Wheeee

Summer classes are fun! :) I'm doing well in both and we're going to Governor's Island tomorrow to learn about oysters. Should be fun! I just hope they don't expect us all to eat them because, uh, I don't. But did you know Manhattan used to be famous for its oysters? No? Well it's hard to imagine anything that spends 100% of its life imbibing water from NY Harbor these days, but they used to be some of the most sought-after oysters in the world.

I was waiting to post until I had maybe acquired some photographs from persons with cameras and could make a proper post about my Great Uncle Maury's 100th birthday, but so far I haven't managed to acquire any just from facebook stalking. Oops! So I guess right now you'll have to settle for a link to the Florida Times Union Article  about the event. Just know that he's an incredible, incredible man and one of these days I'm going to take the videos I recorded of his war stories and edit them into something useable. 

I've been really busy, but I'm trying to do a bit of work on Like a Dog in Space when I have time. It's weird that I spent most of June mooning around feeling like I didn't know where to begin on corrections and then opened it up a few days ago and realized I was basically up to a point where I just needed to start adding previously-deleted stuff back in because it's Mister Papers and when it's a 45-minute script Mister Papers needs to learn to shut up but when it's a full length he is allowed to talk as much as he wants and Mister Papers loves to talk. All the other characters in the play are pretty reticent but Mister Papers is enamored with the sound of his own voice and it makes him fun to write. There's just so much going on with his character and the concept behind him that I want to fit into the play and it's actually a struggle to reel him in, because he has this tendency to run away with every scene he's in. He's a great dramatic foil, and writing other characters is just so easy when they're in conversation with him. 

(At this point I need to probably take a deep breath and remind myself that Ivan is my protagonist.) 

I'm also wondering if I ought to go through and apply proper Russian naming conventions to my characters (patronymics, standardized nicknames, etc). I almost want to aim for a tone bordering on a folktale in terms of telling, but I'm not sure how it would go over. 

THAT'S NOT MY NAME AND I'M GOING TO STOP ANSWERING TO IT.

In the last hour I have been called:

Eliza

Alice

Uhliza

Eleza

Eluza

Elaza

And basically every other combination of consonants and vowels that sounds vaguely like my name without actually being it. I have also been interrogated about my belief in ghosts, the afterlife, and Michael Jackson (as my lord and savior, amen?).

Anyways I have a midterm tomorrow and then I get to go home to celebrate my great (fantastic!) uncle's hundredth birthday and hang out with all my cousins and marvel at how amazing life is.

But right now I have notes to study and the sinking suspicion that no one in this apartment actually knows how to pronounce my name.

Leez out.

Cool Science

Confirmed: All Non-African Humans are Part Neanderthal

I don't know why exactly I think this is so cool. It might be because I've been fascinated by Neanderthals for well over three years, or because we've been talking around this subject in class for three weeks so to see it confirmed is really rewarding. Or because it explains why some of my family (not naming names <3 ) looks so darn paleolithic.

Anyways, stop using Neanderthal as an insult, because it's demeaning to the real Neanderthals, who as it turns out are some of your distant ancestors. Not the majority of your ancestors - we still did all our evolving in Africa - but you've got a drop of ancient eurasian hominin in you.

I've always felt that colonial rape culture is the best evidence for Human-Neanderthal interbreeding. It's clearly ingrained in the human mind that the one of, if not the first thing you do when you meet an unfamiliar group is you have sex with it. If they don't want to have sex with you, you make them have sex with you. And that's that. Who's not to say this wasn't as true 60 kya as it is now? Or that it wasn't working in the opposite direction? Or that humans and neanderthals weren't involved in some big raping-and-pillaging circle of life?

(Additionally, there are weird little anecdotes in Genesis about human women mating with giants. This is about 25 thousand years after the last recorded Neanderthals in the mideast, but could it be cultural memory? Weird folklore?)

Anyways,  I'm starting to put together some play ideas for class next semester. One of them is definitely a family drama about a father and daughter who are incidentally superheroes, but the other one so far all I have is that there's an emaciated man in a cage center stage and all the other characters say he's locked up for his own good because he's a werewolf but we just have to take their word for it. But there's probably a plot that can go with this setup.

Anyways, that's all for now. :)

Except, wait, here's a grainy picture of Roma and I wearing 3D glasses waiting for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 to start.

(An hour after this picture was taken, we were both wibbling, bawling puddles of fangirl.)

NO MORE NEGATIVITY

THERE HAS BEEN TOO MUCH NEGATIVITY ON MY BLOG LATELY AND IT IS INTOLERABLE. TO ALLOW THESE PEOPLE ANY MORE SPACE IN MY LIFE THAN THEY HAVE ALREADY TAKEN IS AN AFFRONT AGAINST MYSELF. IT IS TIME TO FOCUS ON SOMETHING MORE POSITIVE.

FOR EXAMPLE, THE ENTIRE TWO HOURS OF ARCHEOLOGY THIS MORNING WAS ABOUT NEANDERTHALS. IT WAS AMAZING. NEANDERTHALS ARE AWESOME. I NEED TO GIVE MY SCREENPLAY ANOTHER GO.

ALSO I AM GOING TO GO SEE HARRY POTTER AS PART OF A DOUBLE FEATURE (PARTS ONE AND TWO) ON THURSDAY NIGHT. IN NEW JERSEY. WITH ROMA. AND IT WILL BE AWESOME. AND WE WILL BE, LIKE, CRYING.

BECAUSE, MAN, THIS IS THE END OF OUR CHILDHOODS.

AND I WILL FEEL PITY FOR ALL THE FUTURE GENERATIONS THAT DON'T GET TO LITERALLY GROW UP WITH HARRY POTTER AND KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE TO WAIT FOR THE BOOKS.

BUT MOSTLY I WILL JUST CRY AND GRIN AND CRY AND GRIN AND THINK TO MYSELF,

MAN.

LIFE IS JUST AWESOME.

Parts of a whole (the whole is a part)

More orphaned paragraphs, mysterious and intriguing bits of prose I think up while walking places. I am beginning to wonder if these are little teasers of stories I will never write, or if they are stories in and of themselves. Most of it is really too pretentious to ever do full form of.

----------------------

Not one of them was there by choice. Not one of them would have chosen to be anywhere else.

----------------------

For a single, shining moment, everything was perfect. The birds were singing. The traffic noise seemed to go away. Even the sun shining through the trees felt warm without burning, bright without blinding. But then reality snapped back into place and he wondered why he had never noticed the spark of loathing burning behind her eyes.

----------------------

The world ended at five PM on a tuesday, but no one told Tabitha Monroe. And at seven AM on the wednesday after the world ended, she woke up, made coffee, and drove to work on streets no one had told her no longer existed. And she never once thought it odd that there was no one else to be seen. (To tell the truth, she rather liked it that way.)

------------------------

There were occupational hazards to co-parenting with a superhero. This was not supposed to be one of them.

------------------------

"I'm pretty sure my great aunt is the last surviving Neanderthal," said Joshua conversationally. He wasn't lying.

------------------------

He marveled at how she spoke to him like an adult, this once-tiny girl who he had found once more wandering the streets of Paris. She had a vintage hat and a vintage sundress, looked like she'd just stepped out of an Audrey Hepburn movie. She spoke like an adult, but after every other sentence she licked her teeth, and he could hear the once-tiny girl whispering the secrets of the universe to him in the pauses between her words.

"Nothing is ever lost," she seemed to be saying. "It just comes back to you in a myriad of different ways."

"Matter is neither created nor destroyed," he said, and the once-tiny girl gave him a perplexed look.

"I was talking about the Louvre," she said. He nodded. So she was.

--------------------------

No one ever figured out how to get the ship out of the jar. This was for the better, as it saved them the trouble of trying to put it back in afterwards.

More cool stuff in my inbox.

Summer classes have started, which are going to be cool once I get into them. In the meantime, my friend Em drew some stick figures based on Like a Dog in Space characters that ought to be shared with the world.

(I wonder if I can somehow bribe her to do the rest of the cast...)

For now, enjoy Anatoli and Ivan.

A riddle for the ages:

If I ate half of a cream puff, walked like a bazillion blocks, and then went home and ate the other half, does everything come out even, and is my self control and dignity intact?

Had an /amazing/ Fourth of July in the city!!!! Sushisamba miso soup is the best miso soup because it has cilantro in it and that is just amazing. Also their sushi is delicious. Also, have a shaky iphone video of things going kaboom. Otherwise known as the end of the NYC Macy's fireworks display. We couldn't get close enough to see /from/ the river, but we all stood in an intersection at twelfth and twenty-eighth and it was a pretty good view, all things considered.

Breathe in. Hold it.

This is the first time today I've really had a chance to chill out, and I'm about to go see if I can brave the crowds at Trader Joes and Duane Reade in exchange for groceries and toiletries... looks like a daunting task! But I got my bedding and dishes out of storage and feel like a super hero. I also vacuumed my dorm room and threw away a lot of rancid food from the fridge because apparently our suitemates don't understand how to clean up after themselves, but that's not really appropriate to go into on the blog.

Later tonight I'm planning an expedition - either solo or with friends - down to Battery Park City to watch the fireworks. Should be fun, right? More fun if I find friends, but either way.

Okay time to go find groceries.

Leez, over and out.

And sometimes really cool things crash-land in my inbox.

Photo credit goes to my friend Kumo, who found the real Comrade Ivanovich hanging out at the Smithsonian Air and Space museum today. Isn't this neat? He's still around! Thanks so much for remembering me! This is awesome!