oh hi there

You know those times in your life when you're bounding towards something, single minded in the extreme, and then it ends and you're floundering, seemingly purposeless?

I do.

I've been thinking to myself that I haven't been blogging lately and when I have, I haven't really enjoyed it. I could say that BEDA took a lot of blogging energy and May has been a month to replenish. I still don't like it, the not-blogging.

I love blogging. And I hate when I get so caught up in being busy that I don't do the things that I love. Like playing ukulele and making bagels.

May (the month) seems like a blur to me because I wasn't doing those things. I was getting ready for my road test, stressing and over-thinking, and then camp and now they're both over and I just want something new. Purpose. Passion. I'm tired and I'm tired of it. I've seventeen! I want to celebrate and live!

So here goes another shot. At sleeping and eating properly. At doing something with my days (other than reading. Reading's great and all but writing is good, too, as is going outside once in a while). Here's to counting down until June 22 and then July 15. Here's to enjoying the things I love and filling my days with passion and purpose.

I'm ready for my umpteenth wind, a spurt of energy. But first, sleep.

Herbivority

Hello! I'm glad to see that we all survived the rapture! Let's see if we can last until 2013!

I'm thinking about becoming a vegetarian. That sounds like a conversion, doesn't it? I shall join the cult of the vegetables... worship them. Worship them!

Ahem.

This is somewhat of a difficult process, however. Firstly, I'm not sure that I have the willpower to do so. Secondly, while I like vegetables, I don't know if I like them that much. Thirdly, the world of meat is expansive and delicious.

However, it's something that I want to do. I don't have any inherent grudge against eating animals; people are omnivores and that's perfectly fine. I only have an issue with meat eating in the United States and in my own life. I'm pretty sure that, like most Americans, I eat too much meat. It doesn't seem that much to me but I've heard that the recommended portion is about the size of your fist (or smaller?) and if you go to any restaurant you definitely won't get that. Also, I really have issues with how the animals are treated both on an ethical level and because of the increased risk of disease and infection that arises from their horrible living conditions. Also, I'm on an ever-stalling quest to be more healthy and I think vegetarianism is a step in the right direction.

Anyway, I'm not going to start this week -- there's way too much going on right now for me to abandon my comfort food. Also, I need time to figure out what I'm supposed to be eating, vegetable-wise, because I would rather not be malnourished. I'm probably going to wait until summer vacation starts and try it out for a month to see how it goes. It may be a complete failure, but hopefully not.

Alex, I'm pretty sure that you're mostly a vegetarian, and Rena, I don't know if you have any special eating habits, but if you have any tips, I would appreciate them!

- What do you do when you're eating at somebody's house and they serve meat, not knowing that you don't eat meat?

- Does it inconvenience your parents/do they make vegetarian food for you or do you just make your on?

Some Serious and Non-Serious Rapture-Talk

It's 5:58 here in the good ole heartland.

And if you're reading this, than neither of us are dead, so that'll be great. My Rapture day has been spent in my pajamas, listening to the soundtrack to Grease and being quite hungry but otherwise okay. Oh lookit there, it took me two minutes to type that.

Things I will now be able to do that the rapture would have interfered with:

Eat dinner.

Turn 16.

Watch Doctor Who.

See Deathly Hallows P. 2

Vote.

Finish this massively large and important Government project.*

Continue to live.

Fun and worthwhile things, every one of them.

Serious time, though. It's easy for the majority of people, flippant nonbelievers of this one 89 year old Bible thumper, to make fun of this supposed prophecy. I'm not going to try to estimate how many people actually believe in this, but think about what they're going to have to deal with, now that their beliefs have been shattered. What will be their rationale for absolutely no one in the world, not even themselves being raptured? Sure, other people are nonbelievers who are full of sin and deserve to rot in hell on earth. But them, no, of course not. Will this whole thing be enough to shake their belief in God or just Harold Camping? Either way, I'd venture to say it will be unsettling for them.

People in cults or who believe in conspiracies and the like are really interesting to me. Not from a "LOLZ, ur so dumb."** standpoint, but sociologically and psychologically. These things are real to them, and they have reasons. They're very unlikely to change my way of thinking, but worth hearing to some degree.

Footnotes:

* I feel the need to clarify that I don't mean the actual government, but the class I'm required to take. But seeing as there is no Canadian or Indonesian government course, and humans love abbreviations, Government it is.

** Alright, maybe a few lulz.

a sense of broken vitality

I love walking home when it's warm, feeling the sun on my back as I leave no footprints in the familiar sidewalk. I've always had a pretty impressive internal compass. I'm not sure if being directionally oriented is genetic or learned but my mom is the same way. Somehow, I can usually tell which direction is home and, with one earphone in, I can get there, one step at a time.

Lately I've been listening to the same six songs on repeat (my favourite of Plain White T's) and it hasn't become boring yet. Maybe it's because when the songs mix with the sounds of traffic and fleeting birds and my heartbeats, there's no constancy to hold onto. Whatever the reason that I continue to love the diverse monotony, it's a great soundtrack for coming home.

I don't even know if I can describe how great it feels to come home. Today, I was alone and though I can be a social walker at times, I love that. I love the introspection and observation. How I feel completely out of my body and perfectly in it. I love noticing the telephone poles with countless staples that once attached my neighbours' declarations and calls for help in finding beloved pets. I love the spring and I love cherishing the fact of my existence, as the breeze blows cherry blossom petals into my face like overly large pink snowflakes.

But today there was also a somberness in my tread. Ever since watching this video, I've been constantly astonished at how I can feel for someone whose name I don't even know, whose path my life will probably never cross with. Last night, four blocks from where I sit at my computer, a pedestrian was killed in a hit-and-run car accident.

Not only as a newly licensed driver but as a pedestrian, this event horrifies and saddens me. It's scary and upsetting and I'm sitting here with this awful feeling of loss and grief for a woman whose face I probably wouldn't recognize. And she's gone and it's terrible but it amazes me that I have this capacity to empathize with the people who knew her and will miss her, to appreciate that her life was valuable and precious, even if I was never a part of it.

So I was walking home, crossing the intersection where a car delivered that fatal blow and then drove away,  with this broken sense of vitality. How can the world be simultaneously so beautiful and terrible? How can I go on breathing in the essence of spring to my lungs' full capacity when all around me, death is imminent? Our world is full of so many contradictions and contrasts. I've no conclusions. I guess we just have to deal with it the best we can.

on men and women and books

Note: Before you read the rest of this, I'd like to point out that as this is a somewhat involved subject, I could have done it more justice by editing this and not just posting my raw train-of-thought typing (which is how most of my first drafts for everything start), but I'm not being productive tonight and I need to go to sleep so I can wake up and be productive tomorrow, so you are getting the rough version of this (that's what she said). Look out for all the "buts" in the third paragraph.

This whole question of sexism in art fascinates me. I need a better word than "art," though -- I'd use "popular culture" but it's not really only a question of that which is popular -- I suppose I really mean books, although it applies to television and films as well. But I'm most familiar with books, so I'll stick with those.

I just tried to Google some examples of people complaining about this but I couldn't find any. True, I only looked at the first three results, but this, I believe, is insignificant. So maybe I'm just making all of this up inside my head. But anyway, you hear a lot about how there is much sexism in books because lots of main characters, especially in popular series, are male, and how males (and sometimes females) tend to only read books with male main characters. But this leads to the question of how we can combat this problem, or perhaps more interestingly, whom do you blame for this? You can't just put a cap on the number of books that have main male characters and then declare that all other books published that year must be about girls or women. This is also similarly an issue for me when you see books get slammed for being sexist when they have weak female characters and strong male characters, and when that book doesn't have a feminist reason for doing so (to satirically point out the flaws in society's treatment of women, for example). When you look at a large number of books that do that, it seems to be a real problem trend. But on an individual level, how do you tell who's being "sexist" because that's what the book called for (art is rarely politically correct, after all) and who is just a "male chauvinistic pig?" Like, I'd really love to see the day when having that weak female/strong male scenario isn't seen as sexist in the slightest because there are so many examples of the opposite and of combinations that it's just seen as another facet of life being portrayed. Because right now, I don't think we're at that point at all.

Because I think you do have to write male and female characters differently because male and female people aren't identical. But you also can't fall into the trap of "writing a boy" or "writing a girl" because within each sex are billions -- and within the fictional world, another several billion -- of unique individuals who defy gender stereotypes all the time, not to mention the whole realm of gay/lesbian/transgender/etc., etc. characters. But then again, you can't ignore the fact that sex and gender play large roles in the personalities of people, even though sex and gender don't necessarily define a person. But it may be possible that sex and gender aren't even that important in terms of characterization in novels; we just think they are because that's how it's always been. But, personally, and I truly don't think this is sexist of me, I do think that the sex of the main character alters the rest of the book, not that it makes it automatically better or worse if the main character is male or female, but it does change the book and it does change how readers view the book, I think. For one thing, as most people have probably experienced, it is often quite easy to develop slight (or rather large, in some cases) crushes on fictional characters, which I think changes a lot based on how the main character sees them. Like, if the main character is a girl and has a crush on some male character, I as a reader would probably see that differently than if the main character was a boy and had a crush on a female character, because I am already inclined to be romantically attracted to males rather than females, so I'm already looking at the book from a different perspective. But I think it also affects the book and the reader in subtler ways than just as far as romantic interests go.

It's like the "straw that breaks the camel's back" syndrome, only less linear. Whom do you blame? It's a total diffusion of responsibility. Because as an author, at least as a good author, you have a responsibility to yourself and to your story to make it the best it can possibly be, and sometimes, oftentimes, that means including a main character who is male. But then when do the girls get a chance to be the multi-dimensional heroes other than in YA novels, where they are rampant and plentiful (although not always multi-dimensional...)? I think the solution is to write what is best, not what is politically correct. And hope that the problem corrects itself as people slowly start to realize that Being a Girl is not a sign of weakness and Being a Boy is not a sign of power. And that the opposite isn't true, either, because there are tons and tons of weak (in the traditional sense), needy girls. But there are also tons and tons of strong, independent (as independent as a person can be, which is truthfully not very, but in the colloquial sense) girls. Personally, I would be way happy if people would just publish some damn books that have female main characters who aren't annoying as fuck. Goddamn. I can't even tell you how many YA books I end up, not hating, but certainly not enjoying to their fullest, because the main character is a stereotypical feminine girl (which isn't a bad thing to be, but is often written really annoyingly), or she's purposely the opposite of the stereotype, which is really just as painful to read. I think sometimes authors over-correct by focusing more on the fact that the character is a girl than by focusing on the fact that character is a person. So basically, if you ever write a book, don't do that.

skip the title for now

I don't want to write a blog right now. That's why I'm lying on my bed comma (you can write that comma the word comma comma it's artsy. Unless it's annoying) talking at my sister who is dutifully transcribing my fragmented sentences into this empty white space.

People who don't text me back soon enough,

WHY? Why must you make me wait?

Signed, 

A hypocrite

Vita,
Your post on embarrassing moments reminded me of how I may have called someone Karl Marx by accident last Monday. I was horribly ashamed even though I don't actually remember the moment myself and I only know because my mom told me afterwards. So obviously now I must recount the tale to everyone, including the internet.
Yours in embarrassment,
Alex

Rena,
Your post on staticness last Tuesday was remarkable and relatable. My friends are impressed with your eloquence and powerful word use. You are brilliant. 
Sincerely,
A fan

That's all. Thanks, Maddy. You can hit publish post now.