occupy skype

David: (In the middle of a story)
Me: Oh, I really like your hair right now, by the way. Sorry, I got distracted.
David: Thanks! No, I like it when my hair is girl-distractable.
Me: Yep.
David: (Points to head) This could be my cleavage!

I'm skyping with David. The nice thing about skype is that you can stare at yourself the whole time in the lower right corner.

David: The other day he tried to convince us that Lady Gaga was dating an eastern european philosopher.

David's Spanish teacher sounds certifiably mad. I'm glad Brown isn't the only Ivy to have completely insane professors. I was worried it was unique to us.

David: My mother had an opinion! She's giving those away like she's going out of business.

Moms do that. David and I discussed the fact that parents tend to have this ridiculous notion that they have a right to comment and exert control over our life choices. Hogwash! Balderdash! (Frankly, though, by the time they have kids in college, they need to just trust that they raised us with good judgment.)

David: I would support the Occupy Wall Street thing, with the compassionate addendum that they bathe.

I'm not sure how I feel about Occupy Wall Street. I'm glad someone is blaming someone other than Obama for the economic shitshow. I do agree that bathing is something everyone should do (If only the 1% bathed, the world would be a smelly place). I kind of wish they would define a position, but apparently the lack of focus is what makes the movement so cohesive, in a backwards way. If no one is expected to agree on anything, there can't really be infighting, and no one gets alienated.
I just don't know how long that can last.

David: Maybe I need to sprinkle some Descartes into my cauldron.

Love always,
Clara

"dragons are bad!"

Today I'm going to talk about dragons.

It turns out, the theme of the-hero-slaying-the-dragon happens all over the place in old mythologies. It makes sense, because stories need heros. Heros need to do heroic things, and they need to do indisputably heroic things. They need to kill someone that everyone wants killed.

That's where dragons come in.

Professor: These dragons are evil. Antisocial. Every single one. Just awful.

There's never a question whether a dragon is bad. If the hero killed an evil sorcerer or something, maybe the evil sorcerer has a family. Dragons are always bad.

On one occasion, the goddess Inaras overcomes Illuyanka [the dragon] by inviting him to a feast and getting him drunk (Watkins, 405). 
- Handout of 10/17

Naturally we were learning about these dragons in English class. It turns out that in most of these mythologies, dragon-slaying is described using archaic language (more similar to the original Indo-European). Who knew!

Love always,
Clara

derby love

I went to the Brown Derbies Second Annual Best Family Weekend Concert Ever tonight. I always forget how much I like a cappella. It's like watching Glee happen in real life.

Lex: Girl, I've been in love with you ever since you first beat me at beer pong. When you sunk that last shot, I thought, damn, I've got to get a piece of that. And when you beat me two more times, in a row, and made me question my masculinity, well, I had to have you anyways. So this song is dedicated to you.



(Start that 45 seconds in or something)

Val, this kid is a catch.
Those two are great and I don't care who knows it.

Love always,
Clara

things i have learned in human development

On Peers: "Peers! Can leave! Lifelong! Lasting! Scars!!! On you!!!"


On Unwanted Infants: "But you change your mind! It's like when you have a pet! You get the pet, you don't like the pet, you live with the pet, and then you like the pet!"

On Careers: "If I could do it again, I think i'd go into primatology because I think it is fun to play with chimpanzees."

On Animals who are Independent at Birth: "Have you observed the chickens that hatch out of the egg? It's so cute! They peck peck peck out of the shell!" 

On Hospitals: "Have you been to the hospital? Don't go there. Ever. But you never know."


On Temperament: "I'm well known in my family as OH too much arm moving around."


On Human Nature: "Luckily we're not like goats. We're not that simple."


On Vulnerability: "I thought, before i got rash, that I was immortal. . . . NO. It can strike anyone."


On the End of Times: "Particularly rats. I have no doubt that after humans are long gone, there will be rats on this planet."

Love always,
Clara

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

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

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

mind-grains

Michelle: Clara's mind-grains can tell the weather, and I can tell the romance.

Michelle has come back from an evening. The rest of us have been doing homework and trying to find somewhere to watch Harry Potter. She is just full of stories.

Homework sucks. The heat sucks, and migraines suck (even if they can predict the weather), and people who can't figure out the past participle in english even though they're from Nebraska suck, and feeling like a giant inflatable balloon sucks.

But Italy is wonderful.

Love always,
Clara

a golfer's opinion

Caroline: So, Erika, as a golfer, how do you feel about the Tiger Woods scandal?
Me: *giggling*
Caroline: Well, I've never gotten a golfer's opinion!

We're talking now about Michael Jackson.

Caroline: I'm curious about how his kids will turn out.
Erika: Yeah, doesn't he have a kid named blanket? Man, that kid needs a nickname. Like, Little B. Or, like, yo Safety B!

Last night I told Marco that I blog. He seemed curious about it. It's hard to explain a blog like this one in italian.

Erika: Therein lies the sass.
Me: Ah! That's amazing! That is a sentence that I have never ever heard before! It's so great! I'm going to blog that!

Love always,
Clara

cooking and penises and dead animals

Erika: I'm bringing out a symbolic egg. I have others. This is not a symbolic tomato. It's the only one I have.

I skyped with my parents earlier. We talked about my niece, who apparently is huge.

Mom: She's like you. You were always above the hundredth percentile!
Me: Mom, that's not how percentiles work.
Mom: You were an amazon baby!

They said that all of my blog posts are about food. That's basically true. We're making dinner now. By that I mean Erika is making dinner and I chopped up a tomato. Michelle grated some cheese. Caroline says she's hopeless in the kitchen, so she's telling jokes instead.

Today we spent many hours in the park and talked about various interesting things.

Erika: How much do you think a penis weighs. Like, if I looked exactly the same as I do and had the same proportions but had a penis, how much more would I weigh?

It's a question that I don't think I've ever sufficiently considered.

Caroline: Are we telling dead animal stories? Because I have the best one.

Now there's a quote without context.

Love always,
Clara

when you're with us you don't have to be quiet

Erika: Can you get the colander off my head? There's a reason it's there. I needed somewhere to put it.

Questa notte, andiamo alla discoteca.
(Translation: Tonight, we are going to a disco)

My italian skills are becoming more and more sophisticated by the day. Today I made myself a caprese salad for dinner, and ate bread and honey for dessert, and felt simultaneously local-food-healthy and oil-plus-sugar-equals-heart-attack. It's been good.

Anyway, dancing is a workout, so that definitely counts.
Apologies for the fact that I've been notably absent. It's busy over here between class and homework and preparing food for myself and exploring the city.

AnnaMaria: Say sentences! More! I want to be bombed by sentences!

Class is intense. We've got three hours a day, and then essentially a chapter of homework every night. Our two instructors are the coolest, though.

AnnaMaria: Vorrei un chilo di banane. A lot. Like a monkey!

Love always,
Clara

strega nonna

Caroline is telling us about these books that apparently everyone read except Erika and I. They were about an Italian witch-grandmother.

Caroline: So the guy doesn't know how to stop the magic pasta pot from overflowing with pasta, and pasta just flows all over the town!

Today I made fried eggplant. When you cover vegetables in oil and bread and cheese and salt, you can pretend that they're healthy when they're actually delicioso.

Me: This needs something!
Erika: Try some spices. They're above the stove.
Me: Oh. Cool. You're more culinary than I. What do you recommend?
Erika: Try... oregano, and basil, and... thyme.
(later)
Michelle: Erika, you're so domestic. You should have a show.
Me: Yeah. Like, "How to do things"

I plan to learn how to do all kinds of things from Erika. She truly is fantastically domestic. I feel like I'm living with Martha Stewart (in the best way possible) and it's definitely rubbing off on me. I made curtains today.

Me: Ooh, what website is that?
Erika: Martha Stewart dot com. It's embarrassing.

Also notably delicioso is nutella, but we all knew that.

Caroline: Did you know that hazelnuts are plentiful in the northeastern region of Italy? ... there's a build-your-own-breakfast feature on the nutella website!

We are having a grand old time.

Love always,
Clara

jackfuck

Stefan isn't very nice to Alvina. I don't know why she's dating him to be honest.

Alvina: You make a better pillow than my actual pillow.
Stefan: You make a better girlfriend than that sex doll I used to have.

There was, in fact, a sex doll. I seem to recall her wearing a lab coat at one time. College is a strange place.

Alvina: You called me something weird this morning. A jackfuck.
Stefan: Yeah! A jackfuck! I just put words together.
... later...
Alvina: You're a jackfuck and no one loves you except your mom and she's lying!

Harsh words, but I'm absolutely certain he deserved it.

Ken: Your butt is ticklish.
Valerie: I will punch your johnson.

Basically all of the Jameson couples are really weird. That's the only conclusion I can draw from any of this.

Love always,
Clara

klingon

Aaron: Generally, text. On a page. I mean, if you want to build a mechanical robot that... breathes fire... let me know. But yeah, usually people do stories.

Yesterday was an average day in Fiction class and by that I mean nothing made sense ever. We watched the first twenty minutes of Wizard People, Dear Reader, though. I'm half-convinced that Aaron is just trying to turn us into cool people.

Brigham: Why is there a 69 and 1/2 Brown street?
Aaron: Um... hard to say.

After fiction, I went to a lecture with the linguist that the Star Trek people hired to invent Klingon. He was surprisingly charismatic, and I think he had the most interesting career possible for a linguist. This saddens me and makes me wish there were more science fiction movies in need of otherworldly languages, because if so, I would make linguistics my major right now.

Aaron: I hope graphic sex scenes also inspired you to not write about sex ever.

Today has also been fun. I just woke up from that nap that's been three days in the making, which was actually quite nice, and I woke up to a text from Dan.

Dan
I have procured some sir kensingtons ketchup-we now need a tasting party immediately!
Me
Good heavens! Bring on the space disco!

It's been (and, I suspect, will continue to be) a very good friday.

Love always,
Clara

saltines and michael buble and this is my life

Billy is eating some saltines.

Teddy: Mm, those look good. I'd do anything to get one of those. I'd even show you my genitals.

They're trying to convince me to do all kinds of things for these saltines. I don't know where they even got the idea that I want any of their saltines. I'm not even hungry.

Me: Where is the incentive here? I don't really want your saltines. Or to see Teddy's genitals. Sorry Teddy.
Billy: Why not?
Teddy: This is all just an obvious ploy to for Billy to see my genitals. You could just ask.

Now they're telling me that my life is not quite as sad as it appears.


Billy: Some Michael Buble to get you through the lonely nights.

I love hanging out with bros. Honestly, they are some of my favorite people.

Teddy: DTF? Delta Tau Fraternity?

The DTau boys bought shirts that say that on them. I was impressed. I didn't realize that they were so clever over there, but in retrospect I shouldn't be surprised. They're banterous lads, after all.

Teddy: Word! I love saying word. It's my favorite word.

Love always,
Clara

it was far from over!

My last post was indeed a premature retrospective on Spring Weekend. The best, in fact, was yet to come.
There is a man named Dave Binder, and apparently every year the Greek Council gets him to come play a final Spring Weekend concert on Wriston quad.
Everyone is exhausted and drinking at two pm... and then he makes us do the hokey pokey.
I'm not even joking.

Everyone goes out onto the quad, and the nearby frats have cookouts and such. I made some new fratty friends (this has basically been my primary nighttime activity for the last month or so) which was superb. Then Benny and I went with some guys to dance (or, specifically, to twist and shout).

Binder also played Time of Your Life by Green Day.

Me: This song made me cry at the end of eighth grade! Oh my god!

I made the wise decision to bring out my diana mini. One of my new friends said that with my analogue camera and roundish sunglasses and such, I must be a dirty hipster. This, of course, isn't true; I listen to Taylor Swift in the least ironic way possible. There's no way that those two facts can coexist.

I'll have photos soon though. I need to schedule a trip to the CVS that develops film.

Love always,
Clara

the world. it's global.

David: I just found out that New Zealanders like to be called kiwis.
Me: Oh yeah! I have some kiwi friends!
David: I love kiwis! They're so... juicy!
Me: Very.
David: And sometimes, when they're inappropriate, they can be seedy.

Those seedy kiwis. I haven't skyped with David in way too long.
We're going to take over the country later. It's just simpler for everyone. We've already got the necessary egos to be dictators.

Me: Oh! I've never been to Hawaii! Can we go to Hawaii when we're president?

It always catches me off guard how much better I feel about life when I catch up with my old friends.

Me: I mean, we should have a secure border, but who can blame people for wanting to get out of Mexico?
David: Yeah. I can attest that unless you're being chaperoned around for eight days by the Mexican Kennedeys, it's not a great place to live.

Our lives are ridiculous. We are the Serena Van Der Woodsens of our campuses and future leaders of the free world. I actually half believe this.

Love always,
Clara

scooping ketchup and space disco

There is something that all of you need to know about right now, and it is Sir Kensington's gourmet scooping ketchup.

Seriously. On their website, you can learn about the difference between Sir Kensington's and Heinz (hint: Sir Kensington's uses agave nectar and honey to sweeten their ketchup, Heinz uses high fructose corn syrup). You can learn sandwich recipes such as The Top Hat and The Wild Duchess. Sir Kensington himself is a noteworthy character, holding degrees in Industrialism, Philanthropy, Culinary Arts, and Exotic Financial Derivatives.

The best part, though, is that Sir Kensington offers you the opportunity to throw a party in honor of Sir Kensington's gourmet scooping ketchup. They even provide you with a space disco track to play in the background while you spread ketchup on a hearty bread and sip gin and tonic.
It's not bad.

Andrew: If you'd asked me a year ago whether I'd be sitting around in my room on a thursday night, drinking beer, listening to space disco found on the website of a gourmet spooning ketchup company... I'd have said yes.

Next time you're at the grocery store, just consider this.

We're going to have a ketchup party.

Love always,
Clara

gotta get down on friday

Sahil: I wish I didn't have arms! Wait... No I don't.

Arms are inconvenient for shadow puppets, but useful for a ton of other things, so let's all keep our arms.
That happened last night, in fiction class.
Speaking of fiction class, Chichi wrote a story about a paranoid schizophrenic.

Brigham: I felt like, at the beginning, I was like, "Oh, yeah, I feel like that." I mean... I don't really trust strangers either.

No one trusts strangers that much I guess, but few people suspect strangers of stalking them and poisoning their sugar cubes. I think that's the difference.

Now it's friday morning. My first class was at ten, so waking up at 9:56 was definitely the best course of action (I'm so good at decision making). Last night was fun, but I really should remind myself on occasion that I do have 10am classes on fridays.

Everybody's looking forward to the weekend.

Love always,
Clara

texts in my phone right now, from lately

This will be a series of text-quotes without context. Do not be alarmed.

"Lol nothing to see except blacklight-color. No worries. Although I can't help it that my life is an Alfred hitchcock movie."

"jesus christ. do we need to talk?"

"Demand comments!!"

"Window visible bathroom blowjobs?!"

"What? No! It's a metaphor."

"It looks like a church. Top floor. This is a puzzle."

""All that is required for evil to prevail is that good men do nothing"... Thanks."

"disregard females, acquire currency?"

"You have disappeared. Is this permanent?"

"Swimming. I.e. It is going swimmingly. I'm in a mercedes going 70 mph toward poptarts. Wall is there. I am combustible. Danger ahead but we all know my brakes suck."

"I admire your commitment to tea and tobacco."

"And the bst part iz they're not ugly! Actually legit hot"

"Nah. The weirdos lay low during the week. Crafty bastards."

"They always say that."

That was fun. I'm not attributing any of those, but y'all know who you are. I picked the ones that felt well-worded.

Love always,
Clara