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Peace.
-Todd

I'm going to be in a play.

Pentecost is its name. Pusbas is my character's. He's a Russian KGB strong-arm type guy. And, from what I've gathered, totally badass. But I have to speak Russian or something for most of it, which means memorizing lines will be a bitch and a half. Add to that the fact that we start tonight and we're performing March 4-7; I won't have a whole lot of time to do much of anything else. The rehearsal schedule does give me my weekends, though. So I won't go Dean on everyone.

I'm hungry.

Peace.
-Todd

It goes, pretty much, without saying that I'm a little shocked about the results of tonight's caucus. At mine, twelve delegates went to Kerry, nine to Dean and six to Kucinich. I noted, early on, the difference in mean age between the Kerry camp and the Dean and Kucinich camps. It must have been something like thirty-five years. I have, therefore, come to the conclusion that Kerry and Edwards, who both voted for the Iraq war resolution, were caucused for by senior citizens who viewed them as less vulnerable to Bush (Remember, I've been in political science for all of one hour, earlier today.). Of course, Gephardt, who co-authored the damned thing, came in a distant fourth, which doesn't really figure, but pretty much knocks him out of the race for good.

Peace.
-Todd

Big Fish is like an anthology of all your favorite stories by all your favorite authors. I can't recall the last time I left a movie theater feeling so incredibly satisfied and happy.

I had a dream, yesterday, that worked like a movie, and seeing Big Fish reminded me about all the things I'd forgotten about it since waking. It was like a movie in that I saw everything unfold as it happened, but for some reason was privy to everything the main character (a young boy that I have identified as myself) was thinking. It was the strangest, most vivid dream I have ever had. But I can't help feeling like I've heard it, or seen it, before. And I wish I could just remember how it went. I know how it started, but lost the ending sometime just before I woke up:

There are five children and a bloody, disgusting, yellow-eyed horse sitting at a circular breakfast table in the garden outside a stone house. The owner, we are to understand, is a woman who goes by "The Witch." The children, and the horse, who is wearing glasses that cut his nose and is chained to the ground, are waiting to be served their breakfast. They wait for what seems like days, and the sun won't move in the sky. I am about to leave the table when a beautiful woman, dressed in white, emerges from the house. She is The Witch. She says that breakfast will be served shortly and goes back inside through the still-open door.

The freshly-cut grass is green; the dandelions are golden. There is little else of color to be seen. The stone house, the clouded sky, the faces of the four other children at the table are gray. Tall, bare trees, and the birds that fly among their branches, are black. The Witch is white. I grow impatient after waiting for another year-long day and take off in what I know is North.

I pass through the bushes separating The Witch's garden from the rest of dream world. I am in a long field, filled with what look like gigantic, deformed carrots. They are growing out of holes in the ground that, unless I'm careful, will yawn open and swallow me up to my waist. If I start running, the sun starts setting. If I stop, it stops. If I turn around and walk the other way, it rises. This works out so that when I reach the other side of the field, at which there lies a forest, the sun has set entirely and it is nighttime.

When I reach the forest, I am met by the Robot Maker. He tells me I'm right on time and says we need to get to work. He shows me a robotic dog he has made and tells me he's going to put it into battle with Colonel Eagery's robot at the Battle Pavilion (Strangely, remember, I know exactly what he is talking about: Colonel Eagery was a robot he made long ago that defected and became his enemy, putting rival robots into battle at the pavilion.). We take the dog to the top of a plateau, where it is promptly decimated by a robot that looks like the wolfman from old movies. I leave the Robot Maker on his knees, weeping over his robo-terrier, and continue onward.

North of the Battle Pavilion is a tiny village in a garden. The miniature trees and bushes are covered in thousands of miniature razor blades. The inhabitants of this little village are only about the size of my hand, and live in houses carved out of mounds in the dirt. They are not threatened by my presence and continue working diligently in their miniscule front yards. I feel a gush of wind behind me and all of the little people scatter for their houses, slamming doors and boarding up windows. I turn around to see a three-foot tornado hurdling toward the village. It has torn all of the razor blades off the trees and is tearing up the center of the path. I start running toward the other side of the clearing, but a few rogue blades tear my shirt and knick the backs of my legs before I can duck behind a tree. After the storm subsides, I glance around the side of the tree and see the little people's village in ruin.

And that's where it ends.

Peace.
-Todd

In order to pull myself out of this self-proclaimed "funk," I went to the bookstore. I felt like an idiot after beginning an inquiry as to the whereabouts of a certain piece of nonfiction with "Uh... I'm looking for a book." I could only imagine how dim the customer service lady thought I was. I also wondered how often she was told/asked that. It reminded me of how funny I used to think it would be to walk into a Starbucks, or a McDonald's, and ask them if they sell coffee, or french fries, there.

I am now about halfway through Zoe Trope's Please Don't Kill The Freshman (I also got Jonathan Lethem's The Fortress of Solitude and a copy of The Scarlet Letter, because I didn't have it.). I like it. I can remember thinking like she did, at one point, I think. It's filled with surprisingly literate poetry and lots of well-articulated meanderings on what an unfortunate and dramatic period teenager-dom can be. I am, however, soured by whispers of a six-figure deal for the book. And by soured by, I mean jealous about. I wish I could get paid massive amounts of cash for doing what I love.

But there really aren't a whole lot of openings in the napping department.

Speaking of jobs, I'm applying for one. I might be a counselor, this summer, at a french language camp in Bemidji. Wouldn't that be a riot? Well, no. Not really. Work is lame.

I listened to The Music's self-titled debut a couple nights ago for the first time in quite a while. It totally made me realize that dance-punk is, and has been (for some time now), the shit. Also the shit: The Faint, The Rapture.

Oh. And that haircut I hadn't been getting? I got it. It's weak.

Peace.
-Todd

My brain is turning to goo.

A one month break, at first, sounded sweet, but rapidly became my own undoing: I'm getting stupider. I sleep, often, past three in the afternoon. I watch crap television while awake. I eat junk food almost constantly. What little reading I had been doing has since become none. I play pool, on average, three hours a day at PB&Js'. I did go to the art museum, once, but followed it up with a two-hour nap and a Chipotle burrito. I still haven't gotten a haircut.

Don't laugh. This isn't funny. This depressing routine is what my life has become.

Peace.
-Todd

You know what's gross? Republicanism. It is a disease of which our country must be cured. The sad part is, it seems to be spreading. We're talking epidemic proportions, here: Bush's approval rating is at sixty percent. That's Funny. Last I checked he wasn't lying to forty percent of us, he was lying to one-hundred percent of us.

You may be noting that it is near six in the morning, asking "what kind of dweeb loses sleep over the fact that Bush is a liar?" This kind. I have never felt so helpless and unsafe as I have with Bush at the helm and Republicans in power.

The dictator of America is not truthful. To the contrary; he is deceiving.

And sixty percent of Americans are okay with this? Why?

Peace.
-Todd

Aaaah! Grades!

Tutorial	A
Intro. to Art/Art History	A-
Interm. French I	A
French Speaking	A-
Major Asian Religions	C
	3.43

I'm actually quite pleased.

Peace.
-Todd

3!

My weblog is officially three years old today. I say "officially," because, while I began actively pursuing dynamic, semi-weekly content in the middle of December 2000, big-woop.com was originally a humor website with fictitious, "comical" news articles à la The Onion. Then, on January 3, 2001, two things happened:

1. I realized that I am not funny. At all.

and

2. I first saw the word "blog."

The rest, as you all know, is history.

Peace.
-Todd

Happy New Year

Much hasn't warranted posting recently. I've been spending time finishing Al Franken's Lies..., since then moving on to a book called The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. It comes, only 70 pages along, with my seal of approval. It centers around an autistic 15 year-old's investigation into the death of a neighbour's dog (I use the 'U' because the book takes place in England. And I'm a dork like that.). I'm in the middle of the twenty-seventh chapter—prime number 107. I like it.

I've been getting to bed well past midnight and sleeping well past noon. I've been spending much of my time—to the dismay of its owners—at Phrathaüs, playing pool and watching DVDs. I slept there, in a chair, through the midnight bridging the last year to this one. Since then, I've dwelled on the fact that I will be turning twenty this year—something to which I cannot say I am entirely looking forward.

I do not miss Grinnell, and have pondered, recently, whether or not my chosen institution will be the one from which—come Spring 2007—I commence. We'll see.

My resolution is, as usual, to "be nicer to people." We'll see.

I've yet to go to the art museum, pick up a City Pages or get a haircut. Though I have tentative plans to do all three. We'll see.

Peace.
-Todd