A few posts ago, I signed up CTC to an online social network known as Twenty Something Bloggers, in an attempt to catch the wave of virtual good will circling the globe and uniting bloggers everywhere in an interlocking web of awesome. As with most of my previous attempts at surfing, I failed to immediately experience the rush of success and quickly lost interest. Plus, the board kept slipping up and taking all the skin off my chin.

However, recently I received an email from the 20sb team reminding me that it was time for the annual blog swap festival; a time when bloggers from all across the world get to guest post on a random stranger’s blog in order to promote … I don’t actually know what. The blog swappers were supposed to blog on the general theme of “summer”. As keen as was to give someone else control of my blog, unfortunately it isn’t summer here and I missed the deadline anyway.

Not to fear; I never let my self-imposed social isolationism get in the way of a chance to make fun of a perfectly harmless social diversion. So here, guest posting on CTC for the first time, is Katerina from the California Sunshine Pictogram Experience.

Enjoy.

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Wow. A guest spot on Cum Tacent Clament. I’m so jazzed to be here and swapping blogs with Gary. Thanks heaps for the opportunity Gary.

I guess I should start by introducing myself: I’m a twenty something year old post grad law student from San Diego. I live downtown with my roommate and a crazy cat named Muppet. I love writing about my crazy life and all the random things that happen to me all the time.

For instance, this morning I got a call from my baby brother in Boston. BB is still living with Mom and Dad over there and loving every minute of it. Anyway, he rings me up this morning all in a panic because he can’t find his favorite sweater. I guess he thought I might know where it was, despite the fact that I live two thousand miles away, practically on the other side of the world.

I told him to check his camouflage floor. This has been a standing joke between us since we were kids. His sweater is the same shade of blue as the carpet on his floor, and I can think of at least three times as kids when he ‘couldn’t find his sweater’ and it turned out to be lying on his floor, blending in to the carpet.

This time it turned out he’d accidentally set it on fire and fed the ashes to his fish. Craziness.

Shifting the attention back to me… I seem to be breaking a lot of stuff at the moment. For starters I was really sick last week. On Friday morning I coughed so hard I think I broke my clavicle. Seriously, I think I might be allergic to Fridays. How weird is that?

On top of that, while I was having one of those coughing fits, I accidentally knocked a glass of kool-aid over on top of a new sketch I’d been working on. I was a little bummed about this because I’d been working on it for two days, and it was just starting to come together. Mind you, every time I go hang out with proper artists at the pencil club after class on Mondays, I get all depressed because I realise I can’t actually draw. I think I’m going to take up Chinese Checkers instead.

The one thin that keeps me going is my telescope. I keep it at the astronomy department most of the time so it’s handy to all the library resources. I’ve had the telescope so long it’s becoming part of who I am, but more like an extra data interface to my brain than an actual extra appendage. That would be weird. I guess it is anyway.

The thing is my telescope is starting to show his age (Yes, his age. I call him Murray). The adjusting handles are getting sticky and one of the lenses keeps on dropping out of alignment. Sometimes I find myself staring off into other worlds and thinking to myself, “Is there anything in my life that isn’t gradually getting more and more screwed up?” sometimes it makes me want to pretend I’m someone else for a while. Even when I’m gazing into deep space, I can’t get past how annoying the real world is.

Also, I hate banjos. Sometimes I want to throw things at people who play them, but most times I just launch into random tirades about them on my blog.

So I guess that’s about all I can really expect to get away with sharing on some random Australian’s blog. I hope Gary doesn’t mind my discontinuous thought trains and slightly offensive language.

It’s salsa time!

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Right, okay fine. Thanks so much for your contribution Kat. It’s amazing what sort of things you can learn when you open your heart to the internet.

Milkfish.

Garry with 2 Rs