For rocking when we're old, as they say. So Invert opened and blew my mind. And Rachel's, with their gorgeous cello player, were beautifully sleepy. With a name like "the multi-purpose room," you wouldn't think a location could get so cozy.

Watching in the MPR

I hadn't been this excited since Devendra Banhart came to our old gym basement two years ago during reading week, when no one was on campus and the ten or so of us piled into a tiny trashy room where I fell in love. This wasn't the same, of course - but it was nice in a similar way. See all those legs?

My sister drunk-dialed me a couple of nights ago. This happens approximately once a semester; she only calls when she's tore up at some crazy party. She leaves the best messages this way. "Adrianne! It's your sister! Hey! Hey! Guess what? (To the side) Dude shut up I'm talking to my sister! Anyway! So I'm at this thing and [incomprehensible] and [incomprehensible] and [more shouting]and someone asked about you and I was like, I'm going to call her, so we should talk! Anyway, I gotta go, someone's stealing my purse. Haha! Love you!"

It's strange. All of freshman, sophomore, and junior year I never felt even a pinch of homesickness; I cavorted about campus and kissed boys and argued in poetry workshops, and at night I snuggled under the covers and dreamt of the Hudson. I was in the right place. Now, with only a semester left for me at Bard College, I wake up every morning with a kind of gnawing in my stomach. I miss my parents. I miss my sister. I miss them quite a lot.

What I need, clearly, is some green apple vodka and a cell plan.

You know how there's some music that, even the first time you hear it, reminds you of things as if it has been playing in the background your entire life?

To continue in the tradition of "awesome things I may be associated with but whose poster I did not make" - I bring you the Rachel's concert on Monday night.

Hooray!

It's like all the smells and textures that make you happy. I can't tell you how excited I am for this concert, except to upload this pirated mp3 and hope you illegally download it to agree.

Rachel's - "Family Portrait"

Several things have been troubling me lately regarding my scholastic pursuits. For one thing, my classes don't seem to be doing me any good. For another, I never know what to say to my advisor. (We meet once a week, and I always find myself nervously filling the first fifteen minutes with chatter about personal tidbits, squeezing in some sort of discussion about my project for the next ten, and then leaving five minutes early. I'm not sure why I'm so edgy. I think I'm afraid of being found out.)

It's not that I'm not learning anything. It's that, for the life of me, I can't remember anything more than a semester old.

"Adrianne!" a professor said to me today, shaking me out of a very pleasant reverie. "You're a history of science major! So, 'Eureka.' Do you know who said that?"

I was on the verge of saying "Einstein" but then I realized that I wasn't sure he'd actually ever said such a thing; I was thinking of a play I'd written about him a year ago. The eureka didn't even make it into the final draft - I changed it to hiyo for a more comical effect. These are the dangers of combining history with creative writing. "Who said 'Eureka'? Uhhh . . . gee, I don't know. Everyone ever?"

Turns out it was that guy in the tub who discovered that you could measure volume by submerging the object in water. Right on. I totally learned that four semesters ago. It was that guy, you know . . . he jumped out of his bathtub and ran naked through the streets, crying "Eureka!" he was so excited. A sexy story, too. Why didn't I remember it?

Enough, I decided today. I pulled out all my old notes from every history of science class I'd ever taken, and I read through them all: four years of concentration into an intensive two hour session. Aristotle, Plato, Descartes, Copernicus, Democritus, Rheticus, Osiander, Martin Luther, Leucipius, Thomas Kuhn, Karl Popper, dualism, the tetractys, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Charles Darwin . . . holy crap, I was learning things! I felt so inspired, as a matter of fact, that I whipped out the Microsoft Word and wrote a long, annoying email to my advisor. A segment you should not read:

Why did the earth-centered universe paradigm last for so long? Has any other scientific theory outlasted it in lifespan, or is it our "biggest mistake"? With so many anomalies century after century, how could this theory hold? Did we need to discover, first, that the experts could be wrong? Did it take so much time to overthrow because the very option of overthrowing - the potential for error in scientific theory - had to be discovered first?

If so, it would seem that the creation of the heliocentric universe paradigm revealed the existence of anomaly and crisis (forgive the annoyingly Kuhnian terms) within scientific progress. From what I’ve seen of Copernicus and the scientists after him, the heuristic nature of most theory is recognized; assertions tend to have question marks placed after them, or "perhaps" before them. How did we get from centuries of stasis to constant upheaval and self-doubt? Was it due to the questioning of an entire conception of place and belonging in the universe that this language of confidence was shattered?

Sorry for the twenty questions. I keep meaning to bring these things up in our meetings - but once again, that memory issue. I should maybe write notes before we talk, eh? (Another question! I'm sneaky!)

I was talking to my dad on the phone last week, and in the midst of Happy Valentineses and financial queries and life updates he suddenly cried "Oh! Hey! You know what you have to do?"

"See The Gates?" I asked dubiously.

A white hat

I'll be honest, it hadn't really occured to me in a serious way to go. I'd even known about it for quite some time, which, ever since they removed the only television on campus I had access to from its desolate public room, is in of itself rare for me concerning current events and culture. But our campus center had some sort of exhibit with pictures of his madcap schemes all over the fishbowl room. I wasn't sure how to feel about it at the time, but that problem was quickly remedied by my friends.

"Hey, check it out, some guy wrapped an island in plastic."

"Pft. Fucking Christo."
"He is the least ecologically responsible artist ever. What he does is so pointless and wasteful!"
"Fucking Christo."

I could see their points, so I agreed and let the matter go in a careless fashion. If my dad hadn't brought it up, I probably wouldn't have given the idea a second thought until weeks after Central Park regained its state of normalcy. Luckily, I am easily swayed by the opinions of others. A few hours after that conversation, I called around to find a willing companion, and that weekend Nick and I road-tripped to the city for a day to see what the fuss was all about.

The Visitor Center

It was pretty crowded. Apparently people are flying in from all around the world to see this thing. I'd never seen so many digital cameras in my life, which had a nice side effect: for the first time in my blogging career I didn't feel creepy as I took pictures of strangers. It was my right, as a person with a camera, to take pictures of you and put them on the internet. It was everyone's right. "God damn it!" I exclaimed at one point in our brief spree. "I was totally having an aesthetic moment with that girl's white coat in the sunlight and the orange behind her and the awesome, and then that asshole walked in front of her and she was gone." Honestly. Stupid, inconsiderate people, walking in front of other people. For the rest of the day I kept my eyes peeled for another white coat in the sunlight, but it just wasn't the same.(This was the best I could do, incidentally.)

So everyone was taking pictures, and kids were climbing on rocks and people were ice skating on the pond, and it was bitterly cold but there was an odd feeling of togetherness in that ridiculous mass of humans. Nick and I were standing at a fork in the path wondering what to do with ourselves when a woman approached. "Want to see something neat?" she asked. "Look at this one I just took. See that shadow of the tree on there?" We chorused some ooo's, and feeling encouraged she scrolled through the rest of her camera's memory card. "Ah, that one isn't as good. But look at this, see how they glow?"

Everyone was digging the sunlight on the orange fabric. It was quite the spectacle. So, some neat things: some sun behind the gates. A picture Nick took by accident which turned out to be an album cover (Oasis?). The gates from a cave, and from just walking along; here, Nick grabs some of that 20 mil fabric.

Also, absurdity: your new desktop wallpaper and quite possibly the most Bard picture I have ever taken.

We got back late Saturday night. I overheard a girl talking about it as I was leaving class yesterday, single-handedly proving how easy it is to get into this school. "I don't know, like, my friend went to that thing and like, she wasn't so sure about it. Like, I don't think she liked it. She said it was . . . um, like, the color of construction, or something. Like, gross! Who wants to see that?"

I have to give it to her, though. The color of construction? It's kind of a nice phrase.

I cleaned my room, wrote a chapter of my senior project, helped set up a party, submitted a site design, did my laundry, and finally - at long last - understood Newton, for a minute.

If I'd discovered that Friday nights were so freaking productive earlier in my Bard career, I'd own a small company by now.

I've mentioned Nick before. You probably know him. As he himself has said, "I mean, I'm basically a b-list campus celebrity. Maybe a-list." No, I assured him, b-list. Anyway.

Together, Nick and I are doing the best radio show ever.

Your hosts, Tool 1 and Tool 2

Every week we interview three or four people. This usually happens on Thursday, which has been officially labled our "work day" since neither of us has class on that day. As we've continued working, however, we've discovered that in actuality the majority of our days are work days in some fashion. It takes about an hour to interview someone for a story - up to two if they're chatty. We record them onto Nick's laptop, then listen to the recording all over again and take notes. We edit. We search through mp3s. We listen. We edit. All in all, both of us are spending more time on this radio show than either of us are on our senior projects.

We've been spending so much damn time together, as a matter of fact, that we're starting to look (and act) related. How creepy is that?

But I'd like to take this time to say that if I ever work as well with anyone else in my professional career, I will consider myself absurdly lucky. We'll be listening to the recording, and suddenly both of us will look up and say "it ends there" or "there's a quote for an ad" or "cut that." He'll work on it before we meet again, and fade in some music - and I'll just be amazed. We have a very similar vision for the show, but think of different ways to improve it. There's not many things in this world that are more exciting than that kind of dynamic.

So you should listen, because you will love it. "This One Time." Every wednesday night from eight to eight-thirty on wxbc, or download the mp3s on our website.

We got a lot of people for tonight's show - it's forty-five minutes long. The theme? Losing virginity.

"Huh," I thought on my way to the cafeteria, "since my first boyfriend in high school, I've had a date for every Valentine's Day: except this year." Oh well. Maybe I'd watch some Sex and the City or something. Do some homework. Hell, maybe I'd drink.

It was at that moment that the boy I was walking with stopped in front of the door and proceeded to look adorable. "So . . . what are you doing tonight?" he asked.

Tonight I unexpectedly found myself in a professor's crowded living room, the air humid with February and red wine. We'd been through Edgar Allen Poe, Whitman, and Robert Frost, and it was snowing outside.

The fireplace crackled with sparks, and it was when he began reading Dante's Inferno that I began truly regretting giving up that language. I missed Italian the most on the random occasion that it seemed recognizable again: like how a metaphor unencountered for years can, upon its recollection, seem even more beautiful and meaningful than before. Or maybe because understanding was so barely within grasp. Regardless, my heart was just breaking.

First of all, you should know that I was completely innocent. Just sitting there, minding my own business like everyone else in the class. Actually, I think that was part of the problem; we were all so busy minding our own businesses that we forgot to react to what the professor was saying.

"I mean, you all know where Baghdad is, right?" she was asking. I snapped out of my reverie and looked around the room, checking for signs of confidence from my peers. No one said anything. The beginning of class is always a little rough for us.

"Oh, dear," she said. "Nobody knows where Baghdad is?" Baghdad. Baghdad. Come on, people, this is in the news. Think. Think! The visiting professor snickered quietly from her seat.

"Well, okay, maybe Baghdad isn't quite so relevant to us at the moment. But Iraq. You have to know where Iraq is." Well of course we knew where Iraq was. I sat there for a moment and tried to visualize it in all of its Iraqian glory. There it was: an orange country, right? It had "Iraq" in neat Times New Roman boldface across its center. I mean, Iraq. There it was. Clearly.

It took me a moment to realize that for some reason, the question was directed at me. My professor's eyes looked into mine from across the table with a glimmer of hope. Iraq! I nodded feverently. Everyone was nodding, right? "Good," she sighed. "So, Adrianne, where is Iraq?"

Panic gripped me. The room suddenly felt very, very warm. "Iraq," I blurted, "well, Iraq is . . . you know, across that ocean." I was turning bright red. I gestured across the table helplessly, a kind of self-mockery. Like I was pretending to be stupid or something.

The look on my professor's face was absolutely priceless. I had just ruined the reputation of an entire generation for her. "Haha, well, it's . . . it's across a couple of oceans, Adrianne. But come on. You know where Iraq is. Let's say an alien spaceship wants to attack it. Let's say you have to give them directions to Iraq, based on physical characteristics they could recognize from above. Where would you tell them to go?"

In my own defense, my mind was blown for a few minutes by the situation she had just proposed. "Uhh . . ." I stammered.

"Psst," the boy sitting next to me whispered, "the Persian Gulf!"

"Adrianne, the aliens want to attack. Where should they go?"

I couldn't do it. I couldn't accept this charity answer from a kindly stranger; it would only add insult to injury. No, best to just admit defeat here, and hand over the response to someone clearly much more qualified. "Can I popcorn someone?" I asked.

I thought this was a common concept. Apparently it was limited to my Minnesota public high school. There was a deadly silence, as it became clear that not only was I The Girl in Class Who Didn't Know Where Iraq Is, I was also The Girl in Class Who Uses 'Popcorn' As a Verb. This would taint me forever; from now on, I would be marked, and everything I said would be within the context of Iraq and popcorning. God damn it.

"Uh . . . sure," my professor said.

"Popcorn Michael!" I cried flamboyantly, and my fate was sealed.

I'd love to take credit for everything - but in all fairness, it was Nick who made the posters. Sweet, fancy, posters.

Check out that harmony

Are you of the male persuasion? Do you enjoy reading things aloud? Are you a total ham? Yes? Yes? Yes?!

Good news. Because I have this script half-written, and it's just clamoring for attention. We're getting the sound effects ready and talking about it constantly ("How about a web page?" "Sure! Let's give it a web page!") but I still need a Descartes. I need a James Connor. I need a brutish lout of a father, and a paranoid epileptic brother. Really, I need twenty-one such interesting, sexy characters, for the most awesome party of a radio drama ever to hit WXBC radio waves.

Point being, if you have any interest in being totally famous, sign up today outside the blankity blank room.

Or, email me: am533 at bard dot edu.

In case you were wondering, I have been thoroughly enjoying that Vonnegut novel I started on the plane back to Bard. Not Cat's Cradle, not Breakfast of Champions, but Galapagos - and I've actually owned it since senior year of high school when they decided to recycle all the cool books on the shelves in the English rooms. We saw the cardboard boxes in the hallway with "free" scrawled in permanent marker on their flapping lids, and like the good students we were, arrived at our next classes halfway through their lectures so that we could be sure to jack the classics.

It's been over four years since that fateful day in the hall of my high school, and I'm only now discovering how truly awesome my bible-writer can be. I'd read Slaughter-House Five that year for class, and decided it was my new bible ("What the! This is better than Catcher in the Rye!"), so when I saw the shiny aqua cover with the same author's name on it, my hands instinctually grabbed for its box. I tried to find a delightful quote for you, but you really have to read the majority of Kurt Vonnegut's books from the beginning; the majority of their humor consists of inside-jokes he's established with you. All the same, I tried.

"Aidie - " said *Siegfried, "there are ten people on that bus, and one of them is having a heart attack."

The Captain squinted at the bus. "What makes them so invisible?" he said. His hiccups were gone again.

"They're all on the floor, and they're scared to death," said *Siegfried. "You've got to sober up. I can't look after them. You're going to have to do whatever you can. I'm not in control of my own actions anymore, Adie. Of all the times for it to happen - I have Father's disease."

Time stopped, as far as the Captain was concerned. This was a familiar illusion for him. He could count on experiencing it several times a year - whenever he received news he could not joke about. He knew how to get time going again, which was to deny the bad news. "It isn't true," he said. "It cannot be."

"You think I dance for the fun of it?" said *Siegfried, and he was involuntarily dancing away from his brother.

He approaced the Captain again, just as involuntarily, saying "My life is over. It probably never should have been lived. At least I never reproduced, so that some poor woman might give birth to yet another monstrosity."

"I feel so helpless," said the Captain, and added wretchedly, "and so goddamn drunk. Jesus - I certainly expected no more responsibilities. I'm so drunk. I can't think. Tell me what to do, Ziggie."

I figured out sometime last semester that no matter how many items are on my to-do list, I'll do all but one of them. Write a paper? Read twenty pages of Newton's Opticks? Clean room? Drive to Red Hook? Do laundry?

Done, done, done, done. (Damn, the laundry's still dirty.)

What this made me realize, however, was that the more absurd my to-do lists became, the more productive my days would be. I could trick myself into being a better person! Good news, I thought. This led to the climax of the situation yesterday evening. It was a deceptively short list. Maybe that was the problem.

1. Design new website.
2. Read The Iliad.

As it turns out, such goals do not lead to productivity: they lead to self-mockery. I tried to teach myself Relative Positioning, failed, and went to bed.