Better Now...

"Let the word out
I've got to get out
Oh, I'm feeling better now..."

Seriously, I can't ever say that I'm "feeling better now" without getting that Collective Soul song in my head. And considering how often I use the phrase, I guess that means that "Better Now" is the theme song of my life (and not just a Special K commercial). Haha. Oh well. It's a good thing I adore the song. Someday if I ever make it to one of their concerts, I'll be waiting all night for them to play it, just so I can scream "THE WORLD'S DONE SHAKING ME DOWN" at the top of my lungs.

Okay, that was totally random. Maybe I ought to start this post over. But really, all I wanted to say was that I'm mostly over being sick now. Apparently my head hasn't recovered yet, but whatever. I'm mostly here.

Oh, and another thing: GO SEE THE PRESTIGE. It is very good. It kept me and my boyfriend guessing the whole time...and that's saying something, since he can usually spot a plot twist a mile away. Yeah, it's a crazy movie, well written and well executed. I haven't been to the theater and left that satisfied in a long time.

And anyway, who can resist a Christian Bale movie? Apparently I can't. Friday night as I was walking into the lobby to meet my friends to see it, I got a call from my sister-in-law. She said, "Hey, we're just looking at movie listings, have you seen The Prestige yet?" When I told her I was on the verge, she laughed and said, "Well, we knew if you hadn't seen it yet you'd be going pretty soon! Can't resist that what's-his-name!"

It's true. He's the best.

I Smell Like Menthol

I am sick. My nose is runny, my head is stuffy, and I’m quickly developing a cough, which of course has the potential to become a sore throat, and then of course there’s the inevitable development downward into the nasty chest cold. It happens every year.

I hate being sick. Besides the fact that I feel bad physically, there’s something about the fatigue (or something) that makes me feel not-quite-here, disembodied somehow, lost in the meanderings of my own mind. Like I’m the main character of a really badly written novel. A stream-of-conscious one at that.

Also, I feel very guilty anytime I’m sick. If I’m coughing in class, sneezing all over the pharmacy counter, or forcing my poor roomate to listen to sniffling and nose-blowing all night long, I’ve effectively become a nuisance to pretty much everyone I come into contact with. (My roomie hasn’t complained yet, I just always feel a little paranoid about such things. I hate being an annoyance.) When I cancel plans with friends in order to stay home and rest, then I become an annoyance to the people I haven’t come into contact with. It’s a good thing most people are sweet and sympathetic toward me at such times, much more so than I have a tendency to be.

But anyway, that’s the story. Yesterday and today I’ve been trying to rest as much as possible, and that’s all very well, but I’m getting bored. I love having a chance to relax, but there’s only so much you can do before you start feeling a teeny bit restless. I’ve been passing the time by watching movies, and perhaps I’d be a little more content if I’d chosen better films. Haha. The one I watched yesterday was Nanny McPhee, a kid’s movie with Emma Thompson and Colin Firth. I’d been wanting to see it because I like those two actors, and it looked cute, but, enh. It wasn’t so great. Mary Poppins is the classic nanny-whips-kids-into-shape-and-then-after-she’s-no-longer-needed-mysteriously-disappears story. This one just feels like a cheesy repeat. And there aren't even any fun songs or chimney sweeps to liven it up! :( So, not terrible, but certainly unexceptional. The kids were adorable, though.

Then today I saw Underworld. I like sci-fi, and action, and all that, so it seemed like it’d be a good choice. And while the script definitely has some interesting possibilities, none of the really interesting things are fleshed out nearly enough, and at the same time there’s way more than enough fighting, shooting, slashing, etc. The special effects are straight from The Matrix, along with the general look in some ways. That would be okay, though, (a good idea can be used more than once) if they hadn’t way overdone it all. This is a common problem with action movies, it seems to me. You have to trust the story to be compelling enough to excite the viewers—if the story needs endless action sequences to be interesting, then it’s probably not a good story. (The same principle applies to songs. A good song should be good even when it’s just a guy playing his guitar—studio magic can be a nice enhancement, but the song has to be a good song to start with.) You should leave the audience wanting more, not less. And in the space where you’re not overwhelming us with shooting, etc., you should develop the characters to the point where we actually care whether or not they get shot. Action’s a bore when you don’t give rip about anyone involved.

So anyway, all this to say I’ve been a completely worthless bum this week. It hasn’t been all bad, but whatever. This is my griping post. :)

Oh the Pain!

I have a friend whose favorite saying used to be, "Oh the pain!" I find myself saying it a lot these days, since my shoulders and back are in constant pain. Muscle tension. Yowch. I am wearing these medicated (menthol) patches right now, which are helping some, but overall I'm a little annoyed with them. First of all, they're insanely sticky, so I get all this sticky goo on my hands every time I put one on, no matter how careful I am. Second of all, if you put one in the wrong place, it doesn't exactly peel off neatly. Yeah, it's a big mess and a wasted patch. Third, they stink to high heaven. I think I smell like a big walking cough drop right now. Eww. Mental note: no more patches.

But other than that, life is going well. I went out with my boyfriend to have pizza and play the arcade yesterday, and I think that went well. He beat me at air hockey, and I didn't even care all that much. :) With our tickets that we won, I got a bouncy ball with a fake $100 bill in it (why not?), and he got these hilarious fake plastic teeth. They're like hillbilly, or maybe pirate teeth. When he put them on and started doing a rambling impersonation of white trash ("Well, I was down at the truck stop the other day...") I thought I would die laughing. I'm pretty sure it's the funniest thing I've seen all year. Unfortunately, the rest of you missed it. You should ask him to break out his fake teeth sometime. :)

Carino's for lunch: amazing. I love Italian food, even the Americanized version. :)

And now I'm just relaxing for a while. Tonight a couple of my girlfriends are coming over to watch movies. I haven't sat down and watched a movie since...well, okay, my boyfriend and I watched one last night, but before that I hadn't watched in movie in several weeks, at least. That's crazy for me. I mean, I haven't even caught up on the movies I missed this summer yet (X-Men 3, Pirates of the Caribbean 2, Superman). I've got some ground to make up!

Lately...

Not much has been happening lately of note. I enjoy my life, but that doesn't make it interesting to write about. I've just been doing the whole studying thing (sort of...kind of didn't study for that last Latin test...), teaching, hanging out with various people. The usual.

I'm also wondering why, every time I check my email, I have about 10 junk emails telling me to lose weight and stop being obese. I don't think I've signed up for/bought anything lately that would suggest that I'm fat, but who knows. Apparently someone got that idea, lol.

Maybe it's all the pie. Haha I've cooked four pies (2 peach, 2 apple) in the last week. I guess I'm just turning into the Little Baker that Could. I didn't eat all that pie, though, I promise.

Tonight is the night that my boyfriend and I are celebrating our 2-year dating anniversary. Dating anniversaries sometimes seem silly to me (I remember one time on a trip in high school when my youth minister & his girlfriend were celebrating their 10-month mark, which meant he was on the phone all day. I remember thinking, 10 months? Who cares?), but two years is a really long time. I think it's definitely worth celebrating.

That's all. I'm going to class now.

Recommended Reading

I went to Barnes & Noble tonight, again. I don't think I should even try to remember how many times I've gone this semester alone, since it would only come across as sensational and excessive. I feel almost more at home in B&N than I do in my own apartment...and I'm not really exaggerating that much when I say that. Tonight, I ran into a friend who admitted she'd "book-raped" a borrowed paperback and was looking to replace it with a new copy. She was having difficulty finding what she was looking for, so I expertly pointed her to the right shelf. Yeah, I don't work there, I just should. I became even more convinced of that idea when the checker who helped me at the end of my visit informed me that employees get a 30% discount. (That should have come as no surprise, since my boyfriend works at the B&N on campus, but me being the only-half-here-at-all-times person that I am, I reacted with astonishment. "Wow!") She then told me nudgingly, "We're hiring for Christmas!" At this point, I started to feel a little creeped out. Has she been watching me? Does she happen to know that I go in there every other day? Or do my book selections and Member card exude enough nerdiness for her to try to recruit me? In any case, I'd love to fill out an application, but I already have a job. Too bad for B&N.

Not that they don't benefit enough from my, ahem, regular visits. I'm just a bookworm, that's all there is to it, and since this semester I have a few hours a week free for that sort of thing, naturally I feel like I need to buy four books a week to keep up with my insatiable book consumption. Well, anyway...

***
"...What would happen if we never read the classics? There comes a point in life, it seems to me, where you have to decide whether you're a Person of Letters or merely someone who loves books, and I'm beginning to see that book lovers have more fun. Persons of Letters have to read things like Candide or they're a few letters short of the whole alphabet; book lovers, meanwhile, can read whatever they fancy."
--Nick Hornby, Housekeeping vs. The Dirt

I have, in the (not so distant) past, expressed embarassment over my reading choices, and while all in good fun, I've decided that there's really no need for that kind of thinking to come out of this blog. Plenty of people really are restricted in their book/movie/music choices because of this idea that they need to have "good taste" or be "well read" or whatever. Apparently, the hope of impressing the heck out of other wanna-be Persons of Letters is worth a high price to them. (Candide? Blergh.) Ha. I say we read, watch, and listen to things because we like them. So no more joking about hiding things on my bookshelves, I'm just going to throw it all out there shamelessly, as if I'm singing alone in the shower (which I actually don't do, oddly enough. Maybe I should. It seems like singing in the shower is the type of thing which would make one a more well-developed person all the way around, but there is something about the sacred privacy of the shower that always renders me unwilling to disturb the peace and quiet. Besides, I can't ever remember the words to any songs.)

So my latest accomplishment, in the pleasure-reading business, was Ann Brashare's lovely novel The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants. When I bought the book, I was suspecting that it might end up being some kind of cheesy cross between The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (overrated) and The Babysitter's Club. (Considering my pessimistic outlook, you might wonder why I bought the thing. Don't ask the question. I can usually offer no sufficiently rational reasons for the books I buy. I'm just, er, intuitive like that.) To my surprise, this book, while certainly directed at teenage girls, isn't cheesy at all. It treats its characters, and therefore its readers, like real people who just happen to be female and fifteen years old. It isn't a deeply philosophical treatment of the tragedy of the human condition, but neither is it some kind of naive "BFF! Girlfriends rock!"-type trash. Instead, it's a very believable, real-life story about girls who could be the ones down the street, and it recounts their stories with humor and sympathy. It isn't escapist, really (the girls deal with issues like divorce, broken relationships, and terminal illness), but it's a hopeful book, and one you put down feeling like it was definitely worth the time. Or that's how I felt, anyway.

Current Project: Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident (because, like every self-respecting fantasy, Artemis Fowl is a series of indefinite length) by Eoin Colfer

Incoherent Babbling...

I suck at life.

How do I get out of this?

I know that God is the only answer, but it’s like, I pray, but can’t mean it. I can’t fully believe that He is sufficient and my highest good. I can’t surrender myself to His control, because I’m selfish, self-absorbed, ambitious, individualistic, stubborn.

I hate myself for all those things. But I cherish them too. Losing my stubbornness might mean losing my identity. Can’t have that, right?

Who cares? Why is my “identity” so stinkin’ important if it sucks? Why cherish my personality traits, when they are undesirable? When they make life harder? When they put barriers between me and God, not to mention between me and the people I love the most?

I just don’t want to change. I don’t want to make sacrifices. I don’t want my life to go a direction that isn’t my first choice. I don’t want to be broken, convicted, confronted. I want to be ME, and then everyone else love, adore, and cater to me.

And ultimately, that attitude is the result of not believing the Gospel. Truly believing the Gospel, believing in God’s ultimate beauty and worth, just kind of naturally makes self seem unimportant. I know this. But I have a hard time arriving at that perspective. From my concrete, here-and-now, self-absored perspective, it just looks like life is too hard. I lash out in frustration, screaming, “Why can’t life be easy? Why can’t I be happily self-absorbed and immature?”

Shallow self-absorption doesn’t bring fulfillment. I’ll never live life to the fullest, or experience joy, as long as I think that way. I’ll kill myself chasing after things that have no true value, and then wonder why life seems so empty.

I need help. Help in thinking differently. Help in seeing things the way they really are. I pray, but can’t figure out how to articulate what I need. The Bible says that in such times, the Holy Spirit groans in our behalf. I need that.

Not that I deserve any such attention. I’m a dirtbag, I really am.

A dirtbag that God chose to redeem, for some crazy reason that I will never understand. He showered His love on me when I had done (and still have done) nothing to deserve it. He offers joy, and life, and love that I can’t even comprehend. And this is the only thing that gets me through times like this, or life in general.

I have no worth, except in what Christ has given me. And that is the greatest worth of all.

Out of Fuel

I've been masquerading as an extrovert lately. In my new routine this semester, I spend tons of time every single day with people...teaching, counseling, hanging out. I love it, and I love exploring new possibilities (Me? Teach?), but a large part of me is still the reclusive bookworm I always have been. Let's face it, I'm an introvert. After several weeks of a very active and people-oriented life, I can't take it anymore. I need to be a misanthrope this Friday night.

I skipped the Homecoming bonfire tonight, even though I have never gone, and this was my last chance to go as a student at Tech. It sounds sad, to say it that way, but I couldn't have enjoyed it if I had gone. I've just been stretched too thin. I needed to stay home for once, to put on my PJs at 7:00 and just enjoy the peace and quiet, the hum of the refrigerator, the creak of my rocking chair, and the occasional swish of a turned page.

Is it supremely selfish to be a hermit? I am afraid it is, but I can only go so far without crashing. I am sure that most of you introverts out there can relate at some level, but times like this make me wonder what the equivalent feeling is for someone who is extroverted and therefore can't relate. Do they feel this same desperate feeling of almost not existing after being alone for long periods of time?

Well, that's my bit of navel-gazing for the night. I almost forgot I had a navel.

I Shouldn't Admit to This...

I told my roommate yesterday that the books I've been buying lately are the kind that I wouldn't want people discovering on my bookshelf. Naturally, she asked if they were porn or something, and naturally, I acted scandalized and said, Of course not!

They aren't morally objectionable (mostly), just tasteless. I couldn't resist visiting the "Teen Fiction" section of Barnes and Noble the other day (and naturally, "visiting" means that I bought a few books). Any self-respecting college senior (especially an English Lit minor, for heaven's sake) shouldn't be caught dead in that section of the store, but the temptation was too strong. Reading ought to be fun, after all, and most teen fiction isn't out to make some profound (and depressing) statement about the human condition, or some such nonsense. (I think I ought to write some, in fact.) It's mostly either really shallow girly stuff (there's actually a series called Gossip Girls), or sports stories, or school-age comedies, or adventure novels, or...fantasy.

Ever since Harry Potter became such a runaway success, there's been a glut of young adult fantasy on the book market. I, for one, am ecstatic about that. Fantasy is good stuff, and young adult fantasy is usually even better, as it is generally unencumbered by the "mature" ("depressing") themes or the sexual material you often find in adult fantasy.

The first book I devoured was Artemis Fowl, by Eoin Colfer. This one's a romp. I highly recommend it to anyone who's looking for a fun, quick read. I read it in 4-5 hours, and while I do read a bit on the fast side (although it's a dinosaur gait next to my boyfriend, who's got some sort of Turbo-Read gear he uses to read Harry Potter books), it's an easy couple of days' work for just about anybody.

The story centers around the enigmatic character of Artemis Fowl, a 12-year-old boy who just happens to be a genius, a millionaire, and a criminal mastermind. It's sometimes hard to tell whether or not we're supposed to be rooting for him; he seems like more of an anti-hero than your average teen fiction protagonist, but every story needs a fascinating villain, no? (Much like the Harry Potter series, the Artemis Fowl books aren't appropriate for younger children, who need a clearer demarcation between good and evil. For teens and up, though, they're great fun.)

In this particular adventure, Artemis is trying to exploit the extraordinarily well-hidden, underground race of fairies that still lives near the Earth's core. Far from intending to expose their existence to humanity, Artemis is only interested in their Ransom Fund: one ton of 24-karat gold. He may have one or two more endearing interests as well, but you'll just have to read the book to find out. Besides the twisting and turning plot (which I couldn't always predict beforehand), another source of fun is the tongue-in-cheek narration and the sassy sarcasm of several of the characters. However, that could be seen as a weakness, too: all the characters have the exact same sense of humor. Haha I enjoy sassy sarcasm, though, so I didn't mind a bit. The style in general reminds me very much of David Eddings, although not nearly as long-winded.

As an added bonus for the nerds among us, the book has a code written along the bottom of every single page. If you're smart enough to crack the code, presumably there'll be some kind of message for you, a rather long one, in fact. I haven't cracked the code yet, because I'm trying very hard to resist the urge. My past experiences with codes have always been very disappointing. For instance, when I was a kid, my brother and I were really into this computer game called Command and Conquer: Red Alert. The game manual had Morse code along the bottom and sides of every page, so my brother and I spent hours decoding it. It rambled on and on about big ants or something...eventually we figured out the clues and found a hidden part of the game where you fight really big mutant alien ants, instead of tanks. I'm sure you can imagine my disappointment. All that work, just for a stupid ant-fighting scenario! Or just think about A Christmas Story, where the kid works really hard to crack the code, and all it says is to eat your vegetables, or something. Boo.

I'm sure I'll eventually give in to this code-cracking temptation, though. I'm not the sort of person who can leave any challenge unconquered, even a cheesy stupid one like this. Ah well. Then it'll be on to the next book: The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants. Think of me what you will, I'll just enjoy my romp in immaturity. :)