Forts, Shakespeare, and What I Do Best

Good morning everyone. My roommates and I just finished watching a movie with the girls who live directly below us. Hooray for socialness. We got down there and they had constructed a fort--the couch and love seat and coffee table were all turned on their ends and covered with sheets and blankets that they had stapled to the ceiling. It was brilliant and just a little bit insane.

That has decidedly been the high point of my day. I actually intended for this to be an actual diatribe about the people with dreadful theater etiquette who seem to abound at BYU. I sat by at least 20 of them tonight as my roommate and I watched The Taming of the Shrew. I know not everyone who reads this is a fan of Shakespeare, but the guy did write some brilliant stuff. So imagine my annoyance when the words of one of Katherine's best speeches was altered to reflect the agenda of the director. This is Shakespeare. Actually, I don't believe in altering Wilde, Shaw, Stoppard, or Parker for that matter. They wrote it; it's their words. Cutting for the sake of time I understand. Altering pronouns so that suddenly Katherine is "free" and "happy" is trash. And this is turning into some diatribe.

I went to see Taming because one of my good friends was Lucentio. He's one of those guy friends who you can just love without everyone expecting the two of you to pair up or accusing you of "crushing" on each other. Why can't I just have a conversation with a guy? Just because I am single and living in Happy Valley doesn't mean I'm on the hunt every minute of every day. And even when I am interested in a guy, I don't hunt. I just obsess for about a week and then I get over it. It's very much like a cold in that aspect. Oh, and for the record, my Lucentio friend is not gay.

So Em and I remove ourselves from our seats after applauding a few times--no standing ovation--they're severely overdone in Provo--and head home. As we leave I turn on my phone to find a few missed calls and one text message reading "Where are you? Nate so-and-so has been here twice looking for Emily." Nate So-and-so happens to be a high school friend of Em's who is 100% jerk. If I was feeling charitable I'd say he was just insecure. And I probably would be feeling charitable if we hadn't walked in the door to find him kicking it on our couch. He waited an hour for Em to get back.

I've talked about how I can be a brat or a snob, but I don't think my april friends have seen me in jerk mode. Trent would probably enjoy it too much. But this guy pushes just the right buttons for me to go on the defensive. The word creep is too nice a label for him. And he followed us down for our movie night. It's hard to watch a good chick flick when a guy is snorting at every other line (we snort too, just in our heads) and saying asinine things. The best part was that he was laying right next to me, so I was completely aware of myself the whole time--I couldn't relax for fear of touching him. I hate to sound so third-grade-ish, but ew.

Well, my happiness of the couch fort (and getting a chance to see my friend's very cute photographer brother) seems to have been overtaken by these brief diatribes. It's interesting how that can happen. Oh well. Tomorrow is a Divine Comedy night, so I'm sure to be in a good mood. Won't that be a novelty?