I want to punch someone in the face. Maybe get punched a few times myself. I would really like to come away with bruises and bloody knuckles. Even the idea of re-breaking my nose is beginning to sound appealing.
I would like to say I crave being bad-ass all the time, but that's not so much true. I mean, I definitely get the odd desire to get into a fight, but I would say that is pretty well suppressed for the most part. But today I watched "Whip it" and now I miss the pride of showing off a killer welt or the satisfying smack of feeling yourself connect with something solid. Hard.
It's possible this desire to destroy things and be mutually destroyed is just residual from seeing a bunch of girls get to wail on each other. It's possible that it comes from some well of repressed violent tendencies that have been ignored because of my gender or societal expectations or the fact that I am a weakling. It's possible that I just can't fight anyone unless I am in some environment that really says the rules don't exist any more and I am supposed to be mean. I don't know. Whatever the reason, I want to fight.
I won't get to though. There is in all honesty no arena for me to fight in. Roller-derby looks crazy-appealing, but I don't know if it exists up here. And I can't roller skate. I can't even stand on roller skates. My ability to stay upright, while already tremulous, becomes unalterably impaired. Too bad. I would like to think there was some way I could release this aggression. Maybe I can find a punching bag.
And no. I don't want some boy, thinking he's being cute, to offer to let me punch him as hard as I can. This is a stupid offer. No one ever actually punches a person who makes this offer as hard as they can. And there are two reasons: 1) Every person in the world overestimates their own strength. From boys bragging that they might kill people if they really released the full force of their punches to girls claiming they become some badger/kangaroo boxing hybrid when released, people are stupid. Even I, a girl who probably has to exert myself more than I should to swat at flies, have some deep-seated subconscious belief that if I were to really unleash all my aggression and bad-assery into a punch I would instantly shatter every bone in the poor recipient's body, leaving them a quivering, jello-like mass on the floor. 2) No person in the world wants to actually punch someone as hard as they possibly can to find that as hard as they possibly can has little to no effect on anyone. I am weak. Quite weak, even. But I don't want to know that if I were ever involved in an actual fight, I would be entirely useless. I want to believe that some stores of adrenaline or latent ferocity would surface and make me an indispensible ally. So boys, don't offer to let us girls punch you as hard is we can. It's patronizing, obnoxious, and insulting. And hopefully someday a strong girl will actually do it and leave you weeping on the floor.
Anyhow, I am going to go attack a pillow or something.
10.11.2010
10.10.2010
Dear all females.
I learned an extremely important lesson this weekend. It is so important, in fact, that I feel every female in the world, and any of the rare and possibly non-existent males out there who like Jane Austen, must know. Wait, I'm not sure I've built up the importance enough. If there was one thing that you should know, one thing I say that you should listen to, I am nearly certain it would be this. I can't think of anything that could possibly trump this short of knowledge of an impending disaster that will end all life as we know it. Ok. Here it comes:
Do not ever, ever, ever watch the movie "Lost in Austen". It is the worst movie ever created. It is not possible for a movie to be any worse.
This is not bad in the sense of the "so bad it's funny" type of movie. This is bad in the "O my sweet Lord, how is it possible that this is getting worse? There was no way for it to be any worse than it just was but somehow it is! How is it...what are they...AUGH! MY BRAIN!" kind of way.
Let me quickly summarize this and why it is so very awful. I was tricked into getting it from the library because I saw it was about a girl who got sucked into Pride and Prejudice. "I love that book!", I naively thought to myself. "This movie has potential to be vastly amusing!"
It was not vastly amusing.
The girl who gets sucked into the book is the worst and possibly stupidest person ever. She destroys everything. And I mean EVERYTHING. She is a slutty imbecile who, though she has apparently read this book more than actually living a life, has not the slightest idea of how to act like a normal person. I doubt she is capable of acting normal even in the real world. How could she destroy everything, you ask?
In the course of this movie:
-Jane marries a sexually deviant Mr. Collins
-Bingley becomes an alcoholic and runs away with Lydia
-Wickham is actually the (only) good guy
-Darcy's little sister is an evil conniving little snot of a thing
-Mr. Bennett nearly dies after fighting Mr. Bingley
-Elizabeth disappears into our world and becomes a nanny
-Darcy is an ass. Just an ass. The only bit of sense he shows is in initally hating our main girl with an intense passion which he then loses to fall in love with her because this movie is the epitome of suck.
-Charlotte dies alone in Africa.
-Caroline Bingley is a lesbian.
Yes. All that awfulness is in one movie. I didn't think it was possible either.
What makes this all worse (if that's possible) is that this movie is ETERNAL. It was almost three hours long! So many times we were about to stop it but then we would think "we've come so far. It must end soon. Surely it is almost done because they can't possibly destroy things any more than this." But they could. And they did. FOREVER.
Lesson to all: never watch this film. Not ever. If you find copies of it, burn them. My soul is slightly more dead now.
Also, I am so sorry to Erica and Elizabeth. I hope you can forgive me for doing this to you.
I'm going to go read the book or something just to be sure that movie has not swept through some horrific vortex and destroyed it.
Do not ever, ever, ever watch the movie "Lost in Austen". It is the worst movie ever created. It is not possible for a movie to be any worse.
This is not bad in the sense of the "so bad it's funny" type of movie. This is bad in the "O my sweet Lord, how is it possible that this is getting worse? There was no way for it to be any worse than it just was but somehow it is! How is it...what are they...AUGH! MY BRAIN!" kind of way.
Let me quickly summarize this and why it is so very awful. I was tricked into getting it from the library because I saw it was about a girl who got sucked into Pride and Prejudice. "I love that book!", I naively thought to myself. "This movie has potential to be vastly amusing!"
It was not vastly amusing.
This screenplay brought to you by the Prince of Darkness.
The girl who gets sucked into the book is the worst and possibly stupidest person ever. She destroys everything. And I mean EVERYTHING. She is a slutty imbecile who, though she has apparently read this book more than actually living a life, has not the slightest idea of how to act like a normal person. I doubt she is capable of acting normal even in the real world. How could she destroy everything, you ask?
In the course of this movie:
-Jane marries a sexually deviant Mr. Collins
-Bingley becomes an alcoholic and runs away with Lydia
-Wickham is actually the (only) good guy
-Darcy's little sister is an evil conniving little snot of a thing
-Mr. Bennett nearly dies after fighting Mr. Bingley
-Elizabeth disappears into our world and becomes a nanny
-Darcy is an ass. Just an ass. The only bit of sense he shows is in initally hating our main girl with an intense passion which he then loses to fall in love with her because this movie is the epitome of suck.
-Charlotte dies alone in Africa.
-Caroline Bingley is a lesbian.
Yes. All that awfulness is in one movie. I didn't think it was possible either.
What makes this all worse (if that's possible) is that this movie is ETERNAL. It was almost three hours long! So many times we were about to stop it but then we would think "we've come so far. It must end soon. Surely it is almost done because they can't possibly destroy things any more than this." But they could. And they did. FOREVER.
Lesson to all: never watch this film. Not ever. If you find copies of it, burn them. My soul is slightly more dead now.
Also, I am so sorry to Erica and Elizabeth. I hope you can forgive me for doing this to you.
I'm going to go read the book or something just to be sure that movie has not swept through some horrific vortex and destroyed it.
10.03.2010
An Ode to my lack of coordination...
Last night, as I made my way across the living room in the dark, I happened to slip and fall on a stack of papers and photographs that has been sitting in an untidy little pile next to our couch while I decide what exactly to do with it. The thud and crackling and rustling and such was enough to probably convince Tyler both that I had broken something important and that my bones are apparently as fragile as little bird bones that snap if the breeze blows wrong. Though the noise was...substantial (our neighbors beneath us may think that people are routinely murdered in our apartment considering how often they hear a body fall. The body is mine, by the way), I did not actually hurt myself in any way, but it reminded me of a story. And really, I like any excuse to tell a good college story because I miss college.
This particular story dates back to my sophomore year. I was, at that time, living with a dear, fiesty, and horrifyingly intelligent bio-chemistry major friend. Some may know her as Kirsten, or perhaps "The Khoe". While not psychotically neat, she was the kind of person who tended to actually have a place that each of her things belonged and who liked to be able to see her floor. There were many days when her bed was made, her books and papers were stacked in neat little piles, and her clothes were generally in her dresser or wardrobe. Her side of the room was a place where the odd visitor need not be afraid of being lost or injured by anything.
My side of the room was slightly different. I am sure at one point I had places for most of my things, but since they were seldom where they belonged I quickly forgot where everything went. The ledge next to my bed, my desk, my dresser, the chair next to my bed...all were completely covered in things that generally had no business being anywhere at all. I don't believe the chair next to my bed was actually ever sat in as it was so full of my jackets, books, notebooks, and other stuff. I would occasionally go on very brief cleaning sprees and would discover on my side of the room things I didn't know existed, much less that I owned. Even our walls reflected our different ideas about acceptable mess. Kirsten's walls, while full, had posters and pictures hung next to each other at perfectly right angles. It was all pretty orderly. My walls had sketches, photos, pictures from magazines, collages, masks, christmas ornaments, cards, seashells, and whatever else I could find hung at odd angles, purposely crooked and pushed into little clusters everywhere. I even had roses hanging upside down from the ceiling for a while.
Kirsten was ridiculously understanding of my mess. I'm still not sure how she managed to put up with it. The only thing she insisted on was that my stuff stay on my side of the room. This would become an issue because of my charming habit of dumping things on the floor around my desk and bed. Clothes formed mounds on the floor and stacks of notes, books, and loose papers were everywhere. I can't be completely sure of this, but I think Kirsten might have pushed the wall of my junk back to my side of the room with a yardstick a few times. I would sometimes come back and find a line clearly dividing the room: floor covered in crap on one side, floor clear but for the rug on the other.
Anyway, this bit of background is important for my little memory. One night, I came back to the room late. I tended to do this often as I had several vaguely nocturnal friends and my earliest classes were at nine thirty or ten. That's just how Peace Studies rolls. Kirsten, being science-y, had eight o'clock classes. And they were tough classes. The kind a person should be awake for. So she would be a good, responsible person and go to bed at a decent hour and I would come sneaking back to the room around one or two in the morning.
She had turned out the lights in the room (not a big deal. There was a street light that shined right into our room, though it was slightly blocked by the tree that grew in front of the window). I planned to be the best roommate ever. I would creep over to my side and go to sleep and not make her lose a second of sleep before her big important classes (I hear they deal with chemicals and numbers and stuff).
I slowly and silently shut the door. I turned and stealthily moved forward in the close-to-darkness. I distinctly remember feeling a bit like a ninja as I moved undetected through the blackened room toward the unmade lump of my bed. "I could be a spy," I thought to myself. "The best spy ever. I would go on missions and routinely save the world in secret. Everyone would owe me and not even know it." I took my first step into the swirling eddies of junk on the floor around my bed...and lost the ninja in me immediately. I stepped on a plastic grocery bag, which not only crinkled loud enough to wake the dead, but caused me to slip forward. I fell onto my bed, hitting the wall with my head. The creaks, thuds, mild swearing and unholy crinkling Kirsten might have ignored if she hadn't heard me distinctly mutter to myself, "This is why I can't be a ninja." I'm not sure I have ever heard her laugh that long. She very much enjoyed telling that story to everyone we saw for the next several weeks and, as far as I know, still tells it.
Nothing like messiness, clumsiness, and late-night mayhem to solidify a friendship.
This particular story dates back to my sophomore year. I was, at that time, living with a dear, fiesty, and horrifyingly intelligent bio-chemistry major friend. Some may know her as Kirsten, or perhaps "The Khoe". While not psychotically neat, she was the kind of person who tended to actually have a place that each of her things belonged and who liked to be able to see her floor. There were many days when her bed was made, her books and papers were stacked in neat little piles, and her clothes were generally in her dresser or wardrobe. Her side of the room was a place where the odd visitor need not be afraid of being lost or injured by anything.
My side of the room was slightly different. I am sure at one point I had places for most of my things, but since they were seldom where they belonged I quickly forgot where everything went. The ledge next to my bed, my desk, my dresser, the chair next to my bed...all were completely covered in things that generally had no business being anywhere at all. I don't believe the chair next to my bed was actually ever sat in as it was so full of my jackets, books, notebooks, and other stuff. I would occasionally go on very brief cleaning sprees and would discover on my side of the room things I didn't know existed, much less that I owned. Even our walls reflected our different ideas about acceptable mess. Kirsten's walls, while full, had posters and pictures hung next to each other at perfectly right angles. It was all pretty orderly. My walls had sketches, photos, pictures from magazines, collages, masks, christmas ornaments, cards, seashells, and whatever else I could find hung at odd angles, purposely crooked and pushed into little clusters everywhere. I even had roses hanging upside down from the ceiling for a while.
Kirsten was ridiculously understanding of my mess. I'm still not sure how she managed to put up with it. The only thing she insisted on was that my stuff stay on my side of the room. This would become an issue because of my charming habit of dumping things on the floor around my desk and bed. Clothes formed mounds on the floor and stacks of notes, books, and loose papers were everywhere. I can't be completely sure of this, but I think Kirsten might have pushed the wall of my junk back to my side of the room with a yardstick a few times. I would sometimes come back and find a line clearly dividing the room: floor covered in crap on one side, floor clear but for the rug on the other.
Anyway, this bit of background is important for my little memory. One night, I came back to the room late. I tended to do this often as I had several vaguely nocturnal friends and my earliest classes were at nine thirty or ten. That's just how Peace Studies rolls. Kirsten, being science-y, had eight o'clock classes. And they were tough classes. The kind a person should be awake for. So she would be a good, responsible person and go to bed at a decent hour and I would come sneaking back to the room around one or two in the morning.
She had turned out the lights in the room (not a big deal. There was a street light that shined right into our room, though it was slightly blocked by the tree that grew in front of the window). I planned to be the best roommate ever. I would creep over to my side and go to sleep and not make her lose a second of sleep before her big important classes (I hear they deal with chemicals and numbers and stuff).
I slowly and silently shut the door. I turned and stealthily moved forward in the close-to-darkness. I distinctly remember feeling a bit like a ninja as I moved undetected through the blackened room toward the unmade lump of my bed. "I could be a spy," I thought to myself. "The best spy ever. I would go on missions and routinely save the world in secret. Everyone would owe me and not even know it." I took my first step into the swirling eddies of junk on the floor around my bed...and lost the ninja in me immediately. I stepped on a plastic grocery bag, which not only crinkled loud enough to wake the dead, but caused me to slip forward. I fell onto my bed, hitting the wall with my head. The creaks, thuds, mild swearing and unholy crinkling Kirsten might have ignored if she hadn't heard me distinctly mutter to myself, "This is why I can't be a ninja." I'm not sure I have ever heard her laugh that long. She very much enjoyed telling that story to everyone we saw for the next several weeks and, as far as I know, still tells it.
Nothing like messiness, clumsiness, and late-night mayhem to solidify a friendship.
10.02.2010
Heat.
I hate heat. I know for some people that is like a sin, but I really hate it. Give me a blizzard over a heatwave any day. I always knew I liked the cold better, but that point has really been driven home to me lately. There are only so many days that you can lie on the floor of your third-story apartment in your underwear with every fan in the house pointed directly at you. I am just saying.
Now, I know lots of people love heat for some inexplicable reason. Maybe it reminds them of summer when they can go outside and hike and get themselves some more melanin and be in water constantly. I like those parts of heat. I do. I also understand the draw of summer vacation. Or I did when I was in school and had summer vacation. It turns out most jobs don't let you have it any more.
I am just saying that those pros do not weigh out the cons of heat. Besides, there are hot tubs and indoor pools if a person really needs water throughout the year, being tan is over-rated (go pale ones!), and fall is a much cooler time to hike (in more ways than one. Do you see what I did there?).
Therefore, I am writing a list of reasons heat stinks and reasons why cold, even extreme cold, is better.
Why heat stinks:
1) It literally stinks. And causes me to stink. Everything is more pungent in heat, and not in that good Las Vegas way. This includes trash, bodies (especially when packed into a bus), stagnant water, and mulch piles, or whatever those piles of coffee grounds and banana peels are.
2) It forces me to do much more laundry than usual because of the copious amounts of sweat that occur.
3) It prevents me from being comfortable. Heat limits my options for comfort to either wearing clothing that I don't feel sketchy in and sweating all day like I have some horrible fever or sweating a bit less and wearing horrible clothing that I am afraid to move in for fear of awkward revelations of flesh to those around me. This leads me to...
4) Lots of body insecurity. Yes, I like to pretend I don't deal with it and lots of times I don't, but it is hard to be completely confident in yourself when there are thin, tan, bikini-clad women everywhere you go.
5) Bugs. Lots of them. Everywhere.
6) Sunburns, heatstroke, dehydration, and a whole list of medical maladies that occur with much more frequency in hot weather. Also, have you ever noticed how much more miserable it is to be sick in hot weather? There will be no bundling up and drinking tea for you, invalid. The weather itself defies your fever to recede.
7) Inability to turn on my oven without transforming the apartment into a stifling gateway to hell. This results in a sad lack of baked goods.
8) No working out outside unless you are one of those morning-types who is up before the world turns sweaty and shoes begin melting to the sidewalk. I am not, by the way, one of the aforementioned morning-types.
9) Every time I get into the car is like stepping into one of those dry-heat wood saunas. However nice those are when one is in a swimming suit and prepared for the experience, it is not so nice when trying to go to a job interview.
10) Things mold more quickly. It's hot, it's moist, the mold goes crazy.
Wonderful things about the cold:
1) Hot tea, hot chocolate, spiced cider...warm drinks are my lifeblood. It is tough to be unhappy when my drink is warming me from the inside.
2) Lots of baked goods. Lots. Breads, pies, cookies, muffins, cakes... The oven is on all the time and when I run out of baked things to make, Tyler can jump in with pizzas and eggplant parmesan and all kinds of other delicious things.
3) Warm sweaters, jeans, boots, scarves, hats... cold weather clothes are fuzzy, thick, and fabulous. And I am never afraid to move in them.
4) I feel not at all bad in cold weather for curling up on a couch with a book or movie and a hot drink. In fact, I think that these things may be designed specifically to be done in cold weather.
5) Gaining a little bit of bodily insulation is perfectly acceptable, even prudent, in cold weather. And it is more difficult for others to detect.
6) Bonfires are enjoyed in the cold. And really, who doesn't like fire?
7) No guilt for working out indoors. After all, I can't really jog in the snow.
8) The bugs are dead. Or hiding. Either way, they are not around to bug me.
9) This is the season of roasts, crock-pot meals, lasagnas, mashed potatoes... Every hot food that is filling and delicious and makes you happy happens in cold weather. Yeah, I know I talked about food earlier, but I really like food.
10) Playing in the snow is wonderful.
11) Playing in fall leaves is even better.
12) Christmas happens.
You know, I am sure I will add to this as time goes on, but I think I have made my point. Cold is awesome. I want it to come more quickly. Begone, heat!
Now, I know lots of people love heat for some inexplicable reason. Maybe it reminds them of summer when they can go outside and hike and get themselves some more melanin and be in water constantly. I like those parts of heat. I do. I also understand the draw of summer vacation. Or I did when I was in school and had summer vacation. It turns out most jobs don't let you have it any more.
I am just saying that those pros do not weigh out the cons of heat. Besides, there are hot tubs and indoor pools if a person really needs water throughout the year, being tan is over-rated (go pale ones!), and fall is a much cooler time to hike (in more ways than one. Do you see what I did there?).
Therefore, I am writing a list of reasons heat stinks and reasons why cold, even extreme cold, is better.
Why heat stinks:
1) It literally stinks. And causes me to stink. Everything is more pungent in heat, and not in that good Las Vegas way. This includes trash, bodies (especially when packed into a bus), stagnant water, and mulch piles, or whatever those piles of coffee grounds and banana peels are.
2) It forces me to do much more laundry than usual because of the copious amounts of sweat that occur.
3) It prevents me from being comfortable. Heat limits my options for comfort to either wearing clothing that I don't feel sketchy in and sweating all day like I have some horrible fever or sweating a bit less and wearing horrible clothing that I am afraid to move in for fear of awkward revelations of flesh to those around me. This leads me to...
4) Lots of body insecurity. Yes, I like to pretend I don't deal with it and lots of times I don't, but it is hard to be completely confident in yourself when there are thin, tan, bikini-clad women everywhere you go.
5) Bugs. Lots of them. Everywhere.
6) Sunburns, heatstroke, dehydration, and a whole list of medical maladies that occur with much more frequency in hot weather. Also, have you ever noticed how much more miserable it is to be sick in hot weather? There will be no bundling up and drinking tea for you, invalid. The weather itself defies your fever to recede.
7) Inability to turn on my oven without transforming the apartment into a stifling gateway to hell. This results in a sad lack of baked goods.
8) No working out outside unless you are one of those morning-types who is up before the world turns sweaty and shoes begin melting to the sidewalk. I am not, by the way, one of the aforementioned morning-types.
9) Every time I get into the car is like stepping into one of those dry-heat wood saunas. However nice those are when one is in a swimming suit and prepared for the experience, it is not so nice when trying to go to a job interview.
10) Things mold more quickly. It's hot, it's moist, the mold goes crazy.
Wonderful things about the cold:
1) Hot tea, hot chocolate, spiced cider...warm drinks are my lifeblood. It is tough to be unhappy when my drink is warming me from the inside.
2) Lots of baked goods. Lots. Breads, pies, cookies, muffins, cakes... The oven is on all the time and when I run out of baked things to make, Tyler can jump in with pizzas and eggplant parmesan and all kinds of other delicious things.
3) Warm sweaters, jeans, boots, scarves, hats... cold weather clothes are fuzzy, thick, and fabulous. And I am never afraid to move in them.
4) I feel not at all bad in cold weather for curling up on a couch with a book or movie and a hot drink. In fact, I think that these things may be designed specifically to be done in cold weather.
5) Gaining a little bit of bodily insulation is perfectly acceptable, even prudent, in cold weather. And it is more difficult for others to detect.
6) Bonfires are enjoyed in the cold. And really, who doesn't like fire?
7) No guilt for working out indoors. After all, I can't really jog in the snow.
8) The bugs are dead. Or hiding. Either way, they are not around to bug me.
9) This is the season of roasts, crock-pot meals, lasagnas, mashed potatoes... Every hot food that is filling and delicious and makes you happy happens in cold weather. Yeah, I know I talked about food earlier, but I really like food.
10) Playing in the snow is wonderful.
11) Playing in fall leaves is even better.
12) Christmas happens.
You know, I am sure I will add to this as time goes on, but I think I have made my point. Cold is awesome. I want it to come more quickly. Begone, heat!
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