i'm at the deluxe inn in ft stockton, tx!!!

inn in. i'm so tired. i should be sleeping now, but i will soon. i just felt the need to update a blog post. even though it will probably be totally incoherent and i'll look at it later and be like what the hell? when did i even write this? but that's ok, because i trust you guys enough to not judge me that much. it's been an incredibly long day but i'm nearing the end of the longest journey ever. ok, so other people have probably journeyed longer than me before. this just feels like it's taking an eternity. i'm excited to get to where i'm actually going tomorrow - that should be the best part. in the mean time, i'm going to enjoy the classy amenities of the deluxe inn such as the clothespinned together curtains to my left. ok, time to go to sleep. i miss you all already and hope all is well.

love,

christina

Wish you were here

The other night when I was waiting on the bus it stopped snowing for long enough for it to be really calm and pretty and the clock tower was all lit up playing "Hey Jude". It made me think of you.

I feel like this

Whoa BJ lives!

My writing seminar instructor is a grad student who looks like cowsuit jeff, wears hipster clothes, and talks about homoeroticism and phallic/yonic symbols. I cannot tell if these things bother me or I like them. I coughed up green this morning and it is snowing like a mofo, thus I am in my dorm room trying to do an essay but blogging instead. The Rev John Delore sent me an awesome valentines day thingy in his fan newsletter and I would like to share it with you:
"In the spirit of Valentines Day, the third pint of bidness is the semi-condensed myth of Cupid & Psyche. Here we go: Psyche was wayyy hot which made Aphrodite (goddess of beauty) wayyy jealous. She sends her son Cupid to shoot Psyche with an arrow so she'll fall in love with the first thing she sees. Aphrodite plans to put a hideous beast in her chamber so when she wakes up she falls in love with that beast. Aphrodite spends time & trouble to travel to the future to bring back the beast Neil Diamond. Her efforts are wasted because Cupid, seeing the beauty of Psyche hesitates. She wakes up suddenly which startles Cupid so that he scratches himself with the arrow. Now he likes her. Likes her likes her. So he abandons mission & Aprhodite is pissed. As the beast Neil Diamond is torn into a million pieces by the angry goddess he weeps, to which she advises him to dry his eye. Ahem.
Aphrodite places a curse on Psyche & Cupid responds by going on strike. Without his arrows of love, people stop worshiping Aphrodite. Her temple falls into disarray, the world starts to wither & smell like a dead fish in summer. Not being able to handle the smell, Aprhodite relents and Cupid & Psyche are allowed to marry. The catch: Cupid remains invisible to Psyche. Things go well until Psyche's bitchass sisters get jealous and tell Psyche her husband is actually an invisible snake who is going to eat her and her baby. Curiosity eats at her & while he's sleeping Psyche holds a candle up to Cupid. A drop of wax falls on his smooth marble-like chest. He lets out a cry of pain: "SCREEEEEEEEEEE!" He flees. Psyche realizes she done messed up. Before she goes to beg the help of Aphrodite, she gets revenge on her sisters. She makes each of them think that Cupid has chosen her as his wife. They both jump off cliffs thinking Cupid will catch them. He doesn't. They plummet and are dashed upon the stones. They meet Neil Diamond in the underworld and have to listen to "Cracklin Rosie" for a thousand times a thousand years. Ouch, baby.
Meanwhile, Aphrodite puts Psyche through a series of impossible tests that she passes, with help. First a bunch of ants help her separate the different types of grain in a huuuuge basket. Next a river-god helps her gather the golden wool of some vicious sheep. Third, an eagle helps her get a gourd of mountain water guarded by huge serpents. And finally she enters into the Underworld where she appeases the three-headed dog with a cupcake, then gets a bit of Persephone's beauty to take back to Aphrodite. But she gets curious, opens the box and is overcome with a dreadful sleep. Cupid swoops down, saves her, carries her home. Then the council of Gods votes to make Psyche immortal. Whew. Lessons: (1) even for Cupid, love ain't all roses and spooning; (2) physical love (eros) + the spirit (psyche) = a complete union; (3) it's okay to ask ants, eagles, and rivergods for help (or your friends); (4) i'm not a big fan of Neil Diamond (ever seen "The Last Waltz"?); (5) thanks to Clash of the Titans, Ursula Andress will always play Aphrodite in my imagination."
I pretty much love John Delore even though I only met him once.

CARL

Learnings

Here are a few things I've learned this semester:

1) based on English phonics, this word- ghoti- says fish. maybe you'd heard that, but i don't think i had. anyway: gh as in rough, o as in women, and ti as in motion.

2) you know how they say that life is one big rollercoaster? well, it's geographically true. the equator is about 24,000 miles long, and so people there are rotating with the earth at about 1,000 miles per hour. we're moving a bit slower in gville, and cari, you're obviously slower in ithaca, but still, 900 mph is faster than any roller coaster i've ever been on. :)

3) and most importantly: i always laughed at ms. harper when she said "ax" instead of "ask". but she was actually basing her speech in old English, whether she knew it or not. our verb, "ask", comes from the old English word "acsian", and somewhere along the line we transposed the s and the c. people like ms. harper, however, just liked the tradition of it all, i guess. believe it or not.

love,
bethany

In Soviet Russia, Waldo finds you!

So today was my first PT this term. We ran up and down stairs for 20 minutes and so now I have to crawl up my stairs to get to my room. It is a legit arctic tundra here. It's like 7 degrees with a windchill in the negatives. I'm going to a dance party at Thumpty tonight so thats exciting. Hot Russian boy in my chem class sat next to me today "so he could see better". I'm working on it. Oh yeah, I'm drill team commander!!! Well, I don't exactly have a team yet but I'm working on that too.

CARL

Title

I give you what you want, but nothing is for FREE

Listening to good, hot, badass, powerful female singers makes me feel way more empowered as a woman than an any feminist manifesto I've ever come across. Story of an Hour can suck it big time, "But I know how to twist ya, to bring you to your knees..." is somehow much closer to home in my opinion of a strong female.
wC

I would like to burn a theme at here.

I made it back to Cornell safe and sound. Back to school. Back to stress. Back to cramming too much matter in my tiny dorm room and too many to-do's in my schedule. I bought the John Grisham book "The Runaway Jury" today because it's about my grandaddy's big tobacco trials when he was a lawyer. It's strange to read about the character modeled after him. I wonder if I will make history and my grandkids will be able to have that feeling.

CARL

I'll tell you how I became the prince of a town called Bel-Air

So, Americans seem to think that the ancient Greeks had British accents, think Brad Pitt in Troy. It's true.

So they are remaking Clash of the Titans, do you guys remember in middle school when they showed us the old one with godawful effects? Well Liam Neeson is Zeus in the new one and it looks like it will be totally badass. I am excited for it.

K.D.