Though most girls call it "vagina" and my mom calls it "Virginia"

As you may know my family's going through some tough times right now. To cheer my mom up I sent her a bunch of youtube videos that regularly make me laugh. I sent nice(/creepy?) things like talking dogs and the dancing walrus to keep things clean and mom-like. With a little trepidation I put a link to Strong Kids, Safe Kids at the end. Sometimes I underestimate my mom and I forget that she gave birth to me, mixing her and my dad's senses of humor into my genes. "What does it say about me that I laughed the most at that one?" she asked me. "What does it mean that I laughed the most at that one?" I asked myself. My mom has a sick sense of humor.

Holy moly, I have so much to weblog about, but not the time nor energy.
Why? Because I've been hanging out with Margery Kempe all night, learning about how much Jesus loves her over the course of 400 pages (answer: thiiiiiiis much!).
Though I know it's not true, I like to imagine that this prematurely balding mongoloid on the cover of my copy of The Book of Margery Kempe is, in fact, the author. I think it's actually the stained glass window from the church where she worshipped by crying all over the place, St. Mongoloid's.




Reading this thick-ass, Jesus-packed non-starter of an autobiography along with Ancient and Victorian English has spurred me onto a new quest for my non-FWT.
It all started with all this hullabaloo and bullahooha about the new Twilight movie. Since my job this summer teaching little girls who are reading this presumably bullshit book I've been patting my back because I'm now a certified bonafide grown-up who doesn't go for that kid's stuff anymore. Yet... today there was a New York Times article yesterday about how fucking huge this phenomenon apparently is with the just-menstruating set. The Grey Lady said that girls are getting so excited that, before meeting the film's hunky, pubescent star outside of Hot Topics nationwide they're scratching their necks so they'll bleed for him. What?! In my day you didn't bleed for any books (except Island of Blue Dolphins, which demanded a child sacrifice).

How good must this book be to inspire young girls to cut themselves nationwide? (counterpoint: Linkin Park also has this effect). It must at least be titillating to some, weird girl-hormone. Or maybe... woman hormone? That's right, moms love Twilight too.

So, spurred on, as I said, by thick, boring, Jesus-y, Medieval lit and: a) a deepseated love of young-adult literature (having been a young-adult myself once) and b) a deepseated love for horror trash (see: the fact that I'm watching True Blood religiously every week even though it's kind of bad) - spurred on by these factors I think when the term ends and I go home to write my final papers for the term and relax/putter around the house I'm going to read at least the first book in the Twilight series and see what all the young girls/awful American tourists are cutting themselves about.

This also makes me want to revisit those other young-adult classics from the pit of middle school, as well as catch up on ones that I never got around to reading. It could be really fun! Plus, they take, like, a day to read now that I am taller/have better skin/don't think Garfield is funny. My freshman FWT I reread The Giver for my job at the Oregon Children's Theater and it was bomb! A list of the top of my head:

• Lord of the Flies - started rereading it a few years ago, scared the shit out of me
• Island of Blue Dolphins - never read it
• Flowers of Algernon - never read it
• To Kill a Mockingbird - read it twice. It's rad.
  
• Shabanu - I remember my whole class hating this book. I also remember descriptions of growing breasts (likened to apples and camel-droppings - gross), listening to your nomadic parents have sex in the tent next to you (gross) and camels cumming all over the ground (sexy. just kidding, gross). There was a storyline, too, but I can't remember it.
• Red Badge of Courage - never read it. The OCT was working on a production of it my freshman year as well as a rap musical. I bet that went well.
• Hatchet - fucking baller
• A Day No Pigs Would Die - read it. Don't remember anything.
• Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry - ditto
• The Cay - maybe read it... I think?
• Secret Garden - fucking baller (in a feminine way)
• Holes - pretty good. Ruined by Shia Lebouf.
• Animal Farm - sweet
• Yearling - sweet

What am I missing?? That's a pretty good list, if I do say so myself. What should I read this winter? Hatchet's definitely calling out to me. Wasn't there a sequel, too? Bowie Knife or something? (bad joke, but seriously) What else? And remember... ANYONE CAN COMMENT!
Please love me. I'm gonna put that reminder in bold until you do. In bold.

No, Macaulay Culkin, No!!!

My friends have made fun of me before because I complain about my "sleep-cycle getting screwed up." What none of these so-called friends realizes is that getting up at a reasonable time is a constant struggle for me. If I give my body an inch by sleeping in as long as it wants one day, it'll take a mile the next.
Well, ever since coming back from the US I've been complaining about jet-lag. What's really happened, though, is I just haven't been firm enough with my body to make it wake up when humans do this week. I missed one-and-a-half lectures this week because I hit snooze so many times on my alarm clock that it malfunctioned and gave up on me (three days in a row!). I have to put it across the room and just admit that I have a problem - there's no other way. Otherwise I'll be waking up at 3:30 in the afternoon every day.

Like today. Since, like my other post said, everyone leaves on Fridays, it was a really mellow Halloween. I have to read Great Expectations for the third time and it's really slow going now that all the suspense and discovery is sucked out of it (Rachel, "you may kiss me if you like"). I also have to read the book of Margery Kempe, which is a Medieval diary by a crazo woman who talks about Jesus hanging out with her and how she loves crying in front of stained glass windows and abstains from meat and sex with her really patient husband and blah blah blah. What a sweet Halloween!

I did celebrate a little, though, by watching one of the movies that absolutely scarred me as a child, The Good Son. Post-Home Alone and right before leaving films for a decade, Macaulay Culkin was looking to shake up his image a bit. He did so by being in a 1993 movie where he plays the absolutely most hate-able little shit you will ever see.
I remember coming into the family room as a child and seeing the movie on TV and plopping down to watch good, old Mac. Before I knew it he was forcing Elijah Wood to watch him shoot at animals with a crossbow and simulate suicides in order to cause highway accidents. It really resonated with me, having been forced, like little Frodo, to spend many awkward hours with kids of my parents' friends who were certifiable psychos.
Anyways, the movie's aged really well and, though I've seen it three times, it never fails to creep the ever-loving shit out of me. Must be a masterpiece. It's on youtube, if you want to see it, but you have to watch a clip called something like "THE MOTHER OF ALL CLIFF-HANGERS" to watch the end.



A similar movie that I haven't seen since it first came out is Neil Jordan's The Butcher Boy. I kind of want to read the book first and confront my demonic memories of this movie by understanding it. I was like, ten or eleven when my dad brought it home from Hollywood Video and I loved horror movies, but I definitely wasn't old enough for this movie not to leave an impression on me. Plus, I'm in Ireland and Patrick McCabe's practically royalty here, right? Or maybe I should make an effort to experience some culture elsewhere.
Dig the awesome intro: