Wow, it's been a really crazy weekend...let me share it with you!

My cousin Zach had a Cinco de Mayo party.  Now, his parties are usually pretty big and get a little out of hand, but this one was out of control. He somehow mananged to hire a mariachi band and rent out a margarita machine, and I think word got out about how FREAKING AWESOME that was.  And even though his apartment's courtyard is not small by any means, there were SO MANY PEOPLE THERE that it was NEAR TO IMPOSSIBLE to walk around.  But it was completely worth it....because it was a DANCE PARTY (and any friend of mine knows how I feel about dance parties).  And I think every gay guy in the tri-county area showed up to this party, because I have never seen so many completely white guys (that are just reverse oreo cookies in disguise) that could dance the panties right off of you in my entire life.  Good thing I wasn't wearing any, oooooooh!  (Just kidding).  So after my panties fell off a sufficient amount of times and I danced and dropped it like it was hot and harlem shaked (shook?) and did the snake until I couldn't feel feelings anymore, I left that party absolutely dripping in my own sweat (and other people's sweat, eeeuuuwww...) and went straight to bed.

Then tonight, a friend of mine invited me to come with him to his Co-op's bi-annual HUGE, GIANT, oh-my-god-I-can't-move-there's-so-many-people-OH-GOD-I-CAN'T-BREATHE party.  Now, I've never been to a Co-op party, so I didn't really know what to expect.  I've always heard that Co-op'ers are absolute STONERS and smoke more weed than a forest fire, and this place was no exception.  I came home just now and I had to change out of my clothes because even though I just got back from the party, I could smell the smell of weed smoke on myself.  Yech.

At any rate, as my friend and I were walking into the Co-op (...which is SO COOL.  It's not built like a standard apartment complex at all.  It looks like a GIANT treehouse, or like those little interconnected huts from the movie Hook that the Lost Boys live in...you know what I'm talkin' 'bout!) all of a sudden I hear this crazy tribal drum beat.  I'm thinking it's just someone playing some (very...weird...?) party music on a stereo or something, but as we draw closer to the courtyard, I see quite possibly the COOLEST THING I HAVE EVER SEEN!  There's swarms of people crowding around this group of seven or eight people that are dancing around and JUGGLING LIT TORCHES!  But oh ho ho, that's not all, friends!  Every member of this group of people was topless, including the four or five girls, and they had their entire upper bodies decorated in paint in all sorts of different colors.  And they were dancing around to the beat of this awesome African tribal drum beat that someone was playing.  So let me paint a picture for you: body painted-up, topless people juggling fire to drums!  Absolutely amazing.  No one could take their eyes away!  And those that weren't dancing and JUGGLING FIRE, were BLOWING fire!  As in, taking a mouthful of kerosene and blowing it into a lit torch.  Freaking SWEET.

Once the spectacle was drawing to a close, my buddy told me he wanted to get some alcohol and he pretty much sprinted into the crowd and I lost him.  At this point, I'm telling myself that although watching the fire jugglers/fire breathers was COMPLETELY worth the trip, that the rest of the night was going to suck, as I was lost in a crowd of possibly a THOUSAND (no joke, this place is HUGE) drunken hippies in the Lost Boys' giant treehouse of insanity.  But then I decided the best thing for me to do would be to go hang out in my friend's Co-op suite.  So I head down there and his living room is full of his suitemates (a suite is like a little condo that houses about ten or twelve people), and after I tell them that I lost my friend, they, right away, invite me to sit down and hang out with them.  So this actually leads to HOURS of me talking with this group of complete strangers and laughing until my voice is hoarse and having a total blast (and my friend came back after like, 30 minutes anyway).

So after a while, all of these random people and I just start talking about the giant windows that this suite has.  They're these huge, tall windows that look out into the middle of the Co-op and as we start watching so many drunken people walking by and laughing at their antics, I came up with an awesome idea.  Someone grabs a marker and a pen and on a piece of paper on one side, we write "SHOW US YOUR TITS" on one side and "SHOW US SOME ASS" on the other side.  So whenever someone walked by the windows outside, I would hold up the sign and everyone in the room would scream.  Now, the crazy part isn't that we actually did this.  The crazy part is that NINE OUT OF TEN PEOPLE THAT WALKED BY THE WINDOW ACTUALLY COMPLIED WITH THE SIGN.  That is how crazy these Co-op hippies are.  I have never seen so much ass (and might I add, ASS HAIR) in my entire life...I literally lost count, especially considering it was usually done in groups of three or four completely drunken idiot guys, pressing their cans against the window, each one leaving the window more greasy and disgusting than the last.  We saw quite a few boobs though, and even a penis or four, but my god, I think I have fulfilled my Getting Mooned Quota for life.  And the rest of the night, people kept recognizing me as "The Sign Girl" and mooning me/flashing me...which was all very good fun.

So the rest of the night can be summed up in a Foosball tournament followed by watching a bunch of guys jumping naked into a pool and running around, doing naked chin-ups, etc.  So this party was basically like going on a trip to Naked Town.  ...The happiest place on earth...?  I ended up staying there until 5am when I decided it was prrrrrooooobably time for me to git.  Speaking of which, the sun is starting to come up.  Please forgive any egregious typos.  I will fix them when I'm not in a sleep-deprived stupor.

So now I'm going to sleep...

...to sleep the smell of hippie off of me.

Goodnight.

People that get all hung up about not having someone one Valentine's Day annoy me.  It's not that big of a big deal, people.  You're not the only person in the world without someone to boink.  Apologies to anyone over the age of 40 that reads this for the usage of the word "boink."

REMOVE head from sphincter, THEN DRIVE!

CLAIRE

IF YOU DONT WANT ME TO MAKE ENTRIES IN YOUR XANGA

THEN DON'T SIGN ONTO XANGA FROM MY COMPUTER AND TELL IT TO REMEMBER YOU

-your loving sister-

Currently Listening Greetings From Michigan: The Great Lake State By Sufjan Stevens (If you see me with earbuds in, this is what I'm 99% likely to be listening to.) see related

Well, I've been trying for a month to get into Ballroom Dance, and as many of you know, getting into this class is concisely put: ...damn near impossible.  After basically giving up during Add/Drops for any hope that the waitlist might ever open up, one day I just checked one last time just so that I could just stare and revel in my own self-pity at the words "PED 103L - Women's Beginning Ballroom" followed by "CLOSED," hopelessly immersed in that sad gray color...But wait...!

What ho!  The waitlist was open!

So I then felt that wonderful thrill of panic and joy that I'm sure anyone reading this is familiar with that one experiences after accidentally stumbling upon a random open spot in that one class you wanted so badly.  Joy in the fact that, holy CRAP, there's an OPEN SPOT!  And panic in the fact that your mind is a blur with, "Holycrapholycrapholycrap, okayokayokay, gotta copy and paste the unique number, copy and paste, copy and paste, copy and pa-OH CRAP, THAT WAS THE WRONG ONE, oh god, oh god, oh god, okay, okay, I minimized the window, where the hell is the ROSE window, where is it, WHERE IS IT, WHERE THE HELL IS IT, WHY ARE ALL THESE IM BOXES OPE-OH GOD, OKAY, FOUND IT!  Okay, okay, wait, wait, OH SHIT OH GOD OH CRAP BITCH DAMN POOP IT'S CLOSED OH WHY GOD, WHYYYYY?!?!"

But thankfully this had a much happier ending than the aforementioned.  I was on the waitlist!  Hoorah!  But I was 17 of 17.  So for the next week I checked the waitlist obsessively.  It became my surrogate facebook.  I checked it at least five times a day, and each day, the number went down...and down...and finally, after just a few days, I was 6 of 15!  And in the 24 hours before, six people had dropped, so just one more day and I was going to be in!  Oh happy days, I was almost there!  Then...that night, I checked again...and the words "Waitlist Disabled" appeared where my glorious 6 of 15 once did.  It was the fourth class day, when waitlists are dropped.  Crap.

So I did what any stubborn ass would do.  I showed up to every class from the very first day for weeks and I waited some more.  Lauren had already gotten into the same class, so I thought maybe some of her good luck would rub off on me.  So I Two-Stepped, Waltzed and Sweetheart Switched, gradeless and creditless, for weeks.  Then finally, on the last Add/Drop day, Professor Slacks approached the few of us not in the class yet that were still left and said, "If you're not a graduating senior, there's no hope.  There's no point in you being here." ...and walked away.  Several people walked out the moment she said this...but not I, said the fly.  I had already befriended a few of the other pitiful drifters that remained and I decided that I wasn't going to waste all that worrying and panicking and waitlisting and dancing and "OUCH!-YOU-STEPPED-ON-MY-FOOT-YOU-CLOD!!!"ing.  I was going to stay put.

In my speech class today, we discussed visual aids and how important they are in driving your point home during a presentation.  They shouldn't be too cluttered or busy and they should emphasize very clearly the point you are trying to make.  Well, friends, in honor of my speech teacher...

Here is my visual aid...