Thank you, I'll die happy now.

If I was a guy I would feel as if I had the biggest cohones on campus right now because of an event I very recently experienced. I perpetually thought about it. I prepared for it. I even dressed for it. Yesterday I had a particularly rousing conversation with my personal heroine.

By an act of God, perfect timing, or both, I nabbed an interview with author/screenwriter/b.a.m.f. Diablo Cody. Not to be overtly graphic or anything but it was 31 minutes of bladder-releasing bliss. And she is a saint for putting up with my madness.

The first four minutes of the conversation (well, there wasn't really an exchange then because I rambled on, giggling like an idiot) went fairly well! But after the Iowa grad eased tension by joking about shitty cell phone reception, I felt like I was chatting with an old pal... who just happens to be working for Spielberg.

I know the student population can relate: talking to a Chicago suburbanite--which I'm fairly positive makes up one-third of enrollment here-- is like trying to keep up with a professional auctioneer. Diablo Cody reinforces that analogy time and again. I mean, have you seen her on Letterman??

"One night I remember going [to the Union] at my freshman orientation and sneaking in with somebody, and drinking like five sex on the beaches, and getting extremely ill, and throwing up the entire next day, and my mom was horrified because we had driven all the way from Chicago for it," Cody said, recounting her first college drinking experience in a single breath.

But that hardly scratches the surface of our conversation. Cody graciously answered my every Q with witty magnificence, and insight that every aspiring writer should at least hear. She even commended our very own!

"I have to say that I love that I’m talking to the D.I. because I used to read that paper every day," she told me.

Um, if that doesn't instill school pride in your little hearts then I don't know what.

Believe me, I capitalized on the phone call like nobody's business. That woman is going to get mad publicity in the Daily Iowan (spread throughout three articles!), which will be published soon.

If you're as incredibly dazzled by Cody as I am (did I mention I dressed nice for the phone interview?) then you should probably stay tuned or something, babies.

Kathleen