As your attorney I advise you to...

Mrs. Dalloway

2007-10-02T16:22:00.000-07:00

So, I wanted to hate this book. I began "trying" to read it before the class started, but decided to put it away and wait until I HAD to read it. The stream of conciousness was hard to wade through and seemed pointless. I didn't understand why she couldn't just tell the story and entertain me. I guess I understand why now, but it still didn't make reading the book any easier. We do really think that way. My thoughts are always tangled up and shoot off in random directions and I even realize that I constantly contradict myself. Human beings are very complicated and sometimes we don't actually want to know our true selves. I don't think Clarissa really wanted to understand herself. She took the safe way out by not marrying Peter, or going the way of lesbian love. I can't say that I blame her though. There was no guarantee that she would have lived a comfortable life if she had made other choices. What it comes down to is that comfort was really more important to her than romance.

My Life Feels Like a Waste Land Right Now

2007-09-30T10:44:00.000-07:00

Today I am drained. I completely forgot that I needed to post on my blog and now I am struggling to think of something to talk about. What about Elliot's "The Waste Land?" That was a crazy poem. There was no single plot or narrative. Just when you thought you were beginning to figure it out, it would switch to something completely different and you were thrown off again. I don't know how many of you have read any of William S. Burroughs' work, but it really reminded me of Naked Lunch. Both contained gritty, raw content that shocks the reader out of their confort zones, while also making a social commentary about the state of things.

Anyway, my mind isn't really wanting to focus today. I wish I could talk more about the poems we read this past week. I just finished my web page today and it took it all out of me. Now I have several tests to study for in other classes. Yuck!!

Forbidden Fruit

2007-09-19T17:03:00.001-07:00

If you haven't read Goblin Market by Christina Rosetti, you should check it out. It is a pretty quick read and very good. There is a lot of hidden meaning in this work and it was fun trying to pull it all out. I actually wanted to eat that fruit. The goblins make it sound so sweet and tempting. I mean, who can resist "Plump unpecked cherries" or "Wild free-born cranberries." I don't even like cherries, but if you describe them as plump I want to eat them all up. I didn't even know there were that many different kinds of fruit. I thought of the fruit as being a symbol for forbidden sin, or a temptation away from the path of the pure. When Laura gives into the goblins and dines on the fruit, it is like a metaphorical loosing of her virginity. She quickly becomes an old maid who is obsessed with getting another taste. I was really more interested in the temptation part than the redemption part, but if you were wondering she gets saved by her heroine sister.

Read it!

The magical merpeople cult

2007-09-11T14:47:00.000-07:00

You don't often read stories about mermen, do you? I really liked the poem "The Forsaken Merman" by Matthew Arnold. It made me think about what he was saying about religion and imagination. I understood it to mean that you can't have imagination if you want to have religion. That sounds crazy. My only guess is that the church only wanted you to believe what THEY were telling you and there was no room for anything else, like fairy tales and magic. I can see how this idea is still true today. Think about how a lot of Christians have rejected Harry Potter books because of the magical elements, witches, and wizards. Talk about hypocrits. If you want to read something that needs a lot of imagination to believe, you can just open the pages of the Bible itself; people coming back from the dead, walking on water, parting the seas, healing people with just your hands, etc. I'm sorry, but without a little imagination that all sounds a little far fetched to me.

I mentioned in my post that the church sounds like a cult that tries to keep its parishoners cut off from any other type of thought. I had a funny dream once that my dad and I accidentally joined a cult. We thought that aliens had selected us for our superior intelligence to move to a new planet and start a new race of people. My mom and sister were too smart to fall for this though and went out shopping instead. My dad bought a school bus to transport us to this new planet and told me that he planned on picking up "chicks" in it. We ended up driving to El Reno, which is when I realized that we hadn't been chosen by aliens as the smartest people on earth, but were just the most impressionable and had inadvertently joined a cult. It was a sad realization. I'm sorry, that had nothing to do with my original post.

Frankenstein

2007-09-07T08:21:00.000-07:00

So, I really enjoyed reading Frankenstien. I have actually always wanted to read it, but I guess I was a little scared of what it would be like. I knew it was nothing like how Hollywood has depicted it. I do think it is interesting that pop culture has named the monster Frankenstein, even though Shelley never gave it a name other than monster or creature or the like. It does make sense though. Usually when someone invents something, it gets named after the creator or discoverer. Frankenstein did give life to it also, so like a father and son it would inherit his name.

It was sad to read about Mary Shelley's life. It must have been so hard to have so many children die. I think she had 5 pregnancies and only one child who survived. She came close to death herself once during a miscarriage. She seemed surrounded by death. Percy Shelley's wife and Mary's step-sister both committed suicide, Mary's mother died after giving birth to her, her sister Clara's daughter died in a boarding school, and then her husband drowns at sea. It is no wonder she would write a horror novel. I liked the interpretations of Frankenstein based on Shelley's pregnancies and lost children. I think it makes a lot of sense. I can understand the fear of bringing a new life into the world and the fear of rejection or that you will reject your own child. What if it comes out deformed? What if it doesn't love you? What if something goes wrong and your dreams are smashed? I have suffered a miscarriage myself and can understand feeling disconnected from a new pregnancy until you know for sure everything will turn out alright. And then what if it doesn't? How will you deal with it? I guess one way would be to write a book!

SICK!!!

2007-08-29T11:42:00.000-07:00

I know that I am required to post by the end of the week. I am afraid that this post is not really going to cut it. I am falling so far behind. Not because I can't keep up, but because I have been sick as a dog this week. Last week was a lot easier to get through because the readings were short poems. The readings are getting a lot longer this week and I have this mental block against them right now with how bad I feel. I meant to begin posting yesterday and I didn't because I felt so bad. It didn't even occur to me again until right now that I have homework I need to be doing. I guess this is at least something. I need to buckle down and force myself to read. I have to tell myself "It isn't that bad...It isn't that bad...It isn't that bad." Being sick wouldn't be so bad if I wasn't pregnant and can't take anything for my aches and pains. Okay, I guess I have whined enough. I will find my book and get SOMETHING read by the end of the day. I think I will begin with Keats "Ode to a Nightingale." I remember reading "Ode to a Grecian Urn" and liking it, so maybe I will like this one as well. We will see...

Horror Movies

2007-06-30T17:54:00.000-07:00

I am not a fan of horror movies. There was a small glimpse of time where I could handle them, but it was very brief. Movies like Ghost Ship, Resident Evil, and House of 1000 Corpses have ruined me completely. I'm not saying that these were particularly good or scary, but they contained elements that I have determined I do not like. I have very specific reasons and they are as follows:

Reason #1. People being sliced in half-I am not talking about limbs being chopped off. I am talking about the countless scenes in horror movies nowadays where a cable, a glass wall, or lasers slice someone in half. The most horrific part of this for me is that they show you the persons’ eyes as they watch their body slide apart. They are still living long enough to realize what has happened to them and watch it happen. Then there is the inevitable squishy slurping type noise that accompanies the sliding body part. Just gross!

Reason #2. Jerky movements from ghosts and possessed people-This must be an effect they do in editing; maybe they take every other frame out so their movement isn’t fluid. There is just something creepy about it that I don’t like. If the person were floating or moving at a normal pace, or even running I would be okay with it. But when they appear to be moving convulsively, that is where I draw the line.

Reason #3. If it seems too real- If I see a movie that I think, 'you know, that could happen to me,' I can’t watch it. There are too many real psychos out there that don’t need to be getting any more ideas. Seeing stories on the news of husbands hacking up their pregnant wives or people kidnapping helpless children is already more than I can handle.

When I was a kid, the two scariest movies to me were The Neverending Story and Pinocchio. Yes, I know…Pinocchio isn’t a scary movie. It is a Disney cartoon. But to tell a little girl that if she ever plays pool, smokes a cigar, or drinks beer she is going to turn into a donkey is very scary and just not right. Almost every part of The Neverending Story frightened me. I didn’t like when the horse sank into the mud, or the statues that shot lasers out of their eyes, but I did like the flying dragon.

"Peeping Tom, I Know You're Out There!"

2007-06-21T05:46:00.000-07:00

Having kids makes me think about all the mistakes I have made with other people's children. I am the worst at unintentionally teaching them something that they ought not to know. Take for example the time I explained to my 4-year-old niece about peeping tom. Let me explain: a week before, my niece had been asleep in my mother’s bedroom. Upon waking she thought she saw a man looking in through the window at her. My mother didn’t have any curtains in her bedroom and at the time she also had a strange neighbor, so my niece’s story is plausible. No one will ever know for sure if there really was a man looking in or if she was just having a bad dream. So, my niece and I are driving in the car and she brings this story up. I say, “You think you saw a peeping tom?” Of course, a 4-year-old has no clue what a peeping tom is, so when she asks I explain to her in very simple terms that a peeping tom is a man who watches you in your house through your open windows. What was I thinking?? This, of course, stuck in her memory banks and she went back home and told her 2-year-old brother all about Peeping Tom. I recieve a phone call later that night from my sister and mother asking why both of the kids are afraid to open any doors or windows because they think some man named Peeping Tom is lurking around outside. My nephew was actually sticking his head out the garage door saying, “Peeping Tom, we know you are out there.” They thought it was just one guy, first name Peeping, last name Tom, who could just show up at any moment to spy on you.

Did anyone see the episode of Will and Grace where Grace explains to a little girl that her dead mommy is a ghost following her around? That is me!!

Last summer I was in a hot tub with my other 3-year-old niece. I was seated in front of one of the jets and my niece asked me what it was. This is how the conversation went:

Child: “What’s that?”
Adult: “It’s called a jet, it shoots water out of it really fast.”
Child: “A SHIT”?
Adult: “No, no, no, a jjjjjeeet”
Child: “SHET!”
Adult: “Okay, no listen to me, J – E – T”
Child: “SHET!”
Adult: “Ju Ju Ju, Jet”
Child : “SHET!”
Adult: “JET!”
Child: “SHET!”

I eventually gave up, hoping that by dropping the subject she would forget what it was called altogether. Of course, kids will say the strangest things all on their own without any help from me. Not 10 minutes later she informed me that, “when she was a mermaid, she only had one tooth." I know that one was not my fault.

WWJTattoo?

2007-06-15T15:12:00.000-07:00

I dream just about every night. I have a few classics that I will never forget, but I had the craziest dream so far the other night.

My mother, sister, and I are at an outdoor festival. It was kind of like the Festival of the Arts, but not really. Seriously, not really at all like it. The only similar characteristics were that we were outdoors and people were selling things. We were also the only ones there. This “festival” was a bunch of homeless people with shopping carts and trash bags, selling the trash they had collected. We would approach them and ask what they were selling and then begin going through their bags of dirty clothes, aluminum cans, and other assorted trash items.

One homeless woman was doing tattoos for $5. If you have ever gotten a tattoo, you know this is darn cheap. And these weren’t tiny tattoos; they were large intricate designs, with vines and flowers. They were beautiful. But they were all in red. This didn’t seem odd to me though. I have the feeling that we had been drinking at this festival, because my judgment seemed to be off its mark. We all decided to get tattoos. I remember standing there while she tattooed this beautiful red vine pattern up my arm. I apparently had no concern for where this needle had been before or if this woman had washed her hands. Who cares when you have been drinking at a homeless festival, right?

The next morning in my dream, I wake up not remembering much of the night before. My mother and sister were also there. I remembered the tattoo and went to find a mirror. Only now did it occur to me the implications of what we had done. I totally flipped out. I began screaming and crying about dirty needles and saying that we were going to have to get tested. That is when I saw that neither my mother nor sister had tattoos where I remembered them to be. I was dumbstruck! I was sure they got one too. Now I just felt stupid. I looked in the mirror and was relieved to see that I did not have one either. But, then I started to hear them snickering behind me. I turned my back to the mirror to find out what they were talking about. They told me I should look at the back of my upper arm. I craned my neck around to see it in the mirror and was horrified by what I saw. Tattooed down my arm, in giant bold letters were the words, I LOVE JESUS. Actually, it was I (HEART) JESUS. This is the last thing I would tattoo on myself. I would tattoo my husbands name on my bicep with a heart and arrow through it before I would make a bold declaration on a very public area of my body that Jesus is my homeboy. I am not religious and I just wouldn’t do it. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I was thinking about laser treatments and always having to wear long sleeves, when I reached over to touch it and realized that it wasn’t a real tattoo at all. It was a temporary tattoo and I peeled it right off. Whew!

Pregnant

2007-06-12T07:36:00.000-07:00

So, I just found out this past weekend that I am pregnant. I am excited. My husband wasn't as ecstatic in the beginning, which is a little confusing since we were actually trying. This wasn't an unplanned pregnancy. I think his problem was that he thought it would take longer, so he had longer before reality really set in. You see, we just started trying in April, which means we got pregnant on our second month trying. Honestly, I didn't expect it to happen this soon either. I took 4 tests just to make sure. The first I took on Tuesday of last week. It came out negative, so I figured I wasn't pregnant. Then Tuesday passed, Wednesday passed, Thursday passed, Friday passed, and finally, on Saturday, my husband and I decided we should test again.

We stopped off at a store and bought a test, but we were both hungry and wanted to go out to eat so we went straight to a restaurant. We decided it would be a good idea if I just took the test in the restaurant bathroom to get it over with (what kind of people decide this is a good idea?). I think we both honestly expected a negative so it wasn't a big deal. I set it on the toilet paper dispenser and waited. That bright red line appeared instantly (the one that doesn't mean anything) and I didn't see anything else. The disappointment started to creep over me and I was about to throw the test away when I thought I noticed a second line; a very faint second line. This line was so faint that I was pretty sure I was imagining it. The lighting was terrible in this bathroom. I wrapped the test back up in its wrapper and took it out to show my husband; at the table. Gross, I know. He must have been watching my facial expression because he noted that I looked confused when I came back the table. I was biting my lip. I didn't notice. I was definitely confused. I had no way of telling him a definite yes or no. One part of my brain knew that any sort of 2ND line meant pregnant, no matter how light. The other part (the part that is used to disappointment) was saying that I wanted to see a line so I was creating one that wasn't there. My husband, of course, agreed with the latter part and we ate our lunch without discussing it. Awkward!

We decided our best course of action was to buy a completely new test of a different brand and try it again. My husband picked it out this time. He got the one with the digital readout. This eliminated any deciphering on our part. If it was positive, it would clearly say PREGNANT. I took this test and it came out pregnant. Still, this wasn't good enough for my husband. He decided it would be best if he took the second test. Can you picture that? I guess this was to eliminate any factory errors with the product. As expected, he is NOT PREGNANT (in case anyone was wondering).

The New Houdinis?

2007-06-12T06:53:00.000-07:00

I have to rant about David Blaine. I've gotta say, he has really been disappointing me lately. When I first saw his street magic shows on TV a few years back, I was impressed. He had me at hello. Goodbye David Copperfield, hello David Blaine!

But since then I have not been impressed with him. With every new stunt I become more and more disappointed. I don’t understand this new trend of magicians doing these grand stunts, instead of just plain old magic. Every new stunt he does just get more ridiculous. I want to see him do magic, not stand in a hunk of ice for a week with a catheter in his pee hole. Isn’t he supposed to be a magician? What is magical about standing on a pole or burying yourself alive? There isn’t much risk involved if you are being monitored day and night and can be pulled out at any moment. Oh poor baby, his muscles might atrophy. They try and make it sound so dangerous because of all the risks involved to his body. Truthfully, I could care less about what risk he is putting himself in. It is his body and his deal. It doesn't make it any more exciting for me to watch. The same thing goes for that new Chris Angel guy. He is so queer with his eye liner. I have been impressed by a few of his stunts, but I saw one episode where he hangs himself from big hooks and has a helicopter fly him around in the dessert. Now, tell me again what makes that magic? It just sounds plain stupid to me.

Anyway, back to David Blaine. His las stunt he was going to break the record for how long someone can hold their breath under water, right? It was called Drowned Alive. There are divers out there that do that every day. Why should he be so special? Does he think he is better than people out there who do this sort of stuff professionally? I just think he is a jerk. He takes himself way too seriously. He is like an amusing clown now, instead of a magician. He makes me laugh. End of story.

"When the Going Gets Weird, The Weird Turn Pro"

2007-06-08T16:10:00.000-07:00

I wanted to say a little about my choice in blog name. Most of you probably already recognize it, but a few of you might not. It is a quote from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. My husband and I are both huge Hunter S. Thompson fans and I just couldn't resist using a line from one of his books. The movie version is also fantastic if you haven't seen it. I am anxiously awaiting the next film version of one of his books to come out. They are making The Rum Diary and I believe it is scheduled to come out sometime in 2008. This one will also star Johnny Depp, who makes a MUCH better HST than Bill Murray, if any of you ever saw Where the Buffalo Roam. We are slowly but surely creating a collection of his works and other things related to HST. I have even considered the thought of getting a Gonzo tattoo (but my last one hurt so bad that I am taking a very long break). Our most recent book purchase was The Curse of Lono, which I had to order from a private seller because it is no longer in print. I have actually not read it yet because I bought it for my husband for his birthday, but I hope to read it soon. We also have a copy of the Rolling Stone magazine that came out right after his death. We picked it up in an airport after a trip to Italy and were shocked to see the headline because we had not heard the news, being out of the country. It was a sad day.

An Apple a Day

2007-06-06T10:52:00.000-07:00

I was thinking today about going to the doctor. More specifically, I was thinking about how sweaty I get waiting for the doctor. It must make me really anxious or nervous. I feel like he is going to think I am lying when I tell him my ailments. Possibly this might go back to my childhood, or I have watched too many movies or read too many books where drug addicts are trying to con doctors into writing them prescriptions for pain killers. I am not a drug addict, by the way. On a typical day I don’t sweat as much as that 45 minutes I spend sitting alone in that sterile room with crinkly paper under my butt. My palms get clammy and the sweat starts to pool in areas I don't like to discuss. The room feels like 40 degrees, yet my face gets flushed and that slow sweat trickle begins running down my back. You know the one. I sit there staring at the Kleenex box on the counter. It invites me to come over and use some of its water absorbing product. I begin wondering if I have enough time to get up, dab off, and get back on the crinkly paper before anyone catches me. I feel guilty of a crime just thinking it. I can envision myself with my shirt hiked up dabbing my sweaty crevices, the thin Kleenex fabric stuck to my body as the doctor or nurse opens the door in shock and horror. This could be a typical day for them. This is probably why they knock first, but I can't take that chance. I also worry that some of the Kleenex might become lodged in embarrassing areas and the doctor may find it during his examination. This would be bad. I would never be able to return and show my face there again.