Perspective

Every week when I clean out his bowl, my fish, Sashimi, thinks he's been abducted by aliens.

This is me not being productive during dead week

So. I have a big old time-wasting challenge for you, dear readers. Get from here to here by clicking on ten links. Hint: zombies.

I will post more hints if you guys seem to give a crap about my challenge. Maybe there'll be a prize for the first one to come up with the answer or something. I don't know.

See, that's the trouble with wikipedia. I started out trying to actually do some research on gesture and next thing you know I'm reading up on the Vulcan death grip. That may not seem so strange, as this is a pretty obvious connecting link, but I took a more meandering route via the nazi salute. Go figure.

Anyway, that's a couple hours of my life I'll never get back. All I can do from the bottom of this pit of time-suckery is drag you down with me.

I post this hesitantly...

I once ranted against love and ridiculed what fools it made of girls. I saw only the irrational pursuit of approval from the opposite sex and considered myself above such nonsense. I alone possessed impartiality, I alone saw through the games, I alone would be content alone forever. So I thought, and so I said to all who would listen, but those who listened were few. So I lived without loving, and told myself I was content, denying that I even had a heart, crushing it under the weight of the loneliness to which I had proudly condemned myself. I lay in the dark and watched the silent drama of shadows cast through the windowpane accompanied by the ticking of the clock. In the silence shining between each tick, my heart began to make itself known, growing heavy, wearied by its burden. A single selfish tear escaped under cover of darkness. And so I slept for years, suffocated by this exile I chose. Small wonder I felt unloved-I had made myself so unlovely that it took 18 years for an intrepid soul with a great living beast of a heart to catch a slight, living glimmer beneath the ice, made thin by the summer sun after a long winter alone. Slowly, he ventured close enough to melt the ice and set me free of myself. I love him. I am so deep in love that's all I can think. I wake up and I love him, climb out of bed and I love him, get dressed and I love him, eat breakfast, walk to class, sit down and I love him. My notebook is peppered with it- "Today is the ninth of February and I am in love", "Today is the tenth of February and I am in love". I even looked down and blushed to find that I had scrawled an unfamiliar signature in the margin- not my name, but his. Love has made such a beautiful fool of me, and I would have it no other way.

A Mundane, Newsy Post

Recital week is always crazy. Don't ask why I chose now, of all times, to update this beknighted blog. Dodging work, that's what it is. I have 13 pdfs that need reading opened in other tabs, but, at this rate, opening them is likely as far as I'll get with them before I have to run off to class. I have decided that I'll be living at home again next year. Much as I like the girls here at Trinity, practically, I am only actually here a very very small percentage of my time; in fact, Wednesdays are the only day I don't have to drive over to the studio for a couple hours. Since I am planning on making myself available for Narnia in the fall, (no, I haven't been offered a role yet), it most likely won't be much different next year. Plus, the parentals have said that the cash will make an epic family Europe trip a definite possibility next summer. It'll be sweet. This summer promises to be pretty sweet, too, what with boyfriendery and associated friends with whom to drive around and do fun stuff, when I'm not working and getting cash money. I don't know when I'll be able to fit work in next year. At the mo, I'm working Saturdays, but with Narnia on the weekends, it's a worry. Plenty of time to work that out, though.

Now I'm going to go get me some toasted bagel and maybe start in on that first reading. Yay for productivity.

Flesh

Does anyone else find it odd, living inside a beautifully functional bag of meat and bones and nerves and skin? Hands, fingernails, nostrils, molded by the hand of God. Long bones draped artfully with muscle and tendon, wrapped up tight under skin. This machine through which we experience these four dimensions is a wonderous contraption, whatever you may think of its outward form. For example, my body told me that it was dehydrated the other day by manipulating nerve endings, sending a message which manifested itself as a headache. I drank a couple bottles of water and hey, presto, the alarms stopped jangling and I felt fine. Yesterday I pushed it beyond what was safe, so today all sorts of alarm bells are blaring, discouraging me from taking any more risks while it repairs and reinforces the damaged areas. Working my way from the top down, we have four-inch diameter bruises (from improv) on both shoulders, sore glutes and quads (possibly from fencing), with an extra painful strand of muscle in my right-hand thigh. Sore calves, of course, plus a twisted (or sprained or tweaked or something) left ankle (from pirouettes in ballet). Nothing life-threatening, but not pleasant. On the other hand, the sophistication of this flesh boggles the mind, as I stretch it and tear it and bruise it and mistreat it and fill it with ice cream, train it and dress it, bathe it and ultimately, through all this, I take as my goal to use this wonderous gift for its Maker's glory.

Analyzing the Text

For some reason, I find texting to be the ideal form of communication for my particular brand of social ineptitude roughly 90 percent of the time. It carries the immediacy of a phone call, a gentle prodding ring instantly in the recipient's pocket, and yet it is less demanding, allowing the aforementioned recipient to reply at their leisure. Plus, one can communicate effectively without the whole "conversation" nonsense that you have to go through before you can get to the meat of why you are bothering them in the first place.

A few notes on style: under no circumstances should a word be replaced with a number or intentionally misspelled. 160 characters is more than enough to communicate most ideas, though some creative editing may be necessary at times. The omission of some punctuation may be acceptable if the meaning can still be clearly ascertained. At times, shorter synonyms may have to be substituted and intensifiers dropped altogether, but all but the most complex ideas can easily be communicated in plain English (or whatever language you may be texting in) within the space limitations without stooping to the level of asinine acronyms and numeral abuse. These limitations demand that the author be concise, reducing their message to a haiku-like level of simplicity.

As always, when lacking tonal and gestural cues, great care must be taken when interpreting the intended emotion. Far better to grant a potentially sarcastic comment the benefit of the doubt and assume that its author bears you no ill will than to read too much into a statement and end up feeling insulted. Composing a text that is intended to be read as sarcastic is virtually the only time that the emoticon is an acceptable tool for communication, and even then, a simple :) will suffice, none of this other garglemesh you see around the less sophisticated corners of the internet.

Of course, there are occasions when a text message simply will not do. Things that require an immediate response, more complex cues as to the speaker's tone, and the rare occasions when communication becomes a desirable end in and of itself... these are better dealt with via a phone call.

Tantrum- an Exercise in Personification.

The rain began to slow, the downpour becoming a mere trickle in the corner of the heavens' eye. The sky drew a breath, deep but jagged, as through a throat still constricted with the nearness of tears, and began to feel better. The trees shook in the resulting wind, dripping in imitation of the clouds above which had previously hung so heavy, the clouds whose aloof indifference to gravity's hunger had snapped in a torrential tantrum, beating the earth with soggy fists until the grass began to lose its tight grip on its beloved soil and the streets grew slick with mud. Bitter tears lay cooling, collecting in hollow places, filling uneven sidewalks until they were perfectly level. The more ambitious among them streaked along the pavement together, unmindful of traffic laws, producing rivulets with their own short-lived dreams of riverhood. The clouds were exhausted, with no more tears to sacrifice to the greedy earth, and the sky sulked like a child, having done as it was told, yet unwilling to concede defeat. Another gust of sobbing breath, carrying the threat of more tears, but this February tantrum had run its course. The sky began to collect its solemn gray dignity, breathing deeply, still obstinately unwilling to allow the sun to begin the work of drying up the mess. Frankly, the whole affair was a little embarrassing.