More parts!!

Part 1
I drove an SUV today and was a part of a convoy. Firsts! Butnoseriously, it worries me that I may be living a life today that makes the lives of future generations less prosperous. Maybe I'm the only person that thinks these kind of things when they're flipping through racks of clothing that were sewn in Nepal but it's true.

Part 2
I've noticed that writing songs is a lot like writing poetry only after I've written some words down, I pick up my ukulele and start strumming chords to see what fits and then saying, well singing, the words in different ways until I like it. Also, it's harder to know when I'm being original and when I'm ripping off other people's songs that are stuck in my head. Oh and the other difference is that when I finish, I don't really want to show it to people, no matter how awesome I think it is. Handing over a piece of paper is way less daunting than performing my work to an audience which I relate to opening yourself up and spilling all over the floor. Singing my own stuff is just so freaking personal and vulnerable and intense. And then there's that moment when I finish and no one says anything and I'm thinking, please, let me disappear. Maybe I'll get there someday, reach that place where I'm comfortable with my songs and self and can just play like a normal person. Until then, I'll be practicing in my room.


Part 3
It really bothers me when I'm too tired or disillusioned or both to be the person that I want to be. There was this incident last night involving people saying things that I disagreed with but, because I was tired and doubted that anyone would care or notice that I said something, didn't say anything about. It was like that moment when it feels like your last string breaks and it's not even worth it to argue because nothing you say will change their minds. And I hate that, that I didn't have the energy or willpower to be who I want to be.

Part 4
I went to the bookstore today and, on the sale shelves, placed seemingly for the sole purpose of mocking me were two books sitting innocently side by side.
Book 1: The Science of Sexy
Book 2: He's Just Not That Into You
It may be funny to you but it's even more hilarious if you are intimately acquainted with the goings on of my head and also my life. And on that note, I am going to go watch the movie, He's Just Not That Into You, which I got out of the library before it became applicable to my life.

The Return of PARTS

(It's time for a PARTS blog. A blog in 2 PARTS.)

Part I: In Which Rena Recounts Technical Difficulties

So my lovely, faithful computer had its (less lovely, less faithful) mouse frozen for around 2 days. I did nothing about it except intermittently for clicking/jiggling it impatiently and then forcing it back to sleep. Today I get the bright idea to turn the power strip-thing off and turn it on again (thus forcing the power to kind of restart itself, I don't know.), and it worked. This is, I am aware, standard troubleshooting procedure. Why I did not do this sooner, I do not know. It's weird how things I know so often become things I forget. In the Venn Diagram of My Life, those circles overlap with worrisome frequency.

Small inconveniences like this force me to put my life into perspective, in a way. "My computer won't work boo-hoo I can't waste time on Tumblr for today." is a class-A first world problem. In the meantime, though, I've done a lot of reading. (Two books--both about 250 pages in less than 48 hours. Both very good. Summary/rant below.) Which I've been meaning to do more of anyway.

PART II: In Which Rena Talks About Books

The books I read over my little woeful computerless time were Into the Wild Nerd Yonder and Don't Stop Now, both by Julie Halpern. Which I thoroughly enjoyed and you should read. (Think what would happen if John Green were a woman. And still a novelist and not, like, a supermodel or something.) Even though I enjoyed them, I have some criticisms.

The first is about this girl who, once her friends have turned into pseudo-punk rock hipsters, realizes they were terrible friends anyway and goes off in search of new friends. These friends happen to play Dungeons & Dragons. And throughout this whole thing her inner turmoil is if she should abandon her (also sort of punk) roots and cement herself as a D&D nerd because that's where she'll be happier, or if having nerdy friends makes her a nerd.* I (as a self-professed nerd and punk fan) took a mild amount of offense. Life isn't black and white, yo.** Nor is life a neatly-divided-cliques John Hughes movie. I've had heated-yet-well-argued debates regarding 10th vs. 11th Doctors, as well as The Clash vs. The Ramones.*** I'm just a complex person like that. Everyone is/has the right to be. Maybe I'm being overly judgmental and/or overly analytical. The book doesn't necessarily preach giving up one subculture for another, it just implies that if one group is where the hipster assholes reside, then you might want to distance yourself from it completely. Eh. Just read the book and decide for yourselves.

The second I have less criticisms of, but am only a little pouty about because it had almost the exact same plot as my (as-yet-unfinished) NaNoWriMo 2010 novel. Except the published one had a third party being faking her own kidnapping and a kind-of-platonic couple roadtripping to find her instead of the protagonist being fake-kidnapped by her kind-of-platonic friend and a roadtrip ensuing for the sake of the roadtrip. You should read it anyway. It's longer than mine.

Footnotes:

* This sounds really critical and is a pretty bad plot summary.

** I'm so gangster.

*** With the same person, nonetheless. We're bonded by a love of argument. (I was on the side of the latter in both cases, if you were wondering.)

Hockey and Its Implications

preface
I've had this post in my head for a while, maybe even since the whole playoff* thing started. That said, I want to get back to my book, That Fluffy YA Romance**, so if this seems rushed... yeah nevermind. Let's get into it.

Hockey. It's kind of a big deal around these parts. I don't know if it's the same in the US or wherever else you reader people live. I always think of hockey being football's sideshow in the States. But in Canada, it is *the* show.

With Vancouver's*** hockey team (the Canuck[le Heads]s, as my dad affectionately refers to them) currently in the Stanley Cup Finals, it's kind of hard to escape. There are stickers in every window, posters on every wall and flags on a rather large percentage of vehicles--seriously people, two words: fuel efficiency! The hype has given me a lot to think about, too.

I see a lot of merit in sports but I really can't condone the violence. It's completely brutal and unacceptable and I worry that our idolization of these players somewhat desensitizes us to the violence of what they do to each other. I'm not saying that a guy is going to come home from watching a game at the pub, where players smash each other in the face, interspersed with commercials in which women are objectified to sell beer, and beat up his wife. I'm just saying that denying the linkage is obtuse.

But I can look past that, temporarily. As my mom said, "It's not the game I have a problem with, it's the way it's played." What I appreciate about it is the fact that hockey, and sports in general, bring communities together. When played with integrity, I think sports represent being united for a common goal and I am constantly amazed about how the Canucks having gone all the way to the Finals for the first time since the year I was born can bring complete strangers together.

I know people that are sports nerds (ahem, John Green, himself) and I definitely have to take second looks at things when there's so many people who feel so passionate about them. I still can't comprehend how hockey players make exponentially more money than, say, teachers when I would say that education should be more highly valued than entertainment. But that's almost another topic in itself.

I can't come to a solid conclusion either way but I think that's okay. I mean, pro: strengthening community, enjoyment/entertainment; cons: glorified violence, fractured sense of value/priorities. It's tough to call.

Personally, I feel arbitrarily invested, like I want them to win but I don't know why I care. It's a weird feeling. I will be keeping tabs on the game tomorrow, though, because I'll be at work. Yay.

Anything to add to my internal debate? For now, I shall go back to What Happened to Goodbye and bid you good night.

*fought really hard with myself about whether to put 'playoff' in quotes. Just saying.
**I just read two heavy books (re: teen prostitution and death, respectively). So I can read whatever I want now. Don't panic, I'm just regrouping with a little Sarah Dessen. It's all good. This is not to assume you were judging, mostly I'm just judging myself. And rationalizing. I'll stop now.
***I can't say 'our' hockey team, though many do. I just can't.

But not Teletubbies!

I think I prefer TV shows to films, on the whole.

I genuinely believe it’s at least partly because of my obsession with the internet that my attention span during movies tends to wane. Also, I cannot even watch films when I’m stressed out because I can’t stop thinking about how I should be doing something else. Funnily, I have less of a problem with watching TV shows instead of being productive. It’s probably psychological.

It’s not that I hate movies; there are many that I love and I don’t usually have a problem with watching one. However, the prospect of watching a film often seems unappealing to me. This is a fairly recent development because only a couple of years ago, I didn’t regularly follow any TV shows at all. Now, I only religiously watch two-becoming-three (30 Rock, Doctor Who, and now Bones, of course) but I’m getting more interested in other shows as well. I really love the idea of TV shows. You really get to develop characters and stories… or overstay your welcome and totally run yourself into the pavement, depending.

There are also several interesting limiting factors with TV and movies. In TV, you have perhaps more freedom to develop plots and characters, whereas in a film you have approximately 2 hours or less to convince your audience that you’re good. Yet with TV, it’s more risky with the actors, because after their contract is up, they may decide to leave, and then you’re short a character… you may have to write a death into the show! In a way, you’re more influenced by the realistic factors of the show — like, the necessity of the same actors to play the same character, for continuity. That can either contribute to the pace of the show or totally slow it down as the writers attempt to resist all changes to the nature of the show. That's one of the reasons why Doctor Who is so good, I think -- the main and supporting characters all change fairly frequently, allowing the show to retain the same personality whilst keeping it from becoming senile.

Flexi-lunche-vege-vegan-tarianism

Vita's clairvoyant.

^ In the comments to Hank's video, I saw someone who identified as "flexitarian", which--although not recognized by spellcheck--I'm assuming is closer to what you, Alex, have struggled to communicate to your family. There are vegetarians who occasionally eat meat. There are non-vegetarians who occasionally eat vegetarian meals. People are naturally omnivorous (and I personally think it's pointless to deny that), some people just lean more to the herbi/carni sides of the spectrum. And that's fine. The world isn't black and white, good and evil, Muggles and Death Eaters, carnivores and vegetarians, you get the idea.

However, I am going to try going lunchetarian for a month.* More than that, though, I'm actually going to eat vegetables. (Starting tomorrow. See below.) Because there are plenty of vegetarian meals that don't involve vegetables at all. (If the cards are played right, technically vegetarian food can be pretty unhealthy.)

What I had for lunch today:

1. Pita bread with hummus (roasted garlic flavor)

2. A few miniature pickles (kosher dill)

3. A can of Coke (regular)

(This was even vegan, whooo. I could never really be a vegan, though. Cheese is just so good.)

Pickles, while still strictly speaking are vegetables, are like the salt-and-vinegar-mutant-half-siblings of actual vegetables. I've always been more of a fruit person** than a vegetable person, and I've always figured that this difference is like the difference between cat people and dog people; no real difference exists, and they serve the same purpose. Rationally, of course, I know that they contain different nutrients and things and because of this I'm going to try to implement change in my life.

Footnotes:

* This is vaguely cheater-y of me, though, because it is now summer and I tend to sleep until late-morning, making the lunch hours my breakfast hours. I really dislike having to eat a large or even moderately sized meal soon after I wake up, so I tend to just graze on things. (. . .like a dainty little gazelle. "Graze" is such a weird word.)

** Excluding avocados. I hate avocados. I despise the taste, texture, and color of them. They remind me of baby vomit (whenever I make a comparison like this, one or both of my parents cleverly point out that I have never actually tasted the thing to which I am making the comparison. Hopefully you can understand the metaphor.); they are my nemesis. Like peanut butter is to Alex. (Do you mind if I ask why? I'm very pro-PB, and it boggles my mind to see someone so vehemently opposed to it. Unless you're deathly allergic to peanuts or something.)

confessions of a part time vegetarian

WARNING: Some of the tenses in this post are kind of screwed up. Sorry. I'm tired (the excuse of champions).

On my birthday, I was craving bacon. One of the things that I'd managed to convince myself for most of the four (five?) years I was a vegetarian is that I'm not a huge fan of bacon. Vicious lie, or at least it is now. Bacon also holds some negative memories in my mind, unfortunately, because of one of the last times I was craving bacon.

We were having a family breakfast--french toast, strawberries, bacon--and I sat there, staring at the red strips of greasy meat, wanting. And so I talked myself into it, told myself the foundation of my personage wasn't going to crumble if I had one tiny piece of bacon. I reached for it.

It's like I was waiting for one of my sisters to say it, waiting to hear my insecurities voiced, and one of them did. "Aren't you a vegetarian?"

Like a rubber band snapping, I withdrew my hand and left the table in tears.* I don't blame her but for a minute I wished that people didn't have to stick so strictly to what they say they are, that our society left some room for growth or shifting. So let me just say that 'vegetarian' is a label, not a way of life. As a teenager and human being, I feel somewhat entitled to change. This is me, asking for space to shift around whenever I'm uncomfortable in my skin, on behalf of myself and every other person who wants to change without judgement.

Jeez, I really needed to get that out. Thank you for being an outlet. But on to what Vita was actually talking about.

First of all, I have never been what I would call a "strict" vegetarian. I never chose hunger if something was cooked in the same pan as meat. I'd usually pick around it or go for side dishes. These days, I eat chicken whenever and some red meat sporadically.


Does it inconvenience your parents or do you make your own food?
Being the only non-meat eater in my family might have been awkward if we were an intense meat eating family, but we aren't. We eat it a few times a week, less since my older sister left, and when we do, it's usually optional/on the side. Considering how light on meat we are anyway and how easy going I am, I don't think it's inconvenient. I can't speak for someone who has a family that eats meat every day, though.


What do you do when you're eating at someone else's house and they serve meat?
That's tricky. See, once you've been a vegetarian for a few years, the places where you habitually eat catch on to your preferences. All my friends know so there's always a cheese pizza alongside the pepperoni. New people are usually pretty accommodating, too. I mean, I feel bad when people go out of their way to make me a salad because they're serving meatloaf or whatever but it's kind of nice.
As for advice, it depends on the situation. If you're comfortable with the people, mention it beforehand and see if they can keep the meat to the side. If you don't feel like saying anything, stick to sides. And if you don't care, indulge. I've done it to avoid making people feel guilty and because, well, I felt like eating meat. But the more you mentioned it, the more it will stick and people will be thinking of it automatically after a while.

Oh and protein. A friend of mine went vegetarian and then stopped because she was gaining weight from snacking on carbs all the time. The weight thing isn't so much of a problem for me but energy and hunger are so protein is good. I eat nuts and beans and humuus (peanut butter is an arch-nemesis of mine) but also a lot of bread and pasta. And the government technically recommends 7-12 fruit and veggie servings every day so that probably wouldn't hurt. Balance is key in any diet.

I hope that helps. Let me know how it goes.

*Yes, I am that sensitive.