Don't Tell Mother, But I Ate All Your Bacon

.

About Lolita
I can't think about it without feeling ill.
We've all be there.
The perfect puce vomit, lust-laced.
Moderately long fingernails colored an interesting shade
of bright cherry crimson...
Death by Sharpie.
I am a blueberry Froot Loop with a bright red mouth.
I like the way it looks when my neon nails graze skin.
Death by trembling.
Stanley Kubrick's was better, say critics.
It's not suppose to be funny.
It wasn't funny.
But I laughed,
in Lyne's version,
I laughed really hard when She leaned over with the tray
and said,
Don't tell mother, but...
I ate all your bacon.

Wedge of Orange

I haven't written (coherently) in a long while. Mostly just letters and weirdness and brainstorming for stories. Right now I'm at a friend's house, and he and my other good buddy are on the red suade sofa playing video games. There aren't three contollers, so I'm just over here on his laptop. I figured I would write in my blog, since I gave up my position on the controller. I'm no good at video games anyway. I like writing more, as dorky as that sounds. Haha! I'm hopeless. <3

Things have changed a lot since the summer. I'm in school, and doing okay. Not as spectacularly as I would like, but just okay. It's just the beginning of the year, anyway. I have plenty of time to warm up to things. Teehee. High school is interesting! Somehow not as horrid as they say it is. It's bound to get worse, my brother tells me. My brother is not the studious type. He doesn't believe in studying. He believes in dumb luck -- and he gets a lot. He has much potential; I wish he would apply work to his talent. He could be incredible if he wanted.

I'm in some serious need of tea right now! Iced green tea, with a little wedge of orange. A little burst of caffeine. That would be perfect.

Letter: October 4

Dear Mr. Ineffable Baritone,

I figured I could consult you on this. I have a huge problem. It can be described simply through this:



What should I do?

I miss my past. I'm writhing for it with every part of me. I'm in danger of getting sickly nostalgic every hour or so. It's gotten so bad that I can't breathe when I think that all of it is over. That it will never happen again. My heart refuses to let it slip into simple memories... no, I am living in the past. My mind is there and I can't drag it out. This would not be so petrifying if I actually wanted to embrace my future, but I don't want to do that either. In fact, I'm petrified. I hate what's looming ahead of me. I wish I could stab it with a knife and dispose of all deathly possibility. I didn't want things to happen this way.

In the process of struggling between my past and future, I have completely lost contact with my present. I'm lost. Snared. I'm breaking, Mr. IB. I can feel the brittle parts of my heart slowly, slowly fracturing.

We both need help now.

Yvette

All right, I've got the first official list of "character" (?! ...Yeah, I don't get it either) names. Here we go, in no particular order.

+ Dr. Alexander Wood
+ Gretchen Althea Elyshevitz
+ Daniel Crisp
+ Cecil Swank
+ Yvette Jarecke
+ Ms. Sarai Shakir
+ Chinatown clerk, Miss An Yi


And now for the locations!

+ Oxford
+ London (particularly Paddington)
+ Countryside
+ Chinatown
+ Dr. Wood's flat
+ Gretch's friend's apartment
+ Town transmit station
+ Philadelphia

Grammys, Anyone?

Insanity!
I really am going insane!

I'm in its clutches. I'm not on any drugs. I haven't had caff since yesterday morning, and these aren't withdrawl symptoms. I just feel like... what the hell?! GOOD! My eyes are burning and the back of my throat is closing up, but I feel good. Excellent. Ace. Wicked. Skippy. What?

Just got back from Flecktones gig. ZOH_MAI_GAWD!!
Is it just me, or does the room sort of... explode when they get on stange? It's like there's too much talent for the place to contain, so it starts to simmer under the pressure. Oh yes, I could feel the pressure. Just like Hayley Williams (what? Bad joke about mainstream band?! Blasphemy! But I do have a TWLOHA shirt, even though that technically should have nothing to do with it).

Band member evaluation:
Bela Fleck = Okay. Words are useless here. Man's a megamusic god. (If Edgar Meyer were have to shown up on stage, the entire theater would probably spontaneously combust. Just saying.) Plus, he's cute. So screams the female/homo portion of the already very excited audience. Am I sick? Yes. Okay. Moving on.
Victor Wooten = PHAT SOUND. EXTREMELY AMAZING DAZLIOUS COSMIC BASS POWER!!!!!!!!!!!!! He's my hero! He sa gwyne save thah WURLD!
Jeff Coffin = That man has a SERIOUS set of pipes! LORDY! He knows how to blat. I mean, I wasn't a big sax fan before I walked into the theator, but I've been officially converted. And I love the goatee.
Futureman (RoyEl) = LOVE THIS GUY!!! He's a bloody freakin' genius! I had no idea he INVENTED the drumitar. I juat thought it was cool enough that be played one. He's gonna reinvent the world! Watch out for the pirate man! Pyongg!

Bela Fleck and the Flecktones + me = orgasm.
The end.

Letter: September 10

Dear Mr. Ineffable Baritone,

We sat in the bed of a pick-up truck and opened the doors of the cabin wide open, and turned up the music so that even the moon could have heard it. We looked at the stars. It was strange to see them after the rain. You hummed Mozart along with the stereo, Symphony in G minor K. 183, in astounding depth. You and I just lying there, and talking. We talked about many things. You asked me many questions about my ordinary life in America. You asked me about Red Shirt Man. Your tone was peculiar and you fiddled with your shirt collar.

"How old is he?" you asked me.

"Twenty-one," I said.

Then you started buttoning and unbuttoning the cuff of your sleeve. I was suddenly thankful for the nighttime darkness and the isolation of the countryside, and only the stars watching us with silent, bright eyes.

"That's only seven years," you said. "Only a seven-year difference."

"Yeah," I agreed. The woodwinds were chirruping out of the pickup speakers and drowning out the crickets. "But it's not like that."

You stopped unbuttoning your cuff and let it hang open. The other one was still closed. You were making a decision in your head. I tried to talk more, to keep myself from knowing more. I was almost afraid of what you might settle on. Perhpas I like self-suspention. So impulsively I kept speaking.

"It could never be like that. He's married to his music."

Turning to me now, now with both cuffs unbuttoned and rolling up your sleeves, that twisted delicious gut-wrenching little smile suddenly visible in the pale light. Innately I knew that at this moment I was supposed to feel afraid. But I didn't. Not at all. If you were dangerous, then you did a fabulous job of fooling me otherwise. I had never felt so at home; safe and happy; lying in the bed of a pickup next to an old Shakespearean stage actor, curled up in his baggy London Fog sweater, hearing him mimic the melodies to near perfection. That's how it was for me. That's how it felt. I was set adrift.

"Only seven years," you murmured again, mostly to yourself. "That is not so terrible. Are you afraid of it?"

"No. I don't want it. So there is nothing to fear."

"You don't want... him?"

"No. If I did, seven years would be nothing. Absolutely nothing com -- "

I halted before what I was about to say.

"Compared to..?" Your eyes closed and you didn't finish, knowing you didn't have to. I think you were trying not to smile. In the speakers, the movement ended. The crickets took over for that short, fleeting pocket of natural emptiness, and slowly, exaggerated, so that you could see me doing it, I rolled up the sleeves of your London Fog sweater.

Letter: September 9

Dear Mr. Ineffable Baritone,

Ha ha! I remember in that precious twenty hours, we had breakfast, you and I. I was trying my best to be a possibly engaging person for you to spend your day with, and asked you quite impulsively whether or not people liked you? And you looked up from your tea with that face of yours, that signature expression, and you answered flatly,

"Not really."

I wanted to take a picture and stop time forever. It was too good. It was that one moment that made me realize exactly who you are. Exactly the way your thoughts stream throught that magnificent mind of yours... and oh how they do. Ha. Well, I'm sure you know what I mean. I asked you why it was and you just peered at me over your cup with your dark eyes which eased, if just for a moment, in amusement at the sound of my thoughtless inquiry. And you told me you weren't so sure yourself.

"Intimidation," I couldn't help but to squeak it, "is overwhelming. It can make people feel bitter..."

"Intimidation? You think that is the problem, do you?"

"It's likely."

You lowered your gaze and focused dutifully on watching the steaming dark liquid ripple over itself in your porcelain mug. Your expression was easygoing, contemplative, mildly exhausted. I remember it well, although you do not. You are probably reading these cluttered garbles and wondering whether or not I'm just making all of this up, but I'm not. This is how I saw it. This is how it went.

No matter how much time passed, you yourself never turned to an unpleasant phase. I looked at you, your easy and graceful stride, and I couldn't find the coldness they speak about. There was no razor-edge or strange distance they warned me about, or rudeness or adruptness or alienation. Perhaps I am blind, I thought at first. Perhaps I'm seeing only what I want to see. Was I? Were they all right in saying that you're not a kind person? Even if I was, I truly can't believe it in my heart. My brain can tell me, "You're just being blind and it's all wishful thinking. Nothing is ever what it seems." And something else inside me tells me, "He's himself. Whoever he is, it doesn't quite matter. Because he's himself." And that's how I settled on it. I can admit sadly that I don't know you well enough to come to a conclusion. But in twenty hours, you did not show me coldness. You showed me gentleness, charm and a small flame of strong conviction burning beneath your wise and weathered eyes. I would steal your eyes and lock them in some gothic rusting token box and whenever I opened it I would be reminded of how you looked when you said, "Not really."

So you believed that you are not liked?

And I believe that I am emotionally blind?

Then I watched your face twist into a bitter smirk and you gave me the rest of your lemon cookie and told me, "Let's get going. It's going to be a long day." And we slipped out of our breakfast cafe and ducked around the side of the building so you could show me the paintings and tell me the stories about them.

And I really do think it is intimidation. You make people go eiher very white or very red and they stare at their feet and mumble, or they'll ramble rampantly to you in order to compensate for their obvious lack of esteem compared to you. They become uncomfortable. Do not ever believe that it's because you are "cold". The fact is, my friend, that you are stately and well-composed and venerable. You carry yourself with the gravitas of a much older person, you voice is likethunder. You strike awe in people. You strike awe in me.

Letter: September 5

Dear Mr. Ineffable Baritone,

I know you think you don't know me. But you do. You... did. For a very short amount of time, about a day. Twenty hours to be exact. We spent the day together, doing whatever we wanted to do. It was about a week before your incident. I am going to write to you. I am going to reconstruct things I remember about who you were. You have to forgive me when I skip around. I'm struggling to put it down.

It was an oddly misplaced phenomenon to view your being, stately and groomed as it always is, in McDonald's. Like that sculpture of a Grecian hero I saw in the Uffizi, and what it would have looked like if I were to place it in the center of Wal-Mart. A tropical fish in a trout farm. Amusingly, and brazenly, clashing like some surrealist figure... And the moment you spoke your voice made a conflict with everything surrounding you. So, even, that I had to bite back mirth.

Is it possible that I was only yards away from you? I don't think it's likely. Surely you would not be at Paddington Station in the late part of May. That would be something unconditionally lucky (on my part). I must have crossed paths with so many important, authoritative people that day but you're the only one I was concerned about. I've only seen you once. And despite what people tell me, once is not enough to last me a lifetime. Once is enough to drive me mad. Well, regardless of whether or not you were home that day in Paddington Station, I wasn't able to see much beside the pidgeons and some kind of love letter from Crete written in blue pen stuck to the bottom of my shoe. (Maybe someday I'll find out who wrote the letter. It was unsigned, addressed to "Beowulf", and says that "the weather is unclement in Crete this week". Why does that sound encoded? London is filled with mysteries. Including the toilets.) Well, yes. Pidgeons and a piece of paper stuck to my Merrills. What am I to do?

They say you're a cold kind of guy. I don't think so. I think you just know what you want and what you like and you probably don't bother with the rest. You could, but you don't. That's what I like about you. Your mind works in complicated intrevals and thought is oriented around soul. You want to know why I know that? So do I. It's driving me nuts.

Mr. IB, I know everything about you. I know how you think and why you think it. I can erad your actions moments beofre they even happen. My mind is tied to yours at the core like a correspondance system. Somehow I can never doubt what you're saying to me. And when you tell a fib or a lie about something, to sidestep a complicated subject, or to conceal some component of your life, I know it immediately. I may not know the truth behind your mild fabrications, but I do know that there is something brilliant lurking behind your eyes. There is something precious which you must not let out.

As I was saying, some people claim that you are cold. Distant and difficult to reach. I claim that you are startlingly warm. Like pulling a favorite sweater out of the dryer and feeling it bless your skin with its freshness. Something familiar and embracing. How could you be cold? You are no colder than a brick baking in the sun. You are not colder than a herald angel's voice. No more distant than a heart to beating. I feel every contour of yor thought processes as though I could run my fingertips over them. And, although on my part this is somewhat difficult to admit to you who are sitting reading and utter unremembering victim to my observations of you, I must imagine what sensations I could conjure if I were to run my fingertips over your physical form and be as equally so involved with this area of observation as I am with your mind. I would feel your palms and the work your hands have done. But I cannot.

So often you are incomplete to me, just as my own incomplete letters to you will never be signed with my name.

Do you ever wonder what my palms feel like too?

Letter: August 17

Dear Mr. Ineffable Baritone,

We've established many things about each other over the last month or so, and I feel it is safe to share these truths which I did not hold to be self-evident, because it actually took a lot of time to investigate. Twenty hours is not a long time to get to know someone, i now realize with a sad heart. But no matter.

+ You were a stage actor, mostly for Shakepearean plays, in which you graced Hamlet in cloth and earth-shatteringly deep theater voice.

+ You do not need to eat. Not if you don't want to. Not anything. I have tried and failed to bribe you out of the closet with food, but apparently you do not accept leverage. Of any kind.

+ You would probably look very nice and suave and cleaned-up if you decided to shave-and-suit one day. Although I must say, the turtlenecks and battered blue jeans are kind of eye-catching.

+ You probably could get away with anything if you wanted to. The baritone, after all, is ineffable, and can convince nearly any person who isn't deaf to do anything or believe any words you wanted them to. (Then again, even a deaf person would be intimidated by the deeply-resounding vibrations you voice makes in the concrete.)If you told me that you were going to grind up power tools in a blender and drink them as an energy shake, I would totally go for it and set you loose in my dad's workshop and garage. I shit you not.

+ If I ever asked you to set me loose in your garage, you'd raise your eyebrows and tell me that I must be feeling frisky today.

Air-Cushion Finish

What's new now?

I'm in school, big bad high school. Which is actually sort of enjoyable. I have made friends. They are all from foreign ethnicities. I just happened that way. Krishna, Alexei, Ali, Yoorah, Laurence, Sarai, Kwo-Zong, In-yung. Just to name a few. I'm the white one. It's kind of funny.

I am currently fictionalizing my accounts of the someone very famous locked in my closet. It's better than cheese - super fun to write. But really sad, too. Really really sad. It's collaberated in a series of letters, sometimes poems.

I'll post a few today.

A Crank on Mr. IB

Maybe I should
give up and stop it.
Writing my weird & too-personal
unsigned letters
to a man who
has amnesia.

Maybe it was meant to
happen
like this.

Maybe I when my
stomach turns on
itself every night,
and I want to
cry out,
it's only because I know
that it's
too late
to save him.

Peas

Headache
Knots in the stomach, not altogether unpleasant
Just inconvenient
Extended groan.
Walk into a corner and tell yourself NO!
Don't do it.
Then walk out of the corner
And go and do it anyway
Can't control it.
Huge green peas!
Shiny too!
Get out of my head.

-

All right, so here's how it goes:

You're just sort of sitting there, and then you see this person, and then you're like...

Jesus.

And then suddenly green is your favorite color, all you want is some coffee, a good time, music, go to a breezy place and hang off a cliff.
See this person and suddenly your mind commits suicide and your stomach decides to eat itself.
See this person and suddenly it's never the same.
Look at old pictures of yourself and wonder, "Where did that girl go?"

Can't decide to follow person the person around, or just to fade into the background and TRY TRY TRY to forget. Can't do that, you tell yourself very sternly. You are going to make yourself be good.
But then you can't do it and it all comes crashing around your ankles!
Next time you are going to say something clever and memorable, right? No. Don't try. It's just like Jesse says. Don't kill it if you haven't killed it already. Don't try.

And then all you can think is fuck I screwed us all over.

Cluster of Nights

My dreams grow twisted. I haven't had a dream like this one in years.

If it were about anything or anyone else, I would probably be explaining what happened in my dream. But, because it is... the way it is... I will refrain from doing anything of the sort. Just know that it was very strange. The kind of dream that haunts you, sticks with you for the rest of the day and you simply can't shake the images from yours mind.

Parts of it were terrifying, parts of it were nauseating, parts of it were actually enjoyable. Dreams are like that. My dreams usually come in a cluster of nights all in a row, and I've been having strange dreams these days. Some are related and some are not.

"It's just a dream." ... This phrase confuses me. Yes, it was a dream, but why doesn't that mean it didn't actually happen? Who says it couldn't? Why is that things confined to my mind are "not real"? I think the things in the minds of humans are very real. We see them, smell them, feel them. How are they not real? Is anything ever really "fake"...?

Roll Smoothly

I got my schedule...

Creative Writing
This will be fun - Holly did it and she said it was relatively enjoyable. And besides, I like writing. Obviously.

Honors English
Hopefully this will not drag along like my English class last year did. Of course, that was only because my teacher last year was an old butterball with nothing to offer except scathing sarcasm and pessimism.

Honors Ancient History
Everyone says it sucks after a while. I will learn to love it. History is good.

French
Freshmen must take French I unless they take a test to be placed in French II. I'm going to do that - there is no way I'm going to take French I again.

Art I
HELL. YES. It's art and that's all that matters.

Theater I
Well, I've got good stage presence. And even if I suck, I can still design the set and things like that.

Algebra
I decided to retake Algebra I. I'm feeling confident, because I did it all last year, and I didn't want to push myself beyond my limit with math. I suck at math.

Honors Biology
I like science. It'll roll smoothly enough. It always has. I got a 92 on my science final last year.

Bask

Here's another letter that I will never send.

Dear J.K. Rowling,
You get a lot of fanmail, I take it. A lot of fan mail which you will never read because there's probably enough of it to bury you alive. You probably have a vault all for the fanmail you get, an enormous vault into which your workers and interns push wheelbarrows of adoration.

I am just another typical teenage girl wanting to know how the hell you did it. I am a normal fan who enjoyed your books very, very much. I would like to think that I am not, but I am. There is no way to deny it.
And I have a few things to say.

First, I think your name rocks. "J.K." Is that... seriously your name? Do people walk around calling you "J.K.", whenever you're not being "Ms. Rowling" or, better and more likely, "Ms. Rowling the Great and Talented"? I've always wanted a cool name. My name isn't anything good, really, only strange.

Second, what do you think of all this? What do you think of being the great mistress of your own alternate universe, your own fan-created cult, a movie series based upon your work of imagination? How do you handle it? More importantly, how do you get around town without being mauled by rabid onlookers? Do you wear a wig when you go grocery shopping or something like that?

And third, I really hope you keep writing and doing what you want. Really and truly. For you, it should be about you writing and creating things. I really hope you don't get hung up on all these fans expecting great things from you. Ignore us. Honestly, just write for yourself. Do not feel pressured. If you have another idea for a book, let it out and don't be afraid of disturbing the image of being "The Harry Potter Lady". Of course HP must be a very important part of your life, but I know, somehow, that is not what defines you as a person. You are a fantastic writer. And, now that you have all the world under your spell, you can do anything. Your opportunities are endless. Your are not Harry Potter and you are not your fans. You are you, and you can do what you choose to do. I hope you keep writing for the sake of writing, and not writing to please the world around you. That's what it's all about!

I'm behind you all the way. I think you are incredible, and so do thousands of others. Bask in your glory. It is well-deserved.

Best regards.

Insanity Mellon

Today at around 4 pm I'm going to this new high school of mine and getting my schedule and my picture taken. "Summer Insanity" is what it's called. When the entire population of the school is there to sort out the first semester. Apparently, according to my friend Holly, it gets very hot and sweaty, and therefore I should get my picture taken first to I don't look like a greased pig in my student ID. This will be difficult to achieve, because I look like a greased pig most of the time anyway. I will try my hardest to look normal. You know. Washed. Shaved. Hair effectively fried by my new wet-dry flat iron. I will be just another nameless face of a normal high school girl and I'll out at sea for the next few years. It will be fun. I am feeling optimistic.

Maybe if I take chemistry some time I'll meet...
No, stop me there.

Physics? Not likely, although I wish it were. I am fascinated by physics despite my inability to actually do it. My uncle is a physicist. He wrote two books about Optimization - I have the signed copies in my room. Sometimes I read them to try my best to understand. The basics are rather self-explanatory but I'm afraid that I don't understand the fundamentals, or dual roof whatnot... He is a professor at Carnegie Mellon. He travels the world and sends my brother and I post cards from places like Turkey and Pakistan. He is currently living in London. I would like to visit him there.

Anyway. My biggest concern is being able to take art courses. I must have a recommendation written by my former art teacher. I love my former art teacher. She's all heart. I'm going to go back and visit her all the time.

Squalor

Ugh. I feel really nasty.

Responsibility is a stomach ache, pounding head ache, aching bones all over my body! I hate it! It's nice to slip off in my mind and be somebody else, with a different life, a better life. Run around and be fun and free. Draw celebrity portraits and talk to Mr. IB and Red Boy and Molly Cyd. Daydream. Write out strange stories about girls lost in the woods, older men, cats, and boy wood carpenters who want to sort out their psychotic friends.

And then the phone rings, I have summer reading, piano class, I have to eat dinner, and it all unhinges. Comes. Crashing. Down.

Scorching the Carpeting

When you're so washed up all you really want to do is sit around and draw celebrity portraits and talk to Mr. Ineffable Baritone about the subliminal messages in Charles Dickens (a peg leg? I think NOT!), you know there is a problem... because that's when you actually want school to start.

I dropped one of the socks from my closet on the floor in my bedroom and it left a big black burn hole there. Fever. Then I was all, "Damn. If you come out I'll get you some Tylenol." No response.

Oh, yeah. School. I guess it's different for me than for people who are going back to the same school. I am a fresh[wo]man arriving in a different place. It's all going to be new and weird for me and for 500 other kids getting thrown into a mix. It's like riding with your dog in the car for three months, and then letting your dog out somewhere its never been, and they get all psycho and hyped because they smell all these things they've never smelled before. At least, that's how I invision it. I've actually never owned a dog before. It's just me and Molly Cyd, and she's psycho and hyper pretty much all the time anyway.

I have a poster of a starved Indian boy with red dust on his face, which I tore out of an old National Geographic magazine a few years ago. I taped it to my wall. I talk to Red Boy when Mr. IB is sleeping or not feeling sociable. Red Boy is pretty cool, but I think he scares my friends. He can't help it, it's just the way his face works.

Pseudo Grammar

Rereading a memoir by Zoe Trope. I'm doing it to put Red Shirt Man past me. I'm not strong enough to type the name yet. The best I can do is his initials. Which I have already recorded in a separate entry so I'm doing it again.

Anyway. Zoe Trope. She's vulgar, in a respectable way. She's also totally lost. Crushing on your gay best friend? Wow. Nice going.

Other than that she's shrewd and intelligent and she's painfully self-serving, but that's what give the memoir its edge. It's not an account of high school written by a middle-aged Jewish guy. It's the account of high school written by a 14-year-old girl with some major confusion going on. And really weird grammar. In fact, reading her memoir sort of makes me write like her. Like a subliminal trace left in your mind. Stopping short in the middle of sentences so they're not really sentences, just thoughtful phrases that are like pseudo-poetry. I'm just like... Whatever floats your boat.

I slipped a sandwich and a water bottle into my closet for Alan. I hope he eats it. Much less for the sake of his nutrition, but so that sooner or later he'll have to come out to take a piss.
I think he sees through my plan, though. He keeps offering to read Shakespeare, which is probably to get me to give up.

Aziraphale Knows Best

Today I thought about calling in my personal SWAT guys to pry Mr. Ineffable Baritone out of my closet. It's not working. They all took one look at him, decided they were homosexuals, and then left without evening producing a warrant. Unfair. Maybe Tony will help me out. Tony is all man - and he's married so that helps a little. He would never be swayed by the Ineffable Baritone.

I listened to Mr. IB read Sonnet 130 last night, and I tell you, I think someday he's going to get gang-raped by a group of insane forty-year-old women who want to cheat on their husbands. With the same man? Well, yeah. Because that's just how it works.

Mr. IB refuses to get out of my closet. I tried tempting him with some two-day-old peach cobbler from my kitchen, because he hasn't eaten in days (no food in the closet). I did not succeed. He's more determined than I thought.

I refuse to do anything indecent, though, because then he'd get arrested and his wife would probably kick my ass. Mrs. Rickman must be made of iron, or something. It would take a lot to deal with all the rabid forty-somethings clawing at her husband. I am never going to marry a famous English sex god, because I'd probably be assassinated.

You can't question ineffability, though, that's what Aziraphale always says.

S(ever)us

Anyway, I, personally, hate spoilers, so I hate spoiling things for those of you who haven't read or gotten to this certain portion of Harry Potter, but seriously, who the hell is reading this random blog but me?

...So I feel it is safe to say that Severus Snape has seriously got to be the best character in the entire bloody series, ever. EVER!! I knew he was good all along. I could just feel it. Even after the whole Dumbledore calamity, I could sense that something weird was still missing from the equation. I knew that Dumbledore wouldn't just blindly trust Snape to be betrayed like that. I knew there had to be somthing more. That being said, Severus, you supposed dirty bastard you, WE'RE ALL BEHIND YOU!!

I mean, after all that, who wouldn't be?! He deserved Lily! Totally and utterly! It's so completely unfair what happened to him! Why did he have to sacrifice so much?! To be loathed by the boy he was sacrificing everything for, even until after his death? WHY?!?! *chucks something angrily out the window* ARGH!!!

Ahem.

Sorry about that. I've always been a Sev fan, so reading all that was like being trapped among explosives. I wasn't sure whether to be in a state of Euphoria and jumping for joy, or to be really pissed and throwing stuff.
...And I know, I take this entirely too seriously.

Sticker on Your Forehead?

Speaking of Harry Potter and Alan Rickman and all that, it reminds me of when I saw the fifth movie with my friend at the beginning of the month. She hasn't read any of the books, so naturally the plotline is totally befuddling her. I had to explain it all to her once the movie had ended and we were walking out of the theater.

"And what was with Snape?" she kept saying. "Why was Harry's dad dangling Snape upside down? I though Snape was supposed to be the bad one...?"

Now, my friend here is pretty intelligent, but she is also pretty simple-minded when in comes to the depth of characters and people and all that. I tried to tell her about it in a way that she would understand, but she refused to believe that James was the one being mean, and not Snape.

So the only way I could think to put it was like this:

"Okay," I said slowly, "Think of it like this. Let's say Hogwarts is an ordinary high school, and Severus Snape is an 'emo kid', right?"

At once she nodded in understanding. I continued.

"And let's say Harry's dad, James, is a 'rude jock' type."

Another knowing nod.

"And let's say they both have a crush on Harry's mom, Lily, who is a pretty and smart high school girl. Lily is friends with both Snape and with James, and therefore is caught in the middle of everything. Snape, in this situation, is going to be the one who gets abused the most, because jocks are stereotypically naturally more brawny than emo kids, right?"

"Yeah."

"Because Lily has been friends with Snape for a longer amount of time, she defends him while James is rude to him."

"Oh. Then why didn't she marry Snape?"

Answering this question was kind of tricky because it was weirdly emotional for me.

"Because, after time, Snape gets tired of dealing with James, and he begins to appeal to the dark magic in Slytherin. Lily becomes angry with him for it, and winds up spending more time with James because she's in Gryffindor with him, all that - it sort of snowballs from there."

"But James was an ass!" my friend cried defiantly. "They both liked Lily, but Snape was a better person and loved her!"

"Yeah," I sighed. "Life's unfair like that."


I just thought it was funny... the moment I involved contemporary teenage labels for my friend, such as "emo" and "jock", she understood the whole thing immediately. It's like we have to label everything to death before it can make sense.

It's Alan Rickman, Craig. Alan Rickman.

Okay, I'm usually not one for the whole Blog Quiz thing, but this I found to be highly amusing.
I've always had a sick fascination with Alan Rickman, and since finishing the seventh and final volume of Harry Potter, my steady love for the character Severus Snape has somewhat, shall we say, ballooned.
I found this "Which stage of Alan Rickman's career are you?" quiz, and my test results are quite amusing.
Yeahhhhhh....

Which of the illustrious Alan Rickman's characters are you?

You are Professor Severus Snape from the movie 'Harry Potter'. You're very bitter, very smart, and your past has been one long nightmare. You teach Potions at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Although you can act like a bitch sometimes, you've had a rough life, so its somewhat excusable. In the Harry Potter books, you are described as 'greasy-haired and hook-nosed'. yeah, right. Your hair is fucking gorgeous. and so are you. cheer up.
Take this quiz!








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Tatonka, III

(some time later)

An enormous, dark feline suddenly pounced upon the kitchen table - Elsa withdrew, slight shock etched upon her face at the size of the thing.

“Oh!” gasped Caitie, evidently very irritated. “Bad cat!”

She got to her feet as Elsa ogled; Caitie suspected that Elsa had never seen a cat so big before - he wasn’t even fat, just shockingly muscular, most definitely the alpha male of the pack in the cottage.

Caitie started swatting at him with a rolled-up magazine until he retired his post on top of the empty bread platter. He plopped onto the linoleum, giving them both a pompous look before he stalked away with his nose in the air.

“I’m so sorry about that,” she said weakly to Elsa, who looked rather mystified. “He’s always been so rude to humans he isn’t used to.”

“What have you named him?” Elsa asked vaguely.

“Tatonka,” Caitie answered with a little grin.

“Tatonka?” Elsa repeated. She suddenly looked perplexed.

“Yes. It seemed to fit him, since he’s so large, you know?”

“I don’t understand.”

Caitie blinked. Then she laughed, scratching her head comically, like it amused her.

“It means ‘buffalo’!” she said, as though she expected this to explain everything. When Elsa refused to act enlightened, she sighed exasperatedly.

“Haven’t you ever seen Dances with Wolves?”

“Dancing wolves?” Elsa repeated, sounding numbly unimpressed.

Caitie slapped her forehead and groaned. Elsa wondered what she has said that was so obviously incompetent. Whatever it was, she didn’t seem to like the way Caitie was acting.

“Never mind your cat,” she snapped, voice scathing.

“Um. Sure, of course,” Caitie said.

She walked awkwardly to the cabinets. Once her back was turned, she let her face, which so often held a jubilant smile, crumple bitterly.

This girl, this person… she’s so lost, she thought. It’s going to take a miracle to make things work.

Tatonka, II

“All right, come in through this way,” Caitie instructed dutifully, holding an opening in the beads for her.

Elsa stepped through, bobbing her head.

Then she sneezed.

The room they had entered was large, and obviously was supposed to be some form of living room. It was paneled entirely with hard wood. Every wall held a shelf, cabinet or bookcase, upon and within which was a sea of chaotically placed items. Trinkets, picture frames, cork screws, porcelain figures, jars, cups, papers, collections of any and all small objects, endless piles of books, and dish after dish of dusty, stacked-up china, amounting to an antiquated colossus of cluttered disarray.

A black cat, which had been perched precariously upon a 1950’s radio set, hopped unto the musty carpeting, approached Caitie with a welcoming meow, and started rubbing on her shins.

“Oh,” said Caitie, picking the cat up at once. “Elsa, allow me to introduce you to one of my cats, Grimm.”

Elsa merely stared at the creature, unable to think of a thing to say.

“I really hope you don’t mind animals,” continued Caitie, “I have a lot of them - it’s kind of inescapable around these parts, with all the strays roaming around. They come and go, you see. I just can’t bear to keep them inside all day, so most of the time they’re in the forest. And… ah!”

She pointed into a corner where a moth-eaten green armchair sat, and curled upon it was a casually snoozing tabby.

“That there is Hershel. He’s a dope, but nice all the same.”

Tatonka, I

“Well, it’s not like she has anything to pack, so I don’t see why - ”

“Ben.”

“ - And she’s not going to get anywhere if she just keeps sleeping in that goddamn tent every night, and you know that as well as anyone, so don’t - ”

“Ben.”

“ - I know you said it could have been a rape. You know what I think - but even if you’re right, she can’t deal with that properly here, can she? She needs to take it up in a court of law - ”

“Ben, would you listen to me, for a single fucking minute?”

Caitie rarely ever raised her voice, not like that. Whenever she did, it meant business. Ben stared, shocked.

“Okay,” he croaked.

“I’m going to tell you something important, and I don’t want you to get angry. At least, not until I’m done explaining. All right?”

“Okay,” he repeated, although sounding unsure.

“This morning Charlie talked to Jeff and I about it, and it took a while, but I agree with him now. It may take you some time, too, but I know you better than to stay mad for long. You’re too perceptive, anyway.”

She sat down with her iced tea, and patted the spot beside her. Ben took it.

“Elsa is not being cooperative. You are aware of this. We’ve been paying a lot of attention to her, Ben. Mannerisms, ticks, social behavior, the works. Charlie’s been taking note of everything she does. We want to be able to understand her.”

“And?”

Catie took a long gulp from her tea and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “She’s depressed.”

Ben squinted at her. “Oh. Well, yeah. Isn’t that sort of evident by now, though?”

“Hon,” Caitie sighed, “Let me finish. You’ve got to understand that there are many different levels of depression. Many. We’re not talking about the whole teenage phase where life treats you harsh so you go harm yourself in the corner, in hopes somebody will notice your ‘agony.’ No. It’s not the attention-grabbing sort of thing where all you want to do is dump your overly dramatic crap on somebody who will pity you.”

“I know that,” Ben said.

“Good. Keep listening. In Elsa’s case, Charlie and I have come to the conclusion that she needs some help.”

“And I agree completely, but -- ”

“Not listening,” Caitie said, her voice sing-songy, and continued without letting Ben have room to protest. “Elsa is very bizarre, Ben. Very. She won’t be affected by people who shrink at her all the time. There’s something else there that those types of people wouldn’t be able to lay a finger on.”

“And what would that be?”

“She’s homeless, Ben. She’s broke. No hospital in the world knows that language.”

“Did she tell you that she’s homeless?”

“No. But honestly, think about it. If she weren’t, wouldn’t she have something to get back to? And in the scenario that she’s running away from something, wouldn’t she at least have taken some belongings with her?”

“What about amnesia?”

“Same thing. Not being able to remember anything practically makes her homeless. She’s got no money, no insurance, no family to speak of. A walking time bomb.”

“I know where you’re going with this, and I don’t like it.”

“Do you? Tell me, what do you think?”

“Caitie, she can’t live here. She just can’t.”

“And why not? Why are you so dead-set against it?” She looked at him with curiosity.

“Because she’ll be out of place. She’ll be restless. I can feel something unsettling about her, and it’s worrying me. I don’t think she’s… I don’t think…”

He trailed away. “Never mind.”

“No, tell me. Tell me.”

“I don’t think she’s safe,” he blurted. Then he looked away.

“What makes you say that?” Caitie asked, sounding amused by him.

“Can’t you feel it, too?” Ben asked hopelessly. “She’s a creep. She’s dangerous. She’s planning something, I know it.”

“So cynical,” Caitie sighed sadly.

GeniusBoy Is NOT a Boy

(...No, in fact, he is a man.)

---

"N-no, wait --"

"I can't wait. It's now or never. I would stick around, and all, but..." He paused for a moment to curl his features into a maddened grin, "...But I'm late, right?"

His hand slipped out of Gretch's. Her heart lurched. As he pulled away, the warmth disappeared; a chilled breeze seemed to seperate the two bodies by passing between them. For a hideous moment, his smile shrank away - leaving only his ghostly, beautiful intelligence on his complexion - before all of him faded into invisibility, an icy lack of presence.

Gretch began to shake. She wrapped her arms around herself and rocked, but no motion would warm her of this terrible, frozen emptiness. She looked over her shoulder, but the taxi man had driven away without her notice. She gazed down the deserted streets, and at the lamps standing erectly at post, never wavering. They gave off suffient light, but no heat.

The curb on which she stood was stony, and pointedly thrust between two seperate paths. Nothing stirred. Tears began to fill her eyes, but this time she didn't struggle. They burned momentarily before freezing onto her cheeks.

That man, she thought bitterly. He might as well have ripped my still-beating heart out from under my ribs and ran away with it.

The Birth of GeniusBoy and Gretch's Star

"How old are you?"

"Eight," said the bespectacled girl with the toothless grin. Well, toothless in the regard that she was missing her right canine.

She clutched her stuffed huskie doll protectively, holding it awkwardly so that it rested over her belly. Her short, dark hair was tied into two separate little stubs on either side of her head - pigtails, Cara supposed.

"What's your name?"

"Gretch Althea."

Not good, Cara thought to herself. Weird-looking kid with a weird-sounding name, and a stuffed animal everywhere she goes… She’s going to have a rough time…

“It’s very nice to meat you, Miss Althea. If you have any trouble with any of the other children, do not hesitate to tell me about it, and I will help you.”

Little Althea beamed. “Thank you ma’am!”

And she skipped away.

---

"He looks like he's kind of insane," remarked Hel.

"Well, he is," said Gretchen Althea, who seemed to be looking at her iced mocha in a most guilty way.
"But in an undiagnosable kind of way."
Self-consciousness engraved itself on her face. She was embarrassed.

Hel contained a prideful smirk and slid the photograph back at Althea, who quickly confiscated it and tucked it into her colorful sack.

"Al," Hel began cautiously, "Are you sure about...?"

"Positive," said Althea. She scowled inwardly and drained her cup in a rather cruel swig.

Hel sighed and scratched her forehead. "You never make sense. One moment, it's all, 'See you in Holland!' and the next, you're --"

"Helen, I believe I can keep track of my own whereabouts without you," Althea interrupted cooly. "But thanks for the coffee."

She stood up abruptly, pushed her chair in, and dropped a five by her crumpled napkin.

She went by many names. Althea, Altha, Alth, Al, Ally, Thea, Thee, Atie, Althie. And that was the surname, of course. People only rarely bothered to put her first name into use. When they did, it was never Gretchen. Just Gretch. Short and heartless.

Ruddy

Well, it's been done. The hair-chopping process that is Locks of Love has been completed. I had the pleasure of going duo with this ceremony - my cousin Alicia also desired to have her tresses sheared off and made into a wig.
So we did it together.

Ante Scissor phase. (I'm the one with red hair, in the blue shirt.)



Ante Styling Phase. We both look rather china-chopped and mystified.



The final product. She's ecstatic and I'm ruddy.

Test: Letter for Lillian

My friend wanted me to write this for one of her stories. She says she needs a good confession letter, but she can't write it and she can't get it into character, so she wanted me to help her out by writing my own version.
So here goes.

Dear (Can't Type Name Because I Don't Have Permission Yet),
Hey! Just dropping by to say hello, how are you doing, can't wait to see you, all of that.

Um. I guess this is going to be sufficiently awkward, but that's okay. Awkwardness is pretty much an essential when it comes to me e-mailing people I probably really have no right to e-mail, because it's random and I've never really bothered to keep in touch with you before and there really isn't a good reason for me to do it now, other than to say hello and ask what's up, and make you uncomfortable and weirded-out by a random kid who is bored out of her mind.

Well!

The house is a bit empty, it's just me and Camper (you know him as Jimmy, I call him Camper because of Metal of Honor. Long story)hanging out and eating Poptarts (do they have Poptarts in Ireland? If they don't, curse Ireland, come to America and eat some Poptarts with me and Camper and we'll have a party).

Although, I'm sure you really don't care much about whether or not I'm eating Poptarts, now that I think about it, so forget I mentioned it. You've always been busy, even as long as I've known you (okay, maybe not, because that would be since birth, and how old were you when that happened, maybe around ten? Wow, you're nearly a decade older than me. Not that that's very old. Pretty young, actually. But older than me. I'm a little confused here, help me out. The last time I checked, you were 23. Okay, I didn't actually check, I just know. I'm 14, by the way, so know you can roll your eyes and curse yourself for wasting your time because you've read this far only to find out that I'm loopy, I can't string a single sentence together, I eat Poptarts, and I'm underage anyway, so why bother?)

Ahem! I'm the queen of beating around the bush, as you can see. You probably can guess what's coming, but I want you to keep reading anyway, because I've been stalling to get this out of my system for quite a while now. Gasp, oh no! You must be thinking, Not another stupid drooly teenage girl who has nothing better to do than to waste her time having delusions about me!

Well, sorry, but you're right. Bingo!

Okay, let me just get this straight out while I'm on a roll. This must have happened to you at least thirty times by now, and if it hasn't, then I'm sorry that I have to be the first one to do it and annoy, confuse and derange you.

I think you're really cool.
No, no, that doesn't do it justice.

I think you're amazing!

Well, why wouldn't I? You're only a talented, good-looking, slightly older guy with really nice hair. I also think that you're going places, that you have enormous potential as a really interesting human being, and also I hope that you make it far in the world. (I know, it's like a disease you must have, stupid drooly fan girls.)

Now, don't expect me to get all rabid and jump up and down and start squealing. I detest this sort of behavior. Nope, I'm the creepier type, the kind that just sort of sits there and tries not to get noticed... Watching you from the shadows... don't speak until spoken to... spill my latte all over myself from anxiety when nobody's looking...

You know. The ugly wallflower with a gutteral lisp.

Aren't you lucky?!

Great to have spoken with you, and to have taken up your day. You really don't have to reply to this, you can just delete it in shame and pretend I don't exist, that's perfectly okay. I mean, I'd probably do the same thing if an eight-year old boy sent me a gushy, pathetic and overly-eager confession e-mail.

See you around!

Theory and Fruit

Speaking of Jan Vermeer... I just thought of another person I want to meet.
The young woman who posed for Girl with a Pearl Earring.
All right, so we've all seen the painting, read the book, and watched the movie. But who was it REALLY?! I've just got to know! Oh, imagine meeting her... I don't care if her story is dull and not at all as dramatic and controversial as Tracy Chevalier's story. I really don't care if it was simply a portrait done of a random girl. I just want to know who she was.
I mean, look at that painting. It's grown to almost be an old cliche, like the Mona Lisa. But seriously, someday, just look at it! The girl... of course she's lovely and attractive, but that's only the half of it. She gazes, unblinking, back at us over her shoulder, and the look in her eyes tells us, clearly, that she craves something. She's waiting for something to come to her. Her parted lips and interested glance demonstrate some kind of desire. She wants something from us.
That's why I find the painting to be so utterly captivating. Here's what I want to know: Why would a young woman look at Johannes Vermeer that way? I mean, come on. It's not like she was hungrily staring at a plate of fruit sitting beside him.

Heheheh.

Yeah, I know, everybody has their theories about mysterious paintings. We all want to know why Mona Lisa is smiling at us like she knows a dirty secret. We all want to know why The Portrait of Innocent X by Velasquez looks like Pope Innocent X is going to bite your head off in a couple moments if you stand there stuttering at his holy, perfumed toes any longer.
(Both of these paintings I've seen in person, and let me tell you, it's like staring into the face of God. No shit. Powerful stuff.)
I mean, you know you're a good artist when people make cults surrounding your artwork *cough* Da Vinci *cough*.

Crocodile Wrestling and False Colors

I can't wait until I'm in heaven.
All right, well, I can certainly wait until I die. But after I die, if I'm fortunate enough to get into heaven, there are a lot of dead people I really want to meet. I know that sounds weird, but I feel like there are a whole lot of people that have been on this earth that I should have met. I guess there are a whole lot of people everyone should have met. Like Mahatma Ghandi, or something. But you get what I mean.

Like my paternal grandfather. I never got to meet my grandfather. I want to know what he's like. I want to talk to him. I know I can't do that now, but someday I hope I'll be able to.

And Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Junior. Now there's somebody I'd really like to meet. I'd really love to ask him about his life and times, you know? What it felt like to make a difference. To listen to him. And I know I will.

And Anne Frank. All right, so she was Jewish, but we all believe in the same God, don't we? That's what I think. We all go to the same places after it's all over and done with. I know she's got to be up there somewhere. It's not like I wouldn't be able to see her. It's not like there are restrictions as to who you get to meet in heaven, are there? I sure hope not. Anyway.

Really historic people. Like Mozart. Ohh, what I would give to meet Mozart! Haha! That's gonna be fun. That will be so cool, I'm sure. Can you imagine? Hanging out with the master of the musical universe? Oh yeah. And then all the other musical geniuses, like John Lennon and James Brown. Wow. We'll have a big party.

Ohh, and Steve Irwin. I love Steve Irwin. What a cool fellow he is (was). I was pretty devastated the morning he died, but I'm nearly absolutely positive I'll get to see him there and he'll teach me some snake-catching and crocodile-wrestling tips. You know. For the next time I want to go Amazon-ing and safari-ing.

And you know who I would eat cement to meet?! ARTISTS!! All of them! The Italians, the Greeks and Romans, the Byzantine, the illusionist French, the Danish, the Dutch, the English and American. Every single one! Marc Chagall, Salvador Dali, Leonardo Da Vinci, Paul Knee, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Pierre August Renoir, Henri Rousseau, Vincent Van Gough, Andy Warhol, Georges Seurat, Norman Rockwell, Solomon De Bray, Rachel Ruysch, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Johannes Vermeer.

This is gonna be great! XD;;

Worth

Then who, what, do I make art for? For myself. For everyone. For no one. For an illusion, an illusion which has the potential to become something more. That's what I draw for, that's what I paint for. I await the time when I will know I am capable to make great work, and that's when I'll really do it. I paint to improve so I may become who I'd like to be.
I draw so that I may come into closer contact with my subjects, so that I may better understand him. I draw so that someday I may find that person, sit him down, and tell him to look at me and be still, and he would give himself to me with his eyes.
That is why I make art.
I pray I may accomplish substance, with worth.

D7 Revelations

Because reality sucks...
Click Me Now!
New interest: D7 Studios.
It all started years ago. Seventh grade. My friend Dorian and I were in the technology lab, and we had free time. I had already finished school work, and so I busied myself by getting on a vacant laptop and entering things into the address box at random. (As you can see, I do that a lot.)

What I would do was this: a letter and a number. Promising enough, and probably not subject to accidentally opening some kind of porno site. And so, Endlessly, I entered things like: A8, G5, Y3, O9, S4, on and on, until the magical two characters which started it all... D7.

We both were launched into fits of delighted laughter when we saw that D7 was actually something real. Very real, and sort of cool-looking, to our surprise. It seemed like the teaser sight for an upcoming animated film. There weren't many things to see beside that, though, and after time the one-link page for this mysterious animation, "D7 Revelations", faded into only a memory...

Until the second fateful day we were both browsing the Internet. It was a year later and I remembered. I hastily typed in the address, wanting to check up on the progress, the feeling of expectation. Beside me Dorian leaned over my keyboard to see the monitor. She gasped. "That? I know that!" She remembered, too. There was no kidding. It seems silly, I know, but D7 was something sort of special between us. We felt like we were the first to even discover the teaser page, like we were responsible for it, great adventurers of the Internet finding something random and attention-grasping.
And what we saw, a year later, was even more exciting.
...It was a full-scale website now. Pages of links and contacts, and very nice-looking illustrations of these yet-to-be explained characters. So we found the link for the plot and read away.

My first thoughts: obscure as hell. The story was futuristic, taking place in the "Republic of Texas" and my favorite town of that state, Austin. Apparently, it was connected to the biblical book of Revelations, and the Apocalypse. The characters were people called rather - yes - obscure names, such as Ashley, Sakura, Seraphim, and Nate. Neither of us really understood it, but it was cool.
Then we let it be. I lay in wait, patient.

Months later, I checked back up on it, alone this time, and discovered, to my great joy, that there was a new Pilot episode and a trailor for the animation! I eagerly loaded the videos and watched.
I was surprised. It was not what I was expecting, I'll admit it, and I was a little let down. I had misunderstood the fact that D7 Revelations was privately made, and not a massly produced sort of thing. The animation was extremely sparse in fluid movement and parts of the shots looked slightly wonky and odd.
I let it be again.

Now, (well, yesterday, if you want to get technical on me), I pulled D7 out of my memory yet again, and watched the videos provided on the website. There is now, officially, a full-length first episode!
I have to say, I am utterly captivated. I've moved past the choppiness in what I thought should be "fluid movement" and started paying attention to the very art of each part of the animation, and I'm thoroughly impressed. It's well-done, well-presented, and it doesn't really seem to take itself too seriously. The storyline, although only an episode and a half into the plot, has got me hooked and wondering what's next. The voice acting is nicely performed. The music is suiting, produced...
The whole thing is... well, there's no other way I can put this.
The whole thing is good.

There is murchandise coming from D7 soon, and I have to say, I'm tempted to help out with this whole thing. I really think this story has potential in the big world. All these people need is some support and recognition.
Here's the link again:
D7 Studios Web Site

Worcestershire

I just received the list of summer reading I am to complete by August 9, and so I purchased the books at once... the ones I didn't already have, of course. How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Huck Finn, Lord of the Flies, A Raisin in the Sun.

I started with HTRLLAP, because I felt like it would help me out with the other books. At first, I really liked it. It was very cleverly written, not too spartan, but not too silly. After a while though, it grew redundant. Extremely redundant. The author - Thomas Foster - keeps beating the same theme - but exchanging some of the aspects in each chapter for different ones - over the head like he's pounding a steak. Okay, yes, I understand that writers have active sub-consciouses that sneak in other parts of life, as in daily, casual and unsuspecting concepts like Greek mythology, the Bible, Shakespeare, sex, and the weather. I get it now. You can move on to another point. Or are you capable?

*cough* Other than that, it's pretty good.

Pots and Pans

I had a Blogger-searching adventure just recently. Have you ever typed in random words, plus a ".blogspot.com" at the end, in the address box on your Internet server? I hadn't until about thirty minutes ago.

Most of the things I found were pretty uninteresting. Blank auto-blog surfaces last edited in 2000 or 2001, or something like that, with bored people who talk about their girlfriends and their video games. At one point I even found five angry, male, 20-something atheists who share their blog and make a whole bunch of pissy posts that bash God and Jesus, because those kinds of people are obviously so much more intelligent than the rest of us.

Seriously. Blogger.com is a wasteland. We're all a bunch of socially decrepit, bored, caffeine-fuelled retards waiting for something nice to happen to us. I have never seen such a plethora of washed-up, sparsely-posting folks since MySpace. One of which, by the way, I do not have. And proud.

Among some of the words I entered into the address box (multiple-word phrases, naturally, were typed as one word):

Strawberry, blueberry, Prismacolor, jitters, google, cattle, chicken wings, ramen, ramen bowl, piggly wiggly, canada dry, pilatus, war of the roses, crayon, yellow crayon, red crayon, blue crayon, can of worms, kleenex, webmistress, mayo, mayonnaise, hiccups, nachos, Laura Love, flight simulator, flight simulatore, cyd charisse, quoth the raven nevermore, negative, toxic, random fandom, mountain laurel, meow, mew, josef stalin, pots and pans, mercy now...

Etcetera...

As you can see, the cherry coke is keeping me up a little late.

Utterly and Shatteringly

Well, that was much too serious, that previous blog post down below this one. Sometimes I get all these terrible thoughts locked up inside myself, and they just keep coming in, and if I don't let a couple out I fear I might sink through the ground with the weight of them.

It's an embarrassing post, but I'm not going to delete it. I don't think I really need to. Someday none of this will be painful. Someday I'll just laugh about that stupid guy in the red shirt. No problem.

Anyway, my question is, why do things like that always have to be such a big deal? Why can't people just handle those things smoothly and not be so utterly and earth-shatteringly perturbed, like it's the end of their lives? Does everything always have to be handled with shameless drama and shouting like that, even in public? With old couples standing at a distance, staring at you curiously?

Bah, all that is old hat. I am going to move on. I am going to be a good girl! A good respectable girl that the world will be proud to contain! Molly Cyd will be my apprentice, and together we'll create the greatest Lost Girls commune ever created, and there will be absolutely no growing up involved. Absolutely no angry or pubescent or turned-on-down-south behavior allowed in this new commune.

Can't Send Him This

All right. I have to put this somewhere, because I can't keep it locked up in my brain forever. It's like having a lead balloon cradled in my skull.
So here we go.

Dear Red Shirt,

I guess at this point there's no way in hell I'll even see your face again, because the pictures of you on my phone have long been deleted. Even so, I'm having a hard time erasing you from my mind... as much as that sounds like a heartbroken country ballad. Like always, I'm not that much of a sleuth. I haven't changed, although I hope that you have. I hope you've forgotten my face as much as I would like to forget yours.

Well, let's cut right to the chase with this. I don't like beating around the bush with these kinds of things, so I'd prefer to come right out and say it.

Fuck you.
No, seriously. I really mean that. I'm sorry that you had to stroll into my life, I'm sorry I ever ran into you. I'm sorry I was wearing that stupid shirt with the stupid neckline that tricked you into thinking something that was wrong. I'm sorry I even let you think that. I should have stopped your thinking the moment you opened your mouth and started talking. I should have mentioned even just a portion of what was real. But I didn't, like an idiot, so I apologize.

That day in the parking lot had to happen. For me. For you, you probably could have been perfectly happy to have never known the truth. Staying blind would have been so much more comfortable, wouldn't it? I apologize for disrupting your comfortable world, all right? I'M SORRY. But if it hadn't happened, I'd probably be hanging off the top of a building right now.

Oh, wait.

You're not allowed to take me seriously now, because I'm a young girl, I'm going into high school, I'm angry and pubescent. You're not allowed to see me as an equal human being any more, just because I am a certain age, I am educated in a certain method, and therefore I am not worthy of your time or thought. Hell, if you DID pay any attention to my existence, that would classify you as a dope or possibly a pedophile, and we couldn't have that, now, could we?

I'm not a fool. Yes, I'm fourteen years old and I'm still learning about the world, but I am no fool.

(About that memoir. May I quote you? I believe you said this before I took your blindfold off for you - and you know what I mean by that.

"But the author was a bit full of herself and self-obsessed. But, yes, I know that's how all 15 year olds are."

Look, buddy. Yes, she was self-obsessed, she was thinking only of her own problems. But that's what it takes. Everyone has to go through that shit in order to become a justified human being. It's the growth process, you douche bag. You can't become an adult without it.

It's honest. It's written for a teenage audience, not 30-somethings who are looking back on how ridiculous they were in high school. Fourteen year olds are ridiculous sometimes, and they don't want to read a dried up thirty something's version of high school, they want honesty, they want ridiculousness, they want what's really going on.)

I'm prideful, I'm blinded, I'm self-centered, I'm indulgent and cliche and typical.

And you're not?

You're the one who bloody followed me down the fucking hallway.

No, you're not allowed to listen to what I say, because my words don't mean a thing, do they? I'm too stupid to know any better, because of my fucking age. Is that it? I'm just not good enough for you, no matter what I do. No matter how hard I try to become a better and more respectable person for this world to contain, I'll never be good in your eyes, because I'm young, and more specifically, I'm what it means to be young.

Well, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I wasted your time, I'm sorry you regret ever having known me, I'm sorry I humiliated you by being who I really am.

And even though I think you could redeem yourself, I'm not going to let you have that chance. After all, you didn't give it to me. I'm just fourteen - I don't need that, do I? I probably wouldn't understand what it means, anyway.

マイレポート!

Well, I can't read Japanese. That doesn't change the fact that I have the power of Edit > Copy > Paste. Typing in different languages makes you look smart, right?

マイレポート!
写真。 をご覧いただきますとBlogger チームからの最新情報をご確認いただけます... アメリカ合衆国! 自己紹介。 チーム メンバー。名。ユーザー統計。フル サイズで表示。連絡先。の利用歴。性別, 星座, 場所... ホーム, 概要, Buzz, ヘルプ, 言語, 開発者向け, ストア, サービス利用規約, プライバシー, コンテンツ ポリシー... ヘルプ情報。 携帯端末。または。ブログ では、すばやく簡単に投稿が可能です。意見交換やコミュニケーションなど、いろいろな目的に利用でき、しかも無料です。ブログ の利用方法。つのステップで簡単 ブログ 作成! アカウントを作成, ブログに名前を付ける, テンプレートを選択。時に更新。次回から入力を省略?! アカウントにまだ切り替えていませんか。古い : アカウントでリクエストしてください。アカウントを使用してログインしてください。このアドレスを使用して、Blogger や Google の他のサービスにログインします。 お客様の許可なく、お客様のアドレスが第三者に公開されることはありません。半角 6 文字以上をご使用ください。ブログ投稿に使用する名前。左側の画像に表示されている文字を入力します。のサービス利用規約 (英語) を読み、承認します。未入力の必須項目があります! 上の画像に表示されている文字を入力してください。利用規約に同意してください。

Yeah. Basically, all the script above is gibberish and stated in random segments. Enjoy!

Childish Temper

Current "Want List" of July.
* Getting hair cut for Locks of Love.
* Special-order TWLOHA T-shirt.
* The Delgados' CD, entitled HATE.
* Books: The Deathly Hallows, Eclipse, The Far Sweet Thing, and the sequel to Fruits, which is Fresh Fruits.
* Some more nail polish.

Current "Need List" of July.
* New socks.
* Shampoo and conditioner.
* School supplies for August.
* New hinge for closet door.
* Paper for alcohol-based markers.

Goals for the school year of 2007-2008.
* Kill the childish temper. No more outbursts please.
* Just be a happier, more optimistic person in general. Stop being so glum! Stop seeing the bad before considering the good!
* Responsibility. Schoolwork first, lessons first.
* Be more organized with homework and projects. "I lost it" cannot be an excuse.
* Focus, focus, focus! Be dedicated to the task at hand! Don't doubt concentration.
* Clean bedroom.
* Meet some new people. Get out some more.

Toys

Molly Cyd is getting sort of demanding these days. She's in that stage where whenever I sit down, where ever I sit down, however I sit down, she comes and climbs into my lap. It's a bit cute and pathetic. "MC!" I say, all taken aback, "You are invading my personal bubble at the moment!" Then I pick her up and set her on my pink beanbag, which she doesn't particularly care for because she's so little that her paws sink into it everytime she tries to move. Someday when she's big I'll let her sleep there.

She also likes jumping up onto my desk and rubbing up against my computer monitor while I'm typing, and she leaves traces of kitty hair all over it, in colorful clumps. It makes me sneeze, which spooks her and then she jumps off the desk looking dejected.

I think she's a sensitive kitten. She doesn't like it when I giggle at her. I just can't help it... she's too cute to be serious...
I guess all kittens are like that.

Fabric Head Bucket

You know what I was told recently? That I look like the girl Vermeer painted, with the pearl earring. It's just because of my headwrap thing, I guess. It's really more of a pashmina, but I do all sorts of crazy stuff with it. So one day I wore it like a turban and two people in the same day told me I look like that girl, but with no earring. (I didn't get that. It's called Girl with a Pearl Earring. I had no pearl earring, so that pretty much just makes me a freaky chick with a headwrap. It takes away the whole point of me looking the painting, right? ...Okay, so it doesn't work that way. Oh well.) And really, I'm no Scarlett Johansson, I just know how to take a mildly convincing photograph.

Most of the time I just look like a goon.

Cumulus/Euphoria/Pebbles in a Lake

So he started lecturing me on Close. I was all, "Excuse me? You think you're so smart, don't you? Well, let me tell you something. I've met Chuck Close." Shook his hand, in fact. He's all right, I'd say, as far as people go. As an artist, he's incredible and inspiring and shockingly... well, whatever, you know what I'm gonna say, because that's what I always say when I talk about art, and I know my art, even if I'm young. It doesn't take some spinster to know some great stuff when I see it, right? So I know my Close when you ask me about my Close. ...When not the the mosaic style, his portraits are so overwhelmingly detailed that half the time it takes me moments of staring to find parts of the painting that prove that it's not photography.

-

She was sitting there reading Freud. Most of the time I don't mind smart people, but this was kind of strange, a twelve-year-old reading Freud and not looking the slightest bit mystified. There was another book under her arm, but she would not let me see it. It must have been something like Iris Murdoch, or maybe even Angela Carter, but you can never be sure with these types of people. The thing is you really can't read Angela Carter without reading Shakespeare. Well, actually, you can. It just takes some of the fun out of it when you don't.

-

I have to get this out of me. I have to just eject it from my system so that I don't go crazy and pull out my hair. The truth is...
The truth is Jackson Pollock sucks. Okay, well, he doesn't suck, but he's not all that he's famous and cracked up to be. I can throw paint at a canvas, too. I can make hundreds of layers of colorful splashes. Oh yeah, you're all edgy and original, you're respectable, Sir Jackson Pollock. Give me a break! I'm sorry, but anybody could do that. Sure, it's cool-looking. But it's not a gift. There's only so many pictures of choatic dribbles that I would like to look at in an art gallery.

Insert a Penny Here

So tomorrow is my birthday. Turning fourteen.

I Wikipedia'd my birth date. I already knew about Julius Caesar, because he's my homeboy. So I chose a bunch of familiar and famous names to show off, haha.

I was born on the same day as Julius Caesar, Kristi Yamaguchi, Julio César Chávez, Amedeo Modigliani, Abigail Williams, and Henry David Thoreau. I think that's pretty cool, except maybe for the Abigail Williams part, because she was some kind of evil-scapegoat-using Protestant jail bait, but you know, whatever. Although she was only 11 when the trial ended. In the play The Crucible (in which I played the part of Goody Putnam, which was fun because she yells a lot) she's 17. Does that make sense to you? Makes sense to me. Arthur Miller is unpedo. T'chyea.

Did you know, they have Anna Tsuchiya on iTunes? I kind of fainted when I saw it. Then I bought "Rose" because it's evilly catchy, and even if it weren't, I would still have to buy it according to tradition. NANA forever.

Magnificent

I tried to write yesterday and today but it didn't work. The moment I opened to the document I just froze up like a dried walnut. Nothing came out. Just seeing my words made me nervous so I had to close the document.

The bad thing is that I actually have a deadline and readers waiting to indulge in the next chapter. They get sad when I don't post up something new. They complain a lot, too. Which is fine, because I would complain too. But, I mean, come on. I'm not Stephen King here. I can't spontaneously explode into hundreds of novels. That would be cool, though.

And another thing, there is no such thing as genius' pain. That's a load of bull and anybody you pities themselves for being so smart needs to go stick their head in a bucket and chisel down on their ego a little. Just get over yourselves. We all live on the same rock.

Buum Haa

The forth was as expected. I indulged in overly-sweetened Italian ice and gave myself a headache. It was a beautiul thing. The orchestra ripped on with the old cliche, 1812, and the firworks were pretty fantastic.

Here I sit with a can of Cherry Coke, with another empty one crumpled at my feet.

I've been writing a lot lately and I feel like my backside is going to turn into a sack of potatoes if I sit around here typing any longer... but I can't stop with this one thing that's been returning to my mind like a bad dream. I mean, the thing isn't a bad thing, it's just too much a part of what I've been concentrating on lately... kind of painful to think about and difficult to share with people... I'm terrified of showing people. Nobody's allowed to see it. Nope, not a soul. Just me and my dumb head.

I also noticed I can't write properly on paper. I always write my best in front of a keyboard, because things flow so much more quickly that way. It's like those old-fashioned typish secretary rooms where you walk in the front door and you see fifty women in 60's clothing all pecking away at lightning speed and all you can hear is that infernal clacking noise of typwriters. Yeah.

Okay, so maybe you really have no idea what the hell I'm carrying on about and you're totally confused and think I should go take a trip to a psych ward. Whatever floats your boat.

Anyway, I write better when I'm alone and I'm in a big open space without any clutter and proper resources. I've only actually written in a place like that once, but that's when it worked best. Haha. The rest of the time it's just stuck down in the basement with a headache and a pack of ginger ale, surrounded in insomnia... and badly filtered light. It's like sitting in a marshmallow down here. I hate it.

Fried Oreos

Tomorrow is the Forth of July! You know what that means, right?!

Fireworks!

Coffee!

Fireworks!

Music!

Festivals!

Late-night fortune telling!

Fried Oreos!

Fried everything!

Fireworks!

Yup. Being American might be a bad thing nowadays, but we should get at least one day to be blind and prideful without feeling guilty about it.

Way Over

I would like to make it known that I'm starting over. Way over.

Not in the whole sense where I get a fashion make-over and become some babe and go be bitchy and rich and marry eight guys in three years. Not in the sense that I start dressing in a more sophisticated way. Nope.

Just in the sense that I renew myself. Now is a good time to do it all again, with a clean slate. I'm officially going to become a much better and much more steady girl. Somebody who is more clear-headed and doesn't get in over herself with confusion.
I just have to find a good time to start doing it. I guess I could start now, but I feel like I have to see or feel some kind of change in me or around me or on me to do it properly. To do it like I really mean it.
I've already put a nontrust block on all the sites I used to visit daily. I've already decided never to visit any of them ever again because it takes up way too much of my time and I'm always stressing about them. So that will give a gate-opening to the new and improved me. A better me. So that I can see myself as a decent person again.

I'm thinking of starting the renewing process when I cut my hair. I'm doing it for the Cancer children... a program called "Locks of Love". It has to be a cut of ten inches or more, so I guess I'll just go with about eleven inches and have it layered or something like that. I've never given much thought to my hair, to be honest. I don't go and obsess with it like most girls do. It's long, it's thick, it's red, and it's getting a bit heavy to lug around. I want to get rid of it but I don't want it to go to waste... so Locks of Love is absolutely perfect because I'm helping myself and I'm helping somebody else.

Next year I'm going to be a stronger person, a better thinker, somebody who makes wise choices and doesn't blow everything off like it's no big deal. Because somethings really are big deals and need to be treated specially. Next year I'm going to be good.

Sticker on the Seat of Your Pants

I don't know what it is about late-night reading while sipping some decaf and watching my brother play violent video games at the start of July. I just don't know. But it's oddly comforting and homey - part miring oneself in the inconsiquential tales of Isabella Swan and Edward Cullen for the tenth time, part the steamy decaf making me weirdly sleepy, part the sound of artificial machine guns firing away to off-beat background music.
It makes me nostalgic of Christmas, during the break. That's when he and I did that most. He'd sit there for hours before the television screen and battle off on NHL 07 or Medal of Honor, and I'd drift into literature on the couch behind him. Silently keeping each other company. It's a sibling thing.
Just another year to do the sibling thing. Just one. It's his last year at home. He'll be a senior this coming August. I'll be a freshman. Freshwoman. (Whatever.) It'll be sad. He's looking at CCM as his main choice. I hope hope hope pray pray pray he'll get there. I really really really do. After he's gone the house will be empty and quiet and there'll be no more electric guitar jamming, or random and jubilant shouting about hockey, or weird smelly friends of his coming to visit at ungodly hours of time. There'll be no more laughing about quotes from The Princess Bride or watching Wayne's World fifty times or pausing movies at frames when an actor's face looks weird and making crass comments. No more.
I'll have to treat this year very specially so I can correctly spend my last sibling-ish time at home. Of course, we're siblings where ever either of us goes, but it still feels final as... you know. Children. We're not really children, not exactly, but something close.

On a different note, I'm thinking about the way school is going to be next year. Different is the word that comes to mind.
When I was a lot younger differences didn't scare me half as much as they do now. I was flexible and I would work with whatever happened. But not now. To be honest, I get sort of anxious when I think about the way school will be.
Well, I already know I'm going to be somewhat of a freak of nature, because I always have been for my entire life, so that's okay and good. I've got that role down pat, no questions asked, thank you very much.
It's just that I have to be a freak of nature in a different place. At all the other schools and places I've been, it's been all right. I've adapted easily and made lots of friends.
But this is the big cheese, we're talking about, here. What you are in big-bad-public-school high school kind of sticks with you for the rest of your life, even if you do change after time, it'll stay with you like a sticker you sat on that clings to your pants pocket. There's no telling when it'll fall off.
I'll be okay.
But I don't know if I'll be great.

Cyclical Breathing

I drink a lot of ginger ale. I don't know why, but I find it to be a nice substitute for most pop. I've recently gotten over the shock of the fact that it's caffeine-free - it would be ten times better if it weren't - but that's okay.

Mental note: Frank's Natural > Schweppes > Canada Dry >Big K .

Schweppes is the stuff they give you on airplanes, Big K is the stuff they sell at the Pig, Canada Dry is what you get at Target, and Frank's is only found in health food stores.
As you can see, I'm quite into the ale.

--

I just finished rereading Jane Eyre. The last time I read it, I was nine. Now that I understand it more deeply, I feel it is safe to conclude that Mr. Rochester is the sex. Except for maybe the lead singer of the Sex Pistols, because, you know. It's a law that Sid is The Sex, with capitol letters, to show that he is the reigning man. Mr. Rochester is just sort of there as a seperate entity.
In fact, Sid is so much fitting to The Sexiness, that I named half my kitten after him. But it's spelled the girly way. Molly Cyd. The Molly part just sort of seemed like it belonged in front of the Cyd part, to make it flow more evenly.
Anyway, like I was saying, Mr. Rochester is pretty triptastic. In a different way.

Today, I was listening to a music stream on my friend's website, a song called "The Singing Sea." It's from an anime show called Cowboy Bebop, which I guess I should see, but haven't. That's beside the point, and the point is this: The lyrics are messed up. Observe:

The singing sea/ The talking trees/ Are Silent in a noisy way/ The stars are bright/ But give no light/ The world spins backward everyday// A rainbow rat/ A checkered cat/ Go tail in tail around the road/ The mouse is pleased/ The moon is cheese /The sun is shining hot and cold// A golden bird/ Today I heard/ Sitting upon a siver branch/ His little song was very long/ Which made me sad and start to laugh/ My sister he/ My brother she/ But there is only me in the family/ When I grow up/ I’ll go down/ The river to the Singing Sea.

Molly Cyd

So, I've been talking to my kitten, Molly Cyd. She's telepathic, but most of the time I understand her just fine without hearing her mental voice. Her meows are explanitory enough.

Molly Cyd wants to go outside. She isn't allowed to, though. I signed a contract at the animal shelter, in fact, which stated that I keep her indoors for the benefit of her own well-being. M.C. doesn't like it at all. The birds are tempting her.

"You wouldn't know what to do with a bird, even if you caught one," I told her.
She looked bummed and started rubbing on the window pane. Then sat, blinked, and cocked her head at me. She wanted to know if any of my other, previous cats had ever caught a bird.
"Yes, and they tore them apart, too. You're too nice to tear apart a bird."
She bared her teeth, as though she were trying her convince me, Yes I am.

Then I told M.C. that she was too small, because there were birds out there that would eat her if she didn't take them down first, and she hopped off the window pane, defeated.

Thunderwood

Summer is blooming. Or, rather, it's sort of overgrowing its little vegetable garden. The southeast haze is hanging low and the sun doesn't go down until nine. I guess that's normal at the beginning of July... but that doesn't make the situation any less irritating for a person like me.

The main reasons why I'm not really digging summer:

1. It's hot. That means that hot coffee doesn't seem as relaxing. It means I sweat more. It means there are mosquitoes.
2. I'm bored. Days slip by like something gooey and oozing slides down a hill.
3. School starts in the middle of the summer this year. August 9. Who, in all of the name of the holy Universe, decides to start school on August 9? As though August 16 weren't early enough?

My old school didn't start all that early.
I went to a private middle school. It was tiny and cute and I knew every single person of the eighty-six that went there. I had to wear a uniform. I wasn't allowed to wear make-up or earrings or have my hair down. (That was the only bad part.) I liked that school a lot. The kids weren't like other kids. They were considerate and they listened to what others had to say. It was all about developing opinions and sharing thoughts.

So I graduated this past May, and now I'm off to big bad public-school high school. Like the rather unintelligent newbie to the world I am.

In the month I have left before being thrown back into purgatory, I'll drink lots of iced coffee and read a bunch of English literature. That should keep me in an effective state of euphoria before I have to face real life again.