The Animals We Love

I think that sometimes it's harder to lose animals than it is to lose people. The animals we love teach us things that humans will never be able to - when I have wanted to scream at every person in my life, when I have been convinced I hated all of them, I could never have hated my dog. Their utter devotion, their helplessness without us, their unquestioning affection all teach us compassion and empathy in ways that you cannot learn from another person, or from reading out of a book, or from being lectured to.

I understand the value of a human life, and that people must always come before animals, but I understand also the value of implicit trust and unquestionable love on our ability to develop emotionally. I understand that when my cat followed me when I was 8 and tried to run away, he didn't know what he was doing - what matters is that he did it anyways, and that his helplessness in the face of the world, and my worry that he would get lost, in part motivated me to sit in the bushes around the block until I cooled down and went home, rather than continuing on and getting lost and hurt. I understand that when I cried and my dog sat with me until I could breath again, he had no idea what was going on, he had no grasp of human emotion or what those tears meant. That didn't matter then, and it doesn't matter now. What matters is that he sat with me, that I was comforted, that his distress was perhaps more genuine than any half-true reassurances a friend could offer.

Now those animals are gone. Those dogs, who sat beside me growing up, who inhabit nearly every one of my childhood memories, have passed away. One at the age of 17 after a long and happy life as the adored companion of three little girls. One more recently and far too young, only 10, the victim of invisible disease. That hurts the most - all those missed years without my constant companion. I still expect to trip over him, in his usual position sitting by my side, when I get up off the couch. I still expect to hear him barking when I come home. I expect to be bowled over by 80lbs of childish joy every time a chain jingles and he thinks he might get walked. What hurts more, though, is knowing that he didn't understand. That if he suffered, he didn't know why. That when he died alone and in the dark I was in a brightly lit ER being unnecessarily poked and prodded while he was the one who needed medical attention. It feels like betrayal to have left him alone in the face of that when he never once ignored my slightest suffering.

Our cat we lost to kidney damage, the only chance of saving him an operation that only could have prolonged his suffering. That was easier. We put him out of his suffering, it was relief instead of loss. Our other cat, now, has run away. My sisters are putting up posters for him, but I doubt he'll come back. He was a nasty cat, and hated us. He'd bite you if you paid attention to him and bite you if he thought you were ignoring him. Moving traumatized him and for the last two years he has lived mostly upstairs, hiding under beds and hissing at the new cat and the puppy whenever they get near.

Despite that, I'll miss him. Mostly because he was the last remainder of the animals that I grew up with. I pity him his suffering, I mourn his inability to understand that he was loved, no matter how evil and ugly. Ignorance is the most terrifying thing of all - ignorance of your worth, ignorance of death. When people die at least they understand what's happening. At least they know the whys, the hows, even if they don't know what's waiting for them afterwards (or if anything is waiting at all). Some people might find comfort in knowing that animals die without knowledge of those things, but I never have. I don't think I ever will.

Having been taught so many things by them, I can only feel guilt that I couldn't give them that one reassurance at the end in return, no matter how much I loved them in return for their devotion.

Looking and Not Seeing

I feel like a lot of people go around with their eyes closed and their fingers in their ears. They don't look at the world, they don't see anything but their lives laid out right in front of them.

They look at paintings and photographs and see a theoretical beauty, served up for their interpretation, rather than looking at everything around them and seeing real beauty. They listen to music because it fills the silence, not because they love it. They read novels about knights in shining armor and female heroes that aren't too heroic (because that would be masculine) instead of listening to the stories the people they know have to tell, or picking up a history book. They ask God or the television what love is instead of going out in search of it themselves.

Maybe I just know a lot of people who never really do anything with their lives and a lot of people who do so much with their lives, and I compare them too closely. Or maybe they need to be compared, measured up, and found wanting so that they can learn to fix it.

Purity, Abstinence, Morality and Lack Thereof

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

The Social Network (Love or hate or a bit of both?)

I keep going back and forth on whether or not I actually like The Social Network. Before I get into the detail, let me first say that it was an incredibly enjoyable movie. Witty, fast paced, rude and completely unapologetic, its characters were completely unlikable in all the right ways and there was hardly a dull moment. It won me over in the first scene, where Mark Zuckerberg the asshole is dumped by his girlfriend with the qualifier 'it's not because you're a nerd, it's because you're just an asshole'. (Nerd boys, there's a lot of truth in this. If you're complaining that you can't get a girlfriend because you're 'nerdy', ask yourself first, are you just a dick?)

But here's the thing: I can't guiltlessly like it, because it was also unapologetically sexist. I don't find that as bothersome as a lot of the blogosphere does and I certainly didn't ruin my movie experience by sitting there analyzing all the ways that it was an inaccurate and offensive portrayal of women, but it was there and it can't be avoided. Aside from the intelligent and fed up girlfriend that appears in the first scene as the catalyst for Mark's creation of facebook (by first inspiring him to create a site where girls at the school can be compared side by side and rated) the only girls to appear in the movie are mindless objects for the enjoyment of the male dominated cast. To the extent that they have any influence over the main characters, it is negative.

It's one thing to say 'the main characters of this movie are male because the creators of this company were male', the main defense I've seen bopping around the few negative reviews of The Social Network, and another thing entirely to say that it's justifiable to have treated every single minor female character as a sex object. Even when the company has expanded to include dozens of workers and interns the only girls who get screen time are having lines of coke snorted off of their stomachs and personally delivering things to the main characters so that they can be ogled and cat called. In the background the male interns are shown writing code and doing meaningful tasks for the company...with no women among them. Aaron Sorkin's defense that it's just a reflection of the reality of the techworld doesn't really hold water. There are women doing meaningful things in that environment, they just didn't fit into his storyline so he didn't mention them, even in passing. Alright, whatever, but at least acknowledge what you're doing.

At the same time, at least the sexism wasn't portrayed as a good thing. It just was what it was. The characters were clearly assholes for a whole slew of other reasons and no one was jumping to the defense of their treatment of the women around them.

So...I still don't know if I like this movie or not. I like asshole characters in general. I appreciate portrayals of the more negative side of human personalities and interactions, without a hero or a villain. Frankly, I like seeing people screw each other over and treat each other like shit and, well, act like real people in real relationships. Because real people are generally kind of assholes. Even the nicest ones fall into that trap from time to time, and most of us aren't the nicest that we could possibly be.

So what I think it comes down to is this: I would recommend this more as a source of great amusement, it's far more well written than most anything else I've seen all year, with great pacing and decent acting. But take it with a grain of salt. Realize it could be better and take it for what it is, not what it could be.

NaNoWriMo Is Coming

The site (nanowrimo.org) has been reset for the year, the forums wiped clean just to be dirtied by our rambling minds again. It's a fresh start! I'll win this year, I swear!

For those of you who don't know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, and takes place every November not just nationally but internationally. It's a challenge to write 50,000 words in a month (which is short, as far as novels go). No, there's no prize if you win. But you get stickers!

It's an exercise in just getting words on the page. Quantity, rather than quality, is what matters. Save your red pen and editing for December! Or January, when you're not quite so sick of what you just wrote. Being a perfectionist about writing and also awfully lazy, I've never managed to win, though one year I came close and it was only due to an evil conspiracy hatched by my computer and flash drive that I lost (a previous copy of my novel, backed up on the flash drive, was copied over all other existing files at four in the morning, erasing around fifteen thousand words and brutally murdering my motivation).

I'm going to win this year, though. Really I am. Surely it will be easy to write 50,000 words about impossibly adorable genetically engineered pocket sized dragons eating faces, wreaking havoc, and causing moral quandaries, all with a side of questionably motivated genocide and corruption.

Right? Right.

I'm still nervous.

Finding the Words

There are so many things I want to talk about. I am nearly overflowing with topics, with thoughts that would do better on a page than in my head. But...I don't seem to have the words. Anyone who knows me can tell you that that's a rare thing, I can talk about nothing forever, and when I actually WANT to talk? You've got no chance of getting me to shut up. I'll tell you what I'm thinking whether you like it or not. Apparently I intimidate people with how vocal I am about...just about everything (pardon me if I think that, perhaps, those people NEED to be intimidated, so that maybe they'll learn to speak up, too).

But today I just don't have the words. Today I'm tired. Two weeks ago I fell off of a horse, all that remains as evidence is a scar on my face and a lingering sprained ankle, but healing is tiring. My heart hurts, because caring is tiring. People are strange and complicated animals and understanding them, or at least trying to, is tiring. (I don't think I'm ever going to perfect that skill, but maybe I'll learn to find an off button for whatever makes me want to understand people.)

If I was going to try, I could write about: the mustang roundup (though I already did that, and I just need to edit it from an essay into a blog post), my accident and how much I hate hospitals and bitchy ER nurses, the damned horse that hospitalized me and how much I love him, or how much fake concern from people who hate me annoys me and has made me want to hit something in the past few weeks. If not those, then I could write about how I've been reminded lately why I haven't consistently watched the news in years and why I stick to abstract concepts of social justice rather than current events, because the world makes me sick and I like to cling to what little faith in humanity I have left. Or I could be a bit less tragic, a little more hopeful, try to remind myself that there are things worth paying attention to by talking about the It Gets Better Project (and how much I sometimes love Dan Savage) and all the amazing people who have already participated in it and who are spreading it to reach those who need it. I could say that sometimes Violet Blue, or maybe The Rejectionist, say really cool things.

Perhaps I could try grounding myself in real life instead by writing about Beth DiCaprio who runs the Grace Foundation and continues to give me amazing opportunities to do inspiring things (and has really cool dogs that I want to kidnap).

I could meander into discussing music and how much I love it and need it and really need to acquire more of it. I could tell you how cute my puppy is at great length, because she's damn cute and and a really good foot warmer to boot. Had I the words, I could probably go on about books forever because, you see, I have so many and they're all pretty wonderful. Maybe even a mention of Banned Book Week and how ridiculous banning any form of literature is, though I haven't bothered to read a banned book this week even despite having meant to.

But, see, I don't have the words. I have all these really cool words, strung together in sentences and mashed up into paragraphs, but I don't have the right words. I can't find the ones I want. So I guess that will all have to wait.

How I Got To Where I Am (or My Journey to Unschooling)

College is the goal, the motivator in everything we do from kindergarten until high school graduation. To have attained that goal in some small way by entering the Freshman English classroom is, or should be, the end of a journey from point A to point B and therefore a success story. For me, in this English classroom, it is not. Traditional schooling has always proved to be a stumbling block for me; from the first grade public school class environment to what is referred to as a school-at-home curriculum I have not fit the expectations of the system and have sought alternative educational options, in the process abandoning the idea of completing my entire college education at a four year university for the sake of convenience and monetary constraints.

In a system that teaches to the middle in an attempt to average out the success of all its students there is no place for those who excel or fall behind. If you require any special attention you are pushed aside to be dealt with later, with whatever small amount of energy or resources might be left over after the majority is pacified. At least, that was my experience in the public education system starting at a very young age. Having finished my work early I would be punished for trying to otherwise amuse myself. Misbehaving because of boredom or disenchantment with underpaid and undereducated teachers who had little to no passion for their subject, I was sent to counseling. If I could not conform I must be labeled in a way that could be more easily handled by the administration.

On one particularly memorable occasion the school administration tried to tell my mother that I had Tourette’s syndrome. Well, yes, I did have several motor tics as a child—coping mechanisms developed to help me deal with an environment that made me nervous and uncomfortable. I cycled through bouts of habitual eye blinking and throat clearing, two main tics used to diagnose people with Tourette’s, as well as other twitches, though I can’t ever remember manifesting all of them in the same time period. I suppose I could have had/have Tourette’s, but these were not the reasons that they brought up to defend their opinion. No, they had no real concern for my mental health; they simply wanted to diagnose me with something, anything, to makes their lives easier. If I could be put into a box and medicated then their lives would be simpler. If they could say I spoke out in class and had no respect for them because I was somehow damaged as far as they were concerned then I wouldn’t be back-talking for any legitimate reason like oh, say, they can never given me any real reason to respect them. (On an interesting side note, I have never again experienced any of these tics after leaving school.)

After having completed fifth grade, using a curriculum that I had finished through a brief stint in independent study two years previously in third grade, my parents removed me from public school to use a homeschooling program with course work modeled off of the public school standards. That worked little better than public school had in the first place and was quickly abandoned and followed by a descent into the little known but much despised practice of Unschooling. I spent several years going through a process commonly referred to as ‘deschooling’. I don’t remember much of those years. I slept a lot, I sat around and ate junk food, I watched a lecture series on Ancient Egypt and tried NaNoWriMo for the first time. During that time I refused to go out and socialize or talk to people, especially people my own age. A lot of people would classify that as highly unhealthy, but I’d say they’re wrong. I, as a person who was really fucked up at the time, needed to take that time to get my feet back under me. Trust me, when I came out the other side of that I was a much happier and more functional person than I had been for years before.

As my family got the hang of the lifestyle of Unschooling we discovered that it fit our interests and goals far better than public school ever had, mine especially. For the past four years I have studied what I was interested in, pursued my passions, and learned far more about a broader range of subjects than my friends in public school have ever dreamed. I’ll be the first to admit that there are some subjects that I’m more than a little behind in, but I have every confidence that I’ll easily catch up just as soon as it’s relevant that I apply myself to them. I think the fact that I easily tested into a college freshman English class, scoring nearly as highly as you can on the test (though they wouldn’t let me test OUT of the freshman class, sadly), after having had absolutely no formal English curriculum for the past five years, just goes to show how very little you really need to follow school standards to get the education you want and need.

Next semester I’ll be taking a full course load at the local community college as a highschool graduate, though in some respects I’ll still be taking highschool level classes to catch up, but for now I’m doing what I love: playing with horses, volunteering at The Grace Foundation of NorCal (these first two things tie into each other, which makes me very happy!), reading, writing, having interesting discussions with interesting people, and going on as many adventures as I can while I’m young enough to drop everything and run off to have fun.

Tell me, how is that a less valid way of getting where I’m going? College is still a goal, but it isn’t THE defining goal anymore. I’m partially there already. I’ll make it the rest of the way eventually.

Amid Weeping There Is Joy (or HSC Conference 2010)

I find that it becomes infinitely easier to look back on things and find the good in them after a few days. The same is true for looking back and seeing what truly was as bad or worse than you thought it was at the time and figuring out how and why it went so wrong. It's somewhat therapeutic, after an event such as this, to lounge and think about the whys and the hows and pick apart the stresses, fights and failures.

When you put 25 teenagers together and deprive them of sleep, feed them junk food and put them under stress breakdowns will inevitably happen. Adding in 150 of their peers relying on them for amusement doesn't help anything. As well as things went (and most of them went wonderfully) bad things do happen. Things that could ruin the truly unique experience of the conference as a whole if you are willing to let them, and I almost did.

I've come to realize that there were a lot of tears shed in vain and perhaps some words that would have been better off left unsaid, but many things were justified even outside the heat of the moment. There are some people that will never be likable, actions that are unforgivable, trusts that won't reform. Those things won't change even after the initial bursts of anger and betrayal have passed. Nothing will make false rumors less biting or lies less hurtful, and they can't be taken back.

But there are also just people who made silly mistakes and said stupid things to the wrong people and never really thought about the consequences. Forgiveness isn't really in my nature but when it comes down to it well intentioned ignorance is not the same as idiocy and has to be forgiven. And the upside is finding out that what you thought was malicious really wasn't, which kind of brightens things up. :)

So when it comes down to it...conference was pretty good. A lot of the people were really awesome, and really gorgeous, and I wish I had been in a better mood to enjoy their company. We put together a few supercool parties and dances that were totally worth all the effort, and arranged way more workshops than I want to think about.

But my favorite part was probably Sunday night, hanging out and detoxing and letting go of all the things that had been stressing me out.

I'm still exhausted. I'm still kind of upset. But I'm actually pretty happy. Looking back there's always joy amid the tears.

I can't wait for next year. <3

Conference Countdown

This summer has been crazy: beautiful places, beautiful people, adventures, drama, sickness, parties, my 1 year anniversary with my boyfriend, and a new puppy, just to name a few of the things that have happened in the last few months. It's been pretty epic and I've hardly been home at all in the past month. I think my family is starting to wonder if I'm trying to abandon them.

But August is drawing to a close, school is starting (for you conformists who attend XD), tons of people I know are being eaten up by Community College, the awesomely hot weather is going to fade...

But we're going out with a bang because the HSC Conference is this weekend!!! I'd have a hard time thinking of a better way to say goodbye to summer then this. Parties (SUPERHERO THEMED, WOOOOO! the nerd in me can't stop grinning), dances, crazy workshops, not to mention tons of awesome people in one place. And all the weekend before I start class (only one, damn them) at Sierra community college.

I can't wait! Only a day and a half left until it starts....

A Beach Vacation

If there is anything in the world that could make me believe in magic it would be the ocean. There's nothing quite like wiggling your toes in wet sand and looking out past waves to a completely flat horizon, or swimming in something that seems to go on forever. It's the kind of thing that causes existential crises or (in the case of little girls with overactive imaginations and a taste for reading fantasy novels) creates wild imaginings of swords, sorcery and the kick ass princess (Disney and the damsels in distress can go screw themselves). Or maybe talking dolphins, but I'm a bit past that phase.



The beach was beautiful, obviously. The company was great.

Universal studios was awesome.



I got some really amazing leg warmers.



And we all arrived home safe, sound and sunburned.

Much as it annoys my mother to hear it I never wanted to leave. Puppies and ponies aside, I'd stay in SoCal forever if I could.

So thank you to my lovely friends and their family for taking me back there, at least for a little while. <3

On the Road Again

Let me start by saying it's summer in Bakersfield. If you don't know where Bakersfield is or what it's like, let me advise you against visiting. Ever. It is a craphole at the best of times and on days like this, in a motel with shitty air conditioning on the way to somewhere Better, it is even worse.

It was nearly too hot to walk across the parking lot to CoCo's for cold drinks and pie (PIE, four teenagers who nearly did not want to walk to get PIE!).

I prefer the driving to sitting in a motel staring at walls, but then again I've always liked driving. Cramped, overheated, noisy car full of teenagers and all. Even when it's boring. Even when you're driving down I-5 with nothing in sight but hills and stock yards full of too many cows in too little space with no relief from the stink of the shit they're standing in. Sitting in a car going Anywhere But Here is peaceful, thoughtless, and one of my favorite ways to spend time.

Sitting here with the cheap prints on the wall and the rose wallpaper and the mediocre tv and no relief from the heat is not.

But at the end of this road is the BEACH. Anything for the beach.

Going Home

It's probably strange that I still think of San Diego as 'home' after all these years, a place where I last lived permanently when I was 5. By now that's less than a third of my life and by any sort of logic San Jose, Morgan Hill, Sacramento and Folsom all have as much right to a claim on my heart as San Diego does.

The Coyote Valley was where I truly grew up (and so far the place I stayed longest) but it has less than no hold over me. It's a place on the map, a few mostly forgotten memories and severed friendships I was already growing out of before we left. Mostly it exists in stories that start with 'Back when I was a public school kid...'. And Sacramento...well, I don't think the greater Sacramento area will ever be home. No matter how long we stay, no matter how many friends live here, no matter how many memories we make. It remains a physical place to me, with no emotional connection. It's not a place I've ever planned on staying in, a glorified cow-town full over conservatives and white trash (not to say I'm any better). When I leave I don't miss it, when I come back I look forward to going somewhere else again. The mountains, maybe...the mountains I love, but not the valley.

Unlike the others San Diego remains a place I can call home in my heart (a silly romanticized notion 'Home is where the heart is', but don't teenagers love those things?) above all others. Maybe because above all else I love the ocean, and they have by far the best beaches in California (though I won't turn my nose up at NorCal coast in the middle of winter, if that's all that's being offered). Or because the weather suits me (hot and dry and hot and dry, a sort of permanent summer). Or because of the theme parks and museums that I hardly remember. Because of the Zoo and the Wild Animal Park that I utterly adore and could spend weeks in at a time. A romanticized notion of childhood, or because that remains the place I associate with family and yearly trips to visit them, though the family that I care about have all moved here by now and there's no excuse to visit anymore.

It's silly, pointless, stupid to have such an emotional connection to a place that only exists to me in cloudy memory, but there it is. And I can't wait to be going back, going Home, even for a little while.

Puppy!

So I recently got the cutest puppy ever.

She comes from Animal Control by way of The Grace Foundation of Northern California, from a litter that would have been put down thanks to apparent ringworm (which they didn't actually have) had they stayed at the shelter. Fortunately Beth DeCaprio of The Grace Foundation picked them up, brought them back, and found them all foster homes.

When I first saw her she was skinny and badly proportioned, with an angry red rash all over her body. When I picked her up from her first foster home she had gained a little weight and the remains of the rash were much faded.

In the past week and a half she's grown significantly and has no signs of the rash left, has gained a much nicer coat and a lot more energy (she's quite literally bouncing off the furniture when she's not out like a light).

We have absolutely no idea what breed she is--The Grace Foundation's guess was Corgi/Australian Shepherd, but while her siblings look much more like Corgis she appears more Chihuahua (ew) or Rat Terrier, with a Border Collie pattern, if not coloring. Oh well, I'm a big fan of mutts.

Not only is she adorable, she's incredibly sweet and people-motivated, making her easy to train despite her high energy. She sits, comes to her name, and has begun begging at the door to be let out. As soon as she gets her shots (and it stops being so damn hot!) we'll take her out and train her how to walk on a leash.

Of course, our cats hate her. And our old dog isn't really sure what to do with this bouncy little ball of fluff, though I'm sure he'll come around eventually.

Toy Story Is Proof That I Have A Heart

Toy Story 3 is not a children's movie...it's a movie for all the has-beens, the children that grew up and left childhood behind in the past eleven years. Four out of the five members of my family that saw it today cried--the only one who didn't is eleven years old, with a dollhouse made out of the entertainment unit and a collection of Bratz guaranteed to trip anyone who walks through the living room. This movie wasn't aimed at her, not yet.

It's a movie for tweenagers trying to forget their childhoods, straining to grow up but not quite there yet, and teens desperately scrambling back from the brink of adulthood and wondering where all that time went. Shown in snapshots of yesteryear that probably match the pictures on your mother's wall: Andy constructing fantasy lands out of linkin' logs and imagination, Andy asleep amidst a mountain of well loved toys that are, inevitably, forgotten in a dusty toybox. The toys scramble to hold onto what they've known; Andy grows up, forgets them, prepares to leave them in the attic with only one exception.

My own toys are gone: Barbies beheaded by a ten-year-old tomboy, toy cars crashed, action figures lost and left behind in multiple moves, a toy school bus that got dropped on the cat and was forgotten somewhere down along the line. There's no safe warm attic for them, they died in a dump somewhere. I have a collection of Breyer horses (missing hooves and legs, paint scratched, propped up against each other in the windowsill) and a pile of stuffed animals next to the bed, and nothing else. Somewhere there is a stuffed chihuahua with a pink bow tie named Mr. Snookums (you see, I've always been cruel) who went with me to Florida when I was ten and will no doubt go to college with me when I'm 18. No toddler is getting their grubby hands on these, they're mine, and I cried when Andy passed his off even though they went to a good home.

Andy grew up, went to college, and passed his childhood on to someone else...but it went out with a bang, and in doing so has made me want to cling to mine a little harder.

An Ode to Theoretical Writing Space

(Prompted the The Rejectionist's post about writing spaces http://www.therejectionist.com/2010/07/rejectionists-writing-room-also-yours.html)

My writing space is currently only theoretical, in that I have never actually written in it. Currently it is That Space With a Desk and Some Books and Notebooks and Crap Overflowing onto the Floor. It's actually a walk in closet, and it looks like this except less blurry:

There is no chair at my desk because I haven't used my desk since I moved it in there around a month ago. And yes, that is a Pirate's of the Caribbean poster. Everyone is allowed to go through a horribly depressing period of liking bad movies once in their lives.

As you can see, there is no space to actually WRITE in this 'writing space'. I cannot fit a computer or a spare notebook on the desk at this point. The desk is a crap catcher for books and notebooks and magazines and horse figurines and pens and incense and jewelry and pictures that don't fit on the bookcase (and a dead plant that I only recently removed, as I have a black thumb and cannot seem to keep anything alive, especially in the summer heat). You could conclude logically and perfectly accurately that this space has not actually been used for writing in a very long time.

But, you see, it's my writing space because as long as I have a named 'writing space' I can continue to labor under the delusion that at some point I will do some actual writing in it, and get out of this horrible slump of writer's block that has been consuming me lately.

Today I Nearly Scratched My Eyes Out

(Or Why Seeing Twilight: Eclipse Was a Bad Idea)

To start with, let me justify why I even wasted money on this horrible piece of cinema:

1. I just learned that if you go to the first showing of the day of any movie at a Century theater it's half price. So I didn't waste MUCH money on it. This makes me feel better about myself.

2. I feel the need to mock things from a position of knowledge because knowledge is power and if I know more about something than you do I can probably make you feel stupid even if you aren't (have I mentioned that I'm an elitist bitch? I'm an elitist bitch who likes to feel smart. There, it's been said.)

3. Honestly I just needed a laugh and to be braindead for awhile.

So yes, I saw Eclipse today with a friend. It was truly terrible. The first Twilight movie actually truly impressed me with the incredible amount of work that appeared to have gone into it simply to make it watchable. Sure the acting was terrible, the special effects were low budget, the script was overall cheesy and rather stilted, the characters unbelievable, and the entire plot (what little there was) gave me the creeps on a profound level; despite all this it was a Watchable Movie, taken from a book that appeared to have no plot until somewhere around page 300 (which I never reached, having gotten stuck somewhere in the first two hundred pages of He Hates Me, I Love Him) at which point SMeyer realized something needed to happen to make it marketable. In the first Twilight movie the pacing was managed impressively and the plot (entirely pointless and irrelevant to the main focus on the progression of Bella and Edward's ~twu wuv~) was interwoven into the utter schlock that was the rest of it, and was made relevant from the beginning. I at no point felt like falling asleep.

Eclipse cannot say the same for itself. I sat in my uncomfortable movie seat, next to the poor unfortunate boy I had dragged with me to the early morning showing, and constantly changed position just to keep myself awake. Next to me the boy slammed his face against his knees, whined, pouted, and mimed stabbing himself.

The movie jumped between scenes with nothing to connect them, leaving me blinking and thinking 'why is this relevant to what was just happening?'. Bella and Edward spent a lot of time speaking in monotone about their Epic Love and inability to be apart while making unconvincing doe eyes at each other. Jacob, who could previously have been argued to be the Better Choice, committed minor sexual assault. Charlie (Bella's father) found it amusing when Bella was forced to break her hand on Jacob's face because of this. Edward and Jacob growled at each other and treated the supposed object of their true and earthshattering love as just that, an object, giving her very little choice in anything they did.

At one point Bella got horny and tried to jump Edward's bones and as always, Edward knew what was best and made the decision for her and said No Sex For You. Bella is then portrayed in book and movie both as the uncontrolled seductress with no knowledge of what she's actually doing, and pure loyal all knowing Edward must protect her from herself by denying her what she wants. Edward proposes and Bella gives in because he won't sexually satisfy her OR turn her into a vampire unless she does, Edward is of course a manipulative bastard. Then Jacob and Bella cuddle on a mountain while Edward watches, and Jacob thinks loud dirty thoughts to piss Edward off. Down bellow a random clan of newborn vampires attack the Cullens and the werewolf pack. Jacob leaves to help them after emotionally manipulating Bella into kissing him and saying she loves him (she does, but 'not enough' because Edward is perfect for her, obviously). Edward sees all this but loves her all the same. Then Jacob kills vampires and Edward kills vampires and Bella is thoroughly useless.

At one point near the end Jacob tells Bella that loving him would be 'as easy as breathing' and she wouldn't have to change anything for him. But nope, Bella would rather abandon everything/one she's ever known to be get dead with a virgin a hundred years older than her.

Is this not making sense to you? Good, it's not supposed to, this is pretty much exactly how the movie was paced. NOTHING MADE SENSE, NOTHING WAS CONNECTED, THERE WERE RANDOM FLASHBACKS. NO COMMON SENSE WAS USED. Everyone did exactly the opposite of what they were advised to do.

The only watchable part of this movie was near the end, where vampires were literally punching each others faces off. But you can find a clip of that online and avoid wasting your money and your braincells like I did.

I don't wanna grow up...

My sister is obsessive. Painfully so, in fact. She watched one documentary, decided she wanted to become a Marine Biologist, and has since researched colleges and requirements for the programs and already begun having a panic attack about how much work it will be. My sister, by the way, is thirteen.

This makes me feel guilty. This makes me feel like, perhaps, I should go about researching college requirements and where I want to go beyond the vague idea I have always had. After all I'm 16 and college, with all its requirements, is beginning to loom over me. Inevitably this will all end in a panic attack (because I'm already tired, stressed, and in pain--on a side note, I just had oral surgery to remove a benign tumor in my gums that was formed by inflammation in my gums that was caused by a bone spur on my jaw, and they also took out that bit of my jaw, and there is now a giant goddamn hole in my mouth that is slowly healing. That was last week, and while I'm off the vicodin I'm still sleepy and downing motrin by the fist full, and trying to get back to regular life is Not Working Well, and I hate everything and need a nap.)

But it's something that needs to get done. In fact, I need to start taking community college classes in the fall semester to finish highschool with any sort of passable education. Where I will find time for this with any possibility of continuing to have a life I do not know. Oh lovely science and higher maths, you bitches, I am not looking forward to you.

I'm off to research college :(

The Musings of the Sickly

I feel the need to post something. Not because, at this moment, anything particularly interesting is happening, but because I just feel the need to put something down in words. That's not to say that nothing interesting has been happening--it most certainly has been!--just that right now I am laid up, high on Vicodin, after having oral surgery. And there is nothing that can make the world interesting when your jaw is aching and you can't focus your eyes for an extended period of time.

Of course, this gives me time to catch up on my blog and book reading, and maybe write a bit. All of these things have sadly been falling by the wayside of late, as I have been running from pillar to post doing all sorts of crazy things (learning to bellydance! watching my sister learn parkour! taking horseback riding lessons! volunteering at The Grace Foundation of Northern California, which is a truly lovely place, and helping school some of their horses! hanging out with friends! taking pictures of dead cows ! getting in shape for the summer! trying to fit some family time in there somewhere!). Such is Unschooling life.

Several times recently I have been asked 'how do you fit school work in between everything else you're doing?' (mostly by kids I know who go to school, and envy all the time I have to run about doing things while they sit in class rooms). The answer to those questions is: I don't 'fit schoolwork in' anywhere. Living my life is 'schoolwork', and yes, occasionally I have to break out the math textbook (which I really need to catch up on in preparation for taking a community college math course next year), but that's part of my life too. One of my friends, who is a homeschooling mom and also the mother of three of my friends (yes, shocking, children can be friends with parents!) put it best in a conversation I had with her awhile ago. She said that the word school really has no place in the description of what we're doing, we're learning by living our lives. I wish I could remember her exact words, because they were much more eloquent than that, but it gets the point across.

I agree with her to an extent. School is not a word I associate with what I'm doing at the moment. School is a word I associate with institutionalized education, with spending the majority of my time being force fed useless information, with discomfort and lack of personal expression. None of that has anything to do with the way I am currently living my life. I'm learning useful things, I'm re-learning how to be a functional member of society (and the ways in which I don't want to be what is thought of as a normal, functional member of society), I'm comfortable with my life, I'm capable of expressing myself through words and humor and physical appearance in ways that would not be thought of as 'acceptable' within a school environment. I'm not sitting in front of textbooks, learning the same thing everyone else in the country is expected to learn, and not really processing any of it.

So School is not what I am doing. School, really, has no place in a description of my life. And my life is how I am learning. Un-schooling is not really a full or positive description of that, but seeing as it's the best one we have I'll continue to use it to find people like me, and to explain myself to people who don't understand it.


I hope this is a coherent expression of my thoughts, though I certainly didn't start writing with the intention of going off on this tangent. I guess I'll have to check back when I'm sobered up and no longer in pain.

College

I've recently realized that I have never, in my life, considered NOT going to college. I have never thought about doing something that did not require a degree, or even that I might WANT to do something that did not require a degree. After all my parents are both college educated, one of them is a lawyer, we are on the upper side of middleclass....why would I be anything but just like them?

Well, maybe not just like them. It's been my passion for as long as anyone can remember to be a veterinarian, and they aren't exactly the richest people around, especially after a potential 8 years of schooling and student loans....but I never thought that I would want anything but that 8 years of schooling. I'm still not sure I do want anything but that, but I'm beginning to consider it.

There are so many other things to do within the range of my particular passion. I'm really interested in going to a farrier's school to learn how to shoe horses, though I'm not sure it is a skill I would be willing to pursue as a career (as all the middle aged farriers I have known have been in incredibly bad shape, and as their backs and knees got bad it became very hard on them to continue working). I'd love to have the opportunity to professionally train horses, though I doubt I'll ever have the skill. I'd love to do rescue work, like so many of the people that inspire me and are helping to shape my life at the moment.

It's something I'll have to think about...but it's nice to have realized that there are other options.

Of Introductions

Lately I feel as though I need a place to express myself. To put thoughts down on a page somewhere public enough that I must really think before I write, and yet far enough removed from life that I will not overly self edit. I maintain a livejournal, a myspace, a facebook page. None of these things meet my needs, as I keep them firmly separated from from each other and from various other aspects of my life. Livejournal is for the world of fandom: fanfiction, meta, roleplaying and for the people I have met within that self contained internet world. Myspace and Facebook are for day to day life and keeping up connections with friends and family, people with many different beliefs and sensibilities that force me to self edit at least a little out of respect for them and a desire for their continued respect for me.

A blog, then, seems a reasonable place to mix both worlds and introduce things I have been uncomfortable pursuing in either setting.