3 Things

1. False eyelashes, when applied correctly, look pretty damn sultry. Adding that to the "someday I'll care enough to do that regularly' routine. Downside, you can look like a trampy rag doll if you put them on wrong. It's like lip liner for your eyes. 

2. Post-Modernism- YES. I have been waiting so long, and I finally get to do something other than 19th century literature. I just think it's ten times better when you say really bizarre, fucked up shit, but in the most beautiful and lyrical way. Yes, please. Give me more psychopaths with a mastery of syntax.

3. Halloween costumes-- really struggling. How can I be ironic enough that English majors will find me clever and not basic, but still recognizable to the general public, and remain attractive without totally disregarding modesty. I'm just asking for smart, funny, sexy type ideas. Is that so much to ask? Oh, and also cheap and easy. 

Rough Day

In Fiction and Addiction, the professor has made it clear that it's going to get heavier in subject matter. We've discussed the cycles of addictions, and the way people can get trapped in all sorts of things in a pretty terrifying way. We started with laudanum dropping, and ended up at how Freud thinks our dreams are manifestations of our wishes, and how that translates in our reading (even in scientifically, he was never very accurate). We've gone into PTSD, trauma, depression, mourning, loss-- tough class, is what I'm getting at.

Right now we're reading To the Lighthouse, which I'm absolutely loving and it's playing with my brain in all sorts of ways. He doesn't always go into the biographical information, because he doesn't want it clouding our analysis, but in this case he made an exception.

According to professor soul-suck (I actually like him a lot, I've just never had a professor that made me so enthusiastically joyless before) To the Lighthouse is Woolf's way of trying to write herself out of the spiraling depression she was trapped in, which makes it seem way more intimate now.

Taking that one step further, he read us the suicide note she left for her husband before she loaded her pockets with rocks and waded into a river. It's haunting.

Dearest, 

I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can’t fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that – everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. 

I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been.
-V

It hits pretty close to home. Still trying to shake it off.

Call for Action.

I'm not going to do a long blog about this, or even discuss it.

But every time I read news about Rebecca Sedwick, I want to cry. I'm so frustrated with this system. I'm so tired of ugly people, and the people that become victims to that ugliness. I'm tired of parents that stand idly by, and allow their children to become monsters.

But mostly, I'm tired that we haven't actually found a way to solve this problem. 282,000 students a year are attacked in high school physically-- I don't trust that stats on how many are bullied, but this number speaks for itself. Suicide is still the leading cause of death in children under 14. In 2006, and I'm sure this number has risen, 216 children under 14 committed suicide. It's estimated that for every one, there are 10 attempted suicides.

We're working so hard to protect our children from gunmen, but their real risk is to each other.

Writing Motivation

So. Much. Writing.

Why can't there be a class on blogging? I could excel at that. Let me write creatively without the structure of an essay, and I could go for days. As it were, I'm starting to run out of ideas for short stories.

"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."

-Scott Adams

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.
-Sylvia Plath

Raging.

I'm going to preface this by warning everyone what a stupid blog this will be.

Okay, you're prepared.

I'm tired of "sorority girls" being a thing. By "a thing," I mean an easy target to talk down on. Someone posted on twitter that being a sorority girl makes you less attractive. I don't care about the being attractive thing-- what bugs me is that somehow, it has become this wildly agreed upon opinion that everyone can hate on greek people, because they all are shallow and collectively suck and don't deserve the respect to not be stereotyped.

Everyone is first to defend the band kids, the emo kids, the music lovers, the hippy burn outs, nerds, gay people, minorities-- but when it's something people perceive as socially popular, than it just becomes cool to talk shit. It's the same issue I have with people talking smack on the rich business man-- since when did success become a bad thing?

Ok, there are a lot of answers to that question, but I just mean in a really grand scheme kind of way-- if I tell people I was raised poor (which I wasn't), I get more respect and admiration from people than if I say I was raised with money (which I also wasn't, at least until high school).

It's the negative thinking that "those people" (greeks, rich people, whatever) assume they're better than you, so it's ok for you to talk shit on them to even it out or something. Couldn't just let them go on having a positive attitude about themselves; because that translates to "stuck up," even though we preach and preach about having good self esteem. What we really mean is, you should have good self esteem if you feel badly about yourself, but once you become well adjusted and do start to like yourself, you should be more self deprecating and be brought down a peg. Because you don't deserve to feel good about yourself.

Mostly, you should just learn to be comfortable with yourself, and not bully your way to the top by telling other people they aren't as good as you. There's room for all of us up here.

Ungodly Hour

You know those songs that aren't that special, but they're in a tv show at a really pivotal moment so you have to cry when you hear it?

This is one of those.

It probably doesn't mean much if you don't know the characters, but this is where my heart goes. If you don't want to watch the whole thing, skip to the last two minutes.

Reasons Why I hate "We Can't Stop"

I started this list and had saved it for a rainy day, but after the VMAs now seems as good of time as any to post all the reasons "We Can't Stop" is the pits.

-Being vaguely lesbian is not the same as being edgy. That stopped being a thing in the 90s. Actually, it was never a thing, but it stopped being recognized then.

-You can't have your "I'm a woman now" debut by humping huge stuffed animals. Actually, there was nothing that rang even close to "I'm a woman now" in the performance or the video.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/what-miley-cyrus-was-trying-to-do-at-the-vmas-vs-what-miley

-Sticking your tongue out a lot reminds me not of Kiss or any other heavy rock star, but of the poses I used to make when my grandmother took my picture when I was a toddler.


-Saying "it's my mouth I can say what I want to" and all the other blah blah blah variations comes off as those obnoxious people that say "I can do what I want, America is a free country" when you ask them to stop pulling your hair. I know this is a nitpick point, because it isn't like any of her other songs are lyrical masterpieces, but this is the biggie for me. Maybe I'm just an old grouch, but all the teens out there (and I worked with a lot of them over the summer) love the song because it's a "let me be free to be me" song. I perceive it more as a bratty 5 year old than a liberated 20 something.

-Same with the "only God can judge me" line. Wrong. We are all judging you. These are all cliches that got used up in the 8th grade.

So that's all I have to say about that. Hating on child stars is pretty tired, and now hating on this particular song is as well, so no use going much into it. But seriously, I hate this song.