Being home at the moment entails the application of motherly affection through sponsored shopping. I now have brand new undies of wonderfulness and some very pretty eyeshadow, as well as one of those highly useful little eyeliner brushes that make it so that you can forego the use of pencils. Oh, and a blush that looks rather light and natural-I've got something like it already that has no staying power at all and disappears after an hour.

It also entailed a nice dinner at a new restaurant that I have not seen heretofore. I rather shocked my mother by leaving one of my little cards for the waiter with the tip. I have to say that these little cards are really convenient for this kind of thing. I don't anticipate anything coming of it, but at the moment I'm just kind of enjoying how shocked my mother and family are by my apparent "make-over" in Europe. I got a haircut and learned to apply eyeshadow properly- this is clearly cause for celebration.

I should get some stuff today for the July 4th of hanging out with Smadar.

I've got a desk in my room now! And did not need the intervention of random brotherly help. He's still asleep, and I don't want to have to wake him up for something my honor demands I do myself anyways. I really just need to have a desk in my life apparently, and since this one was going begging I grabbed it for dibs. I'm also doing laundry at the same time. Which means I get points in life.

It's weird to be back in the same time zone as all the rest of my life actually is. Strange and wonderful, I suppose.

Yesterday's fiction disappoints me- I mean the day 8 submission, not the day 7. Day 8 was written while I was literally falling asleep after my brother took me out for ice cream to meet his new girlfriend, who is really extraordinarily cute.

I'm going to have Smadar over to my house for the fourth of July, which should be good fun. She sounded like she needed some time to goof off and be away from her work and constant drive to achieve. I will be glad to see her and hang out, though I was slightly looking for an excuse to get to Swelles.

Day 7
“There’s something on the wing of the plane!” shouted the tv. Sharon looked over at it wistfully, but turned back grudgingly to her computer. Classic Twilight Zone would have to wait for after the finals for her.

Not so for her roomie, of course. With a double major in English (focus: Creative Writing) and Cinema, Rachel’s apparent goofing off was actually the sign of a focused mind at work. Her final was to take apart and analyze a short cinematic piece of less then an hour- part of the grade depended on the professor accepting that the piece was in fact worth the effort. But science fiction was not Professor Rothburg’s thing, and though Rachel had been able to suppress her urge to go over the great points of science fiction history with her, she wasn’t going to give up her last chance of bringing Rod Sterling into her academic career. It was the culmination of a lifelong dream.

“Okay, the action of camera is fairly static, but this functions to reinforce the viewer’s feelings of claustrophobia on the plane, at the mercy of whatever is attacking….” Rachel also muttered and couldn’t stand to wear headphones. Her relationship with Sharon was sometimes strained for just these reasons, but a shared love of geekery in all its myriad forms smoothed many a ruffled feather.

“Shar, do you think I can get away with saying that planes are inherently frightening?” Rachel’s willingness to discuss any and all minutia of her current thoughts also tended to have a bonding effect- there are only so many conversations one can have about the comparative visibility from within Godzilla suits versus Mothra suits without either goading one into a murder/suicide or an abiding friendship. As both women yet lived, love prevailed at the cost of sanity.

“If not in real life, (which I certainly think they are), at least in the realm of the movie, I think. Don’t the people who think he’s crazy think that he snapped from the strain of flying on the plane?”

“Ooh, point.” Rachel scribbled, and then unpaused the DVD to return to her scrutiny.

Sharon turned back to her computer again, and just tried to focus on Billy Collins. Ironically, her desk was covered in repeated prints of the same document, all wreathed in red pencil around the center text. “Marginalia, my ass. I’ve written a whole damned new book about this guy.”

“I thought you were going to write about Shakespeare being gay.” Rachel asked.

“Tried. The professor said too many people are picking that topic this year- something about a Doctor Who episode. I had to switch to a modern author. I thought this guy would at least be easy- I mean, poet laureate, he’s got to have something going for him.”

“Pah. You lost your heart to iambic pentameter- you don’t even see anything that doesn’t have a metrical system. Why bother?”
“I asked the professor, and he said I had to change it. It’s just the one paper.”

“It’s just your brain! If you don’t want to have to write about something, you don’t have to. See what I’m writing about?” Rachel gestured broadly at the tv. “I spent the whole semester writing about what the professor liked. This is my last chance to do what I want, so I’m going for it. Don’t just write about a modern poet just because of the grade. You had that gay idea first, and if you hadn’t gotten sick, you’d have already have registered it before all the That Girls got into it. It’s your damned brain- you want to think about Shakespeare? Do it!”

Sharon sighed and then smiled. Rachel was kind of wonderfully impractical at times. “Intellectual purity will not save my scholarship if the professor sacks me, kiddo. You take the high road, and I’ll take the low road, and I’ll get to grad school afore ye, for me and Bill’s gay love will often meet again on the muddy muddy banks of English Lit.”

Rachel gaped in awe at Sharon for a moment.

“… How long had you been storing that up?”

“Honestly? I’ve been doing variations on that sucker since high school.”

“Sharon. I says this with love: you are such a fucking geek.”

“Thanks, dearie. You too.”

So, I'm on my way home, in about 40 minutes or so. Right now, I would be eating breakfast only I have no food. Hopefully something will be open at either the train station or at the airport for me to eat.

Oh, and Spain won the Euro Football championship. This lead to a lot of happiness and joy late into the night and early morning, in which I could not partake for reasons of a) not being a Spaniard, and b) not giving a damn.

However, if I thought the Austria-Germany game was tense, oh, sweet cheese, how much worse was the German-Spain demonstrations yesterday. Roving bands of people wearing German colors would burst into song whenever they saw people wearing the Spanish flag. There were clear divisions.

I am really happy that I have not read Harry Potter. Dropping out of that massive societal brouhaha gave me practice for dropping out of this one.

I am underslept.

First of all: I really love this song, though it confuses me. It kind makes me want to dance and gyrate and do other random happy things.

Second: I am packed! Or, at least, I am almost totally and completely packed and I have only a few more things to do, which are mostly things that have to be done at the last second, such as throwing out my few last remnants of food and taking my shampoo from the shower. But the room looks as naked and spotless as it was when I entered. It's a little weird but nice.

Third: I am not feeling any particular nostalgia about leaving Vienna. It was a great experience, my German is greatly improved, I made my vow to someday live in Berlin, but it was a thing that I was always planning as temporary and I don't mind it staying that way. Getting back to the suburbs does not fill me with overwhelming glee, but it does come with my family and stuff like that. I am going to see a lot of my friends this summer- making a point of it.

Fourth: I have no idea what to write about for today. Apparently my story yesterday freaked my mother out, but..., well, she's slightly prone to that with regard to certain issues, like her children.

Fifth: Spain and Germany are playing in the Euro Soccer Championship, which means the city is now full of happy, loud people on whom I can eavesdrop. I blame the Germans for the fact that my two-step flight from Vienna to London to Boston got changed to a three step flight to Hanover then London to Boston. The Germans will be fleeing the city after the game, I suppose. Though I don't know how many will be on my flight- it's kind of early for them, really. I suppose they will be out partying late.

I am also presuming that the Austrians are divided between rooting for the Germans (shared language, cultural points, huge inferiority complex though) versus the Spanish (who are not German. That might very well be enough for some Austrians.)

Beanie out.

Day 4.
There were reasons why people had started calling Eva “Boss,” all of which came before her taking over as the musical director of the Nosferatu. All of them were now on display as she addressed the assembled gaggle of singers.

“Ladies, first I want to thank y’all so much for all the work you’ve done that’s gotten us here tonight.” Eva was tall, even for a Chinese women, and as a trained singer her voice carried without strain. As usual, her pre-show nerves had dissolved once the task lay before her. Veteran captains under fire on the high seas had something of the same psychotic poise about them. “I am incredibly proud of this group and what we’ve done this year, and y’all have been a pleasure to work with. This is out last performance for this semester and for some of us, including myself, Bruiser, Killer and Sax, this is our last performance with the Nosferatu ever. Let’s make this worth it. We are ready for this. I want you to go out there and sing the house down, because you are that good, and because this, of all audiences, is going to appreciate what you can do. You ladies rock like nobody’s fucking business when you put your minds to it, so I want to see everyone telling all the competition to fuck off and get in line, because this. Is. Our. Year. Now let’s go!”
***
“That was amazing- really great performance.” Jamilla did not notice when the guy in the tux had snuck up next to her until he started to talk to her. He didn’t bother to introduce himself, and combined with his nigglingly familiar good looks, this seemed to suggest that she should already know him from somewhere. Thanking him seemed safe enough.
“They called you Bill Shakespeare?”

“Jill Shakespeare. I do some theater on the side and I’m always the MC at shows. It’s kind of a thing.”

“Ah, that would explain it. Do all the nicknames have a point? I mean, I can understand one or two people, but you all seem to have one. Some kind of initiation thing?”

“It’s kind of a thing in general at the college… Some of us joined already using one, and other people just kind of picked them up after they joined. Einstein gave out a lot of them. But not everyone has a nickname. Er.” Jamilla caught herself. “Well, last year Jessie didn’t have one.”

“Do they all have a story?”

“Eh, more or less. Evageline is Boss because she’s just… a boss. She’s always got a plan, ya know? She used to clash with the last president a lot because of it, but once she got voted President herself she’s been really good and fair about it. Lesse… Well, Genevive is Legs for obvious reasons. The three Sarah’s got their nicknames first, cause we just needed to tell them apart. Einstein (that’s the Latina Sara-with-no-H) got hers cause she’s majoring in physics and she’s just kind of brilliant. Sarah M, the shorter black girl over… there! we called ‘the Lady’-"

“Lemme guess,” he broke in, “Lady Sings the Blues?”

“Nah, she ran the Renaissance Fair at the college in the fall three years running. Everyone in that group called her Lady Sarah, so we just sort of picked it up.

“Now, the last Sarah, the tall black girl, didn’t actually have a real nickname until she started dating Bruiser. Er, that’s Gina. She was kind of screwed up when she got into college- her mom had just died that summer and she’s from California so she couldn’t go home… she ended up getting into a lot of fights. She had a black eye when she auditioned for the group. So we called her Bruiser, and when Sarah S started to date her, she needed some kind of badass nickname. So, Killer. Aw, look, she’s getting Bruiser a Shirley Temple. They’re so cute. Killer really helped straighten Bruiser out. Er. So to speak.”

“They just got married?”

“Yup. They’ve been engaged a while, actually. They couldn’t get married in Massachusetts cause Bruiser isn’t a resident, so they got married here. We were all at the wedding. Ruski was the maid of honor.”

“Wait, which one is the Russian?”

“Oh, um… There! She’s over at the bar too- see the girl with the short little dreads? That’s her. She’s a Russian area studies major, not actually Russian. Her real name’s Margaritte.”

“And who’s the girl next to her?”

“That’s Rocky. I have no idea why she’s called that. Her real name’s Kevina, she really hates it, so she just always introduced herself as Rocky. I wouldn’t even know her real name if it wasn’t part of her school email address.”

“Ok, I think that just leaves ‘Spider-man’ and ‘the Boy’ to explain. Presuming that ‘Sax’ is called that for playing sax?”

“Almost. You ever see Some Like It Hot? Tony Curtis has to cross dress as girl named Josephine who plays sax in an all girl band? Well, our Sax’s real name is Josephine. Now, Spider-Man is really Latifah. She pulled this stunt her freshman year where she hung a giant net filled with water balloons between a couple of buildings on campus. But to get the net up there, she had to climb up and down the outside of both buildings with the net in one hand and a roll of duct tape in her mouth, and then carry up the water balloons in buckets. It was amazing. They still tell the newbies about it every year. So, anyway, good climber, Spider-Man. She tried to get them to change it to Spider-Girl, cause she liked that comic better, but it never stuck.

“Oh, and Lolita is not actually a Lolita. She’s Jane, really, but she always ends up dating these really old and sketchy guys. And she’s so tiny, you know? It’s a little… Nabokov.”

“Okaaay.” He stared across the room at Courtney and looked to be filing that information away. Jamilla began looking for an escape. “But what about ‘The Boy’?”

“She’s tiny and her last name is Mann. I think that explains itself. Oh, look, Boss is waving to me, I’ll just go say hi, real nice meeting you, thank you so much for coming to see the show, have a nice evening.” She made her escape, leaving the familiar looking name to puzzle out her sudden disappearance. She looked back to see him sauntering over to Lolita.

Day 3

Genevieve squealed. “Oh, my god. Is that George Clooney?”
The rest of the group perked up immediately. A couple even moved towards the curtain to try and find him in the crowd.

“I’m going to die.” groaned Evangeline and promptly sat down. Only the timely intervention of two of her fellow singers saved her from landing on the floor. Gina plucked The Fedora, symbol of Evangaline’s leadership as musical director of the Nosferatu, off Eva's head and carefully placed it on the couch next to its owner. Against Eva’s red dress, her normally bronzed skin was blanched and sickly-looking. Sarah S, who’d also moved in to help guide Eva to a safe seat, went to fetch her a bottle of sparkling mineral water of some egregiously expensive variety provided by the misguided generosity of the sponsors and alumnae of the A Capella Performing Arts Council.

Eva, with her head between her knees, looked slightly less pale on the expensive leather couch. It was one of three strewn tastefully about the ‘green area’- a pre-show prep area that was only enclosed on three sides and not quite a room. It was enough off-stage for getting in and out of clothes and make-up before you went on. For all its missing wall, it was still lush with mirrors and soft lighting and small trays of gourmet snack food. Not that anyone could stand to eat right now, but the thought was appreciated. Right now the mirrors just reflected back the group of eleven red-draped young women back and forth until it was they made up a mass greater than the crowd outside


Jamila’s head popped up at the minor commotion across the room, but it was clearly being handled, so she ignored it. She was going over her notes again aloud.


“Legs, then Bruiser and Killer.. no! Start with the group’s name, then you, then the Boss, Legs, Lady, Einstein, Rocky, Sax, Lolita, the Russian, Spider-Man and the Boy-then get to Killer and Bruiser and talk about how they’re skipping their honeymoon to be here. Okay, that’s everyone, then the first song…” Jamila’s muttering decreased in volume as she started to worry her the hem of her sheer crimson skirt with her fingernails. It was going to be half hour slot on an a capella themed concert for Hollywood celebrities and Jamilla was doing the introductions-anxiety radiated off her
in waves. Someone put a hand on her shoulder and she jerked.


“Oh, Latifah. Fuck, you scared me.” Latifah gave Jamilla a look that told her Latifah’s opinion of that kind of language, and disengaged Jamilla’s hands from the dress. Jamilla found herself scooped up into a high powered everything-will-be-fine, pre-show megahug that ended up with
her earring stabbing Latifah’s cleavage.

“Ow!”
“Sorry!”
“It’s cool- I have boobs of steel, it’s one of my superpowers.” Latifah mocked a grave expression. “I just wanted to tell you, that you are going to do great tonight. So you can just chill, Jill Shakespeare. You’ll do fine.”
“Thanks, Spidey.”
“No prob. And really, you’ll be fine.”


A new voice broke in. The stage manager shrieked: “Two minutes, ladies!”
“Thank you, Two minutes!” chorused the closest girls, and the call was repeated until everyone in the way back had heard and thanked the wave before them. The stage manager gave them a look that said they were all crazy.


“All right then!” Evangeline strode to the front of the room, The Fedora on her brow and a challenging look in her eyes. “Let’s do this!” It was clear to everyone there that the Boss was back in form.

Watched Beowulf last night. I think that they had to push the visual aspect of the movie so much because the storyline is just pretty weak. As interpretations go, it's kind of what I would expect- there's been a greater push to show Grendel as some sort of victim in literature these days, which is perhaps just as bad a stereotype as the stuff that was originally written about him. There was some ludicrous addition of sex and magic to give credence to the amount of visual effects being used. The cyclical nature of the whole story was kind of cool, but there was just not enough plot going on. And for some reason, Beowulf's spine always seems to be flexing forward under the weight of his massive pectorals.

There were some fun points: the drinking songs of the Geats and Danes were impressively foul-mouthed, and Wiglaf's ride over the burning bridge would have been massively beautiful in any other film.

The altered nature of the shots is kind of... underwhelming when I think too much about it. Yes, they were glorious and perfectly lined up, but they were constructed. There was no skill in working with the scene to make the shot happen in a real situation: it was all put together later and then they could pick and choose. In such a situation, even a bad film maker could really get into the process and make a movie that takes your breath away.

I kind of hope the genre stops. It worked for Sin City, it worked sort of for Beowulf, but there was no point for it to even exist in Beowulf. There was just nothing going on that needed it.

Roomie watch 2008: I was subjected to yet another 3 am heart to heart between Roomie and on/off boyfriend, in which they both reiterated points from every previous conversation on the subject of their relationship that I have ever been been forced to overhear. They tend to get carried out at full volume, too. It's making me both annoyed and slightly jealous. I want sleep! I want a designated snuggle person!

Gah. Screw this. I am off to take my test.

Day 2

Fountain pens were one of those things you just don’t have to deal with these days. Was it any wonder he wouldn’t know there was such a damned fuss about the stupid things? Apparently you have to buy one for five bucks (and five bucks for a stinking pen was enough to make Clive want to smack the stupid grins off the salesgirl’s face), but then you have buy freaking innards for the damned thing to make it work. And the innards have to be same brand, or they don’t work. Ballpoints never pulled this shit on you, thought Clive.

But when the boss asked him for a pen one night at the club and Clive handed him a skinny blue Bic, the boss had got this look on his face: disappointment. But he’d taken the pen anyway and scribbled the note out and handed it back.

“You really gotta get yourself something better’n that, Clive.”
“What, the pen? What’s wrong with it?”
“You look like some kind of kid that can’t keep track of things. You’re making enough money- what are you doing carrying a crappy piece of plastic like that? Get yourself a good fountain pen ‘r something.”

It was hardly the first time that Clive had had to adapt to the boss’ whims. You wanted to work with Hammerhead, you had to work with his theme. Luckily that didn’t mean some crappy schtick like extra arms or those fucked up SS suits like the Red Skull stuck his guys in- with Hammerhead you just had to look like a gangster. All you had to do was wear a suit, and that didn’t seem so hard to Clive. At least at first. Suit, shirt, tie: not too much to deal with, really.

But the boss noticed all these little details. It was never just a matter of putting on a tie and breaking some knees. The suit and vest had to be tailored, the shirt had to be pressed, the socks had to match the suit, the tie had to be silk and not too loud, and the handkerchief in the front pocket had to be linen, white and folded. Monogrammed cufflinks, something Clive would never have bothered with before, had to be hunted down every morning and put to use. Rings were apparently, a matter of taste, but only if they could fit under brass knuckles: anything too big had to come off. The boss wore knuckledusters like he carried a handkerchief- he might need it, he might not, but the outfit was incomplete without them.

Figuring all that out had taken a couple months, and the look still hadn’t come together until Clive finally gave in and put in a standing order with a local florist for a boutonnière. The boss had finally smiled at him when he came into the club that evening, and told Clive that he looked like a man going places. “As long as you keep sticking to the dark colored shirts, I mean,” he’d added. “Blood stains.”

So Clive thought he was looking fine and working his way up the ranks, but every now and then the boss would pull something crazy like this out. Still, he figured, it couldn’t be that hard to please the man on this. It was just a stupid pen.

“You’re just a fucking stupid pen!” Clive could not get the damned ink cartridge into the damned end of the pen- cleaning a gun wasn’t fiddley enough, now he had to do this whenever he wanted to write a check, too?

Something gave under this fingers and the cartridge slid home. Clive tried to screw the barrel back on before something else could go wrong, but then he saw the ink all over his hand and the rapidly spreading black puddle under his right cuff- the cartridge hadn’t fit, it had just exploded.

The boss was the boss and order were orders but Clive was done with the fountain pen. With a growing mix of frustration and annoyance finally reaching its zenith, Clive dumped the pen and the mostly full box of ink cartridges into the trash bin by his now blackened desk. He stripped out of his ruined shirt, swore, and then used the fabric to mop up the puddle of ink before it stained the desk. The soppy mess joined the pen and cartridges with violent squishing sound. Clive damned the whole exercise to hell. Ballpoints worked fast and they didn’t cost you a shirt before you could write a word.

Clive went to bed and dreamed of ruined silk.

A couple of days passed. Clive thought about the boss’ fountain pen. The boss didn’t forget his things often, and Clive had a chance to see that pen every day for a long while. It was a thick old thing of black enamel with a thin band of gold around the middle. The gold was scratched from rubbing against the boss’ knuckledusters, but even allowing for rough use, the pen looked ancient. The boss left it on the table one night to greet some old friends and, curious, Clive picked it up. There was an inscription he hadn’t noticed under all the scars on the surface.

Capone, it read.

Clive clutched at the pen convulsively. Then, slowly and reverently, he put it down back where the boss had left it. He decided to go out and buy himself a new fountain pen.

I got hailed on. It was refreshing, yet painful. Three thumbs up.

And I have done the first of my little 500+ word challenges. It kind of got away from me, but it's there, which is all I'm asking for the moment. Comments and thoughts would be wonderful.

I mailed the first of my two boxes today- it was the really large one, that I thought perhaps was going to be too large...but no. It was fine, and I will send out the box o' books later this week, after I close my banking account and get on with my work.

I have discovered that a large number of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes that I know and love are all sequential reruns. I'm not sure if that's because I've seen them so often with Maddy on tape, or if I just happened to catch a lot of them on the sci fi channel. It's the kind of show that makes me wish I watched more tv: it's the perfect addition to a Saturday morning with a friend, but it's not something that I would really sit down and just watch by myself. The movies are really, really awful.