Catherine

Funny Stuff

Colin. Reading Michael McClure. With a British accent. Actually I highly doubt that the accent was anywhere near British, probably bordering on that of an insane elderly person from Nantucket. Either way, it was weird, man. Plus he read the poems while standing atop a crypt before a blue ridge of mountains that slightly resembled a coming tsunami.

Anyways, it was mildly entertaining.

In the words of McClure himself, “Ngnngngngnan”

Daisies and Satchels

Yep, that's NamQ, hugging a printer, with a daisy clutched in his hand. A few moments prior to the taking of this picture, he tried on a variety of girls' purses, finally deciding that Alex's "satchel" was his favorite. Things get very silly late at night.

Workshop

Funny things stick with you for days, but to explain them isn't funny.
A workshop with Penne, Abby, Alice and Louie can sound pretty crazy. Especially when your stories consist of throwing cats, cutting people apart, a girl jumping off a building and a girl in an all-boy's school. There were many jokes thrown around and many times where we got totally side-tracked.
"--lift the cat and twirl it around your head, THROWING it out the door. Fortunately the door was open. Or else it's be like MROW! THUD."

Rules

Louie Land!

Bella Signore

Raw Talent

The funniest thing I saw today was definitely Tom Bailey. While the small group workshop, Llamas in Hats, and watching Doctor Who with Abby came close, the reading was the hands down winner. While I really can't choose one comment in particular, I'd probably say the funniest were either the various dead baby jokes. His remark about NYC kids and how they take the subway of all things also made me crack up, just because I am an NYC kid, and the subway is my only method of transportation.

LLAMAS WITH HATS

I have to say, the funniest thing I saw today was the llamas with hats series. Whoever made them is a genius. The fact that one of the llamas is homicidal, with what appears to be a sleeping cap on his head, is just the icing on the cake. It's so much fun to imitate and my friends and I can't help but burst out laughing whenever it's mentioned, or the name Carl at least.

I don't know: Should Cartman or Carl be my new hero?
(But meeeeeehm!)

110

This room has eight corners, two of them inverse. The yellow cream of the ceiling and floor tiles contrast strangely with the soft sea green of the walls, and the blues of the beds seem to emphasize this difference even more. There are two closets, the doors spaced about a foot apart, each seeming like an identical twin of the other. However, this isn’t true because the one on the left is missing two round brass dots, dots that the one on the right seems to wear with pride. The paint is chipped in places, escaping notice for the most part because the chips are below eye level, a place that no one ever seems to look. It stays a crisp sixty-five degrees for the most part, and sunlight pours in through the open blinds.

Whoever designed this room didn’t do a very nice job. There are four power outlets on each side, but on the left side of the room, the power outlets are located on the wall directly underneath the bed. On the right, they are next to the desk, providing easy access for whoever happens to stay on that side.

The desks themselves are nothing fancy. Just like everything else in the room, they seem to be mirror images of the other. In fact, the only thing that isn’t symmetrical is the shape of the room. Everything exists in pairs. The wood of the desks has that sort of honey-brown colour and plastic texture that is similar to furniture found at schools and other public buildings. The chairs are wooden as well, with a slightly curved back and four legs that squeal and scrape against the floor when pushed backwards. The desks are located at the foot of the beds, simple frames each equipped with a blue mattress that sticks to the skin when touched. Their redeeming quality is that they are high enough off the ground to crawl underneath, without having to do that weird sort of shimmy associated with earthworms and the army.

The dressers, each with six drawers, are located behind the door to the room. They are made of the same wood repeated everywhere else, and are about three quarters the height of the doors. The doors are painted white, further adding colour confusion to the room. It was probably painted green because green is a soothing colour, but if so, more care should have been taken with the rest of it. The yellow white of the floors is an anxious colour, causing nervousness. The deep blue of the mattress is mysterious, and when all the colours are mixed with the honey brown, chaos forms in the human mind because nothing complements the others. However, I doubt that the first thing on the mind of anyone who designed this room was aesthetics, because it's not like anyone is going to live in the same room for a long period of their life

The Racks of 210

The room has tan tile flooring and a single, circular light in the middle of the ceiling. There are three doors all on the same greenish wall lined with brown. Two of them lead to closets that have white racks (oh yeah ;) in them. the other door leads out into the mini-hallway. A window sits opposite the doors. It allows a quiet view of the neighboring dorms. Terrific for spying if you're into that sort of thing. Underneath the window is a white heater.
Two beds lay on each side of the spying window. Both have blue covers. At the foot of each bed is a desk that has an opening for a chair and drawers for supplies. Along the left wall (facing the window) are two dressers to put clothing and other assorted items into. Lastly, there are two chairs sitting in the front of each desk.

One One One

                Shoving through the too heavy door, a small kitchen and sitting room emerge. A tiny round table sits in an alcove to the left, perfect for eating breakfast, although we will never use it. Then there are chairs and loveseat couch, maroon and scrambled egg yellow. They are upholstered with material but have a wooden frame and arms. The carpet is short and stiff, as though it could poke right through the soles of a thin pair of shoes. A kitchen to the right houses a microwave and mini fridge, with an ice tray that stay unfilled. Even further to the right is a shower and bathroom, with an automatic toilet that flushes too loud and too suddenly. Then ahead, three doors are presented.

                The center-most, with a room number that could please even the most obsessive compulsive tendencies, Room 111 should feel homey and safe. And while it does, with locked windows and a thick door, it is no place like home. At first it seems lucky to have gotten a single room, and the opportunity to get away in case one desires it. A Harry Potter snuggie lays on the bed, a beach towel in a pillow case replacing a forgotten head rest. The desk is scattered with dirty clothes that haven’t yet found their way into the laundry bag. Along with the tank tops and socks, interspersed books rest on the particleboard.  Looking for Alaska, Paper Towns, Harry Potter. It feels more at home. Toiletries are splayed across the top of the dresser, the inside of the top drawer, the surface of a desk covered in their damp Ziploc bagggies.

                All the belongings in the room fit into a duffel bag and backpack, where many of them remain, not willing to be unpacked when they will inevitably have to be shoved catawampus into their casings again on Saturday. It now seems easy to become comfortable here, but it is to be prevented. Caring hurts, it means missing this place.

                I already know that I will.

White Walls

White walls, linoleum floors, slick mattresses. Room number two-hundred and ten. You enter through the front door; it’s a heavy slab of wood on a set of well-oiled hinges. On your left is a lounge, a simple set of couches and a thermostat, with ample room for a television set, though there is none. On your right is a kitchen counter with four wooden bar-stools, an unplugged microwave and a fridge whose mechanical hum is quieter than the scratching of pencils against paper. If you continue to the right, you come across the bathroom, a set of two sinks and two doors, one to the shower, one to the toilet.

There are three large doorways before you, at the back wall. Two doors lead to two identical single rooms, the third is a double. There is a dresser in each, along with a bed and a desk. Each room holds its own impersonal touch, waiting to be adorned with posters and pictures and cork-boards, though only for a semester. Then its inhabitants will leave it, as they always do.

The lights flicker on and off at the motion of a hand, an accommodation meant either to preserve energy or to alert your roommates of your entrance. You walk to the back left corner of the room, to the small, round table and its four accompanying chairs. Another thermostat sits behind you, perhaps set to high, but it doesn’t matter- you’re not the one paying the electricity bill. You are a renter, a temporary resident, an abandoner. You will leave one day, and the dorm will be impersonal once more, awaiting posters and pictures and cork-boards.

Suite 201

Rooms 201, 202, and 203 are at the beginning of the hall on the 2nd floor of Laurel. The door is thick, heavy, wood, the color of cardboard, and the long, curving knob is a smooth cool gold. This door cannot be locked, and opens onto the living room.

The living room floor is carpeted in interwoven strands of green, red, and yellow, and dotted with two chairs, a couch, and two small tables, each about two feet square. The couch cover is the deep blue of the sky just after sunset on a summer night, the chair covers pale yellow embroidered with tan. Both are backed with tan wood that possesses and odd plastic sheen. The tables, too, have a clear lacquer over the pale brown grain. One table sits between the chairs, empty; the other is on the left side of the couch, topped with an unused, crisply folded pink blanket, a bag of cheese-its, two Dove chocolates and a Dove wrapper. The whole configuration seems to be trying to invite conversation, but the couches in this room are mostly unused.

A low counter painted the same pale mint green as the walls separates the living room and kitchen, lined with three four-legged walnut stools with the same glaze as the table. The fourth is upside down on the counter, pushed up far next to the wall, sharing the countertop with a a red, heart-shaped box of chocolates, a crunched up white t-shirt, a bag of dark blue foil-wrapped Dove chocolates, and a pile of short stories riddled with pencil markings. The other side of the counter is embedded with drawers, flanking an empty hip-high white fridge. In the sideboard across from the counter are more drawings, all inviting the curious searcher to open them and find all, including the cupboards and shelves above them and the drawers in the counter, are empty. The floor of this kitchen area consists of white-yellow tiles, clean except for the large empty garbage can that almost blocks the entrance to the thin space between counter and sideboard. The square silver sink, sunk into the sideboard, spews slightly sulfuric water from the faucet and onto the unwary user. The microwave, on a shelf above the sideboard, is just as unused as the fridge and drawers. An unidentified bottle of pills and a pair of large round earrings with the pattern of flowers share the rest of the sideboard.

The whitish-yellow tiles of the bathroom are scattered with a small trash can, a pile of black material that seems to be a t-shirt, and a lightly dirty white towel shoved half under the sink. Various cosmetics and shampoos perch on the countertop, sharing the space with a necklace and brush. There are two mirrors that pop out when pushed, revealing shelves holding yet more cosmetics and makeup.

Five doors are set at various intervals, a few shades darker than the pale gray-green walls. One leads to a tiled shower; another to a tiled bathroom. The one on the farthest right of the living room is always opened, empty and un-lived in, the bed stripped. The desk and wardrobe, made of a pretty walnut wood, remain empty. The last two doors are shut and locked.

One of them is mine.

Suite 311 and neighbors

When I first entered my suite, I was shocked. I didn't expect it to be big. I was actually expecting a two person room, and they'd be scattered down the hall.
Clearly, that's not the case. It was wide open and rather barren (to be honest, it still is pretty barren. We haven't left out much stuff).
But the lighting was cool, with its motion sensors and all :D
Then I entered my room; rather followed my mom as she excitedly burst through the door.
I'm not sure whether to say I am lucky or not that I got a single, while my other two roommates shared the double.
Anyway, I keep my room clean and organized, so it kinda looks just like when I first got here. Except I put the contents of my suitcase in the drawers.
I thought the stools were cool and how there was a kitchen. It made the room feel so much more than just a dorm. I was actually laughing when I saw there was a microwave and a fridge.
Both are essentially empty, although I think there may be an apple in the fridge.
Anyways, I soon learned that the common area outside rooms became a hot spot for people to hang out (and play Apples to Apples!)
Thus far, I am enjoying dorm life, per se although I am definitely not ready to move here permanently.

Home for the Week

The 104, 105, 106 suite is at the end of the hall of the Laurel Building. Bright colored tiles mingling with pale ones making up the floor leading to the wooden door. A turn of the wooden handle allows access to the suite, even without a key. Entering, one crosses the line that separates the cool tiled hall from the dark, bare carpet of the suite interior. To the right a blue-grey counter juts from the wall and is lined with stiff wooden stools that have dips in the seats from constant use. Beyond the counter top is a miniature kitchen complete with wood cabinets, a shining metal sink, and a fridge, which is half hidden underneath the edge of the counter.
On the other side of the room across from the kitchen there is a large, unnaturally open sitting room. A couch with dark, sea blue seat cushions and a tan wood frame sits against one wall along with a wood side table that has an odd plastic look and feel. Along the opposite wall there are two chairs of the same construction and material as the couch, but these seats are a simple tan. A slightly larger table perfectly matching the side table near the couch sits in the space between the chairs. The floor separating the furniture against opposite walls is strangely empty and leaves a chasm between the seats.
Passing the gigantic counter top and the small space beyond it for the kitchen, the floor abruptly turns to tile. Around the corner of the kitchen wall there is a smooth grey counter top with two identical sinks set in and twin wood framed mirrors hanging from the wall, one in front of each. There are two think doors in this small tiled area. The one in the corner leads to a large bathroom while the one next to it gives access to a shower. The white porcelain looking walls are shielded from view by a plastic curtain hanging from a metal pole that spans the room from one wall to the other. A single, lonely metal hook sticks out of the wall for anyone using the shower to hang their clothes or towel on.
Turning left from the door to the shower there is immediately an opening leading to the double room of the suite. It is larger than the other two bedrooms because in here two beds, two desks, and two dressers all have to fit. However, even with all this furniture the space still feels open. Back out to the carpeted main room. There is another door directly off the end of the counter top. It requires a key- just like the other three- and gives access to a single room. The dark space holds a desk and dresser identical to the ones in the double room. The wood is smooth and has a synthetic texture to it. The drawer unit sits in the corner with its back against the wall with the window centered in it. Though the window is large, the four panes each have a set of binds inside of them that is controlled with a small switch in the molding. These can never be raised all the way so when looking out the window one's view is always obscured. Against the wall the dresser's corner is in there is a desk and chair that are so barren they always look pointless ans unused. Next to the desk there is a closet with a heavy door complete with a metal handle. It reminds one of a prison door in a way. It is as if the clothes and shoes inside are dangerous criminals who will try to escape their confines. The bed is shoved up alongside the wall so that the head is straight against the wall with the windows. The bed's mattress is sheathed in a plastic covering- like the ones seen in portable cribs. However, the wooded structure raises the bed unusually high off the ground so that there is plenty of open space underneath the crisp sheets hang down off the mattress and flutter is the window is opened. The blanket is large, pale, and feels woolly to the touch. The single room next to this one is a spitting image and the floors of all three bedrooms are made up of the same pale tiles of the hall.
The rooms of the suite may have an unnatural air to them, but it is still home for the week.

A Room with Four

Room 106. The end of the first floor hallway is a pretty long walk from the front doors of Laurel Hall.
A wooden oak-looking door blocks the way between the tile and the carpeting of the suite. A mottled brown carpet which is reminiscent of beef stew scratches at bare feet if someone is brave enough to walk on it with bare feet. The tile in the kitchen is a grey color to me, but others say it's a light tan or a cream, with an outer border of a dull green.
The toilet room and shower is a grey tile as well, but I've never asked what color it actually is. It doesn't exactly matter to me.
The bedrooms are tiled as well, an affect I find to feel like a mental institution (and not the good kind [ie. a college]). It makes me feel comfortable...and yet not. I tend not to touch the cold tiles with my bare feet unless they were really hot after a day of calisthenics. I feel out of place in the lonely bed, but I make due. The other rooms are in similar styles, but each blanket and pillow differ in color and shape. The smells of others linger in the air, making my stomach turn. It's comforting to know I'm not alone.
There are other rooms on the floor, all having different light colors. I can't see the difference, but each room feels different. I feel like I belong in mine.

aphorism (n.)

-the shiny and repulsive boil left by a small insect with a powerful itchy poison

Anacronym,

noun

1.) 1.) A snail’s ascent into maturity, often associated with mollusks and other shelled animals.

2.) 2.) The reddening of the abdominal region directly following a “belly-flop” (see belly-flop, page 234)

3.) 3.) A type of fish whose brain is attached to its tail.