To Boldly Go Where....well, you know.

 Like many people this summer, I went to see the new Star Trek movie. Twice. It was simply fantastic, reminding me of the many hours in my childhood spent with the Enterprise crew. So I started re-watching the old show and some of the movies, and I remembered just how much I love this universe.

Then, last night I was thinking lazy, just-before-sleep thoughts. You know, the kind that seem like really good ideas until you examine them the next morning? As I was thinking, one such thought crossed my mind: "Hey, I have Star Trek action figures."

"Wait, do I really?" I asked myself. (When you're that tired, it's okay to have mental conversations with yourself.) And then I remembered. Yes! I in fact did have action figures---a birthday present from when I was about eight years old. They were cool action figures, if memory served, and they were still in my closet. As I drifted off to slumber, the last thought I had was "I should play with those."

Thus, today I descended into new realms of geekiness, even for me. But hey, I had fun!

The fangirls love Spock/Uhura, but the crew of the Enterprise are highly disturbed . . .

. . . especially Captain Kirk, who wishes they wouldn't hold hands on missions, because it breaks his concentration.

"He's dead, Jim."

"Fascinating."

Spock: "Captain, it seems to be life in a different form than we know it.
Bones: "Damnit, Jim, you can't just leave it on this godforsaken planet to die!"
Chekov: "I zink it looks Russian!"
Kirk: "I'm the captain, and I am going to make the right yet difficult decision with pained expressions to let you know how tender-hearted I am."

Vulcan mind-meld!

If you're wearing red and see something dangerous headed toward you, don't try to fight. Call for help immediately, because you're going to die.

Kirk: "You pointy-eared, emotionless...."
Spock: "I am simply pointing out the logical..."
Kirk: "...machinated! green-blooded!...."
Spock: "...alternative that Star Fleet regulations seem to...."
Dr. McCoy and Uhura: *sigh*

Uhura and McCoy have difficult friends.

Nobody likes the old Sulu. See how they shun his creepy face?

I like action figures!

Oh, I crack myself up. Even if I did get them in the wrong order. Dang.

Boys are from . . . . ?

 I pause in the midst of a busy finals week to share with you the amusing experience I had this morning. Roomie and I were sitting outside in the Inner Quad, an outside patio with fountains and nice landscaping situated between the girl's dorms. All was quiet and peaceful, with the sound of the fountains and the studious flipping of pages. And then two boys sauntered up the steps, hands in their pockets, looking around them interestedly. Boys in the Inner Quad, while not rare, are a trifle unusual. So, being the stalker that I am, I watched them with interest. Their conversation went something like this:

Boy 1: Hey! These are pretty cool fountains.
They walk over to one and regard it in silence for a moment.
Boy 1: They're so clear and everything.
Boy 2: I want to dump a bottle of soap in it.
B1: Mmm. Wait, what?
B2: You know. Like, a bottle of soap. But, this one's not even running.
B1: Well, let's go stand by the running one, then.

They walk to the fountain that is running. They walk around it. They poke it. They stick their hands in it. After awhile, this gets old, so they sit down in one of the chairs. But first they poke the chairs.

I thought that the entertainment was over, but no! Have you ever noticed that boys possess this mysterious ability to find parts of things where ever they go? It's like a super-power. Well, when next I looked over at them, they had found a plastic part that might have come from an umbrella. They were seeing if it would float in the fountain. It did.

B1: Man, look at those cool bush-things!
B2: Wow, they're little.

They decided the bush-things need further inspection. The next time I saw them, they were both kneeling down in the flower beds, intently examining a little holly bush. I'm pretty sure they were poking it. In the spirit of plant-appreciation, they turned their attention to the tulips. They poked them for awhile, discussed, then raced back to the fountain. Carefully using their mysteriously-obtained plastic part, they carried some water from the fountain back to the tulips. From across the patio I heard a triumphant shout.

B1: Look, they do hold water! That's freaking sweet!
B2: Look at that. They totally do!

I could only watch in awed delight as two college-aged boys were reduced to their childhood before my very eyes. Is this how boys always are when girls aren't watching? Because when girls are around, they definitely are different. I know this because, as they were crooning their delight to the tulip, a group of girls walked up the sidewalk.

The magic plastic part vanished as mysteriously as it had appeared. Hands went back in pockets. Expressions of manly boredom stole across their faces.

B1: There you girls are! We've been waiting forever. What took you guys so long?
B2 added something about that being the way of girls, to keep them waiting. They gave an impression of long-suffering that was very touching.

I laughed.

The Play's the Thing

Hooray for a successful One Act Festival! I have now officialy been on the Grove City College stage--without embarrassing  myself, which is much more impressive (and surprising). What was this play, you ask? How did it go, you wonder? Never fear, I will tell you.

The play: Texas, 1940s. One good-looking and charming YOUNG MAN all alone in a jail cell, feeling terribly lonesome. "Hello out there!" he calls, thus making the audience chuckle and introducing the name of the play all at once.

 Enter THE GIRL (me), a plain girl in plain clothes.

(This is the back of my head. I liked my hair, so I took a picture of it. In the real play, the girl enters facing the audience. Just clarifying.)

"Nobody anywhere loves anybody as much as I love you."

"I'm kind of lonesome too," she says.

"You're the sweetest girl who ever lived," he says.

Naturally, they fall in love.

But! Here, the playwright throws in a bit of drama. Enter THE MAN (this script wasn't big on names), none other than the husband of THE WOMAN who has accused (falsely, because this is a nice play) THE YOUNG MAN of raping her. THE MAN has a gun. He likes to point it at good-looking and charming men in jail.

"Sure, go ahead and shoot---and spoil all the fun."

This is where the audience has a bad couple of minutes. Will THE MAN shoot the YOUNG MAN? After awhile, though, they start to feel pretty confident that THE YOUNG MAN will smooth-talk his way out of it, the rascal.

Unfortunately for them, that would be the wrong feeling. In a touching scene, THE GIRL enters the jail to find her beloved expiring on the floor from various gunshot wounds.

The script in this last bit gave us a bit of trouble. The playwright wanted THE YOUNG MAN's last living words on earth to be: "I'll be with you always, damnit! Always!" Be nice to the playwright, he was living in the 1940s when they thought melodrama was okay. Anyway, we practiced and practiced, and the poor YOUNG MAN died again and again on the floor....and yours truly could not stop laughing at him. Sad, but true. He would get to the "I'll be with you" bit, and I would be convulsed in hysterical giggles. It was the "damnit" that did me in--the poor little profanity, trying so hard to make the line manly and failing dismally.

Eventually we changed the line to "I'll always be with you." And even though that caused us to break into the Titanic theme song occasionally, it worked better. It was particularly compelling when he made lots of pained noises and stumbled forward on his knees. During one performance I was genuinely distressed. I was squeaking. Distressedly.

To make things even worse for THE GIRL, THE MAN enters again, followed THE WOMAN and ANOTHER MAN (honest, that is his name).  They want to take the dead body away.

"Let me go, you've got no right to take him away!"
"Listen to her. Listen to the little slut, will you?"

THE GIRL is not pleased.

This was the point in the play where I felt like Mary Magdalene, going to defend Jesus' body. "They are taking my Lord away!" I wanted to cry. Unlike Jesus, however, THE YOUNG MAN does not rise from the dead and tell me to stop weeping. Instead, THE WOMAN pushes me to the ground in a violent fit of temper, then they all storm out, carrying the body with them.

Then there was me all alone on the stage, crying an anguished "Hello out there!" to give the play nice internal symmetry.

I had so much fun. It is difficult to express how much fun I had. I have not spent that much time gazing adoringly in to the eyes of a boy since, well, ever. Nor have I ever been pushed to the ground so many times in the space of a week. But my favorite part was hearing the shocked whispers of the audience when the lights went out, the ultimate triumph being when my director reported that she saw a woman crying in the front row.

Mawha.

A Test of Mettle

I am officialy a psychology major now. I know, I know, that's what my transcripts have said for the last two years, but as of yesterday, it is official. What has accomplished this sudden change of status, you ask? Two words: lab rats.

Yesterday, instead of going to the new and airy language arts building for psychology lab, I went down into the bowels of the science building. The science building manages to smell like formaldehyde and fried food combined. It is not new and airy. Anyway, we were instructed on the best way to pick up a rat, to weigh a rat, to hold a rat. Unlike most people, I really like rats, so I waited impatiently while my lab partner went to the animal room and fetched our rat in a cage.

My first thought when I saw him was, "Aww!" He is white, with pink eyes (being an albino rat), and his name is A8. We considered naming him something more friendly, but then we remembered that, when the psychology majors are done with them, the biology majors kill them and throw their internal organs into the blender. That sort of put a damper on desire for emotional attachment.

Our first task was to water the rat. So, we slid his water bottle into its little slot, where it dripped merrily away onto the shavings on the floor. Now, any normal rat would have started drinking the water, right? Not A8. He stood under the water bottle and ate the wet shavings. Ate them. Chomp. As he was studiously chowing down on damp pine flakes, the water bottle continued to drip. Fat drops of water plunked on his head, rolled down his nose, fell on the shavings, and wet them for A8 to consume. He did that for awhile before it occurred to him to wonder why he was getting so wet. He glanced up at the dripping water bottle in disgust. I could see his little brain working: "Why is that big thing dripping this yummy stuff on my head? Can't it see that I'm trying to lick it off the floor? But . . . wait . . . there's a twisted sort of logic here . . ."

He figured it out eventually, but this was our first hint A8 wouldn't be attending the rat equivalent of Harvard.

The next step was to inject the A8 with a drug that would make him feel sick. "It's very easy," our professor assured us, brandishing a hypodermic needle in one hand and a rat in the other. "I will demonstrate." With an expert motion, he jabbed the needle into the rat's stomach.

"SQUEAK!" went the rat.

"Ack!" went the girl students.

"Ha," went the male students.

"Oh, I don't think that I can do this," went I. My breath began coming very fast. Needles are okay, sticking needles into something that goes SQUEAK! is not.

I gave myself a metal shake. Was I not a psychology major? Was I going to be cowed by a pitiful sounding squeak? Yes and no!

Thus, I grasped the needle firmly in one hand and A8 in the other, and, without a tremble or batting an eye, I rammed the needle into his stomach.

"Squeak," A8 complained. "Squeak!"

But by then, it was all over. We put him back in his cage where he promptly started to wobble around the floor and collapsed into a little heap. I went on my way rejoicing, having proven my mettle to all and sundry.

Life Lessons

Me: Okay, I'm leaving now. See you guys later!
Roomie, looking up from her lunch: Bye. Don't get bitten by a wolverine or anything.

Roomie: I'm being persecuted! She's poking me! Persecution!

Tim, trying to convey disproval of dating someone too young: That's sort of robbing the grave, don't you think?

Me: I'm afraid of what you're going to find in the gutter of Google... (likes the sound of that)... The Google gutter.