well, crap.

it was totally lame of me to be coming to school to do any work today anyway, but maybe it was just that i knew the A/C in trismestigus hall was the coldest.

so i'm the computer lab in the basement and it's time to leave and i start walking out and then suddenly BOUNCE right off the air trying to walk through the door and land on my butt! and then this booming voice starts saying '111-222-1933' over and over again about a hundred times and then finally stopped.

so i called the office and they said yeah there's some problem and they're working on it but i'm still stuck here.

anybody have a 4th of july webcam they can send me? or teleport me the heck out of here?


 
 
2009-1-3

airports

i picked up kate at the airport. she got in in the middle of the night, and was delayed a bit, so i had the airport to myself for awhile.

well, almost to myself. i forgot how they use those midnight flights to transport the bodies of our loved ones around -- you know, when someone needs to be buried back in their hometown? do they charge you for that? they must, though i know you get some special deal when you need to fly fast to a funeral - bereavement, right?

anyway, what i didn't realize is how many there are, and the treatment they get. i expected some lone caskets on rollers getting escorted through the airport by silent pale men in dark suits. no way! i saw the planes land, and they've got corpses filling up both first class and economy. they strap them into the seats in their dress clothes, and hot little stewards and stewardesses serve them some kind of special airline elixir to keep them supple and in line. and show them goldie hawn films. when they land they trot them all out to the black plastic chairs at the gate and set them down. for the first class ones they drop some quarters into the black and white tv's they've still got there.

kate's flight finally got in, so i didn't need to wait till dawn watching the corpses. she was all anti-jetlagged, though, so we took off in my car and found different trouble that night.
 
 
2008-11-1   the mitch plane

i still feel like i'm walking in a dream.

kate and i did the craziest thing we've ever done last night. i met her in front of the gym, and she had all the turnip men gathered around her in a giant ring. she said 'Oh Brigid! You made it!' and shoved some fruitcake in my mouth and handed me a gnarly walking stick. then she led us all under the yellow 'do not cross' tape and through a side door into the gym.

the power was all off inside the gym. the psionic skankers were doing their flaming pyramid, with skanker numero uno - aka tricia - standing in front of them with a spooky reaper robe on. all the potato heads were in there too, circled around like an audience. they didn't really notice us, cuz tricia was speaking in tongues or something.

so there's the skankers, with all the potato heads around them. and me and kate and all the turnip men in another little mob. and it seemed there were a bunch of other things, like pumpkin heads, and other kids from school too, up in the bleachers, but i couldn't really see them in the firelight.

all of the sudden, behind the flaming pyramid of skankers, there's this big black shadow. it was huge! tricia keeps speaking in tongues, and kate says 'now Bridid! fly!' and that walking stick in my hand starts to flame up (!) and fly up into the air! i keep holding onto it, and it pulls me up, so i guess i was kinda flying too. then i wrestle it up between my legs so i can ride it better...

...and all of the sudden it turns into my bike. but i'm still flying, and the ceiling opens up to blackness, and the floor is way too far below me... and there's that shadow. only now i can see it more clearly, and it was... indescribably... icky!!! like some, i dunno, sweaty octopus cow? i can't even think about it. really.

so there i am, flying on my bike in some dark dimension, toe to toe with some horrible, unspeakable... grossness, with kate below counting on Brigid to do... something... like, say a magic word? or do some killer fighting combo move? i didn't have anything! i felt completely studid, like everyone was watching me to play some part, but i forgot my lines, which i never even knew i had to learn! nobody told me!!! i'm just floating up there on my bike and doing nothing like an idiot.

but then suddenly there's mitch. i see mitch! he's on the other side of the big shadow pig. but i see him, and i can't help it but i just blurt out:

'Mitch!'

and then everything started to change. mitch is there, and he's waving, and starts glowing with this bright white light. and he keeps getting closer, or bigger, or i do, but we just keep coming together and getting brighter and brighter, and that shadow pig lady just kind of screeches and fades away...

i met mitch then. it was like we always knew each other forever. i mean, seriously. he must be some old friend from someplace else.

i don't really remember how it all happened next, but it was over. the lights were up, tricia and the skankers were all passed out on the floor, and there were potatoes everywhere - just plain old potatoes. and kate gives me a big hug, and the stick is a stick again, and all the turnip heads start cheering and jumping up and down, shaking their knives and forks and pencils in the air.

i was completely exhausted. kate walked me back up to her room, and i slept all day. i'm posting this from her laptop... she went out to get us some food. kate says the turnip heads are gone now too, that they head out into the woods and find a place to rot after halloween. me, i think i'll just sleep here for the rest of the weekend.


 
 
2008-10-31   the mitch plane

kate says we're going to the dance tonight... and she's bringing fruitcake!
 
 
2008-10-30   the mitch plane

kate and i raised an army last night! i'm not exactly sure how, but i'm pretty sure that fruitcake of hers isn't just some quaint family recipie...

so i get to her room up on the tip topiest floor of leaf hall. kate's got all the little turnip heads we carved set up all around the room, each with a tiny glowing candle inside. i had no idea we made so many! kate says (in her delightful irish accent) "Oh Brigid! It's you!" and she gives me a big hug and we sit down in the middle of the room.

so we hang out, and keep nibbling at that Barnbrack (gotta roll your Rs!) and it's getting pretty late when kate pulls out a little harp and starts dancing around and plucking out some fairy tune. or maybe the virgin prunes. they were irish, right? and she's doing her prancy fairy dance around and around and all of a sudden all i can do is burst out laughing! i mean completely uncontrollably!! busting a gut!!! and kate's just laughing and egging me on with 'Oh Brigid! Yes! You're wonderful!' and i keep laughing and the room's all spinning around and i can't believe nobody complained.

so anyway. somehow it all winds down and we flop on the pillows in the middle of her room and we look around and there's something v e r r r y differently about those turnip heads. they are all looking at us. and standing up! but somehow, it wasn't freaky... at least not like the potato heads. maybe it's the cheery warm glow from the candles, or their little hand carved faces. lots are smiley, but you can tell even the frowny ones still have goodness in their hearts.

kate said something to them but i couldn't figure it out through her accent. or maybe it was in fairy. but it makes them all scatter speedy quick... out the window, out the door, zip zippy zip! and they're all gone.

so by then we were completely exhausted and just fell asleep right there. this morning we had granola and tea in her room and watched out the window while the turnip heads fought the potato heads! it was awesome, from way up on the top floor, looking down, it was really like watching old fashioned armies go at it. and the weird chittering noises and squeaks and cries they make! and even though there's a lot more of the potato heads, they're not very good fighters. our turnip guys are smart. because they're made with love. ;)


 
 
2008-10-29   the mitch plane

today has been totally supernuts! you can see i really have food on my mind, though. ;) no lunch! because classes got cancelled by noon because of the crazy potato head men running around everywhere. it is supernuts! and icky. they are spazzing out and running and zipping around, leaping out of trees into people's hairs, ganging up and chasing people... and if they jump up and land on you they bite and it hurts. get out the neosporin! big time.

so i brought my lunch but no time to sit down and eat it. OW! ACK! TAKE THAT! one of those little creeps just started humping and biting my ankle here in the computer lab. grrrrrr! anyway, kate said to come up to her room tonight. she's on the top floor of Leaf, and that it's safe there and she's got some plan she needs me for.(actually, she said she needs Brigid. she's so cute!) OW! GET OFFA ME!!!

 
 
2008-10-26   the mitch plane

great time at kate's party last night... great turn out, good crowd. got maxed out on sugar from candy and fruitcake. kinda freaked me out when they pulled out the turnips to start carving, what with my dream and all, but i just went with it and it was fun. i was actually pretty proud of a couple of mine, and that's when i met kate and we started hanging out. she liked my turnips a lot.

i live in town, and it's kind of a long schlep home at night by bike, so after helping clean up i spent the night in kate's room. ended up wearing some of her clothes today. and she insists on calling me Brigid! she is so totally cool. she'd kind of a pagan punk chic, which is of course me all over, so we're like peas in a pod.

 
 
2008-10-20   the mitch plane

so i don't know what it is about the sugar factory, but i feel like i'm on a 'Mitch' plain... dreamed i was riding my bike around the sugar factory, at the base of the big white silo. but then the ground got real soft, and i realized it was all tilled up for planting. looking into the brown dirt i see the sugar beets, and they're all like little pointy heads. they've got tiny wrinkly eyes and big mouths and needly teeth inside. and then i notice they have little bodies squirming underneath their big heads so i freak out that they're chasing me and i leave my bike because it won't ride in the soft earth and i start running across the field, and at the end of the field i'm sure it's Mitch's house, and he's in his back yard, waving at me.

i woke up before i made it to him.
 
 
2008-10-15   the mitch plane

and i just had a dream about a guy named Mitch! in the dream, he was driving some old hot rod, like a, uh... trans am or something? lived next to a factory that made sugar... me and my friends spun wings out of the sugar and fluttered up around the towers of the sugar factory. the ground was made of rust - like dunes of rust - and we didn't want to land or we'd get all nano-cyberized. but then the molasses tanks burst and flooded the rusty fields. it was still gross, though, so we landed in some cottony trees.