since 24 isn't on for like four more months, i took this opportunity to watch america's top model! i've been wanting to watch it for a long time, but was too caught up in the 24 season.

and guess what? they went to MILANO! this is revealed to them by scary tyra banks in a terrible rap at lunch. i can't believe the woman has an album coming out. but i'll probably buy it because she terrifies me so.

so the girls hop over the ocean to milan in a little cartoon representation, and are shown getting off in milan, which is apparently both the home to pisa's leaning tower and milan international airport, which doesn't exist. but i quibble. they're in milan! and they show lovely little scenes and fountains and piazzas and i am in heaven. milano. ti amo.

the girls find out that they will be doing things called "go sees", where i guess they try out for certain shoots or magazines. i don't really know, because i've started drinking a four dollar bottle of trader joe's wine. but they are driven all over the city by VESPA BOYS. thankfully, NON MASTURBATING vespa boys; in fact, very beautiful typically italian vespa boys. the girls jaws drop open upon seeing them and they croak out some ciaos to the boys.

it doesn't look like, to me, that the go sees go very well. everyone seems unenthusiastic about the girls, and there is one devil italian woman from the caractere line that is so rude and cruel and wonderfully, typically fashionista italian that i want to hug her, except she'd poke my face out. the guy translating translates like, "sensual" to "un po' di sexy." awesome.

there are some scenes showing camille and her sexpot italian vespa boy driving around the city at night and sharing a "connezione." they show the beautiful castello sforezsco and a few other streets. the sexpot says later to camille, "i like not only your walk." charles says, "how do italian guys get away with this shit?"

the results from the go sees come back, and turns out camille wins overall. also turns out yoanna needs to work on her body, which i don't understand, because she is beautiful and skinny and tall and all model-y. if she needs to improve her body, then i need to lose like 50 pounds. yoanna is really upset, and i don't blame her. i think she's gorgeous.

the girls retire to their trendy milan apartment, which they call "small," and then they learn that tomorrow they're going to VERONA!!! one of my favorite italian cities. could this episode get any better? they're all over italy, AND i get to judge other girls on their bodies and looks without feeling guilty about it! awesome.

the girls do a 'high fashion' shoot in the beautiful verona amphitheater, which is all pink soft stone and i was supposed to go see bjork play there, but had to sell my ticket. this ugly scary jay guy is there in a huge fur trimmed coat and bono/bug eye sunglasses. he could not look more out of place. what exactly does he do?

the girls do their own photo shoots, all wearing various ugly ruffled flowing dresses from everyone from dior to galliano. also, everyone's hair is enormous and fluffy. apparently frizz is 'high fashion.' i think yoanna looks fantastic in this peacock-y dress. shandi wears a pale pink dress with her hair bigger than a bush, but i am finally seeing what everyone means when they say she is the only one who can do high fashion, because she looks like she's straight from the pages of vogue. the photographer encourages the girls to hunch over more; tommy says, "i don't get how this is a fashion model look. this is more like...i broke my collarbone look."

so, camille and yoanna go to get camille's 'prize.' her 'prize' is apparently having a five-euro italian street vendor draw her face. she must be thrilled. but verona is beautiful, and i'm reliving my first-time italian excitement through the girls.

scary tyra banks come back at dinner. i cower. i'm sure none of the girls actually eat what is sure to be a fantastically delicious dinner. yoanna "goes to the bathroom" which clearly means goes to vomit up some pasta bolognese. the girls share concern about it to tyra the angry engeful goddess, who shows a minimal amount of concern. oh yeah. eating disorders are a HUGE deal in the modelling business. yoanna finds out that camille was talking behind her back and camille is BURNED. and SPURNED. take that, attitude biatch.

janice dickinson, looking like death in tinfoil, some magazine and modelling people are the judges. are they the judges every time? they reveal various facst such as the caractere lady was just a test, blah blah. who cares. it's clear mercedes is going home. but AH HA. i was tricked by the editing gods of reality tv shows! mercedes does not leave; camille does. fine by me.

wow, tommy, charles and i all agree we have become immediately addicted to the show. thank god 24 isn't on for a while more, so i can become futher immersed in this world of modeling.

charles mentions that he heard a rumor that the next real world is filming in adams morgan. anyone know if there is any truth to this? if so, let's go to adams morgan and find the cast members and make out with all of them and/or punch them in the face.

are your friends' blogs ruining your life? (via tmftml)

blogs aren't ruining my social life yet (i have a writing outlet and i've met cool people through it), but i *am* pretty sure they're ruining my work life.

last night was cool but not cold, with a clear evening sky and slight breeze. perfect running weather, unfortunately, so i forced myself to go on a run with naomi. the enterprise didn't last very long -- probably about 1.5 miles, and that combined with the 2 mile run i did on saturday made for a very sore and desperately out-of-shape catherine. it's been a long time since i did that half-marathon in a little over two hours.

the last time i ran regularly, besides the month before i trained for the half-marathon, was with cynthia back in noverasco. a little past our apartment complex was a dusty loop that led through fields of corn, rice and mud to the nearby town of opera. it was about three miles long, perfect for the mornings when we could force ourselves out of bed to run before school started.

one day, when we were talking to amy and dan, a couple who taught at the school, we mentioned our regular runs on the path. amy and dan glanced at each other, and dan said, "you know, i'm not sure you should be running that so early. there have been some problems on that path."

"like what?"

"well, you know it goes through all those corn fields, and sometimes you can't see the road because the corn can grow so high. and last year some of the girls said there was a flasher."

okay. the image of an italian man in a trenchcoat, jumping out from behind some corn stalks was so ludicrous that i laughed rather than felt concern for my safety. amy and dan didn't have any specifics on the corn flasher, and no one i knew had seen him yet, so we kept running.

but then the encounters started. claire and carla went running one afternoon, and came back laughing hysterically but entirely creeped out. they said they had seen a guy on a silver vespa on the stretch of the path through the corn fields. that's not that abnormal a sight; lots of people rode their motorinos from noverasco to opera, and in the afternoon, there were always tons of people riding bikes and walking on the path. what was weird was that the guy had parked his vespa squarely in the middle of the path, where it stood, leaning defiantly alone on its kickstand. it was the seemingly abandoned vespa that claire and carla noticed first. the guy masturbating in the creek ditch next to the path was what they saw second.

this story was slightly terrifying, but claire and carla laughed about it, and cynthia and i still went running, figuring that as long as we stayed together, it wouldn't be a problem. so one afternoon, we went out on the path, joking that if we saw the masturbating man we would take him on.

for the first half of the run, nothing happened except the usual pollution-induced wheezing caused by the major highway located a few hundred feet away. but then, we saw it in the distance: a silver vespa, glinting in the sun, parked, with its unmoving rider astride the seat.

"oh, holy shit," i said. we slowed our pace to a turtle jog while weighing our options; we could turn around and run back to the apartment, but the apartment was rather far at that point, and he could ride after us; we could keep going and hope that someone else would come along the path so the guy wouldn't feel compelled to drop trou in front of us. cynthia suggested having both of us run completely full-speed at the man, push him and his vespa over, and make a break for it, but while we found that image strangely hysterical, we opted not to. finally, we decided to pick up a handful of rocks and keep running at a normal pace. if the motherfucker tried anything, we would crush his head. heart pounding, i picked up a fist-sized rock in each hand, and off we went.

we got closer and closer to the vespa and its rider, and still, it didn't move. finally, we passed it, and i saw that it was a young guy, probably no older than 18. i wasn't sure he was the masturbating vespa boy, but still, i made what i thought was threatening eye contact and menacingly waved around the rock in my hand. he did nothing, and as soon as we passed, cynthia and i broke into a sprint until we reached the town.

sightings of masturabating vespa boy were fairly common, but no one, besides the one incident with claire and carla, ever actually saw him, you know, in the act. still, he remained a vague threat, an excuse when we were too lazy to go running -- "oh, we don't want to see mvb today, so let's skip running" -- or, inversely, a reason to haul ass -- "oh crap, i think i see the silver vespa, we better go faster."

then, for a few months in late winter and early spring, no one saw masturbating vespa boy. maybe he had taken his masturbating elsewhere, like a public toilet or a local school playground. we could only hope. maybe we could finally run in peace.

one spring afternoon after school, i desperately wanted to go running; i hadn't been out in a few weeks due to poor weather and was feeling stir-crazy and completely atrophied. unfortunately, cynthia was sick and refused to come out with me. oh, fuck it, i decided. i haven't seen vespa boy in months, it'll be fine. i brought my cell phone with me just in case, and cynthia instructed me to call her if there were any sighting whatsoever.

the run was fine and i thought i was home-free until i reached the tunnel i had to pass through in order to get back to the outskirts of the apartment complex. the tunnel was dark and rather long, covered in nonsensical italian graffiti, and smelled vaguely of cat piss. i had run halfway through the tunnel when i heard a rustling in the bushes near the entrance. and then i saw it: a riderless vespa parked next to the bushes. and then i saw masturbating vespa boy himself. in the act. staring at me.

i never knew a masturbating teenage boy could be so terrifying. i broke into a breakneck sprint in the other direction while frantically dialing cynthia's number on my cell. the tunnel and mvb stood behind me, and a 2 mile stretch of empty, dusty, cornfield path stood in front. i was positive he was going to get back on his vespa, run me over and do his thing right there, and suddenly, as the phone was ringing, i heard the roar of an engine behind me. sure enough, a glance over my shoulder confirmed that he had gotten back on his vespa and was GOING TO OVERTAKE ME.

cynthia finally answered, and i yelled something nonsensical like, "THE MASTURBATOR IS GOING TO GET ME!" just then, the boy, wearing a huge white helmet decorated with multi-colored decals, whizzed past me and off into the distance. cynthia instructed me to run home as fast as i could, and i did.

we didn't go running on the path again. and whenever we talk about the masturbating vespa boy now, we laugh, realizing that he probably never would have done anything, but reading that over, that was a completely creepy experience. beware: italian teenage boys are oversexed freaks and don't stay in their bedroom with porno mags like they should.

From slashdot: NASA is set to hold a press conference at 2pm today to announce "significant findings." The nerds are up in arms. If they announce they've found water -- which is what everyone's saying they will, given the apparent presence of mud and ice in recent rover photographs -- then combined with past experiments (dismissed at the time) hinting at the presence of microbial life, this could be a pretty big day for science.

So clearly this will all result in the unleashing of an unspeakably devastating and hypervirulent space-plague. All that remains to be seen is exactly how it will destroy humanity. My guess is it turns monkeys violent and superintelligent. Or maybe bees. Anyway, I'm open to other hypotheses.

sex for pleasure!! what's next? soon, homosexuals will be ruling the earth. awesome.