I Dreamed a Dream

I've gotten a few steps closer to my study abroad application today. My advisor finished the recommendation form (that I dropped off yesterday, crazy productive man) and I ordered my official transcript. With each step it becomes a little bit more real, and a little bit scarier. I'm somewhat adventurous, but admittedly taking off for a foreign country where I somewhat know the language for two months and I'll be more or less on my own is stretching my sense of adventure. Okay, I realize I'm not actually in the program yet, it's only for two months, and I'll have ages to prepare, but still! Really! It's not exactly something I've ever done before. It's exciting and sounds amazing, but still somewhat frighting.

Speaking of things that are somewhat frightening, my dream last night was one of those incredibly vivid ones that are intense to the point of being tiring. But it was also nice because there were a few aspects that I wish would happen (and are physically possible of happening) in real life so I was a little sad to wake up. Then again I was also Buffy from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (but I was still me and living my life) which was the stressful and intense part. Really, I'd never want to actually be her. Have her crazy awesome slayer powers? Maybe. Deal with the demons and the undead and the apocalypse every single year? I'll pass. This might be an indicator that I've been watching too much Buffy, but I haven't watched a single episode since last Monday, I swear! Despite the fact that both the people I told this dream to today had the same almost instant reaction that I've been watching the show too much, I'm sticking with my assertion that I don't have a problem...

Back on the topic of dreams, I think dreams like this are interesting because, despite the fantastic dream-like qualities to them, they feel more like real life than other dreams. Dreams like this blur the lines between reality and dream. What is the dream and what isn't? Did that conversation you distinctly remember having with you mom last week happen in real life? Or in the dream? There are some parts in Gravity's Rainbow that slip into and back out of a dream again, and if you're not careful you can completely miss the shift. If you've seen Inception there's that part where Leonardo DiCaprio's character is explaining to Ellen Page's character that dreams feel real when we're in them, and it isn't until we wake up that we realize something wasn't quite right.

Anyway, I just hope tonight's dreams are a little less intense so I don't feel so tired when I wake up. Being the Slayer is tough- even when it was only a dream.

Oh Snap!

I feel like there's some law in the universe that prevents me from reading Gravity's Rainbow before 9:00 at night. I got home around 5 PM, which honestly should have given me plenty of time to start the reading I have to have done by tomorrow. Yet, like the past two times, I found excellent ways to waste four hours of my life before finally starting on it. I realize that doing something three times in a row doesn't necessarily mean it's a law, but I definitely think it's at least a pattern.

But I was tired! I slept horribly last night AND I went to a pilates class today. So I ended up watching youtube videos for an hour, then I took an hour long nap, then I attempted to get Pokemon Snap to work on an emulator for another hour, then the fourth hour was taken up by people getting home and me trying very hard to (not) start my homework.

And you know the worst part? I didn't get Pokemon Snap to work. Fail.

Seriously though, I have so many good childhood memories about that game. I just thought it was the most BRILLIANT IDEA EVER for you to get points for taking pictures of pokemon. Then it had that awesome level at the end where (spoilers! haha, no not really) you take ten million pictures of Mew for the boss level. Except you can't get to the boss level at all on emulators, and you have to do a lot of special modifications to get other parts of the game to work. So, my current plan is to see if my old N64 works next time I go home. That or, you know, play games that came out in the recent decade.

WTWA: While Pokemon Snap didn't work, I did play a Japanese version of Green on an emulator for a while. Due to the fact there's like no kanji (since the reading level is aimed at kids) it was pretty easy to understand. Especially since I've started about a million Pokemon games and the intro is more or less the same in all of them. Still, Japanese comprehension for the win!

Social Media

So I'm posting a youtube video on a blogger blog talking about Facebook/social media. I'm not sure what that means, exactly, but it sure seems interesting.

Click here for the Amazon page where you can get The Young and the Digital. I mean, you don't have to, but I said in the video I'd link to it.

EDIT: WTWA: So I forgot to say why today (although yesterday now) was awesome. I think it was awesome because it felt like a Monday but it was actually a Tuesday due to the fact there was no school Monday.

None Whatsoever

I definitely should have done more homework over this three-day weekend. I mean, I'm not necessarily doomed this week but I'm not exactly in the best spot either. From the looks of my Google calendar, this week doesn't look too bad. The problem is that next week I'll be completely dead if I don't get a certain amount ahead. Thank goodness for four day weeks after three day weekends that followed the week of drowning in homework.

The reason for my having next to no homework done right now at 7:38 Monday night after a three-day weekend? Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Hands down. Yes, I hung out with friends and did things, but honestly. I watched most of season five, and I watched seven episodes of season six today. I would have watched less of season six, but I really really wanted to get to the "Once More with Feeling" musical episode. Which, by the way, is a product of television GENIUS. No lie. Well, that episode was really only part of my need to keep watching episodes. The other large part of inability to focus on productive things today was my Spike/Buffy shipping that's been happening since Spike crashed into Sunnydale. Things keep happening with those two, and I want to keep watching to see more! I mean, I'm ridiculously close to slapping Buffy and hugging Spike with everything that keeps happening. Well, figuratively obviously. If I did either of those things literally I'd probably die because they'd kill me. Or, in actuality, I'd probably be crazy since they're both fictional characters.

Anyway, on that note of crazy I really do need to go read about 90 pages of Gravity's Rainbow and probably a few other things before I go to sleep. AND because I have no self control I'm going to watch the return of Chuck that will be happening in about 15 minutes.

I really have no self control.

None whatsoever.

Context

I'm currently in the last five episodes of season 5 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer while baking banana bread and banana cake AND doing tiny bits of homework (albeit very tiny). I mean, I won't be able to focus on homework until I finish this season, so why bother? Right?

Seriously, though, this season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer has been amazing. It's also interesting because there's an episode near the middle that has this lovely way of ripping your heart out but it's still beautiful (if you've seen it you know which one I'm referring to) that I had actually seen before. My friend Jessica has always been a little aghast at the fact that this episode was the only episode of Buffy I'd seen the entire way through for the longest time. I had seen parts of the one where Xander is possessed by a hyena and parts of the last episode of the fifth season, but "The Body" was the only one I'd seen it its entirety. It was odd watching it today, finally in context of the five years of history the show had gone through previous to the episode. It was interesting to remember the first time I watched it, not understanding various relationships and histories and characters, and then comparing it to watching it now.

It's kind of like when you take anything out of context. Sure, you can understand most of it, but there's so much more beneath that you just can't see. Which makes me think about people. People, it seems, are always out of context. Or more importantly, we can only seem to understand someone in context. Or maybe it's the context we often understand more than the person themselves.

Or maybe I've been watching to much TV and eating/drinking too much stuff with sugar in it and it's going to my brain.

I Honestly Can't Come Up With a Title so I'm Just Going to Title it This

To anyone who actually read yesterday's post, I applaud you. It was really just a long and concluded way to say I liked but was disappointed in a movie (and the media in general). To anyone who didn't read it, you can just read the previous sentence to get the gist of it.

And to anyone who thinks that this post doesn't count because I missed a day because it's after midnight, I've decided it counts because I haven't gone to bed yet. It might be 3:30 in the morning, but this is why weekends are awesome. You can stay up until 3:30 in the morning and it really doesn't matter. This is especially true for 3-day weekends when it doesn't matter so much when you mess up your sleep schedules because you have an extra day to catch up. Although it probably will mess with my ability to do homework tomorrow, which is unfortunate because I really really need to do homework tomorrow. Mostly because I haven't done any yet this weekend. I did do my laundry though, so I think that should count for something.

As for other things I did today I made breakfast for a friend and myself (pancakes! Gluten free too), watched a decent amount of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (I'm somewhere in the middle of Season 5, a season that is ripping my heart out), crocheted a little (because I'm still working on Christmas presents), and spent about 6-8(?) hours playing this CRAZY board game called Arkham Horror with a few friends (well, technically a friend and his roommate, but friend's roommate can be upped to friend status. I mean, we're friends on facebook, so that must mean we're friends). It was pretty amazing, but it had about a million rules that we definitely did not follow. We followed *most* of them, yes, but we definitely kept discovering rules we'd been breaking the entire game. Some of the rules we kept breaking weren't the biggest deal, but at the very end of the game we discovered a few pretty big rules that were potential game changers that we didn't follow.

Oops.

Still, it was fun. If you like crazy board games where the players work as a team to get to a goal, you should try it!

WTWA: Pretty much for the things I did today. It was a really nice day that I spent with some friends doing fun things.

Side Note: I apologize for the typos that are sure to be in this. It's 3:30 in the morning, and I need to sleep.

Easy A is Easily... Not

I just finished watching Easy A, a movie I was actually quite intrigued to see (despite and because of its previews). I'd heard some things about it, mostly good, so I continued to be interested. However, after I watched it I'm feeling a strange mix of love and hate for the movie, but mostly disappointment.

I'll start with the things I liked. I LOVED Emma Stone. Honestly, I feel like her performance was probably the best part of the movie. She was enjoyable to watch, which honestly was a good thing because if she wasn't the movie would have probably been horrible. Her family was also an upside to the movie (oh hey! A good family for once with parents who actually function as human beings who might actually care for their child?! What is this madness?!).

Now, before I move on to what I didn't like I'm just going to put this on the table because I KNOW that a major reason why I didn't like the movie is going to be this: I am a Christian. I grew up going to church, I believe in God and in heaven, I'm a (trying really hard to) love everybody type person, and I honestly believe that God is a huge part and a huge truth in my life. I try really hard not to push that on people (in huge part, I feel, due to my Lutheran upbringings. Lutherans aren't really big on in-your-face-proselytizing) although I do hope that people realize they can come to me with any question they might have and would receive no judgement on my part towards them.

And now I'm going to admit it, I was pretty offended by the movie.

I tried so hard not to be offended, you guys. I really really really did. I knew going into the movie that Amanda Bynes played the over-stereotyped, bitchy, blond, over-zealous, judging, Christian and that I doubted anything else in the movie would soften that. Although I did appreciate Olive going and attempting to read the Bible, going to different churches, mentioning the fact that Marianne (and her friends) were extremists, and a few other tiny mentions that not all Christians are crazy, but these mentions were a little far and few between. I also had SERIOUS problems with the depiction of Marianne's dad (the pastor) especially at the end due to some of my own past experiences that I don't really feel like going into on the internet at this moment in time.

And before anyone reading this feels the need to point out the injustices done by Christians in both large and small scales, and that Christians have marginalized people for centuries, and whatever... Just don't because I know this already. I just don't understand the constant need in the media to point out how horrible Christians are. People wouldn't feel a need to harp on someone of a racial minority if they were offended due to their ethnicity being negatively stereotyped. People are horrified by old Disney cartoons and children's books that depict gross representations of different groups of people. So why do I feel guilty? Why do I currently feel that I shouldn't be such an easily offended Christian? Why do I feel like I'm not allowed to be offended by this movie?

I'm annoyed that a movie that seems to promote imaging people complexly, that we shouldn't believe everything we see and hear, and there's so much more to people than we realize has every character except the main one be predictable, flat, and stereotyped (except *perhaps* her parents and the teacher she liked). I disliked that I felt that I wasn't allowed to identify with the movie because part of my identity was tied to the villains in the movie. And, honestly, I so identified with Olive, but I felt it ripped away as I felt judged by everything else in the movie. Why am I not allowed to share in these things?

And why can't there be movies that portray normal Christians? Why can't there be TV shows about perfectly normal kids who are Christian? Maybe in my highly offended state right now I can't quite remember them, but beyond the Christian movies I've seen (produced by Christian companies that are often cheesy and campy) I can't think of movies/tv shows/or too many average books with a main character or a friend of the main character who was religious AND normal.

Anyway, the movie wasn't the worst thing I'd ever seen in my. It has a good message that gets distorted by hypocritical views (that are brought to light, I suppose, if you are an easily offended Christian) so if you haven't seen it and you're still interested it could be worth a rental. I, unfortunately, will be a little disappointed (but still loving Emma Stone/Olive and her capacity to still try and love and understand and forgive people in the movie).

WTWA: In my Children's Literature class we got those scholastic book orders you used to get in Elementary school, and we get to order books from them! WIN!