Yeah, today wasn't as productive a day as it could have been...I have a midterm tomorrow evening, so I had planned to study for the better part of the morning and early afternoon, but...you know how me and studying are. (Hint: not friends.) So I spent the morning writing blog posts for later, changing my desktop background to one with a direwolf on it, changing my chrome theme to one that matched the direwolf, and pretending I had important emails to answer. Then I studied for about two hours. Wuph.
In the afternoon, I took Annabelle to swimming class. We have a little kiddie pool that we put out on the porch on nice days, and Annabelle really loves it, so I figured swim class at Birchwood would be like the pinnacle of existence for her. And she did really like bouncing in the water and immediately after her class was over, she wanted to be the teacher (this is a habit of hers; she's a bit of a control freak for one so young) but she was way more scared of water than I remember being at her age. I guess I probably was, though, because most of the kids in that class were. And when I think about it, it's completely normal. I mean, I'm still scared of water, just more rationally. I have water-in-the-ear problems when I go swimming now, and drowning is one of my biggest fears, and sharks aren't my favorite. How much more would a little kid be scared of water? They have no reason to trust it; they haven't been in water long enough to know that they float, and no matter how much we tell them we're going to hold them up and make sure they don't get stuck underwater, why should they believe us? For all they know, we might not be strong enough to fight the water.
Anyway, Annabelle was not too keen about kicking or scooping or...anything but bouncing and bossing me around, really. I hope she grows out of that. She likely will, I think, it just makes me sad to think that she might not. I loved summers when I was a kid specifically because I could swim in the pool.
So after swim class, we came home and had dinner, and then my mom, Annabelle, and I went to Kohl's to return some of the stuff we got on Sunday and use our Kohl's cash to buy more things! Yay consumerism! Then I cleaned my room and my mom and I watched Much Ado About Nothing.
That was Tuesday. I guess it wasn't as bad as I thought...though I still have a ton of studying to do.
<3 spadeALLcross
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
10.6.12
Lazy Sunday, woke up in the...morning...
So, today I did some very interesting things! Hooray for doing something with my life!
- I finished reading Game of Thrones! And later I went out to buy Clash of Kings. I'm going to be writing a review of GoT soon over on my other blog, but I was too busy to do it today.
- I wrote a movie review for my other blog, but I'm not posting it until later; I find that I need some time to sit on my opinions before posting them on the internet.
- I helped make lunch for my family. It was a feast of appetizers: my mom had wrapped some pineapple in slices of prosciutto, and I grilled some shrimp and some steak and some tomatoes. That took up most of the afternoon, between the prep and the actual grilling, but I like to think it was worth it; it was really good food. I am pleasantly surprised that even I can make tasty food when I follow a recipe correctly. I am slowly (and by slowly I mean with the epic charging speed of a glacier) learning how to cook.
- I went to Khol's and bought a dress to wear to the wedding I'm going to this week as well as some jewelry to go with it. It's so nice to have a disposable income again.
- I watched Legend of Korra with Ben via skype.
- I was betrayed by my ally in Diplomacy. He was playing England, so I sent him a message on facebook:
"When you play the Game of Thrones, either you win or you die."
I can only hope he got the joke.
Anyway, very full day. And tomorrow has a lot in store for it, as well.
<3 spadeALLcross
20.10.11
The Cliffs of Insanity!
I've reached them, folks. It's almost November, and if you've been paying attention to my facebook, my google+, the sidebar on this blog, or the crazed look on my face, you'll remember that November means NaNoWriMo.
For those [unlikely few] of you who don't know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, which is November. It is also the name of an event put on by the Office of Letters and Light, a Not-for-Profit organization that supports, encourages, defends, and champions reading and writing and literacy programs around the world, in schools, libraries, and homes. I love it, and I love its people (those whom I know) and I love its annual Month of "Literary Abandon."
NaNoWriMo stands for a lot of things that are important to me, as an enthusiast of education and of books, and a firm believer in a person's need to communicate and express themselves. Because of this, I am putting aside my blue-chip safety dance and strapping on the Lonsword of +5 to risktaking.
On the sidebar of this page, you'll see a big green "Donate!" button. The following are the rules for using said button.
Certainly anyone is allowed to donate free of nefarious connotations: just go to the page and donate and I'll be happy, and you'll be happy, and writers around the country and world will be happy, too. Everyone wins.
But if you're of a more competitive spirit, or you don't think I can do what I say I'm going to do, or if you want to keep me honest, then let's set up a little wager, shall we?
There are many benchmarks for NaNoWriMo that we could put some money on. There's the obvious one, 50K by the end of the month. There're also the challenges of getting 1,667 words/day, or 11,669 words/week, or staying above someone else's daily word count, i.e. Chris Baty (the head of NaNoWriMo.org). The wagers set thereon would work as follows:
You bet, say $50, that I don't make the 50K by the end of the month. If I do, then you donate that $50 to NaNoWriMo. If I don't, then I donate it to an organization of your choosing. Any organization: NaNoWriMo, the NRA, Scientology, or even your own checking account.
The same goes for any benchmark. I'm going to ask that there be a $0.50 maximum wager made for every 1,000 words expected for the benchmark, because I'm not made of money, and I'm sure you're not either.
If you accept any of these wagers, or if you want to donate just for the good of the cause, let me know in a comment below, or an email, or a text, or via facebook, or any other of the numerous ways people can reach me these days. I won't necessarily accept all of the wagers, but I may accept some--the more interesting, the better--and I will consider all of them.
Happy Thursday! And Happy National Novel Writing Month!
<3 spadeALLcross
For those [unlikely few] of you who don't know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, which is November. It is also the name of an event put on by the Office of Letters and Light, a Not-for-Profit organization that supports, encourages, defends, and champions reading and writing and literacy programs around the world, in schools, libraries, and homes. I love it, and I love its people (those whom I know) and I love its annual Month of "Literary Abandon."
NaNoWriMo stands for a lot of things that are important to me, as an enthusiast of education and of books, and a firm believer in a person's need to communicate and express themselves. Because of this, I am putting aside my blue-chip safety dance and strapping on the Lonsword of +5 to risktaking.
On the sidebar of this page, you'll see a big green "Donate!" button. The following are the rules for using said button.
Certainly anyone is allowed to donate free of nefarious connotations: just go to the page and donate and I'll be happy, and you'll be happy, and writers around the country and world will be happy, too. Everyone wins.
But if you're of a more competitive spirit, or you don't think I can do what I say I'm going to do, or if you want to keep me honest, then let's set up a little wager, shall we?
There are many benchmarks for NaNoWriMo that we could put some money on. There's the obvious one, 50K by the end of the month. There're also the challenges of getting 1,667 words/day, or 11,669 words/week, or staying above someone else's daily word count, i.e. Chris Baty (the head of NaNoWriMo.org). The wagers set thereon would work as follows:
You bet, say $50, that I don't make the 50K by the end of the month. If I do, then you donate that $50 to NaNoWriMo. If I don't, then I donate it to an organization of your choosing. Any organization: NaNoWriMo, the NRA, Scientology, or even your own checking account.
The same goes for any benchmark. I'm going to ask that there be a $0.50 maximum wager made for every 1,000 words expected for the benchmark, because I'm not made of money, and I'm sure you're not either.
If you accept any of these wagers, or if you want to donate just for the good of the cause, let me know in a comment below, or an email, or a text, or via facebook, or any other of the numerous ways people can reach me these days. I won't necessarily accept all of the wagers, but I may accept some--the more interesting, the better--and I will consider all of them.
Happy Thursday! And Happy National Novel Writing Month!
<3 spadeALLcross
3.8.11
I am not a doctor...and I don't play one on TV
(This post is not written by an expert in anything. These are opinions and theories based on experience, not facts based on evidence. If you have a problem with anything said here, please begin a discussion, as I would rather be convinced that my theories are wrong than have someone think they're wrong and not tell me.)
So, it's 6:21 am CDT, and I am awake. This is an anomaly: do not be fooled into thinking I am a morning person. No, I'm waiting for the registration to open pottermore.com. There's been a window of about a half hour every day since Sunday, and the windows will officially close for a few months after Saturday, so I've dedicated the early mornings of the past couple days to waiting around for my opportunity to register for the site.
Yesterday was the first day I purposefully woke up early. I got to the site, found the clue, realized I didn't have my copy of The Prisoner of Azkaban, where the answer to the clue could be found, so defaulted and used the audiobook, since iTunes just happened to be open. (If I had had to open iTunes, it would have taken about five full minutes, if not more, and I think I would have imploded due to the building pressure.) I solved the clue, got to the website where the quill was supposed to be, and couldn't find it. Registration had closed. So I shrugged wistfully, yawned, and went back to sleep.
On Sunday, registration opened at 3 am in my time zone, on Monday, it opened at 4 am, and on Tuesday it opened at 5 am. So, I set my alarm this morning for a little before six and hopped online to wait around. Well...obviously, since it's 6:27 now, the trend has changed. It irks me a little and I find it unsettling that whoever is in charge of this website is making the fans jump through so many hoops to get to it. If it's just because they want the most dedicated fans to get on the site for this early registration dry run, I can maybe understand that, although I must point out that "Harry Potter Fan" does not directly translate to "Internet-Savvy, Scavenger-Hunt Extraordinaire" and that there are probably people getting on to Pottermore who were more intrigued by the process of getting there than they will be by the website. But if the reason for the manipulations comes from the fact that, Harry Potter being what it is to so many people, this is one fan base who would put up with almost anything, and this sort of registration process is more fun for the people in charge...that's just sick and they should stop. People are staying up egregiously late in some time zones, or waking up entirely too early, skiving off summer school or work...seems wrong to me. Dumbledore wouldn't let this happen.
Anyway, that's not what I wanted to talk about really.
In the excess time that I've been awake when pottermore hasn't been open (it's 6:35 now) I've been browsing the internet. It started on twitter where, since I'm following Pottermorefans, I was already sitting waiting for some news, perhaps on why regsitration wasn't open yet. I perused the past tweets, the @replies, etc, and I noticed a fervent energy present in every bit of the online conversations that revolved around this twitter account. People excited for pottermore opening, people preparing for each clue by quizzing themselves with similar clues they've made up themselves, people speculating about how access to the site is actually going to work, people sharing stories about the ridiculous things they've done for Harry Potter in the past, comparing Houses, etc. To some degree, it reminded me of the sort of energy I always felt at Harry Potter midnight showings, the energy that kept me coming back to the cinema every year, even though I didn't like the movies anymore.
But I started following links, and looking at other Harry Potter fandom things, and I remembered a book I saw for sale called Dear Mr. Potter which is filled with letters from people to Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling, telling them their stories about how Harry Potter made their life better in some way. A lot of them were touching, some were similar to mine, but a few of them sort of scared me in a way, and I stopped wanting to read them.
I've been called a nerd on several occasions, it feels like my mom calls me an "addict" every time I do anything for more than an hour for two days in a row (right now, this includes my obsession with ST:VOY), and I've gotten numerous questioning looks and scoffs, and even the odd demoralizing attack on my sanity from people who think I get "too" into things. Most of the time, these things are fandoms like Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, Twilight, and others. A few people have made fun of my T-shirt collection, but that's rare (because my t-shirt collection is universally awesome). Some people say I'm too Christian, too, but that's a different matter from my perspective, if not from theirs.
Harry Potter is different, because it is the one series I constantly return to. With others, I go through phases: I don't feel the same awe when I watch the Lord of the Rings movies as I did when I was in Junior High, I don't wish Lt. Commander Data were a non-fictional artificial lifeform anymore, and I certainly hate Bella Swan and her entire creepy family. But I've always loved Harry Potter, from the time I read the first book to the moment the credits rolled on the eighth movie, a timeline of almost fifteen years, my love for the series has developed from a phase-based infatuation into a sort of foundational love. Harry Potter is definitely a part of my life, and I'm sure I wouldn't be the same person if I hadn't read it. This is not true of all the other fandoms I've been a part of, including Twilight, Star Trek, Eragon, or The Matrix: take those experiences away, and the change in my character and person would be minimal.
The other fandom that captured my heart so thoroughly was The Lord of the Rings. I was in fifth or sixth grade when the first movie came out, and it took me a year to read the first book, but after that and until I got into high school, I was beyond obsessed. But it was not the same kind of obsession I had with Harry Potter. 2001, the year the movie came out, was a pretty hard year for me. It was a pretty hard year for the country, which certainly contributed to my year sucking. 2002 and 2003 were not much better. For this period of three years, I didn't have very many friends, my family life was more complicated and painful than I was used to, and I was doing terribly in school. The only thing that was going right, I thought, was The Lord of the Rings. Between reading the books, watching the movies, and obsessing over the details of both, I could easily occupy my mind with things other than my own life, and for the most part, that's exactly what I did for three years. I checked out of reality for the better part of Junior High, forgoing relationships with people around me, a better understanding of myself, and a first-hand knowledge of the world because there were things in my life that upset me and The Lord of the Rings allowed me to get away from them.
Sure, I turned out all right in the end, and yes, being a "fan" doesn't necessarily mean you're an escapist, and no, escapism is not always the same as hard drugs: sometimes it's just a coping mechanism, an outlet to plug in and recharge, and none of that scares me or bothers me. But reading some of those letters to Rowling and hearing the way those people were talking about the series as if it "saved" them from their terrible lives because they were able to read it long enough to wait out their problems and not have to deal with them every day...it feels dangerous to me.
Dumbledore himself said, "It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live." Wishing Hogwarts is real, that you had friends like Hermione or Luna, that you could be a part of something special and important like Dumbledore's Army, that makes sense and I imagine is a natural response to a series that garnered so much love and attention for so long by so many. But I think that believing the books changed your life when all that happened was that you lived them instead of it is just incorrect. If thirteen years of your life you dwelled on Harry Potter, hoping it was real, living as if it was, and skipping out on what was actually happening around you, even if it was too terrible for you to live with, the series did not save you: it allowed you to lose thirteen years of your life that you will never get back.
I'm pretty sure I'm reading more into those letters than is there, since even my bout of living outside reality wasn't that deep or detrimental. But I wanted to voice my opinions about escapism, I guess, because I do think it's dangerous, and I do believe it's similar to, if not the same as an addiction. Some addictions are obviously unhealthy, and the family and friends of the user notice the signs and urge the user to seek help. Some addictions are less noticable, either because they are easily hidden (pornography and x-rated romance novels, anorexia and bulimia, etc) or because they are socially acceptable (caffeine, nicotine, etc). Some are more physically damaging than others (heroine, alcohol, etc) while some are more emotionally or psychologically damaging than others (eating disorders).
But all addictions are the same in that they give the addict a crutch to get through life, and the longer a person uses the crutch, the more the rest of their faculties atrophy due to lack of use or dependence. A person can become addicted to anything if they let that thing control their desires, dictate how they spend their time, or keep them from doing other things they used to enjoy or taking care of their responsibilities. The phrase "The more _____ you own, the more your _____ owns you" is not just a pithy attack on materialism. When someone goes camping and goes through television withdrawal, it's not just a useful metaphor. I'm not a psychologist, but in my personal experience, if there's anything in your life that you do regularly often without thinking, or because you "can't help yourself," or because you think it makes your life easier/simpler/better, you're forming a habit, and habits can easily become addictions.
The Lord of the Rings was my addiction. It didn't kill me, and I don't even necessarily regret it, but I do sometimes wonder what would have been different about my Junior High and high school experience if I had had a more healthy relationship with the books and movies. The difference, from what I can tell, is in the control. If you honestly determine when, where, and how you do something, if you really can stop any time, then you're in control. The moment you start feeling like you have to, like you can't afford not to, like it would be too hard to not do something, things start getting scary.
Aaaand I just went to the pottermore blog and realized that I didn't have to wake up until 22 minutes ago (it's 8:22 now) because they announced that registration would open sometime between 2 pm and 6 pm BST. Ugh. Obviously, I'm an example of an Internet-Idiot Harry Potter fan. But evidently, those in charge of pottermore don't really want me anyway.
I'm going back to bed. I hope I didn't offend anybody, but if I did, please tell me why. I'm just postulating throughout all of this: as I said, I'm not a psychologist and most of my experience with addiction diseases is second-hand, so I am not an expert.
If, though, you think there are things that control you more than you'd like them to, my amateur suggestion would be to tell someone you believe can help you: not necessarily a friend or family member, but someone you think will have the wisdom and guts to help you work through it. A counsellor, a mentor, a religious leader, a teacher...someone who either knows you or would know how to help you with your situation.
<3 spadeALLcross
EDIT: Wow...this post takes quite the journey. Probably reads a little strangely. I should edit it at some point, and I probably will later.
So, it's 6:21 am CDT, and I am awake. This is an anomaly: do not be fooled into thinking I am a morning person. No, I'm waiting for the registration to open pottermore.com. There's been a window of about a half hour every day since Sunday, and the windows will officially close for a few months after Saturday, so I've dedicated the early mornings of the past couple days to waiting around for my opportunity to register for the site.
Yesterday was the first day I purposefully woke up early. I got to the site, found the clue, realized I didn't have my copy of The Prisoner of Azkaban, where the answer to the clue could be found, so defaulted and used the audiobook, since iTunes just happened to be open. (If I had had to open iTunes, it would have taken about five full minutes, if not more, and I think I would have imploded due to the building pressure.) I solved the clue, got to the website where the quill was supposed to be, and couldn't find it. Registration had closed. So I shrugged wistfully, yawned, and went back to sleep.
On Sunday, registration opened at 3 am in my time zone, on Monday, it opened at 4 am, and on Tuesday it opened at 5 am. So, I set my alarm this morning for a little before six and hopped online to wait around. Well...obviously, since it's 6:27 now, the trend has changed. It irks me a little and I find it unsettling that whoever is in charge of this website is making the fans jump through so many hoops to get to it. If it's just because they want the most dedicated fans to get on the site for this early registration dry run, I can maybe understand that, although I must point out that "Harry Potter Fan" does not directly translate to "Internet-Savvy, Scavenger-Hunt Extraordinaire" and that there are probably people getting on to Pottermore who were more intrigued by the process of getting there than they will be by the website. But if the reason for the manipulations comes from the fact that, Harry Potter being what it is to so many people, this is one fan base who would put up with almost anything, and this sort of registration process is more fun for the people in charge...that's just sick and they should stop. People are staying up egregiously late in some time zones, or waking up entirely too early, skiving off summer school or work...seems wrong to me. Dumbledore wouldn't let this happen.
Anyway, that's not what I wanted to talk about really.
In the excess time that I've been awake when pottermore hasn't been open (it's 6:35 now) I've been browsing the internet. It started on twitter where, since I'm following Pottermorefans, I was already sitting waiting for some news, perhaps on why regsitration wasn't open yet. I perused the past tweets, the @replies, etc, and I noticed a fervent energy present in every bit of the online conversations that revolved around this twitter account. People excited for pottermore opening, people preparing for each clue by quizzing themselves with similar clues they've made up themselves, people speculating about how access to the site is actually going to work, people sharing stories about the ridiculous things they've done for Harry Potter in the past, comparing Houses, etc. To some degree, it reminded me of the sort of energy I always felt at Harry Potter midnight showings, the energy that kept me coming back to the cinema every year, even though I didn't like the movies anymore.
But I started following links, and looking at other Harry Potter fandom things, and I remembered a book I saw for sale called Dear Mr. Potter which is filled with letters from people to Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling, telling them their stories about how Harry Potter made their life better in some way. A lot of them were touching, some were similar to mine, but a few of them sort of scared me in a way, and I stopped wanting to read them.
I've been called a nerd on several occasions, it feels like my mom calls me an "addict" every time I do anything for more than an hour for two days in a row (right now, this includes my obsession with ST:VOY), and I've gotten numerous questioning looks and scoffs, and even the odd demoralizing attack on my sanity from people who think I get "too" into things. Most of the time, these things are fandoms like Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, Twilight, and others. A few people have made fun of my T-shirt collection, but that's rare (because my t-shirt collection is universally awesome). Some people say I'm too Christian, too, but that's a different matter from my perspective, if not from theirs.
Harry Potter is different, because it is the one series I constantly return to. With others, I go through phases: I don't feel the same awe when I watch the Lord of the Rings movies as I did when I was in Junior High, I don't wish Lt. Commander Data were a non-fictional artificial lifeform anymore, and I certainly hate Bella Swan and her entire creepy family. But I've always loved Harry Potter, from the time I read the first book to the moment the credits rolled on the eighth movie, a timeline of almost fifteen years, my love for the series has developed from a phase-based infatuation into a sort of foundational love. Harry Potter is definitely a part of my life, and I'm sure I wouldn't be the same person if I hadn't read it. This is not true of all the other fandoms I've been a part of, including Twilight, Star Trek, Eragon, or The Matrix: take those experiences away, and the change in my character and person would be minimal.
The other fandom that captured my heart so thoroughly was The Lord of the Rings. I was in fifth or sixth grade when the first movie came out, and it took me a year to read the first book, but after that and until I got into high school, I was beyond obsessed. But it was not the same kind of obsession I had with Harry Potter. 2001, the year the movie came out, was a pretty hard year for me. It was a pretty hard year for the country, which certainly contributed to my year sucking. 2002 and 2003 were not much better. For this period of three years, I didn't have very many friends, my family life was more complicated and painful than I was used to, and I was doing terribly in school. The only thing that was going right, I thought, was The Lord of the Rings. Between reading the books, watching the movies, and obsessing over the details of both, I could easily occupy my mind with things other than my own life, and for the most part, that's exactly what I did for three years. I checked out of reality for the better part of Junior High, forgoing relationships with people around me, a better understanding of myself, and a first-hand knowledge of the world because there were things in my life that upset me and The Lord of the Rings allowed me to get away from them.
Sure, I turned out all right in the end, and yes, being a "fan" doesn't necessarily mean you're an escapist, and no, escapism is not always the same as hard drugs: sometimes it's just a coping mechanism, an outlet to plug in and recharge, and none of that scares me or bothers me. But reading some of those letters to Rowling and hearing the way those people were talking about the series as if it "saved" them from their terrible lives because they were able to read it long enough to wait out their problems and not have to deal with them every day...it feels dangerous to me.
Dumbledore himself said, "It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live." Wishing Hogwarts is real, that you had friends like Hermione or Luna, that you could be a part of something special and important like Dumbledore's Army, that makes sense and I imagine is a natural response to a series that garnered so much love and attention for so long by so many. But I think that believing the books changed your life when all that happened was that you lived them instead of it is just incorrect. If thirteen years of your life you dwelled on Harry Potter, hoping it was real, living as if it was, and skipping out on what was actually happening around you, even if it was too terrible for you to live with, the series did not save you: it allowed you to lose thirteen years of your life that you will never get back.
I'm pretty sure I'm reading more into those letters than is there, since even my bout of living outside reality wasn't that deep or detrimental. But I wanted to voice my opinions about escapism, I guess, because I do think it's dangerous, and I do believe it's similar to, if not the same as an addiction. Some addictions are obviously unhealthy, and the family and friends of the user notice the signs and urge the user to seek help. Some addictions are less noticable, either because they are easily hidden (pornography and x-rated romance novels, anorexia and bulimia, etc) or because they are socially acceptable (caffeine, nicotine, etc). Some are more physically damaging than others (heroine, alcohol, etc) while some are more emotionally or psychologically damaging than others (eating disorders).
But all addictions are the same in that they give the addict a crutch to get through life, and the longer a person uses the crutch, the more the rest of their faculties atrophy due to lack of use or dependence. A person can become addicted to anything if they let that thing control their desires, dictate how they spend their time, or keep them from doing other things they used to enjoy or taking care of their responsibilities. The phrase "The more _____ you own, the more your _____ owns you" is not just a pithy attack on materialism. When someone goes camping and goes through television withdrawal, it's not just a useful metaphor. I'm not a psychologist, but in my personal experience, if there's anything in your life that you do regularly often without thinking, or because you "can't help yourself," or because you think it makes your life easier/simpler/better, you're forming a habit, and habits can easily become addictions.
The Lord of the Rings was my addiction. It didn't kill me, and I don't even necessarily regret it, but I do sometimes wonder what would have been different about my Junior High and high school experience if I had had a more healthy relationship with the books and movies. The difference, from what I can tell, is in the control. If you honestly determine when, where, and how you do something, if you really can stop any time, then you're in control. The moment you start feeling like you have to, like you can't afford not to, like it would be too hard to not do something, things start getting scary.
Aaaand I just went to the pottermore blog and realized that I didn't have to wake up until 22 minutes ago (it's 8:22 now) because they announced that registration would open sometime between 2 pm and 6 pm BST. Ugh. Obviously, I'm an example of an Internet-Idiot Harry Potter fan. But evidently, those in charge of pottermore don't really want me anyway.
I'm going back to bed. I hope I didn't offend anybody, but if I did, please tell me why. I'm just postulating throughout all of this: as I said, I'm not a psychologist and most of my experience with addiction diseases is second-hand, so I am not an expert.
If, though, you think there are things that control you more than you'd like them to, my amateur suggestion would be to tell someone you believe can help you: not necessarily a friend or family member, but someone you think will have the wisdom and guts to help you work through it. A counsellor, a mentor, a religious leader, a teacher...someone who either knows you or would know how to help you with your situation.
<3 spadeALLcross
EDIT: Wow...this post takes quite the journey. Probably reads a little strangely. I should edit it at some point, and I probably will later.
19.7.11
The time has come, [the Walrus said]...
It's been a few days since I saw HP 7.2, and I now feel solid enough in my opinion of it to review it. Not in-depth, as I don't think anyone who reads this blog really cares about the play-by-play of a movie they could easily watch themselves, but at least enough to discuss the parts that struck me the most.
WARNING: Spoiler City up in hurr.
I walked into the theater last November for the midnight showing of HP 7.1 with very low expectations. I've been to every midnight showing of a Harry Potter movie since Prisoner of Azkaban as a tradition, but have never actually liked the movies. But after HP 7.1 was over, I was incredibly and pleasantly surprised by its quality. The filmmakers had definitely made choices that I didn't understand, like not including the invisibility cloak, rushing through an introduction of Bill Weasley, and skipping over so much of Harry's Dumbledore-related angst. But the movie did a much better job than its predecessors of staying true to the depth, vision, and feeling of the book. Things were dark, scary, and hopeless, and the comic relief came in short bursts of smiles before nail-biting drama struck again.
So Thursday night, my expectations were high for a Harry Potter film for the first time in seven years. And when the credits rolled, I was less disappointed than I could have been. I think the movie did as good a job adapting the book as it could have, given the circumstances. Ending a series beloved by so many people and trying to include all of the bits that audience would expect--"The Prince's Tale," Molly-Bellatrix dueling scene, Neville's defeat of Nagini, many of the priceless bits of dialogue sprinkled throughout, etc.--while still creating an enjoyable movie that wasn't absolute Hell to sit through is a task that I do not envy.
Because the job was such a hard one, I'm quite happy with the way the movie turned out. It does, however, solidify in my mind that the books outstrip the films in every way that counts.
The movie didn't really include anything about the Hallows at all. It registered their existence and sort of nodded to the fact that Harry possessed all three by the end of the war for Hogwarts, but it didn't show the struggle that Dumbledore had faced, like so many others within and -out of fiction have faced, throughout his life of trying to use them to overcome death. Dumbledore's ascension to the position of Hogwarts' Headmaster and decline of the position of Minister of Magic was hardly mentioned, if at all. Harry's choice not to try to beat Voldemort to Dumbledore's tomb and take the Elder wand didn't happen. Voldemort's fear of death was downplayed in favor of his fear of defeat. These choices changed the entire point of the Harry Potter story. The saga went from a relatable tale of young people overcoming internal and external obstacles by learning to think for themselves while still relying on others, a tale of friendship and bravery, of unity and mutual respect, of trusts lost and regained, to a coming-of-age story that no one can ever identify with, since it's set in a fictional world whose struggles are nothing like ours.
In the first book and movie, Quirrell/Voldemort says, "There is no Good and Evil; there is only power and those too weak to seek it." This is the theme of the Deathly Hallows; the internal battle between action and inaction, the conscious decisions Harry, Dumbledore, and Voldemort each make in their separate quests to "win," and each person's individual definition of what "winning" means.
All three of them have different relationships and responses to power. Voldemort obviously desires to increase his own power. As a child and a student he uses his innately strong magical power to bully and coerce those around him, to make them see how strong he was, to make others see how week they were. He also hones his social power to ensnare people who have more actual authority than he does in order to use their power to his advantage. But the only reason he wants any of this power is his fear of death. He fears the unknown that comes after death, and he spends most of his life ensuring that he will never have to face it. It is his search for ways to overcome death that brought so much of his power, and once he believes he has achieved immortality, he knows that he is better, stronger, smarter than everyone else in the world, including Dumbledore. Because, if anyone else were as talented and as driven as he was, they would have created horcruxes as well, they would have done the things he had done, because death was something everyone feared. How could they not? He could not see any other way of approaching the power he had discovered. He could not see why anyone would not want to live forever. What was the point of a whole and pure soul if it could be destroyed?
Meanwhile, Dumbledore also desires power his whole life. Similar to Voldemort, he sharpens his magic and knowledge from a young age. Perhaps it is Dumbledore's habit of (born out of his opportunities for) relying on other people that allow him to have friends at school who then keep him from becoming the lone-ranger that Voldemort is. Maybe Dumbledore's quest is more for knowledge and study than it is for power. But for whatever reason, Albus gets through school without attempting to take over the world. However, once school is over and his mother's death forces him to settle back in at home to take care of his younger brother and sister, he feels trapped in an inferior life. His belief that he could do more with his talents, should be allowed to move forward, fuels his friendship with Grindelwald, someone who agrees with Albus that he was made for better things. Maybe Gelert has a more straightforward desire for power for the sake of power than Dumbledore does, but Dumbledore, blinded by love and a feeling of partnership he probably didn't feel with anyone else and isn't getting from anyone in his broken family, dares to dream with Grindelwald.
Dumbledore's crippling fear that made him seek power wasn't death, but stagnation, discomfort, and intellectual restraints. Where Voldemort wanted the horcruxes primarily to ensure his eternal existence and only secondarily used the power he had gained from making them to subjugate those he thought were weaker than him, Dumbledore and Grindelwald wanted the Hallows primarily to place their superior intelligence and talent rightly on top where it belong, and only secondarily to allow themselves to live forever.
Albus is shocked out of his desire for power by the loss of his brother, sister, and best friend/boyfriend in one fell blow, and for a while, his fear overshadows his guilt. His grief over his lost loved ones and his knowledge that he is at least partly responsible keeps him from grabbing power where he can. But that fear of discomfort is something he struggles with his entire life, between desiring power over other, lesser people, as he exhibits when he borrows the cloak from James Potter, and wanting power over his grief, as he demonstrates by attempting to bring Ariana and his parents back from the dead with the resurrection stone. But he is always disgusted by his relationship to power, which is why the Elder wand is safe with him. He doesn't trust himself, and he doesn't trust the wand, so he remains headmaster of Hogwarts and keeps his own power and the wand's in check.
Unlike Dumbledore and Voldemort, Harry does not want power. All his life he is powerless, alone, and mistreated, much like Voldemort, but at school, he gains friends and fame, like Dumbledore. His fame does not treat him well; it makes him as many enemies as friends, and it gives him as many problems as solutions. Some of his fame is based on his own talent, and some of his success comes from skill, but he knows that an equal, if not greater amount comes from luck, chance, and the providence of others, and between this knowledge and the pains his fame gives him, he doesn't get as big a head as he could. Instead of focusing on overpowering others, he genuinely tries his best to do what he thinks is right. What he thinks is right is not always the most intelligent course of action, but he is only a teenager, and he is often dealing with the complex power schemes and magic of adults much stronger and smarter than he is. He knows that he isn't good enough to do everything by himself, but he also knows that doing something was too important to leave entirely to someone else. He is the perfect combination of Voldemort and Dumbledore, of relying on himself and relying on others, of choosing to act and choosing to wait, of having a will to live without putting it above everything else. If he has a crippling fear, it is that he was not worth dying for: that his parents and his friends loved him too much and for no reason. Instead of driving him to take power wherever he can find it, his fear dives him to be the best person possible, fighting for the best causes he finds. His fear makes him constantly reevaluate his actions and his goals, to know himself...something Dumbledore learned too late, and Voldemort never learned at all. Because of this, he gets all three Hallows and learns what it really means to be Master of Death. Not to live forever, but to embrace the inevitable end, to know that it's coming, and to not fight it once it arrives.
So many themes regarding life and what it means to be human float in and out of Harry Potter: persistence in the face of overwhelming adversity, unlikely forgiveness, the importance of friendship, the need for humility, and so on and so forth. A lot of them feel cliché when said aloud, which is probably why people call Harry Potter fans "nerds." The story is a coming-of-age adventure; how could it not be with a group of adolescents as the protagonists? But its fan base is proof that its characters and plots speak to more than just adolescents and that the series is more than a mere didactic fairy tale about the ideal human being.
The major overarching theme of the whole series is not cliché or nerdy, but a real question that people ask themselves constantly, whether they take note of it or not. The theme is expressed in that striking quote of Quirrell's: "There is no Good and Evil; there is only power and those too week to seek it." The question Harry Potter asks is whether Good seeks power, and whether not seeking power is a weakness. Harry, Dumbledore, and Voldemort represent three case studies in dealing with power that can show us our own feelings about the subject.
But the movies do not focus on that aspect of the books. It makes sense that they wouldn't: in order to do so, all of the movies would have had to have been much longer and probably would have included more scenes of exposition and talking than of action and excitement, and that's not exactly what a movie is best at. As it is, the movies portray a good story about children becoming adults and overcoming the obstacles their parents and mentors could not.
So, while I certainly can't say I love the movies as much as I love the books, I'm not surprised or upset by their inability to match up with each other. When I drink whiskey, I drink whiskey, and when I drink water, I drink water.
And I'm sad that Harry Potter is officially over, but I can't afford to care too much for too long. Everyone has different experiences with literature, and I have confidence in mine and shouldn't worry for anyone else's, since I can't control it anyway.
Here's to you, Harry. And here's to many happy years of your own immortality, one you gained without Hallows, without Horcruxes.
Now...if only Hogwarts were real...
<3 spadeALlcross
WARNING: Spoiler City up in hurr.
I walked into the theater last November for the midnight showing of HP 7.1 with very low expectations. I've been to every midnight showing of a Harry Potter movie since Prisoner of Azkaban as a tradition, but have never actually liked the movies. But after HP 7.1 was over, I was incredibly and pleasantly surprised by its quality. The filmmakers had definitely made choices that I didn't understand, like not including the invisibility cloak, rushing through an introduction of Bill Weasley, and skipping over so much of Harry's Dumbledore-related angst. But the movie did a much better job than its predecessors of staying true to the depth, vision, and feeling of the book. Things were dark, scary, and hopeless, and the comic relief came in short bursts of smiles before nail-biting drama struck again.
So Thursday night, my expectations were high for a Harry Potter film for the first time in seven years. And when the credits rolled, I was less disappointed than I could have been. I think the movie did as good a job adapting the book as it could have, given the circumstances. Ending a series beloved by so many people and trying to include all of the bits that audience would expect--"The Prince's Tale," Molly-Bellatrix dueling scene, Neville's defeat of Nagini, many of the priceless bits of dialogue sprinkled throughout, etc.--while still creating an enjoyable movie that wasn't absolute Hell to sit through is a task that I do not envy.
Because the job was such a hard one, I'm quite happy with the way the movie turned out. It does, however, solidify in my mind that the books outstrip the films in every way that counts.
The movie didn't really include anything about the Hallows at all. It registered their existence and sort of nodded to the fact that Harry possessed all three by the end of the war for Hogwarts, but it didn't show the struggle that Dumbledore had faced, like so many others within and -out of fiction have faced, throughout his life of trying to use them to overcome death. Dumbledore's ascension to the position of Hogwarts' Headmaster and decline of the position of Minister of Magic was hardly mentioned, if at all. Harry's choice not to try to beat Voldemort to Dumbledore's tomb and take the Elder wand didn't happen. Voldemort's fear of death was downplayed in favor of his fear of defeat. These choices changed the entire point of the Harry Potter story. The saga went from a relatable tale of young people overcoming internal and external obstacles by learning to think for themselves while still relying on others, a tale of friendship and bravery, of unity and mutual respect, of trusts lost and regained, to a coming-of-age story that no one can ever identify with, since it's set in a fictional world whose struggles are nothing like ours.
In the first book and movie, Quirrell/Voldemort says, "There is no Good and Evil; there is only power and those too weak to seek it." This is the theme of the Deathly Hallows; the internal battle between action and inaction, the conscious decisions Harry, Dumbledore, and Voldemort each make in their separate quests to "win," and each person's individual definition of what "winning" means.
All three of them have different relationships and responses to power. Voldemort obviously desires to increase his own power. As a child and a student he uses his innately strong magical power to bully and coerce those around him, to make them see how strong he was, to make others see how week they were. He also hones his social power to ensnare people who have more actual authority than he does in order to use their power to his advantage. But the only reason he wants any of this power is his fear of death. He fears the unknown that comes after death, and he spends most of his life ensuring that he will never have to face it. It is his search for ways to overcome death that brought so much of his power, and once he believes he has achieved immortality, he knows that he is better, stronger, smarter than everyone else in the world, including Dumbledore. Because, if anyone else were as talented and as driven as he was, they would have created horcruxes as well, they would have done the things he had done, because death was something everyone feared. How could they not? He could not see any other way of approaching the power he had discovered. He could not see why anyone would not want to live forever. What was the point of a whole and pure soul if it could be destroyed?
Meanwhile, Dumbledore also desires power his whole life. Similar to Voldemort, he sharpens his magic and knowledge from a young age. Perhaps it is Dumbledore's habit of (born out of his opportunities for) relying on other people that allow him to have friends at school who then keep him from becoming the lone-ranger that Voldemort is. Maybe Dumbledore's quest is more for knowledge and study than it is for power. But for whatever reason, Albus gets through school without attempting to take over the world. However, once school is over and his mother's death forces him to settle back in at home to take care of his younger brother and sister, he feels trapped in an inferior life. His belief that he could do more with his talents, should be allowed to move forward, fuels his friendship with Grindelwald, someone who agrees with Albus that he was made for better things. Maybe Gelert has a more straightforward desire for power for the sake of power than Dumbledore does, but Dumbledore, blinded by love and a feeling of partnership he probably didn't feel with anyone else and isn't getting from anyone in his broken family, dares to dream with Grindelwald.
Dumbledore's crippling fear that made him seek power wasn't death, but stagnation, discomfort, and intellectual restraints. Where Voldemort wanted the horcruxes primarily to ensure his eternal existence and only secondarily used the power he had gained from making them to subjugate those he thought were weaker than him, Dumbledore and Grindelwald wanted the Hallows primarily to place their superior intelligence and talent rightly on top where it belong, and only secondarily to allow themselves to live forever.
Albus is shocked out of his desire for power by the loss of his brother, sister, and best friend/boyfriend in one fell blow, and for a while, his fear overshadows his guilt. His grief over his lost loved ones and his knowledge that he is at least partly responsible keeps him from grabbing power where he can. But that fear of discomfort is something he struggles with his entire life, between desiring power over other, lesser people, as he exhibits when he borrows the cloak from James Potter, and wanting power over his grief, as he demonstrates by attempting to bring Ariana and his parents back from the dead with the resurrection stone. But he is always disgusted by his relationship to power, which is why the Elder wand is safe with him. He doesn't trust himself, and he doesn't trust the wand, so he remains headmaster of Hogwarts and keeps his own power and the wand's in check.
Unlike Dumbledore and Voldemort, Harry does not want power. All his life he is powerless, alone, and mistreated, much like Voldemort, but at school, he gains friends and fame, like Dumbledore. His fame does not treat him well; it makes him as many enemies as friends, and it gives him as many problems as solutions. Some of his fame is based on his own talent, and some of his success comes from skill, but he knows that an equal, if not greater amount comes from luck, chance, and the providence of others, and between this knowledge and the pains his fame gives him, he doesn't get as big a head as he could. Instead of focusing on overpowering others, he genuinely tries his best to do what he thinks is right. What he thinks is right is not always the most intelligent course of action, but he is only a teenager, and he is often dealing with the complex power schemes and magic of adults much stronger and smarter than he is. He knows that he isn't good enough to do everything by himself, but he also knows that doing something was too important to leave entirely to someone else. He is the perfect combination of Voldemort and Dumbledore, of relying on himself and relying on others, of choosing to act and choosing to wait, of having a will to live without putting it above everything else. If he has a crippling fear, it is that he was not worth dying for: that his parents and his friends loved him too much and for no reason. Instead of driving him to take power wherever he can find it, his fear dives him to be the best person possible, fighting for the best causes he finds. His fear makes him constantly reevaluate his actions and his goals, to know himself...something Dumbledore learned too late, and Voldemort never learned at all. Because of this, he gets all three Hallows and learns what it really means to be Master of Death. Not to live forever, but to embrace the inevitable end, to know that it's coming, and to not fight it once it arrives.
So many themes regarding life and what it means to be human float in and out of Harry Potter: persistence in the face of overwhelming adversity, unlikely forgiveness, the importance of friendship, the need for humility, and so on and so forth. A lot of them feel cliché when said aloud, which is probably why people call Harry Potter fans "nerds." The story is a coming-of-age adventure; how could it not be with a group of adolescents as the protagonists? But its fan base is proof that its characters and plots speak to more than just adolescents and that the series is more than a mere didactic fairy tale about the ideal human being.
The major overarching theme of the whole series is not cliché or nerdy, but a real question that people ask themselves constantly, whether they take note of it or not. The theme is expressed in that striking quote of Quirrell's: "There is no Good and Evil; there is only power and those too week to seek it." The question Harry Potter asks is whether Good seeks power, and whether not seeking power is a weakness. Harry, Dumbledore, and Voldemort represent three case studies in dealing with power that can show us our own feelings about the subject.
But the movies do not focus on that aspect of the books. It makes sense that they wouldn't: in order to do so, all of the movies would have had to have been much longer and probably would have included more scenes of exposition and talking than of action and excitement, and that's not exactly what a movie is best at. As it is, the movies portray a good story about children becoming adults and overcoming the obstacles their parents and mentors could not.
So, while I certainly can't say I love the movies as much as I love the books, I'm not surprised or upset by their inability to match up with each other. When I drink whiskey, I drink whiskey, and when I drink water, I drink water.
And I'm sad that Harry Potter is officially over, but I can't afford to care too much for too long. Everyone has different experiences with literature, and I have confidence in mine and shouldn't worry for anyone else's, since I can't control it anyway.
Here's to you, Harry. And here's to many happy years of your own immortality, one you gained without Hallows, without Horcruxes.
Now...if only Hogwarts were real...
<3 spadeALlcross
14.7.11
Today is Slytherin Day!
I must confess, I have a huge soft spot for Slytherin, and I can't really explain why. Severus Snape is one of the most complex and exciting characters I've encountered, especially in young-adult-style literature, and I really like what J.K. Rowling did with him throughout the series. Perhaps this explains my love for Slytherin. Because I am certainly no Death-Eater.
So today I was Snape. Obviously.
Status:
"You applied first for the Defense Against the Dark Arts post, I believe?" Professor Umbridge asked Snape.
"Yes," said Snape quietly.
"But you were unsuccessful?"
Snape's lip curled.
"Obviously."
Caption:
"After all this time?"
"Always."
And now, my outfit.
I choose to portray Slytherins, the ambitious little buggers, as business-extremely-casual. I have a forest green men's button-down from Salvation Army as well as a green tie, and I'm wearing a grey ribbed tank under it. I would wear slacks or something, but it's way too hot outside. I used to have a silver snake ring that I would wear, but I think I gave it to a friend.
Tonight's the big night. I'm not wearing this outfit for that (I'm representing all four houses instead) and I guess I might update you on what I do wear, but probably not because it's nothing special.
Wish me luck!
<3 spadeALLcross
So today I was Snape. Obviously.
Status:
"You applied first for the Defense Against the Dark Arts post, I believe?" Professor Umbridge asked Snape.
"Yes," said Snape quietly.
"But you were unsuccessful?"
Snape's lip curled.
"Obviously."
Caption:
"After all this time?"
"Always."
And now, my outfit.
I choose to portray Slytherins, the ambitious little buggers, as business-extremely-casual. I have a forest green men's button-down from Salvation Army as well as a green tie, and I'm wearing a grey ribbed tank under it. I would wear slacks or something, but it's way too hot outside. I used to have a silver snake ring that I would wear, but I think I gave it to a friend.
Tonight's the big night. I'm not wearing this outfit for that (I'm representing all four houses instead) and I guess I might update you on what I do wear, but probably not because it's nothing special.
Wish me luck!
<3 spadeALLcross
13.7.11
Today is Hufflepuff Day!
I have complained openly to many people about how I think Hufflepuff is the house for die Reste, the place where you go when you're not smart enough for Ravenclaw, not brave enough for Gryffindor, and not ambitious enough for Slytherin, but too wizard to stay home.
But, over the course of this past year, I've reread all of the books in a row, and I've learned something: Hufflepuffs are the activists. The environmentalists, the inner-city teachers, the social workers. They're hardworkers, and they're just and fair. They'll do anything they can to stand up for a cause they believe in. And they probably will put two and two together fast enough to realize that it's smarter to live for a cause than to die for one if you can help it, unlike some Gryffindors.
Maybe I'm overblowing it. They are all under 17, after all. But they're not as bad as I made them out to be before.
Anyway, there aren't many Hufflepuffs I idolize (I didn't even swoon over Cedric. Sorry.) and I had already picked Dumbledore to represent today, which is okay, because he's a headmaster: he can represent any of the houses. Wild card. Woo.
Caption: "In fact, being - forgive me - rather cleverer than most men, my mistakes tend to be correspondingly huger."
Status: "I would assume that you were going to offer me refreshment, but the evidence so far suggests that that would be optimistic to the point of foolishness."
I actually had a ton more quotes I wanted to find some way to use--
Well – it's just that you seem to be laboring under the delusion that I am going to – what is the phrase – 'Come quietly.' I am afraid I am not going to come quietly at all, Cornelius. I have absolutely no intention of being sent to Azkaban. I could break out, of course – but what a waste of time, and frankly, I can think of a whole host of things I would rather be doing.
"I am not worried, Harry," said Dumbledore, his voice a little stronger despite the freezing water. "I am with you."
"What happened down in the dungeons between you and Professor Quirrell is a complete secret, so, naturally the whole school knows."
“Tell me one last thing,” said Harry. “Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?”
“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”
And next, my outfit.
Hufflepuff is yellow and black. So far, my least favorite color combination, but I still think it works pretty well. The shirt is something from LOFT...or at least, that's what the tag says. I bought if from a thrift store. Shorts are black and from Primark. Necklace is from Modcloth. Jubilant expression is from me feeling awkward in front of a camera, trying to squish my whole body in there.
Tomorrow is the big day, guys. The big day. Good luck, God bless, and I'll see you when I see you.
<3 spadeALLcross
But, over the course of this past year, I've reread all of the books in a row, and I've learned something: Hufflepuffs are the activists. The environmentalists, the inner-city teachers, the social workers. They're hardworkers, and they're just and fair. They'll do anything they can to stand up for a cause they believe in. And they probably will put two and two together fast enough to realize that it's smarter to live for a cause than to die for one if you can help it, unlike some Gryffindors.
Maybe I'm overblowing it. They are all under 17, after all. But they're not as bad as I made them out to be before.
Anyway, there aren't many Hufflepuffs I idolize (I didn't even swoon over Cedric. Sorry.) and I had already picked Dumbledore to represent today, which is okay, because he's a headmaster: he can represent any of the houses. Wild card. Woo.
Caption: "In fact, being - forgive me - rather cleverer than most men, my mistakes tend to be correspondingly huger."
Status: "I would assume that you were going to offer me refreshment, but the evidence so far suggests that that would be optimistic to the point of foolishness."
I actually had a ton more quotes I wanted to find some way to use--
Well – it's just that you seem to be laboring under the delusion that I am going to – what is the phrase – 'Come quietly.' I am afraid I am not going to come quietly at all, Cornelius. I have absolutely no intention of being sent to Azkaban. I could break out, of course – but what a waste of time, and frankly, I can think of a whole host of things I would rather be doing.
"I am not worried, Harry," said Dumbledore, his voice a little stronger despite the freezing water. "I am with you."
"What happened down in the dungeons between you and Professor Quirrell is a complete secret, so, naturally the whole school knows."
“Tell me one last thing,” said Harry. “Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?”
“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”
And next, my outfit.
Hufflepuff is yellow and black. So far, my least favorite color combination, but I still think it works pretty well. The shirt is something from LOFT...or at least, that's what the tag says. I bought if from a thrift store. Shorts are black and from Primark. Necklace is from Modcloth. Jubilant expression is from me feeling awkward in front of a camera, trying to squish my whole body in there.
Tomorrow is the big day, guys. The big day. Good luck, God bless, and I'll see you when I see you.
<3 spadeALLcross
12.7.11
Today is Gryffindor Day!
I thought I wasn't going to like this day. I don't really like Gryffindor. They're dumb a lot. Honor and glory and stuff, you know? Those kinds of people get on my nerves. I am that kind of person a lot, and I get annoyed at my idiocy.
But then I remembered that Hermione was almost a Ravenclaw, and I remembered what the Sorting Hat said about how sorting isn't always a good thing, because severing ties so thoroughly is dangerous, and I remembered that there's probably a little bit of every house in every person, and I grew to love Gryffindor more...
...but mostly I just remembered that I like Hermione a lot. She's one of my heros. Also, I have a fair bit of Maroon and Gold to use today.
So, facebook = Hermione today. Caption = "You said to us once before that there was time to turn back if we wanted to. We've had time, haven't we?" (Oh man, Hermione's so hard core...) Status = "Imagine losing fingernails, Harry! That really puts our sufferings into perspective, doesn't it?" (Oh man, Hermione flips a shit so well...)
And my outfit.
I think of Gryffindors as world-traveller types, thrill seekers, and people who fancy themselves bad-asses, whether they actually are or not. But maybe that's just me...
This Gryffindor is also, as it happens, rather thrifty. The t-shirt is just a maroon shirt I picked up from the dollar store for the fabric, originally, and then never got around to using it. The yellow vest is a second-hand store find. The lightning necklace was 79p at a flea market in Leeds, the headband was £1 at a going-out-of-business sale in Edinburgh, the shorts are from Primark (the ones I mentioned yesterday, actually) and the glasses I stole from my cousin. The Anchor necklace, though, I bought a couple years ago from Modcloth. I thought it would add to the Magellan Chic look I was going for.
Envy me and my fashion sense. You know you do.
Until tomorrow!
<3 spadeALLcross
P.S. I am really enjoying myself here. Please tell me what you think of my choices...and if you want, tell me how you're celebrating!
But then I remembered that Hermione was almost a Ravenclaw, and I remembered what the Sorting Hat said about how sorting isn't always a good thing, because severing ties so thoroughly is dangerous, and I remembered that there's probably a little bit of every house in every person, and I grew to love Gryffindor more...
...but mostly I just remembered that I like Hermione a lot. She's one of my heros. Also, I have a fair bit of Maroon and Gold to use today.
So, facebook = Hermione today. Caption = "You said to us once before that there was time to turn back if we wanted to. We've had time, haven't we?" (Oh man, Hermione's so hard core...) Status = "Imagine losing fingernails, Harry! That really puts our sufferings into perspective, doesn't it?" (Oh man, Hermione flips a shit so well...)
And my outfit.
I think of Gryffindors as world-traveller types, thrill seekers, and people who fancy themselves bad-asses, whether they actually are or not. But maybe that's just me...
This Gryffindor is also, as it happens, rather thrifty. The t-shirt is just a maroon shirt I picked up from the dollar store for the fabric, originally, and then never got around to using it. The yellow vest is a second-hand store find. The lightning necklace was 79p at a flea market in Leeds, the headband was £1 at a going-out-of-business sale in Edinburgh, the shorts are from Primark (the ones I mentioned yesterday, actually) and the glasses I stole from my cousin. The Anchor necklace, though, I bought a couple years ago from Modcloth. I thought it would add to the Magellan Chic look I was going for.
Envy me and my fashion sense. You know you do.
Until tomorrow!
<3 spadeALLcross
P.S. I am really enjoying myself here. Please tell me what you think of my choices...and if you want, tell me how you're celebrating!
10.7.11
The last week of our lives...
Okay, so maybe that's a bit dramatic. But this does feel like a momentous week for me. Why?
Harry Potter 7.2 comes out on Friday. And then, besides the enigmatic pottermore, there will be nothing new that is Harry for the rest of my forseeable life. Some people reading this are rolling their eyes: Mary, it's just a book series. There are hundreds of thousands of millions. Just pick up a new one. And to those people, I say, I have. No, my life is not ending, and books are not ruined for me forever (thank God...as they are my livelihood at this point). But this is like...a symbol. My childhood is over.
I'm 21. I guess I should have seen this coming.
But when I went to the 4th of July carnival in my town this year and rode all the rides I wanted to in under an hour...or when I went with my best friend to Great America last year and took a nap in the parking lot...or when I bought a friggin' mutual fund...it became more real than it was when I blew out those 18 candles or recovered from my first hangover or had to start going to the grocery store by myself. Adulthood requires new forms of fun, it has its own new challenges, new temptations, new disappointments. Just when I was getting the hang of the old ones.
And Harry Potter's vanishing into the void of literary and cinematic used-to-be is the most painful and final reminder of all these changes.
Because Harry was my childhood. I went to see the first movie for my 11th birthday party. I was seventeen when I read the final book. I was Harry Potter for Halloween in fourth grade. I've gone to the midnight showings of every movie since The Prisoner of Azkaban, even though I didn't like the movies until 7.1 came out last November.
So naturally, I'm a little vexed by default.
But I've decided that, instead of mourning a loss, (which is dumb, because I'm not actually losing anything: I mean, I wasn't in the movies, they weren't paying my salary or anything. In fact, I'm probably gaining a lot of money, since I will be spending less on Harry Potter miscellany) I'm going to celebrate hard and happy and not miss a minute of it.
So, starting tomorrow, I'm doing my four-day countdown of my favorite characters on Facebook, using their Leaky widgets (by Makani) as my profile pictures, their best quotes as my status, and their house colors as my wardrobe. I'm also listening to my meager supply of Harry-Potter-esque music, which is comprised of Draco and the Malfoys, Harry and the Potters, Hank Green, and Jim Dale from the audiobooks, as well as two versions of one gem.
Tune in tomorrow for pictures and smiles!
<3 spadeALLcross
P.S. Oh, were you wondering if I was just going to ignore the past two months or whatever that I didn't post, and the fact that I didn't even finish my Easter Holiday blogs? Why yes, yes I was. Thanks for your concern.
Harry Potter 7.2 comes out on Friday. And then, besides the enigmatic pottermore, there will be nothing new that is Harry for the rest of my forseeable life. Some people reading this are rolling their eyes: Mary, it's just a book series. There are hundreds of thousands of millions. Just pick up a new one. And to those people, I say, I have. No, my life is not ending, and books are not ruined for me forever (thank God...as they are my livelihood at this point). But this is like...a symbol. My childhood is over.
I'm 21. I guess I should have seen this coming.
But when I went to the 4th of July carnival in my town this year and rode all the rides I wanted to in under an hour...or when I went with my best friend to Great America last year and took a nap in the parking lot...or when I bought a friggin' mutual fund...it became more real than it was when I blew out those 18 candles or recovered from my first hangover or had to start going to the grocery store by myself. Adulthood requires new forms of fun, it has its own new challenges, new temptations, new disappointments. Just when I was getting the hang of the old ones.
And Harry Potter's vanishing into the void of literary and cinematic used-to-be is the most painful and final reminder of all these changes.
Because Harry was my childhood. I went to see the first movie for my 11th birthday party. I was seventeen when I read the final book. I was Harry Potter for Halloween in fourth grade. I've gone to the midnight showings of every movie since The Prisoner of Azkaban, even though I didn't like the movies until 7.1 came out last November.
So naturally, I'm a little vexed by default.
But I've decided that, instead of mourning a loss, (which is dumb, because I'm not actually losing anything: I mean, I wasn't in the movies, they weren't paying my salary or anything. In fact, I'm probably gaining a lot of money, since I will be spending less on Harry Potter miscellany) I'm going to celebrate hard and happy and not miss a minute of it.
So, starting tomorrow, I'm doing my four-day countdown of my favorite characters on Facebook, using their Leaky widgets (by Makani) as my profile pictures, their best quotes as my status, and their house colors as my wardrobe. I'm also listening to my meager supply of Harry-Potter-esque music, which is comprised of Draco and the Malfoys, Harry and the Potters, Hank Green, and Jim Dale from the audiobooks, as well as two versions of one gem.
Tune in tomorrow for pictures and smiles!
<3 spadeALLcross
P.S. Oh, were you wondering if I was just going to ignore the past two months or whatever that I didn't post, and the fact that I didn't even finish my Easter Holiday blogs? Why yes, yes I was. Thanks for your concern.
29.11.10
...and the winner is...!
ME!
That's right, ladies and germs, I FINISHED MY NOVEL A DAY EARLY!
PWNED.
FTW.
YOWZA.
ALL OTHER CONCEIVABLE REJOICING PHRASES HERE!
And to put the topping on the cake, I will herein unfold the last chapter I wrote, including the last 1K words, which were specifically for one Kathy Rittenhouse (EDIT: for those of you who bet on my progress for NaNoWriMo and can't remember what you bet, you can find the details here):
If you're Ben and your wager with me technically goes until tomorrow...don't fear. Your turn will come soon.
If you just want to donate, I'm still open for that, for sure. Click the monkey and follow his wise words.
Stay tuned in the next couple of days when I will update my NaNo merit badges (I've earned four more since the last update...) and tell you more about my NaNo experience. But now I've got to shower.
Thanks for all your support this past month!
<3 spadeALLcross
That's right, ladies and germs, I FINISHED MY NOVEL A DAY EARLY!
PWNED.
FTW.
YOWZA.
ALL OTHER CONCEIVABLE REJOICING PHRASES HERE!
And to put the topping on the cake, I will herein unfold the last chapter I wrote, including the last 1K words, which were specifically for one Kathy Rittenhouse (EDIT: for those of you who bet on my progress for NaNoWriMo and can't remember what you bet, you can find the details here):
The men and Uma came back to camp around the same time, each man carrying at least a brace of conies, if not some form of larger or more plentiful game. Tony, now practically a member of the married women’s quilting circle, he was introduced to all the husbands and children, and the women, particularly Rachel and Polonia, vouched for him with their families, saying that he was an asset to the camp and that they would gladly accept them into their homes if he needed a place to sleep that was more fitting than Uma’s tiny hovel.
And although the sensible and level-headed Poplar seemed to actually like Tony by now, Toleman did not seemed wholly convinced that it was safe to have him in camp.
“How do we know this isn’t some elaborate ruse and that he’s really trying to pull one over on us so he can slaughter us in our sleep.”
“The man could barely chop scallions,” Therese said, rolling her eyes in what Tony had discovered was her characteristic way. “We would have to be a sorry excuse for a camp indeed if we could not defend ourselves against the likes of him.”
“All the same, I’ll not let him within twenty paces of my cabin.”
“You’re cabin is even smaller than mine,” Uma said with a sharp laugh. “We wouldn’t want your help anyway.”
Toleman looked hurt by Uma’s words, and Tony realized in that split second of silence where he looked at Toleman’s expression of both longing and sadness when he looked at Uma, that if he really did want to woo Uma, he’d have to fight for her.
And then, with a pop that sounded like a central-vacuum turning on and opening, everything around Tony froze, and out of nowhere, the strange, long-haired, invisible-eyed witchy woman appeared right next to Uma, leaning on her shoulder.
“Well well well,” she said, her voice on the brink of laughter, “what have we here? It seems that Mr. Graduate Degree in Narcissism has actually found someone he can love as much as himself. Is that true, or do mine eyes deceive me?”
Tony blinked and looked around, confused, at the frozen world. It was as if his life was a television screen and someone had pressed pause. “Okay, that’s it. Who are you?”
The woman smiled, stood up, and thrust her hand out in front of her, as if to prompt Tony to shake it. “My name is Bonjo, damsel of distress. It’s really has been a pleasure working with you thus far.”
Tony just looked at her hand. “What?”
“I specialize in tomfoolery, have a degree in ballyhoo, work part-time for mayhem, and generally thrive on total chaos.” She saluted him eagerly. “You’ve been one of my pet projects for the past couple days. I’ve really enjoyed the progress you’ve made so far, but I’m afraid that it might be because of the unfamiliarity of your environment.”
“What do you mean, I’ve been your pet project?”
“Well, you have obviously figured out by now that I am the one who brought you here, right?”
“Yeah, that incident with the field and the wolves and the random treadmill in the middle of nowhere kind of tipped me off on that one.”
“I’m proud of your observational skills.” She nodded sagely. “I did all of this for your benefit. You see, you are, what we call in the business, an ‘orderly.’ You try to organize too much of your life, putting yourself into a dangerous box that keeps you from realizing your full potential. I brought you here to take you out of that box.”
Tony raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
Bonjo shook her head, as if she were mourning something. “This conversation is a result of your self-imposed box. If you would just let go of your death-grip on reality, let yourself go a little bit, give in to the imagination and spontaneity you were born to have, you would have a lot easier time believing me and moving on with your life, if you had any reason to talk to me at all.”
“So, basically, you’re trying to make me as crazy as you are?”
“Oh, gaawwd no,” Bonjo said exaggeratedly. “I am the last thing I want you to be. If I were human, I would be so out of balance, I would hardly be able to breathe. I simply want you to be more chaotic than you are, since right now, you are more lawful than you need to be.”
“Wait, you’re not human?”
“I’m technically only half a being,” she sighed. “But you’re getting off topic. This is not about me. This is about you and your little female friend over there.”
“Who?” Tony asked feigning innocence.
“Let’s not try to play that game,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “Little Uma over there is a real person, with real feelings and a real brother and all that. Just because you think you’re in some sort of dream doesn’t mean you can treat her as if she’s a fictional character.”
Tony narrowed his eyes. “Okay, I actually don’t know what you’re talking about now.”
“You’ve been doing a pretty good job since yesterday of keeping up with all the hitches I’ve thrown at you, from the wolves and the treadmill, to that walk through the cave, to the breakfast club this morning. That dance epic while belting out Gloria Gaynor was quite the show, I must say.”
“Hey, now—“
“But I’m growing more and more leery that your seeming comfort with all of this is simply due to the fact that you’re convinced that all of this is fake, that you’re in some sort of dream state and are imagining all of this.” She shook her head sadly again. “It happens with my clients a lot, actually. I throw too much at them at once and they get overwhelmed, and just blot everything out. It’s one thing to become a balanced, contributing member of society in a fantasy dream world. It’s another thing entirely to translate that way of life into your reality.”
Tony laughed. “Okay, so you’re basically saying that I’m screwing up, but it’s your fault.”
“Oh, I certainly misjudged you, yes. But you’re the idiot who thinks all of this is fake.”
“Well, what am I supposed to think when you’re messing with everything going on around me? How could you do that if it weren’t fake?”
Bonjo laughed a high-pitched clear sound like tiny bells on a Christmas wreath decoration. “You think I’ve waited until just recently to start interfering with your life?”
Like a wave of color and fabric was washing over her, her shape changed into that of the woman at the coffee shop whom he had argued with for five consecutive days about the way he brewed her drinks.
“Recognize me?”
Tony didn’t say anything. He just stared.
Then a second wave passed over her and she turned into his landlord, who he had been ripping off for the past six months by paying him in singles and leaving out at least $150 every month because he knew the man didn’t own a cash-counting machine and he secretly didn’t believe he could actually count for himself.
“Do you feel bad yet, for the way you treat people?”
“Not if that man was you the whole time.”
She rippled back into herself with a jolt like lightening and launched herself at him, tackling him to the ground and pinning his neck under her forearms. “I told you,” she said, hissing into his ear, “these are real people. You can’t just mess around with them and think there aren’t any consequences.”
He pushed her off of him with surprising ease and choked out, “Hey, it’s your involvement that’s got me thinking they’re fake—“
“I never said I became them. I only manipulated them to affect you.”
“Oh, so it’s okay for you to manipulate people, but it’s not—“
“I told you, I’m not human.”
“So you’re above the law?”
“I am the law!” Her black dress turned into a flowing judge’s robe and her hair turned into a long, white powdered wig.
Tony deadpanned.
Her face cracked from a stern, even angry expression to an irrepressible grin instantly. “Bah ha ha,” she blurted out, clapping her hand over her mouth. “I couldn’t help it. It was just so perfect,” she said from between her fingers.”
Her appearance returned to its original state, and she brushed herself off while clearing her throat. “Anyway, this is all just to say that I think you need some continued intensive work.” She snapped her fingers and everything around them fell away as if the Earth had dropped out from under them, leaving nothing but one of those vast white rooms that seems to go on forever that they use for car commercials and the Matrix movies.
“Wait,” Tony yelled, lunging at the empty space where Uma had just been seconds before. He stumbled and fell onto his knees. “What did you do?”
To his horror, Bonjo smiled. “I see my plan is working,” she said, her voice soft. “I just have a little test for you, and then you and your little lady friend can be merrily on your ways, galavanting about the world, having a gay old time.”
“What sort of test?” Tony asked, looking up at her from the ground.
She didn’t say anything, but made a dramatic move with her hand, bringing it around and over her head, while bringing the other one down near her waist, and shaping her fingers in the poise of two snaps.
“Ida Rango!” she said, then snapped twice, doing some sort of seductive salsa dance move with her hands and stomping her feet, and with a loud crack that echoed throughout the endless room, she was gone.
Tony sighed heavily and pushed himself to his feet. By the time the soles of both his shoes were planted firmly and flatly on the ground, the starkly white room was replaced by a stage floor filled with fake fog and reaching arms whose bodies he could barely make out beyond the limited visibility of the fog. There was scaffolding all around the perimeter of the stage, and women were dancing in cages hovering dozens of feet in the air
He turned behind him and looked out beyond the blinding lights into the house, and he could make out the shapes of what had to be hundreds of people sitting in plush red velvet chairs. He looked down at his own body and saw that he was wearing tightly fitting white pants that had artistically place rips along the thighs and shins, and he had a sort of torn sash barely covering a diagonal strip from his shoulder to his opposite hip. He felt a headband constricting the flow of blood to his head, and felt sweat beading up on his arms, chest, and face.
It was his worst nightmare; he had been thrust into some perverted disco movie, and he knew in his heart, the only way to escape was to dance his way to freedom.
Suddenly, the thudding dance music that had been playing grew stormy, and Tony watched a spotlight move from him to a place up stage onto one of the scaffoldings. There, sliding down banisters and suggestively wrapping slender athletic legs around poles and hand rails, was Uma, dressed in a red sequence unitard with a glittering gold headband around curly brown hair Tony hadn’t seen before. Though the movements of her body were fluid, graceful, and beautiful, her face looked horrified.
Evidently, this was her worst nightmare too.
“Curse you, Bonjo,” Tony said under his breath. “I thought you said this was a test for me. Why did you have to pull her into it?”
She came to a break in the scaffolding, and, held at the wrist by two men dressed like dominatrixes, began gyrating heavily, thrusting her pelvis at angles not seen in nature.
Tony was surprised by how calm he felt about all of this. Not only was he not freaking out at the idea of being on a stage and being expected to perform dance feats he’d never even tried to imagine pulling off, but he was not even remotely turned on by Uma’s seductive dance movements.
The men holding her lowered her knees on to his shoulders. He turned her slowly around and slid her slowly to the ground, where she gave him a quick look of terror, before taking off backwards into the fog with long, dancing steps.
Tony chased after her like a panther stalking his prey, but he tried to convey to her with his face that he was just following a script already set out for him, that he didn’t want to scare her, and that he wasn’t any better at dancing than she was.
He grabbed her arm and spun her close to him, and they danced and lept together across the stage, before she did an amazing back bend and he followed the curve of her body with his chin. Then they both stood up and he spun her again before dragging her off behind him slowly and rhythmically. He whispered into her ear, trying to keep his ragged breaths even enough so that she would understand him.
“I don’t know what’s going on, but I swear I’m going to get you out of this.”
She broke away from him and dance forward on gazelle-like toes, and they chased each other flirtatiously in an elegant game of cat-and-mouse. When they met at center stage, he held her in another fierce backbend, and then spun her through the air in a sweeping circle, as if she were a banner he were waving for the whole world to see. He held her on his back while she did slow, strong kicks in the air, and as the music grew in momentum, the zombie chorus dancers popped up out of the smoke like daisies and began pulsating like waves crashing against rocks on the beach.
Uma made a violent dancing gesture that Tony couldn’t have described if he had been asked to, and disappeared. Tony leapt like a frolicking white-tailed deer around the stage looking for her, and while he was standing in one corner, he was accosted by a woman who jumped on to his leg and began swinging herself around his pelvis. If he hadn’t been caught by surprised and slightly revolted, he might have enjoyed it. While she sat there on top of him, more of the zombie dancing women gathered around him and he felt compelled to push her off so that he could jump out of the crowd and skip across the front of the stage, spinning and dancing all the way. Another zombie woman jumped him when he got there, but he fended her off with the grace and poise of a love-struck swan prince, and turned to find Uma running at him.
She broke into his arms and he spun her around in the air again, letting her hips gyrate unnaturally again, and supporting her as she did nauseating backbends in his hands. She kicked her leg high into the air, stood up, and ran off into a sea of zombie woman dancers, then turned around and ran at Tony.
This was it. The part he was most afraid of. The part he’d seen in a couple dozen dance-related movies from the eighties that completely wowed him and made him awfully glad not to be a male dancer.
She leapt into his arms, and he caught her with his right arm, vaulting her into the air above his head while she held onto his shoulders and stretched her legs out behind her. Then, as the drums in the song beat the final cataclysmic cascade of bass beats, he dropped her onto the ground, holding her back with his hands and looking down at her sweaty, frightened face. Her eyes were squeezed shut in a wince, expecting the worst.
After a moment that seemed to Tony to last a lifetime (wherein he envisioned himself growing old and adopting two sets of twins whom he would name Reggie, Martha, Pongo, and Perdita) the unseen audience began to clap and cheer, and he felt the breath return to his lungs.
Unlike his counterpart of the silver screen, Tony did not attempt to kiss his dancing partner. He just looked down at her and smiled. “It’s going to be okay now,” he whispered to her. “It’s all almost over. I just have to strut a little bit, and then we’re done.”
Then the clapping stopped, the stage disappeared, and Tony and Uma were standing in their sweaty dance uniforms in the middle of Kings Cross Station, between platforms nine and ten. Bonjo was standing awkwardly close to them, her face pushing in between theirs.
“Good job,” she whispered, her voice light and clear like the ringing bells. “You both passed.” She then walked slowly away, and Tony and Uma were left to deal with the dozens of confused Britons who were staring at them.I believe all (but one) bets have come to their respective ends at this point. If you owe me money based on our wagers, click the monkey to the right and follow his instructions.
If you're Ben and your wager with me technically goes until tomorrow...don't fear. Your turn will come soon.
If you just want to donate, I'm still open for that, for sure. Click the monkey and follow his wise words.
Stay tuned in the next couple of days when I will update my NaNo merit badges (I've earned four more since the last update...) and tell you more about my NaNo experience. But now I've got to shower.
Thanks for all your support this past month!
<3 spadeALLcross
3.9.10
I need some sleep, I can't go on like this...
I've been having troubles staying asleep past five or six hours for the past few weeks, and the past couple of days it's been really catching up to me; I've been falling asleep at friends' houses, while using my computer, and even while eating. It hasn't been a whole lot of fun, so I decided when I got home last night, that I would try to catch up on all that "lost" (I went through most of the past school years on five to six hours of sleep a night without any problems, so I don't know why I can't now) sleep. I went to bed at 10:00ish and promised myself not to get out of bed until at least 9:00.
<3 spadeALLcross
That failed. I woke up at 1:00 just long enough to look at the clock and roll my eyes. Then I woke up again at 5:30. If I had gotten up then, I would have gotten almost exactly 7 hours of sleep, and my body definitely wanted to get up then. My mind started churning about stuff I had to do today, expecting me to get up and start doing it. But I refused, and eventually, though it took a while, I got back to sleep.
Mistake. I had the worst dream of my entire life between 5:30 and 7:30 this morning.
In the dream, my mom and I went to a movie together. My mom had suggested we see it because she'd heard it was revolutionary film with a lot of really poignant social commentary, etc etc. (In real life, my mom would not recommend that kind of movie: if a movie is depressing, she doesn't want to see it. More and more, I'm finding that that is my view too. Revolutionize me with real life, don't make my escapism tragic) Anyway, so we went. But while we were watching the movie, we were in the movie. It was weird, and no one questioned it; dreams are like that.
In the movie, the US was going to war with Egypt for what ever reason, and the president had decided to fire a nuke at them. So, we fired one, and then everyone started preparations for someone to fire one back at us. The president went into his bunker and a bunch of people kind of stowed away with him (not the Vice President, oddly. He decided to stay above ground). My mom and I got into the bunker, somehow, and the First Lady showed us around, since she had been in charge of the décor.
For what ever reason, there were windows facing DC (which suddenly had rolling hills of open fields and camels...?) and holes in the ground to, as the First Lady said, "Let the smell out," whatever that meant. We were all milling about in the giant bunker, just kind of chilling. This part was funny; it felt like Dr. Strangelove a little bit; when dealing with the end of the world, all these people could do was fuss about the stylish curtains in the fallout shelters. While dreaming, I was thinking, yeah, this is quite the social commentary. Good movie, I thought. People should see how ignorant we all look.
Then the first bomb hit. We watched it out the window. For a dream full of surrealism and an American President of a different color, it got everything about nuclear warfare spot on. At least, the bomb that exploded maybe three miles away from the windows in our bunker acted exactly like the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs did, according to all the reports I've read. We watched from safety as the camels and random people who didn't have an in with the President were instantly incinerated, and the shockwaves tore at the landscape. Then the ground beneath us started to heat up, and (this part I'm not sure is realistic) the molten crust of the earth below the bunker started to boil and pop into the holes in the floor that the First Lady had been so proud of. There was a little boy there, I'm not sure who he was, but I grabbed him and he and I lay on the floor, my back to the lava pits that we were all too close to, me screaming in pain and promising him I would protect him. My mom got too close to one as it bubbled and popped and the skin on her arms...well it was gross. Then Ben's roommate, Luke Breems jumped into one of the holes. I'm...not sure why. Breems is probably one of the most sane people in that house he lives in...but it was a dream after all.
It was very gruesome, very vivid, and for a while, I forgot it was a movie. The President was scheming with his staffers on some way to escape the lava, and they recommended he lock himself away in the sub-bunker (that looked suspiciously like the fallout shelter from Blast From the Past) and he agreed to do so. Meanwhile, all the people who's started to burn alive were turning rapid, including the little boy in my arms, the First Lady, Breems, and my mother. I started yelling at my mom that I'd had enough, that I wanted to leave the theater, that I didn't care how revolutionary the rest of the movie was, I didn't want to see it or live through it. her eyes went wild and she bared her teeth at me and I started hitting her with pillows and trying to escape.
When I woke up, I started crying immediately and groggily made my way downstairs to my mom on the couch and started the slow process of forgetting the dream. But it's still as vivid to me now as it was when I was in it.
...
Aaaanyway...
After that whole fiasco, and while I battled the inevitable exhaustion that comes from waking up mid-REM-cycle, today was a full, fun day. I went out shopping with my mom, my aunt, and my niece: three generations of Rittenhouse women. We went to Meijer (yup...that's the fourth time this week) and then to the mall to visit the Apple store, f.y.e., Sam Goodie (or whatever...I wasn't there for that), and to let Annabelle play in their little play area.
Then we went home, put Annabelle down for a nap, and began watching the movie, Where the Heart Is, with Natalie Portman, among others. We didn't finish before my mom had to go to a party of a friend of hers who moved to Texas a while back, but is in town for a little while.
While she was gone, my aunt and I went to Barnes&Noble's, where I had an old gift card, and I bought far too many books...but they were all worth it. ... Hopefully. I really hate spending money, especially on books. It's all very counter intuitive, I know, because I love having books, and I love earning money so I can spend it. I struggle with the whole have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too thing. But boy, being around all those books, and holding them, carrying them around the store with me, smelling them, talking to them and about them to myself...it just put me in the best mood. And it smelled like fall outside; I love fall. I'm excited for when it decides to come and stay.
Then she and I went to Starbuck's, checked the air in my tires to discover that I may need to fill one of them up tomorrow, and came home. I played with Annabelle a bit, then put her down to bed, and my mom eventually got home in time for us to finish watching the movie. Very good movie; definitely recommend it. It's a chick-flick, but by no means a shallow, two-bit one.
Now I'm going to bed, with a full mind and sagging eyelids.
25.8.10
Sometimes I wish that I could freeze the picture.
I woke up with "She's Leaving Home" stuck in my head. That's oddly specific, Brain. Way to make me feel like a champ.
<3 spadeALLcross
Also, I found out that some woman named Jessica Somethingorother gives my phone number to all the people she doesn't want to call her.
- Last fall, a creeper guy left a voicemail on my phone once, telling me that it was great to meet me at the bar the other night, and he thought I was really great and wouldn't I please give him a ring, now that I had his number, and that he was really sorry about the incident with his sister. He called me Jessica.
- A few weeks ago, I picked up a call that was from a number I didn't recognize, but my phone told me the area code was from Colorado, so I figured I might be related to the person on the other end. As it turns out, I probably wasn't; she was an elderly [and hard of hearing] woman trying to find her stolen car...and looking for Jessica to see if she knew where it was.
- Then this morning, I picked up an 800 number I didn't recognize thinking it might be my bank. Nope. A collection agency looking for Jessica Somethingorother.
And it all clicked; I don't know who this Jessica is, but she's got a sordid past littered with creepy men she doesn't want to talk to and misdemeanors and debt she doesn't want to deal with, so she's shuffing it all off on me. Well, thanks but no thanks, Jessica: I don't want your cast-offs, especially if they come with blind dates, interest, and/or jail time.
Drove to Michigan. Listened to HP3. Good times had by all. Moved my stuff into the house, but kind of just left it everywhere. Went to Meijer, ate dinner, and am now doing nothing of import...just chillin' on Ben's computer while he washes dishes.
Tomorrow I have some stuff I should get done...don't have my list here though, so I can't share it with you yet.
Sponsors are a mile or so away at my house, while I'm here at Ben's.
19.8.10
How could I dance with another when I saw her standing there?
Today was a lovely day! I got so much stuff done, and had fun, and spent money, but not too much...lovely day.
<3 spadeALLcross
Got home from Cari's, showered, then went out with my mom. We went to Khol's to get me some professional clothes for both any job that I might get and for my upcoming semester of observing students in their natural habitat. I fit into everything I tried on, and had enough money to buy a good amount of clothes. We also went to PNC and opened a new bank account for me! Hooray! Now I can deposit money into my account while I'm in Michigan, and get money from ATMs instead of just the cash-back at Meijer. That was always a challenge...I had to buy, like, a pack of Ramen or something just so I could get money to pay someone back for something.
The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, as I recall. I finished ripping Dune Messiah and started Children of Dune. I also started watching a TV show called Life that a friend had recommended to me. The characters do creepy facial expressions sometimes, and the main character has a weird mouth/lisp thing, but it's a pretty good show.
Tomorrow, I'm getting a haircut and a pedicure, and babysitting. I should also pack up my clothes.
And now, a word from our sponsors.
17.8.10
Tired of the insincere; gonna give all my secrets away...
Power was out this morning when I woke up. A little upsetting, but...meh. I wrote a letter (that's right, I handwrite things and put them in envelopes and even occasionally put stamps on them. Karazay!), did some paperwork for the bank, wrote an email (that didn't send until the power came back on) and then, once my dad's computer was up and running, I burned 4 of the 6 DVDs I needed to burn (as well as light-scribing them) ripped a bunch of audiobooks to my hard drive, including Dune and Old Man and the Sea and the beginnings of Nineteen Minutes and The Hour I First Believed. Through all this, I was running out, getting gas in my car, trying to find a CD case to fit all the DVDs I was burning, and generally making a fool of myself. But it's okay; I drive a Prius. Then we had dinner, I went out with a friend, came back, talked to God for a while, and am now going to bed.
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Tomorrow, I'm watching Annabelle. During her nap, I plan on burning some more DVDs and ripping some more CDs, as well as possibly searching again for a CD case, and probably at least thinking about packing either clothes or books. Once her father gets home and takes over her care...I don't know what I'll do. Probably nothing of consequence. Certainly nothing productive.
But let me tell you, I love my friends. I've got a lovely bunch of them, and I don't know where I'd be without them. Each of them has changed my life in startling ways, some more recently, more often, or more positively than others, but whatever. If you are my friend (and, I'm kind of assuming you are at this point, since my readership is probably hovering around five people) I really appreciate you, even if I don't tell you often enough in person.
No sponsors. Go watch thedailyshow.com. It's a hoot sometimes.
15.10.09
It's the final countdown!
A lot of stuff is going on in my life and I'm really busy for the next couple of weeks, so though I have some stuff to write about, I don't have much time to write it. I'm taking a break while watching Jim pretend that his catamaran is going through a tunnel to write this because it's slightly important.
As you may have noticed by the new title image at the top of the screen, I'm planning on participating in National Novel Writing Month. What the title image doesn't tell you is that I want your help! During the month of November, I'm going to use you as my accountability crew. Whenever I write something more, I'll post at least a portion of it here for you to comment on. If ever you want me to add something in, just leave a comment for me.
Even though the actual process isn't starting until November 1st, I'm going to casually start preparations in these two-ish weeks leading up to it, so your input can begin any time, starting with this very post. Characters you want included, episodes you think would be interesting to read about...etc. I can't promise I'll use them, but I can promise I'll read them, and if you have a blog, I'll try to at least comment back.
I tried to do this last year and didn't make it through, but I'm really excited about it this year and don't want to give up on it as quickly as I have before. So please! Please be with me on this one! Tell your friends! Get them in on it too! I want as much feedback as possible to keep me going!
Thanks, my faithful...four readers. You make my life a better place.
<3 spadeALLcross
As you may have noticed by the new title image at the top of the screen, I'm planning on participating in National Novel Writing Month. What the title image doesn't tell you is that I want your help! During the month of November, I'm going to use you as my accountability crew. Whenever I write something more, I'll post at least a portion of it here for you to comment on. If ever you want me to add something in, just leave a comment for me.
Even though the actual process isn't starting until November 1st, I'm going to casually start preparations in these two-ish weeks leading up to it, so your input can begin any time, starting with this very post. Characters you want included, episodes you think would be interesting to read about...etc. I can't promise I'll use them, but I can promise I'll read them, and if you have a blog, I'll try to at least comment back.
I tried to do this last year and didn't make it through, but I'm really excited about it this year and don't want to give up on it as quickly as I have before. So please! Please be with me on this one! Tell your friends! Get them in on it too! I want as much feedback as possible to keep me going!
Thanks, my faithful...four readers. You make my life a better place.
<3 spadeALLcross
28.8.09
Ein jeder Engel ist Schrecklich
WARNING: I reserve the right of spoilers for both The Time Traveler's Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry in this post. Proceed at your own risk.
Audrey Niffenegger permeated my vacation. At times, she was welcome and expected. At times, I did everything I could to push her out the front door, green-bean casserole and all, saying, "No, Audrey, I wasn't having a party. Thanks for the food, but I really don't know what you're doing here..."
Last week (oh gosh, was it really only last week?) a movie came out in theaters that I refused to see. I said to myself myself, I said, "Mary, promise me right now that you're not going to see this movie until you've read the book again, until you feel encased in it again, warm inside of it like it were an electric blanket and you weren't worried about carcinogens. Promise me." So I did. I promised myself that I would not rest, I would not sleep for an instant until the book was reread. But first I decided to take a road trip.
My family does its best reading in the car listening to audiobooks, so I downloaded a [gloriously $9.95-and-yet-still-unabridged] copy of Time Traveler's Wife from the iTunes Store. I hopped over to my MacBook, uploaded the book onto my iPod Touch (obvious plug - I heart iTunes and all things Apple related) and I was on my way from misery to happiness today. Uh huh uh huh uh huh uh huh...
Some 16 hours later (only about 10 of those included listening to the book) we were in Rhode Island and I was forced to put TTW out of my mind for a week. But that didn't stop good ole Audrey.
You see, by chance, by fate, by acts of omniscient God, a previous post did me some tangible good and midweek last week I came into possession of a real-life, hold-me-touch-me Advanced Reader's Copy of Her Fearful Symmetry, Audrey Niffenegger's second book. I was like a giddy school-girl when this thing actually came in the mail, because up until that point I had had a nagging feeling that the correspondence I had had with the Literary group that was going to give me said ARC had all been some elaborate hoax. Maybe it was for those Russian mail-wives who have been emailing me all these years to finally get my real address. Almost as soon as we set foot on solid ground in Rhode Island, Audrey II was in my hand and I was reading.
In fact, I was feeling a little sick and down this past Sunday, so I stayed home from all the galavanting my mother, father, aunt, and uncle were doing, and then spent the whole day reading until I was finished.
Then the rest of the week went by, much to all of our chagrins, as it was our last vacation of the summer and the last time I would see my aunt in who-knows-how-long, and on Thursday morning, we got back into the Chryssie the big red Chrysler and started up the audiobook.
Seven-and-change hours later (plus a bunch of time spent Audrey-less in Scranton and State College) Clare DeTamble was a gray, old woman and Henry was visiting her for the very last time. And I breathed a sigh, because not only was my favorite book once again over, but that meant that Audrey would finally leave me alone.
But the sheer existence of this post is proof that she didn't. She's still hanging around, like a soul that couldn't quite let go, and I find myself thinking about her for strange reasons and at strange times. I woke up too early the other morning and started wondering absently if my lost twin's ghost had brushed an icy hand over my hair. I got deja vú and wondered if I'd found some fold in time, and I worried that some other copy of myself was stuck out of reach in a subzero parking garage. I'll day dream, imagining this Audrey that I don't know, seeing her fall in love with Henry like I did, and feeling her pain as she mutilated and ended him. And I'll try to see her face as she conjures up Robert and Elspeth, as she paints pictures of Highgate Cemetery with words so that people like me can imagine countries they've never seen. She literally haunts both my waking and sleeping hours.
Last week, when the mail came with my ARC of Her Fearful Symmetry, I was simultaneously given a charge to write this post. After actually reading the book, I struggled mutely for days, wondering if I should actually be a good Christian and keep my promise. But after re-finishing The Time Traveler's Wife, I've come to the conclusion that, in short, "That which does not kill me makes me stronger."
I've got to hand the proverbial "it" to Audrey: she did manage to steer quite clear of the formidable temptation of authors whose first novels are bestsellers--to write its twin over and over again. She left her mark--there is an obvious whiff of Niff on every page--but Time Traveler's Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry aren't even close cousins of each other. They're set in different places and cultures with completely different characters and focuses. I could tell from the first chapter that I was going to be satisfied by at least this heartwarming truth: Audrey is not an idiot.
TTW jumps around quite a bit. The structure for the whole book is based loosely on the timeline of Clare's life, but due to Henry's furry little problem, time and space are manipulated in such a way as to have a lurching effect on the reader. This feeling is not anything unpleasant, and in fact accounts for at least part of why I love the book so much. TTW is completely unique in the way it trusts the reader to just keep on trucking. HFS does this as well, though I'm afraid some of the grace is lost because everyone in HFS is firmly grounded in the here and now, so chapters jump between story lines with no confirmation that it is only space that is being hurdled, not time as well. A character will mention that a year has passed since an event of two chapters ago, and I will frown slightly, flip backwards to investigate, and eventually conclude that that must have just been a supremely boring year.
TTW also has no plot. Los siento. There is probably a discernible climax, but it is so not because everything prior leads up to it and everything following leads away, but because it's the part where your emotions are thrown aboard the Andrea Gail and asked to quietly wait for the storm to pass. The book works more like a television series, where each chapter or so is a short episode, with the familiar characters as the glue that keeps you wanting to watch every week, until finally the credits role for the season finale and you reluctantly turn off the set, knowing you're going to buy the DVDs when they come out. In TTW, the characters are so compelling, their life stories so fascinating and real, and everything is so close to you like family that you don't realize it's coming from nowhere and has no particular destination in mind.
HFS also has no plot. It has a beginning, it has a middle, and it has something that looks like it tried to be an ending, but again there are more fragments than there is full vision, and the twist at the end is the high point of the action in the same way a random hiccup is the high point of a coma. Not to say that HFS is as completely devoid of action as a coma, but you wouldn't expect coma guy to have a lung spasm, and I didn't expect...well...anything at the end of that book.
The way I see it, which could be very narrow-minded, I realize, Audrey tried to have a character-driven-plot without any substantial characters. I couldn't discern the "main characters" from the supporting roles, because by the end I felt most familiar with the two people who seemed to have meant the least to the overall story, Martin and Marijke. When they were taken out of the picture towards the end, I almost wished Henry and Clare would waltz in and restore some balance. There was no glue, there was no timeline. In the end I was lost, and I wanted things Audrey and her characters weren't giving me.
As I had TTW read to me this week, I realized I must have skipped over a good portion of the book the first time I read it, because I did not remember there being that much sex, and in that brusque a style. Don't get me wrong, I don't think sex in and of itself is a foul beast in need of literary vanquishing, and I understand that Romance is the best-selling genre of novel. But with sex, as with profanity in my opinion, less is so often much more.
If a character goes through the whole book without uttering a single curse, and then suddenly lets loose on some guy because he uses the word "retard," it sends a clear message. With sex, it's not so much the message, as the intimacy. In ancient Greek plays, characters always died offstage. I don't remember why that was, but it's a concept that's stuck with me. Our deaths, like our sex, are not things we want a lot of strange people to witness unless there's something monumental in them that they need to know and understand. And if it's overdone, it feels like the reader is intruding on something. Or like it's just porn. And that's two-bit stuff; not fit for a serious book.
Sadly, I think HFS could have done with a bit more sex. But I appreciated the times when it loomed awkwardly on inopportune horizons and was taken out of the options menu, because I really didn't want Martin to have random sex with the unorthodox-but-still-literal-girl-next-door the day before he got to go see Marijke. That would have made things worse.
Anyway. Now you know. Or maybe you don't; maybe I skirted around the topic, because I'm still not comfortable with the idea of this post. So let me say it plain.
I didn't like Her Fearful Symmetry. I was evidently a poor steward of your trust, Audrey, and for that, I apologize. There were other, more-deserving people who had to do without an ARC because I had stolen theirs. I'm sorry I didn't like it, because it seems a lot of people did. I always look for characters, and I couldn't find any this time.
None of this changes anything, really. But I have developed a deeper love for The Time Traveler's Wife. And I have started writing again myself, something I’ve sadly forgone for months now. So I certainly don't dislike Audrey Niffenegger. If anything, I appreciate her now more than ever.
<3 spadeALLcross
25.11.08
Try to forgive, teach me to live, give me the strength to try...
I can't help but be moved by music, no matter how controversial. I respect Paul Robeson and of course I condone his changing the lyrics, but I still love "Heart gets weary and sick of trying/ tired of living and scared of dying/ But old man River, he just keeps rolling along." It feels wrong to like that version, which is sad. But I think it symbolizes a lot of people's problems with life's struggles, not just the stereotypical "lazy black man."
And it symbolizes kind of what my research papers are making me feel like right now...
<3 spadeALLcross
24.11.08
Thankful and all that...
I have never looked forward so avidly to the holidays. Both Thanksgiving and Christmas. It's impossible to describe how much I miss my family and my home and my marathon lounger training schedule.
You know what else I'm thankful for?
That's right. Edward freaking Cullen. For serious, his book is not very well written, and his perfection is suffocating, and his movie will most likely be sub par, but...well there it is. He is what he is.
But he's still no Henry DeTamble.
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