ad astra!

Actually, last week’s video was *not* actually hell. I’ve since learned that many other things can be hell.

For instance, Meijer Pharmacy #191 (Plainwell, MI) is a good representation of Dante’s Fourth Circle of Hell , where the avaricious and prodigal are condemned to useless labor. I had to work there all week.

Well this post was interrupted by Carson’s need to use the computer, so I guess I will have to do it later.

The Good News Is: I’ve been informed that my play “Stood Up” has one second place in GVSU’s Oldenburg Writing Contest. Yay!!!!!

Oh yeah, and the only remotely exciting part of the ’speare class on wednesday was that during the movie they were always saying “Coriolanus” like cor-ee-ole-ANUS in ridiculously british british accents. So about 1/2 the way through I’m thouroughly tired of the whole thing and someone in the movie says CORIOLANUS really loud so I say “uh huh huh he said ANUS uh huh huh huh” like beavis & butthead. and stuff. yeah. guess you had to be there.

oh yeah and this coriolANUS’s mom has this long speech near the end of the movie, like this old woman just fucking rambles and rambles and shouts and cries and rambles (ROME! ROME! OH ROME! etc) and at the end she says “I am hushed” so I just yelled out “THANK GOD!” and everyone laughed. THEN she KEPT TALKING after that. It was hell.

Well we are still in limbo with the whole cancer thing… mom has one more chemo treatment in two mondays and then they will do a CT scan and see if it’s doing any good. And if it’s not I guess we’re screwed.

Other than that, things have been acceptable. Carson* is living with me still, still doesn’t have a job, and is going to GVSU. It’d be nice if he’d get a job but then I’m not really supporting him (and he does buy food) but he needs something to do during the day.

I’ve been working almost 40hours a week… I swear all I did last week was study for a test for my SS384 (Social Inequalities) class… that class has been kicking my ass lately but it’s very interesting… in a nutshell, most of the information I’ve gleaned from the course it that in the end about 99% of the population is getting screwed and the leftover 1% has 99% of the wealth. But then I knew that already. It’s actually pretty depressing. And I think my professor could use some Zoloft or a little Xanax maybe to take the edge off. But I guess if that’s what I had to teach people every day I’d be a little pissed off and depressed, too.

I still have to read Coriolanus for my Shakespeare class. We watched the movie in class on wednesday and it was mostly a waste of my time… I would’ve rather done something else like even read the damned thing because that movie was so ridiculously boring and full of itself… But I have to write a paper on it so I guess I should read it. Bagh. Hamlet and King Lear are still the end-all be-all of Shakespeare as far as I’m concerned. And the only ’speare movie that I’ve ever liked was the Kenneth Branagh full-length version of Hamlet and that’s only because it was so fucking long you just had to like it after paying attention for that long. And it’s just neat.

*Carson is my boyfriend.[if that's news to you, click here] Or partner. Or companion. Or whatever… if I call him my boyfriend it sounds like all we do is hang out on the sofa and watch “buffy the vampire slayer”. If I call him my parter it sounds like we’re lawyers & if I call him my companion it sounds like he’s my dog. Whatever.

I mentioned a play I was working on Sept 11, which is why I was awake and on the freeway when all the shit came down. But this is not related to the terrorist attacks.

BUT it is amazing how things happen. When I first had the concept for this play two years ago (two years ago last week even) I don’t know why it came about but I couldn’t sleep until I had the concept down. Then it went to sleep for a long time, and it came back for my creative writing class. The situation changed a bit, the girl at first died in a car accident, then I decided cancer would make it different.

I had no idea that it would actually become so close to me until the 14th of December when I was at Blodgett hospital next to my mom as she was recovering from what was supposed to be gall-bladder surgery and ended up being a six hour procedure to remove those some 900 cancerous tumors from her abdomen. It’s just eerie how things happen to give a lot of my work meaning that they didn’t have before.

She went back in on 19 January [WHICH is why I haven't updated this since the 18th of January] for what we thought was dehydration; by the next day her abdomen had swelled up again with an abscess that was life-threatening so on the 21st she went back into surgery and was in the ICU for two days, but she has recovered from that. I spent two weeks at her place helping her get better this time, which was a bit bumpier than the first time because she had a serious infection and her spritis weren’t all that good; she really didn’t to be back in the hostpital again. But she is back on her feet and ready to fight again, she had a chemo two weeks ago and is getting ready for another. We’re still fighting.

PS!__Thanks for emailing me Jeff. I will get back to you after the weekend.