texts that i have received in the last six months

• J.lo needs to not wear bodysuits, lesson
• im reading plato and socrates says "being filled with things appropriate to our nature is pleasurable" and all i think is I WANT SOME DECENT SEX.
• Poop girls are here
• b a   yyyyvi loveeeee yuou yi88 al so in with tyouyre firend juackl
• Did you get gummi bears? I see that we have more vodka.
• Affirmative. The rooster is in the hayloft.
• Fertile and ready to impregnate you both.
• Sahir got here, Godot has not. We've abandoned our faith.
• I am genuinely sorry I was sleeping when you sent these. Please tell me you were at a strip club.
• !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• You have disappeared. Is this permanent?
• I just sent a text that said: "I think my earring fell off when I took off my cape to breakdance"
• Come! Now! Feminize our decor!
• I just woke up from a dream in which I visited you at brown ... and the brox zoo cobra was there bc brown is so tolerant and progressive.
• I hope we have the opportunity to speak sometime outside the constant cesspool of teenage insecurity we find ourselves joyfully parading around in every weekend. :)
• Doppler effect in astronomy right now!!!
• I have procured some sir kensingtons ketchup -- we now need a tasting party immediately!
• Haha and here I thought my travel plans hinged on your eating habits! :)
• Hat the duck ever?
• As a separate note, you should be informed that the lord's day would also serve satisfactorily as a day of our meeting, my radiant princess.
• I'm required by sharia law to tell him.
• yeah, RANDIAN logic. Objectivist psychobabble.

Conclusions
1. People are rather affectionate via text.
2. I have weird friends.

Love always,
Clara

the eight crazy strangers: number three

This man invented things.

Yet again, I was riding the metro, and this man sat down next to me. He had a big backpack, and asked me to hold something for him while he got himself organized. I am criminally polite. So he sat down, and obviously started making conversation.

Him: I like your toes! Did you do that yourself!?
Me: Oh... no, I got them done at an airport... in New Jersey.
Him: Oh! I thought you did that yourself! I thought, damn! I wonder if she'd paint MY toes!
Me: Um... Yep. Nope.

He then asked me about every one of my bracelets.

Him: I like that one! I like blue! Did you make that?
Me: Oh, no, it was a gift from my mom's friend.
Him: I thought you'd invented it!

In the name of politeness, I had to ask him about the one bracelet he was wearing, one of those rubber ones that we all used to have in eighth grade. It said something on it about living life to the fullest or something.

Him: This bracelet! This is the best! I have this with some of my friends - we invented this. Some guys want to get wasted and drink a lot of beer, and other guys like to drink wine, you know?! I have a friend, and he's a surfer guy, blonde hair, he's a California guy, and one day he was surfing and got bit by a shark! Took his leg off! Now he doesn't have a leg! So we all got these bracelets, to be like, live life! We invented this!

He then told me about his hat. He invented that too. It was blue. I am 100% certain that this man was high, but he might have been my favorite crazy stranger. He never asked for my number, but did tell me to listen to his radio show that's on "all day, all night" (There is never a time that this man is not on the radio).

I did try to listen. He must have been on his break.

Love always,
Clara

english, it turns out, is interesting

I have vivid memories of disliking English class in middle school. We had to read dumb books and underline uses of symbolic language and do awful vocabulary worksheets (It's actually really hard to come up with a sentence using the word . It all seemed silly and redundant and a waste of time.

English teachers were often targets of my animosity. I very specifically remember learning that Ms. Scott, my seventh grade english teacher, hated click-pens -- so I bought a ton of click-pens. (I might have been the worst seventh grade girl ever.) (For the record, about a month later I decided Ms. Scott was my favorite teacher.)

Fast forward six years or so, and I'm spending my lectures learning the alphabet. Linguistics, I've decided, is totally my jam.


I'm taking History of the English Language this semester, and it's pretty much the most awesome class I've ever taken, and I'm not exaggerating at all. The professor is a boss, and he's been teaching the course for the last thirty years or so, so he knows his stuff and tells it like it is.

Professor R: Determinism is the theory that you could predict the future by closely observing the present. Nobody ever made any interesting discoveries based on this theory. Ever.

I think what I'm enjoying most about the class though is that it raises all of the questions that I raised in my English classes (right after I bought my clicky pens, all for the explicit purpose of being a pain in the ass). Like, why did we have to answer the questions on homework sheets in complete sentences, when a word would do? That's not what we do when we speak. If someone asks you, "Where are you going this weekend?" you say, "Boston." If you feel like saying a lot of words, you could say "I'm going to Boston," I guess.

Professor R: 'I am going to Boston' is just wrong! It's weird! It would raise a titter!

That's what I tried to explain to Ms. Pronko all those years ago, but of course she would have none of it. Maybe I just like linguistics because it means I was right all along about English teachers. Some of their rules are totally arbitrary.

Professor R: As if colloquy were an evil thing.

I, for one, like colloquy. I mean, read this. Do I seem like I'm into the formal writing style? I've almost made a conscious decision to ignore it.

And on that note...

Vivian: Actually no, I don't make decisions, I just sit around and rap about philosophy.

Yesterday, that happened.

Love always,
Clara

in which clara rambles about sex and everyone feels uncomfortable

So I'm taking some pretty cool classes this semester, and one of them is called Sex, Gender, and Society. It's really a great course, and it's made me think a little more critically about a number of things.

One of them is this. This book, published a few weeks ago, is entitled Dirty Little Secrets: Breaking the Silence on Teenage Girls and Promiscuity. To be honest, I haven't read it, but Publisher's Weekly said that "[Cohen] seeks to identify the loose girl experience and help girls gain power over their own lives."

Now, what I find problematic about this is the question of whom these teenage girls are being promiscuous with. The issue (if there truly is one) cannot be completely contained within the teenage girls, can it? Is every adolescent a lesbian these days? Really? All of them?

No, I suspect there are boys involved. Probably teenage boys.
Hear that, everyone? OUR DELICATE TEENAGE BOYS ARE PROBABLY HAVING SEX.

Do we need the smelling salts, or are you okay out there? You're probably okay. But why? Why is it okay that teenage boys are having sex (that's just what they do, after all. Boys will be boys!) but if teenage girls are doing it, we immediately need to clutch our pearls and do an in depth study on whether they're doing it for the "right" reasons (hint: there probably are none).

I'll agree that promiscuity is probably an issue, and there are certainly kids out there who are doing everything that moves because it makes them feel popular, and those kids are pretty dumb. I'm on board. But let's not scrutinize the girls quite so much?

Kthanks.

Love always,
Clara

oh i don't wanna grow up

There's a career fair today and I kind of want to set it on fire. I ran into Michael and he'd come out with all of these ping pong balls, and I thought, "Well that looks like fun," but then I went in and it wasn't.

I realized, for one thing, that the only people I felt not-terrible speaking with were the nonprofits. They were all really nice. I grabbed a pamphlet from the Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless (awkwardly acronym-ed RICH), and they were really friendly, as was the guy from City Year, which sounds like a pretty cool program, although any of that sort of thing is so far into the future that any thoughts I have right now are irrelevant.

Me: Okay, so I'm going to sign up for your mailing list, because this seems like a great program, and then I'm going to ignore your emails for the next year or so. And then start paying attention again later. Cool?
City Year Guy: At least you're honest!

Everyone else I talked to wanted to know whether I was an engineer or computer science major or nobel prize winner. There were no linguists waving flags. There were companies I'd never heard of, in great numbers. Abercrombie was there, inexplicably.

Last year, it felt like college was forever. We had four whole years of this! Woohoo! This year, it feels more like they're going to kick us out any minute, and it is stressing me out like no other. I only have five semesters left after this one? Only twenty more classes to pick? I refuse to acknowledge this reality.

Halfway around the room, I decided I needed to get out pronto. Near the door, Capital One had a table, talking about consulting or something. They were giving out sunglasses.

Obviously, I took the sunglasses and ran.

Love always,
Clara

the eight crazy strangers: number two

This one, I met on the metro, and I don't think he was exactly trying to pick me up, like the last one was. Regardless, he qualifies as a crazy stranger.

This man sat down next to me on the red line and immediately struck up conversation. Metro people do this sometimes. I find it a little weird (I find that in most circumstances I am more than happy to sit quietly and listen to "Sparks Fly" on repeat until I arrive at my destination), but to each their own. I'm also really bad at not engaging in conversation. Call it my fatal flaw. Whatever.

So he sat down and asked me where I was headed. This, I think, was the only thing he said in the ten minutes or so that we spoke that made any sense. I told him I was meeting a friend for dinner, and asked him the same.

Man: I was gonna play pool with my friend. But I want to go to church. So I was going to meet this friend, and I'm taking the metro to get to his place, and he tells me he's already left. Where're you getting off?
Me: Um... Dupont Circle.
Man: Me too! I have to get off at Dupont Circle so I can walk back to my house, and it's going to take me half an hour, and I already don't have time to go to church!

I should add that this was not a sunday and he never elaborated on why he wanted to go to church so badly.

I asked him why he couldn't just take the metro back to his house (seeing as he had chosen to take the metro from his house to his friend's). He said that the walk back was really short.

Me: So... why don't you get off before Dupont, and then you won't have as far to walk?
Man: Because my friend lives around Dupont, but he's not even there anymore!
Me: Exactly!
Man: Oh man, I don't even have time to go to church. I just want to play pool and go to church.

This crazy stranger wasn't trying to get into my pants I don't think. He was just crazy.

John: Clara, do you think he might have been... on drugs?
Me: Oh! Maybe.

That is in fact a distinct possibility.

Love always,
Clara

the eight crazy strangers: number one

I've referenced the eight crazy strangers, and I've committed to writing about them, but I'm still trying to figure out how to string them into a narrative that makes any sense.

The thing is, when I got to DC, I'd pretty much just left Italy, where the men are affectionate, to say the least. My roommates and I even talked about what a let down it would be when we got back to the states where strangers didn't call us beautiful every single day.

Harassment is harassment, but I'm not going to say it doesn't feel kind of awesome to have a complete stranger on the street say that you are "fantastic"

Complete stranger: [stops his car in front of me] You are fantastic.

That happened.

So, given that context, I may have taken these events in stride more than one ought to. But for the month of August, the men of Washington DC were more like the men of Bologna than I had ever known them to be.

Introduction concluded, let us begin. I was working, as you may or may not know, in an office in DC for the month, doing intern things (or non-things, as the case may be). Because I am not the social-est of butterflies, I tended to get lunch by myself and read a book or something. My preferred lunch spot was a little while away, and on the way there, I walked by a lot of those buildings with the shiny windows.

Does anyone have the ability to walk by those without subtly checking oneself out? I can't help it. I just want to know if my skirt still looks okay. I'm still a little bit uncomfortable in business casual! A lot of people interpret it as arrogance, or crippling insecurity, or whatever, but when I see a moving shiny thing that looks like me, I want to look at it.
So I'm checking myself out in the shiny window building when a man stops me.

Man: Hi, I don't usually do this, but you're very beautiful. Do you want to get drinks sometime?
Me: Oh! Thanks! Um... actually I don't have a fake ID. Thanks though!

And I flit on my way.

I feel like I said that just to make him feel uncomfortable about asking someone underage out. That's totally my prerogative, right?
Right.

Love always,
Clara

look out, world!!!

I'm going to start cat calling men.

Why? Because I can. Not because I want to bang them or go on dates with them or whatever, but because I kind of think it's hilarious and flattering to be cat called and men need to get this experience as well.
Isn't that their goal when they do it? To give me a hilarious and flattering experience?

Anyway, I'm going to start off campus, I think, so that I don't get a reputation as "that crazy girl who keeps sexually harassing strangers." I mean, maybe that will be inevitable, but I want to give my fun new experiment a test run beforehand.

The eight crazy strangers of August '11 inspired me, to be honest. When I write about them (inevitably), you'll see how truly flattered/pleased/etc I felt after all of these experiences. They were just so friendly! They totally validated my existence as a woman! (If one is not attracting strangers on a daily basis, one is failing.)

So, guys of the Providence area, you should start looking nice. If you don't, I won't cat call you, and then you won't be worth anything.

Love always,
Clara

P.S. Mom, I'm being sarcastic. Except I'm really going to do it because I think it will be funny and interesting.

freshmen

One cool thing about being back at school is that I'm not a freshman anymore. Not being a freshman means I can see them as they are. i.e. Hilarious.

It really does impress me how they get around. We (the cool non-freshman masses) make fun of them for traveling in packs, but I can't think of a better way for them to arrange themselves. Each of them know a little tiny bit about Brown, and all of their knowledge together (if their pack is sufficiently large) might add up to the competence of one whole normal person! It really is fascinating. They just run around asking each other questions.

"Does anyone know where I change my meal plan?"

"Does anyone know where Smith Buononononono is?"

"Does anyone know how to get a package?"

"Does anyone know anyone who lives in Perkins?" (No.)

"Does anyone know what kind of tree this is?"

I totally remember doing this. Once, on my first weekend in college after classes started, I stumbled out of some frat (I don't even know where I was. DTau? DPhi? One of those) and wanted to go home, except... where was home? I turned to a group of complete strangers standing outside having a cigarette or something and asked pretty much the most embarrassing freshman question ever.

"Can anyone tell me how to get back to Keeney?"

And, I mean, I'm sure I entertained them, but I did make it all the way back to Keeney (a whole half-block, if you can believe it). That's what one has to do for the first little while. The first months of college, I'm almost certain, are there to break you a little bit so that you can handle yourself later on.

And so that the rest of us can laugh at you. Sorry.

Love always,
Clara

posting post-y posts

Last night I would have blogged, except post- happened and I ended up being there for seven hours or so. For the record, that's an improvement - last night, for the first time, I got to go to Jo's after hitting "Export" and eat mozzarella sticks before two AM.

I love post-. We have such fun. In the year that I've been there, I've gone from "layout trainee" to "the first layout girl who the editors know the name of" to "chief layout editor." Check that out.

I love feeling competent.

We were reminiscing last night about the rougher moments of last year, including the time someone decided the best possible headline for a feature about transfer students was "TRANNYS AT BROWN."

Someone said seven whole minutes passed before we got an email from the LGBTQ center director. Fair enough.

This of course led us into a very interesting and Brown-characteristic conversation about transsexuals and what they prefer to be called at different stages of their lives. It's a source of debate that I won't get into here (boy am I feeling my heterosexual privilege now), but we had a good time.

Charles: This page has a... I don't know what to call it...

Sam: Crisis? Catastrophe? Lobotomy? Trans man?

Of course, this morning when I eagerly skipped down to the Ratty to check out my marvelous handiwork, I realized that while I was making sure all the apostrophes faced the right way and the fonts were legible and consistent, some quirk of inDesign had made the columns not line up anymore. Either I messed it up at 1:30 am last night and didn't notice (humbug!), or something went wrong when I exported the file to PDF (that's what i'm going with). 

All of it is hogwash.

Love always,

Clara

since i've been gone

A number of things have happened.

• Blogger changed its user interface! You are unlikely to notice this, but from my side of the looking glass things are very different and new.
• I came back to college, have settled myself in, and am feeling just wonderful about it.
• My social life has taken several new turns, not the least of which being the Buxton house lifestyle (AFTERPARTY IN THE SUITE!)
• There was an earthquake! And a hurricane!
• Classes have started, and after briefly flirting with the idea of taking five classes, I realized that ENGN0090 is not at all my style, even if the professor is fantastic. Mom was wrong.
• I've realized I have things to blog about! And I look forward to blogging about them very soon.
• I decided to color code my class notes. I have a color set aside for "Insane professor quotes"
• I've begun to decorate my nails with sparkly stickers.

That's pretty much the gist of it. I've also taken to studying (read: rolling around in the grass) with Val. We have some pretty good times, mostly because I'm allergic to nature and all of the little particles get up inside my head and make me feel giggly. Grass is like catnip for Claras. Then I get a grass-hangover and want a nap.

Yesterday we discussed at length the ways I was misinformed about sexual activity as a child.

Dad: So you're half my DNA and half Mom's DNA, and so is your sister, and you both grew from an egg in your mom's tummy.

Me: But... how does the dad's DNA get to the mom's DNA?

Dad: ... When you get married, god does it.

Don't worry, I'm posting more later. (I know you were going to be worried. It's okay. Calm down.)

Love always,
Clara