Things Made of Awesome, Part One

1.       To Kill a Mockingbird

Re-reading this. Love love love it, and am now much more appreciative of the stunning awesomeness that is Atticus Finch. Also it makes me get all weepy and teary and thoughtful, and besides that it is just a really good story. And very, very quote-worthy. 

2.       The Legend of Korra 

Did anybody else watch Avatar: The Last Airbender? I will go totally geek on you and admit that I did, and I loved it (mostly because of Sokka. Sokka was The Awesome). Anyway, this is kind of a sequel series—same world, seventy years later—and I’m ashamed to admit it but I think I might love it even more than the original (maybe). A quick rundown of its awesomeness: sassy main character, 1920s-ish steam punk setting (love this so much), gorgeous animation, creepy villain-with-motives (and not just the “some men want to see the world burn” Joker motives), and awesome trio-completing friends for Korra (is it weird to have a crush on an animated character? Because the aforementioned friends are boys, and they are attractive boys, and there is much awesome potential-romance going on here). The whole thing is kind of cheesy and indulgent, but in the best possible way. It’s just fun. 

3.       10 Things I Hate About You 

I watched The Prince and Me today, which features Julia Stiles, which made me want to watch the above-mentioned movie. I’ve seen it once, with my brother, about six months ago, and just loved it. Teen movies used to be so cool! And so…realistic. Like, the actors who played teenagers were actually teenagers. And not twenty-seven-year-olds trying to pass as teenagers. Anyway. Among my favorite scenes and lines: when Kat backs into the resident jerk’s car and her father (Larry Miller. Hilarious) tells her that their insurance does not cover PMS, and when Bianca punches out said jerk at the prom (“That’s for my date, that’s for my sister, and that’s for me.”) in a very heroic, date-saving, sister-defending kind of way.

Dating! First Drafts! Magic!

First drafts suck, and I’ll tell you why. Because I am roughly five thousand words into mine and most of it is: 

1.       Stuff that needs to be cut

2.      Dialogue by characters that are getting unceremoniously cut

3.       Laughable 

So by the time I am through editing it I will probably be down to maybe two thousand words I can actually potentially use. 

The key, I think, is to stay positive. And to remind myself that telling stories is FUN, and I like doing this, and also that I really like these characters and do not want the story to die a painful death. 

Also to tell myself not to run away from it because I need to learn commitment, dang it. 

My problem lies in this: I have a lot of ideas. Most authors will tell you that ideas are cheap and easy to come by. You will probably come by a hundred ideas in a day. The trick is finding the one that sticks. 

It’s like dating. Most people don’t have a problem finding people that will date them. There are some very desperate people out there! Many of them stalkers! They would be glad to take you to Olive Garden for some lasagna and even pay for your meal. All they ask in return is that you allow them to follow you home. Consistently. Like for the rest of your life.

Well. So. Just as there are many guys who may not fit your exact dating ideals, most of the ideas that come a person’s way are also unusable, fleeting, or just plain weak. Even the ones that seem really cool, that maybe have the equivalent of a Porsche and a good haircut and a decent understanding of the English language, still have serious flaws—a proverbial ego problem, an inability to make a commitment, and that old stand-by, a crazy wife in the attic. 

But here is my problem: I have a lot of ideas that are rock-solid, that I intend to see all the way through, that I love each in their own way. But I can’t pick which one comes first. I suppose I could do chronological order, but some of my strongest stories are my more recent ones. Right now there are two contending for my attention—one that I had ABSOLUTELY COMPLETELY committed to, and one that is trying to lure me away from the other one with promises of chocolates and daffodils and a wonderful plot involving magicians. 

We’ll see who wins out.

Neville is Popular, People Rock

Looking at page views per post. The Neville Longbottom post has roughly three times more views than its closest competition. 

People have really excellent taste. 

Also, Neville's popular! I bet he's so excited, being a school nerd and all. This is what happens when you complete puberty successfully.

Congratulations, Neville! Please marry us. Or just me. That would be okay, too.

Tension Headaches and Hypochondria

So I’ve had a headache for the past couple of days that’s only now starting to subside. 

It’s in the spot at the back of my head, you know, where your head and your neck meet (unless you’re an alien and your head and neck are completely separate for whatever insane reason). Usually I get headaches there only as the result of tension. Like, say, killer bunnies taking over the world. 

Also, I went apartment shopping, so that might have been a contributing factor.

Is it really called apartment shopping? Would that be the proper term? Looking for apartments seems more appropriate, but bulky word-wise. It sure felt like shopping, except instead of coming home with a bag full of books that I kind-of-but-not-really regret buying (see a hopefully upcoming blog post on buyer’s remorse), I came home with a bag full of flyers and a worsening of the aforementioned headache. 

If you’ve never had the joy of going apartment shopping, let me sum up the experience for you: you go into the office of a selected apartment complex and ask to see a sample apartment (like sample cheese, except less nutritionally valuable). The office people say, “Sure,” even though you know that they want to say, “May your internal organs combust for making me leave my desk.” And one of them leads you to a room, where you wander around oohing and aahing and noting details about the apartment, while said office person kind of stands around looking vacant. 

The actual wandering around the apartment part is the worst. It looks like every other apartment you’ve had to look at. And you just know that they’re not showing you the actual apartment you’ll move into, that, for all you know, the actual apartment you move into could have mold and a leaky toilet and mice tap-dancing in the closet, and you have no real way of knowing beforehand. Also, you don’t really want to say obvious things, like “This light fixture looks like it’s been around since roughly the nineteen fifties” or “Where is the door to the closet?” for fear of looking like an unreasonable jerk, the kind of unreasonable jerk that all the office people tell horror stories about later on. 

And then half of the places had no vacancies, and the half that didn’t were SO CLOSE to having no vacancies that if we didn’t sign RIGHT THAT VERY MINUTE we were in very good danger of not getting a room at all. 

So yeah. It was a tension headache.

Obviously I didn’t think that it was a tension headache, and kept coming up with different scenarios for whatever illness I probably contracted. I do this frequently, and it’s sad because I don’t really get sick all that often. The occasional cold, carsickness, but never the flu or the plague or any of the things that I think I’m getting. 

I think I may be an alarmist.

North and South (and East, and West) and Richard Armitage

Last night (and today) my friend and I (and then just I) watched this:

(source: chachic.wordpress.com)

 It is a movie! Actually it is a miniseries. As in BBC miniseries. As in Pride-and-Prejudice-featuring-Colin-Firth miniseries (except that there is no Colin Firth and it is not Pride and Prejudice).

As a BBC miniseries, it hosts (among other things): 1800s lingo and drama (lingo? lingo), British accents, sideburns, and hot men. 

Usually the sideburns are even attached to the hot men. It's great.

And in the miniseries is this guy:

(source: janeaustenfilmclub.blogspot.com)

 His name is Richard Armitage, and in case you can't tell by this picture, he is quite attractive. And in case you can't tell by this blog, I find it my duty in life to give you (whoever you are) the opportunity to view attractive men whenever possible.

Well, come to think of it, I've only shown you Matthew Lewis.

And now Richard Armitage.

You're welcome.

Essentially what he does throughout the course of North and South is: speak in a really hot accent, hit somebody, read Plato, run a mill, and (this is the real kicker) he stands at windows and stares at the heroine.

If this seems creepy to you, don't worry. Everybody does it in this movie (including the heroine herself and Richard Armitage's mother) (not his real mother). Obviously he is the best at staring out of windows (because he's, you know, attractive), but it is a universal thing and thus not creepy. 

So, to recap: You should watch North and South. Richard Armitage is attractive. British accents rock.

Now if you will excuse me, I have to go and stare at his picture. Like a creeper.

K Battles Neuroses, Weather, Offensive Odors

I have this really weird obsession with checking the weather that is even starting to bug me a little bit. 

That is always the point in my neuroses in which I know that I have to do something about it. When it starts to bother my friends or my family I am not in the slightest bit disturbed, because who cares what they think as long as I know exactly what the weather is going to be every single day, or that my clothes smell perfectly fresh or at least not offensive, or that I will never ever heaven forbid eat anything that includes a combination of peanut butter and chocolate? 

But there does come a time when I get sick of washing my clothes every other day or checking the weather report every fifteen minutes (the chocolate peanut butter avoidance has yet to waver), and that is when I know that I need to do something about it. Recently, for example, I have started hanging up my sweaters or cardigans after I have worn them once, instead of washing them. Worn them! Once! Usually I would wash them immediately, possibly soaking them in vinegar beforehand. Even if I had only worn them for upwards of five minutes, I would toss them into the dirty clothes pile and that would be that. This, naturally, got on people’s nerves, especially when I would ask them, insistently, whether or not my clothes smelled. 

This, incidentally, is the exact opposite approach to clothes washing that, say, my brothers take. Their motto is: “If it has not fused with dirt to the bedroom floor, then it is probably okay to wear again.” And then they still manage to get more dates than me. 

It's probably the neuroses.

Anyway, the weather checkup is even more idiotic than my clothes obsession because, while I can usually control how my clothes smell, and washing them three times a day will undoubtedly make them incrementally cleanlier than they would have been before, checking the weather constantly has absolutely no effect on the actual weather outcome. 

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I realize and respect that I have no control over the weather and must inevitably bow to it. But the larger part of me—the part that is constantly cleaning clothes, for instance—will not accept this. “NO! There must be something I can do! I’ll check another weather report! I’ll check a thousand weather reports! One of them must tell me what I want to hear!” 

But it’s okay. I am reforming. I have accepted that there are things out of my control, and I will only check the weather once a day, or maybe even every other day.

Or, you know, not. Whatever. 

Interview with a Vampire-Zombie-Angel-Werwolf Hybrid

I’m a bit wary of paranormal romance novels, mainly because I hate them. 

If you have never read a paranormal romance novel, then you do not know the main storyline of a paranormal romance novel, which is: a girl and a boy meet. One of them, usually the male, is a vampire/angel/zombie/werewolf, or some combination of the four. Because of forces beyond their control, the girl and boy fall in love, but some jerk who does not like the paranormal half of the couple is trying to tear them apart. 

Apparently evil villains in the paranormal universe have nothing better to do with their time than to force teenagers to break up. 

Oftentimes it is the actual relationship of the couple that is causing the issue for the evil villain, as though evil villain (we’ll call him Steve) sits up at night thinking, “I just can’t believe he’s dating her. I just cannot believe…fine. That’s it. They’re gonna die.” 

Frankly, Steve sounds like a whiny little girl when he talks like this, and if there were any real villains in the story, they would kick his butt. But no! Apparently all of the other villains are with Steve. They agree that it is ridiculous for the couple to be dating and that the consequence for this is for them to die. 

I don’t understand this at all. If villains knew anything about teenagers, they would know that the relationship is bound not to last for longer than six months at the most, and then they will not have to waste any more sleep worrying about it. Probably the male paranormal person (we’ll call him Joe) will forget the girl’s (Cindy’s) birthday, and that will be that. 

This, of course, leads into the other ridiculous part of the paranormal phenomenon, which is: that Joe and Cindy will never break up, because they are destined to be together, because there is some force that binds them inexplicably to each other and forces them to make kissy faces against their will. Back in the good old days, we called this “hormones.” Paranormal romance has renamed it “forces beyond our control” and tried to label it as magical. 

No! There is nothing magical about hormones! In fact hormones are the enemy, and if they didn’t contribute to the continuation of the species, we would have gotten rid of them a long, long time ago.

To actually label hormones as hormones would be too mundane, though, so paranormal romance writers have taken a new direction and labeled it “forces beyond our control.” Next thing you know they will be telling us that other body functions, such as “hair growing,” are also caused by magic and that this means we should find a vampire and marry him. 

Or something. I’m sketchy on the exact details of how this disease will spread, but rest assured that it will, unless we do something about it. So I think the plan should be: you put together a mob and take over all publishing companies, everywhere, and I will “supervise” from my house while making very important life decisions, such as how much chocolate I can get away with eating before being labeled a pig. 

Probably thirty pieces or so. Because, you know, hormones.