Ooh la, so my rampage that I go on at the end of every school quarter has caught up with me today.

I ran out this afternoon, like the Eager Mail Beaver that I am, to flip open the little white door that I always think will reveal golden treasure of Ark-of-the-Covenant proportions, but usually just reveals the mail equivalent of Gong Show donkeys.

Today it was a Gong Show Ark, if that makes sense. Okay, it doesn’t.

I reached in and pulled out a copy of Entertainment Weekly that did not have a bill attached to it, and it even had my name spelled correctly: “SJ.” How did this miracle occur? Usually it’s “S.J.” because no one realizes I have a middle name too, and am not just initials. Or at school I am the ever-popular “Sj” because their computers can’t accept two caps in one field. Or “S J” all spread out which makes me think that they want to say my name extra-slowly. Tenderly. A whisper from across a crowded room.

ANYWHO. As I was thinking all of this, I realized 1. that I was getting very wet in the rain, standing there, staring. And 2, I had some dim recollection of a late-night session of drinking and clicking, drinking and clicking…something about eight free weeks of EW, with absolutely NO obligation on my part, I could cancel anytime, etc.

Damn you, Gato Negro. Damn you straight to Hell. Double that for pop-up ads. On the other hand, now I have something to read in bed tonight! You go, Intoxicated SJ! My past self looking out for my future self! Great Scott!

So, I set foot in a salon yesterday for the first time in fifteen years. I don’t know what finally possessed me to do it. I guess I finally got tired of giving myself the same three haircuts. And for the first time ever, I have sucessful bangs.

I like it, but I don’t think anyone else does. Everyone I have seen hasn’t said anything, I have had to say something. Not a good sign. My sister was pointedly terse about the whole thing. I had to prod her for her opinion, which is on the list of Things Not To Do.

Me: “Well?”

Morgan: “Your bangs look, um, European.”

Me: “What does that mean?”

“They kind of go ‘woosh’ off to the side.”

I have Eurobangs? It’s a good thing she didn’t say French, because then I would have to have Freedom Bangs.

Yes, I am obviously not trying to think about war, too. Or that poor girl who got sawed in half. Or how exhausting it will be attempting to move to Canada or Australia. Tbbbpppt.

For some people it’s Sartre of Foucault, but I always find myself quoting the modern philosopher Ludacris. And now that you’ve forgotten why you read this blog, or why you’re friends with me (for my offsite peeps) I will leave you with this:

Thank you, Giant Head of Ronald Reagan, for letting me start my period, so I can go back to obsessing over food and my boring-ass research report. Which is how it should be. Instead of, you know, me deciding if I should hump the bus stop sign or wait for another hobo to walk by. Armchair or television set? Cherry tomatoes or mashed potatoes? Dirty bombs or DIR-TAY bombs? I would’ve taken someone in a surgical mask and a beard at that point, and it would have been even better if they wouldn’t have been an MD. I would hump anything two days ago.

Back to “normal” for another three weeks, at least.

Thank baby Allah that the quarter is finally over. Because no one thanks baby Allah. It’s always baby Jesus, or Big Allah. Does anyone know what Allah was like when he was a baby? Golden vomit? I think Jesus vomited gold, but I can’t be sure.

I digress.

Yesterday I survived my ultimo college nightmare. For the first time in five years of post-high school education, I left a paper at home on the day it was due. Not just home, either, but on my hard drive. I hadn’t even given it a final edit.

I walked up to my professor, who was standing at the front of the class while everyone was chowing down on all the food they brought for the last day; it was noisy and everyone was distracted.

“Hello,” I said. “My college nightmare has just come true. I forgot my paper at home, on my hard drive. I am an idiot.” I smiled like a dope, because it is the thing to do in situations like this.

“Oh, that’s alright. Just email it when you get home.”

Which was great, but “getting home” didn’t really happen until eleven that night…because my cool professor from last quarter was having a celebratory pub night. What could I do? He said I had to go…as the incoming V-P it was my DUTY to meet-n-greet his evening degree students.

It was also my duty to drink a really horrible lemondrop and then spend the rest of the night drinking beer out of my tiny sticky martini glass.

So I sent it last night when I was still wobbly. I would feel better, guilt-free actually, if he hadn’t agreed to be my thesis advisor just the day before I forgot to turn in my last five-page paper for his class. I am absolutely certain he’s patting himself on the back for that decision now. The decision to supervise me doing real research and churning out 50-100 pages. Yeah.

An excerpt of my forgotten, very tedious paper that is about the structure of a certain thesaurus:

“The AAT mostly operates on post-coordination. When a user enters a term into the search box, the ‘terms are coordinated at the time of searching’ (Foskett, 1996, p. 97.) This means that the AAT finds text that is the same as what the user entered, or makes sense out of a combination of terms, such as a Boolean query. I searched

Aha. So today was the day. No more panty lines, said I. I snapped the smallest two-pack of g-string underwear I could find off the rack at Target with unperturbable determination.

“I figure you might as well have a small piece of fabric in your butt, instead of a giant clump,” my helpful shopping friend said.

“Or just half your underwear, which is worse,” I reasoned. Good. I pitched the tiny two-pack into the cart and they floated to the bottom in a sinister fashion.

What happened after I got out of the shower this morning was a different story. I held up the minuscule piece of fabric I had selected to be my guinea-floss and hesitated. I felt like Ye Olde Virgin Bride: “You want me to put what? In where???”

I had serious doubts that I could even get the item in question over my hips. I have been living in quasi-grannypannies ever since I had Miss Frannie, since they are so crapping comfortable…safe…like wine-in-a-box is safe because you know you will feel awful if you drink too much and, hey, it doesn’t taste very good anyhow. But now I was switching to some Cristal.

“Oh c’mon,” I said to myself. “You’ve been working out, you can do this.” I asked myself the important question I always ask when faced with a situation that involves potential trampiness: “What would the Hilton Sisters do?” Then I realized that they are so wee that one half of my butt could be Nicky’s whole body and the other half could be Paris‘s, and that I should probably leave them out of this. Although how cool would it be to name my buttcheeks after them?

I put it on. Felt okay. Ran for a mirror check and then realized I would be wearing slightly baggy jeans over them anyhow. My ass was free! I felt so liberated. I flexed one buttcheek and then the other, and as I flexed I imagined that the Hilton sisters were catfighting over who would get to bump the last rail. The slightly uglier cheek would be named Nicky. “Get her, Paris! Pull her hair!” Jiggle, jiggle.

Then I wondered if people could tell. I mean, we’re all naked under our clothes, yes, but some of us are more dressed than others. Would people sense my almost-nudity? Would I be giving off the dirty-bird vibe all day, even more than I do already? Who did I think I was, anyway? Did I think Seattle had suddenly become Rio Freaking de Janeiro? I went red, and since I was looking backwards in the mirror I could see that Nicky and Paris went red, too.

Okay. I am breathing again. I left them on and got dressed, and as I write I am sitting on a friendly little strip of fabric that, as my friend said, would normally be a big clump. I wonder if I will miss squirming in class? Probably. What if they get wedged in so far that a black-hole situation is created and the thong gets sucked into my body, doomed to get lost and float around for years, just like we all thought tampons could before we started our periods?

Wish me luck for today, and if it all ends in a disaster I have only the mysterious and powerful Gods of Ovulation to blame, who make me do stupid things like this.

Ho ho ho. So my sister scored the cherriest fucking job-shadow of all time…Calvin Johnson.

Okay, I know, for those of you outside the Greater Puget Sound Area (and to many within it) that name probably means nothing.

Calvin is this local rock star, d-i-y guy. He has been making music since the early 1980’s and has his own record label, which Beck’s third album came out on. He went to Evergreen State College, which is this fantastic hippie land where they don’t believe in ridiculousness such as “prerequisite classes” and “grades.”

My sister stalked him last summer by going to every all-ages show he put on, and guess who drove her? By the third one, I was standing outside…it was too much Calvin for me to handle.

She’s meeting him down in Olympia on the 17th and she’s only 15 and needs a chaparone…it’s me, of course. I couldn’t let our mom louse this up. It should be really fun. She’s going to job-shadow a minor rock star. I am related to such a genius. I probably would have cold-called an accountant or something, if I was still her age.

I was way into his twee strummy rock as well as his experiments in dub when I was 18 or so. I still appreciate what he does, but I know I won’t go all ass over teakettle when I meet him. Now if it was Jake Gyllenhaal…I’d be TOTALLY worthless.