My Past 24 Hours: A Hellish Roller Coaster

Yesterday I spent about...4 hours watching the first two series of Black Books which was created by Graham Linham and Dylan Moran. It's a fantastically awesome series about three misanthropes. Bernard Black run Black Books, a used bookstore; Manny goes bonkers and starts working there and Bernard's friend Fran spends a lot of time hanging out in the shop. They live drinking, smoking and being all around ridiculous.  The characters remind me a bit of a British It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia at times, the humor isn't as dry as some British comedies can be. It made yesterday pretty damn awesome as I started sinking into being depressed.

Speaking of being depressed...I went to counseling yesterday morning, like most Tuesdays. Prior to I did that stupid thing where I sleep for four hours. Seriously, I think it's a retarded side effect from quitting smoking. I don't know, it's really friggin' annoying. I woke up at 6, I was able to get back to sleep, but being awake was not plesant. It's not like I didn't feel rested, but I know me and I know my habits so I don't understand why I keep waking up after only four hours of sleep.

In councling I spoke about what's gone on over the past week including going to a festival this past Friday and going to a youth church thing. I can appreciate where the group is coming from by using rap to make the youth feel closer to the message [it was a predominantly black church group] but I don't agree. It sounded mostly like hardcore rap which seems a little counterproductive. What I mean is, if it sounds like gangster, shoot-'em-up rap and you can't understand what's being said, how do they know the message they intended got across to the youth? If you look at my track record of music habits I'm across the board, except for hardcore rap. I never liked that sound, it has never been pleasing to my ears so I was judgemental. If you remember my earlier blogs about my opinion of religion I was already going in judging. I tried to get with it but I couldn't. When the speaker got up on stage to preach I was more or less fine with the message. He spoke about not giving up because something is too hard. That's the Devil's work getting you off your proper path. That I could get behind. I could not agree with his use of a cancer analogy.

For the newcomers, my mother died from cancer. I don't like talking about cancer in that ambiguous manner that if someone died from it, they gave up. Bull-fucking-shit. My family and I never 'gave up hope' we held out  candle for my mother the entire time she was ill. We prayed, our church prayed, her co-workers prayed. She's now on a prayer list or something with some church, still. People have not forgotten us. There were a lot of people who didn't give up praying for her. The doctors did the best the could and ended up trying to keep her pain manageable. She died because of science. Why do I not want to accept it as God's will? I'll tell you. I don't want to accept it as God's will because I still needed her. I still need her.

I have met a lot of people who care, who will give me advice and help me should I ask, and even if I don't ask all the time. That's all well and dandy but my mother is still dead. It's not the same. If God cared about me than why did she need to die? So I could grow up? What's going to happen in my life that I couldn't stay naive for a few months longer, a few years longer.

Why did she have to die, science can explain. The massive amounts of chemicals in her system took their toll on her body, it could not take it anymore. Her kidney's stopped flushing water from her blood; her lungs deteriorated from pneumonia getting a hold of her chemotherapy weakened system and her body was too far deceased and disconnected to continue. Her body knew it was time, it tried to keep up but it couldn't repair itself fast enough. The thought that biology happened, that it's the natural order of life and death, that all living things die at some point made me feel better than saying 'God wanted her to come home.' Science gives me answers. I believe in science. I believe in some deity getting things started and is now sitting back or just plain gone and this world continues circling that fucking star. Science has yet to give us all the answers. I can accept that. I mean, if the universe started from the 'Big Bang' where did the elements come from for that initial beginning? If they came from an even earlier universe, what happened to that one? And where did that one come from?

We don't know, so I believe in science as far as it can give me an educated answer. It might all be wrong but it makes enough sense and seems plausible enough for me.

I left counseling this morning with my counselor asking me to detail how I felt as my mother was sick, when she died and after. Thankfully I have so many damn blogs and journals it's kind of like aggregating it and maybe writing something new, or taking this. Not too sure yet.

I left counseling and killed some time until I went out to Jerry's Art-Arama to get supplies for my color theory class. I spent $184 to get my supplies, giant 19X24 bristol, color aid, pencils, triangle, compass and a shit ton of 'other'. I did get to save abut $20, my friend who is now dropping the class, is letting me borrow some things for the duration which is pretty sweet.

Now, the trip back from Jerry's, which is out in Virginia Beach was an interesting and highly irritating one. Remember how I said I was slipping into depression last night? Well it reared it's bastardly ugly head. Fucking bastard. People's driving was irritating me and my friend tried to give me some advice on how to deal with it. It didn't help. I was in the middle of being depressed, being told just about anything does not help. We were stuck in traffic because of an accident on 64 and people just kept irritating me. My friend couldn't placate me and was actually counter productive. When I cry I don't want to be told it's fine to cry, I like rationalizing things out. I like words, I like taking the elusive and explaining it to the best of my ability. Why? It focuses me. It keeps me in control. I like being in control.

That's not to say I don't let myself go and go with the flow of things. I have been stepping out of my box, out f my comfort zone for a while, trying new things. At the festival I tried crawfish, I went back to a church for the first time in three years, I've gone out with people I don't know. I have no problem feeling joy, happiness, bliss, anger, irritation, depression. I feel, I like feeling with words. Tears do nothing. No, crying doesn't make me feel better, I hate crying, I hate it when I cry, it's like I've lost control in an unpleasant way.  Science on wikipedia gives me a few answers but not much is going on right now to really prompt this. It's irritating and I really can't stand crying.

And looking at that and knowing me I can now predict a few things. As I said yesterday I knew I was getting depressed. As I cried I said I was feeling depressed. I've written more journals in the past few weeks than I have in a while. Writing is one of the things I do when I'm depressed, I'm trying to put my feelings into words, trying to work through it. Writing about any thing that comes to mind. [Yes, I want 'any' and 'thing' to be separate words]. I've been depressed and I'm PMS-ing. I'm not as hard up about candy unless I'm pms-ing, and I want peanut butter. It was never chocolate for me, always peanut butter. At the moment it's peanut butter M&Ms, yeah there's chocolate, but it's about the peanut butter. It's usually Reese's Pieces, I know these things.

So I'm in my car, trapped in my traffic, in the Virginia heat [with A/C], and I'm crying and depressed. My friend it telling me it's fine. It's not fine. It's never fine when I cry. Very few of my friends have seen me cry and it's always when I can't put my frustrations into words.

I hate crying. Period.

I dropped him off, came home, and made a 16 oz Cosmopolitan in a water-bottle. I downed it in an hour and rolled around on my bed drunk and doing nothing on the internet until I decided to see Toy Story 3. I have been thinking about not seeing it, but in the long run I had to. It was awesome. I didn't like that the three trailer's before the movie were for 3D flicks, I saw Toy Store in classic 2D and these trailers seemed like those movies weren't going to be distributed in 2D, I assume they will be but we'll see. One of these days on my movie blog I'll put up my opinion about 3D and elaborate on my distaste for it. And if you pop over to my movie blog, you can see my opinion on making pseudo 3D/CGI animated films, as critiqued by the Smurfs movie slated for next year. I also have some ideas about photo-realism, which can fit into that blog but will get it's own, because that owl movie looks creepy (it had human eyes..wtf?!? -ovular-). But, I don't like barn owls, their faces are disturbingly flat, and the movie seems to 'star' a barn owl. Joy. Or it's a masked owl...I don't like the flatter faces. The other things I noticed in the trailers is that there are two animated movies for this summer/fall that seem like they're supposed to be sympathetic to villains. The Will Ferrel one, Mastermind or whatever (...'it's BIG for a reason'...great, penis envy jokes); and the Steve Carell one, Despicable Me (reading this plot, this seems weak. I like the beginning idea, but where it goes, not as much). I think the trailer could be made stronger if the minion characters said the word right, instead of tailoring it to kids, if they broke it down on the screen for the kid to learn the damn word and not having the minion stumble on the word then having the announcer say it correctly.

So, Toy Story 3, fantastic. It was also hella depressing. It was also hella brilliant. I loved the toys that were there in the the day care, I loved how things played out. It was all really well written an animated. I don't want to spoil much, but I do with that more had been done with Bonnie's toys, they were awesome. And great voices all around. I could have gone with the Spanish Buzz joke, it went on a bit too long for me and seemed to be a little contrived, but outside of that bit of nit picking I enjoyed everything. It was written on a kid's level, but was great for adults without it needing to be vulgar, a la Shrek.

Yeah...I came back home and wrote all this out. It's taken me a bit more than an hour. So today was a roller coaster of hell, kind of. But I feel better now that I've written..something! See, crying doesn't help, words do!

Jasmine P.

A Little Catching Up and A Few Random Thoughts

I will do a proper birthday write up, I pretty much usually do, but friggin' Norfolk mail didn't deliver yesterday, so I'll see what I get today, and then there's chatting with the Ficus and figuring out if he's visiting, or if our revelry for me being old enough to purchase alcohol will have to wait. It would be lame for it to be delayed for another two weeks because until Thanksgiving.

But onto my thoughts. I haven't written not really, since before I was sick. I wrote while I was sick, but that only barely counts. On a positive side, I seriously have not been depressed since I had my kidney infection. Before I was writing my usual 'oh woah is me! Nobody loves me, I have no body I'm oh so fucking alone' type of crap because that's what it's always about. Then I was sick, and I've been pretty alright. I've been doodlin' and I do have a whole mess of sketches in my personal sketchbook and my class sketch book to scan one of these days. It'll be 'fun' sitting in Webb scanning 11x14" sheets of paper covered in silly pencil sketches, and some 'figure studies'. I put apostrophes around that because I was never looking at people, I imagined the figure I wanted to draw.

So, I saw my school's performance of Dracula on Saturday night, the last night of the show. It was pretty entertaining. I did enjoy the show, then I masochistically decided to help strike the set. I say masochistically because three days later my back, neck and arms are a little sore. But I plan on helping again in the future. Striking is fun. Best quote from the night was one of the prop masters found a black pump, just one shoe. I called it 'Cinderella's Goth Slipper' he called it 'Cinderellas Goth Fuck-Me Pump' me and two or three other people who heard it paused, then laughed. Pretty funny. Then after strike when the actors and crew got to eat, I was chatting with I think the lighting master/teacher whatever, and he remembered me from striking the Rocky Horror set from two years ago. Hell, I think I wrote up striking Rocky, but being remembered from two years ago from a more or less one off meeting is always pretty interesting.

So, I had this thought. I checked out this awesome photo that Paulo Coelho took when he went ot Kazakhstan back in 2005 and he was with some members of the village [i think he said village] who were out falcon hunting. My thoughts on this aren't on the hunting, though, the falcon was huge and a gorgeous animal. It was that he was wearing all black. It made me think that there's a weird dichotomy with wearing black. Depending on the type of black clothing you wear you can either look distinguished, you can look elegant, or you can look like you're emo, goth or depressed. I was just thinking that, it's kind of interesting. I know that depending on how anything is worn it can change how people will perceive the wearer. Black is just such a pivitol color it seems at time that the thought stood out the most to me when I saw that photo. Thinking about it, just about any time someone wants to dress up and look good, they wear black. Why is black the color of distinction? It has been considered slimming, and ever year something come out as 'the new black' but black still reigns. Nothing else lasts for more than a season as the color to wear before black is back. Or, they'll both be big together. My question on this point all together is, why black? But I also like rich darker colors. Wine or burgundy reds, royal blue and the like. The rich dark colors are some of my favorites. They have been. In the right type of suit with the right accents these color can work, or as accents with the black.

I'm not too sure where my thoughts on color are going, but it did start from my question of 'why black' after thinking about how it works for two types of people that society might not necessarily consider all that similar at face value.

Jasmine P.

A Night At The Theatre

The haunted theatre in the Stable's was really fun. Blaise and I went and I was on a caffeine high so everything and it's blood-brother was pretty funny. Tonight was also the first night in about a week that I saw C.R. It was nice to chat. I understand a week isn't that long, but there are certain people I rely on for conversation, so I've ended up chatting about crock with Blaise more so than before because there was no C.R. to talk to. We've had some good conversations, so in the end I guess things have been alright anyway.

So, I've only just gotten back from seeing the midnight of "The Rocky Horror Show" for the second time at the University Theatre. It was really enjoyable. There was audience participation which made the show even more enjoyable. What was not fun were the obnoxious bastards that were making the wrong calls and who kept calling to a friend of theirs, Katie [apparently] I was sad that Allison couldn't go tonight, but it's understandable. She has to get up at 6, and I've got to get up at 9. I need to water the plants in MGB before heading out to McArthur with Blaise and Topher.

I'm mad tired now, I think I'm going to bed about now. 5 1/2 hours, that's what I've been getting all week. Tomorrow night...tonight rather, I think I'm going to have to go to bed a bit early. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to make a regular, decent post. A story, or at least not a boring post about the nothings that have been going on for the past day.

Adios for now.
:salute and bow:
Jasmine P