I live!

Sort of. I've been out in Nascar country for a few days, helping renovate my uncle's house. Well, paint, mostly. Lots of ceiling paint. I am still high on the fumes. I am also sleep-deprived, because...well, most of you know of my small addiction to that sport called Ultimate Frisbee. There's a tournament tomorrow on the beach (well, if you can call it a beach. It's the substitute beach for Texans who don't have real beaches.), and I really wanted to play, but wasn't supposed to get back until tomorrow. So...the only flight option was a 5:20 red-eye out of Chattanooga. I woke up at 3:30 this morning. I have never woken up that early. Stayed up that late? Yes, to my great shame. So I am rather sleep-deprived and yawning now, but tomorrow should be a fantastic day.

I can't get My First Kiss by 3OH!3 or that other Keith Urban song (I Want To Kiss A Girl?) out of my head. I don't know what my subconscious is trying to tell me, but I am bothered by and am fiercely scolding it. Catchy pop songs. We love and hate them.

I think I have stopped making sense, so I am going to go watch Dr. Who or something that doesn't involve higher brain function. Peace, y'all.

He keeps talking. Just talking. Words pouring out of his mouth, and I've heard half of them before. I want to blank it all out, just nod vaguely, but my mind has a perverse need to listen sharply, to catch every word. He thinks he's being helpful. You keep repeating yourself! I want to say. Over and over. Same words. Same thoughts. He wonders why I seem so unstable in decisions, so contradictory, but when he poses question after question after question, I begin to question everything myself. I interlace my fingers and hold them over my mouth, biting into the knuckle of my thumb, increasing the pressure until I can't take it, and then I re-lace my fingers and latch onto the other thumb.

Finally, he quits speaking, distracted. I take my moment and slip away into the dark. When I'm safe, for now, I stare at the rough oval of red marks around my knuckles. It is this pain or avoiding the anger following my outburst. For now, I have chosen this.

No. Life...is not supposed to be a chick flick.

It's not my life I'm talking about. It's someone else's. But really. It just isn't right.

So yes. I have been absent a long time. I want to be better about posting once a week, at least. Even if it's just a little snippet of something interesting.

I have no concerted brain function tonight. So here is my random:

Right now I'm listening to John Mayer. One of my suitemates loves his music. I've never really listened. It's pretty mellow acoustic stuff. I like it, but Five Times August is better. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7RL-MYJatk . Let me know what you think of that. (The funny thing is, I know the red-head kid who plays the bully in this video. It's kind of funny. Because in real life, he is a cross-country kid who weighs about 130 pounds, and is so not a bully. He does a good enough job at being obnoxious though... :P)

Boys can be so stupid.

So, so stupid.

Like, I want to slap the whole lot of them multiple times stupid.

I am going to try to graduate a semester early. Yay! Not that I don't like college, I do. But it's a small school, and it's such a big world, and I am ready to not be in school, or at least, doing a more self-guided master's program. Possibly creative writing master's at Seattle Pacific University. :)

Some quick rambles

Homework. Is. Evil. I want to shoot it all. With an AK-47. And then I want to burn the shreds. And then I want to take the ashes, seal them in a lockbox, and drop them in the middle of the Atlantic.

Love is weird. I'm really not sure what to do with some of it. For the rest, I'm just enjoying the ride.

Ultimate Frisbee is the most amazing sport on earth. Now, playing it for three hours after racing earlier in the morning may not have been the smartest idea, but dang was it fun.

And now...I will be in bed at 9:30. 5:30 wake up for practice. Woooooot. Hear the enthusiasm in my voice. The only good thing about practice being that early is it's really dark. Makes the time go by faster.

Hasta luego!

Wow.

Sorry, y'all. I have been super-spotty with my blog reading and updating. It's the college life - 16 credit hours on top of track, which easily occupies the space another class would, homework and all. So basically, I'm taking a very full load, and yet somehow finding time to write these happy little poems. That time is usually past midnight, when I should definitely be in bed, but those stupid things called emotions keep me up.

The bad news: I have realized I am about six feet in over my head, and have an insane amount of homework.

The good news: I'm emotionally stable, and therefore able to (mostly) logically deal with it.

The best news: It's Friday. As soon as I'm done with the workout of death (to which I am headed in exactly three minutes), I have nothing else scheduled for the weekend except a birthday party and church. Happy days. The unscheduled time, though, really is scheduled. Homework is a demanding taskmaster.

Hasta luego...

A Day in My Life, Twitter-Style

- A lower-case 'i' looks better in Times New Roman than in Arial.

- I love it when my room doesn't look like a train wreck.

- Apparently, I am a clueless idiot.

- I hate coughing.

- Why do I overthink everything?

- Ethan Hawke in Hamlet? Or Pushing Daisies?

- @ Gretch-a-sketch: I <3 Pushing Daisies

- Dark hot chocolate with a splash of caramel creamer = muy delicioso.

- I. LOVE. WRITING.

- I should go to bed.

- This is somewhat odd to have a 45 minute facebook chat with someone I nailed with pepper spray in my dreams.

- I really should go to bed.

- Why did I wake up before my alarm?!

- I'm running my own darn pace next time.

- It's 70 degrees in November, thank you Satan.

- Why do I overthink everything?

- Do I finish the Aeneid paper...or write?

- Ethan Hawke as Hamlet, take three.

- Pizza = yum.

- Lauren = crazy.

- Apparently Finn of BOB and I have central heterochromia. Cool beans.

- Why can't I sleep?!

- Ice baths in 50 degree weather make for frigid walks back to the dorm.

- I'm cold!

- I like "Crush" by David Archuleta far too much, though it painfully resembles part of my life at the moment.

- Bar-ba-sol by David Cook = one awesome song. Get it.

- Two more sources for this paper. Gotta find them.

- Why do I overthink everything?

Odds and Ends

A list of assorted randomness:

1. I am still alive, and feeling bad I haven't posted in a week.

2. Allergies are kicking my behind - I think I've gone through two boxes of Kleenex in the past three days. No joke.

3. I got 12 gallons of gas for 23.50 today. Big yay. I don't remember the last time gas was under 2/gallon.

4. Apparently the Goldfish mascot is named Finn. All you Shannon Hale fans: is this not, at the least, disturbing, and at the greatest, heresy?

5. I like dark chocolate. White chocolate is beyond my power to describe. Cuileann did it nicely here. I agree with her whole-heartedly.

6. This is hilarious. I've watched it four times and still crack up.

7. I really want this for Christmas.

Yet Another Update

I'm working on the short story thing. I promise. I just packed a huge suitcase with two pairs of running shoes, a pair of boots, a pair of heels, a tool kit, and some other stuff. And then I went through my clothes and donated some stuff to my sister. Why I am posting a laundry list (no pun intended)? I don't know. Maybe because my brain is whirling? I'm not panicking (at the moment), so it's a good day. It's cloudy out - looks like rain!! I love rain. And thunderstorms, especially. It's weird. I've found that a lot of bloggers love thunderstorms. It must be imagination...

Hmm... it was a dark and story night. No, my bad. A dark and stormy noon. The clouds, thick like mashed potatoes - no! Awful. What was I thinking?

Okay, round two. Ahem:

It was a dark and stormy noon. The rain collected in the clouds, intent on pummeling the earth, longing for that signal, the breaking of the clouds, so they could complete their mission.

Raindrop #296 looked at his partner, 297. "Mission?"

297 rearranged his atoms to smile; he resembled a grinning blimp. "A rose bush. Award-winner. Joseph's Coat."

His friend 299, the new kid, winced. "Ouch. Watch for the thorns."

297 nodded sagely. He was a veteran, having been reincarnated three hundred and fifty-nine times through the water cycle. He was at Gettysburg. He was at the battle of Arbonne. A rose bush was cake for him. "I'll hit the flower, slid down the curve of the top petal, past the leaves, and down the stem. Unless an enemy derails me, I'll make it to the base of the plant and the soil. After that..."

The three fell silent, silently honoring their fates. It went unsaid, but they thought of the same thing: how some of their number would fall into the street and roll in a teeming mass of other drops into the sewer. From there it was a long underground ride, through processors, to the ocean. It could be a month before Evaporation, that heavenly being, lifted them from the sea into the sky.

And those were the lucky ones. Those like 297, who fulfilled their mission, would seep into the soil. The roots of the rose would eventually slurp him into its system, deconstructing him and using his different molecules for its life processes. He would be torn apart. It would be months at the least, even years before he took that celestial journey into the clouds again.

Look, a short! How did that happen? :-)

Ahhh! And Other Random Things

So. I went up to a tiny town north of Amarillo on Monday morning and got back on Wednesday. Now it appears I will turn around and go back (but driving this time) tomorrow or Sunday to help paint my grandmother's house. This is an 8 or 9 hour drive. My crazy life. At least it'll keep me from being deadly bored.

As promised, the scoop on the story below: This is (sadly) based heavily on real life. The dialogue is not exact, and some of the names have been changed. Last week I went to a Christian worldview camp. Part of it entailed reading Plato's Phaedrus and discussing it in small groups. I enjoyed it most of the time - all logical thinking and discussing with other smart people. However, we did this for at least two hours a day, most days three, but with a couple breaks. The last day we discussed issues for three hours straight. This was after a 2 am bedtime the night (morning, I guess) before. That's the fourth or fifth time I've stayed up past midnight. And I did it playing HORSE on a pool table. (SO much fun, and we really did rename the game PLATO).

The main difference: we were exhausted. Both mentors left the room for a couple minutes. Bethany (real name) suggested the minute they step in, we begin discussing Hungry Hippos, just as an example of our exhaustion and how silly it is to overanalyze things, as some people did.

The sneaking out to buy a frappuccino is also, sadly, true. Don't tell on me! I have to get an appalling amount of sleep to be fully functional - eight hours minimum. The most I got on a given night was seven, and that was the best night. But seeing WALLE for the second time was worth it. Is it not Pixar's crowning gem? I believe it is the best ever, and the song in the credits ('Down to Earth') is great.

Speaking of movies...I haven't heard a lot of buzz about The Dark Knight in the blogger community. I think this may be due to the fact that it's not a 'girl' movie, stereotypically, and percentage-wise, a lot of bloggers are girls. If you are a writer, see it. Christopher Nolan (director) does a fabulous job of keeping the suspense high. The twists and character developments are the best I've seen in an action/adventure movie. Bruce Wayne drives this awesome thing called a Batmobile, but I have to prefer the Lamborghini (the sound makes me dreamy).

And the Joker. Oh my. Heath Ledger WILL get an Oscar nomination at the least. He deserves the award. There are times when I read a sentence in a book, or hear someone sing, or see someone act, and know instinctively, he's good. I mean incredible. Ledger = The Joker. It wasn't that he acted the part; he was the Joker. That moment of clarity came several times in the movie, one being when The Joker, wearing a nurse's outfit, red wig, and full ghastly makeup, limps out of a deserted hospital which is gushing smoke. He's grinning (no, really, not just from scars), wearing a skirt, and looks completely natural doing it.

I'd call that good. From an artistic standpoint alone, it is a tragedy he's dead so young.

My personal theory is that Heath Ledger was already having some personal issues, and playing that role sent him over the edge. Don't get me wrong, he is (to borrow Ron Weasley's favorite phrase), bloody brilliant. All I've heard is that he threw himself into becoming the Joker. I think if you pretend to be something long enough and hard enough, you can wind up being it. Just my thoughts.

Warning: It is dark. Like midnight out-in-the-country-cloud-night-dark. Human-heart dark. But so, so good. There aren't any supernaturally freaky parts as in Batman Begins (not how I want to describe it, but you know what I mean? Nothing demonic?) There is some blood and violence (although much much less than there might have been, kudos to the Nolans). The darkness is all psychological. The movie does an amazing job at showing how people will respond when pushed to their barest nature: some have anchoring in their lives and make the right choices. Others (if you've seen the movie you know who I'm referring to) go off the deep end. It also makes you think about how you'd respond, and what right and wrong really mean.

Anyway. I'll work up another short at some point. I've been turning over The Dark Knight in my mind since opening day and had to get those thoughts out.

very short

EVIL! I JUST WROTE A WHOLE POST AND BLOGGER KILLED IT! BLOGGER, YOU ARE DEMONIC!

Anyway, to recap my post *which just vanished into cyberspace, GROWL*, I am home from camp. I will post later on this, maybe even today. I am toast (extra-crispy, without butter) after the world's worst 10-mile run, which was conducted in 103% humidity. (Yes, 103%; I am very precise about these matters).

And I realized in four weeks I'm going to be living in a dorm (which is brand new [still not quite finished as I type], suite-style, with shared kitchen) and in college full-time. Ah. Wow. I've met two of my suitemates and hit it off with them both. And yeah, that's about it. I'm going to work on another short to satiate my readers *thanks a lot, Q*.

A note on Q: It took me two months to figure out 'thecurlyq.blogspot.com' was supposed to be a play on 'curlycue'. I'm usually not that slow. I am right now, though, and off to nap.

Movies and other Random Things

Something momentous has occurred: I've seen two movies in theaters within two weeks (rare), and both of them were excellent *jaw hits floor*. The first was Iron Man. I was a bit worried it would be a too-common action flick - studly action hero, beautiful girlfriend, flat characters, adrenaline, and lots of explosions.

Yes, there were a few spectacular explosions, and people did die. However, *thanks producer*, the gory factor was close to nonexistent. I don't want to say I'm okay with people dying, but if it's in a movie, and I'm not seeing blood and guts... you get the drift. I'd never seen Robert Downey Jr. in anything, and he did an amazing job. For those of you out there who are actors, study this. He made it so real.

I also liked the cars - some futuristic Audi speedsmobile that screamed down the road, a hot rod, flame-orange Lamborghini. So, if you like action/adventure at all, I'd recommend it. Even if you don't usually, it isn't a usual action flick. There's character development, which as a writer, I appreciated.

The second movie: Prince Caspian, what else? Excepting from the toddler who babbled and shrieked at random intervals (it's basically a war movie, why is a small child in here?), I enjoyed it more than the first Narnia film. Ben Barnes is amazing as Caspian. I was afraid from the previews that his accent would be overblown, but it totally fit the character. Definitely, the movie was more intense than the first. It pushes PG, but as with Iron Man, clean violence. (That sounds weird).

I know this has become a point of contestation with diehard Narnia fans - the Susan/Caspian thing. If you haven't seen the movie, don't highlight the text below.

I'm inclined to disagree with the decision to have the faux-romance thing between Susan and Caspian. Even a compromise would be alright: they look at each other, and even the whole part with the horn ("You might need to call me again") is not that bad. It's the kiss at the end. Come ON! That is so not in the book. I'd settle for a good-bye hug (which does happen, but after a brief kiss). Your opinions?

*clears throat*. Anyway. That's just my opinion.