Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

Recently, I tried to go see a movie with a couple of friends. The movie was Persepolis. It seemed like a simple enough proposition: Go to the movie theater. Buy tickets. Take our seats. Wait for the movie to start. Incidentally, that's the point at which the whole process stalled out.

We should have known something was up when we realized we were the only three people in the theater. We waited for the movie to start. And we waited. And waited. The screen was blank and it continued in that state.

At last, one of our number decided to seek out the establishment's employees and get to the bottom of things. He returned with an amused smile on his face.

"They were taking a cigarette break. They said they'd get to it soon."

We all had a good laugh at their rather indifferent approach to their work. And then we waited. And waited some more. And the screen was still blank.

At last the same member of the group decided he would track down the nicotine-addicted employees and figure out what was going on. This time we could hear him conversing with a woman just outside the theater.

He finally came back in, this time with a more puzzled expression on his face.

"Apparently, they can't show that movie because it's 35mm and not digital."

Huh? Um, weren't we in a movie theater? Where they show movies?

Fortunately at that moment the woman, a supervisor of some sort, appeared to clarify the situation.

"See, that movie only had about ten people the first day we showed it and then the projector broke and there ain't been nobody here to see it again."

Oh....So.... Is the projector going to be repaired?

"Well....lemme call the manager."

She called the manager.

"The tech guy should be coming tomorrow to look at it," she tells us.

Then, can we expect to be able to see the movie the day after?

"Sure. I can refund your money. Or, you know, I've got Fool's Gold, Definitely,Maybe, U23D, Hannah Montana...."

No, no. A refund will be fine.

"OK, I'll just need your ticket stubs." We started digging in our pockets and purses. "What's that movie Persepolis about anyway?"

Well, it's based on the life of a girl growing up in Iran during the revolution....

"Oh, I wouldn't want to see that. My brother just got sent over there, you know. He's protecting the Colonel, cuz he was the best marksman in his class. Yeah, I couldn't watch any movie like that."

Oh. OK. We gave her our ticket stubs, and she gave us back our money. We leave.

Two days later, we're making plans to go to the movie theater and actually see Persepolis this time. We call the theater to make sure the projector is now functioning. It is. However, they are now no longer showing that movie. If we'd like, though, they have Fool's Gold, Hannah Montana, U23D....

Alas.

Ha Ha Ha.

Hey, look, I'm writing a blog post this year. Woo hoo! I feel a little rusty, having stayed away so long. Anyway, here's a break down of this extremely eventful week:

Tuesday, February 12 - I have been dating my boyfriend for exactly one month today. Yay!

Wednesday, February 13 - This would have been my grandmother's 80th birthday. Man, she almost made it!

Thursday, February 14 - Valentine's Day! And I did buy valentines to share with 32 of my closest loved ones. They're Nickelodeon cartoon character themed.

Friday, February 15 - I'm going to see The Crucible starring my wonderful and talented friend A.S. in her last role of her college career.

So, probably nobody else really cares about any of this stuff, but darnit that's what's on my mind right now. Hopefully I'll be back with something more interesting to say later this week. Until then!

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Yesterday I learned about a great internship opportunity in Mexico City, which would utilize both my undergraduate major and my past two years of work experience. The only difficulty is, the internship would be from February 2008 to August 2008. I'd have to take off a semester from Grad. school, and I'd have to drop everything and leave in less than two months.

I'm in a bind. On the one hand, I would love the experience of doing the internship, plus it would be great for my resume and possible future job opportunities. On the other hand, I love my life in Abilene, and I think I've finally found the career path I want to follow.

I'm praying a lot about this. I just don't know what to do.

Hail, poetry!

To make Lauren happy, here's a poem I wrote on Saturday:

Green Peace

The world's so full of violence, man.
People have them guns and bombs.
They even droppin' bombs from blimps,
When really all they need's some hemp!
(Medicinal, I mean, not clothes,
The kind the legal farmer grows.)
If everyone just smoked the herb
They'd throw their weapons to the curb.
The world needs peace. I'm tellin' ya'!
The answer, man's, to take a puff,
So grab a blunt, a roach or joint.
I guarantee you'll see my point.
We potheads never fuss and fight.
We cool, man, coller when we light.
'Cuz when we high, we all laid out
Or laughin', man, or makin' out.
That's why next time I see a king,
Or whatever it is they got in Beijing,
I'll tell him, "Man, you stop those wars."
I'll give him weed from my own stores.
We smoke together. The violence stops.
At least, until they call the cops.

In case you're wondering, I have never smoked marijuana in my life, and I do not necessarily agree with the sentiments expressed in this poem. I wrote it because we were having a contest to see who could write the best poem about a silly topic. The topic I drew was "Peace and pot." OK, that's all I got for now, man...woman...whatever.

Only Strangers See Me Cry

As you may or may not know, at the same moment I am writing this, my grandmother is slowly slipping out of life. She had a heart attack on Monday night, and she has been unconscious since then. Her condition has begun to deteriorate. At this point, it is only a matter of time until she is gone completely.

This whole experience of dealing with my grandmother's looming death has brought home to me again just how intensely private I am with my emotions.

I've been crying, sure. I've actually been crying quite a lot. Yet I'm pretty sure that none of my friends have seen me crying. I doubt they've even seen me looking particularly sad. It's not that I'm trying to suck it up and "act normal" around my friends. The reaction is totally involuntary. As soon as I'm alone, I cry. As soon as I'm near other people, the tears evaporate and I feel normal again. It's like I am physically incapable of losing emotional control in front of other people.

I think my friends think that I'm not dealing with all this well emotionally. They only see me looking more or less the same as always: laughing, smiling, teasing. Maybe I am showing signs of how sorrowful I feel, and I just think I'm not. But everyone feels like they have to keep mum about the whole topic of my grandmother. Nobody will mention it unless I bring it up first. And that's a weird thing too. I have this deep-seated inability to tell people about it. It's just easier not to. It seems like I would just be bothering them to tell them about it, and really, there's nothing they can say or do to make things better.

I've always been good at hiding my feelings. Now I'm wondering if maybe it goes deeper than just being a good actress. I actually don't feel my emotions as strongly when I'm with other people, especially people I know. And that's why the only people who have seen me cry so far are the few people I encounter at the end of my walk to school, at the moment when my tears are beginning to dry up and the overwhelming emotions almost completely disappear.

Self Constructed by Words

I've been thinking a lot lately about song lyrics. I'm writing this paper for one of my classes. Don't ask. I don't even know what it's really about yet. For this paper, though, I've been rolling around in my head all these thoughts about music and song lyrics and the way that technology allows us to be constantly enveloped in this particular literature.

I realized pretty early on that my fascination with this topic has a lot more to do with the words involved than it does with the music in which the words are couched. It should be fairly obvious why I'm more concerned with words than music. So here I am with all these thoughts bumping around up there in my brain, and something suddenly occurred to me: words affect me profoundly.

There was a moment the other day when I was walking home from school, feeling down in the dumps, fearful as I often am that I was teetering on the brink of failure. Then, suddenly, the lyrics of a favorite song popped into my head. I can't remember now which song or which lyrics, but the moment those words appeared in my mind, I began to carefully apply them like a verbal salve on my wounded self. Within a matter of moments, these words had helped me reconstruct myself as a person who could succeed, who could get done what she needed to do. I realized almost immediately what I had done, and that was the instant in which I realized this truth about myself: words affect me profoundly.

It began to dawn on me how much of what I perceived to be myself was built out of certain words, certain phrases. These were things I had read, things I had been told by others, things I had told myself or had written. This is amazing to me. Am I really so literarily inclined that I am truly a self constructed of words? Or do lots of people feel this way, people who don't have the same investment in language that I do?

Theme Song

People should always have theme songs. I heard my friend M tell my friend S this the other night, and I heartily agree. It's OK if your theme song changes depending on your mood or current life situation. Just make sure you have one.

My current theme song: "Your House" by Jimmy Eat World. If you have a theme song, let me know.