Non-fiction for the win...

You know what's fun? Non-fiction reading.

Seriously.

Recently, I've been working on a short story that has required some research on my part and I've been browsing sections of the library that I never had before. And, on a whim, I picked up some non-fiction at random off the shelves and took them home.

It's actually a blast! Right now I'm reading Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America and actually seriously enjoying it. Sure, I'd read bits of Moby Dick and such writers as Jack London and loved the idea of "iron men in wooden boats", but actually reading a history of the whaling industry is interesting. It's amazing how much one seemingly small thing can affect the entirety of an economy.

Also read The Science of Sherlock Holmes (ZOMG! 19th century forensic science!), a book on first-aid care for birds (I don't even have a bird) and have a history of the China's Forbidden City next on the list.

Seriously, such research, when it is not required of me and is simply done for my own entertainment, is fun stuff.

So it's Lent now...

... and I gave up movies/television/internet videos. And yes, I've been whining about it occasionally.

The thing is, it scares me how much shying away from them makes me realize how addicted I was. And I don't even have television per se, which means I'm not chillin' in front of the tube all the time. Mostly it's movies and shows on the internet that I watch. And I miss them.

But it feels good to give them up. It feels good to give up their brain-cell-eating, time-wasting influences and instead focus on a little suffering.

And yet... it feels like I'm making up for it by spending more time on teh interwebz... More time to review on YWS?

Why so serious?

I've been reading Atlas Shrugged lately, and have also been running across several other works that just seem to evoke the same feeling: passionate, intellectual seriousness.

Seriously, what is wrong with levity occasionally? Is it okay to just be silly sometimes and not care what others think? Isn't it okay to get something completely wrong and not have people look down on you for it? Isn't it okay to have something that is light for the sole purpose of levity?

In Atlas Shrugged especially is this feeling. It's like no one can lighten up, even when they are happy. They are all so intensely serious about everything they are doing. There is no happy nonsense of a happy couple whispering fluff to each other during a movie. It is all very. serious. business. It is only ever about the other person's intellectual worth and heavy sexual tension that borders on master/slave roles. Seriously, people, lighten up.

Does there have to be a hidden meaning to everything? Can't I just enjoy something for the sake of enjoying it? The composer guy in Atlas Shrugged (his name escapes me), says that he likes Dagny and appreciates her love for his music because it is intellectual. She likes it with her head, not her heart. What's wrong with liking something with your heart? Why do things need to be intellectual all the time?

I'm not saying that we should through intellectualism out the window, but is it so necessary to have in every aspect of your life? Can't you just love someone and do something for them just to do it, rather than having to put heavy. psychological. meaning. into everything? Dagny makes dinner for Galt and makes a huge deal out of it. Why doesn't she just make the meal and be done with it? I like it when people like the food I make, but I don't meditate on my role as provider.

Am I thinking about this too much? I think that they are thinking about it too much. Isn't it okay to not think sometimes, just do?

Lemme just say that when I find the right guy for me, we will both be okay with silliness once in a while, with holding hands and singing undignified songs, with watching stupid videos and laughing at them, with making the wrong decisions sometimes and not being condemned for 'not thinking'.

Nights are right...

If it was feasible to become completely nocturnal, I think I would do it.

Aaaand... That's really all I have to say beyond the fact that I'm still snowed in and it is still snowing outside. Now, if it were snowing inside, I would have more to say.

I'm blind... I'm blind...

Oh Em Friggin' Gee. Seriously, I'm watching Chronicles of Riddick right now (after having been slightly obsessed with Pitch Black a few weeks ago) and the first invasion scene is seriously attempting to give me a seizure. What is with the flashing lights? I'm not photosensitive, but omirah, that is some annoying flashing. Can't we maintain a constant light source for more than three seconds?

Sure, in the first movie there was a lot of dark and moving lights and whatnot, but at least it was fairly constant and not trying to watch a shadow puppet show in front of a strobe light. Geez, people...

Rest in peace, Dr. Larzelere...

My grandfather passed away last Tuesday and his funeral was today. He was 94 and had been ill, so his passing wasn't a surprise and all of his family was able to see him before he died. I think he was at peace, as was his family. He was a pretty awesome guy and the more I find out about him, the more I wish I could have known him even more. You rocked, Grandpa.

Feeling loved on my birthday...

Today is my birthday and while it's not a bad day exactly, circumstances are not going exactly the way I would have picked if I had the choice (ex. my mom's out of town with my sickly grandfather, my dad's working, my siblings are all shipped off to school or friends' houses and I'm in class from 9-7 today). And yet... I feel so loved today.

Seriously, this day that I started out feeling rather whiny and sorry for myself since things were seeming to be turning out so lonely today. And then the flood of calls came in from my friend (who called me like five times when normally we talk about once a week or so over the phone) and my aunt invited me to dinner later tonight. Then I happen to go on my Facebook for the first time in months and there's a slew of people wishing me a happy birthday on there. I even got a text from a friend I hadn't talked to in a long time wishing me a happy birthday. I feel just so loved today!

I'm sorry that I started the day feeling lonely. Turns out that people really care about me. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy. *snugs the world*

Tell me what's the matter...

Why is it that fictional characters seem to be budding psychologists/psychiatrists who not only seem to have incredibly insight into others' troubles and motives, and not only are correct, but can also wax eloquently about it at the drop of a hat?

Two works that brought this to my attention were 1) House and 2) Fruits Basket.

1) House: Everyone seems to be so insightful in this series. I mean, it's like every patient House has ever treated seems to have some psychological truth to discover about him. Seriously, it gets distracting. Sure, part of compelling story and character development is having characters confront their flaws and whatnot, but sometimes the audience can figure it out for themselves, people.

Now, to be sure, I love the show and its writing, but sometimes people don't reach epiphanies about others, you know? Or they don't tell them about it, you know? Sometimes just a change in behavior is proof enough of a revelation. Show, not tell, peeps. It's a pretty basic rule.

2) Fruits Basket: Not quite as bad about characters preaching to one another, but that's mainly because we have the benefit of inner dialogue here. In fact, the series handles it fairly well with the use of inner dialogue. It does seems like Touhru has a unearthly amount of insight, but she's not always telling other characters about their own problems. She's usually just thinking it to herself.

Like I said, not generally as bad, but there are times in both series (mostly House, but both have their moments) that it feels like they can't let the reader/watcher figure out a character's woes and what they need to do to be fixed on their own. It's like the audience must be told everything rather than drawing their own conclusions.

Fruits Basket is actually really good about keeping even its ridiculous amounts of exposition about character's mental issues rather low-key (maybe just the show's context makes it possible?). I guess the reason it strikes me as an example is in contrast to House. Seriously, I enjoy probing Greg's psyche as much as the writer, but I do like to be able to realize some things for myself. The character is complex enough and Hugh Laurie is competent enough of an actor (understatement, much?) that we can just watch him and undertand struggles and growth. We don't need everything verbally spelled out for us.

Yeah, this would be an example of when "show, don't tell" should be taken as law occasionally.

Ah, nostalgia...

Nowadays, I tend to prefer fantasy and science fiction, but still enjoy other genres. However, as a little kid, I was a strict fantasy buff. There was little that could persuade me to read anything that didn't involve some kind of magic (unless it had horses... I read a lot of horse books). One of my favorite series was The Unicorn Chronicles by Bruce Coville.

Looking back now, it was a fairly generic story about a girl that is drawn into a magic land, but I loved it then and it still resides in a fond place in my heart, padded heavily with nostalgia. However, even as a kid, there were two things that drove me crazy about the Chronicles.

1) When I first found and fell in love with the series, there were only two published and that was all that had been out for several years even when I picked it up.

I waited impatiently for many years before nearly giving up on the series, only to have the third and fourth books come out very recently. Cue geek out on my part and a feeling of betrayal. It's like it was waiting for me to forget about it before it would rear up again. I beat it in terms of patience, but now that I am older, I am not able to view the new books with as much pleasure as I did the old ones. It feels rather sad actually.

2) Even as a kid, reading through them time after time and considering them the bee's knees, similarities between the Chronicles and other series were sometimes quite obvious. The first two remain mostly untarnished under the protection of my nostalgia goggles, but it was really glaring in to my older self in the recently-read third book (including, but not limited to, a scene of going underground with goblin-like creatures, seemingly taken straight out of The Hobbit.)

Yet, all in all, I still view them with a great deal of happy nostalgia. It was these books on tape that introduced me to the wonders of a full-cast recording (two words: Eh-pick!). I still luffs them, despite all their flaws.  Those flaws just happen to drive me batty.

...in SPACE!

Meme. (I use TV Tropes as a reference far too often.)

Yeah, apparently it's pronounced "meem", though I always pronounced it "mem" (with a short 'e'). The thought behind it is "gene" and "genetic" (since it is "meme" and "memetic"). But I still call it "mem". It just looks better to me.

Attention span? What attention span?

So, I had a topic I was super excited about talking about... and I forgot it. Yeah... I'm kind of annoyed with myself for not writing it down before I forgot it.

I'm feeling much better today and as such, my brain is jumping from one topic to another faster than you can say... Well, I'm not sure what you could say that would be comparable to how fast my mind is jumping from one topic to another. And the worst part is that every new thing my brain settles on for however fractional a second, I want to talk about it, but then my mind is skipping ahead of my mouth again. No attention span whatso-- ooh, a butterfly...

Chance or theft...

I'm sick. Been sick for a while and will probably be sick for a while yet. I hate colds. And ear infections. I hate those too.

Anyway, while sick, I was watching Escaflowne the movie after having finished the series recently. Escaflowne was actually the first anime movie I ever watched, methinks, quite a few years ago. I recently watched the series to see what exactly it was that I remembered and even ended up buying one of the soundtracks for the series and the movie soundtrack. The movie soundtrack especially is fantastic and I found out that the same composer who did the music for the series and movie also wrote the music for "Cowboy Bebop", which I am currently watching and which I have heard rave reviews about for its music. Yes indeed.

While watching the movie with my soundtrack in mind, I noticed something. One of the songs (track 23 - Final Vision) sounds a lot like the music from Nausicaa and a bit from Castle in the Sky. And it actually plays while the floating fortress disintegrates, playing similar to the music when the castle collapses in Castle in the Sky. Coinkydink? Inspiration? It was interesting.

Pass me the BrainBleach...

TV Tropes is ruining my life.

So... I was reading entries and whatnot and I came across fans' suggestions that Jack Sparrow is bisexual and that he and Beckett may have... history of some sort.

I watched POTC3 again, paying special attention to all the scenes where Jack and Beckett interact, or have references made to one another in their presence.

O_O

Disney, how could you?  *scarred*

The Dark Knight does not approve...

I'm trying to write a scholarly paper here. I am doing my research, citing my sources, trying to draw logical conclusions.

The problem: there seems to be a great lack of scholarly sources on Batman.

Seriously, I'm trying to write a paper about some of the great literary creators and creations of detective fiction within the past few centuries. What are the first names that you think of when I say "detective"?

Edgar Allan Poe, Sherlock Holmes and Batman of course!

Well, maybe not, but that is what I am aiming for: to instill those names into that genre so strongly that any time anyone ever says "detective" again, you'll think of a pipe-smoking raven in a bat-cape.

But it is as if the scholarly community is against me as I do last-minute research (I procrastinated horribly on this project and I take full blame for it), since it seems as though no one believes in writing serious scholarly articles on the deep themes of Batman and his literary traditions. Gah...

Trivial to serious...

Doing research for an English paper involving Sherlock Holmes and thinking about TV Tropes, I realized that I e enjoy reading about pop culture icons being taken seriously and the themes embodied in them being taken seriously. For example, I'm reading a great deal of history surrounding the detective genre and the cultural influences on it are amazing and thought-provoking. Why can more scholarly essays be written on things like "Avatar", Batman or zombies? Take something that fans take seriously and turn it into something the rest of the populace has to take seriously.

It makes me want to be a teacher so badly, just so I can do this in my classroom. Why is so much of our education focused on getting in certain material just by reading it and then going on? Why can't we linger on a particular work or subject and explore it in-depth? I find the history of gestures and words and books, movies and plays to be so interesting. Why does stuff like that have to be researched individually? Why can't there be in-depth classes on it outside of the obscure college? Gah... Why does most of it have to be trivia?

I now want to write essays of this kind, based on things that I really want to write and research. There are so many jumping off points in my research that I want to write about that have nothing to do with my actual paper topic. Phooey...

Fall of a hero...

After a month of dragging myself through NaNo with loose-leaf, pen, and computer, I needed a medium change. So I dragged out a yellow legal pad and a pencil and did some free-association writing, which ended up turning into a fairly formal essay. I present the results for your entertainment.

Disclaimer: I actually love Cyrano immensely. But I’ve noticed that, as I grow older, I am able to temper my love for literary characters with recognition of their faults. Same thing with fan-preferred couples and whatnot. Ex. I used to be a die-hard Zutara fan, but now I am willing to let Maiko be as it is (though, I am a bit of a Toph-Zuko shipper). (Avatar the Last Airbender, for any who don't speak the lingo.) I’m not a frantically desperate fangirl who is anxious to ignore all faults of my favorites.

Except when it comes to Batman. Nothing can deflect or mitigate my love for the Bat.

Batman = Pure essence of awesome.

(Yeah, I was playing Lego Batman for hours today and just plain geeking out about everything in it. I want a Lego Batman set for Christmas, just to get the little Lego figure of the Dark Knight himself.)

Anyway…

Cyrano De Bergerac

I watched the French version again recently after having read the original play a few months back. So incredibly beautiful and tragic. It was strange, because I remembered Cyrano’s speech about reaching the moon before reading the actual play, but it wasn’t in the French version. I think I recalled that and the scene of Cyrano’s dinner at the theatre from the black and white English version I saw a long time ago.

Watching the play with the benefit of my community college Psychology 200 class, it was a little easier to put a label on why it was all so tragic. Of the two male leads, Christian was actually the more honest and maybe pitiable for it. Cyrano, being the main, obviously garners the most sympathy, but when examined, he is not quite the paragon of poetic and manly virtue he would have you believe.

Projecting and Deception – Cyrano

Cyrano is known for attacking the hypocrisy of the rich and he prides himself on his stubborn principles. And yet, perhaps he has more in common with the fops he defies than he would like. He shuns and mocks the frills of the nobles’ clothing and manner, yet he hides behind the frills of his wit. Rather than honestly state his affection for Roxane, he uses deception to win her heart through Christain.

Perhaps the real reason he did not want Christian to expose their ruse to Roxane was because he was disgusted with himself, and not just with his appearance. He knew what he had done, that he had been resorting to deception, perhaps with the unspoken, mostly unformed hope that it would draw Roxane to himself. But when he realizes that he has succeeded so perfectly in his goal of making her love Christian, he hates himself for having stooped so low and so denying his love for her is his way of punishing himself and keeping her from discovering his baseness. He wants his beloved to be happy, but more importantly, he wants himself to be unhappy.

The Honest Brute – Christian

When first compared to Cyrano, Christian seems to be a carnal buffoon, with a military mind and a distinct male gaze for Roxane. Cyrano sees Roxane as an immaculate angel, while Christian sees her as a beautiful woman. It makes him seem far more estimable than the adoring and un-touching Cyrano.

Yet it is not as if Christian is just a base animal with only one thing on his mind. He is a clever man, as evidenced by his taunting Cyrano. Roxane’s affection does matter to him. He is just far more honesty about Roxane to himself than Cyrano. When he realizes that Cyrano has made Roxane fall in love with a lie, he immediately wants to destroy the lie, no matter how painful the truth might be to anyone involved. He is perfectly honest in his sentiments that he still wants Roxane, but he wants her to love him for himself, rather than Cyrano’s mask.

While Cyrano attacks deception and appearances and Christian seems willing to exploit a ruse, it is ultimately Cyrano who perpetuated the ruse and Christian who wished to destroy it.

Yeah... That's the kind of thing I have been writing the past few days (I have, like, four other essay thingies like this on that legal pad.) It's refreshing.

NaNo...

Yeah, haven't been writing here because I've been writing here.

But believe me, when I get around to writing here, I will have lots. I've been carrying around my notebook (which I am referring to as my analog Twitter) and writing down things as they occur to me. Plenty of material for when I hit blog block in December...

Multiple blog posts...

Yes, I will write multiple blog posts in a day and I will not care!

Basically, I come up with a lot of little thoughts in a day and as much as I love Twitter's ability to take my random thoughts and force me to condense them into 140 character snippets as much as I want, sometimes that's not enough. Like now. Venting my frustrations about not having enough space would take a series of tweets and I'd rather just write it all out now.

I'm in a love-hate relationship with Twitter right now.

Also, I like the blog's ability to take as many entries as I want, with one entry per subject, but it is all condensed, rather than if I took a notebook and wrote seperate entry after seperate entry and ended up with dozens of sheets of paper only half or a quarter filled. (Yes, I could write multiple entries on the same page and save paper, but call me picky... I don't like doing that. It just looks cluttered to me. And, this way, I'm not using paper at all! Save the trees!)

Quirk Classics...

Ah, "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies." Very quirky, very much tongue-in-cheek, but very fun. Basically the original text of P&P, but with zombies thrown in. The result is pure win.

Another in the series, "Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters", recently came out. I've yet to read it (though that will hopefully change soon), but I had to laugh at the trailer.

I realized...

... a lot of things, actually. Here's just a few.

- I have a lot of things in a day that I want to say/write and never do in a) my journal because it takes too long to handwrite it out, b) my YWS blog because I'm afraid that if I post about a bajillion blog posts a day, I'll take up most of the blog forum and annoy people, c) here because I sort of forgot this existed.

- That I have no less than four blogs: 1) my YWS blog, which I update at least daily. 2) my writing blog, Opening the Vein, which I intend to revive. 3) my NaNo blog, which will probably go away after NaNo. 4) This blog, which I also intend to revive.

- I have a lot of things in a day that I want to say/write and actually do. I fill pages of  notebooks with things to say. I have a Twitter that I post semi-regularly on. I have the aforementioned blogs. There just seems to be so much more that I don't say. (Hence why I have taken to carrying a pocket-sized notebook around with me that has no particular purpose other than being a catchall receptacle for my thoughts in order to preserve them for future expansion.)

- The more I learn, it seems, the less confident I am to speak on my knowledge. It's like the more I learn, the more I learn that there are people out there who are so much more knowledgeable on the subject than I am. It sort of makes you feel humble.

- Safety is for ninjas too.

- I enjoy non-sequiter humor. I enjoy clever humor. I also enjoy random things. Clever non-sequiter random humor is the very best.

- I am in the apathetic stage of stress.

- I love The Hunchback of Notre Dame. And Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. (Though those aren't so much realizations as memories.)