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Liz and I went to the Natural History Museum hoping to learn about the earth; be generally erudite. But instead, we were discouraged to find that we had forgotten everything we learned in second grade. So instead, we meandered about like faux- Rachel Zoe’s, having profound conversations like, when at the wall of Sea and Worm Creatures:

Me: So wait, are these things real, or like, not real?

Liz:…….I think the things in the Jars are real. But the other things aren’t real.

Or, in ancient China exhibit, of a old linen outfit:

Me: I would wear that. Like I would really wear that.

Or, of the whole time:

Liz: how cool would it be if like Robin Williams and or Ben Stiller were here?

Me: So. Cool.

Here is where I get all erudite and ‘I am reading this amazing book right now.’ So I am reading this amazing book right now, pictured above. Andy suggested I read it, for a deeper look into inner city schools. So this amazing guy, Geoffrey Canada, started the Harlem’s Children Zone in an effort to better the quality of life and FUTURE life for Harlem kids. He raised millions of dollars, and started programs for high schoolers on down to pregnant Mothers.

Basically, he grew tired of only being able to save / help a few children, whoever he could afford to let into his programs – he wanted to impact EVERYONE. His solution: to start early. Before birth. Because there is this huge discrepancy in the cognitive and learning abilities between poor and middle / upper class children.

When I was little, without even KNOWING it, my parents made education and success a priority – I was constantly instructed, learned social codes, and was encouraged to ask questions (Mom/ Dad do you remember doing this? I bet you did, and I bet YOU didn’t even realize it.) But kids from lower-class homes: their parents have a COMPLETELY different set of priorities, and raise their children  differently. Not that it’s all bad. Kids from lower-class homes are more inclined to talk about how they feel, express themselves, but aren’t as familiar or comfortable with rules / the structure of school as their peers.

I haven’t finished the book yet, but so far, I’ve watched Canada struggle through pouring all of this funding into a new school for middle school kids, Promise Academy – and STILL the kids can’t get their test scores up, with extra attention, test prep, etc.

All in all, it makes me grateful that I was raised how I was. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I spent a fair amount of time outside making ‘stew’ out of grass and rocks, and playing circus, and reading babysitter’s club, but somehow somewhere, education as a priority was ingrained in me.

I just wrote a 5 paragraph essay. Look at me, doing my homework. This is the fifth paragraph, in which I sum up, so uh, thank you for reading this essay.

Happy earth day, ladies and gents! Today, may your coffee cups be biodegradable; may you bike and recycle and use your nylon grocery bags and cool metal water bottle things. Meh. Hippies. I’m kidding! I’m kidding!

I’m attempting to do my part by working on my piece for Global Cooling: The Women Chill, the site specific project for the Women’s Project. In my playlette, a group of actors are hired to play the Sun, The Wind, The Earth, and A VOLCANO!!!! – and as things go awry in their skit, I dramatically explore my own ignorance of the earth’s problems. In a funny, awkward sort of way. Honestly, though I’ve learned a lot and it’s been really eye opening. I pretty much want to hug polar bears, all the time, and I have single handedly started a USE LESS PAPER movement in my office.

In other, yet earth-related news -

How terrifying are renditions of Mother Earth?? HER BRA IS MADE OF CLOUDS. THERE ARE TREES GROWING IN HER HAIR.

Hi, and welcome to my nerdpost.

As if we need any more evidence that we are currently living inside of  the Future – Gmail has just announced a new feature for users – after an email is sent – an ‘Undo Send’ button will pop up for 5 seconds, allowing the sender to, well, unsend what they just said/sent/drunkwrote.

In Outlook, you can recall an email, but then it sends an email out to everyone – MESSAGE RECALLED – which just makes everyone salivate, wondering what terrible thing you didn’t mean to say. This new Gmail feature takes it a step further – it’s literally like it never happened. We can officially unsay things. We are officially robots, and should all have hovercrafts.

Complicated Dinosaur Comic time.

Okay, time’s up.

My brain hurts.

She is not a nine year old.  That is not an avacado.   This show is bad.My blog is profound.  

Okay, okay. Sometimes, betwixt the dumb things I do for a time, lethargy, and general debauchery, I do a lil writin, here and there. Did that 24 hour play festival last weekend, and I ended up musing about sleep- because lately it’s all i can think about, the frantic getting of it -  in a way that I think might be cute or cosmically important, so here I will share.

It’s called the Bedmaker’s Revenge, and involves one Sleepyhead, one Bedmaker, and one Sleepfairy.

Here, the Sleepfairy speaks. Or, at least, it’s pieces of things that she says.

SLEEP FAIRY:

‘How are you? Tired? Oh – You’ll have to excuse me, I’m already in my pajamas.
So  Are you tired? I’d like a count, please, how many of you are tired?
Please don’t really raise your hand. Awkward. You’ll make the person next to you feel very uncomfortable, and that person is probably tired.
Speaking of tired, I’m tired, though I have never slept. Is it fun? It looks fun.
Would you like me to put you to sleep? Later.
There was something important I – I was -

(Pause. She thinks and dreams.)

I’m sorry, I  had something important to say, but I was thinking of sleep.
Ah.
So what time is it, anyways? How tired are you, if you could measure it? How many cups of tired?
You’ve had your Coffee, I bet, this morning. And then more coffee, coffee part two, then wine with dinner – your bed is looking pretty good right now, isn’t it? Well – your bed or the bed of your lover – the person you have chosen with which to bed.
By the time you get out of here, the 43 minute commute – by the time you’ve twice fed the whiney cat and taken out all recyclings – the getting of mail and the clipping of fingernails – you’ll get five and half hours of sleep.
Not enough. Didn’t your mother ever teach you?
You have to be at work by nine, which means you’re up by seven, to allow for the hair-scrubbing and face scrubbing to give the ILLUSION of adequate sleep. Then there’s the getting of the egg sandwich after the fiasco in which your metrocard expires and there you find yourself, tired, tired, cussing in front of small children.
And There’s somewhere to be tomorrow night, too. Obligatory. You won’t get a real night’s sleep until Friday, and then if you sleep in Saturday, you’ll have wasted half a free day, and I can tell you’re not the type to waste anything.
Really, the only hope is that you’ve found a proper person to share your bedplace with – a person whose sleep sounds and sleep-moving lovingly juxtapose with your own. That they match.
That’s the only hope, really.
But what if they don’t?There was something important to say, somewhere – there something – I love beds, don’t you? I was saying something.
Oh.
ONE NIGHT EVERY YEAR, YOU ARE VIOLENTLY AND MALICIOUSLY AND VICIOUSLY ROBBED OF ONE HOUR OF SLEEP.
I’m sorry. It just really pisses me off. It’s not my doing, I promise. It’s got something very complicated to do with gravity or the growing of grass.

I think I was saying – I was going to say something about compatibility, love, sleep numbers, mattress salesmen. Or wine glasses floating on mattresses while old men drop bowling balls to prove a point.
When you sleep, your body is paralyzed so you don’t get up and do what you’re dreaming.
Elephants sleep standing up, I was going to mention that.
If I had a lover, I would make him stare at me until I fell asleep. I would just pretend, though, and then he would fall asleep, and I would watch him do it.

Cruel and unusual. Maybe it’s handed back to us months later, but by then, the tired has already happened, been dragged out over hundreds of days.
And for the following days, we find ourselves discombobulated. Picking fights, Swinging our large bags into innocent strangers.
And by we – I mean you.
One day, I’d like to sleep. That’d be nice.
I think was saying something.
I think I was saying something like- There is the first time you sleep with a person, and the then the first time you Sleep with a person. One is more vulnerable than the other.
I think people are most lovely with their bed hair and broccoli breath. It is like – this is me. This is how I look and smell when you’re not looking.

If you oversleep you lie like a dog and pretend you didn’t. Your forgot your keys or she forgot your keys or something exploded or someone died.
When you wake up, you are a like a baby, clenching your fists and kicking your feet.
I hear that sometimes, you’re so tired, it’s like you’re drunk. You forget what it’s like to not be tired and this becomes a constant feeling of average despair, which feels like life. ‘

I’ve always been skeptical of this strange product that apparently burns you, and uh, it’s a good thing? Applied to things like tennis knees and football butts, I think, Icy Hot has been reliably ice-burning athlete pains for years.

OR SO WE THOUGHT. (dun dun dunnnn.)

The Important Folk over at Icy Hot have recalled Icy Hot Products because well, they’ve been giving people 1st, 2nd, and 3rd degree burns.

Ha. That’s what you get for being and athlete, and rubbing ‘cream’ on  yourself.

To those that perceive me to be deep or complex in Any Way, please note the conversation I had with myself in my Mind today while riding the Bus:

(Note, again, real fast: there’s all this hoopla in the news in NYC right now re: transit – this really splendid 93 year old labor advocate – Ted Kheel has proposed this plan that will make city wide transit entirely free – and reduce the traffic by some 25%.)

So I was thunking to myself:

Wow. All Transit should definitely be free. That would be awesome. But wait, then, like, homeless people would be able to ride it. And homeless people are gross.

Sometimes, my cracker-ness makes me sick.

I am beginning a steady hearting of the Thing that is the Graphic Novel. This week, I steadily heart Fun Home, a sort of bleak but really compelling memoir penned by one booky lesbian. Also, she can draw.

When I first started reading le novels graphique, or what have you and stuff, I found it hard not to judge the actual writing – it can be sort of, well, blah. But then I realized (and also, it was pointed out to me, le duh) that the words in the graphic novel LACK the sort of descriptive yum that I usually look for in my Bekah-ed idea of good prose – because it’s in the images, instead. This is really interesting to me – it’s like a completely different type of storytelling. I want to do one. Make one, rather. And one day, I will.