why the writers of Frozen over-villained the story, though. When you’re plotting out one of these things, it starts to get really easy to think, “But is this too boring? Let’s put some more action in there,” until you’ve crowded the story so much that none of the characters have room to breathe. I keep worrying about not being compelling enough. This is why scripts for big blockbusters theoretically go through an editing process, though.

On another different note, this month we have illustrations! Two of them, to be precise.

Whoops

Okay, the May 12 Months of Frozen is... not going to happen before May is over, because I am a garbage person living a garbage life, and also because I'm away with the fam. Mostly the garbage person thing, though. SORRY GUYS. There will just be two in June to make up for it.

Upfront and Judgmental: CW Edition

So the CW only has four new shows for the 2014-2015 season, and they only have trailers for two of them. Uncool, CW. Very uncool. I mean, sure, I'm capable of feeling intrigued or skeptical based solely on a synopsis, but it's just not the same as having these brief little snippets of the finished product.

Granted, since both the non-trailer-ed shows are midseason shows that, based on their descriptions, are probably going to be fairly effects-heavy, they might not actually have much of a finished product yet. Alas. I suppose I can understand this reasoning, even if it takes away like 50% of my fun. But hey, at least the trailer for The Flash is out!

Plus, because there are fewer trailers to go through, that means that I can go ahead and start with the 30-second promo trailer that started getting me really psyched for this show in the first place.



The Flash
BARRY ALLEN, YOU ADORABLE RIDICULOUS SHOW-OFF OF A HUMAN BEING.

...Yeah, that's about it. I never started watching Arrow because it seemed a little self-serious, but LOOK AT THIS GLEEFUL DORK. LOOK AT OLIVER ROLLING HIS EYES. Can any show with a promo like that take itself or its hero completely seriously?

I still hate the costume, though. It doesn't look very flexible or speedy, the chin strap is ridiculous, and the parts with a loose fit make Grant Gustin look even twiggier than normal.

Upfront and Judgmental: CBS Edition

Yes, it's silly to judge a show based on its pilot, much less its 3-minute upfronts reel. And yet, I get bored easily. (Honestly, these trailers aren't entirely helping. CBS takes itself so seriously, man.)

Let's get to it, ducklings.

Extant
I'm so curious about this title, honestly. Extant as in... currently existing? That's very SAT-prep of them. As opposed to extinct, I guess? Mostly it just makes me think of extinct mutants or something.

Also, between this and the new Rosemary's Baby, I guess this is just the summer for creepy pregnancy stories. (Specifically, stories about women of color being violated for horror purposes. Um. I'm not super in favor of this trend.) Which, like — I like Halle Berry, and I like spaceships, and I like robots, and I like mysterious stories about whether we're alone in the universe or not, but I am also immediately skeeved by anything involving: creepy pregnancy; rape/hella dubious consent; creepy children, whether they're robots or not; spouses who seem to know more than they're telling.

The trailer is edited well, but pretty much everything contained within the trailer is suggesting to me that this show has a greater-than-decent chance of being a catastrophe.

Upfront and Judgmental: ABC Edition

You're in luck today, ducklings, because ABC's fall schedule is absolutely the most interesting (insane? interesting? same thing, right?) of any of the Big 4. Also, has the most actors of color. Todd VanDerWerff actually wrote an article about how ABC seems to be hoping diversity will shore up its falling ratings; god knows if they were inspired by the success of FOX's "diversity initiative" or if they realised that maybe Scandal is popular for more reasons than just sexy backstabbing drama, but whatever, I'm here for it. Also, I'm willing to give them good press and good buzz for it if that makes it more likely that other networks will follow suit.

("Crap, our ratings are awful. Maybe we should try making shows that... aren't just about white people? Look, I know it sounds crazy, but it just might work!")

Previously: FOX and NBC.

How to Get Away With Murder

Look, guys, it's Dean Thomas from the Harry Potter movies! Also Bennett the prison guard from Orange is the New Black, but I care about that less than I care about Dean Thomas: Adorable Dork and Potential Moral Center to Viola Davis's Stunning Genius Calculating Lawyer-Professor. (Although if this is anything like Scandal, I wouldn't bet on any one character's sense of right or wrong lasting unscathed for more than half a season.) (Also: was that three seconds of Canon Queer Characters?!)

It looks like an unholy fusion of a legal drama and a university show, which ought to be great for Shonda because she can mine both the criminal aspects and dubious ethics of the former as well as the political maneuvering and young-adults-having-screwed-up-young-adult-drama of the latter. Also, apparently there's going to be a dead body? My bet's on that being a bait-and-switch, although even if it is: guys, take a forensic anthropology class. It takes way higher temperatures than that to burn a body.

Anyway, I'm here for it — as long as I can take it, at least. I had to quit out of Scandal in the middle of the third season, and not just because I hated Fitz so much. I have to give props, though; Thursday night is going to be the Night of Shonda, which is both impressive and pretty amazing.

Upfront and Judgmental: FOX Edition

Where I watch the upfronts trailers so you... well, I was going to say "so you don't have to," but come on. If you don't watch the trailers for the new fall shows, how will you begin the elaborate process of narrowing down which shows you're going to put on your increasingly complex personal TV viewing schedule for the 2014-2015 season? It's a matter of personal responsibility.

I watch the upfronts trailers so we can judge them together and all make informed decisions. There we go.

Gotham
SURPRISINGLY INTRIGUED BY THIS TRAILER. Like, I haven't been entirely sure how to feel about Gotham; academically speaking, it's a little weird, given that most cop shows tend to be ideologically reassuring. There's typically this unspoken idea of "Hey, they caught the bad guy. The world's a little better." It... indirectly reproduces faith in the system by showing the success of the system, I guess? Even if the system is just represented by rogue cops. I mean, there are exceptions — Miami Vice actually tended to be very aware of the fact that sometimes your efforts don't matter, because another crime lord, another drug runner, will just step up to fill the void — but there's, I don't know, sort of an idea of working towards a better world, and with Gotham we know from the beginning that things are only going to get worse. Sort of like when you're watching Oedipus Rex and you know that this shit isn't going to go well for him.

So purely for those reasons, I've been curious about its eventual form, but this trailer was actually pretty great. (JADA PINKETT SMITH AS FISH MOONEY. TINY CATWOMAN. GIVE ME.) I'll definitely be on my couch in the fall, ready to pass more judgment then.

Upfront and Judgmental: NBC Edition

Ducklings, I don't like to think of myself as a judgmental person.

But really, who am I kidding. I daydream about being part of a company that goes up to networks and showrunners and yells at them about what they're doing wrong. I'm a judgmental little ball of sparkles and intersectional feminism. So when upfronts happen and all the trailers for all the new fall shows come out, well. It's hard to resist.

State of Affairs
I just. Okay, someone clearly thought to themselves "Hey, Scandal and Homeland have made White House dramas sexy again, let's run with that shit!" and then they put Katherine Heigl in the lead role. I guess there's a chance that this could be interesting and not just a hilariously overblown and unconvincing piece of nonsense, but let's be real, there were only a few actually intriguing and non-derivative bits to that trailer, and they were A) Alfre Woodard as the President, and B) those ten seconds where they're talking about wanting to kill everyone responsible for the death of Alfre Woodard's son/Katherine Heigl's fiancé.

I don't know, I just really like ladies bonding over violent urges and a shared desire for vengeance. Maybe that's just me.

Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na BATMAN

Yesterday was a very edifying day for me. By "edifying," I mean that I finally saw an episode of the 1960s Batman  — which, for the record, is a national treasure on par with Nicholas Cage's willingness to steal the Declaration of Independence.

Now, in this transcendent new stage of my existence, I have to wonder if all those post-70s, outrageously grim adaptations of the Batman franchise are an indirect response to the 60s Batman. (Batman 6-0, if you will.) Has it all been an act of spite? Were they so annoyed by the show that they reacted by taking Batman even more seriously than he takes himself? "How dare you act like a guy dressing up as a bat in order to fight crime is an inherently silly concept? I'LL SHOW YOU! I'LL SHOW YOU ALL!"

(Note that I'm obviously not including the DC Animated Universe in this. The DCAU brings light to my life.)

[EDIT AS OF 5/9/2014: Jumping in to say that I've just seen the tape of the Batman 75th anniversary panel at Paley and OH MY GOD I WAS RIGHT. Like, Michael Uslan, who produced a ton of Batman movies including the Burton one and the Dark Knight trilogy, actually straight-up said that when he saw Batman 6-0 when it came out, he was so upset that he made a vow to show the world "what the true Batman is like." More on this later.]

Being who I am, though, I can never resist an adaptation that seems to be laughing at itself the entire time — so, out of the generosity of my heart, I thought I'd share an episode so we can all experience this together.

"Enter Batgirl, Exit Penguin"

12MoF: The One Where Elsa is the Snowman NO WAIT HEAR ME OUT

Previously on 12 Months of Frozen: 

Prologue 

1stMoF: The One Where Elsa and Anna Send a Lot of Letters

I'm not going to lie: this idea came out on the spur of the moment, as part of an instinctive reaction of "You want Anna to be the main character? Fine, I'll GIVE you Anna as the main character, and it'll STILL have more Anna&Elsa interaction. Because I can."

Just so you know where this is coming from.

As mentioned previously: Anna and Elsa are still ladies of color. Just in case you forgot. Also, for the sake of having some variety between the Disney princesses, I'm going to go ahead and say that they're both short and have waists larger than an inch.

(Also you should go check out this redesign of them as Inuit, because it's really cute.)

Because this is now officially Anna's Movie, we don't see Elsa at the beginning — instead it's like the beginning of, say, How To Train Your Dragon, where we frontload some of the important info right off the bat in a voiceover or song. Key points: Anna's parents died a few years ago, her sister was lost, and their land was cursed with perpetual ice and snow, which understandably has been not so great for things like inter-kingdom trade. Not that we're really going to get into how the import/export business suffers when your major travel routes are prone to avalanches, but we get the idea that Arendelle, which used to be a thriving hub of people, has suddenly been thrust into a forced, and painful, isolation.

The song/voiceover is Anna's way of making all this into a sort of story, something she could be telling to one of the paintings — a form of abstraction to help her think about it without breaking down. Not a fairytale, because she's ambivalent about fairytales, but a history, because she loves history. 

This Week In TV: 6 April - 12 April

Yeah, I'm a little late. Sue me. This week's crop: Cosmos, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., The Mindy Project, and Community — vague spoilers for all, but mostly for TMP.

Sunday, April 6:

Cosmos, "Hiding in the Light": We come to the subject of light! Neil deGrasse Tyson gave us possibly the best Cosmos episode yet this week, by which I mean that I spent the first half having awesome flashbacks to high school physics — flashbacks that were actually significantly more awesome than the physics classes themselves — and then the second half staring in wide-eyed awe at the screen, saying, "WHAT THE HELL," over and over again. I distantly knew that you can use light to find out the chemical composition of something, and I knew that our perceptions of what's going on in the world around us weren't objective, but it goes so far beyond that. (Developing a theory: gravity rules our universe, light defines it.) I think I'd have to study physics for at least two years before I even started to comprehend just how little about this subject I comprehend. Also, NdGT getting choked up about Joseph von Fraunhofer's experiments, the forerunners of astrophysics, was wonderful.

What I love about Cosmos is that it reminds me every week just how awesome science and the universe are. If this show had been around when I was a kid I probably would've wanted to be an astrophysicist when I grew up.

12MoF: The One Where Elsa and Anna Send A Lot of Letters

Previously on 12 Months of Frozen: Prologue, aka I talk about why I'm rewriting Frozen twelve times. Also, I accidentally deleted this entire post and now I have to rewrite it, so... Joy.

Setting: A fictional kingdom which we're going to continue to call Arendelle for the sake of simplicity, although as I previously mentioned, that doesn't mean it has to be Scandinavia Lite. It could be, say, Fake Japan. Doesn't matter. It's a fake country with a fictional history, so as long as we're not racist or appropriative (that is a VERY IMPORTANT CONDITION and one I honestly don't trust Disney with), we can give it the scenery and architecture we want. Feel free to insert your own.

Really the only relevant thing is that we're just going to go ahead and imagine that all of the characters are POC. Except Hans, I guess. Hans can be white. Either way.

Story: We skip the ice-logging scene and just go straight to Anna dragging Elsa out of bed to build a snowman. This goes about the same way it does in the movie — which is to say, initially awesome, subsequently less so — except that instead of running to the trolls, the king and queen go straight to the royal healer and their most trusted royal advisor guy. Cue all the same type of "oh dear, this is very dangerous, people will be scared, she needs to get that ish under control ASAP, blah blah blah" exposition, the only difference being that the king and queen decide to send Elsa away instead of, you know, everyone else in the castle. Because they don't want to be responsible for laying off hundreds of people, and also nobody wants to go down in history as a country's first Hermit King and Queen.

(Although, the advisor admits, magic isn't his speciality. Most knowledge of magic left the country when the trolls did. Ooh, I wonder if that'll come back to be important later?)

Almost Human's Identity Crisis

I've been enjoying Almost Human this season in the same way that I've enjoyed a vast number of entertaining-yet-average TV shows over the years: with amusement, a dash of fondness, and occasional cheering when the production team manages to turn out an episode that's more competent than usual. And yet with most of those other shows, I never finished up the first season with the sneaking suspicion that I had just been watching five different shows. 

I'm not even talking about the fact that the show was a mishmash of tropes I've seen a thousand times before, even though it was — the buddy cop aspects are pretty damn standard, and John's manpain and wobbly standing in the police department, and I can name at least three different movies/books/TV shows about a grumpy, robot-hating human cop who's forced to pair up with, surprise of surprises, a humanoid robot, and then they all end up learning valuable lessons about humanity. Sometimes the grumpy, robot-hating human cop is even cybernetically modified, too. We've all seen I, Robot, right? 

I will at least give Almost Human props for not being entirely about white dudes, which is more than I can say for a lot of sci-fi shows.

But anyway, that's not the point. This isn't just me having flashbacks to the ghosts of stories past; this is a narrative identity crisis. It's sort of like what I imagine would happen if identical quintuplets enrolled in high school under one name and all took turns pretending to be the same person. The superficial resemblance was there, but other concerns tended to vary wildly.

Okay guys, remember: we're in love with the quarterback, we hate science, and we have three things due in AP Lit. And I swear, Number 2, if you try and flirt with the TA one more time...

A Whole Year of Winter: Twelve Months of Frozen Rewrites

I’ve been meaning to write this post pretty much since I first saw Frozen (...a month ago? Yeah, sounds about right), and just never got around to it because I’m lazy and, you know, lazy. I think it’s time, though, particularly because I can’t step out of my apartment without tripping over a pile composed half of ice and half of very dirty slush. Anyway, I’m trying to work on my follow-through.

[Sidenote: the prevalence of blogs on the internet is weirdly reassuring in terms of opinion posts. I’d normally worry about people reading the things I think, but seriously, who but my friends is going to read this? More importantly, who the hell is going to care? Much like Elsa fucking off to be alone in the middle of the mountains, it’s sort of liberating.]

[Not-a-sidenote: This post is definitely going to have spoilers for Frozen. Like, a lot of them. Almost immediately.]

So, Frozen was okay.

That's All, Folks [2013/05/29]

This is my last post.

I know, I know, it's days after my graduation, technically I probably shouldn't even be posting right now, but I wanted a better sense of closure than I really provided in my last post. For the past two and a half years, this blog has been a big part of my life — I know that for you, dear readers, it probably hasn't been more than a set of occasionally diverting words on a page, but you're also not the ones who have spent two and a half years thinking, "Oh, I could blog about this!" And you know what, I like to think I've left my mark — mostly in the fact that some of my ridiculous tags show up in the "most used tags" thing on the sidebar over there.

Writing for you has been a blast, ducklings, even if most of the time I don't actually know if anyone is even reading this. (If you have been, though, and you'd like to continue reading, feel free to keep up with my twitter, @alasallama. If I set up another blog, I’ll put it in my twitter bio.)

More than that, though, my four years at Wesleyan have meant a lot to me. But you know what, even that sounds like too much of an understatement. Certain songs mean a lot to me. Todd VanDerWerff’s reviews of season 3 of Community mean a lot to me. When friends of mine specifically seek me out to talk, it means a lot to me. Wesleyan, in contrast, has structured the past four years of my life. I have lived in Wesleyan, made friends with Wesleyan students, eaten at Wesleyan, taken classes at Wesleyan, worked at Wesleyan, been influenced by Wesleyan faculty and staff, watched plays that were funded by Wesleyan and performed in Wesleyan buildings, railed at Wesleyan policies, applied for internships through Wesleyan. For better or for worse, Wesleyan was my world, even when I was at home for break. And now, it is a place that used to be my world.

So what do I say to wrap up something like that? It’s been two days since graduation, and I’m not entirely sure I know. For a while, I thought about taking all the buildings on campus, and listing the best memories I have from each of them. Or maybe, I thought, I would take the question they asked the senior commencement speaker applicants to answer — “What has your Wesleyan experience meant to you?”, in a neat 200-250 word package — and write my own spin on it, like the commencement speech I could have given if I had bothered applying to be a commencement speaker in the first place.

And I started writing that, and then I started again, and then I started again, and then I gave up for a little while and went to sulk on the sofa and drink tea and try not to cough up most of my lungs, and then I deleted most of what I’d written and wrote other stuff about Wes being my world and my difficulty summing that up in prose form, which has gotten me this far.

[Under the cut: I try to figure out this whole "closure" thing. Also, pictures of fluffy animals.]

Prepare Yourself. [2013/05/24]

Today is the calm before the storm.

Not even today, actually — the next few hours. Then my family gets here, and then boom, it's time for taiko practice, and then my friends will be queueing up for the screening of Much Ado while I run off to shower and head to dinner with my family, and then tomorrow it's all departmental receptions and Phi Beta Kappa madness and some giant shindig with not only my family but the families of my housemates and then there's some sort of all-campus celebration thing going on? And packing, obviously, and then on Sunday it's graduation, and then — well. Then, it's time for the calm after the storm.

For now, though, it's just me and you, ducklings. And my housemates, as they move in and out of the common space.

[Under the cut: Musings.]

We're All Mad Here [2013/05/18]

Oh ducklings. I keep trying to write these posts at a time that isn't the middle of the night, and then somehow time sneaks up on me and boom, it's 2 am and I'm thinking, "Hey, you know what I should do? Write a blog post."

As I write this, I've actually just gotten back from a joint bachelor/bachelorette party for my friends who are getting married in June. Quite honestly, I'm not sure whether I'm more amused that they're getting married in June or that they actually had a joint bachelor/bachelorette party. I mean, isn't the point of those supposed to be that the bride- and groom-to-be are separate for the evening?

I can't lie, the fact that I know 21- and 22-year-olds who are engaged and getting married (these two are among a few Wes couples in my graduating class who are getting married this summer, and a few of the kids I knew in high school are not engaged, which is hilarious to me because I knew them when they were titchy and unattractive thirteen-year-olds) is still sort of wiggly-weird, no matter how long I've had to get used to it. Not because of the couple, just because — well, marriage. That's growing up, isn't it? Marriage is essentially the legal way of saying, "I am going to be stepping into the future hand-in-hand with this person."

Commitment is a weird thing. I had a hard enough time just deciding what college to go to for four years. Actually, sometimes I have a hard time just deciding what I'm going to eat for dinner.

[Under the Cut: Thesis films, Hamlet in Wonderland, and... I don't know, stuff?]

BE EXCITED, DARNIT [2013/05/09]

Hey, kiddos. So classes are done! That's, um. Exciting! Plenty of time for me to sit around and bake bread and watch hockey and — what was that? Redo my resume and find a job? Hmmm, wait, you're breaking up on me, I can't hear you, how odd —

Okay, okay, so I'm actually just typing and can't pull the "headed into a tunnel, gotta go!" trick. Unfortunately. Still, even though I keep stumbling into discussions about the future, there has to be something else we can talk about! Like the fact that Spring Fling is tomorrow! Or today, actually, since as I type this it is now officially Thursday. Kendrick Lamar is performing! It’ll be in the hockey rink instead of on Foss Hill for reasons of rain and misery! I find this very depressing but will probably try and go nonetheless as long as it doesn’t fill to capacity!



Or we could talk about how it was pouring rain today for precisely the four minutes it took me to get from the library to my house, but not immediately before or after! Or we could talk about how I went to the Star&Crescent this week for the first and the last time ever! Or we could talk about all the performances I went to this weekend! Or we could talk about how I just spent like forty-five minutes trying to remember a random CD-ROM game from the 90s that I used to play! Or we could talk about how I keep injuring myself in really inconvenient ways! Or we could debate about whether any injuries are really ever convenient! (For the record, the answer is yes!) Or we could talk about whether it would be possible to build a tiny castle out of pecan brownies!

…You know, as one does.

[Under the cut: Except I actually already had that particular conversation. Yes, for real. Also, pictures of food!]

Titles are for people who aren't sleepy. [2013/04/29]

Good afternoon, ducklings! It's shaping up to be a beautiful day, although currently I'm sitting inside my living room with the windows closed while my housemates discuss possible day trips we could go on during Senior Week as a house bonding thing.

For the record, in the Palace Theater, you can't bring your own alcohol inside, nor can you consume that alcohol in the parking lot. Which begs the question of WHY THEY NEED THAT RULE.

There are a lot of unexpectedly hilarious things in New England, though. I have a feeling we're probably going to find someplace with pretty scenery and just take a walk. (Not a hike. Certain somebodies among us do not like heights, for whatever value of “height” you can find in the alleged mountains of Connecticut.) I also want to see if I can drag them over to Wadsworth Falls at some point, because I’ve never been there before and I feel like I should go before I graduate.

…Okay, now it’s nighttime. IT’S LIKE I TIME TRAVELED OR SOMETHING. Or, you know, like I stopped writing in the middle of the day and then only got back to it much, much later.

(Also, for the record, tossing out ideas soon devolved into looking at our quote wall and seeing how much hilarity we could create by selectively replacing certain words with others. The answer, it turns out, is “a lot.” And I thought that I wouldn’t find stupid things as funny once theses were done!)

[Under the cut: Company, WesBurlesque, Foss Hill, and why my computer is trying to kill me.]

Helping Hands, etc. [2013/04/22]

(Before saying anything else, I want to express my sincere hope that you guys are okay after the incredibly shitty, awful, miserable events of this week.)

I can't believe that it's almost the end of April.

There, obligatory "holy crap I'm a graduating senior!" moment of existential panic out of the way, so I can get on with talking about the things I actually did this week. Because, for the first time in a while, I actually did things instead of cooping myself up in my house and metaphorically bashing my head against my laptop! Life is exciting, you guys.

Mostly I figured that since I now have free time — I mean, within reason; I have work, where I'm trying to make up for the hours I missed, and class, and I have a couple posts due for the geek blog I contribute to — and more sanity, I could use some of it in order to help out friends of mine who had more demanding schedules than mine.

[under the cut: fashion shows, theater stuff, etc. etc.]

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! [2013/04/15]

So first things first, ducklings: WesFest is this week! So if any of you are on campus and want to come hang out, you should absolutely hit me up. I swear I am actually way more normal than this blog probably makes me seem. And this isn't the sort of thing where I'm offering just for the sake of offering — trust me, that's not actually a thing I do. So if you're up for it, hit me up, either in the comments of this blog or on twitter (alasallama).

Oh, yeah, I have a twitter now! I haven't written a ton on it, but that might change now that my thesis is done and I no longer have to feel guilty about being on the internet.

...Oh, yeah. My thesis is done, too. That's... a thing.

Honestly, I have no idea how to feel about that. I know that some of my posts have been a bit doom and gloom about it, and I'm not going to lie, I still don't think I'll be ready to look at it again any time soon? I mean, it was a struggle forcing myself to reread it while I was editing it, which, you know, presented its own special challenges to the editing process. But at the same time, I was also right in that last post: it's amazing to think that I did that. I wrote something that's 150 pages, including the cover page and bibliography. I wrote something that requires not only a table of contents but an acknowledgements section.

(For the record? Writing the acknowledgements section might have been the most fun part of the entire process.)

An Open Letter to my Thesis [2013/04/05]

[Note: This was written a few nights ago, when I should have been writing my introduction. It is written somewhat facetiously. Sort of.]

[I'm also going to frontload you with cuteness here in the form of a picture of an adorable bunny rabbit. Just because.]



An open letter to my thesis:

I’m sorry I don’t love you. I should. I have been working on you, in one form or another, since September. I have been writing you since late November. I have been focusing all of my spare attention, every scrap I have to give, everything that is not being taken up by procrastination or class or the petty need to eat and sleep and cook, on you for months. I have spent more time on you than I have spent on any one thing in my life. I have complained about you so much that I suspect my housemates are beginning to fantasize about gagging me. I have allowed you to drive me insane.

I have given you most of me.

THESIS SMASH [2013/03/22]

Oh, ducklings. I have… written. I have written, and I’m tired.

Spring Break thus far has been an exciting exercise in “How long can Sasha work without accidentally trying to open up tumblr?” (best record: two hours; worst record: one sentence) and “How crazy will Sasha drive her family while she is home and working on her thesis?” (hint: a lot) and “How crazy will Sasha drive herself while she is home and working on her thesis?” (hint: ALSO A LOT) and “How much will Sasha hate everything she has written as soon as she finishes writing it?” (hint: REALLY REALLY A LOT) and lots of exciting other questions like that.

This all probably sounds really negative and like I’m whining again, but honestly I’ve almost been enjoying myself, in a very weird and probably masochistic way. There’s something very interesting about feeling as if you’re attached to a rope that’s slowly fraying. It’s sort of exciting. And it’s made for some very entertaining moments thus far over break.

[under the cut: Thesis stuff, a comic!!!! and the two things that made me laugh the hardest this week. Warning: this post contains profanity.]

A Little Ray of Sunshine [2013/03/10]

[Note: Written on Saturday, during my "I am going to be productive by turning the internet off!" day; posted today.]

It has been a beautiful weekend, ducklings.

Well, okay, it’s been an unexpectedly snowy and then unexpectedly melty weekend, which has so far involved an awful lot of trudging through slush and getting my boots and socks absolutely soaked (and we all know that of life’s little inconveniences, wet socks are some of the worst), but! Why let that bring us down? The snow was beautiful, and now it is apparently fifty degrees outside, which is also beautiful because it means that hypothetically at some point we will actually get to that spring we were promised when Persephone agreed to leave the underworld for half the year. I have made delicious food, and subsequently dined on delicious food, and gotten my stitches out, and, okay, not been quite as thesis-ly productive as I wanted, but I have had some very positive meetings with my thesis advisor and my thesis mentor, so I’m feeling oddly at peace with the world right now.

It’s Spring Break, ducklings. Celebrate.



[Under the cut: The three states of thesis being and a LOT of food talk.]

Some Sort of Saying About Old Dogs and Learning Things [2013/03/01]

Well, ducklings, it has been a Week, hasn't it. And I don't mean that in the sense of, "Yes, it has been precisely seven days!" since I trust that all of you have been keeping up with the days of the week. Not that there's anything wrong with you if you haven't; that stuff is hard. I'm pretty sure that I wrote that today was the 28th of February instead of the 1st of March on at least two different documents today. And then signed them. Whoops.

On that note, happy March 1st?

It's been... I can't say that I'm sad this week is done, since as I mentioned earlier, it's been a Week. Not awful — I've definitely had worse weeks, all things told — but very draining, for some reason. But, you know, they do say that adversity builds character and teaches you lessons and all that good stuff, so. Here are some lessons I believe I have learned from this week:

This is a Thesis Post. (Run. Run Now.) [2013/02/22]

Happy Fridays, ducklings.

Yes, yes, I know, my last blog was on Tuesday; how can I have come up with anything interesting to say in the few days between then and now? But somehow, I do always manage to say quite a lot without actually saying anything at all, so I suspect I'll manage. And this time I haven't just woken up from a nap, which is already a step in the right direction.

It's true that I haven't done much over the past few days, but I suspect that my life right now is supposed to consist of not doing much. Not doing much except writing, that is, and even then, I'm behind where I should be, considering that I'm going to need as much time as possible to edit my thesis into some semblance of decency. How is it that I'm about 75 pages in and yet I don't feel like I've gotten to the heart of my topic yet?

I'm buckling down this weekend, though. There's supposed to be a snowstorm, plus I wounded myself on Wednesday and don't really feel like leaving the house ever*, which are good enough reasons to stay in, bake some bread, and write. A lot. I think I'm going to have to institute some rules like my end-of-term rules last semester: turning off Airport so I can't get distracted by the internet, and allowing myself to break only to do other productive things. I can stop writing in the middle of a paragraph if I'm going to read a chapter in a book or actually format my citations properly. (And, for example, I'm allowed to not be doing work right now because I'm writing this piece of gloriousness.)

[* She says, like she ever really feels like leaving the house.]

...I'm not even sure what I just wrote in this post. [2013/02/19]

Guess who closed her eyes at 4:15 today and only woke up two and a half hours later? If you said to yourself, "Wow, that sounds like the sort of ridiculous thing that would happen to Sasha," then you would be entirely correct. Congratulations. On the other hand, at least it wasn't like that one time when I closed my eyes at 8 pm and woke up at 1. Um.

Anyway! So I meant to write up a post over the weekend, and then I was distracted by thesis and work and procrastination, which means that you're getting my delightful company on Tuesday night instead. I've been sort of... scattered, recently.

[Under the cut: Let's see how well I can unscatter myself.]

SNOW. (I need sleep.) [2013/02/09]

Ducklings! Currently there is a wall of snow outside my back door. A wall. When you open the door there's at least four inches stacked up above the sill. Bear in mind that to get to my back door you have to CLIMB UP STAIRS. Our porch is also completely covered in snow, you can barely see my housemates' cars, we might have to sled down the stairs if we want to go outside, the street is no longer distinguishable from the sidewalk, and I have apple chips in the oven.

...What? It matters to me, okay.

So anyway, snow has occurred! My housemate is currently trying to convince me that going outside is a good idea. I am uncertain about her correctness.

Three hours later: I have changed my mind! Housemate Katie was correct. The snow was ridiculously deep (for the record, there's now a foot stacked up above the ledge on the back door and my housemates' cars are completely covered in snow), but some friends of ours were having a party and for some reason I thought being social might be sort of okay, so we and Previously Mentioned Housemate Natalia blazed our own trail through the snowy wilderness of Brainerd, which has not been plowed! At all! AT ALL. On our way back, I fell in the snow twice and looked like the abominable snowman, it was great. Plus I made a snow angel! Everything was fantastic.

[Under the cut: Words. (Look, it is 2:40 am and I am tired. I just want to write this and go to sleep and then wake up and make pancakes or something.)]

Like a Time Capsule But More Insane [2013/01/30]

Ducklings! Welcome to the new year, the spring semester, and my last semester at Wesleyan.

...Oh god.

I was going to write a post last weekend, I swear I was, and then somehow I got caught up in sulking around my room and flailing a lot about how it is my LAST SEMESTER EVER and THE FUTURE IS DRAWING NEARER and OH MY GOD WHAT IS DROP/ADD WHAT ARE CLASSES WHAT IS SANITY??? and let's be real, that is not something you guys need in your lives (that is not something I need in my life) and then I got distracted because I realised I had written a blog post all the way back in December, on the day I went home, and then never posted it. And it was sort of funny, looking back at it from a month later, so I thought you guys might be amused by a glimpse of my thought process (my INCREDIBLY SLEEP-DEPRIVED thought process) on Sunday, December 16th.

Am I cheating by not writing up something about this week? Hell yes I am. But it's for your sake, ducklings. It really is. Promise.

[Under the cut: Something that's more stream of consciousness than usual. Which for me is, you know, saying a lot.]

Eat, Work, Sleep, Repeat (Most of the Time) [2012/12/12]

Seriously though, you guys. Finals.

People keep asking me, "How are your finals going?", which generally results (depending on the day/hour/minute/second) on me either laughing or staring at them with dead eyes until they start to feel uncomfortable. Which is silly, really, because my finals have actually been really spread out this year — I had my taiko performance a week before classes ended, all my fiction stuff due the next Tuesday, and now I only have a research paper for Commodity Consumption (yes, the class I'm TA-ing, people always seem very surprised about this) and then... the rest of my first thesis chapter. I have twenty pages so far. I am halfway through. We're not talking about that right now.

We can talk about all the things I've done/attended in the week and a half since I last updated my blog, though! These things include: the Worlds of Dance performance, Winter Formal, a reading by senior poets, The Tempest, Winter Dance, and other things that can be found under the cut.

Time Keeps On Ticking, Ticking, Ticking... [2012/12/01]

...into the fuuuuuuture. (What? You don't occasionally get the urge to title posts after Steve Miller Band songs from the 70s?)

Anyway, ducklings, today marks the day on which there are only approximately seven more days of schooldays. Or yesterday did, I guess, since I'm writing this at 2 am on a Saturday, but no matter. The point is: classes end during the upcoming week. More to the point: HOMEWORK HOMEWORK HOMEWORK HOMEWORK.

And, you know, other end-of-term things. Like my performance for Beginning Taiko, which was tonight and was AWESOME. Because taiko is awesome.

[Under the cut: That performance in greater detail, my new thesis-writing regimen, and adorable animals. Oh, and something odd?]

My Mom Bugged Me Until I Posted This [2012/11/21]

[Note: For the sake of clarification, ducklings, this was written across Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday, and thus the inherent temporality may be... confused. Hopefully not too badly.]

[Note 2: My mom really did bug me until I posted this.]

It’s almost Thanksgiving, ducklings, a fact that is at once both relieving and terrifying to me. It’s a relief because to be honest I feel like I could use a few days of not having class, where I can just collapse onto my bed and sleep for hours at a time. Seven hours, even. Maybe — I know this is a lot to ask for — maybe even eight or nine.

…Sleep and I have been somewhat estranged this week, I don’t know if you can tell.

But, of course, the flip side to that is that in addition to seeing my family and sleeping and cooking delicious food, I need to use the available time in order to do work. A lot of work. Work that I may or may not have been sort of avoiding for the past few days.

But enough of that! Back to the recap of my week to date.

[Under the cut: Spring Awakening, Oh! Megan, the beginning of my sure-to-be-illustrious (not really) career in voice acting, and a minor — minor! — rant about the future.]

Words. >:( [2012/11/11]

Words are useless. And hard. And dumb. And... dumb.

Really, really dumb.

(Aka, this weekend I started trying to write my thesis! And work on a short story for Intermediate Fiction! IT IS NOT GOING WELL.)

Buuuuut I like you guys a lot so I'm going to make an effort and will NOT be writing an entry in freeform poetry. I can probably hold off on that one until the end of the semester, at least.

[Under the Cut: Election night, senior events, homework stuff, and pictures of cute animals, which I prefer not to think of so much as bait to draw you guys in as it is a reward for anyone who actually dares read my crazed ramblings.]

Rock You Like A Hurricane [2012/11/03]

[For the record, the title of the post? Yeah, I woke up to that song on Monday morning. Good times.]

I swear, at some point (maybe during finals week or right before my thesis is due, when I'm going crazy but don't feel like making another post entirely in capslock) I'm just going to write a post that's a response to all the spam comments we get on this blog, because some of them are hilarious. I was just clearing out the "pending" section, which ratio-wise is usually about 400 spam comments for every 1 non-spam comment, and I came across this gem:

"thanks to the author representing captivating his clock calculate proceeding this one."

No, Okna pcw drutex. Thank you.

But enough of that, ducklings; I'll save it for a time when I legitimately have no brain power left for anything other than frantically trying to finish work. I figure I'll know that time has come when conversations with my housemates end in anguished screaming, most likely on my part. Till that time, though, I'm still definitely okay enough to tell my loyal readers about my week.

[Under the cut: An anti-climactic unexpected holiday, the return of My Life: Badly Drawn in Photoshop, and a dragon cake. Because I am AWESOME.]

titles are for the weak [2012/10/26]

Happy Halloweekend, ducklings! Well, Halloweekend #1, at least. Given that Halloween is on a Wednesday this year, people seem to be taking the unique opportunity to celebrate on both weekends, at least insofar as I am aware. Or maybe they're just planning stuff for this weekend on the chance that Hurricane Sandy is going to knock out our power on Halloween (again) and that we will once again have the chance to prove over the course of several days that, like celery, Wes students thrive in the dark.

(Yes. Celery.)

Hopefully not, though. The woodframes took almost a week longer to get power than Hi-Rise did last year.

Anyway, ducklings, on to the important stuff! ...Wait, no, sorry, I had this weird momentary delusion that I write about important stuff, instead of food, homework, and how I shaved off part of my eyebrow. What a hilarious idea.

[Under the cut: food, homework, and how I shaved off part of my eyebrow. Yes, really. Also a picture of a puppy, just because.]

Dance Like You're In The Kitchen Doing The Dishes [2012/10/19]

Happy Homecoming/Parent's Weekend, ducklings! Or, if you don't celebrate those esoteric holidays, Happy day-that-Brave-is-playing-on-the-film-series! (Alas, I will probably not be able to see it tonight, due to the parental units arriving for the aforementioned Parent's Weekend.) Or, if your life is devoid of joy and you don't like Brave, Happy Friday!

...Look, I'm having a good day today. I am, in fact, enjoying the heck out of this grey, drizzly, reasonably chilly October day. So sue me.

[Under the cut: Food, the end of Fall Break, and more of my incessant good mood.]

My Life Is Better Than Everyone Else's, Full Stop [2012/10/13]

Is that a boasting title? That probably seems a bit braggartly to you, ducklings, but I'm sorry, I can't bring myself to take it back. I would ask if you want to know why, but let's be real here, I'm going to tell you anyone. I'm going to tell everyone, because [insert drumroll here] I MET TERRY PRATCHETT.

Well, okay, perhaps I should go back to the beginning of the week first, if my memories of this week haven't all been swept away by the glory and wonder that was meeting the inestimable PTerry. So let's see, what did I do?

...Homework. And thesis research. I finished Dragnet, moved on to other shows, and then got told by my thesis adviser that it would make more sense to not watch all nine of my shows in chronological order, which is GREAT, because now I can follow different themes across shows and don't have to work my way through twelve seasons of the original Hawaii Five-O before getting to the stuff that will be more pertinent to my research!

[Under the cut: How I met Terry Pratchett, and other stuff that isn't nearly as interesting to me but might be more interesting to other people who don't have my fanatical devotion to Terry Pratchett.]

Shock, Horror, Calamity, Etc. [2012/10/06]

I know what you're thinking: "Two posts in one week? Sasha, what are you doing? What's going on? THIS IS AGAINST THE NORMAL ORDER OF THE UNIVERSE."

Or maybe you're thinking, "...Wait, you posted twice in one week? You post at all? You write for this blog? Who are you???"

Or, possibly, you're thinking, "I should really go check my mail right now."

Or, even more possibly, you're sort of skimming this while you watch videos of adorable panda on Youtube and thus aren't really thinking very much at all. That's cool, I don't judge. Pandas are great.

(At this point, you might be thinking, "...Sasha, you've already spent more than 100 words trying to be telepathic. Get on with it already." Just for you, dear reader, I will indeed get on with it... under the cut.)

The Mystery of the Missing Month [2012/10/01]

Did you know that it's October, ducklings? Are you ready for it to be October? Because I'm definitely not ready for it to be October. I wasn't even ready for it to be September, quite honestly.

This morning I woke up and smelled a distinctly autumnal tint to the air — well, no, that's a complete lie. This morning I woke up, groaned at my alarm clock, turned over and went to sleep again. Unfortunately, my alarm clock doesn't understand basic concepts like "decency" or "kindness," and mercilessly continued ringing until I was forced to crawl out from under my warm blankets into the pitiless open air. By that point, I was mostly just glad that the sky didn't look like it was going to rain buckets like it did for approximately half of yesterday.

(Me, to Housemate Katie yesterday when the day went from golden sunshine to thunderstorms: "I have a very important question for you."

Housemate Katie: "Hmm?"

Me: "WHEN DID IT START RAINING?!"

Housemate Katie: "...I'm going to go back to napping now."

Housemate Katie does not share my almost-journalistic devotion to uncovering the truth.)

[The adventures of Sasha the Super Sleuth will continue, under the cut!]

Bad Omens? [2012/09/15]

Hello, ducklings!

...Yes, I'm late. Whoops. I meant to write up a post two weeks ago, really I did! It was going to feature another "what I did over my summer vacation" comic*, and it was going to reassure regular readers that my brain did not actually explode after my last post**, and basically it was going to be REALLY REALLY GREAT and then I got distracted and didn't write it. This would not seem to be a great omen for the beginning of senior year as a whole. Oh well?

*Fun fact: if you're new to this blog/my life/etc. and feel like delving into the haze of absurdity that is my previous entries, you can find them all here, here, or just by clicking the "alamb" link at the top of this post or the "Sasha Lamb '13" button under "Categories." If you want a few highlights, I believe I can confidently say that the best things about my blog are the pictures of adorable animals [which are all tagged under adorable things because I am boring and/or cute fluffy things] and the fact that I can occasionally be persuaded to use photoshop to create very badly-drawn comics about mundane incidents in my life. Wait, when I put it that way, it doesn't sound nearly as appealing... If you're curious, though, my three favorite can be found here: one, two, three.

**I went a little insane in my last post. Or, um. A lot insane. But I'm totally better now! Life is great, man. No capslock necessary.***

***If you've gotten through all of these footnotes, then you may want to continue moving on to the rest of the post, which can be found under the cut:

THIS IS A POST [2012/05/14]

HELLO DUCKLINGS

TODAY I AM WRITING THIS POST IN ALL-CAPS TO SYMBOLIZE THE FACT THAT IT IS READING WEEK AND MY STRESS IS GETTING VERY LOUD INSIDE MY BRAIN

>:(

ON THE UPSIDE THERE WILL BE PICTURES OF FLUFFY ANIMALS

SO THERE'S THAT

[UNDER THE CUT: ...basically more of the same.]

Kermit Flail [2012/05/07]

Hello, ducklings. Want to hear something exciting? I realized today that I have a thesis proposal due on Wednesday which I haven't even started writing, because the email that we received about it a few months ago said "Friday, May 9," and I looked at the Friday part more than the 9 part, which in hindsight appears to have been the slightly more important aspect.

Well, worst comes to worst, the Anthropology department doesn't accept my thesis proposal, and then I don't have to spend the next year going through my own personal hell of attempting to be productive. So, uh. Silver lining? I guess?

(...I'd still kind of like them to accept it, though. Just because.)

Plus, I have to revise my final nonfiction paper for Friday, and then study for an exam and write two moderately intelligent-sounding essays for the week after that. It's not the worst workload I've ever had, but it's going to be a bit of a bumpy road between now and the end of classes, ducklings.

(I've decided that I'm going to call all my readers "ducklings" from now on. It has a nice ring to it.)

Anyway, enough about my future stress. Time to move on to the reason why I have all that stress, aka, the recap of the week where I was not nearly productive enough! I mean, I was sort of productive. I just clearly should have been twice as productive as I already was. And should have, you know, rechecked that email about theses proposals.

[Under the cut: pictures of food, Foodstock, my apparent narcolepsy, and THE AVENGERS.]

The Whooshing Sound of Deadlines [2012/04/30]

How are you, my darling readers? How was has your week been? I hope you haven't been suffering from allergies, or had too much work to do, or been inconvenienced too much by the random shifts of the weather. We may be separated by cyberspace, actual space, and the fact that I have absolutely no idea who you are, but you know what, I care. You matter, random mysterious person who somehow happened to stumble across this blog.

...I have no segue from there.

Anyway, this is going to be a shorter post than usual (maybe), because I'd like to actually, you know, post this before Monday (goals are the vanguard of a healthy and well-balanced life). Or before 1 am on Monday, at least. (Goals are awesome; deadlines, however, should be flexible.)

So what are you waiting for, dear reader? Come on! Click the little "Continue Reading" button already!

[Beneath the "Continue Reading" Button: A briefer and less ramble-tastic summary of my week.]

...I've Run Out Of Clever Titles Regarding Lateness [2012/04/23]

I had such good intentions. I really did... and then somehow I ended up completely forgetting to write my post yesterday because I was too busy procrastinating on my homework by making romaine, banana, and peach smoothies (delicious), baking banana-avocado-coconut bread (also delicious, despite how weird it sounds), and mixing up a batch of chocolate-peanut-butter-toffee-sea-salt cookies (three for three on the deliciousness front, here). That's the problem with writing a final paper about baking cake: you want to spend all your time in the kitchen instead of actually, you know, writing.

Did I not mention that I'm writing a final paper about baking cake? It's for my creative nonfiction class, and I'm pretty excited about it. I mean, if there's one thing I love to do, it's talk about food.

The problem is that I've felt so unmotivated lately — not about the paper, but in general. All I want to do is lie in bed watching hockey highlights (both the playoffs and the fact that I have no reputable site on which to watch the playoffs are killing me) or Avatar: The Last Airbender (I swear that this show is better written than a ton of supposedly higher-brow fare made for adults). Instead I have to fight to keep my mind on my work, or whatever else I happen to be doing at the moment.

Like right now, for instance. What's going on? What am I typing? Does my brain even have control of what my fingers are doing right now?

...Well, neurologically speaking, yes, it does. But in a metaphorical sense, my mind has retired. It's probably golfing right now.

Metaphors aside, though, it's probably time for a recap, right?

[Under the cut: A recap! Involving pre-reg, The Cabin in the Woods, and The Laramie Project.]

It's A Little Sad How Proud I Am That This Post Is On-Time [2012/04/15]

Happy Wesfest, everybody!

It was a glorious weekend for it, too; my freshman year, I was told that Wesfest weekend is always nice, which, in my sophomore year, I unhappily learned was not at all true. Still, we seem to have gotten back to the pattern, which I approve of, as it means that I finally feel like it's warm enough to start wearing shorts again. Glory glory hallelujah, etc.

So let's see. What did I do this week, after I returned from DC? The answer, surprisingly, is, "Several things."

[Under the cut: Several things! Including WesMTC, The Theatre (pronounced thee-ay-truh, of course), awesome movies, quasi-religious traditions, and a guide to the dreaded specter of GRS.]

We Running This, Let's Go [2012/04/09]

I’M ON A TRAIN. I’M ON A TRAIN. TAKE A GOOD HARD LOOK, ‘CAUSE I’M SITTING ON A TRAIN.

I’m on a train and, it’s moving fast and, I’ve been sitting in here for way too long, man.

[Blogger's Note: I feel I should note at this juncture that this was written yesterday, when I was in fact on a train (as my loving Lonely Island ripoff would suggest), rather than today, when I am simply hopelessly late because I completely failed to post this yesterday evening. Forgive me.]

I went home this weekend for Passover seder, which was a first for me; usually I just stay at school and think longingly of all the delicious food my family is eating without me. Freshman year I went to the Wesleyan seder, which was pretty good, although I was thrown off a little by the fact that we used fairly conventional Haggadahs rather than the goofy hippy ones that are a tradition at my house. Sophomore year I believe I had a night class at the same time, and I ended up prioritizing that over a ritual I enjoy, but don’t particularly believe in. I tend to be more of a cultural Jew than a religious one, which means that I’ll talk about matzah ball soup and macaroons until the cows come home, but I tend to answer all questions about belief with a question mark. I guess that makes me an agnostic or something? I don’t know, I don’t really bother labeling it. The closest I’ve gotten to contemplating the mysteries of the universe recently was the time I spent an hour boggling over how the internet works.

Seriously, though. A series of mysterious “protocols” that connect our computers despite not having any shared servers or anything? That shit is magical.

…You’re probably laughing at me right now, aren’t you. It wouldn’t surprise me.

[Under the cut: A recap of my week and a brief analogy about analogies.]

The Emperor's New Title [2012/04/02]

[Because I'm pretending the post has a title, but it doesn't actually? Like the fable with — oh, whatever.]

So... Spring break is still over. My life is full of tragedy and woe.

I've had a pretty crazy week, though — or maybe it just feels crazy because usually my weeks are pretty slow. Who knows. I'm not built for such a hectic lifestyle.

The deal is that I really, really should have finished my creative writing paper over Spring Break, except then I didn't, so I had to write it all this past week and for some reason it was giving me a huge amount of trouble, and then I had other homework and then suddenly there were all these things that I needed to do and all these places that I was trying to be and —

...Basically, when I say I'm not built for a hectic lifestyle, I mean I'm not built for a lifestyle where I have due dates.

[Under the cut: My crazy week, another edition of My Life: Badly Drawn in Photoshop, and some photos of adorable animals. All the good stuff, basically.]

This Post Is Not Actually About College Decisions [2012/03/25]

…so if you’re at the point where you absolutely positively cannot read a single thing about it, even just me talking for a few paragraphs about why I’m not going to be talking about it right now, just skip the intro and go right to the “Read More.” Or, if you’re really at a bad place right now, you can skip this entry entirely. That’s right, go. Shoo! I won’t tell, and I’ll still be here if you decide to come back.

Anyway, the alternate title for this post was: Everything In Your Life Is Awful Right Now.

Granted, I don't actually know that for sure. As I believe I've mentioned before, one of the beautiful things about writing this blog is that I have no idea who you are — parent, professor, prospective student, pre-frosh accepted via Early Decision, Wesleyan student, one of my relatives (hi, guys), someone who randomly stumbled across this blog while searching something completely unrelated on Google. (That would be kind of cool, actually.) Which you'd think would make it harder to write this thing, but I've decided to follow one of Kurt Vonnegut's tips for writing short stories:

Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

And nobody wants to have a sneezing short story, do they? Especially since I think my short stories have asthma to begin with. BUT, the point is that most of my fellow bloggers have been directing their recent posts towards You: The Prospective Wesleyan Student Who Is Currently In The Hell Known As The College Decision Process, and to that You, I say...

Well, everything in your life is probably awful right now. But really, I mean that in the best way.

I'm not actually going to take this time to convince you guys to come to Wesleyan. My fellow bloggers have already written up several convincing posts, and honestly, when I was a senior in high school, I already felt so overwhelmed by all those different little pieces of trivia that are supposed to help you make a decision, and so grumpy about the entire process that I was ready to snap at anyone who asked me which colleges were at the top of my list.

...I didn't really enjoy the college search thing, if you couldn't guess.

But you know what, even if you end up picking your college out of a hat, or if you choose based on whether they allow easy access to falafel, it's probably okay. And if it's not, if you're so stressed right now that it seems like nothing will ever be okay again?

Well, that's cool too. And if you're interested, I am very willing to help distract you right now by, as usual, spewing a ridiculous load of random nonsense.

[Under the cut: a ridiculous load of random nonsense.]

Tourism For Fun But Not Profit [2012/03/17]

Every time I tell people that my spring break is two weeks, they generally gape in awe and make some comment about what a long break that is — which, if I'm unlucky, is followed by an addendum about how tuition is more and more so students can be in school less and less. I've generally found that the best response to this is to say very sweetly, "Maybe they're just working us harder" — because while I appreciate the sympathy regarding the cost of 4 years of college, I don't come to your house and make implications about the quality of your education, do I?

But I digress. My original point was that while two weeks seems like a long time in theory, it actually feels far shorter from smack dab in the middle, especially when you have yet to finish a great deal of your assigned work. At the same time? Man, it's good to be home.

Darkness and Chaos, Narrowly Averted [2012/03/05]

["Without ice cream, there would be darkness and chaos." ~Don Kardong]

Well, it's late in the day, but it's still Sunday, so I'm going to go ahead and count that as a win. It's amazing how low your standards can get right before spring break — although admittedly, I don't have nearly as much midterm stuff this week as I did last week, which is why I spent an awful lot of time this weekend doing absolutely nothing. It was fantastic. I mean, I suspect that there were a number of things I should have been doing instead, like writing applications and otherwise being a productive human being, but whatever, I can ignore my randomized guilt for the time being and just focus on the fact that I'm almost caught up on sleep. Huzzah!

Alright, then. Shall I take you through my week? (Well. My week minus Monday, at least, since I'm pretty sure I covered that in my previous post.)

[Below the cut: My week, examples of awful scholarly writing, some minor rambling regarding the Avengers, and the return of Badly-Drawn-in-Photoshop!Sasha!]

I'm Late! I'm Late! for a Very Important... Blog? [2012/02/27]

Because I am, at heart, a massive flake, I forgot to post this blog entry yesterday. I really need to go back to posting these on Saturdays; I'm so much more forgiving of myself if my late post is on a Sunday, rather than on a Monday, when the new week has already started to kick off.

It's funny, actually; even back in high school, I still felt like the week started on Sundays, calendar-wise. Now, though, Monday is definitely the start of the week, and Sunday is the catch-up day at the very end. Although this weekend I really should have done a little more catching-up and a little less Parks And Recreation-watching, seeing as I have a presentation, a response paper, and a test this week. Amy Poehler and her cast of lovable misfits can wait.

[Under the cut: Me attempting desperately to remember my week, along with brief ramble about social-ness, Mao: the Musical, and small fluffy animals.]

Welcome to the Jungle [2012/02/19]

...The jungle of learning, that is.

Uh. I actually have no idea where that came from. Ignore me. Although it does beg the question: should I start titling my post with song titles from now on? Hmm. Something to consider.

Anyway, before I really delve into my recap, I should probably take the time to mention what was probably the most exciting part of my week: inspired by this tutorial, I painted my nails to look like tuxedoes. Yes, I now have fingernails that are so freaking stylish, they look as if they wandered right off the pages of GQ magazine.

...Actually, they look like they were still slightly malleable when I went to sleep and so now they have a few wrinkles in them, but whatever, that's only noticeable if you're really looking closely.

[Under the cut: Photos of the aforementioned nail art, the recap of my week, pictures of food, my Awesome Tower of Recycling and Procrastination, and a brief digression on the matter of going to the grocery store.]

The Title of this Post is: "The Title of this Post is." [2012/02/12]

You know, it's astounding to me how many of my fellow bloggers also lived/live on Clark 4, aka C4 (everything's more fun with explosive nicknames), aka Writing Hall. (Aka, the only freshman hall on campus where it would not be at all odd to see a group of people clustered around someone's door, writing anagrams on the whiteboard. Yes, that actually happened, and it was awesome. Or rather, I should say, "Io saw me sweat." Or better yet, "A Sam is wet. Woe.")

So take note, prospective students and upcoming freshpeople! Live on Writing Hall; you could become an admissions blogger!

Okay, enough of that. We all know you guys are here to read about my fabulously exciting week. Well, unless you're not. I don't like to judge. I'm sure there are plenty of reasons you guys are here reading this. Maybe you like pictures of adorable animals. Maybe you're here for the comics (in which case, sorry, but that's a no go this week — they actually take a surprising amount of time, and I haven't been able to get my butt in gear for that). Maybe you clicked on the wrong link. Maybe you're a prospective student and your parents are forcing you to read this so you can get a better sense of what the Wesleyan College Experience is all about, but you're just skimming this while they're looking over your shoulder and are planning to click out of the browser pretty much the second they walk away. The possibilities are endless!

(Philosophical side note: I spent some time the other week contemplating the state of being of a blog post that isn't being read. After all, its existence can only be confirmed when somebody pulls it up on a web browser and looks at it... so in the time when nobody is looking at it, can it be said to exist at all? Is it sitting in a box being shredded to pieces by Schrodinger's Cat?)

...So, my week!

[Under the cut: THINGS WOT I HAVE DONE THIS WEEK.]

There is a photo of a puppy in this post. [2012/02/05]

So I know my fellow blogger Anya covered this already in her eloquent post Weird Weather (what else is new), but seriously, this weather is Not On. This is not winter weather, people! This is like late fall or early spring — something transitional, not something suited to the majestic month of February. I should be cursing bitterly at the icy winds, not wandering outside in just a denim jacket.

Well, ours is not to reason why. Enough of the weather. On to the weekly recap:

...Uh. I did do things this week! I swear, I did! I mean, I went to class, and... went to class, and... Oh! On Tuesday I went and learned some basics of belly dance, which was really fun and enabled my love of moving random parts of my body in weird ways. (Huh. It sounds really creepy when I put it like that.) I went to a meeting for a new group called Freshleyan, which is trying to start up a sort of fashion thing on campus, and no, I really can't explain it any better than that. Sorry. Sometimes my ability to be articulate fails me at the most inconvenient times.

This Friday I went to see The Lion King at the film series, which was GREAT because The Lion King is a classic movie and Timon and Pumba make everything better. (Last Friday the film series played Drive, which I also went to see and which was pretty good but obviously can't compare to the glory of The Lion King.)

Yesterday (Saturday) I made pancakes for Flatmate Katie (chocolate chip), Delightful Neighbor Kristen* (plain, with syrup), and myself (oats and blueberries), following which we went ice skating at Wesleyan's own Spurrier-Snyder Rink. It was quite excellent, even if it took me about fifteen minutes just to lace up my freaking skates.

Side note: Apparently you can now rent ice skates from Wesleyan? I don't know the details, but if you want to be able to take a turn out on the ice but are feeling sadly limited by your lack of foot-strappable blades, you are now freed from the tyranny of not having brought skates to school! Go! Rent! Skate free! Try not to fall!

[Below the cut: Some more random stuff about my week, a few pictures, and the promised Open Letter Regarding Discussions of the Future With Relatives and Family Friends Who Have Kind Intentions.]

Welcome Back, and Happy Apocalypse-year! [2012/01/29]

Hello, lovelies! Ahhh, my first post of the year; something about it seems so pure, so refreshing. It's like the blog version of new-fallen snow, and as I look at the blank document in front of me it's like I'm staring out into a glistening white field of possibility, beauty, and new beginnings...

...which will inevitably be ruined by the dirty footprints of my nonsensical ramblings. So it goes.

I did mean to write a few mid-Break posts, but I inevitably got distracted and started doing something else, which doesn't say much about my work ethic but is probably fairly expressive of how my Winter Break went overall. Which isn't a bad thing, of course; I had a great time hanging out with my family, and I got to do all the appropriate "Sasha's Winter Break" things: cook/bake, eat delicious food, visit relatives, sink into the couch, watch tv, maybe see people other than my family?, read, go on the internet, watch more tv, freak out about the future. I'd say it all worked out pretty much as usual.

[Under the cut: the inevitable food photos and tv-viewing recaps, and maybe even a little about this year's classes, if you're lucky. Or unlucky. Or neither one nor the other.]