Take notes.

In order for the admissions staff of our college to get to know you, the applicant, better, we ask that you answer the following question: are there any significant experiences you have had, or accomplishments you have realized, that have helped to define you as a person?

I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees; I write award-winning operas; I manage time efficiently. Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row.

I woo women with my sensuous and god-like trombone playing; I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed; and I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru.

Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Mets, I am the subject of numerous documentaries. When I'm bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard. I enjoy urban hang-gliding. On Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical appliances free of charge.

I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie. Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear. I don't perspire. I am a private citizen, yet I receive fan mail. I have been caller number nine and have won the weekend passes. Last summer I toured New Jersey with a traveling centrifugal-force demonstration. I bat .400. My deft floral arrangements have earned me fame in international botany circles. Children trust me.

I can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy. I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. I know the exact location of every food item in the supermarket. I have performed several covert operations for the CIA. I sleep once a week; when I do sleep, I sleep in a chair. While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery. The laws of physics do not apply to me.

I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic, and my bills are all paid. On weekends, to let off steam, I participate in full-contact origami. Years ago, I discovered the meaning of life, but forgot to write it down. I have made extraordinary four-course meals using only a mouli and a toaster oven. I breed prize-winning clams. I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at the Kremlin. I have played Hamlet, I have performed open-heart surgery, and I have spoken with Elvis.

But I have not yet gone to college.

You may have seen this before, but it's worth reading more than once. It's an essay written by Hugh Gallagher for his application to NYU. He was accepted.

Guinea pigs in Motion(?)

I am the Queen of HalfAssery. Surely, a Goddess among mere mortals.

So my fellow Physics pupil calls me up this Saturday and basically tells me to do this group project that was announced three weeks ago (on a day when I was at home, faking sickness) by the end of the weekend. Oh, I said I'd do it. Katie-style.

(To this moment, I'm not sure what the actual instructions for the project were. It had something to do with an experiment, velocity, acceleration, and graphs.)

So, yesterday night, I took out my dusty video recorder, and filmed two minutes of my ancient guinea pig sitting on my kitchen floor on a line marked "Start." And sitting, and sitting, and sitting. Dead still.

I then wrote a 2-page report on the velocity and acceleration of an unmotivated guinea pig. That would be 0 m/s and 0 m/s². I made sure to include my calculations and a notation that, had we been using equations applying to the three-dimensional read world, we would have taken into account the very slight occasional bobbing of the guinea pig's head.

I had to present this to the class today. I've really never seen this look on my Physics' teachers face; it's a look halfway between utter shock and oh-my-God-you-must-be-kidding. My flustered lab partner muttered quietly to himself, "It'll be okay, it'll be okay, she'll fail us, and then we'll just do it over again. It'll be okay, I'll do it next time and we won't fail and it'll be okay. Oh my God! It'll be okay."

I think we'll get an A. My guinea pig's pretty darn cute, if not mobile.

DoomKatie

My friend Sam is one of those revolutionaries who has just given up and pulled the white flag. She doesn't talk in Government class anymore. Frankly, this sucks, 'cause she's the one who had my back whenever I got into one of my deeply-argumentative tangents. She'd be the next one to comment. Quieter. Nicer. With less sass. She's my beloved spokeswoman.

But she doesn't talk anymore, primarily because she absolutely despises Governmentteacherman. He rather likes her, though. He approached her the other day on the subject of her and I:

"Sam, why are you so quiet in my class? I need my Sensible Sam. Without you, it's just Chaotic Katie. I need Sensible Sam to balance out Chaotic Katie."

Chaotic Katie? Schweet. I am the bane of all educators. The energizer rabbit of doom. Roar!

I've stopped raising my hand in my class to speak, because he's stopped answering it. I'm louder than he is, anyway.

Foul language isn't ladylike, darlin'. Repent!

My car wouldn't start when I tried to leave the school today. It's about 92 degrees. Baking.

Apparently I left my lights on.

Shit.

Naturally, my first move was to try and find my sexy Government teacher to jump-start my car and save the day and fall desperately in love with me and let me have his babies. But his car was gone, and he's married and all that, so I just wandered around asking if anyone would help me with my car. I ended up finding the principal's wife, who called every male on the staff asking if they were around to help. Lutheran men apparently don't answer phones (and Lutheran women apparently don't know shit about cars), so she ran back into the school to go find someone. Peachy.

Let me quickly add that you can't really forget the look of a Lutheran pastor in full garb. He's got the full black suit and that little white collar that only shows at the throat. So when I see that strolling my way confidently (nay, righteously) I know just what's going on.

Mr. Sunshine's found me.

He's not a blatant asshole, but there's really no way of getting around the fact that he's a chauvinist pig. Many a speech has been thrust upon us womenfolk, explaining the ways of the world in words simple enough for a mere weaker vessel to comprehend - "the world" being marriage and childbirth. His condescending tone pisses me off.

He quickly assures me that "it's alright, Sunshine, I'm gonna take care of you." Fantastic.

"Thanks. It's pretty stupid, I just left my lights on. I have the cables and everything, I just don't know how to do it."

"Don't worry, hun."

There was some small talk on the way to my car. Lots of "hun" and "darlin'" and "sunshine," with that unmistakable machomacho tone. Ugh. God, just strike me down now. Please.

So I got in my car and put it into neutral so it could be pushed out of its parking space. I jumped out to help push the car (weaker? eh? eh?) but y'know, without someone in the car, it's kinda hard to stop it. So I jumped back in and hit the brakes, which stopped the car about a foot from hitting a chain-link fence.

Smooth, Katie. Real smooth. You look like an idiot. Not that he expects much more from you; after all, you haven't got a penis.

He points at the driver's seat. "Okay, sunshine." Then sternly, "you just sit in there and behave."

Oh.

Hell.

No.

I kept my composure. I didn't attack a clergyman. I wanted to, but I didn't. I'm pretty damn proud of myself for that. Everything else is in a blur; I was in Katie-Hulk mode. I seriously wanted to give him a good kick in the nuts. I thanked him, waited for the other car to pull out, and got on my way.

And I'm still pissed off. I mean, what the hell? Behave? It's not like he even wanted me to do anything, but he still felt like he had to push his dominance on me. Fuck. That. Shit.

Yeah, I'm a nerd

My dream last night could best be described as World of Warcraft meets The OC. Let me get you a visual for that:



I'll admit it... it was sort of a fun dream. But it was weird.

I'm a level 31 night elf druid. I find myself invited to a guild, Order of the Dragon. Feeling deeply honored, I accept. I take my obligatory first visit to the guild headquarters and find myself in a huge, ravishly-elegant palace. Think marble pillars and draping paper-thin curtains. Suddenly, I'm engaging in foreplay with a human warrior (I don't know what part of my mind thinks that's hot, but that how it goes). After extensive groping, I decide I don't want to take it any farther than that and prompty give him the boot. He doesn't take it well, but I equip my Smite's Mighty Hammer and he backs off. I return to the guild commons and socialize for a bit before heading off on a quest for some extra gold and experience points. As I leave the building, a friggin level 99 rat comes out of nowhere and leaps on my face. Due to level differences, there's no way I can pwn this rat, which (by the way) is like three feet long. The rat has some serious range and apparently I've dealt major aggro, so all I can do is run away. And run away. And run away... anyway, I finally run back to the headquarters and manage to lock the rat out. Nonetheless, the thing keeps scratching on the door and making whimpering noises. One of my idiot guildies opens the door and - guess what? - it's time to run away yet again. But is that the full extent of my troubles? Oh, nonono. Apparently my sexually-repressed human warrior guy has gone insane out of lust for me and is up in the rafters, firing at everyone in the building with a Bow of Searing Arrows. All I can do is try to talk him out of it whilst running in circles with a rat on my ass. Of course, loverboy's a little pissed, and I end up with an arrow in the kneecap. As I pass out, I feel the rat hit the back of my neck and start gnawing.

Then I woke up.

Even Freud would say I need to get a life, which should tell me something. I'd write more, but I want to hurry up and get on World of Warcraft since it's already 9 am.

My brain is veggie stir fry.

I took my SAT today. Not familiar with it? It's a simple, non-invasive procedure to remove creativity. It seems to have been a success - needless to say, if you have any questions for me, you're going to have to provide multiple-choice answers and corresponding bubbles for me to fill in.

The rest of the day has been spent in recovery, i.e., on my lazy ass in front of the T.V. with a pile of nerds ropes and a liter of diet coke.

It's dawned on me that I should probably find a couple colleges since I'm a senior now and all that. I really, really want to go to Britain to study. Why, you ask?
The grass is green there. Green. Not yellow and crispy. Texas grass is straw that you mow.

And here's a true fact: A British accent makes any guy appear 20% hotter than he actually is. It's a guarded secret held deep within female society, but now you know.

Ooh, and KittenCult's up for rent again. Should be fun, no?

I saw a "God Loves America Only" bumper sticker on a parked car the other day. Seriously. I took about five minutes trying to locate a redeeming punchline that just wasn't there. Is there really a market for the production of something like that? I mean, what's the thought process behind making that kind of purchase? "Gee, I think I'll make someone smile today over not being a godless foreigner!"

That bumper sticker officially takes the win for stupidest and most offensive piece of shit you can tack to the rear of your vehicle.

Taking second, truck nuts:

Of softball, my arch-nemesis.

I have to do softball again this year in order to graduate, which is basically a vague form of corporal punishment. It wouldn't be unfair to say that for every time I manage to hit the ball with the bat, I'm hit by the ball and walked to base twice. Coaches frantically rotate their pitchers, praying for one to find my batter's box and retrieve an easy strikeout; disgruntled fans shout at the ref, She's trying to get hit! She's jumping into it! Strike! Strike! I emerge victorious and take my base, thankful that the pain was brief and that my trial is over.

For the inning.

Ugh.

I'm one of those kids who always got the B+ in PE for sucking up and "good effort." Physically, I'm not built for sports: I'm wideset, somewhat heavy-chested, and I teeter on two stick-like legs that can barely support my 125 pounds. Mentally, I'm sports-retarded; during my first softball game (after I was hit by the ball, of course), I ran to the left and went straight from home to 3rd. The poor refs were confounded; my flustered coach yelled at me to for-the-love-of-God STOP. If you can, try to imagine me teetering along on my little legs to 3rd, with my coach fuming, both teams staring on in shock, and the parents in the stands whispering quietly amongst themselves, "It's so nice that they let the girl with down syndrome play."

So I'm looking forward to another year of that. Woo-hoo. The nice thing about it is that my teammates love me, they really do; anyone looks better when playing next to me, and that's a much-appreciated role in the world of semi-competitive girl's sports. I think it must be easier to pity me when I've got a dozen softball-sized bruises running all up and down my left side; if the ball didn't put them there, my team probably would.

I ain't got no birthin' hips nohow

I've already sort of explained my position on children. They're cute. Fun to accessorize. And their heads sometimes resemble tennis balls, which amuses me to no end. But they whine and cry and don't know what to do with their feces, and I just don't know if I will ever be able to put up with that for longer than an hour or two.

And I'm almost certain that I'm one of those women. Yes, you know the type. An infant so much as trips over a shoelace, and they recoil in overprotective horror. God forbid the little bugger scrape a knee; he'll be so well bound in gauze that he'll lose all feeling in his legs. And break a bone? Oh, nonono. I'll never let him out of the house again; my precious wittle bubble boy.

I've been reading all those infertility blogs. Women in my family manage to get pregnant at the drop of the hat, but they suck at staying that way. My mother had eight miscarriages before successfully bringing me into this world, pathetic and tiny as I was. Ironically, she "accidentally" got laid immediately afterward and gave birth to my brother in the same year. We were each more than a month premature. I weighed a little more than five pounds.

Maybe I'll just keep cats when I get older. One or two or fifty.

Wasting your time, kitten-style

I'm rarely amused by anything on Youtube, with the occasional kitten-based exception:

Any insightful Bushies, feel free to comment

I got a D- on my last progress report from my fantastically gorgeous Government teacher. The funny thing about homework is that they seem to actually expect you to do it, which does not bode well for lazy smartasses such as myself. Apparently the 5-minute scribbles I managed to jot down and turn in approximately 20% of the time just didn't cut it for that Always-Participates Brilliant-Student Pleasure-to-Have A+++ (smiley face sticker).

So I basically demanded extra credit work, and he basically laughed at me and said "no." At which point I begged.

Anyway, long story short: he's an asshat, I'm a liberal, and I've now got to write a 5-pager on why I want to be a conservative. Yippee.

My very first tenant! She's like a sister to me.

I'd like to introduce all of my groovy peeps at the Cult to Gaby at Forever 17. In recent weeks I've realized that teenagers who are capable of writing coherently are a rare and precious breed; this girl is a diamond in the rough, if I may say so.

She lives in Mexico, she's seventeen, and her favorite carebear is Bedtime Bear. I have reason to believe that she's considerably more sane than the freaks I get around my blog, so you all will have to make a conscious effort not to scare her away. Best of all, she wants to be a doctor, which means if I get on her good side I can get all kinds of cheap Mexican drugs.

Joking.
Kind of.

Anyway, she writes on a very personal level and I'm sure we can all relate. If you're one of those ancient elderly people, it might just take you back to back in the day. If it does, please don't blog about it. We don't care about what you did in the day, how you walked five miles in the driving snow to get to school in the day, how young whippersnappers knew how to respect their elders in the day. You know what? Just die already.

No, I don't mean that. And this is supposed to be about Gaby. Sigh.

My mother is a bitch.

Let me explain. For the past week, I've been having pretty severe jaw pain from the extraction of my wisdom teeth. By "pretty severe" I mean a pain hitting about halfway between reruns of The Cosby Show and a punch squarely in the jaw issued by a professional boxer. I've been taking the drugs prescribed by my oral surgeon (see "I'll be sticking to advil from now on") and they've made me very happy, very sleepy, and very pain-free.

I've been taking them religiously, because pain tolerance isn't a skill of mine. I'm a pussy. So last night when I took my pills and found myself far from Candyland and well within the realm of pain, I became pissed - and have remained pissed to this very moment. But pissed in no particular direction, until about twenty minutes ago.

I got a call from mom. It went something like this:

"Baby?"

"Yeah?"

"I told your dad you probably wouldn't want to go to dinner with him since you weren't feeling well. You probably agree, right? How're you feeling now?"

"In pain. I took the percocet last night and it didn't help at all. I took two vicodin this morning and figured if that didn't put me out my misery, nothing will. Guess I'm just going to have to put up with it."

"Baby... you know... I was worried... those medications are addicting, and, well..."

"Mom."

"I thought maybe tylenol-"

Immediate. Realization. Percocet is almost identical to Tylenol!

"Mom. You stole my drugs."

"Yeah, but I thought-"

"WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?! DO YOU HAVE ANY F**KING IDEA WHAT KIND OF PAIN I'VE BEEN IN?! DO YOU HAVE ANY F**KING IDEA WHY DOCTORS PRESCRIBE THOSE DRUGS? IT SAYS IT RIGHT ON THE F**KING BOTTLE! RELIEF OF MODERATE TO SEVERE PAIN!"

"Baby, stop yelling. I just thought you should know, you know, if I were in a particularily mischeivious mood I might've put vitamins in your vicodin bottle. Maybe. But I just thought you were getting addicted, and I was worried. They're in the bottom cabinet in my bathroom if you think you might need them."

"YEAH, I think I MIGHT need them. Thanks SO MUCH for calling."

I feel justified. Don't judge me.

-Le sigh-

My Government teacher is a regular fixture in my dreams. He's twenty-four, gorgeous, and as of last year, married. Doesn't seem to daunt my subconscious, though.

To be honest, I'm curious as to whether or not he just wears that wedding ring to keep all the jail bait off him. His wife is legendary; neither I nor many of my fellow students have ever seen her, although rumor has it that she appears at school events quite frequently. I'm a much less elusive woman; I can't relate to the wallflower type.

In any case, all I remember from last night's dream is laying next to him, and him being distinctly shirtless. And a fuzzy, warm feeling, much like being nestled in a blanket of newborn kittens.

Bad lust! Bad! I'm going to Hell.

What makes the world go round?

"The big furry answer will astound you!"

I'll have you know that I'm not one to frequently indulge in the guilty pleasures of the tabloids, but I am easily tempted by the notion of 900-pound guinea pigs residing at the center of the earth.

"And that's not all. It's their running and tumbling that makes the world go around," said Dr. James R. Mensa, the world's leading expert on guinea pig physiology and behavior.

Glad we've got that cleared up... and it's all thanks to the intensive investigative journalism at the Weekly World News. Bravo, I say.

Weed's cheaper than therapy.

As always - Comment, and I will check out your blog and do the same.

When you first see a psychologist, there's an overwhelming feeling that the odds are stacked against you. And oh, how they are. You're facing some serious issues in your life, and when it gets to the point where you're willing to pay $100 an hour to learn how to deal, you've admitted to yourself how desperately helpless you are. You're vulnerable, and the person who's supposed to help you practically has a degree in manipulation. Good luck?

This doesn't really have a point. I was only in therapy for a month, primarily because my counselor was trying to convince me that I was fixing my depression and anxiety by tapping my eyebrows and bending my arms into certain positions. She was very insistant on the healing effects of these exercises, and in a way, they helped. Just like it would have helped if she'd given me a bottle of sugar pills labeled Prozac. But ultimately, the sessions were just giving me more reason to avoid the roots of my problems, and I became less confident in my ability to cope. Realizing that I didn't need voodoo rituals to solve my problems was a kind of therapy in itself. I know for a fact that counseling and therapy helps many people; to my mother, for example - her therapist has been a godsend for her over the past few years. I just wonder how many people are using therapy like a high dollar feel-good drug, and how many therapists are more than happy to play that role and take in the profits hand-over-fist.

My sad attempt at advertising.

So, you need a banner for BlogMad, BlogAdvance, BlogExplosion, BlogSoldiers, or any other such thing?

Hire me.
The beauty of my banners is that they hurt, but in a pretty way.
Viewers really don't have the option to ignore them.









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Email admin@talkcube.com.

My people will get in touch with your people.

In the name of Google I pray

I'm losing my faith in the wisdom of the Almighty Adsense. I just don't see how plastic boxes are relevant to my blog. Or multinational adoption, for that matter.

I've never really heard the term "plastic boxes" before, either. Plastic bins, sure. Cardboard boxes, yeah. But plastic boxes? Is there really a market for such an abomination?

Sexism & Cricket Cookies

Spike and Not-Spike are doing well, bless their little bunny souls. Orphaned rabbit pups have a low rate of survival, but my hopes are up.

Anyway... As it so happens, I'm a high school senior. I attend an extremely religious school in the South. Recently it seems like the ever-present gender roles are being pushed even more than usual, and yet I remain unconvinced that having a penis makes one exponentially more spiritual or wise than being without. Of course, I've never had a penis, so this is all speculation, but I'm fairly certain that one can be a leader and a competent individual even if they happen to be female. Thinking that God made an entire gender just so you could have a happy helper under you is more than a little egocentric.

Today's Question of the Day is...
What is the strangest thing you've ever eaten?

For me, it's cricket cookies. Chocolate chip cookies with crickets baked into them. It was something I tried at a zoo event once, and I swear on all things holy I'll never eat one ever again. Crickets are not food.

Comment with your food.

Read quickly, love.

You've probably found me from Blogmad/Blogadvance, which means we have roughly 30 precious seconds together. Read quickly, dahling - I'm going to share ten intimate facts with you.

If you comment with an intimate fact of your own or a thought on mine, I'll have a look at your blog. That said, enjoy:

1) My parents divorced when I was four. My father remarried my nanny. My mother was in a relationship for seven years; her fiance cheated on her with a prostitute (who he eventually married and moved to Mexico with) and she has vowed never to date again.

2) When I was 5 years old, my grandparents bought me a pet cockatiel. When they asked what I wanted to name it, I joyfully shouted "F**ker!" My mother swore around me less frequently from then on.

3) I have a labrador retriever named Ducky. He once ate a bottle of wart remover without so much as an upset stomach. He chews holes in the wall and constantly eats the crotch sections out of my underwear, but I love him so I put up with it.

4) When I was 9 years old, I gave my senile great grandfather a shiny piece of quartz I found in his driveway. He ate it and died later that week.

5) I'm a vegetarian, and I sincerely love tofu.

6) I'm raising a pair of orphaned cottontail rabbits. I think they're about 10 days old. I've lovingly dubbed them "Spike" and "Not-Spike."

7) My favorite number is definitely "8," and my favorite letter is certainly "S." Why? Hell if I know.

8) I've only been in love three times, and I've never been loved back by any of them. Love's still a sacred thought to me, and I'm still a virgin.

9) I don't know if I'll ever have kids. I've found that babies are cute, but only in convenient 2-hour doses.

10) Before I moved to Texas, I took care of a horse named Shadow at an equine shelter. I only rode him once, and due to a freak accident, was never allowed to ride him again. I still spent two years with him. He died the year after I left, on my birthday.

I'll be sticking to advil from now on.

Having just had my wisdom teeth yanked forcefully from my jawbone, I'm managing the pain with some pretty heavy duty drugs. They work like a charm (a fuzzy, tingly charm that makes me feel happy-happy-happy) but they come with some pretty trippy side effects.

For example, I spent all of friday night in a Groundhog Day dream that simply would not end. For hours, I woke up from a dream in a dream, from which I would then wake up, but not really. Just in yet another dream. And so on, and so on. The fact that I remember it in such definite detail suggests to me that half of the night was spent walking around my bed in a half-conscious, drug-induced daze.

Needless to say, I now understand why percocet is a controlled drug.