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What's with the "I'm captured by Buffalo Bill if he were the Ice Truck Killer" dream? Because you're under the impression that I go outside too much already? Fuck you.

I know why it happened: we're studying helping behavior in Sociology, and there are stages between when you notice someone in distress and whether you help them or not. Know what I learned? I won't help anyone. If it's a dude, I assume he's a rapist, and if it's a woman or child or puppy, then they're the bait for a trap set by a rapist. You can thank TV for all that, people in need. Too many true crime shows in my head + my mother liked to encourage her daughters to regard all things with suspicion. She made us watch the beginning of Eye For An Eye where Kiefer Sutherland kills Dorothy Torkelson just so I'd never open the door to anyone (not an exaggeration--that's the exact reason). Cut to me several years later watching the mailbox from between slits in the blinds, debating the risk of walking to the end of the (very short) driveway to see if there are letters. I could do that for hours. Is that a van lurking around the corner ready to snatch me? Better re-lock all the doors just in case and hide.

So if you swerve into a tree and I'm the only car to drive past, you need to disentangle yourself from the seatbelt before you're hanged, because I'll call the paramedics, but I can't stop for you. That's a very elaborate trap you have there to capture me for the rapist in Lie To Me who keeps his victims for days in suspended terror, watching tapes of him burning out the eyes of previous victims with acid, before naturally he does it to them. Even if I see the wreck happen and you're a girl my age carpooling handicapable children to church I might not risk it--that would only be the kind of thing a clever rapist might think of.

From The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde, between the Queensberry defense attorney and Oscar:

Carson: Did you ever have any immoral practices with Wood? [That's just a dude's name, don't get excited yet.]
Wilde: Never in my life.
Carson: Did you ever open his trousers?
Wilde: Certainly not!
Carson: Put your hand on his person?
Wilde: Never.
Carson: Did you ever put your person between his legs?
Wilde: Never.

This transcript is actually pretty difficult to read because it's so disheartening, especially since there are still people around today squawking about how homosexuality should be recriminalized. Oh--because it was such a fucking party back in the day? Because folks said "person" instead of "penis" and sent people to jail over art and thus the world was bright and clean? Dude, fuck that.

My thesis has a pretty depressing slant all the way through. I try to be optimistic in the conclusion, but it's hard to realize just how much of this baggage is still being hauled around, and that the laws are hardly different (see: Uganda), and motherfuckers in my own country want to take a few steps backward every day. Awful.

Tonight I'm spending some quality time with:

-the new OK Go album, Of the Blue Colour of the Sky

-Ne-Yo (who's so gorgeous it's unjust and terrible)

-Royal City, the dominant noise we heard on the soundtrack of Twist

-old Dixie Chicks songs from several years ago

-and an oldie by Desmond Dekker and the Aces from Drugstore Cowboy

I AM MORE ECLECTIC THAN YOU JUST ADMIT IT.

I finished my edits earlier today, but I'm still doing research on my thesis. The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde brings up The Chameleon, which first printed Alfred Douglas' "Two Loves" (from whence we get "the Love that dare not speak its name") and Wilde's "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young" (where we get stuff like, "It is only the superficial qualities that last. Man's deeper nature is soon found out"). Lesser known to me however: "The Priest and the Acolyte" by Some Other Dude. It's exactly what it sounds like: a 28 year old priest and a 14 year old boy--totally choice. "Conscience is merely another name for the cowardice that dreads to offend against convention." No wonder they convicted Oscar Wilde, who the fuck did those boys think they were fooling?

Now I have to read this naughty priest story and giggle and get scandalized instead of watching Drugstore Cowboy and going to bed like I planned. Damn you thesis!

Thanks to the mentorship of Bill Konigsberg (and if you don't want to be referred to from here on in as Uncle Bill, you'd best say so now), I've just officially signed with Mark McVeigh at The McVeigh Agency.

Also I've got a camera hook-up for Skype (blrhetoric) because I am a business person now.

And I've scheduled my baccalaureate exam--announcement to follow.

Today's been pretty awesome.

Maladaptation didn't make the Lambda finalists for Children's/YA (I'm gonna assume it was just too adult for the category, which UPDATE: I have on good authority is actually the case), but here's who did:

* Ash, by Malinda Lo (Little, Brown)

* How Beautiful the Ordinary, edited by Michael Cart (HarperCollins)

* In Mike We Trust, by P.E. Ryan (HarperCollins)

* Sprout, by Dale Peck (Bloomsbury USA)

* The Vast Fields of Ordinary, by Nick Burd (Penguin Books)

I'm sure those are all awesome, not that jealous, good sport, blah blah blah. Wanna know the first thought that ran through my head (after "ow" that is)? "Oh good, now I won't have to feel bad about not flying to New York for the awards ceremony."

Social anxiety: my eternal consolation prize.

Dudes--if I get rejected from two regular universities but get in to two art schools, I'm gonna know what's up.

It's now officially the week of March 15th, which is when the Lambda awards announce the 2009 finalists, so I'll find out about that soon too.

Thesis edits also came in from my adviser; it's not as done as we thought. I'm reworking the introduction and abstract since the topic shifted while writing. Not a big deal. I have about two weeks to fiddle with it.

Also: when I told my adviser that I'd gotten an agent she suggested maybe not even going to grad school at all. How awesome is it when a professor says you might want to drop out of school?

Oh man--my acceptance to CCA just hit me. After getting interviewed by Chicago I just got it into my head that they were the only school that wanted me that I'd naturally be going there, so when I got the letter from CCA it didn't register. But San Francisco? I don't think I want to be anywhere else. I was looking up apartments in both cities (I lost a couple of hours to this) and as far as environment goes it's no contest. I belong on the west coast.

If I get in to SAIC, I'll have to make a list of pros and cons, and one big con about California is that my best friend won't be there with me, but... I think that's my home out there.

And while I'm being sentimental; I'm reading The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde (I ditched A Room With A View indefinitely--I just wasn't feeling it), and it reminded me of an Oscar quote I hadn't seen in a while:

"You knew what my Art was to me, the great primal note by which I had revealed, first myself to myself, and then myself to the world; the real passion of my life; the love to which all other loves were as marsh-water to red wine."

How pretty is that? <3

Always a good choice. My face and hands went numb because I am a Pro Fessional.

I had a lot of success to dance out, and it was a good wall.

This is the best feeling.

Because I'm not in the middle of enough things, my Sherlock Holmes novel. I had too many people encourage me about it today, so it's started. I'm thinking I'll try for 100,000 words (so far everything I've written is less than 80,000), and I've already got 763, so I'm well on my way.

You what I learned right away? I know NOTHING about World War I. Nothing. Not a single damn thing. But I'll Google my way through it somehow.

2:00 - My adviser tells me my thesis is pretty well done and ready to defend. (I've decided I want to rework some stuff on my own, but that's beside the point.)

3:00 - Letter from California College of the Arts admitting me to the Fall 2010 class. I still want to hear from Chicago, and there's no mention of funding in this initial letter, but that's an awesome relief. (This letter is dated March 2, ten days ago. E-mail people, CCA! Dang!)

4:00 - Got a call from agent Mark McVeigh (!!!eleventyone!!!exclaimation!!!) and things are percolating. I handled that way better than my phone interview with SAIC--hardly any awkward pauses.

5:00 - Printed my midterm, and I'm officially homework free until after Spring Break.

8:00 - Mystery GIFT: Twist

10:00 - Dance it out.

Masterpieces midterm paper: done.

Surprise assignment from Sociology: completed.

Extra thesis work I invented because I'm too good at homework and want my thesis to be the best ever: outlined.

I'll probably never be as good at a real job as I am at being a student. Luckily I plan never to have a real job. I'm having a lovely time now, and that's because at some point during my work it rolled over into Friday. I hope the door hit Thursday on the ass when it left.

Today was pretty lame. It started last night when a check for about eight dollars closing an account that was started for me by a credit union got lost, and it would cost twenty dollars to have the first check voided and another sent out. That is not sensible. So unless the envelope shows up because someone found it, the state gets to claim that eight dollars in five years. Stupid.

Then there was a letter about my health care, a bill about my health care, a letter about prepaid college fund being over (obviously--as it's my last semester), and the wind was pushing me around today, and I had to sit through a fantastically useless class summarizing all the paintings we've learned about this year and hearing about how to write a midterm paper. Yes, thank you. I'll write that on Monday now. Fuck it, I'll just do it now.

But I'm not so cranky now. I saw the beautiful gay child I eye-stalk on campus today, and suddenly the world seemed just and beautiful. Plus, this weekend I have a telephone conference with a literary agent and I'm very optimistic and excited about it, since he actually queried me at the beginning of the week, and already likes Maladaptation. More details to follow--I really hope that works out to some good news.

Also: Chicago is supposed to get back to me about grad school decisions, and tomorrow's Mystery GIFT, and I'll find out how much of my thesis needs more work before my bacc., and I'll have a room scheduled for it. So as far as I'm concerned, Friday started five minutes ago, and it's going to be awesome the whole time.

Eh. This book went way too fast, and not in a "oh man it's so good I couldn't stop reading it" sort of way. It was more of an "I like girls, no wait guys, no wait friends" starter novel for teens who still move their lips when they read. Oh well.

Next up: A Room With A View (it came packaged with my class copy of Howard's End, and I'm curious to see if I like it) interspersed with anthology stories. And possibly The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde as sort of baccalaureate prep. Can you tell I'm done writing my thesis? I've missed reading.

When I'm sitting in Masterpieces, I have to do shit with my hands so I don't fall asleep. It's a dark, cozy lecture class, actually not all that boring, and every time I raise my hand I school all those art kids on how to read a painting as a text. But that's not the point, what's important is: I copy down poems I memorized in high school over and over again to stay awake. I actually scammed an advanced placement psych teacher in high school for nearly an entire year by copying down "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" on the useless vocabulary packets he gave us. Why should I do honest work if he's not going to even glance at it? And I got perfect grades, obviously. But that's not the point either.

I've started making cut-up poems. I copy out two poems onto one page so that they're all jumbled and then read across for anything that makes sense. This is pretty much why I don't respect a lot of contemporary poetry, because this nonsense is way too easy. We had a visiting creative writing professor who did "found poems" off of stuff in the grocery aisle. Um... no. I feel like art has to be more deliberate than that, but I'm good at faking it all the same. Observe:

Perish in the heart
the winter evening days
of withered showers
and lightning consciousness;
smells of street press early
raising a thousand tossed lights,
revealing images constituted
against the day.

The shutters, the gutter,
the street curled
from your clasped palms
soiled, stretched, trampled, impatient,
assured by gentle fingers.

BAM! Check out all that art. That's mostly T.S. Eliot's "The Preludes" with a smidge of Longfellow and one case of me writing too fast and making a new word that isn't in the original ("lighting" turned into "lightning," but it's more art this way).

The message: it's so easy to be farty, such a long battle I wage against how clever I think I am. I hope you people appreciate how real I keep it around here. I do that for you. P.S. Get ready for a series of these. It's a long class.

Here's what's happening to me as I read Chapter Thirteen of Oscar Wilde and a Death of No Importance:

Book: "It's New Year's Eve at Tite Street! Isn't it fun the way people who actually knew Oscar Wilde are dropping by? Look, it's Mama Wilde! And Brother Wilde! And John Gray who was the inspiration for Dorian Gray! He's here too! Look at Oscar's kids! They're eating dinner now!"

Me: "Whoa, hey, Book, I'm gonna need you to stop right there. This is by far the most boring thing I've ever read, and I've read Oscar Wilde's biography that had, like, bills and letters to the city about potholes in front of his house, okay? Really, you have to stop this shit and give me something more interesting."

Book: "O ye of little faith! Here's a head in a box like the end of Seven!"

Me: *face-->palm* "Yeah, bro, that's really not what I meant."

I just... I guess I'm glad that it's going to be so easy to dominate when I come around with my Sherlock story. They don't call me Silver Lining Fields for nothing. I think I'm going to start something fun again, and just finish these Wilde mysteries in between stuff that isn't so carefully, deliberately dull. I have David Inside Out, which is a fellow contender with me in the YA Lambda category, and sounds like Robin Reardon's A Secret Edge (because it's about kids on the track team, basically) and yet cannot possibly be as bad. I'm not trying to damn with faint praise or anything, I'm just speaking the Lord's honest truth here. The hurdle's awfully low ifyouknowwhatImean.

I've been reading Lake Overturn all day. It's set in Idaho, and at this point I wouldn't even drive through Idaho to get to Canada (and you know how much I wanna go to Canada). Even if I didn't have to stop for gas, seriously.

It's a good book though, really good at being crowded, full of interconnected small town characters, but not too overwhelming. And it has those unlikely metaphors I enjoy so much in Keith Banner's stuff, though Vestal McIntyre keeps them a little kinder. Not that people aren't in proper agony over here, it's just a regular, everyday sort of agony, as opposed to the extraordinary kind Banner hands you. I may finish this book tonight since it's got hooks in me. It's not what I expected, but it's good enough that I don't care.

And I really like the title too. That's a good one.

I just finished my conclusion.

I think this thesis might be really good.

Cool.