They Once Sounded Right and Rare

Once more back in my house brooding. Brooding isn't fun and it doesn't get you anywhere but its' hard when you're scraping the bottom of the barrel. Thanksgiving; my folks n' me and my grandfather. About all that's left of the family because everyone else is too busy with their new families and cheating spouses to bother to invite us. Couple of jobs listed at the U neither in my field; both asked for a major in English or Journalism in which I am wishing I had gone into instead of art. Who the hell wants an Art major? Trying to get together with a friend to go see an exhibit at the musuem except she's busy with work, haha. Both of graduated college and now I'm unemployeed and she's working at Payless Shoes. Fun world this is. Don't know how long of an entry this will be; no heat in the house except for the space heater and I am brooding. Which is no fun because I am swimming with loser vibes like, 'why aren't I a famous millionare yet?' and other realistic goals like, 'why haven't I published my One True Masterpiece yet?' and thus gaining famous millionare status. Maybe I should write about my dreams with sparkly blood suckers and become an instant success. Or maybe tap into the solid neurosis of the teenage girl mind and spit out plenty of angst/sexual themes and supernatural drama and BINGO! I, too, can be a writer.
What the hell, at least then I can avoid getting a job bagging groceries or ringing up customers and annoying the hell out of them with, 'have you signed up for our super-special discount customer service package? Do you want to? do you? do you? do you?'
While shopping, my mother was actually greeted at World Market with, "What's up". The hell? If I said that to a customer in my retail days my boss would have taken a chunk out of my hide and nailed it to the wall. There was strict protocol that included being neatly groomed, no visable tattoos, treating the customer with respect and manners. Of course this being ten years ago maybe things have changed drastically.
Could you imagine spending your eight hours asking over a hundred customers, 'do you want a membership' over and over and over when all you're doing is ANNOYING THEM?
All right. Angst rant is now over.

List for tomorrow:

-Mail in request for volunteering
-get Paypal squared
-walk to school, check boards for work
-write
-look for jobs again online

Sparkly Vampires and Flesh Wounds


Am reeling in abject horror at the cash cow that is Twilight. About two years ago I caught my fellow classmate reading Twilight in my Medieval Studies class and she described it as 'good' so naturally I read it. In all fairness the first Twilight book is entertaining. Long, drawn-out, filled with 'Edward is HAWT' and not much of a plot but entertaining. Then I learned there was more and more to be written. For the most part over the last two years I ignored the hype, hearing bits and pieces about it because frankly it gets shoved down your throat everytime you leave the house (and the Twihards who exist in droves don't help things). Then as the fanbase grew to terrifying proportions I reread Twilight (and New Moon AND Eclipse and because I didn't want to waste anymore money of this virulent CRAP I read a summary of Breaking Dawn)and began to pick up some really disturbing underlying messages; physical appearance trumps connection through shared experiences and any other normal, sane means of establishing a romantic stable relationship. How many times do we have to hear about Edwards physical 'perfection'? Even more disturbing are the nearly mysogynist aspects of Bella's character whom we are supposed to identify with. She is introduced as a mature, intelligent 17 year old girl and before I went through the series I thought, 'oh good, here is a story with the potential that this average, ordinary girl will overcome great hardships and grow as a human being to become a independent, strong, intelligent woman'.

Dear God, how wrong I was.

I slogged through Twilight and New Moon and Eclipse before I realized that no Bella would never grow as a human being, no Bella has no personality, NO Bella will never learn how self-destructive and damaging it is to pin your entire happiness completely and wholly on another person and finally NO this is not a good series and please don't call it literature.
What I did take away was; aging is bad, staying young forever, even at a horrible cost, is good, hotness is all that matters, learning independence puts the kibosh you winning a hot, white- knight guy, that men like it when you are helpless and stupid (are we stuck in the 50's or something?)that apparently the undead can impregnate a woman, suicide is emo and cool, vampires sparkle, aaaand getting pregnant is bad (like having the child eat it's way out of your uterus Alien-style bad).
As one critic said before it wouldn't be so bad if this book was marketed as just a plain-ol' adult book meant for idle entertainment like on the level of a Harlequin Romance but the fact that this book targets teenage girls is horrifying. The fact that some Twilight fans are so psychotic they commit physical VIOLENCE over this book is terrifying(type Twilight Violence into Google). That this makes a social comment on the culture of America is a sad, sad thing.

Which brings me to wonder how the HELL did Stephenie Meyer become an instant success that has pretty much set her for life for fame and fortune when people with actual talent can go a lifetime without ever getting published or recognized? This is what I absolutely HATE about the arts in general. Since the modernism of art nobody knows the difference between talent and shit that should be burned anymore. At the college a lot of the art shows include things that make me go, 'WTF is that?' why is sticking pubic hair on a computer mouse 'art' and why the fuck is this person getting thousands of dollars for it? (no, seriously that was an exibit) Why is standing on a block of ice while playing the violin make you famous for centuries to come because it's 'modernism'? Why is a sparkling vampire so damned popular when Anne Rice's Lestat kicks the crap out of Edward and his blah non-personality, non-fanged 'vegetarianism' and honestly I haven't been a Lestat fan since I was sixteen and went through a vampire phase in which now I look back and shake my head at my teenage girl silliness (and even in my most extreme obsession with popular culture I never beat somebody upside the head with a book because they didn't agree with me). There isn't much more to be said on the subject other than I shake my head at you America and all your silly ways.

On a more personal note/entry I am volunteering at one of the libraries in town because this doing nothing/not working is driving me towards madness and depression. Depression for sure because I think I crossed that madness line some years ago. Its hard to sleep at night when I close my eyes and all I can think is 'where the hell is my life going?' and 'I don't think I'm ever going to find a place to fit in'.
Also have been victim of stupid self injury( I'm BELLA, har har); dropped a plate and sliced my finger open while doing the dishes, got a wood sliver shoved into my pinky toe from my freak wooden flooring and now I will wear shoes in the house instead of socks and wore shoes that gave my heels big fat blisters when I walked to college and back yesterday.

The Jitters


Been away for a while; close to a week. This is what I get for not reading labels; made calzone with store bought pizza dough and now I'm sitting here with a headache and anxiety - the pizza dough is made with sulfates which sets off the anxiety. and it occurs to me AFTER the fact that I could have made home-made bread and not get this reaction. Oh, stupid me. God, this sucks - the feeling like your teeth are set on edge for no particular reason. I guess I should drink some water or something.
But the calzone was freaking awesome.
Stayed for five days or so to take care of my mom, who after recovering from surgery is susceptible more than usual to colds and the like so she's sick. Kind of an interesting feeling taking care of cooking and cleaning for the old folks - guess I was spoiled as a kid. The good news is my cooking is picking up. I can do several dishes that taste pretty good and include some form of vegetable.
Staying at the parents house also means there isn't much to do so I spent most of the time hand stitching things and practicing sewing which is getting slowly better. Trying to get together a stock of plushies for Etsy. Not doing so well on the book/story. Eh, it comes and goes but I did discover old writing that I did some years ago about pirates that was hilarious. Maybe I'll post it here later ( I had no idea I was so funny)
Hoping that on Sunday I will be able to attend a D&D meeting at a friends house. Not that I have a great interest in it but it strikes me as something potentially entertaining in a mean sort of way (I never said I was nice). Observing other socially inept idjiots pretend to be something else for a few hours.
The job search....is rather nonexistent. The university is only hiring campus police right now (seriously, out of the ENTIRE campus with 17,000 plus students the ONLY opening is 'campus police')
Perhaps tomorrow I'll scan the online wanted ads again to see how nothing has changed since the last time I looked. This is it for now unless the anxiety doesn't lesson in which I will be back to whine more or possibly post pirate story.

And Then There Are Some Days...



when I'm glad I am a social shut-in. There are a lot of misconceptions in the world that in the past years I've had to sort out; I can actually thank the media/Hollywood/the general tone of society for about 80% of my neuroticisms. I can thank them for my obsession with growing older, the solidified terror that I'm too old and when I hit 30 no one will want me and nothing will ever happen because all the cool things happen when you're 21. I can thank them for allowing myself to get groped by my long ago ex even though it hurt badly when he shoved his fingers up my vagina(I ended up bleeding, one time, I remember); I didn't have a right to say no (ah, stupid stupid youth) because I was his girl and I should please him. I can thank them for feeling like a freak for having solid morals, faith and spirituality, for expecting respect and equality. I can thank them for my fear of talking about mental disabilities because no one wants to talk about it, or understand it, or pretty much acknowledge its existance which led to a hell of a lot more pain than I had to withstand than if someone said to me, 'look, you have a problem its not a big deal but why don't you find a counselor?' rather than the, 'just get over it, I miss how you used to be, what's wrong with you? why can't you just get over it?' that I got instead which surprisingly did not help the situation.

If anything that I've taken away from my decade of being twenty-something is that I've spent nearly all of those ten years dismanteling all the shit the world feeds you and I'm lucky for it. Because no matter how bad it got, whatever happened to me, whatever someone said or did not say it is NOTHING in comparison to what other people have been through. I, at least, was fortunate to have the insight and intelligence to articulate something is wrong and how could I make it right? By actively seeking out knowledge about myself and world around me I think I am a better, more well-rounded, sane person for it. I think, ironically, that by spending my early twenties as a total shut-in it actually spared me some major grief that most people go through at that age.

Every time I think, oh crap look at the seven pounds of weight I've gained on my thighs, how disgusting - I can counter it with, would you be a better person with skinny thighs? would you be wiser, funnier, more popular, a more well-rounded person because your thighs are skinny? and some days it works and I believe there isn't anything wrong with my body and its just fine the way it is and some days a life-time of Barbie, Beer commercials and Hollywood Movies gets to me and I despair at my dimpled thighs (then think about how centuries ago being thin was a sign of illness and hey, the next famine we have I'll have a good chance of surviving)

Everytime I despair at the lack of social interaction that I'm supposed to be having (bars and parties and making out in an alley if television is anything to go by) I backtrack and think, what would you actually be doing if you went out to drink and hang out and party every other night? What conversations would you be having? Would it actually be fun to watch idiots get drunk and do stupid things on a weekly basis? Do you think you would you would discuss history and art and all the extraordinary things that make the world go round with people who devote their lives to being in a drunken stupor and having meaningless and often dangerous sexual relations? Is that was you really want? Or would it be better to cultivate the few relationships you have now and put more effort into people who actually exhibit self-awareness and care for themselves their bodies and the people around them? (which sadly they seem to be a very hard type o,f person to meet, at least in this city)

Some days I think I'm pretty well off if a little isolated and its just fine. Other days I keep myself up at night wondering what my life would have been if I'd done things differently. If I were more like my brother or my friends and charged the world like a bull and smoked pot and travled and gotten into stupid relationships and had sex with a bunch of different guys and done all the things that young women do today, who would I have been then? Would I be better off? Would it have been worse? Would I have been more successful? Would I be stuck in a loveless marriage with kids and a life that I hated but didn't know how to change? Would I have been famous? Happier? Crazier? Makes the theory of alternative worlds more interesting, who would you have been if circumstances had been just a little different.

I Wish Halloween Wasn't Over



Not that I did much; handed out candy to kids (yaaay...). This reinforced my idea that little children are something like little monsters. One got a handful of candy from me and then said , 'can I have more?'. One reached right over into my candy basket and helped himself. One asked for a piece of candy for his dad (which I gave him) then asked for one for his pet, his mother, his sister ect. ect.
amusing but at the same time, seriously little children? Five pounds of candy isn't enough for you?
What was weird was that there were a lot of 'grown up' kids. Like I open the door and there's this six foot guy with a scraggly beard, some sort of costume consisting of hobo clothes and blood and he sort of grunts, 'hey' at me.
I think today I'm just really tired of dealing with people. People who cut you off on the freeway so they can ...get to the grocery store with thirty seconds to spare? People who cut in line (seriously, three times today) and finally to my immense joy the rental next door got rented out to YAY college students who stand on the front porch, stare at me and smoke while I do yard work.
This is not a loving humanity sort of day.