Where is the Line?

Song of the Day: 'Resistance', Muse

There's a line between teasing and just being mean.

it helps if the teasing is countered by some genuine niceness on the part of the teaser, but it isn't always so.

I'm all for sarcasm and wit and banter and jokes at other's expense. But when that's all there is coming from one persons, it certainly leaves something to be desired.

I joke with my friends. I'm excessively teasing with some and have reached downright bitchiness with others. But I'd like to think I'm a good enough friend to A) BE a friend when they need me and B) know when to stop without crossing the line. Or at least try to be cognizant of where that line may lie. And hopefully my friends trust me enough to let me know when I've crossed the line. Sure, it's certainly fun to make fun of people and make them the butt of a joke, but not at the cost of a friendship.

What makes me sad is that there ARE people who don't value that friendship enough - or at least don't seem to - and allow it to devolve into nothing more than biting back and forth.

And I know there are some people who use it as a defense mechanism and are afraid of getting hurt - but the way to acquire and maintain a good friendship requires some love to go along with all the jokes, however cliched that sounds.

I wish people could trust people more. But more than that I wish people were more trustworthy.

'Why does the one we love
become the one who makes you want to cry?' - 'How', Maroon 5

Nineteen?

Song of the Day: ‘Final Countdown’, Europe 

So.

I’ve been nineteen for a little over a week now.

And let me tell you, it is just riveting, the changes that have ensued.

^heavy sarcasm^

It just seems like little more than a stepping stone to bigger and better things. Like middle school.

At eighteen you can vote, twenty you’re no longer a teenager, and then it’s on to drinking the the fun of your twenties. And then, you know, growing up and stuff.

But nineteen...

All it really allows for is a slight feeling of superiority over all those silly eighteen-year-olds. The way eighth graders looked down on all the ‘sevvies’ as naïve, annoying little buggers.

Granted, it’s a very necessary stepping stone.

But at this point, it’s hard not to feel like al you’ve accomplished is succeeding at being the oldest you’ve ever been.

And that still doesn’t stop you from feeling slightly superfluous.

‘It just takes sometime 

little girl, you’re in the middle of the ride
everything, everything will be just fine
everything, everything will be alright.’ - ‘The Middle’, Jimmy Eat World

This Could All Be Mine Someday

Song of the Day: ‘A Star is Born’, Hercules (An Original Disney Animated Motion Picture)

Today I got to tour the Paramount Theatre in Seattle.

I got to meet the technical director, props master, and main fly guy. I went into dressing rooms, up onto the grid, into a special viewing room (in which, the TD Mike said, Mel Brooks had been at one point or another), onto the stage (where ROBERT PLANT was rehearsing for a show. NBD.), into the main house, down underneath the stage where the orchestra pit lowers down on hydraulics, and even into the main house where Joe the props master explained how the two front rows of seats can be hidden below the floor to allow for a bigger orchestra pit.

Now, this wasn’t any special trip with a class, nor was it the prize in some competition or something. No, this stemmed from my own initiative. Damn straight.

After talking with some upperclassmen in the drama department at my university, they told me how it was pretty standard for the production majors to intern for a theatre company during the summer. So I decided to look for some opportunities around my hometown - hence the meeting with Mike and the subsequent tour of the Awesome Theatre of Awesome.

All I can think about now is how freaking amazing it would be to work at a theatre. And as an intern I wouldn’t even be paid, but I’m STILL wigging out about it all.

And I can’t believe that *I* took it upon myself to email the technical director at a prominent theatre and coordinate a meeting with him.

Overall, it was such a surreal experience that I don’t know if I’ll ever stop reeling. I got my own private backstage tour of a theatre I’ve only ever been in as a member of the audience. And furthermore, everyone was just so casual about it - and that made it THAT much more incredible.

It certainly is a wonderful feeling when dreams come true.

It’s even more amazing when you feel the beginnings of them forming.

‘From the Dairy Queen to the head of the parade
in a blink your life could change
this could all be yours someday’ - 'This Could All Be Yours', Guster

Text Speak

Song of the Day: 'Mother Knows Best', Tangled: Original Soundtrack

I’d think more highly of you if you knew how to spell properly.

If you refrained from shortening words like ‘you’ to ‘u’ and ‘see’ to ‘c’.

If you stopped using annoying acronyms like ‘idk’ and ‘omg’.

If your grammar wasn’t atrocious and your sentence structure a pain to read.

If you knew the differences between ‘their’, ‘there’, and ‘they’re’.

If you knew the difference between 'your' and 'you're'.

If you actually capitalized the letters at the beginning of your sentences.

If you used punctuation properly at all and, when you do, didn’t use them in excess.

Text speak is all fine and dandy if you’ve got a character limit in your cell phone, but that begs the question: why don’t you just have the conversation in person? Or actually talk on the phone? Video message? An email? Hell, write them a damn letter.

You wouldn’t turn in a paper to your English professor with this kind of crap. Why do your friends warrant choppy writing that more often than not leads to ambiguity and a lack of understanding?

Apparently, text speak such as ‘omg’, ‘lol’, and ‘fyi’ have been added to the Oxford English Dictionary (1).

Now, I’m not free from blame here, either. I do use some of these phrases frequently in my messaging. But more often than not my text speak is outweighed by the fluidity and clarity of my writing. Because I TRY.

I find it sad that we live in an age in which our communication skills are not only lacking than those of previous generations, but it's considered acceptable and often excusable. We live in a time that allows for bad grammar, improper spelling, horrendous sentence structure and an incredibly diminished vocabulary. Granted, we have online thesauruses (thesauri?) and dictionaries. Hell, we’ve got them built in to our word processing software. But outside of class assignments, those resources are rarely used by a majority of this generation. And this generation needs to more than any prior generation.

I’m not asking anyone to be Shakespeare. I’m not even asking for the correct use of ‘whom’ from time to time. I’d just appreciate it if people would realize the impact and importance of words and language and the proper uses of each.

We're losing our language. To my sister the linguist, it's part of the language process - in essence, sometimes it's okay. I complain because I don't think it should be. A lot can be said with words, but it’s not worth a damn if no one can understand it.



'A longer sentence brings no more
than one that I had said before
it's hard to compromise when I see through your eyes
it's just a common view, I guess it's lost on you.' - 'I Can Talk', Two Door Cinema Club



(1) http://www.oed.com/public/latest/latest-update/

Pride

Song of the Day: 'I Just Can't Wait to be King', The Lion King: 1997 Broadway Cast

I have trouble taking pride in myself.

Now, don’t get me wrong, when I’m with my family and good friends, I’m a batshit crazy fucker, and damn proud to be.

But.

Sometimes, I find myself in situations in which I’m making excuses.

Let me clear away some of the ambiguity, here.

I am every synonym for weird there is. Which isn’t to say that I’m ONLY eccentric - there are quite a few normal aspects about me as well. But I LIKE the weird things.

However, I seem to lack the ability to either show said weirdness or openly take pride in it occasionally. Or I apologize for my oddities. When a weird song comes on my iTunes, or someone sees one of the many posters/pictures/objects/things on my walls and question them. Or even when I make a nerdy reference and people don’t get it. Or, those who do are oddly surprised by it and give me weird looks.

Of course, I DO have my fellow freaks and geeks who understand, share, and accept my peculiarity. For most of them, my quirks are theirs, too. And I revel in their company.

But a lot of my time is spent apologizing to people I don’t know when my friends would usually be laughing with me.

Which is another thing that can get to me - the difference between people laughing WITH me versus AT me.

I love making my friends laugh. In fact, I spend a lot of time trying to make them laugh on purpose. I make a fool of myself, act like a dork, do things I wouldn’t do in other context.

But when I’m NOT trying to be funny, even when I’m attempting to be serious, and people laugh - not only does it hurt my feelings, it pisses me off. Or when I do something idiotic and unintentionally look like a fool and people laugh, I feel horrible. Like I didn’t already feel like a jackass, no my ‘friends’ are laughing at me.

...Which doesn’t really happen that often. But all the same. It hurts ten times more when it happens, and it can’t have happened more than a couple of times. But I can remember them more clear than a lot of my favorite memories. And that sucks.

'I hear in my mind all of these voices

I hear in my mind all of these words

I hear in my mind all of this music

and it breaks my heart, it breaks my heart.' - 'Fidelity', Regina Spektor

Le Judgement

Song of the Day: 'Ghost Story', Sting

Have you ever noticed that the insanely offensive people, the ones by whom we get so affronted, are the ones you only ever encounter once?

Like the idiot on the road who cuts you off at ninety miles an hour, making you almost collide with the partition and careen onto the opposite side of the highway. Or that bitch who takes the last pair of Gucci boots when you just KNOW she’s seen that you’re already mid-dive after spotting them from the other end of the aisle. Or hell, even the whore that attracts your guy’s attention for the tiniest millisecond by wearing a push-up bra tight enough to make her cleavage look like an ass-crack.

THESE are the people we bitch about. THESE are the people we seem to ‘hate’.

But the fact of the matter is our beef shouldn’t really be with them. Sure, we’re pissed with the circumstances and they happened to get in way of what we wanted to happen, but when we direct our hatred and anger at them, it’s *kinda* blowing things out of proportion.

Think of it this way: that jerk offends for about 15 seconds, from the time you swerve til you’re back on track and shaking your fist in the air while cursing in their general direction. What about the REST of their life? Hell, what about the rest of YOURS? You may come into contact with this dumbass in another situation, unknowingly or otherwise, and they could buy your coffee in Starbucks when you’re holding up the line trying to find an extra couple dollars. How does this define their character now? One minute they’re cutting you off, the next, buying your caffeine fix – does this make them bipolar? Or simply HUMAN?

People, my people, are multifaceted, despite what we may want to believe. The fuckwad who cut you off may have been in the middle of a conversation on his cell phone and wasn’t paying as much attention as he should have. Or perhaps he was a little drunk, busy having a good time with his buddies. Maybe he had just found his girlfriend in bed with two other men and was having a little trouble focusing on the tangible things in life at the moment.

It’s hard not to make snap judgements about people. We’re all guilty of it, myself included. But I think the world could stand to try a little harder to give others the benefit of the doubt. After all, you rarely think about the jackasses again after your first encounter with them. It might be a better use of energy to try and remember the nice things people do than their asshole moments. At any rate, I’d prefer to be remembered for holding a door open for someone struggling with too many groceries than pushing in front of someone in the hallway while trying to make it to class on time.



'And your sense of culpability
is from the guides that you perceive
will show you grace
oh, when you turn to a ghost.' - 'Jocasta', Noah and the Whale'

The Blower

Song of the Day: ‘Ghost Story’, Sting

When I sleep, I turn on an air purifier (which at the age of nine I aptly dubbed ‘the blower’) so as to provide a blanket of white noise. Not only does it block out any ambient sounds that can keep me awake (as I am a very light sleeper), it’s oddly soothing and helps me to fall asleep quicker (do I have enough parentheticals in this paragraph?).

However. When the blower is on during the day, it drives me a little bit more insane. It just makes everything too busy and the room feel smaller. Furthermore, it’s usually my roommate who either forgets to turn it off when she leaves or just keeps it on whilst in the room. Now, I adores this girl, but it seems to add an extra layer of annoyance for me. As if she’s being selfish or inconsiderate of my wishes. Which is utterly ridiculous, because she is quite unable to figuratively step on toes and would be horrified if she thought she was inconveniencing me in any way.

Which leads me to believe the problem is me. What is it about the blower that makes it perfect during sleep, but atrocious any other time? And it’s even worse when there’s music playing WHILE the blower is on. I LIKE TO HEAR THE MUSIC, DAMMIT.

Lately, it’s been irking me more than usual. And again, it’s not my roommate, just the constant presence of sound in my life. I LOVE music and listening to people and whatnot, but there’s just something about the consistency of the blower that irritates the living hell out of me, which I otherwise find quite soothing.

Perhaps it stems from my high school days. When the blower was on, THERE WAS NO TALKING TO ABBIE. She was unavailable, determinedly so. Not only that, but on the weekends when I would sleep, it would be on til noon or later. Mayhaps it’s the fact that it signifies the END of sleep time for me - and it doesn’t seem to be ending lately.

Which, now that I think about it, explains a lot. I’ve been feeling uncharacteristically restless lately, the kind of restlessness that comes from too much sleep. Not that I’m sleeping too much - it’s just that I’m sleeping more during the day and less than usual at night. Kind of like a housecat, but with actual activity betwixt naps.

I feel like there’s no way to differentiate between my respective states of sleep and awakeness. Not just physically, but in the sense that my brain and heart aren’t getting the exercise they need. Or rather, I’m stuck in a place in which I can’t get the motivation to get the exercise I need. Problem.

I feel increasingly lethargic and - dare I say it? - lackadaisical. And I’m afraid it’ll lead me to a slump in which I can’t extricate myself. More than anything, I’d say it’s the emotional exercise that’s predominantly getting me down. Which isn’t to say that it’s not being aerobically challenged at all - let me tell you, my heart’s been doing some pretty crazy gymnastics as of late.

It’s just.... monotonous. The same thing it’s always done. I’d like a little variation up in here but not only do I lack the motivation, I seem to be bereft of hope. Which is increasingly harder to find with my intensifying state of destined hebetude.



‘If that’s all you will be, you’ll be a waste of time
you’ve dreamed a thousand dreams, none seem to stick in your mind
two points for honesty
it must make you sad to know that nobody cares at all.’ - ‘Two Points for Honesty’, Guster