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.