bad metaphor

The BIAM (Book in a Month, in the previous post) started today. I actually started mine earlier than that because, unlike with the rules of NaNoWriMo, in this challenge, you can start at any point you like – beginning, or after 1,000 words – just as long as you write 50k total in the month of February. I decided that this time, I would figure out the setup of the story and at least get enough momentum going so that I could be able to crank out 1700 words per day. Trying to learn from the lesson of my second failure at NaNo this past November, I’ve decided to do a children’s fantasy novel. That way, if I’m at an impasse, I can just throw in some monsters or explosions and I’ll be all right.

The novel I’m working on is called (at least for the time being) “The Prince of Paukarit”. It’s about a girl and a boy who have adventures. Seriously, that’s about as structured as I’ve got the plot right now. I have an idea of what I want to happen later, but it’s probably going to change. Certainly I expect it to change by Feb. 28th, an hour till midnight, as I’m scrambling for more monsters or explosions to get me to 50k.

Here’s to not losing this time!

It’s only two weeks into the new semester, and I am behind! I know this is kind of a generic lament for college students, but really it has little to do with the schoolwork – I’m only enrolled in 13 hours. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not enrolled in any basket-weaving classes or anything (although underwater basket-weaving always seemed like it might be difficult to me, so I never got that expression); I share the American Indian Lit class with graduate students, and my Ethnicity and Sexuality class is also a graduate course being taught this semester as an honors seminar. We’ve only had one class of E&S, and already I’m supposed to meet with the prof. to discuss projects. Well, okay, as far as schoolwork goes, I might be a little behind.

I don’t know, though, I guess I thought “hey, I’m only taking 13 hours spring semester, that means I have lots of time to do anything!” I’ve already mentioned I’ve committed to Tae Kwon Do, which is a fairly useful skill if you’re five-foot-two and girly. Not that I have that much to fear in Lawrence; but then again, there was that one dude awhile back that would lurk behind cars and jump on people in the Lied parking lot. And then there was the one guy that would break into women’s apartments and sneak into their beds and…all right, I’d better stop, I’m sounding like my mother!

In addition to Tae Kwon Do, I’m helping out with the Student Union Activities, which I did last semester but didn’t really mention before cause I don’t feel like I do a whole lot for it. SUA is involved in planning campus-wide events, and the neat part about it is that it’s entirely done by students. Basically we get a whole bunch of money and are told, “hey, entertain us.” I’m on the Comedy and Concerts Committee, which is self-explanatory – we bring concerts to campus mostly, but occasionally a few comedians. We brought the likes of Bill Cosby and Ryan Adams last semester, which was actually rather kind of exciting. You can never fully appreciate the scope of what goes into planning an event until you’ve become involved in it. Nevermind all then paperwork and the organizing of volunteers that went on before, just setting up the stage for Bill Cosby took an entire day and then some. And then the event itself was maybe an hour. A hysterically funny hour, but an hour nonetheless. Then afterwards, all us SUA lackies set to work on tearing down the stage and cleaning up until the wee hours of the morning. The next time you go to a show, whether it be rock concert or piano recital, try to be appreciative of all the grunt work that went into propping up the stars of the show, making sure they’re well lit so that you can see them, and catering to the performers’ demands (apparently one band that we’ve hired requested in their rider tube socks. I don’t think they ever found out why on earth the band wanted these).

In addition to that, I recently joined the Sexuality Education Committee on campus. Kind of a different direction than the last two things. I’m not sure what prompted me to join this semester as opposed to any other; I’ve always been kind of interested in it. You might be familiar with the saga of Dennis Dailey, if not, here’s a brief summary:

Dr. Dailey teaches Human Sexuality on our campus. As with many professors who teach Human Sexuality courses on college campuses in the Midwest, he’s been the target of lots of local controversy. Enter Senator Susan Wagel (Wagle? Whatever, “Sen. Nutjob” is what I usually call her in conversation). Sen. Wagel, who hails from my home town of Wichita (yet another reason why Wichita sucks) has had it out for Dailey and his ilk for a long time, I suspect. About two years ago, an intern that worked for Sen. Wagel enrolled in the HS course, and began filing complaints to the university about obscenity and even charged that Dailey personally harrassed students in the class on occasion.

Long story short, the charges were unfounded, but the whole scandal blew up so much that Dailey’s class was featured as a spot on the O’Reilly Factor. Dailey refused to go on the show, but some of his supporters did, and proceeded to have a grande olde time on that circus punditry orgy of a show. Sen. Wagel, meanwhile, introduced legislation that would cut funding for the School of Social Welfare at our university if they continued to support Dailey’s class. After a huge media/political campaign, Sen. Wagel lost and Dailey’s class was not shut down, nor funding for the already-underfunded School of Social Welfare cut.

That’s just one example of what we’re fighting here in the Midwest. Actually, the entire country. This country’s attitude toward sexuality is ridiculously bipolar – hey, you’re a woman? Are you madonna or whore? A Mandy Moore or Paris Hilton? There’s not room for an in-between, a healthy conception of sexuality, instead of a pathological fear or hyper-obsession. Anyway, as you can probably tell, this is something that’s confounded me for awhile. I’m joining SEC not just because it interests me, though, but because it’s a critically important issue that’s becoming more and more relevant when we’re talking about things like the ban on gay marriage amendments (which is currently being debated in our Capitol) or recent challenges to the Roe vs. Wade decision. Choices are rapidly being eroded in our time, and it scares me to see what things will be like five years from now, or even less.

Oh yeah, and on top of that, I’m still involved in coordinating ecojustice awareness, specifically about the wetlands area in Lawrence. Hooray, another potentially hopeless cause! And I’m participating in another novel challenge, in light of the fact that I failed miserably at the last one. This one’s called “Book in a Month” (BIAM), and it’s also 50k words, but it’s in February. Which I had anticipated would be less busy than November, but now I’m not so sure. I might lose this one, too – again, how pathetic is it to lose at a writing challenge where quality doesn’t matter?

Looking back, I kind of wish I hadn’t committed to so many things this semester, but I am not going to give up just yet. I can do this! I am not overwhelmed. I am simply whelmed.

Back when we were all little, my cousins used to do Tae Kwon Do. They got fairly good at it, I believe; I think my cousin Daniel was really close to a black belt (black belt red tip, maybe?). At one point I expressed interest in doing Tae Kwon Do, but Daniel managed to talk me out of it. “The girls’ tournaments are brutal,” he told me. “They get kicked in the nose a lot, because girls kick really high.” That squashed any vestige of interest for me, in addition to the fact that I was really wussy as a child and also very lazy.

Since then, I haven’t really had much interest in Tae Kwon Do per se. I did like the Tae Bo tapes (who wouldn’t like Billy Blanks, with his fancy girly umbrella moves and the cheesy 80’s dance tracks?), but as any Tae Kwon Do enthusiast will tell you, Tae Bo is nothing at all like Tae Kwon Do. I guess the fear of being kicked in the nose stayed with me, until recently. The boy was having a party at his place, and a girlfriend of one of the boy’s friends managed to talk the boy, the boy’s roommate Garrett, and I into doing it. She said it was the single most worthwhile experience she’s had in her college years. It’s changed her life, taught her discipline and restraint. Her nose looked pretty straight to me, so I said, what the hey, I’ll try it.

Tonight was our second exposure to Tae Kwon Do class. The boy and I went this past Sunday for some preliminary training. It’s a little weird getting used to all the little rules and protocol that come with the martial art. One can’t simply waltz in, kick people in the head, and scurry off to play basketball; one must bow when they enter the room, bow to the teacher, avoid placing one’s hands on one’s hips, etc. Apparently if you put your hands on your hips, or cross your arms, that’s very super bad and taken as a challenge to the martial arts instructor. One of the new guys whose first day was today kept placing his hands on his hips, and I wondered whether or not I should tell him. The brown belt that was training us eventually informed the new guy, and new guy kept engaging in said behavior. Uh, I’m wagering that he will be properly schooled in no time.

As for tonight’s class – we haven’t started sparring yet, but strangely enough, I feel like my ass has been thoroughly kicked. It was pretty light on Sunday because the Sunday practices are informal, consisting of some extra training and catching up, and maybe light sparring for the higher belts. Today, after we entered and bowed and lined up and bowed some more, the teacher barked, “okay! One hundred jumping jacks! Now!” Though the boy and I have been working out for the past month or so, I am disgustingly out of shape – by the 65th or so I couldn’t count out loud anymore (luckily us newbs are situated at the back of the formation). It felt like military school, or at least what I’ve seen on TV of military school (episodes of Maury Povich in which they send sassy adolescents to boot camp). Then followed two hours of kicking, punching, lunging, and running around, which wasn’t too bad at first but towards the end, my hamstrings and gluteals were whining.

Now, the teacher had said at the beginning of class that us newbies could leave after an hour or so, but the brown belt guy that was teaching us, though very nice, showed little sign of wanting to let us go. At one point, though, he did ask all four of us if we wanted to learn new moves, or review the ones we’d just learned. Maybe that would have been a good time to say “for the love of God, I’ve got sixty pages of reading left to do tonight, please let my people go!” but that doesn’t sound like a very tough-girl thing to say, and of course none of the guys were going to admit that they were tired.

Overall, though, it wasn’t bad. I could take most of it, except at the very end, when we rejoined the rest of the class and the teacher made us do fifty pushups before he excused us. Now, I don’t know about you, but fifty pushups is a lot for an out-of-shape dough-girl like myself! On top of that, instead of counting the pushups, he made us chant the five tenets of TKD: “courtesy!” “integrity!” “perserverance!” “self-control!” “indomitable spirit!,” repeating them over and over again. Now Mr. Teacher “my biceps are bigger than karenology’s waist” Man may have an indomitable spirit, but I assure you, my spirit is quite domitable.

In all honesty, I actually feel pretty great and I’m glad that I’m doing this. Let’s see how I’ll feel tomorrow.

As per claire-obscure’s request – she was the one who gave me the camera, after all – here are some photos of Quark, my adorably photogenic cat. Alas, I’m not quite up to my sister’s photography skills, but I think the adorableness still manages to shine through.

Here’s Quark in his resting pose (otherwise known as the “I’ve just eaten and the effort was so taxing” pose).

Pretty in pink – what a manly specimen!

Maybe I shouldn’t mention that 95% of the shots I’ve taken so far with my camera have been cat photos. But I just can’t help it!