Hey Yeah! Just wanted to let you all know I'm graduating from UB at long last! It only took me four years, many tears, and the foresight to form a committee that wouldn't even really read my paper. Wise choice!

This past semester I've been working fulltime, so there were a lot of sleepless nights and ruined weekends, but hey, it's done now, so all I have to do it look back in wonder and wait for the formwork bitterness to pass. UB, you're done with me, at long last.

But this is also an announcement that my project is online and you should check it out. I'm actually really pleased with how it came out and I did indeed work hard on it, which feels good.

Anyways, the site is www.darevirginia.com

Dare, Viriginia is a hypertext history of missing and imaginary American women.

Please check it out and let me know what you think. Tell me if you think the navigation is confusing, or if the javascript resize makes the screen too small for you. I still gotta work that out.

And now, on to the student loans...

Okay, I know you've been crossing country skiing in the park because I see your tracks. Yes I do, I see them. You know who you are. I rilly rilly rilly want to go to Byrncliff so why don't you call me and we can all ski again! You know who you are! Help! My boyfriend is a bookworm who thinks cross country skiing is too much work! What a freak! I need you! Ski with me!

OK, so I can't NOT go in costume to my own party. So I'm recycling an old idea into a new costume...

I thought I would post my competing Before & After Party in the spirit of choice and a free-market economy. My house is small, I'm turning 30, I have cats, and I'm not bothering with a costume for the first Holly-ween in seriously 29 years (even at the tender age of 3 my mother dressed me up as Pancho Villa, complete with moustache and sombrero. But I just can't ask my evil twin Polly to come out for yet another monster bash.) So please come by and celebrate with me, before and after your wilder engagements!

October 29th
623 Parkside Ave.

I thought everyone whow knows Judy, my mom, would like to know that Wednesday night she had a hear attack and was taken to St. Vincent's Hospital in Erie. She's going to be okay. Only one of her arteries was clogged and they've already cleared it out, but she will have to stay in the hospital until Monday, and she will have to give up the salty snacks and creamy goodies that are her only joy. The last thing she ate before she started to have severe chest pains was a bowl of peanut butter ice cream covered with chocolate syrup, if that gives you any indication of her usual fare!

You could tell how much everyone loves my mom by the number of people who rushed to Erie at 11 at night to be with her. I came with my boyfriend from Buffalo, my cousin came from Hamburg, my sisters and my nephew were already with her, my niece came from Toronto, and my mom's brother and sister came from Bradford, PA. My mom heard the doctor say "she has a consortium in the waiting room," only she keeps saying consor-ti-um instead of consorshum which makes it sound so cute. I think the morphine helps too. She said a number of funny things while in intense pain, another testement to just how tough that old bird is. One of the orderlies in Bradford used to party at our house when my sisters were younger. My mom was the only one who recongnized him and said "Roger Ludwig, I'm doooomed." Then she told all of us, a la Monty Python, "but I don't want to go on the cart!!"

I can't tell you all how relieved we are that she is going to be okay. It's too terrible to see your Mommy all yellow and cold and contorted with pain on a hospital gurney. Please, everyone, quit smoking now, exercise, eat right, all that shit, so that the people who love you so much never have to worry like we have about our mom. I finally managed to quit smoking now a month, and I was so glad that I wasn't standing outside a hospital sucking a cigarette while my mom (ex, but one-time heavy, smoker) was inside having a heart attack. I know death isn't preventable, but preventable death is preventable, so like, shape up everyone, or ship out, as they say.

If anyone wants to pass a message on to my mom, send me an email, and I'll bring them to her on Sunday. I know she'd like to hear from you.

So I have fallen off the wagon already. On Saturday I drank one beer and smoked one imported cigarette. Ahhhhh Gauloises. I felt guilty and recommitted to the goal. But then today I really started to try to do my Application to Candidacy, which is a really friggin' lame paperwork nightmare that you have to go through in order to begin working on your MFA thesis project. Paul I'm sure wrote about what a positive pain in the ass this is. For me especially, since I transferred from another Master's degree program at UB, I have a ton of classes outside of Media Studies. And for each one I have to find the syllabus and write a justification of why it should count toward my degree, and for some of those, I have to get the signature of a teacher who may have moved (out of the country) or who I have possibly pissed off and never want to speak to again. That's so me. Anyways, I called our advisor, a man many know and love but who has always told me encouraging things like I'll never graduate and maybe I shouldn't even be a graduate student. Which is so ridiculous. So today he told me the same thing again, that despite the fact that I have completed everything except the actual thesis project, I shouldn't have "gone out on my own" and yes, I still won't graduate. Well, I might just follow the lead of some greater minds than mine, like say, T.S. Eliot, Getrude Stein, Bill Gates, and complete all my course work, at a cost of $25,000, and tell them to file their formwork where the sun don't shine and let me go my merry way, with no degree to show for all my hard work. Needless to say, it was either break down in tears or break down and smoke. Since I won't give the bastards the satisfaction of seeing me cry, I begged someone for a Marlboro Red. And then I smoked it. WHY! WHY?! WHYYYYY!!!??? I got a lot of nice and encouraging comments from people who read my Quitter post, but the best and most honest one was, don't say you've quit until 2 years have passed.

Day 6 with no cigarettes. The (e:strip) party was my last hurrah with the smoking. I think it was an appropriate way to end it all; after 10 years of partying and puffing, to toke some last rollies with my old crew. I smoked a smorgasborg of borrowed butts that night, and since I had been cutting back for two weeks before that, they made me dizzy and kinda sick feeling. The next day I think I was more hungover from cigarettes than anything else. This week has been intense with rehersals (one of my ideas was pretty over-the-top and I got grilled by the whole troupe and in the end I had to just cut the skit) but I have still managed not to give in, even though people around me are smoking. Really what I feel like is I've lost an old friend (I almost typed 'fiend'), My Tabaccy, and though I miss it now it's gone, it was time to move on. There just weren't any surprises anymore. Puff puff butt, over and over. The good news is, according to everything doctors have told me, now that I'm not a smoker, I'll live forever, right?

[size=l]Hello Strippers![/size]
[size=xl]This is an invite to the
Real Dream Cabaret's[/size]

[size=xxl]Super Intense Decision Show

at Squeaky Wheel! [/size]

Thursday
August 4
8:00 p.m.

Friday
August 5
9:00 p.m.

Saturday
August 6
2:00 p.m.

Sunday
August 7
4:00 p.m.

The Super Intense Decision Show is part of the Infringement Festival. All performances held at Squeaky Wheel 175 Elmwood. Admission is your hourly wage.

I will be performing with the group, in case you are my friend and would like to see me. But even if you are not my friend or would not like to see me, you should come and just close your eyes during my parts!

More Info:
Real Dream Cabaret Webpage:
Infringement Festival (Buffalo):

Calling all Hackers! Calling all Hackers! Do you like people, especially women? Do you deplore and denounce violence, especially against women? Of course you do. Otherwise you'd be a dickless motherfucker who should rot in hell.

So if you like women, and you think beating them up is about the most disgusting thing a man can do, then I have a job for you. I would like someone to take down sliceoftheday.com for as long as possible, if not permanently.

Basically it's a celebrity nudes site. I was surfing it because this is my boyfriend's favorite kind of internet softporn, so I'm curious and thought maybe I could recommend the site to him. Alright, so I also wanted to see nude pictures of Scarlett Johannsson. Who wouldn't. Anyway, they have a section of the site called "Pieclopedia" where they define different types of women as different flavors of pie. Innocent enough. But then I saw this definition, complete with a bruised picture of Paris Hilton:

"Black and Blueberry
This is a very tricky flavor. Every single slice of pie can become Black and Blueberry, but none of them will ever stay that flavor. This flavor is for those pies that have been "kneeded" or "tenderized" to bring out their full flavor. If you miss your chance to taste this flavor, don't worry my friend. You can always create it out of any slice of pie you see."

These fuckers are not only recommending beating women, they are getting off on it. I'm so pissed I think I could make their dicks shrivel up right now just by thinking about it. I can't even say anymore, I don't think I have to. Women die everyday at the hands of their so-called "lovers". So if you want to hack-attack this site, you would be doing the world a favor. Or if there are any women out there who want to join me as I track the site owners down and beat the shit out of them and then ask how sexy *they* feel, I'm all for it.

I should know better than to think that I can skim even the surface of filth on some men's minds without becoming totally sickened by it. I'm all for looking at naked pictures, it turns me on too, but jokingly suggesting that beaten women are attractive hurts not just women but men too.

Warning: Harry Potter is crack! Millions have suffered from Harry Potter addiction before me, but now I've fallen prey too. So I'm here to warn you, children, if you've somehow managed to remain free of its influence up to now, do not touch, smell, or even look too closely at any Harry Potter books or the words may leap into your eyes and infect your brain.

Symptoms of Harry Potter addiction include but are not limited to:

--> An inability to concentrate on anything not related to Hogwarts, the Ministry of Magic, character arcana, or minute clues spread over 6 novels. In general, sufferers are prone to "magical thinking" and may refuse to go to work, eat, or even accept that "none of it is real." Once at work, they often spend hours combing through fan sites and repeatedly checking the current date to verify the ETA for "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" (2 days, 13 hours, 50 minutes, 30 seconds).

--> Waving your pencil like a wand, trying to make your car fly, and seriously considering what position you are best suited to play on your house Quidditch team, which may result in attempts to actually play Quidditch, which may result in death. Warning: a broom can NOT fly, even and especially when one leaps off a rooftop astride one.

--> An intensely irritating weeping rash between the toes and around the heel of the foot that is resistant to all forms of OTC treatment (Although I haven't been able to determine conclusively that this is Potter induced... could be poison ivy.)

Suffers can be recognized by their glassy eyes, dazed expression, and incoherent speech. If they respond to questions by starting "Well, Dumbledore says..." or "My life is a lot like Sirius' in PoA" then they should be immediately diagnosed with the affliction.

Unfortunately, no cures have been established at this time, although symptoms do seem to be relieved by periods of unconsciousness (sleep, drug induced torpor, or coma) and vigorous shaking (either of the victim directly or by earth quake). One can only expect for this epidemic to become worse with the release of book 6, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince", in only 2 days, 13 hours, 47 minutes and counting, or movie 4, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" which doesn't come out, alas, until November 2005.