Please, Someone Get Me Out of Here

I had self-imposed a ban on blogging until I got all those stupid pictures up. I didn't realize how INCREDIBLY, MIND-NUMBINGLY IRRITATING it is to do anything on dialup. I hate dialup. Hate dialup. So for now there are no pictures. Sorry.

It's not like I really have anything interesting to say, anyway. East Hellhole has, as is its wont, plunged me into a state of simultaneous boredom, lethargy, and (relative) obesity. It is also depriving me of my will to live. The only things that keep me going are Harry Potter and random, unexpected encounters with people with whom I went to high school. They're funny. According to sources, all the popular girls have ballooned out. This makes me happy in a very mean, vindictive, and wrong way. Bad Allison. Bad. Unfortunately, I am incapable of feeling compassion for those who have abused me. Jesus I am not.

Jerry Orbach died, and that makes me sad. We will not, of course, talk about the 120,000 people who died whose names I do not know. As a typical specimen of the self-absorbed-I'm-moving-to-Canada generation currently coming into power, I find it emotionally cheaper to withdraw and forget. Naturally superior 40-somethings, remember the Vietnam protests and your tear gas scars (emotional, are they?); lament away.

I will never get into grad school.

I want to leave this place now.

Germanic countries posts will come as soon as Jorge gets back from vacation and sends me photos.

Honest.

I swear.

Happy Christmas to All!

I would like to extend my holiday greetings to each of you and remind you of a group that needs our special support during this and every festive season:

The vegans.

Yes, the vegans, whose annual Tofurky can be but cold solace between late November and early January. The vegans, who are forced to bring their own seaweed-containing repast to neighbors' parties. The vegans, whose continual scoffing at the baser instincts of their omnivorous friends serve only to accentuate and heighten the rich, alienating smells wafting from the kitchen.

Not for the faint of heart is holiday veganism. This is no fairweather diet; it is not the polloovolactovegetarian escapism of half-hearted activists, faux friends of livestock. To miff mashed potatoes, snub stuffing, yawn at yams: these are the marks of a true pioneer of socioculinary egalitarianism.

Adopt a vegan this year, my friends. Support their brave stand. Invite them over for dinner and, when the pumpkin pie and Cool Whip are being served, present to them their lot: a 100% animal-free Fruit Leather. It is the least you can do.

***

Right. Now that that silliness is over, here are some pictures.


Kori and Issa somewhere in Spain being irresistably cute.


And then they gave us burning alcohol to drink!...and I don't know what happened after, but when I woke up I was in Jersey with a finger on a chain around my neck.


Toshio: everyone else looks at a cliff. He does backflips on it.


Do you see this? Do you SEE this? This is Galicia. Why did you make me come back? Why? Why? I hate you all.


The 1st century AD Roman 100%-concrete-free-as-in-nothing-holding-the-blocks-together aqueduct in Segovia. Mad props to Tom for this awesome picture.

PS. Eventually I will fix the size on these, but for now I kind of like them in their original size. So there. Also eventually, place pictures will be insterted into their respective blog entries. But that comes next week when it's not 1:42am Christmas morning.

Short Conversation with Short Brother

Allison:...so you see, I am an adult and can do anything I want.
James: You're not an adult, you're a teenager.
Allison: I'm an adult.
James: How old are you?
Allison: Twenty.
James: Oh.
*extended pause*
James: Twenty. Wow. That's really old. You must be married.

Deep Thoughts by Allison Clarke

It's Christmas. Apparently, Christmas /= comments. Hrrrrm.

So I've been wondering lately if, its initial purpose concluded (exhausted? depleted? can you deplete a time period?), I should keep writing in this blog. I'm not sure. I had a blog before, but the thing is that when I'm at school my life inevitably becomes routine (though good routine), and routine blogging is inevitably boring. (I say that like I'm not already boring. I am, I know! but I was hoping a change of locale might force in some wit/intelligence against my will.) Plus, half the reason I have a blog is to communicate with people, and now I'm going to be, you know. Around.

I might start a gradual phasing-out (keeping in mind that I still owe ridiculous amounts of boring, laundry-list-type Germany posts) wherein I only blog if I have something fun to say. At that rate, I should be done by next week or so. Ahahaha.

Allison Is Playing With Technology and The World Is Going to End

Hello!

I'm bored. I've been sitting in the same room all day playing Chrono Trigger. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with Chrono Trigger, it's just that now my butt sorta hurts.

Anyway, I'm bored, and the only logical solution to my boredom is to dig through Mom's documents on her computer. Haha! I kid. Just the pictures. And, with a little bit of motivation and 20 frantic minutes searching the OIT website ("ok, but what do you DO once you've downloaded SSH?"), I present to you the five pictures I liked out of innumerable gigs of Mother-Picture-Hard-Drive-Space, irregularly sized (sorry, no Photoshop). I have high standards.

Pic number one:

Me and The Boo before freshman homecoming. Two fundamentals are learned from this picture: 1. the only pictures Allison looks good in are the ones she doesn't know are being taken and is not looking at and 2. the only things bigger than my nose are my feet. Look at those feet!

Pic number two:

The Boo. Just scream "awwww!". You know you want to.

Pic number three:

My 18th birthday party. Kelly House and James Giacalone: quite possibly the two most adorable beings on all the planet.

Pic number four:

Still my party. Gotta love the look on his face.

Pic number five:

I don't know what I was opening, but it'd better have been good. God, I look horrible both with AND without bangs.

Thank you for indulging in my flight of self-...umm, indulgence. I'm gonna go press "publish post" now and see how badly this formats.

*high-pitched, girlish squeal*

Now With More Sadism!

I find it interesting that I am unable to have either a completely positive or completely negative travel experience. Things will trend either one way or another all day, but then at the end something will happen which is totally off from the pattern. It's like Murphy's Law, but crueler: anything that can go wrong will, but not until we get your hopes up about it.

The preceding is my incoherent attempt to give some sort of reasoning for the airplane experience I had Friday.

It started out bad, but not too bad. I had to take my stuff to the airport on the Metro, and man, those bags were heavy. Heavy heavy. So heavy, in fact, that my back and shoulders still hurt from wrestling with them. Heavy. But I got from my house to Barajas in an hour, which isn't bad if you consider that it took me 10 minutes to walk the three blocks from my house to the station (heavy). I was still running early. It was cool.

The airport was inundated with American coeds waxing poetic about peanut butter, dryers and fabric softener, and their boyfriends. That was bad, too, because they were doing it in English. There was so much English, in fact, that the Delta people took one look at my passport and didn't even attempt to speak to me in Spanish. I was pissed. My last shot at Spanish practice wasted.

But then I got up to the ticket counter and gave the guy my stats. He typed my name into the terminal and looked up at me suspiciously.

"Oh, here we go," I thought.

"You're flying tourist class?"

"Well, yeah, of course," I said, very confused.

He started to grin. "No you're not. You're in 3A, business class."

"You guys better not have lost my reserv-waitwhat? Business class?"

"It looks like your father logged on and upgraded your seat."

"Oh! Oh, wow! Wo-I don't have to pay for it, do I?"

"It's paid for with frequent flyer miles." He grinned at me again. "You have a good father, huh?"

I limited myself to smiling and saying "I have a very good father," mostly because I figured "I have a father who oscillates between incredible acts of kindness and making me wonder if he was brought up in a barn" was a little too indepth for the Delta ticket counter guy. Just, like, my opinion, man.

Have you ever paid $200 for a one hour flight and wondered "Where the hell could all this extra money possibly be going"? I'll tell you where that money is going. It's going to business class. It's going to the Airport Elite Lounge - the one that has free food, drinks, coffee, pastries, and...what else...oh yes, A FREE OPEN BAR. It's going to the Barcalounger that I had for my seat (with electronic controls, no less), the china I ate my five-course-meal off of, and the 28395 bottles of water I drank. And let's not forget the bonus that the flight attendants get for acting subservient and, through their subservience, making me feel like an uncultured hick.

Oh wait, I AM an uncultured hick. Sorry, I'd forgotten.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that business class is ridiculous. Not necessarily good or bad ridiculous, but I will say that I think it made me a little more Marxist inside. So maybe that's bad ridiculous.

So we landed at JFK (nine hours later...auuuugh). Passport control was smooth, I was in the front of the line, got a good spot at the baggage carousel...wait, is our stuff coming down on two different carousels? and getting mixed up with the stuff from Santo Domingo?...wait...why do I only have one suitcase?...ok, these are clothes, clothes good...where's the bag with all the stuff I GOT for people?

Ahahaha. So, um, if you were expecting a Christmas present from me...umm, yeah. Blame Delta.

Excuse me, I have to log off so I can go scream at a "baggage handling representative" now*.

*I wouldn't really scream. I don't scream at service people - I know better. I work at a coffee shop. But I will give them the voice equivalent of puppydog eyes until they cough up all that Swiss chocolate I bought.

Allison's Schedule, 19-12-04

-wake up.
-play Final Fantasy Tactics.
-shower.
-breakfast.
-play Final Fantasy Tactics.
-picked up by Cam; go to Cam's house. At Cam's house:
--play DDR;
--play Final Fantasy X;
--eat popcorn and watch Family Guy;
--play more DDR.
-back to Allison's house.
-Bill comes over; three of us eat pizza and wings for dinner.
-out for coffee with Bill.
-Internet.
-play more Final Fantasy Tactics (*projected*).
-bed (*projected*).

Snow accumulation in past 24 hours: approx. 3 inches
Ambient temperature: approx. 0 degrees F (wind chill: -18 degrees F)
Projected overnight snowfall: approx. 3 inches

HOLY CRAP, I MUST HAVE DIED ON THAT PLANE.

Reasons to Turn Around and Go Straight Back

1. BOWFLEX COMMERCIALS.

Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight

I have a confession to make.

I've been contemplating writing this post for a couple of days now. You know, a general goodbye to Spain, ruminating upon all the things I've learned, reminiscing all the fun I've had, reminding Blogger that I still exist.

But
I
didn't
care.

"This might be the last time you walk down the Gran Via," I said to myself.

Myself shot back. "So what?"

"Might be the last time you ever have morcilla." "So what?"

"Might be the last time you ever see the Palacio Real." "So what?"

If it's to be the end of churros con chocolate, it's also the end of diesel fumes, constant construction, being the target of xenophobia and constant disorganization. It's the end of cheating Spanish schoolmates (not mine, others'), a ridiculously awful educational system, and outdated technology. It's the end of sharing an apartment. It's the end of stepping in dog pee every other night. The End.

This morning, I had an 8am, just like every Friday (oh man, it's the end of that too). I showed up because I had to turn in the (22pageahahahah) paper. I sat and took notes, realizing it was the last day of having Magdalena as a professor (anyone good enough to make me go to a Thursday/Friday 8am EVERY WEEK deserves a Nobel Prize). At 9, I got my stuff together and started getting up, but Conchi stopped me. (Conchi is my friend. She is also a nun. This is very cool.)

"Since it's your last day, we all...well, ok, all of us, not just all the people who showed up for class today - wanted to get you something so you would remember your time here."

Wrapped inside a plastic bag was a book. Not a book - THE book, the only book we were told to buy the entire time we were here and therefore the only book I kept bumming off people because I was too cheap to buy it. Spanish Art for Foreigners. The book.

I got teary.

There are no more "so what"s.

Oh, Spain, You're Funny When You're Stupid

I went into a special seminar class with the Spanish kiddos today. The professor showed up late, so we were all standing in the hall talking. I began to vent about the paper.

"...and now with footnotes it's 18 pages, but I don't know what to do about it!"

"18 pages? Oh, that's fine! She said ABOUT 15 pages, so 18 is great."

"Yeah, you could really go up to 20 if you wanted. Especially because it's from you."

...because it's from me? What does this mean? She likes me so much she's willing to read extra pages of my horrible crack-addict idiocy? She's going to hate it and throw it out without even reading it anyway? I get a handicap because of poor Spanish skillz?

...let's hope it's the first.

How do you get a staple through 22 pages?

Reasons Why I Would Like to Go Home Now, Please

Last Friday, I had my last kid-teaching class. After teaching them all about Christmas words (and having to translate "nativity scene" about 55,825 times) I was walking home - feeling pretty good about myself, too. They clapped for me when I told them goodbye. It made me swell up a little.

I was on the street that our school's on and crossed at a green light. On the other sidewalk was a group of kids, about my age, maybe a little less. They were congregated in the crosswalk, so I had to push through them. So I did, excusing myself as I went. "Uy, perdon, siento, perdon."

A boy behind me called after me as I passed. "¿De donde eres, con ese español de mierda?" (o algo del estilo, lo siento que no me acuerdo exactamente de la letra que utilizaron para REIRSE DE MI.) *translation, sorry guys: Where are you from, with that shitty Spanish? or something like that, sorry I don't remember exactly the words they used to MOCK ME.*

The girl next to him started to laugh. "Siento, siento, sieeeeeeeennnnntoooooooooo." *obnoxious tone of voice. copying me. so cute.*

I kept walking.

***

The beauty of the Spanish academic system is that one does not buy books. Instead of buying books, you are expected to go to the understocked, understaffed library to make photocopies of the pages you need. Just thought I'd set the scene there.

So Sue, one of the girls from the program, was down in the library making her copies. She was with someone else, probably Emily (Jeannie and Deirdre, you remember Trinity Emily?). There were two Spanish girls behind them in line, waiting for them to finish.

They left to copy room to go get another book, and when they came back the Spanish girls were almost finished with what they had to do. As they turned to leave, one of said girls turned and gave Sue a folded sheet of paper before hurrying out of the room.

Sue unfolded the paper. At the top, in block letters:

VETE A TU PAIS, PUTA.

Translation?:

GO BACK TO YOUR COUNTRY, WHORE.

***

(edit) I love when the Times and I are on the same wavelength.

Just thought I'd drop in to let you know you're going to have to wait awhile for the vacation post. Reasons:

21 hours of eating churros and chocolate!
no class!
no finals!
no pages!
still no clue!

All of a sudden 15-page-paper has 18 pages.

I am not sure what to do about this.

Die Schöne Schweiz

THINGS I DID THIS WEEKEND:

met two new people (yay!)
saw snow (YAY!)
drank wine with stuff in it (yay.)
ate soooooo much food from Walmart (unyay, sort of)
climbed mountains (yay!)
saw my first glacier (YAY!)
almost died (UNYAY!)
flew on a lot of planes (unyay.)
got sick (unyay.)
got 50€ in cash (yay!)
quoted almost all of Monty Python and the Holy Grail (yay!)

THINGS I DID NOT DO THIS WEEKEND:

sleep much (unyay!)
eat a vegetable (UNYAY HOW DO PEOPLE LIVE LIKE THIS!)
play video games (unyay.)
spend as much money as I was expecting (yay!)
unpop my ears from the plane flight (OW.)

ed. note: So the Chilean is a guy (Juan) and the Lithuanian is a girl (Kristina). I don't think that's what I wrote before. I'm an idiot.

Munich

The evening started, interestingly enough, with Jorge and Juan not being able to figure out how to find the parking lot they had just left (lost #1). We went back to Jorge's dorm to spend the night. It was 11pm. We had to get up at 4:30am. Guess what we did?

Right! We watched The Simpsons.

Then, we got up verrrrrrrry early and got in the car, but not before Jorge'd stalled it out twice and gotten us completely lost on the way to find Kristina (lost #2). Then I fell asleep. Can you blame me? But I woke up as soon as we got to

Lindau

which I would write about but I don't feel like it now. You'll have to content yourself with the list and the assurance that I am, in fact, alive and will write later.

You Had Best Thank Me For This

Hello, compañer@s.

I greatly lament having left you all for a week when Mom was here. I even more greatly lament having left you the absolute crappiest and least interesting post ever to read. To make up for my horrible lapse in blogging responsibility, I have written you a couple special and new (and LONG!) posts for you to take advantage of during this puente. Don't spend them all in one place, now.

First, though, I'm going to make you all SOOOO JEALOUS by telling you where I'm going (as far as I know, I'm not the one running this shebang)!

The Deal: Allison is flying into Munich to visit Jorge, friend from UDLA in Mexico! Four of us are then doing the Mad Alpine RoadTrip!

The Group: Allison, Jorge, female friend of Jorge's (Chilean), male friend of Jorge's (Lithuanian)!

The Challenge: Find a lingua franca within the first two hours!

The Pitstops: Munich, Germany - Konstanz, Germany - Lindau, Germany - Lucerne, Switzerland - Interlaken, Switzerland (undoubtedly better than Interlaken, New York, ahahaha) - Grindelwald, Switzerland - Innsbruck, Austria!

The Plan: We're supposed to have a plan? I don't have a plan! Traipse, ala Von Trapp family, and try to avoid dying from avalanches! I don't know if there will be avalanches! There might be! I like explanation points (only Jeannie will understand this joke and she might not yet because she might not have gotten her postcard!)!

The Souvenir(ieieieir) Situation: Cross your fingers and hope I don't run out of cash, and I might getcha something!

The Rest of It: I LOVE YOU AND WILL SEE YOU ALL SOON! (well, except for ChrisnBecky. And Grandma. And Aunt Carrie and Jess and...doh.)

Being Like the Uncle

Elegance is an attitude.

Audrey Hepburn gazes serenely over the bustling crowd.
Christmas on Preciados - resplendant golden bells and azure stars bob gently,
suspended only by 3-inch steel wire and a thousand-dollar electric bill.

The scent of waffles wafts downwind.
I'm not hungry
(12 days left);
hot fudge lazes towards Styrofoam support.

A lone cellist plays a song I've always known.
I hum the second melody, leaning on vibratos and polished black marble.
Chin scrapes woolen coat and striped scarf, avoiding errant chocolate drips.

The cello music fades away.
The last bite and I smile at each other;
Life is an attitude,
we chuckle as I swallow it down.

It's a FANTASY, OK?

So with December creeping up and the number of days left in Madrid countable on the hands and feet, it is time for me to start romanticizing coming home (of course I romanticize things, I'm a 20 year old girl, jeez). However, I'm trying to keep it in check, because of course I will blow everything out of proportion in my happy little Allison-land and then come home and HATE YOU ALL. Here, without further ado, are The Way I Want Things to Happen and then The Way Things Actually Will Happen; get ready for a fun ride and a lot of HTML!

The Way It Should Happen

The plane to Buffalo is half an hour early, rolling in at 9 instead of 9:30 like it should. It's snowing gently, but the flakes are big and fat. Grandpa is there to pick me up, and we drive home in companionable silence. We pull into the driveway, and bump into Mom on the way out the door.

"Hey, kid. Glad you're home."

"Yo."

"I knew that you'd been living in a house with other people for the past three months now, and I knew it was driving you insane, so we decided to kill the kids and harvest their organs for beer money ed. note: oops. take the kids to an undisclosed location for the night so you could have the house to yourself for a while. We'll be back tomorrow afternoon - but say goodnight to them before we leave."

I poke my head in the car door. "Hi, kids. Bye, kids."

"Hi, Allie. Bye, Allie. Mom said you'd play with us tomorrow."

"Sounds like a plan, if I get up before 6pm. See you tomorrow. Night night."

"Night night."

Mom calls out from the driveway as I'm lugging my suitcase through the door. "There's food in the kitchen and instant oatmeal in with the cereal. See you tomorrow."

I walk into the house and throw my crap into a corner somewhere. It's late and I'm hungry, so I go into the kitchen to check on this purported food source thing. I step in, flip on the light and -

- friends! Friends are there waiting for me! Cam and Billy, Shorty and Faye and Marcy, Jon and Deirdre and Jeannie ed. note: it's a FANTASY sequence. I can bring in whoever I want, no matter how improbable. I could have Kermit the Frog, if I wanted to. In fact-, Kermit the Frog and The Man I Will Eventually Marry and With Whom I Will Live Happily Ever After ed. note: does not exist. Following the example of a good number of my elders, I will be married two or three times, being left by my last husband at the age of 47 once he realizes that oops, he really did want to have kids after all, but he and his new 25-year-old wife will assure me that I am always welcome in their house and that she sees me as a mother figure, and when I'm 55 and the alimony runs out the two of them will find me in the backyard after I've staked myself to death with a garden trowel - they're all there! Someone has dusted the Playstation and given it a shiny bow to wear in its hair. I give it a hug to show it how much I missed it and it starts to purr. Then I back away, because it's not plugged in and I am a poltergeist. This would be approximately the time when I start to simultaneously sob and squeal "I missed you all soooooo much!" while trying to hug everyone at once without getting snot on anyone. It's hard. I think I fail.

Shorty waves me over. "Get ahold of yourself so we can eat."

I look past them all to the kitchen table and see several gigantic boxes of pizza from Picasso's, a seemingly bottomless box of barbeque wings, and 12 cans of Diet Coke with my name on them. Bill breaks in. "There's Ben & Jerry's in the fridge, too."

I pound three Cokes in succession, after which all the trip-fatigue fades away and we start in on the food. I eat and eat and eat chicken wings until I can't eat chicken wings no mo'. Just when I think I'm done and start to relax, Cam pulls me up. "Now we play DDR. In the living room. Come come! DDR!"

"NO!" I scream. "DON'T LET BILL KNOW THERE'S DDR!" I have to tackle him before he surgically attaches himself to the pad and hogs it for the rest of the night.

"I love DDR," says Man I Will Marry. "In fact, I love all video games. However, I am not an elitist about it and never, ever make Allison feel stupid for not knowing some of the essential classics. I am just happy that she is willing to listen. Also, I am incredibly intelligent, but never talk down to anyone. I am sexy, too. However, I am not pompous, and the only reason I am getting away with a monologue like this is because I am fictional."

After a good hour or so of DDR, we settle in to watch a movie. The lights are off and the snow is falling outside, and the mingled smells of popcorn and hot chocolate waft through the room. ed. note: they made popcorn and hot chocolate. Duh. Maybe we play some in the snow after the movie. Maybe we don't. Maybe, after they leave, I hook up Pretty Miss Playstation and we play some FFVII before I drift off to sleep. But it doesn't really matter, because I've got the greatest friends in the world. ed. note: this is where you say 'AWWWW', just like a Three's Company laugh track.

How It Will Actually Happen

The plane is late because it's sleeting in Buffalo. I sat in 19B all the way from Madrid to New York, which means the seat didn't recline and I was utterly unable to sleep. When the plane taxis up, it's the typical mix of gray-brown-green that characterizes the pre-snow season in the Northeast. Mom picks me up and we drive home, during which trip I am forced to make inane chatter despite the fact that IT'S 4AM IN MADRID TIME, FOR GOD'S SAKE. We pull up to the house and the kids swarm to the door.

"Allie! Hi Allie! Hi Allie! Play with us! Hi! Play with us!"

"No, I'm tired." They follow me up to my room.

"But Whhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy? Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy won't you play with us?????!?!?!"

"I told you, I'm tired. Get out, go 'way, go." Lissa turns around on the step on the way out, gives me that humph-impertinent look that makes me want to smack her, and says "Fine. Mommy made ravioli. You HAVE to EAT SOME." I hear them clomp down the stairs, wailing "Moooooooooooooooooooo-om! Allie hates us! She won't play with us!"

"Be nice to your brother and sister!"

"Tell them to leave me alone when it's 4 in the morning. Why did you make ravioli? You know I hate ravioli!"

"Too bad!"

I clump downstairs and pick up a ravioli. It's cold. I eat it anyway. I wander back upstairs and start calling people in an attempt to make plans. Cam first.

"Hello?"

"Hey, it's Allie."

"Hey hun! How are you?"

"Exhausted. What are you doing tomorrow? Want to do something?"

"Oh, you know I would, but my mom has declared this next week Family-Only. Dith's not even allowed to come over."

"Oh."

"I'm sorry, hun."

"No, it's ok. I'll talk to you after Christmas, then. Love you."

"Love you too."

Ok. Let's try Bill next.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Bee-leh."

"Yo, what's up?"

"You wanna hang out tomorrow?"

"Can't. Work."

"It's Sunday."

"...Can't. Work." ed. note: it's Bill. He's like that.

"Fine. I'll talk to you later."

"Bye."

Shorty?

"I can't get a ride out, we'll have to wait for a day when my mom goes to work. Can you borrow the car?"

I yell downstairs. "Mom? Can I borrow the car?"

"No!"

"I can't borrow the car." ed. note: sucks being a teenager.

"Ah. Well, we'll have to do something Monday or Tuesday or something."

"Ok." By this point my lower lip is trembling cutely, and when I get off the phone I burst into tears. "NOBODY LOVES MEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" ed. note: true. I try to turn on the Playstation. It fizzles and cracks, and - where are my memory cards?

"MOM! WHERE ARE MY MEMORY CARDS!"

"Oh, those...yeah, the kids were playing with them, and they were bright, so we floated them and made them into bath toys. Hope you don't mind. I bought you a new one, but then the kids put a peanut butter sandwich into the Playstation, so I figured you wouldn't need them and returned them."

Panic mode sets in. Jon is going to put out a hit on me. He was up to level 99 on FF:Tactics and now his save games are gone and I am DEAD BECAUSE HE IS GOING TO PUT OUT A HIT ON ME. I keep crying, because it seems to be the only reasonable solution. The future looks bleak.

Finis.

ed. note: have disabled comments on this post. THESE ARE FANTASY SCENARIOS. I don't want to hear any sort of feedback on which is more likely - let my keep my dream.

The 8th Grade Dance Story

For some of you, this is a classic. For others, it's brand new. For everyone, it's a reminder that sometimes, life really does work out like in the movies. But most of all, it's completely and 100% true.

In 8th grade, I was not exactly the most popular kid in the school. Actually, as Cam likes to remind me, my only friend was the kid who chewed the plastic off the scissors. Even CAM was too popular for me then, and when that happens you know something must be wrong. Haha. I love you, Cammy.

Anyway, despite the fact that I was a social bottom-feeder, I had something that I now lack - perseverance. I say that because it's the only reason I can possibly come up with for why I decided to go to the 8th grade Valentine's Day Dance. Alone.

So I spiffed myself up in my nicest Aussie T and jeans, thereby achieving the absolute zenith of preteen fashion, and got Mummers to give me a ride over to the Boys' and Girls' Club. I walked in, scoped out the gym/dance floor (self-segregated, of course, with boys and girls on opposite walls). Not much was doing there, so I went upstairs to the game room and started hanging out with some girls who were accessibly anti-social (9th graders at an 8th grade dance, so I figured they had to be just as bad at this clique crap as I was).

We were playing pool - or I was watching them play pool, or something - when this kid I knew came bounding up from the dance floor. He came over to me and started talking, which made me very confused because he was Not In My League. But I listened anyway.

"Allison! There you are. Listen, I have to talk to you. I have this friend, and he's downstairs, and he's been wanting to dance with you all night but he's too shy to ask. You have to come with me."

The internal alarm bells didn't go off (stupid alarm bells), so I followed him downstairs to the gym, and...ok. You know those horrible, terribly-written teenage chick flicks? You know how, in all of those chick flicks, whenever the Protagonist Girlie enters the room, there's this aisle of kids flanking her? It's what I affectionately refer to as the Gauntlet.

This was exactly like that.

People who would never have talked to me in school were encouraging me, patting me on the back, telling me how much this kid had liked me since forever. It was like I had done nothing but was suddenly sucked into this frightening vortex of popularity. I was surprised, and maybe a little suspicious, but happy (because it's very hard to be a socially-bottom-feeding 13 year old and not do everything you can to drag yourself up).

We got out onto the middle of the dance floor, where a big circle had opened up. I was standing in the middle of it, alone, with the Gauntlet kids watching. I started to get more nervous...and more...and then I saw the kid. This was probably the most popular guy in 8th grade, not bad looking - and the largest and most obnoxious jerk in the school. "Wow," I remember thinking, "I guess all that stuff they say about boys teasing you because they like you really is true."

He walked towards me with his arms out, like he was going to take me by the waist to slow dance. He got closer - and closer - and then, when he was about three feet away, he stopped and got this look on his face. "Wait, it's you," he said. "Oh, sorry, I was looking for somebody pretty." Then he turned around and walked away.

The entire gym can't have started laughing, but that sure is what it seemed like. I, of course, started crying and ran into the locker room, where I stayed for an hour before calling for my ride back. For the rest of the night, I watched the Valentine's edition of Boy Meets World and drowned myself in tears of humiliation. Which is, come to think of it, pretty much what I've done for every Valentine's Day since. Here's to setting a precedent!

See? Teen movies really ARE based on life, no matter how crazily out-of-whack they may seem. And now you have all heard the best life story I have to tell. I hope you enjoyed it.

Reasons to Bury the Head Under the Pillow and Die

1. "Allison, you need to let me know when we're going to give you this exam."
"Exam?"
"Exam. I told you at the beginning of the class."
"No, I'm sorry, you said something about a 15 PAGE RESEARCH PAPER IN SPANISH, but nothing about an exam."
"Can you take it Tuesday?"

2. Walked out of a museum visit yesterday. In my defense, we were supposed to have left 20 minutes before and she just...kept...talking. Also, we all hate her. I just did what everyone else wanted to do. Still hope she didn't see me, though.

3. Do I have any idea what is going on in that class, by the way? None. Oh no. Picasso? Who's that? Final exam? You mean the one I've missed about four classes and therefore 6 artists for? Pssh. Whatever.

4. KOTOR 2 comes out next week and I don't have an XBox to play it on.

5. Because I want to.