Semester in Review via iPod Playlist

Today I finally managed to overcome laziness, weather, and general impetus to stay in Norman and drove back to AR. And the trip went well, for once - no major pre-trip screw-ups, no iced-up roads, no engines falling out, etc.

Anyway, I listened to my "A Drivetime Mix" playlist as I drove. (I only named it "A Drivetime Mix so it'll always be at the top of the list). It's an ever-changing collection of whatever I'm into at the time, and I clean it up every few months or so. As I'm listening, I realized that it was kind of a "semester in review" sort of thing - nearly every song had some sort of memory or moment attached to it. I decided to catalogue some of my favorite moments here.

• Hello - Hawk Nelson: Frontier City with Jules and Jack. Sibling rivalry, outdoor concert, and the neverending word games in the grass.
• Stronger - Kanye West: scaring Sweetie in the WalMart parking lot. (See? Told you that you knew the obnoxious rap song I meant ...)
• Go That Far - Bret Michaels Band: Rock of Love night with my girls! Yelling at Lacey and laughing at Bret. Oh, Bret.
• When You Were Young - The Killers: finally five-starring a Guitar Hero song on hard. Never before has my pinky finger been so useful.
• Show Me the Money - Petey Pablo: Julie's gangsta theme. Rocking out in the car until people around us just have to look.
• Suck My Kiss - Red Hot Chili Peppers: Alyson and Lola finally getting into the GH craze, shouting "suck my kiss!" at the television
• Paranoid - Black Sabbath: late-night Rock Band at Kevin and Joe's. The guys makes the girls sing hard rock songs, and the girls makes the guys sing "Roxanne."
• Holiday in Cambodia - Dead Kennedys: Lola, totally sober, singing songs like a drunk person. "Hol'day in C'MBODIA!"
• Welcome Home - Coheed and Cambria: venting a little stress by belting angry revenge-song lyrics; taking Rock Band to a whole new level by both singing the vocals and playing the main guitar part simultaneously. Kneel, for I am truly a Rock-Band badass.
  
• Talk Dirty to Me - Poison: more Rock of Love goodness; also, botched lyrics ("At the drive-in, in the old man's corpse" rather than "old man's Ford.")
• Welcome to the Jungle - Guns n Roses: finally, FINALLY, beating the guitar battle with Slash and shouting celebratory swears at the television; also, my discovery that I play better standing on my couch. The taller you are, the harder you can rock apparently.

There are some other amazing memories as well, although they come without a theme song. Fangirling out about ANTM with Allie, casino night at Riverwind (I guess that does have a theme song ... Alyson singing "Ladies' Night"), Joe offending people of all creeds and races at IHOP, endless quoting of Wizard People/Dr. Tran/youtube videos, late-night WalMart runs (why? because it's THERE!), and any post-midnight phone call from Julie. They always mean good things.

This has been easily one of the best semester of my college life, due in large part to the people involved. Mel, for helping to make me a published writer and for goading me until I wrote a 50,000 word novel; my fellow intro classmates, who took awesome lessons from Batman and came out all the better because of it; my family, for being there any time I need them; the guys, for being the newest facet of my social life and for making nearly every night memorable; and, of course, my girls. You ladies made this semester completely badass, and I love yall!

Oh, and thanks to Fig (my bug). For not falling apart this time around. =)

No (Dallas) Love: Redux

Yall may remember a post I did a month or so back about my terrible luck flying home for visits?

It hasn't changed.

Wednesday morning, I got up at about 7 am (and, seeing as I was out late the night before, this was not a fun concept). My flight was supposed to leave at 10, and I was gonna get in town shortly after noon.

At 6 pm, I finally, finally straggled into the Little Rock Airport. Finally. I kid you not; it took that long to go from OKC to Dallas to LR.

The problem was that a storm hit LR right when our flight was supposed to land. We circled the city for nearly 45 minutes before the pilot announced we were low on fuel and were going to divert to Tulsa.

Tulsa. Putting me essentially right back where I'd started hours ago. So we flew to Tulsa, refueled, chilled on the tarmac, and got back in the air way too long afterwards.

Once again, I could have driven here and back again in the time it took me to simply fly here. You can be damn sure I'll be driving home for Christmas break (and all the others too, if I can swing it). I'm tired of my travel being in hands other than my own.

On the plus side, I did get to sleep in a chair instead of on the floor of the Dallas Love airport thsi time around. What a difference, man.

The Mist To Be Missed

I apologize for how quiet this blog's been lately. My responsibilities caught up to me, and I've been completely swamped getting them all covered. Hopefully I'll be back to regular updates after this.

Today, my family and I went to see The Mist after Thanksgiving lunch. We knew it wasn't going to be anything uplifting, but we love Stephen King and The Mist has long been one of our favorites.

Folks, don't go see The Mist.

Seriously.

The story's good when the movie keeps with the novella's line, but there was a ton of unexpected gore and the CG, while decent, showed a whole lot of cheesy baddies that would have been scary had they been seen less. To top it all off, the ending was the most wrenchingly painful thing I've seen in a long time.

And actually, seeing as last Monday my apartment's parking lot was completely smothered in pea-soup-style mist, I'm quite glad I hadn't seen the movie at that point. I would've decided "the hell with this" and gone back to bed. Sorry Mel, I do love Intro, but I'm not gonna wade through face-ripping-baddie-filled mist to get there.

However! I did have a hardcore fangirl moment at the beginning of the movie. The main character is an artist who creates movie posters and such. At the movie's opening, he's working on an image of a gun-carrying man. The more I look at the man, the more familiar he gets. Then we see the rose being painted next to him, and I about hit the roof. It was Roland! King's gunslinger, right there on the canvas! It seems like a clever and backhanded way for King to get people talking about a Dark Tower movie/miniseries.

I can only hope they do it better justice than they did The Mist ...

Hardcore Bug

More fun at WalMart today.

I saw a VW Beetle leaving the lot as I got there. It was cute and yellow and bumper-stickered, as so many Bugs are; however, the windows were rolled down and the driver was BLASTING deathmetal.

That's right - the sweet, free-spirit car was zooming around blaring "HATEANDDEATHANDKILLANDMAIMANDYAAAAAAAAAAH!" I thought it was damn funny.

I need to go to WalMart more often. They have such great characters there.

The Brattiest Brat to Ever Brat

This morning, I got up and headed to WalMart for a quick grocery run. I was low on some essentials, and it was about to be a bad situation.

I do my shopping and head out to my car to load it all up. Parked beside me is a woman, also loading groceries, and her daughter, probably ten years old and blonde, and wearing a shirt with a rather trampy-looking poodle which reads, "Sweetie." Shirts like that bug me - show me, don't tell me. Girls in "sweetie" and "princess" shirts generally tend to be the opposite of that label.

I pop the trunk and start moving bags. Out of nowhere, the little girl goes, "Me Gles? Megg Les? I don't understand." After a minute, I realize she's trying to sound out my license plate: Meggles, an old nickname of mine that, seeing as it's on my license plate, I can't quite shake. Gotta get a new plate. This one destroys my credibility.

So Sweetie keeps trying to sound out "Meggles" to get a response out of me. I just tune her out. Suddenly, she looks right at me and says, "What a stupid license plate. Why would anyone put something so dumb on their car?" as if I can't hear her.

She then moves on to my clothes. "Why would someone wear black on a sunny day?" she postulates to the air. "People like that are so depressing." I look down at my black-and-gold camisole and cropped black jacket and think, bitch!

This little critic goes on to pick at my car (who drive a blue car?), my groceries (is all that for just one person?) and my makeup (black around people's eyes makes them look like raccoons). That last one stung - I know my face is awfully delicate for black eyeliner, but I think it's a good look for something different! Plus it gives me sex appeal: something a ten-year-old little stick knows nothing about.

This girl just kept going and going. I was just waiting for the little brat to go into more personal details, like, "Fight Club is not a funny movie! Arrested Development was canceled for a reason! Your antiquated Christian ideals are laughable!"

On top of all that, her mother was right there! And Mrs. Sweetie didn't have a word to say. Either she was ignoring her precocious little darling, or she didn't realize the person her daughter was lampooning was all of three feet away, listening to every word. No, Mrs. Sweetie just kept loading her groceries in a slow, defeated way without a word.

What I really wanted to do was roll up a magazine, pop Sweetie on the nose like a disobedient dog, and tell the mom to retrain her puppy. Instead, I opted for a little psychological warfare.

I got into my car, cracked the windows, and delved into my iPod. I turned on the most obnoxious rap song in my iPod's arsenal, the one that makes my whole car vibrate with the bass. You know the one I mean. While I could still see Sweetie's lips moving, I could no longer hear her at least. Quiet, sweetie - Kanye's talking.

I backed slowly out, keeping tabs on Little Miss Thang without ever looking directly at her. The music's still pumping, Mrs. Sweetie's still oblivious, and Sweetie is turning like a little radar dish to keep an eye on me. Right before I drive away, I suddenly snap my head around and lock eyes with the little brat. I point to my eyes, then point to her - got my eeeeeeyes on you, baby. The kid's eyes get HUGE and she yells something that can only be "Moooooooooom!!" But Mama Sweetie is still preoccupied with the groceries,so she is left to wail alone as I race out of the WalMart lot all gangbusters.

Someone's gonna be looking over her shoulder for a few days now. Sorry, Sweetie! But a little childhood trauma is said to do wonders for one's disposition.

Language Sponge

Last night, I was determined to get out another 800 words on my novel. However, I have internet ADD. Things didn't go quite the way I'd hoped.

I'd started reading a new webcomic, Ctrl-Alt-Del, the other day. I've had a lot of people recommend it to me, and I finally decided to take a little time and page through the archives. And I loved it! It's a gaming comic like Penny Arcade, except it doesn't make me feel like a noob!

So last night, I decided to read a few strips. And then just a few more. And maybe just another story arc, until boom. I caught up to the current strips. Five years worth of comics, and I powered right through it.

Once I realized I'd caught up to the present and blown most of my evening, I decided to stay up a little later and do some writing anyway. But after all that comic reading, all I could do... was write witty banter.

I was trying to write this tense, suspenseful scene, but I kept turning out these horribly corny Schwarzenegger-esque puns and action-movie style bravado! It was totally wrong for the scene. Finally I deleted my sad, sad attempt and called it a night.

The problem with me is I am a language sponge. The longer I spend around someone, the more I pick up their talking habits. For instance, my friend Lola is forever telling people and things that they need to calm down! And now, a year into our friendship, I'm doing it too. My friend Julie tends to maow at people to get their attention; I catch myself doing it too.

It's the same with movies and books. After watching the Pirates movies, I talk in an up-and-down Jack Sparrow sort of way; after watching Wizard People, I drag aaaall my seeentences ouuut like Brad Neely. After reading the Dark Tower books, I keep catching myself wanting to use the High Speech; thee-ing and thou-ing and thankee, sai and all that.

I think it may be a throwback to my drama days ... when we did Steel Magnolias, I spent two months with a drawl so thick I was nigh incomprehensible at times. It's not even a conscious decision to affect these different speaking styles; it just sort of creeps in sometimes.

I guess this means I need to better choose my media while I'm writing this novel. No sense in getting my genres all screwed around.

Zombie

I am up way, way too late. Check the timestamp at the bottom: it's nearly 5 am. I'm not on good terms with 5 am, but tonight's just been one of those nights.

I actually went to bed earlier. I had a slow, solo sort of day, and everyone else had plans tonight except me. I got to feeling kind of lonely so I opted to go on to bed and not dwell on it. At about 2:30 am, my phone rings.

Me: Mmmph ... 'llo?
Julie: Megan! Zombies in the park! It's like magic! You have to get up!
Me: .... but--
Julie: Okay-great-I'll-see-you-here-in-ten-minutes-bye!!
*click*

Now while that may seem like gibberish, I speak Julie. I knew exactly what she was trying to tell me.

Zombie is a concoction our group of friends developed during Night Games (actually proposed by the ragged, shambling guy in the picture there). It's sort of like tag - one person's it, the rest run from them. Except when whoever's it catches someone, they bite them (we're a close-knit group, but bites are generally restricted to arms and shoulders). Boom. Two zombies.

These two keep going, chasing down and biting the non-zombies. It becomes exponential after a while, and the last man standing wins and gets to be the starting zombie next round. It can be kind of scary - you see someone once, and they're running and hiding besides you, then a few minutes later they've been turned and they're coming after you. It's got a nice horror-movie sort of twist to it.

Also, zombies have to shamble around and groan a lot. You can be slow, Night-of-the-Living-Dead zombies or Dawn-of-the-Dead sprinting zombies. It must look really strange to anyone passing by, but it's late. No one frequents parks at that time of night, save for us.

Anyway, it has been awhile since we had Night Games, and I hadn't been sleeping that well anyway. I got up, got dressed, and met the group at our usual spot. And then proceeded to chase and bite people for three hours straight.

It really is fun, no one just goes out and plays like that at our age. I really hope to make a habit of it.

But in the meantime, it's 5 am. And I am wiiiiiide awake. This does not bode well for my sleep schedule, but it's so worth it. Night Games make my weekends great.

The WTF Moment

Today I'd like to discuss something I call "the WTF Moment." WTF Moments occur when people say something so far departed from the conversation at hand or so out-of-the-blue that you can't figure out how they reached the subject.

There's no graceful way to ask the speaker to explain himself, and generally these statements either create uncomfortable conversation vacuums or result in a total brick wall which stops the conversation dead until someone can awkwardly steer the talk back in a less WTF direction.

It's not that I'm against discussing the bizarre or the taboo - I'll talk about anything you want to talk about, so long as it's brought up in a way where I can understand the train of thought. But when someone turns to me and drops an unprecedented conversation topic out of nowhere, I have two general reactions - I either nod slowly and uncomfortably until I can regain my footing, or I act like I didn't hear them in the first place. If they really want to discuss it, they can try again in a much clearer way.

This afternoon, I had a hardcore WTF moment. Tuesdays and Thursdays, I have my honors class. The honors department in general tends to attract an eclectic group of students, and my current class (Androids, Aliens, Robots and Cyborgs: The Other in Science Fiction) increases that factor tenfold.

I got to class early (mistake) and sat down to re-read a few passages from the book we were currently discussing. A few minutes later, one of my classmates (way, way left of center, this one) came in and took a seat right beside me.

After a moment of silence, he heaved a huge, wistful sigh and said tragically, "I miss the dinosaurs."

And that was all. Seriously.

I had to look around the room - there were no book, posters, or other media that would prompt "dinosaurs." Nothing I was wearing or reading would suggest "dinosaurs," and the same goes for him. Eventually I ascertained that no, there wasn't a damn thing in the room with any remote connection that would make him nostalgic for dinosaurs.

By now, about a full minute of silence had passed; it was waaaay too late for me to ask him why, exactly, he missed the dinosaurs. Moreover, I honestly didn't want to know the answer to that question - this guy intimidates me in ways I can't explain, and his effort at a conversation starter really wasn't doing it for me.

Thankfully, a guy friend of mine showed up for class right at that penultimate awkward moment and asked me to join him outside while he had a quick smoke. I can't stand cigarette smoke; however, I'd rather brave the secondhand smoke and chat with a friend than sit in class awkwardly trying not to notice dinosaur-guy trying to catch my eye.

By the time we got back, it was time for class to start up and my new seatmate had apparently forgotten his melancholy memories of those good ol' Jurassic days. Thank God for small things.

I < / 3 Housekeeping

I do NOT love housekeeping.

I just got back in to my apartment after having been out of town since Thursday morning. I got out my keys to unlock the door.

Except it's already fucking unlocked.

Apparently, after cleaning my apartment Thursday afternoon, the housekeeping women left my apartment unlocked.

For three days straight.

I am absolutely furious. I could have been robbed stone blind! I had to search my whole apartment to ensure that A) my shit wasn't stolen, and B) no one was hiding in my apartment. Thankfully, everything is as it was when I left.

Normally, I take time with these posts to make sure they're articulate and clever; however, I'm apoplectic right now. I am without words (and that's saying something for me).

Tomorrow, I will be going into the Housing office and raising a little hell until they can tell me what they're going to do about this. I know I'm not the first - a friend of mine also lives in my complex, and came back to an unlocked place.

Not cool, Housekeeping. Not cool.

Watch out for Hop-ons (you're gonna get some Hop-ons)

This is a quick post - I've been up since 6 am and I am fading fast, but this is such a great fluke thing that I have to share it before the funny wears off.

The other day, I bought a pair of magnetic earrings. I sort of need them for a Halloween costume, but I also like the idea of looking a little edgier than I currently do without all that unpleasant hole-poking. I have my lobes pierced, and that's fine; the idea of piercing my cartilage, however, makes me a touch squeamish.

Anyway, I decided to wear one home today and see if my parents clued in. Sadly, I knocked it loose when answering my phone and the magnetic back tumbled away. I started to look around for it on the floor, but realized I looked crazy crawling around on the airport floor. For all I knew, the little magnetic bit had snapped onto someone's suitcase, or underneath a table leg. I gave the back up for lost and opted to save the piece I had (I'm kind of a magpie; shiny objects are hoard-worthy).

So I spent all day traveling home and catching up with my family, and a few minutes ago I finally got upstairs to get undressed and grab a shower before bed.

And there, magnetized firmly to the underwire of my bra, was the back of the earring.

Apparently when I knocked it loose, it rolled down the front of my shirt and caught on the metal underwire. It just kind of hopped on and hung out there all day, and I had absolutely no clue.

Migrating accessories - who knew?

Edit: Today, being more awake, I remembered an incident last fall that also involved migrating accessories, although on a slightly more noticeable scale.

The purse I carried back then had a velcro clasp on it, and somehow I left the house one day with a pair of underwear stuck to it. Not even sexy or cute underwear - no, it had to be a painfully ugly pair of granny-panties that is NEVER supposed to see the light of day. Those things are, in all honesty, a rape deterrent in and of themselves.

And no, I didn't immediately clue in to my little hop-on. I rode the CART shuttle, sat around the South Oval, and walked to class before I noticed them and stuffed them safely out of sight, actually. God only knows how many people spent the rest of the day snickering about the poor clueless girl they saw on the bus with the thunderpants hanging off of her purse. Needless to say, I subsequently retired that bag ... and the fugitive underwear, too. Just in case.

Traveler, Here Lies All-World

I am so excited! Last night, I submitted a new article to blogcritics. It was a class assignment - describe a place, any place. As enthused as I was about my new gunslinger poster, I decided to describe the Way Station from the first book of the series.

I had a lot of fun with it - I got to play with King's language and sentence structure, and I described the Station as if I'd brought someone there who'd never seen it before. I wrote it at a moment of suspended action, with the man in black and the gunslinger poised on the horizon.

It's part prose and part review, and I was proud of the end result, but it didn't seem like something they'd publish.

Well, they published it.

Not only that, the editor that published it suggested I write a whole series, one for each book!

This is a dream for me - out of all of King's works, the Dark Towers are the ones I turn to most often for comfort reading, and the ones that get into me the most. After reading them, I always catch myself speaking in the cadenced and archaic structure of his characters, especially in the later books. As much as I love this story and these characters, I can never write them. They don't belong to me. I can, however, take that love and use it to pull others readers into the story the way I was pulled in.

My first installment can be found here, and hopefully I'll have the others up a few days at a time. Depends on if the rest come to me as easily as this first one did. But please - read them, comment on them, and let me know what you think.

If I can attract even one new reader to this series, I'll consider these articles a success.

No (Dallas) Love

Thursday morning, I'm taking advantage of OU/TX weekend to fly home and see my family for a little bit. It'll be nice to catch up with my parents and vegg out at home for a few days. And watch the game, of course. No one knows how to berate the Longhorns quite like me and my dad.

However, I've got one big barrier between me and my family. The Dallas-Love airport.

Me and Dallas-Love don't get along so well. I'm jinxed whenever I'm in that place. Last time I flew through was May of this year, for my little brother's high school graduation (May 25th ... a day which will live ... in travel-infamy ...).

I think our plane landed at Dallas-Love a bit late at around 9:45 pm. Six hours later, I was still. Friggin. There. Our plane kept getting delayed, and delayed, and delayed, and through some loophole of the airline system they didn't have to buy us hotel rooms (or provide us with food, for that matter. All I got for dinner that night was a package of pizza-flavored Combos from the gift shop. Nasty).

Thank God I'd carried my bag on. Around 3 am, I gave up and changed into my pjs in the bathroom and tried to find a place to sleep. The benches were a no-go, unless I wanted to spoon with some creepy stranger guy (no. No. Doesn't matter how tired I am, no). The airport lounge was too far from our gate; if, by some fluke of fate, our plane did come in, I wouldn't be near enough to hear the announcement.

I ended up along the wall, using my robe and a dress as a blanket, my duffel as the most uselessly solid pillow EVER, and hugging my laptop bag to my chest so no one messed with me or my stuff while I slept. Not that I slept, mind you. The spirit was willing, but the flesh said "hell no. Not comfortable. Ask again later."

We finally got out of there around 5 or 6 am (about time, too; I was beginning to worry I'd miss seeing Alex graduate). I ended up sleeping all morning to make up for my long night on the airport floor. And then, a few days later on the return trip, I got stuck in Dallas-Love AGAIN. I'm amazed the PA system didn't go all horror-movie and start laughing maniacally at me. It really wouldn't have surprised me at that point, though.

So do me a favor, guys. Keep your fingers crossed for me and my next attempt to get through that airport. I've only got a few days at home, and I really don't want to waste any of that visit laying around Love again.

Sleep-Deprived

Unlike many college students, I need sleep in order to function. I need a lot of sleep, actually. And I didn't really get that much sleep last night. When that happens, I'm either A) sullenly annoyed about being awake, or B) absently dumb about simple things.

So today, I got up around 10 and went to church (it wasn't an early service, even), and got back home around maybe 1:00.

And stood in the breezeway in front of the door to my apartment, blankly but patiently pushing the "unlock" button on my car keys and wondering why the door wasn't unlocking.

No lie - I was that tired. It took at least half a dozen clicks of the button before I clued in. Someone, quick - shoot me before I breed.

I very much need to get caught up on my sleep tonight. I've got a lot to do this week, and if I'm busily using the wrong key to try and open my front door, it's gonna take a lot longer to do it all.

Rock of Love Finale - Sunday!

The girls and I are total Rock of Love slaves. When it's on, nothing else is going on so far as we're concerned. The building could be on fire and we'd still have to wait for a commercial break before we ran to safety.

Sunday night is the big finale! In the final two we have Jes, my personal favorite who again is waaay too cool for this show, and Heather, who is (to quote Jes) a "hungry f-ing stripper." Applause all around!

And of course, being VH1, there will probably (hopefully) be a marathon of all the episodes prior to mark the occasion. And, of course, we're going to have to watch it. So to add a new twist to the old episodes, I give you the Rock of Love drinking game.

1. Anytime there is innuendo (theme song included - touch my backstage pass, ride my limousine!), drink.
   
2. Anytime one of Bret's semi-popular eighties hits is played, drink.
3. Anytime Bret kisses a woman for slightly longer than is proper, drink.
4. Anytime Heather's chosen profession is called into question, drink.
5. Anytime Lacey does something totally bitchy and unnecessary, drink. Then fling the empty container at her and try to knock that ugly lip-piercing loose.
6. Anytime the girls have to take part in a challenge which either a) results in partial nudity or naughty attire, b) results in jiggling of the breasts, or c) results in Bret being unnecessarily turned on, drink.
7. Anytime Bret does or says something so dumb that there's actually a pause for thought before the laughter starts, drink.
8. Anytime Sam cries (poor emotional thing that she is,) drink.
9. Anytime a girl whines about the lack of time they have with Bret, drink.
10. Catfights, censored nudity, and breaking stuff always merits a drink, no matter the circumstances.
    

Now, seeing as will be a Sunday and we are by and large not of drinking age, this drinking will probably involve water/Coke more so than liquor, but the idea still stands firm.

This game is second only to the drinking game for the second season of Arrested Development, where you drink every time someone makes a joke at Ann's expense (IE, "Who?" or "Her?") and the Wizard People, Dear Reader drinking game where you drink every time a name is changed or a spell is cast.

Small Wisdom

Today, I got a little unexpected wisdom.

I take a taekwondo class at OU, more for the physical outlet than anything else. On Monday, I sort of completely skipped class, and today my professor wanted to know why.

Teacher *in nearly impenetrable Korean accent*: We missed you in class on Monday, Megan. Where were you?

Me: Sorry sir. I got caught up in a conversation, and it went right through class.

Teacher: I see. Was it ... a very important conversation?

Me: ... well no, not really, but it was a very good conversation.

Teacher: Ah. Sometimes, that is all that matters.

And that was the end of it. It's always nice when people understand your reasons; it's even nicer when they understand them even better than you do.

Completely Geekin' Out!

I am in a little flurry of fandom! My Gunslinger poster came in today!

Out of all the series I've ever read, nothing has pulled me in like Stephen King's Dark Tower series. The main character, Roland, is one of the most complex and fascinating characters ever written. So when I found out that King and Marvel were releasing graphic novel versions of Roland's younger days under the title The Gunslinger Born, I pounced.

And when I found out that said graphic novels were being publicized by some beautifully artworked posters, I super-pounced. I went into a comic book store and smiled really big and talked really softly and voila! The nice guys ordered me my own poster. Again: girl perk. Gotta love it.

So now I've got this gorgeous poster of the gunslinger Roland right on the wall of my room. It's amazingly geeky of me, but I must admit I absolutely love it.

My fandom's got some serious aim.

Freudian Sip

Last night, I had a group of people over to chill out, catch up, and watch some Brad Neely nonsense. And, sleepaholic that I am, as soon as everyone headed out around 1 am, I collapsed into bed and dozed off without worrying too much about the party-debris accumulated in the den.

After waking up this morning, I walked back out into my living room to take stock of the jumble of party-related junk settled around my apartment, especially cans and bottles. And suddenly my fiction-mechanism clicked on and I started to sort out how someone's drinking habits could be used as character development.

I mean, the way people drink can be used as characterization. A femme fatale will run her finger around the rim of her glass seductively, and a seasoned drinker will toss back a shot without a flinch. But I'm thinking about it in simpler, almost forensic terms: what do I know about who was here last night based on the leftover evidence next morning?

Quick note to anyone who was here last night - I have no idea whose drink was whose (I've slept since then), so none of this is personal judgment. This is just me extrapolating.

• Some people finished their drink and threw their empty cans away. Those people are empathetic, and they follow through logically with anything they begin (Step 1: open drink, Step 2: drink drink, Step 3: trash drink).

• Some people finished their drinks, but left the empty can sitting on the nearest stable surface. These people are all about efficiency, aware of what they are supposed to do but also knowledgeable about what corners they can cut without being called out.
  

• Some people didn't finish their drinks (guilty!) but only took a few sips and either opted for another drink or set theirs down and forgot about it. These people are somewhat fickle, or are forever looking forward and get distracted by what's next instead of what's now.

• Some people took their unfinished drinks home with them afterwards. These people are conscientious, and don't want to waste anything if they can help it. That, or they intend to go ahead and throw it out once out of sight, but want to look conscientious rather than wasteful.

• Some people went out and got 7-11 Big Gulps, which our group of girls has re-dubbed "big-ass drinks." These people ... have a phallic fixation with straws?
  

• And finally, some people finished their drink, scrunched up the can, and left what I can only identify as a chain of vampire-type bite marks up the side. Now I didn't see anyone drinking out of the side of the can Nosferatu-style, but again - I've slept since then. This either suggests that this type of drinker has a very complex personality which can't be explained by my impromptu analysis, or that I am in fact friends with a dracula.

Seeing as I don't remember who drank what, there's no way for me to find out if my theory is accurate or not. But that's the beauty of fiction - it's reality as I see it that applies, and nothing else.

Anyway, now that I've evaluated all the left-behind drink cans, it's time to throw them out. Psychoanalysis aside, I live here. Forest of aluminum isn't doing it for me.

Hi, Maintenance

The maintenance people in my apartment complex have the worst timing.

This afternoon, after a crazy-busy morning, I decided to take a nap. Nothing big, just an hour or so to get me back to center. I'm woken up shortly thereafter by loud, open-the-fuck-up-it's-the-cops-style pounding on my front door and someone shouting, "housekeeping!" like a drill sergeant.

In my still sleep-addled state, my mind comes up with Schwarzenegger in an apron. Quite seriously. Not a great image, but a hell of a wake-up call.

Now, my complex may be nice, but complimentary housekeeping isn't part of the package. However, if they were who they said they were, that meant they had a key to my apartment and I was not exactly dressed for company. I flung myself out of bed and ran to the front door to keep it locked until I could figure out what was going on.

Me: Uh, hi, can I help you?

Housekeeping: Housekeeping!

Me: ... Since when do I have housekeeping?

Housekeeping: We're here to clean your bathroom.

Me: Um, that's really not ... necessary ...

Housekeeping: It's just the OU Housing department's way of saying thank you for being such a loyal tenant for the past three years.

Me: Oh. Well that's really nice and all ... um ... I'm wearing a bedsheet right now, ma'am.

Housekeeping: Oh. Um ... we'll come back in five minutes.

So they left me to make myself presentable - while the whole bedsheet-as-gown-look may be very early-cinema starlet, it really wasn't doing it for me.

Apparently, I have in fact earned myself a weekly bathroom cleaning because of my loyalty to the OU Housing system. Which is seriously not necessary, but I'm really not sure how to tell them I can Pine-Sol my own toilet.

Note to self: no more napping on Thursdays.

All Jacked Up

So, y'know how I ended that last post with, "today is fantastic?" Well, it looks like I jumped the gun on that particular call.

I left my car in the Lloyd Noble parking lot and hopped the shuttle to my afternoon class. When I got back to my car, there was a giant, L-shaped hole in one of my tires. It's like someone stabbed it ... with an L.

So, since it was less than a mile from the lot to my apartment, I decided to go ahead and drive home on my totally worthlessly flat tire. Three words, people. Scariest. Thing. Ever.

In an even greater act of "Wait! I-can-fix-it," I decided to try and change the tire myself - the VW manual made it look pretty idiot-proof. And yet I couldn't get the stupid lugs loosened even a little bit.

I was quite seriously standing on the lug wrench, putting my full weight on it and the damn thing wouldn't turn. On top of it all, the entire eastern horizon was a mass of onrushing storm clouds, complete with little lightning streaks flickering through them.

Nothing like impending storms to amp up the tension of the moment. Thank you, Oklahoma weather patterns. Fantastic timing. Kudos.

However, my apartment complex definitely has one thing going for it. If you stand outside looking helpless for long enough, people will come help you. Last winter, that was how I eventually got the ice off my car - by sadly attempting to do it myself until several attractive exchange students came to my rescue. It's a girl perk.

Anyway, after maybe ten minutes of jumping on the lug wrench and doing nothing but rock my car, a girl walked past and asked me if I needed any help.

Now I have this little stubborn streak in me which causes me to be stupid about things. And my first impulse when this girl offered to help was to tell her thanks anyway, but I had it all under control, and that I was just lulling the tire into a false sense of security so I could catch it off guard.

But then, I thought about another hour of standing on the lug wrench. And the fact that I had no freakin' clue what I was doing, and that the little diagrams in the owner's manual were only going to get me so far. Plus, the aforementioned big ol' storm clouds were even bigger and storm-cloudy-er.

So I admitted I was totally clueless. This girl (Alyssa, wonderful stranger that she is) helped me loosen up the lugs (it took her all of two seconds; apparently, I suck at cars) and after a while a few more people came over and joined in, and by the time the job was done there were about a dozen people standing around my car. Oddly enough, all the women were helping me with my situation, and all the buff-type men were standing around discussing my situation. Hmm.

With like half of my building helping out, it only took us like fifteen minutes to get everything all fixed up! I was actually sort of hoping the storm would break right as we finished, in a cathartic slow-motion movie sort of way, but it didn't. Oh well.

In any case, thanks to the wonderful people of Traditions for saving me from my hopelessly sad little attempt at car maintenance! I am always amazed by the capacity of people to help the totally hopeless, even when they look flustered and have what appears to be a tire track down their face (I lifted the spare out of the trunk, it bounced back and ran a nice black tire tread down my face. Not exactly my best look.)

Hopefully I'll get to pay them back someday ... although clearly it won't be via car maintenance.

Professor Batman?

This semester, I'm taking an amazing Intro to Professional Writing class. It's comprehensive and honest about the writing profession, and I've quite seriously gotten more experience after one month in this class than I have in my entire academic career.

In addition, the class is ridiculously, unpredictably entertaining! We always end up going on tangents and telling amazing stories, and yet still learning whatever it is we're meant to learn for the day. Our teacher, Mel, makes off-color jokes and wonderfully lousy puns and keeps the class hanging off his every word - which is very impressive, considering it's a 9 am class.

The class is cool enough that a friend of mine actually coined the phrase, "taking awesome lessons from Batman" to describe it, spawned by Mel wearing a Batman t-shirt last class.

And this morning, Mel came in wearing a Batgirl shirt. Today is fantastic.