ask

Way to be, self. I apologize for not having blogged in a week. I've had nothing even remotely interesting to say. So I'll just tell you about the main things that have happened since I last posted.

On Wednesday, I killed my car. Well, I didn't really kill it. I just damaged the bumper. But it's in the auto shop right now, and I miss it, because I heart my car. It does all sorts of neat things. It gives me directions and allows me to call people hands-free. It's a very enjoyable car, and I'm excited to get it back this upcoming Wednesday.

Thursday and Friday, we were out of school because of inclement weather, and I was relatively lonely. I watched nine movies. Nine. I will write brief thoughts about each to give you an accurate summary of what I did during my snow days.

The Last Song: I went into this with low expectations because of Miley Cyrus, but her acting wasn't bad, and this movie managed to make me cry. A lot.

An Education: This was a lovely movie. I can't believe I didn't watch it sooner. Also, Peter Sarsgaaaaaaaaaaard.

Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius: Yes, I watched this. I think it's the seventh or eighth time I've seen it. I mainly just rewatched it to see if Jimmy and Cindy had confessed their love for each other yet. And disappointingly, no.

A Beautiful Mind: I loved this. It was quite sad but very inspiring. Everyone should see this.

Assassination of a High School President: I started to watch this movie because of Reece Thompson, an actor who starred in one of my favorite movies, Rocket Science. This movie was surprisingly pleasant, but the sad thing is that though it was originally supposed to be a limited theatrical release, it ended up being a straight-to-DVD. So this movie is really underrated, and a lot of people don't know about it. But it was witty, clever, and had a good plot. You should watch it.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine: Yeah, this was good. As expected.

CAMP: This is my guilty pleasure movie, so of course I enjoyed this, no matter how horrible it is.

The Hottie and the Nottie: I'm sad to say that I've watched this more than once.

Flawless: This movie is SO CUTE. Philip Seymour Hoffman is a drag queen and Robert De Niro is the typical homophobic jackass, and they form a friendship. Love it.

Today, I went to lunch with some friends and then bought an outfit for my birthday party this weekend, because yes, it is my birthday weekend. My actual birthday is February 2nd, otherwise known as Groundhog Day.

- Emily

frankly, mr. shankly

My iTunes has pretty much been hating on me for weeks now.

The thing is, it's mostly my fault. I neglected to change my email when I was still able to do that, and so when my email expired and I could no longer check my account, iTunes was like, "YOU CAN'T LOG IN ANYMORE SRY BECAUSE THIS EMAIL IS SO REALLY REALLY INVALID NOW SRY WE DIDN'T WARN YOU LOLOLOL." But thankfully, Abin from iTunes Customer Support was able to help me change my email/password, and my iTunes likes me again.

So, I've been able to purchase even more songs by The Smiths. In case you haven't noticed, all of my post titles are Smiths songs. Not all of them are total winners, but I find the titles to be magnificent. I now own 11 songs by The Smiths, and I would have purchased more, but their songs tend to make me feel more or less depressed, which is not good. I'm sad to say that I own more Taylor Swift songs than I should. I'm ashamed to count, so let's just say I own too many.

That's all for now, I guess. Less than exciting.

Emily

barbarism begins at home

The only important thing worth mentioning is that today, my driver's license becomes officially unrestricted. Yeah, bitches. See you on the road.

vicar in a tutu

One of the best things about certain fast food chains is the presence of a Value Menu. I like to judge my fast food choices based on two main things: price and quality. So I love fast food chains like Chick-fil-A, because the quality of their food is at an 8 or 9 for me. But they don't have a value menu, which fills my soul with sadness.

The most popular Value Menus include: Taco Bell, McDonald's, KFC, Sonic, Wendy's

Sonic is the clear winner [at least for me] out of the above. Their food isn't as artery-clogging as that of Taco Bell and McDonald's, and there's something magical about Happy Hour [it's from 2-4 pm everyday, for those of you that are new to the idea of Sonic]. A 50 cent Watermelon slush paired with a Jr. Fritos Chili Wrap and a small tots = $2.50, which is a steal. Once I start driving on my own - which is Saturday, y'all! - I plan on taking advantage of Happy Hour drinks as often as possible. Lovely.

But it's not as if Chick-fil-A needs a Value Menu. The reason most restaurants have Value Menus is obviously because their food isn't quite at the same level as other fast food chains, and Chick-fil-A's food is relatively healthy, absolutely delicious, and not ridiculously expensive.

If Chick-fil-A starts promoting a value menu, one of two things has happened: either the economy has really gone to shit, or the owners are starting to get a bit greedy.

That was a pretty pointless thing to talk about, but I wanted to talk about it. Now that that's out of the way, I'll talk about something that is actually meaningful - something you all want to read.

The above is a photograph of the ever-so-fabulous John Cameron Mitchell in the motion picture version of the musical, "Hedwig and the Angry Inch". If you don't know Hedwig, you should pull up your Netflix queue right now and put it above Carnivale. It'll arrive within a few days, and you will experience the true magic.

Hedwig is a MTF transvestite, but her sex change operation got botched. Basically, Hedwig is touring the country with her band, following around her ex-boyfriend, Tommy Gnosis. It's a beautiful movie, really. I'd love to see the stage version of it, to see how it compares.

Anyway, the real reason behind my mentioning this truly amazing film/musical is the song "The Origin of Love". In the song, it tells the story of how soul mates came to exist.

And there were three sexes then,
One that looked like two men glued up back to back called the children of the sun.
And similar in shape and girth were the children of the earth.

They looked like two girls rolled up in one.
And the children of the moon were like a fork shoved on a spoon.

They were part sun, part earth, part daughter, part son.

I've heard the whole, "In ancient history, people once had four arms, four legs and two heads, we were separated because Zeus got mad and we were condemned to spend the rest of our lives searching for our soul mates." However, the new view of it in this song made me extremely happy, because I hadn't heard a version that talked about soul mates of the same sex. Even if the story is just a myth, it's comforting to me.

So, yeah, Hedwig is great. Netflix. Now.

Emily

the boy with the thorn in his side

Tonight's post is a response to something that I experienced last night [and have been experiencing a lot lately].

I was on the Fayetteville Public Schools fan page, reading witty comments from students who were requesting school be canceled [which it wasn't...silly, silly FPS]. Anyway, as I was browsing, I came across something quite peculiar. It went something along the lines of:

if you dont close school were gonna rename you gayetteville

Before moving on, let's examine the above statement. The first thing I notice is the total lack of punctuation and also the lack of capitalization. When presenting our arguments to the people who educate us, it would make sense that we would want to APPEAR intelligent, at least on paper. Otherwise, our teachers are simply convinced that we need to attend school. The above sentence should actually say:

If you don't close school, we're going to rename you Gayetteville.

Now that's better.

My second thought was that this child didn't even have the brain capacity to come up with something better than Gayetteville. I was pretty much fed up with the ignorance and grammatical errors on the FPS page by this point, so I was entirely ready to settle down into my living room chair and enjoy an evening viewing of the HBO Original Series, "Carnivale." [It is wonderful, by the way. If you haven't seen it, I highly suggest putting it in your Netflix queue. Now.]

But then I saw the comment below it. Brace yourselves.

more like FAGGOTVILLE

...I'll let you regain your composure before I continue.

Here was my brain: UM, EXCUSE ME? I was entirely prepared to rant. But instead, I calmly replied, "Unnecessary," like the good teenager that I am and let it go. FPS deleted it within the hour, so I was satisfied.

But today, I saw that someone had called FPS District a dyke which is not nearly as bad asFAGGOTVILLE, [Wittiest comment I've ever seen in my life. Oh, man. Can't live up to it, EVER. And it's in all caps! I'm stunned.] but it's still not okay.

The derogatory terms have got to stop, you guys. It is simply unacceptable for students to walk around calling each other faggots and dykes and rug munchers and fruits and fairies and homos and queers and ass bandits. [I've never heard that last one before, but I saw it and it made me giggle.] It's okay for me to call myself a dyke, because I am. And I don't mean it in an offensive way, and when my friends say it, I know they don't either. It's all in good fun.

But when you're trying to insult somebody, don't throw out the word faggot, please. For God's sake, get a brain, get a thesaurus, and find a better word than ass bandit [lolololol, love it].

It's also NOT okay to call somebody a fairy if you know that they are actually part of the LGBT community and you're trying to be an ignorant asshole. That will get you beat up on the streets of San Francisco. And nobody wants that.

If I haven't convinced you yet, here's something that might help. Recognize this kid?

His name was Asher Brown, and he was 13 years old when he killed himself with a shotgun in his stepdad's closet - this past September. This suicide was a DIRECT result of anti-LGBT bullying, and nobody even knew if this kid was gay or not! People at his school teased him because of his size and the way he dressed; they often called him words like "faggot", "queer", and the words I mentioned above. And he took his life.

There are cases of kids just like Asher everywhere. Even at your school. So take a stand. If you see someone saying something ignorant or picking on another kid, say something. It's okay to stand up against homophobic bullying. You might just save a life.

Emily

pretty girls make graves

Well, here I go again, I suppose. I've made countless attempts at this "blogging" thing and I've never posted more than a few times. I'm not sure what makes me think I'll keep it up this time around. For some reason the idea of posting my thoughts on the internet seems wildly unappealing. It also somewhat makes me feel as if I'll be tracked down by a violent computer nerd (now there's an oxymoron) that somehow has my IP address. Spending an evening duct taped to a chair in a psychopath's basement is less than what I hope for in regards to my future.

No, my near future hopefully consists of spending my evenings in an arctic tundra of a library, forcing knowledge into my brain so that I can become a famous pediatrician and save adorable kids from cancerous moles and fistulas and such. Then I will have lots of money and I will be doing what I love. Maybe with the person that I love. But more than likely not. I give all my love to myself, and I don't really know if I should share all that love with anyone else. Then I'd be neglecting my insides and outsides. Which is never any fun, right?

Look at me, spilling my guts to you people. "You people" meaning my mom and three friends that have heard me go on and on about my life more than four times in the past month.

I guess the real reason I'm trying to start a blog again is because my mom told me I need to start writing again, basically because my writing has become shit. I used to write constantly. I think I was probably brilliant. But lately, I spend all my time thinking about what I'm going to do, when I'm going to do it, and who I'm going to do it with that I don't stop and just write what's on my mind. So that's what I'm trying to do. Write.

Boring, right? I don't blame you if you make the decision never to read my blog again. But I'd like it if you did because I want to help you through my words. I hope to inspire and save as many people as I can in this lifetime, and I'm hoping I can do a little bit of that through my writing.

Emily