Why I will kill anyone who sings the theme to "Annie."

I dropped choir and voice lessons. I didn't have time (not that I have ever enjoyed being in choirs...minus All-State & Area All-State, I love women's choirs). While I feel relieved, I can't help but feel like I'm "abandoning" something that's been a pretty large part of my life for so long. I always told myself it would be something I'd never get tired of, but I'm pretty sure it was just that: something I told myself. The things I'll (almost certainly) never get tired of:

• Movies
• Makeup
  
• Listening to music
• Writing
• Food
• Animals

So I chose the one I feel I have the most potential with (or least potential to fail at, really): writing. And thank goodness I did. Music is one of the most frustrating career options. Your friends are often your friends until it's inopportune to be your friend, your options run out quickly on a regular basis, and cattiness is mandatory.

I think I was doing music for so long that I began doing it (around 15 is probably when it happened) for other people and not myself. For teachers, for directors, for my parents, whatever. I hate chorus all through middle school. I hated it in high school, too. But I did it because I hate disappointing people (and hell knows that teachers love guilt-tripping people into doing shit). I hated musicals and that's why I did just one all of high school, throughout which I was (1)annoyed that many people give up their personal values for pseudo-success, (2)the only person made to dye their real hair whereas every other girl wore a damn wig (sounds silly, but it was annoying), (3)perpetually anxious - I really, really hate being on stages and I didn't realize it until then. It was a stupid high school musical ("Anything Goes," if you're familiar) and yet, people took it SO seriously - the directors, in past and future years, cast their favorites (including relatives, ahem), and often didn't just step back and see how hilarious it was. All that fuss over something a couple hundred people, primarily parents and friends, will simply clap at and cheer for regardless of what good or bad it is. You know who will remember it when you're done? The actors, the teachers, and the crew. That's about it. I was a lead and I never could comprehend why I didn't take the actual production quite as seriously until later when I realized it was because I look too much at the big picture and didn't enjoy sacrificing personal ideals for some minimal, brief, school-stardom.

I quit musicals because they're boring, they're cheesy, and they (almost always) attract the cattiest, most obnoxious "look-at-my-TALENT!" people in the world. Plus, I was never going anywhere in that business. I think too much and I feel I can give more back to the world than 1-2-3-4 steps on a stage. My friend Zak, probably the best male dancer in the dance school, was talking to me yesterday about how many (not all, o'course) people that do dance do it because they don't really have many more options. Unfortunately, same goes for music and theater. It's not always true but often, it is. I think for some people, the ones that truly love music/the arts and are actually amazing, hard-working, and humble about their talents that don't do it for the recognition -- those people are meant to do it. But the ones that sing just to have people listen, who brag and never hear anyone else, who do it for the applause...those are the ones that I can't stand, and they're typically more populous than the former.

Ah well. In conclusion, I feel I've made the right choice. I should've chosen it so long ago and just given up on the cesspool joke that was most of high school. I just think it's funny that so many people continue on the same route in college, particularly MPH students. MPH kids often transfer schools to be closer to other MPH kids; why? Because they realize that college isn't their high school, they miss being in a small, conserved, protected setting, and end up being friends with a few people until they just can't do it anymore and switch. Meh, it's already happened to people from my class in just a semester. As cool as it is to have people from my school here, it's certainly not why I chose this place. I almost went to northern CA to Santa Clara, and there, I would've known nobody (financial aid issues were why I didn't). I hated the feeling of MPH, though I guess I'm glad I went there for a few reasons, and I am so happy to be gone from that silly school.

ANYWAYS, I think I'm going to either the library or the beach. Probably the library though I'd enjoy the former. I just want to finish The Bell Jar and then eat, and then take my allergy medicine and pass out. Signing off.

My name's not "Lucia Maria Perez Almanzo," I don't sell drugs, and I'm not the salsa sidekick.

I couldn't sleep last night so I watched 21 and Asylum. Asylum is just generally bad: bad cast/concept/execution and an even worse script. I found so much continuity just watching it once. Then there's 21. For the cast and budget it was given, was fucking horrendous. Kate Bosworth was either directed horribly or simply cannot act; either way, it's somebody's fault and I'd like to give whomever that may be a swift but hard smack. It's an amazing story given that it's true, and Jeff Ma is definitely an incredible person. I, like many, find it offensive that they changed the main character to be caucasion. It's unfortunate that Hollywood, in all of its trillions of dollars, refuses to take racial "risks" and actually cast people who resemble the people they're portraying. Start paying attention to what sort of characters Asian actors play (almost always, they are: gurus, martial artists, gangsters/mobsters, or geeks, or extras depending on where the story's setting is). Then take a look at who Hispanic actors play (males: gangsters, troubled youths, poor people, potheads, unintelligent comic relief; women: "fiesty chiquitas" who use frivelous Spanish when seducing men/talking to their girlfriends, older women gurus, poor people, dancers). And black actors usually end up as side characters unless the movie has an almost exclusively black cast. It fucking sucks, and television and movies could easily change this. People who love movies and TV get used to things and adjust to them at alarming rates because all they usually give a fuck about is (often mindless) entertainment, anyways. Just make sure the characters aren't gay because then we're all just going to hell, obviously.

Movies I plan on watching or re-watching this week:

• El Bola (Spanish film directed by Achero Manas)
  
• Cigarette Burns (I think it'll be the fifth or sixth time)
• What's Eating Gilbert Grape (I love this movie so much)
• Eden Lake (I need to find a way to see this!)
• Suicide (German)
• Tomb of Torture (1965 Italian horror)
• OldBoy (I've been meaning to see this forevah)
  
• Man Bites Dog (this, too)
• EXECUTIVE KOALA
  

My ears are still 4g but the SF glass tunnels Olivia lent me have HUGE front flares. I really like them, though; they're super comfy. I'm gonna have to buy myself a pair on BAF next time I have dinero!

You're the only proper noun I need.

Things I want to do in the next ten years:

1. Have children. I want to be a mother so badly, I can't even explain it. And by "have" children I mean adopt because there is no way in hell I am giving my insanely annoying medical history to a kid to deal with. They'll end up being a near-blind perpetually-anxious depressive with OCD and sickly pale skin. Not to mention that whole "overpopulation" thing. It feels too selfish to add another, though I can understand why some people wouldn't feel that way. It's all a personal thing. But every time I see a little kid, I get super happy for the parent(s) and hope that they value their parenthood.
2. Publish a book of poetry. At this point, I would say I have around 40 - 50 working poems: 30-something that aren't at all ready to be shown or submitted and around 8 - 10 that I would be willing to try with.
3. Finish my bachelor's. Get my master's. This will hopefully happen by age 25 or so.
4. Live in either Boston or northern CA. Or Ireland.
   
5. According to a fortune teller I saw when I was pretty young, I'll be married at 27. I don't see this happening, but sure. Why the hell not!
6. Write/record album. Possibly release.
   
7. Have both half sleeves done. One will be the sun rising over a black silhouette of the woods and lake in Maine where my mom's side of the family has a camp (built by my great grandfather). I might include the camp, too. The other will be the sun setting over the ocean with lots of blues and purples.
8. Work consistently with a group that helps animals get adopted by good homes. I'm looking at http://fochp.org here in Orange County currently, so I'll contact them tomorrow. I want to actually host animals, though, but that part will have to wait for a few years. :(
   
9. Get a job as a as a professor of poetry.
10. Get over my PTSD, my OCD, and my anxiety.
    
11. Be fluent in at least one other language.

All I've done the past few days: listen to music, write, sleep. Nobody that I'm close with (besides David, but we hung out so much last week that I think that option's been exhausted, and James, who is in some crazy situations/we didn't see that much of him right before we all left, anyways) is back. Not that I'm even that close with many people here. I know it's terrible but it seems like I just expect people to understand my weird humor and appreciate it the same way my friends at home do. Olivia is coming back Saturday as well as a few others, but before then, I really only have a few things to do:
1) LOST
2) Send things to Ben Cooper
3) Go camping with David, James, and Jessie but I am nearly positive this won't happen
I have such a hard time being close to new people because I rarely don't find things wrong with them. It's here, too; it's this place. I'm an absurdly stubborn person in a location where being "easy-going" is necessary to be socially active. But so many people, in my eyes, have such a high expendability rate that I simply don't even want to bother. I'm not content, but I'm even less content playing beer pong with sweaty frat boys or going running because I want to fit into this string bikini or that size 2 dress or rushing a sorority only (because this obviously is not everyone's reasoning) because I don't want to put in the effort of just making new friends or because I want the benefits of parties every weekend. Thanks, but I am just fine playing beer pong with ten or less people, owning one bathing suit that basically is a dress that covers me from chest to mid-thigh, and being in clubs that don't have paid membership.

And thus, the root of my problem. I can't justify doing these things, so I simply don't do them.

My room is somewhat tense. I don't hang out with either of my roommates, they're both in the same sorority, and I am sort of the "other" roommate. What's funny is that they both have talked shit about each other on numerous occasions, yet they talk far more to one another than to me. It's just amusing, that's all. The day I moved back in, they both separately said shit about each other to me. One of them is moving out soon. The other one wants one of her sorority sisters to move in after. Thanks for consulting me! Gah. I can't wait to live off campus next year. I'd like to live alone but that's just me being a hermit. I'll probably end up living with one other person. Hopefully they watch Lost.

I love being a hermit though I simultaneously wish I could be one of those people that is completely oblivious to things. The fact that I am hypercritical of new people in my life means that I filter out a lot of shitty individuals (though I still am extremely nice to most people, I just refuse to let them in my life past a certain point), but it also means that I have less people in my life, period. Which would be fine, normally, because it's quality over quantity in my opinion, but given that two of the only people I actually get along with are on the other side of the country, I don't exactly have tons of options. Once in a while, I'd love to be the sort of person that just does things without reason because it's omgfun! and likes boys because they're omgcute! and doesn't constantly feel like this:

Seriously, though. In my first week of school, I got "You look like that girl from Eternal Sunshine!" seven times a day and "You remember that cartoon on MTV with the girl with the glasses?" "Uh, Daria?" "YEAH! You remind me of her" about four times. I feel like a short-order cook is being asked to take back my order because it NEEDS MOAR PEP!

Pela'o

So, I've been having a mild anxiety attack this evening and I've had goosebumps and hives for a few hours. Ah well. I'm trying to keep my mind off things by moving, moving, moving. I've been listening to Crookers in an attempt to keep my brain energized and thinking about other shit.

I got up early and went to my InsideTrack coach, Kristen, and we discussed what was going on with my schedule. I felt much better afterwards, so I took a walk and went to The Circle. Unfortunately, I forgot how terrifying crossing streets is now (I got hit by a car last week and can't seem to shake the feeling that it'll happen again), and people there drive like shit. Olivia called and came by for about an hour. We played catch-up, I missed her a ton, and she let me borrow a pair of 4g glass eyelets and 2g steel star spirals; I'm lucky to have a friend with so much pretty jewelry that lets me borrow it, haha. I had dinner with Gabe because he happened to be there at the same time as I. He's one of the more interesting people at Chapman that I've met, definitely. I then took a nap back here and had a really horrendous nightmare, woke up, and had an anxiety attack. It's better now but it keeps coming back in waves.

I'm sending stuff to Ben Cooper tomorrow.

Scham Tha Funkee Homosexual

My schedule for this coming semester is pretty sicklicious. Nothing starts before 11 am, three of my classes apply to my Creative Writing major, one applies to my Comm minor, and one gets rid of a GE requirement. And the other one is just AWESOME (take a guess at which that is, haha).

Mondays
11 - 11:50 Writing About Film
12 - 12:20 InsideTrack
1 - 2:15 Intro to Poetry
7 - 9:50 (pm) Film Genre: The Western

Tuesdays
11 - 12:15 Theatrical Makeup (!!!)
1 - 2:15 American Literature
7 - 9:50 (pm) Theories of Persuasion

Wednesdays are the same as Mondays but without InsideTrack and Film Genre: The Western.
Thursdays are the same as Tuesdays but without Theories of Persuasion.
Fridays only have Writing About Film and then I'm done!

Fucking awesome. SO much better than my five-classes-on-Mondays, four-classes-every-other-day-of-the-week schedule from the fall. I felt like I had no time to do anything, and it definitely showed in both my grades and demeanor. However, because I'm taking 18 credits this semester, it means I have to quit University Choir and probably voice lessons unless I can somehow audit that shit. I love my voice teacher and she's done a hell of a lot for me, so if possible, I want to stay doing that. Choir...not quite as important to me. I've never been good with large amounts of musicians (about 75% of whom, though very good, are insanely egotistical) all at once.

On a side note, I'm in The Vagina Monologues here. My monologue = "The Woman Who Loved To Make Vaginas Happy." I'm really excited, although a bit nervous because I haven't acted since Glass Menagerie (and I wasn't exactly SAG worthy, haha) and I have horrendous stage fright. I also have to orgasm onstage so I s'pose that'll be interesting, eh?

I fit my first pair of double-flared plugs in my ears. They're horn with an abalone inlay. Tons of Vitamin E oil went into the effort, haha. They're these ones in a 4g. :) Hopefully, at some point in 2010/2011, I'll be able to wear the following in my goal size (1/2"):

I have no answers, I'm rambling.

You know how in Slaughterhouse 5, Vonnegut talks about being "unstuck in time"? That, for some reason, is how I constantly feel.

I am perpetually feeling like I have no solid place in time and that I am incapable of just settling down and dealing with it. When I'm in "right now" and think about the "past," I get somewhat upset because I have no control over that anymore. And the future? We're tricked into believing we have tons of control over our choices but really, we're given a set of circumstances, a pencil, and told to choose A, B, C, or D. Then we deal with what we've done and go from there.

To be totally honest, I'm really terrible at being honest. Not because I love lying but more because I like shifting the truth to my liking; if you don't have the ability to control what's going on, why not attempt to change the way it's viewed? Half the time, that's more important than what it all is in actuality. It's not as though I lie constantly and I certainly don't typically lie when it will (1)affect the way people view other people - I try to give them credit and just hope they'll see each other for who they are regardless of my opinion most of the time (2)hurt somebody in general. I try not to get lost in untruths but sometimes, if you've only told yourself the lie, you tend to murk the waters a little too much. Now I'm just rambling.

Current events: Saturday, David and I got dinner and went to My Bloody Valentine. We both love horror and have seen quite a bit, so this wasn't really a unique experience minus (1)seeing it with tons of loud OC residents (2)the 3-D aspect. Pretty bad script, cop-out ending, kinda tasteless gore. With such a big budget, they could have done better. We then went over to James' apartment and hung out, drank a bit, and then went back and crashed around 3 or 4 am. Last night, I went to James' again last night and he, his roommate Tyler, his girlfriend Jessie, and I just drank and watched silly reality shows. It was a really nice night and definitely the break I needed from the tension in my room.

Ever since I was very young, I've been watching planes fly over my house and wishing I was on one of them. Not to escape permanently, though. I just want to be New somewhere.

The best place to start.

In my life, I usually have kept a journal. Well, actually, I usually keep many journals all at once. One is usually the "honest" one that nobody sees, one is the "public-esque" one that wouldn't be a crying shame if a lover happened to drop in on it, and there is typically at least one more that wouldn't cause any harm if people, online or not, saw it. This little baby falls in between the second and third categories; while I'd prefer it if the majority of people who see it are already friends with me or at least on friendly terms, I won't feel like running far, far away regardless of who reads it.

My name is Sam and I'm nineteen years young, though you probably already know that if you're reading this. I sing, I can't dance, and I go to college for creative writing/political science/communications. I'm easily annoyed with strangers; I hate watching people in classes highlight everything on a page rather than just the important things, I can't stand people that don't realize how incredibly loud they speak in public, and when I see parents, I judge them based on whether or not they seem like they love their kids enough. But I'm still extremely friendly to strangers (this tends to get me into trouble in places like airports where creepy older men decide it's okay to sit next to me because I smile, then proceed to offer me places to live...with them). I have really fantastic friends that I don't see much right now because I'm in California for school rather than where I grew up, central New York. It sucks to be 11 states away, but when I do see them, it's pretty fantastic.

I love love. I love writing about it and thinking about it, singing along about it and discussing it. I love watching movies about it provided it's not the romantic-comedic type of love because I swear, if I see one more film where quirky-cute Jennifer Aniston/Reese Witherspoon/Meg Ryan falls for a fellow that's oh-so-different than they are as they struggle to find themselves...I'll shoot all of the writers in the kneecaps.

I believe everyone should love their bodies until they start hating somebody else's body. Then, they absolutely deserve to hate their own bodies because, hell, if you hate somebody else's, you probably never loved yours in the first place anyways. In my case, I am a (barely) 5'7" girl who, despite being half-Hispanic and having extremely wide hips, has a very small derriere (though I compensate a few stories upwards, and my face's cheekbones are big enough to take over my entire body, anyways). I'm also extremely pale (again, I'm half-Peruvian/Chilean so this makes absolutely no sense) and look far more normal when my hair is bright blue as opposed to it's natural state of dull brown. I like piercings and tattoos; I always have, so I'm not sure why people occasionally write this off as a stage. I currently have a few of each, all of which I enjoy thoroughly and take good care of. I think of it as customizing my body to my liking, the same way people get cosmetic surgery but far, far less expensive as well as having a need for actual creativity rather than just idealism.

I am addicted to words. I literally feel depressed if I don't write for a few days; at first, it's just an itch to grab a pen and scribble, but eventually, I just get full-on saddened if I don't release. And it has to be my own words, not just a technical exercise for a class or something. I enjoy prompts but rarely use them. I've only really had one teacher who understood how much I love and need to write and read (I think he mostly understood this because he (1)paid more attention to his attention-paying students, unlike many teachers who pretend to like everyone equally (2)was addicted to words himself). I see all events like a set of books: while they're open, they're open and you can read them, you can actively participate in the making of them, and you can see every detail beautifully. When you're done and on the next volume, recalling things gets considerably harder and the finer work of each sentence is near-impossible, though sometimes you'll remember a quote or two. But you still have the general idea of it all in your head, it's just quite a bit fuzzier. PTSD is like occasionally opening the books back up and flipping through them but only grabbing a couple of pictures at the start of the chapters. It's peculiar, but this really is the only way I can accurately illustrate how I feel about...anything.

Sam